Should we really trust Prototype game sales?

So I am sure most people who are into retro games and who either look around on various sale sites such as ebay for example or who read internet news sites will have either seen or read about various prototype versions of games on carts or discs. When they go up for sale they usually go up for a lot of money with some auctions ending on the frankly ridiculous side of things, just to show you the kind of thing I am refering to I will drop an image here before continuing.

Ok so what we have here is a NES game apparently a protoype version of Isolated Warrior. Now you can get a cartridge only copy of Isolated Warrior for about £7 and without trying to put the idea in to anyones head you could very easily use a special screwdriver to remove the case and soak it in order to remove its proper original shop label before priting out something which looks like the above label and gluing that in its place very easily. The above was on sale for the sum of £423, but is it real? Who really knows, sure they posted pictures of the inside of the cart as well as the outside but even if I took apart a real original copy of the game and what was inside it looked diffrent to what is inside this how does that prove this is genuine? Even I with my limited skills could soldier in usless components that would make the board look diffrent, I could add stickers with diffrent bits of writing on and use various processes to age them and make them look like theyve sat there inside the cart gathering dust for the last 30 or so years and how would you know if this was how it was supposed to look or not? Heck you could even know someone else with a prototype which has all kinds of proof with it marking it out as legitimate and yet how would you know that because mine looked diffrent to it that it wasnt just a latter or earlier prototype?

Now I know what some people might be thinking, they might be thinking well the proof is in the playing, if a game is a genuine prototype then it will play diffrently to the released product in some way, maybe it will have less levels, end suddenly or even just have subtle little diffrences and surly seeing this in action will prove the cart is real? Well the answer to that is no it wont. All that will prove is that there is a diffrent rom image burnt to the cartridges eprom chip (forgive me if I am a little wrong on the terms and specifics as this is not a field I am deeply invovled in). When NES carts were new the idea that you could take one cart and turn it in to another would have seemed crazy but thats not the case now, with the right equipment and knowledge you can infact burn a very rare game on to a chip and use a donner cartridge to get the game up and running, its not simple and it might require specialist tools but its possible, people have done it to add translation hacks on to games that have never been officially released in English but it could also be used to burn a prototype rom onto a chip so that you could then add this into a regular cartridge print a fake label designed to make the game look like a lost prototype cartridge and then pretty much ask what you want for it. Hey lets face it I am sure most people have seen a fake pirate cart during there life time quiet possibly one of those 100 in 1 type games? I even have 2 fake MegaDrive carts one of which is an English copy of Golden Axe 3 obviously fake as the game never came out over here.

I was lucky to get this from a lady who used to run a market store for retro games, she sold it to me for £4 if I remember correctly, but how easy would it be to take this and try to claim its some kind of prototype, how could anyone really disprove me? If you want to say the label is not right heck I could go print out any label I want for it remember. All I am saying is when you see something someone tries to claim is rare or special or one of a kind just remember that with all the technology we have knocking around now days it wouldnt be that hard for them to have knocked something up in order to try and pull a fast one and make a profit.

CreepShow why I love it and what its done for me

Well I guess its time to say that I have started up an Instergram account to promote this blog, if you want to find me then my name on there is kerr9000_blog

I figure that I might pull in a few new readers through this but I can also post pictures of things related to the blog or things that hint what future posts may be about. I have posted about 40 pictures up so far but a good 3 or 4 of them have been related to CreepShow and thats because for quiet some time I have been intending to talk about this amazing movie.

Through out this post I will share a few pictures and forgive me but I feel I need to say a little bit about them even if it does break up this post somewhat. The above picture is a piece of art I did using my computer, you see thats how strongly I feel about CreepShow, how much it means to me. So I guess I should start by saying what CreepShow is and how it came in to my life.

So CreepShow would have been one of the very first what I would call proper horror films I ever saw as a young person, sure I had seen some black and white classic monster movies before it and a few films which were well more on the lines of spooky kid based entertainment, I had even walked in on some shocking bits of film from this and that which I was really far to young to see but the first thing I remember actually properply sitting down to watch with my parents blessing that I found to be actually scary in any way shape or form was CreepShow.

