Apart from establishing that the Amiga was far superior to the Atari ST, if you were still playing 8-bit computer games that the Amiga was the way to go and providing an albeit expensive alternative to the fledgling console market, what else have we learned about the Amiga during the merry month of April ?

Well the variety of titles were there. There were plenty of groundbreakers too – Another World, Flashback, Kick Off, Sensible Soccer and Populous to name but a few. The fact that all of these ended up on consoles goes to show the quality of the games and their enduring appeal which very much catered to all markets. The best thing though is that, unlike the PC at the time, the Amiga was very much at it’s best whether it was used for programming, educational uses or games. The PC simply couldn’t hold a candle at this time if you wanted to play games software.

Love At First Sight

So, with a last hoorah we wave farewell to the Amiga with much sadness in the heart, but look forward to May where the Sega Master System steps into the limelight…..

TEAM SUZUKI – It’s probably fair to say that fans of motorbikes were given a pretty shoddy treatment when it came to computer games. The one you’ll all think of is Road Rash, but that had beat em up elements and wasn’t a straight bike game. So Team Suzuki was a rather nice surprise when it rode into view. Using vector graphics, allowing you the choice of mouse or joystick control, the ability to change the view of your rider and the ever popular replay mode were all included and made for a very nice package indeed. The controls take a bit of mastering especially with the mouse, but everything else is done pretty well. By far and away the best bike game at the time, though connoisseurs of more arcadey fare like Hang On will probably do best steering clear.

ULTIMATE SOCCER MANAGER – Being a fan of Premier Manager, which incorporated the Kick Off game engine when going to play matches, and the statistic heavy fledgling Championship Manager series, this was a game I was very much looking forward to. The thing is though, once you get used to a certain style of game, unless one comes along and plays in a way that makes you feel comfortable you tend to feel quite coldly towards other games of that genre. USM is most definitely in that bracket and left me completely unhooked and longing for something else. Its just too laden down with statistics, so you feel the football side is just a small part of it. It does appear to have been done very well and if you fancy being a chairman of a football club it’s probably a good game to practice on. For me though, it’s just too in depth and too stop start. Ultimate Soccer Strategist would be a better title.

VIZ – You know when someone takes a great book and turns it into a fairly underwhelming TV series or movie ? Somehow something gets lost in translation and you end up with a pretty unsatisfactory experience that has you longing for the source material. Well Viz The Game falls firmly and squarely into that hole. There is no denying the original humour of the classic comics is there, as are all the characters. It’s just a series of sub games at the end of the day though and none of them are particularly well done. The main race section is good to start with but laden with unavoidable deaths, which frustrate, and the bonus games for the main characters just consist of joystick waggling. Quite frankly this sort of game was just not up to standard for 1991.

WINGS – Ah the feel of the wind rushing through your hair, the ability to go up-diddly-up and down-diddly-down at your own pleasure. If only those pesky Germans wouldn’t keep engaging you in dogfights and having you go on strafing runs or missions to shoot down barrage balloons. Yes it’s a World War One flying simulator, but from the software house Cinemaware you know you are in for a bit of quality. It’s not your standard shooter either, with a proper storyline and diary sequences which paint the picture of the sort of hell you have entered. The flying scenes are great with quality graphics and little detail touches dotted all around (like your pilot turning his head to show you where the Germans are and the bullet holes appearing in your plane as you get shot at). The strafing scenes are done from an isometric view, and are very well done, as you gun down enemy troops and supplies whilst avoiding shooting Red Cross vans. You can play all the way through too, picking a new name of your own choice for your pilot. At the end of each pilot’s lifespan – and believe me you may find you get through a few – you will be shown a war memorial with your pilot’s names on and their service records, which is very touching. Wings is an experience and by being an arcade style game rather than a simulator is one of the best flying games ever. It’s also one of the Amiga games you must play.

X-OUT – I am no fan of shoot-em ups but X-Out isn’t a bad game to play for a few hours. It conjures up images of R-Type with it’s look and game style which is no bad thing. You can increase your ship’s weaponry with add ons galore, giving you ample firepower to dispose of the alien hordes that come at you. There are some very impressive graphics on display, with an excellent game intro. It all looks superb and plays very nicely indeed. If it does have one flaw it’s that it does take a little getting into, but once you have had a few blasts you should be OK. One of the better shooters on the Amiga and a worthy addition to your collection.

YOGI BEAR & THE GREED MONSTER – I may be scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one, but if you want a colourful, fun, quite large, occasionally difficult and pretty addictive game based on a licence you can do a lot worse than this title. It’s based on the largely forgotten Yogi’s Treasure Hunt TV series. You take Yogi through a number of levels and have to find the key to open a door to release his friends. Along the way you have to collect sweets, which you then use to throw at enemies. It’s very formulaic stuff at the end of the day and hardened gamers will probably breeze through this in no time. However, it’s definitely above average and if you like Yogi and his chums then this is for you as it is undeniably the closest thing you will get to a decent Yogi Bear game.

