ColecoVision Games #1

Venture (1982)
By: Exidy Genre: Maze / Shooting Players: 1
Difficulty: Easy-Medium First Day Score: 173,800
Featured Version: ColecoVision
Also Available For: Arcade, VCS, Intellivision

I had intended to restrict all of my ColecoVision coverage here to 'Round Up' posts since the games in question are usually very simple and also invariably available on other systems too, but I was recently reminded of Venture while looking at t-shirts on the Redbubble website of all places. A short while playing it later and I decided that not only should I burble about it here but that it should even receive a proper review (not that I've gotten around to many Round Ups so far anyway!). Like many games of its day it first appeared in arcade form but the Coleco was the first system to see a home version, and it was apparently a launch title for the leathery company's spiffing new console too (voontle). I was too young to be among those first few lucky owners myself, but if I had been I suspect Venture would've taken up a lot of my time. Well, that's assuming my parents were kind enough to buy me the console and game, obviously. It was one of the more reasonably-priced consoles though!

PS4 Purchases #11

Secret of Mana by Square / Q Studios (2018)

I think it's likely I will always prefer the MegaDrive over the SNES but it's impossible to forget that the latter was home to some stunning games that never appeared on the MD. Among them was Secret of Mana which I have played since missing it in its day and its quality was quickly obvious. Then I saw it was the latest old classic to get the remake treatment and would even be getting a physical release for the PS4 and probably some other formats too. Fearing this version would be available in limited numbers and would quickly end up as expensive as so many others these days, I made the uncharacteristic move of pre-ordering it. That was two years ago and I still haven't played it as my OCD demands that I play the SNES version more thoroughly first. And as it turned out, this PS4 version has not gotten expensive at all. Oh well, least I still have it to look forward to (chortle!), and it does look really nice. The question is, does it lose any charm and character as a result of the new graphics? I know those qualities to be among those held in the highest regard as far as the original is concerned after all. Perhaps one day, when I've got a long white beard and two or three marbles rolling around upstairs, I'll find out...

First Celebrity Crushes?

I was talking to my good friend Luke recently, about Sandra Bullock as prompted by my recent post here as I recall, and he commented as he has before about my 'celebrity attractions' as he puts it. I think he finds it strange but nearly everyone has a celebrity crush or two, don't they? My wife predictably likes Pitt and DiCaprio and I've had certain favourites for many years now too.

The way people are these days I'm sure I would be called sexist or worse anyway, but it's not about tits and arse. Well, it's certainly not just about that. Personality and/or talent always come into play as well, for me at least. Anyway, my brief conversation with Luke got me thinking: who were my first celebrity crushes?

Puzzle Games #23

E-Motion a.k.a. Sphericule, a.k.a. The Game of Harmony (1990)
By: The Assembly Line Genre: Puzzle Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Amiga First Day Score: ???,???
Also Available For: Game Boy, PC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum

You know how sometimes there are games you kept seeing screenshots of and kept seeing good review scores of, but they just didn't seem appealing? E-Motion is one of those games for me. It was pretty heavily advertised in its day and the few magazines I bought had pretty decent opinions of it. It just didn't look interesting to me so I never gave it a try. Then, however, many moons after its original release, I happened upon it on an Amiga and found that it's actually not bad. Imagine that! I can kind of still see why I wasn't enticed by it in its day though. Colourful it may be but it's still just screens of different coloured spheres. How much fun could that be? As it turned out, I'm not sure 'fun' is the most appropriate word for the game.

First Look PC #5

Inertial Drift: Sunset Prologue by PQube / Level 91 Entertainment (2020) - PC

How long has there been drifting in racing games? Was Daytona USA the first? However long it has been, one thing's for sure - pulling off a proper, respectable drift takes a lot of practise as it's pretty hard to do in most games. BUT WAIT! What if someone made a game specialising in drifting and made it simpler to actually perform the drifts? Well whoopdy dee and trolly bazoo, that sounds like a wonderful idea! Happily, a Northern Irish indie developer called Level 91 Entertainment has now done just that! Inertial Drift, without the 'Sunset Prologue' part, was launched in September of last year on Steam as well as for PS4 and Switch for around £15. However, if funds are tight and/or you aren't sure whether to take the chance on it, Level 91 have also been good enough to release this Sunset Prologue version which is basically just a fancy name for a free playable demo!

Film Round-Up #33

I might have grown up watching Sean Connery and Roger Moore save the world as Bond, and I was even around when Timothy Dalton gave it his best shot, but Pierce Brosnan was the first actor I can remember actually getting the part. He was cast in the mid-80s before Dalton but when he became unavailable Dalton was cast in his place. Many were keen to see the Irishman take on the role though, and his chance came when Dalton declined his third Bond film. Would he be worth the wait? And just as importantly, would his outings as the famous character be any good?

