What better way to finish than with two real retro memories ? 2 for the price of 1 as RetroBear sinks his teeth in the BBC Micro, talks to four brightly coloured dragons and checks out the Vealery for clues……

Don't you remember how cool games likes these were when we were kids ?

When I look back on all the games that I have played in my lifetime, and there are a helluva lot of them, I am reminded of where it all began. It’s probably a toss up between the table top game Astro Wars or the Atari VCS game Space Invaders. I then come full circle and think of the last current gen game I played, and that either has to be Band Hero or PES 2011 on the PS3. In between that there has been a lot of time with Championship/Football Manager and not enough time with my C64 – and yes the Commodorathon is coming back.

One game I always will have fond memories of is perhaps one not from a usual source. Back in the day when I were a lad, my dad used to bring home one of the school computers. No he wasn’t a thief, he was teacher, and each and every school holiday me and my sister would be treated to the delight of “educational games”. These were as exciting as they sounded, because kids, there is nothing more exciting than learning when you are on your holidays. At least no one could say the BBC Micro on loan to us wasn’t being used for gaming purposes.

It's the newest member of the Loose Women panel.....and she send you back to the start of the game too

However there were two titles that really deserve a mention as a joint entry, homage to those funny summer days when everyone else was out playing and I was either trawling through Granny’s Garden or solving mysteries in Mallory Manor. The first is one of the best and most fondly remembered BBC titles whilst the latter allowed use for you own imagination as it allowed to you input your own ideas which then appeared in the game.

Let’s deal with Granny’s Garden first because anyone who knows anything about educational software should know this game. The game is set in The Kingdom Of Mountains where you have to rescue the King and Queen’s 6 children. Along the way your maths, logic and spelling would be tested as the Evil Witch would try to outfox your do-gooding attempts to save the day once again. It was a simple formula and rather surprisingly for an educational title, dare I say it, actually made learning fun. The colourful graphics more than made up for the very basic feel to the game. So successful was this that it ended up being ported to the Spectrum, Amstrad and C64 and even a few years ago ended up on Windows. It’s the one game anyone associates with the BBC Micros and IT lessons at primary school.

Normally I don't condone this sort of juvenile behaviour, but if you will allow people to edit fuctions in the game what do you expect ? Joking aside it is rather funny isn't it ?

Mallory Manor on the other hand was incredibly amusing. You played a policeman who had to go round a manor house, interviewing suspects, collecting evidence and deciphering clues in order to solve the murder. All seems rather dull, except that Mallory Manor allowed you to edit the text, changing the names of the rooms and also the characters. Now this should have been all rather amusing if you were 7 years old, however at the grand old age of 13-14 years old this game was still causing great mirth when I was at high school, and the prospect of encountering your classmate in the Beefery (I know, I still don’t get it after all these years) brought many a tear to the eye.

There is nothing dynamic about either game, there is nothing vaguely special or ground breaking either. They were just two titles that brought me a lot of fun at the time and a lot of memories looking back.

I waqs unable to find a screenshot for Mallory Manor, so here is the bumbling Inspector Clouseau to represent it instead

VERDICT : If you are feeling nostalgic, dig them out. If not, just leave your memories where they were and keep them that way

NOTES : Sadly I am unable to locate either of these games on Amazon or eBay.

UP NEXT : 30 days of highs and lows – it’s a retrospective of the journey we have been on.

Time for some top sports action from the good old US of A. It might look like rugby for nancies, what with all that padding and stuff, but by gum does Madden play a damn good game of football….

About as close as you can get to being the great man himself without the need to buy a large mobile home

I got back into American Football in the early 1980’s when my dad insisted on making us sit around the black-and-white portable and watch the snowy reception on Channel 4. There are many things wrong with that statement, most notably the fact we had a B&W portable TV (and I believe we still had it until around 10 years ago), but also the issue being when Channel 4 first started we couldn’t actually get a signal. We sat watching a snowy picture and listening to the commentary. I think my dad preferred it this way because in those days you could still pick up the Armed Forces radio carrying live NFL matches on Sunday evenings.

(Please pause for a moment, RetroBear is going to wipe his eyes and take a moment whilst fondly remembering those more innocent days…..)

