This is the fourth part of the unimportant port part. We focus this time on a slew of 8bit computers that were popular back in the day. Think Chinnyvision's channel on Youtube for the kind of stuff we're getting at. Amstrad to ZX Spectrum with a little CBM action thrown in. If the platform is not specified on the heading then the game port is for the main three computers at the time I.E. CPC, Speccy, C64.
First up
Kurosu ZX81.
This is one of those puzzle games where you can't have more than two 0 or Xs next to each other in a row in a 6x6 square grid.
I would have said sudoku here as well but i'm really not sure if the unexpanded ZX81 has enough grunt to run a randomized 9x9 grid with the rules, unless you added 16k of wobbly add on ram.
Whereas a 6x6 grid I would imagine could be made to run in 1K of ram with ascii graphics, which is this computers limitations.
Crosswize Hewson C64.
A mate had this for his speccy and while a C64 owner back in the day, I guess I wanted this to come to the beige breadbin. Not that we aren't starved for side scrolling shmups on the C64 side. Just one of those games that never got ported to anything.
Lunar Rescue Taito
The original was on the Tatio legends CD round up of their old Arcade IP. As soon as I saw this late 70's obscurity I said, wow this has got to be an old Speccy game, as it just looks the part.
Looking around there is an actual unofficial port for the speccy, as well as a new remake. So I'll extend this out to Amstrad and C64 users too.
Ice Climber.
This is one of those games from the NES which aren't well regarded now. You have to climb a mountain, either clubbing the birds and seals until you reach the bonus round at the summit where you have to collect the vegetables and cop hold of the pterodactyls cock to escape (that's what it looked like as a kid.)
It's a fun game, that I'm sure could be ported to the home computers, even the poor little spectrum in monochrome mode without too much autistic screeching from Nintendo. Imagine this running with CPC colours or the more dour C64 palette.
The Pit. Spectrum.
One I got from reading Reverend Flat tops site a long time ago. Apparently its an old ultimate play the game title, where you have to go digging in a pit and avoid the robots. For a more up to date version and a list of all the suspected games that Rare before Rare put out on arcade platforms, then Rev Stuart Campbell has a good article here (see The Pit halfway down for more fun.).
The online home of Bear or Bust.
Sunday 23 February 2020
Sunday 16 February 2020
The UnimPORTant part 3 NES family
The NES never really took off here, I guess it was a London thing mainly, but Nintendo was never big in the UK in the 80's, don't let the revisionists tell you otherwise.
I guess a mix of paying £30-40 for console games, and the fact we had a massive home computer market here meant that Nintendo was a distant 3rd place behind Sega and whatever home computer came first. It doesn't help that nearly everything got a NES port back in the day so what I'm proposing here is a few games that are strictly European in flavour or obscure arcade ports.
1. Mr DO!
This was one of my favourite arcade classics growing up. Essentially a dig em up, you had to tunnel to get the cherries and drop apples onto the spawning dinosaurs and evil crocodile monsters. Its probably the only glaring omission from the Famicom line up that could most definitely do with a homebrew port.
2. Manic Miner.
An unashamed, classic, euro platformer from back in the day. One of the classics of its genre with miner Willy having to collect keys and evade all manner of weirdo's to make his fortune. There are hardly any single screen platformers on the NES where you die from falling a short distance (this genre was everywhere on home computer.). If you're a yank you could sub in Bounty Bob Strikes Back which is similar in execution but without having you attacked by toilets and the like.
3. Frogger
OK, there is the other obvious arcade classic that does not have a port to the classic homebrew platform. Can't believe Konami never ported this out as one of its first run of games in the system. You play as a frog who has to cross a notoriously busy road to make it to the banks of the swamp.
As a purist I'd love it to have Inu no Omawarisan in it as this normally gets skipped due to copyright concerns.
4. Bruce Lee
Never played this back in the day, this is another platformer, like the NES isn't overrun with them already. As I've never played this I will shamelessly copy from Wiki and put the synopsis here.
The plot involves the eponymous martial artist advancing from chamber to chamber in a wizard's tower, seeking to claim infinite wealth and the secret of immortality. There are twenty chambers, each represented by a single screen with platforms and ladders. To progress, the player must collect a number of lanterns suspended from various points in the chamber.
That and a vague memory of it getting a homebrew port for the Master System as well makes it my ideal candidate.
5. Match Day.
Almost all NES football (proper football) is abysmal in execution. With few exceptions, such as Nintendo World Cup and Soccer. I will NOT have the best football game on the NES, be Dino(saur) Dini's Kick Off. I also never played much in the way of sports titles as a kid, FIFA soccer was a good 8 years in the future when I first got my computer, and was terrible at the actual game itself.
