The 50’s was a drought for the established character actor Peter Lorre, but perhaps things seemed brighter at the start of the decade with his directorial debut, a postwar German thriller, Der Verlorene, or The Lost One, sometimes translated as The Lost Man. Released in 1951, Der Verlorene tells the story of one Dr. Karl Neumeister (Peter Lorre), working at
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List of the top 10 greatest black and white comic book series of all time.
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Welcome back to The Splintering’s Monochrome May event! Today we’re featuring the trade paperback edition of Batman Black and White, the four-issue anthology miniseries published by DC Comics. The individual issues of Batman Black and White included five stories that were eight pages long, and the first collected edition was released in 1998. Each story features the work of a
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I backed a digital copy of The Mythicals #1 during its active funding period back in 2023, but I never got around to reading it before this month. While I did back ultimately back physical copies of issues 1-3 on the campaign for the third installment, H. Wayne Desper, creator and writer, reached out via X asking if I would
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Welcome back to The Splintering’s Jolly Jinglings holiday event! Today we’re going to celebrate by taking a look at possibly the Christmasiest of all Christmas games! It’s difficult to believe that the classic playground war of “Nintendo vs. SEGA” was officially decided nearly 2 decades ago! I mean, seriously! 2020 is RIGHT around the corner! Making me feel old over
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Welcome back to The Splintering’s Jolly Jinglings holiday event! Today we’re tackling a rare example of a Christmas-related superhero game… Superhero games have historically been hit or miss, but Batman has managed to have slightly better luck than many other characters. The 16-bit era was particularly kind to the Dark Knight. There are several solid Batman games on the Super
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Welcome back to The Splintering‘s Festival of Dread, our celebration of all things monstrous and macabre! Today we’re going to take a look at Mary Shelley’s classic horror tale Frankenstein as retold by celebrated manga creator, Junji Ito. Originally published in 2013, Junji Ito’s Frankenstein includes not just an illustrated retelling of the classic tale, but it includes several backup
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Welcome back to the Festival of Dread, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of all things creepy and chilling! Today we’re going to look at Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess, a game from beyond the grave! Why so? Because the game is no longer available to purchase if you have not already done so (at least on Xbox 360). Developed by MediaTonic
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Welcome back to our SEGA Dreamcast Anniversary celebration at The Splintering! Today we’re reviewing Playing at the Next Level in which author Ken Horowitz details the history of SEGA of America with an emphasis on SEGA’s U.S. development teams and some of their more notable games.* Starting with the ill-fated Master System and continuing all the way until SEGA’s swan
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It’s 9 September, which means it is the anniversary of the SEGA Dreamcast’s U.S. release. I’m now going to attempt a fair review of Sonic Adventure, one of the most divisive games in SEGA’s back-catalogue. While it was received very well upon its original release in 1999, its many flaws have been exhaustively laid out since. How to proceed? Should
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Today, The Splintering is reviewing the most famous of all of the SEGA Genesis launch titles: Altered Beast! I know pretty much everyone interested in classic gaming knows about the original pack-in for one of the greatest consoles of all time… and most people do not have the nicest things to say about it, either. However, I am one of
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It is with great pleasure that I present this review of Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble III for the PlayStation 4!* You may be asking yourself, “Why would you care so much about reviewing a rerelease of some obscure TurboGrafx-16 (TG16) game that only five people have ever heard of?” You see, I am one of those five people, as I actually
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I backed Jon Malin’s Godlike: The Romulus Saga in September 2021. Malin claimed it was going to be his best work yet — a project where he returns to interior art after Graveyard Shift II (2020). There were not a lot of details given about the project; intentional secrecy and ‘epic-ness’ were the constant themes. I ended up backing just before the campaign closed
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Welcome back to Monochrome May, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of black and white entertainment! Today we’re going to pick apart a lesser-known puzzle game for the Nintendo Game Boy, Daedalian Opus. Published by Vic Tokai in 1990, Daedalian Opus is a Tetris-inspired twist on tangram puzzles. What’s a tangram puzzle? Tangrams are designed around rearranging various two dimensional shapes called
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The Kickstarter campaign for the second issue of John McGuire’s In Our Dreams Awake* is now underway. For those who missed the first book (you can read our review here), In Our Dreams Awake combines elements of both sci-fi and fantasy to tell a story across two realities and is intended “for fans of love stories, dreampunk, steampunk, and cyberpunk.” Am I the only