GoldenEye (1995)

Our first look at Brosnan Bond was a memorable one, featuring the famous Soviet chemical weapons facility escape followed by a huge dam bungee jump, and indeed, those pesky Russkies are the bad guys here, specifically the Janus crime syndicate who are aiming to take control of the 'GoldenEye' space-based weapon. These oafs are chiefly represented here by Ourumov (Gottfried John), a rogue Soviet general, Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen), a scary assassin who orgasms from killing people, Boris (Alan Cumming), a skilled programmer/hacker, and of course (spoiler!) Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean), a former 00-agent who was presumed dead. It is the latter, with the help of his goons, who intends to use the GoldenEye's fancy electromagnetic pulse to devastate London and cause global financial meltdown.

Non-Speccy Homebrew Games #1

White Light (2017)
By: Sarah Walker Genre: Shooting Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: BBC Micro First Day Score: 45,270
Also Available For: Nothing

Out of all the old 8-bit home micro computers that were popular here in the UK in the 80's, the good old Speccy definitely seems, to me at least, to be the one with the most active homebrew gaming scene. That's not to say the others have been totally abandoned though, as demonstrated by this title that was brought to my attention... I was going to say recently but it was actually a couple of years ago now, maybe even more. Oops! Oh well, I guess no one would ever accuse me of keeping up with the times, but it has remained in my thoughts and now I've finally gotten around to having a proper look at it. As you can probably see it's called White Light and it's a brand new shoot 'em up for the BBC Micro, and it comes to us on the back of a bewildering development time that has spanned nine years. By jingo, now that's a labour of love if I ever saw one! Was it worth the wait for those who knew about it?

Awesome Nature #23

Blue-Footed Booby
Type: Bird  Lives In: Eastern Pacific  Conservation Status: Least Concern

I guess it's not hard to work out why so many people have heard of this particular flapper (and no, it's not because of the blue feet)! It's quite an interesting creature though. They are much bigger than most people think, for one thing, reaching up to about 90cm with a wingspan of 1.5m. As might be obvious from its appearance, it's a marine bird, living in the Eastern Pacific from about Northern Mexico down to Peru, and only ventures onto land to breed, and that's what the bright blue feet are for. Only the males have them and they display them in a strange dance to attract a female. It must work too, as there are tons of them! I'm not sure why just the blue-booted variety is well known though, as there are several other types of booby (no, not making a joke about the more commonly-appreciated type of boobies!) including the more widespread red-footed booby. Oh, and in case you're wondering, the name comes from the Spanish word 'bobo' which means 'foolish', or 'clown' since they are clumsy on land!

Why It Is Awesome: Booby

Crap Games #13

Sword of Sodan (1990)
By: Innerprise / Electronic Arts Genre: Fighting Players: 1 Difficulty: Hard
Featured Version: Sega MegaDrive / Genesis First Day Score: 108,900 (including three pit deaths)
Also Available For: Amiga, Apple IIGS, Apple Mac

Is it me or does she look like Rebecca Romijn?

Back in the glorious days of Sega's mighty Mega Drive, EA weren't the soul-sucking, studio-destroying corporate leviathan that they are nowadays and they weren't yet flooding the shelves of used-game and charity shops with thousands of copies of their nearly-identical sports games. Much of what they released was pretty good, excellent even, and a forthcoming MD game of theirs was something to look forward to. Until Sword of Sodan came along. It was a conversion of an Amiga game from the year before which was well-received by magazines, so surely a version for the slightly-more-powerful Mega Drive would be more awesome than a unicycling panda? It was, however, slaughtered in reviews as though falling victim to the very weapon of its title, and it damaged EA's decent rep among MD owners as a result. Consequently, I never bothered with it. Was I wise?

The Best of Arcade Flyers - Part 1

Oh hey, what's going down? I'm sure I am not alone in my appreciation of game art. Back in my day when life made sense (kind of), that was usually in the form of adverts in the magazines of the time or the covers of the games themselves, but one major 'format' not covered by either of those is that of the sacred arcade, birth place and home of many of the most revered and loved games for generations.

For arcade games, these 'adverts' usually came in the form of flyers that were sent to arcades the world over to try and tempt said arcade's operator to bring in the game. Obviously, unless you were one of those owners, or at least knew one, these flyers went largely unseen. To that end, please join me in a celebratory tootle for this new series of Red Parsley posts which will feature what are in my opinion the finest flyers to grace... umm, paper I guess, or whatever they were printed on.

These posts will be by letter in alphabetical order. First up are games whose titles start with a number. There obviously wasn't much choice here so the selection isn't great (or plentiful) but I present it nonetheless. Greater things are to come...

