Some arcade hangovers

 We have had a nightmare journey to Folkestone today took two hours and stuck in traffic, next to a lorry going and some stop start bits down the M20 going home. It was OK there (Never been) but, fuck this am not waiting in traffic again. 

As an aside. this is a quick update. Mostly for two games I've seen back in Mallorca and never really noticed anywhere else. 

A Whack-a-Mole called Ghost Hunter, seems to be Spanish in origin. Some Engrish, but apart from that, crickets online.

Ghost Hunter

Next is a Japan cab called Dino Land 3. 

Some googling on Jim Breen's Japan Page, gets a Chinese translation of the Kanji / Hanzi on above coin part as Lottery Ticket Outlet. So this I'm guessing is some sort of ticket redemption machine where you win tickets and redeem them for prizes

A bit more searching gets you a ticket redemption mech by Yenox on BeGay. And a search for redemption game gets you Dino land a ball shooting game for kids. Not by Yenox who seem to do parts instead. 

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.

Aztec Warriors and that

Having a better week of it this time around, than last time, sky have our mini box up an running and we have a few more tapes brought home and have tackled the ones in the fake library book cases (If you have old videos you'll know what I mean.)

So far there is an opera taped from Channel 4 by my granddad and a bit of Gerald Durrell on Sky News from way back when, before it goes into Ken Russells Salome and Oscar Wilde.

This is not why you're here though. I've transcribed another book and this time its The Mystery Of the Aztec Warrior, the first in the series of Hardy boys books if you're from the UK. Americans can be content with the fact that the Tower Treasure is already up for you to read.

Thoughts and that.

So far an easy ride, replacing lost tildes from the N in Senor in spell check and adding a few hyphens and italics that are lost when they're scanned by whoever does it. Even better it seems to be based on the UK version as it has the Arctic Warrior at the end rather than the Haunted Fort.

It's not a bad introduction, basically the boys go looking for a guy mentioned in the will of the Brookes family and go to Mexico on an extended break to do this. There's even mention of using thread from Agaves and the old canard of getting water from Cacti in the desert to quench your thirst (see also The Mark on The Door for more on this). Me I'm already tackling the cluster fuck that is The Witchmaster's Key, expect it to be scathing.

Aztec Warrior can be found here.

Finally if you want derring do and the risk of life and limb and some classic arcade games, then this is a good read.

Islington and Wimbledon

Vhs mess continues and this time Virtualdub is playing nicely with all the sound synced up ready to go.  Tried a few more programs before coming back to Virtualdub.  Its spat out a 4gb file for about 4 mins of footage, after encoding we've got it down to 400mb as a MP4 file.  Anyway on with the show.

Two trips to places I've been but once before.  First one was to Wimbledon home of the tennis and more importantly terminus of both the District line and the tram. Bit of a weird thing going on here as I seemed to pick up a lot of  DJ Sneak stuff including his Fabric live mix and a few albums, ended up with about 5 albums and mixes by the end which was cool.

The second is more important  than that. We were lured back to Angel, with the promise of free stuff out the front of Flashback Records. Of course it wasn't free, but was reasonably priced and got a few more good things, including Black Devil. Kid606 CDs and a few funk / Nitzer Ebb singles. 

Islington itself still is a  massive lefty ponce hole, we spotted one cunt with a man bun and assorted pricks in a pub so its come as a shock to find that we found a new arcade.

Opposite Angel tube station.

Almost walked past this, only seeing the words Tekken out the corner of my eye forced me to stop and then seeing a pool table almost made me walk on.  Persevere though and you'll come to the good stuff.  A warning there is no shmups at present but there is a few good things there to tempt you.

They have a list here for the impatient but I can say it leans heavily on the dancing genre with only a SF4 for the beat em up crowd. 

The interesting stuff is of course the visual Pinball cab they have displaying some sort of Frankenstein pin table. Looking around there were a few more cabs to choose from but I hope they were better quality than that.

Which brings us to the two puzzle games, Puzzle Bobble which is always a blast, and Tetris Grandmaster the Terror Instinct. 

Yeah that one,  even easy is no picnic, and this guy's playing on master.  Not pictured, but definitely included is a Sakura mode where you clear glowing gems by making lines.  I wonder if the Homebrew DS version is still around.

Paignton

Spent a nice week down at Paignton in Devon.  We had good weather for a change as its normally changeable here in September, no record heatwave but it wasn't cold either and no storm on the friday as predicted which is a bonus. 

Its part of the south Devon coast and has some stunning sandy beaches along with rock pools when the tide goes out.  I'll warn you that the sea fair races in here, case in point we were gone about 20 minutes and what was a large pool with a sandbar became almost entirely under water and this was just yards from the sea front.  Also another good thing is that dogs were allowed on the beach in certain areas, so if you want to watch dogs chasing balls, digging in the sand and racing around then your needs are accommodated for.  

