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New (Old) 3D Golf: porting PC-9801 & Virtual Boy to Mega Drive

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 16:26:00 +0000

The Japanese Mega Drive ports of T&E SOFT’s New 3D Golf Simulation series are my favourite golf games, and recently I’ve been living inside their ROMs.

As with all the craziest ideas, it began with a “I wonder if I could”… In the early hours of one April morning I managed to pull a single course out of the game—its terrain and flyby data—and reimplement it in a viewer of my own, written in Three.js. Over the following week or so of continued reverse engineering, that viewer quietly grew into something resembling a 3D golf game running in the browser. Finding the data had some big clues: we know that there are 18 holes, the distances of each hole and their sequence order, and I’d read the courses were made of ~256 points, so adding all these heuristics together meant it was much easier to find the data than finding a needle in a haystack.

Understanding the data that well meant I could go the other way, too—back into the original Mega Drive games themselves. First I added a terrain modifier. To test it I flattened the entire course like a pancake to confirm my understanding was correct, and then cranked it up to 11 into a sort of “Hyperactive Terrain Mode” that warps the fairways into something wild. Both worked well.

An early attempt changed its mind on every run; turned out I was seeding it from an uninitialised memory location. 🤦 With no debugger console to hand, I’d been hunting bugs like this the crude way—scribbling values into the cartridge’s SRAM (its battery-backed save memory) and reading them back out, a poor man’s printf. So it wasn’t exactly straightforward.

Once that was sorted, I gave the 32-year-old game some brand new, custom user interface to match.

Next I wondered if the course data was the same across all of the four Mega Drive games, could it be the same across the games on other platforms? The answer is yes: the same course data format turns out to be used right across the series, from the original PC-9801 games (and almost certainly X68000 and FM Towns) through to the Mega Drive and even the Virtual Boy. If my (little-endian) maths is correct that’s a total of 7 unique courses, all sharing one format. There’s some reformatting that needs to be done, but the data structure is the same. And since I could already read the courses, I could write them too—patching the games to pick a course at random, or to load one that was never available on the Mega Drive in the first place. PC-9801 to Mega Drive required sorting the polygons to match how they were expected to be stored.

But I guess T&E SOFT used the same POLYSYS-CAD software to design all the courses over several years? I love how such a tool could have that sort of longevity.

That last part is the really fun bit. (Can this even be more fun?)

Here are three courses running on the Mega Drive for the first time:

T&E Selection

Extracted from the NEC PC-9801 add-on course disk:

This course is somewhat unique as it has messages spelled using coloured topology:
the 1st has “GO!” by the tee position; the 18th has “T&E” just beyond the final green

Eight Lakes G.C.

Also extracted from NEC PC-9801 add-on course disk:

A fact perhaps only I care about: during development, prior to Feb 1990, it was Seven Lakes G.C.

Papillon C.C.

Extracted from the Nintendo Virtual Boy game T&E Virtual Golf:

It’s called Papillon—the French word for butterfly—because the course holes were laid out in the shape of a butterfly. Which was surely a nod to the shape of the Virtual Boy controller.

That last one needed a little extra work. T&E Golf on Virtual Boy doesn’t have a hole flyby, so I had to generate the camera path myself: a bezier curve from tee to pin, nudged towards the centre point of the visible course as it appears on the mini-map. The flyby path in this video was about half way to my final solution.

Playing these courses on Mega Drive is truly special and the effort was very much worthwhile. 🥰

A few things I learned along the way

Living inside the disassembly for weeks, I kept tripping over the little decisions T&E SOFT made all those years ago. Some are clever, some are quietly bonkers, and all of them made me grin:

The hole is three times too big. The cup grabs any ball within ~6.7 inches—triple a real hole’s radius—so balls drop from further out than they look. A fudge for the 320×224 screen, where ball and cup were both sub-pixel.
The polygons pre-sort themselves. No depth buffer on the Mega Drive, so the draw order is baked into the course data, back-to-front (the painter’s algorithm). The giveaway: it doesn’t match the original PC-9801 CAD order.
Backspin can reverse a putt. Spin isn’t cosmetic: it’s fed back into the roll and can make the ball check up and trickle backwards. Real ballistic physics in a 1993 cartridge. Love it!
Water isn’t a hazard—just very sticky. There’s no “in the water” state; water polygons carry friction so high it kills the ball in one frame. The penalty falls out of the ordinary maths.
Wind is a real force, not an aim fudge. It becomes a horizontal acceleration applied every frame of flight, exactly like gravity.
Augusta’s wind never actually changes. The direction is never written—only strength varies. The arrow only seems to swing because it’s drawn relative to the camera.
Bunkers plug, cart paths kick. Every surface has its own bounce coefficient. The fairway hands back a healthy ~40% of the ball’s speed; a bunker returns only ~10%, so the ball plugs where it lands; a cart path or rock fires it back at ~75% for that horrible hard skip.
Your lie quietly rolls the dice. On every stroke the game picks a random number from a per-(lie, club) range and folds it into your swing power. A clean fairway lie uses a narrow range; a bad lie widens it—so the rough genuinely makes your shots less predictable. The ranges live in a 17×17 table, one entry per lie-and-club combination.

Four volumes, one evolving engine

It’s tempting to treat the four Mega Drive games as a single engine with interchangeable courses. They’re not, and the very first line of the cross-volume notes I kept is a warning to myself: ⚠️ never assume all four ROMs share code or data layouts. T&E SOFT kept tinkering release to release, and you only catch it by dumping the same region in all four disassemblies and diffing.

The ROM headers number them New 3D Golf Simulation Vol.1–4, and each header also carries a build date stamped in YYYY.MMM form. Here’s the curiosity: the volume numbers track the build dates, not the retail release dates. Vol.2 Devil’s Course was finished a month before Vol.3 Augusta—but reached the shops a month after it:

Vol	Title	Japanese	ROM build	Retail release
1	Pebble Beach no Hatou	ペブルビーチの波濤	1993-07	1993-10-29
2	Devil’s Course	デビルズコース	1993-08	1994-01-28
3	Harukanaru Augusta	遙かなるオーガスタ	1993-09	1993-12-17
4	Waialae no Kiseki	ワイアラエの奇蹟	1993-09	1994-02-25

A couple of header quirks fell out of this. Pebble’s stamp reads 1993.JLY—Sega’s own oddball abbreviation for July. And while three of the carts credit SEGA, Augusta credits T&E Soft’s Sega licensee code T-114 instead—a clue that it alone was self-published by T&E SOFT rather than by Sega. The boxes agree: Augusta’s isn’t Sega-branded either.

Two places they genuinely diverge, each confirmed by dumping the same region in all four:

Colour isn’t a plain palette lookup—and the recipe is per-game. A surface byte runs through a little chain of lookup tables before it becomes a pen colour, and those tables aren’t shared: Pebble grades several surfaces differently and even reorders two entries, while Devil’s Course carries its own darker, redder palette. Waialae, charmingly, reuses a single palette three times where its siblings have three distinct ones.
A decoder bug only Pebble could trigger. In the polygon stream, vertex indices are single bytes, with 0xFF acting as an escape prefix—the byte after it encodes a higher index (0xE0 + xx), so a hole can point past the ~254 vertices a lone byte can name. My extractor mishandled that escaped range, but only Pebble’s holes are dense enough to actually use it—so the bug sailed through the other three games and only fell over when I reached Pebble. Same encoding in every cart; one course’s data was all it took to expose the flaw in my reader.

There’s also the US release, Pebble Beach Golf Links (header stamped 1993-11, likely on shelves 1994-04): the same course data on a larger ROM, with English strings present where the Japanese Vol.1 zeroed them. That parallel made a useful “Rosetta Stone” for decoding menus and text.

Inside Waialae

Waialae was my primary reference—1,572,864 bytes, header NEW 3D GOLF SIMULATION Vol.4 Waialae C.C., serial GM G-5529.

Each hole is reached through four ROM pointers, one per data block, and they’re wildly different sizes. Block 0 is the vertex list—244 XYZ points, the ~256-point mesh, about 1.5 KB. Block 1 is the bulk of it: sixteen view-order streams (one draw order per camera angle) that bake in the back-to-front sorting—around 5.5 KB, bigger than the geometry it orders. Block 2 holds the mesh and sprites themselves (230 polygons plus 54 sprites), ~1.8 KB. Block 3 is just the flyby keyframes, a slim ~0.7 KB. For Waialae’s first hole that comes to about 9.2 KB, split like this:

A couple more structural quirks:

A spatial grid, decades early. Immediately after the vertex pool sits a count followed by count × 16 word offsets into the face section—a two-level spatial grid (cell → faces) so the engine can look up the relevant polygons from the ball’s (x, z) without walking the whole hole.
Why the SRAM debugging hurt. Waialae’s battery-backed save RAM is odd-lane only, from $200001. Byte writes have to land on odd Mega Drive addresses; even-address writes to $200000 simply disappear. That’s the real reason scribbling values into SRAM as a printf substitute was so finicky—half my early writes were going into the void. (BlastEm helpfully flushes SRAM to disk on quit, so I could read it back from the host.)

Variable zoom

The shared course format is what let me move holes between platforms, but each machine scales the world differently. The proven case: Waialae hole 1 from the PC-9801 drops into the Mega Drive after a fixed 1.6× rescale on X and Z (Y untouched), plus a little-endian → big-endian flip on the flyby path records.

Lining those transplanted polygons up against the stock Mega Drive ones is also what proved the rendering trick I mentioned earlier: the Mega Drive packs faces in descending max-Z order—back to front, the painter’s algorithm—and the original PC-9801 face id survives the journey as the Mega Drive’s attr1 byte.

Two deeper cuts

The flyby camera, decoded by statistics. Each flyby keyframe carries two mystery bytes. With no documentation, I histogrammed 4,723 of them across every hole and the shape gave it away: one byte is an 8-bit angle (256 units = 360°) for yaw, the other a signed pitch clamped to about ±40, positive meaning the camera looks down. Educated guessing, with visuals.
The Virtual Boy world is built at a different scale. The Virtual Boy stores its courses at 32 raw units per yard, where the Mega Drive works in 17—so Papillon has to be shrunk by exactly 17/32 (0.53) to sit correctly on the Mega Drive, otherwise every club hits too short for the hole. (My first attempt used the wrong unit and reported hole 1 as 321 yards instead of its true 360.) It’s the same idea as the 1.6× I needed coming the other way from the PC-9801—one shared format, but every machine measures its yards differently.

The whole thing ran on rizin and vasmm68k with BlastEm for execution—though frame-time profiling had to move to Genesis Plus GX, because BlastEm freezes the VDP’s HV counter during the long rendering routines I was trying to measure.

