Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis.

Is there anything better than a zoo builder? Yes. A dinosaur zoo builder.
With the recent release of Jurassic World Evolution 2, a game I’m very much looking forward to getting as soon as I am not in the clutches of light poverty. I thought I’d go back to a game that defined my childhood. Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis for the mighty PlayStation 2.
There’s nothing more a child of 8 years old needs than to create a park full of dinosaurs, using those easy to find cheat codes to avoid any of the actual business strategy involved of course. Tame those dinosaurs with a PlayStation 2 controller and you’ve got hours of wasted time before your dad turns off the electricity.
Going back to it now, it actually holds up quite well. The graphics are obviously nothing compared to the new generation, but there’s something about a considerably well designed T-rex spurting out square drops of blood over the almost faceless block-headed guests.
The dinosaur’s had clearly been given the budget in the design department, and rightly so, but the other aspects are laking.
Overall though I’d say graphics were pretty decent, as were the build mechanics.
Aside from everything working on 90° angles only, it all worked well, buildings did what they were supposed to and guests interacted as well as they do with modern games, so essentially they’d complain they hadn’t seen any dinosaurs just after seeing a Spinosaurs go to town on an unsuspecting Parasoroluphus and devour his corpse. Food and drink gave guests a choice of 3 meals that they always complained about and left them running for the restrooms, and obviously you charge them extortionate amounts to use because, well, fuck em. We’re here for dinosaurs not people, people suck.
The game has mission modes that were fun yet challenging, the main building mode – operation genesis, scenario modes where you get to recreate the original Jurassic park in one of them and lastly site B, a free for all.
All of these were great modes to play, scenarios were always my jam, though I don’t think I ever finished them all without cheats. There was, however, one thing I always thought could be improved. Only giving me access to 3 dig sites meant that I could never get all those big boy Dino’s in one park which always left me wishing they’d make a new one with every possible Dino in.
I spent many hours of my youth on this game and even replaying it now, it really holds up. The graphics are hit and miss, the Dino’s are still pretty great, mainly though it’s just pure tasty gaming.
9/10 from me, for that nostalgia gives it a bonus point.

Review by MoonHead

Playstation 2

Release Date: March 28th 2003

Ebay Winning

Always with new activity at the Tasty HQ (It’s just my house, it’s pretty depressing really.) I managed to bag myself this bargain for an undisclosed fee.

The mighty Sony PSP.

A good little haul, right? Even if I did lose three potentially better bids before winning this one, fucking ebay bots. It does contain some gaff games in the stack but similarly some absolute bangers. As a start to a new collection and a whole fuck ton of reviews waiting to be done I can’t complain all that much, in fact I’m pretty chuffed.

With this as well, comes the slow and expensive conversion of my spare room to a gaming office. So that I may bring even more good news, and tidings coming up to the festive season, like the jolly fat man in red I too will empty my big gaming sack in the name of spreading joy to you all.

Keep your eyes peeled for new and exciting shit that I will be posting at my leasure and for your reading pleasure, guarenteed to be riveting. Enjoy the rest of your day, my loyal ones.

Quick Update

Here at TRGaming I am always looking to improve, and hopefully I have some very good news coming soon, as I am highly busy behind the scenes as we speak. The best place to follow all of my tasty goodness is by following my official pages on FB and twitter with the relevant links at the top of my HomePage. And as to you my loyal readers stay Tasty.

Monster Hunter Rise – Review

This may not be the Pokemon Colosseum Review that I had promised nor is it even retro but fear not that shall still arrive in due course my loyal ones. This Review merely came about as it happens to be the game I am currently playing and I have obtained a capture card and wanted to mess about with it to see how it worked.

So without further ado, Monster Hunter Rise is the latest in CAPCOM’s monster hunting series. It continues to deviate from the old school handheld games of yesteryear and takes the same approach of Monster Hunter World. In most aspects, many things of this game are great improvements even over it’s big console counterpart. The graphics aren’t as good as World, but by no means are they bad either. For a Switch exclusive the RE engine it uses is highly optimised putting out one of the best looking games on this system.

