In this week’s retro column, the Retro Bear goes on a rant about the fine line when deeming a game or games system to be truly retro, and shows he is quite happy playing new generation console games just as much as the old ones…

Originally Posted to GameFancier.com on October 26th 2010

Scouring the internet recently it amazes me just how much of a debate classifying retro games actually provokes. Try telling someone that the PS1 is retro and you are likely to get a volley of abuse in return. Surely a console 15 years in existence deserves to be tagged as retro ? After all it was released before the N64, yet that is deemed to be retro. I can’t really work out what the difference is and can only presume it’s because the PS1 is CD based as opposed to the trusty old cartridge.

Better than the N64 games ? Retro gamers say not

So does that rule out the Sega Saturn ? Apparently not. The same applies to the Dreamcast as well, but strangely enough not the PS2, XBOX or Gamecube. Presumably as you can still play these on the current generation of consoles (if you are lucky PS3 wise to have backwards compatibility), they are not retro enough to be classed as true retro. You can argue these points until you are blue in the face and still there are those who will not be moved from their opinion.

For the majority of retro gamers it has to have the feel of a classic game. That’s why so many “updates” are generally badly received. Yes, there have been exceptions but on the whole these games are disappointing. But why so ? Is it because they have been jazzed up too much ? Is it because they don’t feel like the original ? Or as in the case of Sonic Adventure (reviewed a while back on these very pages) the game itself wasn’t all that good in the first place.

This doesn’t mean that all new games are crap and the older stuff was much better. Games that were dogs back then are dogs now, and some of those games we remember with fondness when revisited actually turn out to be pretty dire too. Any platform game not allowing multiple directions when jumping, football games with the ball stuck to the foot and really bad 3D shooters are just some of the genres where we are grateful for how games are now. How would current gen gamers get along with the likes of Manic Miner, Emlyn Hughes’ Football and Operation Wolf now ?

Anyway, rant over.

The retro cupboard gets rather bare during the winter months

I thought this week I’d delve into just how frustrating it can be to be a retro collector. Now that the majority of the car boot season is over retro games are going to be pretty hard to find. So I am now limited to trawling through charity shops in search of that elusive bargain. I’ve also come to the conclusion it would be much better and less time consuming to concentrate on what I have got and actually play some of the games I already have.

Mrs Bear very sweetly purchased for my birthday a couple of weeks back an Amiga 1200 (thank you you know who you are Mrs Bear). Now given her track record with buying Amigas (the A500 she got from a car boot earlier this year doesn’t work properly) I must admit I was excited but also nervous. Would this actually read the discs this time or would it make that awful screeching noise which indicates that the actual floppy inside the disc is knackered.

Well it was a case of a mixed bag. Some worked fine, some didn’t. The addition of a separate floppy drive helped and I was able to fire up a few classics – Stunt Car Racer and Turrican amongst others. The rest though went from “disc error” to not working at all. It seems it needs a good clean and some TLC to get it back into life. It also doesn’t help that some of the

Geoff Crammond we salute you ! Stunt Car Racer on the Miggy and what a fine game it was - and still is.

games won’t work on the A1200 format anyway, so it’s going to be a real case of trial and error. I shall persevere anyway, as I always do. I am though slightly resigned to the fact that some of the games may never work no matter what I try. Being a collector and gamer there is nothing worse than throwing away broken pieces of software.

Finally on the current generation front I have been revisiting PES 2010 and Guitar Hero again for my sins. I have always preferred the PES games to FIFA although 2010 isn’t a patch on some of the earlier PS1 and later PS2 titles it still provides good entertainment. I have yet to play PES online but may well do in the future (if I can find anyone still playing that version). I have always loved Guitar Hero and Rock Band, having ploughed my way through GH 3, GH World Tour, Beatles Rock Band and Rock Band 1 on the PS3. I therefore decided to revisit GH Aerosmith, which is all good fun except it’s got Aerosmith in it. Well at least I got the guitar free with the game (thats how I look at it anyway)

Till the next time – keep on rockin’.

The Retro Bear looks back at the second stage of his retrohood, including those all important first encounters with Mario Kart and Street Fighter II without the aid of rose tinted spectacles….

Originally Posted to GameFancier.com on October 12th 2010

Lame gamesplayers need not apply

My knowledge of game consoles was rather poor when I was younger and just discovering games. Spoiled with the Amiga 500 you came to believe that anything on that machine was arcade perfect, and you sneered at the mention of anything to do with Sega and Nintendo. How wrong we all were – by the mid 90′s home computing, as it was known, was restricted to slow running PC games (and most of those games were flight simulators, ideal if you fancied a career as a pilot) and consoles such as the Mega Drive and Super Nintendo were the must haves.

My mate Jim got me interested in the console side of things. He originally had a Master System and raved about the delights of Psycho Fox and Shinobi, all titles that were not available on the home computers. I even made him an offer to buy the console and games off him for £10 a week, but he was unsurprisingly dismissive of the proposal. He then upgraded to a Mega Drive and was the only person I knew (and still know) to have a Mega CD.

Providing you didn't try and bend the CD in half, this was an awesome shooter

Jim also suffered from Game Rage (see my previous column), involving him punching and bending a vast variety of cartridges and CD’s. Silpheed on the Mega CD was badly bent in half but still worked surprisingly. It was a good test of a game’s playability if it passed the Jim Rage Test. Street Fighter II also suffered, with one punch forcing a large crack down the side of the SNES cartridge. He also paid £65.00 for that when it came out. When I purchased a loose cartridge of the same game last year he was put off by the £40.00 price tag I tried to sell it to him at, having only paid £2.00 myself for it.

