I’m stuck. I’ve entered the final warp (unless there are more later), and I seem to be in a forest near a smithy. I’ve figured out that there’s a mould in a birdcage in the smithy, and the parrot in the cage is actually a bomb (so you have to let him out and run away). There’s a clearing in the forest where a guy called Micky hangs around, but he randomly kills you. He also randomly leaves, meaning you …
Noes! What went wrong? NiGHTS is supposed to be great, and yet… it wasn’t! I finished the first “dream” for each kid, and killed the first boss on Claris’ dream and failed to kill fat bouncy woman on Elliot’s dream, but the boss fights were fine – it’s the main dream levels that seem to have lost something. Of course, I wasn’t playing with the “3D” (i.e. analogue) pad, which didn’t help, but I was just getting overly frustrated with …
Played this some more with my wife. I realised (or rather, re-realised) what the “Counter Gem” pattern does. It’s the pattern of gems that fall on your opponent’s screen when you send gems their way. Knowing the pattern your opponent has chosen is handy, and you can actually use it to your advantage by placing gems in places where counter gems will land and match up. Cunning!
Well, that’s another warp done now. I was stuck on the bit with the gargoyle for ages as I didn’t know how to get it as wrapping the cord round it and pulling did nothing… until I realised you had to pull it from another location.
But I can’t skate. Even better, is that I bought it because it came free with a copy of Tony Hawk’s Project 8 for the Xbox 360. Which I already own.
Best Bomberman ever? Of course. It has all the greatness of the SNES incarnations, but with the addition of extra battle maps, characters, and best of all, simultaneous players. Ten, in fact. Thing is, there was only me and the wife, so ten seemed a bit of overkill. We started with five instead (three CPU players, if maths isn’t your strong point), and after a few rounds bumped it up to eight. However, I eventually set it to wide-mode and …
Probably the best two player puzzle game ever made. Ever. Even better that Puzzle Bobble or Puyo Puyo, in my opinion, and my opinion is Right and Good. So I played it with my wife this evening, with me winning most of the rounds, and there being rather too many incidents of just-about-to-die suddenly becoming I’M WINNER! Which is always ace.
It’s still Retro Week on ugvm, and having spent the last few days on NES titles, I thought I’d move over to Saturn games today. First up, the lovely Digital Pinball. Sadly, the saved games on my Saturn have long since vanished, so I had no high scores to attempt. I launched (see?) straight into the Gladiators table, as it’s the best one. “I’m coming for ya, you’d best be ready for me!”, “ESS! PEE! QUEUE! ARR!”, “MUH-MUH-MUH-MUH-MULTIBALL!” and so …
I’ve just found SpeccyDS, a Spectrum emulator for the Nintendo DS. Which means I can play Chuckie Egg on it! And Run Baby Run! Aces!
Oh! I had everything I needed! All I had to do was show the purple tentacle the police badge, and I had access to the main lab, and Dr. Fred, and the big off switch! Wendy saved, plot foiled, game overed!
So it seems the water from the pool can be given to the plant to make it grow, and by getting one kid caught by Ed you get a few minutes to raid his room. That helped me progress a bit, and I even managed to get the meteor arrested, and have access to the lab! However, I can’t find an envelope (which I think I need to send this demo tape off), and I can’t get into the safe, …
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 …