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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.

Need For Speed is Hilarious: Return of the Live Action Cutscene

First, the tiny confession: I have never ever played a Need For Speed. I’m no racing fanatic, but I’m shocked I’ve managed to avoid them this long. I tend to play one racer obsessively every couple of years, a cycle that began with Rage Racer way back in, yes, 1998. (It actually came out in mid-’97, but I didn’t play it until a full year later, curious after reading previews for R4: Ridge Racer Type 4. That year really was awesome, wasn’t it?) The arcade-style delights of Ridge Racer are really what appeal to me in a racing game, something Need For Speed has in spades, so it’s surprising I’ve never played one of its fifteen different entries until this week. If Need For Speed: Undercover is anything to go by, I haven’t been missing much. The game’s something of a poor man’s Burnout: Paradise, giving you an open world to drive your licensed rides about but not letting you do much interesting inside of it. You can’t just stumble into races, you’ve got to select them from a menu or press down when driving near them, prompting load times and cutscenes. The driving is no great shakes, either, fast and presentable but with none of the edge of your seat spectacle that makes the aforementioned Burnout such a treat. I’m going to keep playing Need For Speed, though, for no other reason than to keep watching it’s hilarious live action cutscenes. Check out the goods after the jump.

Gears of LittleBig Fable Music: Considering the First-Party Blitz

October brought its true fury and grandeur to New York today. It took three days, but the nattering leftovers of summer finally drifted out to sea like so many dead leaves and left behind the lowlight and intent wind so particular to the month. Walking down the street, I could smell it, looming like bonfire smoke and Halloween parades: game season.

I hold no love for the business structure that sees some ninety-percent of the year’s most ballyhooed games releasing all within a tight ten week window. It leads to sensory overload and, for the devoted gamer, it adds to already-big backlogs. But I’d be lying if I said it isn’t always exciting. All of the hype, all of the previews, leaked screens, developer showcases, and high, high hopes all lead here and it always begins in October. Holiday 2008, as it were, is going to be a particularly interesting season considering that it is gaming’s first to witness true third-party agnosticism. Nigh on every publisher from East and West is releasing their biggest games on any and all platforms available. (There are rare exceptions. See Sega’s Valkyria Chronicles, Valve’s Left4Dead, and a number of Wii titles.) This brings even closer scrutiny to the console holders' offerings; more than ever, first-party games need to be system sellers. They have to act as ambassadors, convincing casual and hardcore gamers alike that if they put money into such and such a system, there will be more where that came from.

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.