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When I saw the spoilers to Graveyard Shift: Omega Storm, I did wonder why I backed, but I am trying to give it a fair shake- to be able to say what the best and worst part of the book was – since that’s a thing now.* Day One I’m only on page six (for a few different reasons). First
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Once upon a time, I would stay up late at night with friends, listening to the local high school playing football, and “playing” visual novels with wonder… both by being sucked into the story, and at the amazement of modern technology used by state-of-the-art computers of the mid-80’s. Technology is funny though. It advances so quickly, and older tech is
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Welcome back to Jolly Jinglings, The Splintering’s holiday celebration of all things gold, frankincense and myrrh. Today, we’re going to look at The Life of Christ: The Christmas Story, published by Marvel Comics in 1993 and distributed by Thomas Nelson publishers. Heavy spoilers will follow, but the story is probably familiar to many of you, anyway, right? (If not, you’re
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Are you the kind of person who might have played Space Harrier and thought to yourself? “You know what’s missing here? A Queen soundtrack!” If you are, then I have good news for you! Air Twister* is finally here to fulfill your deepest fantasy! If you’re unfamiliar with Space Harrier, it is one of the most original games from legendary video game creator, Yu Suzuki
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It’s been a while since I’ve written something here on The Splintering, but rather than awkwardly explaining myself, I’ll just jump right into things like it hasn’t been over a year! Mel Brooks made his film directorial debut in the late 60s with The Producers, a controversial film for its time given both the subject matter and the casting of
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Nearly three years into my indie comic journey, approximately 150 different backings, and Rise Again Comics’ Monster M.D. is STILL my favorite book. It had everything– great art, story, colors, humor and action. It had a powerhouse team pairing writer Von Klaus and artist Monika Maccagni and brought to life the story of a monster doctor and his invisible assistant
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*Upfront Disclosure: Hybrids creator Luke Stone is a contributor to The Splintering website. We recently got a chance to read digital versions of Arrow Comics’ Hybrids: The Sons of Gods volumes 1 and 2.* According to the writer Luke Stone (and co-artist, and letterer…), he started work on these stories in 2016. So, the ten chapters that make up these
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Hey! It’s Darius!… 2! Aaaaaannnd a bunch of other games that never made it to the good ol’ U.S. of A. Some may be familiar with The Legend of Kage or maybe an import or emulation enthusiast may have touched on some of these, but I imagine that most of the games on the Taito Milestones 2 collection will be played for
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In the 90’s, the space shooter genre really hit peak levels with improving technology and the implementation of 3-D graphics. Taito’s Ray’z Arcade Chronology is an interesting piece of history, as it includes the original game in the series, RayForce, which was a 2-D vertical shooter, but then you get to see how things transitioned to 3-D in the follow-up, RayStorm, and then how
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Welcome back to Monochrome May, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of everything faded and old. Sorta. Today we’re going to pick apart Raging Fighter, a one-on-one fighting game for the Nintendo Game Boy published in 1993 by Konami. As many who lived through the early 90s fighting game craze might recall, fighting games could often be lumped into two categories: the ones that wanted to be Street
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How many Bubble Bobble fans do we have in the reading audience today? Alrighty then, so how many Puzzle Bobble fans are there? (*cough!* Bust-A-Move for us old-schoolers *cough!*) I feel like it’s been a long time since I played a Puzzle Bobble game. Let’s see… I think I had a demo for the Bust-A-Move Live… Sorry… Old habits die hard… PUZZLE BOBBLE Live back on the Xbox 360, and that came
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I just finished up playing Varney Lake,* the follow-up to Chorus Worldwide’s previous game, Mothmen 1966. First things first, you certainly do not need to have played Mothmen 1966 to enjoy Varney Lake, but for those who have already played through it, you will definitely get some extra satisfaction in seeing how the two are intertwined. Just like Mothmen before
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We recently got the chance to read the first three issues of The Brooding Muse, an ongoing horror anthology series.* Let’s just jump into it! A variety of artists and writers bring “illustrated stories of overwhelming fear and lurking death” to The Brooding Muse, which is presented in black and white. Each issue has several stories (anthology), with some of them being serialized
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Whether we like it or not, it looks like we’re getting another lazy, soulless live-action remake from Disney, this time on the form of Peter Pan and Wendy exclusively on Disney+. Bangarang. So to mark the occasion, we’re going to review a Peter Pan-related game from the early 90s. I asked around The Splintering’s staff for a someone to review
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“I’m, big, I’m bad, and I’m back, and I suck!” Today we’re going to take a look at George Foreman’s KO Boxing, which was developed by Beam Software and published by Acclaim Entertainment in 1992 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). As the title may suggest, George Foreman’s KO Boxing puts players in the gloves of the two-time Heavyweight Champion of the
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