Ports 2: the legend of Curlys Wurly.

Here is part 2 of our ports special and with a slight apology, there was one game from the list last time that we do recall.  And that is...

Viz NES, Megadrive.

We were big fans of the comic back then, with Roger Irrelavant, Finbarr Saunders and Johnny Fartpants as my favourites along with whatever nonsense Davey Jones came up with (bum faced vibrating goats and snail shaped tea rooms with massive tits solving mysteries were just some of these).  Incidentally in 1990 Virgin who had the Sega license then, released a Viz game a half hearted track and field game which let you play as Johnny Fartpants, Buster Gonad and Biffa Bacon.  Coming on two tapes with separate minigames to build up your respective powers (joystick waggling mainly) and a main road race game through Fulchester, commented by Roger Mellie the man on the Telly.  We think it would be the perfect fit for either Megadrive or the NES (as a bootleg due to swears).

SNES.

As a natural successor to the NES, we got our Snes from Currys in Charlton back in 1992.   Now completely fucked due to excessive adaptor and Super Gameboy use, it provided us with several man hours of goodness due to the limited run of RPGS released here and a vociferous support from the likes of SuperPlay magazine.

Suikoden.

This one is a little contentious as what we are asking for is a port of the PSone version.  This was really odd and came out early in the PSones life so everything looks so primitive.  We have often looked at it as a souped up version from a cancelled SNES game. I suppose if it ever went ahead it would have to use the MSU1 expansion to handle cutscenes and audio and compression for the main game data.

Speedball 2 Brutal deluxe.

Another beloved in Europe game, this one a violent take on football and while I've sadly never played it, this has been remade for both XBLA and GBA it could be easily done for the SNES.  No fancy mode7 or any tricks just deliver a solid port.

Rainbow Islands
A port of the sublime Amiga version with the extra levels put back.

Sega Saturn / PS1
Had a PS1 as my follow up to the SNES as a Christmas present with Resident Evil, Tekken 3 and FF7 ( remade for the Famicom of all things) so enjoyed these immensely.  Theres not many games that I would like to see remade for PS1 most of what I have is old arcade stuff mainly for Saturn, so here goes.

Bubble Memories Sega Saturn / PS1

Virgin interactive were comissioned to make Bubble Symphony for Saturn and PS1 but in the end it was cancelled (though Japan got the Saturn version and the PS1 version was eventually leaked and spread around).  This is the follow up Bubble Bobble 3 if you will,  released in 1995 and never getting a home release.  It would be lovely to see this getting a belated port for the home system, especially for Saturn as it could really do that sprite work justice.

Touhou project. Sega Saturn / Dreamcast.

Imperishable Night, Perfect Cherry blossom, Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil et al are shareware vertical bullet hell shmups written by ZUN, they are mainly for PC but remind me of old DC / SS games such is their style.
It would be good to see a port of these if only for the Dreamcast.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.  Saturn only

Though a port of this exists,  it is of inferior quality to the PSOne Original and done by an inexperienced team at KCET.  I'd love to see it remade one of these days or even translated but the Saturn is a Cunt to program so this will never get an airing.

Part 3 will end up with stuff for handhelds such as NDS and PSP.

Chain Break - Freecorder are malware spamming cunts.

FUCK YOU FREECORDER.

There we said it, after what seems like 3 or so years we are free of your malware whoring cockrot, Applian, and we are never coming back.

In the beginning we had a need for your streamlined toolbar back when you were at 2.0, and actively enjoyed recording stuff with it, thanks to our onboard sound disabling recording for some retarded notion.  

True you didn't handle silences very well and split files up into little bits occasionally, but we overlooked your shortcomings as you did what you were told and.  Then you didn't work and found we had to upgrade, you came with all singing all dancing converter toolbar with tv shows and other apps, but you weren't that evil then and as a bonus you let us watch films you'd grab from youtube and other less salubrious areas of the net, (but not Iplayer for some reason).  

