I’ve always been asked what sort of games I prefer. Do I prefer First Person Shooters ? Well I like the original Goldeneye on the N64 and the early Medal Of Honour/Call Of Duty games, but not the modern versions. I love sports games, although playing anything pre Kick Off is now nothing more than a retro chore (with the exception of Emlyn Hughes’ Football). Puzzle games are OK, but give me Tetris and I’ll be happy. I love good arcade conversions and original games but I am not the world’s biggest fan of film and TV tie ins. So this next batch of Amiga games from my youth cover a lot of bases with the usual predictably mixed results…..

Which game genre do you prefer ? Strip poker games not included of course......

GRAND MONSTER SLAM – Loosely based on the ancient arcade game Penguin Wars, Grand Monster Slam tries to be a number of things, with the final result perhaps not quite satisfying enough for all, it remains a jolly good effort trying to be something else. Taking part in what is a cross between a medieval and fantasy world, the basis of the game is to work through a league. Each opponent you face has the same goal as you – kick all their furry creatures (called Beloms) at your opponent, to clear your line, as quickly as possible. Do that and you run at your opponent for victory. You can aim your Beloms at your opponent to knock him down, whilst kicking them into the crowd will result in extra Beloms being added to your remaining ones. Work your way through the league and take part in some weird mini games, one being kicking Beloms into the mouth of waiting monsters, each slightly higher up than the last one. It’s a brave attempt at being different and was good enough to be in the very first Amiga Power 100. However, the sometimes clunky controls and samey gameplay might mean boredom sets in before too long. A good effort and worth a little look.

HYDRA – The Amiga was home to some pretty worthless conversions in it’s time, and this one is no exception. It’s basically STUN Runner on water, or those of you who remember the game based on the James Bond film Live & Let Die, its kinda like that. I actually played this back in the arcade once and it didn’t exactly grab me as being a great game. The whole chasing criminals thing had become a bit dull by this point – this version was around 18 months after Chase HQ had appeared – and although putting it on water is a slightly different approach, a great game it does not make. In fact it gets real dull real quick. The whole thing moves so slowly that any sense of speed the game should create isn’t there and thus it becomes another woeful racing/driving/chase the crims game of very low quality. At least the water effect is nice……

INDY 500 – We touched on Days of Thunder in the previous posting. That was a bad example of what the Amiga could do when it came to vector based racing games. Indy 500 is considerably better, providing you had at least 1MB of memory and reduced the detail in the graphics to the bear minimum. Being a simulation rather than a straight racer there are lots of details such as car set up, testing, practice, qualifying and of course the actual Indianapolis 500, based on the field that entered the 1989 race. Yes, you only get one race to take part in so the lastability comes into question. There is no denying it looks great and was way ahead of anything else at the time, but it might prove a bit too techy for those who just like to plug in and race away.

JIMMY WHITE’S WHIRLWIND SNOOKER – You always wonder with certain sports whether you can replicate the actual fun and feeling of playing it on a computer as opposed to participating in the real thing. Snooker had up till then had a fairly chequered history, with snooker games being basic coloured balls on a green background. The legendary programmer Archer Maclean took the game of snooker and did something rather marvellous – he made it interesting. This is one of the best sports games ever, with so many touches of realism included – cueing angles, needing to chalk the cue, backspin, positional play and even the odd cheeky ball suddenly having a cartoon face and sticking it’ tongue out at you. Throw in some excellent graphics and the ability to view each shot from every angle possible and you have a really excellent piece of software. Even people who hate snooker will love this.

KICK OFF – OK so it’s not Kick Off 2, but it seems only fair to look at the original game which revolutionised how football would be transferred to computers in the future. The big pluses from Kick Off are the sheer speed of how things move and the fact the ball doesn’t stick to your feet all the time. This allows for fluid movement and the ability to change direction with ease. You also get a grid which shows you the whole pitch and where your team mates are, allowing you to build attacks and protect yourself from being caught on the counter attack. It’s not the best looking game, the computer AI is suspect and some of the referees are total bastards, reducing some games to 8 v 8 in a flash if you are a bit twitchy with the old tackling. Kick Off set the bar for future football games and the sequel is the best football game ever made. It’s hard to play anything made before this now. It effectively rendered any other football game of it’s time negligible.

LED STORM – Now here is an arcade game you probably won’t remember – even I can’t recall this one. What I can recall is playing this conversion by US Gold on one of the many compilations I had at the time, and looking back now it’s still a lot of fun. It is by no means perfect at all – the graphics are small, the playing area is minuscule and it’s all a bit monotonous. It’s saving grace is the fact it does hook you right away and the music is pretty awesome. It’s sort of like Spy Hunter mixed with any racing checkpoint game you have played before. It’s not outstanding, it’s nothing special but it is a bit of harmless fun from an obscure arcade machine where can easily while away a couple of hours.

