Tiny Bobble

 There seems to be a new version of Bubble Bobble for Amiga computers out now.

Done by the demo group Abyss, it's a new version not based on a port from the ST. Mostly arcade perfect, it has more colours and added animation than the previous version, but sadly no extra rooms, so if you make it to level 20 without dying you'll not be rewarded. 

To be honest the original Amiga version of this is not bad, got it as a pirate ages ago, for my aunty and it seemed OK. Maybe I was spoiled by having the NES version back in the day (though that doesn't have any secret rooms either.) as that's the version I played the most. 

Its not as if there are any bad ports of Bubble Bobble either. most of the popular systems got a port of the original. With varying degrees of success. Only the Gameboy version is lousy, and that is due to the small screen.  

Rather than give you a review, (my Amiga has been dormant for the past 5 or so years, and haven't played around with Win UAE for about the same time either.), I'll post up a few links to where you can get stuff to play this below.

Anyway you can grab the ADF file from here along with links to Tiny Invaders and Tiny Galaga.

Also fans of fake micro console the Pico8 can play a version too, and that is found here.

Edit. Finally got WinUAE to play this, and from what brief poking its got, its not half bad. Hats off Abyss team.

Marks on Doors and the like.

 Number 27 of The Hardy boys adventure is the Mark on the Door. For all you fans of Mexico who couldn't get enough of The Aztec Warrior we have the boys go to Baja California and Sinaloa State in search of one Elmer Tremmer, who is mixed up in a stock fraud case.

The remake is more up to date with submarines and a bit of oil smuggling added to the mix, whereas the original text has none of that, just a lot of Mexican wilderness.

Like in Aztec, there is the old canard of eating cacti to stop dehydration, (it will not work for reasons explained below.) And one of their Indian captors gets put to sleep by eating a special cactus hidden in their lunch, (really no, a lot of puking and shitting is involved, especially as it's implied to be Peyote,) in order to escape. 

Talking of Indians, they are explicitly described as Tarahumaras in the original and of unknown tribal origin in the remake. They do most of the work for Vincenzo Cardillo, the real bad guy of the piece, and guard the Hardys when captured. There is some dignity to them even in the original, even if they speak with an accent. This is changed to more Spanish in italics in the remake with a little bit of broken English thrown in. 

There is also Yaqui an old Indian tracker, supplanted by a younger guy called Tico in the remake, In both stories they act as a guide although Yaqui seems to be much more taciturn than Tico is, who is much more matey with the Hardys in general.

Chet also puts in an appearance, upgraded to a full member of the team in the remake, where in the original he stays behind in Bayport.

You can grab either the original from here or the remake here. Judge for yourself which is the better story, 

Snooker.

 Been watching  the snooker on TV. It's the World Championships which are normally held mid April and coincide with the first may bank holiday.  

So far its been good semi finals, Rocket man Ronnie O Sullivan beating Mark Selby 17-16 in the first and Kyren Wilson beating Andy McGill by the same margin in the other. 

I had to postpone watching Perry Mason (on catchup) as this was truly an epic come back by Ronnie. Playing weird shots to unnerve his opponent, requiring the last 3 frames to win, and then putting in a break of 138 as a response and winning the next two to go through to the finals.

I didn't see the McGill  - Wilson conclusion and by all accounts it was also an epic final, but seeing as this blog goes out every Sunday, its currently halfway through the final, so I don't know how this will turn out. But I will keep you posted who wins.

EDIT Ronnie walked it winning 18-8.

Whatever Happened to Byuu

 Whatever happened to me. That is for those not interested in old television, a link to the theme tune to the Likely Lads. 

Apart from being the correct way to spell Byuu, it has no bearing on this post, except to pose the question, what ever happened to Byuu?.

My second or so post on here was about the MSU1 unit for the SNES, at the time, ten years or so ago a way in the emulator BSNES to simulate the failed CDROM add on that Sony was developing in the mid 90's for the SNES.  

The author Byuu, was someone I've been following or so for years on forums, a mercurial chap best known for his work on the Emulators BSNES and its all dancing follow up Higan. The former a cycle accurate SNES emulator and the latter a expanded out into a multitude of systems taking in N64 during lockdown and when I last saw on the twatter, preliminary PS1 emulation (only Ridge Racer played if I recall correctly.)

Then, nothing, a few name changes from Byuu, to Near and Higan got rebranded as Ares, then bang, he deleted the whole thing. His site remain up although relevant emulation parts are archived,

 Seems like he moved to Japan and retired from the scene, I knew of the first as he regularly posted food and stuff on his twatter from Tokyo and places, but until looking into this never knew he'd retired from the scene. 

As someone who cannot program in any capacity I do kinda think he was cool even though I never got half the things he put up. but that whole scan and document every US / Euro SNES game to check for inconsistencies are what got me into doing the UK Hardy boys scanning project. Something barely documented and with a few inconsistent PDFs lying around the net. I could do better and this was the inspiration needed.

Whatever you do, big guy, I hope you have fun, and enjoy your retirement.

Edit: Seem s like he showed up on the twatter again, pushing a new re translation of Bahamut Lagoon for the SNES, ironically one of the first fan translations I ever downloaded back in dial up era. 

He's still retired from the scene, and it seems Higan has gotten a ZX Spectrum core to it now, which is cool. My words still stand though, nice retirement dude, keep safe.

Double Edit: Terrible news, seems that Near has passed on due to pressure from Kiwifarms of all places. Seems like there was a suicide attempt and no one can get in touch with him. I hope for his sake that he is OK and that he just wants time away from twitter, and it's not real. 

But if it's true then. Fuck....

The Witchmaster's Key

A.K.A. We need to talk about the Witchmaster's key. 

Book 55 of the Hardy Boys mysteries and one of the last from the original canon of mysteries. It's one of what I like to call the tour type of Hardy boys mystery, where they get to tour a country for some spurious reason, Aztec Warrior, the last title I put up fits into this profile quite neatly as does this.

The downside is this, if you have any familiarity with the country they tour you'll know its taking some liberties with the geography and places.  

The main plot is that some articles relating to witchcraft have been stolen from a museum from an old friend of Fentons and they boys jet over to England (with some stops in Eire and the Isle of Man for good luck) to track them down.  They visit Stonehenge (which in some fit of irony, was in the news) and get involved with the locals, who seem to be keen on practising the old religion.

There are subplots about an artisans village (no, me either) being targeted by mysterious arsonist and some genealogy with a distant relation of the Hardys being a witch or so it seems. Both would have made better main stories than the witch museum thefts.

Norfolk doesn't really have moorland being much more a place of either dry Heath or broadlands wetland habitat. Had family in Suffolk which is to the south and can tell you whenever we ventured to the north coast it was flat lands of gorse, and reeds. No heather here.

Ironically there is an actual witch museum in Boscastle, Cornwall, which also linked back to the Isle Of Man. A place known for witches, and extensive Fairy lore as well. 

There is a trip to Soho, up London which makes it seem much more seedier than it is. I guess they went round the porn bit as the gay quarter and record shops have always to my eyes seen quite respectable. There aren't many tea shops there or blacksmiths, think bougie coffee places and a few clothes places that could conceivably be from around that time. 

It is mainly a rats nest of streets and without a good map you can lose your bearings quite easily. One thing the did have quite right was Medmenhams book shop which is probably a cover for Foyles up on Shaftesbury Avenue near the edge of Soho.

Finally, this is one of the last books we got here before Armada shut down. It does not have reference to the next mystery in the series (the Sting of The Scorpion) as it wasn't released yet here due to contractual reasons.