You would still let you record sounds, from diverse places such as WinUAE and even Rebirth sessions. With no grief at all.  Then we noticed you stopped recording films and would grab stuff only occasionally and then you gave us a free upgrade, with Conduit inc included.  We knew you were bad news when installing we checked no to Conduit and you still forced it onto us anyway and it took a while to block your shit completely, but you were still usable and still could record stuff, then you took away our right to watch those clips you downloaded on us preferring that you instead install a free FLV. player app that was actually Real Audio which was cock of the highest order.  We kicked your nonsense out and just used you for sound as by then you still didn't download films (even though you wouldn't let us watch them in app anymore) for some unknown reason.  

Then you couldn't do that right and we found out that there was a Freecorder 6.0 that boasted no Conduit and all the old ways mended.  Like a cock we took you back but by then we were wise to your schemes, you cosied up with freemods and invaded google Chrome so deep it took a boot time scan with Spybot and a week to free ourselves from your clutches.  We checked our other browsers and found you hijacked them as well changing homepages and putting you Fisher Price toolbar all over the place.  Well enough is enough we have kicked your sorry arse out and putting this up as a warning to others what a pile of cock you are. 
We now resume your standard viewing in ports part 2.  

Ports. PT1 the Wishful Thinkening.

Hello and welcome. We don't have a particularly exciting trip to go on about this week but we will talk once again about video games.  Or more accurately video games that should have been released on other consoles / computers back in the day.  We can remember writing out back in sixth form a long list of games that they should have ported to the NES and without any way of knowing if they had done so or not.

My defence is that it was 1993 and they was no mass market proliferation of the internet back then for fact checking.  So I had to rely on CES show release lists in popular gaming magazines for all my news and reviews.

Please note that what we are asking in the games we would like to see are not by and large modern titles but, something which could be capable on host hardware of the day albeit maybe with some extra ram in the case of a few titles.

First week will cover 8bit Consoles and Computers. Also please note we haven't checked whether they have actually ported versions of these games or not.

Atari VCS.

Pong. 
This is possibly the only game where an Atari VCS version would be considered arcade perfect.  This was our first ever console, bought from Argos cheap and as a guy down the market actually still had games for this which he sold for £10 of his stall, we managed to grab a few titles.  We never saw a version of Pong for 2600, ever, and this is a system that had a few arcade conversions, such as Pacman and Space Invaders. 

Ideally it would use paddle controllers for that authentic feel and as its possibly the most basic of games ever, it shouldn't tax the host hardware much. Our next VCS choice is however possibly not doable.

QIX.
Taito's 1981 arcade game where you had to fill in an area whilst avoiding the Qix (an ambulatory assemblage of lines) and its mutant offspring, the diamond shaped Sparxx, was a popular 8bit choice appearing on many of the home computers of the day either as clones or as variants, indeed we remember a pretty decent  version of this called Styx for the old Videotron cable boxes we had in our area as well as the boss gameboy version.  The closest thing I've seen for the VCS is Amidar by Konami but has grids already outlined so we don't know if this could be remotely doable on host hardware.

However if its not, I'm pretty sure that the 5200 could more than handle it.

ZX81.

Sudoku.

For a computer that had 1K* of RAM and ASCII graphics only, there are a lot of ports that just wouldn't work on the humble proto speccy.  So we give you a game which is just numbers, in a grid with simple rules to follow. 

*it was expandable to 16K via a wobbly ram pack at the back.

C64.

Chase HQ.

To be honest a version of this exists but is so horrible that it should be remade.  The ZX Spectrum version of this is a work of genius, and is a monochrome conversion of the arcade game, which although missing some bits was insanely playable.  The C64 could do great driving games such as Buggy Boy so a version of this optimised for host hardware would be cool.

Crosswize.

A side scroller that a mate of mine had on Speccy (released by Firebird) that inexplicably was never ported to anything else.  

C64 / Amstrad CPC

Parasol Stars.

