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Review: The Italian Job (2001)

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 14:00:00 +0000

You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!

The Italian Job is based on the 1969 cult classic movie of the same name, and released very late into the life of PlayStation in fact over a year into the life of PlayStation 2. It reviewed well and charted at number one for a good amount of time, even winning a “Best PlayStation Game of 2002” award from the Official PlayStation Magazine in the UK. But I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of it let alone played it.

It was one of those games I picked up along the way, long after release, probably at a car boot sale or charity shop or bargain bin. I distinctly remember booting it up for the first time and feeling the vibe of the movie instantly despite only having seen it once when I was a teen. It retains all the comedy, action, and British irreverance. The thought of racing cars around busy city streets with reckless abandon is as intoxicating now as it was then.

So, with that in mind we should look at The Italian Job through that sort of period lens. PlayStation was on its way out and the wobbly polygons were par for the course, no worries. It released after the hugely successful Driver (1999) and its slightly less successful sequel Driver 2 (2000) and is obviously inspired by those games. It features pretty much the same game modes, and the same gameplay. One could be forgiven for thinking The Italian Job was Driver: 1969, which is no bad thing. Graphically it’s very strong, gameplay wise it ticks all the boxes, and most imporantly it drives very well. You control a range of vehicles throughout the game and they all handle differently in terms of speed and control which makes the game all the more rewarding.

The main game follows the plot of the movie quite faithfully and turns the heist planning and preparation into missions mostly around London, then on to Turin and finally to the Alps for the finale. If you don’t know the movie, it’s the story of a heist where $4 million in gold bullion is stolen from Turin on the day of a football match and the robbers escape through grodlock traffic in Austin Mini cars coloured red, white, and blue. Rule Brittania, eh!? The music at the end of every mission never fails to raise a smile, and the sound effects in Turin really put you in the moment.

What I love most about the game is that even though it is sticking to the plot of the movie, it never feels linear. You’re free to take whatever route you want. Naturally, there are more optimal routes for certain things, and familarity of the cities comes over the course of the missions. You might want to drive on the wrong side of the road, or take a slightly longer route to avoid police cars or roadblocks. The developers did something wonderful when they stiched together all the disparate stunts and scenes from the movie into something far more grand than it has any right to be: a seven minute escape route across Turin—through city streets, across rooftops, shopping arcades, on top of the roof of the Palavela, around the test track at the FIAT factory, down church steps, through a Palazzo, across a river, into sewers, and foiling the police to potential freedom. It’s difficult to recall a finer set piece. By the time you get to this mission the game is quite demanding in terms of difficulty, but never feels unfair. Of course these days it useful to play with save states to avoid any frustration. Load times are probably the only real issue with the game, but you can use emulator fast forward to speed those up. No better time to play the game!

Today we’re spoiled by open world games. We’ve seen it all before from the likes of Grand Theft Auto and many more. It’s comforting to think that the lowly PlayStation was powerful enough in the right hands to pull of streaming of “whole” cities and allow a game like this to exist in 2001. It is undoubtedly one of best arcade driving games on PS1.

It’s worth noting there was a later movie also called The Italian Job from 2003 which received a video game on GameCube and PS2 that same year. It’s similar in scope, though perhaps less daring in scale, and also very highly recommended and well worth playing. See posts from 2022 and 2021.

Review: GTi Club Supermini Festa!

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 07 Jun 2023 12:00:00 +0000

The ultimate hot hatch.

Most people are familiar with the first game in the GTi Club series due to its prevalence in arcades throughout the later half of the 1990s. The second game in the series is very hard to find in the wild, whilst the third is perhaps least known but a little easier to find and play today.

The PlayStation 3 received a loose port of the first arcade game, as GTi Club+, though it takes a lot of liberties. You may not notice if you’re going from 20-something year old memories of the original arcade game, but to me it feels more Western than Japanese and the classic GTi Club handling is largely missing. It’s very much a “blue sky” reinterpretation of the original arcade game running in the Sumo Digital racing game engine. It’s OK, but that’s all.

And that brings us to the home ports of GTi Club: Supermini Festa! The third game in Konami’s arcade series added extra locations, cars, and game modes to the original recipe whilst keeping the much loved controls including the handbrake. For this home port developer Genki built on the base of the arcade game and added even more, including online multi-player, game progression, and unlockable cars, modifications, liveries. And you can still play it online today with a modded Wii!

Released amongst the aftermath of the Icelandic ash cloud and greeted with physical delays before its arrival in retail stores, and perhaps even onto digital store fronts. The game finally released in Spring 2010, a mere two years after its release in arcades. The choice of Nintendo Wii and Sony PSP is a curious one, explained in part by the Wii being a huge seller but the PSP remains an odd choice. Maybe it was easy to target both these 480p platforms with one codebase or maybe it made more sense from a Japanese perspective? Regardless, due to the capabilities of the target home platforms the HD graphics of the arcade game are downscaled in resolution and complexity to 480p and, at least on Wii, the frame rate is kept high at 60fps.

Your first few games with GTi Club: Supermini Festa! might have you feeling a little nonplussed, and that was my experience when I received it in the post in March 2010. I played it for a bit and put it to one side. It was over a decade later that I returned to play it again—with a more open mind—and it really sunk its teeth into me.

The game starts off very easy, almost too easy, as you set about unlocking cars and game modes. You might think that there is no challenge, but before long you’ll notice that difficulty begins to ramp up and you have to be a little more selective with your car choice and how you choose to level-up your car stats. By about half way through the game, and perhaps earlier if you’re going for gold medals, you’ll need to figure out that to remaining competitive means figuring out the correct car to use for each challenge and failure to do so will result in you hitting an impasse. It’s a very Japanese level of difficulty, one could describe it as the Dark Souls of driving games. I’ve seen many people hit this wall and abandon the game just as it is about to show them what it really has up its sleeve. Nintendo do the same thing in many of their games, where you play through it once and only then are the most dedicated players greeted with the main event.

One final point is about control. In the early days of playing the game I was using motion control, which is well-implemented and very enjoyable. Later in the game, I found that I needed a control method with more reaction speed. I tried Wii SNES Controller, which helped but the digital nature of the controls felt very jarring on-screen. So I switched to analog stick control on a Wii Classic Controller Pro, which gives quicker turns and reactions in general. I later spoke with 赤しおん/Aka_sion—a Japanese player with whom I race online—who confirmed that all serious Japanese players who were playing online back in the day had made the same discovery.

At this point in time GTi Club: Supermini Festa! is one of a select few hard-to-find Wii games, so it commands a high price. If you’re not a collector it’s an easier choice, as you could essentially rent the game by buying it, playing it and selling it on. Or you might have other options depending on your propensity to sail the high seas. Come on in, the water’s lovely.

Reviewing the iPhone Xs in 2023

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Yes, the iPhone Xs came out in 2018. I thought it would be interesting to review it in 2023. Plus, I only just bought one!

I hung on to the old home-button form factor for as long as I could, using a 6s for the longest time, but two things made me move to an edge-to-edge phone:

I was on an SE2020 which doesn’t have enough RAM to run modern iOS well. The newer SE2022 has more RAM, but still suffers from…
the encroachment of user interface meant for edge-to-edge phones that do not work well on home-button devices: gestures, buttons, and weird spacings and misalignments: death by a thousand cuts.

So, why an Xs over a newer iPhone? Many reasons.

Good

Extra RAM is the biggest benefit, especially when it comes to multi-tasking
Home bar interactions are great, they make sense for this device
Safari address bar at the bottom also makes sense!
One of my favourite gestures is swiping up on the editable Safari address bar to get to tab view
Being able to see large cards for every tab now makes sense
3D Touch is so much more immediate than a long press
Camera features less computational adjustments
OLED blacks are really black
256GB capacity means less hassle

Bad

Top corners accessibility is a pain, though reachability helps
Entering passwords is slower due to Face ID being slower than fingerprint
Having to enter my passcode more frequently due to Face ID fails
OLED ghosting at low brightness
3D Touch interactions other than long press have been removed
~~Speakers are nowhere near as good as on the SE2020~~
This issue was fixed for free at the same time as an official battery replacement

Indifferent

Speed is slightly slower than SE2020, but the increased RAM and user interface fit are a net gain
Very slippery, but I use a case that provides additional grip and protection as I am clumsy

So, there we have it! I bought an old iPhone rather than a new one and I’m enjoying it.

Gaming Advent Calendar

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 26 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

At the start of December I decided to do a sort of “gaming advent calendar”, a single-tweet review of a bunch of my favourite video games. I’m collecting them here for posterity. Hopefully you will find something of interest in the list.

Each tweet contained:

hashtag #GamingAdventCalendar
title & year
text review
YouTube video link
4x images (box art, flyers, screenshot, etc)

Here begins my #GamingAdventCalendar for 2022.

Twenty-five of my favourite video games between 1st and 25th December. Just for kicks!

🧵

1. Flicky (1984)

I adore this so much I own an arcade cabinet! It’s deterministic (no randomness) so you can figure out a repeatable route and turn playing into a zen experience. Controls use leaf switches so feel very analogue. Video

2. Pebble Beach no Hatou (1993)

Or any of the “New 3D Golf Simulation” series; I play the Japanese Mega Drive versions. Great golf, majestic music, super stylish interface & box art, and a tea break after hole 9. Play with CPU overclock! ⛳️🏌️‍♂️ Video

3. Runabout 2 (1999)

This sequel fulfilled the promise of the original and took it to great heights, delivering an almost perfect game of chasing, collecting and crashing. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking it’s like Crazy Taxi! Video

4. Orbital (2006)

Available for both GBA & Wii this is slow motion Katamari Damacy with gravity. You control a star that can absorb smaller stars and crash into larger ones. Two buttons: attract/repel control your orbit & trajectory. Video

5. DigitalGlider Airman (1999)

An immensely rewarding glider sim with perfect difficulty curve and lovely, mysterious vibe. But playing this as an arcade game won’t get you far: it requires thinking, planning & minimal/accurate input. Video

6. Kururin Paradise (2002)

This 2nd GBA game in the series gets my vote as best, tho they’re all great. It dials the concept up to 11 with enhanced level design, goals & controls. On a beach holiday I was so engrossed I got sunstroke. Video

7. A Little Bit of… Nintendo Touch Golf (2009)

This DSiWare reworking of the original game throws out online functionality and adds an extensive Challenge mode to reinforce the core. Mod your device and download it @internetarchive!) Video

8. Smashing Drive (2002)

Superb port of an arcade game people think is like Crazy Taxi but is more Out Run with mad shortcuts! Extended play rewarded by seeing more wow moments. I’m yet to see them all. Crash into King Kong’s bits! Video

9. Polarium Advance (2005)

After seeing a prototype Nintendo demanded a version of this for DS, but the GBA version is more refined & released later. Daily puzzle mode will last you a year. One-handed control for commuting is genius! Video

10. Excite Truck (2006)

An amazingly well-balanced game. Criminally overlooked, maybe because it’s Wii, or only has motion controls? This is a tour de force of close and clever racing; an adrenalin rush like no other once it clicks! Video

11. Downhill Domination (2003)

I often wonder if the developers of Excite Truck were inspired by this game? It’s certainly as close a relative as I’ve found. It features same BIG AIR adrenalin rush, impossible powers and close racing. Video

12. Pilotwings (1990)

One of my fondest memories: my dad playing hang gliding stage on repeat as a relaxation tool. I loved the surprise & delight of the secret levels that were unlocked for being good at the game: I can still do it! Video

13. MaBoShi (2008)

This inventive action game is 3-in-1: Circle, Square & Bar. Circle = physics, Square = turn-based, Bar = Reaction. Circle is quite possibly my favourite game of all time. You can play today using Wii & DS ROMs. See: blog.gingerbeardman.com/2013/06/29/maboshi/) Video

14. GTi Club: Supermini Festa! (2010)

This is a port of the 3rd game in Konami’s arcade series. Developer Genki added online multi-player & extra features to the console versions. You can still play it online today with a modded Wii! Video

15. Bubble Bobble (1986)

Maybe the greatest ever arcade game!? A tour-de-force by the late, great Fukio “MTJ” Mitsuji, this game has perfectly balanced gameplay, 2-player perks, 100s levels, inventive power-ups, and hidden secrets. Video