What the old magazines turned up

Reverse engineering only tells you what the games do; for the why, I went digging through a stack of Japanese computer magazines from the era, OCRing the scans to pull out the text. A 1989 developer interview about Harukanaru Augusta (遙かなるオーガスタ)—the PC-9801 original that kicked off the series—turned out to be a goldmine:

The 3D engine came first. T&E’s POLYSYS pre-dated the golf games by a couple of years, already appearing—only in the 3D intro logos, as far as I can tell—in DAIVA STORY 7: Light of Kali Yuga and Psy-O-Blade.
Trees were nearly real 3D. They tried modelling trees as polygons, leaves and all—but one tree took as long to draw as a whole screen. So scaled sprites were used instead.
The first game had no hills. T&E’s 3-D Golf Simulation, written in BASIC six years earlier, had no terrain undulation at all—and on the Sharp X1, 18 holes took half a day to play through.
POLYSYS was meant to be general-purpose: swap the data and it renders anything. T&E planned an RPG and a shooter on it and intended to license it to other software houses.
One programmer, mostly: Eiji Kato (加藤英治).

And the Augusta course itself came with a wonderful backstory:

They licensed the real thing. An official contract with Augusta National, working from the club’s blueprints. Staff visited, didn’t play, but “rubbed their cheeks on the grass.”
Augusta sent back ~60 corrections: eg. pine trees too short and too spread out, flowers too pink, bunker sand the wrong colour.
No do-overs, by design. You could save mid-round, but loading erased the save data—so no replaying holes to pad your score.
Best of all: the dev build’s four caddies were all women. Augusta’s are all men, so the final game swapped them. The ladies returned in the expansion courses and Mega Drive games.
The T&E Selection caddies are real people: four women who worked at Brother Industries—whose TAKERU software vending machines sold these add-on course disks.

What Next?

There’s an extra bit of hacking I’m working on but am unsure if it will lead to anything, but if it does it will need a post all of its own. Hold your thumbs. Fingers crossed. 🤞

It would be possible to release a small script which given both original games would do the extraction and patching, but for now I don’t feel comfortable doing that. I still need to figure out the correct tree mapping for each game, decide which of the four Mega Drive games is most suited to each of the three new courses, add new title screens and a few more bits of detail work.

I’d love to see these ported courses released officially some day—the series IP is now owned and managed by D4 Enterprise—so if you know anybody there please hook us up! If you are an employee of D4 Enterprise then please check my request to license the IP. 🙏

There are more period games in the series that I’d like to take a look at to see if they use the same data format, or modify it in any specific way. SNES and 3DO seem to be the most interesting. 🧐

But for now it’s just me, a pile of disassembly files, rizin and vasmm68k, the BlastEm emulator, and a soft spot for blue skies and FM synth — still trying to get the ball in the hole. ⛳️🏌️‍♂️

TV’s TV (1987) & TV Games Encyclopedia (1988)

by Matt Sephton — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 23:34:00 +0000

TV’s TV was a four-hour late-night television program broadcast in Japan on Fuji TV from 01:55 to 05:55 on Saturday, March 14, 1987. It was a televisual predecessor to a book that I also discuss below, and an early sign of the experimental programming that Fuji TV would formalise later that year with its JOCX-TV2 late-night brand—a slot explicitly created to give young creators room to experiment.

The program comprised 100 TV spots, presented as a wall of TVs, showcasing a range of video games from around the world. For many Japanese viewers, it was their first encounter with the Amiga, Apple II, and Atari.

The creative credits read like a who’s who of future Japanese media innovators. Toshio Iwai (Otocky, SimTunes, Electroplankton, Tenori-on) created the CG using an Amiga. Masaya Matsuura (The Seven Colors: Legend of PSY·S City, PaRappa the Rapper, Vib-Ribbon) composed the music. The show’s production was overseen by Tsunekazu Ishihara—now president of The Pokémon Company—who would go on to direct the book that followed.

TV’s TV ushered in a new way of looking at television, not only because it introduced Western computers and games to a Japanese audience, but because it did so in a format that was itself playful and game-like.

There’s a full table of contents in the description of the video below.

But don’t watch the 4 hours yet! Read on.

テレビゲーム―電視遊戯大全 / TV Games Encyclopedia (1988)

The following year, the team behind TV’s TV channelled that same energy into print. The result might be described as a book, but it’s much more than that. テレビゲーム―電視遊戯大全 (TV GAMES: Denshi Yūgi Taizen; TV Games Encyclopedia), published in May 1988 by UPU, ISBN4-946432-31-0, was a seminal encyclopedia of video game history—and perhaps the single most ambitious book about games ever produced.

It arrived right in the middle of Japan’s bubble economy. Between roughly 1986 and 1991, a combination of rock-bottom interest rates and rampant speculation sent asset prices into the stratosphere. Money was everywhere and it was looking for things to be spent on.

This was the era when Japanese corporations bought Rockefeller Center and Columbia Pictures. When golf club memberships traded for the price of houses. When the land beneath the Imperial Palace in Tokyo was theoretically worth more than the entire state of California. Consumer spending went through the roof: credit card circulation tripled, luxury imports quadrupled, and the art market went berserk—Japanese buyers paid record sums at auction for Renoirs and Van Goghs just because they could.

The cultural side-effects were extraordinary. Bubble-era money funded some of the most ambitious, beautiful, and outright weird creative projects Japan has ever produced. Architecture, graphic design, magazines, vehicles, music, fashion, animation—everything was touched by the sense that budgets were infinite and ambition should match. It’s no coincidence that this period overlaps with the golden age of Japanese game development, or that Fuji TV was handing late-night airtime to young experimentalists, or that someone thought a four-hour TV program about Western computer games was a good idea.

The TV Games Encyclopedia is very much a product of this moment. Its lavish physical production—the frosted plastic slipcase, the variety of paper stocks, the multiple print techniques and finishes—reflects the kind of excess that was not only possible but expected. A book about video games had no business being this beautifully made. And yet here it was, priced at ¥3,500, with the ambition and budget of an art object. When the bubble burst in 1991—ushering in what became known as the Lost Decades—this kind of thing simply stopped being made.

The object

The book is extravagantly packaged in a frosted plastic slipcase and printed on a variety of paper stocks. It contains a host of different print techniques, finishes, and folds—and, most obviously, it is ring-bound with the majority of pages split into three horizontal sections. Unusually for a Japanese book from this period, it reads from left to right in the Western manner.

This makes reading the book an experience like nothing else. Pages are linked with cross-references, giving it a game-like, exploratory feeling. At various points, atmospheric photographs of games taken off cathode ray tube screens are spread across three separate panels, but the panels are distributed almost randomly throughout the book—making it a sort of puzzle to be able to view the whole image.

Imagine a hyperactive version of a choose-your-own-adventure book, or a paper-based website before the age of the internet.

The book was designed by Hitoshi Suzuki (鈴木一誌), one of Japan’s most influential book designers—a protégé of Kohei Sugiura (杉浦康平) known for radical editorial layouts. Phototypesetting was by Masaaki Inoue (井上聖昭), with design assistance from Takao Kabaya (蒲谷孝夫).

The name

The title is doubled: first in modern katakana (テレビゲーム, terebi gēmu) and then in classical kanji (電視遊戯大全, denshi yūgi taizen—literally “electronic play grand compendium”). The former is how Japanese people actually say “video game”; the latter is an archaic, almost scholarly construction. The juxtaposition is deliberately playful.

The structure

The main body of the book is divided into four parts:

KEY	Section	Description
●	History	The history of video games, from Willy Higinbotham’s tennis game through Space Invaders, the Atari VCS, Apple II, and the Famicom
■	Creators	Companies and key developers
＊	200 Games	Two hundred selected titles across all platforms
＋	Interviews & Columns	In-depth conversations with creators and essays on game culture

Because every page is physically split into three sections—and each section carries jump signs pointing to related content elsewhere—you don’t read the book linearly. You follow threads. Top section might be history, middle section a company profile, bottom section a game entry, and the cross-references send you bouncing between all three. It is, in the most literal sense, a hypertext document published five years before Mosaic.

The content

All contemporary platforms of 1988 are covered, and crucially the focus is worldwide rather than Japan-only, making it a comprehensive who’s who from the golden age of video games. The book documents over 200 games, profiles dozens of companies and creators, and contains what may be the richest set of developer interviews assembled in a single volume up to that point.

The people behind it

The book was planned and directed by Tsunekazu Ishihara (石原恒和), now president of The Pokémon Company, and produced by the company SEDIC—the same outfit that developed the musical-platform game Otocky (1987), designed by Toshio Iwai. The creative thread connecting TV’s TV, Otocky, and this book is SEDIC and Ishihara’s circle: a group of people at the intersection of games, art, and media who understood video games not as disposable entertainment but as a cultural form worth documenting seriously. The team were also featured in the Tetris: Heavenly Scrolls book in 1989.

Among the book’s contributors was Satoshi Tajiri (田尻智), who later created Pokémon and is currently president of Game Freak. Tajiri had already established himself through his Game Freak fanzine as one of Japan’s most dedicated game critics, and his presence here—alongside Ishihara—prefigures the partnership that would eventually produce the world’s largest media franchise.

This is also the book that Tetsuya Mizuguchi cites as the genesis of his career in video games. Mizuguchi would go on to create Sega Rally Championship, Rez, Lumines, and Tetris Effect—a body of work deeply concerned with synesthesia, music, and the sensory experience of play. It’s not hard to see how a book this alive to the artistic possibilities of games might have lit that fuse.

A note on names

The book contains several misspellings of Western names, and at least one name that has since changed. For the record:

Dan Bynten in the book → Danielle Bunten Berry (credited as Dan Bunten at the time; designer of M.U.L.E. and Seven Cities of Gold, she transitioned in 1992)
Tossio Iwai in the book → Toshio Iwai (岩井俊雄; his own name is romanised inconsistently)
Mark F. Flint — this is the pseudonym of the head of System Sacom, a Japanese game developer responsible for titles including Dome, Soft de Hard na Monogatari, and Xenon 2: Megablast (Japanese release). His real name remains unclear. The book contains what appears to be his only substantial interview—and possibly the only interview with him under any name!

The people list and interview list below use corrected/modern names.