Hot digging dog

Also there were a load of gulls here, including the bully gull or Herring Gull as its more usually known.  We get them on the river at home along with Black Headed Gull and Greater or Lesser Black Backed Gulls, but here its just the Herring gull.  Mostly 1st season chicks, with a few adults getting their winter plumage which threw me for a bit as I've only ever seen them with pure white heads.

Gull second winter?

There's a great guide telling you what the various stages in a Herring Gull's life is here.  Apart from the gulls there were crows who seemed to be moulting as they looked ratty and dull. 

We did a few trips out down to a few places including Torquay, Paignton itself and Brixham.   First of all Brixham.  A lovely place where I stayed 30 years or so ago, can remember the all saints church and its impressive clock and that it played abide with me.  Turns out that it didn't but the vicar who wrote it lived there instead.  I ain't Christian no more, but its still one impressive building and the clock was as I remember it, black and imposing, and plays the half and quarter hours, sadly didn't hear it on the hour as I was back in the car then.

Another warning you'll get no phone signal in the town itself, just a heads up if you have a life and that.  Also they have a proper mental flogging the big issue which is worth the price of admission alone.

Torquay.

If its known for anything its the English Riviera and Fawlty Towers, we didn't find Basil's famous guest house although there was a Corbyn hotel presumably full of lefty scum.  Torquay itself is not bad but full of what can only be described as future Jeremy Kyle contestants, and tramps, its got a lot going for it including an impressive array of charity shops, but like I said tramp central.

Paignton.

Finally Paignton.  Rather reminds me of Salou in a way, both have rail lines that cut through the town and both have an impressive sea front.  Though Paignton reminds me more of Lowestoft here. We also have a few arcades though none have any classic coin ops and its all penny falls and slots.  I did however find 2 new pachislots to add to the list of places that have them displayed in the windows.

Neo Planett

Neo Pulsar

Both are by Yamasa and both are stuck in the window, apart from that they did the usual suspects, rainbow riches and Deal or No Deal so if being stared at by a bank of Noel Edmonds is your thing go for it.
 All in all though an excellent holiday. I'll leave you with the train.

Choo choo.

Bad luck and trouble and Bros.

We have been unlucky of late, not only a few things not turning out well, a found Xbox 360 turning out to have about a billion faults (to be fair its an Xbox 360 and a launch model at that as far as I'm concerned they're all fucked) and a loss of a bag this weekend while out record hunting containing some great stuff from Sounds Of The Universe Records.

Will have to look to see if there are tracks/ downloads for Jared Wilson Ghost Miners 2 and Patrick Cowley's Muscle Up a compilation of tracks from Fox Videos gay porno series.  Juno has snips of 6+7 and Youtube has 8 + 9.  Muscle up may be more problematic as they say nowadays though there should be more stuff coming out as its recently released. 

Pretty sure I lost it either in the arcade on Wardour street or the Japan Center its the only two places I really set my bags down. The time I realised it had gone was on the tube and couldn't really go back to check which was a cunt and a half. 

On the other hand I have a few oddities from Camden such as some old obscure techno (mainly Cari Lekebusch) and 18 minutes of Bros.  Yes Bros.

Matt and Luke Goss were the equivalent of One Direction for 80's kids although slightly less punchable then Harry Styles and co, they were still not the wisest thing for a boy to like.  So why did I pick this up, first of all of all the records I have of this they seem to be single sided and this has music on both sides so a bit of detective work is required, oh and Shep Pettibone is on edit duties so this shouldn't be too harsh on the old ears. 

Sort of remember Bros fans had this thing of putting Grolsch bottle tops on their shoes a bit pointless but there you go, incidentally they are now film stars and have a residency in Vegas which is nice.

Playbubblun.

We have a few bits and pieces that are strangely connected to each other in this round up so without further ado I'll begin.

Bubble Bobble Stuff.

If you've been browsing the front page we've added a link to Kimimi's Site that should hopefully work.  Forgot all about Kimimi's work on obscure games and this takes the cake for great new stuff.  Epoch are releasing some old coin ops in LCD game format and some of the first games are Fantasy Zone from Sega and Bubble Bobble from Taito.  Not quite sure how this is going to work in reality but the link above will let you see a brief clip with the iconic music and some gameplay which is cool.

Even better is a strange cheat mode that was uncovered in the X68000 version that will let you play a super tough version of the game but reskinned to look like odd shoot 'em up Syvalion.  Haven't actually got this to work in X68K highspeed yet (and there isn't really any updated X68000 emulators apart from MESS / MAME). Which is a shame as I always considered it to be Japans answer to the Amiga.

More info on the X68000 here. 