16. Magical Puzzle Popils (1991)

Is a highly original puzzle game with mind-bending level design feat. portals and other cool stuff. Created by MTJ (Bubble Bobble) & Jun Amanai it is largely unknown as it is only for Sega Game Gear! 🧵 Video

It’s my birthday! SO… more about POPILS:

whilst trying to 100% the game, my friend Jamie “Junosix” Hamshere and I reverse-engineered/hacked/patched the game to make the step and sub-step count always visible. This makes it easier to beat stage targets! www.smspower.org/forums/16730-MagicalPuzzlePopilsGGHackHelp

I also discovered a few other previously unknown things: debug mode (step count preview, level select), alt credits, and most notably secret stage 0 that had only been hinted at in the Japanese manual [segaretro.org/images/e/e0/Magical_Puzzle_Popils_GG_JP_Manual.pdf]> (https://segaretro.org/images/e/e0/Magical_Puzzle_Popils_GG_JP_Manual.pdf) these are documented at TCRF: tcrf.net/Magical_Puzzle_Popils

I’ll summarise my complete POPILS adventures in a future blog post, because it’s worth it. But not today. See you in a bit for the big birthday blog post, and tomorrow for the next entry in 🎄

17. Boogie Wings (1992)

This “shmup” contains more ideas than any other single game. At every turn you think you’ve seen it all: you have not. Game designer Kazuyuki Kurata called it a day after this, his only game. A masterpiece. Video

18. Sideswiped (2009)

Crazy, fast, manic, 60fps. There’s racing, plus so much more. My favourite mode involves juggling exploding cars and traffic cones to keep your multiplier and have the road ahead in a constant state of explosion. Video

19. Guru Logi Champ (2001)

Dev COMPILE made games of all types for their Disc Station compilations. Related to those is this puzzle game: rotate the field & pull/push blocks to compete the picture. Sort of Magical Drop meets Picross. Video

20. The Italian Job (2003)

A short 60fps mission-based driving game like “Driver”. Tight arcade controls, demanding targets, interesting env. Story mode echoes movie plot. Stunt mode involves driving elaborate scaffolded courses. Fun! Video

21. Donkey Kong’s Crash Course (2012)

A motion-controlled mini-game in Nintendo Land on Wii U. Navigate the maze-like stages using all your skill and dexterity. A forgotten prototypes that made it into a real game! 100% pure Nintendo. Video

22. Llamatron (1991)

Jeff Minter improves on Robotron by adding elaborate power-ups, enhancing enemies, and channeling Monty Python. Round up animals, avoid radioactive rain, shoot a screaming Mandelbrot set! Assisted by an AI droid? Video

23. Sheep Raider (2001)

A “despicable” 3D puzzle platform stealth game dressed as TV show. Beautifully presented, supremely self-aware, inventive puzzles anchored in the Looney Toons world, good difficulty curve, secrets, jazz …nice! Video

24. Pang (2010)

All prior games in the series are perfectly distilled and stretched across dual screens. A more perfect difficulty curve I am yet to find. Extended play is mind-melding: you begin to think like the level designer! 🤯 Video

25. Winter Gold (1996)

Part Amiga demoscene production, part SNES technical showcase for the Super FX 2 chip, 1–8 players can compete across six winter sports events. Downhill and luge are my favourites. Very fun! Happy Christmas 🎄 Video

26. BONUS! A Little Tree (1995)

This wonderful animated story book by Thoru Yamamoto 山本徹 @thoruman is one of several Christmas-themed works he created using HyperCard on Macintosh. Play/download this, See The Sky and ZiZi Christmas archive.org/details/thoru-yamamoto-hypercard-stacks Video

Review: A Little Bit of... Nintendo Touch Golf

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 23:16:18 +0000

Less is more.

A Little Bit of… was series of previously released retail DS games adapted to suit Nintendo’s DSiWare download service. The idea for these “Chotto” games came from Satoru Iwata, who said “I thought it would be good if there were a Chotto game series that you could play with little by little and interact with little by little in your life.”

The games were adapted by refining one or more elements of the core gameplay to suit the concept of playing a little bit at a time over a long period. These changes were either overlooked by the press, or described as a bad thing, but closer inspection shows that the changes were well considered and well executed. And in the case of this particular game by a largely different team than the original game.

I played through the DSiWare version of this golf game some 10 years after it was released as I was intrigued how different it might be to the original cartridge release.

The answer was a lot. And it turns out this DSiWare version is a much better game as a result. It features a proper interactive tutorial rather than the still screens of the original, as well as a refined user interface with simpler power and putting display, an updated and improved version of the game engine with a higher frame-rate due do the increased CPU speed of the Nintendo DSi, and an all new Challenge mode.

Challenge mode, which replaces Championship Tour mode, introduces a method of levelling up that is focused on improving your golf technique. This adds a lot to the game and provides a method of increasing your player stats and unlocking additional courses. It includes 100 challenges at each of several different difficulty levels, totalling over 300 different challenges. They include such variations as: nearest to the pin, chip-in, limited strokes, single putt, total distance, limited time, competition (vs CPU), and limited clubs.

This little version is also missing a bunch of courses and their associated music, replays, special shot, Wi-Fi features, and a few other small things. But they’re not essential to the experience so it’s not a big deal.

With this tweaked version T&E SOFT took a look at the existing game with fresh eyes, removed the stuff that made it needlessly complicated, and added a new mode that reinforces the core gameplay. It’s a more focused and better game as a result.

Top 10 Games Played in 2020

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Single tweet reviews of the best games I’ve played this year.

All old, but gold.

DigitalGlider Airman (PS1)

Immensely rewarding glider simulation with perfect difficulty progression and a lovely, mysterious vibe. Trying to play this as an arcade game won’t get you far - it requires minimal, accurate input with a lot of thinking and forward planning. My GOTY.

Touge MAX G (PS1)

I’ve completed the Gymkhana mode in this: a set of driving skill challenges requiring precise control and faultless maneuvering around small courses laid out with gates and cones. I intend to go back for the main race mode. A superb (and difficult) game.

The Italian Job (GC)

The first game I played entirely through Dolphin emulator: glorious supersampled down to 640x480p over VGA. The game plays very well and has a story mode and an obstacle course “stunt” mode. Great driving and handling model at 60fps. An overlooked classic!

Runabout 3 (PS2) & Runabout 3D (3DS)

Reviewing these together because the 3DS game is effectively a remake of the PS2 one, with almost identical goals but with cleaner presentation and slightly less content. The PS2 game has slightly more humour and more collectables. Pick one.

Flying Circus (PS2)

Radio controlled helicopter game with simulation and arcade handling models. Lots of fun secrets. My biggest gripe is that you need to play it through in one sitting to complete the main mode. But with one of the better copters that takes less than an hour.

WRC Rally Evolved (PS2)

Astonishing attention to detail, plus a lot of things I’ve not seen before or since. Phenomenal handling. Can be persuaded to run in 480p using GSM and external scaler. Uneven computer results/timings lose it a little love.

Super Runabout (DC)

The craziest in the series. I held off playing this for so long because the PAL version is slow, the NTSC-U version is faster and far more enjoyable. Features 2 scenarios with similar, but different, levels and goals. Marginally better than the PS2/3DS games.

Sideswiped (DS)

A little known game only released in Japan/USA. Crazy fast at times, manic, 60fps all the way. There’s racing, plus so much more. Some modes feel more like soccer. Great mini games. Tons of content. I wish they’d made Excite Truck DS with this engine!

Runabout 2 (PS1)

The first Runabout was an innovative concept in a short, underdeveloped game. The sequel (made by Graphic Research, rather than Climax Ent.) fulfilled the promise of the original and took it to great heights, delivering an almost perfect game. Joint GOTY.

Review: Disc

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 07 Jul 2017 13:03:42 +0000

A future sports game that aims high but struggles to hit the mark.

In the era of the 16-bit home computers, there was a trend to take concepts that had made an impression at the arcade and create a version of them for home release that neatly sidestepped any licence that may have otherwise been required. And so Disc, whilst not being a straight copy, is obviously inspired by the arcade game Discs of Tron which was itself based on a sequence in the 1982 cult sci-fi movie Tron.

Disc presents a futuristic sport where competitors throw discs of light at each other in gladiator-style, with the goal of being the last man standing. This can be achieved in two ways: by knocking your opponent out into the abyss by destroying the tiles that make up the platform they stand on, or by hitting your opponent with the disc enough times so their energy is reduced to zero.

In reality, this plays out like a somewhat awkward cross between Breakout and Shufflepuck Café.

The gameplay is enhanced in a number of ways: ownership of the disc can be transferred by catching it, or avoided by deflecting it with your shield; power-ups can increase the speed or damage capability of your disc; extra discs can be awarded, allowing for multiple discs to be in play at once; and tiles that need to be hit multiple times before they disappear. Increasingly difficult opponents also introduce new tricks that require different play styles to be learnt and used to beat them. All this is set against a timer which, if it reaches zero, awards victory to the player with the most tiles remaining in their area.

The original Discs of Tron game featured analogue aiming using a spinner, and 8-way movement of the player using the joystick. The programmers at Loriciel came up with an ingenious way of mapping these controls to an 8-way joystick with single fire button: without the fire button pressed the joystick controls the movement of the player, with the fire button pressed the joystick controls throwing of the disc or use of the shield. It takes a little getting used to, and even then you’ll likely make some timing mistakes in the heat of the moment and do something unintentionally. But it worked well enough.

The graphics are something else though. They effuse that particular French quality I am so fond of, with a firm dose of science fiction that sits somewhere between the helmet-wearing ostrich riders of Joust and the inside-the-mainframe look of Tron.

The only issue I have with the game is that it can get repetitive. The difficulty curve is too long and this can lead to boredom setting in. But for a few short rounds, the game is great to look at and fun to play.

Historical note: the Atari ST version was first to be released, and later ported well to Amiga and PC, and to the Amstrad CPC with surprisingly little loss of fidelity.

Review: MaBoShi

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 00:25:58 +0000

Three games for the price of one in this innovative WiiWare title. Six if you count the fact that you can download a version of the game over Wi-Fi to your Nintendo DS to play on the move.

WiiWare is the downloadable game service on Nintendo’s Wii home console. It lets you download smaller sized and lower priced games direct to your console, and offers a distinctly different range of games than you can pick up through more traditional retail outlets. The channel showcases game concepts that may not have been profitable to release elsewhere. It’s astonishing that without WiiWare, MaBoShi may never have seen the light of day. Each of its three game concepts are so unconventional and slight that I think most gamers might not give them a second glance, even at this very affordable price.

MaBoShi takes advantage of few of the Wii’s features but still delivers a solid and innovative experience. It allows players to use their Miis as avatars in the game, send replays to other players via WiiConnect24, and also has the previously mentioned Wi-Fi download to Nintendo DS. But there is no sign of motion control. In fact, whilst the wii remote is used as a pointer for the game menu, MaBoShi is firmly a one button game. Or perhaps that be three one button games, as there are actually three main game modes: Circle, Bar and Square. Each mode is played differently, but with the same objective - to score one million points. In the Wii version there are three game panels on screen, allowing simultaneous multi-player.

With multiple players the game adds an extra feature into the mix, known simply as the Effect System. Destroying an enemy will cause a bubble to appear. This bubble moves across the screen and over other game panels where it can affect other games in progress. This means that players managing their own separate games may be influenced by these effects eminating from other game panels, and players may therefore choose whether they wish to help or hinder their fellow players. It’s not often you get to choose whether to play cooperatively or competitively, and I really like this aspect of the gameplay.

Circle mode - my personal favourite - finds you in control of a constantly rotating circle, able to switch the direction in which it is spinning by pressing the A button. By controlling the speed and momentum of the circle, you must guide it around the screen. You can use the variety of dynamic obstacles that appear on screen as a means to achieving the precise movement required to collide with the enemies and collect bonus multipliers. The aim of each round is to collide with all enemies as they appear onscreen, before they move off the game area. It is game over as soon as one enemy leaves the play field. The depth of control in this game mode is simply astonishing, and infrequent taps of the A button allow almost analog control of speed and momentum. Special mention must also go to the level design in this game, as it is balanced to perfection. In fact, if you’re good enough to score a million you will most likely do so near the end of all available 40 levels.

