http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Website/HardcoreGaming101
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Hardcore Gaming 101 is a video game overview site run by Kurt Kalata that is dedicated to cult classics and the obscure. Founded in 2004, it looks at everything from the classics, to Japanese import games, to long-forgotten arcade quarter-munchers, to homebrew, to puregarbage and the utterly insane. The site also takes a broader look at Shoot 'em UpiOS Games, the Shoot Em Ups of Compile, Toaplan, Psikyo and 8ing/Raizing, pre-Street Fighter IIfighting games, and the various Licensed Games of Capcom and Konami. The overviews are quite image intensive, and tend to run on to some strangetangents. The site has published a book containing overviews of nearly every adventure game ever released, and is in the process of publishing similar books on classic Sega arcade games. It is also one of the few places you'll find someone defending the ZeldaCD-i games.
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The site updates roughly every week. For real this time. Honest.
Game series and individual games reviewed that have TV Tropes pages:
open/close all folders
- Athena / Psycho Soldier
- Bad Dudes / Crude Buster
- CapcomBeat Em Ups:
- Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom/Shadow Over Mystara
- Conquests Of Camelot/Conquests of the Longbow
- D/Enemy Zero
- Data East Commando Games:
- Bloody Wolf
- Thunder Zone
- Donkey Kong Country (including Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, which usually isn't considered part of the Country series)
- Dragon Slayer (including Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu, Romancia, Legacy of the Wizard, Sorcerian and The Legend of Heroes)
- El Viento / Earnest Evans / Annet Futatabi
- Excelsior Phase One Lysandia/Phase Two: Errondor
- Fallen London/Sunless Sea
- Final Fantasynote
- ICO / Shadow of the Colossus
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
- Irem Post-Apocalyptic Games:
- Air Duel
- Armored Police Unit Gallop
- Gun Force 2
- Konami Beat-'em-ups:
- Crime Fighters/Vendetta
Hardcore Gaming 101 is a gaming website started in 2004 that has covered countless video games extensively. As of May 26, 2013, Hardcore Gaming 101 has published almost 800 standalone articles on series, individual games, franchise and company profiles, 64 'Weekly' Kusoge, 12 500-Word Indies, 26 podcast episodes, 18 book reviews, 2 printed books, 35 developer interviews and dozens of other.
- The Legend Of Zelda CDI Games (Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon)
- Mad Stalker: Full Metal Force (the PlayStation version)
- Natsume NES Action Games:
- Shadow of the Ninja
- S.C.A.T.: Special Cybernetic Attack Team
- Nippon IchiStrategy RPGs:
- Nosferatu the Vampyre / Nosferatu / Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi
- Post Mortem / Still Life
- Post-Mortem Dreamcast Shooters, including:
- Princess Crown/Odin Sphere
- Princess Maker 2 (focusing on the unreleased IBM PC version)
- Radiant Silvergun / Ikaruga
- Sakura Wars
- Sengoku Ace series
- Shogun Warriors / Blood Warrior
- Smash TV / Total Carnage
- Sting RPGs:
- Solid Runner
- Super Robot Wars (the Classic Timeline)
- Time Killers / BloodStorm
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Licensed Game franchise overviews, and individual licensed games reviewed that only have TV Tropes pages for the source licenses:
- All Japan Pro Wrestling (games by NCS)
- Discworld (the three adventure games)
- Donald Duck games, including:
- Magical Quest 3
- G.I. Joe (the NES games)
- Jackie Chan games, including games based on:
- Around the World in 80 Days (The 2004 film)
- Wheels on Meals (MSX, as well as the game better known as Kung Fu Master overseas due to originally being a Wheels on Meals game in Japan)
- The Jetsons: Invasion of the Planet Pirates
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (the fighting games developed by Capcom)
- Ranma ½ (the fighting games for the Super Famicom/SNES)
- Rollergames
- Spot (7up mascot)
- Stallone games:
- Shonen Jump fighting games by Treasure:
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500 Word Indies:
![Forums on video games Forums on video games](/uploads/1/2/5/0/125000983/641247127.jpg)
Your Weekly Kusoge (brief reviews of 'shit' games):
- Contra: Legacy of War
- Final Fantasy VI (April Fools' Day review)
- Genocide (The PC Engine CD version)
- King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! (NES version)
- Revenge of the Sunfish (part of a special article on Jacob Buczynski's games)
- Saint Seiya Ougon Densetsu Kanketsu Hen
- Space Ace (SNES version)
- Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5
- WWF Wrestlemania (NES version)
Tropes relevant to the writeups include:
- April Fools' Day: The 'Your Weekly Kusoge' article for April 1st, 2015 reviews the Super Famicom version of Final Fantasy VI as if it had never been officially translated into English.
- Artifact Title: The 'Your Weekly Kusoge' column hasn't been a weekly occurrence in years.
- Description Cut: The first second thought on the dubious idea of licensing Valis out to an H-Game developer: 'Maybe this is respectful. Maybe it's a well-crafted narrative with the sex scenes merely as an aside, like YU-NO. Maybe it's...' And then follows a screenshot of a tentacle rape scene from Valis X, with SD Valis sprites as Scenery Censor and the caption 'FIVE. GODDAMN. MINUTES. LATER.'
