Summer sunshine with Outrun

More heavy snow showers here at the moment and it’s certainly not looking very spring like out there. A quick dash out to refill the bird tables is about as much time I want to be out there this morning. It’ll be much better to stay indoors with mug O coffee and my C64 whilst I await another heating engineer.

Time for something a bit summery I think and a game which just radiates heat.

Outrun is summer, whenever I play on Mame and I think back to summer holidays spent along the coastline and the many arcades halls we used to hang around in over there . The smell of sea air mixed with fried fish, chips, hot donuts and ice creams, deep blue skies and hot bright sunshine glinting of mirror and bezel glass. Neon, chrome, the noise of a hundred arcade cabinets, the flashing lights, the awful carpets (is this the same in arcade halls around the world?), that familiar red car and the sweet sound of Magical Shower drifting over the din. The snow is melting already!

When the home conversions started to appear in 1987 I eagerly brought a copy for my C64. It wasn’t exactly arcade perfect of course but it was a damn fine conversion that was complete with two (of the original three) signature tunes playing out beautifully via C64 ‘s SID chip. Alternative, an audio tape edition of the original arcade music was also included for playback on your Walkman.

The only problem I had with the C64 version is that I didn’t have a disk drive at the time and therefore had to rely on the very slow loading tape edition. Because of this, track routes A thru to E had to be loaded as individual games. So for example, if you wanted to drive route C, you had to fast forward the tape to a certain position and load from there – none of that fancy picking of route as you drive along.

These days I’ll load the floppy edition from my SD2iEC but until recently I had no idea that there was actually two version of the same game released for the C64. One was released in the US and the other over here and the rest of Europe I guess? I happened across it whilst browsing around on CSDB and found a collection of arcade releases by Nostalgia that had been grouped together into EasyFlash cartridge images.

Compilation #3

Each title contains a number of cheats/modifications, allows high score saving to the cartridge and well as backup to disk image. Of course, having the games run from cartridge also cuts the loading time to practically seconds…perfect for Outrun.

Being in .crt format you can play these releases using a C64 emulator such as Vice, but if you want to play them on a real C64, you’ll need to get yourself an EasyFlash Cartridge.

I picked mine up from eBay a few years ago <see previous blog post <http://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/commodore-64-easyflash-cartridge-and-jiffydos-rom/>and you can still find them pretty easily on there either assembled or, if you fancy a spot of fun, in kit form.

 

Immediately, you can see that the Ferrari and background is slightly difference between the US and European versions.

European version.

A nicely drawn rendition of the Ferrari although not much use of colour on the driver and girlfriend . Loving those cotton wool clouds just like the in the arcade though.

 

USA version.

A new car and some rougher looking clouds.

Other than that, there’s little to tell the difference between the two – The track palette have been swapped around a little and i find that the US version is slightly easier to complete (or that the stages are shorter?)…all i know is that I’m completing the US version more times that the EU version.

Brunette (EU)….

 

….or Blonde (US)?

And as far as I can tell, the SID tunes are the same as well although I’d probably need to run these through SIDplay to be 100% sure.

Either way, Outrun on C64 Cartridge is a bags of run especially with ultra fast loading time. There’s also a a track selection screen too.

Brr, it still looks cold out there, but in here its summer again….although the illusion helps when you’ve got a toastie warm C64 power supply next to you!

 

 

 

Commodore Plus/4 Asteroids emulator.

There’s nothing like booting up an old machine (as long as it does boot) especially if its been a while since it was last out of the box. Take my Commodore Plus/4 for example, which I’ve set up on the geek desk in anticipation of some weekend retro gaming, but no matter how often I see it, having some brand new software loaded on an old system makes me very happy.

March 2013 on a machine thats almost kicking 30 years. Feel the love!

Thanks to both my modded sd2iec and CBM Browser which now supports the C16 and Plus/4, computers I can now sample these goodies on the real hardware.

I played Norbert Kehrer’s Asteroids emulator on the C64 when it was released at the beginning of the month but I had no idea that there was an alleged faster version on the Plus/4.

It’s pretty impressive stuff indeed and well worth checking out – http://web.utanet.at/nkehrer/

Right, enough with the rock blasting, I’m off for a warm up session for this weekends challenge -Trying to finish Treasure Island?

My Gaming Week #8

Last weekend I was shifting, sorting and dusting down a few older computers, consoles and  games and had started to amass a collection tapes, discs and cartridges on my ‘to play’ pile. Here’s a few that’s been fun to play this week.

First up, is a Megadrive conversion of an arcade game that was a sequel to a huge favourite of mine -phew!

Rolling Thunder 2 – Sega Megadrive (1991).

RT2 Japanese cover as my European cover is just. quite frankly, awful!

The first time I played  Rolling Thunder 2 (and Rolling Thunder 3 on the MD) I thought, meh…it’s not a patch on the original and it wasn’t long before it was shelved. Playing it again this week and after a few sessions on the original courtesy of Mame and am starting to warm to it a little more. It’s still an average run and gun type game, but it does look very nice and still contains elements of the original game mechanics like the make or break jump from lower to upper platform (or vice versa), the limited gun ammo, the high difficulty and those frantic moments were you just make it out alive.

