The Nerd Next Door

   Retro Shooters seem to be on the rise lately haven't they? Retro Shooters being fast paced shooters where if you either don't kill everything in the room or blaze out of there at 420mph you failed your ancestors. Six years ago the Retro Shooter was dead and buried; consigned to the dustbin of the 90's along with Jnco's and Vanilla Ice's career. But unlike those things Retro Shooters are back with a steel barreled vengeance. So what changed? Well to understand how the Retro Shooters came back, we have to understand their rise and fall. In 1992 id software released Wolfenstien 3D , the first mass market First Person Shooter; here the objective was to shoot your way out of a Nazi lair because fuck Nazi's. This however was less shooter and more maze game, you had about three types of enemy who did the same thing at varying speeds and your real concern was escaping their lairs, all 60 of them. This would change with id's follow up, Wolfenstien Spear of Desti- ...

Ah October, pumpkin spice is in the air, spooks are abundant, and I even rebrand myself as Spookbringer to get into the season. Things have been a little tougher this year to get into the mood, what with the looming threats breathing down our necks come November, but I decided to do so anyway with two games, Luigi's Mansion and DOOM 64 . Now this isn't about Luigi's Mansion , chances are if you're a gamer who owns a Gamecube/can emulate on PC you'll know Luigi's Mansion is a classic so I'm not here to beat you over the head with that knowledge. No, I'm here to tell you about a Halloween classic you may have slept on, one that went largely ignored even in it's own series' fanbase until about, two-three years ago.  Yes, we're talking DOOM 64 for the Panasonic 3DO Nintendo 64, a game that is shockingly not just DOOM but on the N64, it's a wholly original game and a Halloween FPS classic. Now , DOOM 64 is sort of an inappropriate name, ...