To be honest this was in the works from Ocean, who would go on to deliver 8Bit console ports for the NES (Good) and Gameboy (Dire) and had a version in the offing for Commodores beige box, which was subsequently canned.  Ocean claimed the code was stolen but the true story can be found here.
 Our heart was set on a C64 version and judging from what I read it was a really strong conversion
However, looking at BB4CPC  we think that an expanded Amstrad could possibly do a passable job of a conversion.

NES.

That list of games for conversion is long gone sadly, written on a blue folder during boring moments in class, we remember none of the titles added but over the years we have added a few things that they should port.

MR. DO!

Though a lot of arcade games were ported to the NES back in the day including a cut down version of Donkey Kong and Altered Beast (via Tengen).  However they never had a version of Mr Do!.  Classic dig em up via Universal was possibly one of the best classic arcade games and even the VCS had a version, but the NES never received a port.  Same would go for Mr Do's Castle which at least appeared on C64 as a covergame called Top Duck.

Manic Miner.

As a European this is probably the one idea that started it all off.  Spelunker I guess fills the rock hard platformer role on the NES, but damn I would actually love to see this happen.  Its a single screen platformer in which you have to grab all the keys and get to the exit without all the random stuff killing you or you running out of oxygen.  I would love this to have been ported for FDS like Monty on the run was only not in such a bastardized way.

More next week as we probe 16 bits and beyond.

Lullingstone Trip.

This is our round up of our trip out to the World Garden in Lullingstone, Kent.  Noted for its castle and roman villa as well as the world garden, Lullingstone is one of the nicer parts of Kent, along with Eynsford and its duck house, and Swanley which you could get to by bus from Plumstead common when I was little.

It was proposed at our last club meeting that there would be a trip out to Lullingstone to see the world garden and the grounds.  We put our details down and hoped that there would be a pick up, as you see, I can't drive and have no inclination to do so. 

Cut to Friday and there are still no word on pick up and just a date and a sense of foreboding.  We called up our branch Secretary Jim and after a muted discussion he said to come down to his place in Eltham and he'll take us down.  So we did just that, and managed to get there in time for pick up.  He offered for me to look around his collection and led us down to a lean to on the back of his house.  Every conceiveable surface was stuffed with cacti and succulents of varying degrees of tenderness and rarity, to say it was jaw dropping would be an understatement, these plants were all in perfect condition and of exceptional size.  There was a small greenhouse leading off of this, that made me feel like I was stuffed in a box, so cramped with plants and staging.  For a cactophile it was the closest thing to heaven on earth save for a trip to the Richtersveld.

Anyway we picked up a few more people and gradually made our way down to Lullingstone passed the now covered over Roman ruins and down alongside a stream to the main gatehouse.  After meeting up with the rest of our club we waited for Tom, to lead us inside.

Cloud Garden, pond area, complete with Bulrushes and smoke

Tom is of course Tom Hart Dyke, noted botanist, creator of the world garden, and the twentieth generation of Hart Dyke to live on site.  Possibly the only person where passionate is entirely accurate when describing his love of plants, he's got a manic enthusiasm that will inspire anyone to get growing.   I'm not sure how he and Jim met but he's given some talks to us down at Eltham as well as Jim donating a lot of plants to the Hot and Spikey cactus house more of which later.

Our first stop was the Cloud Garden, a polytunnel area devoted to half hardy jungle planting, complete with small water area and goldfish.  It was all lush and overgrown just like a real jungle.

Eucalyptus, already reaching for the stars.

Our next area, was a small storage area meant to keep tender stuff in over the winter (unlike London with its warmth of the bricks Lullingstone acutally lies in a frost pocket, which is problematic if you grow tender tropical species.).  That half hardy red gum is a permanent visitor along with some more bizarre and obscure specimens from australasia, and is currently in dire need of a good clipping to stop it going through the roof.

We did a brief tour of the world garden before moving onto the Hot and Spikey greenhouse.  This also contains the Moroccan room at the end by the Volcano (which works by remote control). 

A selection Succulent flora.

