Day 75: Slipstream (PC)

The spirit of OutRun is invoked in today's randomly selected title from my 561 game backlog. I'm playing one for every day that the UK is in lockdown...

Slipstream for the PC
Previous days' entries can be read HERE

OutRun is one of the most iconic, and for me one of the very best, video games of all time. As such, it’s imitators are legion, and have been arriving regularly ever since its original release back in 1986.

I’ll save you a long monologue on Yu Suzuki’s masterpiece now, as I’ve already written about it at length before, and, as I said the last time this came up, the fact I titled it ‘A Love Letter to OutRun’ should give you a clue as to my feelings.

Slipstream is one of the more recent games to pay homage to the old master, with the whole OutRun series serving as inspiration, and a dollop of ‘Initial D’ added for good measure. It began life on Kickstarter in 2016 and finally gained release exclusively to PC (including Linux and Mac) in 2018.

I saw it originally on Rock, Paper, Shotgun in mid 2015, when the developer released an initial demo onto their itch.io page. I saved it to my Google Keep and promptly forgot about it. A digital tidy up brought it back to my attention three and half years later, and this time I immediately took myself to itch to buy it… and then forgot about it for another six months. 

Which brings us to today.

Day 69: Pogo (ZX Spectrum)

The ZX Spectrum returns in my ongoing efforts to play one randomly selected title from my 564 game backlog for every day that the UK is in lockdown...

Pogo for the ZX Spectrum
Previous days' entries can be read HERE

It’s going to be a short one today because ‘Pogo’ is... well... it's ‘Q*bert’ - and what new could I possibly find to say about ‘Q*bert’?

Lets see...

Day 68: To the Earth (NES)

Busting out the NES Zapper in my ongoing efforts to play one randomly selected title from my 565 game backlog for every day that the UK is in lockdown...

To the Earth for the NES
Previous days' entries can be read HERE

Did you know there are only seventeen games for the NES ‘Zapper’ accessory? That’s sixteen games that no-one has ever played because they aren’t ‘Duck Hunt’.

Okay. That’s not fair. 

I know there are fans out there of ‘Wild Gunman’, ‘Gum Shoe’, ‘Hogan’s Alley’, ‘Operation Wolf’, and ‘Freedom Force’. And a lot of people know of ‘Bayou Billy’, and ‘Barker Bill’.

But I reckon that about does it for the Zapper games that most people could name off the top of their head; not even half of them, by my maths.

Which is a shame because there’s a couple of games in the ‘other’ half that are better than most of the better known games. I don’t own SNK’s ‘Mechanized Attack’ as it’s US only, but I was able to play it at a game show a few years back and it’s definitely one of the better games for the peripheral and deserving of attention for more than it’s infamous debug screen. 

And then there’s ‘To the Earth’, which, incidentally, has possibly my favourite box art on the system; the lettering alone is pure joy to behold.

Day 65: Gyron (ZX Spectrum)

A genuinely fascinating title is the latest random selection from my 567 game backlog. I'm playing one a day, every day, for as long as the UK is in lockdown...

Gyron (and Gyron Arena) for the ZX Spectrum
Previous days' entries can be read HERE

I never really intended these blog entries to be as ‘reviewy’ as they have become. I don’t have a problem with it, it’s natural to lean that way when writing about a game you’ve just played, especially when the method of writing is as unstructured as mine is. (Play game - Open blog - Write until I’ve got nothing else to say - Pass to wife to edit).

In the case of 'Gyron' I’m going to get the review out of the way early and in far fewer words than usual:
It's a fascinating feat of programming with incredibly creative tools to aid your navigation around a fully realised 3D labyrinth. It’s devious, it’s hard, it’s impressive, it’s addictive, and it looks utterly amazing for a 48k Spectrum game from 1985 [a year older than the aforementioned wife! - Ed]

The rest of this post is just going to be some stuff I find fascinating about this game.

By the way, this is all info I’ve gleaned from the internet so if you are familiar with the game already then there’ll be nothing new here. Sorry.

Day 63: Yanya Caballista City Skater (PS2)

Back to obscurity as I continue to play one title from my 570 game backlog for every day that the UK is in lockdown...

Yanya Caballista City Skater for the PS2
Previous days' entries can be read HERE

At some point last year I became obsessed with getting a copy of this game, not because I’d heard it was particularly good or interesting or rare, but because of the ‘fingerboard’ controller accessory you can see pictured above.

I love stuff like this; odd little experiments and gimmicks that developers come up with for their games. Things like the Lenslok anti piracy device, the little paddle controller that came with ‘Puchi Carat’, and even Namco’s fantastic ‘NegCon’ controller that I mentioned yesterday, all have enthralled me at various points in my games collecting history.
So it wasn’t a surprise that Yanya Cabalista’s tiny skateboard deck attachment caught my attention.

I set up an eBay alert and waited patiently. Eventually, about two months after I started looking, I was able to get a Japanese copy with the board for a decent price. Weirdly, a day or two after that, an American copy was listed ‘disc only’ for a pittance so I snapped that up too.
Annoyingly, when I went to play the games, neither would load using my Swap Magic discs, so they went onto the shelf as curios for the foreseeable future.

Yesterday, however, I started having some loading issues with ‘Ridge Racer V’. I was poking around in my PS2 and realised the brake release pin on the disc lid wasn’t working properly and this was slowing the disc down. As I fixed this issue I was reminded of the Swap Magic problems, so I tried it again, and it worked right away!

