Finally, the wait is over for Nintendo fans across the world as the Nintendo Switch is released this Friday. Although guaranteed many sales from dedicated Nintendo ‘Fan-Boys’ and ‘Fan-Girls’, the console (or tablet) has been met by mixed reviews and sceptics for the future of the Switch and Nintendo themselves. So ahead of launch, we’ve been looking at what the critics have been saying and if it’s worth snatching up the last few consoles on pre-order sites…
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Karate Champ (1984)
Data East’s Karate Champ is praised for being the game that both established and popularised the one-on-one fighting genre, which had reached heights by the early 90s. Additionally, it had further used the ‘best of three matches’ format and training bonus stages that could also be found in later games within the genre. The cabinet had a dual-joystick mechanic and showed some early signs of speech synthesis within the game, with phrases such as ‘Fight’ and ‘Winner’ being included. Furthermore, a second game was brought out later in 1984 titled ‘Karate Champ: Player vs Player’, which was a two player version of the original game.
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Sega’s Dreamcast is the first console officially released in the 6th generation of video games. It also stands as Sega’s last video game console after 18 years on the home console market. Initially showing to be a success, the console is seen as a failure due to many coinciding issues and happenings of the time. Though the console does not seem to show many negative reviews, it is considered before it’s time and overly powerful for the day. Notably the innovative side to this console should be considered, being the first system with an in-built modem for online gameplay.
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1942 (1984)
Capcom’s 1942 was their breakthrough game, spawning a series of five other games. The game is set during World War II over Asia. The player controls a plane that must aim to reach Tokyo to beat the Japanese fleet. The vertical-scrolling game allows the player to control the plane by moving across the screen to avoid enemies, and also being able to vertically loop down. The enemy fleet attack in Kawasaki Ki-61s, Mitsubishi A6M Zeros and Kawasaki Ki-48 planes, and the boss plane is a Nakajima 68N. The popularity of the simplistic game is shown as it was number 1 on Euromax’s UK Arcade Chart in 1987.
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The Xbox is Microsoft’s addition to the gaming console market. The company had shown interest in this for a while, with Bill Gates being a fan and outwardly praising the PlayStation upon release. This console happens to be the first in the Xbox series of gaming consoles, and was the first console produced by an American company since the Atari Jaguar in 1996. Its main competitors were the PlayStation 2 and the Game Cube. The console boasted superior graphics to its rivals, also becoming the first console to feature built-in hard-discs. Nevertheless, the system was always inferior to the sales of the PS2, though this cannot denote the ultimate success of the console, promoting high sales and steady popularity within its lifetime.
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