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Showing posts from August, 2020

PlayStation Basement #76 - Magic Carpet

This review was originally published on the  Console Purist  Facebook group on February 8th, 2020. Welcome back to the PlayStation Basement, a weekly review of games for the original PlayStation that are somewhat obscure, unusual, or unknown. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral to emphasize the review itself. Now, let’s go! Today, we delve back into the fantastic past with  Magic Carpet .  Magic Carpet  was originally released for PC in 1994 by Electronic Arts and developed by Bullfrog Productions, the studio created by the now infamous Peter Molyneux. The game was ported to Sega Saturn and PlayStation in 1996 (Europe and North America) and 1997 (Japan) by Krisalis Software.  Magic Carpet  is a combination of light flight-sim and strategy. You play as a young wizard who must gather mana, portrayed here as colored orbs, to restore the equilibrium of various worlds that resemble a fantasy Middle-East. Magic Carpet  features some very different cover art by region. The first PlayStation

PlayStation Basement #75 - Cleopatra's Fortune

This review was originally published on the  Console Purist  Facebook group on February 1st, 2020. I hope that you are having a good weekend. Welcome back to the PlayStation Basement, a weekly review of games for the original PlayStation that are somewhat obscure, unusual, or unknown. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral to emphasize the review itself. Now, let’s go! After all of those futuristic games last month, I’ve decided to explore the past for a bit this February. Today’s game is  Cleopatra’s Fortune , an arcade puzzle game from Natsume and Taito. Originally released to Japanese arcades in 1996 as  Cleopatra Fortune , the game came to the Japanese Saturn in 1997 and the Japanese PlayStation in 2001.  Cleopatra’s Fortune  finally reached American shores in 2003 under the budget publisher, Mud Duck, handling the port by Altron. The game was also included on  Taito Legends 2  for PS2, Xbox, and PC in 2007, but we’re looking further into the past than that. The cover art for this u

PlayStation Basement #74 - Fear Effect

This review was originally published on the  Console Purist  Facebook group on January 25th, 2020. Welcome to PlayStation Basement, a weekly review of games for the original PlayStation that are  somewhat obscure, unusual, or unknown. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral to emphasize the  review itself. Now, let’s go! This is the last week of Future Month 2020; next Saturday, this will all just be the present, like yesterday’s news. It’s a complex web of technical, analytical, chronoscopic intrigue that leads to these sorts of determinations, one mostly based on counts of days and new years and such. In related news, today is also the Lunar New Year based on the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar. This marks the new year in Vietnam (Tết), Korea (Seollal), Mongolia (Tsagaan Sar), Tibet (Losar), and China (Chinese New Year or Spring Festival). The last of these is the most widely known, as far as I can tell, in the United States, and I remember watching a short documentary every yea