Right I am back from the trip, I hope you enjoyed it as much as me. So anyway I was, and am, still fascinated with the NFL. That is why I usually have to make sure there is at least one NFL game in my collection per machine. The last I actually purchased was Madden 07 for the PS3, but I do remember playing a copy of the first Madden game on the Amiga. For those of you not in the know, the Madden series (named after the former coach and TV commentator John Madden) is the most successful and long running sports-game franchise ever.

A very decent representation of the real game - all team colours are correct and the whole thing moves very nicely indeed

I am not going to go into the ins-and-outs of how to play the game, because each game comes with so many choices of plays, tactics and things to select I’d be here all day typing. Quite frankly if you are not an NFL fan then you won’t be buying this game on the off chance. My happiest memories of the Madden series came when I purchased a copy of the 94 version for the Mega Drive, which I had newly acquired from a mate at college.

In those days graphically Madden didn’t have a lot to get excited about. Although all the teams colours and helmet images were nicely done and the players were well animated, it didn’t really push the boundaries of the Mega Drive. The 94 version had the great man himself popping up with bits of speech before games, and during the games quipping a few lines here and there as well with his trademark “bang” and “pow” if you made a rather good hit on your opponent. There have always been tonnes of options, such as playing a full season, exhibition modes and the chance to play as classic teams.

It's another 49er 1st down.......

For anyone into the NFL, such as myself, this sort of game was a delight. You had stats coming out of your ears, you could select from hundreds of plays on offence, defence and special teams. You had fumbles, interceptions and even penalties. Crowning the whole impressive package was the facility to save everything via battery back-up, meaning you could play full length seasons over a time period and win the Superbowl again and again. Picking the right time of course was most helpful and having just given it a whirl again a good pick would be Dallas (although as a 49er fan I must now go and thrash myself thoroughly)

Non-NFL fans won’t get much from this, as it simply isn’t the sort of game you can pick up and play. For that you need to look at either the NFL Quarerback Club series or NFL Blitz which simplifies the games and isn’t as heavy on the stats or playbooks. If though you love your NFL this is an essential pick for your collection.

VERDICT : Pro-Bowl bound, Madden NFL94 is one of the best NFL games I have ever played. It still goes pretty well today, if you can cope with the obvious out of date teams.

NOTES : You can own this game for 97p on Amazon and 99p on eBay.

UP NEXT : Educational genius or just a way to brainwash kids into thinking computer games can also help you learn ? Either way it’s a double entry (oooo matron) with Granny’s Garden and Mallory Manor on the BBC Micro…

Don’t you just hate it when someone some how manages to destroy something that seems indestructible ? How hard could it be to ruin an arcade classic such as Commando ? RetroBear should start re-reading some of his old posts as this is a far more common occurance than he seems to think………

Hmmmm doesn't exactly fill me with confidence - you can tell a lot from a title screen

Certain games have certain impacts on gamers. Whether it is some breathtaking sequence, a memorable moment or just a “wow” factor about some aspect of the game, certain things stay with you forever. No matter what you do in the future, where you go and how you go about it, something will always find a way of dragging you back to that one moment. Games have that impact on people, as we remember those fine moments along with the ones we’d much rather forget.

Regrettably that leads me rather nicely on to the NES version of Commando. When it came out in 1985, Commando was lauded as a superb vertical, run and gun game with plenty of on screen action and furious game play to keep arcaders pumping in the 20p’s. There was nothing magical about any of Commando’s genetic make-up – it was adequate graphically and the main tune was OK. The gameplay was pitched nicely so you weren’t put off by a ridiculous difficulty curve whilst still managing to keep you coming back for more.

Depending on how bad the graphic flicker is this screen could be full of enemy soldiers or it's just two of them

Unfortunately somehow, somewhere the wheels fell off the home market conversion truck in a big way. What went from being a popular but run of the mill arcade game turned into a bit of a shambolic mess. All of a sudden the difficulty curve was turned right down meaning it was fairly simple to complete the game, and some of the levels were even missing. Now I know that the C64 version is by no means great, but  it did have one piece of computer game music widely regarded as a classic – almost the Bohemian Rhapsody of video game soundtracks – which was Rob Hubbard’s remix of the original arcade tune.

