retroking1981 wrote:

@davyK seems to know his stuff though so maybe his choices will be better, although I'll probably play the lot.

your selections look pretty good too (had considered most of what you list - esp. the like of Jr Pacman etc.) - it's knowing what people's tolerance of the 2600 graphics would be....you REALLY have to like retro to get anything out of a 2600 and not be swayed by the looks of most of the games.

Have you got a Harmony cart? If you don't I can't recommend it enough.

The only one I'd avoid on your list is Defender which really was a poor effort. Defender II is far better and Chopper Command is a good alternative.

Donkey Kong is bit ropey too but it was quite a technical feat back in the day and there isn't really a viable alternative I can think of...

There are some brilliant homebrew efforts made in modern times but they are cheating really as they use far more memory than was commercially viable back in the day..

look at Thrust and Medieval Madness (warlords remake) - both quite brilliant and could pass for 7800 games.

Yeah - released by Parker Bros. - up until then they made board games - was a funny old time the 80's.

They also did Frogger and a quite good Star Wars game - Empire Strikes Back - not sure if Minter copied it in Attack of the mutant camels or if it was the other way round - worth trying that one actually.

davyK wrote:

Have you got a Harmony cart? If you don't I can't recommend it enough.

No whats that?

davyK wrote:

Donkey Kong is bit ropey too but it was quite a technical feat back in the day and there isn't really a viable alternative I can think of...

Kangaroo?

davyK wrote:

Yeah - released by Parker Bros. - up until then they made board games - was a funny old time the 80's.

Milton Bradley too, I have a few NES games released by them, most notably California Games and Marble Madness

Week twenty two: Star Parodier (PC Engine/Turbografx, Virtual Console)

Hudson Soft's answer to the Parodius series; a parody of their own Star Soldier Series influenced by Konami's parody of Gradius.  A vertical scrolling shooter, featuring many conventions of the Star Soldier series, albeit with cartoonish visuals and toned down violence.  Choose from three characters: the Paro Ceasar from Star Soldier, a giant Bomberman, or an Hu Card/cd-rom firing anthropomorphic PC Engine.  This title remained unreleased in the west until the Virtual Console release in 2008.



I'm gonna leave this running for two weeks, partly because I was late updating the OP, and partly because I've got a lot on at the moment and still need to play Rondo of Blood.  So, selfish reasons then. 

Play and discuss, or simply reminisce. 


Schedule:

Week twenty three (18/02): Legendary Axe (PC Engine/Virtual Console)
Week twenty four (25/02): Atari 2600 week
Week tenty five (04/03): Cybernator (SNES)
Week twenty six (11/03): Sonic & Knuckles + Sonic 3 LOCK-ON! (Megadrive)
Week twenty seven (18/03): Yoshi's Island (SNES)
Week twenty eight: 25/03): Midnight Resistance (arcade, Megadrive, Amiga etc)
Week twenty nine (01/04): Rub you own Rhubarb: Retro Batman week (various).

2 weeks is good Moot - the games run into each other a bit....

I first played this courtesy of VC on the Wii and initially I didn't like it - thought it too easy - but crank up the difficulty from the default which is set too low and it turns into a lovely game. The levels go on a bit for my liking but it's full of charm.

It also features 2min and 5min caravan modes which I really like and find very addictive.

And you can also play as Bomberman or Mr PC-Engine! What's not to like?

This one further underlines my belief the PC-Engine is a truly amazing console that has a really unique feel to it and delivers gaming quality way beyond it's spec.

Cheers Moot. Dug around in control panel and device manager to no avail. Thought it was easily done but seems not. I have PS2 pads but prob won't be picking up an adaptor due to varying time available for these side projects!

Mount to a Daemontools virtual drive?

Week twenty three: The Legendary Axe (PC Engine)

The Legenadry Axe is a hack 'n slash platformer, developed by Victor Interactive and released in 1988.  You control Gogan, who is off to bust some skulls with 'sting', his legendary axe (*cough* shameless pilfering ahoy) in search of his woman (named Flare, which come to think of it may have been nicked by Sega for Golden Axe intheir own shameless act of plagiarism).  Reviews upon release were positive, praising the game for its graphics, animation, difficulty level and diverse music.  EGM and Videogames & Computer Entertainment both voted it 'game of the year' in 1989.



Look at that lovely box art.  

Play and discuss, or simply reminisce. 