MERV THE MERCILESS – This is cheating slightly as this game was given away free with Zero magazine on the coverdisk. It’s a Public Domain game – games created by programmers that were cheap and cheerful, as long as you don’t expect too much from them. Kinda like the forerunner of PSN exclusives and WiiWare games. Anyway, Merv is a top down collect em up, with the added peril of having to move around a screen which moves in a totally random fashion (very much like having the walls close in on you). Get trapped in a corner, the screen will move in on you and kill you. It has fairly crappy graphics so perhaps the best thing about it is the music and sound effects – you can activate the Neighbours TV theme tune by running over the Neighbours icon, whilst being squashed by the moving play area will result in a comedy sound effect and suitably comical music. It definitely follows the Three C’s very closely – Cheap, Cheerful and Crappy. The only reason it’s included here is because me and my mates found it hilarious back in the day, but it has certainly lost that appeal some 20 years later !

The Atari Landfill in New Mexico - Resting place for the VCS versions of PacMan & E.T.

I have always found history to be a fascinating subject. Upon my travels and trawls through retro gaming, I came across the Video Games Crash of 1983. At the time I would have been 7 years old and more interested in Marmite and Lego as to why a company such as Atari entered meltdown. It’s a fascinating lesson that had repercussions for the rest of the world and was something that took a number of years to recover from.

When the Atari 2600 was launched, it offered a home games system with simple plug in cartridges, and the games that while not pretty to look at or pleasing on the ear in terms of sound allowed people at home the chance to play games on their TV. That was in 1977 and Atari had the entire market to themselves.

Almost immediately, and over the course of the next 5 years, consoles such as Intellivision, Vectrex, ColecoVision and many others were released into the same market. Now, as we all know, there is nothing wrong with a bit of healthy competition. By 1982 there were so many similar consoles competing for share that Atari felt it would be best to launch the 5200, which was an update to the 2600. All of a sudden Atari was reflooding the market with their new machine (which turned out to be a total stinker of a console and there might be an article in that somewhere down the line)

The Atari 5200 - not compatible with existing Atari 2600 software

More telling was Activision’s victory in 1979, gaining recognition for third party developers. Here was a group of programmers working for Atari who wanted credit recognition on their work. Atari refused, so they split and formed Activision (a company still going but very far removed from the one it started out as). Atari challenged this but failed to win a restraining order, and by 1982 third party software development – titles being launched by anyone who could make a programme without the need or permission of the manufacturer – could do so. This is what we would class as Homebrew gaming.

The influx of Third Party Software flooded the market and led to oversaturation

This in turn led to an increase in games and a massive downturn in quality. All of a sudden games were made to cash in on popular products, such as Quaker Oats and Purina Dog Food. The infamous “sex games” were launched on another label, catering for the XXX market which was a far cry from where gaming had begun. In the space of 5 years the market was now greatly saturated and consumers had so much choice that cracks began to appear in the industry.

It is said that 2 games titles for the Atari 2600 tipped the games market into a full blown crash – PacMan and ET on the Atari 2600. Both games were over produced, both games were rushed into production, both undersold and a result of this is that unsold copies of the games were deposited in a New Mexico landfill where they were smashed up and then concreted over.

By June 1983 the games market was now viewed as something not to be associated with. Toy shops and retailers began mass discounting and stock disposal of unsold items and when Atari announced only a 10% profit increase against an expected 50% profit increase, the value of Warner Communications – the owners of Atari – crashed by 65% in the space of 2 days.

This guaranteed you officially licensed and approved software developed exclusively for Nintendo

It wasn’t until Nintendo launched the NES in 1985 and, shortly afterwards, Sega launched the Master System that the console market and computer games began to win confidence once more. Sega ensured that there would be no repeat of the market being flooded with poor quality titles by allowing developers to sign their agreement and get their credit. Nintendo only released their titles with an official “Seal of Quality” and a unique chip which would only allow a cartridge with that inside it to function on the NES. As a result the market slowly grew again before the console war erupted in the early 1990’s.

Notice Sega's name on the box but also the name of Epyx, the developer licensed by Sega to produce the game for their Master System

I don’t buy into the argument that the home computer market – the Spectrum and Commodore ranges and titles that were available – contributed to the demise of the original cartridge based consoles. At the time that particular market was only just beginning and it wasn’t until 1984 at the earliest that the Spectrum 48K and C64 actually began to make an impression. Home computers were still vastly expensive back then compared to the price of a console. The console market would rise again and actually begin to kill off home computing as we reached the 1990’s.

With established names like Sony, Microsoft and the old warhorse Nintendo now in total control these days, it’s hard to see if anything like the saturation point of 1983 will ever be reached again. I very much doubt that will be the case, especially as Sega now simply develop games and have done for many years. The market is buoyant and very profitable and will remain so for many years to come, but how different things were in 1983 when the market collapsed and games were considered nothing more than a fad.

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 !