Its divided into three areas the first part being South Africa (with parts of East Africa thrown in for good measure).  Devoted to mesembryanthemums and Stapeliads along with some of the more amenable Euphorbias.

Opuntia Invicta in bud.

The middle part is Mexico which is largely all cacti and included some flowering Opuntias which is a rare bonus in this country as they are often reluctant to flower.  The back wall has a mural painted on it and holds both south and north american cacti collections.   These are mainly large cerei and bunny ear style Prickly pear Opuntias. The final bed is of course Macronesia.  Devoted to the mainly Canarian flora and with some from Madeira and Cape Verde Islands, these are mainly Aeonium species but with other stuff as well including a new Sarcostemma.

Morocco garden with Hippeastrum in the foreground.

The Morocccan garden is devoted to bulbs with various lillies and Amaryllis types in flower and a decent morning glory which you can see in the left of the picture above.

You finally exit to the gift shop with plants for sale and our notice board detailling our society and its aims. Though this is a major bone of contention with Jim and Tom.  We got an Aeonium Zwartkopf to replace an old specimen that died ages ago.  Tom also pointed out a massive specimen which had flowered and had thrown up offsets on the inflorescence of the newly doomed plant (Aeoniums along with Agave are terminal flowerers, they'll go out in a blaze of glory) which we didn't know it did.

Beaky's return.

We snuck a peek into some other greenhouses and saw some other plants lying around including more Opuntias and a nice Pleiospilos with seed pods.  We took in the world garden with its metal baobab and noted the sheer number of Damselflies flying around including a mating pair.  Before making our way home.

This was the best Damselfly we saw but there were loads around.

We'll leave you with a few more shots of the world garden to go out with.

Olympic Bootsale fest 2012.

Because this is an Olympic year and because its turning out to be in my eyes one of the most hateful things ever,  I'm going to describe our trip to a small bootsale next to our main Olympic venue.

Saturday.

The torch relay came through our town on the Saturday which meant Woolwich was packed with people for once.  Don't worry by the time we got there it was all over leaving the surreal site of some police dancing to reggae being played on a trumpet.  Our final destination was of course Charlton Meridian Sports ground right in the bastard heart of the Olympics.  For the uninitiated its situated close to the army barracks and directly on Woolwich common which has been commandeered for small arms shooting events and I think archery.  There is a proper boss looking arena up there that looks like a Yakult pack designed by mental patients.

Left Yakult Right Yakult on drugs.

All this meant the bastard roads were closed due to the Fucking Olympics, and we had to take a massive detour to reach our destination.  We finally got there and paid 50P to get in we had a good look around, there still are massive amounts of Africans and gypsies selling pirate and a few old food dealers, but our interest was piqued by a few reggae greats.  One stall had Homophobic classic Boom Bye Bye by Buju Bumchum (Banton).  Not sure what they wanted for this but as I despise dancehall and ragga it didn't come home with us.   There was a massive amount of synthetic trance for sale at one stall including Prodigy Charly
(which we have and of course is old hardcore).  But though I'm dance, we really can't take too much pounding trance so we gave up after the third box. 

We had much better luck at an africans stall, we picked up a few records there including the excellently titled Clusterfunk Do Me Right, a Doris Norton EP, Direct Drive (Synth pop and not house) and best of all Cosmic Force Uncompromised EP.  Oh yeah baby they had Clone / Creme Org stuff (and a load of reggae.) which due to the stall holders dodgy maths cost me £6 rather than £8 a result. 

We decided to walk back past the Yakult Center and over the common down to Woolwich.  We passed by a Nun walking up the street and back passed the big screen in General Gordon place which by this time had gotten rid of its Reggae police and had a dancing builder (I kid you not).  Walking through Woolwich we saw weird Christian groups including street preachers (always there) an african singing with a small dog and a group also singing from the Potter ministeries (not Harry).  We stopped off in Cex which has taken the place of our Gamestation, thanks to Games near bankruptcy, and came across gold. 

