Yes, yes. We’ve all played Metal Slug before and own it on various compilations a hundred times over but that doesn’t stop it being good. And! This time I completed it in co-op with my daughter, which I’ve never done before. It has horrible slowdown, which I don’t remember from any other version but apparently even in the arcade it did that. Not what you’d expect from what was, at the time, the most powerful gaming device in the world. …
Ironclad is a pretty standard side-scrolling shooter, originally for the NeoGeo but I played it on the NeoGeo Arcade Evercade cartridge. I found it a lot easier than most games in the genre, which is especially odd for an arcade game, but I’m not going to complain! It’s got a nice weapon upgrade system, a floaty drone thingy and some interesting bosses (like a big train), but the biggest draw is the graphics. Backgrounds seem to be pre-rendered, and remind …
No, I don’t know why I played this either. It wasn’t that great, with very flickery graphics, was very short, and did nothing much other games (even at the time of original release) hadn’t already done far better. Probably a miracle it managed as well as it did on the Game Boy hardware, although, I suspect, impossible to see on the original device’s blurry screen – it’s bad enough on the telly – but still average at best.
I’ve always loved this game. It’s the Game Boy version of Donkey Kong, also sometimes referred to as “Donkey Kong ’94”. I talked about it more last time I played it, which I thought was maybe three years ago but it turns out it was FOURTEEN years ago. Cripes. This time, I played it on the Switch’s Game Boy game service thingy, but it’s just the same game as it ever was before. It’s still really slick, and plays well …
Since I had my Retroflag GPi out for the Mandatory Playing Of Mega-lo-Mania, I thought I’d play something else afterwards. Perusing those Mega Drive games I’d not really played before, but I remember having reasonable reviews, I came across Buster’s Hidden Treasure and gave it a punt. And you know what? It’s alright actually. The 8 and 16-bit console eras were drowning in character platformers, and yet none really touched Mario or Sonic. Even the big games like Dynamite Headdy …
Once more I was in the mood for some Mega-lo-Mania. I’ve gone into why I love the game before, but I just can’t stop playing it every so often. It is still The Best Game. This time, I chose Oberon (the camp yellow guy), and when I reached the final level not one but two other gods managed to squirrel away some people for me to fight! Which took about ten seconds as I had loads and they had very …
Another two player Evercade game. I’ve played Joe & Mac (Caveman Ninja) before, and the sequel, but hadn’t even heard of this. In fact, I thought it was the sequel when I started it up. As it turns out, it’s a completely different sort of platformer. Whereas the other two Joe & Mac games were sideways scrolling platformers where you club baddies, Returns is a two player Bubble Bobble/Snowbros/Rodland type single screen “clear the baddies” type game. You still club …
I broke out the Evercade VS for some games with my daughter, and this was one of those we played. It’s a Final Fight clone by Toaplan, and is very silly and badly translated. You’re wrestlers, I think, one of whom is Elvis Presley, and you have to fight your way through the streets and buildings to take down the bad guys, some of whom join your cause. It’s hilarious. But not (always) intentionally so. It’s just so ridiculous. Like …
Well isn’t this a slick little arcade shooter? I’ve heard of it before but never played it, and I don’t generally get excited over shoot ’em ups as they’re not really my favourite genre, but I couldn’t help be impressed with just how much is going on at any one time on this. I suppose in some ways it’s an early bullet hell shooter, in that there are so many bullets coming at you the main focus of the game …
Nah mate. Look, I tried. And, it looks so much better and plays so much better than the previous two Monty games, but I just couldn’t make head nor tail of the map, where I’m supposed to go, or what I’m supposed to do. Collect plane tickets, go to other countries? Then what? Why? There’s money pick up, I think? And other items? Just utterly flummoxed by it and wandering the map with a dwindling number of tickets which are …
Another Monty game. It’s very similar to the first one, really, but with the added feature that you have to collect five specific items en-route to the exit or you can’t escape. I think I was lucky in that I found them automatically or accidentally, because I certainly remember when I’ve played this previously a very long time ago I must have missed some. It wouldn’t surprise me if backtracking to find them again was impossible too. The jumping physics …
The Monty Mole games were always Too Hard. You only have to look at the random nature of the instant-death Crushers to see that. I sort of liked them at the time, but not enough to struggle through with not-my-fault deaths threatening to cut my play short – it was just too frustrating. Plus on the Spectrum I had a million other games I could play instead. So, why I bought The Monty Mole Collection, a set of three Monty …
Yes, it’s more of more of the same. Same baddies (mostly), same skills (that again need re-learning), same silly characters to interact with. But! Densetsu no Stafi 3 adds something new – a second, female, starfish. If my Japanese is correct, she’s Stafi’s sister Stapi. At various times in the game you swap between the two starfish, sometimes at will, other times it is forced due to Events That Happen. Although similar, they have a couple of different skills. Notably, …
See, I told you I was going to play them all. Soon after finishing Stafi 1, it was on to Stafi 2, which takes place directly following the events of the first game. Somehow, Stafi has lost all his skills so they have to be re-obtained, so really it’s a re-tread of the first game only with different levels. And more levels – seemingly a lot more levels. And different bosses. And some new gimmicks. OK, so not really a …
When I bought the original Game Boy Advance, imported from Japan, I ended importing a lot of Japanese games too. At the time it was usually cheaper, and there were some really weird looking games that I wanted to play. For a few years, I often saw the three GBA Stafi games for sale on the likes of Lik Sang (RIP) and Play Asia, but never cheap enough to buy. Eventually the DS came out and the 4th game in …