ZYNAPS – The classic 8-bit era shoot em up comes to the Amiga and my goodness me, did something go horribly wrong. Zynaps was a fun game back on the Spectrum and Amstrad but with the added power of the Amiga everything gets the haphazard treatment. Whilst it looks OK, the controls are far too stiff, which for a game of this genre is not good. How can you move quickly when everything is unresponsive ? The collision detection is ropier than the contents of a rope shop and before long you die another unfair and painful death which has you longing for something better. There was simply no excuse for something like this being churned out when, with a bit of thought, it could have been great. A real disappointment.

When I first got my Amiga it came with just 3 games, of which 2 were awesome Ocean Software releases (Batman The Movie and New Zealand Story). The other was F-18 Interceptor and was my first taste of a flight simulator. It was only enjoyable for it’s San Francisco surroundings and the fact you could roll the plane under the Golden Gate Bridge. Otherwise it was confined to the back of the drawer. The rest of the software was educational and most of it was a waste of time especially the word processor as it needed another 512K worth of memory in order to be able to save things. Thus my first few pages of my first draft of a new Pink Panther movie was never saved. I think considering how the Steve Martin remakes turned out, it was a crying shame mine was never saved and unleashed on the world.

The very package that got me started all those years ago......educational software not pictured

Anyhoooooooo no more crying over spilt milk, time for some more Amiga goodness…….

NEIGHBOURS – You often wonder who thinks up the ideas for games like this. Surely a game based on the incredibly popular (at the time) Aussie soap opera should have been role playing based with some typically bizarre storylines ? Oh no, not on this occasion. It was more apt and therefore more appealing to the kids to have the chance to put Charlene, Henry, Mike, Bronwyn and someone called Matt in a race against each other, using a variety of roller skates, go-karts and skateboards to get from start to finish. You have to avoid children with radio controlled cars, kangaroos, ostriches, Bouncer the dog, Mrs Mangel and Harold Bishop who infiltrate the course and make it harder for you to win. I wish I was making this shit up, but sadly I’m not. There is nothing redeemable at all about this game….well OK the theme tune is vaguely like the original but that’s it. One idea that should have stayed Down Under…….

OPERATION THUNDERBOLT – Operation Wolf had made arcade first person shooters fun again, except it was always going to be hard to replicate the mounted gun on the arcade cabinet in the comfort of your own home. Operation Thunderbolt suffers from the same thing, and this time you can have a mate with you to sympathise if you so wish because this can be a two player experience. The premise is still the same – shoot the bad guys and get to the end of the level, but now you can have a chum with you. It’s all good fun and the Amiga makes a good job of the arcade conversion meaning you feel very happy with the programming. You must make sure it’s played with a mouse though, as always with a joystick games like this are often too difficult and too frustrating. If you’re feeling in the mood to kick some terrorist butt, this is as good a game as any to take out your frustrations on.

PLAGUE, THE – When I first played this I was quite impressed by how it all looked and felt. It was easy enough to play and quite enjoyable. However time has not been kind to The Plague and back in the day I was still able to get through the game quite easily. This definitely has the feeling of a mid 1980’s arcade game with basic moves, basic weaponry, linear levels and an all too easy learning curve. The graphics look great, well drawn but lacking decent animation. The sound effects and music are pretty awful and sadly the whole thing is too damn easy to master. A few tweaks here and there and this could have been a bit good, as such it’s not even averagely average and as side scrolling adventure/shooting games go it’s all a bit bland and crappy. It simply cannot compare to games like the Shadow Of The Beast series it appears to be copying and falls far short on all counts.

QUATTRO SPORTS – The great thing about the Amiga from late 1989 onwards was the arrival of budget games, or older titles re-released at a much more acceptable price. However as with the 8-bit era, budget software usually meant an awful lot of dross floating about that required sifting through to discover the gems. Quattro Sports from Codemasters falls somewhere between the two. BMX Simulator is an OK reworking of their massive 8-bit seller which, despite having tarted up graphics, plays pretty well as you guide your biker round the course in a top down racing style. Advanced Ski Simulator is also not bad, though suffers from some pretty clunky controls and the odd insanely difficult moment. It is pretty solid if unspectacular (you can find a review of the C64 version on the Russian Roulette of Retro). The other two games aren’t much cop. Italia 90, despite having a nifty little training section which is good fun for a short while, is an incredibly awful football simulator with ridiculous game physics (goals from the halfway line are common an the AI of the goalkeepers is woeful), duff graphics and all the lastability of an ice lolly. Pro Tennis Simulator is not much better, using cartoon graphics and a squashed playing area to compensate for a lack of options, a limited selection of shots and a feeling that going out and playing tennis for real is a better option. It’s that last line that does it for me – why on earth would you ever feel the need to play tennis for real ?

