TV Review of This Year.

Now: Nonce. Then : Hero

This has been a funny old year box wise.  We started off the year like this with a pic of Sir Jimmy and never talked about him and now end up with the revelation that he was the biggest Trevor Chester the UK has ever seen.  He apparently fixed it so that everyone looked the other way while he fucked everything in sight.

But first of all we'll start with a few lost ends.

Best T Power Impression.

Rudimental Feel The love.  Coming over like some 2012 version of Mutant Jazz this is not bad especially for a junglist hater such as myself.

We would add Gotye to the list but to be honest we'll add the Star Wars that we used to know instead as its much cooler.

Which leads into the best TV of the year.

Private Life of Plants in 3D With David Attenborough

Looking at plants in close up with a generous amount of Cacti and succulents thrown in for good measure this was the coolest of them all.  With revelations like bats making use of Cereus blooming to create a nectar Corridor and the worlds smallest (and most Endangered) Water Lilly and its propagation. That was cool.

Storage Wars.

We came to this late but damn this is good.  The premise is this people who cannot keep up with the payments on their lockers have it go to auction where they are sold off to people.  Often with Thrift Stores (a yank charity shop by any other name) or junk shops.  Sometimes the people come across treasure sometimes though they don't.  Its much more riveting than it seems, there is also a Texan spin off where everyone is 10 stone fatter and a redneck.

Best YTP The 2000s were a point in time Da Things. 

YTP is at its best when its used to rip into its target.  This neatly executes a handfull of 2000 songs with such aplomb its uncanny.

Best Source in a YTP video.

Pumkin.

A weird little online game that is supposed to teach kids English but comes across as really awkward hosted by a demanding pumpkin.  His catchphrase is I Don't Want that, and would really love it if you gave him the french Fry. 

Best Dreamcast era racing game.

Pyongyang Racer.
A pedestrian browser game that looks like it was coded for Dreamcast but in reality is the first game put out by ronery communist dictatorshp North Korea.  The game tasks you with driving round Pyongyang and collecting items for bonus  trivia. 

Miranda Awards for televisual despair. (we should make a logo for this)

2012 Olympics.

The bastard 2012 olympics as it should be known.  I only care about one Sport (snooker) and to be honest a whole 7 weeks worth of athletics and how they did really well makes me want to puke blood.  The opening wasn't that bad but the Underworld songs were underwhelming.  We watched it on iPlayer and just substituted old Underworld songs instead.  There was a load of cock about the NHS and a load of chimneys. We didn't like it at all.

Apart from that it was all gravy.

Merry Boxing Day

This is what you've been waiting for our irrelevant review of the year show, a round up of the best and the rubbish and the not so good.

First of all current affairs Barrat Ojama won the U.S Presidency beating Mitch Romhack into second place.  A few spree killings in Conneticut and Colorado (don't know their motives and I don't care).  Jimmy Saville was found to be Englands worst posthumous Nonce, (fixed it for him) and there was masses of Fucking sport in Stratford some involving spastics (Olympics they were called).  Oh and the Jubilee.

Music wise this was cool for me in 2012.

Neatest Disco from a modern band.

Elitechnique Rooftops.

A neat little italo disco stomp on Clone, there is a video showing you how they made it on Youtube. Which is nice.

Best oasis in a wasteland of shite goes to.

Ed Sheeran Drunk Lazy Js Wasted in London Mix,  Fun. We are young Kiss FM version.

In the endless stream of shit put out by Kiss these are the only two bastions of good dance that isn't tainted by rap or R +B. I've never encountered these versions anywhere else either they are both sped up house tracks that'll probably turn out to be by David Guetta or someone other underachiever.  Edit its the Lazy Js Wasted in London mix of Ed Sheeran but the Fun. remix still eludes us.

Best old school house tracks goes to.

Paranoid London Feat Paris Briteledge Paris in Dub.

Massive jacking acid track, in an increasingly crowded market of good quality house.  Paris of course made the seminal Learn to Love for DJ International back in the 80s so you know you're getting the real deal here.

Best honourable mention goes to Orgue Electronique Our house, simply because it has Robert Owens.

Best Bond movie theme from an Alison Moyet look alike.

Adele Skyrim Skyfall.

To me this sounds like a mix of diamonds are forever and Martin So Cool from Skint Records offshoot Under 5s. Its not bad but still ubiquitous on Heart FM.

Best track by an Overattached Girlfriend.

Laina Walker Call Me Maybe.

We tend to sing these lyrics instead of Carly Raes so this is some stalkerish nightmare.

Best Electro.

Xosar Rainy Day Juno Jam.

We're rating this not just because she's hot, but because this is a monster of a track. A lovely laid back groove and much better than Ghosthaus which we were indifferent to.  You'll want to check out Xamiga which is a collab with Legowelt.

Best Techno.

D'Marc Cantu A New World.

Sounding more and more like Mike Dearborn this is some heavy dark analogue house and techno here, giving you no let up and was my album of the year.

Best Acapella.
Swedish Chef Massacre Don't you Worry Child.

We don't know nor care that we spelt this correctly, just know this rejig this is whatever audio editor you have and play it with Elitechniques Rooftop for that authentic overblown Italo disco cult classic. I think its the heavilly accented English that makes this.

With all these bests of there has to be some worsts and the following has annoyed the fuck out of me for the past year.

Nicki Minaj Super Bass (though anything with her in it.)
MANAMANAMANAMANAMANAMANA AMAHELAVAGAH. This is how she sounds, all the fucking time.

Stooshe Black Cock Heart.
Fucking absymal track that is like those old KFC soul ads but miles more shit.  Honey i'm waiting for yer monster. Its big and its black, it fits up my crack, he gotta black cock. Well those are the words I sing with it.

Flo Rida. Whistle.

You just put your lips together and you can fuck right off.

Maroon 5 Payphone.

Also unescapable, and the second time Maroon 5 made our cunt list in as many years.  Along with a rap by Wiz Khalifa which is largely bollocks, this edges out stooshe for our worst of the year.  We will alter the lyrics here.  I'm in a gay bar, jacking off sailors, licking up all of the semen they shed.

We'll be back in the new year for all the other stuff and Miranda Awards for Televisual bollocks as well.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone.  We got some good presents this year, mainly jumpers and a neat little usb vacuum for cleaning out your keyboard and that.  This is only a brief update so the main review of the year will go up tomorrow. 

Neo Geo X update. 
For those following the mini handhelds fortunes HG101 have a pretty impressive write up here. 

Bubble Bobble The lost cave. Revues, chips and teats.

We actually got this patched and playable in MameUIFX a fork off of the main mame project, we spent most of Xmas eve trying and failing to configure it for most other emulators and decided to cut out the middleman and put it in UIFX.  It works and can be found under bootlegs on the main menu screen.

In fact we don't remember any of the layouts except Level 9 (NES) a big brilliant red Maitta that is harder than the level was.  Most of the other levels are not the best and are actually quite hard (definitely later levels it seems), but its quite nice and best of all it has NES style lives progression.  Because I'm a massive Bubble Bobble nerd I know these to be granted at 30,000, 100,000 200,000 and 400,000 along with any you'd get from extend bubbles.  Our top score is about 400,000 odd or level 17. 

Here are some more findings and a brief list of bonuses encountered.

End of level bonuses.

You seem to get these on every fifth stage, these are standard bonuses and not the sort you get for matching the last few digits of your score or player 2's score.

