Star Trek #2

Next Generation Favourite Episodes - Season Two

So, the mighty Star Trek was reborn and its first season largely deemed a success by most fans, old and new. Looking back on it now, however, it's definitely the odd season out. This isn't due its quality though, it's more related to small character and personnel differences, and most of these have been rectified for season two. For example, Cmdr Riker now has a beard, Cllr Troi's hair and cleavage-displaying outfits are correct, Geordie and Worf are now wearing yellow, the former is now chief engineer, the latter is now wearing his metallic sash rather than the flappy fabric one... They're all small differences but the show now feels more like home.

First Look Arcade #1

Haunted Castle a.k.a. Akuma-Jou Dracula by Konami (1988) - Arcade

So there I was, messing round with MAME again when I selected yet another random, rather generic-sounding title to try. The resultant title screen was pretty cool and from there followed a brief intro which showed some girly getting kidnapped by a pesky Dracula-like nincompoop, and I also noticed that it was a Konami game. Hmmm, something about this was starting to seem familiar, but before I thought about that too much I started the game. At this point, a feeling of unbridled horror soon fell upon me like dark clouds casting their mighty shadows over a once vibrant landscape, but it wasn't the game's spooky horror theme that caused this; noo, this was down to the game itself which stunk like a garlic-riddled corpse. Intrigued by this badness, I then looked into it in more detail so I could know exactly what/who I was cussing, paying more attention this time. Then... egads! Sure enough, it was confirmed - Haunted Castle is actually a Castlevania game!

Commodore 64 Round-Up #1

I've mentioned here a few times how limited my experience is with the legendary Commodore 64 - rectifying this and many other gaming oversights was the main reason for starting this blog - and since doing so I have begun to scratch the surface of the C64's immense software library but not by nearly enough. I have therefore decided to start covering a few more titles for said beige breadbin starting with this splendid Round Up! For the first one I've chosen five random platformers:

Trolls and Tribulations (1984)

In this early release you apparently play the part of some dude who's disguised himself as a troll in order to infiltrate some underground caverns and grab all the treasure! There are several scary beasties patrolling the depths - one type (cretins) can be (and need to be) shot while the other types (skulls, spiders, and buzzards) cannot and must instead be avoided. As well as the treasure, you'll need to look out for keys to pass the numerous locked doors. There are seven stages altogether, each consisting of five fairly short scrolling mazes ("over 200 dark and eery chambers" in total) which are generally well designed and accompanied by some catchy music. Progress through them is hindered somewhat by some rather sluggish controls which often makes moving around the platforms (particularly jumping) and avoiding the enemies a frustrating experience but, with practise, it's just about bearable. The collision-detection is quite forgiving though, and the difficulty level is just about right which makes this a pretty fun game, and a rather one addictive too! Grew on me a lot, this one... 7/10

Atari 2600 Games #2

Atlantis (1982)
By: Imagic Genre: Shooting Players: 1-2 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Atari 2600 First Day Score: 46,200
Also Available For: Atari 8-bit, Intellivision, Magnavox Odyssey 2, Commodore VIC-20

I'm sure we've all heard the stories of the long lost city of Atlantis and, while the ancient civilisation may remain a mystery to us idiotic humans, it seems that someone has found it. The evil race of warriors known as the Gorgons has sent a fleet of spaceships to destroy the fabled city so it's now up to you to stop them "before it becomes a watery grave!" and consigned once more to hearsay and legend. What this amounts to is a fixed-screen shooter which places you in command of Atlantis' last defences consisting of three cannons - one in the bottom-middle of the screen which fires straight up, with the other two in the bottom-left and bottom-right of the screen which fire diagonally into the sky above the city. Most of the Gorgon ships do little beyond flying back and forth across the screen inviting you to take pot-shots at them. Each time one of the pesky things gets across unscathed, however, it returns at a lower altitude, and then again. If you let any get too low, that's when they can do some damage...