The game itself comes with a plethora of quality of life upgrades, some rolling over from world. Some very welcomed ones like, the whetstone being a permanent carry item with unlimited uses. Not needing to carry pick axes, fishing lines and bug nets. Just run around the maps find the points and harvest away, even adding multiple items at once, and auto combination, meaning restocking potions on the go. No longer just at your inventory trunk. Getting rid of hot/cold drinks for certain environments, this just makes it a smidge easier as you aren’t worrying about losing stamina in the cold whilst getting violated by a giant flying wyvern.

The utter ‘bastard’ that is the Tigrex, still haunts me from the Freedom Unite days. Still nice to cut it up with it’s fallen breathren though. Dishing out that sweet, sweet revenge.

The wirebug allowing for a much more varied movement set than previously allowed, also coming with distinct attacks for all 14 types of weapons, and one of the coolest additons, monster riding. Not to mention the extra traversal around the seemless map areas, which once required a loading screen for each little area.

It still comes with all the many different types of armours and weapons, that is signature of this game, with the spruced up weapon tree from World and the easier upgrades for armours. With the additional help of optional quests this time round which act as sub quest whilst you are out hunting.

These range from hunting large,small monsters. Capturing or even just gathering.

Each one rewarding you with village points as well as a specific item reward.

If these aren’t up to your fancy you could just grind out the new rampage quests which is basically just an interactive tower defense game. Allowing you to farm certain items usually of the returning APEX monsters.

I could go on for many, many more paragraphs about the MH franchise but I won’t. As it ultimately it boils down to you take a quest, go to the specific area and kill some shit. Which I like to do to some really heavy deathcore or death metal adding to the ambience of the total annihilation of my foes. I may have some issues but that is for another time.

I could also go on about the nice new areas, the online hub, the intricacies of the weapons, decorations,talismans, different type of monsters, blah blah blah. The overall experience and that boring shit but I don’t wanna really. The game is good, it’s really good and if you’re new to the series or thinking about playing, it couldn’t be a better time to jump in, it’s by far the most accessible for new players. Which is also it’s biggest draw back. Now I don’t know if it’s due to re-jigging the health,hit boxes, and damage outputs of both you and the monsters, but it just feels far easier then the older stuff. All the old monsters that returned in this that used to give me mad grief just don’t seem too anymore. Now this could be a good thing, but it takes away a little bit of the edge of the older games, the 40 minute arduous battles and having to grind them out 4/5 times for specific materials. On the flip side however it could be a sign of how far the gaming industry and this particular franchise has come. The main quest poses nearly no challenge and it isn’t until the high rank hub quests around the 6 star stuff it really start’s to feel like the old games again, so it hasn’t completely disapeared.

Me looking fresh in my mid HR armour and Tigrex dual blades.

The new big bad for the game the Magnamalo, a Tiger that I can only assume peered into the aetheral void and came out a purple flame using roid addict.

A very strong 8/10, Certified highly tasty. A great frachise made better with good quality of life upgrades, nice graphics and a great range of monsters. That for me is only held back by it’s lack of difficulty, where I’m sure many would disagree. However with the Sunbreak DLC out next summer, this has every chance to return and only make a brilliant game even better.

Sneaky Find

There is nothing better than sorting some old junk out and finding a hidden gem, well I found three in this case, these beauties.

Breath of Fire 1 and 2! And Duke Nukem Advance.

The biggest downside in my youthful stupidity I rammed them at the bottom of a storage box and now they are all fucky. The cartridges themselves are in good condition, but the boxes lack any form of a strong constitution in the sense I’ve seen healthier looking roadkill. From a collectors point of view they are far from mint condition and would shave off a good chunk of money from their value. Luckily for me though I won’t be selling any time soon, and it’s nice to have the orginal box even if it is shot to shit as most of my other GBA games cases are long gone, but nevertheless a happy find is a happy find.