1. Gameboy
5. Popcorn
10. Lollipop (round shape)
15. Bananas

Neat regular score bonuses.

As well as a few musical bonuses such as tubas and ocarinas we've found some nice bonuses to increase your score.

Ptolemy from Fairyland Story.  Worth 4000 points. (don't believe wiki here she doesn't show up in the original game.)
Purple PC. Looks like a purple version of one of the highscore bonus items. worth 4000
5.25 floppy disk.  Don't know how much its worth.

Bonus round Drug score bonuses.

In the NES version these would show up around level 45. But I've actually got a few of these in the arcade version. They give you a bouns round and the chance for an extra life if you catch em all.

Red Drug.  Tuliips
Purple Drug. Sunflowers.

We also got a fire bubble, the kind that actually shows up once in every 4096 games.  It gives you the ability to spit fire (red cross powers) untill you die. Its rather nice and is worth 10,000 points.

We got a few other stuff including most of the wizard canes, a bell that highlights rare stuff and a Chack'n pop invincible heart.  We haven't found any secrets yet but so far I am enjoying this immensly even though its much tougher than the original.

Arcade Bubble Bobble

Well well, its almost Christmas again so this means a  round up of tat and our long awaited Boxing day slagfest / review of the year. They'll be the regulation 2 posts over the holiday period so please give generously.

First up though we've unearthed an odd little thing. Someone has made a hack of Arcade Bubble Bobble, specifically adding in levels and new items from the various console games and backporting them to the arcade version.  Its called Bubble Bobble the Lost Cave and looks pretty swish as it so happens.

I've written before about my massive love for Bubble Bobble and even went so far as to make a NES romhack via various level editors to add in all the Arcade levels and a few of my own for when you reach the door at the end.  So this revelation comes as an early Xmas present.

There is a lot more info here but we really, really hope that Aladars PC Engine version actually comes to fruition as that is potentially very interesting and its something that was skipped for the poor old PC Engine.

Theres also a massive playthrough on YT also for those who would love to see it in action.

 Scan of the week

I Have a Sad story to tell.

Blimey we haven't done one of these in a while, but thanks to our room being rearranged we unearthed a load of promo tat from the 1997/1998 World of Amiga shows.  We actually ended up scanning a whole load of stuff in including various program guides and leaflets.  This is an Amiga favourite of mine from Vulcan Software, Valhalla was an odd adventure game where everything was fully voiced, it doesn't sound much now but this was A. made in 1995 and  B.came on 5 or so 880k floppies.  No CDROM here, and it proved to be quite a stiff challenge as well, with many obscure puzzles and false trails. 

Incidentally, it looks like Vulcan are still going and there are now PC versions of the original Amiga classics. I don't know how they fare up after all this time but they seem to have proper voice acting now.

Party Season

We are in the full flow of party season now, which has seen both our cactus club do and Gilbourne teams party go off and our own works shindig planned for next friday.  First of all our cactus club party, this was a joint mix of slideshow and AGM, with snacks afterward.   We narrowly avoided dissolution (we needed a treasurer but someone stepped up at the last minute) but in all other respects we are doing quite well and may think of a merger with Dartford branch if push comes to a shove. 

Gondar Ethiopia NOT middle Earth.

Our talk was on Ethiopia from some time in the late sixties taking in Addis Ababa, Axum and a few other places and sights too, including some Gelada Baboons from a trek into the highlands.  The best of all was a place called Gondar, a mix of medieval castles transported from the heart of Europe to the dry plains of Africa.  I was astounded by this as all the current images I've seen of Ethiopia is from television which seems to have a one track mind when it comes to Africa (i.e civil war and mass starvation).

Our speaker also brought a guide book (sadly in German) with a few nice pictures and retro adverts for german fags and Ethiopian airways.

Our other party took place in a local pub, on the friday to say I'm not really a pub person is an understatement.  I really don't get the whole pissed up culture we have here in Britain that says that to have a good time you need to get wrecked and meet it through a haze of alcohol the next morning.  We stayed a good 90 minutes and had a few drinks but to be honest it was starting to get to me after a while.  Most of Gilbournes crew was down as well as the Councils training team who graciously let us finish up their buffet. 

Round up.

Did you enjoy our Fantasy phone thing we did back in May, well Samsung have sort of made my fantasy phone here.  Called  the Samsung Galaxy Fraulein  Advance Turbo Edtion Sweet Roy its a Cameraphone minus the phone, and looks like the best thing evar.  Best of all its antisocial as fuck no phone no texting and only what Droid Programs you can download from google.

Did you also enjoy the Neo Geo stats we translated back in September.  Well there are some hitches with the distributor Blaze so its been delayed till further notice.  However their site does look awesome so if you have interest then go here for it.

Finally we have sad news, that Patrick Moore has died.  For most of the gaming generation we think of him as part of Channel 4s Gamesmaster slot dispensing wisdom and laying down a challenge for cocky teens on such games as Virtua Cop and Streetfighter II, while Dominik Diamond made cheap knob gags.

He also did The Sky at Night for almost forever, and definitely sparked off many peoples love of space.

We give you our tribute to Patrick Moore right here.

Aqua Aqua Review

We recently picked up from one of our charity shop trawls, Aqua Aqua from the Pickford brothers software house Zed two now (Zee 3 digital).  It was one of those games that always seemed to be available for other systems. The original Wetrix I believe was a N64 exclusive (Wikipedia suggests some other ports including GBC among the line up) making use of the analog sticks and swish water animation, for a rather nice looking puzzler.

Like I say it was one of those games that either slipped through the cracks by either being not available or on a system I didn't own, so when I had the chance to get a copy of the PS2 follow up I snapped at the chance.

For those uninitiated its a nice little puzzler where you have to make rock pools on an isometric landscape.  Land tiles will drop from the sky and its up to you to terraform square pools (and not so square pools) to catch water drops from the sky (make a perimeter wall is the best advice I can give here). Often, stuff will ruin these plans though.  Bombs and level down land that will lower your precious walls and blow a hole in  the level, as well as an earthquake that wreaks havoc with your plans.  Often though its your own incompetence and the slightly dodgy perspective that'll be your undoing as the water sloshes over the edge of the level.  Theres a gauge that will keep track of all spilt water and if it fills up then its game over and your elf drowns (yeah there are elves as well). 

However, its not all bad, you'll get a fireball to dry out those lakes for a meaty bonus and ice cubes falling at random to freeze whatever is in its path, giving you time to shore up walls and plug those gaps.  There is also a bingo board for when those fireballs connect you get bonuses, fill a row and you get all sorts of bonuses (though we haven't managed to get anything yet due to being lame at it). 

 Modes. 

Though there is some supplementary guff about mythical beasts awakening and kicking arse for supremacy, most of the time you won't notice that and its you vs computer. 

The tutorial is a bastard as well, you'll fail more often due to dodgy perspective then not doing it right which is  frustrating.

Other modes need to be unlocked as well as the ever present option screen. 

Music and graphics.

Theres a nice ambient score going on that complements the action nicely as well as some good n crunchy effects.  In fact the best thing is the voices in it (by Janet James), every time your areas fill up with water you get a crazed sounding X lakes (x standing for the amount of lakes you have).  It sounds like its from an  old kids show which makes it all the nicer.  

Gameplay. 

Thanks to the controls you often make mistakes due to perspective leaving stupid gaps for precious water to drain away.  However it is pretty addictive with a hearty one more go gameplay, it just that perspective and pathfinding makes it tough to control.

