TV Shows #24 - Part 1

Dexter (2006-13)
Developed By: James Manos Jr. Starring: Michael C. Hall, Julie Benz, Jennifer Carpenter, Erik King, Lauren Velez, David Zayas, James Remar, C. S. Lee, Desmond Harrington, Geoff Pierson, Aimee Garcia

Certificate: 18 Running Time: 45-60 Minutes per Episode

Tagline: Takes Life. Seriously.

I have always found the subject of serial killers fascinating for some reason, as apparently many others do too. I don't admire or excuse what they do, obviously, but I do find it interesting hearing about their upbringing, the reasons they commit their horrendous acts, how long they keep going before getting caught, and what exactly it is that eventually trips them up. There have been a few good films on the subject over the years and I've seen most of them, so it's a bit surprising I put off watching Dexter for so long. I did eventually watch it about 3-4 years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it overall, and was sad that it ended. For anyone who doesn't know, however, a revival was announced a while back which sees the return of the titular character after an absence of nearly a decade. With this in mind, I decided the time was right to watch the show again.

Shinobi Series - Part 7

The GG Shinobi (1991)
By: Sega Genre: Platform/Fighting Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Featured Version: Sega Game Gear First Day Score: 000,000
Also Available For: Nothing
Download For: 3DS Virtual Console

This great, now-celebrated series was only four games old but it had already started looking as though it was heading downhill. The original game and the MegaDrive sequel were both widely acclaimed (with good reason) but Shadow Dancer (both versions) less so, and Cyber Shinobi, the series' only Master System exclusive, was not well received at all. The next title would need to be a corker or Musashi-san might be heading for the gaming retirement home. Luckily for keen assassins such as myself and no doubt many of you, it looked as though the title in question might restore Joe's crown as gaming's top ninja! In an effort to push their shiny new handheld, Sega made the game an exclusive for it. Known simply (and slightly confusingly) as 'Shinobi' outside Japan, fans always refer to it these days by it's Japanese title - The GG Shinobi - and here's a look at it.

Arcade Shmups #28

Raiga - Strato Fighter (1991)
By: Tecmo Genre: Shooting Players: 1-2 Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Featured Version: Arcade First Day Score: 116,620 (one credit)
Also Available For: Xbox (compilation)

I suspect there's a decent chance many of you won't have heard of this obscure shooter, and that's a surprise. It arrived at a time when the genre was immensely popular and it was bestowed upon us by a well known arcade developer. It was even available in the West (US only, no release for us European oafs), so why wasn't it known to more players? Well, I suppose it may have gotten crowded out by the sheer number of similar games available, but aside from that I've no idea. Of course, your resident herb-flavoured retrohead knew all about... okay, I admit - I hadn't heard of it either! I discovered it simply due to spotting its cool name (Strato Fighter? Yeah!) in my MAME list and giving it a go. With that in mind, I guess it should be part of my 'Random Game' feature, but it was probably around 7 or 8 years ago that I saw it and it has remained on my 'to review' list ever since (hey, in my defence, there are about 1,000-odd games on it!), but I've finally gotten around to playing it.

Film Review #119

Cosmos (2019)
Directors: Elliot Weaver & Zander Weaver Starring: Tom England, Joshua Ford, Arjun Singh Panam, Ben Vardy

Certificate: PG Running Time: 128 Minutes

Tagline: "Only they will hear. Only they will believe."

Every now and then, when I'm struggling to find something I feel like watching, I'll scan through the offerings on the streaming services to which I currently subscribe, as many others also do I'm sure. A frequently perused genre is sci-fi which has probably been my favourite genre since I first discovered Star Trek as a child. Most efforts that show up in searches that I haven't already seen are ones with such catastrophically bad ratings that I don't even chance them, but one hitherto unknown film recently caught my eye during such a search that sounded very intriguing. It may be worth pointing out at this point that Contact, the 1997 sci-fi film starring Jodie Foster, has long been among my very favourites. For those who don't know, Ms. Foster plays a radio astronomer who intercepts a signal from another world - a subject that has captivated me for many years - and it was this premise that also formed the basis for Cosmos, a fairly recent British indie film made with literally no budget at all.

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.