The Megadrive version adds a few extra anime style cut scenes and a few extra levels compared to the arcade version. It certainly is a nicely polished game.

So, it appears that the Geldra organisation is up to no good again and decided to take out earth’s orbiting satellites. As agent Albatross (or additional agent Liela is you wish) of Special Task Force – Rolling Thunder, it’s up to you to track him down and give him what for. To Miami Airport it is then!

The original Rolling Thunder arcade game was said to have been set around the 1960′s but it appears that the sequel is quite a few years into the future judging by some of the visuals.

Forget the mission, I want to drive this truck!

I’ve been running, jumping and shooting my way through this game all week but I can still only reach  level 3. Thankfully there’s a handy password system so at least  I don’t have to restart from the beginning again, and with any luck will make it to the end of the game soon wipe the smile off his greenish himself.

Now for something less challenging!

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Contra (or Gryzor over here…or Probotector) – NES (1988)

Less challenging? Contra is certainly not.   I’ve always wanted to  get into  Contra but could never really got very far past the first level. Being an essential NES game I was eager  to seek out this for my  collection many moons ago, but on playing it,it was quickly boxed and has rarely comes out these days.

However, this week I was feeling lucky…..how did it do? Well, I’ve seen this screen so many times and nothing much past it

So, I was about to shelve it again when I thought….what the heck, lets cheat to buggery and you know what, with the Konami code entered to give you a  whopping 30 lives, it really make gives you chance to try different things out and learn a few attack patterns, . It’s still hard as nails and even with this many lives you still have a hefty challenge on yout hands but one that is almost reachable….who am I kidding, I suck at Contra

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Hunchback – Commodore 64 – (1983)

Hunchback, a real classic on any platform, be it the C64, BBC Micro, Amstrad, Speccy or even Oric-1, it’s a great game and thirty years on I’m still playing it.

Move over Pitfall Harry, it’s Quazzy’s turn. Run from left to right  jumping  and swinging your way to the bells and on to rescuing said damsel in distress (alleged). Don’t hang about for too long though as there’s a Knight on your tail who after the side order of hunch rump…..ew!

One of the fifteen odd screens you’ll encounter. This one is an easy one , jump over the guards at the right moment or  feel the pointy end up your tights. Later on this level is repeated often but adds flaming cannon balls and arrows to the mix.  

Get your timing right and swing to the other side, get it wrong and it’s down to your doom. Top tip, I find that if you jump when the rope is around about the 7 0′clock position, you should make it o.k.  If not, there’s always the Konami code

…and if you want something a little more modern, how about this remake? Are those guards from an Asterix game?

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This next one isn’t a game of sorts but bags of fun for Lego fans, old and new.

Lego Digital Designer - http://ldd.lego.com/

Once you’ve downloaded and installed the software (Mac/Windows/PowerPC) you can then use the simple editor to build virtual Lego models just like you used to do as a kid. There’s 100′s of bricks to choose from  in all manner of o colours and sizes  including many from the classic  Lego era.

But that’s not half the fun, having spent a few minutes browsing around the forums, it appears that there’s a whole community based around recreating many of the classic Lego models. I found many old favourites that you can import into the application or build using digital scans from the original model instructions.

 It was my birthday yesterday and quite fitting to find the model below, which was a birthday gift from a late aunt I received so many many years ago.

6681 – Police Van

I remember this model being so cool for many reasons. Firstly, all Police sets were cool, secondly, it had many moving doors including a hinged cockpit roof. Thirdly, this was one of the first models to have those uber-cool Police walkie talkies and finally, look at those large off road tyres…you can imaging how many other vehicles I created used these.

..and here’s the virtual model…just trying to figure out the correct tyres.

You can also place a model in a 3D environment allowing you to pan and zoom around at leisure. Here’s another of the vintage space sets that I had back in the day.

918 – Space Transport

It’s missing a few details but oh does this bring back memories! It’s not as impressive as it’s bigger brother with the opening cargo bay/lunar buggy but believe me, this Space Transport did some mileage. The hinge tool can be used to manipulate the two hinge bricks, so for example on this model, I can raise the cockpit roof..Good job, the pilot had his helmet on.

What model I’d love to find (or digitally build myself) is the best Lego Space set I ever owned.

6970 – Beta 1 Command Base.

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Back to gaming and this weeks lunch time gaming has been an online version of a classic…with an unexpected twist.

Final Fight – Web/Flash - http://toork.com/classicgames/final-fight/play2

You only get to play as Guy, but who cares, it’s Final Fight and you get to smack Mad Gear and his gang around online.

Right here we g….wait a minute, you lot aren’t familiar, are you new recruits?

I was expecting the odd metal pipe or sword to use as a weapon but look what I found!…this is embarrassing, I’m a hardened Street Fighter!

Aha, the golden doors, time to fight Thrasher…..wait one gawdamn minute, what’s going on here? What are you doing here Ken…oh you do do you, well bring it on then.

Hmm, this is not a part of Metro City that I know…someone forgot to mow everything? Eek, mini raptor and I’m pretty sure that not Roxy or Two-P that’s sneaking up on me.

Driving around in a Cadillac is so much better than the dingy tube.  Woo, what’s the gun for?’

Eek!

It’s a strange game all right, cool, but bizarre. They should call it Final Street Fight Cadillacs and Dungeons.