Overall score 7.  An addictive puzzler due to shonky controls (many times I've created a small gap where I wanted a seamless wall) keeps it from its greatness. 

Incidentally the Pickfords went on to create Future Tactics with Digi's Mr Biffo on script duties (and Tim Follin on sound duties) and make Magnetic Billiards for smartphones. You can read more about what they made and more on Aqua Aqua here.

Croydon Christmas tour

We decided, as the weather was shit, to take a ride out to Croydon, a place I've been to many times before to look for junk and Xmas presents (indeed it was a family treat to see Father Christmas in the Whitgift centre we I was a nipper).  To be honest, it was a rum deal all round thanks to the weather.  Even in the pouring rain they still had Christian preachers out leafletting as well as a muslim  tent for those of an Islamic bent, one of these days i'll set up a stall in Woolwich punting out atheist material to the crowds but that is probably not allowed due to political correctness.  The good news is this, Croydon seems to have recovered from the riots and what few game shops are now actually pretty good, especially the small indie in the little arcade opposite C(r)ash Converters.   They had Nostalgia on import for sale (looks like a solid 7/10 so ideal if you finished Solartorobo or World ends with you) we were broke so no sale.  They also had a japanese version of the terrible Bubble Bobble Evolution for PSP complete with crappy gameplay and horrible graphics.  Note to Taito bundle up some of your F3 arcade games for PSP like Symphony or Memories even the original running under MAME, I guarantee it'll be the smartest thing you could do for the series.

We also grabbed some tights in Marks for my aunt and had a look at their socks for my uncle but they were all hideously expensive. I know modern Christmas is the time to put yourself in debt with big presents but surely it doesn't have to be that way.  Anyway we got the bus back to Catford to look at their charity shops and take a walk back to Lewisham to get the bus home.  We picked up Finitribe an Unexpected Groovy treat and Gimmik slow motion process albums.  Finitribe is not that great a dated sampledelic mix of old tat their earlier stuff is much better though Forevergreen is still not too bad.   Slow Motion Process however is a gem, glitchy IDM in the style of Autechre (early not their technical later albums) and well worth tracking down. 
Our journey back took us past Lewisham hospital due to close its A+E department and scenes of protestors keeping it open. So much so I had to walk in the road to avoid them.  They had a massive amount of buses lined up blocking most of them from view which was even worse and seemed to be filled with cunts from the socialist wanker parties.  Which is a bastard shame as the only real alternative in our area is the QE up on the common which is hardly ideal, looks like the scum actually have a point sigh. 

Our final trip took us to Greenwich (pronounced Grinitch nothing puts my back up more then someone saying Grenitch), they had a book sale and we got the excellent The search for Planet X a 60's paperback about the hunt for Pluto rather than Zechariah Sitchins Nibiru, and Funny Amazing Funny Amusing a collection of bloopers from the national press alongside more fortean stories. All in all a good day.

A dangerous round up

Can't believe I missed this first time round but Elite is getting a 21st centuary update.  I can't say I'm that enamoured with the original version which I've played in its numerous incarnations but Frontier its follow up is an out and out favourite of mine so will look into donating.  Dave Braben wants 125,000 by the start of January so if you really want to make your space pirate dreams come true, give him your fucking money ((c) Bono 1985).

On the other hand I've just learned about the sad passing of Peter Kuhlmann.  For those who never knew about him or his style of music, he was the master of ambient, with a massive amount of releases on his own label Fax as well as collaborations with the cream of dance music, including Ritchie Hawtin, Jochem Paap and Dr Atmo.  I have some of his stuff on label Rising High as well as a few precious releases on Fax (Escape Escape to Polaris) and in supreme irony have the Sequential ep loaded up on the system ready to play.

I'll link to some of his best works and fax highlights below for you to play.

Darkside of the Moog V With Klaus Schulze

Peter Namlook and Ritchie Hawtin

Anthony Rother Magic Diner Pt 1

Comic Strip presents.

Here is some weird and wonderful stuff that we have been enjoying this week.  Its a round up of sorts, but with a bit of  commentary thrown in as well.

We have been archiving some old stuff, that includes bits and pieces we have found over the years, obscure stuff and old gaming stuff.


First up we have some comics for your perusal, from The Sun newspaper.

Livvy, like George and Lynne long gone.

Littlecock, back when he was at least palatable, but not original.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Livvy and bit of old Richard Littlejohn, from The Sun.  Sad confession time, I used to enjoy his man of the people shtick when he wrote for the Soaraway Super Sun, the cartoons they had were at least part of the fun
and although his column can be boiled down to Health and Safety madness, bloody foreigners or gays on Hampstead bloody Heath, it never came across as nasty as it does in the Mail now, and that is partly because of the cartoons.

The Mail version of this is fucking dour, a grim humourless jackboot of a column thanks due, in no part to the
Mail cartoonist knocking all the "joy" out of it all.

Other things long gone are Livvy and Striker (which as a football agnostic I loved and seems to survive in Nuts magazine sigh). Its been replaced by a charmless Wallace and Gromit strip and a Dark and "edgy" vampire strip called Shadows the Hunted, made out of bad CG and looks like the bastard offspring of a PS1 game and Twilight, its fucking terrible on all fronts which leaves Hagar the Horrible to bring up the rear as the only traditional strip left in there. 

I kinda miss George and Lynne and their laid back lifestyle of semi nudity (and The Stars shameless clone Ben and Katie) luckily there are archived on line here with a brief explanation for newbies.

Other stuff, I liked includes the Perishers and its eyeballs in the sky and Andy Capp who doesn't have any eyes at all, both can be found in the Stalinesque Daily Mirror, along with Scorer a second rate soccer strip.
The Star has Beau Peep which can guarantee a mild titter in its genuinely odd strips, and Garfield along with Stoneytoons in the Mail is the only reason you'd pay cash money for it.

Odd streak if you didn't know.

Incidentally Peanuts (Charles Schultzs defining opus) only survives in reruns in the Mail On Sunday now unlike Fred Bassett whose soporific strip I'm pretty sure was a proper TV cartoon as well as a form of torture for all who read it.

Incidentally this is probably the pinnacle of Garfield strips around although this is also worth your time to visit.
Though this is billed as a real life Garfield, its actually ShiroNekoShiro who has a blog for those who read Japanese here (if you don't know Japanese there is some excellent cat photos and clips) he reminds me of
Old Man Ginger my old cat so gets a shoe in.   We would also like to big up Nemi in the Metro as well as its pretty cool.

Finally this last link is nothing to do with the above and I was going to talk about, before all this comic strip nonsense took over, but deserves a link of its own. The Madagascan Man Eating Tree.

Round up time again. TV Special

Round up time sees us revisit some old haunts and this time we bring you Mike Levey and Ian which we may have told you about before (we can't seem to find it but to be honest it was infomercials on Lifestyle TV).

A post on the Beexcellenttoeachother.com funny pictures thread linking to Infomercial dunces brought this up, not only the name of the two guys presenting (we knew these already) but the name of the show too Amazing Discoveries.

For those who didn't know Mike was amazed and amazed about everything, his helper was Ian a northern type with a handy gadget, be it a handy mixer on a stick, stuff for cleaning car paintwork (includes junked bonnet which they set fire to) or the ubiquitous exercise stuff (it will fold down flat to fit under your bed).

