RPO Replay: Smash TV

A Smash TV contestant, surrounded by whirling blades, fends off enemies.

The Ready Player One Replay is an exploration of the games that inspired the novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Quote Aech and I had wasted countless hours on two-player classics like Contra, Golden Axe, Heavy Barrel, Smash TV, and Ikari Warriors. Game Play Smash TV is a frantic run-and-gun game inspired by the likes of Running Man … Read more

Golden Axe – Ready Player One Video Game Replay

The heroes of Golden Axe: A battle axe wielding dwarf, a great sword using male human, and a long sword-using female human. They stand against a brown tiled background.

Golden Axe is a side-scrolling, fantasy-based hack’n’slash video game that dominated arcades in the early 1990s. Released in 1989 by Sega, the game was one that my friends and I would happily pump quarters into until we completed its epic quest, usually laughing our asses off whenever we did something particularly dumb on screen. It … Read more

RPO Replay: Contra

The Ready Player One Replay is an exploration of the games that inspired the novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Quote Aech and I had wasted countless hours on two-player classics like Contra, Golden Axe, Heavy Barrel, Smash TV, and Ikari Warriors. Game Play Contra is a side-scrolling two-player shooter by Konami featuring two muscle-bound … Read more