RODLAND – Yet another cutesy looking, garishly coloured platform game with a bit of a difference. This time you are armed with a rod of power that, when used, paralyses and traps your enemies. You then have the power to lift them up, whack them a couple of times on the floor before they turn into fruit or collectable items. It’s all done on a single screen, so clear that as quickly as possible and move on to the next one. Fondly remembered by those who played it and largely forgotten now, Rodland does deserve to be mentioned alongside perennial favourites Rainbow Islands and Bubble Bobble because it is good, it is a lot of fun and you keep going back to it. It’s a little on the easy side but you’ll be enjoying yourself too much to notice. Some may find the cutesy look and sugar coated visuals too much – especially if you are a diabetic – but grab a mate and you can guarantee many hours of fun. One of the Top 20 Amiga games you have to play.

SHADOW WARRIORS – Ninja escapades ahoy as you don your ninja suit and go about slashing and hacking bad guys before reaching the end of level boss. Yes we have all seen, heard and played this a thousand times before. This game tries to be a little different, meaning you have a few more moves to hand than just the usual punches and kicks. For example you can swing on lampposts, do somersaults and pick up handy weapons. It doesn’t sound very original and to be honest it isn’t. It all looks very nice, with some very impressive bosses, but the whole thing is on the slow side and, quite frankly, there is nothing ground breaking or new here at all especially if you have already played Final Fight, Double Dragon et al.

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 !

This is most definitely a trip down memory lane which I am going to relish. Looking back at some of the old Amiga games I used to play, it’s funny how many come back to surprise you and also some that shock you. I am hoping that the mix of games will at least give you an idea of the wealth of titles, the vast array of styles and a feel for what makes me love this machine so much.

Oooooooo the controversy.....

Just out of interest I have decided to exclude Kick Off 2 from this list, purely because I have banged on about it in the past and I’d like to save it for a footie retrospective once we get to the 2012 European Championships in the summer.

So away we go with our first batch of Amiga games…..

ALIEN BREED – With an overhead viewpoint, which was fairly common back then, and with the sort of title that would be a precursor to horror survival games, Alien Breed was a breakthrough for the software house Team 17. Heavily influenced by the Alien films, you had to battle your way through corridors collecting keys to open doors and escape the level. Your path is blocked constantly by hordes of alien monsters which you have to keep blasting to continue. It’s a real cross between the classic Gauntlet games and Alien the film, but it works. It is tense and dimly lit, the sound effects are creepy and the graphics, while on the small side, are well defined and animated. It’s a tough old game too and was successful enough to warrant a couple of sequels and more recently a couple of current gen makeovers. Make no mistake about it though, this is the definitive Alien Breed game.

BC KID – If you remember the PC Engine console which only ever got a proper full release in Japan but was wowing readers of C&VG and the like back in 1989, you would have seen a prehistoric-themed platform romp called PC Kid. A full 3 years later a version arrived on the Amiga which looked every inch a great conversion of the original game. It’s the usual platform fare with the unique idea that BC Kid goes round headbutting things, rather than the usual Mario idea of jumping on stuff. It’s pretty simplistic stuff and given the late release date (1993 was pretty late in the Amiga’s lifespan) it doesn’t make the best use of the Amiga’s technology. That said, there were many worse platformers around than this but you’d be better off hunting down the original PC Engine version.

CIRCUS GAMES – I’ve always been fascinated by curious games such as this. You get to try your hand at various circus acts such as tightrope walking, riding a horse standing up and flying through the air with the greatest of ease on the trapeze. I guess my nature is to find out just how much fun a computerised version of those things would be, seeing as I have absolutely no interest in doing them for real. Sadly, unless the thrill of endless disc swapping, broken controls, a high difficulty level and the raging feeling inside that you want to punch the next clown you see are how one should feel then don’t play this game. Sometimes it’s best to remain curious and not to know.

DAYS OF THUNDER – Oh joy, yet another film tie in designed to rob you of your cash whilst the game producers sit back and count their profits. Chances are, if you owned an Amiga you’d have a copy of this game because the damn thing was eventually bundled with the machine as part of the various freebie software packages. The only thing this has in common with the awful Tom Cruise film is the racing aspect – so no stolen encounters with Nicole Kidman whilst Maria McKee warbles in the background. The car driving aspect of the game sucks like never before, with everything moving at a rate of 1 frame per second. It’s just too slow to be enjoyable and before you know it it’ll be consigned to memory, never to be resurrected again. Pretty much like the film really. God this game sucks…..