Long story short, (too late!?) today I’m playing the American version of ‘Yanya Caballista’, with the fingerboard from the Japanese version, on my European PS2 Slim, using Swap Magic 3.6.

Day 62: Ridge Racer V (PS2)

The only Riiiiiidge Racer I've never played features in my ongoing efforts to play one title from my 571 game backlog for every day that the UK is in lockdown...

Ridge Racer V for the PS2
Previous days' entries can be read HERE

I kind of love Ridge Racer. I've had most of the games in the series from new with only Rage Racer and this added to the collection later on. As a matter of fact I just checked Wikipedia to see if I owned every Ridge Racer, and ended up ordering RR64 for the N64. Other than that, the only one I don’t have is Ridge Racer Vita - but then I don’t actually own a Vita (yet) so that would be a bit pointless.
So yeah, bit of a fan.

Why ‘Ridge Racer V’ has sat unplayed since I picked it up a couple of years ago, I don't know. I always struggle to see PS2 games as particularly 'special' though, which I know is ridiculous, but I guess that might have something to do with it. 
That notwithstanding, it’s weird that I haven’t played a game I own from a series I really like - especially as it supports the brilliant NegCon controller; Namco’s proprietary device that is, for my money, the best way to play driving games that isn’t a steering wheel.

Day 61: Soft Aid (C64)

I'm usually playing 1 title a day from my 581 backlog every day that the UK is in lockdown, but today I played 10...

Soft Aid for the Commodore 64
Previous days' entries can be read HERE

The game actually chosen by Selectron™ today was ‘Beam Rider’, a C64 game that’s part of a compilation called ‘Soft Aid’ - nothing to do with impotence awareness - this was actually launched in 1985 to coincide with the original Band Aid and Live Aid projects. 
It features 10 games all donated to the compilation so that the proceeds could go to charity, although I came to own it as part of a stack of games I got from eBay many years after the original release.

As this compilation is on a cassette the inlay helpfully indicates the position of the tape counter for each of the games, but when I fast forwarded to the position shown and tried load 'Beam Rider' it wouldn’t work. 
I tried all the other counter-positions for the other titles until eventually one started to load, albeit not the one I was expecting. 
It turns out none of the numbers on the inlay bear any relation to the actual positions of the games on the cassette.

Even even the counter-number for the first game is wrong as each side of the tape starts with a copy of the ‘Do they know it’s Christmas?’ Luckily I was able to work out the true starting position by leaving the tape playing for 3 minutes and 50 seconds (the playtime of the single) and from there I worked my way through the whole compilation noting the new counter digits as I went.

And thus, one write up became ten.

Day 60: Star Wars: Dark Forces (PC)

Playing one title from my 582 game backlog while the UK is in lockdown...

Star Wars: Dark Forces for the PC
Previous days' entries can be read HERE

Back on May 4th I started my post by saying I had two candidates from the franchise to play in honour of ‘Star Wars Day’ and ultimately chose ‘Rogue Squadron’ on the N64 because the other option required installation. This was that ‘other’ game; ‘Star Wars: Dark Forces’.

If memory serves me correctly this was part of a whole bundle of Star Wars games I bought from GOG a couple of years ago. At the time I asked around the internet to check if it was a good option for a non-Star Wars fan and the consensus seemed to be positive, and Dark Forces was one of the reasons why.

As a PC game released in 1992,this is not something that comes with Xbox One controller support as standard and, as I don’t believe in playing with keyboard and mouse, I had a little fun setting up joy-to-key before I could get stuck in, and then tweaking my assumptions during the first mission.
Fun fact: The XB1 controller has exactly one too few buttons to assign every command you’d like in Dark Forces, but luckily I haven’t found a reason for the dedicated map screen as the overlaid version is so useful. 
Also, I know there are plenty available, but other than joy-to-key I didn’t use any other mods or tweaks.

Day 58: Crack Down (Amiga)

A rare outing for my Amiga 600 as I continue to play one title a day from my 585 game backlog during UK lockdown...

Crack Down for the Amiga
Previous days' entries can be read HERE

You may have noticed that in this little intro section for these posts I sometimes like to give a background of the game in hand. Whether that’s on the development of the game, or it’s journey to my collection, I’ve always have a habit of ‘setting the scene’ and I hope you’ll indulge me at least one more time:

I first came to own this game, and a Commodore Amiga, when an old work colleague asked if I’d like some old computers he had, as he was clearing out to move abroad. 
These ‘old computers’ turned out to be an Atari 400 and an Amiga 500. 
In the collection of software for latter was, of course, Crack Down.

It was never my intention but I actually ended up selling both machines. 
The Atari was non-functional beyond my skills to repair, but the Amiga 500 was just too big for any of the 4 different games rooms I’d had set up while I owned it, so I sold it and used the proceeds to pay for repairs to an Amiga 600 I had picked up for a tenner at a boot sale in the intervening years.

Gaming the Pandemic - Day 21: Prince of Persia (Mega Drive)

I'm playing one title from my 627 game backlog every day that the UK is in lockdown. 
Previous entries can be found HERE, but today's random selection is...

Prince of Persia on the Mega Drive

Before I downloaded Transpose yesterday (it was free on SteamVR at the weekend and looks ace) this was actually the game that had been in my backlog for the shortest amount of time. 

