My Retro Game Purchases June 2022

Ok so here I am back again with another retro purchases monthly report. I am not going to add up the value of the stuff as a lot of it is debatable whether its retro or not, if its not the current gen or the gen before that then I am calling it retro, same with something i am using for retro purposes If I am using a modern pad to play retro games then I am going to talk about it here.

So on the first of the month I grabbed a Nintendo Wii for £25, its far from the first one I have purchased but if you look at the following picture its probably easy to see why I grabbed it.

As can sort of be seen it included a balance board, 2 official Wii-motes, 4 official nunchucks , 2 official classic controllers, 1 official classic pro controller, the sensor , power supply, the standard TV lead, a better official composite lead, the sensor bar, the stand, a bunch of those silly attachments, a 2Gig SD card inside it, not in this picture are an unofficial stand complete with a charging dock in it with chargeable batteries for 2 Wii-motes. I very much purchased this console for all of the equipment that came with it as by CEX/Pawn store standards there was around £100 worth of controllers

On the first of the month I also got 6 Japanese GameCube games for £30

These are

Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen ,the disc the plastic case and manual no card cover

Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen 2, complete

Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen 3, the disc the plastic case and manual no card cover

Gash Bell!! Yuujou no Tag Battle, the disc the plastic case and manual no card cover

Donkey Konga ,complete

Groove Adventure Rave: Fighting Live , complete

Other than a Japanese Baseball game I grabbed last month these are the first Japanese Cube games to enter my collection, I love the size and shape of the plastic boxes for them, not so keen on the carboard covers

I then waited till the 14th of the month when I got another Japanese Gamecube game complete for £8 (Mystic Heroes)

I also got a joystick for the C64 Mini boxed for £5, sure its a modern item but its retro themed and will help me to play more retro stuff, not only can I use it on the C64 Mini I own It would also be cool for using to play games from that sort of age on my laptop C64 and Spectrum etc

On the 15th I managed to get a loose SNES cart of Tiny Toons Adventures Buster Busts loose for £4 its not in perfect condition but its a good game so I was quiet happy to grab it.

On the 17th I grabbed two things one of them was this loose cart of Quackshot for the MegaDrive for £5 this is actually one of my top twenty games on the system, if you haven't played it then I highly recommend it particularly if your a Duck Tales fan.

The other thing I grabbed was Arc Twilight of the Spirits for PS2 I grabbed this for £5 it's missing it's manual but I'm happy. I didn't realise there was an English Language Arc The Lad game on PS2, in fact when I saw it I did a quick google search to see if it was an Arc the Lad game. Arc the Lad was a game that formed a piece of my teenage life, you see I had a friend who was so in to his RPG games that he couldn't get enough of them to the degree that he started buying Japanese RPG's that had not come out in England and trying to play his way through them despite the language barrier and the main ones I remember him playing are Arc the Lad and Arc the Lad 2.

On the 18th I got Little Big Planet for the PS3 from a charity shop for 50pence, it was just nestled in with the kids DVD's, not every retro game needs to cost the earth and its a great game.

On the 22nd my favourite pawn store closed and I had a last visit to say goodbye to the staff who have helped me with so much stuff. Grabbed this little pile of stuff for £20, my final purchase from a great shop and a great bunch of guys. As can be seen there are 3 sealed wired Joypads for use on PC or PS3 should be great for retro gaming, theres also a PS2 pad with an adaptor to allow me to use it on a PC (great for emulation), then there is a PS3 Blue Ray remote and a broken laptop.

I got that Laptop up and running its a Dual Core 1.7ghz processor with 1gb of ram and a 120gig Hardrive (which I have since upgraded to a 500gig Hardrive) and I bet you can guess just what I have done with it.

On the 25th I finished the month of by buying a whole bunch of stuff

Grabbed these 4 original XBOX games for £1 each.

These PS3 games for £3 in total

These 3 games for a total of £2

This lovely looking 2DS for £30 it's in great condition, came with official charger and a 4gb SD card, also had Tomodachi life on it. I have since hacked it, hey if Nintendo are going to shut down there online shop and stop me getting all the patches and stuff I might need in the future I am going to be ready for it.

And here are the last of that days games that I grabbed, Super Street fighter 2 American for £8 ,ECW hardcore for GBC for £1 , Stunt Race FX for SNES for £4, Microsoft puzzle collection for £1, and JaJa Maru for Famicom for £3

An Overwatch Conspiracy was Ellie real?

My Review of The Evil Dead and how I first experianced it

So yesterday I posted a link to my YouTube video on the film White Zombie, so I am back today talking once again about Zombies but a diffrent kind of Zombie and a diffrent kind of film. Anyways back when I was a kid in the United Kingdom there were quiet a few films that were banned. These were called the Video nasties and were films which were criticised for their violent content by the press, social commentators and various religious organisations.

Following a moral campaign led by Mary Whitehouse and the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association films began to be prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959. A list of 72 films was released films that the police would cease from video rental shops and which it would essentially be illegal to sell or rent. The Evil Dead didnt stay on the list long but when it was released it had content cut out of it, infact you couldnt get the whole film complete free of cuts until the year 2000. The DPP72 is something I have talked about many times before in the past on both this blog and on my previous blog before the site which hosted it closed down, I guess this is because censorship is something that I have always been quiet passionate about but it wasnt until now that I decided that I wanted to make a YouTube Video on one of the DPP72 films. The reason I wanted to make a video about The Evil Dead is because I felt like I had something slightly novel to say about the film and about my experiance originally watching it, you know that with the internet and YouTube there are so many users that pretty much every single film, song and book in existance must have been talked about a million diffrent times, by a whole bunch of diffrent people and because of this sometimes you feel like why should I talk about it? What do I have to offer on the subject that no one else does, and this is why I often feel happier talking about what a game or film means to me, about how I came upon it and how it affected my life instead of just reviewing it because after all anyone can review an item but not everyone will have experianced it in the same way.

