This Week In Video-Game History: August 15-21

Chrono Cross This week in video-game history is a fairly slow one. Most of the important happenings took place in the last 10 years, except for John Carmack's birthday!

August 15

2000: Chrono Trigger sequel Chrono Cross comes to America.

August 16

2005: The curiously themed vampire western Darkwatch goes on sale. It actually got fairly positive reviews, despite being one of the most unappealing ideas for a video game I've ever heard.

2006: Hawaiian resident Don Perreira pleads guilty to two counts of criminal copyright infringement. Perreria was distributing Xbox consoles with pre-loaded games with the intent to sell.

August 17

2007: The King of Kong is released. The controversial documentary follows the struggles of Steve Wiebe as he attempts to tackle long-time Donkey Kong record holder Billy Mitchell's score.

August 18

1995: The first Mortal Kombat movie is released in theaters around the country. While parents feared the games would trigger a violent response in their children, I know firsthand that this movie did far more damage to rambunctious and fight-prone children than the video game did.

August 19

2002: The original Dead to Rights is released on the Xbox as a timed exclusive. Namco later ported it to the PlayStation 2 and GameCube. Dead to Rights was originally a PC game.

2005: The long-lived and incredibly funny Disney cartoon The Proud Family comes to an end. A full three months after the show leaves the air, the underwhelming GBA game hits the shelves.

August 20

1970: John Carmack is born. He was the lead programmer for the Doom and Quake series, as well as Commander Keen. Besides programming games, Carmack is also an avid rocket enthusiast and founded the rocket-powered-vehicle company Armadillo Aerospace.

2002: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 is the last game released on the Nintendo 64.

August 21

1989: Sony Records publishes the Mother soundtrack. Much like the games in the series, it never went on sale in North America.

Tags: Doom, Donkey Kong, Chrono Cross, Mortal Kombat, Chrono Trigger, Mother, Quake, The King of Kong, Darkwatch, This Week in Video-Game History, Commander Keen, Dead to Rights, The Proud Family, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3

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Ed Grabowski

August 22, 2010

Darkwatch is actually a pretty good game. It can get a little stale because of the slim amount of weapons you have, but overall it was a good ride.

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Tim Latshaw

I picked up Chrono Cross some time ago, but have never gotten around to playing it. Is it still worth doing so?

Alejandro Moreno

August 23, 2010

I thought it was very good back then. A bit confusing, though. Also, don't expect any references to Chrono Trigger. At all.

William Stilwell

Man, I loved Commander F'ing Keen! I'm pretty sure it was the first piece of shareware me and my old man sent in for the full version and got every penny's worth of fun.

Randy Snow

Sure there are some references to CT Alejandro. From the Epoc to talk of the outer world, to remixed characters.

Eddy Fettig

Damn, man, I LOVED Chrono Cross. The story made...no sense, really, and as a sequel to Chrono Trigger it was awkward, but as a game in and of itself, it was original and extremely atmospheric. Possibly the best OST to grace any game to date, in my opinion. Yasunori Mitsuda is probably my favorite game music composer: Mario and Luigi games, Kingdom Hearts, Mario Parties on the 64, and Chrono Cross and Chrono Trigger. Damn, that guy is awesome.

I'd say CC is still worth playing, especially if you haven't, though a lot of that game's charm was just how beautiful it was. I haven't played it in a while so I'm not sure how well it holds up.