We’ve reached the ripe old age of twenty-five, first hitting the information superhighway on 26th March 2001. If the site were an actual human, it would be looking to settle down, purchase a sensible car, and ditch Lynx Africa for a more sophisticated fragrance. Like Lynx Epic Fresh.
The history of Games Asylum has been detailed several times. For those interested in an abridged version, a fondness for the SEGA Dreamcast originally brought the team together, leading to the creation of DigiApe – a Dreamcast site. When SEGA’s 128-bit dream machine was no more, we pivoted to Games Asylum, which was originally split into SEGA, Sony, Xbox, and Nintendo channels with a few staff members assigned to each. The site grew quickly, covering daily news and reviewing a reasonable amount of new titles. After a few years, the site had become so big – both in size and popularity – that it started to become a colossal time sink, on par with a full-time job.
So, in late 2006 – around the time the Wii launched – we chose to scale it back, dropping news to focus on just a few weekly features and whatever review code plopped through our letterbox. Today, things are a bit different. We’re quietly content covering whatever piques our interest (retro re-releases and modern retro games, mostly) and can balance things within our spare time. If there’s one thing we’ve mastered over the years, it’s time management.
When the site reached twenty in 2021, we revisited our launch day content. This included an enthusiastic preview of the Game Boy Color’s Pokémon Gold & Silver, along with reviews of Oni and Star Wars: Starfighter on PS2, plus a few late Dreamcast games. The team was also excited for the upcoming launch of the GameCube, little knowing it wouldn’t surface in Europe for another year. Looking back at the site as it was during late March 2006 seems like a logical step, with another five years having passed. This was a time when the Nintendo DS and PSP were making a name for themselves, the Xbox 360 was slowly amassing a catalogue of greats, and both the Wii and PS3 were on the horizon. The trusty PS2 remained dominant, while the poor old GameCube was starting to fizzle out.
The week commencing 27th March began not with a weekly new release round-up – in a pre-digital world, that was reserved for Friday – but rather a news story. SEGA had only gone and confirmed the stone-cold classic Let’s Make a Soccer Team for a European release. “We can’t but help to think that it would be taken more seriously if they changed the name to something less cringe worthy,” I grumbled.
A bit more interesting was the UK top 40 chart, covered by Jake. In a two-way battle between the Xbox 360’s The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and EA’s crime caper The Godfather, it was Bethesda’s RPG that came out on top, reportedly outselling the PC version. The rest of the top ten was mostly comprised of PS2 games, including Buzz! The Big Quiz at #3, former no.1 FIFA Street 2 at #4, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter at #5 – presumably the Xbox 360 version – Fight Night Round 3 at #6 (ditto), Driver: Parallel Lines at #7, the PS2 exclusive 24: The Game at #8, EA’s shooter Black at #9, and finally The Sims 2: Open for Business for PC at #10.
Other news pieces included Sony’s breakdancing sim B-Boy, which sounded more like a brawler in the press release due to having “a dynamically controlled fighting system.” In the end, we likened it to FIFA Street without the football due to its grimy urban setting. Ubisoft also nabbed the Far Cry series from Crytek this week, along with unlimited use of their CryENGINE. Jake suggested their next engine should be called “Crymea River.”
It wasn’t a bad week for new releases, especially for the time of year. The PS2 and Xbox gained the incredible Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast, the revered retro collection Taito Legends 2, and the MTV show tie-in Aeon Flux. Ice Age 2: The Meltdown came to all formats, including the GBA, Nintendo DS and GameCube, not to be outdone by fellow multiformat movie tie-in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The GameCube also gained the strategic pinball battler Odama, while Namco’s RPG Tales of Phantasia hit the GBA. The Nintendo DS had a far busier week than the PSP, with Animal Crossing: Wild World, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, and Resident Evil: Deadly Silence all due. Future classics one and all. The PSP had to make do with Taito’s puzzler Exit – published by Ubisoft over here.
Speaking of Animal Crossing: Wild World, we managed to post a review almost a week ahead of launch. No, really. Presumably, we had imported the US release. Jake noted how remarkably similar it was to the GameCube’s AC but was a bit miffed by the online functionality. “It’s nice enough to visit a distant friend’s town, but it takes so much effort to organise – swapping friend codes and organising a time to meet has to be done away from the game,” he moaned. This somewhat concise review, which suggested players should jump in and discover its joys for themselves, resulted in a well-deserved 8/10.
We cast our critical eyes on two other new games. Adam went bareback with G1 Jockey 4 on PS2, which came with a plastic saddle that clipped onto the controller’s analogue sticks. “Eventually you can build up relationships with the horses (not like that!), and start breeding your own horses (not like that!),” Adam cheekily noted. It went on to gain a middling 6/10. “Being a jockey doesn’t sound amazing.”
The second review was for Konami’s forgotten PS2 action RPG The Sword of Etheria – known as Oz in Japan. It seems that it’s forgotten for a reason, with Jake reporting of a rubbish story, bloody awful voice acting, horrendous text-based conversations, and a hit and miss team-based combat system that involves juggling enemies. To summarise: “What the game boils down to is a quite nice team-based combat system, and lots of repetitive opportunities to use it.”
Would you believe we celebrated our fifth birthday too? For our first milestone, Adam prepared a downloadable PDF annual with a selection of content from our first five years. This included select quotes from (frankly embarrassing – on our behalf) interviews with Traveller’s Tales, Team17, Revolution, and SEGA’s music man Richard Jacques. When asked what they thought about the music in the Game Boy’s iconic pack-in Tetris, Jacques responded with “It is excellent music but it’s only annoying because of its repetitiveness. But this also helps to build the pace of the game and make the player more agitated.”
We also took the opportunity to look at five games we awarded 10/10. Coincidentally, it turned out only five games had garnered top marks since we launched: Zelda: The Wind Waker and Super Smash Bros. Melee on GameCube, along with Halo: Combat Evolved, MotoGP, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic on Xbox. According to our much younger selves, The Wind Waker “should be a bookmarked page in the Big Book of Gaming” and Super Smash Bros. could be played “until your thumbs bleed.” Adam also proudly declared that Climax’s MotoGP was “the most perfect game ever.” That’s perhaps the boldest claim in our entire 25 years of existence.