Alien Hominid Hit Consoles A Decade Ago, And Changed Everything.

The early 2000s were a very cool time for the Internet. Sites that showcased flash based videos and games were really popular, and the most popular of those was Newgrounds. None of those has been as popular as a little homage to Contra and Metal Slug from a small team known as The Behemoth. When this game hit the site, it became wildly successful, so much so, that it was tapped as the team's first console release. That game was one of the most popular titles on Xbox Live Arcade for a time and is still one of the great gems released on the PS2 and GameCube. This game, Alien Hominid is still available in it's original form as a flash game, and after a decade, the console versions of the title hold up incredibly well to this day.

For those unfamiliar with this title, players take control of a little yellow alien who is simply trying to find his shtp and leave home after being shot down by the FBI. The little guy is armed with a simple blaster that also has a charge shot much like Mega Man's eponymous Mega Buster. There are also a number of weapons powerups and vehicular weapons that pop up during the game. All of the weapons are par for the course with side scrolling action games, but that's the charm of Alien Hominid. It doesn't need to do anything new or innovative, but it does everything well. Boss fights are a throwback to the days of Contra: big bosses that fight in patterns and die in huge explosions.

Graphically, it's a vibrant, colorful game in general. Not having voices doesn't distract from the characters in Alien Hominid bursting with personality. Even the little rats in a sewer stage are smarter than many main characters in big budget titles with a huge fanbase. Animation wise, it isn't particularly fluid, but it's definitely serviceable, and while parts of the soundtrack seem way too serious for the backdrop, it's pretty solid nonetheless.

Apart from the core game, there are a few interesting minigames that proved pretty awesome. There is a pretty solid challenge mode with different parameters, and play options. Also, a host of "PDA Games" which was a series of single screen platform jumping levels with puzzle elements and a level editor. Finally, there was Super Soviet Missile Mastar, an Atari 2600 flavored scrolling "avoid the obstacles and hit the target" with a Soviet invasion of America theme. None of them are incredibly deep, but they are definitely fun distractions from the core game.

Alien Hominid was born in 2002, hit consoles in 2004, and cemented The Behemoth as a pretty big deal among indy developers. They have grown to make some pretty amazing things happen and it all started with this game. Here's to celebrating the console release of one of gaming's most unlikely success story.

Beats, Rhymes, and Uppercuts: Ten Years Of Def Jam Fight For New York

The relationship between video games and Hip Hop has always been peculiar, with game developers
relegating Hip Hop strictly to the soundtrack of most games. Electronic Arts struck gold with Def Jam Vendetta, and when gamers began to ask about a sequel, EA actually decided to go in a slightly different direction, and in 2004 They released Def Jam: Fight For New York. Fight For New York, unlike it's older sibling, was a fighting game. While it wasn't Street Fighter III: Third Strike, it was a solid game with tight mechanics, a fairly decent story, and pretty deep character creation engine.

 At a glance it shouldn't be as deep a game as it is gameplay wise, but with the ability to blend up to three fighting styles, it's easy for gamers to find some surprising depth in their character's play style. On top of the "play as yourself (if you're a guy)" story mode, there's also a pretty large roster of characters encompassing a wide berth of popular names in hip hop at the time of the game's release. There was a pretty fun, albeit silly, storyline to back everything up, and the soundtrack is superb, as expected.

Ten years after it's debut, and Def Jam: Fight For New York is still a quality fighting game. It's blend of Power Stone's frenetic multiplayer brawls and Def Jam Vendetta's knock out centered wrestling based gameplay were a great marriage and would have been an amazing send off for the series. EA had to run a good thing into the ground though, and Def Jam: Icon was released in 2007, effectively killing the series.

Was Fight For New York created to be a major player in the world of fighting games? Probably not, but it did prove to be a marvelous fighter that is still a lot of fun to play despite the majority of the rappers in the game being widely irrelevant now.

The Curious Case Of Def Jam Vendetta

Sometimes, a game comes along that has such a peculiar concept that it warrants a second look into it's history. One such game was the first in a series of games released by Electronic Arts that featured hip hop artists in environments that had nothing to do with hip hop. The title, Def Jam Vendetta, was a wrestling game. A very good wrestling game, actually, and it received a great deal of praise from many gamers and critics who considered it one of the best wrestling games that wasn't released on a Nintendo console.

It was peculiar to some as to why the rappers and actors in the game seemed shoehorned in, but no one gave it a second thought. It wasn't until I stumbled across copies of two reviled wrestling games released a few years earlier by EA, WCW Mayhem and WCW Backstage Assault, that I realized what Def Jam Vendetta was originally supposed to be. It's a fairly short story, but an interesting one that may remind gamers of happened with Sunsoft involving their NES title, Journey To Silius (for context on the weird story behind the existense of Journey To Silius, read my post on that game here: http://nerdgasmnoire.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/journey-to-silius-the-best-action-game-you-never-played/ ).

You see, once upon a time, THQ let their license to produce games featuring wrestlers from World Championship Wrestling expire to go after a possibly more lucrative World Wrestling Federation license. When this happened, Electronic Arts bought the WCW license and began making their own wrestling games. The problem was, EA's wrestling games were kinda lackluster and WCW's wrestling product was pretty bad too. after gasping for life for a few more years, WCW was purchased by the WWF in 2001 and pretty much went the way of the Dodo. This left EA in an interesting position because they were at that point working with developer AKI on a wrestling game for the Playstation 2 and Nintendo Gamecube, and without a strong license attached to the game, it would be overlooked in the marketplace.

Instead of going the route Acclaim went in with it's Legends Of Wrestling series, EA went a bit left field. The video game giant went to a place they would usually go for pieces of the soundtracks of their sports games, Def Jam Records. Since EA already had a bit of a working relationship with the label, they pitched the idea of putting rappers in a wrestling game, and the label decided this would be a great opportunity to extend it's brand. Several artists on Def Jam's roster already had music on the game's soundtrack, so it was a bit of a no-brainer that those artists would be playable characters in the game. However, they would end up being the primary characters, with a few random characters created by AKI thrown in as well.

EA published the game in 2003 under it's EA Sports Big label, which had previously seen success with arcadey titles like SSX and NBA Street, so an over the top wrestling game featuring a roster full of rappers was a perfect fit. It was also successful and spawned two sequels, one of which won a number of fighting game of the year honors in 2004 (Def Jam: Fight For New York).

The story surrounding the history of Def Jam Vendetta is proof positive that a good game can garner success, regardless of how mismatched the license attached to it may be. It also proves that had they not gone out of business, there could have been some excellent WCW games on the PS2 and Gamecube.