So am I rating the C64 version as a good game because of the music ? Well it’s above the rest on that count, but no way would it be recommended as an essential play. Neither is the NES version, which I have to admit is even worse than the C64 version. Firstly, although you do get the arcade tune it’s a toneless affair so already it’s off to a bad start. The gameplay is all but missing – I managed to walk through the entire first 2 levels only needing to fire any shots once I had reached the end compounds. So that’s 2 levels simply moving my man up the screen, dodging bullets. It is though the third aspect of this I cannot forgive. We know that both the NES and Master System were prone to sprite flicker and graphical glitches, but on Commando these rank as some of the worst I have seen. I know it’s meant to be a jungle game, but enemy soldiers just disappear whilst vehicles appear and vanish with amazing regularity. I actually got killed walking along when a van just dropped on top of me.

I hate slagging off games and it does appear I have been rather unfair on the NES during this 30 Days of Gaming, but I have been picking these at random. Commando, no matter what system it ended up on, was an absolute turd of a conversion. Have a look at the original arcade game and wonder how it ended up transferring as badly as it did. Then go and look at either Ikari Warriors or Rambo : First Blood Part Two and see exactly how it should have turned out.

Jus keep moving on up the screen - once past the enemy soliders they can't follow you or fire at you so it's just a case of dodging bullets

VERDICT : Break into the POW camp and put this back. Commando on the NES (and to be fair most systems) is a prime example of how not to convert a popular and playable arcade classic.

NOTES : Unfortunately neither Amazon or eBay have this item available

UP NEXT : 4-4-4, Hut, Hut – Madden NFL94 on the Mega Drive

RetroBear never had a paper round when he was little. It wasn’t the fact he couldn’t wake up early enough, nor was it the fact that he didn’t think he could handle it. No it was more down to the fact that he really couldn’t be bothered……

Don't you just love games that do exactly what they say on the title screen ?

If, like me, you were an avid tea time follower of the game show First Class when you were a child then that would have been probably the first time you saw such NES games as 720 and Hyper Sports. This quiz programme, played by slightly older children than I was at the time, was mostly forgettable except some bright spark at the BBC had the idea of including a video game section. After all, video games were just beginning to catch on again and what better way to get them out and exposed than on national television ?

One other game that was heavily featured was Paperboy, and this seemed rather more fun than the others. By this time the arcade version had been around for a couple of years, so if you knew your arcade games then you’d know all about this game. Just to make sure that it was etched in the memory, the arcade cabinet had handlebars attached to it for a more authentic feel. The object of the game was to ride your bike up the street, firing newspapers at houses. You would have a set number of papers to deliver to the right houses, whilst new subscribers could be gained. Depending on how well you did at the end of the day determined how many more or less houses wanted your paper.

Pick up the bundle of paper, avoid the kid on the go-kart who is going to drive at you and fire your newspaper into the mailbox - not much to do then in this one....

Along the way there were a whole manner of obstacles to avoid – stray remote controlled cars, dogs running off their leash, breakdancers (yes this was the mid 1980’s remember), joggers, people on bikes and when you came to a road crossing, cars. Along the way you could collect bundles of newspapers to replenish your dwindling resources. If you weren’t careful or accurate with your aim, you could break people’s windows, which was not a good idea if you were aiming for their letterbox. Complete your street and you’d be able to attack the assault course at the end, firing your spare newspapers at targets whilst going over speed and water jumps.

Paperboy was converted to just about every system imaginable back in the day and by 1991 the final versions for Game Gear and Mega Drive came out. The Master System version was released in 1990 and I am not playing it for any reason other than it was there. It’s the only version I have, to my knowledge. It’s a very colourful and faithful representation of the arcade original, although as with a lot of Master System games the music is horrendous. One of the problems the game had was just how hard it could be. You had to keep a constant speed up, especially on the bonus assault course at the end. If you went too slow you’d end up crashing or not making the jumps. You also had to time your passage past obstacles because if they moved quicker than you, you had no chance.

Always something going on in this game - you have to keep your eyes peeled, your speed up and your papers delivered otherwise its off to the job centre

It’s a very fun game and definitely worth digging out if you have a copy. There was even a sequel which was only for home computers instead of an arcade follow up release. If you have an XBOX 360, mobile phone or I-Pad then you can also get versions of it for those. It’s a very widely available game. 25 years on from it’s original release, Paperboy can still cut it.