 

We did a cursory glimpse for anything relating to the childrens channel but there was nothing apart from idents this strange thing in Dutch with some stuff I had long forgotten about (including teletext pages proving that Stories without words existed after all and lasted all morning).  We also got a response to one of our posts asking if we remember something from mid 1992 but to be honest we don't remember it.  Possibly from the same era Head to Head with Violet Berlin was on along with a live action show of the same ilk but this time featuring Mario 3 (it has a canadian guy that I forgot the name of presenting). 

Also included is the pervy sounding drama Interbang, a show about two kids finding mini statutes of the leaning tower of Pisa and having to solve a mystery of some sort, remember it being fun.

PSP ISO guide

Due to redecoration at my place, we are currently doing up the room my computer is in, so this will not only be an educational post but an early one as from tomorrow our room will be painted and funky fresh.

A guide to making ISOs from PSP games that you *legally own. Very simple guide by a very simple guy.

*as opposed to downloading an ISO that probably doesn't work.

What you'll need.

A PSP that isn't a PSP GO.
Custom Firmware, (Pro B is good. we tested this on 6.20 but your firmware maybe higher or lower depending on what you installed).
Some UMD games and or Videos (seriously who watches videos on PSP or thought it was a good idea to watch videos on PSP.)
A PC plus USB cable with a micro end out and spare USB slot to link it to, digital cameras often come with a lead like that if you have one lying around.

Step one

Insert Game into PSP and switch on.
Press select to bring up Firmware menu.
Scroll down to UMD Mode and select M33 driver. (You'll need this later.)
Edit you may also have to change the mode from Memory Card to USB disc in general settings otherwise you'll get nothing to rip.


Step two

Insert USB cable into both PC and PSP. One end for each.
Click open on dialogue box that pops up, to view files you'll see a box that looks like this.

A mystery ufo.

 If you already have a PSP Iso folder drag it there now, if not make one now and drag it over, (it'll take ages by the way a good 10 minutes for 1Gig games.)

Step Three.

When this is finally done you can rename this file, remove the disk from the PSP and press O to get out of USB mode.  With the disk removed from your PSP, go back to USB mode and when the dialogue box pops up again go to ISO and drag the game you just copied and renamed to your ISO folder (it'll take much less time now).

I hope you have one of these, if not just create a  folder called ISO in the PSP root file menu and drag your new ISO folder.  They are massive files so you may want to either get a bigger Memory stick (we use this along with some Micro SD cards.) or convert to CSO with UMD Gen.

Step Four.

Exit USB mode, go to PSP Game and it should appear, you can play this as you would a regular game.

Finally we tried out a few 3rd party tools such as UMD Dumper and ISO ripper, UMD Dumper only did Lumines and was really laborious, and ISO Ripper just crashed a lot. We are slowly working through our collection of games and the custom firmware method proves to be a winner in terms of speed and use.

Polymusic.

Woolwich Poly Lower school ruins.

Here is something we really didn't expect to see, an LP of music from my old school.  Its called Polymusic and was made by the Woolwich Polytechnic School Concert band back in 1980.  Consisting of brass band standards including Dixieland Jamboree and a few marches it also contains some TV themes including Born Free and The Sweeny.   Although not a brass fan, this is actually quite relaxing and its competently done, but what you're dying to know is whether I'm one of the kids on the record.   Sadly no by the time I went there in 88 the band wasn't that much of a big deal, we still had music, but the band took less and less importance.  I can remember they came to our primary school sometime in the mid 80's possibly 86 and performed for us around Christmas time, but apart from that thats all I can remember.    

On a side note, my mate and I volunteered for choir practice they set up one christmas as we thought we could sing (we can't).  It was pretty cool and we had to wear uniform, but apart from singing Silent Night in German  I can remember nothing about it at all apart from it taking place in St Marys Church down at the back of Sainsburys in Woolwich.

Sadly both schools have moved into one now and they focus more on Technology rather than music.  The main campus is at the old Waterfield school in Thamesmead, you can read more here.   The upper school remains as flats though I don't have a photo of that yet. 

Ninja Edit.


The Sweeny from side A.

Bromley Junk Tour.

We decided to get the bus to Bromley one of the nicer areas of town, and unlike east London, not one of my regular haunts.  Its a double jump from where I live, a bus to Lewisham and a choice of buses to Bromley and its Glades Shopping Centre.  With a little side trip as well to Catford seeing as its on the way back.

I did quite well, with a few decent records and a few weird ones as well.  The red cross had some vinyl that wasn't from the ark and we managed to pick up a Heimelektro ep (ELF live) and a Miss Yetti remix EP (half remembered from a Hacker Mix CD).

Our main trip to Bromley was a little disappointing as both Gamestation and CEX had closed down.  Back in the day  that CEX was cool it was the first ever place I saw import playstation games (we picked up Dragon Quest 7 there before the import side was totally killed off) and FFV for Snes in all its job class and impenetrable Japaneseness.  Square did a ballsed up job of localising it for anthology and it took the GBA version before they added a decent script.  Those days are sadly long gone with them dealing with more second hand phones and other peripheral junk.  

There was a few things that did stand out, this includes seeing the worlds blackest child throwing a rugby ball around with his pal.  They also had a guy handing out driving school leaflets which makes a change from the usual weirdos.  Speaking of which they still have the Socialist wankers down by the bus stop in Lewisham, apparently everything is still the tories fault nothing changes.

So we get the bus back to Lewisham and get off early at Catford with its decent array of charity shops.  We managed to pick up quite a few things including some old UK Garage (DJ Hype, maybe awful maybe not) a Californian Raisins EP and The Spoken Word of Rock n Roll. We also got a poetry CD with Michael Rosens Boogy Woogie Buggy on it (still sealed) and an Eat Static EP (because old trance is the bomb.)
Our bus home had fat sea cows rowing with a mum with a pushchair, which just made me reach for my revolver.

Stand out Tracks

Poems For Children Michael Rosen and Friends. 41 Poets for Oxfam.

A mix of poems for Oxfam from Plummeister Michael Rosen (he has Boogy Woogy Buggy and Really!) and a few other nice poems from Ian McMillan, Roger McGough and Gervase Phinn.  Mostly got for the Michael Rosen stuff but the whole of this could be used if I'm in a sentence mixing mood. Like I said above its still sealed and we got this from The Salvation Army for 99p instead of Oxfam.

The Spoken Word of Rock n Roll

Stars Organisation for Spastics grouped together about a billion celebrities for this hatecrime on wax.
Theres Stephen Fry from QI (a baffling version of Elvis Hound Dog), Cannon and Ball, Frank Bruno, Babs Windsor and Russell Grant. Speaking over rock n roll classics.  Thankfully theres no Jimmy Saville but they do cover Gary Glitters Do you Wanna Touch me (if he does call the police) so we are spared Jingle Jangle Jewellery.   Apparently this is sought after because Roger Moore is on this (as is noted Astronomer Patrick Moore) why I  haven't a clue as its balls awful.  The S.O.S is now just the Stars Organisation, though this sort of thing is still going on I believe.

We'll try and get a link going for this if it isn't shot down by the copyright cunts at Youtube.

Who was Archias of Greece

We got another nutjob leaflet from God.  Not actually from god himself just one of his billions of followers here on earth.  It boasts of serious things tomorrow and concerns an Archias of Greece putting off a letter concerning his assasination to go revelling hence the name.