Bar mode sees you manoeuvring a rotating bar through a vertically scrolling level. The bar rotates around a core, which only moves using the momentum created by the bar and only when the A button is held. The bar can be used to defeat enemies and smash blocks, but if the core touches an enemy or a block the game ends. There are also pinballs, powerups and much more to contend with. I find this game the most difficult of the three.

Square mode sees the player controlling a single block that leaves a trail of fire behind. This trail of fire can burn obstacles, and can even set other parts of the trail alight. You must navigate around the screen, at your own pace, setting fire to all the obstacles with the help of the occasional bomb, whilst keeping an eye out for bonus multipliers. The screen scrolls when the player moves, and if an obstacle or part of the trail of fire hits the bottom of the screen, the game ends.

Created by Japanese pinball experts Mindware Corp, and based on pre-existing prototypes created by team member Kuniaki Watanabe, MaBoShi is a triumph of game design and deserves your attention. If you fancy a challenge I can heartily recommend trying to reach one million points in one or all of the game modes (I’ve only managed to do it myself in circle mode on the DS download version) - the game has a lot to offer if you’re willing to give it a try. Nintendo seem to be of the same mind, as they recently released an updated and expanded version of the Square game for their DSiWare download service under the name of Flametail (USA) also known as Trailblaze: Puzzle Incinerator (EU) and Moyasu Puzzle: Flametail (JPN).

How to play

Review: Chip’s Challenge

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 11:27:00 +0000

Sokoban for the 20th century.

Sokoban was a Japanese puzzle game created in 1981 by Hiroyuki Imabayashi in which the player pushes boxes around a warehouse onto a number of designated goal locations. It’s a game whose depth and complexity rivals chess, and which has been used as a testbed for Artificial Intelligence applications and other science research. It’s up there with Tetris as one of the purest gameplay concepts ever created. Indeed, you might wonder how such a solid concept could be improved upon. Many had tried and either failed or ended up with a game that didn’t vary from Sokoban in any meaningful way. I expect Chuck Sommerville was pretty pleased with himself as he refined the Sokoban concept and ended up with Chip’s Challenge for the Atari Lynx. Even more amazing is that the programming for the final version was completed in a mater of weeks.

Chip’s Challenge took the core Sokoban concept of pushing things around and injected it with a good dose of humour and a bunch of extra gameplay elements, such as conveyor belts, keys, enemies, transporters, destroyable tiles, switches, power ups and more. And of course computer chips that need to be picked up to complete a level. These extra features meant that levels could vary greatly in difficulty and also in play style - some would be puzzles and others would focus more on action. Level passwords allowed the player to resume their game before battery backup game saving was the norm. The game became fiendishly difficult as you progressed through just under 150 extremely well designed levels.

The game was subsequently released on multiple home computer platforms, culminating in a version produced by Microsoft for Windows 95. This well-known version has different graphics and some errors in the gameplay logic, meaning it isn’t really the best one to play. I recommend playing the DOS version (shown above), Commodore Amiga, Atari ST or Atari Lynx version through an emulator.

Chuck Sommerville apparently completed work on Chip’s Challenge 2, but it has never been published due to the fact he didn’t retain the copyright on the game name. But you can see a video of what might have been on YouTube. He has also gone on to reuse a lot of the same ideas in Chuck’s Challenge, a pseudo sequel to the original game which keeps the majority of the gameplay elements but changes the scenario to one with much less personality. For me the master stroke of Chip’s Challenge is the more interesting scenario - kids growing up with the Atari Lynx would have much more affinity with a nerd trying to get into a computer club than with a guy pushing boxes around a warehouse with no real aim.

Review: Wizkid

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:02:00 +0000

The greatest video game ever sold?

Wizkid was born in a time when British video game developers ruled the world. That such a time existed may seem strange today, as developers from Japan and the USA roll out one blockbuster game after another whilst British development companies quietly wonder where it all went wrong. Back in the early 90s a video game could be made by a small team of individuals rather than a team of hundreds - it was a much simpler time. To put things into perspective, at the time Wizkid was released the home computer scene was in decline and video game consoles such as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Mega Drive were invading UK homes.

A product of bedroom-based development house Sensible Software during the peak of their creative output, Wizkid was an ode to everything British. It was Monty Python, seaside arcades, Fawlty Towers, tabloid newspapers, The Young Ones, punk rock, Viz and so much more – all wrapped up in a game that can only be described as, well, completely bonkers. It was fun, but perhaps more importantly it was funny. My initial play session left me bewildered, but as I settled into the weirdness it dawned on me that I was witnessing the most wonderful game I’d ever seen.

At this point in time Sensible Software were a household name, an established company and burgeoning brand who were coming off the back of a string of considerable successes. Most recently they had scored a hit with Mega-lo-Mania and were deep into the development of Sensible Soccer, the game that would turn out to be their magnum opus. Wizkid may seem like an unlikely stop gap, not helped by the fact there are only a tenuous link to Wizball - the older game by the company mentioned in the subtitle. You’d be right to wonder how such a crazy concept was sold to the executives at Ocean, but back then it was quite common for a publisher to sign a developer on the strength of their previous games with nothing but blind faith - or perhaps just trust - in their capability to deliver. A lot like the music industry works - the record company or publisher sign an artist to make an album before they ever hear it. Jon Hare – one half of the original Sensible Software team – has described Wizkid as a game that shows the height of the team’s collective expression and imagination, a game that was undiluted by the publisher and showed just how much they were capable of achieving. The result is a game so quirky it feels almost Japanese in its execution.

Right from the off you’re in no doubt that the game is a little bit left of centre, as you witness Wizkid conduct a pair of cannon to an excerpt from Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture”. You can’t help but raise a smile - perhaps as a reaction to the confusion that’s slowly setting in, or maybe just because the act of conduction a pair of cannon looks so damned fun - in much the same way as the parade scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The game combines two decidedly old-school concepts: block-breaking and the adventure game. You play an odd variation of Breakout, where instead of a paddle you control a disembodied head whose job is to dislodge blocks so they collide with enemies. Success results in the appearance of a musical note, of which there’s a whole tune’s worth to collect. Once you complete the melody the game switches into adventure mode, where you gain control of the fully formed Wizkid and can walk him around a series of platform-based adventure screens, collecting items and solving a series of obtuse puzzles. Between these two forms of gameplay, you’ll collect a bunch of cats, solve some crosswords, buy some useful and not-so-useful items from a shop, row a boat, ride a donkey and much more besides. If ever there was a case where a game was more than the sum of its parts this is it. The game is unforgiving at times and if you’re not careful you’ll do well enough get to the end, but not well enough to see the “real” ending. You’re unlikely to see everything the game has to offer in your first play-through so there’s a chance to discover more in subsequent replays. If you’re not going to be able to play it, make sure you at least watch the play-through videos linked below.

Could a game like Wizkid be successful today? It’s hard to say, but it would have its work cut out. The types of games it’s comprised of have long since fallen out of favour. Publishers don’t take risks any more, preferring to instead push out identikit games that cater the latest trend. On the other hand, there does still seem to be occasional room for off-the-wall presentation and humour in a game, as shown by the likes of Peggle and Tomba! - a combination of which would be a pretty good match to the madness of the world of Wizkid.

Whilst it’s not my favourite game, or even anywhere near what you might consider to be a perfect game, the sheer scope and ambition seen in Wizkid means it’s my choice as the greatest game ever sold.

(That’s not to say it’s the end of this blog, though!)

Review: Pilotwings

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 17:36:00 +0000

Take to the skies in one of the most relaxing video games of all time.

Pilotwings is best described as an arcade flight simulator. The game enrolls you in a flying school and gives you a series of missions of increasing difficulty using a variety of aircraft from hang glider and airplane to rocket pack. Gaining enough points in each set of missions allows you to qualify for a flying licence and rewards you with a password that can be used to resume from that level on subsequent play-throughs. The game makes use of SNES graphics Mode 7, allowing a flat image to be transformed and skewed to give the illusion of 3D. These days the look might seem a little primitive, but back in 1992 this was awe inspiring stuff.

Like many classics it was easy to pick up yet difficult to master, but rewarded extended play by giving the player secret characters or missions if they were skillful enough to land their aircraft on moving platforms. You could fly a bird man across a series of trampolines, or take control of a penguin jumping from a sky high diving board - all for a handful of bonus points. It turned the serious simulation on it’s head and infused it with a great sense of humour.

The subtle jazz-pop music and idyllic island locations lent themselves to flying without a purpose. It was so much fun to take to the skies and just fly around. So much so that my Dad used to ask me to put on one of the hang gliding levels and he’d fly around catching thermals and just enjoying the view. When his time was about to run out he’d restart the level and do it all over again. It says a lot that the game was that much fun without actually competing any of the objectives.

The game saw a sequel in Pilotwings 64 on the Nintendo 64, courtesy of Nintendo and Paradigm Simulation. This version of the game added fully 3D environments and more realistic vehicle behaviour. As much as I hate to say it, this version has not dated anywhere near as well as the SNES original. It feels very clunky and slow and I really don’t enjoy playing it these days.

So it was great to find out that, after 15 years of waiting, an all-new Pilotwings game - Pilotwings Resort - was to be a launch title for the Nintendo 3DS. I’ve played the game extensively and it’s just sublime - every bit the sequel I’d wished for. Whilst it’s not without faults - there’s only one location, a handful of vehicles, less variety of landing areas and no funny bonus modes. But it is in 3D, has it’s fair share of novel rewards and bags of gameplay. It’s also a far more accessible game than either of the two previous games. It’s evident that the Nintendo of today can put out games of a higher quality than they have ever done before. Even if it takes them a while to get around to it.

Review: Enthusia Professional Racing

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 15:15:00 +0000

It’s brave to go up against an established franchise, but that’s just what Konami tried to do with Enthusia Professional Racing. In many ways it’s a better game than Gran Turismo but that wasn’t enough to take any substantial market share.

The first thing you’ll notice about the game is that it looks every bit as good as PS2 rival Gran Turismo 4, especially when your PS2 is connected using component cables. Courses and scenery are definitely set in more varied and interesting locales. But there’s no support for widescreen display, which is a slight annoyance especially when playig on modern equipment. Most noticeable is that the load times are very fast indeed, restarting a race is instantaneous as it should be in every game.

The game features a total of 211 cars and take a different approach to proceedings, in that you win cars rather than having to earn money to buy them. Plus, it has one of the strangest introductory movies I’ve ever seen - it includes CGI of fast cars, a dinky toy Morris Mini, a female photographer, a necklace and… an orgasm. So strange.

There are three main sections to the game. Driving Revolution gives you various driving scenarios and allows you test your driving skills and in return unlock cars for use in Free Race mode. Free Race mode allows you to race with your newly unlocked cars on any course, just for kicks. Finally we have Enthusia Life - you start off with a small number of cars in your garage, and are given a number of themed races to take part in, winning a random competing car as a prize, along with points and ranking. Quite RPG like, in some ways especially the random nature of winning a car after the race has ended. One tip - which sounds kind of obvious - is to make sure you pick a race where the odds are in your favour, with your car around the same skill level as the other competitors.

Not one for the feint hearted, you lose points for driving badly - crashing, colliding or going off road - pretty much opposite to the Kudos system seen in Metropolis Street Racer. This is probably the biggest issue with the game, as it can be a little bit too eager to deduct points especially when you also lose them in collisions that are caused by the AI.

These days I think most people would consider the game closer to the Forza series than the Gran Turismo series. However, I can see a lot of other games in there too: handling is very good with offroad sections feeling a lot like RalliSport Challenge 2, scenery is full of character a lot like another of Konami’s games GTi Club or even Metropolis Street Racer, and the attention required whilst driving is very reminiscent of Vanishing Point. So, elements of a handful of my favourite ever racers, which can be no bad thing.

