Staying in.

Here's another boring update. Been self isolating and not that is not a euphemism. Not been out since Friday. Having to look for stuff to do around the house, to keep busy as this is definitely not my regular schedule.  

Took a look online at my DVD / Video combo that I got from my aunties place, and what I thought was a good project (seeing if its a DVD recorder) failed when I had a read through of the manual archived online.  It can copy DVDs to VHS but not vice versa.  

Will have to use Obs and  my capture card to rip stuff from videos that I have.  It's not the best idea but will like to archive the stuff I have so I can fill up some space for more junk.

More stuff to come includes some Vietnamese tapes (mostly UK stuff and junked what looks like a lot of  Karaoke tat.)  Maybe even the Pron tape which is 2 thirds Channel 4 stuff, including a episode of Quincy. Have the last of my mandatory use it or lose it leave days to take before the new tax year kicks in. So will give it a go tomorrow.

cough cough.

I aten't dead yet as Granny Weatherwax would say as she lay out with her sign upon her chest, I'm still kicking and healthy at the moment, asymptomatic as they say. Sars2 electro boogaloo is currently fucking up the western world with a liberal sprinkling of selfish cunts stockpiling bog roll and in fact anything that moves, and wearing masks that will do literally fuck all.

I've been self isolating, well my whole life's been self isolating but there you go. Also as my job is largely cleaning, I'm one of the front line, key workers, If they tell me to stay home, I will. To be honest I have leave to take by the end of  the month, and we'll see how the Wu flu situation goes on from there.

Seems like you need a book or two to read in these dark times. We just got through editing The Wailing Siren Mystery in both the original and UK edition remake.

A word of warning, both the original and the remake are from the UK. The original text was slightly anglicized, so I've tried to put it back to American English. My original was by Sampson Low which used The Sinister Signpost as the first book in the series. So it's not quite a 1 to 1 transcription. Think of it more like a 99% especially as I've amended some typos from the original.

The UK version really doubles down on the whole baseball game where Frank goes missing, the Sampson Low keeps all the terminology in which of course would go over the head of the average Brit. (To put it in perspective, this is what a baseball bat is most used for in this country.)  So much so, it's a wonder how they got all this rewritten so a limey such as I could understand it.

The original expands on various bits and pieces (meeting Officer Smuff and Con Riley on the docks, camping Bantz and as usual Aunt Gertrude getting toned down) and even gives the Hardy's girlfriends some detective work to do in the original.

But still its 90% the same, much like the Secret of The Lost tunnel and such.

You can download both original and remake here. and here. 

The Final UnimPORTant

This is the final part of the UnimPORTant series, where we put up hypothetical games that could be ported to systems from another. This time its Commodores well regarded 16 / 32 bit home computer system the Amiga.

Clu Clu land. NES.

This is a weird one, as the name is romanized wrongly. It should be Kuru Kuru land where Kuru Kuru means something that spins, and that is indeed what this game is based on.  You are a small blubbery looking fish that has to avoid the sea urchins and uncover the gold by spinning around poles in a maze.

I would have put this in my home micro round up but I think the Amiga is basically a better fit. Can imagine this being done in something like AMOS or that for the 500. It's not a bad game.

Kickle Cubicle / Meikyuujima.

A favourite NES game from R*Type producers Irem.  More of a block shoving type of game, you have to get all the bags in the allotted time.  Quite a nice little game supposedly produced for the PC Engine but remains unreleased.

Can easily see this for either Amiga 500 or 1200 series of computers.

Oids.

This is some Atari only thrust clone which for some reason was only released for the inferior ST line of computers. A nice port for the Amiga would be nice seeing as we can't have them having all the fun.

Ducktales.

Part of Capcoms Disney line up of platformers.  Would love to see this ported to the Amiga even if it incurs the wrath of the house of mouse.  With gameplay that involves Scrooge McDuck being his greedy bastard self, and rather nice music, including the Moon stage which is what its known for. This along with a few other games such as Megaman are why Capcom could do no wrong back in the day.

