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Saturday 25 August 2012

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).

Sunday 19 August 2012

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.

   








Sunday 12 August 2012

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.  

Sunday 5 August 2012

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.