The Best of X68000 Cover-Art - Part 1

The X68000 has long been a system that has interested me. As well as looking cool, it hosts some great games including some famously-awesome arcade conversions. I would like to cover it more here but, like most Japanese home micros, it's a pain in the arse to emulate and it's certainly not a realistic system to buy. Due to the high cost of the actual system as well as most games for it, and no doubt for numerous other reasons, it's not one that's popular with collectors, at least in this hemisphere. It doesn't seem to get mentioned much at all really, from what I've seen. As a result of all this, not only have I not played many games for it, but I haven't even seen many of the physical games, even online, so I found myself wondering what the cover-art was like for them. After a little effort, I have found some cover scans and have taken it upon myself to choose the most eye-catching ones! Here is the first of what will probably be four posts on the subject...

38 Man Kilo No Kokuu...

Air Combat...

Game Boy Games #5

Choplifter II: Rescue and Survive (1991)
By: Beam Software  Genre: Shooting Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Nintendo Game Boy First Day Score: ???,???
Also Available For: Nothing

I've never really been a handheld gamer for some weird reason - it was always the home consoles that interested me - so when I saw that Choplifter III had been released on the SNES I was mildly startled. I had long enjoyed the original game on my delightful Master System, and here, apparently, was the third game, but what in the blue blazes had happened to the second game? The answer wouldn't find my eyes until many moons later but it turned out that Choplifter II was a Game Boy exclusive of all things. Crikey, I exclaimed! Once I got over the shock of this unexpected news and considered the game for a moment, I was immediately sceptical that such a game would work on the small, blurry screen. The view of the action would have to be much more zoomed-in so you could actually see stuff for one thing, and that would open you up to being killed by something when it scrolled onto the screen right next to you. I suppose I should play the game before condemning it for my imagined slights (to partly quote Thor from The Avengers) though, huh?!

Top Five John Hughes Films

If you asked someone old enough to name the best films of the 80s, you would very likely hear names like Ghostbusters and Back to the Future, but I'm confident a majority of the John Hughes filmography would be mentioned too. When I say that, I'm only counting the films he actually directed as well as wrote, rather than the far greater number for which he has only a writing credit. That only leaves eight films, but nonetheless, for many, his films define 80s cinema, especially if you grew up in that decade as I did. Here are my pics for his finest efforts:

5. Sixteen Candles (1984)

I suspect many had a bit of a thing for teen hottie Molly Ringwald in the 80s and this was the first of her 'big three' releases in successive years, but I was only seeing it for the first time here. She stars as Sam Baker who is hoping for big things following her imminent 16th birthday, only to find her family all forgot about it! They are a little preoccupied with her older sister's wedding the day after but even so! Aside from that there isn't too much of a story though. She goes to school as normal where she gossips with her friend, crushes on senior Jake (Michael Schoeffling), gets chased around by geek Ted (Anthony Michael Hall), goes to a school dance, etc. There isn't much more to it really, it's kind of a 'slice of life' 80s high school comedy that happens to take place on and just after the main character's birthday. It's possibly most famous these days for Long Duk Dong (Gedde Watanabe), a foreign exchange student whose racially-stereotyped scenes are, frankly, not very funny, but I enjoyed most of the rest of it. Ringwald and Hall are great and share some nice scenes, and the general 80s-ness is wonderful too. Not sure Sam should've given up her panties so readily though - lord only knows what ends up being done to/with them...