It was a thank you gift I received just earlier this week, and with this undertaking every day and playing Pyre and Ape Out quite a lot, poor PoP hadn't got a look in.

This is a game I played a lot back in the day. Although I have neither in my collection today I'm almost certain I played and completed both the Gameboy and SNES versions. Interestingly I discovered whilst researching the game that every version of it after the Apple II original had to be re-written from the ground up. Jordan Mechner was only involved in the original, the sequel, and the 1999 masterpiece 'The Sands of Time'. Every other port, sequel, and spin-off (of which there are literally dozens) was handled in isolation by third parties.

By the time the Mega Drive version arrived in 1993 it was pretty late to the party. This was 4 years after the Apple II original and a year after every other port to 4th and 5th generation hardware (including the Sega's own Master System and Game Gear). 1993 was the same year that the sequel arrived on other systems, a year after Flashback had arrived a knocked this concept into space, and only 3 years before Tomb Raider came along re-wrote the book on this kind of thing entirely. As a result this version was yesterday's news and it did not review or sell particularly well.

Anyone who plays a lot of retro games will know that you never continue on the first level of a game. You're basically wasting that 'continue' because you're starting from the beginning away. So, whatever the game, don't continue, go back to the main menu and start again. 
With PoP you have a 60 minute countdown timer running so it's time you'd be wasting rather than continues - but it's still relevant, and on the Mega Drive there's extra step to this process. 
After you've died on the first level for the first time, head back to main menu and, before you start a new game, change the sounds option from 'Music and SFX' to 'SFX Only' - because it seems the developers used their extra time incubating this version to compose the most irritating music ever conceived! I think I'd rather have Baby Mario screeching in my ear for an hour.

Other than that this is Prince of Persia as I know and love it. I've seen the Domark ports (they handled all Sega machines and the Amiga version) criticised around the internet but I'm struggling to see why. Maybe I'd feel differently if I had this running side-by-side with the SNES version but I didn't, and neither will the vast majority of other people who play it.
I have to say though, and this is very much a matter of personal taste, but I think the earlier versions of game have aged with more style. The Apple II version may have limited detail but this somehow makes the rotoscoped art look even more fluid in action.

The weird thing now is that I find myself in exactly the same position as the original reviewers of this game back in '93. The overwhelming consensus back then was that Prince of Persia on the Mega Drive was only really worth your time if you hadn't already played it on other systems - and it's as much true now as it was then.
If you only have a Mega Drive/Genesis, or maybe the Mini Classic version thereof, then absolutely you should have Prince of Persia in your library. Other than that, this version's appeal will rest on how keen you are to play different versions of this classic title.

Prince of Persia (Mega Drive) - Better than I was expecting and, with the above caveats, recommended.

Gaming the Pandemic - Day 19: Yoshi's Island

I'm playing one title from my 627 game backlog every day that the UK is in lockdown. 

Previous days games can be found here, but today we have a game that's considered a true classic...

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island on SNES

Shouldn't it be Yoshis' Island? With the apostrophe at the end because it's plural and possessive? There are multiple 'Yoshis' after all..? Anyway.

I have so much love for the SNES. It was my first 'proper' console and it's great to finally get a chance to write about it here. I only have a handful of unplayed games for this machine and most of those are Mario platformers, and, well, I have a confession to make...

I don't really like Mario platformers. 
I love Mario Kart, I've had fun with Mario Party, and I recently played and loved Mario & Rabbids kingdom Battle. When the games are spin-offs and side projects they hit the mark, but I've never really got on with the 'true' genre of Mario.
Obviously I'm part of a minuscule minority, but I really struggle to take the same pleasure from these games that millions of other people find.

To try and break it down I can tell you that most of the character designs are hideous to my eyes, the music is often repetitive and annoying, and, worst of all, I find the controls to be floaty, slidey, imprecise, and infuriating. I know I might as well be shouting this into a hole in the ground but I'm not going to pretend I feel otherwise due to decades of other people's reverence and nostalgia for the Mario brand.
I'm happy for you if you get joy from Mario games, truly I am, but I don't feel the same way.

So... This is the part where I say that Yoshi's Island was different, that it's the exception to the rule, and that it changed my mind... 

Except it wasn't, it isn't, and it absolutely didn't.

I played the entire first world of Yoshi's Island. I was impressed by the art work and level design, I admired the clever platforming, I respected the built in replayability of optional goals. This is a game clearly created by incredibly talented people with enviable creativity. But all that means nothing, because after 8 levels I just couldn't face another moment of sliding into lava, crawling along platforms, and chasing that incessantly mewling boy-in-a-bubble. 
The latter; that shreeching, monotonous cry as Baby Mario floats rage-inducingly around the stage, is the only issue I had that relates specifically to this game - all the others are issues that can be traced to the Mario DNA that I've never enjoyed but so wanted to be different this time.

And that's something that makes it worse: I wanted to like this game. 
I'm indifferent about the other Marios in the backlog, I'll give them a fair shot if they pop out of the randomiser but I don't really care if they don't. But when SMW2 was chosen today I was excited. I loved Yoshi's Woolly World on the Wii-U and it was because of that that I was recommended Yoshi's Island and even found a beautiful boxed copy in a local shop not long after. 
But, expectation is the mother of disappointment, and that's certainly something I'm full of right now.