VERDICT : This is a news flash – play Paperboy, it’s jolly good fun.

NOTES : Wow – a penny under £7.00 will net you a complete copy from Amazon, whilst the same deal on eBay will set you back £3.95

UP NEXT : One of my fave C64 games becomes an NES disaster – Commando.

With the nights drawn in and everything going that bit colder, RetroBear dons his Parka jacket, grabs hold of the nearest hammer and goes out to thwack some long haired freaks. No he’s not hippy-bashing, he’s yeti-squashing in Ice Climber……

One of the original launch titles for the NES in the US, Ice Climber originally had you whacking seals with a hammer before someone decided yetis might be a bit more acceptable

With winter coming it only seems appropriate to find a cold weather themed game. Yes I know I have already covered Frostbite on the 2600. So anyway I decided to select one of the earliest games released for the NES. If you like polar bears and eskimos then this is probably the other game for you aside from Frostbite. I am of course wittering on about Ice Climber.

This was one of the launch titles for the NES in the USA and was programmed by Kazuaki Morita, who went on to become one of the main programmers on Super Mario Bros. It follows the adventures of Popo who with the aid of his ice hammer, has to chop holes in the ice ceilings to climb up through 8 levels of ice before reaching the top level. This is a bonus stage where you have a set time to collect bits of fruit (yes fruit – why fruit ?) as part of a bonus level.

Wallop the yetis to give you some more time to dig your holes and move up the levels

Along the way you have to avoid yetis, giant polar bears who wear sunglasses and a red bird called a Nitpicker, which unless I am very much mistaken isn’t a real bird at all. After hacking holes in the ice you have to jump through them. On occasions this will have to be done by jumping onto moving platforms, and once the hole is cut you have to be quick otherwise the yetis fill them in. Adding to your woes are the icy drips that form and plummet at you at a very fast speed indeed. You will certainly need quick reactions and wits in this one.

Sadly for me Ice Climber is very much a product of it’s age. There is no doubt it is a very good game but unfortunately I found some of the collision detection of the jumps to be as ropey as hell. More often than not I appeared to have landed on the platform, only to sail through it and drop back down again. That rather large fault aside, it’s a fun game but I don’t think it’s one I personally will keep going back to.

That is not to say Ice Climber is a forgotten relic of the past. Oh no, many versions have appeared on Nintendo consoles since then : a port of the arcade version, Vs Ice Climber, made its way to the Famicom Disk System in 1988, in 2002 a version was tucked away in the Gamecube version of Animal Crossing, the Gameboy Advance had it’s own version in 2004 and you can access the original via the Virtual Console on the Wii (this was also one of the ROM’s included for 3DS owners who invested in that console at launch).

After you clear 8 platforsm (numbered down the side) the top part is a bonus level where you collect fruit. How original is that ?

So there are plenty of ways of getting hold of this, and certainly its worth some of your time. I just didn’t find it grabbed me in perhaps the way I expected and as such I shan’t be going back to it. Pity because with the cold weather coming, one needs warm feeling games to get you through the bleak midwinter.

VERDICT : Falls through the ice after a while. Stay inside, keep warm and do something less chilly instead.

NOTES : No copies to be found over on Amazon. Over on eBay you can bid from around £3.00, but Buy It Now will cost you a hefty £24.99 and that’s cart only !

UP NEXT : Early mornings and after school deliveries ? Why it must be Paperboy on the Sega Master System.

You have to wonder why some games end up being converted to some consoles or comp0uters. Here is such a pointless exercise for your consideration as RetroBear looks back to his one and only experience with a C16+4…..

Make sure you always check the screenshots on the back....because they don't always apply to version you are buying....

When you have a successful home computer the one thing you want to do is expand on it. Spectrum did so with a 128k version, and Commodore added a disk drive making its capabilities that much more powerful. The last thing you want to do is bring out a downscaled version of an already fairly potent machine. So when Commodore announced in 1984 they were discontinuing their entry level Vic 20 and replacing it with the C16, one wonders what they were thinking.