Film Round-Up #32

Despite her acting talent, not to mention her undeniable aesthetic qualities, I hadn't really been much of a Sandra Bullock fan until recently. I'd seen a few films featuring her, sure, but I wasn't at the point where I would seek films out just because she was in them. Believe it or not, it was The Proposal that changed that, but I'm not really sure why (no, it wasn't her nude scene). Nonetheless, it did prompt me to watch some more films of hers for a Round-Up here. Some I'd seen before, others were new to me, but here are the ones I went for in this, the first of what will probably be two posts, maybe even three if you (or I?) are lucky!

Speed (1994)

This was, for those who had missed Demolition Man, the film that made many of us say "Crikey, who's that? What a hottie!" when first we laid eyes upon the lovely Ms. Bullock. The role that so enchanted us was that of Annie Porter, a passenger on the ill-fated bus that surely all of us know now so well? It's a film I had seen long ago but, while viewing it again for this post, there was a fair bit I had forgotten about, including the existence of some off-bus parts. Bullock features in all of them but the opening hostage scene that introduces Mr. Reeves as the courageous, risk-taking LAPD bomb disposal officer, Jack Traven, who ends up on the same speeding bus as Annie who, along with the rest of its passengers, is at the mercy of Dennis Hopper's mad bomber. All three stars are excellent in different ways but it's Bullock who stood out for many as the wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time passenger who is forced to take the wheel and somehow keep her cool while keeping the bus above 50mph through busy roads and, implausibly, over an unfinished section of an elevated freeway. Aside from that ridiculous stunt though, the film has aged splendidly... 8/10

Star Control - Part 11

Generally I need little excuse to burble on about the Star Control series - it is one of my favourite of all game series' after all, particularly the skillish second game - but I've already taken detailed looks at the various spacecraft, the story, and of course reviewed the actual game and its prequel, so what else is there? Why yes that's right, I could take a look at the many alien races themselves!

Seldom have I played a game with such a varied, eclectic roster of species, and while many are perhaps not terribly realistic or even a bit gimmicky (a bit like pro wrestling was around the same time, in fact), they are appealing and memorable all the same. There are quite a few as well though, so I'll split this into several parts. This is the second of two posts featuring the less-friendly half of the roster...

Spoiler Warning! - It's probably not really worth mentioning for a 25-year-old game but just in case - the following post will likely contain some small spoilers relating to Star Control 2 and the story found in its main game, so proceed with caution if you've yet to play through it! (assuming you plan to) :)

This is probably fan-made artwork so credit where it's due...

Sega Super Scaler Games #6

Thunder Blade (1987)
By: Sega Genre: Shooting Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Featured Version: Arcade First Day Score: 958,160
Also Available For: Mega Drive, Master System, PC Engine, X68000, Nintendo 3DS, Amiga, Atari ST, PC, MSX, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum

When you think about Super Scaler games, I'd wager most thoughts are immediately of Space Harrier, Out Run, or After Burner. There are many others of course, all of which should be featured here eventually, but of the major earlier releases, Thunder Blade seems to be one that has been rather forgotten in more modern times. Why could that be? It was well-received in its day after all, so why the lack of love these days? A Nintendo 3DS release aside, even Sega seem to have abandoned it to a degree. Has its choppery-shooting action aged worse than its brethren? Is it now as unpleasant as a gravel-filled burrito? This is a question your possibly-favourite herb-related blog was made to answer! Much of my time with the game was spent on my Speccy for which I had the magical +3 disk version but this review will, as always, focus on the original arcade version.

Memorable Adverts / Flyers #4

The Vindicator! by Imagine Software Ltd (1988) - Various Formats

Many of the magazine ads I remember from the likes of Sinclair User, C&VG, ACE and a plethora of similar publications of the 80s and early 90s were for big name arcade conversions or hyped titles for the home micros that everyone knew about and wanted to play, but a few less well-known games got distinctive adverts too. The Vindicator, it seems, is one of these. It seemed like a fairly big deal in its day but, despite having possibly-false links to big-name games (I've seen it called both Gryzor II and Green Beret II), there's barely any acknowledgement of it today. It doesn't even have a Wiki page!

Why is it memorable?
In the era of improbably-large and tough action movie heroes who could take down entire armies single-handedly, it featured a cool candidate for a game equivalent: a hulking great brute looking formidable, festooned in giant bullets for his equally huge gun, the twisted wreckage of a creature/craft of some sort lying behind him smouldering... He was even wearing shades for goodness sake! It was of course another classic piece of Bob Wakelin artwork, and like many others it elevated an otherwise rather ordinary game to the wanted lists of many young 8-bit gamers like myself (Amiga and ST owners were out of luck - this one was just for us Speccy, CPC, and C64 gamers!).