E-MOTION – Right up there in the top 5 of games my Dad has played. That list may stand at perhaps 10 games in the whole history of time. This was a rather novel attempt to make a puzzle game of a different sort, whilst trying to throw a bit of Einstein in there. It’s basically a cross between snooker and the old game Thrust, where you have to link the coloured balls together to clear the screen. Make a mistake and the balls start multiplying. If you are really careless (like me) then you’ll end up with a screen full of balls, a lot of screen slowdown and no chance of completing the level because of the time limit. It is quite a fun game but you get the feeling it’s a bad trip someone had when they dropped a load of acid and then played Asteroids. It gets quite tough quite quickly and the time limits really are unfair. Still if you fancy a weird puzzler then you can do a lot worse than this.

FACE OFF – Ice hockey games really didn’t hit their stride until the EA NHL series on the Mega Drive so this early entry from Anco didn’t quite do the sport justice. You get the feeling, after the success of Kick Off, this was rushed out hoping to have the same winning formula. It’s all a bit rough around the edges, with some lazy programming. The controls aren’t the best and the visuals and sounds are of a very average nature. There are plenty of options but you really need a grasp of the rules, especially so if you play it with the fouls turned on. If that’s the case then you’ll spend alot more time hearing the disc drive load the “sin bin” scene over and over again. Is it a fair effort ? Not really, you are definitely better off with the EA console games than seeking this one out.

The Commodore Amiga – a phrase that brings tears of happiness to the eyes of myself. Oh how many happy hours were wiled away in front of my monitor playing on a computer system which had been purchased purely for educational purposes. Yeah right, as if that was going to happen. You know that’s gone out of the window when your Dad starts buying American Civil War games and wants you to come off so he can have a quick pop at E-Motion.

The sort of photo that weeps nostalgia - many happy hours were spent loading this up

If the Spectrum was the must have for the 8-bit era, then the Amiga was it’s 16-bit era alternative, at least until the rise of the consoles in the early 1990’s. PC’s were not yet fully functioning games machines and they cost a fortune. You could have gone for an Atari ST, but for some reason that machine never really stayed in the imagination of gamers once the power of the Amiga took over. I remember people at school having ST’s and I was the only one with an Amiga. Within 18 months that had changed and there was barely an ST owner out there.

The Amiga could boast having superior sound and fabulous looking visuals. It is one thing to hear speech on an 8-bit game for the first time, but great swathes of speech were found on the Amiga. Throw in support from all the major software players of the day – EA, Ocean, US Gold, Elite, Gremlin, Domark, Activision (OK maybe scrub that last one) – the computer went from strength to strength, despite it costing well over £100 more than the ST. It seemed people were quite happy to pay that bit extra back in the day.

On the left one of the best computers ever made, and on the right some vague pale imitation from Atari

That’s not to say the Amiga was perfect. Games used to come on anything up to 10 floppy discs, which meant you needed a second, external, floppy drive to cut down on disc swapping. Those infernal password protect systems, designed to cut down on piracy, had you scanning through the manuals or playing around with the included wagon wheels so you could get the correct code to actually get into the damn game. All very commendable but it didn’t stop games being swapped rapidly in playgrounds around the country. There was also a sense with some games that they looked great but played crap, substituting the audio and visual aspect for actual playability. It was also the case that the Amiga suffered from lazy porting of games from the ST, meaning some inferior conversions not making use of the extra technology available.

Oh and I forgot to mention that the basic model was 512K and as the Amiga grew more popular the need to have at least 1MB of memory got bigger, so much so you had to fork out an extra £30 to buy the memory needed. Oh yes, and it needed a TV modulator to play games on your TV set, otherwise you’d need to fork out a couple of hundred quid for a decent monitor. Yes, 16 bit games may have been the way to go but the move did require a hefty cash investment from gamers – as ever!

Advertising has absolutely no affect on me at all. Ever.

The Amiga seemed to go from strength to strength. While the Atari ST 520 was upgraded to 1040 to show off more powerful capabilities, Commodore decided to add to the Amiga range. You could have an Amiga 500 in 512K or 1MB version, the Amiga 500+ (a disaster as a lot of old software wouldn’t work on it), the Amiga 600 (slightly better, with more backward compatibility) and the Amiga 1200 (with designated software titles that you could only play on a 1200 and the capability to install a hard drive meaning you could store data on it, making it more like a PC).

It is an era I remember fondly, with the dross games far being outweighed by the glorious games that memories are made of. So during the course of this month I shall look back at a few games, some good, some not so good, and hope that you will revel in them as much as I do.

Let the Games begin…….

Don't worry there won't be any athletics involved, just good old fashioned joystick and mouse action

As we say goodbye to the Mega Drive, in closing it is worth saying that this is one of my most favourite machines ever. It looked cool, it played your arcade favourites and brought some arcade quality into the home, producing new gems such as Streets of Rage and Sonic that are iconic masterpieces of video games programming.