She's got her curlers in.

Because we are a bubblehead who follows everything without question we kept the leaflet and scanned it in for future reference.  Hey maybe this Archias was a well known figure from Greek myth and legend and these are well known parables studied by classicists the world over.

So I decided to dig a little and see on wikipedia if they have anything about a king Archias.

They don't but there are various statesmen and poets on there, maybe they put off serious things till tomorrow, thus sealing their own fate.  There is a link to ancient library.com lets see if there is anythig on Archias there.  Oh goody there are a few Archias, one or two are kings and the rest rulers or poets.  Except they do not mention the whole putting off serious things tomorrow, going for either choosing money over health, or hanging themselves when found out for treachery.

So I decide to look for the origin of the legend and check out the saying through google and it gives us a sermon by traffic shouter and general nutjob Reverend Ian Paisley, (Youtube link but without Harry Enfield playing Gerry Adams in this bit (he wanted Pizza, Palsy didn't that was the joke), incidentally this was shown shortly after the Omagh bombings where something else controversial was pulled at the last minute and this was deemed an acceptable replacement, cue much outrage.)

So there you go unless you especially like Palsys brand of Protestantism (and as an Atheist we don't) and would like a ruler that has nothing specifically memorable written about him or spoken by him then go ahead and knock yourself out.

Me, I think its more like this.

She's still got her curlers in though

Neo Geo X Stats

Finally done and hand translated from an article over at Inside games we bring you NEOGEOX stats.  If your Nihongo is up to it then thats a link to the original article above and please feel free to correct in the comments below, we are nowhere near fluent.

They'll be some comment on certain things too just check for the (*) K.

Lets begin.

NEO-GEO nears Completion [NEOGEOX] on sale from the 6th Dec.

OK Japan LLC (*1) announces the planned worldwide sale of the NeoGeoX entertainment System and
says that it should be on sale from the 6/12/2012 in Japan.

 A few days ago our connections found out the release date of the NeoGeoX Entertainment System. The Handheld NeoGeo (Neo GeoX) has the same case design as originally shown and could come with a possible HDMI out cable (Neo GeoX Station) and Joystick (Neo GeoX Joystick).  It also includes 3 types of cables and an AC adaptor in the same pack.  Also noted here for the first time is a preorder bonus, (Ninja Master's game card).  It'll cost 19,900YEN from 6/12/2012.

Package Outline

NEO GEO X
NEO GEO X STATION
NEO GEO X JOYSTICK
HDMI Cable
Stereo AV Cable
Preorder bonus. Ninja Master's Game card enclosed program.

Collected titles (2*)
3 Count Bout / Fire Suplex
League Bowling
Art Of Fighting / Fists of The Dragon Tiger
Magician Lord
ASO II Last Guardian
Metal Slug
Baseball Stars 2
Mutation Nation
Cyber Lip
Nam 1975
Fatal Fury / Garou Densetsu (Hungry Wolf Legend and Special,
Fatal Fury Special / Garou Densetsu Special
Puzzled
Real Bout Fatal Fury Special
The King Of Fighters 95
Samurai Showdown II
King Of The Monsters
Super Sidekicks
Last Resort
World Heroes Perfect.

Official Homepage here in English collecting all software and peripherals in one place (*3)

We feel inclined here to make clear here all (NeoGeoX) internal stats.  According to rumours, seeing as there is an SD card slot it would take extra programs too, though looking through the stats it cannot connect to the internet to do so.  Possibly it will allow you to add more with external SD cards.

Product Resources

CPU: 1GZ
OS: Linux (type not stated)
Display  LCD Panel:
Size: 4.3inch
Screen Image Size. 480x272
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Memory
System Memory 256MB
Memory Type DDR II
Memory Frequency (Possibly clock speed) 250MHz
Flash Memory 2GB
Flash Memory Type Trans Flash
Memory Card Standard
Supported Memory Cards: SD Card / MMC
Card Capacity: 1 - 8 GB

Function
Internal Speaker Output: 0.5W x2
Earphone jack: 3.5mm
USB Port Micro USB x1
OTG Standard Equipment
TV Out: HDMI, Composite Video
Battery
Battery Capacity: 3.7/2200mAh
Battery Usage (Time) / 6hr Gaming
Charge current 900mA
Charge Time 3 Hours

NeoGeoX Gold Entertainment System on sale from 6/12/2012 priced 19,900 Yen pre tax.

(*1) I've gone with LLC although i'm not sure if they are.
(*2) I've gone to the liberty to translate these into English, and provide a horrible clunky translation from the original Japanese.
(*3) Currently showing bugger all.

Pyngas Entertainment

First up we still haven't gotten round to translating those NeoGeoX Stats at the moment, so if anyone is busting a gut to get them done well I can't help you.

Secondly we've be caught up playing Chefville on Facebook.  Like Stan Marsh in South Park we really didn't want to get caught up with the virtual farming biz but we recently added my cousin as mates and she plays them so now we have a big fuck off cafe in Chefville.

Its called Cornholios for obvious reasons and its not that large, and thats also for a reason. Because while this maybe social gaming, its also coming up against the terminally asocial I.E me.

We really do not welcome the frequent status updates with jokey messages posted on your behalf, nor do we like the complete and utter naked greed at the heart of it all.  Our ethos on DLC and in *app purchase is this unless its pretty freaking awesome or free, then its not worth your money at all.  In fact unless its not on disk I'd go as far as saying pirate it or get the game of the year edition with all bonuses and stuff added.

 *and when did apple naming for programs become standard, you don't have an exe store for non apple programs, though the name does sound awesome, X-STORE go on shout it out.

There is our rub with it, like our Freecorder rant (Applian if you are listening get a webpage based version going like certain youtube downloaders for people to record stuff with.) it has the germ of a good idea but adds a load of cock to it no one wants. 

Do you really need to buy in added spices with real cash, do you really want to purchase additional items to cook with, with real cash.  Do you really want every little milestone posted up on your facebook page or get real world friends to staff virtual resturants or proxy mates for real cash.  Didn't think so.

Then there is creator Zynga, about as welcome in the industry as Aids to a porn set and just as vicious.
As far as we can tell we think chefville is a totally new idea, although running a restaurant is nothing new for gaming.
As far as we can tell, the basic recipe is a mix of evil, Gusts Atelier series for the crafting bits and sim city for restaurant building and a dumb flash game for all the characters. I'm not sure what it was originally ripping off unlike Farmville (harvest moon but online), but I'm damned sure its not original. 

EDIT.

Cornholios is bust, thanks to Zynga, we have line of cardboard boxes for virtual items that will never be finished due to them requiring either real world cash or stupid asinine posting for items.  Let us build stuff and we'll come you bastards.

The ballad of Kates Tits.

Heres a round up of stuff, including a bit more from the Wisdom Tree, some more info on that handheld Neo Geo and some deeply topical stuff with IM Baciel partys Prophet Muhammad (Caustic Window) film.  Oh and the tits of Kate Middleton.

Wisdom Tree bits.

We decided to not bother hacking anymore of King Of Kings, Spiritual Warfare or Bible Adventures as though I have a shed load of ideas I've got bugger all time to spend learning how to code.  Sad I know, Quitters never win and all that but I have found a few more things that are relevant to the project.  Both Bible Adventures and Spiritual Warfare have a small string of letters that are are used to load in bible quiz questions.  (I did corrupt this by switching a W for an R and may actually do this for King Of Kings which uses the aforementioned huge table of words to build its questions with).  We thought we had this when we found a script with FCEUXs PPU viewer but had our enthusiasm severly curbed when we found out it was just viewing what was in RAM (its RAM nothing stays in RAM). 

