EfreetEater

This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on August 3rd, 2019. The initial review missed the paragraph about the game's sound design, but it has been re-added here. Good evening and welcome to another PlayStation Basement! PlayStation Basement runs every Saturday with a review of an obscure or odd game for PS1. I don't like numerical reviews too much, so the games are rated Good, Neutral, or Bad. Let's go! Thinking about the anniversary of Apollo 11, today we're talking about RayStorm (aka Layer Section II ), an epic shmup from Taito. A sequel of sorts to 1994's RayForce / Galactic Attack (the games share the same gameplay but have a seemingly unrelated storyline), RayStorm was released to arcades in 1996. It was ported to the PlayStation January, June, and September of 1997 in Japan, North America, and Europe respectively. The excellent Working Designs did the North American port under their Spaz label. RayStorm was also re...

This review was originally published on the  Console Purist  Facebook group on July 27th, 2019. Hello, and welcome to PlayStation Basement! I am in the middle of moving from one house to another, but there’s always time for a game review. PlayStation Basement is a weekly review of an odd or obscure game for the original PlayStation. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral. Now, let’s go! Continuing with another game about water (after Depth and Aquanaut’s Holiday ) for the summer, this week I have Critical Depth to review. Unlike the previous games in this summer mini-series that featured psychedelic weirdness and tropical paradises, this is a vehicular combat game from the creators of Twisted Metal and Twisted Metal 2 , SingleTrac. The developers did not work on Twisted Metal 3 and made this instead. Critical Depth was published by GT Interactive in North America and Europe in October and December of 1997 respectively. I remember seeing this game but never rente...

Replay FX is like a dream. Walking into that room at the top of the escalator in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center seriously felt like some dreams I had; I had never seen so many flickering neon lights, machines casting shadows across the walls of those who stood before them to defeat aliens, blast gangsters, solve puzzles, and outrace ace speedsters of ages past. I had never been to Replay FX before, and I remember seeing it advertised online a few years ago without really knowing what it was. Here's a primer - Replay FX is a huge gaming convention in Pittsburgh that takes place in the late summer. I believe it started in 2015, but the organization that runs it, the Replay Foundation, has been around since 2012 with the intent of preserving pinball and arcade machines. The Replay Foundation also runs the Professional & Amateur Pinball Association (PAPA) tournaments which were originally founded in the 1980s. In addition to hundreds of arcade and pinball games, Repla...

This review was originally published on the  Console Purist  Facebook group on July 20th, 2019. Hello, and welcome to PlayStation Basement! PlayStation Basement is a weekly review of an odd or obscure game for the original PlayStation. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral. Now, let’s go! July 16 th , 2019 is the day when the film Akira was set to occur. I didn’t see any news about psychic mutant teenagers in Japan, but here’s a themed game for this occasion. Today, we’re talking about Psychic Force , a very unusual fighting game from Taito. The PlayStation version of this 1995 arcade game was published by Taito in October of 1996 in Japan and by Acclaim in April 1997 for North America and July 1997 for Europe. Similar to Akira , Psychic Force features battling teenage psychics. The cover art shows some of these psychics: the main character Burn Griffiths and antagonist Keith Evans. The cover art is almost the same in all regions, but the original Japa...