Devilish

I never had this game in either of its original incarnations on the PC Engine and the Megadrive, but remember wanting it when I saw a review of it. I think the UK version either never existed or was ub3r-l@@k-r@re. It’s Breakout with two bats and zombies, basically. And it is pretty good too, making use of the second screen to see further up the level as you progress. Graphics are pretty poor though – no improvement on the Megadrive …

Guru Guru Nagetto

This is one of three DS games that arrived from Play Asia for me today, and is the most bizarre of the three. It uses elements from Ribbit King, Hypersports and adds witches and weird floating bunny things. The aim is to throw your bunny thing along a path which has slopes, walls and drops on it. Get to the end (and not past the end) in fewer “strokes” than the other players, and you win. You throw by drawing …

Rayman DS

I don’t know why, but I picked this up to play again this evening. It’s awful. And I hate it. I must like self-harm or something, I suppose. Anyway, I finished off a few levels, only to find I can’t go any further as I need more Lums. “You need 6735472 more Super Happy Seeds of Power to progress!” is one of my least favourite game mechanics, so you can imagine my joy that I had to go back and …

Yoshi’s Universal Gravitation

More levels on this one now. I’m up to World (or Page, or whatever) 4, and it has got quite tricky. Some of the “targets” I have to achieve (such as “Get 45 Coins!” or “Destroy 15 Enemies!” are hard as it is too easy to mess them up and then you have to start over. Not only that, but some levels have dual targets – get 60 coins and finish in under 75 seconds, or whatever. And Yoshi has …

Rayman DS

What a poor game. The pre-PS1-era visuals don’t exactly help, but the collision detection, pop-up, clipping, low quality textures and awful camera basically kill it. That, and the fact it was almost half an hour between save points – not good for a handheld game really, is it? I set about the first level – well, the first bit before the first level and the first level itself. I knew Rayman DS was just a port, but I didn’t realise …

Drifter / 2003 / Miner

Ah yes, a trio of awful, shameless ripoffs on a handheld with a design like the PSP, but with the power of a VMU. Excellent. I am of course, talking about my new Gameking II. It’s like a Gameking, only shaped differently and has a screen light. Not that the screen light is a lot of good, as although it illuminates the screen pretty well, there is now a “backdrop” to the screen – a picture of some mountains – …

Kirby Canvas Curse: CONCLUDED!

Yes! Already! I only got it yesterday, but it is already over and done. It seems World 7 didn’t have a boss at the end, and World 8 wasn’t really a level, just a quick run through a couple of easy things and then the boss – Drawica. Once his (or her, probably – it is a witch after all) patterns became clear, she was pretty easy. And then, as was pretty likely going from most games these days, there …

Kirby Canvas Curse

Really plowed through this today, and I’m now up to World 7 (out of, it seems, 8). In fact, I only stopped playing due to the battery in my DS coming close to running out. Things are getting somewhat harder now, with lots going on at once to worry about – things flying at you, electrified walls, spinning spikes and all sorts all at once. Luckily, there are plenty of restart points, and lives are easy enough to pick up. …

Kirby Canvas Curse

It’s like Yoshi Touch & Go, but with actual proper levels! And Kirby! The levels I’ve done so far (the first two worlds) have been pretty good – varied, nice graphics, but very easy so far. I’m only “4.7%” complete though, it seems, so I’m sure things will get harder. The bosses are a bit different to your usual games too. You have three to pick at the end of each world (the same three each time), and you have …

Yoshi’s Universal Gravitation

Ludicrous name aside, this is actually a pretty good platformer. See – it is possible to make decent 2D platformers in this day and age. It’s a shame the tilt sensor is either “on” or “off”, however – there’s no analogueness to it. And my brain doesn’t work backwards well enough to work out I need to tilt left to move everything right, and vice versa. But anyway. Completed all of the first two “worlds”, which involved turning into a …

Setline

This game is too hard, and based too much on luck. Much like game-card-mate Cool 104 Joker then, really. I managed a whopping 164 points on this today, but it would have been much higher if it wasn’t for the fact I got a “blocker” tile, which I had to use to kill off three potential lines. I have unlocked another “theme” though, which doesn’t alter the game in any way but makes a change nonetheless.

Under the Skin

Not a particularly successful play today on this. I did managed to complete the Pharoh level on my second attempt – once I’d figured you could smash the huge gold boulders, my coins racked up pretty quickly. Sadly, I had less luck in Frontiersville, although I did come pretty close. As for the Resident Evil Racoon City level – that’s just plain impossible. FACT. You have to get Nemesis to drop all of his coins, but you have to hit …

Pac-Pix: OVERDRAWN!

Oh ho – what hilarious punnage. Yes, anyway – I had a few goes today, managing to storm through the actual level (Chapter 12) I was stuck on and making it to the boss. Who was hard. Not hard as in, bloody difficult, but hard as in “I know what I need to do and it seems to hurt him but even though I keep doing it he doesn’t die and whoops I’ve run out of time Game Over”. Finally, …

Pac-Pix

Chapter 12… is a bit hard. Well, 12-1 to 12-4 are easy enough, but 12-5 is difficult. There are so many switches you have to keep active, things to shoot, things to bomb and it gets pretty cluttered leaving you without much room to actually draw things. I had one ghosty left, and ran out of time. On my second go, I ran out of Pac Men (mans?) due to so many of them getting jammed between explodey ghosties, which …

Pac-Pix

Chapter 11 completed now. Struggled a little on the last round, with it’s clutteredness – there was nowhere to actually draw stuff. Managed it in the end though. Now, Chapter 12… which seems to be the last level in “Book I”.