Before I’d even heard of Tron, or seen another one of the 8962398146238 game clones of the Tron Light Cycle sequence, I had this – Light Cycle (Light Cycles on the title screen, for some reason) by PSS.

It was awesome. Looking back now, it looks basic even by Spectrum standards, but the gameplay is still there. I also don’t remember any other variant having the little “blips” around the edges, making edge-hugging impossible but opening up more chances to make the other player crash.

The emulator used is Qaop.

The PSU was shot, so I bought a new one from consolegoods.co.uk. I was sceptical because the NES needs a 9V AC adapter at 1.3A, and this was a 9V DC at 400mA. I read up a bit about it and it turns out that much of the current is needed to actually convert to DC internally, and in fact, theres no way in hell a NES can actually draw more than 600mA and using a DC source is in fact fine. So I plugged it in and…

Der Blinkenlight. Boo!

Stripped the NES down, cleaned the contacts on the 72 pin connector, and while I was in there did the region/security mod which was far too easy. Put it all back together and…

Grey screen. Bah.

Stripped it down again and looked at the pins on the 72 pin connector. Realised that a combination of age and vigourous cleaning had bent all the pins inwards, so prised each and every one out with a paperclip. Put everything back together (again) and TA-DAAAHHH!!! IT LIVES!

Celebrated by playing the “cream” of NES games – Mega Man II, Bart vs the Space Mutants, Bart vs the World, Dragon’s Lair, Totally Shi^H^H^HRad, Jurassic Park, The Adventures of Bayou Billy, Probotector II and Chip ‘N Dale: Rescue Rangers.

Well, in gaming circles, he was known for his ability to break joysticks. Many a Quickshot 2 was destroyed in the playing of his waggle-tastic sports games. And this, was the original – Daley Thompson’s Decathlon.

It’s possibly worth noting that Ocean were a bit colour blind when they made it. Since Daley is a black man. And his sprite is white. Amaze.

Note: I can’t be held responsible if you HULK SMASH your keyboards.

The emulator used is Qaop.

Also, back in the 80s, it was quite common for us kids to think the real game was actually a clone of the clone we’d known first. For example, I had a game called Road Toad, which Frogger blatantly copied. It didn’t, of course – Road Toad was the “fake”, but that didn’t matter. See also Orbiter/Defender, Maze Chase/Painter, Thru’ the Wall/Breakout, and this – Hunchy. Which I knew before Hunchback.

Esmeralda! Quasimodo! The bells! The bells!

Best speech ever.

The emulator used is Qaop.

Kill them. Kill them all.

Until the release of the technically fantastic, utterly huge, and gloriously lovely to look at Donkey Kong 64 for the Nintendo 64, I was a big fan of Rare’s stuff. Or at least, I thought I was.

I mean, I did really, really, enjoy Banjo Kazooie. So much so that I almost completed it many times (the end boss proving too much), and even got the XBLA remake – finally 100%ing it. But looking back at their other titles, I’m not sure I was that big a fan.

Donkey Kong Country was a horrible, fantastic looking, impossible platformer. Its two sequels were too. All three I had some fun with, before realising they weren’t really very good and were more flash than actually enjoyable. The Donkey Kong Land Game Boy games were even worse, being just as rubbish but also impossible to see on the low-res, blurry GB LCD display. Mmm, smeary.

Even Banjo Tooie, the follow-up to Banjo Kazooie was pants. Yeah, it was more of the same, literally following on from the first game, but with a larger, more irritating to navigate main “hub” – which the game’s design forced you to traipse all over after almost every jiggy was obtained. Lots of pointless backtracking over the same areas over and over and over again does not a fun game make, so every attempt to play it just resulted in frustration, boredom, or a complete loss as to what needed to be done next.

Donkey Kong 64 then. To all intents and purposes, it’s Banjo Kazooie again with more characters and different levels. It all starts off fun, collecting bananas and reaching level goals, but then new characters are unlocked and you find you have to redo the levels again, albeit sometimes differently, collecting different bananas. And the next character? Same level, more bananas. And again. And again. AND AGAIN. 100 for each character in each level. Seven levels, five apes. 3500 bananas to collect. “Fun”.

You can even see the bananas each character can collect when playing as other characters. But can you pick them up? No. It isn’t just bananas either. There are also character-specific Golden Bananas and coins. Then there’s boss keys, ammo (different for each ape), Crystal Coconuts, special coins and banana medals. Joy.

It became a slog. Levels went from amazing and exciting the first time round to dull and oh-so-bloody-tedious on the third run through,  let alone the fourth or fifth. And that’s assuming you don’t have to redo the level yet more times because you missed stuff. Oh, the merriment of trudging through the jungle for the nth time and spotting some missed bananas, only to realise you’re the wrong Kong and have to go back in as the right one and do it all again to get to them. Even the masochists can’t enjoy that, surely?