Yes by then the Vic 20 had had it’s day. The C64 had taken off globally and was selling well in both Europe and the USA. Commodore wanted to establish the C16 as a budget home computer and thus head off any supposed competition that was coming from Japan. Unbeknownst to them that competition never arrived as the resurgence of the home console was imminent. Thus all Commodore’s competitors at the time, namely Texas Instruments, Timex and Mattel, withdrew from the market leaving the C16 all alone.

The results were pretty disastrous. The computer sold badly in the USA, forcing Commodore to withdraw the machine from sale. It picked up in Europe where it was sold as a cheap games machine and had some very surprising success in Mexico. There is no doubt though that as a far less powerful version of it’s C64 sibling there were only a few things it could do that would appeal to anyone interested in playing games. The machine now does have a cult following for it given it’s rather poor reputation (and there are good games to be found for it)

Footballer Of The Year was not one of them. For those unfamiliar with the game, you took the role of a lower division footballer with an eye for goal. During each game you would be given a limited number of chances to score goals. You occasionally would have one or two defenders in your way and the keeper to beat, but providing you were quick off the mark you got your shots in. During the game you had a chance to earn extra goal cards to have extra chances in the match. Too slow and you’d be tackled or the keeper would save your shots. The quicker and more accurate you were the better and soon the bigger clubs would come knocking. Working your way up the leagues you would gain experience and a reputation and eventually you could claim the Footballer Of The Year title and even play for your country.

Sadly I wasn't able to find any actual screenshots for the game, but it's kinda like this only the text is a bit more spaced out

The game was a big success on the 8 bit formats and Gremlin Graphics even released a sequel incorporating the Amiga and Atari ST. It is the C16 version that sticks in my mind for one reason. A friend of mine had a C16 and I popped round one day to have a look. I’d never heard of them before then, let alone seen one. I caught him playing Ikari Warriors and was rather unimpressed by what I had seen. So when he loaded FOTY up I really had trouble believing what my eyes were seeing, and that despite the fact I wear glasses.

Instead of having the chance to shoot on goal in some rendered matchday graphics, to simulate your shot on goal you pressed the space bar on a text screen. Once you did that the computer would tell you which way you kicked the ball and whether you had scored or not. That was it. No way of telling if you were close or showing the ball nestling in the net, the C16 simply wasn’t powerful enough or advanced enough to show that. All you got was a message informing you of success or failure.

If you read the 4 points in the bottom left hand corner you will see what I mean - the thing is though this was printed on the inside and not the outside - a cunning plan to get you to buy the game then read about how bad it was going to be later

Quite frankly this was one of the most detached, embarrassing and ludicrous pieces of software I had come across, and I still don’t think I have seen anything as bad as that since. You just had no control over what you were doing. I couldn’t help feel sympathy for my friend, who I am sure would have been thrilled with the computer. I might have had an Atari 2600 at the time but at least that allowed to actually play the game.

Playing it on other formats FOTY is a fine game. This though doesn’t even warrant the word “game” being tagged to it. I am sure there are many fine pieces of software for the C16 but having seen one in action I am rather glad I had a few mates with a C64 instead.

VERDICT : Horrible.

NOTES : No trace at all on Amazon and eBay (you lucky people)

UP NEXT : Let’s all rub noses – Ice Climber on the NES.

Well the good stuff didn’t last as RetroBear plays one of the biggest steaming piles of cow dung ever released on the Super Nintendo. The question is why did anyone really both trying to convert a game so shallow as this ?

Well the box looks nice I suppose, but its all downhill when you open it

Do you remember laser discs ? Now that is a fair slice of retro history right there. This was meant to be the technology that revolutionised how we watched movies in our own home, with the chance to have almost cinema quality picture and full channel stereo sound blasting us out of our armchairs. Those in the know say that this was a technology that should have succeeded if only for one small, tiny problem : the laser disc players were the most unreliable piece of machinery that was ever produced.

No bother that you could have the most incredible version of Star Wars or Jurassic Park thundering out of your TV. If your player was throwing a wobbler there was no chance of getting anything out of it. All too soon laser discs lost out to the already established VHS market and, before they had a chance to improve, the DVD came along and did what laser discs should have done in the first place. Gamers though also had their own slice of good fortune when Don Bluth, and ex-Disney studio animator, and his Bluth Studios decided to not only make an arcade game with high quality cartoon graphics but also stick it on laser disc.