I’d love to see a sequel to Enthusia, but I doubt Konami would ever consider it. They made an admirable effort but the game just didn’t excite the punter in any lasting way. Shame. Look out for a future review of Konami’s Kaidō Battle game for their take on another style of driving game.

Review: Split/Second Velocity

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 21:51:00 +0000

It’s common knowledge that video game movie tie-ins generally result in disappointing games. So it’s interesting to see a game that takes so much inspiration from the big screen and manages to wrap it up in a great game. And all without a movie licence in sight.

The look of Split/Second: Velocity will be instantly familiar to many. It will remind you of Jerry Bruckheimer action movies and super slick TV gameshows with it’s high gloss production values and all out assault on the senses.

A few minutes into the game you’ll probably wonder what the hell is going on. Your car is being throw all over the track, parts of the scenery exploding in astonishing fashion all around and all you get as a reward is a position near the bottom of the results when, or if, you cross the finishing line. But the game, with it’s completely over the top explosions, has drawn you in enough and you’ll keep playing. Just one more race.

A few hours later, you’ll have realised that whilst it’s a racing game at heart, there’s also a great deal of strategy involved. It’s very much a thinking man’s racer. You need to build up enough “juice” to be able to detonate parts of the scenery, which can be used to wreck fellow racers and change the balance of play and indeed in some cases the path of the course on which your driving. Your choice of cars will begin to grow, at a pace perfectly matched to the difficulty curve of the levels available.

A few days in, you’ll be progressing through the chapters, raced most of the courses and memorised where each of the powerplays are. You’ll have begun to form tactics or favourites ways to play certain sections allowing you to influence the race in many ways other than simply driving well. You’ll still be slack jawed at the variety of destruction on display and perhaps you’ll even have settled on a car that suits your driving style and allows you to go back and mop up a few of the gold medals you failed to get in the early chapters. The poker-like gamble of whether to spend time building up more juice for a large powerplay or use what you have on smaller explosions will sit in your mind long after you’ve switched off the game. Feeling in control is knowing you’ve got enough juice to make a change and knowing where you can make those changes.

A few weeks in and you’re skills will really be tested. You’ll be having some very close races whilst having to make judicious use of your powerplays. You’ll be approaching the end of the available chapters and wondering just how the explosions and set pieces can get any bigger or better. But they do. If you’re playing for achievements there are only a couple that cause any real problem - where you have to beat times set by members of the development team. The times are beatable, but it’s a task that really will separate the men from the boys - very difficult, perhaps even requiring fundamental changes to the way you’ve been driving the course involved, but always remaining fun.

Thinking about how a particular explosion and the chain of events that follow might be able to change the race is one thing, but the absolute joy that greets you when you manage to pull it off is another. Split/Second: Velocity is undoubtedly my Game of the Year 2010 and I’m looking forward to the inevitable sequel. Very nicely done indeed.

Review: The Wind Waker

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 03:28:00 +0000

I’m not one for traditional adventure games - ones with a long, drawn-out main quest, lots of optional sub quests, experience points, levelling up, random battles and all of that sort of stuff. I need more direction in what to do next, although I still want to have fun figuring out how to do it and on the journey getting there.

My first Zelda experience was playing A Link to the Past on my SNES. It’s a great game and it has some clever touches throughout the story. But I can’t remember finishing it. That, in a nutshell, is my problem with The Legend of Zelda series - although it took a while for me to realise, mainly because of The Wind Waker. Whilst it’s your typical Zelda game, it looks so different to any of the previous games in the series with its cell-shaded graphical style that’s more akin to a Disney animation than a video game. The graphics alone meant I could put up with the annoyances the series had become bogged down with - the needless backtracking and relentless dungeon crawling. I know those things epitomise Zelda but The Wind Waker made me forget about them - for the better. It coated all that boring Zelda stuff in visuals to die for - visuals that would make many movie animators slack jawed. And that was enough to see me through to the final credits.

Just prior to playing The Wind Waker I’d read Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist which is a beautiful novel about realising your dreams. The book moved me a great deal and I never hesitate to recommend it. Whilst playing The Wind Waker it struck me that there are a number of parallels between it and The Alchemist, and whilst I’d love to see a video game - or movie - based on The Alchemist, Nintendo had done enough to satiate my desire.

I’ve tried every Zelda since and they’ve not held my attention as much as The Wind Waker. Only as recently as The Twilight Princess, with it’s more grown-up look, I decided that I’m pretty much wasting my time trying to find a Zelda game that hits me quite as hard as The Wind Waker did. But there’s a special place in my heart for this story and I look forward to playing the game through again in 1080p High Definition when Nintendo give us capable hardware. I trust even more glorious visuals will once again help me see the final credits.

Review: Bubble Bobble

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 08:54:00 +0000

His and hers gaming at it’s finest.

Bubble Bobble is one of those old-school arcade games that stands up well today. It’s single screen platform mechanics haven’t aged one bit. Capturing monsters in bubbles and then popping them to collect fruit is a supremely addictive pursuit. Things are constantly kept fresh with power ups, expert level design and a variety of bad guys to learn how to deal with. It’s interesting that when playing with a friend the natural tendency is to play cooperatively to clear the screen in an effort to see just how far you can get, allowing for some great team building.

There have been a number of versions of the game released across most home formats but none have managed to capture the intricacies of the original game. This is a problem inherent in ports of any game - great care has to be taken to remain faithful to the original. If the developers responsible for the port do not have access to the original source code the quality of the resulting game will only be as good as their attention to detail and ability to figure out what is actually happening in the game behind the scenes. In the case of Bubble Bobble, this has resulted in levels that are laid out wrongly, bad guys that move incorrectly, power-ups that don’t work as expected and more. Some of the issues probably have more to do with the fact that the arcade runs in an odd screen resolution making a 1:1 conversion impossible. Also interesting is that, in 1996, Taito announced that they had lost the original source code to Bubble Bobble following a reorganisation. So when they were creating further ports and sequels they on had to work from program disassembly, playing the game and from other ports that had already been made. Whilst the arcade version is the blueprint, with the number of subsequent versions of the game it’s no longer obvious what exactly constitutes the core game. I do wonder why with the power of today’s machines an emulated version of the game hasn’t been released?

Bub and Bob - the dinosaur characters featured in the game - returned to human form for the game’s sequel Rainbow Islands and whilst it had some gameplay features in common with the original it was effectively a new concept. A more traditional sequel came somewhat later in the form of Bubble Symphony which stayed faithful to the gameplay of the original whilst added a few new elements. it also featured a rousing brass band version of the fantastic Bubble Bobble theme music. Other than using MAME to play the original under emulation, the WiiWare or PlayStation versions are probably the best home versions.

Review: GoldenEye 007

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 11:55:00 +0000

I’d love to see somebody calculate just how much time was wasted by University students playing GoldenEye: 007. Or, perhaps, how better off industry might be had we used that time to study rather than shoot each other in the face for hours on end.

GoldenEye is one of the most lauded games in history, being lavished with heaps of praise that might be considered ridiculous were the game not able to deliver on all counts. Best FPS, best multi-player game, best movie-licence - the list goes on. Being regarded as the best Nintendo 64 game ever is a commendation not many people would argue with. The game was released on the N64 which supported four players each with analog control for precise movement. The game took advantage of everything the N64 had to offer, serving up a split-screen multi-player experience with enough depth to allow for hours, days, weeks or even years of repeat play. It was a game that showed just how good Rare was at it’s peak - the story of it’s development is a fascinating insight into the whole process.

In 2008 rumours appeared online about a HD port of the original game for XBLA, but it never saw the light of day apparently due to financial disagreements between Microsoft and Nintendo. I’m not sure how that game would have been received, though. Whilst the original game still plays very well, especially in multi-player, it’s not without problems - control settings are not per player, levels are small in size, A.I. is limited and predictable, to name just a few. I feel that a port would have been looked at not through the rose-tinted glasses the original is regarded in but rather through the critical eye of today’s discerning gamer.

So, it’s no surprise why the game didn’t receive the sequel it so obviously deserved. Lots of people tried and failed to recreate the magical formula that defined the sublime experience of the original. What it was exactly that made GoldenEye so great became the stuff of legend. A few Bond games came along and were quickly forgotten about, most notable was the excellent 007 Nightfire - developed by Eurocom and released by Electronic Arts - which was a great game but failed to capture the attention of the press or public. Interesting then, that it’s the same development team that bring us the new GoldenEye: 007 for Wii, which is a remake but one that takes numerous story and gameplay cues from the much loved original and brings it bang up-to-date in terms of graphics, gameplay and production values. Fans of the original shouldn’t worry at all - the game is as worthy successor as we are ever likely to see and an essential purchase for those yearning to relive their multi-player student days. Perhaps it’s time to settle those old grudges online?

Review: Tempest 2000

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 11:16:00 +0000

As far as “zone” games go, there are none finer than Jeff Minter’s remake of arcade classic Tempest. It built on the solid foundation of the original and added all manner of power-ups and tripped-out graphics.

There’s no doubting that the original Tempest arcade game is as much of a classic today as it was in 1980, the concept apparently appearing to it’s creator Dave Theurer in a dream. So it’s no mean feat that one man could bring the game kicking and screaming into the 90s in the form of Tempest 2000 or T2K. Released on the Atari Jaguar it was pretty much the only game worth owning on the machine, but was not enough to prevent the machine performing poorly at retail.

T2K modifies the gameplay of the original Tempest by adding in bonus levels, collectible power-ups, more sophisticated enemy types, and wildly varying level (“web”) designs. The game contains a total of 100 webs, with new frame colors and variations every 15 levels. Your progress is saved every couple of levels, and the game allows you to restart from the last stage the game saved at, albeit with your score zeroed out. Power-ups appear after shooting a certain number of enemies, floating up the web towards you. Collecting these power-ups will reward you with one of a number of items: a better laser, bonus points, the ability to jump up off the web, a helper “A.I.” droid, a warp token and a smart bomb. If a power-up is collected during your exit from a level, you’ll hear the phrase “Yes! Yes! Yes!” and the first power-up you receive in the next stage will be the A.I. Droid which is just the sort of thing you need to try to get through some of the more difficult levels, such as the infamous level 64, which punctuates a reasonably well balanced difficult curve. The game is pretty frantic, and may leave you wondering what the hell is going on but perseverance is rewarded by a fantastic experience - both in the gaming sense but also in emotional and psychological senses. It really is a trip.

A version of T2K was released for other machines under the name of Tempest-X3 but featured a number of changes amongst was a change that saw your AI Droid all but labotomised. A second remake was created by Minter in the form of Tempest 3000 which was released for the Nuon - another machine that failed to makr an impact at retail. T3K remains one of the most beautiful looking games I’ve ever played, but suffered from the fact that it didn’t play quite as well as T2K.

These days you can play T2K using an emulator or go one better and pick up a copy of the game with the machine to play it on for next to nothing on eBay. You might want to set aside a good part of your weekend to play it, as time passes a lot faster when you’re in the zone.

Review: Bishi Bashi Special

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 19:17:00 +0000

Attention! Ready? Go!

Bishi Bashi Special is a set of games originally found on a pair of Konami arcade machines, the PlayStation version of which allowed up to 8 players using two multi-taps and featured 85 completely mental minigames. This was all years before Wario Ware, Inc., Wii Party or any other mini-game compilations came along.

The games featured such things as body builders on pogo sticks jumping for a piece of meat (“Meat Catcher”), a dance-off to get the biggest afro (“Perm Mania”), a bride throwing wedding cake down the aisle (“Hyper Pie”), juggling cavemen eating different colored balls (“Uncle Bean”), and others with names like “Uncle Launcher”, “Robo Docking” and “Touch Tone Mania”. The games used control schemes that will be familiar to many a game player - for example button bashing like Track and Field, pattern repetition like Simon, and rhythm action button pressing in time with the music. Digitiser, a video game fanzine written by Paul Rose provided by Channel 4 as part of their Teletext service had this to say about Bishi Bashi Special “utterly, utterly dreadful–but… probably one of the best games I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing.” That sums things up better than I ever could.