Most of all, I hate Donkey Kong 64 for what it marked the start of – a terrible downturn in the playability (not the technical quality) of Rare games. Starfox Adventures. Grabbed by the Ghoulies. The GBA Sabre Wulf game that wasn’t anything to do with Sabre Wulf. Kameo, Perfect Dark Zero, Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts – all far from the glorious days of old. I’ll give you two exceptions – Viva Pinata and its sequel – but even they are less game and more gardening/zoo simulators.

And what of Rare now? Creating Xbox 360 avatar clothes, aren’t they? Horrific.

And fiftyquagillion times more exciting than Sonic Generations coming out for the 360 and PS3 tomorrow. Why? Well, there’s this reason for starters:

One of these game was The Steelyard Blues. Which I loved, until only a few years ago when I found out it was a shameless clone of “Cheekah’s Exploits” by Julian Wood – a game published as a type-in in Your Computer. Tch.

Still, it’s a competent and difficult collect-em-up platformer, complete with level editor (which often seemed to corrupt or crash the game for me – a few typos when copying in the program, eh Harry?).

The emulator used is Qaop.

No instructions. No clues. No nuffin. Go!

The emulator used is Qaop.

I’ve done all that before. Moaned about Sonic games. At length. To anyone who will listen, read or otherwise take an interest (or not). It hasn’t done any good: Sega still keeps making them.

Today, to mark his birthday, Sega have released a demo of Sonic Generations for the 360 and PS3. In this new corpse-beating adventure, Sega have attempted to appease both new fans (those who love the into-the-screen, homing attack nonsense) and old fans (those who don’t) with a game that lets you play as both Classic Sonic (rejoice! for he has no green eyes!) and Modern Sonic, in some horribly convoluted storyline.

I’ve not played it yet. But I’m expecting big things. Big brown steaming things. Watch this space.

Goldfish – We Come Together (OFFICIAL) from Goldfish live on Vimeo.

Can you do any better with your first life? I doubt it.

Getting started and translation hints: Press Space to skip intro. Choose 3 on the menu to redefine keys, then choose Left, Right, Up, Down, Fire, Pause. Choose 1 back on the menu to start.

The emulator used is Qaop.

Anyway! The bunnysamurai game! I’m pretty sure he was in one or more episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Did I make that up in my head? He wasn’t attacking straw there, anyway.

Please remember that them old C64s were creaky and slow, so even the emulator takes some time to load, and may appear to reset several times. Panic not! Just wait a bit longer. It might be worth it. (It won’t).

Controls, if you swap to Keyboard on the title screen, are QZIP Space.

The emulator used is JaC64.

Also, despite what one of the possible commentators on this post may tell you, the Speccy version was far better than the AmSad CPC version. FACT.

The emulator used is Qaop.

Ricochet was the best Breakout clone ever, at the time. Well, it wasn’t. It wasn’t even nearly the best. And Arcanoid and Batty and Krakout were all much better. But the thing with Ricochet was the scrolling message on the title screen. It’s amazing. Seriously.  And it goes on for hours.

The emulator used is Qaop.

Lander was a free game that came on one of the RISC OS disks, and was, in fact, a demo of a bigger game called Zarch. Imagine my surprise when I found out that Zarch was actually an Acorn version of a David Braben (of Elite fame) Spectrum game from a few years previous: Virus. So much for the game showing off the power of the Archimedies!

Anyhoo, here it is. In all its impossible-to-controllness!

The emulator used is Qaop.

£698 for a QL? Bargain! That’s about £1700 in today’s money. Compare that with the £3325 PC (£8300!).

So many quotable speech samples, none of which appear in the Spectrum version I have here. Tch, eh?

My first memories of Gauntlet are when my cousin Richard came to stay with us, and him and I played Gauntlet for about zleventyfivesix hours non-stop. Both on the same Spectrum keyboard. With the Symbol Shift key sellotaped down because that activated the walk-through-walls cheat.

We played for so long, we ran out of cassette from which to load the next set of levels (ah, the joys of multi-load cassette-based games!) and although we started the tape from the start again and that worked for a bit, somehow, incrementing the level number but repeating the maps, eventually the levels became more and more garbled until we hit one that wasn’t possible to complete. Fantastic!

Keys to select player are 5 and 8, then Space to choose. Keys on options screen are 6 and 7 for up and down, Space to select.

The emulator used is Qaop.

And here it is. Do enjoy it, because I didn’t.

The emulator used is Qaop.