On the upside we have found a corrupter that actually works.  Its a custom job from Vinesauce and can be had from their forums, here.  Used in most of their corruption videos and has provided me with a goodly amount of laughs.

NEOGEO Handheld.

Seems that NEO GEO hand held isn't a hoax after all.  Blaze will be punting this out for the European Market so expect this to be in the same vein as their Megadrive Portable. There's full stats in Japanese here and we'll try and get this translated in full, (we know our kana and a few kanji so this won't be too difficult).
We of course will wait untill this is professionally reviewed before casting hard earned brass at this.

Predictable scenes from the Middle East.

MST3K The innocence of the Muslims.

We only learned about this through the excellent Carl Craig facebook feed.  Its a zero budget film adaptation of Muhammads (Mont Sant Michel and St Michaels Mount) life (though originally it was Bin Laden / nameless Egyptian Warlord).  To be honest I would love to see the whole film as it was before it was changed.  Because as it stands now, the film comes across as perfect fodder for Mystery Science Theater 3000.  Badly done chroma jobs and hilarious over dubbing make this a scream rather than anything sacreligious.  Needless to say it caused outrage all over the middle east especially when it was subbed into Arabic, even in the UK with the usual crowd of Islamic Neckbeards protesting.

There is a pretty informed article up on wikipaedia for you to look, though I'd still love to hear a rifftrax version of it. 

Kates Tits.

The other controversy inflaming the western world is some paparazzi shots of the Duchess of Cambridges Tits. Published in the French version of Closer (which judging by the content seems to have a more heterosexual male readership than its English couterpart) and the Irish Daily Star (still big brother and bugger all news I'd imagine) they are some of the grainiest pictures of royal jugs I have seen.  Then we saw the actual distance on the news they were snapped from and I'm guessing they used the hubble telescope to get the shots.  Like Britney Spears snatch though I warn you they are a little underwhelming and if you really want to see out of focus images of some tits you can look here instead.

Wisdom Tree hacking.

For the past 3 days we've been poking over the tired old corpse of a few of the legendary bible games released for the NES.  They were put out by Wisdom Tree a god loving, bootleg software house who as Color Dreams put out some of the worst NES games for the system.   To be honest these aren't the best either, so far we have looked at Bible Adventures, King Of Kings and Spiritual Warfare.

Those reviews just about sum up the amount of ludicrousness that these games hold.  Besides theres only so much Go tell it to the mountain that one person can take before he starts reaching for the petrol looking for a church to burn down. 

We're pretty new to this whole romhacking scene our only other hack is a version of Bubble Bobble edited with arcade levels for the NES, made in a level editor and punted out last year.  I cannot program so this is just a bit of documenting of things I've found and maybe some tile map editing with Tile Layer Pro to make improved sprites.

OK on with the show.
Our initial aim was to make a corruption video of the series using rom corruptors to show some funny glitches and bizarre behaviour, to be honest we did that but used a hex editor to do the job instead.

About halfway through the rom of Bible Adventures we came across some text including title screen descriptions and continue screen text.  We decided to have a look at this and found that not only can you edit this but work out the rest of the letter spaces to create a table.  Then we loaded up King Of Kings and Spiritual Warfare and found more text that shared the exact hex codes meaning the table is universal to all of the Wisdom Tree games (or at least the three I tried). Spiritual Warfare is detailled up on Data crystal so we'll add some stuff from King of Kings, Bible Adventures didn't get a lot of love but we'll cast a critical eye over it later.

King of Kings stores its text mainly at $1887A and a massive wall of words at $194E8.  These are rated in order of size from smallest to largest so I'm guessing there is a table to look up stuff and generate bible passages whenever you pick a scroll up.  Its funny to substitue words of the same length to make hideous quotes and passages.

Like so. We haven't found much else that is intelligble just yet just some title screen text which may become a Chuckle Brothers Hack.

Spiritual Warfare is much better with miles more text set out in lines however amending this breaks the screen layout and crashes the game in the case of item descriptions. Not noted on Data Crystal is where the question subgame text is (its at Address $9344) and then seems to be letters only, amending these creates much cave speak in the minigame, so someone better can look at it and maybe make sense of it. 

Romford Junk tour.

So we haven't been here in a while, we decided to dodge most of east London due to the olympics, now that the paralympics is underway I feel its time to venture out in this direction again. 

We made it out to what we call the orange county (Essex) enjoying a sleep on the bus from Canning town (takes an hour so you can get some shut eye).  Our main tasks are looking for records and an external HDD case (SATA) for a recovered Tivo HD (1 TB shame it didn't work).  We did however come home with some stuff.

PET Player one ready.

Some indie band that sounds vaguely electronic, not the best actually or has any single track that is redeeming so its going in the out pile.

One Self: Children of Possibilty.

A collaboration between DJ Vadim, Yarah Bravo and Blu Rum 13. Ninjatune stuff is generally worth picking up even if you don't really care about hip hop.  We haven't listened to this yet so we'll update you when we do.  We did however rate Your Revolution with Jill Scott so this may be worth keeping.

Eleven Phases A Detroit Compilation disc.

Magic words indeed. This is on sublime records and is an odd beast.  Its essentially techno artists doing hip hop beats,  so you have the best of the second wave of detroits finest serving up some cool beats.  Daniel Bells track is possibly the best along with Will Web and Kenny Larkin as Lark Daddy.  The weakest is Thomas (nude photo) Barnett, who's track ravish doesn't actually live up to much and is a shame seeing as I generally rate his stuff.

Finally some more oddities,  we didn't get they had a Japanese Saturn Game for sale in one of the charity shops.  Before you get excited its Super Casino Speciale from Coconuts which looking around got a Euro Release for PS1 as Vegas Casino via the Midas Interactive label.

Its really baffling to see something like that appear in a charity shop, as old PC games and endless versions of Fifa Football are the regular fodder for places like that.  We didn't get it as its not really my favourite genre even if it did have its spine card and funny Engrish on the back page.

Thatz Entertainment had a decent couple of Atlus Games for sale including Growlanser and Sting licensed  Gungir, and something from Aksys games, (clue its Jikandia which reading up on it sounds awesome).   Sadly we were broke by then so we will have to wait its turn maybe around Christmas.

(Post script) We returned yesterday and the Saturn game had gone. Who knows who bought it but there its gone.  Also they had author Martina Cole signing books on a bookstall (rather than Waterstones) which is odd to say the least.

Bank Holiday round ups

We are down at my aunts place in Suffolk so this is just a short round up of stuff.

Ages ago we posted about cutting up Mother in laws tongues (Psycho ED) and having a quick perusal around the old conservatory, we noticed that there were two healthy plantlets at the base of some of the leaves. It took about 12 months to do but finally we have vindication that something we saw of in an old cactus book actually works.  We'll pot them up when we get back proper, but for now this is good news.

Ports and that.

For those that liked the recent trilogy of ports posts Pacific Micro International are running a software design competition so if you really want any of those old games ported, why not enter a design outlook there and  if your design wins.

Oh and here is a few final ports for you.