I used to play Bishi Bashi Special whilst I was lived in my first house share - the perfect place for it really. Having that many people all laughing manically at what was happening on screen was a fantastic experience. Interestingly, the few people I’ve spoken to about the game all have such fond memories but nobody could actually remember too many details so the video linked to below brought them all flooding back. In fact, I’d forgotten that a multi-player game could be so much fun until the exact same atmosphere appeared when I was recently at a friend’s house playing Wii Party, which takes what was done so well in Bishi Bashi Special and dresses it up in that special way only Nintendo seem to be able to do.

So if you’re not consumed by Wii Party and it’s horse racing mode, or sick to death of Wario Ware, Inc., and you’re hungry for more social multi-player gaming, then it might be time to revisit Bishi Bashi Special. It can currently be picked up for £3.49 on the PlayStation Store. That works out at less than 5p a game, making it quite possibly the bargain of the century.

Review: DS Spirits Hanafuda

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 06:12:00 +0000

Nintendo started out in the entertainment business by manufacturing Hanafuda, or flower cards. There are a number of games that are commonly played with these cards the most popular of which is Koi-Koi, a game of surprising depth and one of my vices.

A Hanafuda deck consists of 48 cards split into twelve suits - one for each month. Each is designated a flower, and each suit has four cards. Typically, there are two “normal” cards, one poetry ribbon card, and a final special card. Familiarising yourself with the Hanafuda deck is the first obstacle to playing a game with them.

The object of Koi-Koi is to form special card combinations (“yaku”) from cards accumulated in a point pile. Players can gain cards in their point piles by matching cards in their hands, or cards drawn from the draw pile, with cards on the table. Once a yaku has been made, a player can stop to cash in points, or keep going (“koi-koi”) to form additional yaku for more points. Different yaku are worth different numbers of points, roughly matching how difficult it is to collect that particular combination of cards. Memorising the dozen or so valid yaku is the second obstacle to the game.

I first played Koi-Koi as part of the 42 All-Time Classics compilation of parlour games that Nintendo released for the DS. The game really intrigued me and I played it a lot to try to memorise the yaku. By then, though, the game had well and truly sunk it’s teeth into me. I search high and low for alternative versions of the game, amassing quite a collection in the process. I have Hanafuda/Koi-Koi games on pretty much every platform from older systems such as the WonderSwan, PlayStation and Dreamcast to more recent systems such as the iPhone, Wii and Nintendo DS. The main benefit of playing the game electronically is that you don’t have to keep score, but I find it fascinating that there can be such a range of quality and implementation when the rules of the game are so fixed. Some versions lay the cards on the table in a very confusing way, others over-complicate the controls so that it’s tricky to manipulate the cards or even see whose turn it is next or what your possible choices are. Then there are the games that dress up the game with licenced characters or graphics, such as Youkai Hana Asobi, in an attempt to add a story around the game.

So, after much searching I was overjoyed to find DS Spirits Hanafuda, which for me is pretty much the perfect Hanafuda game. It looks good, controls well, lays out the cards logically and has a multitude of game modes including a Mission mode in which you have to play in a variety of ways such as winning without conceding a point, by collecting certain yaku or within a certain number of rounds. This mode in particular shows the great depth to the game and I’m still to finish the final challenge. The only bad thing about this version of the game is that it features only Japanese text. Dealing with Japanese is the third obstacle with the game, as the traditional Japanese nature of the game means that there’s very little Western interest and very few versions released that are English-friendly.

But obstacles are there to be overcome. If you’ve not got a Nintendo DS, then the next best Koi-Koi game is on the iPhone. This version by Hidetoshi Hayakawa plays a great game of cards, supports wireless multi-player and also features a progressive mode versus the computer. Whilst not as polished or complete as DS Spirits Hanafuda it features full English interface and instructions so it’s as probably the best starting point. Perhaps Koi-Koi will capture your heart as much as it has mine? Give the game a go and find out.

Review: ChuChu Rocket!

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 14:01:00 +0000

The Dreamcast was the first truly online home video game console, and brought with it the first wave of fantastic online multi-player games that could be played on your TV. ChuChu Rocket! was one of the best, an outstanding action puzzler with a glorious multi-player mode.

The aim of the game is to guide mice (“ChuChus”) around the screen into one or more goals (Rockets) whilst avoiding any cats (“KapuKapus”) that are roaming about. Both the mice and cats move in predictable ways - they always turn right when reaching a wall, they follow corners and they turn around when they encounter a dead end. The player places up to three arrows on the play field, which will direct anything that passes over them - both mice and cats. Arrows cannot be laid on top of other arrow or obstacles, and disappear over time and the oldest is removed if the player lays a fourth arrow. Special mice frequently appear, golden mice being worth many times more than regular mice and pink mice randomly changing gameplay in one of a number of ways. Such a simple premise quickly results in a maddening procession of mice and cats and all manner of confusion as players try to outwit each the positioning of arrows.

Single player mode saw you play against the computer or in puzzle mode where you have to figure out the solution to puzzles by placing your arrows in the correct locations to get the mice to the exit, which was an excellent part of the game in itself. Local multi-player is an absolute riot and has to be seen to be believed - there simply aren’t many other games that are this much fun played with a few friends. Online multi-player was a great backup option to have as you’d never be short of people to play against. It’s something we’re used to these days with things like Xbox Live and as we have all grown up and got on with our own lives it’s often the preferred way to experience multi-player gaming.

With the demise of the Dreamcast the game slowly faded away, briefly reentering the public eye a year later with a release on the Game Boy Advance. This handheld version matched the Dreamcast original feature for feature, with the exception of online play. However it did have slightly simplified graphics and an extra 2,5000 user-generated puzzles taken from the Dreamcast version’s online hub. There was a fan remake for the Atari ST which was an accurate but unofficial version of the game.

Recently a version of the game was released on the App Store, but with features being spread across an iPhone version and an iPad version and it not feat as much content as the older GameBoy Advance version. It’s great to see such an original game get a new lease of life, but sad that it’s still missing important features from the original, showing just how far ahead of it’s time the Dreamcast was. Hopefully the iOS versions of the game will gain multi-player support in the future and finally give us the experience that was so enthralling those 10 years ago.

This review is dedicated to my good friend Morgan, without whom I’d have never bought a Dreamcast. He will always be Mr Sega to me.

Review: Joust

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 11:29:00 +0000

Joust was the first arcade game I ever played, at Royal Video on Breckfield Road North in Liverpool in the mid-80s. Those were the days. It’s a fascinating, old-school arcade game that still holds up well today.

During the peak of video game arcades, most games were based on abstract or fantasy concepts with a small amount of realism thrown in the make the audience feel involved. These days everything is trying so hard to be lifelike and I often long for the days where games were more interested in offering something out of the ordinary. Williams’ Joust was one such game. It put the player in the game as a futuristic knight sitting astride a flying bird, armed only with a lance, on a mission to defeat a number of adversaries and collect some eggs along the way. Every young boy has, at one point, wanted to be a knight in shining armour and this game gave you the ability to do that albeit in a world closer to the one in Tron than a medieval tale.

The only controls are left and right and flap - you gain height by pressing the flap button repeatedly. That was enough to do some skilful flying and manoeuvring around the wave, using the platforms that are dotted around to help you on your way. The levels increase in difficulty with the addition of more bad guys, different platform layouts - some of which crumble away mid-wave - and a lava pit along the bottom which will pull you in if you get too close. You can rebound off platforms which is a strategy that should be used to your advantage as bad guys can be turned into collectible eggs by descending on them from above - a somewhat less risky strategy than the lancing them. Take too long to kill the bad guys and a shrieking pterodactyl will arrive to wreak havoc - you can only defeat it by lancing it in the mouth which is a task that requires pixel perfect precision.

Joust is a typical arcade game in that it’s easy to pick up but tricky to master, a trademark Williams game if ever there was one. It’s a difficult game because it was designed to take have you play for short periods of time and keep taking money from players. There are a lot of tactics to be discovered and a surprising amount of depth with bonus points being given for completing the level in various unspoken ways. A second player can join in on a different bird and it’s up to you to decide whether or not to play cooperatively or against each other, often resulting in hilarious duels or short-term falling out.

The Joust world record was recently broken by John McAllister after a marathon 53 hours, 47 minutes of play - racking up a score of 107,301,150. The previous record had lasted for 26 years and John made the decision to stop playing as soon as he broke it. He had 105 spare lives at that point so I’d imagine he could have gone on as long as he was physically able. An astonishing achievement, especially when you see how difficult the game is in this clip of wave 31.

The core gameplay concept was used by Nintendo a couple of years later for their NES game Balloon Fight, and there have been a number of unofficial versions and fan remakes of Joust since. I’d love to see a modern day interpretation of the game. Whilst I doubt it would work in 3D I’m sure there are enough ideas to give the game a new lease of life.

Review: Speed Freaks

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 10:37:00 +0000

Nintendo seem reluctant to release more than one Mario Kart per console, so fans of the game will often seek out a new challenge by playing one of its many clones. It’s often a futile exercise as it makes painfully clear how far ahead of the competition Nintendo are.

That said, there have been a handful of games that manage to capture enough of the ever-elusive Nintendo magic to deliver an enjoyable and challenging racing game: Rare’s Diddy King Racing was the first contender of note, followed closely by Crash Team Racing. In fact, it was the later that caused Speed Freaks to fly under the radar of most PlayStation gamers - it was delayed by Sony Computer Entertainment to make way for Crash Team Racing at retail. I suppose it’s one thing to try to take sales away from Mario Kart on a competing platform but another to cannibalise sales of your own games on your own platform. The game was given a later release in North America under the name of Speed Punks.

The game has some really nice handling, with some subtle additions to the staple kart racer mechanics including an interesting turbo system. It has a nice enough range of power-ups and weapons that offer something new compared to Mario Kart at the expense of being quite as balanced. There are shortcuts on every track, as you might expect, which are essential when trying to beat some of the more difficult levels or challenges the game has to offer. As well as the usual tournament and time trial modes the game also offers split screen multi-player and a range of bonus characters and modes that are unlocked by playing through the game. Whilst the difficulty level is a little high you have three retry attempts that can be used to restart particular races and recover from any catastrophic errors. Compared to Vanishing Point - another of my favourite racers - this really is a most welcome feature.

A distinctly British sense of humour pervades the whole game, especially obvious in the naming of two bonus characters - Cosworth and Beamer. If Mario had grown up in Essex he’d fit perfectly into this game, and that’s a compliment. The graphics look really great and have a fantastic cartoon feel to them, character design is interesting and unusual, and track design has more going on than the standard scenarios you seem to get in kart racers like this. As with other games of this vintage, the computer AI is prone to stretching the laws physics somewhat, most noticeable in severe rubber-banding and predictable routing. However, despite these minor issues, it remains a fun and rewarding game and one well worth seeking out.

Review: Orbital

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 00:28:00 +0000

Drifting through space without a care in the universe.

During the final days of the Game Boy Advance a series of games were released by Nintendo in their home territory of Japan under the bit Generations label. A set of seven games featuring basic but stylish graphics and somewhat experimental gameplay.

My favourite of the bunch was Orbital, or sometimes Orbient, the objective of which is to control a white star which can grow larger by absorbing other stars. Similarly sized stars are coloured blue, smaller stars are grey and larger stars are red. Collecting blue or grey stars forms the basis of progression in the game, though there are some subtleties to gameplay as it is possible to gain satellites by approaching smaller stars at an angle that will cause them to orbit you - orbit range is shown by a ring around the star. Red stars and asteroids must be avoided at all costs, adding a subtle but necessary level of danger to proceedings. Once your star has grown big enough a final star will begin to glow orange and capturing it in your orbit will clear the stage.

The method of control is really interesting - two buttons are used to either attract or repel your star from the nearest object. This may sound limiting but it allows for an almost analog level of precision from a distinctly digital method of control. Limited lives and other non-collectible obstacles round off the game perfectly. Imagine Katamari Damacy pared down to the essential elements and you’ll be on your way to understanding the vibe.