People featured

Douglas Noel Adams · Don Bluth · Bill Budge · Danielle Bunten Berry · Nolan Bushnell · Douglas G. Carlston · Steve Cartwright · David Crane · Chris Crawford · Masanobu Endō · Mark F. Flint · David Fox · Richard Garriott · Nasir Gebelli · Hibiki Godai · Dan Gorlin · Satoshi Honda · Yūji Horii · Haruomi Hosono · Rob Hubbard · Toshio Iwai · Tōru Iwatani · Eugene P. Jarvis · Garry Kitchen · Yoshio Kiya · Timothy Leary · Ed Logg · Alan R. Miller · Shigeru Miyamoto · Kazuo Morita · Paul Murray · Kōichi Nakamura · Tomohiro Nishikado · Kazunori Sawano · Tom Snyder · Kōichi Sugiyama · Takanari Suzuki · Tony Suzuki · Toshiyuki Takahashi · Bill Williams · Roberta and Ken Williams

Companies featured

Accolade · Activision · Artdink · ASCII · Atari · Atari Games · Avalon Hill · Bandai · Beagle Bros · Bothtec · BPS · Brøderbund · Chat Noir · Electronic Arts · Enix · Enzan-Hoshigumi · Epyx · Firebird Software · Free Fall Associates · Game Arts · Game Studio · Hudson · Infocom · Irem · Koei · Konami · Kogado Studio · The Learning Company · LucasFilm Games · Mindscape · MIT · Namco · Nihon Falcom · Nintendo · Optimum Resource · Origin Systems · Sega Enterprises · Sierra On-Line · Silicon Beach · Sir-Tech Software · Sirius Software · Square · Strategic Simulations · Sublogic · Synapse Software · T&E Soft · Taito · Thinking Rabbit · Tokyo-Shoseki · Williams

Interviews

The interview section is the book’s crown jewel. It contains what are believed to be the only interviews ever conducted with several of its subjects—most notably Mark Flint (the enigmatic head of System Sacom). With rare input from people like Fukio “MTJ” Mitsuji (creator of Bubble Bobble, who died in 2008). For a number of the Western developers, these are the earliest known long-form interviews, predating the retro gaming preservation movement by over a decade.

Accolade (Peter Doctorow)
Activision (Jeffrey Mulligan, Richard Larberg)
Activision & Sound (Russell Lieblich)
Atari (Nolan Bushnell)
Atari Games (Ed Logg)
Atari Games Japan (Hideyuki Nakajima)
Atari, Activision, Accolade (Alan Miller)
Brøderbund (Douglas Carlston)
Activision (Steve Cartwright)
Bubble Bobble (Fukio “MTJ” Mitsuji)
Electronic Arts (Trip Hawkins)
Free Fall Associates (John Freeman, Anne Westfall)
Irem (Mitsuri Kawai, Masato Ishizaki, Atsushi Yamazaki)
LucasFilm Games (David Fox)
Mind Mirror (Timothy Leary)
Namco (Masanobu Endō)
Nintendo (Shigeru Miyamoto)
Nintendo Concepts & Future Developments (Hiroshi Imanishi)
Door Door, Dragon Quest (Kōichi Nakamura)
“Dragon Quest” (Yūji Horii)
Galaxian (Kazunori Sawano)
Pac-Man (Tōru Iwatani)
Space Invaders (Tomohiro Nishikado)
Strategic Simulations (Joel Billings, Randy Broweleit)
Wizardry (Sir-Tech)
Q&A (Bill Williams)
“Copywriting” (Shigesato Itoi)
“Future Video Games” (Toshio Iwai)
“Video Games are Borderline” (Rika Kayama)
Taito & PSG (Tadashi Kimijima)
“Kind-Hearted Hackers” (Yūichi Konno)
“Discovering Otaku, 1987” (Hiroshi Masuyama)
“My Soliloquy” (Takao Momozono)
“Invader Now” (Fumihiro Nonomura)
TRON Real Time Operating System (Ken Sakamura)
“Future of Games” (Izuo Sakane)
“Games & Science Fiction” (Takao Shiga)
Music & Games (Kōichi Sugiyama)
“Luxury in Video Games” (Satoshi Tajiri)
“Computer Culture” (Mitsuhiro Takemura)

Authors

Init	Name	Romanisation	Notes
AM	三浦明彦	Akihiko Miura	SEDIC, Otocky. Game designer, Star Craft (MobyGames)
EM	松村英治	Eiji Matsumura	Writer, Amiga consultant (MobyGames)
FF	原田ユニ子	Fujie Fuyouko	Real name Yuniko Harada. Translator
HK	紀伊尾宏隆	Hirotaka Kiio	Freelance writer (MobyGames)
HM	桝山寛	Hiroshi Masuyama	SEDIC, Otocky. Techno/director (MobyGames)
HQ	小泉すみれ	Sumire Koizumi	Editor
KH	平林一則	Kazunori Hirabayashi	Freelance, Yotsuya Bannō Kikaku
KI	伊藤桂	Kei Itō	AV planner, editor of CAFE Magazine
KK	倉繁宏輔	Kōsuke Kurashige	SEDIC, CG engineer
MT	瀧本雅志	Masashi Takimoto	I&S, SEDIC. Now Professor, Osaka University of Arts
ST	田尻智	Satoshi Tajiri	Writer, Game Freak fanzine. Creator of Pokémon (MobyGames)
TI	石原恒和	Tsunekazu Ishihara	SEDIC, I&S. Now President, The Pokémon Company (MobyGames)
TT	田中利昭	Toshiaki Tanaka	PC game reviewer for Bug News, Comptiq (MobyGames)
YI	石井康文	Yasufumi Ishii	Student, Gamer
YK	今野裕一	Yūichi Konno	Editor, Peyotl Kōbō (夜想, 銀星倶楽部, WAVE)
YM	森川倖	Yukihito Morikawa	Manga artist, Yotsuya Bannō Kikaku
YT	田村安史	Yasufumi Tamura	System designer, technical writer
YY	山下由美子	Yumiko Yamashita	Freelance writer

It’s been scanned

There’s a scan on Internet Archive, though this won’t give you the full hypertext experience!

Full scan of the book on Internet Archive

Contemporary references

Buying the book today

The current price for the book is high, and varies quite a lot. It’s gone up since I bought my first copy in 2022. Whilst it’s almost unknown in the West the book continues to be fondly remembered and much sought after in Japan. Today you’re looking at somewhere between £200–600 GBP, or equivalent, depending on the condition. Some have cracked outer case, some are missing the correction insert, some have gone mouldy with age. But, up to now they have come up for sale often.

Yahoo! Japan Auctions
Mercari Japan classifieds
Amazon Japan books
Kosho book store search
From Japan (offers reshipping worldwide)
HOYOYO (offers reshipping worldwide)

Postscript

I’ve been working on this blog post on and (mostly) off since 2022. I’ll try to improve it over time!

Serenity: zen gliding to the sound of procedurally generated music

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 17:53:00 +0000

Today I’m releasing a demo of my new game: Serenity.

It’s available for both Mac and Windows, and the final game will also support Linux.

Download: store.steampowered.com/app/4309910/Serenity_Demo/

The Universe Provides

The story of this game is a strange one, so perhaps worth telling. I was about to add online play to a different game project and wanted a smaller game to test PlayroomKit, the solution I had chosen. As Thanksgiving 2025 approached I wondered what personal project I could do over the break that might be a quick way to prove the online concept. I’d been working in 3D using Three.js for a while, so my mind wandered to all of my favourite 3D game experiences. I wondered how difficult it would be to create something along the lines of an old favourite of mine: Tranquility.

Later that day I was emailing the musicians I was working with, Nova Sphere, and when I returned to my inbox—filtered with the search term “sphere”—there was an email I had been waiting on for something like 20 years: it was from Bill Romanowski, the creator of Tranquility. This was a sign that the Universe really does provide, so I set to work.

The Demo

From that point on I put all my spare time into the game and by Boxing Day I had finished what I would consider the MVP, vertical slice, or whatever you want to call it. That’s essentially what this demo is. You can read a sort of director’s commentary of the game development and my philosophy in a thread on Bluesky. I signed up to Steam, paid my fee, and submitted to Steam Next Fest: February 2026 Edition. I thought it would be fun to release the demo ahead of that event because I’m travelling to Japan for the Tokyo Design Forum between now and then.

This demo is a snapshot from early January and the game has been refined and improved in countless ways since. So, please go easy on the demo and look forward to the final version. Visually, it’s obviously inspired by Tranquility but given that I was creating it with little more than a memory of how that game felt to play back in the day, it contains a lot more. Depending on your point of view, it might strike you as a 3D Electroplankton, Jumping Flash! crossed with Zarch, Tiny Wings in space, Proteus without the trees, or Journey set in the Matrix. My list of influences is wide and varied—not just for the game but also for the procedurally generated levels and music. And of course there is a lot of what I like to think only I can bring to the table. I hope you enjoy it.

The Inspirations

Alpha Waves (1990)
Electroplankton (2005)
Flower (2009)
Journey (2012)
Jumping Flash! (1995)
Panekit (1999)
Proteus (2013)
Tiny Wings (2011)
Tranquility (1992)
Zarch (1987)

The Future

I’m still working hard on the final game, which will release later in 2026. I’m currently courting publishers, so if you like what you see please get in touch. I’d love to get this onto consoles.

I’ll be sure to write more about the game as it gets closer to the finish line, but the current development version has better onboarding, improved music, even higher performance (the demo is 60fps, but the final version is more adaptive). There’s a lot to talk about, but if you’re hungry for more, check out my director’s commentary thread.

In the short term I’ll be showing Serenity at Tokyo Indies on 18th February. I’d love to see you there.

The Trailer

Wormhole for Perplexity Comet

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 16:00:00 +0000

Surprise! My latest game, Wormhole, is included in the Comet web browser from Perplexity. It started as an idea to replace the Chrome Dino game and grew into something a bit more sophisticated and fun, and a lot more on brand.

Big love to Henry Modisett and the great team over at Perplexity.

And to Soleio for the hookup—thanks sensei! 🙌

The development of this game was very typical for me and my process: rapid prototyping, careful scoping, and focus on the central mechanic. Let’s dive in!

Prototype 1

This took the brief very literally and replaced Chrome Dino in size and scope. It fitted in the same area of the page and had a similar one button interaction. So, it was a simple game where you controlled the speed of a comet and had to avoid incoming space debris for as long as possible by using a dash mechanic. You could chain dashes and therefore control your acceleration and deceleration whilst balancing risk and reward. It was fun, but the team had bigger ideas. Video of first prototype.

Prototype 2

Multiple members of the team independently proposed the idea of space golf/billiards, or snooker as I called it which raised a few eyebrows, by which time I had already prototyped it. The initial version proved to be fun, so it was full steam ahead.

I set out to refine the game feel and figure out game progress. I’d been reading about procedural generation in Elite (thanks Mark Moxon) and Mario Kart World (thanks Nintendo) and created something similar for my game. A whole universe of galaxies and planets to conquer! It worked well, but the traversal between galaxies and the overall structure didn’t add anything to the game. Zooming through the universe looked super cool! Video of second prototype.

Prototype 3

So, I started the galaxy generation again from scratch. At this point I had the feeling of existential dread that all developers are probably familiar with. I wanted to trash it all and start again, but instead I went out for dinner and talked it over with a close friend and fellow developer (thanks Dave).