Ok so if you have watched my YouTube video then you will have noticed that the footage I am talking over in it is all over the place, for a start the picture is of an incredably low quality but beyond that it jumps from color to black and white, the picture suddenly brakes into moments of static , there are foreign sub titles on the screen at points, well there is a reason for this and that is because the first time I saw the Evil Dead it was on a VHS cassette which had all of these issues a poor quality picture , foreign subtitles the whole shebang so I figured that I would mess with this footage to try and recreate for you the sort of feeling I had while originally wathing this film. Sure it wont be exactly what I watched as a youngster but I have tried to recreate the experiance at least in a short form to try and give people an idea of what watching this film back in that point of time would have been like for me.

The film was brought to my house one night by a childhood friend of mine who had borrowed it from his Sister.. It was a pirate VHS tape with the name of the film written on it in pen and it felt sort of both special and naughty to be wathing it , hey I was only like 14 at the time and the shoddy quality gave the film a sort of even more scary vibe it felt like this little bit of ghoulish horror which had been dug up from somewere and passed from hand to hand, it was scratchy and rough around the edges and somehow this actually added to the whole experience. You would think all of the issues put me off but no actually they kind of drew me into the film and made watching it feel like an event.

At the time I appreciated the film on one level but on watching it again and again I have noticed more things about it for one I think the film is full of fantastic camera work, the evil in the film is given this amazing sense of presence via the movement of the camera. I could talk about this film all day but I would rather people watch my Video after all I put a lot of work into it, so consider this me saying pretty please.... Oh and by the way have a happy New Year.

My YouTube Review of White Zombie

A Katamari Damacy REROLL Switch Review

My YouTube review of Dizzy on the Spectrum

My Retro Purchases in November 2018

On the 6th of November I started my months retro purchases by visiting a bunch of charity shops where for the grand total of £7.50 I got 5 complete switch games (Mario Kart Wii, Super Mario Galaxy, Mini Ninjas, Sonic and the secret rings, and Lego StarWars the complete saga) 2 original Playstation games (This is football and F1 World Grand prix) and Tetris 2 for GameBoy, not a bad start to the month at all.

Then on the 12th of the month I grabbed 4 psp games at £1 each from a local charity shop while taking a stroll to get milk, I got medal of honor heroes, medal of honor heroes 2, Socom Tactical strike and Ace Combat X skies of deception, there was another 2 game cases there but some absolute dick had stolen the games they were not anything earth shattering but its just so annoying that people will steal stuff that is being sold for next to sod all and therefore rob charities of cash.

On the 19th I grabbed Time Splitters 2 For Xbox complete for 50pence and Medal of Honor frontline (platinum) for GameCube complete for 50pence from a charity shop. Time Splitters 2 is a game I hold very fond memories of, I got it originally on the GameCube pretty darn soon after its release and its just one of those games that is so much fun particularly if a bunch of you play it together.

On the 28th I spent £3.50 on a cartridge only copy of Rad Gravity for the NES, which I was very happy with because to be honest pretty much anytime you can get a none sports NES title for under £5 is a good time.

On the 29th I  went to a charity shop and got a nice little haul for £2.50. I got Hardcore 4x4 for PlayStation complete, Tomb Raider 2 disc and manual in a CD case with its real cover cut to fit in this, Tekken Tag Tournament (Platinum version) complete for ps2, StarWars Starfighter complete for ps2 and Taito Legends complete for PS2.

So in total this month I spent £18.50 which makes this a pretty small month expense wise, but I am glad with what I have got and that I haven't spent that much on it. I don't think that there is any stand out item that I got but I think in general I got some darn cool stuff and I am very happy with what I spent on it.

A RockStar Ate My Hamster My YouTube Review

A bit about the PlayStation things I have been doing recently and if I am actually going to get a Playstation Classic?

So I guess with the PlayStation Classic being just around the corner I have been thinking about PlayStations an awful lot recently. For one I found myself setting up a PlayStation 2 so that I could play PlayStation 1 and 2 games but also because I had some equipment I wanted to mess with. I had a second hand PS2 I had grabbed from a charity shop ages OK with all its leads for like £10, and then I had a network/hard drive adapter I had spent like £3 on.  To be honest I had purchased this adapter not realizing I was supposed to have a official disc to set it up. I had an old Hard-drive a 40gig model I had grabbed cheap for, £2 and then I had this memory card with software on it which was supposed to help you use programs on your PS2 so you could burn games to the hard drive and play them. In the end I got it up and running and despite being disappointed that I couldn't burn PS1 games to it I did start going through my PS2 games and putting a few on the Hard drive and showing my daughter a few I didn't think she had played before.