The beauty of any game built around such a simple set of rules is in the level design, and Orbital is no exception. The difficulty curve - how the levels increase in complexity - is just right, meaning you’ll never feel cheated. New methods of play will need to be discovered if you are to stand any chance of being able to manoeuvre your star with the precision demanded in some of the later levels. Playing the game is a very relaxing experience, and you may find yourself floating around losing hours in the process. It’s as much of a zone game as Tempest 2000, F-Zero or the Wipeout series but more of a thinking mans game than a twitch experience. Though there’s still opportunity for it to sink it’s claws in deep enough to have you screaming at the TV - trying to beat your previous best for any level and numerous minor objectives reward repeated play. In other words: this game has real depth.

The game was later given a re-release on WiiWare under the name of Orbient. Graphics and sound were given extra definition for the big screen and there were a few minor additions to the gameplay, meaning that it’s well worth playing even if you’ve played the original. Both versions of the game are a triumph, showing that beauty and simplicity in gameplay can lead to an engrossing game with a fantastic atmosphere.

Review: Pushover

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 07:04:00 +0000

This game was a real time sink for me during my formative years, with its simple rules hiding a fiendishly difficult set of puzzles that chewed through the hours as if they were minutes. It has to be said, however, that the Quavers crisps licence attached to the game was a very odd marketing move.

Each stage in the game consists of a number of platforms - interconnected by ladders - on which there are a series of dominoes. Each type of domino has a different pattern which dictates how it will react when toppled over. The dominoes must be arranged, one at a time, in the correct sequence so that when all dominoes topple in one chain reaction. At this point the exit will open and you can go on to the next stage. The first set of stages are a well-paced introduction to the different types of dominoes.

Various problems present themselves as soon as you start playing - you can only carry one domino at a time, and there is limited space to swap dominoes around. Platforms and even the dominoes themselves can be destroyed. If a domino blocks the exit then you’ll not be able to get out. Your character, G.I. Ant, can also die if he falls too far or is crushed by a falling domino. So it’s a lot more complicated than a simple game of dominoes.

Things are kept interesting by the number of different types of dominoes lending themselves to a variety of puzzles involving some real lateral thinking and planning ahead. Stages are set throughout nine different themed worlds all of which have their own unique graphical style and background music. Almost as an afterthought, a packet of Quavers is awarded to the player upon completing each world, tying things in loosely to the licence. Upon finishing an individual stage a token is awarded, which can be used as an undo function to save time that would be spent laying out the dominoes again. Completing all 100 stages in one session would be a ridiculous challenge, so the game uses a password system allowing you to easily resume from any stage.

Pushover is the perfect example of a one hit wonder. It was a great, original idea but it’s difficulty meant that you’d end up throwing your joystick at the wall because you’d had enough if you weren’t banging on the publisher’s door asking for more. The satisfaction gained from figuring out a puzzle that you’d been struggling with for some time was as addictive as any game.

The game was well received and a sequel - One Step Beyond - was released a year later which featured an entirely new game mechanic. Whilst it was a good game in it’s own right it can’t be held in as high regard as the original.

Whilst you can still play the original game on handful of platforms it was released on, there’s an excellent, modern and authentic remake by Ishisoft that is more enjoyable to play these days.

Review: Tomba!

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 14:02:00 +0000

Evil pigs, giant eggs, farting flowers, butterflies, mushrooms, a hungry monkey, a lost dwarf child, a thousand year-old wise man and a pink-haired feral boy. Yes, Tomba! may not be your average game but it’s certainly an overlooked gem.

Sony’s PlayStation brought gaming kicking and screaming into the third dimension. Before the introduction of such a powerful console we’d only seen small glimpses of 3D gaming. The SNES had Mode 7 which allowed for the pseudo-3D effects seen in games such as Pilotwings and Super Mario Kart whilst the Super FX chip allowed slightly more convincing 3D worlds like those in Star Fox and Stunt Race FX. But the PlayStation took things to another dimension - allowing fully textured 3D worlds. But where did that leave traditional 2D concepts?

Whoopee Camp had some ideas. They took the platform game and stretched it into something that sits somewhere between 2D and 3D - sort of 2.5D. Action takes place on a 2D plane and the characters are 2D sprites, but the level is rendered in 3D. This gives everything the benefit of depth and perspective but keeps gameplay recognisable, simple and straightforward. As well as the platforming aspect, gameplay also borrowed elements from adventure games such as Coktel Vision’s Gobliiins or LucasArts’ The Secret of Monkey Island where you have to collect and use items in specific ways in order to progress. It even borrows some RPG elements in that there are multiple, overlapping events or tasks to be completed - only a fraction of which are essential for progression of the story – for which you’re rewarded with adventure points. I guess the most accurate description of Tomba! would be a platform adventure game, but that would be to simple a definition.

You can see from the graphics that the game has a unique visual style - full of bold, neon colours more reminiscent of the late-80s rather than the late-90s. You might think the cartoon aesthetic would cover up game meant for kids, but beneath the bright veneer you’ll find a very challenging game that will take you far longer to complete than many more modern ones. Tomba! has a great sense of humour and a somewhat bizarre story but it nevertheless oozes charm and character.

The game received a sequel that moved things on even further - the characters as well as the levels were fully 3D - whilst keeping the core gameplay largely the same. Tomba! creator Tokuro Fujiwara - best known for creating Ghosts ‘n Goblins and producing the Mega Man series - now works at Platinum Games whose recent Vanquish garnered rave reviews. Perhaps they’ll revisit one of gaming’s most misunderstood icons for a third time? A new adventure of the pink-haired little oik would be perfectly suited to modern download services such as DSiWare, WiiWare, XBLA or PSN. Here’s hoping.

Review: Sensible Soccer

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 10:35:00 +0000

The beautiful game.

When people mention football (soccer) games these days there are probably mean one of two games: FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer. These games have evolved year-on-year, from when they were originally poles apart to today where they are very much the same sort of game: photorealistic players, recognisable stadiums, team kits, tournaments and commentary from your most loved (or hated) TV sports commentator. They really feel like you’re at a football match. But I often ask myself why they feel like you’re watching a football match rather than playing a football match?

Back in the days when pixel graphics ruled the world - well my world at least - the computer football game was an entirely different beast. The power of the machines at the time imposed limits on what was possible in terms of graphics and anything else superfluous to the gameplay. Football was rendered at a much more abstract level and the rest was left wide open ready to be filled in by your imagination.

In this story it all started with Microprose Soccer - created for Microprose by a couple of Essex boys: Chris Yates and Jon Hare, who later went in to form Sensible Software. It literally flipped football games on their head - displaying the action from a top down viewpoint which allowed for easy control of both player and ball, and also let you influence the path of the ball after a kick using aftertouch. From humble beginnings come great things, as they say, and that was definitely true in this instance.

The story goes that in the middle of developing their “god simulator” Mega-lo-mania, the guys at Sensible Software started dressing up the tiny characters in football kits for fun. Reflecting on their addiction to Anco’s Kick Off 2 at the time, they realised that they had the basis for a new football game of their own: Sensible Soccer - or Sensi as it is affectionately known.

What set Sensi apart from its competitors was that you could see so much more of the pitch at once, allowing for an unparalleled level of forward planning. Control of players and ball was more accurate than ever and meant that it really felt like you were on the pitch playing as part of a team. Although the graphics may seem purely functional they possessed an ability to show remarkable likeness for the players they were representing, regardless of the fact they were only composed of hair colour, skin colour and shirt number it was completely obvious who each player was.

Subsequent revisions of the game made small, incremental improvements including the addition of red and yellow cards and an on-screen referee, as well as improved goalkeeper behaviour and other tweaks. International teams were added along with the World Cup Tournament in a version that also made it onto most consoles at the time, but it remained the same game. A year later came Sensible World of Soccer, which proved to be the ultimate version of the game. It added further refinements to the core gameplay and a comprehensive manager mode giving the game so much more depth. It also featured an amazing amount of player data - all of the players in all of the teams from all of the professional leagues in the world at that time were included - over 1,500 teams and 27,000 players in total. Add to that all national and international competitions for all club and national teams around the world and you have an most perfect representation of football.

But you know what? All that data doesn’t really matter - all you need is a couple of joysticks, a second player and a few minutes to enjoy one of the finest videogame experiences every made. In fact, in 2007 the game was included in a list of theten most important video games of all time. The fact it plays as well today as it did all those years ago is testament to it’s quality. It remains a truly beautiful game.

Review: Excite Truck

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 20:05:00 +0000

Creating a sequel to a game is a tricky thing. It’s often difficult to retain the essence of the original game, meaning a lot of sequels keep things safe and don’t stray too far from the concept along the way. This usually leads to an average game, which is why it was such a shock to find that this one goes up to 11.

One of the most well remembered NES games is Excite Bike - an arcade-style dirt bike game in which you jump over a series of hills whilst going fast and avoiding obstacles. The game received a sequel on the Nintendo 64 which took concept into the third dimension, adding a few game new modes along the way, but otherwise remaining quite faithful to the original.

After that, not much was heard from the series until a surprise announcement of Excite Truck as a launch title for the Nintendo Wii. It traded in bikes for trucks and multiplied pretty much everything else in the game by a huge factor. Courses are no longer set in a stadium but rather around vast landscapes based on countries from around the world that lend themselves to the standard themes for driving game environments: Mexico for deserts and canyons, Finland for snow and ice, Fiji for beaches and volcanoes, not to mention Canada, Scotland and China. The core gameplay is the same, in that you must race around a course getting big air and beating your opponents, making good use of your turbo which is prone to overheating. Also thrown into the mix is the ability to crash into your opponents, or indeed the scenery. Crashing into the scenery sees you having to pound a button repeatedly to restart your car, a great nod of the head to gamers who do this anyway during cut scenes and delays in many other games. On the other hand, crashing into opponents leads to a new mechanic - receiving stars - which can also be gained by performing mid-air spins and driving dangerously. Winning a race is not simply a matter of coming first - you also have to receive a certain number of stars, which adds a nice extra layer of subtlety to play.

Just like it’s predecessors, racing is still very much an arcade experience. There’s no hint of simulation anywhere in the game and that’s no bad thing. The game starts off easy enough and then gets more and more of an adrenalin rush as it continues through various difficulty levels and challenges. There’s a great sense of speed throughout, too. The game remains finely balanced at all times and you’re never left feeling hard done by and are always hungry for one more go. Racing hard and fast and getting ridiculously big air really is one of life’s greatest gaming pleasures.

The game offered local multi-player only, something that was addressed in it’s madcap sequel Excitebots: Trick Racing which adds a whole range of crazy mini-games and power-ups to proceedings whilst trading in the trucks for transforming robot animal cars. Yes. Whilst not as charming as Excite Truck, Excitebots is every bit as good a game. It may even be better if you like to play your racing games online. Sadly, Excite Bots was only ever released in the USA so you’ll have to look for it on import.

For those that don’t own a Wii, Smash Cars on the PlayStation 3 is a pretty decent copy of Excite Truck but has you racing radio controlled cars around oversized locations. It’s not quite as good a game as either Excite Truck or Excite Bots, and it brings little of it’s own to the table, but it plays well enough.

Review: Binary Land

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 18:00:00 +0000

A tale of enduring love, spiders and spray cans. This charming little maze game is interesting for one major reason - you control both characters simultaneously.

It’s not as difficult as it sounds, though, so don’t worry. Both characters walk up and down the screen as directed, but when you attempt sideways movement the first character does as directed and the other does the opposite - making for some interesting brain work. The characters start on opposite sides the screen and you have to figure out how to navigate the maze so that the characters arrive at the goal at the same time. Judicious use of dead-ends and the maze walls can prevent movement of one or the other characters and allow you to move them one at a time, albeit only in a limited way. Things get more difficult with the addition of spider enemies that need to be avoided, and also spider’s webs that will trap either character if walked into. At this point you’ll have to get to them and then use a spray can to destroy the web and free them.

As with most games of this age, the graphics are functional at best but they do have a certain charm of their own. The music is Eric Satie’s “Je te veux” (I want you) - a sentimental, slow waltz that lends itself wonderfully to the NES chip music stylings. But the game is really all about the puzzles provided by the maze layouts of which there many - the first three are always the same but after that the rest of the mazes are presented in a random order.

