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...
Saturday, 30 May 2020
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...
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...
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.
Friday, 29 May 2020
Day 67: NBA Playgrounds (PC)
Hitting the courts in my ongoing effort to play one randomly selected title from my 566 game backlog for every day that the UK is in lockdown...
"All opinions are valid" is a nonsense statement.
On a more important scale than video games there are far too many opinions based on prejudice or ignorance that have been expressed loudly, and protected inadequately, by the concept that an ill-informed opinion has the same value as an informed one.
Back in the world of video games this isn’t as dangerous or scary, but it's still annoying.
I touched the problem way back on Day 14 with Mr Shifty; a game that isn't, and isn't trying to be, Hotline Miami - but was still criticised often for not being Hotline Miami; which is not a valid opinion.
NBA Playgrounds is not NBA Jam. This is obviously a fact, but it's also been expressed often as a negative opinion. However, the validity of this rests on the answer to a different question:
Is NBA Playgrounds trying to be NBA Jam?
Thursday, 28 May 2020
Day 66: Henry Hatsworth in The Puzzling Adventure (Nintendo DS)
This fun hybrid platform/puzzler is the latest randomly selected title from my 566 game backlog, from which I'm playing one a day while the UK is in lockdown...
Henry Hatsworth in The Puzzling Adventure for the DS
Previous days' entries can be read HERE
I was recently reading a review on Eurogamer of a Nintendo DS game called 'Scurge: Hive' (a cracking isometric Metroidvania), in which the writer was lamenting the fact that so many DS games only used the lower display as a map screen.
I don’t deny this is a fair point, but it is one mostly limited (luckily) to the sort of game I don’t really play.
I’m actually struggling to recall a game (other than 'Scurge: Hive', obviously) that didn’t have some practical or interesting use for the second screen. Even Sonic Rush (which I bounced off pretty hard on day 56) looked beautiful split across the dual screens, and now here’s 'Henry Hatsworth', the very next DS game I play, wherein the second screen is not just used well, but used to play almost a completely different game to that being played on the top.
This is a game that combines an action-platformer, played on the top screen, with a match-three puzzler, played on the bottom. And ‘combines’ is the correct word, it would have been easy for the two, very different, games to seem disjointed or only have a faint connection, but Hatsworth brilliantly manages to ensure that actions in one game directly affect events in the other.
Wednesday, 27 May 2020
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...
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.
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.
Tuesday, 26 May 2020
Day 64: Pixeljunk Shooter (PC)
One title picked at random from my 568 game backlog. One a day, every day, as long as the UK is in lockdown...
Despite playing this game on PC, the Pixeljunk brand is one I can’t help but mentally associate with PlayStation, largely due to the acclaim it received on the PSN platform all the way back in 2009. I feel the ‘console wars’ of the PS3/360 era were the most prevalent since the SNES/Megadrive days, and I expect this played no small part in an indie game getting heralded as much as this was.
It took a year and half to appear on PC in any form and, evidently, another decade after that for me to get around to playing it.
It’s a bit strange to say that a game ‘isn’t what I was expecting’ when all I’ve had to go on is a name.
Pixeljunk Shooter is one of those ‘picked it up in a bundle’ games, but, as I've said before, I don’t keep games I get in bundles unless there’s something about them that appeals to me. In this case that’s very likely to have been the words ‘Pixel’ and ‘Shooter’ in the title.
This could have left me hoist by my own ‘expectation is the mother of disappointment’ shaped petard, as the game not only doesn’t feature any pixels, but it’s also not really a shooter.
It took a year and half to appear on PC in any form and, evidently, another decade after that for me to get around to playing it.
It’s a bit strange to say that a game ‘isn’t what I was expecting’ when all I’ve had to go on is a name.
Pixeljunk Shooter is one of those ‘picked it up in a bundle’ games, but, as I've said before, I don’t keep games I get in bundles unless there’s something about them that appeals to me. In this case that’s very likely to have been the words ‘Pixel’ and ‘Shooter’ in the title.
This could have left me hoist by my own ‘expectation is the mother of disappointment’ shaped petard, as the game not only doesn’t feature any pixels, but it’s also not really a shooter.
Monday, 25 May 2020
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...
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.
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.
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