Embarrassing fact: This game was one half of a compilation tape I got as a kid. You can see a copy of the original inlay over there.
Thing is, I didn’t know that Bouncing Berty and Eskimo Capers were, in fact, two different games. I always referred to the Eskimo game as “Bouncing Berty in Eskimo Capers”, and hated my poor gaming skills as I was seemingly never good enough to get to the “pyramid level”.
Then, one day many years later, Eskimo Capers refused to load. After several attempts, I decided to load the other side of the tape instead – and my eyes were opened wide. How stupid I felt.
These mock-ups of some recent games as they might appear in the 80s and 90s are amazing. And not just amazing – in many cases they’re actual games I’d really want to own.
I also like how they’ve been imagined – Bayonetta as a bullet-hell shooter, and Brutal Legend as a point-and-click adventure game.
I’d like SNES Pikmin and Super Mario Sprint made first, please!
Pete Cooke was one of the “heroes” of 8-bit game programming. He had a talent for slickly presented games, and many of his creations also had some sort of Easter Egg built-in.
In the case of Zolyx, the best Qix clone for the Spectrum, he included an entire Game of Life routine. For no reason. You can play with that if you like (pick Freebie from the menu), but I suggest you get stuck in to the game proper – it’s very good! Read the rest of this entry »
In a change to previous Let’s Play Friday posts, today’s game isn’t a Spectrum one. Nor is it a retro game in the truest sense. It’s not even right here on this page to play.
No – instead, it’s Ed Fries’ Atari 2600 port of Halo. That you can play in your browser here. It’s amazing. Probably.
Well, there are probably some missing. And many aren’t games consoles. In fact, some didn’t have all that many games at all, and some are really one-title TV games and not actually video games. But anyway.
Derided in the magazines, KP Skips adver-game Action Biker (starring one-tip corn snack shill Clumsy Colin) was actually pretty good. Well, I played it a lot anyway, which is sort of the same thing.
Unlike the more action-based C64 version, the Speccy game had you visiting houses looking for items to make your bike better. Items that let you drive through the mysterious “Dark Area”, prevent you from skidding on oil, and so on. Oh yeah, and you have to find Marty and take him to the airport on time – meaning you can’t endlessly have cups of tea with friends’ mums, who also occupy some of the houses.
And did I mention this is all in Colin’s dream? Amazing.
I completed Super Mario Galaxy 2 this week, and although it was very good, it was very, very easy. Easier than the first game (so far at least – I’m on 82 stars). It wasn’t so much disappointing than unexpected, as all the reviews have suggested it’s actually substantially harder.
Anyway, it got me thinking about difficult games, and how they don’t make them any more. Yeah, there are hard games, but compared to difficult 8-bit titles? Pff. Walkovers. All of them.
Take Army Moves, for example. It is quite possibly the hardest game in existence. I can’t even get past the first helicopter. Read the rest of this entry »
To celebrate Germany’s defeat at the hands of a (surprised) Serbia this afternoon, why not sit back and enjoy a couple of games of Match Day II, the Spectrum’s best football game? Well, aside from Football Manager, of course, but that has Kevin Toms on the cover. Anyway! Read the rest of this entry »
You know that there Bomberman? Of course you do. There have been over seventeenhundredbillionandfive Bomberman games. Remember the first one? On the NES. WRONG!
The very first Bomberman game was older than that. And was, in fact, a Spectrum (and MSX) game called Eric and the Floaters. Yeah, that’s right folks – Bomberman’s first name is Eric. Eric Bomberman. Mind… Blown.
And here it is, in all it’s primitive glory. Barely indistinguishable from the newer titles in the series, right? Read the rest of this entry »
Kane came up in conversation about some other “wild west” game over on the ‘muk last week. It’s another game I used to play a lot, but (like Crazy Caverns) totally forgot about until the name came up.
It’s hard. I mean, it was rare I ever got past level 3, and I certainly never completed it. What was great though was that the levels were completely different to each other – the bow-and-arrow bird shooting, the train chasing, the into-the-screen shooting, the uh, whatever came next
Embarrassing fact: This game was one half of a compilation tape I got as a kid. You can see a copy of the original inlay over there.
