It seems I have a slow puncture. Not only that, but I have a tracking problem causing wear (and possibly the puncture) on both front tyres. So here I am at Kwik-Fit whilst Davey gets some new wheels. I don’t think he likes being up in the air like that, but at least he knows there’s something in it for him…
Isn’t the NES great? Well, aside from mine which keeps resetting, anyway. Thank the baby Jesus for my NeoFami, eh? Anyway. This is another point-and-click adventure that I never completed “back in the day”. I thought I’d see how I fared with Man Brains. Interesting Trivia about Maniac Mansion: I first played the game in Germany, on my German exchange partner’s C64. He had it on disk, and it took fourtyeightyteen weeks to load. The best bit, was it was …
Never done that before! In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever got further than the Room of Fire With The Firedrake In before now. Mind you, I haven’t played it for probably 10 years or more, so I could be putting down my younger self, intelligence-wise. Some really obtuse puzzles marred it a bit, and the constant burning out of torches (although I found if you don’t die, they last longer) was a pain as I felt rushed, but overall …
OK, so it’s not on an actual Spectrum. I’m playing Fish!, a text adventure co-written by ex-YS chap Phil South on Fuse, a Spectrum emulator. On my Mac. Yes, it is complicated. So far, I’ve become a goldfish (or perhaps I’m a fish all along?), spent ages trying to figure out how not to be swimming upside-down (“turn upside-down” seemed to do the trick), and completed the first of three “warps”. How about some screenshots to show you, eh? Amazing …
Another day, another delivery from eBuyer via City Link. These are a for-work delivery, though. And, oh! Look! It’s smashed up! However, unlike last time, the boxes inside (some Seagate external hard drives) are also bent out of shape. Lets hope they’re actually working, eh?
I was stuck on one level for aaaaaaages, but then I had a stroke of genius and moved on. I’m on Floor 6 now, on the 3rd or 4th level there. Things are getting a bit tricky, because not only do you have to navigate the “get the hearts” phase, and the “get to the chest” phase, but sometimes you now have to look ahead to the “leave the level” bit – I’d inadvertently blocked myself in a couple of …
I recall that this point-and-click adventure game was hard. Mainly due to the lack of logic in the puzzles, and the try-every-item-on-every-object gameplay. So far, I’ve not been stuck, mainly because I can do some of it from memory. However, I don’t know how to get past the wraith (I thought it was use the slingshot, but no), so I’ve saved for now.
Ah, Rare. Remember them, back when they were good? Before they’d even started work on Kameo, which was about selventyfourten years ago? When they first became Nintendo game developers? Well, this is the sort of thing they wrote. Sadly, this hasn’t stood the test of time as well as Rescue Rangers. It looks fine, and the music and title screen is great and all, but the controls are terrible. Most of this is due to the floaty way the snakes …
Next week on ugvm (the newsgroup, that is) has been designated Retro Week. In preparation, I fished out my NES and some games. This was one of those I decided to try. And, it’s pretty good. Yeah, it’s a standard platformer, but there’s nothing wrong with is so far as I can see. Well, aside from the nasty limited continues and the go-back-to-the-start-of-the-level when you continue thing, but that’s normal for games of this era. I reached the first end …
Just a brief play on this today, managing to complete another three or so levels. No real problems as yet, either.
Well, level 52 threw pretty much EVERYTHING at me – every type of baddie yet seen (aside from the huge walker and dino-mechs), all at once, and then sent in a second wave just as I thought it was all over. But I managed it, after a few attempts, and then it was finally time to take down the mothership. And take it down I did. Of course, it seems the whole of the rest of the world has been …
The war has certainly turned. Every level is now a mop-up of all the baddies I’ve previously had to retreat from, and some new super-giant giant spiders and flying ant things sent out as a last resort by the Ravagers. And lots, and lots, of things to kill at once. Fahsands, in fact. And I’m up to level 52. Just this and the next level remain. EDF! EDF! Or something.
Why does formatting a new (super-fast SATA) hard drive take FOREVER? So far, it’s been going for about an hour. I wiped and reinstalled Tiger on an old G4 Mac mini last week in less time than this is taking just to format, and the mini has a slooooow 4200rpm laptop IDE drive in it. Yeah, I could do a quick format, but since this drive arrived in the smashed up box from yesterday’s post, I thought I’d best do …
Yet more giant ant/spider/robot destruction today. Considering how repetitive the game sounds, it’s amazing how different each level can be. In one, you’ll be in narrow caves full of ants and a flamethrower is a must, and then the next, you’ll be in a city shooting down UFOs whilst avoiding spiders on the ground. It’s really rather addictive. So much so, in fact, that I’m now up to Level 40 after some extended play this evening.
Next week on ugvm (the newsgroup, not the magazine) is Retro Week. I’ve decided. So, in preparation, I downloaded this from the Wii VC library. I vaguely remember playing it once before, and, in fact, I thought I owned it for the NES, but perhaps not. It’s a bit like Sokoban, only with less pushing and more baddies. Sort of. The idea is to collect all the hearts on the screen, which activates a treasure chest, and you reach that …