If you've read any of these before you'll know I do a one line summary at the end. I'll say a game is 'recommended', or that 'genre fans might want to try it' - that kind of thing.
But I've struggled with what to put for Yoshi's Island. 
Not for the first time I've played a game that many consider one of the best ever made and I just couldn't enjoy it, but I don't want to piss anyone off. So I guess the summary can only be...

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island - I hated it. Sorry.

Gaming the Pandemic - Day 18: Burnout: Revenge (PS2)

I'm playing one title from my 629 game backlog every day that the UK is in lockdown. 

Previous days games can be found here, but today we have...

Burnout: Revenge on Playstation 2

I find myself wondering what to write about this game that could possibly be interesting, worthwhile, or new.

It was in my backlog because I hadn't played it - but then, after the VERY turn of the century music had played, and the VERY turn of the century intro movie had finished, and I actually started playing, it was... well... it's Burnout, isn't it?

Sandwiched between the breakout third entry 'Takedown' and the landmark 'Paradise' (Both of which I've played a lot), Revenge is much more an iteration on the former than a step towards the latter.

There are small tweaks to gameplay in a lot of areas and the titular Revenge mechanic is the largest of them - and it is a good one. Essentially you get extra points for taking out the car that last took you out. A different coloured icon over the vehicle is about as much as this amounts to, but it really works. I found myself desperate to put my rival in a wall and genuinely disappointed if I hadn't achieved this before the race was over - even if I had won.

As a polishing of the original Burnout formula it's a hard game to fault. It comes with EA's trademark sheen and there's an impressive sense of speed for a 6th generation game - with the sound effects of particularly of quality when it comes the all round atmosphere of careening through city streets. 

I'm in the minority that really can't be arsed with 'Crash mode' so for me nothing before Burnout: Paradise even comes close to that game's quality. But Revenge is the 'next best' in the franchise and if you hadn't played any of these games from the pre-HD era then this would probably be the best place to start.

Although, with that said, I'm quite partial to Dominator on the PSP. Let's face it, these are not deep games, it's a pure arcade blast from start to finish and that structure suits handheld gaming really well.

Burnout: Revenge - You've probably played it already, but if not, you should

Gaming the Pandemic - Day 12: Glory Days (aka Super Army War) (GBA)

Latest in my attack on (at least) one title from my 632 game backlog every day that the UK is in 'lock-down'.

I'm not planning on completing them, just playing them for long enough to know: A) What they're all about and B) If they're good enough to continue playing ASAP

A step forward from the GBC yesterday to the GBA today as the randomiser has chosen...

Glory Days on the Game Boy Advance

Way back in 1984 there was a game on the Apple II called Rescue Raiders. A forerunner of Choplifter, it featured similar gameplay to that later game combined with light Real Time Strategy elements. 3 years later, initially on the same machine, came the slightly better known Wings of Fury. Similar to Rescue Raiders with it's side on view but with a more attack focused outlook and the helicopter swapped for a WWII, carrier launched, Hellcat fighter.

For some reason, 20 years after Rescue Raiders first saw the light of day, a french developer called Neko (who spent most of their days phoning in cash-grab licensed games for whomsoever hired them) decided to take these two classics, smoosh them together, and remake them into a game called Glory Days which was then rebranded to the mind numbingly generic 'Super Army War' in the US.

Being a wholesale rip-off of two good games means that Glory Days is itself a good game. You fly either the chopper or the Hellcat over the battlefield as the good-guys advance from the right and the bad-guys from the left, attacking with the weapons specific to either vehicle.

During their advance your troops capture bunkers, these generate extra cash, which in turn generates extra troops. So in destroying the enemy you help the ground troops advance to the next bunker and eventually to the enemy base for victory. Pretty standard RTS stuff, just simplified into a side on view.

The depictions of the troops, tanks, choppers, and fighters are all small but quite detailed. The style is pseudo-realistic and while it looks nice, to my tastes the pixels of Wings of Fury on the Amiga - or even the GBC - were more attractive. Glory Days is by no means a bad looking game, it just lacks a little personality. Additionally, on the original GBA or even the front-lit SP, Glory days can be quite hard to make out when there is a lot going on. It looks great on the Micro though and if that's not an option the DS is a great alternative.

I'm not generally a fan of the RTS genre but so much is taken care of automatically in Glory Days that I found it didn't bother me at all. In the earliest levels strategy is as light as choosing which targets to hit, more depth follows later in the game but it never takes away from the feeling that your actions in the air are having the most direct impact on the tide of the battle.

Basically, this is game that steals directly from too highly addictive classics and essentially lets you play them both at the same time. It may leave a bad taste in the mouth for some, but on pure entertainment value it's a hard game to fault.

Glory Days (GBA) - Perfect pocket plagiarism. 'Wings of Rescue Raiders' if you will.

Previously...

Day One was the excellent Luminees II on PSP

Day Two was the fun-but-probably-better-in-co-op Sanctum 2 on PC

Day Three was the pretty ropey but maybe worth a second chance on PS2 Dead to Rights 2 on Xbox

Day Four was the utterly stunning Pyre on PC

Day Five was the horribly aged but undeniably addictive skate it on the Wii

Day Six was the endearing and surprisingly competent Enduro Racer for the Sega Master System

Day Seven was the fun for a (very) quick burst Space Pirate Trainer in VR

Day Eight was the disappointingly awkward Draconus on ZX Spectrum

Day Nine was the idiosyncratic Ring of Red on PS2

Day Ten I lost half my text while trying to explain how Assassin's Creed Syndicate on PC was a pleasant, is simplistic, surprise.