Eventually I calmed down and settled on a never-ending belt of galaxies. The transitions became much shorter and sweeter, and the game feel was better than ever. At this point I think I was still coding in love2d. Things were locked down, so I ported the game to JavaScript using the LittleJS framework. According to my notes the prototype was about 300 lines of code before I began the hard work of rounding it out into a game. Video of third prototype.

Procedurally generated

Without giving too much away, the galaxies are procedurally generated with a handful of galaxy types and several other parameters and properties dictating the layout, rotating in a multi-layer but deterministic sequence. It was really fun to think through and implement.

Planets can either attract and repel, gravity varies, slingshots are possible, trick shots are possible, hole-in-one is possible. Wormholes can help or hinder.

The deterministic nature of the game means that everybody plays the same series of galaxies but at their own pace. And you can watch a replay of your shot if you get a suitably amazing black-hole-in-one, with a quick press of the R key (thanks Sensible Soccer). The game is theoretically never-ending, and the difficulty comes with carefully balanced stepped progression and cyclical repeating of the various game properties (thanks Steve Reich).

Never quite made it

If you’ve followed any of my developments you’ll know I’m quite happy to throw code away as quick as I can create it. I attach myself to the idea and execution rather than the code itself.

So it’s fun to mention some things that never made it. As well as the realistic universe, there were some additional obstacle types that fell by the wayside, and the ability to export a video recording of your replay for sharing.

Finishing touches

During prototyping I use geometric shapes: circles, rectangles, lines, and so on. The team at Perplexity then worked up visual designs (thanks Erin) and I implemented them as a combination of bitmaps, SVG for noise texture, CSS for round rects, and there are still arcs, circles, lines, and various fill types punching well above their weight. LittleJS (thanks Frank) is a fantastic and very well optimised framework that I encourage all game devs to check out.

Sound was initially synthesised using ZzFX (thanks again Frank), given LittleJS has built-in support, but they were eventually replaced with digital audio and music (thanks neso).

The Comet launch page was designed by Escha Diol, product designer on Comet, who has been very supportive during this project. She’s a pleasure to work alongside.

There are lots of details and a high level of polish in the game that are easily overlooked but are essential to the final feel: particles, parallax, keyboard control, replay, and more.

Have fun with it!

Abandoned project: Band-kun/Beatnik for Playdate

by Matt Sephton — Sun, 11 May 2025 16:58:00 +0000

Back in November 2020 I was exploring the PC-98 back catalog, and stumbled across a strange game called Band-kun. Strange in that it’s a 1-bit black and white game on a platform that was capable of colour, and also because it’s a hybrid adventure/management/music/rhythm game. I was smitten.

The Idea

I was already developing for the Playdate, a modern 1-bit platform, and it struck me as the perfect opportunity to create a remaster of the game. So, I set my sights on securing the licence. The original title was developed by Koei—Japan’s equivalent to Electronic Arts—a giant now known as Koei Tecmo, whose owners are worth hundreds of billions. The game itself is credited to one of those owners: Yoichi Erikawa, who used the pen name Ko Shibusawa. I had a feeling this wasn’t going to be easy.

I published a thread about the game and my prototype on Twitter, introducing the game to the West, which remains my most popular post and thread of all-time (~20 years, for me) at over 450K impressions. I also mirrored the thread as a blog post which is no doubt an easier read.

The idea for the remaster was to not remake the original game at all, but rather to take the vibe and bring it into the modern era. So there were no plans to use the original music, or perhaps even the original graphics. I would leverage modern device capabilities and input methods to create a totally new experience a million miles away from the limited original game from 1990.

Challenge Accepted

A couple of days later, 18th December 2020, Cabel Sasser of Panic reached out:

“Hey Matt, I love a good challenge—do you want me to actually try to make contact with someone at Koei? Regarding Band-Kun? (Philosophically, the idea of reviving a long-forgotten PC Koei title is just enormously interesting to me ahhahah)”.

By 25th December 2020—thanks Santa!—Panic’s guy in Japan, Noby, had a breakthrough finding contact details and sent an email to Koei. Their reply came quickly on 27th December 2020 when a lovely person in Koei’s IP management department replied:

they knew of the Playdate and were waiting patiently to pre-order
they had the licence for the Band-kun game (music to my ears!)
there was an outstanding question about the music rights
and some remaining business questions for Panic to answer

The project then became in need of a budget to be set: for both the licence and for me to build it. Even with this discussion happening in late December 2020, it was suggested that the game could feature in Season 2. And that, unfortunately, was the last I heard of it. Sad, and surprising, but true.

Not one to give up so easily I submitted the game twice, kind of, in pitches to Panic.

Open Pitch: Band-kun

June 2022
to reignite the licence discussion
a reimagining of the original game for a modern device
as a team effort with musician and tools programmers; to hit a deadline
suggested budget was included
pitch pdf (191 KB)

On 1st May 2024 I sent a message to Panic stating that I was still interested in making the game and to check the status of the project, but never received a reply.

Season 2 Pitch: Beatnik

July 2024
an all-new game
let’s forget about the IP
completely revised and redesigned
as a solo endeavour; I was confident I could complete the new scope myself
no budget was required
pitch pdf (185 KB)

Go/no-go

Neither of the pitches were successful. There was no further discussion of the licence from 2020.

Regardless, I decided that I would continue working on the game and release it myself. This was the big project I was working on pretty much exclusively from May 2024 to October 2024. You can see elements of it in my New World and Band-o-matic tech demos.

In August 2024, I took a two-week break from working on Beatnik to develop Bender 2: Bend Harder, an expanded version of a game I originally made in 2012. As part of that project, I integrated some of the tooling and library code I had built for Beatnik to test and validate a few of the technologies and concepts. And that was the end of that.

Atari/Jeff Minter game jam results, Llamasoft, and ST Format

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 09 May 2025 17:03:00 +0000

So, my game HERD NERD is a winner in the “I, REBEL” game jam, hosted by Atari and Jeff Minter.

We are delighted to let you know after hours of play and deliberation - Jeff Minter himself chose your game as THIRD PLACE WINNER

Your game stood out in all the right ways: creative, clever, weird and totally nailing the theme. The team (and the judges!) were blown away by your take on the theme and your execution.

✨ What an honour! ✨

All three winners receive the same prize, but honestly I am more excited to hear why Jeff, Giles, and Jason liked my game. So many nice words to spur me on!

The Results

You can hear more about the game jam and the winning games on the latest Atari podcast episode on YouTube or your favourite podcast listening point. You’ll also learn a bit about the famous Superlambanana sculpture and the infamous Sven Bømwøllen video game. You have been warned!

HERD NERD

You can download and play HERD NERD for free/PWYC on Mac and PC. So check it out! Have fun.

Back in the day

It’s July 1991 and I’ve just walked back from Lewis Meeson’s newsagent to my family home clutching the latest monthly ST FORMAT, issue 24. I’d browsed the magazine in-store to make sure it was worth £2.95 of my hard-earned pocket money, and was eager to try out the software included on the 3.5” floppy disk. This was pre-internet and that was the easiest way of getting hold of a selection of new software. The same thing applied to Amiga, Macintosh, PC, and more.

Today I dug out my actual magazine from storage and my nostalgia dial went all the way up to 11.

Llamatron was my first encounter with Jeff Minter and his weird and wonderful type of game. I played it a lot, mostly in 2-player with the droid or other members of my family. Enemies like sentient cans of cola or screaming Mandelbrot patterns are scorched into my memory forever more.

But it wasn’t just Llamatron that was so great in this issue, I also remember using the Revenge document displayer (with no internet we used to read a lot of text files that were included on the disks, like the Llamatron manual and readme about it being distributed in a new-fangled way known as Shareware). And also Little Green Selector which replaced the standard file selector with one that had fully-featured file manager functionality, though eventually I migrated to the even more amazing Universal Item Selector III which was one of many such replacements. It really was a different era.

Elsewhere in the magazine is a list of Jeff’s favourite games of all time (as of mid-1991). I love that he put his own game at number 1. And then to also include 2 more of his games. What a rock star! Click the image to zoom. Below you’ll find a full list of games with links to read more.

A yak’s favourite games (of all time), 1991

Abandoned project: Soccer for Playdate

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 01 May 2025 14:34:00 +0000

On September 30th, 2023, I was sitting in the cinema waiting for an anniversary screening of Talking Heads “Stop Making Sense” to begin when I got a message from Panic. They asked if I was familiar with Sensible Soccer. Naturally, I was—I’ve played it since its release in 1992, as man and boy. Back in 2000, I’d even made my own arcade-style take on it called Simple Soccer, and in 2002 I designed an official Sensible Soccer T-shirt that was sold on the high street. Panic had no idea about any of this, but luck works in funny ways sometimes.

Panic’s idea was to make a soccer game for Playdate, tied in as a promotional companion to the soccer-infused first-person slice-of-life game Despelote (out today—1st May, 2025). Very cool.

I was super keen, as you’d imagine, and quickly got to work on a prototype (download at the link). It let you move around the pitch, zoom in and out, and switch between different pitch surfaces. I sent it off and asked for a budget and scope. With the expectation set that the project was going forwards and while waiting for a reply, I kept going: I got the ball moving (using the same sort of ball movement trick I first solved 25 years ago and more recently reused for Fore! Track), and had two AI-controlled teams running around the pitch, tracking the ball using the classic Sensible Soccer grid system.

But I never heard back about the budget. So I stopped—just before adding goal-scoring. It would’ve been so cool.

Lesson learned. I now always ask for a contract upfront and of course don’t do spec work. If a client wants me to build something, they need to commit—and at the very least, meet me on the halfway line.

Abandoned project: firework builder puzzle game

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 21:39:00 +0000

I plan to occasionally list abandoned projects that I’ve decided not to take any further.

This one is a prototype for a “firework builder” puzzle game. I was calling it Hanabi, the Japanese word for firework, but I’m not sure I would have stuck with that for the final name.

It’s a visual programming-based puzzle video game along the lines of Human Resource Machine and influenced by block-based visual programming language Scratch.

I submitted it to the Draknek New Voices Puzzle Grant 2024, but was not selected. At the time of submission the core game logic had been proven, with a dozen or so block types supported, and I was learning how to program shaders as I had a very specific way I wanted to present the final firework animation. You can see the paper texture that I was generating using a shader in the video below. I had a dozen or so puzzles designed, including a heart shape which takes some thinking and combining of logic blocks to achieve!

Whilst the prototype was an iOS app—mostly to benefit from rapid prototyping using SwiftUI and to get touch control and easy list management for free—the final game could have been on any platform. The challenge would be user interface, followed by puzzles and visual design.

I gave up on the idea for a number of reasons, including but not limited to harassment.

Video Demonstration

Below is the video I submitted with my entry, dated 2024-10-07. I narrate and run through the concept, complete example puzzles, and talk about the “woodblock print” style of fireworks I was planning and in the process of implementing.