Top Five Capital Cities I've Visited

Over the years I've come to realise that I'm pretty weird in rather a lot of ways. To go into all of them would be folly but the one that's most relevant to this post is that, until I was more than 30 years old, I had never travelled outside of my home country (which is England if you didn't know). This was unusual for someone born into the 'First World' and can only be explained by a lack of funds, as well as laziness of course! However, it did give me an excuse to do a bit of catching up when I met the lovely lady who was to become my wife. So, in the last... five years or so, we've visited a number of places in several countries including their capital cities in most cases. Here are the best ones we've been to:

5. Berlin

We didn't pick a very good time to visit this city - November is usually chilly enough in the UK but it was even colder here - brrr! I also didn't really know much about the mighty German capital beyond what I heard growing up - mostly WWII and Berlin Wall-related stuff, obviously, and these historic periods are still much in evidence here. We visited some remnants of the Berlin Wall and I was actually surprised to see just how many memorials and tributes there are around the city (I thought references to the war in particular was taboo here). We also visited the iconic TV Tower and the impressive Brandenburg Gate and surrounding area and I was more taken than I probably should've been by the traffic-light crossing dude (known as Ampelmann)! On a less significant note, I also enjoyed the food here - plenty of bangers of many varieties and Currywurst in particular was well lush, and the booze is cheaper than bottled water - if you go to a supermarket you can get three beers for €1!

Pinball Games #1

Battle Pinball (1995)
By: Banpresto  Genre: Pinball  Players: 1  Difficulty: Easy-Medium
Featured Version: Nintendo SNES  First Day Score: 601,910
Also Available For: Nothing

Have you ever found a particular genre of something ruined for you by its finest example being so superior to all other examples? This happened to me with sci-fi TV shows - I'm a big Babylon 5 fan but it's so good that most other sci-fi seems crap in comparison and my ability to further enjoy the genre diminished. The same sort of thing happened to me a little earlier than this with video games too, or more specifically, pinball video games. Having discovered the Crush series only a few years after getting into gaming to begin with, the supreme awesomeness of the games in question greatly reduced the appeal of pretty much all other examples. Therefore, to this day, almost the only pinball videogames I've played have been Crush-related ones. This kind of closed-mindedness won't do here at Red Parsley though, so I've decided to start looking at a selection of alternatives. The first one I've chosen, based purely on the splendid cover-art I accidentally found, is Battle Pinball which is apparently part of a sizeable series itself.

Puzzle Games #15

Kitten Kaboodle a.k.a. Nyan Nyan Panic (1988)
By: Konami Genre: Puzzle Players: 1-2 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Arcade
Also Available For: Nothing

They may be a bit girly but kittens are still mighty entertaining little creatures. In fact, I'm surprised they haven't featured a lot more prominently in the world of video games, considering some of the other peculiar choices we've had for game 'heroes'. Konami obviously deemed them worthy of at least a try-out though, as can be seen from this Pengo-inspired action-puzzler which stars two of the agile fluff-balls. There's no story here that I can tell though, just an apparent need to guide them through fifty single-screen stages. Each predominantly features two things - blocks and enemies. The latter consist of insects (who wear lab coats, naturally), angry tomatoes, and bipedal crocodiles and they are all deadly to the touch, but our daring kitty is light of foot and can also perform a helpful leap over them or the blocks. Pushing the blocks rather then jumping them, however, can potentially squash an enemy, much like the Sega's penguin-starring game.

Star Trek #1

Next Generation Favourite Episodes - Season One

For some reason I seem to have few memories of my childhood. It wasn't a traumatic period for me or anything like that, quite the opposite in fact, I just don't remember much of it – just odd snippets here and there really. One thing I do recall, however, and recall fondly, is waking up early on Sunday mornings, cooking a couple of French bread pizzas, and sitting down to eat them while watching Star Trek: The Original Series (or just Star Trek, as it was known back then) on the little TV in the kitchen.

I hadn't been doing this for too long, however, before I heard something quite remarkable – Star Trek was returning, not only with new episodes, but with a whole new crew and ship! This series was of course the appropriately-named Star Trek: The Next Generation, set 70 years after Kirk’s adventures, and news of its arrival was met with optimistic curiosity from most existing fans, myself included. Without getting into a detailed analysis of the new show, I think I can safely say that it succeeded on most levels and brought many new fans to the franchise as well as satisfying all but the most stubborn of those that already existed.