CreepShow is one of the films which started my obsession with horror, it also started my obsession with films that had multiple stories in them. The funny thing is that CreepShow led me to the old film version of Tales from The Crypt and The Vault of Horror without me realising at the time that these films were based on comic books, comic books which had themselves been the main insperation for CreepShow. The things is that before the internet became something which was in everyones home films were watched in a very diffrent way, you tended to just watch it and enjoy what you enjoyed and hate what you hated if you liked it then sure youd talk to your friends or family about it but in a way the internet changed things and in some ways for the better. Sure I used to buy old horror books which would talk about diffrent films but a book is out of date the moment its fell off of the printing press, new films are always coming out and some films just seem to slip under the radar. Thanks to sites like IMDB you can look at films down to the very detail, you can look up who acted in films, who directed , who produced and who wrote them as well as looking at all kinds of trivia.

Sure I had noticed that an actor or writers name had appeared in more than one film I liked before but it was the internet that began to help me really connect the dots which went from film to film, comic to comic. It was when I was older using resources like this that I truly realised that it had all started with William Gaines EC Horror Comics, comics such as Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror, everything fed back to them, the Tales from the Crypt TV show I had enjoyed so much the wonderful old Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror films and well CreepShow. You see CreepShow was basically made by Stephen King and George Romero as there love letter to the old EC comics, comics which had inspired them the way they would go on to inspire me.

What makes CreepShow so great is the fact that its one film with 5 diffrent horror based stories in it, all of them have a diffrent feel, one might be kind of funny, the next kind of creepy, the film takes you on a ride, it shocks then it makes you laugh, then it scares you just a little but what it does most of all and pretty much none stop is to entertain you, and even if you decide your not enjoying a particular story well then at least you know there will be another one along shortly.

I could rate or review CreepShow either episode by episode or overall but that simply would not get across how much this film means to me and how much it has influenced me, so sure I have done a little art like the above picture but it is also part of what made me want to be a writer. I really got behind the idea of short stories, I watched CreepShow and its sequel and then I found out about the films connection to EC comics so I watched and read Tales from the Crypt and I read all of the Stephen King short stories I could get my hands on. I had always wanted to be a writer even when I was like 6 in school I had sat and wrote in these little note books trying to come up with stories, but it was latter as an adult I found that I enjoyed writing horror stories horror stories which as far as I am concerned fit very much into the CreepShow sort of mold in fact it would be a dream come true to see someone adapt one of my stories (but that will never happen). I wrote quiet a few short stories and even a novel but the following 3 short story collections are the ones I think bear the most resemblance to CreepShow Fear Entrapment and Revenge, Fear Entrapmentand Revenge Volume 2 and Fear Entrapment and Revenge Volume 3. (If you click on any of those titles you will see it on Amazon).

To end things I wanted to share this, its on my wall its a small Creep show 2 poster around A4 size with 3 autographs on it, one of which is the special effects wizard Tom Savini, and another is the autograph of the late great George Kennedy. Well I will just end this post here and leave it as a short love letter to CreepShow and its sequel Creepshow 2 ......oh and as for CreepShow 3?  Look at Tales from the DarkSide the Movie if you want a 3rd chapter as the garbage someone branded CreepShow 3 is not worthy of the name.

Should people Restore old Games and Systems or not?

Ok so I want to start by saying that I am sure a lot of mainstream video game news sites have already coverd this and I bet there are even discusions on various forums but I wanted to stop and throw my 2cents in, I also knew I would say a lot so didnt want to just reply to someone else or post in comments section I really wanted to grab ahold of the topic and run with it.