Playbore

I'm not kidding its fucking tedious.

If you haven't already heard, Playboy (the worlds dullest sex mag) is cutting out the nudes as, I quote, the world and his dog can see nudity and more online for free. The current owners want to turn it into a joyless version of Maxim but with "quality writing".

When growing up this was the one magazine that you didn't want to find under the hedge shredded up, as it was 95% article and very little tit and bum, and what you did see tended to be a lot blonde and very much silicone packed.  Can remember one especially grim issue with Sandra Bernhard from Hudson Hawk posing nude.

A shame as I always wanted to see a magazine like Loaded, do a Playboy and go the other way and show full nudity, especially if its 90's Loaded with Howard Hughes and the original prototype TV go home from Charlie Brooker.  They had some great writing then and some funny cartoons from Modern toss, Playboy never made me laugh.  Ever.

Put it this way if Playboy was a:
*game magazine they'd be the modern incarnation of Edge.
* rock 'n Roll they'd be Coldplay.
* sitcom they'd be Miranda.
* DJ they would be David Guetta
*football team they would be West brom.
*food it would be brown bread.

You get the idea.

As you've already had the glamour shots (see picture) I'll leave you with some quality articles to read.

The rise of anti Semitism in the left.
Van Nuys porn capital of the world.

Devon Stuff

We are back from Devon now, I didn't update while I was out there as to be honest phone reception was patchy at best.  They had Wifi in the main building but it was slow and apart from check selected websites and Facebook thats all you could do.

Pretty ain't it.

Stayed in a chalet outside of Ilfracombe on the North Devon Coast, a reasonably nice place but had a purgatory version of Freeview where you can only get the 5 main channels and their digital off shoots, kinda wished they had something non BBC to watch, especially as their news is dire, highlight was seeing them interview ancient apocalypse author Graham Hancock on breakfast telly.   The lowlights are many but largely biased immigration reporting is probably the worst I've seen.  This includes, hand wringing, a charity song, some more hand wringing and nary a dissenting voice about the logistics of  housing 30,000 extra blokes and its largely blokes from the line up I saw.

Apart from the TV, and the nice weather which was out of my hands, our resort wasn't bad. It had a clubhouse / pub / reception area,  that hosted an arcade, a few slots as well as a stage area which had some pretty young ladies dancing with a giant rabbit whenever we popped in for dinner.

Not a great shot.

They also did a quiz (would have aced it if I'd of taken part) that in true Dale Winton fashion the host was several shades thicker than the audience.  She pronounced the Suez canal as the Seuss canal which gave a wonderful image of it being built by the Cat in The Hat. Also didn't know that lignite referred to wood.
Our arcade was quite nice actually, nothing for me ironically, but there were a few interesting cabs to look at, including a big rocketship ride with a built in screen, and a few old Sega cabs, apart for an obligatory House of the Dead included a Dinosaur King and a Love and Berry in shin high cabinets.  Kicking myself that it was always too busy to grab a photo of these.  Also it seems that Archer Maclean's Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker is now a quiz game.  Didn't actually get to play this either but it was part of a quiz terminal along with a few other pub staples and that.

Ilfracombe is nice, with a few good gardens and an impressive Strawberry Tree in the car park and a strange theatre with its reactor like acoustic domes.  They had a good line up of shops including an independent record shop and a few general store type things, the harbour had a sculpture of a vivisected pregnant woman by Damien Hirst, but the natural landscape with much more stunning (see top picture).  If you are into geology then there is some pretty cool looking rock strata out there which makes for excellent photos. Also a nice local museum, we like a nice museum.

Barnstaple, is the archetypal big town, nicely laid out and can recommend the Pannier Center, a covered market in the heart of town for antique stuff (wednesdays) and general market stuff (every other day).  Plenty of charity shops and free disabled parking made me quite impressed with it.

pannier center.

Lynton and Lynmouth.

Little town / village further along the coast with a working funicular railway that transports you up and down the cliff edge between the two towns.  Lots of poky shops and steep walks down to places here, so not really those who can't walk far.  Also dogs, loads and loads of dogs, dogs in shops, dogs on the street and dogs on the cliff railway, if you like dogs then there are plenty here for you.

Where's my lead go?

Combe Martin. Boasts the longest high street in the UK, 90 percent of this is made up of houses with the odd shop thrown in along its length, there are more down by the beach but not much.  Quite picturesque.

Diddly Dogber.

That is all.

They sound cool but are probably a rock band.

Junk Tour 2015

Been revisiting some old haunts with a brief trip to Walthamstow and the West End, with a feast of CD's and vinyl that didn't disappoint.  I was initially going to postpone this trip for next weeks Chinese new year, but its also a club night on the wednesday and I would rather conserve my ticket.  So decided to go out and see if I could get at least the Persona 5 issue of  Famitsu as well as a poke around some old haunts.