Andy still plugged away on his C64 while our other mate Neil invested in a Super Nintendo, and shortly after Jim followed suit. We spent many many hours round in Neil’s bedroom, playing a vast array of titles such as UN Squadron, Super Star Wars and the previously mentioned Street Fighter II. We also played Super Mario Kart, and there I developed my long term hatred for the game. It also went to show just how lucky Neil was at gaming, a trait I understand he still has today, and many the night was ended with Jim storming home after another fluke red shell knocked him off the track.

Neil eventually invested in an N64 when they were released and we spent time between his house and another mate, Mark. Mark loved games like Zelda and Mario 64, but it was here we discovered Goldeneye and Mario Kart 64 and the

The expressions on the guards faces says it all really. Bond Rules.

joys of multi player gaming. In fact I don’t think we played any game more in multi player mode than Goldeneye. Of course, I wasn’t much kop at any of them and would rather than stayed at home than endure another round of Mario Kart Battle Mode. Neil would also never tell you the instructions or controls before you started, which didn’t help.

Andy, and then I, decided to go more upmarket than cartridge based machines, and thus we both purchased a PlayStation 1. I remember Christmas Day night one year, round Neil’s, playing Crash Team Racing and marvelling at it’s superiority to Mario Kart (well I would wouldn’t I ? I didn’t tell Neil the controls either). And then almost as soon as it began all, those years ago, our big nights in were swapped for big nights out and gaming took a back seat to be dipped into now and again.

As far as I know, Andy upgraded to a PS2 and then PS3 and where he now happily resides in Australia. Jim – well Jim didn’t get any new consoles after his N64, though he assures me his whole collection is in his parent’s garage, locked away safely. In the original boxes. It’s worth a few quid I keep telling him but, like me, he’s happy to horde it. Neil meanwhile has both a Wii and PS3, though I am unsure of his reasoning (well two young children is a good one). He told me a few weeks ago he purchased God Of War on the PS3. When I asked why, he simply replied “I don’t know”. More money than sense that one.

Jim and I always used to enjoy a good blast in the arcades – speciality House Of The Dead or Jurassic Park : The Lost World. We weren’t very good but we always loved

Daytona Deluxe

the trips to Blackpool to seek these out. Mark became a specialist on Time Crisis and Star Wars (the newer version by Sega where you have lightsaber battles with Darth Vader and Boba Fett). We always loved a good 4 player bash at Sega Rally or Daytona if we could find a 4 linkable set up. Finally I’ll never forget the 4 player horse racing game we found in Blackpool one year, where you had to sit on plastic horses and move the heads back and forth to simulate riding one. It sounds erotically sick, but I have never ever been so knackered after playing a game in my life.

As mentioned, even now, gaming isn’t too far away from our everyday lives, but I am the only one with a retro passsion. That may be more down to me missing out when I was younger, and that I prefer games from the past as opposed to newer titles. Sure I can appreciate their aesthetic qualities and how technology has advanced since Pong, but to me you’ll never beat the cuteness of New Zealand Story, the will to win on Kick Off 2 and the downright brown trouser-ness of the original Doom. To me that’s gaming.

So there you are – a brief history of me, a few mates and the games we played when we were young. Till the next time – If it ain’t retro , then it ain’t gaming.

In response to the release of Sonic Adventure on XBOX 360 and PlayStation 3, the Retro Bear looks back at the original on the much maligned Sega Dreamcast and asks “Was it really worth it?”

Originally Posted to GameFancier.com on September 26th 2010

Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast)

I have made it clear before that I am not a massive fan of older games being updated for the next generation of gamers. Quite frankly, if something ain’t broke, why the hell would you try to fix it? I understand we are now in an age where the likes of After Burner can be given that treatment, but they end up look like a Next-Gen game more than the original game they were based on. Then again, you might play the original and try to understand what all the fuss was about in the first place.

We therefore come to Sonic Adventure, now available to download from XBOX 360 Live and the PlayStation Network and reviewed by our very own editor on this humble site a few days ago. He actually dropped me an email to find out what I remembered about the game. I’ll be honest – although I own Sonic Adventure in it’s original form on the Dreamcast I hadn’t actually played it (you know when you collect stuff and don’t actually get round to doing anything with it? Well, welcome to my world)

It was only fair to give it a spin in light of this, though I am far too stingy (and principled) to actually fork out extra spondoolicks for the updated version of the game. Reading the Ed’s review though it is totally apparent that the faults with the update are faults of the original game as follows :

Poor camera – Honestly for a game which moves as fast as this one does (and it does crack on at a fair lick) you would have thought better camera control to prevent unnecessary deaths would have been implemented. Not so. Rack up those extra lives RetroManiacs, because you will most definitely need them.

Poor voice acting – I think Resident Evil holds the record for Most Ludicrous Voice Acting In A Video Game, but this would run it a pretty close second. Sonic was very much like Tom & Jerry – characters like that shouldn’t talk. When Mario talks, it works because Mario looks Italian and therefore has to sound Italian. What accent do hedgehogs have ? Welsh ? Somerset ? Geordie ? Surely not the whiny, teeny tone they have given the Blue Blur in this game.

All that running around – What, no map ? No guidance ? No helpful arrows pointing the way ? Well you do get a red orb which gives you a brief idea of what you need to do but that’s it. You can spend precious time running around like a headless hedgehog getting nowhere fast, which then leads to….

Boredom – I played it for about 3 hours the other night, got about 4 levels in and gradually found myself getting a bit tired of it. Especially the casino bit, where you can play Sonic Pinball and a special Nights Into Dreams Pinball as well. This enables you to build up your ring collection and every 100 rings you collect gives you an extra life.

The Sega Dreamcast

I entered the casino (eventually – that was a chore and a half) with 4 lives and left the casino with 11 lives. Hmmmmmm.