So what is the subject I am going to be talking about? Well it is video game restoration. I am sure this has been touched on a few times over the years but  a recent YouTube video in which a guy relabells old vidoe game cartridges has kind of thrown the subject back under the spot light and got peoiple talking about it. The guys videos go in to the methods he has used to make and experiment with making new labels, they sort of almost serve as a how to guide to a degree, they are sort of intresting to watch but what is really intresting is that they have lit a fire under some people causing them to become very passionate in discusing if you should or should not do this sort of restoration work.

I want to start by sharing a few quotes from the guy responsible for these videos and then I breifly want to talk about them,“When I do these restoration videos, there’s always someone in the comments complaining that I should have left it the way it was,”, “Even when you look at classic cars, is it wrong to take an old rusty classic car from the 1950s and repaint it so it looks new?” ,“Ultimately what it comes down is that these are my cartridges and I can do whatever I want to with them,” he says. “I can roll them over with a steamroller if I want, and I have done that in a previous video.”. Ok so I would think that if he feels he needs to justify himself then at least some part of him thinks that he might be acting in error or he is concious of the fact that he is upseting people but the final comment about he could run over them with a steamroller just makes him come off as a complete and utter tosspot. I could if I really wanted to eat chocolate cake after chocolate cake and record it and then send the video to a starving family but I wouldnt do it, and the reason I wouldnt do it is because I fully realise that this would make me a total and utter git. There are only so many of these old retro games out there and in some cases demand greatly outstrips supply, to destroy something someone else would really appreciate just because you can really seems like the work of a troubled five year old, we live in a much too wasteful society as it is and this is just the height of crazyness so I cant support that kind of destruction at all, with that said I will get on to the topic of restoration.

I think its important here to outline the fact that I have sort of restored video game hardware and modified it as well myself but there are some things about this I would like to make clear, I for one would never modify a machine which was in good condition. I have painted various consoles but it has been when they are in need of such dire repairs that they simply could not be made to look like they originally did before hand. The first example of this would be a Super Nintendo I purchased from a carboot for 50pence years ago, for a start I had to go inside clean a few contacts and replace the internal pico fuse, but the plastic had become so brittle it had began to shatter exposing both jagged edges and the circuit board below. I tried to see if I could find or buy a broken SNES but at the time I couldnt, so I resorted to melting down plastic paracetomol pots in order to cover the holes as smoothly as possible, also hoping to cover and strengthen some of the existing plastic before it was further damaged. The result looked kind of messy and so I painted the machine with a flaming pattern which blended the damage in making it look intentional. Some may argue I was wrong in doing this but it  made an otherwise unsafe/unsuable console in to a working machine. This kind of restoration/modification I can get behind, I also wont complain about people installing extra switches or outputs on to a console providing it remains playable, some of these machines are getting a little older and they kind of need a little tender loving care here and there to keep them running and some of that might involve resolidering, replacing capacitors and fuses or even adding new ports so they will adequatly work on modern Television hardware. Where ever possible though I would like to see things remain as close to original as possible with old broken consoles being used for experimentation and art instead of working machines. Ok so I have kind of run off in to a tangent and talked about machines so next lets get back to talking about actual game carts.

It is true that its the owners carts and he can do what he wants with them, wether I or others like it or not, and I will say that when they are finished they do look good, in fact some of them look as if they have come straight off of the assembly line, but no matter how good these labels look its not a true restoration its a replacment, one which might fool a lot of people but its basically a lie, a lie which may in fact lower the value of these cartridges and might lead to people being ripped off in the future. Yes the guy who did the particular alterations has said he wont be selling his carts any time soon and if he did he might even be genuine and admit that the labels are fakes but that doesnt mean that a future seller will be or that someone might not use these videos as how to do this guides to try and mock up fake labels to try and pull a fast one on someone and make money from themdishnoestly by buying poor condition carts cheap making them look like new and selling them for a profit.

