Intellivision A-Z

I had never even heard of this console when I was growing up and didn't see one in real life until about 12 years ago - I guess it wasn't too popular here in the UK! It was pretty popular elsewhere though, and has remained a favourite for many to this day. Despite its moderate success, it didn't receive that many releases either, so I'll be featuring all of them here. Bear in mind, however, that all will have been played via an emulator and not therefore with the Intellivision's notorious controller. This is one of five posts to that end and features all games beginning with letters D through L:

Deep Pockets (1990)

No, this late release isn't about some really generous guy, it's actually a pool game. The table isn't green (probably due to the Intellivision's limited colour palette) and the balls flicker, and the controls aren't nearly as precise as many would want either, but there are tons of options and it's pretty good fun for two players.

TV Shows #34 - Part 1

The Night Agent Season One (2023)
Developed By: Shawn Ryan
Starring: Gabriel Basso, Luciane Buchanan, Hong Chau, Fola Evans-Akingbola, D. B. Woodside, Sarah Desjardins, Eve Harlow, Phoenix Raei, Robert Patrick, Enrique Murciano, Kari Matchett

Certificate: 15 Running Time: 45-56 Minutes per Episode (approx), 10 Episodes

Tagline: "Heroes aren't born. They answer the call."

I've watched a lot of films and shows like this over the years. I would call them spy dramas but they don't always involve actual spies. They do always involve government agencies though - the 'three letter' agencies, as some like to say - and usually some conspiracy or other, mostly the work of some terrorists and often also a 'inside man' or corrupt member of one of these agencies. Most examples feature real agencies like the FBI, CIA, MI5/6, etc, but there are a few that make up their own, and this new 'Netflix Original' show features the latest - Night Action. Seems a bit of a weird name, don't you think? It sounds like the name of a swingers club or something. Hmm, anyway... I think it's meant to be a super secret branch of the FBI but it seems to operate much more like the CIA. Either way, it's so secret that other agencies don't even know it exists. That must make things tricky.

Non-Speccy Homebrew Games #2

Electrobots (2021)
By: OxCode Genre: Platform Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: BBC Micro First Day Score: 1,800
Also Available For: Nothing

There are quite a few retro formats that receive deserved attention from the homebrew community but for what I'm disappointed to say is only my second review in this series of posts here, I've gone for another BBC example. I've had it for at least three years ago now (if you watch the video below on YT you can see a comment of mine from that long ago!) and played it quite extensively at the time, but didn't get around to reviewing it then for some reason. The title screen to the right here saves me the trouble of relaying the game's brief backstory but what I probably should mention is that it takes the form of a flickscreen platform adventure which is set over three zones - Land Zone, Water Zone and Space Zone. The ancient objects mentioned in the story are dotted around all three zones. As are various enemies too, naturally, which appear to be robots as well, or security droids or something.

Gaming Memories - Part 18

The mid-to-late 90s were a painful time for me as a gamer. While I wasn't giving the scene my full attention during the year that saw the wonderful 16-bit systems replaced by the dazzling new 32-bit examples with all their polygons, I was still a Sega fan and I knew of the difficulties they had faced while faffing around with the 32X, Nomad, CDX, TeraDrive, and lord knows what else, and I also knew of their troubles concerning the development and release of the Saturn itself.

These collective woes ultimately led to the premature downfall of the Saturn. I still remember one day when I had just bought the latest Official Saturn Magazine on the way home from work and was sat on a bench flicking though it. Times were grim and the magazine staff did their best to give us hope, but there were only a handful of new reviews at best. The news pages brought faint glimmers of hope that some of the PS1's popular games might see release on Sega's ailing system, but I knew they wouldn't (which proved correct) and I think that was the moment when I finally accepted that the Saturn was on its way down. Did I put aside my sadness and frustration and step foot into the enemy's camp? If you can't beat 'em, join 'em - right? I'm ashamed to admit my desire to play new games eventually outweighed my loyalty to Sega and I went in search of a second-hand PlayStation console.