I’m not saying it’s a bad game. On the plus side it has fab graphics (the bit with killer whale early on is still impressive as Sonic runs towards the screen), good music (as with all Sonic games) and it keeps the thing that sets Sonic apart from Mario – the speed of the original games. Sometimes that’s great, other times it moves too fast and Sonic therefore becomes totally uncontrollable. However, it’s no more than a score of either *** out of ***** or a percentage score of 70-75% at best and therefore well over-hyped when it came out in 2000.

There you go – in it’s original form or the new update (and I am taking the Editor’s word here), Sonic Adventure is a good game, but originally flawed – which makes you wonder why they didn’t try a little harder with the update. Unless of course Sega are smelling “cash cow”, in which case this could be the start of some rather inferior Next-Gen “updates”.

This week after an enforced break due to work commitments and a bout of Bear Flu, the Retro Bear takes on a voyage of gaming discovery, which will probably run into another couple of columns…..

Originally Posted to GameFancier.com on September 21st 2010

I thought that this week it might be a good idea to do a spot of reminiscing and hark back to when I first discovered computer games. Yes, the days when chicken really did taste like chicken, cans of coke were 25p from the shop on the way home from school and smoking a cigarette on the sly seemed like you were doing something incredibly naughty. How times have changed – chicken now tastes like water flavoured chicken, I haven’t bought a can of coke in years and after dropping a packet of 20 in the street the other night, realising 10 minutes later what I’d done and retracing my steps, found them on the floor unopened.

My childhood has a lot to thank gaming for. I don’t know what would have happened if I’d been born 10 years earlier and been brought up on Space Hoppers. The late 70′s and early 80′s were the first boom period for gaming and I was right in the middle of it. The trusty old wooden Atari VCS was entrusted onto me at an early age and I still have fond memories of getting a blister on the inside of my thumb from too much Space Invaders (wittily referred to as Atari Thumb by my mother) or finally reaching the 40,000 point barrier on Frostbite.

The little seen C16 - you got one of these if you couldn't afford a C64

My mate Andy introduced me to his VIC-20 and the game Carnival which was nothing more than a shooting gallery, with ducks and things. How we whiled away the hours playing that. We probably played more games but that one sticks out more than any other. Alternatively, across the road, I was happily playing on another friends C64, insisting on playing only Ocean Software games so I could sit and listen to the Ocean Loader tune as the game fired up. Another friend had a C16 which is the only time I have ever seen or played on it. I wasn’t impressed – Footballer of The Year had graphics and actual game play on the C64 but with the C16 version you pressed the space bar and it told you what happened. Ikari Warriors also looked a bit tame compared to the other 8 bit versions.

I had my first taste of playing an actual arcade cabinet on a trip to Blackpool on my 11^th birthday, despite my local chippy having Pengo permanently housed there. My Dad wouldn’t let me play on it, saying they’re a waste of money. The first game I did play was the vector graphics version of The Empire Strikes Back. I had no idea what to do and the 20p credit vanished into thin air. Years later on the Amiga version or Star Wars I had my revenge, though I have never played that version of Empire since (I did own the Atari VCS Empire game and was rather good at it, though there was no end to the game and it just continuously looped).

The Atari VCS was gathering dust and was sold to a guy I knew at school. He then promptly had it stolen. I even spent the horrendous sum of £8.99 in Toys’R’Us on the Atari VCS version of Kung Fu Master shortly before I sold it. My family then invested in an Amiga for “Educational Purposes”. Yeah.. Right. Many the night you’d find my Dad in front of it playing Gettysburg or E-Motion. To fill the gap, my mate Andy had a C64 and we spent many nights playing Mike Read’s Pop Quiz. It seemed the only country and western question that ever came up was “Who sang Rhinestone Cowboy?”. This then became a running joke for many years and caused copious laughter whenever we heard it playing.

While my other friends were playing on Master System’s and Megadrive’s, and shortly after Super Nintendo’s, I was stuck with a 16 bit home computer that nobody else seemed to own. A guy at school I had known of years also had an Amiga, but everyone else owned an Atari ST. Within 12 months the ST numbers had dwindled and 5 of us from school even started an Amiga club. That lasted all of two weekends until we found something else better to do.

1-0 to the Retro Bear

On week nights Andy would pop round to play Kick Off 2 and it was there that I began to experience what I can only presume most gamers suffer from – Game Rage. For weeks he couldn’t beat me, then all of a sudden he went on a 30+ match winning streak that I couldn’t bear. It was pure torture, and he being a smug bastard didn’t help either. This was the man who on a first date with a girl took her to a snooker hall to play pool. When I asked him how it went he turned to me, raised hands in the air to signal holding a trophy and triumphantly said “6 – 1”. And yes dear reader, they did end up marrying each other. Then again, me and he were always at our most intense when playing games – snooker, pool, cards, video games – it was always the same.

Away from home consoles, I dabbled a bit more in arcade games. However my short comings as a gamer (which I still have today – I was up most of last night swearing at Stuntman on the PS2) were always evident and it was painfully obvious to anyone with one eye that I was actually shit. It didn’t deter me though as I continued to pump 20p’s into the likes of Outrun, Space Harrier (the big hydraulic version), Operation Wolf, The Simpsons and Konami’s 4 player Turtles game. Yes I was shit at them, but that didn’t stop me loving being there playing them.

I’ll leave you this week with my own memory of Wrestle War, which ended up being converted to the Sega Megadrive. For weeks on end Andy would accompany me to the local cinema where, before going to watch a film with a large drink and a bucket of buttered popcorn (the best sort which you can’t buy now because of cholesterol or something), I would sweat my ass off trying to beat this game. I think it was round 6 before you got to the copyright dodging Bulk Logan character. I was that good I even had people standing watching me. Sweat pouring down my face in buckets, I felt like a gaming god. True, I never did beat the game but I gave it my all.

It's Time To Rumble....

 

Some might say a tale of blood, sweat and joysticks. Some might say you sad bastard, get a life. I’ll leave it to you to decide.

