New Blog!

Yes that's right! As some of my longer-term readers may well already know, another subject I'm interested in besides video games and films is astronomy. I've posted a handful of related features here before but I know most of you come here for gaming-related stuff so I've kept them to a minimum. It remains a subject I'm very interested in though, despite being hopelessly ill-equipped to comprehend much of it, so I decided to create a separate blog just for spacey stuff.

It won't be updated as often as Red Parsley - I only have so much free time after all - but if you have any interest in the subject, I invite you to check it out now and then. Click here to see! http://skysofullofstars.blogspot.co.uk/

 

Crap Games #8

Shadow of the Beast (1989)
By: Reflections / Psygnosis Genre: Fighting Players: 1 Difficulty: Hard
Featured Version: Commodore Amiga
Also Available For: MegaDrive, Master System, PC Engine CD, FM Towns, Lynx, Atari ST, C64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum

If you could go back in time to the end of the 80's and took a stroll to your local computer retailer (and yes, those little independent shops did used to exist), there's a very good chance the window displays would include, amongst other things, an Amiga running Shadow of the Beast. Its release was very quickly followed by all and sundry heralding its wondrous audio/visual delights and, naturally enough, many shop keepers swiftly seized upon these qualities in an attempt to sell more Amigas. Who could blame them? It certainly made an impressive sight. Before too long, however, the game developed a reputation of being all style over substance. Some even called it a glorified tech-demo. Not that anything is wrong with tech-demos of course, they've been used to sell hardware since there has been hardware, but most of those aren't then put on sale as full games at about three times the price of a normal release...

Film Review #75

Divergent (2014)
Director: Neil Burger Starring: Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Ashley Judd, Jai Courtney, Ray Stevenson, Zoë Kravitz, Miles Teller, Tony Goldwyn, Kate Winslet, Maggie Q, Christian Madsen, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, Ansel Elgort

Certificate: 12 Running Time: 139 Minutes

Tagline: "What Makes You Different Makes You Dangerous."

The movie world has been seeing quite a number of war-ravaged Earths reinventing themselves in the last few years, or at least particular parts of our poor old planet anyway. Most recently we've had the districts and oppressive Capitol of Panem which have hosted some exciting adventures and a potential coup d'état, and now comes the first film adaptation of another trilogy of novels set in a not-entirely-dissimilar-looking world. Here, our precious home has been subjected to a vast, unspecified war - much was devastated and even the climate has been changed, to such an extent that lakes have dried up. The survivors live in what's left of downtown Chicago which has been sealed behind an enormous, all-encompassing wall, and here, society has been divided into five factions.

Collection Rarities #1

I don't have a tremendously large retro collection these days, much to my sorrow. There are several reasons for this including limited space, a video-game-hating wife, and this very blog (I spend a large portion of my gaming time on emulators grabbing screen shots), but I do still have a few decent items left. One of my favourites is rarest console I own - a 'Skeleton' Saturn, as they have become known.

As anyone into retro gaming knows well, Sega's Saturn was a fantastic system with stacks of top-quality titles available. Many of them were only released in Japan, however, which means any serious player or collector needs to either have their UK/US machine modified to play Japanese games, or go the whole hog and buy an actual Japanese system. As is often the case with our Far Eastern friends, there were several models of Sega's 32-bit powerhouse including one with white casing and another with grey casing, but by far the most interesting models to collectors are the so-called 'skeleton' Saturns which have smoky grey transparent casing, allowing you see the various bits and pieces inside. These were the final Saturns to be manufactured and came in two guises.

Sega Super Scaler Games #3

Enduro Racer (1986)
By: Sega Genre: Racing Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Arcade First Day Score: 1,617,848
Also Available For: Master System (variation), Atari ST, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum
Download For: Wii Virtual Console

When most gamers recall arcadey motorcycle games, or indeed Sega motorcycle games if you want to be more specific, they immediately think of Hang-On. Perhaps younger gamers might be more familiar with Manx TT Superbike, but one game that often seems to get forgotten is Enduro Racer, and that’s a bit peculiar. It is, after all, different enough from both of those games, and from anything else that was around at the time, to be worthy of remembering, surely? Well, I've only remembered it myself recently, and I was never fortunate enough to find the 'proper' version of it in any arcades to begin with - I enjoyed the Speccy version long ago and, as some of you may remember, I have already looked at the Master System version here at Red Parsley which was basically an entirely different (but decent) game - so I'm looking forward to giving this arcade original a try.

Hack 'n' Slash Games #3

Völgarr the Viking (2013)
By: Crazy Viking Studios Genre: Platform/Fighting Players: 1 Difficulty: Hard
Featured Version: PC
Also Available For: Apple Mac, Linux, Xbox Live Arcade

The indie gaming boom of the last few years has given us lucky oafs more choice and variety than ever before. That can only be good news, of course, and I have taken particular delight in the many retro flavoured titles that have been steadily appearing lately. Some of them have been sequels/reboots, whether official or unofficial, while others have clearly been inspired by favourites from the past, and Völgarr the Viking definitely falls into the latter category. Völgarr is a great warrior who fell in battle 'to overwhelming numbers defending his homeland after slaying hundreds of adversaries.' His mortal life is restored by Odin, however, on condition that he rid the land of the terrible dragon Fáfnir who has been sowing chaos throughout the land of Midgard. If Odin is powerful enough to do that, it does make you wonder why he didn't just flick Fáfnir away himself though.