- Gushing About Shows You Like: In-universe. Ys, especially. During an episode of the site's official podcast, Kurt showed he had a soft spot for 'Monster World IV, praising its merits more than the other commentators. He also quite likes Wendy: Every Witch Way, an obscure licensed game from WayForward Technologies.
- Halloween Episode: The week of October 31 is often dedicated to reviewing spooky video games such as:
- 2014: CarnEvil, Nosferatu, Porky Pig's Haunted Holiday
- 2015: Nightmare in the Dark, Escape from Monster Manor, Golly! Ghost, Laser Ghost, Drac's Night Out
- 2016: Deep Fear, Mystic Riders, Downfall, Chiller, Midnight Mutants
- 2017: Zombie Revenge, MediEvil, Costume Quest
- Lighter and Softer: The site remarks that Dynamite Dux is this compared to other beat 'em ups.
- Narm Charm: In-universe, he enjoys the voice acting in Freedom Planet because of its earnest yet rough production, reminding him of dubs from the first years of CD consoles.
- Nostalgia Filter: Averted. Hardcore Gaming 101 is probably one of the few classic game retrospective sites out there that doesn't dismiss anything made after 1996 as garbage. Also, if an older game is horrible or a classic game has aged poorly, they have no problem saying so.
- Retraux: A mockup cover of Hardcore Gaming 101 as a 90s gaming magazine. (No longer available after the site redesign, see the YMMV page for details)
- Widget Series: 'To make an analogy, Dynamite Dux is to Double Dragon as Twinbee is to Xevious.'
Index
Hardcore Gaming 101 was founded in 2004 in order to present readers with comprehensive overviews of long running games series, as well as to highlight lesser known cult classics or obscure games. Over the past decade, the site has hosted over 3000 articles.
Articles for HG101 often require an extraordinary amount of effort - not only is the writer expected to have thorough knowledge of the genre they're writing about, but they need to take screenshots, research sources (often in other languages) and connect it all into one digestible, but thorough, package.
Around 2010 or so, we started to stick more advertisements onto the site and ask for donations through Paypal. Most of the funds go towards compensating the authors for their hard work, since people shouldn't have to work for free. The goal was to hire more contributors and expand the site, both in quality and breadth of content. And it worked, to an extent! We received many more contributions, even though the payment rate is lower than larger publications.
The problem is, that while the site has increased in traffic and popularity, the ad revenue has not. Anyone can tell you that constant news posts, goofy pictures and listicles are how the big sites bring in revenue, but HG101 specializes instead on longer form pieces that concentrate on history.
We began this Patreon back in the middle of 2014. Back then, we published a few articles every couple of weeks. Thanks to the expanded budget provided by generous donors, we've drastically expanded this so we now published 2-3 articles every week, along with a weekly podcast. Additionally, back in 2014 we had only published two books. As of now, early 2019, we have sixteen, with several more on the way.
We use our Patreon budget in two ways. The first is to pay for writers for their contributions. As mentioned above, these take a lot of time to assemble, and quality effort deserves some monetary rewards.
The second goal is to fund the production of more books. Although some of the content featured in these books is already available on the site, it still takes a substantial amount of time to expand, revise and update them. Since the site has been around for a decade, we have improved our standards in both content and tone, so everything that goes into a book needs to be heavily revised, and sometimes completely rewritten. Additionally, other people need to be hired to help the production, including paying the cover artists.
Although the books sell relatively well for what are niche products, the profits are not high enough to justify full time production. This is especially the case for books that focus on companies like Data East, which don't exactly have mass appeal. The money from the Patreon helps supplement this, so I could work on them full time, and allow for a much quicker publication schedule.
Some upcoming book projects, which are in various stages of planning:
-Other Konami volumes. We've already done three of these (Castlevania, Konami Shooters, and Contra/Other Classics), so we're roughly planning a fourth focusing on some of the slightly more modern series, like Silent Hill and Metal Gear.
-A Guide to Beat-em-Ups, including all of Capcom's (Final Fight) and Konami's (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), as well as Technos (Double Dragon) and others.
-Sega Master System and Genesis Vol. 1. As a follow up to the Arcade Classics series, this line would begin to focus on Sega's home consoles. The first volume would include the 8 and 16-bit outings in series like Phantasy Star, Shining Force, Sonic the Hedgehog, and many, many others.
-Ys and Falcom. We're always updating our Ys article, so we would like to build a book around this expansive series, and also include coverage of all of Falcom's other game series, like Popful Mail, Sorcerian, Brandish, Trails in the Sky, Dragon Slayer, Xanadu, Zwei!!, and numerous others. In many cases, our current articles are the only English sources for these games, and we aim to improve them even more.
