In a change to previous Let’s Play Friday posts, today’s game isn’t a Spectrum one. Nor is it a retro game in the truest sense. It’s not even right here on this page to play. No – instead, it’s Ed Fries’ Atari 2600 port of Halo. That you can play in your browser here. It’s amazing. Probably.
Well, there are probably some missing. And many aren’t games consoles. In fact, some didn’t have all that many games at all, and some are really one-title TV games and not actually video games. But anyway. The Insane Console History Video 2.0 from Elder-Geek on Vimeo.
Derided in the magazines, KP Skips adver-game Action Biker (starring one-tip corn snack shill Clumsy Colin) was actually pretty good. Well, I played it a lot anyway, which is sort of the same thing. Unlike the more action-based C64 version, the Speccy game had you visiting houses looking for items to make your bike better. Items that let you drive through the mysterious “Dark Area”, prevent you from skidding on oil, and so on. Oh yeah, and you have to …
I completed Super Mario Galaxy 2 this week, and although it was very good, it was very, very easy. Easier than the first game (so far at least – I’m on 82 stars). It wasn’t so much disappointing than unexpected, as all the reviews have suggested it’s actually substantially harder. Anyway, it got me thinking about difficult games, and how they don’t make them any more. Yeah, there are hard games, but compared to difficult 8-bit titles? Pff. Walkovers. All …
To celebrate Germany’s defeat at the hands of a (surprised) Serbia this afternoon, why not sit back and enjoy a couple of games of Match Day II, the Spectrum’s best football game? Well, aside from Football Manager, of course, but that has Kevin Toms on the cover. Anyway!
I got given an MSX this morning. Not only that, but it works! Not only that, but it came with some games! What an amazing day. First up was Pairs. It’s a pelmanism-style matching pairs game, but you have a little man you have to guide to the cards to flip them, while avoiding the baddies. It was fun for a bit. Then I played Eric and the Floaters. The original Bomberman game. Coincidentally, I’d actually blogged about this very …
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?
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 …
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 …
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 …
If there’s one game that defines my childhood gaming more than any other, it’s Chuckie Egg. From clocking it on my Spectrum, to beating my friend’s high score on his MSX, to the covert Chuckie Egg competitions on the BBC Micro in the school library, it was THE 8-bit game of choice. Of course, you’ve all played it, right? If not, DO IT NOW RIGHT HERE!
I don’t really like side scrolling shooters. There are a few in the genre that have interested me over the years – Side Arms, Zero Wing and Sol Feace. Of course, I loved Parodius and Ai Cho Aniki too, but they’re “comedy” shooters. I was never a fan of most of the “big name” shooters – Gradius, R-Type, Thunderforce, etc. I don’t know why. I played an unhealthy amount of Gynoug, but never really liked it. But one game I …
Just look at this! It’s AMAZING! You know the OneStation handheld Famiclone? What do you mean “no”? I wrote about it right here! This, the “Digital Dragon System”, is actually just another OneStation. It even says “OneStation” on it. But it’s a different shape! And! It has 999 games built in! And! The cartridges are a different shape! Gasp!! Other than that, it’s the same thing. A poor quality handheld Famiclone with fewer than advertised games (they’re almost all duplicates) …
Just to finish everything off, here’s my other remake of Advanced Lawnmower Simulator – for the Game Boy Advance. I wrote it in 2004, and it was actually a lot easier than writing the Game Boy version. I even added a “SNES Mode 7” style rotate to the title screen, and included music (from the film The Lawnmower Man). Sadly, the only onlineable emulator I could find (Boycott Advance Online) runs too fast and without sound. Ah well.