Personally I am against relabelling carts because I see the conditon of a game part of its greater story, every game goes through a journey before it finds its way to a collector and sometimes you find traces of this and I think they can be as intresting as the games themselves, I love it when you find recepits in your second hand games letting you know when and where they were purchased and I think the label is part of this. Now dont get me wrong I am not saying not to whipe the dust and any surface grime off of a cartridge or case after all I like things to be as clean as possible but softly cleaning something is very diffrent from replacing parts of it, after all you wouldnt consider a classic car no longer a complete classic car if you washed it, but if you provided a new fake door or wing mirror that would be very diffrent. I think if your a real game collector one who is intrested in the history and cultural relevance of retro video games then you an argument could be made that you should feel that you have an obligation to safeguard the authenticity of the games.

The above picture is a photo of a tape I own, it is my main and only copy of Fernandez must die for the spectrum, it wasnt a full price retail copy it was a copy of the game given away on the front of a magazine with other games and programmes on the tape but if you look at it there is a deep story there, you can clearly see the phrase on it in a very childish scribble ''My best tape'', I had written this on it because of how much I loved this game and its a love that has not died which can be seen from the fact it was one of the games I listed as one of my personal Top Ten Spectrum games. If you were to cover this up with a replacment label then you would kill my story, you would kill this cassettes history, it might still hold the game but it wouldnt be the same tape anymore would it?

Now if a game has tottally lost its label or its case or cover then I cant see any problem with replacing these but personally I dont think I would try to reproduce the original art I think I would use it as a chance to be a little artistic, if for example you have followed this blog for any length of time you will have seen examples of when I try to intergrate the Japanese art on Megadrive games with the European case style/format 

Look I am not trying to preach to anyone or trying to tell people what they should or should not do, I just want to make people stop and think about what they have and how they look at it. Every game we ever touch, we ever buy, sell or trade in tells a story, a story we are and will always be a part of.

Classic Horror films of Bela Lugosi: Invisable Ghost

So I am back once again talking about another Bela LKugosi film, this one is called Invisable Ghost. Ok so I want to go off on a slight tangent right now and just make a few quick comments that kind of apply to all of these old black and white horror films and in fact some of the colour ones even up to and including the Hammer ones. A lot of these films have what I would call very quick resolutions or put another way endings which dont hang around to give you any extra details or prologs. For example in the monster type movie the monster dies the hero turns to walk away and the words the end flash up on screen, you dont get to find out what anyone does after or how the death of this creature effects the world around it you just get to know its dead and thats your lot. Is this a good or a bad thing? I am really not sure I guess it just feels very strange watching something like this after watching something more modern which seems to slowly end wrapping up thread after thread trying to leave you without much to ask or think about. Also some of these older films like these Lugosi ones well there quiet brief with run time being just a little over an hour but I guess it gives them a certain sense of tightness, there is less filler but then it has downsides your less invested in side characters.

Charles Kessler Bela Lugosi's character is a man whoise wife left him, she left him for someone else and its believed she is dead and yet he sits down to dinner with his wife on their wedding anniversary, shes not there of couse but he acts as if she is and his butler humours him and tries to act as if the wife is there. His daughter Virginia's boyfriend arrives and witness some of what is going on leaveing her having to explain everythign to him.

You soon learn that the wife is not dead she is an amnesiac being taken care of by the gardner, she is being kept in his basment buit occasionally she goes for a bit of a walk, usally ending up around outside her former home, look through the windows, loooking at her husband Charles Kessler. What you are met with in this film is lots of death, person after person being killed, now in most films you wouldnt know who is responsible but this film actually tells you straight out who has done it, well worse than that you see the murders and yet you have to sit around and watch as person after person ponders who is responsible for the killings. I really cant help but think that the film would have worked much better if it had been filmed more as a ''who dunnit'' A lot of the characters feel kinda empty and cookie cutter like with a few notable exceptions one of them being Lugosi who gives a charming performance the other would be the butler who I find to be a incredably likeable character who is well acted and who often acts in the way I think most people wish they would. I could go into more detail but other than setting the rough scene I would rather let people read this post and get a feel for if theyd like to watch the film or not rather than spoil the whole thing by talking about the begining middle and end.