Day Eleven was the utterly broken Perfect Dark on GBC

Gaming the Pandemic - Day 11: Perfect Dark (GBC)

Latest in my attack on (at least) one title from my 633 game backlog every day that the UK is in 'lock-down'.

I'm not planning on completing them, just playing them for long enough to know: A) What they're all about and B) If they're good enough to continue playing ASAP

The GBC is one of my favourite handhelds so I was intrigued when the randomiser chose...

Perfect Dark on the Game Boy Color

Made as a showcase of what the hardware could achieve, Perfect Dark has big, beautifully animated sprites, lots of in game speech, lots of colour, a rumble pack built in, support for infrared transfer and even content for the mighty Game Boy Printer.

Sadly, the usually reliable folks a Rare were apparently so busy doing all this that they forgot to make an entertaining game.

Viewed from a weird kind-of-above, kind-of-side-on, not-quite-isometric view, the game tries to offer about four different types of gameplay. This is admirable, but only one of them is actually any fun - and one of them is game-breakingly bad.

Firstly, there's the run around killing guys sections. Thanks to the tiny screen and large sprites your only hope here is to stand toe-to-toe and trade bullets until someone dies (and hope it's them). The game tries to balance this out by letting you search the corpses for health and bullets, with which it is admittedly pretty generous, but which is also very slow and repetitive.

Secondly there are door 'puzzles' which are literally 4 colour, 'Simon says' efforts... should you forget the sequence the only way to quit and retry is to get it wrong another 2 times... every bit as enjoyable as you'd imagine.

Next there's the shooting galleries. It's the very definition of damning with feint praise to say that these are the most entertaining sections in the game. They are little Operation Wolf style affairs that mix up the pace nicely and work well.

Lastly, and most frustratingly of all, given the pedigree, we have what is laughable called the 'Stealth' mechanic. During the game you can walk and run. Walking is 'stealth', if you can walk up behind an enemy undetected they can be killed with one shot. Given this is the GBC the simplified concept is sound. However, given this is the GBC, the screen is so small (made smaller by a health bar covering the entire right side) that the stealth approach is like trying to sneak up on someone in a lift. Does that sound bad? How about if you add an insta-fail mechanic to the mix? Yeah? no.

Perfect Dark (GBC) - A great example of how all the polished presentation in the world can't save a very bad game.

Previously...

Day One was the excellent Luminees II on PSP

Day Two was the fun-but-probably-better-in-co-op Sanctum 2 on PC

Day Three was the pretty ropey but maybe worth a second chance on PS2 Dead to Rights 2 on Xbox

Day Four was the utterly stunning Pyre on PC

Day Five was the horribly aged but undeniably addictive skate it on the Wii

Day Six was the endearing and surprisingly competent Enduro Racer for the Sega Master System

Day Seven was the fun for a (very) quick burst Space Pirate Trainer in VR

Day Eight was the disappointingly awkward Draconus on ZX Spectrum

Day Nine was the idiosyncratic Ring of Red on PS2

Day Ten I lost half my text while trying to explain how Assassin's Creed: Syndicate on PC was a pleasant, if simplistic, surprise.

Gaming the Pandemic - Day 9: Ring of Red (PS2)

Latest in my attack of (at least) one title from my 636 game backlog every day that the UK is in 'lock-down'.

I'm not planning on completing them, just playing them for long enough to know: A) What they're all about and B) If they're good enough to continue playing ASAP

The random game selector has actually picked two titles today, but the one I'm going to talk about is

Ring of Red on Playstation 2 (Played on 60gb PS3)

The other one, Crazy Cars on the C64 was so irredeemably terrible that I actually played it for less time than it took the tape to load. But still, another one off the the backlog list at least.

Crazy Cars (C64) - Avoid like Covid 19

There's a tenuous link, I guess, between the old 8 bit days of Crazy Cars and Ring of Red which was released exclusively for the PS2 in 2001

The cover tape on the front of the August 1990 issue of Your Sinclair featured a demo of Back to the Future II, about which 'young me' was very excited. Having rushed home with my copy and waited patiently for the tape to load I soon discovered that this game was awful. Fortunately, also on the tape that month was a full and complete copy of Rebelstar II, which was definitely not awful, but also scratched my naive desire for a movie tie-in game. Rebelstar II, in case you're not familiar, rips off all of its character and enemy designs from the Alien movies.

And thus, on that day, my love of Turn Based Strategy games was born.

It's a genre completely at odds with my usual tastes (I grew up with the arcades) so I have to make a special effort to discover new games in this area. I think I remember reading a retrospective of Ring of Red and the author being so enthusiastic about it that I decided to track down a copy - it's certainly not a game that's been in my backlog from its release date and equally not something I've stumbled across at a boot sale or CEX.

Set in an alternative universe post-WWII Japan that has been geo-politically divided between East and West, Ring of Red has you as the pilot of an AFW (Armoured Fighting Walker), a hulking mechanised tank of the kind that apparently rule the battlefields of this other reality.