First Look PSN #2

ibb & obb by Sparpweed (2013) - PlayStation Network (PS3)

As a platform game fan (2D ones, obviously), it’s very pleasing for me to find so many new ones turning up in the world of homebrew and independent developers. This particular example is one I’d never heard of and just happened to stumble upon during a rare flick through the PSN Store. It is indeed a platformer, you see, but not a normal one. It was designed to be played by two, each controlling one of the titular characters - semi circular green and red creatures respectively - who must simply make their way from left-to-right through each of the surreal scrolling stages. The trick is, the 'platforms' in them consist of a single line representing the horizon. Both characters can walk and jump around at will, but they can also flip from one side of the horizon to the next by passing through wibbly sections called warps.

Saturn Shmups #2

Blast Wind (1997)
By: Techno Soft Genre: Shooting Players: 1-2  Difficulty: Easy-Medium
Featured Version: Sega Saturn  First Day Score: 472,450
Also Available For: Nothing

The name of Techno Soft is one that was and still is revered by the retro gaming community. A large reason for this is their awesome Thunder Force series but they are still known for a few other titles as well. One of these, however, is generally not Blast Wind which, while still a shoot 'em up, is a rare foray into vertically-scrolling territory for them. It was released exclusively in Japan and only on the Saturn (although an arcade version was apparently planned), which certainly wasn't unusual for Sega's planetary powerhouse, but it does mean there's a fair amount of kanji, including in the intro sequence. The premise behind the game is therefore something of a mystery to me (even the static intro images don't really help with that) but I believe it has some sort of environmental theme and a good deal to do with a creature/object/place called Gorn. Anyway, whatever it is, let's go kick its arse!

TV Shows #3

Charmed (1998 - 2006)
Created By: Constance M. Burge Starring: Holly Marie Combs, Alyssa Milano, Rose McGowan, Shannen Doherty, Brian Krause, Dorian Gregory, Julian McMahon, Drew Fuller, T.W. King, Greg Vaughan, Karis Paige Bryant, Kaley Cuoco

Certificate: 15 Running Time: 42 Minutes (per episode)

Tagline: "The Power of Three Will Set You Free"

Love them or hate them, the Americans do contribute a rather sizeable percentage of the world’s TV shows (as well as many other entertainment media). Their competence at this no doubt varies wildly depending on who you ask but, for me, the 80’s were pretty awesome. When I was growing up, shows like The A-Team, Dukes of Hazard, and Airwolf were the greatest things ever, but when we reached the mid-90’s things took a dramatic downward turn when a new trend reared its ugly head. Shows started appearing which were filled with good looking and/or popular actors/actresses but which had no other redeeming qualities. They were usually playing characters for which they were completely ill-suited and were therefore not convincing as, the premise of the show was usually ridiculous, or at least unrealistic, the stories barely existed, and the characters were usually boring. Shows like Buffy, Dark Angel, Alias, etc, are prime examples of this curious-but-unwelcome trend but one of the last to appear was Charmed.

Crap Games #7

Crackout (1991)
By: Palcom / Konami Genre: Bat 'n' Ball Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Featured Version: Nintendo NES First Day Score: 7,990
Also Available For: Famicom Disk System

In my last review for this series of features I spoke of the lowest magazine review score I could remember from back in the good old days but I may have spoken too soon. Recently re-entering my conscious mind from the dark realms of depravity that lurk in its basement is this game; an NES game which was rather unusually released in neither the Japanese nor American markets. Us lucky Europeans got to sample its delights though, but probably not too many gamers bothered based on the review I can now vaguely recall which savagely hacked it to pieces, then ate and pooped out the pieces, then set them on fire, then peed on the ashes. Such savagery was probably as much in jest as genuine disdain but I think it's likely that Crackout is not generally viewed as the pinnacle of its genre all the same. I'm nonetheless keen to find out just how bad it really is, especially since it's an example of a genre I'm rather keen on, no less. So... shields up, phasers on stun, energise...