Happy Gaming….and and btw, Albatross is one cool name.

My Gaming Week #7

I’m having an impromptu afternoon off working this afternoon – yesterday, our central heating boiler decided not to central heat anymore and wasn’t expecting a to be able to find an available heating engineer  so soon considering last weekends rapid drop in  temperatures and the huge dumping of snow we’ve had these past few days. Any-ho, he’s on his way so whilst I wait for him I  thought I’d catch up with my blog posts as free time has been a bit elusive these past few weeks.

Here’s a selection of games that’s been keeping me entertained this week (and the last week too as I didn’t get chance to post then either).

It’s no secret, I do love a good dose of Pinball, be it on a real table or in digital format and there are many digital tables out there which, unbound from any restrictions of a physical table often contain many weird and wonderful designs and features.

One such digital pinball game, really takes this to the max.

Devil Crash (Devil Crush) Sega Megadrive (1990).

Devils crash expands the pinball experience by presenting the main game table in multiple parts. The initial table is split into three sections, each with their own set of goals, bonuses and objectives to shoot for and expands on these by adding even more sub tables, again with there own set of goals. I haven’t managed to visit them all yet, but at the last count, playing Devils Crash is like playing on a pinball table which spans over eight tables.

I’ve only ever seen the PC Engine version running but never played it myself so was hoping that the Megadrive port going to be as good.

Visual, it certainly looks fantastic and although I’m not a horror fan, am loving the Gothic/Splatterhouse/Doom-esq/Gieger/Demonic <insert red stuff> look to the entire table. The sound effects perfectly match the table too with plenty of cliché ghoulish laughing, screams and howls – The background music I find, can be a bit repetitive so i’d decided that anything by Metallica was perfectly suited.

Here’s the bottom of the table, lose the ball here and it’s game over my friend.  Aim for the centre castle to help you seal up the gap between your flippers and/or plant the ball into ‘boney’ mouth on the right.

One of the amazing looking sub-tables.

Am also loving the centre section, which kinda reminds me of Bride of Pinbot where the ladies face changes after hitting certain targets. This time around though, instead of robot to girl, we get girl to vamp to aged vamp and on to demonic snake thing….eek!… I’m sure she’s a lovely person though..just misunderstood

But all that goodness would be wasted if the ball physics and framerate turned out to be a bit iffy and thankfully, Devils Crash on the Megadrive doesn’t suffer with any of this. A great pinball game well worth checking out you ever get the chance.

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Buggy Boy – Commodore 64 (1987)

The first time I played Buggy Boy in the arcades was at Smiths arcade on the East coast. They had the huge  triple screen monster of a cabinet version (although not the largest according to KLOV) and I remember  it had red rope netting added to the rear window and sides to enhance that offroad buggy experience.  I’m not sure if this was added by the arcade operator themselves as I can’t find any reference to it being on as standard but it’s something that has always stuck in my mind. Funny how all the little obscure little details often do.

The port to the C64 by Elite surely ranks up as one of the best arcade racing games on Commie and a sure inclusion to pretty much everyones top lists of C64 games?  Like most, I’ve played this over and over again, but it wasn’t until I  was reminded of the fact that I’ve not actually loaded this in ages after seeing it included in NikNice’s ipad C64 games collection (see previous post - http://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/niknices-collection-of-c64-games-for-ipad-and-iphone/

You all know the game so I won’t go into it, but if like myself and its been a while, I hope these will also serve as a reminder to do so again soon.

It might not have the large vehicle graphics of the arcade original but of all the home ports, surely the C64 conversion has got to be one of the best Buggy Boy experiences – especially the speed when comparing it to other home ports.

I’ve always like the look of the the ZX spectrum version too, especially the visuals which despite the lack of colour are pretty darn close to the arcade original. However, it runs incredibly slow and the camera angle is way to low, your Buggy blocks you view. It’s a shame as this could really have been something special. I occasionally play the Amiga version and a friend of mine recommended the Atari ST version so that’s added to the play list for another day.

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I had no idea this game existed until receiving a response  Youtube video featuring an  arcade gaming convention  From the 3 or 4 seconds of game footage  I  thought, woo that looks cool, in a  sorta Salamander-organic way. Little did I know that it was  actual a sequel.

Salamander 2 – Arcade/Mame (1992)

I’ve not really got far into the game yet but so far am looking the levels and bosses.  Sure, apart from a huge graphical update there’s that much extra going on here but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, just more of that Salamander/Gradius goodness.

One ugly mother.

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I’ve also been playing a handful of classic vector based arcade games using an emulator that’s designed to accurately reproduce a little bit better than say with MAME. Games like Asteroids, Rip off, Tempest, Gravitar and Lunar Lander.

The emulator is called Another Arcade Emulator (AAE)  - http://www.zophar.net/marcade/aae.html

Play Asteroids in Mame and then on AAE and you’ll instantly notice the difference.

You need a fairly beefy PC to run some of the games though and some seem to run better than others despite having less objects on screen. Initially I tried tried to run Omega Race on my Netbook and it just groaned and stuttered at 1 – 2 fps but on my main desktop things ran much better and am now toying with the idea of adding this emulator to my own arcade/Mame cabinet (yes I will finish it one day!).

