CobraBlade.com

Way back in the good old days of the SNES when I was mooching off my parents and the WWE was still the WWF (well the mooching hasn’t changed), we were treated to a multitude of button mashing wresting games. Now the genre has faded into the corner of the ring as well as our minds. However as Hulk Hogan managed to re-pop up as a current TV persona, so has a retro-like wresting game. In the right corner, its first appearance in the Mac AppStore (OSX), Powerslam!

Powerslam at its core is a button masher but if you’re one to really focus on attacks you’ll be pleased with the small variety of moves that’s included to break up the button mashing. All the moves are lined up on the keyboard allowing a swift line of attacks from kicks, grapples to even taunts. If you’re new to the fighting genre and you find yourself getting pulverized instead of landing attacks, you can adjust the Ai difficulty anywhere from very easy to very difficult. If you play it on very hard you’ll need to break away from button mashing and focus on lining up a string of attacks as well as a good defense. In other words,Powerslam will allow the most novice to succeed while still bringing a challenge for the more advanced.

Throughout Powerslam you’ll come across a wide variety of matches that change the gameplay experience. With the 11 types of fights you’ll encounter a variety that ranges from wrestling one on one to a massive brawl with four wrestlers at once. Best of all is that some of the matches include objects such as chairs that you can whack the opponents with. The amount of variety helps make up for the short comings of the graphics (all the characters for the most part look the same) as well as limited variety of attacks.

Powerslam contains a couple unlockables that will push some gamers to play through the whole tournament (it’s a long tournament made up of 48 rounds and a final boss battle). You can unlock “Big Head Mode” that will totally conjure up memories of anyone who played games on the PSX (or earlier). Also if the standard 18 wrestlers are not enough for you to choose from, you can unlock an editor mode that’ll allow you to create up to 95 custom wrestlers!

The Bottom Line: 6.0

PowerSlam is a decent wrestling  game that’ll bring some enjoyment and nostalgia to fans of this genre.

Powerslam not violent or bloody enough? Well you’ll love the new 1.1.0 update then! As a big thank you to everyone who purchased Powerslam (I truly appreciate the support!) the action can now spill into the parking lot with the new Street Fight mode. Imagine how brutal a wrestling match in the arena parking lot would be with so many weapons at your disposal. Well imagine no more and download the update now.

Are you ready? At long last the arrival of POWERSLAM is in sight. Australia Day 2012 (26th of Jan) will see the release of the first ever Macintosh wrestling game.

I think I have finally done enough work to show how the game is currently looking. Rather than more screenshots however I have made a quick six minute video I have uploaded to both Vimeo & YouTube.

Feel free to check one of them out below.
http://vimeo.com/30977183

An inventor, an icon, a technological genius has passed away today. I speak of none other than the young Steve Jobs who was only 56. A very inspirational man that I certainly looked up to. He changed the way I listen to music, use a phone, use a computer, play games. He made my life easier in many ways with his visions.

I am deeply sadden by this news on many levels and unfortunately words fail to express the extent of this. So I will just say that the world has just lost a brilliant man, who’s visions and passion were unparalleled. So may we do our best to make sure his memory along with his visions are eternal and live on forever.

Here we are in 2011, three years since my first game release and my second game has yet to come out. That is despite work beginning on it the year after Soulless was released!

While my lack of coding abilities obviously contribute somewhat, what has truly slowed development down is my quest to discover a style all of my own that I could use across all of my games. So lets turn the clock back and look at the many forms POWERSLAM has taken leading up to now.

In 2009 when things first started the game was looking vastly different. These taller more realistic sprites didn’t work as well in this game as they would have for Soulless and it is obvious why it needed to change.

A lot of work later and the game was looking very different by 2010. Its funny though, at the time I was obviously being to critical of myself. I could probably have ended my quest here as it was already looking really good. But important changes were yet to be made…

Then later the same year a dramatic change! A different shading style for the sprites (playable characters not included as I never got that far) and a very different arena. This arena helped remedy a few issues I had with AI and camera placement.

Still 2010 and a sudden change that came out of nowhere. I gave changing the characters all into anthropomorphic animals a try. I figured there is nothing like this out there and it’ll really help to get POWERSLAM recognised. The down side is I’m after a style I can use for all of my games and while it’ll work for this I can’t think of future games I can release in this style.

Another year goes by and we get to see the final change. This is where it all comes together. Everything is zoomed-in and done in a different style now I’m using Poser Debut but the character types are back to what they were like early 2010. The arena is the same used late in 2010 but the ring itself is going back to early 2010. So a cool new look combining everything from 2010.

Welcome back to today where I am busily creating many more sprites for POWERSLAM to try and bring the game to completion. Hope you look as forward to its release as I do.

Finally got around to finishing off my new website design today.

I’ve had it sitting on my computer half completed for a while now so decided to make today the day I would finish it and upload it.

As usual, it can be found at
http://www.cobrablade.com

Finally got around to finishing off my new website design today.

I’ve had it sitting on my computer half completed for a while now so decided to make today the day I would finish it and upload it.

As usual, it can be found at
http://www.cobrablade.com