But I think a good homebrew port of one of the 8 bit home computer games would be a fine idea.
Just don/t port Indoor Soccer. OK.
I guess a mix of paying £30-40 for console games, and the fact we had a massive home computer market here meant that Nintendo was a distant 3rd place behind Sega and whatever home computer came first. It doesn't help that nearly everything got a NES port back in the day so what I'm proposing here is a few games that are strictly European in flavour or obscure arcade ports.
1. Mr DO!
This was one of my favourite arcade classics growing up. Essentially a dig em up, you had to tunnel to get the cherries and drop apples onto the spawning dinosaurs and evil crocodile monsters. Its probably the only glaring omission from the Famicom line up that could most definitely do with a homebrew port.
2. Manic Miner.
An unashamed, classic, euro platformer from back in the day. One of the classics of its genre with miner Willy having to collect keys and evade all manner of weirdo's to make his fortune. There are hardly any single screen platformers on the NES where you die from falling a short distance (this genre was everywhere on home computer.). If you're a yank you could sub in Bounty Bob Strikes Back which is similar in execution but without having you attacked by toilets and the like.
3. Frogger
OK, there is the other obvious arcade classic that does not have a port to the classic homebrew platform. Can't believe Konami never ported this out as one of its first run of games in the system. You play as a frog who has to cross a notoriously busy road to make it to the banks of the swamp.
As a purist I'd love it to have Inu no Omawarisan in it as this normally gets skipped due to copyright concerns.
4. Bruce Lee
Never played this back in the day, this is another platformer, like the NES isn't overrun with them already. As I've never played this I will shamelessly copy from Wiki and put the synopsis here.
The plot involves the eponymous martial artist advancing from chamber to chamber in a wizard's tower, seeking to claim infinite wealth and the secret of immortality. There are twenty chambers, each represented by a single screen with platforms and ladders. To progress, the player must collect a number of lanterns suspended from various points in the chamber.
That and a vague memory of it getting a homebrew port for the Master System as well makes it my ideal candidate.
5. Match Day.
Almost all NES football (proper football) is abysmal in execution. With few exceptions, such as Nintendo World Cup and Soccer. I will NOT have the best football game on the NES, be Dino(saur) Dini's Kick Off. I also never played much in the way of sports titles as a kid, FIFA soccer was a good 8 years in the future when I first got my computer, and was terrible at the actual game itself.
But I think a good homebrew port of one of the 8 bit home computer games would be a fine idea.
Just don/t port Indoor Soccer. OK.
Sunday 9 February 2020
The UnimPORTant part 2 Neo Geo.
AKA the 330mega shock.
There is quite a bit of homebrew for the Neo-geo and it is ridiculously well done. Whether its Gunlord ripping off Turrican or Kraut buster being the WW2 era Metal Slug (both these games by NG:DEV btw) the venerable arcade hardware has seen some high quality posthumous support.
For those not familiar with the system, the NEO-GEO was a ruinously expensive home system and at the same time a reasonably priced arcade system. I'm adding here the Neo Geo Pocket which was a small hand held system that was put out to counter the GB Color and had the misfortune to fall foul of parent company SNK's bankruptcy and wholesale flogging off to gambling company Aruze.
Anyway here is a few games I'd have loved to have seen on either AES or NGPC adn none of them street fighter clones. .
Ikari Warriors.
Ironically, I would have loved to have seen this back in the day, when it was the vogue to bring out old IP and put them in a hastily made compilation with poor emulation to sell. Ikari isn't my favourite game, having gotten stuck with the piss poor NES port as a child.
You play as two mercenaries who shoot and drive a tank against an army or some such. Its been years since I've played it but I kinda like the idea that SNK would pay tribute to their back catalogue of games like they did with their 40th anniversary edition special for switch. Just for irony factor alone I guess. Failing that port Crush Roller.
Side Pocket.
I love this game and Data East had a licence to port games to the hardware back then, bringing out a shameless Street Fighter clone called Fighters History Dynamite. There are no pool clones for the Neo and done well would have complemented Nazca's Big Tournament Golf as the stand out sports title for the system.
Mr Gimmick.
Sunsoft were another developer that produced for the Neo too, the insane Waku Waku 7 which joins the 80% of the entire library of beat em ups for the system. This one stands out as being crazy.
Anyway Mr Gimmick was a high quality and tough as nails platformer for the NES / Famicom. I've never played it but its getting an arcade port and as the only platformer is the middling Blues Journey, this would be a much better deal.
The final two are for handhelds only.
Galaga.
Namco ported Pacman to the pocket colour back in the day, and I'd have to say its a perfect fit for the system. Especially as it has an analogue stick. Now lets see them port a few more classics for the system too. Of course I want Dig Dug to be part of this but the first thing that came to mind was Galaxian and its follow up Galaga (and maybe Gaplus, too, seeing as I had it on tape for the C64.)