We've played some classics and we've had some fun but for Sega Mega Drive March Madness we must move on

Of course there are the downsides too. Each game cost around £40.00, it suffered from some lazy conversions compared to the SNES, the Mega Drive II wasn’t as cool as the original console and at the end of the day it was being flogged to death for every last drop of technological advancement it had (the Mega CD and 32X)

One final thought – when the Mega Drive first launched in Japan it was possible to import Mega Drives into the UK Legally. These were known as “grey imports” which led to much confusion. We all thought the Mega Drive was black and wondered if we did get one, it would be a dodgy grey coloured version. Oh how we had much to learn……..and we all waited for the original UK release. Well my mates did, I had to wait until 1994 to buy a second hand version from a chap at college.

Anyway I digress – here are the final few Mega Drive March Madness games………..

SUPER KICK OFF – It’s probably worth remembering that 50% of the games with the word SUPER stuck in front of them were rubbish and the other 50% were great. So how do you go about making the world’s best football game even better ? Well not by sticking the word SUPER in front of it because never have I had a more disappointing gaming experience than when I played this. I couldn’t believe that Kick Off could have two such differing versions. The controls are abysmally awful with the ball constantly running away from you. Everything moves too slowly and the graphics are inferior to the Amiga version. The main thing it lacks is playability and that is what made Kick Off great. I hate to say it but Sensible Soccer happily thrashes Super Kick Off when you put them up against each other.

SUPERMAN : THE MAN OF STEEL – Usually I can find words to summarise a game, good or bad. It might end up with the same old phrases being trotted out, but it comes from the heart. So how do I honestly critique a game which is as average as Clark Kent, about as interesting as watching paint dry and guaranteed to make your enthusiasm for the Man Of Steel wane faster than the excitement of the ability to leap tall buildings with a single leap ? I’m afraid I just did. Move along please, there is nothing to see here……..

THUNDERFORCE 3 – Far too freakin’ hard for the likes of me. It looks fabulous but suffers from graphical slowdown when too much is going on. No matter how many times I had a go at it I couldn’t get any further and threw down my joypad, tears running down my face. I can’t handle games of this intensity, so it’s one for die hard fans of the shoot em up genre and back to silly effeminate looking platform games for me…..If that wasn’t depressing enough, this is regarded as being the easiest in the series !!!

TURRICAN – Anyone who has played this game would have instantly been struck by how fluid it played, how good it looked and the pretty cool soundtrack. The weapons were ace with the rotating fire being the best choice. The way Turrican looked and moved was pretty amazing. The whole intergalactic look was a big hit with gamers and underneath was a very playable game with some real depth to it. The one problem Turrican had on the Mega Drive was that it was simply a straight port of the Amiga version, some near 2 years before. As such, games had moved on quite a lot since then and, compared to the look of Mega Turrican a few years later, the two could be world’s apart. Worth a look though, definitely.

VR TROOPERS – One thing the Mega Drive was full of was sub par Street Fighter type games that simply failed to capture any imagination or originality before being released. This is a fine example of that, a cash-in on the Power Rangers spin off a-like that were plaguing us in the mid 1990’s. So awful is this game that there is absolutely nothing to see here, even if you are a fan of the series. It should be given a wide berth at all costs. This is a sanitised, almost anti Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat game that fails to achieve anything at any level. Avoid.

WOLVERINE : ADAMANTIUM RAGE – I am not all that convinced that as time has gone on there have been that many successful X-Men games. So taking the most popular character and giving him his own game was a rather bold move. Saddling him with adequate graphics and sounds might win favour in some courts, but when you then chuck in appallingly hard levels, impossibly difficult computer AI and some clunky controls, the gaming experience will make wish you had claws coming out of your own hands to poke your own eyes out.

ZOOL – Finally a game which wowed Amiga owners who were desperately seeking an answer to the console dominance of Mario and Sonic. There was nothing as fast or as colourful as Zool and when the game appeared on the Mega Drive nothing had changed. However, console owners were less than impressed by the over sensitive controls, the samey gameplay and the garish graphics. There were many pretenders to Sonic’s throne over the years, and perhaps Zool is the one that should have come closest to taking the crown. The fact it was so far from the mark was one that had many games experts scratching their heads in disbelief.

Sequels and licences, two of my least favourite things. They go together like wood chippings and jam and there are far too many inferior examples of them across all formats of video games. They still produce them to this day, with video game developers chasing that last penny from us all in return for something that stinks worse than last night’s curry.

They don't get much badder than this - and not in a good way

Expect this to be a mix of the sublime and the ridiculous as we enter the next part of Mega Drive March Madness……….