Next week – the advent of consoles bring some exciting times, more tales of game rage and a tale of 2 guys, 2 guns and some zombies.

Til then – keep it real

PS. I promised a game review at the end of my last column. So here it is – Stuntman (PS2) : Its shit!

After seeing the PS3 disintegrate into some sort of yellowy death light thing, this week The Retro Bear ponders the usage of something big, strong, sturdy and black. But enough of his fantasies, it’s the Microsoft XBOX…..

Originally Posted to GameFancier.com on September 2nd 2010

Aaaaaggghhh - frustration !

What do you do when modern technology let’s you down ? Aside from curl up into the foetal position and gently rock back and forth, crying your eyes out ? Well this is the situation we had to ponder last week at Bear Towers. For all it’s all singing, all dancing capabilities for the third time in six months the PS3 packed up and refused to work. Once again we were struck down by the dreaded Yellow Light Of Death (unofficial copyright Sony circa 2007).

Now let me clarify first of all – I like the PS3. It streams all my films and we have some really great games for it, and it was certainly worth the near £300 investment in it. It’s also got the Blu-Ray player, which if you watched all those Hitler-sodes about the demise of HD DVD a couple of years back was very much a wise choice. In fact it’s probably fair to say it’s easily the best £300 I have ever spent.

Anyway enough blowing smoke up Sony’s backside. If it was that good, then why does it keep breaking down and having to be fixed (total cost so far in the region of £120) ? Well it’s lucky for us that we do have a back up system, and thank god it’s Retro. Yes, retro has come to the rescue once again to allow all the streaming functions that the PS3 does easily. The source ? A chipped Microsoft XBOX, enabling XBMC to be installed. It is now a fully functional cross platform media centre, but it’s origins are still reflected in it’s name – The XBOX Media Centre.

Alongside cockroaches as the only thing that will survive a nuclear blast

You remember the XBOX ? The big chunky console that was Bill Gates’ answer to the PS2. Known to kill a man if thrown at them, break a foot if you drop it on yourself and more durable than the plastic bags Tesco used to give you (not the thin ones currently masquerading as carrier bags), the XBOX is a pretty good console. Having had it chipped, it will do all the streaming functions the PS3 does and you get the joy of being able to play XBOX games at the same time.

Chipping it involved the use of a solder iron which is never easy. I remember back when you wanted to play imported Megadrive games, and unless you forked out for a converter, the only way to do so was file down the edges of the cartridge slot so they’d fit. Codemasters backed the Game Genie, which allowed you to hack into a cartridge and by entering codes alter the game settings. In fact modding and hacking and chipping has been around for a long, long time.

Now evidently you can do the same with the PS3. Deemed unhackable by Sony, a new device has now become available that will allow you to open source the PS3 and play copied games on it. Now let me make a very important point here : I do not condone or endorse any form of pirating. All the games in my collection are LEGAL and ORIGINAL. Pirating is illegal – end of. The joy from this is it will now allow “homebrew” game designers the chance to make their own games. Homebrew has been going on for years on other systems, it’s just that Sony didn’t want you to do it on their machine. Previous security updates have also taken that away.

Not that sort of homebrew you fool!

 

So it will be interesting to see where Sony go from here. We can all but expect their boffins to be working on something that will close this loophole. In the meantime, let’s see what develops on the games front and what people can get out of the PS3 before time is up. Until the next hack comes along, that is.

Next week : back to some game reviews !

In the second part of this week’s (or should that be last week’s ?) column, the Retrobear gives you insight into the trials and tribulations of getting hold of retro games without using eBay.

Originally Posted to GameFancier.com on August 23rd 2010

OK so I am a little late, but for some reason when I wasn’t out shopping this past weekend, I either spent it eating or asleep. For those of you trying to gauge what kind of person I am, that is my perfect weekend. Too much sleep however prevented me from getting this piece up on Sunday, so let me try and recap the weekend’s events and give you a first hand view of what it’s like being a retro collector.

What treasures lurk within ? Aside from 45 copies of Jurassic Park on VHS ?

Saturday was spent trawling round the various charity shops in close proximity to home. I also happened to call into Gamestation whilst I was at it, but was distinctly unimpressed by what was on offer. I struggle to understand their pricing policy on their older games i.e. PS1.

Yes, they did have some Gamecube titles in, but as these can be played on the Wii, and as previously mentioned in an earlier column, the second hand price is still at bit steep averaging about £4.99 a title. In the case of PS1 games I am sure Jungle Book Groove Party is an excellent title, however the £9.99 price tag was far less welcoming.

Mind you, charity shops suffer from the same erratic pricing as retailers when it comes to retro. If the prices they charged were at a car boot, you’d haggle. However, haggling in a charity shop marks you out as some sort of low life scum (and rightly so), so you take a deep breath and move on. They usually charge £3-4 for an old FIFA title, when Gamestation won’t take them damn things. I was tempted to buy Rambo III for the Master System, but at £4.00 I was put off. I did though see a totally mint Amstrad CPC464 compilation The Maginificent Seven (circa 1987), featuring such 8 bit classics as Head Over Heels, Yie Ar Kung Fu, Short Circuit etc, for only £1.00.

On Sunday it was off to the car boot for the first time in about 8 weeks. Unfortunately we left it a little late this week and either all the retro stuff had gone, people simply hadn’t bothered this week or there wasn’t a lot of it about to start with. I picked up 5 games, 4 PS2 and 1 XBOX, which is hardly retro but still good going. Someone wanted £25 for an unboxed Dreamcast and was “open to offers”. I would have gone in at £10 but the woman selling it was scary looking and I feared for getting my teeth smashed in. Aside from seeing an N64 (£10 with no games or expansion pack) and a Mega Drive (with 6 games but the MKII model and as such doesn’t look as impressive as the original black model – £20 to you Sir), that was about it.