First of all Walthamstow doesn't change (except that there is now a whacking great Odeon cinema being built at the end of the market) its still a melting pot of every kind of race and culture and its charity shops still come up trumps when it comes to music. CD wise alone I picked up Steel Erector By Jodey Kendrick and a Cat Power CD (has Crossbones Style) which is worth the price I paid alone.
The downside is Volcano! paperwork which is OK if you really like pisspoor indie pop but as I don't its going straight back.  A few vinyl releases of note is a Double Trouble Megamix with Renegade Soundwave mixes on the flip side should be good and a Calypso / Soca release called Bumsy (Val Adams) which is a really funny word.

Decided  to go up town and as there wasn't a bus direct decided to go via the tube and as I boarded the train I noticed a beanie hat.  Decided to grab this as I've grown attached to the one I have at work and as its got no branding will be ideal to wear out.  I didn't quite get my Persona 5 issue of  Famitsu, it was a toss up between a SaGa anniversary issue or one with new details on Disgaea 5 both of which are my absolute faves.   Walking down by the old Leisure Casino site I saw anonymous out protesting against Scientology, they had a sign out saying that Scientology is bad mmmkay which was cool.

Also as a last resort tried to find the manga shop I saw once (and was convinced it's some kind of  Brigadoon) stumbled upon a brand new arcade deep in the gay heart of Soho. Its called Las Vegas Casino and while upstairs has a few Pin tables didn't realize that there was a proper arcade downstairs.  Spent a few credits on Gunbird 2 and Espgaluda as well as noting that Codemasters (the Dizzy people) have an arcade game out.  Its Called GRID and its published by Sega and comes in a massive car cab. Personally I'd have gone for a cocktail cab version of  Fast Food but there you go.

Jug Mon.

This is a weird one and no mistake.  We updated Final Burn Alpha, and heard in the comments that the SH3 series of Cave Arcade games maybe playable soon, and as Casino Leisure had reopened as a miserable slot hall would be a good way to reacquaint myself with Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu and Mushihimesama.

On a whim I checked out Cave's Wikipedia file and it had some intriguing bits under the mobile setting.  Previously they've ported their bullet hell shmups to IPhone mainly with a few going to Android, so seeing a few new entries for stuff like Don Paccin and "Jagura x Monster" piqued the old interest.

Don Paccin I found easily, it seems to be, from the clips on Youtube,  some sort of episodic shmup, that reminds me a bit of Muchi Muchi Pork but half as interesting.  "Jagura x Monster" well that's anyone's guess and decided to flip to the Japanese Cave page to see how it was rendered in Kana.  Turns out its Juggler vs Monster part of Kitai Corp's long running Pachi slot series and is some sort of RPG.  If its known for anything its the secret mode from the Juggler DS games where you had to swipe a load of rhinoceroses with your stylus in a set time, so to see that its now a Japanese only slot machine based RPG is mental and possibly only available on phone.

Maybe if this ever gets funded I'll have to download this to see what all the fuss is about, but so far I'll have to make do with some Youtube vids.

Hyper Japan

Hyper Japan was on over the weekend if you didn't know, at Earls Court centre. For those not in the know this is a celebration of Japanese culture and otaku pursuits, think manga, anime, gaming and Japanese and you'd be right.  I decided to have a look after mum saw the address on an ad on the tube and wrote it down for us.  So this is my rather poor round up on the whole thing.

Paying my £15 on the door to get in and its a little overwhelming as its the whole ground floor dedicated to everything.  Big stand out stalls are Namco Bandai with a bank of PS3's dedicated to showcasing Tales of Xillia 2 and some One Piece game.  Tales turned out to be OK with the demo having you explore the basement of some bastard hydroponic centre for an imprisoned goddess or something, to be honest who judges an RPG on 10 minutes of play.  Across the way Nintendo had some stalls out promoting Wii U and Tomodachi Life and Yoshi's Woolly World and actually had a go on a new Harvest Moon spin off which I believe was called Hometown Story* (didn't think much of that).

Apart from games there were about a billion more stalls ranging from weapons (no really actual Katana) to a celebration of Sake.  They had a small area for people flogging dojinshi, homely Tumblrettes with self published books and manga of varying quality, from dull western (Manglo I call it, think rubbish like Totally Spies that try too hard to look Japanese but never capture the spirit) to the real deal in all its myriad styles.