The film is no Dracula and I feel like it could have been a lot better but if you want to find a good way to spend a little over an hour its not a bad watch at all. Apparently a lot of the copies of it on DVD are in pretty poor condition mostly due to the fact that the film has found itself in the public domain meaning any company can pretty much throw it onto a disc and sell it. The copy I have is not exactly the greatest print but it doesnt matter the film is from the 30's and I find the little bits of degredation and frame skipping almost charming, I much prefer it to the idea of an artificially cleaned up film. I would recomend that you watch this film but go in to it with moderate expectations.

May's Retro Games Purchases 2017

So its the end of another month and that means it is once again time to do a post on my retro purchases for the month.

I started on the 1st of May when I walked into a local branch of Game and saw some PSP titles.I picked up the following PSP titles KillZone Liberation complete for £1.50, The Lord of the rings Tactics complete for psp for £1, God Of War chains of Olympus complete for PSP for £2.50 and Star Ocean First Departure complete for psp for £4. The highlight of this would have to be Star Ocean, yes I already own it but £4 was a heck of a price for this game and my hunter instinct just couldnt resist it.

It was also on this day that I made the decision to buy a small lot from FaceBook. I agreed to pay £20 for Super Mario 64 and New Mario Bros for DS both complete, they also threw in 13 GBA carts all of which were fake but in these situations you just nod and say thank you, heck at least no one will be sold them now loosing actual cash on them, and to be honest I am not to proud to play them, I wont brag I own them although I have to admit you get the odd knock of gem sometimes (I for example have a pokemon cart full of swearing that refers to the pokemon as Elves).

On the 4th of May I went to a semi local Indy store and picked up Jedi power battles cart only GBA for £2, Final Fight one cart only GBA for £2 and Xmen Reign of Apocalypse cart only for GBA £2.I have to say I like grabbing GBA stuff as there small and ease to store and well there just darn playable games Final Fight One for example is an awesome little gem, its so much better than the SNES version and its a lot cheaper to find with lots of little bells and whistles thrown on top of it. I also grabbed Fighters Destiny cart only for N64 for £3 and Corporation complete for the MegaDrive for £4.50 from the same place.

On the 8th of May I purchased a small pile of DS games from a friend who was asking for £10 for allof the following boxed and complete, Lego Star Wars 2, Star Wars Clone wars republic heroes, Arkanoid DS, Rhythem Paradise and Final Fantasy Chocobo tales. On this day I also grabbed a complete copy of Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII for psp for £5.

On the 9th I got a copy of Silpheed the lost planet complete for PS2 for £1.50. I know a lot of the time all you find in charity shops is rubbish football games or over priced damaged tat but its kind of fun to walk around a few, it also helps that I collect other things like comic books that I can keep my eyes peeled for. A few you tubers and such have argued that its not worth buying from places like this as you could spend the time you spend searching working and earning the cash to pay top dollar for everything but that goes against the thrill of the chase eliment of retro gaming I enjoy, if a game is worth £15 and I spend £15 I dont tend to get any thrill from the purchase, I might from the playing but not collecting wise.

On the 11th I recieved a whole bunch of games I had purchased online all of the prices I haver put after the games include the post, all of the SNES games I got mostly because I wanted some new diffrent games to review for my 150 SNES game review challange. I got The Incredible Hulk snes cart only for £6, I got Zoop for Snes complete for £7 and I also got Spectre for snes complete for £6.
I also recieved Mech Platoon GBA cart only for £3.50, this is not to review or anything its just simply because I read something about it and it sounded like my kind of thing.

On may the 12th I grabbed Patapon for psp complete for £2 and Patapon 2 for psp complete for £2. I have always wanted all 3 Patapon games so its good to have gotten both of these but I dont think I will get the third one any time soon. I also grabbed a hold of We Love Golf, Batallion Wars 2 and Samurai Warriors Katana complete for Wii for £4 for the bunch, now this was at Game and this price because of there buy 2 get the third free deal, I basically wanted to try We Love Golf and figured I should grab the other 2 because of how cheap this would make them.