So let’s take a look at what gems I unearthed :

Rumble Roses (PS2) £1.00 – Female japanese wrestling. Need I say more ? This goes nicely alongside my XBOX copy of Playboy : The Mansion and Leisure Suit Larry : Magna Cum Laude on the PS2 as the ones to play when Mrs Bear isn’t looking.

Gromit shows us how much attention he paid to all those nPower adverts he was in

Wallace & Gromit : Curse Of The Were Rabbit (PS2) £1.00 – Everyone loves Wallace and Gromit. Well I do anyway. Looks graphically very impressive from the box, and I do feel throughout my collection I am neglecting “kiddie games”. I also quite like the idea of shooting rabbits out of a gun (if you haven’t seen the film of the game, do so cos it’s very good), so let’s hope it’s a good licence of the film.

Escape From Monkey Island (PS2) £1.75 – Now I must be honest in that I have never played a Monkey Island game. I know they are amongst some of the best and funniest click and point adventure games, so I couldn’t really ignore this. It’s a genre I haven’t played much so am looking forward to settling down and giving this some hammer.

Spongebob Squarepants : Revenge Of The Flying Dutchman (PS2) £1.75 – I have to admit I do enjoy Spongebob. I don’t know why, it just appeals to me in a kind of funny way. This is also another one of the “kiddie games” I don’t have enough of. Spongebob is more than that though, and I hope that the cartoon’s humour translates into the game. If not, then I shan’t play it again.

Juiced (XBOX) £1.00 – Boasting 7.5 trillion car customisation possibilities (wow that just does not appeal to me in the slightest), this looks like an impressive racer from the box. Providing I can whizz round at 200mph and not have to give a shit about cornering (unlike Gran Turismo) I shall be well happy.

Intellivision Lives (PS2) £1.99 – FROM HELP THE AGED CHARITY SHOP – 62 original games from the Intellivision on one disc ? Wow let me at it ! I have never played on one of these machines, and I know as a retro gamer I should be playing them on an original system, but for the price I couldn’t pass it up. It will also allow me to do an Intellivision feature in a future column (quick thinking that).

Dancing Stage Party Edition (PS1) £1.50 – FROM MARY STEVENS HOSPICE CHARITY SHOP – Yes I know, not exactly a stellar purchase, but I have always fancied a dance mat game. All I need now is a dance mat.

Now sometimes I’ll come back with loads of older stuff than that, and on other weekends I’ll come back with stuff like the above. If I was after something in particular I’d use eBay. However, I prefer to play a broad field when it comes to my collecting as I think that’s the best option. After all, if you collect for one machine only, once you get to your target what do you do ? Sell it ? Keep it ? Move on to another one ? This way I can keep collecting for all the machines I have and build things up nicely. Not counting Wii and PS3 (which I should really seeing as I talk about a “collection” as a whole), I now stand at 827 games for the C64, Megadrive, Master System, NES, SNES, Saturn, Dreamcast, N64, Gameboy, Gameboy Colour, Gameboy Advance, Game Gear, Gamecube, PS1, PS2 and XBOX.

Yowser - gaming heaven.

Let me know what you have been up to in the world of games collecting, retro or non retro. It’s always good to know what other gamers are up to and what’s tickling your fancy at this time.

Till the next time – keep it in your pants because you’ll never know when it will go off

This week in the first of a two part column, the Retrobear bemoans “Top” lists and why such things are individual and unique. The second part, to be posted over the next couple of days, will definitely feature more on retro games. Honest…..

Originally Posted to GameFancier.com on August 19th 2010

How we cried at both the film and game versions of ET.

One thing I always like to scan through when getting ideas for writing a column is what other columns have  done already. There is, for example, absolutely no point in me doing “My Top 50 Games” list because it’s relevant only to me. There can be no way a list I can put together will find universal approval, and is more likely have me tarred with the dribbling imbecile brush. I scan through other people’s lists with interest and have no desire to pull them apart because they believe Sonic 2 is better than Mario 64. If that’s your opinion, then that’s great and good for you. You’ll still be welcome here at Bear Towers for a cup of tea and a slice of cake. 

Now truth be told, I did do a Top 10 N64 list a few weeks back, but if you recall (and you can go back a few pages and read it here if you wish) it wasn’t my list, it was someone else’s. I purely did it because I had played some of the games and it allowed me to do a couple of elf jokes at the expense of Link. I therefore considered myself able to put some sort of comment on it. The thing is with retro games and playing them in the correct way, it takes a lot of time and that’s something I don’t usually have. So if you want my top 10 C64 games I have played, you’ll have to wait as playing 423 of them will take me years.

Of course, the lists we do like to read are the Bad Games ones, as they always raise a few chuckles. However how many people have actually played the bad ones which always occur, and simply include them because they have a reputation for being bad ? As a 7 year old kid I thought E.T. And Pac Man on the Atari 2600 were great (well not truthfully – E.T. used to really piss me off). Now history tells me they were bad and should be condemned and as such these now always appear at the top of Bad Games lists. It’s much better to find a really bad game no one seems to remember, for example last week’s Retro Bullet The Running Man. It was crap at the time and it’s crap now.

He likes to play the shitty games that suck ass.

I admire people like James Rolfe of Angry Video Game Nerd fame. He has never been scared to put his opinions forward and has unearthed some really quite awful old NES titles that most of us had forgotten about, or even knew existed. He has his own way of putting his thoughts and comments across, though not to everyone’s taste. Personally, going beyond the bad language and toilet humour, he does know what he is on about, and has a collection to die for. Good games, bad games, good systems, bad systems ; he has them all and deserves his successes.

