TURN TO CHANNEL 3: ‘Battle Royale’ is short and cheesy fun for classic wrestling fans
My fondness for the TurboGrafx-16 comes from my childhood attachment to it. During a time when you were either a Nintendo fan or an early Sega Genesis follower, the TurboGrafx-16 offered you an alternative and almost a bridge between the 8-bit and 16-bit eras of gaming. It still bothers me to this day that so […]
TURN TO CHANNEL 3: ‘Air Zonk’ shows the crazy creativity of TurboGrafx-16 games
Obviously with my shop, I get a lot of questions about my own retro gaming collection and, in truth, it isn’t some vast room of thousands of games because I only buy the games I’m actually going to sit and play, so I am the furthest thing from a collector. However, I have a sweet […]
TURN TO CHANNEL 3: ‘Breakers’ isn’t groundbreaking, but it’s more than a ‘Street Fighter’ clone
The 1990s arcade scene was largely ruled by beat ‘em ups and fighting games, the latter building some of gaming’s most prominent franchises in the genre. But, as with all genres, there are those that are overlooked, dubbed pretenders to the throne and buried under so many copies or near copies of the more well-known […]
TURN TO CHANNEL 3: ‘Root Beer Tapper’ serves up fast-paced arcade fun
In nearly five years of running my small business of selling video games, one of the constant conversations I have is about the simplicity of the classics versus all the bells and whistles of today’s modern games, and today’s topic here on Turn to Channel 3 is really about what I feel every good game […]
TURN TO CHANNEL 3: Capcom’s ‘Cadillacs and Dinosaurs’ deserves revival from arcade extinction
While it certainly happens today, there’s something to be said about the hidden gems of yesteryear, especially in the realm of arcade games. In the 1980s and ’90s, arcades were chock full of popular titles, so much so that there were always a few diamonds in the rough, those that fell off the radars of […]
TURN TO CHANNEL 3: ‘Blood Bros.’ are the unsung heroes of the Wild West of arcades
Happy 2018, readers! Turn to Channel 3 will continue showcasing games of years past in the new year, so we begin by taking a trip back to the arcades this month with some unsung heroes of that era, if you will. Today’s topic is a game with a ton of fun and twice as much […]
TURN TO CHANNEL 3: Santa delivers an average holiday in ‘Daze Before Christmas’
Another Christmas is in the books, and I hope you all had a great one, but I apologize if today’s topic already feels stale and Christmas overload-ish for you, but when you look at the history of true Christmas-themed games, there aren’t many to speak of, and even less that made the trek over here […]
TURN TO CHANNEL 3: ‘C. Kane’ is the classic movie/RPG parody you’ll want like Rosebud
Recently, a colleague asked me just what makes indie games, without those big budgets behind them, so successful? My immediate response is that they tap into something that elicits a memory or make an established formula even better. In the case of today’s Turn to Channel 3 topic, it is 50 percent parody, 50 percent […]
TURN TO CHANNEL 3: If you love retro games, you’ll dig ‘Shovel Knight’ on the Wii U
I recently read an article about the success of indie games on the Nintendo Switch, which has further bolstered the already stellar roster of titles for the console. Many developers were quoted as saying that one of the reasons their games have been so successful on the Switch is because many of them harken back […]
TURN TO CHANNEL 3: ‘Double Dragon Neon’ burns bright as ’80s throwback brawler
Creating new content from an established franchise is difficult business. The struggle is real, as it relates to how much you borrow from the past versus creating a totally new experience for the gamer. I’ve seen just as many failures as successes in this area of game development, and today we’re going to focus on […]