RAMBO III – There can be no denying when I first saw a shot of this game in C&VG back in 1989 I was totally mesmerised. There was Rambo, standing in front of helicopter, trading ammunition blows. Wow, that was mightily impressive. So when you actually play the game itself it really is no more than an extension of the old Ikari Warriors game, where you scroll up and across through wasteland, taking out the bad guys. The problem is, you get one sodding life and that goes pretty quickly. I know I am a lame games player when it comes to be being killed over and over again, but I just found this too hard for my liking. Having said that, everything about it is pretty good – the graphics look amazing, the gameplay follows a traditional format and the music is sublime. So worth a look ? Yeah I would say so, but it might not be everyone’s cup of char.

ROBOCOP III – Having loved the original on the Amiga, hated the sequel on the Amiga and found the C64 version of the original film incredibly frustrating, you can perhaps excuse my apprehension in approaching this title. This is also totally different to the 3D vector graphic driven Amiga version, which may be the reason that this is an awful piece of software. It is just too damned hard to get anywhere in the game. Whilst it looks OK, the controls are hit and miss and Robocop jumps like he weighs 4 tonnes. The odds are unfairly stacked against you and as a result you’ll spend more time bashing your head against the screen than you will progressing further into the game.

SCOOBY-DOO MYSTERY – Well this is different. After presumably looking at the likes of the Monkey Island games and realising that point and click adventures weren’t dead in the water, up pops this title and gives you a nice surprise. With the choice of two adventures and the chance to take part in some of that legendary Scooby Doo humour, you control Scooby and Shaggy as they attempt to solve the mysteries. It’s a decent enough effort and one that will charm fans of the cartoon, but the real let down is the stupid password system, which when you consider that battery back up cartridges were commonplace in 1995 makes it all the more stupid that it wasn’t included here. So give it a whirl if you fancy some fairly non-taxing Scooby style fun, but adventurers wanting a bit more depth might have to pass on this one.

SENSIBLE SOCCER – Regular readers will know that I absolutely hate Sensible Soccer and consider Kick Off 2 to be the king of football games. Having now gone back and played the Mega Drive version of Sensible Soccer, I was actually rather surprised by how playable it was. I can forgive the crappy music and the fact that the player names are badly spelt variations of the real names (owing to copyright), and underneath find this is not a bad game of football. It still has the silly faults I remember, such as ability to score from the halfway line and the goalkeepers sucking. There is no denying though this is not a bad game, it just won’t win me over that easily.

SPLATTERHOUSE 3 – Having never really played the previous two games in the series, I thought it would be a bit of fun to have a stab at this. No one likes mindless violence in video games more than me, and there is plenty of that contained within, albeit with a horror/gothic vibe to proceedings. You simply punch and bash your way through a series of levels, and rather cleverly depending on the route you take and the time you take you can end up with different endings and game patterns. The game is full of gore and guts and although the action does get a bit repetitive after a while, the option to power up and quicken your journey is a welcome relief. Coupled with the massive sprites and cool music this is an excellent adventure beat em up and worthy of your attention.

SUNSET RIDERS – Now this is quite cool ; a game based around cowboys but rather than simply shooting Indians it casts you as a sheriff, scrolling left to right whilst shooting all the bad guys and bringing the villains to justice. Along the way you have to alternate between levels and avoid cattle stampedes. The action is fast and furious and for me it was too much of both of those, meaning that little progress was made and many untimely deaths occurred. However, rather than getting annoyed and fed up with this, it acted more as an incentive to keep going. It is this factor, as well as looking quite stunning, with decent controls allowing you full fire rotation from your standing position, that makes Sunset Riders a recommendation without hesitation.

The great joy with Mega Drive collecting is the fact that there are masses of games to pick up and play. Unlike cassette based games, where tapes may have stretched or warped with time, or disk based games where the disc may be damaged or simply perished due to the age, the only real problem you can find with cartridges is a few dirty connectors. Give them a spruce up and more or less 8 or 9 out of 10 will work without any problems. They are easy to store if out of the original box, and if you aren’t fussy about all the original packaging they can be picked up as cheaply as £1.00, or even less if you get lucky.

Clever that isn't it ?

Anyway here are some more games that may or may not appeal for the Mega Drive as March Madness continues……

MARBLE MADNESS – If you could name two games that used a trackball mounted onto an arcade cabinet, chances are this is one of the games you would name (the others might be Crystal Castles, Missile Command or Tecmo World Cup, or some other game I can’t recall right now). Marble Madness was a fiendishly tricky and at times frustrating puzzle game where you had to negotiate your marble through a maze to the exit. Along the way you’d have to watch out for obstacles, random meanies an of course the edge of the maze. Falling off would simply mean starting from that point, but it was all against the clock. The Mega Drive version is a pretty faithful conversion, but you can’t replace the trackball controller with a joypad. All said, it’s a worthy and noble effort and another one of those games guaranteed a slot in retro history.