It’s made it all the more difficult for people to put their gaming opinions across though. If you come across all angry and sweary, as I sometimes do, you get labelled with the AVGN imposter tag. The world already has one of those, so you have to forge your own opinions and get your points across. It seems that there is nothing better than waxing lyrical about how bad a game is, but the art of praising one seems to have disappeared. When you do put together a Great Games List, someone comes along and craps all over it. So what if you haven’t included Halo ? You might not have played it, and therefore one comment takes away any credibility from your list and then the nit picking begins. Before long, it’s been pulled apart and you’ll wonder why you bothered in the first place.

Bend it, shake it, move it, make it, who do you think you are ?

So next time someone goes to the trouble of posting their favourite games list, remember it’s one person’s opinion which they are sharing with you. You won’t agree with all of them, but you might agree with some. Doesn’t make them a bad person or a bad expert on games, they just want to let you know why they love gaming so much. Unless they put Spiceworld at the top of the list : then you have grounds to blast the buffoon to kingdom come.

Till the next time – It was like that when I got here.

Originally Posted to GameFancier.com on August 13th 2010

The good old C64

This week, as promised, we embark on something new. Something I hope you will find as enjoyable as I do, and if you don’t then we’ll call the whole thing off and promise never to mention it again. This is what being a gamer is all about ; the variety of choice, the thrill of trying something new and coming across the gems and the gallstones that lurk within the confines of your gaming cupboard. Yes folks, it’s random gaming (which one could alike to a rather weird form of speed dating)

The rules for the Russian Roulette of Retro are as follows :

• My lovely assistant Mrs Retro Bear will select any 6 games from a library of over 800 titles
• Unless specified, these will be across random formats
• Each game will be played for a minimum of 30 minutes
• If a game is enjoyable or particularly absorbing I can carry on playing until such point comes when I have had enough
• No matter how bad a game is, it has to get a minimum of 30 minutes
• After playing all 6 games, one will be selected as the Bullet and one as my Retro Recommendation

So without further ado, week one sees 6 titles from the Commodore 64. These have been chosen from a grand total of 423 original games, including compilations. The 6 games will be played across 2 nights, with a minimum 90 minutes playing time per night :

Kikstart (1985) by Mastertronic

Fact : Based on the popular BBC TV series which ran from 1979 to 1988

Loading up Kikstart

Opens with a rendition of the Can Can, which is not aurally unpleasant. 8 courses to choose from with a variety of jumps, hazards, buses, cars, telephone boxes and water pits to tackle. The idea is simple : get to the end in the quickest time possible. You can play head to head if you wish as the game is presented in split screen format.

Awful rendition of the old Kickstart TV theme tune (You remember the TV series ? This was always shown during the school holidays and presented by Peter Purves, who was the guy from Blue Peter who wasn’t John Noakes), but thankfully that can be turned off. Controls aren’t bad, but you have to be spot on with your wheelies, jumps and speed otherwise you fall off. Sadly that is the most frustrating part about the game. You fall off a lot, but get a great sense of success when you manage to go 10 seconds without coming a cropper. Graphics and sound are very much of it’s day.

Verdict : Spawned a sequel and is pretty good fun, so all in all not a bad game to get going with.

Atom Ant (1990) by Hitec Software

Fact : The TV series ran from 1965 to 1968 and shared it’s half hour slot with Secret Squirrel

From the C64 golden age to the C64 dying days. Hitec licensed quite a few Hanna-Barbera games in the early 1990′s. I actually played and finished their version of Yogi’s Treasure Hunt on the Amiga. However, this is not one of their well known characters and perhaps unsurprisingly it’s a pretty poor effort.

The object is to fly Atom Ant up the building, collecting bombs to take to a diffuser at the top. You have to avoid a bizzare collection of enemies (from birds and bees to mini copters and bouncing hammers) while doing this, all against the clock. You can collect sugar lumps for extra points and Atom Ant helmets for extra lives. You start with 4 lives and lose one every time you hit an enemy.

Graphically this is pretty poor ; bland backgrounds and a poor main sprite, though the enemies are coloured well. There are minimal sound effects and an OK title tune but nothing special. It’s like a poor man’s Bomb Jack and there isn’t an awful lot to recommend it. I got to the third level on my second go, which suggests with a bit of practice you could get through it easily.

Verdict : Poor licence, poor game. Not even one for the kiddies which is where it was aimed.

Game Over II (1987) by Dinamic Software

Fact : The original Game Over featured a censored UK sleeve to cover up the female character’s ample chest

Some might remember Game Over, with it’s loading screen showing a buxom beauty and some fairly visible nipples. While we are missing a loading screen for this sequel, we do get plenty of nipple coverage on the game’s sleeve. Of course there is more to this than just nipples surely ? Well yes there is. What we have here is one of the many side scrolling shoot-em-ups that gave the C64 it’s name as the best machine to play this kind of game on.

Having said that, it’s rock hard. It boasts a really excellent title tune by Pablo Toldeo , but once you get into the game all you get are weedy “pew pew” effects when you fire your ship’s laser. Graphically it’s not brilliant, and certainly doesn’t push the C64. However it is quick, the enemies come thick and fast and you can’t resist going back to have another go.

Verdict : Not the greatest example of this genre, but a fairly solid entry which will provide a good challenge to trigger happy fans.

The Running Man (1989) by Grandslam

Fact : The film was inspired by a Stephen King novel from 1982. So not only do they make crap films from Stephen King novels, but crap games as well

Still running..

I commented on this game back in the first part of my “movies made into games” blog a few weeks back, and made my thoughts pretty vocal. To sum up – the graphics are poor, the game moves at a snails pace, the collision detection is ropey, the sound and music are awful and the gameplay is repetitive, dull and totally uninspiring.

There is one point though which makes this game so mind numbing, and that is the loading. No matter that you have to load an entire side of one tape (which you then have to flip so it can carry on loading), but then each level is loaded in after that. Die, and you have to rewind the tape to the start. Aggghhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!!

Verdict : Load it up and blow your brains out. It is dog crap of the highest stink.