In gameplay you control the AFW and two infantrymen who provide both small arms fire and other support roles. Battles take place on a standard grid with units getting the usual allocation of movement and firing ranges.

So far, so every-TBS-ever, but Ring of Red really starts to stand out when two units are engaged in direct combat. Rather than the sort of canned animation that is usual for the genre, here you take direct control of the mech and issue real time orders to the support troops. Even though this is rather limited (interactions are ostensibly 'forward', 'back', 'stop' and 'fire') they have a real impact on events. The battle combat system is based on range and time; get into the optimal range, take time to aim, and the resulting damage will be maximised.

All this is viewed from a low angle next to your unit which provides a tangible sense of scale and a real immersion in the battle.It does make Ring of Red a very slow game, but for me this had an almost mesmeric effect - the game has a unique rhythm that I found captivating.

There are issues, though most of them lie with polish and presentation. The most jarring is the translation job, which is all over the place. At one point early on I was asked a question with two possible, detailed options as answers, and then given the option to answer either Yes or No... Unfortunately this was not the only nonsensical passage I came across in my short time playing.

On the positive side the game certainly has a consistent, if perhaps overly brown, art style.The graphics in the combat sections are borderline low-poly and the AFWs look all the better for it. They have a real sense of size and weight.Outside the combat the game reminded me a lot of the Ace Combat series on the same hardware; the tone is similarly serious on the subject of war despite the fantastical setting.

Ring of Red has left me with a dilemma that I knew was coming when I started this endeavour: The desire to keep playing without the capacity to do so. I'm also wary that the last game I completed was a TBS and I'd rather mix things up than return to the genre so soon. For now I've marked it as s priority play on my spreadsheet and it will be in the mix to return to when I'm done with Pyre.

Ring of Red - Idiosyncratic, but recommended for fans of the genre

Previously...

Day One was the excellent Luminees II on PSP

Day Two was the fun-but-probably-better-in-co-op Sanctum 2 on PC

Day Three was the pretty ropey but maybe worth a second chance on PS2 Dead to Rights 2 on Xbox

Day Four was the utterly stunning Pyre on PC

Day Five was the horribly aged but undeniably addictive skate it on the Wii

Day Six was the endearing and surprisingly competent Enduro Racer for the Sega Master System

Day Seven was the fun for a (very) short blast Space Pirate Trainer in VR

Day Eight was the unplayably dated Draconus on ZX Spectrum

Gaming the Pandemic - Day 8: Draconus (ZX Spectrum)

The latest in my attack of (at least) one title from my 637 game backlog every day that the UK is in 'lock-down'.

I'm not planning on completing them, just playing them for long enough to know: A) What they're all about and B) If they're good enough to continue playing ASAP

Back in the eighties today, and the newly re-programmed random backlog game selector (need to think up a pithier name) has chosen:

Draconus on the ZX Spectrum

For the uninitiated (ie about 80% of people outside Europe) the ZX Spectrum was an early home computer released in 1982 by the Sinclair corporation. Much like the original Playstation it was the least powerful among it's peers (the C64 and Ampstrad CPC) but the most popular due in a lower price and vast range of software.

With just 48k of RAM and games that loaded from cassette tapes, programmers, a lot whom were teenagers, were able to do incredible things with the humble 'Speccy'; with notables such as Xcom's Julian Gollop cutting his teeth on the hardware.

Draconus was a 'budget game'. These were games that were either old and re-released or, as with Draconus, from smaller developers with no brand to bolster sales. Budget games sold for £1.99 or £2.99 and could be found in corner shops and WH Smiths and generally places where you wouldn't usually find games for sale.

As with any game of this age the the instruction manual is essential... unfortunately, as you can see from the picture, this game is in my collection on a Sinclair User cover tape (a free cassette stuck to the front of a magazine, they usually included demos and free, older, full games). The instructions for a game on a cover tape were printed inside the magazine itself - a magazine I don't have. Fortunately it's 2020 so I just looked them up online. No drama.

I play a lot of very old games but still, Draconus took a lot of getting used to. I guess it's the budget nature of it's development but even compared to spectrum games of the same era Draconus has very simple animation and very flakey collision detection. But, having read that was very well received upon release, I decided to persevere.

The game has you play as a humanoid-lizard who can also transform into an aquatic lizardoid-lizard, but not at will, you have to first find the 'morph helix' and then stand on a morph stone. Alongside the 'Morph Helix' there are other items that need to be collected in order to progress parts certain areas in the game, so it turns out, Draconus is essentially a Metroidvania. This is interesting for a number of reasons, not least that Metroid wasn't released in Europe until January 1988 - the same year that Draconus was published.

As much as I'd love pretend that Draconus holds up as well as Samus Aran's first appearance I'd be lying, to you and myself. The aforementioned collision detection and the inaccuracy of movement makes Draconus a difficult game to enjoy . It has impressive scale and detailed graphics for it's age but that can't excuse the issues at hand, issues that are exacerbated by the games choice of the kind of floaty enemy that I dislike to this day (I'm looking at you Rogue Legacy).

So I'm afraid I gave up on Draconus, 'Budget Game of the year 1988', without seeing the vast majority of its purported 100+ screen of action.

Draconus - Sadly, impossible to recommend for all but the die-hard Spectrum completist.

Previously...