Schedule:

Week twenty three (18/02): Legendary Axe (PC Engine/Virtual Console)
Week twenty four (25/02): Atari 2600 week
Week tenty five (04/03): Cybernator (SNES)
Week twenty six (11/03): Sonic & Knuckles + Sonic 3 LOCK-ON! (Megadrive)
Week twenty seven (18/03): Yoshi's Island (SNES)
Week twenty eight: 25/03): Midnight Resistance (arcade, Megadrive, Amiga etc)
Week twenty nine (01/04): Rub you own Rhubarb: Retro Batman week (various).

*Fortnight* twenty four: Ten Atari 2600 games, as chosen by Retroking and davyk, and whittled down by myself in slightly random fashion:

Sky Skipper
Pitfall
Thrust
Frostbite
Bezerk
Medieval Madness
Chopper Command
Atlantis
Frogger
Yar's Revenge



Play and discuss, or simply reminisce.

Schedule:

Fortnight twenty five (18/03): Cybernator (SNES)
Fortnight twenty six (01/04): Sonic & Knuckles + Sonic 3 LOCK-ON! (Megadrive)
Fortnight twenty seven (15/04): Yoshi's Island (SNES)
Fortnight twenty eight: (29/04): Midnight Resistance (arcade, Megadrive, Amiga etc)
Fortnight twenty nine (13/05): Rub you own Rhubarb: Retro Batman week (various).

I've loaded these onto my Caanoo with no problems, they all seem to be working.  Is it Medieval Mayhem rather than Medieval Madness?  I found the ROM for the former anyway.  Lunch breaks are go for retro gaming again.

Yeah - meant Medieval Mayhem...and it is rock hard in 1 player. The difficulty is adjusted depending on which castle you control. I think if you control the blue (lower right) corner it makes it easier but it is still really tough. You really need paddles for this but worth a look if you have some sort of analogue control.

I played Atlantis to death back in the day - clocked it many times.

There's an excellent co-op mode with no central gun and each player controlling a side gun which is pretty tough as you would imagine.

Atlantis has a sequel. You see that little ship that escapes at Game Over? You get to control that in a game called Cosmic Ark. You fly through space in the ark to planets and use that little ship with a tractor beam to pick up animals to repopulate a planet or some such guff. It isn't as good a game as Atlantis but is worth a look.

With 2600 games you need to watch out because the default variation (game#1) isn't always the best. For example I'm almost certain game 1 of Berzerk doesn't have Evil Otto. You can get the game variation details from the manuals - they are all at atariage.com.

Also watch out for the difficulty switch settings. There are 2 - one for each player. Setting the switch to "a" usually makes the game harder. It was quite a cool feature then (still is in many ways) as you could use it to handicap matches.


Berzerk is an excellent port and is one of the few that graphically passes as close to the original...played a lot of it back in the day was well. It's a pity there is no diagonal firing though which appears in later levels of the arcade version. Apparantly some code for that is in there but it was never finished. There is also a homebrew version that has the speech which is pretty cool considering it works on the original hardware.

Moot_Geeza wrote:

I'll have to watch out for the switch settings, I wasn't really sure what some of the face buttons were doing tbh, they all seemed to be set to do something.  There was diagonal firing in the Bezerk ROM I played (from coolrom.com).

Sorry - meant diagonal firing by the robots. I don't think the difficulty level switch affects Berzerk but there are game variations that definitely will change the aggressiveness of the robots from the start and evil otto.

We should pick a game variation for each game and have a mini hi-score competition for these two weeks - after all - that's what most of these games are about..

With Atlantis you score double if you use the side guns.

worry not - I'll not be stunning anyone with my efforts. Probably best to go for the most difficult variations for quick game turnover:

Berzerk - Game 9 - no extra lives, invincible otto, firing robots.
Atlantis - Game 2 - no central gun.
Frostbite - Game 3 - advanced (starts at level 5)
Chopper Command - Game 3 - commander level - difficulty switch to a
Yars Revenge - Game 4 - rebounding cannon shots - diff switch a - faster swirl
Frogger - Game 5 - fastest speed - diff switch a - scroll off screen results in life loss.
Pitfall - no variations
Thrust - game 1 - this one is tricky enough without cranking it up
Sky Skipper - Game 3 - diff a.

Atlantis, game type 2: A measly 57601 was my best score from four goes this lunchtime. Once it all speeds up you can get messed up very quickly.

Will set my Atari up at the weekend. Haven't got many of the games on the list but I'll play what I do have from it, plus Asteroids. Can't set the Atari up and not play that right?

Moot you wanna come up mine for some multiplayer? Combat and Air Sea Battle are musts imo