The Great Burger Riot (1987) by Nationsoft

Fact : I like burgers

Two of my favourite things (burgers and games) sadly do not a great combination make. This is a fairly poor budget title that provides a few good goes initially, but that soon fades. You are Hammy the Hamburger and the goal is to side scroll your way through the levels, blasting hot dogs, cans of cola and other assorted bits n bobs with your tomato sauce. At the end of the level, the hot dogs gang up against you and you have to dodge them and shoot a bottle of ketchup before it hits an electric sensor which trips some hidden wires and turns you to smithereens (not mincemeat because that’s what you already are)

If that makes sense and sounds like fun, then this is the game for you. What you won’t forgive are the poor graphics, lack of sound (though the title tune is OK and the Game Over screen is arguably one of the brashest and garish I’ve seen), the bad scrolling, sprites that appear from nowhere and kill you (and I don’t mean from off the screen either) and the real lack of control of your hamburger. If this was a full price game you’d have frogmarched it back to the shop and got a refund. As a budget title, you’d wait until your pocket money next week and ensure you made a better choice with your £2.00 that time around.

Verdict – Probably this week’s loser if it wasn’t for The Running Man. Poor title with very little going for it, and quite badly programmed as well.

Pro Ski Simulator (1989) by Codemasters

Fact : One of the few Codemaster games that actually featured proper review snippets from magazines as opposed to their own “absolutely brilliant” blurb that they used to put on the sleeve

Not for amateurs

So the kings of 80′s budget software make an appearance with a fairly solid entry in their “Simulator” series. The graphics are quite nice, though nothing special, and while the opening soundtrack is boppy in an 80′s way, sound effects are quite sparse and limited. Like BMX Simulator, if you crash you suffer from being forced to face the wrong way, and as such you can easily get stuck behind an object. If you go too fast the scrolling does struggle to keep up, and the time limits are very, very tight indeed.

It is a rewarding game though and does have that “Ooo just one more go” feel to it which I like. That means I shall probably load it up again over the next few days and try and get beyond level 3. I have no hesitation in recommending this as good fun (if you can get the original or play it via emulation) and a good way to pass a few hours.

Verdict : Will have you humming the theme tune to Ski Sunday in no time at all.

So my Retro Roulette Bullet Of The Week : The Running Man – run away from this at all costs.

And my Retro Recommendation Of The Week : Pro Ski Simulator – some good fun on the piste.

Till the next time Retromaniacs – Look at the size of that thing……

Originally Posted to GameFancier.com on August 5th 2010

The only handheld you'll ever need

As I’m embarking on a short weekend, the old column inches have taken a hit somewhat. I have had to balance getting all my holiday gear ready against writing this weekly piece for my fan in Rotherham. If I don’t get either right then I am on a hiding to nothing. So, this week if you will allow me to indulge in a few snippets of wisdom, I promise for next week that normal service shall be resumed.

After the epic trawl through video games based on films, I have revisited a couple of titles this week, all of which are on the Gamecube. I am thoroughly enjoying Star Wars Rogue Leader, From Russia with Love and 007: Everything or Nothing. There is no better feeling than replaying old games you remember with fondness and still finding them a joy to play. It’s like meeting your hero and finding them to be alright as opposed to the self righteous twat that everyone told you they would be.

I find it difficult to get excited about remakes of old games, with what is classed as a “Next Generation” makeover: Bionic Commando – I just don’t get it. The arcade game was side-on, as were the home conversions, so why does someone feel the need to take it and completely turn it on its head making a game that splits people the same way Marmite does? Being retro orientated, you would expect me to side with the original and in most cases I do. However, the new version of AfterBurner is absolutely awesome, which goes to show you that you can get it right.

I own a lot of machines and am trying to find out which one I don’t feel a lot of love for. My Saturn sits there gathering dust (mainly because my mate Jim still has my RF lead), as does my Dreamcast, despite the fact I have plenty of software for them both. Do you detect a hatred for all things Sega? No, absolutely not. My first proper console was a Mega Drive and I played that to death when I first had one. It got me through college and university alongside lengthy sessions on Championship Manager (German Club Edition), and I now have another one. The one machine I cannot get to grips with is the humble grey plastic toaster that is the NES. I have six games for it, but can’t feel the love at all. I won’t cast it aside, after all that’s sacrilege to even consider, but as it sits there getting dustier and dustier it must wonder if it’s ever going to get a fair crack of the whip. That and its connectors needing a good clean too.

This weekend will give me ample opportunity to play on the various handheld consoles that I have, although I shall probably just take the Gameboy Advance as it is backwards compatible with all Gameboy software. The GBA is an odd one for me, as I don’t think it was raved about the same way as Nintendo’s original Gameboy. That said there are some great games for it and given time over the weekend I may try playing Pokemon on it. I have decided against taking the Sega Game Gear as I don’t have 74 batteries spare (a quick tip if you have one – the Mega Drive power adaptor plugs into it and runs from the mains).

Anyway a quick peek at next week. I am going to try something new which I hope to alternate every 2-3 weeks depending on time and all that other stuff that gets in the way. Yes, finally I am going to start playing some games in depth and letting you know what they are like. I am going to call it the Retro Bear Russian Roulette of Retro (work in progress). Each week Mrs Retro Bear is going to pick me six games from a cross section of systems and I am going to play them. No arguments, no fudging, no cheating. However for the first one I am restricting her to the C64, so tune in next week and see how I get on. It could be a total disaster or rather cool – we shall wait and see!

Till the next time Retromaniacs (and to my fan Maurice in Rotherham) – Good Luck 007!

Originally Posted to GameFancier.com on July 30th 2010

Lego Star Wars The Complete Saga

The decade known as the Noughties (or to any sane member of the general population, the years 2000 onwards) saw as many games released tied into films as there were the previous decade. The quality should have improved, given the capabilities of consoles and handhelds. The last generation of consoles were about to be put aside and we embarked on a new digital age, at the end of which PlayStation would be on mark 3, Nintendo would have introduced us to motion-sensing gaming and Xbox…..well would still be Xbox, just a more powerful version.