Hudson Soft first released Binary Land in 1983 for the MSX and a bunch of other Japan-only home computers and this version of the game featured a boy and a girl. The game was later released in 1985 for the NES/Famicom with the two main characters replaced by penguins, which whilst being reminiscent of Pengo adds a lot of charm to the game. Even more so when you look at the cover. The MSX version saw release in Europe by Kuma Computers Ltd in 1984, but the NES version never made it out of Japan.

More recently a poor java mobile phone version was made and the game was released as Hudson Best Collection Vol. 4 on Game Boy Advance, which contains a bunch of NES games running under emulation. Whilst emulation is the most convenient way to play the original game these days, there have also been a couple of fan remakes which can be played on your desktop computer.

Review: Gunpey

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 11:29:00 +0000

This game was dedicated to the memory of Gunpei Yokoi - genius creator of Nintendo’s Game & Watch and Game Boy handheld consoles. A fitting tribute that means his name will live on.

The game was released for the WonderSwan an odd little machine available only in Japan and created by Bandai to compete with the Neo Geo Pocket and - of course - the Game Boy. It featured a strange layout of buttons including two d-pads at one end of the screen meaning that it could be used to play games in either landscape or portrait orientations - a feature used recently on the Nintendo DS. Just like the Game Boy, the WonderSwan received a colour upgrade during it’s lifetime but it was too little too late and it didn’t really challenge the Game Boy at all. It did, however, have a handful of great games of which Gunpey is one.

A puzzle game with a number of similarities to Tetris Attack. It uses a two-block cursor - but here it swaps two vertically adjacent pieces - and the player is trying to clear pieces that are moving up the screen, trying to avoid any of them reaching the top and the subsequent game over.

Clearing pieces is done by moving small sections of line up and down within their own column so as to form a complete line that spans across the whole play area from left to right. Longer lines mean bigger scores, and it’s even possible to extend the line with extra pieces for a short time after the line has been made and before it disappears from play. This means you can chain together lines for even bigger scores and skilful play is rewarded with huge scores. Special block types are steadily introduced throughout play to add strategy to proceedings, and there’s a range of game modes available: Endless, Stage, Story, Free and Puzzle.

There are three versions of Gunpey for the WonderSwan - the first video game version, with a Wild West themed game, Tare Panda No Gunpey which is based on a popular Japanese cartoon, and Gunpey EX a colour version of the game. A PlayStation version was later released which adhered to the Wild West theme of the WonderSwan version, but with more detailed graphics and multi-player. More recently Q Entertainment of Meteos fame created two different versions of the game for Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable.

Really though, all subsequent versions haven’t added much since the first video game version of the concept, which remains a great puzzle game that will keep you coming back for more. A game every bit worthy of it’s name.

For the true fans, the original version of the concept was an LCD game called Professor Henoheno (プロフェッサーへのへの) or Henoheno, created by Koto (Gunpei Yokoi’s company) in conjunction with LCD game manufacturers HIRO.

Review: Tetris Attack

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 11:00:00 +0000

When does a Tetris game have nothing to do with Tetris? When you’re trying to market a fantastic but niche Japanese game to the rest of the world, of course.

Tetris Attack has a strange heritage, starting out life as a Japan-only release Panel de Pon. It was successful in Japan and prompted Nintendo to wonder how well it might do with a worldwide release. This resulted in them doing a quick rebrand of the game, adding in a bunch of characters from their SNES masterpiece Yoshi’s Island in an effort to make it more appealing to gamers outside of Japan. It was a great marketing decision and the game was a success. As mentioned earlier on the core gameplay has nothing in common with Tetris, but it does feature blocks so I guess that was a bit of artistic licence on Nintendo’s part. Lucky that they had the handheld Tetris rights at this particular time and were able to persuade Tetris Company founder Henk Rogers to let them use the name in this way. Perhaps proof that a great game concept won’t sell well if it doesn’t have a recognisable brand name attached?

Blocks continually rise up from the bottom of the screen, the player controlling a two block wide cursor that swaps the pair of blocks horizontally when the action button is pressed. Making a row or column of three or more blocks of the same colour will clear them from the play field, potentially creating chains of combos as new blocks falling to take their place. If the blocks reach the top of the screen it’s game over. The game offers a variety of both single and multi-player modes. In these versus modes, combos will send large garbage blocks to your opponent, which must be eliminated by clearing a piece that is touching it, turning it into a bunch of normal blocks.

One thing the game does have in common with Tetris is that it’s fiendishly addictive. The simple gameplay mechanic and depth of the rules of play mean that it sinks its teeth into you fast and hard and refuses to let go. In that respect, the game is up there as one of the best puzzle games of all time.

Playing the game today is easy, as there have been so many versions released over the years. The concept received a second rebranding a few years later in the form of the Puzzle League series which has appeared on every subsequent Nintendo console. The DS version even adds touch control to the game making it even more accessible.

Review: Sheep, Dog ‘n’ Wolf

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 19:00:00 +0000

In a sea of badly realised licenced games French company Infogrames made a daring move to buck the trend, creating this cartoon stealth ‘em up set in the Looney Tunes world. The result is a fabulous game as imaginative as the source material it’s based on.

You play a Ralph Wolf – a Looney Tunes character the double of Wile E. Coyote from their Road Runner series of cartoons. The story goes that you’re starring in a game show hosted by Daffy Duck in which you have to steal sheep from under the nose of Sam Sheepdog. Using ACME products such as rockets, dynamite and giant elastic bands ordered from mailboxes conveniently placed around each level - as well as a variety of items that make up the scenery - you have to figure out how to get to a sheep without being seen. After that, it’s usually - but not always - an easier task to get it to the level exit. It’s a brilliantly inventive mix of stealth, puzzle, platform and adventure genres that really brings a breath of fresh air.

The pace of the game encourages a thoughtful and sedate approach. With it’s electro-jazz music you’re left largely to your own devices as you survey the lay of the land, sneak around, collect items and figure out how to approach the problem of sheep stealing with the tools you have at hand.

The game is slickly presented with short tutorials to introduce every new gameplay mechanic and has all the hallmarks of a Looney Tunes cartoon: a cast of well known characters all of whom have their proper voices, a luscious cell-shaded 3D realisation of the cartoon world, and the famously comical over-the-top deaths.

Even today - almost 10 years after it was released – it’s rare to get a game this simple, fun and challenging. In fact, there are few games on the original PlayStation that holds up so well after so many years. Plus, it’s as cheap as chips on eBay and you can even get a graphically improved version that will run on Windows that might be more convenient to obtain and play these days.

Replay value is limited once you’ve figured out the puzzles, but I still enjoy revisiting levels from time to time.

I’d love to see a follow-up to this game, or alternatively another game that treads the same ground as I’m hungry for more.

Review: RalliSport Challenge 2

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 10:14:00 +0000

You’d be forgiven for not having heard of RalliSport Challenge - a rally racing game for the original Xbox, and Windows PC. But don’t go away without playing the sequel - the best rally racing game ever made.

I missed out on the Xbox during it’s ascent to online gaming console of choice, picking one up only recently when a friend of mine gave me his old one to use as a media centre. I took the opportunity to catch up on the best bits of the Xbox back catalogue and was pleased to find some absolute gems. Including a few titles released under Microsoft’s now defunct XSN Sports label: Links 2004 and RalliSport Challenge 2. I love a good driving game so I settled down for the ride.

In order for a rally game to work in needs to recreate everything that makes the sport what it is. As well as fast cars and precise handling, it needs to simulate the environment, terrain, atmosphere, speed and exhilaration. That’s a lot of factors and it’s understandable why so many rally games end up so average - they undoubtedly get something wrong along the way. It could be dodgy graphics, unconvincing weather effects, unbelievable scenery or – worse – handling that feels unrealistic. Or maybe the game just doesn’t feel like you’re going very fast. RalliSport Challenge 2 makes no such mistakes. Forget Colin McRae/DiRT, Sega Rally, V-Rally, WRC - this is the only rally game you’ll ever need.

It features a great range of cars, course, locations and race types – which can be unlocked through a novel tree structure where you choose which branch to race next. This means you have the luxury of skipping a race you may be finding difficult so you can still progress. The graphics are great given the limitations of the Xbox - cars and scenery are very detailed and everything looks lifelike. Environmental effects - time of day and weather in particular – are brilliant and really add to the feeling of being there. Track design is inspired, with even the longest of courses remaining distinct over their length and not looking like they’re put together from repeated elements or building blocks. Cars show damage in real time so you’ll see windows smash and body parts fly off when you inevitably collide with trees or walls, which brings me to my only gripe about the game. In the years that have passed since the game was released we’ve been spoilt with destructible scenery and all sort of fancy effects, but in RalliSport Challenge 2 everything is pretty much static. You can crash into a house or a fence and everything – apart from your own car – remains untouched. Still, in a game where you’re making every effort to stay pointing the right way it’s not much of a problem - in fact it’s often a bit of a help. Vibration and sound varies according to the type of road you’re driving on, again adding to the immersion. In terms of difficulty racing can be a struggle at times but it’s always fun. There’s also some DLC available - 4 new cars, 2 new careers and some new car livery.

Everything screams along at breakneck speed and the game engine doesn’t miss a beat at 60fps, a goal of visual fidelity that seems to have been forgotten about in the race for photorealism on modern machines like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. You’ll want to hook your Xbox up using a component connection so that you get progressive scan. RGB SCART just isn’t up to the job of displaying detailed images so quickly - the interlaced output will mean you’ll struggle to see the finer details of the fast moving track somewhere around the half way point in the game.

It’s sad to think that we may never get a third game in the series - Microsoft simply have no idea what hot property they’re sitting on. Sadly it’s in their hands as developer DICE – of Mirror’s Edge fame – have no control over the situation. To add insult to injury the game doesn’t run on the Xbox 360 so you’re going to have to fire up your old original Xbox to play it, and Microsoft recently discontinued Xbox Live support for their original machine and so you’re no longer able to play through official means. It is possible using a third party service such as XLink Kai and the DLC is available for download if you google it.

Some feelings are hard to describe in words and that’s true here - there’s never been a game that felt so right and so complete.

Review: Meteos

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 08:02:00 +0000

It’s easy to forget that when dual screen feature of the DS was announced some corners of the gaming world thought Nintendo had lost the plot. Whilst a reasonable number of launch games used the lower, touch-sensitive screen in novel ways, it was important that games continued to do so as the console matured.

Meteos was the DS’s second big-name puzzle game, after the excellent Polarium from Mitchell Corp. The scenario is fairly simple: meteors of various colours rain down towards the bottom of the screen and pile up into columns as they land on top of one another, whilst the player moves any block up and down within it’s own column. When three or more meteors of the same colour are arranged either vertically or horizontally they ignite and rocket up towards the top screen, carrying with them any other meteors that get in the way. Skilful play chaining together multiple ignitions means you can lift lots more blocks at once and make things easier for yourself. Push as many meteors as you can of the bottom screen, and watch out for the bottom screen filling up or it will be game over.

The constant barrage of blocks raining down the screen and the continuous chain of reactions blasting blocks back up the screen can result in absolute pandemonium. Coupled with a riot of sound effects, some players find the whole thing sensory overload. Indeed, the multi-tasking required by the player means that playing the game is both a mental and physical exercise that is never short of tension. It’s the initial confusion that comes with playing such a manic game that I think prevented the game reaching Tetris-style fever.

Nevertheless Meteos is accommodating to new players, featuring a multitude of “planets” each with subtle variations. For example reduced gravity will affecting the pace of the gameplay. Throw into the mix a finely balanced difficulty curve, a bunch of single and multi-player game modes and you’ve got a pretty much perfectly realised game.

The game is commonly credited to Tetsuya Mizuguchi, given that it hails from the Q Entertainment stable, but it was in fact designed by Masahiro Sakurai who had previously been the creative force behind both the Kirby and the Super Smash Bros. series of games for Nintendo whilst at HAL Laboratory. Nintendo fans are hoping he brings the midas touch to his next project - Kid Icarus: Uprising for the 3DS.

A pseudo-sequel to the game was released under the name Meteos: Disney Magic which introduced branded graphics, the ability to move blocks sideways and the a change in screen orientation allowing for a taller play area. All changes are considered to have been for the worse, so if you’re looking to buy the game go for the original version.