We've been looking on and off for Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor for a while now, we had the rom up and running in DesMuMe (You'll need to fiddle with the screen outputs to get the text legible) but in all honesty what we wanted was the real deal running on our DS.   So imagine our surprise when scanning the shelves for stuff we spotted this amongst all the dog poking / pretend teacher sims.  For the princely sum of £12 it comes home with us.  All in all a brilliant end to a excellent day.

A few updates.

We have a few updates to certain things.  We finally got our scanner working again so we can give you the official Botanicactus leaflet.

Botanicactus with pertinent information in 4 languages.

A Map of the grounds.

Some rather nice artwork and a layout that reminds me of the old cactus park in Tenerife.  We did have a leaflet for that ages ago but it is of course closed down now.

OUYA not quite my fantasy phone.

We got news of this from the message boards up on RHDN and thought it looked cool.  Its an open source android based console that anyone can develop for.   Openly hackable and customisable, it should allow the tech savvy to play their way so to speak.   There is a nice video presented by an American Shirley Carter lookalike on the main site and a begging button, so you can donate cash to them.  Now how about a handheld version of that running android and letting you play phone games as well as emulation.

Holiday Highlights.

This is a quick update giving a quick thumbs up / thumbs down guide to our recent holiday. We detailed Botanicactus in our last post though it'll get on here simply for having an eyed hawkmoth.

OK Here goes.

Good.
Various calas around our resort.  Its catalan or possibly Spanish for bay, Platja/ playa being beach in both, they were rather nice little beaches with the smaller bay having a massive pine tree for shade and good amount of sea life for snorkelling. 

General wildlife. 
Our balcony had house martins nesting in the beams, so you could see the young poke their heads out of the nest and the adults barrel in and feed them or if you got too close abort at the last second and fly away.  They would wheel around and do all sorts of insane acrobatics.  They reminded me of little spitfires crossed with jets and their aeronautic abilities were incredible.  Sadly due to some bullshit by the hotel, we had  to change rooms on the wednesday so we never saw the little guy fledge.

So were's me grub then?

Other stuff we saw was a scorpion in our shower, not sure if its poisonous or what but most are and a wall gecko, though this was only in the last week or so.

Plantwise. There was plenty of cacti for us and tubs full of little Aloes including some of the Littoralis types and what looked like Melalucea in flower / seed.  Incidentally this was the first time I've ever seen red flowered platyopuntia, your archetypal flat pad prickly pear.  There was plenty of the original yellow flowered versions as well.

So red and spiny.

Finally we saw a sea hare but was not sure if it was alive or dead.

Cover acts.
They had a load of cover acts with varying degrees of badness.  We have a Rod Stewart that looked like Keith Chegwin, a Whitney Houston that looked like a gorilla in a dress and a duo that covered everything from Creedence to Sam and Dave (sic) as well as Usher.  Best of all was walking along the street and coming across a bar covering Love and Happiness by Ron Hardy (though they played the Al Green original  rather than the proper house beat we know and love)

Downsides.

Our hotel was nice and we got an upgrade to an suite room, however on the Monday before we went home we had a letter posted on our door saying we had to move and come to reception.  We did and they gave us some cock about a leak from our room.  There was no leak and we saw them later putting in a minibar, they did give us two new rooms and a packed lunch but it was the principle of the thing rather then being cocking deceitful about it.

Even worse was to come. We missed our flight home due to them Thomson being bellends about the coach home.  A coach pulled up and they didn't call out and when we did query the name they said no.  Of course this was our coach and they pulled off.  We had to get a cab to the airport and fuck about getting new flights as Thomson were of course no use.  We can do you tomorrow, cough.  So we took our trade to Easyjet who took our cash and got us flights home a mere two hours later.

Yeah we are putting in a complaint for them dicking us around.

El Mejor sito de Musica Libre Electronica

Oh and in unrelated news we'll be putting up a music blog soon its called RobotNuncaVisto and heres the header for it. We listen to a lot of music so we'll share the joy of this with any good stuff heard.  If its made.