There were a load of cosplayers too, and for every bloke in shorts with hairy legs and Sailor Moon with a nose ring (no really), there were several who looked boss.  Everyone deserved a medal as it was murderously hot out, especially the furry guy.
My favourite bits were a small arcade section with a Donkey Kong, PacMan and Ikaruga.  I never got a chance to play Ikaruga as there was some old dude content to freeplay his way to the end, never switching colours, and just continuing over and over when he died (which was often).  I've probably forgotten plenty of stuff (I came home with a Disgaea Artbook and a wobbly weedle cat) more including a table flogging Godzilla toys and Hentai Manga which was awesome.

I decided to make my way down to the end of street and look around Brompton Street Cemetery, which is marvellously overgrown, and was full of bathing crows and Gothic grave architecture, this must look stunning when the weather is cold and grey.
I decided to take the train home and popped out at Woolwich to see some people wanting Biafra to be a proper state, it sounded like they were banging a saucepan and yelling about jesus which sounds about right for Woolwich.

Goldeneye and SFII on portable hell yeah.

Pac n Pal.

It was O.K. I suppose.

A excerpt from the absolutely barking wall of manga.

Carue from One Piece according to Google.

From Brompton Road Cemetery, not the newscaster.

*edit it turned out to be Fantasy Life instead, possibly another that will warrant an extended play. Also a Gamecentral reader posted his version of a trip there too, he got to play a lot more Nintendo stuff then me.

Holiday

You were supposed to get a post detailing my current hiatus before leaving for Spain.  

We went to Salou if you are wondering, a place called the Hotel Belvedere a charming 3 star place off of the main strip.  I had previously been to Salou in 2011 but this was sort of a return trip further down the coast.  What you really want to know is if its changed much and if there was any other weirdness to go with it.

1. The Russians have taken over, the women either homely sorts, dark haired slavs quite fit in the way or impossibly tall hard faced blondes, the guys tall with mullets and an odd dress sense or old fat guys in speedos. One of the best things I saw but regret taking a photo of was a little girl in a cat dress that had the immortal words Do you wanna fuck on it.  I'm guessing they do not know English enough to know how poor taste / bloody funny it was, but it had me laughing for a good 5 minutes.

2. They have a really nice open area for walking at the back of the hotel, next to the railway line. Its supposed to be for dog walkers and the like but if you like nature there was some cool stuff there.  I saw a trail of ants scavenging on the corpse of an Oil Beetle, and a load of rabbits.  It eventually led onto Port Aventura water park which looked really run down and hardly busy.  I don't much like rides and such so didn't go in.

3. The pinball arcades are still there and this time managed to get film of the little robots moving at the play park arcade.  The one with Furoko Wars seems to have closed down and have now idea where it was.  They still have Scared Stiff, Red and Teds Road trip with their creepy talking heads and Ripleys Believe it or not, and they've added Gottliebs Teed Off which was awesome and along with No Good Gofers is one of the pins I really wanted to play.

4. So many dogs and cats. They had stray kittens in the rocks up on the cliffs and regular moggies down by the harbour, we saw a big tabby being fed a sausage by an old German lady, his ginger friend was clearly unimpressed as he prefers ham.  Dog wise lots of little dogs, and a few surprising things.  A big German Shepherd type thing with a massive shaggy coat was the highlight along with a medium sized howl (Spaniel) lapping up some water from from a fountain.

5. Not so much racism here they still had their fair share of swastikas sprayed up but no little old ladies comparing their tans with the African guys selling watches and perfumes on the street.  On the other hand the bar hawkers are out of control including northern blokes and unknown foreign ladies flogging restaurants and bars.  Strangest of the lot was a guy who wanted to rate his advert for a boat party.

Stay tuned next time as I'll be detailing TV to you including the demise of UN1 Ukraine News 1.

POSTSCRIPT.

I was supposed to add this as well.  Mogura Kensei has been dumped and added to mame according to Haze.  I'm sure this came from an old arcade in Margate, as I saw this 9 years back on a trip there one bank holiday.  It was in pretty poor condition then (it looked like they took a lump hammer to the moles you bashed, as every Bison was totally fucked) but crucially still worked.

Chinese New Year.

we decided to take a trip uptown to Chinatown and see what the year of the Horse would bring, seeing as its Chinese new year. Also we would take in the Kings road to see what they had to offer in our first uptown junk tour of the new year.

First of all we had to get there, and we may do the whole thing via Oyster card in future as a one day travelcard is now £8.90 and oyster has a daily cap.  And there would be more unpleasantness in store for me.

Unthinkingly I didn't charge my camera so didn't get too many shots and almost none at all of the new year festivities. I'll post some of what I did at the end as it was worth it but you can curse my stupidity for most of this stuff.

Continuing on with my journey, I made it to Sloane Square station without much hassle, pro tip if you want to get back to the West End from here take the next stop to Victoria and change for the Victoria Line and go to  Green Park. You can either exit from there and walk or have the choice of Jubilee or Piccadilly Lines to take you to Bond Street or Leicester Square.