Them Socials, Yo.

I have now officially got Twitter and Facebook pages up and running. The relevant links are at the top of my home page for you all, so you can keep nice and upto date with all the tasty news and probably some other random shit. Feel free to like and share, spreading the tasty gospel so that I may provide joyous reads to all the new potential disciples across this moist, rock ridden planet.

The Gameboy Player

The Gameboy player is an attachable peripheral directly developed by Nintendo for the Gamecube. With it situated at the bottom of the console where it would connect via a high speed port. Allowing players to play any; Gameboy,colour or advance game directly through their console on to the TV. With control functionality going to the gamepad, and menu select allowing for games to be swapped in and out. Most games and features would work perfectly fine minus some exceptions and rumble/vibration features such as Pokemon pinball.

  • Ignore the dogshit quality photo’s i’m still starting out, it’ll get better I Promise.

Instead of going down the route of using an emulator to work, the player is booted up by a disc, which without renders it useless, not the best of designs. However this allowed for the internal components of the unit base basically being a Gameboy advance handheld system itself. A significant upgrade over it’s predecessors. Also being able to play all previous handheld generations of games boosted the Gamecubes library by hundreds of other games by proxy. Giving the option to play some games you may not have properly before or some you just didn’t want to play on the smaller screen.

This wasn’t Nintendo’s first attempt at this, the N64 had the wide boy, which was initially conceived as a way for gaming journalist and the like to be able to take better quality snapshots of Gameboy games. Having two variants released one for GBC and GBA games, making the aspect for nowadays a hard collecting endeavour as neither are particularly cheap and having to obtain two for one system is a tad annoying.

Even before this there was the Super Game boy, allowing Gameboy games to be played through the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. So this was really always coming in some form or another to the Gamecube. Which I can’t complain about as I now get the option to play some of the best Pokemon games in the series on my TV, way before the likes of Let’s Go or Sword and Shield.

The Magnum Opus of the Gba Pokemon Era, with Rayquaza in all their glory on the big boy screen.

Overall it comes with two big pluses even for the time it was a cool concept, and even now I think it’s impressive. The first being been able to play any of your childhood GB games on your TV and the second adding the inadvertent functionality of not losing charge as it’s powered through the Gamecube instead. A big flaw about it, especially some 18 years after its conception and release, its utterly useless without the boot up disc, which is also region blocked but oddly the unit itself isn’t. So getting paired with the wrong disc is just as much of an annoyance as not having it. The biggest drawback which for all I do really like this little bit of tech and rather not have to think is that even on release it was kinda never needed, just a gimmick to boost sales numbers at best.

A Solid 8/10, Certified highly Tasty. A cool expansion to an already underrated console, adding just a little bit more to the legacy of Nintendo and it’s push for handheld gaming.

Gamecube – The Short Review

Finally, some actual content for this review blog. I imagine it’ll take a least 3 minutes or more to read. I won’t be going into too much detail due to me probably covering it more within the game reviews and an upcoming tech comparison review I will be working on. I can’t promise how amazing my first official foray into journalistic gaming reviewing will be, but there will be something of interest there I hope. This is a mere stepping stone for my skills to be improved over time to keep you tasty folks hooked and coming back for more of that sweet sweet nectar. So please do enjoy.

The Gamecube is considered a commercial flop by it’s own parent company due to low sales when initially released way back when in 2001 in Japan and then to America, and finally Europe in 2002. Even so, it still managed to ship over 21 million units worldwide, which still isn’t the worst realistically. At the time it was going up against the absolute juggernaut that is the Playstation 2 which dropped in 2000 giving it a slight head start, and then not too long after in 2002 the Xbox appeared, which did alright I suppose, it did give us the Halo series. However no one can deny the might that was the PS2 which to this day is still the best selling console of all time at a mega 155 million units sold. With an extensive back catalogue of games that still reaches audiences today with various remakes and remasters. And if not that, it could just be dusting off your old collection from time to time or maybe fond memories of the games you played in your younger days.