Bat 'n' Ball Games #12

Batty (1987)
By: Elite  Genre: Bat 'n' Ball Players: 1  Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Featured Version: ZX Spectrum  First Day Score: ???,???
Also Available For: Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC

One of the great things about being an 8-bit home-micro owner in the 80s was not only the many cool magazines we got (or our parents got for us), but that the mags often included cover-mounted tapes that featured demos of new games and other bits and pieces. On the odd, rare occasion, however, they had been known to feature a full game! This was a time of celebration and revelry, even if it was often short-lived when the game turned out to be as much fun as shovelling rhino poop without a shovel. BUT!! One game has gone down in legend as being more fun than any kind of poop-shovelling, and that game is... Batty, shockingly! Yes, that's right, 'mounted' on the cover of the October 1987 issue of Your Sinclair was a cassette containing the full Batty game! I mean, it was never going to be another Lords of Midnight but it was still a full game which was obviously wonderful news to us cash-strapped urchins.

Film Round-Up #37

Taken Trilogy (2008 - 2014)
Directed By: Pierre Morel, Olivier Megaton Starring: Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Forest Whitaker, Leland Orser, Jon Gries, David Warshofsky, Katie Cassidy, Dougray Scott, Xander Berkeley, Olivier Rabourdin, Arben Bajraktaraj, Rade Šerbedžija, Sam Spruell

Certificate: 18 Running Time: Approx 294 minutes

I grew up during an excellent era of action stars on the silver screen. We had Arnie at his peak, Sly during his Rocky/Rambo years, Van Damme, Steven Seagal and other martial-arts wizards, countless more if you had access to Far-Eastern cinema too, but whichever ones you watched, most of them had something in common - they were young and they pretty much only featured in action films. Go forward 25-odd years and we were given a new action star that nobody could have predicted - Liam Neeson, a serious, award-winning actor in his mid-50s? No, it hadn't been a prank, and the middle-aged thespian apparently took to it like a duck to water too. The first we got to see of him in this new guise was Taken, produced and co-written by Luc Besson. It was so successful it probably came as a surprise even to the Frenchman and Neeson himself, and before long there was a trilogy, all centred around Neeson's Bryan Mills, former Green Beret and highly effective CIA agent.

Mobile Games #11

Bloo Kid (2011)
By: Winterworks / Corona Labs Genre: Platform Players: 1 Difficulty: Easy-Medium
Featured Version: Android Also Available For: iOS

I discovered this appealing-looking game quite a while ago now - a couple of years, probably - when I happened to see its sequel on sale in the Steam store. My OCD won't allow me to play that first though, so I had to track down the first game. Happily, I found it's a free (with ads) Android game, and of a type I enjoy a lot, namely a single-screen platformer. As appealing as that was though, it also set off an alarm. Games of this type are frequently a lot of fun but they also generally require quick and precise movements - would that be possible with a mobile game? I now own a Bluetooth game pad but it doesn't seem to work with this game, so I guess I had little choice but to find out how good (or bad) the touchscreen controls were. Let's hope it's the former!

First Look Amiga #2

Inviyya by Tigerskunk / Polyplay (2021) - Amiga

I don't really have time to keep up to date with most indie/homebrew scenes these days and that sadly includes the lively community of Amiga fans, so I'm sure there are tons of great games/projects that I've missed. Even I managed to stumble on Inviyya though, a new hori shmup which looked frankly remarkable from the screenshots I saw. Happily the kind team behind the game gave me a digital review copy (there is also a superb full physical version available) and, after an embarrassing yet characteristic period of procrastination, I sat down to give it a good play prior to writing a full review. Unfortunately, after working out how to get the game running on the rather complicated WinUAE emulator, I soon ran into some as-yet-unresolved technical issues. Until such time as these issues are ironed out, I thought I'd make a quick post to give my first impressions on what looks to be a corker.

Film Review #118

Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)
Director: Taylor Sheridan Starring: Angelina Jolie, Finn Little, Jon Bernthal, Nicholas Hoult, Aidan Gillen, Jake Weber, Medina Senghore, Tyler Perry

Certificate: 15 Running Time: 100 Minutes

You don't seem to see the once-prolific Ms. Jolie in much these days but my wife is a fan (shouldn't that be the other way around?) so this recent HBO novel adaptation was very much on the agenda as soon as it was available. Set in the wild country of Montana, it stars her (Jolie, not my wife) as Hannah, a former 'smokejumper' (someone who is parachuted to the site of a wildfire to provide first response action and advice about directing further firefighting efforts). She is now stationed at a fire lookout tower after three young campers recently died on her watch leaving her traumatised and unsure of herself. Stumbling into her neck of the woods (chortle!) is Owen, a forensic accountant on the run from some hoodlums with his sole remaining child Connor (Little), after said hoodlums whacked his boss and family when Owen discovered some nefarious activity on the part of their boss Arthur (Perry). When Owen is fatally shot, he gives the evidence to young Connor and tells him to run.