On the 15th I grabbed Coded Arms Contagion for the PSP complete for £2 from an indy store, the funny thing is I know its not worth much really but I hadnt seen it before and yet I have seen the first Coded Arms a lot of times, its PSP games like this that make me think the companies involved, Konami in this case really should throw a few of these on to either a compilation or just put them online alterd to run on a PS4 (or emulated) and sell them digitally for a good price so people dont miss out on them and so the companies involved can grab a little extra cash off them.

On the 19th I picked up Final Fantasy VIII platinum edition, boxed but missing manual for £10, I think the value of the game seems to have dropped since people have found other places to play it but I think there is no substitute to putting the real discs in a real playstation, holding a proper original pad.

On the 21st I went into an indy store and got Harry Potter and the philosophers stone cart only for GBC for £1, its hardly a game thats going to set the world on fire but generally any cart that you can get particularly if its not sports based is worth £1 at the very least.

On the 23rd I recieved two games I had orderd from online the prices include the post and packaging. I got George Formans KO BOxing NTSC cart only for £4 and Gadget Twins Mega Drive american cart only for £4. George Formans KO Boxing I got basically as I want to review it for my 150 SNES review series, where as Gadget Twins I got because its a MegaDrive game you hardly ever see proberbly because it never came out in Europe, usually it goes for quiet a bit more than this so I thought I would grab it while I can.

On the 25th of May I went in to an indy store, its a store I had visited a few trimes in fact I had seen my first purchase several times the first time I saw it they wanted £12 for it which in fairness was a decent price but I wasnt desperate enough, the next time I looked it was £10 which was tempting but when I saw it for £5 I had to get it the game I am talking about was a cartridge only copy of Rtype 3 for the GameBoy Advance.

I also picked up Def Jam Fight for NY for xbox complete for £1 and then noticed that they had some spectrum games in two boxes, one box was full of games they wanted £1 for the other games they wanted £2 for, I grabbed the following Monty on the Run complete for £2, Bruce Lee complete for £2, Eric and the Floaters complete for £2 and Alchemist gold edition complete for the spectrum £1. I wanted Bruce Lee as I used to play it a lot as a kid, Eric and the Floaters for those who dont know is basically an old version of Bomberman and Bomberman is a game series I have followed for a long time, heck I brought the Switch Version on release the very same day the console came out. The Monty Games are a staple of the spectrum, games that often get talked about with the machine and I knew I didnt own it so thought I should grab it while I had the chance. Alchamist as a game I know nothing about it other than the fact that you can get it with a regular color case and cassette and with a gold case and cassette, this is something I find very intresting as look at all of the fuss people make about Zelda having gold carts well this did the whole gold thing and it did it a few years earlier.

On the 28th my daughter told me she had seen some Xbox games for sale and did I want her to grab any, she told me what they had and I asked her to pick up Shadow the HedgeHog and Crash Bandicoot The wrath of Cortex which were both boxed complete and this cost me £4, she also got them to throw in some empty cases with covers one of which belonged to the game star wars republic Commando which was incredably useful as I had a copy of this which was just a disc in a blank case.

On the 30th I went into an indy store and got the following Brian Lara cricket, Brian Lara cricket 96, FIFA 97, Pete Sampras Tennis, and Monoco GP 2 all boxed and complete for the megadrive £5 and Reversi, Gauntlet, Dandy and The Curse of Sherwood all boxed complete for the Spectrum £4.