Day One was the excellent Luminees II on PSP

Day Two was the fun-but-probably-better-in-co-op Sanctum 2 on PC

Day Three was the pretty ropey but maybe worth a second chance on PS2 Dead to Rights 2 on Xbox

Day Four was the utterly stunning Pyre on PC

Day Five was the horribly aged but undeniably addictive skate it on the Wii

Day Six was the endearing and surprisingly competent Enduro Racer for the Sega Master System

Day Seven was the fun for a (very) short blast Space Pirate Trainer in VR

Gaming the Pandemic - Day 6: Enduro Racer (Sega Master System)

This is the latest in my attack of (at least) one game from my 639 strong backlog every day that the UK is in 'lock-down'.

I'm not planning on completing them, just playing them for long enough to know:A) What they're all about.B) If they're good enough to continue playing ASAP

I put a random selection button in my game database and today it threw up...

Enduro Racer on the Sega Master System.

This is the first time I've but the hardware in the title of the post - I'm going to keep doing it from now on but there's a very good reason why it's important for this game.

We used to call these 'Coin-op Conversions'; games that we knew and loved from the arcades brought to home consoles (apologies if this is patronising to anyone). It's worth remembering that there were pretty much no 1:1 arcade-to-console accurate games until the Dreamcast, that's pretty much half the time that home consoles have existed.

So, as you can imagine, a ride-on arcade motocross game that used Sega's 'super scaler' technology was not going to be 'Arcade Perfect' on an 8 bit console in 1987.

'Arcade Perfect', by the way, would totally be the name of my garage band if I had any musical talent whatsoever.

So instead of riding into the screen and hoiking back on a life size bike, the Master System version of Enduro Racer has the player on an isometrically presented course, riding from the bottom left to the top right corner.

Initially it all feels a bit too basic. You press a button to accelerate and move left or right, as you would expect, to avoid other vehicles and obstacles, occasionally pressing down on the d-pad to pop a wheelie over a jump. But I noticed I was losing a lot of speed on landing, so I dug out the manual to see if I was missing something - and lo-and-behold the game features a pre-cursor of Crazy Taxi's Crazy Dash to keep the speed up over the jumps.

That may seem an extreme analogy, but when you're playing it really does have that exact rhythm. You press back as you hit a jump to wheelie then forward as you hit the top - I assume to simulate the action of pumping the bike over the ramp - but the timing and result immediately put me in mind of Sega's 1999 masterpiece.

On top of this, the game is further elevated beyond the basic by the developers decision to embrace the distance from the original and actually turned the game into an endurance event, rather than the checkpoint racer from the arcades.

Your bike will inevitably get damaged in the course of the stage and it becomes of far more concern to keep the wheels turning than to make the fairly generous time gates. Fortunately you can patch up or upgrade your bike between stages using points you earn from passing vehicles on course, and today it might even be called a roguelike, as each upgrade only lasts a single stage and nothing in carried over beyond the game over screen.

All in, this is one of the best games I've played on the Master System. That might be considered damning with feint praise by some, but personally I love Sega's plucky underdog in the 8 bit fight.

Enduro Racer (Master System) - A 100% nostalgia free 'Recommended'

Previously...

Day One was the excellent Luminees II on PSP

Day Two was the fun-but-probably-better-in-co-op Sanctum 2 on PC

Day Three was the pretty ropey but maybe worth a second chance on PS2 Dead to Rights 2 on Xbox

Day Four was the utterly stunning Pyre on PC

Day Five was the horribly aged but undeniably addictive skate it on the Wii

A-Z of MAME Hidden Gems - Y and Z are for...

After starting off way back in 2014 I recently discovered that I never finished my A-Z of MAME Hidden Gems - I only got as far as V... I was pretty annoyed with myself and resolved to knuckle down and get those last four letters squared away.

W and X were covered in the last post, which just leaves me with Y & Z...

If you'd have told me that Y would be by far the most difficult letter to find hidden gems for I wouldn't have believed you. Z I expected to be awkward by Y's just not a letter I'd think of in the same way... if I'd even considered it at all.

And yet, here I have just one game for 'Y', a game I'm listing under it's bootleg name that probably wouldn't have made it into the top ten choices for any other letter:


Yellow Cab

It's not that Yellow Cab (better known as Kamikaze Cabbie) is a bad game - it's from Data East after all and I'm pretty sure they don't know how to make bad games - it's just more 'interesting' than 'excellent'.

Played on a large overhead map the main goal of the game is to pick up a passenger in your cab and take them to another point on the map. From that you may infer that the game is a precursor to Crazy Taxi, but in fact it feels much more like the original Grand Theft Auto.

It's hectic fun and has some extra depth added by the presence of the police and the need to refuel regularly. Despite the my somewhat negative tone here it's well worth a play, but if I was to rank all the games I've covered over the course of this series it would definitely be nearer the bottom than the top.


And so, finally, after four years of intermittent blogging, playing, building, and configuring controls in the tab menu, I've reached the end. It's somehow fitting that this whole thing should finish with that most ubiquitous of hidden gem genres; the vertical shooter.


Zaviga

If you have read many of the other entries in this blog you'll know that I'm far from immune to the charms of a good gimmick.

Zaviga, (like Yellow Cab released in 1984 by Data East) is a vertical shooter whos gimmick is that it takes place both in the air as a jet fighter and on the ground as tank.
The game allows you to switch between the two at will and, from the little I've played, seems to scroll infidelity on a loop, with the enemies getting a little harder each time.