Sadly these machines were as unreliable as their home counterparts. Too often machines broke down awaiting repair and at the time charging you £1.00 a go when the average game would give you 3 credits for 50p was extortionate. The games produced, Dragons Lair : Escape From Singe’s Castle, Dragons Lair 2 : Timewarp and Space Ace, were some of the most simple ever made. All you had to do was move the joystick or press the fire button at the right time to move to the next screen. Basically you were playing a cartoon with interaction, and limited interaction at that. You couldn’t fault how the games looked and sounded, but as playing experience it was like being hit with a wet lettuce over again and having someone nick a quid from your pocket for the privilege.

Whilst it all looks very nice it cannot compare to the arcade original in any way shape or form

Some bright spark thought it would be fun to secure the rights to the home conversions and try and make some money. When the third game in the series, Space Ace, was released it had a whopping 9 discs for the 16 bit versions. How on earth could you fit all the tech into one small tape ? Well you couldn’t and anyone expecting a similar experience to the arcade game was living in cloud cuckoo land. Finally, Escape From Singes Castle arrived on the SNES and what a disaster it was.

Rather than make any attempt to recreate the arcade game, the SNES version like the NES one was turned into a side scrolling platform game (The Angry Video Game Nerd has done a pretty scathing review of the NES version). Whilst there is no doubt the game has some nice colourful graphics the fun ends there, when you realise the whole game moves like a slug in treacle with a brick tied to its back. The controls are amongst some of the most unresponsive I have ever experienced, switching from incredibly twitchy to sluggish to just damned unresponsive with each flick of the joypad.

You don’t get any joy from this game at all. It might have been prudent to try and do a straight conversion with the obvious graphical limitations, but when the original has little or no game play in the first place, it makes you wonder why this wasn’t left in the dust covered memories of the past. You might give some small applause for the effort but when platform games are ten-a-penny and as bad as this it really doesn’t bear thinking about. You can now play both Escape From Singes Castle and Dragons Lair 2 via your PS3 should you wish to download them. It must be added that after all these years it’s a straight conversion and as such all you have to do is move the pad or press the button at the right time. Yawn. That’s now like being hit in the face with a case of wet lettuces whilst someone takes £8.00 from your pocket. No thank you.

It is hard to tell whether the game is moving or whether it is a trick of the eye

Dragons Lair at least holds a place in games history for trying to do something technologically advanced. Unfortunately either someone was very greedy or someone simply didn’t think it through properly. Make up your own minds, I’m off to play Asteroids instead.

VERDICT : Hopeless controls and a game speed to rival the 100m final of the snail olympics, this is not recommended at all unless you are a fan of masochism.

NOTES : For those of you who don’t wish to heed my advice you can buy a copy for £2.39 on Amazon whilst you’ll have to pay an insane £4.00 for a loose cart version on eBay.

UP NEXT : Horror of horrors – Footballer Of The Year on the Commodore C16+4

The end is in sight and now is the time to roll out some of the good stuff. Roll around your living room and pop out to shoot the bad guys, it’s Time Crisis…..

The mighty G-Con 45 and Time Crisis - a formidable partnership

Nothing captures the gamer’s imagination more than a giant, hulking arcade cabinet. Those with all the flashy bells and knobs on – cabinets shaped like cars, those with hydraulic mechanisms and those with plastic Uzi 9mms bolted on to them – were likely to gobble up more 20p’s than standard stand up versions. Whether they were any good or not, gamers were lured in by the bells-and-whistles and kept coming back in their droves. The mention of cabinets with mounted guns brings us to our next entry.

Operation Wolf probably defines that game best of all. With it’s Rambo-esque opening sequence and death message of “You have sustained a fatal injury” (Yes thank you for pointing that out) had you pumping more 20p’s in as you wanted to get that bit further into the game. It was a very good game too and had many fine home conversions to go with it. Namco decided a few years later that they could improve on this, by adding a few extra bits and pieces to make this run-and-gun genre a little more interesting, and thus Time Crisis was born.