Talking about Moai in Games on Tokyo Game Life podcast

by Matt Sephton — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 20:56:00 +0000

You may or may not know that I run the website moai.games which features a catalogue of screenshots showing Moai appearances in video games. At the time of writing there are over 1000 games listed going all the way back to the early 1980s. ✨👋🗿✨

Tokyo Game Life reached out and I chatted to them a bit about all of that cool and nerdy stuff. Listen in your usual podcast app or using the embedded player below.

Station: Travel Through the Four Seasons (1994)

by Matt Sephton — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 20:12:00 +0000

After reaching 1 million files in my Macintosh Magazine Media project, I thought it would be cool to post about something I found recently in those discs. I get a real buzz rediscovering something like this after more than 30 years have passed.

It’s a sweet little point and click adventure game for Classic Macintosh called “Station: Travel Through the Four Seasons” by Mitsuo Isaka, about taking train rides through the Japanese countryside. You meet and interact with a variety of people and explore each scene to figure out how to move on.

It was found on CD2 マルチメディアチャレンジ ’94 要賞作品篥 (Multimedia Challenge ’94 Award Winning Works) of MACLIFE Special: Gokuraku Paradise Theater 1994. You can download the ISO to explore that disc for yourself in an emulator or on a vintage Macintosh. I also uploaded just the game to Macintosh Garden so that you don’t need to download the whole CD for just this game.

Play it in your browser

But if you want to try it right now you can do so in your browser thanks to the Infinite Mac website, using this link: KanjiTalk 7.5.3 with the Station disk image already mounted

The game is in Japanese and features mostly voiceover and a little on screen text. Google Translate can probably help with its conversation (audio) and camera (visual) translation modes. Ganbare!

Introduction

In Japanese, it says:

ここは“四季の里”といわれるとこる。昔から一両だけのディーゼル車がのんびりと走っているという。

駅は全部で四つの小さな鉄道だけれど不思議なことに、ひとつひとつの駅にそれぞれのきまった季節があるという。

ぼくは、さっそくその鉄道に乗ってみようと春の季節をもっといわれる“桜ヶ丘”という駅を訪ねることにした・・・

Translated into English:

This place is known as the ‘Village of the Four Seasons’. A single diesel train has been running slowly and leisurely here for a long time.

There are four stations in total on this small railway, but strangely enough, each station has its own set season.

I decided to visit a station called ‘Sakuragaoka’, which is known more for its spring season, to try out the railway…

The making of MaBoShi

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 16:00:00 +0000

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of an almost forgotten WiiWare game called MaBoShi. I’ve posted a review, the staff roll/credits (for the first time in English), written an FAQ strategy guide, managed to score 1 million in its “circle” game on my Nintendo DS, created a way for you to play it more easily on your iPhone, and even finally succeeded to make my own version of the “circle” game over the course of many years. I never miss an opportunity to wax lyrical about its genius, so here I am once again to keep the fire burning.

MaBoShi was published in 2008 by Nintendo and developed by Mindware Corp who have a long and well respected development history. The game was critically acclaimed on release, which might come as a shock if you’ve never heard of it. It was somewhat inaccessible: it was a hardcore arcade title only available digitally on a console that was maligned as being “for kids”. To give a sense of time, the App Store on iPhone was barely a month old at the time of MaBoShi’s release.

As part of the release promotional campaign Micky Albert of Mindware Corp gave an interview with WiiWare World (now Nintendo Life) which can be read in two parts. The team effort of the development of the Wii game is detailed in that interview. However, if we dig a little deeper we can find the true origins of the game in a couple of prototypes created by a Japanese indie developer. Over the years I have pieced together the interesting story of how MaBoShi came to be.

The Long Tail

Kuniaki Watanabe (“kuni”) is probably best known for his PlayStation open world exploration and crafting game Panekit, released in 1999. This was a product of Sony’s ゲームやろうぜ! “Game Yaroze!” development programme (not to be confused with PlayStation’s 「ネットやろうぜ」 “Net Yaroze” dev kit). Panekit offered the type of easy, freeform crafting that would later appear in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and even later in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Most famously Panekit took 13 years to become profitable.

In more recent years he’s written a book on game design, 組み立て×分解！ゲームデザイン (“Assembly × Disassembly! Game Design”), that goes into the mechanics that are used in his games, including MaBoShi. It’s only available in Japanese but has a very friendly manga-style presentation and the game design techniques are easily understood.

Throughout the past 30 years kuni has been an indie developer, developing for many platforms using a range of tools. And this is where we pick up the origins of MaBoShi.

Hot Soup Processor

HSP could be thought of as a Japanese equivalent to something like BlitzMax, given that it started life as a version of BASIC, or perhaps Love2D for a rough equivalent of its capabilities.

ONION software, creators of HSP, hold the annual HSP Program Contest and the results for all of these have been archived over the years. Nice work, ONION! We can do a web search of that domain to find mentions of kuni.

Mosser

We find one entry in HSP Program Contest 2004 called Mosser. A quick look at the image below shows that it was an early version of MaBoShi’s “square” game, which later evolved into Flametail on DSiWare in 2010. Mosser was awarded first prize in the small game category.

One of the judges was none other than Micky Albert of Mindware Corp—the company that would go on to develop MaBoShi! He and the other judges were very impressed with the gameplay and depth even at this prototype stage. Kuni would win a PlayStation Portable and some pinball art donated by Mindware who were a sponsor of the event. You can read the judges thoughts and the game can be run in old versions of Windows.

Circular

Kuni would create prototypes in Flash Lite, which was a version of Flash that was suitable for running on low powered devices, including Japanese feature phones. If we search archived versions of kuni’s old websites we can find a download from 2003 called Circular. You can play this in your browser thanks to Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine and Ruffle, a web-based Flash emulator.

Circular is obviously an early version of MaBoShi’s “circle” game.

All bar one

So we have found two of the three games in MaBoShi, which leaves us with the “bar” game. I spoke to kuni and he mentioned that this did not exist as a prototype prior to work commencing on MaBoShi, so it was created for the game when it was decided that a third game would be welcome.

Missing in action

At the time of release there were a couple of English videos of a “making of” developer interview shown in both North America and Europe that have since been lost to time. Nintendo Europe were kind enough to respond to my request about these videos, but told me that their archive currently only goes back to 2012 so we’re sadly out of luck. Here are references I have found to the airing dates for video 1 (Dec 2008) and video 2 (Jan 2009).

These include the juicy fact that the game was initially green lit for the Game Boy Micro (a small Game Boy Advance, marketed as being suitable for one-handed play for Japanese commuters) alongside the bitGenerations series, Polarium, Rhythm Paradise, but after the sales of the Micro were less than anticipated the development was moved to DS and eventually to Wii.

Reading list

“1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die” (Tony Mott, et al) right opposite Spelunky
Tiny Cartridge guest review by Anna Anthropy
TV ad/commercial that inspired MaBoShi’s effect system
Patent application US20090093314 describing MaBoShi’s effect system
Patent application US20110165940 describing Flametail’s power-up system

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.

TETRIS: 1984 is the date of conception (1989)

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 17:20:00 +0000

Given the ongoing discussion about whether or not TETRIS turns 40 years old in 2024 or 2025, I keep my eye out for early mentions of the game. As a bonus, this is an item that at the time of me posting it to social media a couple of days ago had not been covered in English anywhere else on the internet. As far as I’m aware this is the earliest printed reference mentioning the conception date of Tetris.

It’s a short interview with Alexey Pajitnov in Japanese PC magazine, Oh! X, conducted mid-1989 around the time of the release of the seminal Game Boy version of TETRIS, the first year the game was available outside of the USSR. It contains this beautiful question and answer:

Japanese text:

Q: TETRIS誕生のきっかけを教えてください。

——いまから5年前の1984年に、IQテスト用プログラムを作ろうとしたのが最初です。そのとき、ペントミノというゲームをベースに5～8個からなるブロックを落下させ、それを回転させて組み合わせるということを考えて作ったのがこのゲームなのです。

English translation:

Q: Please tell us about how TETRIS came to be created.

A: It started 5 years ago in 1984, when I was trying to create a program for IQ testing. At that time, I created this game based on a game called Pentomino, where I came up with the idea of having blocks made up of 5–8 pieces fall down and rotate them to combine them together.

Note: pentomino are comprised of 5 pieces whilst tetromino are comprised of 4 pieces, so the version referred to is certainly an early prototype. I’m not aware of a surviving version of whatever TETRIS was first known as that has blocks of 5–8 pieces.

Bibliography

Publication: Oh! X, Vol. 8, No. 8 (August 1989)
ISSN: 0910-7614
Section: TETRISの原作者パジトノフ氏来日 (TETRIS creator Pajitnov visits Japan)
Pages: 89–90
Source scan

New 3D Golf Simulation (video game series)

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 09 Nov 2024 20:00:00 +0000

Golf video games are one of my passions, ever since World Class Leader Board and Microprose Golf on Atari ST. These days my favourite golf games are still the old ones. In particular I have a soft spot for T&E SOFT’s New 3D Golf Simulation series with its blue skies, bright colours, and FM synth tunes. This series has a long history so I thought I’d do my best to recap and share some little-known knowledge.

Translation Guides

To make it easier for you to play the Japanese games mentioned below, I wrote translation guides: gamefaqs.gamespot.com/community/msephton/contributions/faqs

8-bit Computers

The series began in 1982 with リアルゴルフゲーム (Real Golf Game) for NEC PC-6001, a distinctly 2D presentation with overhead view, power bar and course map. Here’s a video of where it all began.

Things got interesting later that year with the follow-up ３Ｄゴルフシミュレーション (3-D Golf Simulation) which was written for the Fujitsu FM-7 computer and published in the 1983-4 issue of I/O magazine. The game was written in BASIC and its source code, including data for 18 holes known as T&E Island Golf Course, was given away in the magazine as a type-in listing. The game was released commercially on a few other Japanese 8-bit computers over the next couple of years, with machine code gradually added to speed up the 3D processing in 1984’s “High-Speed” edition for MSX and 1985’s “Super Version” for PC-6001 mkII. They’re still painfully slow.

16-bit Computers

A break of 4 years should give you some idea as to the work that was going on behind the scenes, culminating in the 1989 release of Harukanaru Augusta for PC-9801. This was an official licensed representation of Augusta National Golf Club, also known as the location of the famous Masters tournament.

This is where the series really hit its stride and made lasting impressions: high resolution graphics using a bespoke dithering system to make the most of the limited colour palette, digitised caddy images and sound effects, catchy music using FM synthesis, detailed real life golf courses, and an engaging control system. The 3DGOLF system software was upgraded a couple of times over the next few years, and a handful of add-on courses were released.

