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Up All Night With Jaleco: Never the Best, But Never Forgotten

Despite the solid gold righteousness of Barack Obama’s inauguration, this day’s still a little sad. As Joe noted, Jaleco Holdings has sold off their game developer/publisher subsidiary Jaleco to Korean MMO house Game Yarou and taken their leave of gaming for good. Ducking out of the videogame business because of "increasing competition (…) in the videogame market" isn’t an especially surprising move for a c-list – close to d-list really – publisher, but it’s still disconcerting to see a member of the old vanguard get shut down. Joe’s timeline of Jaleco is pretty thorough, but I wanted to make special note of a few other games they brought to the world. Let’s be honest: no Jaleco game, whether it was one they just published or one they created, could be considered one of the all time greats. But many of them were a hell of a lot of fun, and others were just plain freaking weird. All four of the following are perfect Up All Night candidates: they may or may not play that well, but they are trashy as all hell. Here’s to you, Jaleco.

Tuff E Nuff – SNES

Like Totally Rad, Tuff E Nuff is notable for its totally sweet name alone, but it earns extra points for being a decent one on one fighter in an age lousy with Street Fighter II wannabes. Tuff E Nuff is unassuming at first, revealing its merits slowly. The quality music, the solid character design, and the game’s story mode – which actually includes some character and skill leveling – are all charmers. It's story is suitably absurd and awesome.

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.