Let’s Play! Eric and the Floaters

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?

Streaming EyeTV video to the network

Apparently, there’s some sort of football tournament on at the moment. Quite a big one too. I wouldn’t know. However, the fact that it’s on, and some of the games are on during the working day, causes a few problems in that staff at work want to watch them. And they don’t have teevees. Me to the rescue then, with this motley crew of software and devices: An Elgato EyeTV 410 A PowerMac G5 VLC The VLC Plugin for EyeTV …

D.I.Woe.

Although I’m a remarkably fantastic individual in pretty much every area, there’s one thing that I’m really not the best there is at. DIY. I try. I really do. But things just don’t always work. Take last night’s surround sound speaker setup for instance. I’ve got four speakers to hang on the wall, one in each corner of the room. Running cables was easy – the carpet lifts up and there’s space between the grip rods and the skirting boards. …

iPhone Carcassonne

Well, wouldja just look at what appeared on the App Store today: That’s right – excellent XBLA (and, of course, real life board) game Carcassonne. With online, turn-based, push-enabled gameplay! Flabber has never been so ghasted! After a few hiccups, such as no idea how to start a game – it just “happens”, and no way of swapping to another game (turns out to press the cog then Pause), I now have a game in full flow. And it’s excellent! …

Let’s Play! Kane

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 …

The Important Mario Comparison Chart

For the purpose of seeing both sides of the coin, here’s the Mario Game Comparison Chart. In case you’re a little confused at why the original Mario Bros gets a 0, note this: it’s a comparison chart. Each title is rated compared to the others. The best game, however poor, gets a 10, and the worst game however good, gets a 0. See? So Mario Bros gets a 0 even though it’s a pretty good game.

Let’s Play! BMX Racers

BMX Racers was probably the first game my sister took an interest in playing. She used to pester me to put it on my Spectrum. She made up some back story about the Granny-with-a-walking-stick too. She was very odd. Many years later, I got to play a Master System game (actually, a Sega Mark-III game – in Japan only) called Alex Kidd BMX Trial, and it reminded me very much of BMX Racers. In fact, I did wonder if one …

From the Dawn of Time – Pixel Art

Inspired by the FANTASTIC piggy I drew earlier, I decided to have a look for the previous “pixel art” I’d done about 12 years ago on the Amiga. I shouldn’t have bothered – they were far worse to look at than I remembered. There was a system on the Amiga for higher quality (than standard) icons for programs, games, files and folders called NewIcons. I’d installed it on my Amiga, but couldn’t find icons for a few things. So I …

Oink!

I drew a piggy. Properly drew. Pixel by pixel. My first pixel art!* He’s certainly a happy looking piggy! *Not technically true. I’ve drawn little stick men before. And, more importantly, I drew some Amiga NewIcons once. They’re on Aminet somewhere. But that’s another post!