-Shin Megami Tensei. The SMT article was one of our first ones, but it's extremely outdated since Atlus puts them out pretty regularly. A book would include a complete revamp of the article including the whole series and all of its spinoffs (Persona, Devil Survivor, Devil Summoner, etc.), totaling something like at least 35 games, and growing all of the time.
Additionally, I'd like to experiment with smaller digests that feature a wide variety of content, with a concentration on features. We've published four of these so far: the first featuring Bionic Commando and Strider, the second featuring assorted Taito Arcade Classics, the third focusing on retro horror games and the fourth on Star Fox, F- Zero and other early 3D games. Plans for future volumes include some of the lesser known Namco arcade classics, and focus on Nintendo games and Japanese RPGs, like games from Tri-Ace.
All of this, in addition to our usual reviews of arcade, PC, and console titles, from every genre, ranging from RPGs to shooters to platformers to adventure games.
If worked on full time, the goal would be to publish four books a year, maybe more in the smaller digest format. Even without reaching this goal, the money can help us diversify our line-up and allow the commission of a wider variety of products.
Thank you very much for reading this, and thank you for your support!
Articles for HG101 often require an extraordinary amount of effort - not only is the writer expected to have thorough knowledge of the genre they're writing about, but they need to take screenshots, research sources (often in other languages) and connect it all into one digestible, but thorough, package.
Around 2010 or so, we started to stick more advertisements onto the site and ask for donations through Paypal. Most of the funds go towards compensating the authors for their hard work, since people shouldn't have to work for free. The goal was to hire more contributors and expand the site, both in quality and breadth of content. And it worked, to an extent! We received many more contributions, even though the payment rate is lower than larger publications.
The problem is, that while the site has increased in traffic and popularity, the ad revenue has not. Anyone can tell you that constant news posts, goofy pictures and listicles are how the big sites bring in revenue, but HG101 specializes instead on longer form pieces that concentrate on history.
We began this Patreon back in the middle of 2014. Back then, we published a few articles every couple of weeks. Thanks to the expanded budget provided by generous donors, we've drastically expanded this so we now published 2-3 articles every week, along with a weekly podcast. Additionally, back in 2014 we had only published two books. As of now, early 2019, we have sixteen, with several more on the way.
We use our Patreon budget in two ways. The first is to pay for writers for their contributions. As mentioned above, these take a lot of time to assemble, and quality effort deserves some monetary rewards.
The second goal is to fund the production of more books. Although some of the content featured in these books is already available on the site, it still takes a substantial amount of time to expand, revise and update them. Since the site has been around for a decade, we have improved our standards in both content and tone, so everything that goes into a book needs to be heavily revised, and sometimes completely rewritten. Additionally, other people need to be hired to help the production, including paying the cover artists.
Although the books sell relatively well for what are niche products, the profits are not high enough to justify full time production. This is especially the case for books that focus on companies like Data East, which don't exactly have mass appeal. The money from the Patreon helps supplement this, so I could work on them full time, and allow for a much quicker publication schedule.
Some upcoming book projects, which are in various stages of planning:
-Other Konami volumes. We've already done three of these (Castlevania, Konami Shooters, and Contra/Other Classics), so we're roughly planning a fourth focusing on some of the slightly more modern series, like Silent Hill and Metal Gear.
-A Guide to Beat-em-Ups, including all of Capcom's (Final Fight) and Konami's (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), as well as Technos (Double Dragon) and others.
-Sega Master System and Genesis Vol. 1. As a follow up to the Arcade Classics series, this line would begin to focus on Sega's home consoles. The first volume would include the 8 and 16-bit outings in series like Phantasy Star, Shining Force, Sonic the Hedgehog, and many, many others.
-Ys and Falcom. We're always updating our Ys article, so we would like to build a book around this expansive series, and also include coverage of all of Falcom's other game series, like Popful Mail, Sorcerian, Brandish, Trails in the Sky, Dragon Slayer, Xanadu, Zwei!!, and numerous others. In many cases, our current articles are the only English sources for these games, and we aim to improve them even more.
-Shin Megami Tensei. The SMT article was one of our first ones, but it's extremely outdated since Atlus puts them out pretty regularly. A book would include a complete revamp of the article including the whole series and all of its spinoffs (Persona, Devil Survivor, Devil Summoner, etc.), totaling something like at least 35 games, and growing all of the time.
Additionally, I'd like to experiment with smaller digests that feature a wide variety of content, with a concentration on features. We've published four of these so far: the first featuring Bionic Commando and Strider, the second featuring assorted Taito Arcade Classics, the third focusing on retro horror games and the fourth on Star Fox, F- Zero and other early 3D games. Plans for future volumes include some of the lesser known Namco arcade classics, and focus on Nintendo games and Japanese RPGs, like games from Tri-Ace.
All of this, in addition to our usual reviews of arcade, PC, and console titles, from every genre, ranging from RPGs to shooters to platformers to adventure games.
If worked on full time, the goal would be to publish four books a year, maybe more in the smaller digest format. Even without reaching this goal, the money can help us diversify our line-up and allow the commission of a wider variety of products.
Thank you very much for reading this, and thank you for your support!