Lumines.C64 / NES

This is one of those puzzlers that go on for absolutely ages before it gets remotely challenging.  Billed as a kind of multimedia puzzler complete with psychedelic backgrounds and pumping music, in reality its a novel take on those block matching puzzlers of old.  You get to drop a bi coloured square onto the playing area with the intention of making squares of one colour that can be erased by a moving line.  Sometimes you get a special square that erases all of the blocks of one colour in a line but that is about it.

I think it could be done in 8 bits, there is nothing too demanding maybe a plain background and one music track but this could be done.

An SRPG game for Windows.

Something like Disgaea would be nice, or even a complete rip off with item world.  Actually this may exist as an eroge.  Damn it does.

Finally looking through Lowestoft today we saw that there is a regional version of Calendar Girls (Imagine if the W.I. made a nude calendar to benefit cancer research
Now imagine that they made that into a film that became a west end show (with Kelly Brook in) and that is on tour in regional theatres up and down the country.  So who's in it you may ask.
Ruth Madoc. Gladys Pugh from Hi de hi or Daffyds mum from Little Britain.
Lesley Joseph. Aka Dorian from Birds of a feather.
Sue Holderness, Marlene from Fools n horses.
Camilla Dialup from Strictly
and Little Mo from Eastenders (Kacey Ainsworth)
Just shut up and take my money. nao.
Link here includes some tasteful nudity (and hairy bikers on the banner heading if thats your thing).

Ports 3 Resolving the Trilogy

Seeing as both of my viewers are sick of them now this is the last of the Ports for a long while.
We'll be adding both Smartphone and Handheld gaming fantasy ports now, ranging from the old to the brand new.

Onward.

Oh and we welcome back Snesorama, after the SOPACTA debacle and Megaupload takedown is back with a limited service.  So if you really want emulation "news" its there.

Ports.
First up some stray lambs from last time.
Azure Dreams. Snes

Konami takes on the rogue alike with this anime take on the genre. We actually liked this for PS1 and would like to see a simpler sprite version of this.  Tame Monsters and raise them to fight alongside you in the Monster tower, out of battle you can use you stuff you brought back to raise your town up from the backwater it is to a fine city.  You could also date the girls in town, including the creepy library owner who reads your memory card Otacon style.

Mighty Pang. PS1 Saturn.

One of the last CPS2 games and the last Pang game for a long time (magical Michael came out 8 years later).  Would love to see a nice version of this as it never made it to a home console and looking at Wikipedia they never released anything for Saturn. 

 NDS Games
Though coughing up blood now, the NDS has been both a success and criminally under exploited.  There are billions of mediocre cash ins for it involving pretending to be a small girl and poking horses with styluses.
That or ports of hidden object games and lacklusterBbejewelled clones including a not very good version of Popcaps cash cow.  Here are a few games I'd love to see for the wonder box.

Cannon Fodder.
War has never been so much fun, so said the old Amiga game.   Leading a pack of small soldiers to glory, trying not to get killed was one of the Amigas highlights.  Developed by Sensible Software, who would go onto make a sequel before abandoning it to some no mark Russians to piss all over the series for a shoddy PC sequel.  We would love to see this being ported to the DS along with using the stylus for controlling your troops.

Senisble Soccer, Saturn / NDS / iPad
 Which leads to this, I don't want Fifa  and its official names, we would love a port of the Original Snes ISS pro before it became Pro Evil (complete with Dog / Referee transformation please) and as a European we certainly want this.  Tiny little footballers with leagues of made up players, funny names and squads, and best of all gameplay.  I can see this working on either Saturn (with its sprite handling)  or iPad best thanks to its larger resolution screen.  I would love a DS port too as that would be cool.

Elite 2 Frontier.
Possibly what we have been craving for all along.  This is the premier Amiga space trading game of all time, true the combat is broken, but its got an autopilot now and a massive universe to explore and above all tense gameplay.  Do you grade up your ship or do you spend cash on repairs and max out your space on imported veg to flog onto mining worlds. It was an impressive job on the amiga and would love to see it be replicated for the DS.  Closest thing is Platinum games Infinite Space a space drama that plays a bit like the games but also more like a strategy game.

Romancing SaGa 1-3

We did gate some old Gameboy remakes for NDS but the SNES games would have worked well on the NDS.  Also known for being rock hard, these RPGS took no prisoners and would love to see them remade with the SaGa 2 engine.

Squigs.
A PD version of columns from an old Amiga Power disk, and possibly the only thing here that would stand a realistic chance of a Remake.  It was fun and had a rescue mode where you had to get down to a lone squig and rescue it.

Vandal Hearts.  We love this more than is Humanly possible especially the intro song which still haunts us now.  Unlike everthing I've added here this was being remade for DS but I suspect is long since cancelled, a shame as it was shaping up to be quite nice.

PSP
Still with a big following in Japan, the only game I can think of releasing may make it as a PSOne classic release like Xenogears did.

Saga Frontier 1+2
These actually work as Popsloasder games but would love to see a proper remake of both the two PS One games.

Blackberry.
Finally we'll finish up with some dregs for the Acorn Electron of smartphones.  Whereas the playbook seems to get all the emulator love and its true that all its games are substandard knock offs of original titles, we would love to see two things for the business phone.

Sunvox.
This is not a game rather a modular tracker that is ported to about a million mobile systems.  We would love to see this here simply because the only alternative is a relentlessly shit Kiss creator thing that reminds me of the bastard son of Music 2000 with in app purchasing and a crippled nun.   Come on fuckberry, it would work, your curve phones have proper keyboards so this would work and would give the kids something to do rather than message on BBM or play crap knock offs.

Finally an emulator, anything, even a ropey NES emulator for your phones. Though this would require it to not be signed by Blackberry and be open source.  Once you do that and have an unofficial store I think it would be much better.

 

 

 

Ports 2: the legend of Curlys Wurly.

Here is part 2 of our ports special and with a slight apology, there was one game from the list last time that we do recall.  And that is...

Viz NES, Megadrive.

We were big fans of the comic back then, with Roger Irrelavant, Finbarr Saunders and Johnny Fartpants as my favourites along with whatever nonsense Davey Jones came up with (bum faced vibrating goats and snail shaped tea rooms with massive tits solving mysteries were just some of these).  Incidentally in 1990 Virgin who had the Sega license then, released a Viz game a half hearted track and field game which let you play as Johnny Fartpants, Buster Gonad and Biffa Bacon.  Coming on two tapes with separate minigames to build up your respective powers (joystick waggling mainly) and a main road race game through Fulchester, commented by Roger Mellie the man on the Telly.  We think it would be the perfect fit for either Megadrive or the NES (as a bootleg due to swears).

SNES.

As a natural successor to the NES, we got our Snes from Currys in Charlton back in 1992.   Now completely fucked due to excessive adaptor and Super Gameboy use, it provided us with several man hours of goodness due to the limited run of RPGS released here and a vociferous support from the likes of SuperPlay magazine.

Suikoden.

This one is a little contentious as what we are asking for is a port of the PSone version.  This was really odd and came out early in the PSones life so everything looks so primitive.  We have often looked at it as a souped up version from a cancelled SNES game. I suppose if it ever went ahead it would have to use the MSU1 expansion to handle cutscenes and audio and compression for the main game data.

Speedball 2 Brutal deluxe.

Another beloved in Europe game, this one a violent take on football and while I've sadly never played it, this has been remade for both XBLA and GBA it could be easily done for the SNES.  No fancy mode7 or any tricks just deliver a solid port.