Of course we still had the shameless cash-ins we had seen previously, with Disney milking every new film, and any old film, for as much cash as it could. With changes in filming and the ongoing improvements in CGI, games had to look as realistic as possible and more like their cinematic counterparts. You have to move with the times as do consumers, and no one was going to make any half-assed effort at a game – it would be simply left on the shelf next to Blues Brothers 2000 (seriously, why did someone contemplate buying THAT licence?), or March Of The Penguins (really worth owning a DS for).

For this decade I am just going to list the games I’ve played and rate them good or bad. After my experiences in the 90′s, I stepped back from buying licensed games like these. There are only so many times you can get stung, although as we are about to see I was stung a few more times for good measure, but also played some absolute treats:

Alien Resurrection (PS1, 2000) – AVERAGE – Graphically superior to Alien Trilogy and as atmospheric, but you get the feeling the gameplay has been glossed over in favour of the visuals. Still, the opening sequence is very impressive considering the PS1 was on its way out.

007 – The World Is Not Enough (PS1/N64, 2000) – GOOD – A marked improvement on Tomorrow Never Dies which was rubbish. Helped by excellent audio from the stars of the film and good gameplay. Best Bond since Goldeneye, and as good as anything Bond that’s followed it.

Harry Potter & The Philosopher’s Stone (PS1, 2001) – GOOD – I quite enjoyed this seeing as I loathe HP. Great if you like wands, wizards and the like, with a good walkabout and collect type game going on. Nothing outstanding, just a nice little game to play. I haven’t played the others and wouldn’t want to either.

Spider Man: The Movie

Spider Man The Movie (XBOX, 2002) – GOOD – Webslinging adventures of the highest order. Like the films, very much going downhill after this entry, but the sheer thrill and delight of swinging through the city for the first time is still a gaming highlight I look back on.

The Lord Of The Rings : The Two Towers (PS2, 2002) – AVERAGE – Yeah it’s better than the first one (as with the film) but it’s really for fans of the books. Full of orcs, arrows and dwarves, which sounds like a night out in Birmingham to me. Aside from whiling away a couple of hours, I still don’t see what all the fuss is about.

The Thing (XBOX, 2002) – GOOD – A prime example of a 20-year old film being dusted off and given the Next-Gen treatment. And didn’t they do it well. Good solid game and well worth a look.

The Great Escape (XBOX, 2003) – BAD – Now take the above and substitute all the praise for slagging off and you get the idea. The theme tune is nice, but that’s where the fun ends. Seriously not worth a look even if you have a Bank Holiday weekend to spare.

The Chronicles of Riddick (XBOX, 2004) – GOOD – Hate the film, love the game. Vin Diesel in easily his best role to date, and that’s saying something. The guy should consider a career in games. Wait a minute didn’t he appear in some crappy New-Gen game recently ? Ah well, back to the drawing board, Vin.

Van Helsing (XBOX, 2004) – BAD – Crap film, crap licence. Who’s going to buy the game of a film which is total tripe ? Is it the games company having a punt – no, this is Vivendi who are owned by Universal, who made the film and therefore all the cash is going into the same pot. Hah ! Revenge for the 1990′s !!

From Russia With Love

007 : From Russia With Love (Gamecube, 2005) – GOOD – With added Sean Connery and some rather impressive cut scenes. As with The Thing, dusting off an old movie isn’t such a bad idea. Unless it’s Disney in which case you’ll turn it into a platform game.

Star Wars Episode III (PS2, 2005) – BAD – Unimaginative, bland platform game where you have to go round cutting things up with your lightsaber etc. Honestly, you’ll play this for a while, notice you’ve lost a couple of hours but swear you were still on the first level such is the repetitive nature of this game. No matter that it features great chunks of the film in the game; you’re best off with the DVD.

The Godfather (PS2, 2006) – AVERAGE – I waited ages to play this and then found it was nothing more than a GTA rip-off. It’s done well but it’s not that special and wasn’t worth that wait. A game of this film should be frigging awesome. Still it spawned another version and a sequel. Is that a cash cow I can hear mooing?

LEGO Star Wars : The Complete Sage (PS2, 2006) – EXCELLENT– Lego & Star Wars ? Isn’t that your dream childhood rolled into one? It was mine. Quite simply the King of the noughties licences.

And that, RetroBear fans, is where my last full played licence lies. I have played demos of both Iron Man and Watchmen (both boring, repetitive beat-em/shoot-em up type games that hold the attention for a few moments), but that’s it. Who knows what horrors lurked in games made from the Pirates of the Caribbean and Transformers franchises (bad ones from what I have read). A fair crack was made of the original Ghostbusters game last year, but it matters not to me as I have lost interest in games of this ilk.

There were good games based on popular film series – Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis for example, where you too can emulate Richard Attenborough and perfect your own fake Scottish accent, limp and dinosaur park of your own. If the only sole purpose of that is to see Jeff Goldblum torn limb from limb. Then again, there are pieces of shit like Die Hard Vendetta and Jaws Unleashed – the latter never should have worked in the first place and didn’t. Wow a game about a shark. I really must run out and buy that.

As we close this chapter on gaming and, in true MGM fashion, walk into a glorious Technicolor sunset, we should be richer for the experience. Not monetarily wise because we purchased most of this crap in the first place, but more so in our ability to spot a shameless cash-in. Remember someone, somewhere played these games so the likes of you and me didn’t have to. Like most things, if you wade through the shit you’ll find the gems, but you’ll also find a fair few nuggets that just won’t go away no matter how hard you flush them. Right, who’s for a game of Shrek Swamp Car Speedway?

Till the next time – Duh, who turned out the lights?