So that is it, we'll get back to normal posting now. There isn't much left to say except that I'd love a port of protracker to the old physical keyboard Blackbastard phones. Also as this whole SARS 2 electric boogaloo is going down now, a brief note that there is ten years worth of bollocks masquerading as articles so if you're at a loose end why not have a trawl through.

The UnimPORTant part V 16bit years.

The SNES and Megadrive or genitals if you're American posting.

You know the deal now, a bunch of games that were never ported over to the various systems at the time, but fit into the various system requirements of the native hardware.

Snes and Megadrive.

Apart from a few notable bits, the SNES lags far behind the Megadrive when it comes to homebrew.

There's a good port of Marioland for the Snes out and Nekotako as a new small print run game, but apart from that. Nothing.

The Megadrive fares better with a few chinese originals and bootlegs.  Seeing as they were relatively popular over here, lets give 5 games each, for the system, which were never ported.

Megadrive 5 first.

R*Type

Known as the home of shooting games, it's weird that this was never ported. Will have to check to see if Irem ever had the licence to port stuff. It's the only big omission I've seen on whole system.

Puzzle Bobble. Mega CD

This, every one knows, you line up bubbles in the launcher and try to pop 3 or more to clear stuff. It's either ported as Bust A Move (>_<) or a bajillion reskins of the same thing. I don't know why I added Mega CD to this as it could be done on the Megadrive. But would love to see it. Maybe a CD version of the iconic sound track.

Magic Sword

This is an old scrolling beat'em up by Capcom. I've played this in the arcade and is only one of a handful of games I ever saw the ending to. The others being Golden Axe and Darkstalkers. It's a middling game but I like it. Would love to see a port of it back then.

Powerdrift Mega CD.

An old superscaler racing game from Sega. I think it got a Saturn port as part of the ages range. But I would like to have seen if it could have been made to run under Megadrive hardware.  I put this as a Mega CD release, as the extra hardware would  make sense.

F1 Exhaust Note 32X

This is basically an old twin screen F1 game I saw back in Cyprus over ten years ago. Apparently never getting a home release, I have this as a provisonal 32X hardware release as its both obscure and little supported.

SNES ERA 5

This was my jam back in the day and therefore I know more of what was released and what wasn't.

1 Bubble Bobble.

Would love to see Taito's island hop coin op here too (Rainbow Islands) but to be honest, a good port of Bubble Bobble would be nice too. Seeing as the NES version is one of my favourite games ever a port along those lines would be excellent.

2. Bombjack.

Tekhan aka Tecmo did a few good games back in the day and this is another single screen job that wasn't ported over either. I envisage those two I mentioned up there as small rom carts (8mb or so). Seeing as there were a few coin op classics ported in its death throes. I'd love a home brew version of Bombjack.

3. Suikoden Snes CD

This is way out of the realms of possibility but, when I got this for Playstation back in the day. I was taken by how it looked like a late era SNES game, one of the style over substance RPGS such as Star Ocean or Tales Of Phantasia.  Could this have been done for the SNES CD, who knows, but I'm sure it would have had a port if it had taken off.

4. Gauntlet.

Would love a port of the original game here.  There are a few games that would make excellent use of the multitap, and this game is ideal for 4 player support.  The downside being Atari taking in the mid 90's and its corpse used to pump out old IP and bastard clones of the VCS till this day.

Anyway this I could happily play on the SNES.

5. Elite.

Apparently this was being done back then and was abandoned. Its the old home micro game where you trade through galaxies and shoot pirates. Ian Bell has a lot of the games for the old system to play for free under emulation if you like that sort of thing. I much prefer Frontier, but a port of this could be fun.

Break

Been busy sorting my room out, so, no regular weekly update this week.We have swanky metal shelves put up, from Lidl's and everything that was in order isn't now. But it's done now and will have to take a day to sort everything out again.