Its fast and furious and all against the clock

All these types of games, to this point, had one major fatal flaw. It was impossible to avoid enemy fire unless you got to them first, and that wasn’t always easy. By adding a pedal to the arcade cabinet you were now able to hide behind objects, therefore allowing you the time to choose the right moment to leap from behind a crate all guns blazing. The gun for the game was no longer mounted and allowed you free and easy movement when making your shots. Firing off screen reloaded the gun and eliminated the need to shoot objects along the way in order to get more ammunition. Throw in a time limit for each section of the level and it really was a race against the clock.

This is what set Time Crisis apart from the rest of that genre. More freedom for the gamer equalled a more satisfying and fun experience. You could even have 2 players at the same time and this paved the way for more exciting games to come into the market, like The House Of The Dead Series and Virtua Cop. So, when the chance to transfer the success of Time Crisis to the PS2 came about, once again the boffins went to work to make the conversion a success.

Time attack gaming is never usually as much fun as this

Thus the Namco G-Con 45 light gun adaptor was produced and my word what a rather fabulous piece of kit it was. It was lightweight and responsive, something which light guns had not been to that point. Aside from the trigger there was also a button on the side of the gun which activated the hide feature of the arcade game. Throw in some pretty adequate graphics and the excellent game play and you had a cracking little conversion which sold very well.

Time Crisis has now spawned three sequels with the latest once being transferred to the PS3. It’s a game series that revolutionised that ilk of games, whilst at the same time providing some exciting home gun action for those in need of it. This is most definitely worth a revisit with a decent learning curve, although anyone with an eye for this sort of game should blast through it with very few problems.

So make time for Time Crisis, it really is worth it.

VERDICT : Gun toting, bad guy popping, action entertainment of a very high standard. Make sure you get the G-Con peripheral to get the full experience.

NOTES : You can buy the game and gun for £8.00 on Amazon. On eBay this package sees bidding start from 99p whilst a complete set on Buy It Now will cost you £12.99

UP NEXT : The good stuff didn’t last – it’s Dragons Lair on the SNES

Taz and Retrobear share a few things in common. They are always hungry, both hideously ugly and both amazingly hairy. It seemed only fair to look at Taz’s first platform outing on the Mega Drive and find out if the rave reviews on release were still justified 20 years later…..

That is the worst case of indegestion I have ever seen

I love cartoons, not sure I have mentioned that before. Not the modern day rubbish you find polluting our screens on some obscure kids satellite TV channel. I am talking about proper cartoons – Tom and Jerry, Yogi Bear, Scooby Doo and Looney Tunes. It’s the latter I probably love the most, with humour so far ahead of its time, wacky characters, insane violence and some high quality animation. No cartoon studio captures the spirit of what a cartoon should be more than Warner Brothers so it comes as no surprise that at every opportunity they will license their characters to video games.

There are literally far too many to mention and as a result of that I am going to focus on Taz-Mania which was released on the Sega Mega Drive. Incidentally this is not to be confused with the SNES game of the same name, which was totally different and thus vastly inferior to this game. At the time Warners had created a brand new cartoon based around the Tasmanian Devil, his family and friends and this game tied in nicely with that.

Lush graphics make the game feel like it was lifted straight from the TV series

You all know Taz, he’s the unpredictable, loud, always hungry, scruffy looking monster that tried numerous times to eat Bugs and Daffy in the 1950’s. Now back in his homeland of Australia (giving the Americans enough ammunition to take the piss out of the Aussies whenever possible), Taz was strapped into yet another platform game based around his adventures. Taz sets off an a quest to find the mythical lizard egg which will feed a family of Tasmanian Devils for a year. All he has to do is simply walk, jump or spin his way through various levels, avoiding spear chucking bushrats amongst other things while eating everything and anything he can along the way. He can’t eat everything though and eating something that doesn’t agree with him will result in a bellyache.

The first thing that strikes you about the game is how beautiful it looks. At the time it was one of the most stunning games to look at on the Mega Drive. It really captured the feel of the cartoon so well. In fact it may have been this that blinded a lot of the positive press at the time. Strip the lovely visuals away and you are left with quite annoyingly bad sound effects and twee, inappropriate music. Taz is well animated, as are the other graphics but the whole thing moves at a snail’s pace, even when Taz is in spin mode. Finally the whole thing is just too damn easy. My bad games playing skills are well known but even I was able to get quite far into the game after a few goes, and that doesn’t bode well.