TV Shows #22 - Part 1

The Boys Season One (2019)
Developed By: Eric Kripke
Starring: Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, Erin Moriarty, Dominique McElligott, Elisabeth Shue, Jessie T. Usher, Laz Alonso, Chace Crawford, Tomer Kapon, Karen Fukuhara, Nathan Mitchell

Certificate: 18 Running Time: 55-66 Minutes per Episode, 8 Episodes

Tagline: "Never Meet Your Heroes"

One of the positives (or indeed negatives depending on how you feel about the subject) of the enormous popularity of TV/film comic-book adaptations over recent years is the vast range of source material that can and is being plundered for our viewing pleasure, including some that many of us probably hadn't even heard of before. The Boys is a great example of this. I certainly didn't know of it until Amazon unveiled it as the latest of their 'originals'. It is a fairly recent example though. Originally created in comic form by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson and released between 2006 and 2012, it's set in the real world (mainly the US) and is, as far as I know, the first realistic look at what a world with superheroes might really be like. The result wasn't remotely surprising either, considering what our society has become.

Retro Gaming Zoo #4

Humans are stupid. Animals are always better than stupid humans, everyone knows that, and it's something that's also true in the world of video games. A tremendous variety of weird and wonderful animals have starred in games over the years and here I'll be taking a closer look at some of them. Next up is:

Creature #4 - Alestes of Agony
Type of Creature? Owl  Realistic Portrayal? Kind of, yes

By the early-90s, animal characters were firmly established in the world of videogames, often taking the starring role, but most of these were found in platform or general action games. There had of course been a shoot 'em up example or two but they were few and far between. One, however, that pretty much everyone remembers, here in the UK at least, is Agony. Not only was it from Psygnosis in the days of their gorgeous, distinctive game artwork, but the animal it featured was also a glorious, majestic barn owl. Alestes, as it turned out (if you read the accompanying blurb) was a student wizard who had been transformed into a barn owl, but it mattered not to those who played it - we were in control of a beautifully-animated flapper, swooshing through moody locales and taking out horrifying beasties with his echolocation waves. Now, I can't say for sure how destructive real owl echolocation waves are, and I'm confident they can't be powered-up, but aside from that uncertainty (and the fact that he used to be a human), Alestes does appear to be not only a graceful game character, especially for a shoot em up, but also a pretty accurately-portrayed one.

Is His Game Any Good? Indeed it is. To be honest, it was always a game I expected to be more style than substance, and I suppose it is, but contrary to what is often the norm in those circumstances, it doesn't make it a bad game. Aside from its visuals, it didn't break any new ground, admittedly, but it was a cracking game for its time and is still very enjoyable now. Check the full review here.

F-Zero - Extinct?

Many moons have passed since last I wrote about the F-Zero series but it has rarely strayed far from my thoughts. Featuring most often among these thoughts is my desire to see a brand new F-Zero game. It has been some 16 years now since the last one - Climax for the Game Boy Advance - and despite ample opportunities for sequels on the Wii, WiiU, DS/3DS or Switch, there hasn't been so much as a whisper.

This continues to be a great source of sorrow for me, not to mention confusion, but never have I sought an explanation for what must be considered a significant oversight on Nintendo's part. According to my subsequent research however, the answer only serves to confuse me even more. The great Shigeru Miyamoto has reportedly said that they stopped producing new F-Zero games because there was little new they could add to the series. This, combined with the fact that other developers started releasing their own futuristic racers, meant that Nintendo didn't want to make any new F-Zero titles unless they could find something new to bring to the table, but they couldn't so they stopped. Now, I can understand Nintendo's, particularly Miyamoto's desire to be innovative - that's basically what Nintendo have always been about, certainly in terms of hardware - but most developers' idea of innovation or progression in a game series is simply to release a sequel/reboot for the latest hardware that takes advantage of the new system's abilities. Why couldn't Nintendo do that for their own systems?

Wonder Boy Series - Part 3

Wonder Boy (1987)
By: Westone / Sega Genre: Platform / Action Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Sega Master System First Day Score: ??,???
Also Available For: Arcade, SG-1000, Game Gear, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum
Download For: Wii Virtual Console, Sony PSN

Yes I know, I've already reviewed the original Wonder Boy game, but though it may have originated in the arcades, to me, my good friend Luke, and probably many others, it has always been a Master System game first and foremost. This may be because it featured prominently in the MS's somewhat limited early selection of games, but it may also be because it's a rather stonking conversion! Well, I always used to think so anyway, but to my sorrow I haven't played it for many moons now. I didn't play it all that much even then if I'm honest. The reasons for this are also the reasons the original game won't quite receive a top score here at Red Parsley; namely, that I became distracted by the sequels Monster Land and Dragon's Trap - which were even better! I still had a lot of fun with this game though - let's see if it's still as good...