Rainbow Islands
A port of the sublime Amiga version with the extra levels put back.

Sega Saturn / PS1
Had a PS1 as my follow up to the SNES as a Christmas present with Resident Evil, Tekken 3 and FF7 ( remade for the Famicom of all things) so enjoyed these immensely.  Theres not many games that I would like to see remade for PS1 most of what I have is old arcade stuff mainly for Saturn, so here goes.

Bubble Memories Sega Saturn / PS1

Virgin interactive were comissioned to make Bubble Symphony for Saturn and PS1 but in the end it was cancelled (though Japan got the Saturn version and the PS1 version was eventually leaked and spread around).  This is the follow up Bubble Bobble 3 if you will,  released in 1995 and never getting a home release.  It would be lovely to see this getting a belated port for the home system, especially for Saturn as it could really do that sprite work justice.

Touhou project. Sega Saturn / Dreamcast.

Imperishable Night, Perfect Cherry blossom, Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil et al are shareware vertical bullet hell shmups written by ZUN, they are mainly for PC but remind me of old DC / SS games such is their style.
It would be good to see a port of these if only for the Dreamcast.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.  Saturn only

Though a port of this exists,  it is of inferior quality to the PSOne Original and done by an inexperienced team at KCET.  I'd love to see it remade one of these days or even translated but the Saturn is a Cunt to program so this will never get an airing.

Part 3 will end up with stuff for handhelds such as NDS and PSP.

Chain Break - Freecorder are malware spamming cunts.

FUCK YOU FREECORDER.

There we said it, after what seems like 3 or so years we are free of your malware whoring cockrot, Applian, and we are never coming back.

In the beginning we had a need for your streamlined toolbar back when you were at 2.0, and actively enjoyed recording stuff with it, thanks to our onboard sound disabling recording for some retarded notion.  

True you didn't handle silences very well and split files up into little bits occasionally, but we overlooked your shortcomings as you did what you were told and.  Then you didn't work and found we had to upgrade, you came with all singing all dancing converter toolbar with tv shows and other apps, but you weren't that evil then and as a bonus you let us watch films you'd grab from youtube and other less salubrious areas of the net, (but not Iplayer for some reason).  

You would still let you record sounds, from diverse places such as WinUAE and even Rebirth sessions. With no grief at all.  Then we noticed you stopped recording films and would grab stuff only occasionally and then you gave us a free upgrade, with Conduit inc included.  We knew you were bad news when installing we checked no to Conduit and you still forced it onto us anyway and it took a while to block your shit completely, but you were still usable and still could record stuff, then you took away our right to watch those clips you downloaded on us preferring that you instead install a free FLV. player app that was actually Real Audio which was cock of the highest order.  We kicked your nonsense out and just used you for sound as by then you still didn't download films (even though you wouldn't let us watch them in app anymore) for some unknown reason.  

Then you couldn't do that right and we found out that there was a Freecorder 6.0 that boasted no Conduit and all the old ways mended.  Like a cock we took you back but by then we were wise to your schemes, you cosied up with freemods and invaded google Chrome so deep it took a boot time scan with Spybot and a week to free ourselves from your clutches.  We checked our other browsers and found you hijacked them as well changing homepages and putting you Fisher Price toolbar all over the place.  Well enough is enough we have kicked your sorry arse out and putting this up as a warning to others what a pile of cock you are. 
We now resume your standard viewing in ports part 2.  

Ports. PT1 the Wishful Thinkening.

Hello and welcome. We don't have a particularly exciting trip to go on about this week but we will talk once again about video games.  Or more accurately video games that should have been released on other consoles / computers back in the day.  We can remember writing out back in sixth form a long list of games that they should have ported to the NES and without any way of knowing if they had done so or not.

My defence is that it was 1993 and they was no mass market proliferation of the internet back then for fact checking.  So I had to rely on CES show release lists in popular gaming magazines for all my news and reviews.

Please note that what we are asking in the games we would like to see are not by and large modern titles but, something which could be capable on host hardware of the day albeit maybe with some extra ram in the case of a few titles.

First week will cover 8bit Consoles and Computers. Also please note we haven't checked whether they have actually ported versions of these games or not.

Atari VCS.

Pong. 
This is possibly the only game where an Atari VCS version would be considered arcade perfect.  This was our first ever console, bought from Argos cheap and as a guy down the market actually still had games for this which he sold for £10 of his stall, we managed to grab a few titles.  We never saw a version of Pong for 2600, ever, and this is a system that had a few arcade conversions, such as Pacman and Space Invaders. 

Ideally it would use paddle controllers for that authentic feel and as its possibly the most basic of games ever, it shouldn't tax the host hardware much. Our next VCS choice is however possibly not doable.

QIX.
Taito's 1981 arcade game where you had to fill in an area whilst avoiding the Qix (an ambulatory assemblage of lines) and its mutant offspring, the diamond shaped Sparxx, was a popular 8bit choice appearing on many of the home computers of the day either as clones or as variants, indeed we remember a pretty decent  version of this called Styx for the old Videotron cable boxes we had in our area as well as the boss gameboy version.  The closest thing I've seen for the VCS is Amidar by Konami but has grids already outlined so we don't know if this could be remotely doable on host hardware.

However if its not, I'm pretty sure that the 5200 could more than handle it.

ZX81.

Sudoku.

For a computer that had 1K* of RAM and ASCII graphics only, there are a lot of ports that just wouldn't work on the humble proto speccy.  So we give you a game which is just numbers, in a grid with simple rules to follow. 

*it was expandable to 16K via a wobbly ram pack at the back.

C64.

Chase HQ.

To be honest a version of this exists but is so horrible that it should be remade.  The ZX Spectrum version of this is a work of genius, and is a monochrome conversion of the arcade game, which although missing some bits was insanely playable.  The C64 could do great driving games such as Buggy Boy so a version of this optimised for host hardware would be cool.

Crosswize.

A side scroller that a mate of mine had on Speccy (released by Firebird) that inexplicably was never ported to anything else.  

C64 / Amstrad CPC

Parasol Stars.

To be honest this was in the works from Ocean, who would go on to deliver 8Bit console ports for the NES (Good) and Gameboy (Dire) and had a version in the offing for Commodores beige box, which was subsequently canned.  Ocean claimed the code was stolen but the true story can be found here.
 Our heart was set on a C64 version and judging from what I read it was a really strong conversion
However, looking at BB4CPC  we think that an expanded Amstrad could possibly do a passable job of a conversion.

NES.

That list of games for conversion is long gone sadly, written on a blue folder during boring moments in class, we remember none of the titles added but over the years we have added a few things that they should port.

MR. DO!

Though a lot of arcade games were ported to the NES back in the day including a cut down version of Donkey Kong and Altered Beast (via Tengen).  However they never had a version of Mr Do!.  Classic dig em up via Universal was possibly one of the best classic arcade games and even the VCS had a version, but the NES never received a port.  Same would go for Mr Do's Castle which at least appeared on C64 as a covergame called Top Duck.

Manic Miner.

As a European this is probably the one idea that started it all off.  Spelunker I guess fills the rock hard platformer role on the NES, but damn I would actually love to see this happen.  Its a single screen platformer in which you have to grab all the keys and get to the exit without all the random stuff killing you or you running out of oxygen.  I would love this to have been ported for FDS like Monty on the run was only not in such a bastardized way.

More next week as we probe 16 bits and beyond.