Kings Road then, mostly its unsufferably posh. They have a Waitrose and a Marks & Spencer and a load of boutique shops where if you have to ask the price you can't afford it. I had memories that they had an HMV but nobody makes CDs anymore so it went bust (more on this later).  They had a nice little art gallery specializing in dog prints and watercolours.  I suspect they had other stuff but they wanted £300 for a dog made out of what seems like a bent paper clip stuck on canvas, they had a nice shaggy dog painting but most of the stuff there I could do just as well.

Putting aside all thoughts of dogs, we decided to check out a small mall on the other side of the street, and came across what seems to be a ghetto for the regular high street.  It didn't have a Poundland but it did have a massive branch of the YMCA charity shop (over two floors people) and a mobile phone accessory shop. we got a book in YMCA which is possibly the most inaccurate work on exotic flowers, not only weirdly translated from Italian, but having different pictures on occasion the globe thistle Echinops is represented by a photo of a Chrysanthemum.

Confident that I had seen enough of the Kings road and its utter cunts in sports cars (too noisy), I decided to explore the west end.

Making my way through to Piccadilly we found that the Japan Centre had moved from Regents Street to a place on Shaftsbury avenue.  It seems much smaller now and is entirely upstairs.  Their magazine choice seems smaller too, no Famitsu to pick up but they did have some pricey artbooks on Persona 4 Animation.
we got a nice blueberry Capri Sun jelly drink that was like drinking the jam bit from a Muller Fruit Corner.

Anyway we made our way to the Trocadero and was amazed that they had a small arcade there in the basement.  Its not a patch on the old Leisure Casino (now fruit machine only) but it rivals the original Troc for arcade games.  I.E. it has a load of big showy ride style arcade cabs like Deadstone pirates and Time Crisis, if you like that sort of thing then go ahead. There was some good stuff there, they had a few coin pushers such as X Quacker where I won a manky keyring, and Willie Wheels a driving game aimed at under 5's judging by the size of the cab.

The time I made my way out it was time to hit China town and see what they had to offer by way of entertainment and I wasn't disappointed.  They had the streets closed off and lion dancers complete with drum group at the back and by that time my camera decided to die on me so from this point on there are no photos.

It was crowded and noisy what with the drums, but the lion dancing was amazing as they snaked their way down through the streets and up to the various stores. They had a black lion as well as a yellow lion dancing and the percussion was rather cool.  Seeing enough I decided to look down Oxford street and go through the massively respectable Old Compton Street (the Gay part of town is always well presented) home.

Could have seen Michael Rosen talk about the holocaust at the socialist bookshop but to be honest I'd rather see a nice YTP of him instead. He's got a twitter account here if you want to talk to him, keep it civil and not quote bits of old poops especially stuff like Babyshitter.  Oh yeah HMV is closed, that massive flagship store on Oxford street is now boarded up and looks rather forlorn, no one bought their CDs at massive mark up so now all we have is the Charity shops keeping physical media alive. With that in mind and a short trip to Phonica for a nice compilation on CD we decided to call it a day and go home.

  photos to follow.

Willie Wheels, Incidentally that steering wheel is knee high.

Setting up for lion dancing.

LCD Malfunction at the troc.

Konami Round Up.

This is a round up of all things Konami. There may be some other stuff in here mainly about the end of WOS (main site up but forums now closed for those interested) and Jim Nick Nick Davidson but damn there is a lot of Konami stuff here to deal with.

First up there are a few translations to deal with, mainly Suikoden Spin offs, so if you have a hankering for Suikogaiden 1 and 2 on the PS1 then your prayers have been answered. 

These are side stories from the original PS1 Suikoden games and play out like a visual novel rather than the RPGs you would be familiar with.  A much better description and a download can be found here.

Next is a translation of Suikoden Card stories a GBA version of a physical card game from Konami (its not just Yugioh stuff they do).  They say its not as polished as the two visual novels above but still good enough to get a release.

Finally there is a translation out for Konamis "Ladyius" shooting game Otomedius, Gradius in skirts if you will, for the arcade.  The site there is good for both general information on all of Konamis Gradius games and the patch itself.  Incidentally this was the first in a week of Konami Kracks and what set the idea off originally.  I really didn't know what sort of hardware it ran on, but it seems that its some sort of PC equivalent like Taitos Type X hardware.   If you get it working the forums there have a massive compatibility thread, to help you along.

Jim Davidson Still Unfunny.

In other news Jim Nick Nick Davidson moans that Ade Edmonson is smug and his wife (Jennifer Saunders) is funnier than him after winning Masterchef.

Put it this way what would you rather have Bottom, Filthy Rich and Catflap and The Young Ones all proper laugh out loud funny shows with Ade Edmonson in.

