Return of the King

Oh hey, how's it going? It has once again been a busy time here in RKS-Land; maybe more so than at any time since I started this faltering page, in fact. This has definitely been the longest period without a post since I started the page 12 long years ago. I even forgot about it altogether for a while and hadn't been here for so long I had about 900 billion spams in the 'comments' section amongst other things when I did eventually saunter back here. BUT!! My return isn't what prompted the title of this post - that would be a step too far in the direction of vanity. No, it refers to a thing, not a person at all. Not just any thing though. Perhaps the greatest thing.

But first a bit of background which includes the main reason I have absent for so long - I have moved house! Well, I say 'house' but I was in a flat previously. A pretty good one it should be said, but it was in a shitty area filled with loud, super-annoying people of a remarkably undesirable nature (to put it politely). Our new place was larger and in a far better area, but the actually process of packing and moving, then unpacking and organising takes an extraordinary amount of time, as I'm sure anyone who has done it will testify. Then there were numerous small jobs that needed doing such as 'mounting' (snigger) my large TV on the wall - a prospect that scared me - but I did actually end up doing it myself and... the TV is still there! But suffice to say, I've been busy, and on the occasion I've had some time to pootle around here, I just haven't been in the mood for one reason or another.

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?

Too Old For Retro?

So, I was walking along the other day, as I often am, when I went past a retirement home. Peering momentarily through the window revealed a sight familiar at many such establishments - a variety of old people sitting in big comfy chairs watching whatever nonsensical bullcrap happens to be on the television at the time which may or may not be numbing them to all of life's ills and easing their passage out of our world, or possibly even compelling them to hasten their departures.

An old person...

Nothing unusual there I agree but it did remind me of a discussion I once had with my best buddy Luke. He postulated, and I agreed, that the world of video games, even just the ones we would call 'retro' nowadays, contains so many titles that, short of winning the lottery or something else equally improbable, we simply won't have time to play most of them, perhaps ever. There might be one golden opportunity to do so, however, and that is when we retire. At the time we had the conversation, Luke and I were confident that we would still be very much into retro gaming by the time we reach our retirement age, which is likely to be around the 70 mark by then, and that we would relish the opportunity to spend our days catching up on old classics, but my recent epiphany while out walking made me question that. I mean, will we really still care about playing old games then? We will be getting on for the year 2045 by then and who knows what wonders may be around?

INPUT Magazine - A Retrospective

Oh hey, RetroKingSimon here. Since I started Red Parsley I've been the only person ever to write or post anything here, but today I'm happy and proud to present Red Parsley's first ever guest writer - programmer, developer of Nebula Retro (a mobile game reviewed here a while back), and Facebook friend, John Blackburn, who has written this fantastic piece. Take it away John:

INPUT magazine was a computer programming course published as a partwork by Marshall Cavendish in 1984-5. INPUT must surely be one of the most advanced and impressive partworks ever published on any subject. With 52 editions adding up to 1600 pages, it's huge! And the quality of writing is superb throughout.

One of the first programs I ever wrote. Just a few lines of code produced a beautiful sunset pattern complete with perspective lines. My grandma was amazed art could come from "those numbers"!

Was the Saturn a Flop?

It's a fairly safe bet that most of us retro gamers have a lot of love for Sega and their mighty Saturn. A good few of us probably owned one back when it was first released and I'm sure many more of us have owned one since. It's been a particular favourite among collectors for many years now and, now that I stop to think about it, it's a console I've rarely heard a bad word about.

Recently, however, I saw an eye-catching article about it on the Sky News website, heralding the achievements of a talented engineer who has 'saved the console from extinction' by finally 'cracking its security systems', allowing the system to read from and write to other storage mediums such as flash drives. It's a grand triumph to be sure but one that was of limited interest to me if I'm honest.

Nintendo 64 - Retro Gaming's Weak Link?

Over on Facebook myself and a handful of like-minded friends often get together in a chat group and spend an unwise portion of our working day blabbering on about all manner of nonsense*, retro game-related and beyond, when we should probably be doing more important grown-up things. Of all the subjects that are often discussed, however, one continues to vex me so - the Nintendo 64, or more accurately, how it is regarded by this gathering of esteemed retro gamers and beyond.

Rise From Your Grave - Resurrecting my old Speccy +3

As were the words famously spoken by Zeus at the start of Altered Beast, and they were the words I thought of once again just a couple of nights ago. As I mentioned here a few weeks ago, I recently undertook an arduous-but-productive expedition into the mysterious depths of my old bedroom and the attic of my parents house. This resulted in the retrieval of my old gaming magazines, as detailed here in the previous post, but something else I unearthed - and one of the things I was actually looking for - was my old Spectrum +3, and happily I found it.

It was more or less exactly where I left it actually - in the attic, safely sealed in a big box along with all the cables and bits and pieces as well as a load of tape games. After cautiously opening the box in case of spiders or other scary creatures and finding none, I began sorting through everything in preparation for actually seeing if it still worked. This presented me with a problem though - how the devil do you get a computer like this working on a modern TV? As it turned out, this was easier than I thought (after consulting the instructions for my TV, naturally), and splendidly I soon saw the distinctive opening menu offered by Alan Sugar's fancy revamped Speccy models. Further progress, however, was cut short by the pesky keyboard which was apparently no longer working. Unwilling to admit defeat, this meant I had to do something I very rarely do - actually try to fix it.