The Gamecube even so, still managed to hold it’s own as time has gone by mainly in my opinion due to the high quality of games that they dropped over the 6 years of production. Even though you could pick up a Wii for cheaper and play your games on it. It doesn’t have the same feel as booting up the Console itself, with the unique gamepad that came with it, something Nintendo still likes to do for every new console.

The games coming on much smaller optical discs then their counterparts, opting out of CD and DVD playing functionality allowing a more focused set up for gaming. Which for this particular generation for me are some of the ones that have aged the best. Obviously not graphically or technically, as at the time they would’ve seemed incredible as it does every time a new generation drops but by today’s standards especially in comparison to the new powerhouses of the PS5 or Xbox Series X, with all the fancy Ray-tracing and shit. You have so many beloved series and the entries within, that are still so highly regarded. From The Metroid Prime series, Mario Kart Double Dash, LOZ The Wind Waker, Luigi’s mansion, Pokemon Colosseum and Xd Gale of Darkness and so on and so forth.

The Gamecube came with many cool features that the other 6th generation counterparts didn’t for instance the Wavebird. The first commercially sold wireless controller having to plug in a transceiver into the controller port, then using the channel selection wheel on it and the controller to connect up. The joytech flip up screen allowing you to play the game directly on the console itself or the broadband adapter used to play games like fantasy star online. Which also leads on to one of the simultaneously great and most ridiculous thing in gaming the Gamecube ASCII keyboard controller, which is literally a whole computer keyboard with the the left and right side of the game pad dumped at the end creating a true monstrosity, all just for the privilege of been able to use a chat function in game. You even have the strange Panasonic Q hybrid, which did allow for DVDs to be used, but that didn’t fair well in sales due to it being kinda pointless and horrific to look at, like someone you used to go to school with rock head rumple looking child being spammed over your social media’s 24/7 so you block them.

Then you have the GBA Link cable which allowed you to hook up your Advance to aid in different ways to play certain games like the LOZ the four swords adventure or trade Pokemon, usually through the Gameboy player which for me even today is still an amazing piece of tech and my favourite part of my personal collection. You slot a small slab looking platform at the bottom of your console and drop in the disc in the top. Then this allows you to play any of your Gameboy all the way through to GB Advance games onto your TV. Making it the true precursor to what the switch ended up becoming through trials using the Wii U.

Without waffling on for too much longer, I will wrap this review up. So for me it is truly one of the best consoles and even though it lacks most the features of today’s consoles I don’t necessarily feel that’s a bad thing. It did what it was made for, playing games and it did it very, very well. It may be nice to watch Netflix off your Playstation or talk to your mates over an online game, but you’ve lost the fun of making sure you’ve got the right memory card plugged in. The local co-op where you’d all be crammed round the same console in your room. You never had to worry about all the new firmware updates that could brick your saves. New features swapping round how the interface works. Sure the memory cards may or may have not caused a few problems for certain games, but it’d never break your console. In certain ways simpler is much better, don’t get me wrong I love my PS5 and Switch but not many games have come out in the last 10 years that’d keep playing, whereas on my Gamecube there is many.

10/10 Certified real fuckin Tasty. (No bias here I swear)

A Soft Overhaul

Just a quick update here, due to the cumbersome demands of life, and various other reasons getting in the way. I have somewhat not managed to move forward as intended, and for that I can only apologise. But with the arrival of a logo, and addition of a few social media accounts in the oncoming days. I will now be picking up where I left off some weeks ago. With the first task at hand, to start the reviews back up, you know the entire point of this blog.

So with that a slight soft restart here at TastyRetroGaming. To begin with I will be starting with Pokemon Colosseum, one of my favourite Pokemon games. Which one day will hopefully lead me onto the holy grail of the Gamecube games for me, XD Gale of Darkness. Whilst I begin this review I will also be writing up a full scale review of the Gamecube Console itself. Finally giving you all some of that tasty content you all so desire so much.