For PC-9801 the total list of available courses counted six:

Harukanaru Augusta (1989)
- “Distant Augusta”
- [System Disk 1.0]
Eight Lakes G.C. (1990)
- fictional course
T&E Selection (1990)
- fictional course
Waialae no Kiseki (1991)
- “Miracle of Waialae”
Pebble Beach no Hatou (1992)
- “Waves of Pebble Beach”
- [System Disk 2.0]
Devil’s Course (1992)
- aka Wicked 18
- fictional course

Harukanaru Augusta and Eight Lakes G.C. were also released on FM-TOWNS and Sharp X68000, but not the later courses. Maybe sales weren’t good enough? Harukanaru Augusta would also see a mail-in upgrade release as a “HD” hard disk installable version, running System Disk 2.5, but this was not backwards compatible with the previous releases. At this point the engine powering the games had been rewritten and was referred to as POLYSYS and made claims of being an “Integrated 3D Processor” or software DSP. The holes were designed in a custom CAD package. Each 3D hole consisted of a mere 256 points!

Throughout this hugely productive Japanese PC period T&E SOFT published a printed newsletter for New 3D Golf Simulation owners called “Top Spin”, which I’m yet to see a copy of. Please do get in touch if you have any information!

16-bit Consoles

The series was eventually ported to console, first to Nintendo’s Super Famicom (SNES), with Harukanaru Augusta arriving early in Japan and Waialae Country Club being a USA launch title. Later, totally different ports were released on Sega Mega Drive, which was lucky enough to get four out of the six courses. Pebble Beach was released first in the USA and later in Japan. Harukanaru Augusta, Devil’s Course and Waialae followed, but only in Japan.

These Japanese Mega Drive versions are my favourite of the bunch. They’re based on the PC-9801 games, right down to using the same course data, and the user interface is a low-resolution facsimile that retains the charm and style of the original PC interface. They really are a work of art. The Japanese versions maintain the dithering effect to show different grass types, but the USA version features only solid colours. The USA version features an easier power meter but removes the special full power shot that the Japanese version had. All in all I’d say the USA versions are easier and less attractive.

Playing them today under emulation I make sure to overclock the CPU (400% is good) to reduce the redraw times, speed up transitions, and make for an altogether more modern and enjoyable experience. You can also hold the B button to speed up ball flight animation, which is even more noticable when running overclocked. Speed runners take note!

Real 3D?

With the arrival of systems capable of real-time 3D came the opportunity for more realistic golf courses, at least. But there was some legacy baggage hanging around. The SNES was still very popular, and it wasn’t obvious how much more powerful the more awkward to program 32-bit systems like the 3DO and Saturn might be. So the final games in the series on SNES and the first in the series on 3DO and Saturn were pretty much the same: 3D but no dynamic camera. Amazing for SNES owners, and perhaps disappointing for 3DO and Saturn owners.

PlayStation and N64, on the other hand, got real 3D versions of the game. Even the Virtual Boy got a decent wireframe 3D version of this era T&E SOFT golf engine, as T&E Virtual Golf (or just Golf worldwide). Quite surprising! All are very much worth playing, though I personally favour the PlayStation games over the N64 games. Virtual Boy Golf is worth a try, just for kicks, and can be played under emulation in 3D using anaglyph red/blue glasses or in glasses-free 3D in an emulator on a Nintendo 3DS!

That said, the Saturn still had a trump up its sleeve. Perhaps because it was very popular in Japan it was the console T&E SOFT chose to release the final 32-bit version of the game, Waialae no Kiseki ~Extra 36 Holes~. As you might expect from its name there were two extra courses bundled with this game. Windy G.C. was a brand new ultra-difficult course, whilst Eight Lakes G.C. was a modernisation of the fictional course featured in the 1990 add-on disk for the original Harukanaru Augusta game for PC-98 and X68000 that released back in 1989. Full circle self-referencing from T&E SOFT—nice!

The engine also powered RPG Virtual Hydlide on SEGA Saturn.

The 19th Hole

T&E SOFT kind of ceased to exist at some point after this, though they managed to spit out a few golf games under one name or another to mixed reviews. Windows 9x got a proper version of the game in Harukanaru Augusta for Windows, which is great. PS2 got Golf Paradise (Swing Away Golf) and a Disney-branded version called Disney Golf Classic (Disney Golf) which are somewhat souless games that really don’t excite me.

The finale was somewhat of a surprise, with the DS getting Touch Golf (True Swing Golf) in 2005, and a DSi version in 2009 as A Little Bit of Nintendo Touch Golf. These are both truly great games, though if I had to choose I’d pick the DSi version as it trims some fat and focuses the game and experience perfectly: a real treat! You can read my review of the DSi version in an older blog post.

Music

The music in this series really is some of the best FM synth you’ll hear. I can recommend this episode of the Pixelated Audio podcast to bring you up to speed.

A bunch of these games share a common music track—I call it the “T&E SOFT Golf Theme”—arranged differently to suit the host sound system capabilities.

Waialae no Kiseki (SFC)
Pebble Beach no Hatou (SFC)
Harukanaru Augusta (PC-98, X68000, FMT)

Here’s a playlist of the 5 versions.

Box Art

Perhaps the box artwork is the most striking thing about the Mega Drive versions, with its classic typography-led design, strong brush-stroked calligraphic logo, and the intriguing hand-painted golf scene.

These paintings obviously represent the real life courses, but further investigation revealed that not only did they show a particular hole but they also showed a famous event that happened on the course (with the obvious exception of the fictional Devil’s Course).

I don’t have much knowledge of real life golf events but I managed to figure them out, I think, using my Google-fu. Though I’d still love to know who painted them!?

Harukanaru Augusta

Pebble Beach no Hatou

Waialae no Kiseki

Devil’s Course (Wicked 18)

Bender 2: Bend Harder for Playdate

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 17:00:00 +0000

Back in 2012 I wanted to make a quick game for the AGBIC game jam (A Game By Its Cover; make a game inspired by the imaginary cover art from the Famicase exhibition). There’s only one rule for this game jam, which is taken very seriously: respect the wishes of the original artists, and don’t appropriate their designs without consent. Otherwise you’re free to do what you want. And you can choose a cover as inspiration for your game from the entire archive of Famicase entries, so every year there are more and more great covers to be inspired by.

2012

I had a browse of the Famicase entries and picked artwork titled Bender, by 清水昭利 Akitoshi Shimizu, from the 2011 submissions, and set to work… thinking. One morning I had the crazy idea to impose severe constraints to help my ideation: I should make the game using only CSS transitions (and some simple JavaScript logic to control the game state and flow). I have no idea why this seemed like a good idea, but it worked!

The result of two days work was a web game called Bender released 12th July 2012. It was fun to make and devilishly addictive. The web game still works today, on desktop and mobile, though the controls are prone to getting stuck from time to time for reasons I’ve not looked into.

2022

Fast forward 10 years and I decided to do a pretty straight port of the web game to the Playdate handheld, that was 20th May 2022. I coded it from memory/feel, just for kicks, not that I had any choice as the available technologies are so different. It was a very bare bones game, with no music and messy code, but it was a test to see if I could release a game in a day. I did.

Seeing as original Bender web game used CSS for all graphics and animation, and a little JavaScript to control the game flow, I had wondered how I would build Bender with the Playdate SDK? I settled on using only primitives and dither patterns to draw all the elements, an approach that I have continued to refine in subsequent games such as my GOTY 2023 accolade and award winner YOYOZO, the detailed rendered look of Fore! Track, or the stark minimalism of Super ICARUS.

Each side of the bar is a thick line, with “butt” cap-style. To give the illusion of the bar bending I draw a circle at the origin or common point of both lines. A little bit of trigonometry was all that was needed to get the lines bending correctly. The benefits to this approach are many, such as: no images, no sprites, always smooth edges, better performance. Animation also does not use the Playdate SDK, but rather I track the positions of screen elements and move them based on some rules and algorithms.

I use dithering to provide visual effects: animation of snapping and motion blur of the moving line. There’s also a zen mode that disables visual effects and the toasting words (which are randomised from large lists).

2023

I submitted Bender for consideration for Playdate Catalog when the service launched, but it was rejected for being “too simple”. After some lengthy contemplation my takeaway from the rejection was that it meant there was not enough meat on the bones of the game, rather than anything specific against the central gameplay mechanic which is beautifully simple.

Fair point. Though I did say I would expand the game, add music and so on, I learned that it’s difficult for people to imagine how you’re going to expand on a simple concept. You need to show them. It took many months—about a year and a half—for me to find the time and energy to revisit Bender.

2024

The end result is Bender 2: Bend Harder. The new game has been remade, from scratch, right down to the fonts. And it’s packed with new things: friendlier gameplay, more obvious goals, multiple game modes, a deeper scoring system, awards/achievements, multiple secrets/easter eggs, online score boards, improved graphics, dynamic music and sound including elements that react to the beat of the music, an imaginary scenario to provide a bit of world-building, and much more besides! At ~2000 lines the source code is over 4 times the length of the first version’s ~500 lines, just to give you an idea of how much more logic there is in the new game. Not that lines of code is a good metric, but you get my point. There is much new!

There are elements to the game that I would usually disclose the technical details of—my process, tooling—but I’m currently doing my utmost to protect my “vibe” so that won’t happen today. This is why we can’t have nice things. Maybe at some point in the future, but no promises.

Anyway, I’m really happy how this game has turned out. Can’t wait to see some activity on the leaderboards! Get it at play.date/games/bender-2-bend-harder/ and I’ll see you in the high scores!

As usual, promo artwork is by vxcl with 1-bit equivalents drawn by me.

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

My other games for Playdate

This brings my total of games on Playdate Catalog to 5, the others being:

YOYOZO
- Best Games of 2023 (Ars Technica)
- Best Arcade Game (Playdate Community Awards 2023)
Sparrow Solitaire
- Best Puzzle Game (Playdate Community Awards 2023)
Fore! Track
- the first colour Playdate game?
Super ICARUS
- an innovative hybrid survival-racing game

I also have a bunch of other games at gingerbeardman.itch.io for both Playdate and Mac/Windows.

Moai-chan-dise

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 19:19:00 +0000

Let’s celebrate!

we just hit 1000 games at my database of moai in video games 🗿
today is Fiestas Patrias (Independence Day) in Chile 🇨🇱

So here’s some “Moai-chan-dise” ✨

t-shirts and stickers in both silly and serious styles
special “relaxing” sticker by @Vxcl

T-shirts

Various sizes and colours.

Stickers

3-inch longest side, on clear vinyl.

Special Edition Sticker

3-inch longest side, on clear vinyl.

gingerbeardman.creator-spring.com/listing/moai-relaxing-sticker

Alt Store

Some buyers may choose to buy from my alternate web store which ships from the UK.

www.tshirtstudio.com/marketplace/gingerbeardman

This store has more limited colour choices, though you can edit that during checkout. YMMV.

