Namco Fun City VS god and that

Yesterday I took a trip up town as it was nice out, and it never fails to surprise me how much strange stuff I find out and about.  For the most of the day I was round by  the Namco Centre now called Namco Fun City but will probably change next time I'm up there. Decided to come out at Southwark and head down that way via The Cut and see what we could find.  First of all there was a shop that sold nothing but sheet music so if you have a piano or guitar (other instruments available) and have a hankering for any music in sheet form then this will be your first port of call, its near Waterloo station if you are interested.  I finally found my way down to the river (its by the London Aquarium near County Hall) and I came across a plaque dedicated to those who lost their lives through VCJD (you may know it as BSE) on the wall opposite Big Ben.

Finally made my way into Namco Fun City or whatever it is now and had a go on a few cabs.  They still have the Temple Run infinite runner cab set up to dispense tickets (nearly everything dispenses tickets) and somehow its gained a Flappy Bird cab as well which to my knowledge is the only hardware left that its not been ported to (there are a ton of 8bit / 16bit ports including Colecovision and possibly Sharp X1).

The only other thing was playing a few games on the slot and understanding how a person could get addicted to them.  I got 2 7s due to activating a feature and was 1 nudge short and for the rest of the day was convinced it was all my fault and if I had one more coin I COULD get the bonus.  Luckily I was only £2 down but damn that was scary.

Walking around Soho some guy stopped me with a random don't kill him and points to the pavement.  There is a tiny rat hopping along, tail outstretched and acting for all the while like a little clockwork toy.  I know vermin aren't cute but damn it was endearing to see it hop about and its just like a cat toy.  Also managed to find a place that sells Jones Soda one of the best Cola's around, they had a panda pops style blue Bubblegum flavour but in a glass bottle and totally ace it was.  You don't see them much but their straight cola is definitely worth it too.

Yet more PC Engine stuff.

We've had more of a chance to play around with Ootake now, more specifically refinding something I saw from my childhood.

But first the usual reminiscence.

We may have told you about a place called Trading World that used to be in Bexleyheath in the early to mid nineties. It was a collection of small stalls and shops selling all manner of items. They had a few game stands there one that specialized in Amiga stuff (they had Mario baiting german platformer, Great Giana Sisters running at one time), and one dedicated to Console games with load of import games. Of the three games I remember them doing one was Super Ghouls 'n' Ghosts on the SNES(or its Super Fami incarnation Chomakaimura to be exact). The others were early hori shmup, Cyberlip for Neo-Geo and Marchen Maze which looked fucking impressive to my 12 year old eyes more used to the brown tinged hues of a C64.

Recently remembering this was a PC Engine game, we downloaded it and booted it up in Ootake. It still looks the part, even if the intro is entirely in Japanese, you can easily work out its based on Alice in Wonderland. Its by Namcot long before their change over to Namco and is based on an arcade game of the same name. Available for the Sharp X68000 also, its a middling vertical scrolling platformer, shooting game, complete with unsual enemies such as Tweedledum and a Mushroom smoking a fag (though we always thought it was the caterpillar which had the nicotine addiction in the original book). The premise is to make it to the end of the level and take down the boss Queen of Hearts.

The first level is Okashi land (i'e Sweetyland) and many of the enemies will try and push you over the edge in which case you lose one of you lives represented by a balloon. Make it to the end and you'll fight a boss, in this case an absolute git of a wizard who'll kill you stone dead in seconds flat.

We've yet to find if was localised for western systems, apparently its called Alice In Wonderland in western arcades and has an isometric viewpoint which the PC Engine lacks. We'll need to check if the X68000 does the same, but in any case the same can be said its barely average.

Anyway we don't have a scan of Marchen Maze but we do have a shoddy little ad from GameStuff.

Hullo Buster are you looking for a good time dearie.

Buster Bunny from Tiny Toons encounters (judging from the picutre) a Shemale Prostitute called Targa and offers 'her' his arse. And by arse we mean games. Apparently you can call for 'specials' too, we shudder to think what that could be.