Busy Year Ahead...

Oh hey, how's it going chums? :) As some of you may have noticed, it's been a while since I've had a chance to post something here at Red Parsley. Well, you may have noticed I haven't posted anything for a while, at least, and that's because I haven't had a chance to (believe it or not), so I figured I'd take the opportunity to ramble on incoherently while I've got half an hour or so free.

Perhaps surprisingly, the lack of new posts of late isn't down to laziness either. Well, not just down to laziness anyway. As much as I'd love to do it for a living, blogging is strictly a part-time gig for me and has to be fitted around everything else that occupies my insufficient free time. Recent weeks in RKS Land have included a short period of illness, several birthdays, the acquisition (and subsequent use) of a new mountain bike (a rather fancy one too), and other time consuming pursuits, and the remainder of the year doesn't look like affording me a great deal of blogging time either. In just a few weeks my brother-in-law will be visiting my wife and I from Brazil for a month, and at the end of the summer we'll be taking a remarkably spiffing holiday to (muthafukkin) California too. Perhaps most detrimental to my blogging, however, is something that comes along ever year around this time - work.

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.

PS2, Xbox, GameCube... The Last of Their Kind?

For almost the entire history of video games there has been a rivalry to one degree or another between console gamers and home computer users. The former believed their systems to be the superior gaming platforms whereas the latter heralded the multi-functionality of their systems, and I suppose both were right - that is after all what both types of format were designed for.

Rather than simply acknowledging that though, most gamers argued instead. First we had the Spectrum and Commodore 64 users versus the Master System and NES users, then MegaDrive and SNES users versus Amiga and Atari ST users, and when the CD-based consoles started appearing it was the all-powerful PC they were competing with. I was an active participant in many of these wars, particularly at college where I spent many study hours passionately lobbying for my mighty MegaDrive in the face of a devout Amiga fan, right up until I effectively left the 'current' gaming scene with the demise of Sega's final console which was, as we all know, the last really great console to be released. Part of the reason the Dreamcast didn't achieve the levels of success that Sega needed it to was simply because there were so many PS1 owners who were waiting for the PS2 to be released, and most of the rest were waiting to see what delights Nintendo would come up with for the GameCube or to see what Microsoft's debut console would offer, and it's these consoles that I recently decided must surely constitute the last of the true games consoles.

Rediscovering a Lost Favourite

Well, okay, not lost but sorely neglected at least! To my ever deepening shame and sorrow it's now been a good couple of year since I fired up my precious Dreamcast, the official 'Last Great Console Ever'. This has mainly been because of this very blog on which pretty much all of my gaming time has been spent 'researching' games for features. A worthy sacrifice? Perhaps, but things still had to change.

My modest collection of CIB games...

So, when my wife and I decided to replace our beloved but ageing car the weekend before last, in order to acquaint ourselves with the new one we drove to my parents house (around 12 miles) where, as well as catching up with my splendid ancestors, I decided to also grab my collection of Dreamcast games which were being stored in my old room. However, when I returned home and tried reuniting them with the console which was stowed in the 'stuff cupboard', to my not-inconsiderable fury I was unable to find the controller! Cue near enough an entire week of searching for it until... Thursday night when I finally found it stashed inside my Xbox box. Grrr! My incredulity at this revelation was, however, mixed with excitement as I could now finally reacquaint myself with my recently recovered collection.

Sega: To Be How Good Takes Ages? - Part 1

I suppose it's inevitable that companies come and go over time, much like people, cultures, and everything else really I suppose. Even behemoths like Microsoft and (shudder) Apple will be distant memories one day. Most of the time it doesn't really matter too much when a company goes down. I mean, it's sad that people might've lost their jobs and all that stuff, but it rarely makes much actual difference to our everyday lives - there's almost always another waiting to rise in its place after all.

On some odd occasions, however, a loss is more keenly felt. Take, for example, the downfall of arcade and console giant, Sega. They're still in business, I know, but what a shadow of their former selves they now are. Their fall from grace was one felt profoundly by me as well as many other Sega fanboys and it's one that has had a not-insignificant impact on our gaming lives and the industry at large as well. My recent acquisition of an Xbox brought back memories of my happy Dreamcast days, the sadness that followed when news of its apparent failure broke, and my short-lived hope that Microsoft's bulky machine would carry on where Sega's had left off. It was while musing over these events that I decided it might be interesting, for me at least (chuckle), to take a (hopefully fairly brief) look back at Sega's history as well ponder what the future could hold for them.

Star Control - Part 6

Most of my gaming friends are well aware of my appreciation of the Star Control series but I actually discovered it completely by accident. My dad, you see, went through a brief phase of MegaDrive gaming and he discovered a store which I didn’t even know existed. On one of his trips there he picked up a handful of games – some were ones I knew of well, but the one that I’d barely heard of soon turned out to be my favourite of his selection – Star Control.