Then last night I hit the PSN store and spent around £12 on there and got a load of PS1 games for the vita/ps3/ Vita TV I have. I got Crash Bandicoot 1,2 and 3, Spyro 1,2 and 3, Metal Gear solid, Silent Hill, and Crash Team Racing. Add these to the thirty PS1 download games my PS3 informs me I have on its hard-drive and I guess I now own nearly 40 of these games digitally and that's if I don't want to trouble myself by getting my disc collection out. Now one of the reasons I mention this is because I have been pondering if I should get the PS Classic or not, but when I put all of the above down in writing it doesn't really seem like the best of deals to be honest. If the machine ends up hack-able then this might alter things, or if I was to see some kind of deal on one, heck I might even get excited on the morning of release and run out and get one or decide as an amateur games journalist I just have to have it for reviewing so I guess I wont be overly confident in saying I am not going to be getting one.

My next PlayStation Classic post will be another one looking at a few of the games but for now I just wanted to talk about if I was going to get one or not and what I had been doing recently with one of my PlayStation 2's (Yes I have more than one, because I am a bit of a sad collector who always worries stuff will break one day).

My oppinion on Destruction Derby and Final Fantasy VII being on the PlayStation Classic , and the issue with diffrent regions Roms being used on the system.

OK so more information seems to have come out about the Sony PlayStation Classic now that a few sites online have had test units, and apparently Some games are the SCEA versions, and some are the SCEE ones, this in itself seems a little bit weird but to start with lets talk about what I mean by SCEA and SCEE. SCEA are the American versions and SCEE are the European versions, the American Versions usually ran at 60hz while the European versions ran at 50hz this usually meant that American and Japanese games were around 20% faster than there European counterparts. Games were often programmed at 60hz and then essentially forced into 50hz for Europe sometimes with optimization but usually without, this means that basically most of the time the 60hz version is really how the developer intended the game to be, and so in most cases gamers in the know tend to prefer to play the 60hz version of games if they can.As the games on the PlayStation classic are essential just disc/rom files it arguably should have been easy for Sony to just slap the 60hz American versions on every English Language regions machines but it doesn't appear like they have done this, heck you'd think that if they really wanted they could have doubled up the machines memory and put the SCEE and SCEA versions of every game on so that people could have fun looking for differences. So why do some people see this as a big issue? Well basically because people kind of want the best product that they can get for there money, and if you know that you very easily could have been given a better version of a game with it incurring the company providing the units no additional costs then it kind of seems crazy for you to be given an inferior version, does this ruin or damage the credibility and usefulness of the PlayStation classic? Well I guess that depends strongly on what is making you consider buying the unit and your own preferences and annoyances.

With that new information touched upon why don't we look at a few more of the games?

Now one of the games on the PlayStation classic that I am very happy to hear is on the system is Destruction Derby. Now I got that game very early in the machines life and I played it to absolute death, I not only loved the racing but I couldn't stop playing the Bowl where all you do is start in a big circular bowl with lots of other cars and try to smash the crud out of them without your car getting so damaged that it can no longer move. I not only spent a great deal of time playing this on at my own but I also pulled it out at plenty of party's and sleepovers and one of the funniest things was that my mother who wasn't even that keen on driving games managed to set a time that none of my friends could beat and it drove a particular friend of mine absolutely  mad to the point that he tried for 3 hours straight and couldn't even approach her score. I love this game because it gave me a whole lot of fun but even more than that it gave me a memory which I will carry with me forever a memory which is very much


OK now with Final Fantasy VII some people will argue that this or that Final Fantasy would be better, personally I would if I had to pick one and one only Final Fantasy game would have gone for Final Fantasy Tactics just because I love that kind of game but I can defiantly see why this game was picked for the PlayStation classic it is a long multi disc good Japanese RPG and after all RPG's were a very strong part of the PlayStation and this one does tend to hold a very special place in a lot of peoples hearts so I think this is an excellent addition to the PlayStation Classic and is probably one of the games which will make the people who purchase this machine decide to purchase it.

More about the PlayStation Classic full title list including the diffrences between the Western and Japanese Version. Including my oppinion on Three of the Japanese exclusives

In my previous post I posted the full list of games on the Western PlayStation classic and then went on to talk about two of the games and what I thought about them being on the machine. Something I didn't mention was the difference between the Western and Japanese versions. Well 12 of the games are the same on both regions systems however our Japanese gaming friends will not be getting Cool Boarders 2, Destruction Derby, Grand Theft Auto, Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee, Rayman, Syphon Filter, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six or Twisted Metal. I guess there will be good reasons for this maybe these games were not very popular over there or are not as well remembered by them. The Japanese however do have the following games on there version of the PlayStation Classic.

Japanese PlayStation Classic Exclusives:
Arc the Lad
Arc the Lad 2
Armored Core
G Darius
Gradius Gaiden
SaGa Frontier
Parasite Eve
XI [sái] (Devil Dice)

I already discussed Cool Borders 2 and whether it really deserved a place on the PlayStation Classic or  not but I instantly have to admit that there are a lot of games on the above Japanese Exclusive list that I would very happily swap Cool Borders 2 for.

The Arc the Lad games are basically games which consist of tactical battles and basic RPG elements, as far as I know they didn't ever come out over here but I do remember one of my best friends having a Japanese import of the first game, and the games have certainly been downloadable in English on the PSN store. I actually quiet like these games and I would have enjoyed seeing one of them on the Western PlayStation Classic and to the best of my knowledge they both actually reviewed quiet well. It is also interesting to note that the inclusion of the first two Arc the Lad games on the Japanese system means that the Japanese version actually has two games in the same series something the Western version cant brag.

