For several generations, youngsters have enjoyed watching shows on the Nickelodeon cable channel for kids.  Heck, even when I was a little kid back in the 80’s, I enjoyed watching Nick shows such as You Can’t Do that on Television, Danger Mouse, and Double Dare.  Even more recently I’ve been known to watch shows on that channel like Invader ZIM and The Penguins of Madagascar.  My younger brothers would watch shows on Nickelodeon, too, such as Rugrats and SpongeBob Squarepants.  And now kart racing and Nickelodeon fans can have fun together with Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway.  It’s available on all current consoles and PC, but reviewed on Switch here.  They’ve added a few characters and tracks, but most of it is the same as before.  But there is one new improvement the other Nick kart games lacked: ACTUAL VOICES!  Really gives the series the much-needed personality this type of licensed game requires.

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Tags: Game Reviews, Movies with Children, Television

Back in the early to mid 90s, many PC owners got their games via shareware.  With shareware games, you usually could pick up a free disk at a computer store or in a magazine.  The disk would have demos of games you could try, and if you liked them, there would usually be info on how you can order the full game, or even get a shareware catalog!  Keep in mind this was before the internet was big.  Many popular games back then started out as shareware: Commander Keen, Jazz Jackrabbit, heck even Wolfenstein!  If you want to play a new 2-D platformer that has that old ‘shareware’ DOS PC feel, then C.A.R.L. is for you!  C.A.R.L. stands for Computer Automated Resource Locator (acronyms are a running gag in this game).  You are a robot equipped with a blaster and you must infiltrate a robot factory owned by a engineer who wants to take over the world.  The game is available on all current consoles and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.

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Tags: Game Reviews

Play a fun color matching block puzzle game while being accompanied by cute anime ladies in Pretty Girls Escape.  It’s available on PlayStation consoles, Switch, and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.

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Tags: Game Reviews

If you have a bunch of people over to play games during the holidays, but not enough controllers to play with everyone, then Jackbox has you covered!  Their latest batch of party games is out, and all you need are cell phones or tablets to play them!  Just connect to Jackbox.tv on any mobile device and enter in the room code and you’re in!  It’s pretty simple and works well, and in some games, even people who don’t have cell phones can be part of the audience and participate, too.  The Jackbox Party Pack 9 is available on most anything that can play games, but reviewed on PS4 here.  Let’s take a quick look at the five games on this collection.

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Tags: Game Reviews

Get ready for one of the weirdest pinball games I’ve ever played!  In Car Mechanic Pinball, you play pinball to fix up cars.  But instead of tossing balls around with the flippers, here you toss a CAR around!  This crazy pinball game is on Nintendo Switch, but I think I’ve seen an arcade version of it, too.

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Tags: Game Reviews

Little Kong is a young primate enjoying his fruit meal.  But he got a little messy and the fruit juices even dyed his fur purple!  His mommy wants to give him a bath, but he likes his new purple fur.  Help Little Kong run away and escape bathtime in this cute and cartoony continuous runner on Switch.

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Tags: Game Reviews

My brother Ben returns and we talk about our favorite turn-based RPGs in this episode of The Pizza Pixel Podcast!  I think out of all my brothers, Ben likes RPGs the most, and since I’ve helped introduce many of them to the genre, I guess I know a bit about them, too!  I’ve definitely fell off the RPG loop now, but I was really into them way back in the 16-bit days!  So please click on the link and give it listen if you can.  I think this one’s a lot of fun!

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Tags: Misc

Back when I was a kid, one of the local pizza joints we visited at least once a week for their buffet was Pizza Inn.  Like many other pizza places, this one had a few arcade machines in the back.  You had your mainstays that were there pretty much forever, like Ms. Pac-Man, Spy Hunter, and Arkanoid.  But this restaurant also had a couple of machines in rotation that I had never seen in another arcade before, or only once or twice.  Some of these titles included stuff like Mr. Do!’s Castle and Bomb Jack.  Bomb Jack was made by what would become Tecmo and it starred a caped superhero character as he collected bombs in single screen areas while avoiding enemies.  Its appearance at Pizza Inn is what caused me to buy Mighty Bomb Jack when I got my NES.  The NES version added some side scrolling elements as well as obtuse hidden secrets that games back then tended to do.  There was a Bomb Jack 2 on European PCs, but it was just a reworked Thundercats game.  In Japan in the 90s there was a two player Bomb Jack arcade game called Bomb Jack Twin.  But aside from an appearance in the Arcade Archives collection, a Tecmo classic collection on the Xbox, and a secret outfit in a Tecmo Wii golf game, there hasn’t been much of Bomb Jack seen since.  But if you want to play an imitation of the game, now there’s Super Jagger Bomb, which plays so much like Bomb Jack, from the stage layouts to the backgrounds, that I’m surprised Tecmo hasn’t sued them!  It’s available on PlayStation consoles, Switch, and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.

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Tags: Game Reviews

Aliens have taken over the city and the only ones who can stop them are a blue haired android girl and her friends in the “Chenso Club.”  This one reminds me of several different types of games.  It has the style and presentation of titles you might see from WayForward or Treasure.  It’s got some slight Smash Bros. style gameplay and since it’s a (mostly) single screen action game it also makes me think of Taito classics like Bubble Bobble.  But it all mixes together to make a fairly enjoyable experience.  Chenso Club is available on most current consoles and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.

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Tags: Game Reviews

A while back I reviewed the PlayDate, a new handheld gaming device that has a crank on the side that you can wind to control some of the games.  The other unique thing about this device is how you get the games.  They come two at a time and are downloaded automatically on the handheld each week on a Monday.  I talked about a few of them when I wrote my initial review, but since I didn’t have all the games yet in ‘season one,’ I said I would talk about more of the games later when I get a good amount of them.  So now that I’ve got a few more, let’s go over what they are here!

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Tags: Game Reviews