MARVEL LAND – I first played this via import from a friend’s copy. Using the Japanese converter, which involved plugging an adaptor into the cartridge slot and then plugging a European game into that before plugging this game into it to get the damn thing to work (the Mega Drive is well remembered for it’s ludicrously complicated add ons). Once it did work, the game itself is bog standard platform fare with big sprites, colourful garish graphics and an annoyingly catchy tune. It is though superior stuff and being a connoisseur of platform games it is one I remember well and enjoyed playing at the time and again here. It of course has all the usual trimmings of it’s ilk – collect items, jump onto and over stuff, jump timing and that feeling of frustration and elation at the same time, but this is bloody good fun and well worth a look.

MEGA BOMBERMAN – There can’t be too many people who have not played an incarnation of this popular and hugely addictive bomb and run series. This was the first Mega Drive outing and was incredibly impressive, keeping the tried and tested gameplay whilst at same time sporting some impressive graphics and bouncy tunes. There is plenty of depth too, as you bomb your way out of mazes to clear the screen of monsters and reach the centre as quickly as possible. Of course where Bomberman games always excel is with a few mates playing and you cannot deny how much fun that is. If you only play one Bomberman game then let this be it, you will not be disappointed.

PAC ATTACK – A mash up of two great video game icons of the 1980’s ; Pac-Man and Tetris. The blocks are substituted for ghosts here with the idea being to link as many ghosts as possible so that when a Pac-Man block comes down he gobbles them up to clear the level. It’s all rather pretty and a doddle to play, but you get the feeling something is missing. Yes it’s fun to combine these two together in what could have been a total disaster of a title, but whilst not that, it’s nothing special either. One for fans of puzzle games only.

PITFALL THE MAYAN ADVENTURE – Yet another iconic 80’s title gets the 90’s makeover and it’s interesting to say the least. It’s also one of the few 32X titles that got a release alongside the regular cartridge version. It is though a world apart from the original series of games, as everything looks absolutely wonderful and sounds great. It is only the game play that lets it down. Yes, Pitfall was all about precision jumping and timing, but this version really does take some mastering and it’s inevitable frustration and annoyance will kick in before progress and delight. If you could find it, you can access the original Atari 2600 hidden in the game, but you might get too wound up before you got that far. If only it wasn’t all so linear and samey then this could have been something really great, as such Pitfall suffers from pitfalls of it’s own making.

QUACKSHOT – We all know Donald Duck is way cooler than Mickey Mouse. After all he doesn’t have a whiny voice, a dog that won’t stop barking and isn’t a complete drip. No Donald knows where he’s best and as such his video game outings have on the whole been better than Mickey’s. Quackshot, with it’s stunning graphics, tight controls and excellent gameplay, it’s one of the Mega Drive’s standout titles. It does have a few flaws – it is not overly long or hard and some of the mapping leaves a lot to be desired as you can end up walking around not knowing where to go. Therefore this is not a perfect game, but it is a pretty damn good one. It goes without saying that you’d be qwackers not to give it a go.

Games, games, games. Tonnes of them around and I choose to play all the really old ones. Well someone has to and seeing as I am not overly fond of the way the current games market sits in terms of getting to grips with the modern titles and methods of playing, simply give me a joypad, minimal fire buttons and no motion sensor at all and I’ll be dead happy.

It’s part 2 of this month’s Mega Drive games reviews………….

Sound advice that......

HARD DRIVIN’ – I have played some pretty yucky versions of this vector graphic driven driving game but actually the Mega Drive version isn’t all that bad. The big attraction of Hard Drivin’ when originally in arcades was the big sit down cabinet and the track design. Of course you lose that impact on the home versions, but while most of those suffer with a lack of speed, this version doesn’t so much. Sure it’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination – the handling is abysmal and there is zero lastability beyond a few plays – but it’s worth a look if you have fond memories of the original arcade game.

ITCHY & SCRATCHY – You’d have thought this was one licence, with the emphasis being on cat and mouse violence, that would be a pretty good game but you’d be well off the mark. Twitchy controls (Itchy, Scratchy and Twitchy would be a better title), awful music and mind numbing gameplay leave this Simpson spin off stuck somewhere rather unpleasant. Not even fans of the show will get anything from this, and yet another Simpsons licence is tarnished with the crappy brush.

JAMMIT – I had absolutely zero hope for this digitised graphical, one-on-one basketball game. For me basketball is one game that really had problems transferring from playing the game to playing the video game version. I am no fan of NBA Jam, but that is a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously and therefore isn’t a bad game to play. Jammit though did surprise me. It slowly lured me in as I played game after game, constantly losing and having all my street cash and street cred taken from me. It’s kinda like the film White Men Can’t Jump, where you play for cash. Once you work out the controls, which are a bit iffy, you get into the flow of things. Not a great game, but not a bad one.

