Resident Evil 4 is one of the highest-rated games of all time and perhaps single-handedly saved the GameCube from obscurity. It follows the adventures of Leon Kennedy as he's vacationing in rural Spain, and suddenly all kinds of startling things begin happening in this surprisingly large and affluent farming community. Things like deranged hutterites kidnapping barely-legal teen girls.

But before Leon was killing Spanish villagers in the most mildly racist manner possible, he was set to infiltrate the heart of the Umbrella Corporation and deliver a portfolio crushing suplex to company president Ozwell E. Spencer. After that he was going to be whisked off to investigate a haunted mansion in Europe filled with zombies, creepy dolls and posessed deer heads. That's why you always ask the landlord if anyone has died in the house before you rent it because how else are you gonna know? When your deer heads start running around and rummaging through your fridge you'll have no one to blame but yourself.

These were the original, unreleased versions of Resident Evil 4 that were shown at E3 and the Tokyo Game show in 2002 and 2003. Each was a cool departure from the series' norms that any Resident Evil fan would have loved to play, and although they'll never be released to the public I still like to revisit the original videos and images and wax nostalgic about what might have been.

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I actually posted this sometime last year, but it got lost in the shuffle while I was porting articles to the new database. It's not the best thing I've ever written, but reposting it is better than trying to come up with something new. Enjoy.

If you’ve been readin’ what I’ve been tweetin’, you’ll know that I’ve recently come to acquire my very own Sega Game Gear. My friend owned one while we were growing up and it’s actually the system that got me interested in games in the first place. I used to borrow it and play all manner of exciting and sophisticated jewels, like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Surf Ninjas.

Now that I have my hairy hands on a GG again for the first time in thirteen years I’ve been trying to rebuild my old experiences. I’ve managed to track down three of the seven games that my friend used to own: Sonic the Hedgehog 2, The Adventures of Batman & Robin and Surf Ninjas. Now I just need to find the two Power Rangers games and Sonics Triple Trouble and Chaos and I'll finally be able to pretend that I'm ten years old again.

So far, though, Batman & Robin is the only game that I can play for serious and not just nostalgia. Surf Ninjas is pretty good for a two-button brawler, but it’s hard to imagine how we all got by twenty years ago with games that didn’t even have password saves. Having to either replay the first level over and over again or find a level select cheat is just stupid when we now have games that save for us without even asking. They’re just like, "Hey, you’re coming up to a pretty tough part where you’ll probably die a crazy amount of times. Let me back up your progress for you," and you're like, "Thanks autosave!"

Besides digging up Game Gear gold, I also recently found the Sega Classics Collection for PS2. While most of the games on the disk are crap not worthy of sitting in my bowels, there are a few sweet nuggets included. Phantasy Star IV, Ecco the Dolphin and the ubiquitous Sonic the Hedgehog games are all worth playing again if you can find them all for under ten dollars. However, I now own five separate copies of Sonic the Hedgehog 2—the Genesis and Game Gear originals, one port for the GameCube and two for the PS2—which is far too many to be acceptable in polite company.

At long last, I am proud to present part two of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Super Special Feature +. Right now, on your computer! (The "plus" stands for Germany.) We continue with the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers retrospective, already in progress.

What made MMPR so special was that a show like this was virtually unprecedented in the North American market. The notion wasn’t new, as we had seen costumed super hero teams and transforming robots in the past, courtesy of Japanese cartoons; but this was different. This was real. Real-ish. It brought all those awesome powers and abilities one step closer to being within our feeble child-grasps.

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You are now reading part one of The 34th Dimension’s very first feature, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Super Special Feature +. The "plus" stands for quantity.

If you were a kid back in the early ’90s, you probably spent your Saturday mornings like I did: glued to the idiot box watching shows like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, X-Men, The Real Ghostbusters and, if you were lucky, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. But there was one show that came along in 1993 that totally blew everything else away. That show was Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and it was awesome.

For the uninitiated and stupid, MMPR was about a group of high school students with attitude who became tasked by a giant floating head and his robotic love slave assistant to save the world from an evil, interstellar hobo/sorceress who woke up after 10,000 years in a space dumpster. That’s right, a space dumpster. I couldn’t make this up if I tried.

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