The strategy game wasn't too popular - but I loved it!

Full details of the actual game can be found in the rather sizeable review I wrote many moons ago but suffice to say, it was a game that had a lasting impact on me. It wasn't just the game either; the main strategy section of the game was enjoyable as well as the more exciting overhead combat, both of which were even better with two-players, but I think it was the attention to detail which impressed me the most. The unique names, look, and spacecraft of all the alien races involved were well thought out and the story, while hardly original in this early form, was quite intriguing too. It revolved around the powerful Hierarchy - a group of subservient races commanded by the apparently evil Ur-Quan, and the Alliance of Free Stars - a hastily assembled group of races opposing the Ur-Quan's murderous goal of enslaving all the sentient races in the known galaxy.

Next Next Generation Is Here - Are You Excited?

Even if I hadn't mentioned it numerous times, I expect regular visitors to Red Parsley have managed to work out that I tend to prefer using older computers and consoles to more modern ones but this hasn't always been the case. I suppose that would be impossible if you went back far enough and indeed, in the 80's and early 90's I greeted news of upcoming new systems with as much interest as everyone else, particularly when they were new Sega systems.

Sega's Dreamcast: the last good console ever. This is fact...

Probably the new hardware launch in which I had the most interest ever was that of the Dreamcast. My beloved Sega had suffered a combination of bad planning and plain bad luck when it came to the Saturn but I was confident the Dreamcast would address all these issue and more, and owing to the scarcity of new games for their 32-bit machine during its final year or so, magazines such as the Official Saturn Magazine were filled with little more than Dreamcast-related hype. Never before had I been so excited about a system launch - I was certain Sega's new machine would take the world by storm. But alas... despite being very popular with those in the know, it failed to achieve mainstream success, and when it went down it took the vast majority of my enthusiasm for the gaming industry with it. From that point on, I've had little interest in new systems, even if I've (occasionally) wanted to.

Crush Series Overview

In the unlikely event that you've been reading my ramblings here at Red Parsley since all the way back at the beginning, you may remember that I've long been keen on Naxat's rather spiffing Crush series of pinball games. Even including the (fairly) recent Wii remake, however, there have only been six releases in the series, and only three of them are generally considered unique and proper instalments.

What is much more likely, however, is that you haven't been visiting my humble blog for very long (or ever before) and have therefore seen nothing of my enthusiastic tributes to the (mostly) fine games that make up this intriguing series. Therefore, as it's been a long time since I posted anything about them, and also because I was recently reminded of an article I wrote for the Replay magazine a while back, I thought I'd share it with my tens of readers here as well to wrap up my coverage of the series. Behold, for your possible reading pleasure:

Electronic Arts or Electronic Farts?

In the long and jumbled history of video games, has there ever been another company like Electronic Arts? They're now among the very richest and most successful developers/publishers of all time but if you asked the average hardcore or retro gamer for their opinion of EA, most would probably have a venomous retort already scripted and ready to vent. I am firmly entrenched among them I have to say (as long-time readers here will already know), but it wasn't always that way.

Although founded waay back in 1982 by Trip Hawkins, I was only vaguely aware of them during my Speccy and Master System gaming years. It wasn't until the era of the MegaDrive had arrived that I really started to have sufficient information to form an opinion on the company, and that opinion was... actually a very positive one! That's right, back then EA were a splendid company whose name was held in high regard worldwide, even by me. They became a prolific supporter of Sega's 16-bit monster, pretty much from the off, and new releases were always eagerly anticipated. How could they not be when they had the quality of Battle Squadron, Starflight, The Immortal, Rolo to the Rescue, F-22 Interceptor, Desert Strike, and the James Pond series? Their releases weren't all 'Mean Machines Mega Games' of course, but the quality and, vitally, the originality and creativity were of a consistently high enough standard for EA to be regarded as one of the best and most reliable game companies around.

Me? Modern Gaming?

As those of you with whom I'm friends on Facebook will already know, as of this past weekend I not-altogether-enthusiastically joined the ranks of the modern gamers! Well, that's not actually correct yet but I do now possess a current generation console, namely a PlayStation 3 - eeek! But what brought this on? What could make a self-professed 'retro king' step foot into the camp of the accursed enemy?

Just about found space for the PS3 beneath the new TV!

Up until now, my experience with the current consoles equates to a few hours with a friend's Wii (mostly playing Sports Resort and Animal Crossing), around an hour with an Xbox 360 at the Replay Gaming Expo back in November 2010 (playing the splendid Split/Second), and a few hours with one of those guitar games on a friend’s PS3 during my last visit to Brazil. None of these brief experiences impressed me enough to ‘take the plunge’ and actually buy one of the system’s in question but I’ve always held the 360 in the highest regard of the three. This is primarily due to the splendid retro-flavoured updates and sequels on offer for Microsoft’s Live Arcade service as well as the mental bullet-hell shmups getting released for it in Japan so I always thought that if I did buy a current system, it would be that one.