This year I finally bid farewell to my old cell phone. It was a real antique, scarcely a step up from one of those World War II radio phones that some grunt would have to wear as a backpack while another soldier shoveled coal into it. It sported an ultra-low-res monochrome screen and came with a single game, a minimalist Arkanoid clone called Brick Attack.

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• Reader Review by: Anonymommy

Super Smash Bros Brawl is a mega-budget, mega-effort blockbuster of the highest order. It’s huge, it’s inescapable and it’s absolutely gorgeous.

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• Developer: Sora Ltd
• Publisher: Nintendo
• Score: 94%
• The Accessibility: 9
• The Audio & Visuals: 9
• The Depth & Lastability: 9
• The Features: 10
• The Plot & Characters: 9

Where were you when Street Fighter IV was announced? Make a note of it now, because it’s information that you’ll one day treasure, the way you remember where you were when the Spice Girls were assassinated or when the first McDonald’s opened in Scotland.

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The question of whether or not the new trend of including the all-important online feature into fighting games is a good one is a quandary that has plagued me for quite some time now.  It has finally come to the point where I feel the need to spell my thoughts out, for all to see and discuss, in order to truly come to a conclusion on this inner-debate and finally bring closure to it.
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How do you follow up a game that single-handedly rejuvenated the dying arcade scene, transformed the entire notion of the two-player game, raised the bar for sprite art and animation and introduced hitherto unseen levels of controller and hit detection accuracy?

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• Publisher/Developer: Capcom
• Score: 73%
• The Accessibility: 8
• The Audio & Visuals: 10
• The Depth & Lastability: 6
• The Features: 7
• The Plot & Characters: 7

Where were you when SNK died? I remember reading about it, on this site and on forums like Orochinagi and Fighters.net back in mid-2000, and I also recall seeing the first crowd reaction reports of KOF2001 (specifically, laughter at the spaceship-zeppelin cutscene) at my desk in my old job, back in what must have been early 2001.

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• Publisher/Developer: SNK Playmore
• Score: 58%
• The Accessibility: 8
• The Audio & Visuals: 6
• The Depth & Lastability: 8
• The Features: 7
• The Plot & Characters: 5

The pioneers of 3D fighting continue to revolutionize the ‘game.’

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• Developer: AM2
• Publisher: Sega
• Score: 96%
• The Accessibility: 10
• The Audio & Visuals: 10
• The Depth & Lastability: 10
• The Features: 8
• The Plot & Characters: 8

I can imagine the bored groans of Japanese Gundam enthusiasts when reading “Bandai announces new Gundam fighting game for the Super Famicom!” See, “Bandai”, “Gundam”, and “fighting games” hadn’t been a recipe for success in past years - hell, “Bandai” and “Gundam game that isn’t a turn-based strategy game” typically didn’t bode well either.

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• Developer: Natsume
• Publisher: Bandai
• Reader Review by: HiryuNoKen
• Score: 95%

While relatively unknown outside of the Far East, in his native Japan and it’s surrounding nations, Ultraman is a seemingly invincible franchise that’s enjoyed success that’s seen it transcend the status usually afforded to television characters and become a bit of a phenomena.

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• Publisher/Developer: Bandai
• Reader Review by: Ham
• Score: 20%
• The Accessibility: 4
• The Audio & Visuals: 6
• The Depth & Lastability: 2
• The Plot & Characters: 8