It's fair to say that, being quite an early game Zaviga isn't particularly blessed with complexities.

But complexities was never what this endeavour was about.

Hidden gems remain hidden because at first glance they may look simple, they may seem derivative or dated - but dig a little below the surface and you reveal a game that makes you happy, makes you nostalgic, or just makes you wish you hadn't overlooked it so many times before.

Zaviga captures all that brilliantly.

It may not be as gob-smacking as Boogie Wings, as surprising as Change Air Blade, or as awe-inspiring as Outfoxies... but it has charm in abundance. And really, at the end of the day, what more could you ask for than that?

A-Z of MAME Hidden gems - W and X are for...

So it's been a while...

One of the many things I enjoy about videogames is talking about them online and, unsurprisingly, the subject of MAME often comes up.

This happened recently when I pointed someone who was asking about lesser known arcade classics on the r/retrogaming sub-reddit to this very blog.

As part of the ensuing conversation they suggested I turn this weary old text dump into a nice new, easy to navigate database.Great idea, I thought, and immediately set to work...

A few days later I discovered that I never finished my A-Z of MAME Hidden Gems - I only got as far as V... I was pretty annoyed with myself and resolved to knuckle down and get those last four letters squared away - and that brings us to right now.

So first up, a fighter from the Capcom stable that has nonetheless remained somewhat hidden:
War-Zard

Okay so, full disclosure: Way (way) back when I was writing up the recommendations for 'R' I found this game under it's western title of 'Red Planet' - Knowing that the options for 'W' were likely to be very limited I tucked it away to unearth at the very moment.

It's worth the wait though!

War-Zard is primarily a fighter and, coming from this particular era of Capcom, you can be sure it has all the qualities you would expect.
The art is stunning, the character design is ingenious, and the special moves are very familiar.
With that said, the single player campaign of War-Zard goes far beyond that normally found in an arcade fighter.

Named 'Quest Mode' a lone player chooses one of the four main characters and proceeds to do battle against a wave of CPU controlled bosses.
Furthermore, items can be collected during fights that provide buffs and experience points are also gained that can be used to level up your chosen combatant.

It's pretty much the perfect fighter to play at home, at even includes a password system to pick up where you left off - which makes it all the stranger that this is the only CPS III game that Capcom made that never got ported to a home console or PC.


And if you think not getting a home release keeps a game under the radar, this next one never actually got a release in the arcades:
Wing Force

The story goes that this prototype game was lost forever until a PCB was found, bought for a considerable sum, and then (very generously) dumped to MAME so it could be enjoyed by all.
You can read all about it on this archived thread from the Shmups form: https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?p=1155828#p1155828

It would have been a shame to lose Wing Force as it's a great little game. Very much in the Raiden mode it features wonderful animation and very smart craft design - with each power-up physically changing it's appearance.

Even without the intriguing back story this would still be well worth your time.

Onto to 'X', and more shooters, firstly:
X-Multiply

Being a horizontal shooter from Irem, X-Multiply is never going to avoid comparison to R-Type.
With a plot based on the cellular occupation of a woman by a microscopic alien force it would appear that the developers were keen to draw the line under their seminal genre example - but in truth niether this nor the organic style of the enemies and environments really manages to create any distance between the two games.

Luckily the ship design and unusual play style it generates more than make up for it.
Your craft has two tentacles that extend up and down from the hull, on the ends of which the weapons are mounted. These mechanical arms move fluidly around your ship as you manoeuvre through the levels and are impervious to enemy fire.

This makes for a great balance of offence and defence and you learn to shift seamlessly from positioning the arms for the best offensive alignment to ensuring they are a well place barrier between you and enemy fire.

Finally for today, a game that follows on the X-Multiply not just on this page, but in the evolution of weapon design.
Xexex

Despite coming from Konami Xexex actually looks and plays more like R-Type than X-Multiply ever did.
In a fair and just world a game that so blatantly steals all its best ideas from elsewhere wuldn't be any fun to play - luckily for us that isn't the case!

Xexex takes the tentacles from X-Multiply, adds a third arm, and then attaches the whole thing to a force orb.

Lets not pretend this is a life-altering innovation - but it offers just enough to make itself well worthy of inclusion here.

See you next time for 'Y' and 'Z'.

Setting up the controls... for realsies!

 As I said last time; the next part of the construction was to assemble the control deck proper.

I’d had the majority of the buttons attached to a random lump of timber I had kicking around from way back when they were first delivered – this had allowed me to test out some games and better understand what I wanted from the button layout.

Check out this old post for more on that: http://mybudgetmame.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/setting-up-test-rig.html

Now, with the paint fully dry on new deck, it was time to remove them from the prototype and into position on the real deal.

I’m not going to lie: This felt like a big moment.

I don’t think I could possibly be happier with the way it looks. The red looks class against the dark grey mid-sheen finish and it just in general looks the real deal.

Some initial concerns about cramped connection were allayed by pointing the terminals of the back row though the gaps of those in the front.

I’m fairly sure I don’t have them connected up in the same order as before but that’s a simple fix in the MAME configuration when it comes to it. Need to screw that pcb to the case somewhere too but that's no problem either.

So only one thing left to do - put the pieces I have together...

Now that's proper progress right there!