Review: Flicky

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 08:35:00 +0000

Flicky is one of those games that’s been released so many times on so many compilations that you probably already own it without even realising. It’s also a typical 1980s arcade game—simple to pick up, difficult to master, and a lot of fun along the way.

I’m a bit too young to have encountered Flicky in the arcades. I actually stumbled across the game by accident—it came in a double game cartridge alongside Gunstar Heroes on the Mega Drive. Quite why those two games were put together I have no idea. Designed by Yoji Ishii—later part of Sonic Team—Flicky can be considered spiritual precursor to the Sonic the Hedgehog series.

The aim of the game is, as a blue sparrow named Flicky, to collect a bunch of lost chicks from around each stage and lead them to the exit. It may sound easy but there are a lot of things that can get in your way. Enemies take the form of various animals that emerge from air vents—one touch and you’ll lose a life, as well as your trail of chicks. Chicks will also stop following you if an enemy crosses their path, at which point you’ll need to pick them up again. You’re not totally defenceless though, as you can collect plant pots and things from around each stage. These things are autmatically thrown as you jump, so judicious timing of jumps can be key. The stages in the game are single screens that scroll horizontally to keep Flicky centred. Each stage is loosely decorated to look like an apartment with windows, shelves, pot plants, home-wares, and of course the exit door.

There are more nice touches—some chicks are blind, and if set loose from your trail will wander around aimlessly making them much more difficult to pick up. You can spot those chicks easily as they wear Stevie Wonder style sunglasses. Every few stages a bonus round appears, in which chicks are flung into the air leaving you to catch them in a net. Flicky’s inertia makes collecting all of them pretty tricky, but doing so will gain a lot more points. More points not only means a higher score, but also the chance of extra lives. Doing really well will result in a series of pixel girls appearing in the odd looking window on the level as your end of level bonus is added to your score. Quite a task, if you’re looking for a challenge.

What I love so much about Flicky is that it’s such a pure, zen gaming experience. It’s possible to plan a route around the stage in away that you can pick up all chicks in one go, avoiding/killing any enemies en route, before depositing them at the exit. All in less than 20 seconds in order to get maximum bonus points. The satisfaction from such a perfect run is immense. However, messing up will result in the stage becoming very difficult indeed, as you attempt to pick up the chicks who are, of course, now moving around.

I love the way the game does so much with so little. A true classic.

Over the years Flicky has been re-released as part of various Sega Mega Drive/Genesis compilations and is available, in one form or another, for pretty much every recent platform, including GameCube, PC, PSP, PS2, PS3, Xbox, Xbox 360 and even some mobile phones. And that’s just the official emulated versions. MAME would be the best place to play the original arcade version. So there’s no shortage of places to get your Flicky on.

Since writing this review I’ve been lucky enough to become owner of an original Flicky arcade cabinet, which is now the star of its own blog: www.flicky1984.com

Review: Vijay Singh 3D

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 08:52:00 +0000

It seems a long time ago when mobile phones functioned more as a phone than anything else. You could download games for them, of course, but the whole experience was hard work and underwhelming at best. In fact, you’d be forgiven for wondering why you’d even bother. And then along came Vijay Singh.

I’ve always loved golf video games, even if I have no real affinity with the sport. First there was Leader Board which gave us the first real taste of golf from the player’s viewpoint, albeit rendered to screen at a glacial pace. Still, it laid down the triple-click power and snap control mechanic that remained the default golf game control scheme for years to come.

That was more than enough for me for a while, until I read about a new golf on its way. One that offered a fully 3D world and accurate simulation of the game – multiple courses, camera angles, tournaments and your own player profile. It was Microprose Golf and it offered something truly new. It was the stuff dreams are made of, or at least it’s the stuff that keeps a family of gamers glued to a 14” portable TV for months on end. It was real golf, on your computer. More about that in a forthcoming review.

In the following years, many great golf games graced my TV screen: Mario Golf, Everybody’s Golf, Links, Tiger Woods. As arcade representations of the game they were all good games that were a lot of fun to play, but none of them captured the essence of the sport quite as much as Microprose Golf. But then along came Vijay Singh.

It came pre-installed on a Sony Ericsson phone I’d upgraded to and was, in short, all that is or ever has been great about golf games distilled into one beautiful 375kb java archive. Obviously a labour of love for it’s creators it played like a dream. It was a modern Microprose Golf in the palm of your hand. An astonishing achievement for a mobile phone of the time.

The game added some great new touches of it’s own: putting featured the now standard grid that maps the contours of the green, with the addition of small particles that flow along the grid lines showing the the direction and severity of any slope. Also (and this is the bit that really made me smile) at certain points - more often than not when you’ve landed yourself in a bit of a pickle - the game goes into TV mode. This put you in certain money making scenarios such as “our sponsors will give you $25,000 if you chip the ball in from this bunker” which, coupled with a vibration heart beat effect, really kept you on the edge of your seat. The vibration effect was also used sometimes when putting to make you that little bit more anxious as to whether or not you’ve got your angles right. I played it to completion and then hoped for downloadable courses which had been hinted at, but they sadly never materialised. And that was that…

Until, in September 2010, Gameloft released Real Golf 2011 for iPhone/iPod touch and iPad. It’s a next generation incarnation of Vijay Singh in all but name and it plays like a dream. Of course, Vijay is featured in the game’s roster of real golfers. It just wouldn’t be the same without him.

Review: Kuru Kuru Kururin

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 09:41:00 +0000

Kuru Kuru Kururin sums up what I think is so great about the sort of games Nintendo publish. It’s an unorthodox action/puzzle/maze game made by a third party best known for their scrolling shoot ’em ups. No other company would have the balls to release a game like this, never mind as part of a console launch line-up.

The launch of a console is always an interesting event, the launch line-up of games can be make or break for the system. So instead of rushing out and buying the latest iteration of long running series (Mario, Tony Hawk’s, F-Zero, Castlevania) I was intrigued to find a quintessential Japanese game in the European GBA launch lineup. It had my name written all over it.

In Kuru Kuru Kururin, you’re a rabbit, piloting a helicopter rotor blade, in search of a mother’s lost children. What this means in terms of gameplay is that you have to guide a constantly spinning stick around a series of mazes, avoiding the walls, to get to the exit. The concept becomes fun as you have to judge the position of your spinning stick when manoeuvring around corners, through gaps and past moving obstacles and enemies. Getting to the goal is a nail biting experience, and there’s nothing quite like the feeling of getting a perfect run through the level. Well, except perhaps getting a perfect run whilst breaking your personal best for that level.

What’s brilliant about the game is that you can play it in so many different ways:

Want it easy, play with the short stick. Want it regular, play with the long stick. Want it hard, go for all the fastest times. Want it extra hard, go for all perfect (no collisions).

Whilst Nintendo were brave enough to release the game in Europe, it must not have sold very well as the two sequels (Kururin Paradise for GBA and Kururin Squash! for GameCube) were only released in Japan. I was such a fan of the first game that I bought the other two regardless.

I even took the two GBA versions of the game on holiday one year to Corfu, just to give me something to do whilst sunbathing. My girlfriend might argue against me when I say was possibly one of the greatest gaming decisions I’ve ever made. I sat for a few hours every day on the beach for the whole week we were away and managed to ace both games - I think I’m a bit gaming OCD like that. Even so, completing all levels perfectly and breaking all records remains one of my greatest gaming achievements to date. Though I think I drew the line at the secret, super-difficult levels that were unlocked for doing so. Perhaps I can do them on my next holiday?

Review: Pang

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 12:28:00 +0000

I like to think that this game taught me as much about world geography as school did, but that’s probably a slight exaggeration. Still, it remains to this day one of my all time favourite games.

You’re a little dude in a white safari suit on an around-the-world quest to destroy bouncing balloons at various well known locations. A second player can join in wearing a pink safari suit. Starting at the magnificent Mt Fuji in Japan and ending at Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean, you must fire your grappling gun up into the air to make contact with a balloon, which will then split into two smaller balloons. Hitting the smallest sized balloons will make them disappear. Hitting the same size balloons one after the other will multiple how many points they’re worth.

There are a number of power-ups to help and hinder: different weapons, freeze time, slow time, invincibility and dynamite. There are also hidden bonus points in the form of fruit and animals. The levels are expertly designed using different types of platforms, ladders and so on. You might think that not much can be done with some bouncing balls, some platforms and the odd ladder but you’d be wrong. It’s the sign of a great game where a simple gameplay mechanic can be used in so many different ways.

Some people say that the game is far too hard, but I think it has a perfect balance of risk/reward gameplay and I’m always left with the desire to have just one more go. The sign of a great arcade game.

As a final note, Pang: Magical Michael was recently released for Nintendo DS – hoorah! I think it’s the best version of the game to date and definitely worth the wait.

Review: Guru Logi Champ

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 12:02:00 +0000

I’ve been playing this on-and-off for years and still haven’t finished all the puzzles. It’s one of those games that I love so much that I sort of don’t want to finish it. Possibly the greatest puzzler of all time – disregarding Tetris, of course.

Each stage sees you having to complete the image by placing and removing blocks on the board. The puzzles are set up so that there is no simple solution; a position may be blocked by other immovable areas, so you have to improvise a solution by constantly constructing and deconstructing scaffolding in order to get a piece into the correct position. As well as controls to add or remove blocks from the board, you can also rotate the board to enable you to approach the problem from any side.

As well as having bags of gameplay the game also features some completely bonkers characters, over-the-top stage clear screens and the craziest of cutscenes. It’s a shame to say it but these are the sorts of things you only seem to get in Japanese games, as the rest of the world seems too scared to make a game with a sense of humour.

Game developer Compile went bust a short time after releasing the game, though some of their staff went on to work at Eighting, working on Kuru Kuru Kururin amongst other games. A version was made for Japanese mobile phones, and there were unofficial versions made for MSX, PC, and PopCap even out out a version under the name Pixelus but that was discontinued – I hope for reasons of IP infringement.

The game is quite expensive to buy these days if you can even find it outside of Japan. But worry not because as of 2nd December 2009, thanks to Nintendo’s DSiWare download service, Japanese DSi owners can play a modern reworking of the game under the name of Spinning Logic (ぐるぐるロジック gurugururojikku) whilst in the USA as of October 18th 2010 it’s available as Snapdots.

Review: Vanishing Point

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 22:57:00 +0000

I’ve recently come back to this game in an attempt to complete it 100%, picking up my 10 year old save game. It’s a great game, though the sensitivity of the controls can be unforgiving at times. But it’s definitely worth persevering with. Think of it like a modern day Stunt Car Racer and you’ll be fine – laying off the accelerator is just as important as keeping the pedal to the metal.

Straddling the narrow line between flat-out arcade racer and flat-tyre simulation, Vanishing Point offered a wealth of cars, locations and driving modes that still stand up today. Time Trial, Single Races and Tournaments as well as a novel Stunt Mode in which you had to throw the cars around various non-race challenges with pinpoint precision. The recent Trials HD on the 360 brings back a lot of memories of Stunt Mode for me, except Vanishing Point had more cones, balloons and chequered flags.

Multi-player modes were Head-to-Head split-screen for two, and Knock-out, League and Winner-Stays-On for up to eight player sessions. The game also took advantage of the Dreamcast’s online function and allowed you to send Challenge Times back and forth with your mates.

Sitting somewhere between Gran Turismo and Ridge Racer the range of cars available was broad but also quite unique. As well as fast cars like the Shelby Cobra and Dodgy Viper, the game also featured alternative choices like the world famous Mini, VW camper van and even some American muscle cars. You had to start with just two default cars and unlock the rest through your own driving skill. The game wasn’t afraid to do things its own way.

All of this was dressed up in high resolution 60fps graphics that made it’s contemporaries look positively old school. It’s a crying shame Clockwork Games didn’t survive long enough to make a sequel. Perhaps it exists in the same alternate dimension where the Dreamcast is still selling millions? Yes, I’d like to go there.

The thorn in the game’s side was it’s overly sensitive default controls, which caused many gamers to not even give the game a chance. But those that did would find a truly complete and supremely rewarding driving game.

Update: I finally completed the game in May 2015. Woop!