TETRIS for Sharp Electronic Notebook (1989)

by Matt Sephton — Sun, 04 Aug 2024 16:47:00 +0000

Sharp’s Denshi Techō (電子手帳) were a range of electronic notebooks or organisers, marketed as Bware in Japan and Wizard or IQ elsewhere. In Japan they won a prestigious G-mark Good Design Award in 1988 and in the USA an episode of Seinfeld was the prize.

As well as being home to some of the earliest emoji these devices could run software from IC cards (solid state storage). There were about 30 games released in this format, everything from classics like Sokoban, Shanghai, Lode Runner, Puzznic, Fortress, to everygreen games like Golf, Baseball, Mahjong, Shogi, Othello, Solitaire, President (card game), exclusive games like Yamamura Misa Suspense – The Kyoto Zai-tech Murder Case, and some contemporary titles like Hatris.

And perhaps most importantly: a version of Tetris, released in December 1989. Tetris-mania was in full effect and the Game Boy had recently received its version of Tetris in April 1989.

There’s not much about these devices online, particularly in English, but two notable places are: HP Museum forum (for devices and IC cards) and Insert Credit forum (for games). The devices are common on Japanese auction and selling websites, but the games are becoming more difficult to find.

This was, as far as I am aware, the second ever handheld version of Tetris. At the time of its release Japan was in the “bubble era” period of economic boom, which lasted 1986–1991. There was so much money floating around they didn’t know what to do with it, so much of it was ploughed into research and development of crazy things in the fields of consumer electronics, computers, engine technology, vehicle design, book design, software distribution, etc.

Without this device there would be no Apple Newton (which was co-produced by Sharp), without Newton there would be no iPhone, and without iPhone there would be no Android. Evolution is necessary for technological progress.

Thanks to Akuji, the collector from whom I bought my Sharp PA-8500 and manual, who is a fountain of knowledge regarding IC-capable devices from a range of manufacturers.

TETRIS IC card

Here it is running on my PA-8500:

Analysis

This version of the game is documented only briefly on Tetris.wiki and even less on Hard Drop Tetris Wiki, so let’s see what we can do to fill in a bit more information.

The device boots straight into the game, but you can switch to calendar, memo, calculator, or other organiser functions whilst it is running. Switching back to the game causes it to reboot, so games cannot be resumed. You cannot skip the BPS logo, but you can skip the credits.

The credits and game area are in the left (or top) half of the display because it can also run on devices with a smaller screen of half the size of the one shown.

There is a touch screen surface on top of where the card slots in and the print on the IC card itself shows the user where to press for each button or function. We can see that the shape of each buttons lines up with the grid of dots of the touch surface. We see the following buttons:

left
right
rotate (only counter-clockwise)
soft drop
start (hi-speed)
start (low-speed)
pause on/off
sound on/off

Scoring, line-clearing, leveling-up are somewhat odd and non-standard. Tetris.wiki has those covered. Notably, the play area reduces in size by the bottom lines filling in as you level-up, gradually becoming less tall and more cramped.

The game seems to have been programmed by BPS (Bullet-Proof Software), though I’m yet to see the manual, but there are no separate programming credits.

Credits

As seen in the video:

™ and © 1987 Elorg.
TETRIS licensed to B.P.S.
© 1989 B.P.S. All Rights Reserved.
Original concept by Alexey Pazhitnov.
Original design and program by Vadim Gerasimov.

TETRIS: Heavenly Scrolls (1989)

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 14:47:00 +0000

Given the ongoing discussion about whether or not TETRIS is 40 years old in 2024 (I say not), I thought it would be cool to add something interesting and relevant to the conversation. As a bonus, this is an item that at the time of writing is not covered in English anywhere else on the internet.

A Japanese book about TETRIS, written in the first year the game was available outside of the USSR:

テトリス10万点への解法 (天の巻)
TETRIS: The Solution to 100,000 Points (Heavenly Scrolls)
“HOW TO WIN TETRIS FOR 100,000,000 TETRISTS”

Edited and translated by 石原恒和 Tsunekazu Ishihara, published 15th March 1989.

Yes, that’s the current CEO of The Pokémon Company!

The book is equal parts strategy guide, love letter to the game, and historical document. It mostly features Spectrum Holobyte’s Macintosh version of TETRIS, but fondly refers to versions on the Amiga and other home computers. At the point this book was published, March 1989, the Game Boy was just about to release, in April, and its version of TETRIS would not arrive for a few months more, in June.

It features contributions from the team at SEDIC (most famous for Otocky) in the form of essays, stories, and illustrations about their experience with the game and how it had changed their world view. More on them in a forthcoming blog post. Towards the end of the book there are interviews with the TETRIS creators: Vadim Gerasimov (programmer) and Alexey Pajitnov (designer). Henk Rogers does not seem to be mentioned, though his company BPS is briefly mentioned in passing.

I can’t see any specific mention of the creation date of TETRIS in the text, but there’s a copyright line, most likely taken from the Spectrum Holobyte Macintosh version, that says:

Copyright © 1987 Academy Soft-ELORG.
All rights reserved. TETRIS is a trademark of Academy Soft-ELORG.

Pitching a game based on the CICLOPE 2016 Opening Film

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 14:30:00 +0000

A little over a year ago I wrote a screenplay/pitch for a video game based on an animated short film created by THE LINE Animation Studio: the opening film from the CICLOPE Festival in 2016.

I’d like to make this game but I need support to do so. Until then I figured I’d post it here for all to read.

CICLOPE

Think of this as the game trailer. Watch it before or after reading.

More information on the making of the animation at thelineanimation.com/work/ciclope/

Game Overview

Our task is to transport the package to its destination.

We start the game not knowing what, why, or how.

The story would involve the environment and its occupants, across many scenarios. We would work together to overcome problems and allow the drone to complete its journey.

The overarching theme of the game is that we could and should all live in harmony together, make use of what we have around us, treat each other and the Earth with respect, and live a happy life.

The experience is not a walking simulator, it is more than that. It is a truly interactive, guided story, with puzzles and multiple paths.

Scenarios

These are the scenarios shown in the film and story boards. I’m giving them names here, but I do not see them being named in the game as it will strive to use as little text as possible.

Delta

We first see the drone flying above an River delta at low tide, arriving from an unknown location. We are immediately tasked with flying the drone, following the strand of river that we are on. The camera angle is locked to point only down. We do not see that we are carrying a package.

On subsequent play-throughs we would fly low to pick up some “gold dust” on the package we are carrying for a special bonus in the ending sequence.

After a while everywhere starts to look the same, every tree looks the same, every bit of riverbed looks the same. The small river we have been following starts to disappear, eventually branching into another which does the same. We realise that we are lost.

Picking up clues from the environment, we figure out that the best course of action is to follow the direction in which the water is flowing, eventually reaching the open sea.

River deltas have proven to be important throughout human civilisation, as they are major agricultural and population centres. They could be considered the cradle of civilisation.

We cross the open sea only to encounter an electric fence, we have to seek the help of animals to find the hole in the fence and continue our journey. Near the hole in the fence we find a small satellite dish and overhear some broken comms/broadcast that we cannot understand.

We see our reflection for the first time in the water and see a label stencilled on our housing: D3174 (“Delta”).

we see: beautiful landscapes, ourselves
we feel: found, lost, new beginnings, purpose

Opening Credits

This acts as a tidy segue between river delta and desert, showing star-filled sky and sun-bleached-sky signifying that much time has passed and distance has been covered.

Here it is revealed for the first time that we are carrying a package.

we see: the vast expanse, the wide world, stars, sun, endless vistas
we feel: excited, inquisitive, small, ill-equipped

Desert

After flying through the desert for a while, exploring structures, a sand storm approaches and we are forced to take shelter in a small hut at the base of a felled pylon. Here we are taught first hand how we can drop the package if we need to (but only on places where X marks the spot) and how we can pick up and combine items. We learn how to craft new objects with the things we find around us.

After the storm has passed (coincidentally as soon as we have completed the tutorial objectives) we are allowed to go back outside. We discover lots of new things: a partially covered megalithic monument where we are able to find a replacement battery, and a satellite dish and broadcasting station.

Similar partially covered monuments are visible in all locations, and are a reference to technology and discoveries that have been forgotten in the name of progress.

We need to use our new crafting ability to reconnect the equipment. We then receive our first communication/broadcast. But what form does it take?

One idea would be for it to be famous radio broadcasts in foreign languages, celebratiing technological breakthroughs related to the current scenario. eg. the desert could be Africa, and the radio broadcast could be about, say, CT scan etc.

We are also given our first new ability, an Augmented Reality (AR) overlay on our camera view allowing us to see certain invisible things in the environment such as hot air drafts.

we see: sand storm, crafting, invisible stuff
we feel: accomplished, empowered

Oasis

The transition out of the desert takes the form of an encounter with an oasis.

This gives us the opportunity to have a flash-back or flash-forward, somewhat acid trip sort of interjection in the story. Half through our AR glasses and half through the scene. We see elements of what has happened on Earth to leave the landscape in such a ravaged state. It is not Nuclear war, or AI, but simply a result of our over-use of Earth’s resources.

We are left wondering… what was real and what was imaginary?

we see: psychedelic, trippy, quick-cut flashes from another time
we feel: confused, lost, humbled

Solar Farm

We see something on the horizon, something that looks like a city. Perhaps our experience at the oasis had foreshadowed this? We instinctively head in that direction, and it turns out to be much closer than it looked because it is much less tall than it looked at a distance.

We have encountered a solar farm, with panels stretching as far as the eye can see in every direction.

In fact the game makes sure it is impossible to fly away from them, see Notes section at the end of this document.

After our ordeal in the desert we have a problem with our battery and solar panel.

We need to figure out where in the solar farm we have to go, maybe there is something here we can use to craft a solution. Racing against daylight and the approaching shadows of nightfall we are forced in a certain direction. We realise we can follow the cables on the ground much like we followed the rivers at the delta. We end up at a hut somewhere in the solar farm.

We immediately find a new battery, but replacing our solar panel will be more difficult. Another satellite comes online and we receive more comms. We see signs of a power source radar, we have to find it and pick it up. But how?

We need to build a Rube Goldberg-style contraption involving: a fragment of our existing solar panel, the reflection of the sun to concentrate light/heat, the water tower, and of course the drone. The water tower ruptures and water floods onto the land and down a previously unseen drainage system. We fly through the pipes into an underground facility where we find a replacement solar panel and our power source radar.

we see: signs of sustainable technology, signs of an advanced human race
we feel: empowered, less small, hopeful

Coastline

We see the megalithic monuments for the first time.

Our radar picks up its first sign of power, but we cannot reach it.

We need to fly to top of the tower, in stages as we do not have the power to fly at once. When we get to the top we realise we are low on battery. The only things up there are a rock and a small plank of wood. We have to position the wood on the rock and then land on it like a see saw. The wood then flips over and lands on top of us, interlocking with our frame to create wings.