AAE adds lots of new graphics options to closely present what the original arcade machines/monitors produced so for example, you can set screen burn, vector  phosphor glow levels, motion blur and light trail length as well as all manner of tweakable controls to suit your preferences.

Arcade  bezel and overlay art is supported in AAE too and worth tracking down to complete the illusion. You’ll also need to hunt down the rom images as these are not included in the download.

A note on Rom files  -
Out of the box I couldn’t get AAE to work correctly with my Mame set and on closer  inspection of the error/log file that’s produced after running a game, it appears that my roms are named incorrectly – or that they are correct but the AAE uses a different naming convention?

- for example, AAE might call for a rom image called 30210.01 but my image was called 30210-01.fr. Concidering that each game might contain a collection of anything between 6 – 40 rom images, that’s alot of file renaming you might need to do – not including the additional game revisions and prototypes.  It’s a bit of a chore but , the emulator is so good I think the reward is so worth the input.

AAE was last updated in 2008 with little advancements  after that, but there still appears to be a thriving forum community that should be able to answer any questions you might have.

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Lunch time web/flash gaming has mainly collection classics like Frogger and Space Invaders and one i’ve been playing quite a bit of is yet again, another Depth Charge port.

Depth Charge: First Attack - http://potentialtargetproductions.com/flash.html

The same classic mechanics of the arcade original are here – bomb the subs within a set time and avoid the torpedoes. However, this flash version differs somewhat by adding the ability to set the depth of you charge. So not only have you got to get the timing right, you also need to figure out the correct depth too…and don’t think those sub driver will stay at the same depth too…the dirty little rotters!

This version has upgrades too allowing you to outfit your warship with faster engines, increased reloading times and armour plating.

Able Seaman Stiggy at your service Cappy…..is it lunchtime yet?

My top tip, try to upgrade your ships speed first as without that you won’t be able to react quick enough to sink the subs or avoid incoming fire.

Happy gaming

StiGGy

Congrats to Mordi again.

Congrats to Mordi for winning c64 remixer of the year for the forth time now.

http://www.remix64.com/roty.html

Check out all of his tunes at – http://mordi.ziphoid.com/ – especially ‘Ocean Loader no.2′ which still gives me goosebumps when I play it and (hoping he doesn’t mind) used it as background music a few years ago in my ‘bung a PC inside a dead Commodore 64′ YouTube vid.

Congrats again Mordi and keep up the good work.

Niknice’s collection of games for iPad and iPhone C64 emulator.

Got Manimo’s C64 emulator for your ios device and want a few C64 games to import?

Well, it sounds like you need Niknice Awesome-ness super flippin-well-fantastic, ‘woo that’ll save me some time‘ collection of C64 games!

Knowing how much time is required to configure the plist for each game, locate artwork, resize etc I can appreciate how much work has gone into this collection.

Just look at all this lot!

3D Ant Attack
Afterburner
Airwolf
Alien 3
Aliens UK
Aliens US
Alleykat
Armalyte
Arnie
Asterix
Auf Wiedersehen Monty
Automania
Barbarian
Battlezone
BC Tires
Beach Head
Beach Head 2
Bionic Commando
BlackWyche
Blue Max
Bobby Bearing
Bombjack
Bombjack 2
Bombo
Boulder Dash 2
Bombo
Bruce Lee
Bubble Bobble
Buck Rogers
Buggy Boy
Burger Time
Cabal
California Games
Cauldron 2
Cavelon
Chuckie Egg 2
Cosmic Bakery
Commando
Commando 2
Congo Bongo
Crazy Comets
Crystal Castles
Cybernoid 2
Devon Aire Diamond Caper
Dizzy Crystal Kingdom
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong Atari
Double Dragon 2
Dragon Ninja
Dragon Skulle
Dropzone
Eliminator
Elite
Empire Strikes Back
Encounter
Entombed
Escape from the Planet of the Robots
Everyones a Wally
Exolon
Fairlight – A Prelude
Firelord
First Samurai
Forgotten Worlds
Fortress of Narzod
Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Ghostbusters
Ghosts and Goblins
Ghould n Ghosts
Giana Sisters
Gorf
Green Beret
Gremlins – The Adventure
Grogs Revenge
Gyroscope
Gryuss
H.A.T.E
Halls of the Things
Head over Heels
Hellfire
Herberts Dummy Run
Hero
Highway Encounter
Howard the Duck
Hunchback
Hunchback 2
Hypersports
Ikari Warriors
IK +
Impossible Mission
Inspector Gadget
International Karate
Jet Set Willy
Jet Set Willy 2
Jr Pac-Man
Judge Dredd
Jumpman Jnr
Kikstart 2
Kong Strikes Back
Kung Fu Master
Leviathan
Manic Miner
Mario Bros
Masters of the Universe Super Adventure
Mega Apocalypse
Midnight Resistance
Mighty Bombjack
Mikie
Miner 2049er
Monty Mole
Monty on the run
Moon Patrol
Mr Do
Mr Dos Castle
Mr Heli
Mr Wimpy
Ms PacMan
Nebulus
Nemesis
Nightshade
Niosferatu the Vampire
Outrun Europa
Outlaws
Outrun
Panther
Paperboy
Paradroid
Parallax
Pitfall 2
Pitstop 2
Platton
Pole Position
Pooyan
Popeye
power Drift
Pyjamarama
Questprobe 1 – the Incredible Hulk
Questprobe 2 – Spiderman
Questprobe 3 – Fantastic Four
Raid over Moscow
Rainbow Islands
Rambo
Rastan
Renegade 3
Rick Dangerous 2
Robocop
Rodland
Roger Rabbit
Sabre Wulf
Saint Dragon
Salamander
Samurai Warrior
Smash TV
Space Tazi
Spike
Spindizzy
Spy Hunter
Soy vs Spy
Spy vs Spy 2
Spy vs Spy 3
Staff of Karnath
Star Raiders 2
Starquake
Street Fighter UK
Street Fighter US
Strider
Super Pipeline 2
Super Zaxxon
Tapper
Target Renegade
Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles
The Goonies
The Hobbit
The Neverending Story
Thing Bounces Back
Track and Field
Trashman
Typhoon
UN Squadron
Uridium
Wizard of Wor
Wizardry
Wizards Lair
Wizball
Yie Ar Kung Fu
Yie Ar Kung Fu 2
Zaxxon
Zoids
Zynaps