Armored Core is a third-person shooter mecha video game developed by FromSoftware who are probably best known now for being the developers of the Dark Souls games. and released in 1997. The game is the first in the Armored Core series a series which not only made a name for itself but has also gone on to include around 20 games. Given how much love Dark Souls gets I think it would have been cool to have this game feature on the Western version of the PlayStation Classic

I don't want to get into the other games right now I will save those for a latter post but personally I think I would have possibly preferred if we had gotten the same titles as the Japanese but I guess a lot of that is down purely to my own possible preferences.

My retro Game Purchases for October 2018

OK so my retro purchases started on the 1st of October when I got a copy of Mytran Wars for the psp in a case with its manual but with the cover missing for  £1.99.  I also walked into a charity shop and managed to get the Japanese soundtrack to Metal Gear Solid (the first one) for 50pence, not exactly a game but id still class it as a retro game collection item.

On the 4th I Visited an indy shop and had a little spending spree. I got Final Fantasy Tactics for GBA cart only for £8, 2 unofficial and 1 official PS1 memory cards for 50pence each, Go Vacation complete for the Wii for £3 and ford street racing LA duel complete for psp for £1.

On the 7th I went into a branch of CEX and grabbed two psp games both complete for the combined total of £3 these games were Modnation racers and everybodys golf 2

On the 11th I grabbed a complete Japanese copy of Ghost Busters for the megadrive for £10. It seemed a darn good price and a pretty excellent time to grab it given what month it is.

On the 12th I went to a pawn store I sometimes visit and for £11 I managed to grab 4 loose N64 carts, WCW NWO Revenge, Ridge Racer 64, Ready to rumble boxing, and NBA hang time and then 3 boxed complete original Xbox games, Spider-man 2, House of the Dead 3 and 007 from Russia with love.

On the 14th I got Capcom Puzzle World for the PSP for £3.50 from an indy game shop, I had seen this before but never paid much attention and certainly didn't realize it had the Pang/Buster Bros games on it.

On the 16th of October I went in to a charity shop and I managed to grab Metal Gear Solid 3 complete for the PS2 for 50pence and Resident Evil 4 special edition complete for the PS2 for 50pence

On the 17th I got 6 football games for the PS1 all complete for £3 for all of them. Sure football games are not worth much or the most interesting thing in the world but they all have perfect discs and I just couldn't leave them.

On the 30th I went to a few charity shops and managed to grab a complete copy of resident evil for the GameCube for £1 and a complete copy of Smackdown vs Raw 2007 for psp for £1.

Finally on the last day of the month I grabbed a few bits and pieces from a pawn store. I grabbed MX Superfly complete for the GameCube for £1, International Superstar Soccer cart only for the SNES for £2 and 3 original Xbox games for 50pence GoldenEye Rogue Agent, The Chronicles of Riddick Escape from Butcher Bay, and Midway Arcade Treasures.

So in total I spent £53.99 this month on Retro Games which is a pretty slow month for me but in fairness the last few months I have tried to curb my spending a little bit and with Christmas fast approaching I dont expect things to really change, but who knows, if something good jumps in front of me then I am most likly going to grab it. I suppose my favourate purchase of the month is my Japanese copy of Ghost Busters for the MegaDrive not only because its an awesome game but also because its the exact same region/version I grabbed as a youngster so its very nostalgic for me.

The PlayStation Classic full title list annouced and my oppinion on two of the games on it and if they belong on the system.

 

So the full list of games for the upcoming PlayStation Classic has been announced and I thought that was worth talking about, in general it feels like there is a sense of disappointment in the air people have been asking questions like where is Medievil? Where is Silent Hill? where is Spyro, where is Crash  and why is there not a single Tomb Raider game on this thing? I guess one of the issues though is that the PlayStation was a massively popular machine with a huge catalog of games for it and no matter what games were put on the machine some people were always going to end up disappointed. What do I personally think about things though? Well first I will list the games and then I will spend the rest of this blog talking about one or two of them with the idea being that by the time this machine launches that I will have talked about all of them at least a little.

• Battle Arena Toshinden
• Cool Boarders 2
• Destruction Derby
• Final Fantasy VII
• Grand Theft Auto
• Intelligent Qube
• Jumping Flash
• Metal Gear Solid
• Mr Driller
• Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee
• Rayman
• Resident Evil Director’s Cut
• Revelations: Persona
• Ridge Racer Type 4
• Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo
• Syphon Filter
• Tekken 3
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six
• Twisted Metal
• Wild Arms

OK so I know a lot of people will probably be a little surprised at the inclusion of Battle Arena Toshinden but I actually really enjoyed the game when the PlayStation originally released and I think the double one two beat em up punch of Tekken and Toshindon was a really strong point of the original consoles launch but I do find it a little strange we got Toshinden 1 and Tekken 3 instead of getting for example Toshinden 3. I do see how they might have wanted this mini console to have a similar beat em up double punch but I think that given the consoles long life and high game count they perhaps could have come up with a bit of a better two punch combo here. The truth is though I kind of like the games inclusion on this classic system but I can understand it not being other peoples cup of tea.

OK so that leads me to Cool Boarders 2 known in Japan as Cool Boarders 2: Killing Session for those who haven't played it well its basically a snowboarding video game which is part of a series which was largely exclusive to the PlayStation. So why are we getting the second game in a series and not either the first or even the 3rd or the 4th or Cool Boarders 2001 which was an American Exclusive? Well the second game builds upon its predecessor's features with the addition of trick competitions, as well as there being more unlockables, with 7 snowboarders, 18 snowboards and 10 courses to compete on. Sure the games after kind of have even more added to them but they are not made by the original developer so Cool Boarders 2 is the fullest game offered up by the original developer and perhaps the reason it was chosen. In all honesty I enjoyed the Cool Boarders games enough back in the day but its not really something I see as an essential title which encapsulates the essence of the original PlayStation console.