Imagine shooting down waves of intruders on a tiny screen, they have an iPhone port as well as a gameboy port too. If it falls through then SNK's Sasuke and Commander or king and balloon do in a pinch,
Tetris. Joy Joy Kid AKA Puzzled.
Looking around it seems to have been done. Hell there's even some 4 player homebrew in progress for the MVS, and no its nor worth whatever price, they're going to put on it for a cart. Looking at the master list it seems they had an official version under development but never released. Also look at the amount of pachinko trash they had there, thanks to Aruze's take over.
No what I want is the smallest of the Neo Geo carts, the one where you have to have to rescue a blimp, by making Tetris lines to set it free. I guess it may break rules on what you can do with the system, but I reckon its doable. There isn't much there to begin with, and its basically rescue tetris.
There's a plot, but it makes no sense. It's perfect fodder for the system.
There is quite a bit of homebrew for the Neo-geo and it is ridiculously well done. Whether its Gunlord ripping off Turrican or Kraut buster being the WW2 era Metal Slug (both these games by NG:DEV btw) the venerable arcade hardware has seen some high quality posthumous support.
For those not familiar with the system, the NEO-GEO was a ruinously expensive home system and at the same time a reasonably priced arcade system. I'm adding here the Neo Geo Pocket which was a small hand held system that was put out to counter the GB Color and had the misfortune to fall foul of parent company SNK's bankruptcy and wholesale flogging off to gambling company Aruze.
Anyway here is a few games I'd have loved to have seen on either AES or NGPC adn none of them street fighter clones. .
Ikari Warriors.
Ironically, I would have loved to have seen this back in the day, when it was the vogue to bring out old IP and put them in a hastily made compilation with poor emulation to sell. Ikari isn't my favourite game, having gotten stuck with the piss poor NES port as a child.
You play as two mercenaries who shoot and drive a tank against an army or some such. Its been years since I've played it but I kinda like the idea that SNK would pay tribute to their back catalogue of games like they did with their 40th anniversary edition special for switch. Just for irony factor alone I guess. Failing that port Crush Roller.
 |
| Crush Roller in cyprus 2009 |
Side Pocket.
I love this game and Data East had a licence to port games to the hardware back then, bringing out a shameless Street Fighter clone called Fighters History Dynamite. There are no pool clones for the Neo and done well would have complemented Nazca's Big Tournament Golf as the stand out sports title for the system.
Mr Gimmick.
Sunsoft were another developer that produced for the Neo too, the insane Waku Waku 7 which joins the 80% of the entire library of beat em ups for the system. This one stands out as being crazy.
Anyway Mr Gimmick was a high quality and tough as nails platformer for the NES / Famicom. I've never played it but its getting an arcade port and as the only platformer is the middling Blues Journey, this would be a much better deal.
The final two are for handhelds only.
Galaga.
Namco ported Pacman to the pocket colour back in the day, and I'd have to say its a perfect fit for the system. Especially as it has an analogue stick. Now lets see them port a few more classics for the system too. Of course I want Dig Dug to be part of this but the first thing that came to mind was Galaxian and its follow up Galaga (and maybe Gaplus, too, seeing as I had it on tape for the C64.)
Imagine shooting down waves of intruders on a tiny screen, they have an iPhone port as well as a gameboy port too. If it falls through then SNK's Sasuke and Commander or king and balloon do in a pinch,
Looking around it seems to have been done. Hell there's even some 4 player homebrew in progress for the MVS, and no its nor worth whatever price, they're going to put on it for a cart. Looking at the master list it seems they had an official version under development but never released. Also look at the amount of pachinko trash they had there, thanks to Aruze's take over.
No what I want is the smallest of the Neo Geo carts, the one where you have to have to rescue a blimp, by making Tetris lines to set it free. I guess it may break rules on what you can do with the system, but I reckon its doable. There isn't much there to begin with, and its basically rescue tetris.
There's a plot, but it makes no sense. It's perfect fodder for the system.
Sunday 2 February 2020
The UnimPORTant part 1.
What is the unimPORtant. I've long wanted to do a video series of games never ported. I'd pick a system and see what games are missing and see if they could be added to them. I'm not going do anything modern apart from linux which is its own special case and is detailed below. Apart from that its mainly old console stuff and home computers from either the 80's or 90's.
The list will be, in order:
Linux.
Neo-geo
NES
Home micro round up
SNES and Megadrive.
Amiga.
The only rules I make for this is that it doesn't appear on the system and that said game can be physically done, i.e no modern disc game ports for 8bit / 16 bit consoles.
Linux.