So I guess I went and spent £132.50 this month which for me is a heck of a lot of money for a monthly spend, I have to admit to feeling a little bad about it in all honesty. What am I most proud of getting though? Well I guess that would have to be picking up a copy of Star Ocean First Departure complete for psp for £4, as for what I feel worse about, well thats kind of the SNES games I have picked up, by the time you read this you will most likly have read my SNES reviews and learned that I havent found these games to be that good, but really they were purchsed for the purpose of this blog, I guess some people would have set up Patreons or done some other kind of crowd funding to do this but I just dont think I am big enough or have enough fans to do that, although I would never say no to being sent a game by someone who wanted me to talk about it, well unless it was being sent by a company and they were demanding I give them a favourable review believe it or not that happens.

My Top Ten Sinclair Spectrum games: Skool Daze & Gauntlet

Ok so its time to give the last two names on my list of Top Ten Spectrum games so without further ado here we go.

Skool Daze

So Skool Daze was a game which believe it or not saw you play the role of a kid attending school. Ok so a game about school might not sound that great of the bat but the game was commercially and critically successful, as well as being praised for the originality of its concept. It is often also thought to be one of the pioneers of the whole sandbox video game genre, so I guess its starting to sound a little more impressive right? Skool daze was simply brilliant if I was to try and describe it to a modern gamer then I would basically say that it was the great Grand-Daddy of the game Bully.

So in Skool Daze you play as a schoolboy named Eric, with the basic story of the game being your quest to steal your own report card from out of the staff room safe. The game features a lot of none player characters including the headmaster Mr Wacker, various other teachers and other pupils including Angelface the bully and Einstein the swot (as well as other unamed sort of blank/undiscript pupils) You have the option of renaming the characters before the game starts which is great as well you can rename characters giving them names personal to you and your own days at school. So to win you need to get your report, and to loose well you need to get expelled, you will get expelled if you get 10,000 or more lines, you get given lines for being caught out of class or well just missbeahving in general. Other kids will get you in trouble though by pushing you out of your chair or by firing projectiles at teachers when your close to a teacher and therfore get blamed despite it not being your fault. The whole thing is just so fun and diffrent that you cant help but love it. It was one of the games that I stupidly sold when younger but thanks to my wonderful girlfriend buying it me for Christmas I once again have it in my possession and shall not be letting it go anytime soon.

Gauntlet

So home computers back in the day had loads and loads of arcade conversions, with the vast majority of them being either very poor or at the least incredibly simplified but the conversion of Gauntlet was both incredably good and was also a game that I spent a great deal of time on both alone and with a good friend (I also used to play the C64 version at his house and that was excellent as well).

Gauntlet could best be described as a fantasy-themed hack and slash multiplayer dungeon crawler which came out in the arcades in 1985 apparently its creator Atari sold a heck of a lot of arcade cabinets of it and made a lot of money out of it so its no suprise that Gauntlet was ported to lots of home systems including but not limited to. the Apple II, the MSX, the NES, the Sega Master System, ,the Atari ST, the Commodore 64, the Amstrad CPC and of course the ZX Spectrum. It doesnt end there though still to this very dare Gauntlet is showing up on various retro compilations on all manner of systems and there is a reason for this and if you ask me a large part of this is that its a great game. Part of what makes it a great game is that you can play it co-operativly with a buddy.

You start the game by selecting from four playable characters they are the Warrior, theWizard, the Valkyrie, and the Elf. Each of the characters has his or her own unique strength and weaknesses. The Warrior is strongest in direct combat, where as the Wizard has the most powerful magic, the Valkyrie is the best armored and the Elf is the quickest, this is great as it lets you pick the character who best matches your own personal play style.

The game is very easy to pick up and play, as soon as you pick your character you are dropped into the first in a series of top-down third person perspective mazes where you need to find the exit in order to finish the level and move on to the next. Its not a case of just walking around looking for a way out though no you collect loot, and you collect keys and you collect food  and magic potions all of which serves a purpose but you also fight against hordes of various different enemies.