SNES Review Sunset Riders

When I first started my Super Nintendo 150 Reviews series I had a whole bunch of rules, the main two were that I was only going to review games where I owned the actual cartridge, and I was going to review them on actual hardware. I stuck by these 2 rules firmly for the entire 150 reviews but then as I came up to my 152nd review I decided I was going to loosen up a little, I had achieved my objective after all so why not relax a little bit. So for my 152nd Review I used the Everdrive my wonderful Fiancee had gotten me for Christmas and I reviewed an unfinished prototype game using the Everdrive to play it on actual real hardware. After this I proceeded to review a few more unreleased games but then I decided hey why don't I review some of the games I always wanted to review but couldn't either find, afford or ones where I just couldn't justify spending like £80 just to review a game.

It was at this point that I decided that I wanted to take a good long look at the game Sunset Riders. What drove me towards this game was the fact I had found some tickets to get half price admission to The American Adventure theme park in the bottom of a bag while doing a spot of deep cleaning, the weird thing about this is that The American Adventure closed years ago. This got me to thinking about the times when I would go there as a very young kid in jeans, a wrangler jacket with a Sheriffs star on it, a gun belt around my waist carrying a set of matching plastic pistols and a white cowboy hat. This was the start of me thinking that cowboys were perhaps the greatest thing ever which was only proven even more true when I was shown the films of the Duke AKA John Wayne, and then I saw the Young Guns films which made me want to be an outlaw like Billy the Kid. It was when I was almost at cowboy fever pitch that the MegaDrive/Genesis version of Young Guns dropped into my life courtesy of Santa Clause one fine Christmas morning, I have to give my parents a huge shout out here not only did they always keep the magic of Christmas alive but they always did there best to makes sure that I could darn good presents not just by spending money but also by listening to what I liked and making very good decisions.

I have to admit that I don't actually remember when I got the Super Nintendo version but I do remember being surprised as all heck when I loaded it up and on the title screen you could see four heroes on horseback and then when I pressed the start button and I had a choice between Steve, Billy, Bob and Cormano I just felt absolutely spoiled for choice. Bob became my go to character, it was a mix between me really liking the shotgun weapons spread and the novelty of him not having been in my MegaDrive version.

Click here for My Sunset Riders YouTube Review

So if you haven't played Sunset Riders it is basically a scrolling shooter game where you move largely from left to right making your way through the level to reach your bounty, an individual you have been hired to take down in a blaze of glory. You can get two  power-ups  along the way, these come in the form of sheriff's badges with one of them increasing the speed as which you can fire and the other basically making you dual wield, so your character instead of having a six shooter or a shotgun will have two pistols or two shotguns at there disposal for double the damage and double the fun.

The games graphics and sound although not arcade perfect are just about as close as you could expect and give the game a darn charming and fun atmosphere, the music is great for getting you in to the right mood to play the game and for making it feel even more action packed. Even more important than this though are the controls. Yeah they might be simple with there basically being three buttons one to shoot, one to jump and one to slide, but they feel awesome, they are super responsive and your soon doing exactly what you want the very second you want to do it. This means that if you get shot or get blown up by dynamite your never cursing the game itself your instead only cursing yourself and become determined that with a bit of practice you can get better and make less school boy errors.

If I was to give Sunset Riders a score out of 10 then I would have to give the game a 9 or even 10 out of 10 the game is simply a joy to play especially in two player. Some people might argue that with only 8 stages and its arcade nature that there is very little replayability or reason to return to the game but I would argue that with the games sense of fun and its charm its easy to return to the game for a quick enjoyable blast no matter how many times you have finished it, its just a great game to dip into for a bit and enjoy yourself. The game is very very expensive even for a cart only version so I cant help but recommend that people either look for it on Virtual console style services or that you look into investing in something like an Everdrive.

What have I been doing with my time and why are the posts here so few and far between

I am not a big fan of having to do these why am I not posting very much posts but I feel that every so often they are kind of important. I guess part of it has just been that I have been a little bit busier than I would like in my personal life, but there is a little bit more to it than just that in this case, in this case I have also spent a decent amount of time doing some editing work on a podcast/

I edited the last two episodes of the GRcade podcast as well as editing a sort of bonus episode. If you are interested in hearing me and many other talented individuals talking about the video game world then you can either look up the GRcade podcast on Iplayer or you can click on the following link

GRcade Podcast

This is not the first time I have been involved in a Podcast, I used to produce and edit the podcasts for a site called ONM Haven and even carried on doing them after the places downfall, but to me the GRcade stuff is much more important and is a big step up. For one on ONM Havens old Podcast Podcast Zero, I was the only real participant it would either consists of me talking on my own or at max me interviewing one person. The GRcade podcast is a much more group related podcast which although harder to edit is ultimately in my opinion a lot better product and as a person who can at times be socially awkward I think its a great thing for me to be involved in. The editing I have done on these few episodes though has taken up a fair amount of time and has therefore kind of limited my posting here, so I wanted to mention it.

So what does the future hold? Hopefully more Podcast related work as well as hopefully a few more YouTube videos, I have to admit though in all honesty I find this part of the year a bit of a complex time for me. I am not very into Christmas largely as things get a lot more stressful, so if my output here is to increase much then it will probably either go down again around Christmas or you wont see much of an improvement till next year.