Here’s the download link that Niknice has kindly provided.

http://www.mediafire.com/?8z16su4p0pi19xn

A huge thumbs up mate!

My gaming Week #5

Another retro gaming week flies by. Here’s what I’ve been up to.

Gyruss – Atari 2600 (1980)

Usually, my go to system for a spot of Gyruss (other than the original/Mame version) is the conversion written for the Commodore C64, but this week, thanks to a bundle of eBay VCS carts (The Harmony cartridge is great, but I do love my retro box art!) , I’ve be enjoying the simple delights of the Parker Brothers Atari 2600 release. Basic it might look, but for a 2600 game it’s surprisingly nippy and has one of the best musical scores I’ve ever heard on the VCS.

In Gryuss, you move your ship through 360 degrees around the perimeter of the screen and blast away at the enemy ships fanning out from either the centre of the screen or from the left or right – Think Galaxians wrapped around a tube.

I think that grey blob is me…honestly it looks better when it’s in motion

Intense tube blasting calls for an intense soundtrack and compared to other conversions, Parker Brother have cranked up the tempo on the 2600 with Bach’s signature tune.

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I’ve also been checking out the Gyruss on another system too and it’s a version I’ve not actually played until this week.

Gryuss – Nintendo NES (1988)

Compared to the Atari 2600 this one certainly looks a stunner with its colourful and chunky Konami threads. The NES version also adds a few new elements not found in the arcade original including boss attack rounds, a new super weapon and a remix of the original soundtrack. It’s a cracking version of Gryuss all right, even if somewhat on the easy side. However, I’ve only scratched the first few planets so lets see if it has the same lasting appeal of the original.

 

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Another early game from Jeff Minters and one you’d usually see playing on my Vic-20 or C64 but this time around, I found the crisp visuals on the ZX Spectrum version simply too good to miss.

Voidrunner – ZX Spectrum (1987)

I found this version of Voidrunner purely by accident really as I was messing around with iXpectrum, the ZX Spectrum emulator on my iPad and needing an example game to play around. Because I’d been dipping in and out of Jeff Minters Llamasoft website recently (I’m keeping an eye out for more news on the soon to be released follow up to Goat Up) I found myself at the software library area where Jeff has many of his early games available as free downloads.

 

Voidrunner is a arcade shooter that shares similarities with Gridrunner and Matrix (which itself take influence from the the arcade game Centipede). The game contains a centipede like trail that makes its way down from the top of the screen towards you at the bottom. As you fire on it, the centipede breaksinto smaller pieces which travel in different direction making the whole task of destroying it ever more difficult. To make life even more difficult, there’s a horizontal laser beam that cuts down from the top of the screen to destroys you if your ship happens to cross it’s path.

It’s been fun to play on my iPad but I’ll be digging out one of my Speccys soon as this one deserves a proper joystick.

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Lunch break gaming this week has been so absorbing at times with this next game that I’ve actually forgot to stop and eat my lunch.

Zombotron – PC/web

http://armorgames.com/play/12000/zombotron

Guns, Zombies, Robots, ragdoll physics and unscripted moments of sheer awesomeness, you can’t help but have fun with this one.

‘Welcome to the planet «Zombotron», inhabited by human-mutants or just stupid zombies. Nobody knows where they come from and what they eat. But we know one thing – they are ready to destroy everything that moves.’

You control our hero via W,A,S,D with mouse for aim and mouse button for shooting, plus the E key for inventory. I’m still a Q,A,O,P type of chap but as I play more and more of these web games I’m getting kinda used to them bit by bit…I just wished more web games would have redefinable keys!

 

The aim of the game is simple to survive the ten levels and get from the start to the finish. Along the way you’ll need to solve a handful of puzzles as well as take out a fair share of squishy zombies and not so squishy robotic defense systems. Kills and opening treasure chests will reward with gold coins which can be used to purchase weapons, ammo, medkits and armour.