Or Jim Davidson doing his bloody Chalky White impression on Big Break.

I rest my case.

Bubble Symphony Proto

Before we get onto the main moan of the week, I'd like to spend a bit of time discussing this which turned up in a box of old jamma boards. It as the title suggests is a proto version of Bubble symphony, which I first got to play on Taitos Arcade legends for PC, (PS2 not having this for somne reason).   Even though I much prefer the follow up Bubble Memories, this version actually looks the bomb being much closer to Bubble Bobble than the world spanning rework we eventually got.

Incidentally that was the high point of my day, mostly I've been wrestling with something ordered online, first up an Icydock Harddrive dock that spontaneously combusted for no good reason, yeah we got our money back on it as well, and a Video tape snaffler from Honestech.

Most of the time its been driving me nuts due to a combination of video and problems with the software, largely it not recording anything and when it accepts a stream its largely static.  Now I'm pretty sure there are other ways of using the hardware so it doesn't go through honestechs software, which on expert is remarkably informative, but so far have drawn a blank, we have another vcr to test and if push comes to shove I've already installed the software on my old PC to see if thats the problem.  If you do make it though, I have tapes worth of Porn memories to be loaded up onto youtube. 

Looking through I have a few animes Kishin Heidan and Gunbuster (few episodes missing).  A load of Pokemon lifted from Sky back in the 90's and a few It'll be alright on the nights as well as some junk kung fu and a something tedious from Hokushin.

Atlus, Mitchell and More

Hello its been quite a while since I've added a round up of stuff but there is so much to talk about that its unreal (bro). 

Cousins on facebook.

You may have heard me talk about my cousins here and that, often in exalted tones, that we share a lot in common and they're gifted, but that really is just the girls.  In reality my cousins had 4 kids each and the majority of them are sons.  I'm not saying that they are all unpromising dullards or junior thugs, if I'm going by facebook posts (and really you shouldn't go by facebook posts) then damn I thought we were smarter than this. 

It all stemmed from monday going through my pictures and finding some comments I'd missed by my cousins eldest.  He wasn't a mate so we did the honourable thing and sent a request, only for him to reply who are you are you gay?.  The rest descended into cavespeak / textspeak which I'm pretty sure is untranslatable.
So we gave him the heads up in words he could understand, i.e. your mum was my cousin, and your nan was my mums sister.   I got a request but with the words I still don't know who you are.   Thick cunt.

Freecorder.

For sheer completeness we have a video review now up on youtube, Short version for those with tiny attention spans, if you have an offline PC (say an old XP box you don't use) its still probably not worth the hassle of downloading.
You can watch it here in all its silent glory.

Double Wings.

Thanks to haze this bizarre little Raidenesque shmup is now (more) playable in MAME.  Why does this get a mention here, because it was one of the first things I ever played in a pub.  I was 17 and along with several 6th form mates we used to go out on a saturday night to the Director General pub.  After a few, we had some cash to play the few cabs they had there, including this with its toucan in a flying helmet  a gambling version of tetris and an Addams family pinball (the greatest pin of all time).  I'd long forgotten about it untill I saw it up on there in all its emulated glory.

Oh and finally in this highly schizophrenic post how about a list of all? the mobile phone game spin offs of the series.

10000 and 1 Views.

Well that was amazing we've just come back from a nice holiday in Pineda De Mar (Nice Informative Spanish Link here) and was quite amazed that we've reached the 10000 views mark. Congratulations to all that have visited and heres to ten thousand more.

On sadder note it seems that the Casino Leisure arcade on Goodge street has finished its remodelling into a slot arcade, theres fuck all to recommend here its all slots and its now called crystal casino.  Truly sad and feels like the end of an era.

Holiday.

This is a round up of a few trips out on holiday and a few bits and pieces of interest.  First up is the garden tour in Blanes and nearby Lloret De Mar.

This is a lot better signposted than the Botanicactus trip I undertook last year and there will be no samaritans this time.  Taking advantage of excellent train links (theres a RENFE line running right by the beach) we could take the train in style to Blanes and catch a connecting bus to either Lloret de mar or Blanes.  First up is the Marimurtra gardens in Blanes. 

Marimurtra

This is situated on a steep climb at the top of the cliffs overlooking the harbour, if you can walk it then its worth it but less fitter people can take the Garden bus up (we did this in Lloret). Once at the top though the views are excellent, taking in the harbour and various gulls nesting on the flat rooves, well worth a slow walk up.  The gardens are 6 euro to get in and you get an extra 2 for 1 tickets for other gardens at  Lloret once you are up there though its worth it.  Cactus fans will be overjoyed, there is an extensive macronesian flora as well as shorter sections on South Africa and the Americas.  Stuff was well grown and was at least correctly named. They had other stuff including a small cafe and a cracking Magnolia in flower that drew all the bees.  Overall 7/10

Marimurtra Map

Tuberose at Marimurtra

 Lloret De Mar.