The enemies are an assortment of fantasy monsters, including ghosts, demons, sorcerers and all manner of other creatures, each of which comes out of a specific monster generator, generators which can be destroyed to prevent them from spewing more monsters into the maze. The ultimate villain you will meet is death who quickly drains your life force and who is absolutely solid to kill, so most often you will run from him most likely screaming at your friend to haul butt and get the monkey fudge out of there.  At first the game is easy but as it progresses it soon gets tougher, the further you get the more skill is needed and trust me if your playing with a buddy you better learn to talk, to share and to generally co-operate if you want to keep going through the levels.

Gauntlet is on this list because as far as I am concerned its the ultimate game to play with a buddy if you want some frantic co-operative fun. I think that this is where so many games today started take something like the Diablo series and you can see that at its core there is a little bit of Gauntlet and the reason for this is that Gauntlet was quiet simply a wonderful game and it still is.

My Top Ten Sinclair Spectrum games: Treasure Island Dizzy & Ghostbusters

So I am back once again to talk about my Top Ten Spectrum games, so far I have coverd 6 games already so that will make the games I am going to cover today game 7 and game 8, they are not in order though as well I just find it too hard to do that, so without further ado lets get going.

Treasure Island Dizzy
 
Now for those not in the Know Treasure Island Dizzy is the second game in a series of games featuring a hero called Dizzy and often his friends and family who are referd to as the Yolkfolk. The main series consists of Dizzy, Treasure Island Dizzy, Fantasy World Dizzy, Magicland Dizzy, Spellbound Dizzy, Dizzy, Prince of the YolkFolk, Crystal Kingdom Dizzy with several spin off games as well including Fast Food, Kwik Snax and Dizzy Down the Rapids. As a Spectrum owner you got so used to seeing Dizzy and playing Dizzy games that he kind of felt like a mascot, he might have started out on the spectrum though but he was also ported to the Amstrad, Commodore 64, NES, Amiga, Atari ST and other platforms.

The story for the game is pretty brief Dizzy is on an island and has to find a way to get back home, its as simple as that, but the Island is a large and fantastic place for a spectrum game, and Dizzy himself just feels like a brilliant character to be playing with. Yes he is simple but he is kind of simple and iconic in the same way a character like Mario is, there might not be much to him but what there is is instantly appealing and recognisable. The game is pretty much a puzzle platformer sort of adventure game, basically you go around from screen to screen as Dizzy you have no energy bar and only one life so you need to avoid anything that might kill you but you also have to pick up items you see laying around and then take them to other places to use them to solve a puzzle that will let you progress. Yes it is harsh when you die as everything you have done is lost and you have to start again but you just know that with each time you play it the knowledge you have gained will see you get just that little bit further.

I think that if you want to take on the best the Spectrum has to offer then you need to look at the Dizzy series, now some may find my choice of series entry an issue as its an early and a hard one in relation to the others but I also find it incredably rewarding, stick with it and just jump right in to the world of Dizzy and get your grey cells working figuring out what to use where and trust me when you start to get things right you will feel like your on top of the world

Ghost Busters

Who You Gonna Call? Ok I know its a movie license but its a movie license I enjoyed so very much, you see to me the perfect movie licensed game should make you feel like your in the universe thats presented in the film, this doesnt mean every single thing that happens in the film needs to be turned into a level in the game no it just needs to understand the universe of the film and represent this. Ghost Busters on the spectrum starts in a wonderful way it tells you what the ghostbusters are and then tells you that if youd like to start a franchise you have to input your name, from there you get a bank loan which you use to buy a car and relevent ghost busting gear. You drive to diffrent locations, and use your proton beams to push ghosts where you need them to be  and then you activate the trap and try to catch them.  Yes the graphics are basic with people pretty much being stick men and ghosts being little floating blobs but the music although being a simple loop and the general presentation really pull you in. I spent absolutly hours and hours playing this as a kid it hooked me in and in honesty it worked as the perfect game license, id watch the film and want to play the game and then play the game and want to watch the film the two fed my need for the franchise in general. I also think that this game goes to show what the spectrum had going for it overall and thats the fact that with a little bit of effort despite all of the machines limitations and lack of power you could still get a cracking good experiance out of it.