Licensed Games #4

Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom (1982)
By: Sega Genre: Shooting Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Arcade First Day Score: 23,297 (one credit)
Also Available For: Master System, SG-1000, PC, MSX, Commodore 64, Commodore VIC-20, ZX Spectrum, TI-99/4A, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari XE, ColecoVision, Coleco Adam, Intellivision

It may have taken a few years but it still wasn't long before the first few licensed video games started to appear. One of the first such games to grace an amusement arcade was this example, by my beloved Sega no less, and was based on the (mis)adventures of Captain Rogers. Well, I say 'based' but this is a game that, name aside, has pretty much nothing to do with the source material - something that would become a familiar story in the years to come - but as we all know, that doesn't necessarily make it a sucky game, just an unfaithful one. Planet of Zoom, for example, takes the form of an into-the-screen shooter. Nothing unusual there for a 70's sci-fi show, I'll grant you - plenty of shooting done in most of those. However, as long as it might have been since I've immersed myself in the gallant exploits of Buck, Wilma, and Twiki, nothing else from the game seems familiar.

Top Five N64 Rare Games

We all have our favourite game system but what qualities earn it this prestigious rank for you? For most, it's probably the quality and/or range of titles available, pure and simple. Generally there are many game developers to thank for this but every now and then one appears who goes on to release a succession of high-quality titles on a particular system to such an extent that they alone become a major reason for owning said system.

Two examples I remember well are Ultimate for the Spectrum and Team 17 for the Amiga, but the period that stands out most for me was that of Rare, ironically the modern incarnation of Ultimate, and their run of releases on the Nintendo 64.

In the eyes of many, Rare's releases for Nintendo's black slab, whilst not always particularly original, were so consistently superb that they even eclipsed those of Nintendo themselves. I'm not sure I'd go quite that far myself but they certainly contributed a great deal towards the success of the N64 and my enjoyment of owning one. They released more than ten games for the system in total; none of them sucked but these are my five favourites:

5. Diddy Kong Racing (1997)

Many consider the N64 instalment of Mario Kart to be the weakest so you could say Rare didn't have to try very hard to improve on that particular title, but that didn't stop them from coming up with this stonking game anyway! It was very similar in concept though, to be sure. As well as offering four-player tomfoolery, there's also an 'Adventure' mode as well as the usual 'Quick Race' option. This offers a series of semi-explorable worlds which each contain several racing circuits and a boss. The worlds are based around four themes - a normal grassy area, bright sandy beaches, twinkly snow/ice, and fiery lava-filled caverns, and there are ten characters to choose from (including a pre-sweary Conker), but the best part is that there are three different vehicles to use, with aircraft and hovercraft in addition to the usual carts. It's still not a perfect game - the bosses are teeth-shatteringly tough for one thing - but all the other stuff helps make DKR more varied than Mario's game whilst remaining at least as enjoyable. Great fun for any number of players.

Film Round-Up #2

I've talked here before (probably lots of times) about the wonder that is Netflix. Some moan about the 'poor range' of films and TV shows available to stream but I suspect these people are looking a specific show or few shows that don't happen to be available (yet). For me, it's fantastic - user friendly, near faultless service (I would've left out the 'near' but an episode of Battlestar Galactica I tried to watch recently didn't have sound - it was okay after a couple of days), no advertising anywhere, and more films and TV shows than I've got time to watch, all for a miraculously generous price of £6 per month!

There is of course a downside to this, at least if you're married as I am. That is, of course, when the 'other half' wants to watch something as mine often does! Occasionally one of her choices turns out to be great but more often they are average or even head-explodingly bad. Nonetheless, I figured I might as well mention such titles here, whether for good or for ill. Of course, most aren't worthy of a full review, so, to that end, here is the first of my Netflix Round-Ups!

Stick It (2006)

When this title was selected during one of partner's many extensive searches, I shuddered and feared for the worst. It comes from the same writer as 'Bring It On' and I was duly expecting one of those annoying teen high-school-based dancing films but actually it's none of those things. Well, it is a teen film and stars Missy Peregrym as talented but rebellious former gymnast 'with an attitude', Haley, who's forced to return to the sport by a judge after a brush with the law so she can gain some structure and discipline. She is sent to a gymnastics academy run by legendary coach, Burt Vickerman (Jeff Bridges), where she is greeted with hostility by the other gymnasts while training for an upcoming competition. So yes, it's all pretty girly stuff, but the gymnastics action is very convincing (at least to my untrained eyes), and Peregrym and Bridges are superb value (especially the former) as the film heads for its not-wholly-predictable climax. Hardly a 'must see' but not as bad as I feared... 6/10