You start off with a puny pistol, but it’s not long before your packing shotgun, assault rifle, grenade launcher and rail gun. Ammo might seem a bit stingy at first but once you reach some of the later levels ammo conservation doesn’t become such a problem. Besides, although it’s fun to simply blast everything in sight, each level is littered with items that you can use (or not) as make shift weapon or trap. For example, push a crate from above on to the heads of an unsuspecting zombie, roll an explosive filled barrel down a slope mowing everything down in its path or shoot it in mid path at the right moment to cause maximum, and gory, damage. Alternatively sit back and watch zombie vs robot duke it leaving you to pick off any survivors.

There are also bonus missions to complete too – although not necessary to complete a level, including collecting certain things or doing certain actions. For example complete a level using minimal gun ammo.

I’ve had (and still am) having so much fun with Zombotron and now that i’ve completed it i’m hungry for more….woo, sequels!

Here’s the trailer.

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I round this week up with a pocket collection of classic Atari arcade games that have been given a new paint job.

Atari Classic Collection – Nintendo DS

This DS cart comprises of some pretty accurate arcade ports -

Centipede

Lunar Lander

Gravitar

Pong

Breakout

Missile Command

Warlords

Asteroids

Dragster

Tempest

Each game has also been made to take advantage of the DS touchscreen and stylus control which apart from Missile Command/Breakout pretty much sucks – Tempest with a stylus is just plain awful! However, you an still use the D-Pad and physical buttons which work perfectly (apart from Missile Command) and having a pocket version of Gravitar, Lunar Lander and Asteroids is why I brought the cart and much better than say Mame on my iPhone.

But thats not all. The thing I like most about this collection compared to other Atari compilations is the remixed graphic mode for each game.

Asteroids

Gravitar

Breakout…oh wait, that looks the same.

Happy gaming!

Bit Trip Runners great great Grandfather?

I was going through some digital PDF scans the other day and thought I’d have a go at a type in game called Acrobat. This listing was featured in Compute! magazine – Feb ’85. Inside there is listing for Atari and C64 but I thought I’d try out the (shorter) VIC-20 version first.

 

The aim of the game is to jump over or duck under obstacles that scroll right to left to gain points. As you progress, your Acrobat VIC.Trip Runner moves further to the right therefore reducing the amount of reaction time you have whether to duck or jump the next eobstacles. It’s VERY basic, but fun all the same and kinda reminds me of Bit Trip Runner.

A corner of my Geek desk setup with my trusty VIC-20, PDF on my Netbook, mug ‘O coffee and some 80′s Synth  to get me into that retro bedroom coder groove.

Time for a break from all those Syntax errors (typical!) and some fun on the real Bit.Trip Runner.

All done, although I’ve  amended the title screen to replace the original Acrobat title.

My Level 1 score ….although <lame excuse mode> all that typing must have worn me out

C64 whizz bang at Datastorm

If you haven’t already and enjoy the C64 demo scene, check out some of artistic content coming out of this years DATASTORM 2013 demo party. You can find a collection of files to download at CSDB to play back on a real C64 or under emulation.

One of the many C64 graphic entries – This one by Malmix is just superb!

http://csdb.dk/release/?id=115662

I don’t have the correct SID chip in my C64′s to get the best out of this one but it sounds so cool under Vice when setting the SID emulation to 6581R4A4.

http://csdb.dk/release/?id=115651

Check out the Too Old to Ror and Rol demo too, especially the part at 3:07 below.

http://csdb.dk/release/?id=115677

Sadly, I couldn’t get this to load on my C64, I can browse the contents of the .d64 image via my sd2iec but whenever I load the first .prg file within the directory, I get the very first bit of the demo but then a blank blue screen. Anyone care to give me with any tips on this one as I’d love to see it running on a real C64.

 

Project buzzbar – Commodore Amiga (PD game)

I’ve got the Miggy set up on the geek bench today and sorting through some old magazine cover mounted floppy disks with a view t0 formatting a couple  i no longer need to reuse  as blank disks –  You know the sort of thing, single level game demos and endless ‘fonts’ disks.

I wasn’t that far into sifting through them when I came across this rather fun little (blitz basic) Asteroids/Defender type PD game which was originally cover-mounted to an issue of The One – Amiga Magazine - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_(magazine)

 

It’s all simple looking stuff all right, especially for an Amiga game, but it certainly got me hooked this afternoon!

Project Buzz Bar – written by Simon Armstrong

Project Buzz Bar – written by Simon Armstrong

Your ships control & behaviour is similar to that of most   Asteroids styled game including a limited shield when you press the down. There’s also a slight gravity effect going on to as well as reverse feedback whenever you fire your guns. The game map isn’t static like Asteroids though and is much larger than what is displayed on screen. The aim is  simple enough  - fly around  the level and destroy all enemy ships and rack up those points.

Dotted around the level are floating spacemen that need rescuing similar to those in Defender and Dropzone before the attacking ships either fire on them or they get abducted by the circle shaped  ships. Bonus points are awarded for each one you manage to save so use your scanner map at the top centre of the screen to locate them all.

Once the level is complete, the next wave begins containing more enemy, faster ships and more intense gameplay etc etc..Oh and a colour change too. Wooooooo!