The favourite free and open source way to revive an old computer, before you jack it in and send it to the tip. Relying on the fact that nothing has progressed past 1993, while it does have GUI the hardcore will use terminal for everything. I mainly use it for scanning using simple scan, but thanks to nice opensource programs like VLC, GIMP and Libre Office you can use it to do so much more which brings us to the first of missing links.
The Adobe Audition Multi Track recorder clone.
True there is Audacity for sound manipulation and either Ardour or the excellent LMMS (basically the only FL studio timeline shit I can stomach.) but they are either terrible, or DAWs(digital audio workstations). I want the audio equivalent of what GIMP is to Photoshop but user friendly and usable. For re edits and such, I know you could do it in Audacity, but as I've said before its awful and would rather someone coded something up from scratch.
The Audio player that isn't shit.
I.E the Foobar2000 clone. I've had the misfortune to use a whole host of rubbish audio players and found the best was either Clementine or VLC. There is nothing that will let you play files one by one and they all use a play list like some bastard version of iTunes from Apple which is awful.
Foobar2000 is great as its not only skinnable but thanks to 3rd party modules supports nearly everything it can throw at it. I have SID support and MIDI along with a few destructive effects for commercial shit.
The CD Ripper.
Sorry if its all audio related but I would love to see someone make a FOSS equivalent of Windows Exact Audio Copy. Its a really nice windows program that focuses on accurately ripping CDs with a focus on damaged and scratched discs. I didn't check to see if there is an equivalent for Linux, but I'm betting there ism't. Seems an oversight.
The installer integration program.
I know this can be done via the terminal command: sodoff u get and install my program you bastard.
But would really like to see this being made part of the main linux to install things from known sources. Maybe an actual installer to install automatically proper linux programs for you system outside the actual linux app store.
Finally the system information app.
I know there is a thing that acts like rainmeter for linux but that is not what I want. All I want is like windows system information that displays HD size, processor speed and memory allocation. There are a few things like that but are split through 4 different programs. All I really want is a mix of CPUID and a Hardware monitor. I suspect there are terminal commands to display this in depth.
Anyway this ends my first round up and I'll be back next time looking at missing NEO-GEO games in a similar vein.
There is probably a terminal command that will show you
The list will be, in order:
Linux.
Neo-geo
NES
Home micro round up
SNES and Megadrive.
Amiga.
The only rules I make for this is that it doesn't appear on the system and that said game can be physically done, i.e no modern disc game ports for 8bit / 16 bit consoles.
Linux.
The favourite free and open source way to revive an old computer, before you jack it in and send it to the tip. Relying on the fact that nothing has progressed past 1993, while it does have GUI the hardcore will use terminal for everything. I mainly use it for scanning using simple scan, but thanks to nice opensource programs like VLC, GIMP and Libre Office you can use it to do so much more which brings us to the first of missing links.
The Adobe Audition Multi Track recorder clone.
True there is Audacity for sound manipulation and either Ardour or the excellent LMMS (basically the only FL studio timeline shit I can stomach.) but they are either terrible, or DAWs(digital audio workstations). I want the audio equivalent of what GIMP is to Photoshop but user friendly and usable. For re edits and such, I know you could do it in Audacity, but as I've said before its awful and would rather someone coded something up from scratch.
The Audio player that isn't shit.
I.E the Foobar2000 clone. I've had the misfortune to use a whole host of rubbish audio players and found the best was either Clementine or VLC. There is nothing that will let you play files one by one and they all use a play list like some bastard version of iTunes from Apple which is awful.
Foobar2000 is great as its not only skinnable but thanks to 3rd party modules supports nearly everything it can throw at it. I have SID support and MIDI along with a few destructive effects for commercial shit.
The CD Ripper.
Sorry if its all audio related but I would love to see someone make a FOSS equivalent of Windows Exact Audio Copy. Its a really nice windows program that focuses on accurately ripping CDs with a focus on damaged and scratched discs. I didn't check to see if there is an equivalent for Linux, but I'm betting there ism't. Seems an oversight.
The installer integration program.
I know this can be done via the terminal command: sodoff u get and install my program you bastard.
But would really like to see this being made part of the main linux to install things from known sources. Maybe an actual installer to install automatically proper linux programs for you system outside the actual linux app store.
Finally the system information app.
I know there is a thing that acts like rainmeter for linux but that is not what I want. All I want is like windows system information that displays HD size, processor speed and memory allocation. There are a few things like that but are split through 4 different programs. All I really want is a mix of CPUID and a Hardware monitor. I suspect there are terminal commands to display this in depth.
Anyway this ends my first round up and I'll be back next time looking at missing NEO-GEO games in a similar vein.
There is probably a terminal command that will show you
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