Lynx Games #2

Gauntlet: The Third Encounter (1990)
By: Atari Genre: Maze / Run 'n' Gun Players: 1-4 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Atari Lynx First Day Score: 44,816
Also Available For: Nothing

When I was younger I loved the two Gauntlet games. I had them on a compilation (I forget which now) for my Speccy, and my local arcade had the full-on four-player version of the first game there for years, so I had lots of opportunities to do my Gauntleting. They were very high-profile games too, but it wasn't until years later I realised... where the hell was Gauntlet 3? Well, as it turned out, there were two different takes on a third game in the series and neither was anywhere near as high-profile as the first two. One was made by Software Creations for the 8 & 16-bit home micros and was not very Gauntlet-ish. The other was developed by Epyx and released only on the handheld console they developed - the Lynx. Would it prove to be any more Gauntlety than the weird home micro offering? Yes it would, as it turns out, but it's still far from a typical Gauntlet game.

Game Art Gallery #2

Most of my fellow UK retro gamers will probably remember the various Psygnosis adverts that appeared in magazines like C&VG and Ace back in the late 80s and early 90s, and for a majority of us they will be something we remember fondly. I've recently been looking into these in a bit more detail and found a few that I'd never even seen before. After careful consideration, I posted my Top Five a few months back, but there were some tough choices and the ones that didn't make the list deserve to be seen too. I therefore now present what I believe to be the complete Psygnosis adverts gallery! Well, the ads in this style at least, but I'm probably wrong anyway (grunkle). I've also tried to tidy/touch up some of the images too. Hope you like them, and let me know of any I missed :)

 

Film Round-Up #36

As you may remember, I did a round-up of Sandra Bullock films a few months back, but round-ups here at Red Parsley generally consist of five films and I accidentally watched six. I therefore had little choice to watch four more films featuring the lovely Virginian and post another round-up here! This wasn't a hardship if I'm honest - she's not exactly tough on the eyes after all (snigger!) - so behold, here's another selection of films starring or featuring this mighty appealing actress:

The Net (1995)

This is one of those ones I knew of in its day but never got around to watching, so this was my first time! As the name may suggest, it's a 'techno-thriller' starring Ms. Bullock as Angela Bennett who is a systems analyst who lives through her computer (yes, that was even possible in the mid-90s!). When a friend sends her a spooky hacker program, however, she thereafter finds herself targetted by a ghastly group of cyberterrorists who have stolen her identity, planted a fake one where she's a junkie hooker, and are chasing her for that magical 3.5" 'floppy' that houses such important data. Placed firmly in the 'English bad guy' role is Jeremy Northam as the main hoodlum chasing Angela (after quite literally 'pumping' her for information, obviously). Despite the understandably-outdated computery stuff though (or even partly because of it!), this was looking like a decent thriller at first. Bullock plays the out-of-her-depth-loner well as she suddenly finds herself with no home, money, or anything else, and she remains as likeable as ever in the process. Sadly, no one else stands out and the plot does go downhill somewhat in the final act, so it's left to its radiant star to just about ensure this one is still worth a watch... 6/10

Nintendo 64 A-Z

The poor old N64 has many detractors in the snobbier parts of the retro community, and I can kind of see their point(s) to a degree, but there are many good things about Nintendo's 64-bit system too. I've always been a fan of it in any case - it's home to a few of my very favourite games so how could I not be? This list will include those and hopefully all other games released for it. Up next is:

C is for...

California Speed (1999)

Although a product of some big names (Atari/Midway), this one is quite obscure to many since it was only released in the US for some reason. It does seem worth some attention though - it's an ultra-arcade-style racing game and there are lots of courses with many having some very unique or even bizarre sections.

Bomberman Series - Part 15

Super Bomberman 2 (1994)
By: Hudson Soft  Genre: Maze  Players: 1-4  Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Nintendo SNES  First Day Score: 38,500
Also Available For: Nothing

I was a big fan of Bomberman right from the first game of his that I played, namely Super Bomberman for the SNES, so it was a significant surprise when I found out years later that there ended up being four more games in the series! The fourth and fifth games were only released in Japan so I kind of have an excuse there, but the second and third ones? How did I not hear about them? I blame the pesky magazines of the day which must have failed to cover them. Yes, that must be it. Hmm, anyway, this of course means I've never played this particular Bomberman game before, nor any later games in the SNES/SFC series, which makes them among the few games in the traditional style I've not played. Happily, things looked very familiar from the moment I started it. There is of course a silly backstory to facilitate the action, this time involving the 'Five Dastardly Bombers' who apparently want to take over the universe - an ambition that has prompted them to take over five worlds.