I’ve managed to track down a link to the game via the Back to the Roots website if you feel like giving it a go on your Amiga or under emulation with Winuae etc.

http://ftp.back2roots.org/back2roots/disks/17bit/dms/30xx/17bit-3030.dms

High Score 23100

My Gaming Week #2

Heavy Snow has been causing so much chaos on the road this week especially during the commute to and from work – nearly two and a hours stuck on the M1 one day So with free time a little on the short side, so has my game time for week #2.

One game that I have started to re-re-re-re-visit (yup, everyone has played this one) is Super Mario World on the SNES.

SMW is pure fun whether you’ve got five hours or just five minutes to kill and has been the perfect game companion this week. I was spurred on to take another look at this beginning of the week  after finding a free web based SNES emulator on the Google Chrome Web Store – thinking it would save me time getting my Snes out of storage and setting it up. Hmm, I can’t seem to locate the URL any more so i guessing Nintendo’s lawyers had a word? Any-ho, there was a whole collection of Mario based games but to be quite honest the emulator sucked and ran so slowly that SMW was practically unplayable.

So, my SNES came out after all  and I’ve been dipping in and out of it all week.

I was doing great and racking up quite a collection of lives on the the early stages. but things have started to heat up in the Vanilla Dome. Dome 3 and 4 has really took some beating and am currently fighting with my controller on Lemmy’s castle.

No doubt SMW will see we well into next week and beyond. I’ve only ever completed it once and compared to say SMB3 it’s not as tough…..still, I must be rusty as it’s certainly giving we a whippin this time around.

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Lunch break gaming has been well catered for this week with this a rather simple yet most excellent Flash based, dual stick shooter – Retro Assault - http://www.kongregate.com/games/Zyzic/retro-assault

Controls – check, know thy enemy – check, got my ‘bits’ wallet ready – check. Lets begin.

It all starts off reasonably slow until Wave four when those pesky blue arrow shaped thingiess hone in on your position. Run, shoot and survive until the orange timer bar at the bottom of the screen is depleted.

Level over, time to spend those ‘bits’ on upgrade’s you’ll need em!

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During the week, my mate Max released a beta demo of Cosmic Ark for the Commodore 64. It’s a conversation of the Atari 2600 game by Imagic and is coming along quite nicely and is just as addictive as the original.

There’s still a few bugs to be ironed out but if you fancy a go, you can download the release at CSDB.

http://csdb.dk/release/?id=114953

 

 

Pilot your drone ship and rescue the inhabitants with your tractor beam. Don’t stray into the path of the defence towers on the left and right as your mission will be very short lived.

 

 

Return to the mothership and repel those planet destroying asteroids.

 

Cosmic Ark, might look a little basic, but at it core is damn fine arcade game. Being a  friend of the author makes it that little bit more special and I’m sure that high score competitions will be played out at many RCM gaming days to come.

Just for fun I created a mock cartridge for Cosmic Ark for Max in Photoshop using a picture of my C64 Simons Basic cartridge and the box art from the Atari 2600 game. I’ve colour matched the box art to the cart , embossed the layer and merged using blur, clone, smudge tools. Pretty crap I know but was fun to do all the same.

Hopefully, more game time next week!

My gaming week #1

Here’s a new section for my blog (see I’ve even created a shiny new category for it on the right hand side) which will list some of the games that’s been keeping me entertained over the previous week.  I wanted to start something like this here at the beginning of January but, well with one thing and another, time just slipped by.

Most of the games listed will be pretty much from older computers and consoles as well as the odd  indie games, low-fi causal games and those from the homebrew scene for classic systems. I don’t really play any modern PC games or own any modern console hardware and much prefer those with chunky pixels as you’ve probably gathered if you’ve been catching some of my posts on my blog.

These lists aren’t  going to feature huge reviews or anything like because quite frankly I can’t spel Maybe a few words and the odd picture or video in the hope that you’ll want to investigate further via a proper website or indeed jog the old noggin into thinking about and old classic you haven’t visited in a while.

Right here goes.

Friday saw the release of  an update to Capcom’s Street Fighter X Mega Man game and if you missed it and  happen to be a NES Megaman fan then you’re in for a treat….a treat that also happens to be free as well.

http://www.capcom-unity.com/mega_man

Now I totally suck at Megaman games on the NES (in fact, is anyone good at these games?) and I remember the Nintendo Gameboy version getting quite a bit of verbal abuse back in the day.

Street Fighter X Megaman is just as balls hard as the originals and I’m finding that I’m not getting very far at it at all…..yet, I just can’t seem to put the thing down, it’s so addictive

Top tip, the level against Blanka seems to be a good starting point as this (and Blanka) is fairly easy to complete.

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Carmageddon – DOSbox/iOS

Still causing Max Damage with the re-released by GOG edition of the classic PC games as well as the updated  iPad edition. The first level is still the best and gruesome of them all

Pitch invasion!

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Nano Ninja – web

http://www.newcave.com/game/nano-ninja

A fun little flash game which uses just one control and with it you must guide your ninja left & right and try to figure out how best to utilise this one control to overcome  each obstacle.

Moon Buggy – Commodore 16

I’ve played so many versions of Moon Buggy and it’s numerous clones on many systems but am thoroughly enjoying the simple yet hugely playable version on the Commodore 16….and for a C16 game it actually looks and scrolls pretty damn smooth too.