150 SNES games reviewed #37: Spindizzy Worlds

Spindizzy Worlds is a puzzle game published by Activision, originally released on the Amiga and Atari ST in 1990, which was then ported to the SNES by Ascii Entertainment. 

The game is a sequel to the 1986 video game Spindizzy which was released on early home computers such as the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, etc . Spindizzy Worlds uses an isometric view, and the player controls a robotic device named GERALD (who looks like a yellow spinning top). His name is an acronymn for Geographical Environmental Reconnaissance And Land Mapping Device. The idea of this game is to explore a star system before it is destroyed, collecting the jewel like icons there as you go.

The best way to think of this game is as a less cutsey prototype of Super Monkey Ball, which features a yellow spinning robot instead of a trapped simian. Now take that image and push the graphics back about 10 years from Monkey Ball and you will be pretty darn close to what is on offer here.

Gerald will spin everywhere you direct it – but you’ll have a tough time getting it to stop at first, meaning you’re going to go shooting off of this and that platform, you’re going to get half way up a ramp and fall off, and you’re possibly going to do it again and again. Going up and down elevators is hard because no matter how careful you think you’re being, or how softly you think you’re using your fingers, sometimes you will find that you just cant seem to hold the little blighter in place long enough. The trick to this is Gerald travels at around his medium speed, if you try the face buttons then you will soon learn that one of them if held makes him go faster and another acts as a sort of brake or slow movement button.

A lot of this game kind of relies on you knowing when to go quickly and when to slow down, and of course once you think you have the hang of this the game will decide to give you a treacherous task to perform and decide to up the ante by making you have to do it quickly. Of course, this stops the game from becoming a cakewalk once you think you have gotten the hang of things, but it can also cause the game to get incredibly frustrating and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are not people who have torn there own hair out in flights of swearing and frustration. However I have seen people play this like they have some kind of neural link with the bloody game. Just like in Super Monkey Ball there are some players who with the right amount of practice manage to get so in tune with the controls and Gerald’s strengths and limitations that they can turn this in to a form of video game ballet and it becomes amazing to watch. Players like this are a rarity though. Most people will bounce around like a mad spinning top shooting off the sides or crawling at the pace of a snail and I think that in a way this makes this a hard game to show footage of. I am not saying that I am incredibly bad at this game or anything but I am quiet a shaky person mostly due to medication I am on for epilepsy, so I hardly make this kind of thing look graceful.

The graphics and sound are both adequate but that’s the best I can say about them. They don’t really add anything much to the game. For me this game is a bit of a Marmite game, you will either love it or hate it. If you want a fun challenging puzzle game then it might be worth giving it a whack but I would only recommend this if you have played the living hell out of things such as Monkey Ball, Kororinpa and Marble Madness and simply need more of that kind of game. If you decide you want a crack at this game you can get it online with a cartridge-only PAL copy going for around £7 which I would say is quite a fair price for this title. My copy is boxed but not in the best of shape and in all honesty I cant remember where the heck I got it from, or when I even got it.

I would give this game six out of 10, but like I said I think it is a real Marmite game. I can see some people saying it deserves eight and I can equally imagine people calling it a poor sliding mess and claiming six is far too generous, and that they would have given it three. If you like puzzle games maybe give it a bash but I can promise you that if you don’t usually like this kind of thing then this game will not be the one to change your mind.

150 SNES games reviewed #35: UN Squadron

U.N. Squadron is a side-scrolling shooting game which came out in arcades in 1989. It was programmed by Capcom and released for use on their CPS arcade hardware. I won’t explain what this was but if you look back at my Final Fight review there is an explanation there.

The game was released in Japan under the name Area 88, the same name which was used for the Super Famicom (Japanese version of this game). The game is a typical side-scrolling shooter, unlike many of Capcom’s other shooters around this time such as their 1940 series which are vertical-scrolling shooters. It was based on a Manga series Area 88 which never really came to these shores. But the game has a nice intro which explains the rough idea behind the story.

My UN Squadron SNES YouTube Review 

Unlike some shooters which are one hit and you’re dead this game is a little different. If you’re hit then your plane is damaged but if you can keep it safe from harm for a little while then you’ll be fine. This actually adds to the excitement, you will find yourself going: ‘OK I have got to keep away from the enemies as you keep trying to dodge incoming fire and hold on’. When you manage it you will thump the air in triumph, and when you fail you will curse yourself for not having quick enough reflexes but the main thing is it always feels like any failures are down to your own lack of skills.

Before starting a level you get the option of purchasing special weapons or added defense options from the shop. As you shoot down enemies you gain cash and at the end of the level any special weapons you purchased and did not use get converted back in to funds and added to your cash reserve. This is a great little addition as once you get better at the early levels you can try to challenge yourself with the added benefit of an easier time in later missions by trying to complete the earlier ones on a strict budget allowing you to hold back enough money to kit your plane out with lots of special weapons for the later missions.

 

If you were a big fan of Capcom then the SNES was definitely the machine for you to get your arcade fix on back in the day. If you have read my Final Fight review then you might be asking what has been dropped from the original arcade version?

Well the SNES version is not an exact replica of the coin-op. Yes, it is a port and yes, this port does have certain things missing and disappointingly one of these missing things is once again the two-player mode. Some of the game’s levels are different or modified from the arcade version but it is not always in a bad way. It’s not really a worse version. it’s more of a slightly remixed version. In this case they didn’t just strip things from the game, there are actually a few additions including some more weapons and the chance to purchase different aircraft. Ignoring the missing two-player mode this game is no worse than the arcade machine, it’s just a little bit of a different version.

