Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of all things octogenarian… from a 20th century point of view. The SEGA Genesis is largely remembered as a 90s gaming powerhouse, but it was actually released in 1989. That makes a handful of the console’s early games babies of the 80s. Truxton (aka 達人 or Tatsujin in Japan… which means something like “expert”) is one
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since the creation of Italian sausage. It’s a truly great thing that the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: the Cowabunga Collection is now available from Konami, perhaps for me more so than anyone else on earth. It’s like a pang of guilt has been lifted from my shoulders after a decade of
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade. Ever. (Change my mind) Today, we’re going to take a look at Laffin’ Gas Cartoonies issue 3, which was published by Blackthorne Publishing in November 1986. Laffin’ Gas Cartoonies was an ongoing black-and-white anthology featuring several comedy and parody short stories. The book is very much in the spirit of
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since the martians built the pyramids. Today, we’re going to look at Capcom’s very first game, a 2D, vertically scrolling, space shooter titled Vulgus released in 1984. Humanity is under attack! Maybe. Who knows? I wasn’t able to discern any plot from my time with Vulgus, but that was pretty much par for
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since fry bread. Before Ronald McDonald starred in his own video games and the Geico Cavemen were given their own ill-fated television show, the marketing minds at CalRab (the California Raisin Advisory Board) decided to expand the presence of their own claymation mascots in pop culture. As
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since the unification of Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate! Today, we’re going to look at Thunder Cross, an a side-scrolling shoot ’em up (or simply “shooter,” as we called them back then) released in arcades by Konami in 1988. It’s important to note up front that I am looking specifically at the US
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since Gutenberg invented the printing press! And welcome back to Tale of the Toy, the feature where we tell stories about some of our most cherished childhood toys and action figures. Today, we’re telling the tale of how we originally acquired the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT)
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since the invention of the hurdy-gurdy. Today we’re going to take a look at Cyborg Hunter, one of the very few third party (sort of) games released for the SEGA Master System. Cyborg Season? Developed by SEGA and published in the United States by Activision in 1988, Cyborg Hunter
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since “Big Maps” started their coverup of our true, flat Earth. Today we’re going to take a bittersweet look back at Moon Patrol: The Milky Way Chronicles, a game developed by Wasted Studios which was in-development for the ill-fated Intellivision Amico. As many have already heard, the Intellivision Amico console looks
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since the discovery of zero. Today we’re going to look at Shatter Special issue 1, a sci-fi adventure published in June 1985 by First Comics, and billed as the “first computerized comic book.” Set on a gritty, futuristic version of earth, Shatter follows the exploits of a freelance security contractor named
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since bacon. Today, we’re going to take a look at The 3-D Battles of Worldrunner (aka 3-D Worldrunner), a game published by Acclaim for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1987. Developed by Square before they started making good Final Fantasy games, then bad ones, then good ones
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since We’re marking this festive occasion with an all-new installment of Box Art Bombshells, where we reveal the completely fabricated super really-real events that inspired some of the wackiest and weirdest box art from gaming history. This time, we’re revealing the hidden truth behind Black Belt, the martial arts action game released on
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of everything 80s. Derp. Despite being primarily famous as a 90s console the SEGA Genesis (aka Mega Drive) was actually released in 1989, so the launch games and other early titles can still lay claim to being entertainment artifacts of the 80s. One such launch game is Thunder Force II. I know what
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since the chicken laid the first egg… or, wait… Today we’re going to look at Chack’ N Pop, an arcade puzzle platformer released by Taito in 1983. A horde of monsters has stolen all of Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man Chack’n’s hearts, so now they don’t love each other, or something
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While we typically use our 80s August event to focus on entertainment produced during the 1980s, there is also room for covering things that are inspired by the era, too. That’s why today, we’re looking at The Mighty Mascots issues 4-6, which is published by Alterna Comics.
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Konichiwa! Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since the development of opposable thumbs. Today, we’re going to take a look at Ninja JaJaMaru-kun, an arcade style 2D action game developed by Jaleco and released for the Nintendo Famicom in 1985. Ninja JaJaMaru-kun stars the young hero JaJaMaru who must come to the rescue of Princess Sakura, who has
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since the chicken laid the first egg… or, wait… Today we’re going to take a look at ATARI Force issue one published by DC Comics in 1984. Written by Gerry Conway and illustrated by José Luis Garcia Lopez, the DC ATARI Force series actually serves as a sequel to five mini comics that
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since the breakup of Pangea! Since the original RoboCop film was released in July 1987, that makes this year an anniversary of sorts. To celebrate, we’re going to pick apart RoboCop for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Published by Data East in 1989, RoboCop is for NES
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We love our theme events here at The Splintering (the Festival of Dread, Jolly Jinglings, and Monochrome May), but it’s been so long Monochrome May, am I right? So we’re bringing back 80s August for 2022! Starting Monday, we’ll be posting reviews and features celebrating the greatest decade since mankind learned to churn butter. To mark the occasion, we’re featuring
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since Istanbul was still Constantinople! We’re marking this festive occasion by introducing an all-new feature here at The Splintering: Box Art Bombshells, where we reveal the completely fabricated super really-real events that inspired some of the wackiest and weirdest box art from gaming history. We’re kicking off
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since the first belly dance! Today we’re going to take a look at Karate Champ, a one-on-one martial arts fighting game released by Data East on the Nintendo NES. So how does one of the earliest fighting games hold out? Based on the 1984 arcade game by
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since the discovery of the Pythagorean Theorem! Though certainly not the first female video game character, Samus Aran from 1986’s Metroid is still considered by many to be the First Lady of gaming. It should therefore come as no surprise that the topic of a Metroid film keeps
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since the Trojan War! Despite being a prominent presence of the 90s gaming scene, many forget that the SEGA Genesis (aka Mega Drive) was actually released in 1989. So today, we’re continuing our 80s coverage by reviewing one of the console’s launch titles: Last Battle! *Note: Did
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since Gutenberg invented the printing press! Today, we’re introducing Tales of the Toy, a new feature where we tell stories about some of our most cherished childhood toys. We’re kicking it off by telling the tale of how we originally acquired Cosmos, the G1 Transformers toy. On
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since martians built the pyramids! Today, we’re going to take a look at Space Invaders Invincible Collection on Nintendo Switch.* I know what you’re thinking- that Taito first released Space Invaders in 1978, not the 1980s. True enough, but Space Invaders was absolutely still an arcade mainstay
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since the first seppuku! Today we’re going to examine Ronin, a six-book miniseries by comic book legend Frank Miller and published by DC Comics in 1987. Set in a bleak, alternate future (it has to be “alternate” because it references Soviets as contemporaneous to the story), Ronin
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since cuneiform! A profound understatement would be saying that the 80s was a good decade for film. Star Trek films with the original cast had a long, lucrative run during the period; Back To The Future I and II took viewers on a temporal roller coaster; a
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since the founding of psychoanalysis! As reviews for E.T. The Extra Terrestrial have piled up over the years, I’m here to talk about one aspect of the game that could impact your desire to buy a copy, as it has mine. I am a trypophobe, and I
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Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since chopped liver! While many will recall SEGA’s 2018 release of Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise for PS4, western gamers, particularly the younger ones, might be interested to learn that SEGA has a long history with the Fist of the North Star license. Yes, indeedy.
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Welcome to Commando Ninja, a YouTube movie and prelude comic funded on Kickstarter in Spring, 2018.
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