This was at a later date and we took full advantage of the garden bus this time.  Its about a mile outside Lloret the two gardens we were visiting and if you make you way down to the harbour the stop you want is just outside the tourist office / museum.  It'll cost you 10 euro for this trip as this is both a joint day pass bus ticket / garden pass giving you free entry to one garden and half price to another.  Oh and antother thing get there early or be prepared to make a day of it as the bus takes an obligitary siesta at 1pm and doesn't resume till 4pm.  We walked back and can appreciate how far this is of the beaten track (you'll never find them without the bus even though they are well signposted) but for now here are the two gardens.

Jardin de Santa Clotilde

In a cactaceous departure this is a much more traditional garden complete with cypresses and formal planting.  We thought it was either the grounds to a religious order or a large manor house / Hacienda, but it turns out the gardens are a memorial to the wife of the owner.  They had largely formal planting and edging, complete with some stunning views framed by mature trees it was remarkably cool and clear.  Much more italiante in style like something from Piedmont or Tuscany.  It costs 5 euros to get in, but you normally get this one free from the bus / garden ticket combo.
Overall 6/10

Look down to the Sea.

Pinya de Rosa

This was the final stop on the tour and was the cheapest to enter at 4 Euros which we got in half price.
This was the most oddest and a polar opposite to Santa Clotilde, a pure cactus garden complete with hand printed leaflet and blazing sunshine.  I felt it was on its last legs or at least in terminal decline, and if you ever went to the cactus garden on Tenerife outside Los Christianos,  then it feels like that.  What they had was quite lovely though and its largely stands of Cereus, Cleistocactus and other tall columnar types as well as majoring in tall cacti  they had much more to see including a lot of Opuntias in flower.  Warning a lot of the names are outdated or just switched around, however its a slight niggle and there are many opportunities for great photos.  They have an area with peacocks and at the very bottom a large pond, shaded and with fish and dragonflies. 
Overall 7/10

This was nice.

Opuntias at Pinya de Rosa

The Asocial network games.

 Before we start Sundays sermon, Dr A has a review of Blazes NEO GEO X and it is as disappointing as it sounds.

You can continue now.

This is a follow on from this, on notorious shillfest Real Racing 3, a game that requires you to spend to tune up after every race and freemium gaming where your only real cause is to pay to win.
  
We play a few games on facebook namely Farmville2 and Candy Crush Saga.  The first needs no introduction, its a farming game from Zynga, kinda like a dumbed down Harvest moon but with pay to play items, the other is a rather insidious Bejewelled clone that relies on lives and levels, and pretty harsh unlocks.

Zynga of course are well known for this stunt, want some extra fripperies or in my case a Yucca tree and they'll happily sell it to you (we didn't buy of course) cheap, so long as you have enough rupees (or farmbucks).  None of these things they sell are essential by the way these extra cows and ornaments are not needed to progress just to give variety and make the place look nice, and a few more XP to level up.  

Candy crush saga on the other hand is evil, a Bejewelled clone that is not only very good but also a complete shill, requiring either pay to use unlocked items or real cash to progress past a certain point.  I've always hated that either paying for freemium content or social networking stuff that penalises the friendless (and lets face it I'm a loner and proud).  There are of course people who will pay up for stuff as well as those with massive rosters of friends to call on to help unlock certain stuff, I'm lucky relying on Farmville community members to grab stuff for me and my cousin to help out with the posting stuff (occasionally).  But it still comes down to this, if you're a loner, you really aren't going to like freemium social networking stuff.

Even worse is that freemium relies on In App Purchasing (why is nothing a program anymore) to play to win.  That leaderboard top spot should be earned by skill not by how rich you are(n't).  

I would love to see a game where pay to play is penalised, if this is truly the new arcade then you should play by arcade rules.  Old Capcom games used to add a number in the unit columns of your score to show how many times you continued (SNES Streetfighter 2 is a prime example) maybe a separate hi score table for those who pay and a proper one with unlockable in game currency for those who play normally and get above a certain score (maybe beating the initial in game Hi score or top spot).
 
I would also love to see a game where all the IAP purchasing was either unnecessary or rigged in some way.  Take for instance an RPG where a sword bought in game will leech your XP to use or in exteme cases not allow you to level up for at least 2 months after purchase (they love the timer unlocks freemium so lets at least have some fun with it).  Or in candy crush's case those special items that work but do not record your score and use up a life to trigger.  
 Or to put it another way If you pay to play you're a sucker.

We're saying our market is suckers — we're going to cast a net that catches as many mentally ill people as we can!"
Nik Davidson Amazon.

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.