Sega Model 1 Games #2

Virtua Fighter (1993)
By: Sega AM2 Genre: Fighting Players: 1-8 (via machine link-up) Difficulty: Easy-Medium
Featured Version: Arcade
Also Available For: MegaDrive, 32X, Saturn, PC, PlayStation 2

Though polygon graphics had been around for some years already, it was Sega’s seminal Virtua Racing that really kickstarted the gaming industry’s obsession with them. Though it may have merely been a glorified tech demo, it still proved to be a mighty enjoyable game as well. If the new technology was to evolve and achieve any sustained success, though, it needed to be proven by more than one game, so Sega soon cooked up another, and wisely went for a totally different kind of game too. The result was Virtua Fighter, a one-on-one fighting game born partly out of this need to show off the Model 1 board some more, but also no doubt due to the ongoing popularity of the genre prompted by Street Fighter II a few years before. Capcom’s game is a rather cartoony and unrealistic affair, of course, but Sega were aiming for more realism with their game to go with the more realistic graphics too.

Indie Games News/Previews #2

Monster Boy and the Wizard of Booze by FDG Entertainment (2015) - PC

Growing up as a Sega fan-boy as I did in the late 80's, there was one series of games that was a must-have, and that was Wonder Boy. The first entry in the series was a fun action game but the second, called Wonder Boy In Monsterland, was a revelation, taking the form of a fully-fledged arcade adventure made up of lots of magical lands to explore and tons of special stuff to collect. The third instalment was even better and remains one of my favourite games of all-time, but whichever one you prefer, there's no doubting that this fantastic series was a great reason to be a Master System owner. It should therefore come as mesmerisingly awesome news to hear that there is a new title on the way.

Film Round-Up #7

Due to the nature of my work I always get a decent amount of time off work over Christmas and New Year and this is often a time that includes numerous movies. This year I received a few as gifts and I gave a few to my wife too, and we watched nearly all of them. Some of these will hopefully receive full reviews (eventually) but until then, here is a round-up of some others viewed over the holiday period:

Fracture (2007)

I'm not entirely sure why now but I've been after this film for years. Happily, I received it as a gift at Christmas along with several other titles but it was the first I tried. It stars Anthony Hopkins as Ted Crawford, a wealthy Irish engineer living and working in LA who, upon discovering his wife has been having an affair, confronts her and then shoots her, leaving her in a coma. When the police arrive he immediately confesses and is duly arrested. The case is taken on by cocky deputy DA, Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling) who is expecting a quick open-and-shut case to round off his current job before he moves on to his lofty new position with a prestigious law firm. Unfortunately, Ted is released on a technicality and Willy, unhappy at the blemish on his reputation, gets involved in a battle of wits with clued-up Ted who believes he's staged the perfect crime, and is soon obsessed with bringing him down. Sadly, I didn't find this quite as engaging as I had imagined I would but it's just about saved by the lead cast and their superb performances, without whom this might just seem like an elaborate TV show episode. Not the most gripping crime drama but worth watching 6/10

Isometric Games #3

The Immortal a.k.a. Wizard of the Immortal (1991)
By: Will Harvey / Electronic Arts Genre: Arcade Adventure Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Featured Version: Sega MegaDrive / Genesis
Also Available For: NES, Amiga, Atari ST, PC, Apple IIGS

There were many examples of very striking promotional artwork being produced for games in the 80's and 90's, and one that I was recently reminded of after it having passed out of memory long before is The Immortal. How could I forget that sinister-looking Grim Reaper type fellow that adorned all the adverts, cover-art, and even title screen of the game though? Who can say? Having now returned to the game for the first time in an age, I've found myself wondering who he actually is. He's certainly not the character you're tasked to play through the game as, who, though nameless to mere mortals like us, is much fleshier and appears to be from the land of the living. He's also rather wizardly in appearance, in the finest traditions of Gandalf and other grey-robed, staff-wielding, beardy old codgers. Whatever his name and background may be though, he has a rather daunting mission before him.

Favourite Speccy Loading Screens - Part 2

As some of you may have seen, about a month ago I posted the first part of my selection of my favourite Spectrum loading screens. Actually, I imagine rather a lot of you saw it as it turned out to be my most popular post for some time! I suppose visually-stimulating posts are always popular but, whatever the reason, I'm very pleased to now present the second part of the extensive gallery...

Currently Playing...

MotoGP: Ultimate Racing Technology (1999)
By: Climax Group / THQ Genre: Racing Players: 1-4 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Microsoft Xbox
Also Available For: PC, Game Boy Advance, N-Gage

I must say, this fangled Xbox contraption may be bordering dangerously close to 'modern gaming' but it's been pretty helpful so far too. A couple of months ago I wrote about how I've played and liked very few 'flying games' over the years only to find a superb example on Microsoft's leviathan, and now I've found what certainly looks to be a top quality motorcycle game, another genre I've encountered few of (aside from Hang On).

Even though I hadn't played it, I actually thought I was already familiar with this series but, to my surprise, I've discovered there are two MotoGP series' running simultaneously - this one for the PC and the Xbox consoles and a separate one by Namco for Sony's consoles which seems a bit silly since they use the same logo and all. Hmm, oh well. I can't speak for Namco's game then, but this MotoGP game and is a rather splendid one. It's quite arcadey in nature, despite being officially licensed, and consists of Quick Race, Arcade Championship, Grand Prix Series, Training, and Time Trials modes as well as an Options screen which allows you to change stuff like the volume, number of laps, gear type, circuit map on/off, direction arrows on/off, etc, as well as change the controls, load or save a 'guest rider', and access a load of unlockable stuff.