As good as it looks, Taz-Mania plays like any other platform game of its era and has nothing to make it stand out from the crowd

Throw in yet another linear platformer and all Taz-Mania has to stand out from the crowd is its looks. Its a real shame that revisiting a game I quite enjoyed as a kid now finds it in a state where it can have no real place in gaming history. Sadly the bad games for Taz didn’t end there. The afore mentioned SNES game was a 3D running game which has no redeeming features whatsoever. Taz Express on the N64 wasn’t much better, going back to the tried and tested formula of platform gaming, and ends up being a poor man’s Mario 64 type game.

Taz-Mania sadly isn’t the licence it should have been. If you have fond memories of this from your childhood, keep your distance and hold on to them

VERDICT : At the time, stunning visually. Now, its exposed for the shallow platform game it was at the time. A real shame.

NOTES : Taz-Mania can be found for around £2.00 on Amazon and 99p on eBay.

TBC : Put together time and crisis and what does that give you – Time Crisis on the PS1

Simple things appeal to simple minds, and they don’t get much simpler than RetroBear’s. Give him some bongo shaped controllers and a sing-a-long soundtrack and you have the makings of a decent game. Throw in Nintendo’s number one ape and you get Donkey Konga on the Gamecube……

Bongos + Gamecube + TV = Fun for all the family....for a limited time anyway

Its always fun to see a game that tries to be something a little different. An original concept can do wonders for sales especially if the idea catches on quickly. Take the Guitar Hero franchise, which moved fairly rapidly from a single guitar rhythm game and developed into a game where everyone could pick an instrument – providing it was either a guitar or drums – and even sing lead vocals The Singstar series of games capitalised on our love for karaoke and Samba Di Amigo catered for anyone feeling a bit Mexican and delighted in shaking their maracas at anyone stupid enough to look.

Nintendo though decided to be markedly different. What instrument could be more simple to play than a set of bongos ? Everyone can sit there and thwack bongos to their hearts content. Nothing could be more fitting than having a monkey thrash them in time to the music for the purpose of collecting bananas and coins (what is it with coin collecting and games designers ??). Thus Donkey Konga was born and thumped its way onto the Nintendo Gamecube.

Slap the skins in time to the Mario Bros theme tune. Can you get more Nintendo than that ?

There is nothing particularly special about Donkey Konga. Its the simple keep-in-time-with-the-music rhythm game played against some colourful backdrops and a rather varied soundtrack, with tunes ranging from some of Nintendo’s best in game music including the themes to Zelda and Super Mario Brothers, through to more recognised songs such as Don’t Stop Me Now, You Can’t Hurry Love and rather hilariously for game with a giant ape at the heart of it, Wild Thing.

There are even a few mini-games thrown in for good measure, giving you a full range of thrills to experience. Sadly everything is rather on the easy side and those weaned on the more difficult Guitar Hero/RockBand series won’t find anything too testing here. The bongo peripheral is fabulous, making realistic sounds so the neighbours will think you are hammering out proper bongo beats at 3am. Get a couple of sets of these for an incredibly funny two player mode and all in all you have a pretty satisfying package.

Bongos and monkeys - thats all you can ask for.

Nintendo got good mileage from this series as a sequel was released. They even added a third game but this was released in Japan only. Sadly bongo bashing didn’t catch on as much as would hoped and the series was given up on. It’s a shame the bongos can’t be used for anything else really as they are quite a cool piece of kit. I picked up a spare pair last year much to the annoyance of Mrs Bear last year and when asked why I had brought them I simply responded “emergency bongos”. Because you can never have enough of them.

If you like rhythm games this is for you. If not steer well clear.

VERDICT : Thumpingly good fun for a short period but this isn’t one you’ll keep coming back to. It has great novelty value but like all novelties it wears thin quicker than you’d like.

NOTES : Shopping on Amazon will be bag you a copy for just 89p, whilst over on eBay pay just 75p for a complete version. Bongos are cheap enough to find from around £2.00.

UP NEXT : Throw another shrimp on the barbie – it’s Taz-Mania on the Mega Drive