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 …

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.

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 …

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, …

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 …

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”.

Chapter 10 defeaterat0rized! I just can’t do arrows in any direction other than up. My brain can’t rotate the shape you need to draw, so I have to rotate the DS instead – not ideal in the heat of the game. Anyway, this chapter is bombtastic, and you have to kill the boss at the end by use of the bombs too. And he is dead. And eaten.

Finished a few more levels. I think I’m getting the hang of it now. First up today was Booty Bay again, which I found pretty easy. One trick I’ve found is to try and “prank” the same group of people several times in quick sucession. Also, the sharks are an excellent weapon if you have a hoover – let them out, run and hide, and suck up the coins from a safe spot. After that was the Casino level, which …

I did wonder if I was nearing the end of the game when the “level select” markers seemed to fill the entire map. Some of the final few levels are bloody hard though, or at least would be, if I hadn’t have played Original Mode for a fair while and unlocked some useful power-ups. Level 19 was the hardest by far. It looks like a “normal” Invaders screen, but the invaders move up rather than down – trying to escape. …

And, magically, the 72-in-1 also has a Famicom cart slot (although you have to put the cartridges in upside down). So I played this for a while. Actually did pretty well, managing some 18 rounds before I was finally out of points. Normally I struggle to last 5 or 6. One hand of 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 Characters / 7-8-9 Bamboo / Pair of Green Dragons was most impressive, until I found I got only about 5,000 points for it, and not the …

Yes, the 72-in-1 has a light gun, and Duck Hunt is one of the built in games! It’s a lot easier than I remember, though, managing to get to Round 22-ish, with a score of over 560,000 on my first go. I only missed three ducks in total, and by Round 22 you can’t miss any. And I did.

My “72-in-1 V-Com Console” (from GBAX) arrived today, so I set that up. Of course, it doesn’t have 72 actual games, only about 12 and then variations on them. Pocket Monster is the first on the list, and surprisingly, isn’t a hacked copy of another game. OK, so it’s pants – a crap side scrolling platformer with rubbish graphics and sound, but at least it’s a “new” game. And yes, it does star Pikachu.

Hurrah! 36 card “run”! Then of course, I chose Double or Nothing, and got… nothing. Bah. Had several more goes though, but didn’t manage anything near 36 cards. 15 was about the limit after that.

A helpful young lady on Usenet explained what I was supposed to do in this game, and so I started having more success with it. It seems you pick a start card, and from then on, all cards you place down must be either the same suit, or same value. And that’s pretty much it. I did manage a run of 24 cards, which was pretty good, I thought.

I’m really quite impressed with this game. I’ve managed about 12 stages so far, with Million Invaders being the most taxing. There are about four times as many invaders as usual, all 1/4 of the size. It takes quite a while to kill them all, plus you’ve got more to shoot at you! I found out that getting hiscores on Original mode also unlocks power-ups for New Age mode, so I played that for a bit too. And only managed …