JUNGLE STRIKE – Redefining the art of isometric shoot em ups and providing some of the best side-on shooting action since Zaxxon, the Strike series of games were massive sellers, back in the day, on the Mega Drive. Taking control of a helicopter and progressing through masses of missions, each more tricky than the last, making sure you don’t run out of fuel, avoiding enemy gunfire and ensuring once more that peace can rule the world, this is one game all Mega Drive owners must own. It’s gorgeous to look at, the controls are great and it plays like a dream.

KING OF THE MONSTERS – Godzilla-type monsters battle each other in a Street Fighter style fighting contest that has you wishing that they had used Godzilla instead. Clunky controls don’t help things and whilst on the whole it looks fairly good, the limited moves you have at your disposal means the thing is quickly reduced to frantic button pressing in the hope you land your blows first. I couldn’t find anything redeeming about this and as such my quest to find a fighting game I enjoy must continue because there isn’t an awful lot to see here.

LETHAL ENFORCERS – Badly showing it’s age in 2012, this was quite the revolutionary Operation Wolf style run and gun when it first came out in the arcades. Helped (or hindered) by the use of digitised graphics, you must shoot the bad guys as they appear whilst avoiding hostages and members of the public who, as always in this type of game, tend to get in the way. You even take part in shoot outs whilst on a moving vehicle, though this sadly is where the game starts to fall away as the amount of bad guys it appears you can fit in one standard 4 door car numbers more than I have fingers. It’s fun but repetition soon gives way to boredom and before long you’ll be reaching for the off switch. Fun for it’s day but only recommended as a curiosity now.

It’s only appropriate on Mother’s Day to post this article. Why ? Well back in the day having seen this following piece of kit shown off in all the magazines and through adverts on the TV, you would have been pestering your Mum to get this for you. And boy you’d be in for a crushing disappointment. It’s the Sega Mega CD….

This should have been the next great technological leap, but ended up being a big step backwards

When a console reaches the end of it’s life cycle in these technologically advanced days, companies will look to the future and bring out a new improved machine to replace it. Granted, this could take a few years of development and testing but once a console’s time has come, it has come and the end is not far off. Back in the day, companies would look to add-ons and expansions to their existing machines to squeeze as much life out of it as possible.

Take the Super Nintendo – not only was there the Super Scope (a rocket launcher light gun type thing) and the Super Game Boy (which allowed you to play Game Boy games on the SNES) – but there were also certain other “adaptors” of a dubious third party nature that would let you play NES games too. The Mega Drive was also no stranger to having bits bolted on, and in this series of articles we shall briefly highlight some of those addons. First up, The Mega CD…..

Released late in 1991, the Mega CD was designed to take gaming to higher levels and provide better graphics and sounds to enhance the gaming experience. This was the first console ever to deliver data on an optical disk. The use of FMV, or Full Motion Video, was very much taken on board and used as much as possible. Also by putting games onto CD’s more and more data would be able to be used and, as such, games should have been a whole lot better. Chuck in a fully functional CD player and you have a pretty dynamic piece of kit.

As always Sega did a grand job in promoting the heck out of the Meag CD but the public simply weren't buying it

However whilst all this sounded mind blowingly awesome back in 1991 when it was launched, the actuality of it all was something of a Mega disappointment. Developers were somewhat surprised by the capacity of the CD’s and after spending so long programming for cartridges, simply did not make enough use of the extra storage available. The decision to incorporate as much FMV as possible was also an error, whilst this might have looked impressive it was very limited in function and most of the games which used a lot of FMV were generally panned.

That’s not to say the system was a total loss. Like the versions of Sonic that appeared on the Master System and Game Gear that were different from the Mega Drive original. Different Mega CD versions of Earthworm Jim and Spiderman Vs The Kingpin saw extra levels and scenes slotted in, and Sonic CD was for many probably the best Sonic game ever (which incidentally has been re-released on XBOX Live and Playstation Network to rave reviews).

At least current gen fans will get to enjoy the beauty and brilliance of Sonic CD after it's release on the PSN and XBOX Live

The Mega CD never realised it’s potential and for many games owners shelling out for a console and expensive games, it was a fad too far. The technology in place was perhaps at the wrong end of the life cycle and found itself struggling to compete with the very markets it was looking to push into, namely competing with PC games. Although initially sales were good, Sega had already turned their attention to other add-ons and had one eye on the next generation of consoles, with the Sega Saturn becoming their next disk based machine to be released a few years later.

Next time we will take a look at the 32X……

This might have looked extreme but if you plugged in all the Sega add ons it would have looked exactly like that