With bright graphics, enjoyable music and epic action it is hard to see what this game could do better. The end of the level will see you meeting some kind of large end of level boss which you will have to defeat. At this point you better hope you have held something back to save the day. I would have to give this game eight out of 10. It’s a darn good scrolling shooter. The only thing it is really lacking which would make me bump the score up would be a two-player mode, at this point some of you must be wondering if Capcom ever managed to bash out a high-quality SNES game which catered for more than one.

If you want to try this game you will most likely be paying £15 minimum for a cart of it. I managed to get one for £10 but it took a heck of a lot of looking around and waiting. Capcom have actually made quite a few of those classic collections but U.N. Squadron has never seemed to make the cut, and this is probably one of the reasons it holds its price.

150 SNES games reviewed #28: Ryan Giggs Champions World Class Soccer

Ryan Giggs Champions World Class Soccer was the game I played a little last night as well as early this morning. It is obviously a football (soccer) game and it was released on the SNES as well as the Mega Drive. It was developed by Park Place Productions and published by Acclaim.

 

My Champions World Class Soccor YouTube Review 

 

You might not have heard of Park Place Productions largely because they were a bit of a bright light that burnt out very quickly. They were founded in 1989 and in 1993 they had become the largest independent developer of computer games. They had  130 developers making 45 games for 14 different publishers. At the end of December 1993 the company collapsed spectacularly. Basically they didn’t hit some targets they had been set by publishers and as a result of this they were denied payments, pulled out of contracts and literally left Park Place Productions up the creek without a paddle.

The first thing to note is that the whole Ryan Giggs thing is a bit of a con. The UK release featured a picture of the player on the game box and the cartridge label but any real connection to the guy or inclusion of his name ends there. The German version featured a player famous to them Sepp Maier, and the French featured a team likely to interest them, Paris Saint-Germain. None of the three have anything to do with the game beyond the box art and cartridge label though so from now on sod Giggs I will be referring to this as Champions World Class Soccer (or CWC Soccer if I get lazy).

Modes of play included in the game are the standard type, exhibition match and tournament mode. There are the obvious options to turn certain things off and mess with how long the matches last etc but nothing out of the ordinary.

The game’s presentation is pretty decent. There is a TV announcer talking about the match before it starts – talking as in text along the bottom of the screen, but the text is pretty cool. It mentions which team you are and what is good or bad about you. For example I got something on the lines of the following for my first match: “England have always been good at defence but there shooting record is a little unpredictable”. The in game graphics are pretty much the bog standard average football game graphics from this point in time so I don’t have a lot to say about them, they don’t make or break the game.

I like the fact that there is a big blue star around the character you are in control of. It is very easy to know who you are and then there is a button which seems to exist just to help you do little tricks either dribbling the ball around your feet, turning backwards for a second or shooting forward quickly – well, quickly for this game. Unfortunately this is the point at which my review has to get a little bit sour I am afraid that personally I feel that the gameplay is bad. The game is slow, both passing and shooting are hard and frustrating to the point you’ll soon find yourself turning the air blue.

Sometimes it takes a few seconds for your character to become properly attached to the ball like you do in most football games. You will have ran on to the ball and it just wont end up under your control so you’ll be running backwards and forwards hoping it attaches to you and then a computer controlled player will just run straight up and claim it with no problem or pause in proceedings.

In my opinion this game is the worst SNES football game I have played so far. I like the TV start, I like the fact it makes it obvious who you are but I don’t really like the controls or the gameplay. It also didn’t give me my any of my demands such as great goal scoring animations or a voice shouting “Goal!”. I would give this game four out of 10 . It’s not unplayable but there are much better games out there for your cash. If you decide that you simply need this game to live the good point is it will cost you only £4 or £5 to buy it online and get it posted to you.

150 SNES games reviewed #27: Top Gear

Top Gear (or as our friends in Japan would know it, Top Racer) is a racing game for the SNES. It was developed by Gremlin Graphics and published by Kemco.

 

It was one of the first racing games to be released on the SNES, so when it came out it was immediately popular. Everyone I knew back then seemed to have either this or Exhaust Heat with the lucky and truly dedicated having both. Top Gear and its two sequels – Top Gear 2 and Top Gear 3000 – were created by the same developers as the famous Lotus series of games which had been released earlier on the Amiga and the Mega Drive. It is important to note before anyone gets too excited this game has no connection to the TV show with the same name.

My Top Gear YouTube Review 

The good points are that the game feels very fast. I hadn’t played it for a fair few years and when I started playing it this morning I was very surprised at how fast it felt. It is also very bumpy in a way which is kind of hard to explain, but it is worth noting because I remember back in the day a few people I knew couldn’t play it because when it was in motion it made them feel sick. I love it as it actually helps to make you feel like your in there racing. But it’s important to note before anyone goes out and pays for this game, it might be worth looking for some footage on YouTube so you can see if it affects you.

I lost my first few races which meant instead of progressing I kept seeing the starting screen again. But I soon realised I wasn’t paying proper attention to my gears. You don’t get to choose a car or buy add-ons for it, or to even mess with its handling and tires. If this is something that is important to you then your probably better off with Exhaust Heat. Once I started paying attention though I soon found I was up there fighting for pole position again and again. This is when the game began to get really fun, but just when I thought I had seen it all, when I thought I had it in the bag, that’s when things changed a little bit.