Solar Quest – Vectrex

This plays much better on the real hardware with it’s analogue joystick but my Vectrex is tucked away at present so I’ve been messing around with Solar Quest via the iPad Vectrex app and my iCade. It’s a simple game where you shoot, avoid and collect your bounty all under the gravitational pull of the centre star.

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Moderate Retribution – ZX Spectrum

A brand new game released for never ageing Speccy and quite a nice little shoot em up it is too.

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0028022

C64 Winter Challenge – Barrel Jumping.

Well with that big dumping of snow that Ms. Nature decided to drop on us here it’s all looking rather picturesque and wintry out there and a perfect <lame> excuse for a spot of winter themed retro gaming.

This time, I’m on a mission to beat a record set by a work colleague many years ago on the Barrel Jumping event in World Games on the Commodore 64.

The records stands at 18 barrels and my personnel best is 14.

Left…….right…..left…right…leftrightleftrightleftJUMP…Weeeeee!

 

Aw crap, the challenge remains!

Right, lets try my to beat my personal best.

Line em up.

Yay, that’s more like it, a new personal best.

I had a few more goes at 18 barrels but i’m still way short of the mark. So….whilst no one was looking, I dug out a few old Zzap64 magazines, grabbed my Action Replay cartridge and entered a few POKE cheats

This is the skateboard hack

If that doesn’t work, how about a POKE for a Dropzone jetpack?

…and if all else fails, you can always go Turrican on those pesky barrels

Mawse, if you’re reading this, get in touch mate and we’ll meet up for, a beer and I’ll bring my laptop/emulator so you can show me how 18 barrels is done…..actually forget that, let’s just have beer

Diablo – Commodore 16 /Plus 4.

Nope, not a retro 8-bit remake of the popular PC based hack n adventure game – Diablo on the Commodore 16 is some sort of shooter and although basic it is, it’s not actually too bad.

Diablo tape label after messing around creating my own boxes in Photoshop. Need more practise though!

;

Diablo appears to have the livery of an in-house Commodore game. I wonder if this was one of the pack in games for Commodore 16 computers as I don’t recall it being on the Plus/4 pack in roster?

Any-ho, the game title screen sets the story – this is a word for word copy!

‘On a planet deep in the space robots have taken the power and will now start to eliminate the humans. You have to destroy the robots who let the humans free when they are hit. Save the humans before another robot explodes. You die when your base is hit. This mission is not easy. Keep that in mind….’

O…kay, I’m still non the wiser therefore I’ve had to figure it out myself. That yellow thing at the bottom centre of the screen (the thing that looks like a chess piece), that’s you and it’s you’re job to save your base (the thing that looks like a space invader hiding in the bottom right of the screen) from the Robotic hoard that start at the top of the screen and travel left/right and down towards the bottom. I have no idea what the round thing (top left-ish) with the ‘X’ in the centre is but it bounces up and down, left to right and kills you if you touch it. I’m guessing some kind of robotic frisbee, probably evil too

Once you shoot a robot, it will stay still for a few seconds and so, dodging all other things on screen, fly up and over it to collect the rescued human body that was contained within. Leave it alone for more than a few seconds and it’ll explode killing you instantly.

Diablo sort of plays like Centipede and also reminds me of Carnival and Gridrunner and is kinda fun for a while once you get the hang of it especially in later levels when there’s so many robots to shoot and duck around.

It’s not going to be a game that you’ll be playing for very long but certainly fun to check out.

My current high score is 30,080.

;

Brutal Sports Football – Commodore Amiga

The second game we used to play on those New Years day gaming sessions was Brutal Sports Football, a game which, to be quite honest, isn’t actually very good. However, when you’re looking for a a2-up sports game and fancy something a little bit different from Sensible Soccer, we thought we have a go on  this particular game that I’d brought up with me, after all it had been sitting on my game shelve untouched for a few months.

 

It’s a side scrolling football game of sorts where the object like most footy games is to score goals to win. Brutal Sports Football differs somewhat to most football games as the players based on fictional characters from fantasy realms including barbarians,  lizardmen and other such creatures…but mostly human…who all seem to have white hair?. The ref appears to be a some sort of Minotaur and not to be argued with and there’s  also a number of weapons laying about the pitch which can be used for defensive or offence use..of just plain fun.

We were hoping for some sort computerised version of Blood Bowl i.e the fantasy board game from Games Workshop that was popular in the late 80′s…wonder if you can still get it ? but was sadly disappointed when we first played it.

 

Shame really as graphically it looks pretty o.k although played on my mates Amiga A600 it all seemed a bit too much green and grey drab. Looking back at it again this afternoon on the A1200 with the colourful AGA chipset it looks much better.

 

Then we discovered the weapons…..then we discovered what we could do with the the weapon…and you can gain points too

Off with his head!

 

Well, that was much better and the next hour or so we forgot about the ball and concentrated on hacking each other to bits until heads were rolling all over the place. Highest fatalities wins

This was so much fun and we all found it absolutely hilarious that Brutal Sports Football returned to the playlist for many years afterwards and was always loaded on New Years day. I don’t see my old friend too often these days but we  keep in touch and each New Years day, we still swap Brutal Sports Football screenshots (with Photoshoppped goodies) via phone  message.

It’s funny how even a crap games can be fun given the right circumstances….except Double Dragon the on the C64….don’t get me started on that one again