I’d noticed there were pit stops but I had never seen the need to use them, sure I had got a little bit tight on fuel at times but there was always just enough to see me fly past the flag in first. You see short races don’t  really require a pit stop and refueling, but the lengthier ones will see you come to an abrupt halt half-way around the track in one of your later laps if you’re not careful. This adds a whole new level of strategy to proceedings as you begin to have to think about when to have a pit stop, how long to stay in the pit, sure you can see your position getting worse while you’re being filled up but you know that in the longer races if you don’t fill up then you’re going to come to a stop and lose. Whole races can be won or lost based on your judgement of when you should pull in for a pit stop or how long you can put it off.

The graphics are good for the time. The screen is always split even when you’re playing on your own. In this case there is a computer rival in charge of a car on the bottom half of the screen. I like the music in this game, it might not be technically brilliant but it is fun. It fits its purpose of pumping you up for the races brilliantly and makes a change to all those games back then which suffered from having no sounds in game apart from that farting rumbling engine sound which used to be popular. I would give this game a good solid seven out of 10. It is a fun game but I miss having a choice in terms of what car to drive and the options to tune it up and buy upgrades. Basically this game just seems like a very big slice of arcade fun not that that’s a bad thing, but you need to keep that in mind if you’re thinking about getting this.

A lot of times when I have seen this game online its been about £8 for an import cart or about £15 for an PAL one, with a boxed copy being as high as £30. I only paid £3 for my cart. The sequel does seem to be a little cheaper and easier to get your hands on though (I will get around to reviewing that sooner or later).

150 SNES games reviewed #26: Prince of Persia

Today’s game is Prince of Persia. Prince of Persia is a fantasy platform game, originally developed by a guy called Jordan Mechner and released in 1989 for the Apple II system.

 

My Prince Of Perisa SNES YouTube Review

At the time the game was held in high regard. People claimed it represented a great technological leap forward in terms of the quality of animation used in video games. As with most games which do extremely well it was soon ported to just about anything that could cope with it. The SNES version was done by Arsys Software, a company set up by former Technosoft staff members. It was published by Masaya in Japan and Konami in both the US and Europe.

I was thrilled when I originally played a home computer version of this game but the thrill had faded a little bit by the time I played the SNES version. Have you ever played a game and decided that it had the basics down right but that it just lacked something? That there were the bare bones of a classic in place but that the project needed fleshing out? The graphics are plain but the movement is still impressive. For those who have played the original its important to note that the SNES version is in fact longer, consider it sort of a director’s/extended cut. Instead of the original 13 levels, this version has 20. In the original you had one hour to complete the game but this has been increased here to two hours due to the added length. It is great to see so much added to this conversion in terms of gameplay, and it helps make this game worth considering if you have already seen what it has to offer on an earlier release on a different platform.



The game offers a good, if basic, story and a good degree of challenge. You won’t be finishing this game quickly. In fact you will probably make slow, steady progress punctuated with bouts of swearing. I  praise the game for its atmosphere and challenge but there is also a lot I have to say about the things that bug me. My main gripe with the game is that at times the controls feel kind of skiddy. Now we’re not getting into awful control territory here like Ultraman but they’re just not as crisp as I would like them. Often you will need to stop running before you run off a ledge and fall to your doom. You just feel that little bit too skiddy for my liking meaning often you’ll end up turning the air blue as you plummet to your death. The game is also more or less silent and although the movements in the game look impressive there could be a lot more flavour added in to the graphics. When it comes to presentation it just seems like a very bare bones production which is a shame. I guess after having seen the Konami name on the European box I had sort of expected a Konami level of presentation. That’s the thing when you put someone else’s logo on your product by having them publish it for you. It can act as good publicity as people can be pulled in by a well known name, but it can also come as a curse as those names and logos come with a reputation you then find your product having to try to live up to.

There are other games though that came out after this title which I feel used this game as a stepping stone and in doing so managed to offer a much fuller, richer experience, and you might be better off spending your hard earned money on one of these. (I won’t name them as I plan on eventually reviewing one or two of them.) I think influences from this game can still be seen in some games today, I think there is a definite case to make that this game was an incredibly important piece of software which helped shape so many titles which followed in its wake, much in the same way as Super Mario Kart helped to birth seemingly a million character-filled go kart racing games. Prince of Perisa’s DNA can be felt in more places than I can name, tunnelling its way through action platformer after action platformer. Of course as most people are aware the Prince of Persia name has lived on well into the more recent gaming environment with an awesome trilogy of games carrying the name and some of the original DNA appearing on the PS2 , Xbox and GameCube.

I would give this game seven out of 10. It can be frustrating but it is also incredibly rewarding. Every time you play you will get a little bit further, you will solve another puzzle or you will work out where you are supposed to be going just before you die. It has a very strong just one more go quality. I do think you need to think long and hard about the kinds of games you like before purchasing this though. If you don’t mind slowly making progress and learning from your mistakes then you will benefit more from the game, if you like instantaneous rewards and a game you can very easily make quick progress in then this probably is not the game for you.

My copy of Prince of Persia is a loose Japanese cart which I managed to get for a couple of quid a few years ago. If you really wanted to give this game a go you would be looking at paying between £15 to £25 for a PAL copy, depending on how lucky you are and if this game has a box and manual or not. I have seen a few boxed US copies going for as little as £13 if you have a converter or modified or import system.