We dive from the top of one monument and glide over to the other monument, to sunlight and safety, and a replacement power source.

The gliding in this stage is reminiscent of hang-gliding in Pilotwings (SNES, N64, DS) where you need to fly through rings of dots and catch updrafts. These can be see thanks to the item we obtained in the desert.

we see: strange monuments to lost technology
we feel: mysterious, capable, resourceful

Cut Scene

The transition from coastline takes the form of an introduction to our Augmented Reality camera.

We see AR overlays of ravaged landscape showing aspects of how it used to be.

Volcanic

We use two abilities of our AR camera in this tricky scenario. We need to find a path through the steam that avoids heat, and use updrafts to reach difficult heights.

We reach a set of six communications towers but they are offline. One of the six towers is broken and we need to fix it.

We need to find some metal, smelt it in the heat, pick it up when safe to do so, find wire and a way to cut it, and all to fashion a replacement resistor. We also need to find, untie and otherwise free various wires, and eventually re-plug them to get the system powered up.

We get the system online and hear more comms.

we see: heat haze, AR views
we feel: relieved, capable, hot!

Mountains: valley

We see the broken monorail. In the distance we can hear the sound of cattle bells.

We pick up a power signal and after some effort removing a rock fall, we enter a tunnel and find a small monorail cart. It’s a close cousin of the drone, for the purposes of delivery and operated by the same company. But it’s much older, from the days before drones.

We have to go through the waterfall to collect the battery. Now we have two options, we can leave the area with the battery we have found, or we can go back to monorail cart and give it the battery.

By donating the battery the monorail cart bursts into action and we discover that it is part of a much larger system. The various parts all come to life and start to reconnect the monorail track. This results in a special bonus in the ending sequence.

We are also given a new ability for our kindness: language translation which will allow us to understand the contents of all the broadcasts in the game. These abilities can be kept for New Game+ allowing us to see the contents of the earlier broadcasts which add an extra level of depth to the story line on second playthrough.

After the task is complete we feel as big as the mountains and capable of anything.

we see: the bigger picture, traces of other useful technology
we feel: huge, helpful, part of something bigger

Storm

This scenario not only shows some fancy weather effects, but also shows us that we can save battery power by switching off our light and by not using our other abilities.

We manage to locate a hole in the electrified fence. Once we fly through the storm abates. We are low on power but pick up a radar signal locating a power source. We fly towards it but our battery is depleted giving us no choice but to crash land. The music has been building all this time, becoming more somber, but now it falls completely silent. We hear the strained whine of motors that do not have enough power.

The image fades to black, and we think it might be game over.

A short while later the scene comes back and it is day time. We are in the opening of a cliff-side cave. We see ancient murals depicting a peaceful world.

We can photograph these with our AR camera to get a special bonus in the ending sequence.

Enough sun has entered the cave to recharge our battery enough for us to continue our journey. From our current vantage point we can see we are almost at the peak of a mountain range. The only way is up!

we see: rain, lightning, the end?
we feel: relieved, born again, recharged

Mountains: peak

We are now far off route, but the top of the mountain has been calling us.

We encounter indigenous people who have perhaps never seen a drone. Or maybe they are trying to take the package? We keep our distance and notice they seem preoccupied by something else.

There are markings on the rocks, including our familiar X marks the spot the recurring theme showing the place where we can set down our package and it will be safe.

The people are looking for their pet. They understand that the drone might be able to help them and they shout in a language the drone does not recognise, but the new ability gained at the Valley means that we can understand them. We can see the pet stranded on a high peak.

If we fly directly there we will be in too much shadow and our battery will deplete. We figure out that we need to fly between crepuscular rays and avoid shadows. So with some aerial acrobatics and some picking up and dropping things to help the animal come closer, we are able to rescue pick it up and carry it back to the people. They reward us by interpreting the photo we took earlier and show us which way we need to go.

we see: people, animals, the path forward
we feel: helpful, helped, oneness

Forest

We fly down the far side of the mountain. The scenery changes from snow covered peaks to lush forests. Never have we been able to fly so freely.

Flying below tree canopy means less direct sun light and makes parts of this scenario more difficult. Imagine the Star Wars speedbike sequence.

We are receiving radar signals for multiple power sources. One by one they drop off the radar, by going out of range, leaving us with only one. Little do we know that this is our last waypoint.

We are hit by a catapulted projectile and crash to the ground. We see the crashed drone, open package, and the child picking up and using the music box.

we see: a human, a child
we feel: useful, happy, complete
we hear: the music box

FIN

The end sequence is similar to the opening sequence, with the addition of humans. We see each location that we encountered in the game, but they are changed because the world is rebuilding. There are many drones, monorail systems and power source to be seen.

Delta: is once again the cradle of civilisation, busy with people and agriculture
Desert: is back online, populated and a hub of activity
Solar Farm: is now fully functional and even larger than before
Coastline: offshore wind farm, the monuments have been converted into windmills
Volcanic: we are harnessing the volcano heat and steam for power
Valley: we see a busy monorail system, and the waterfall and river is a power source
Storm: in daylight we see the electrified fence is another way of harnessing power
Peak: we see the indigenous people using technology to make their lives easier
Oasis: this turns out to be the home of the child, we see the drone being played with

That’s all, folks.

we see: everything
we feel: happy and content
we hear: rearranged main theme

Post Credits

The child is seen saving the sum total knowledge of her civilisation to a small magneto optical disc, inserting it into the music box, and loading it into the repaired drone. With great delight, she throws the drone into the air. Its next adventure begins.

Notes

If it’s an open world can’t we just keep on flying?

it is not an open world but a guided experience
each location is a limited dimensions and if we keep flying in one direction it will wrap around
this also help reduce backtracking if the map was wide open
travel between areas is guided but there is free movement within each area

Who is flying this thing?

we are
slowly we will earn about other people in the world and we will be helped on our way by many of them, in a wide range of languages
with an ability gathered mid-game we can understand the languages
hearing all the messages will require a second play-through
messages that initially appeared angry take on other meanings

How do we segue between locations?

music & animated sequence almost like a music visualiser
- like the star-filled sky @1:38
- and the sun-bleached sky @1:48
we have to rest (sleep) in some locations to progress from night to day

Influences

Panekit (1999, PS1)
Rime (2017, PS4)
Journey (2021, PS3)
Proteus (2013, PC)
Ico (2001, PS2)
Hunter (1991, Atari ST)

Per-game skins in the Delta classic video game emulator for iOS

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 19:55:00 +0000

Apple recently changed the App Store rules to allow emulators, which means we’re now seeing emulators for classic video game consoles available for download! This is great news for a retro gamer like myself. Delta is one such emulator that currently focuses on Nintendo platforms: NES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, SNES, N64 and DS.

I thought it would be fun to play my favourite Nintendo DS game: MaBoShi. This is an odd choice of game for a few reasons, but it really tests what Delta and the melonDS emulation core can do.

Immediately I noticed that the Nintendo DS emulation quality is high: MaBoShi’s mosaic transitions are shown, whereas in other emulators such as DraStic or DeSmuME they are not. That’s a good start!

When good isn’t good enough

But, we can see some odd things about MaBoShi:

it is played with the DS rotated on its side
the second screen goes mostly unused

And there are some other things we can’t see:

it doesn’t use the touch screen
only the D-pad is used during play (and Start button to pause)

Usually, when I play this game in an emulator I activate single screen mode and forgo seeing the high score, which is no big deal as the game ends at 1 million and that’s always my goal.

So I looked into the Delta docs and skin docs and find that the options to show a single screen, or rotate it, are controlled by the skin (visual theme) you are using.

Reading further into skins the capabilities seemed quite comprehensive, so I began to hatch a plan… maybe I can create a custom skin just for MaBoShi?

I love it when a plan comes together

Here’s the feature list I came up with:

show the main game screen
show only the score from the secondary screen
remove all controls other than the d-pad, start and delta button

I achieved this goal as follows:

define two seperate screens to split the DS image
rotate each of the screens
overlap the screens so that only the score from the secondary screen is visible
rotate the d-pad direction controls
made the touch/game screen a big button
make empty space equivalent to nearest button
create a nice PDF to show the buttons visually

If you’re interested in the JSON associated with this skin, here it is on GitHub.

Maximum joy

Installation and download instructions are at the bottom of the page, but here’s the final skin:

Installation

To install the skin you need to do a little bit of busy work, but boy is it worth it:

Install Delta and get it running DS games (check this video)
Create a folder called Delta in your iCloud Drive so you can easily store/retrieve some downloads
Download the following files:
- MaBoShi.nds.zip game file
- MaBoShi.jpg artwork
- MaBoShi.deltaskin custom skin
Open the .nds.zip game file in Delta
Tap and hold the game icon to show a menu
Choose “Change Artwork”
Select the .jpg you downloaded earlier
Choose “Change Controller Skin”
Select the skin using the + button and set it as both Portrait and Landscape skin for the game

Check out my MaBoShi Guide at GameFAQs to learn more about the game and how to play it. It’s essentially a one button game so isn’t affected by the lack of physical buttons.

Interview: Kenta Cho (Japanese indie game developer)

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 10 Feb 2024 21:46:00 +0000

Kenta Cho is a Japanese indie game developer, who has been active since the 1980s. He became well-known in the West in the early 2000s with a series of bullet hell shoot-em-ups. In 2021 he created a total 139 games, which is one hell of a lockdown project. In early 2024 his game Paku Paku went viral, as “1D Pac-Man”, a year after it was made.

I reached out to him with some questions and he was gracious enough to answer them candidly, from one game developer to another.

After studying information science at university, I joined a manufacturing company in an IT-related research position. Currently, I work as a manager in system development. I have never worked in the gaming industry.

Wow! You’re a true indie in that you’ve never worked at a game studio! Well, let’s start at the beginning: what was your earliest experience with video games?

It was Nintendo’s Game & Watch. Around that time, I lived in an apartment, and I used to exchange and play various Game & Watch games with my friends who lived there. Titles like Fire, Manhole, Helmet, Parachute, and Octopus were simple yet extremely exciting. The simple gameplay of Game & Watch has become my foundational experience in gaming, significantly influencing the small games I make now.

Also, at that time, game arcades were more adult-oriented, making it difficult for children to visit, so arcade games were objects of longing that I couldn’t actually play. Instead, there were various LSI/FL games (in the West we usually refer to such games as LCD games or handheld electronic games) that ported those arcade games, which I also played with friends. Games like Heiankyo Alien and Frisky Tom, ported to machines with specs far inferior to arcade games, were almost different games, but their core gameplay was well-designed, and I loved playing them. The LSI game version of Pac-Man, released by multiple manufacturers, was interesting because each one had its unique arrangement. It was enlightening to realize that depending on the arrangement, a variety of variations could be created from the base gameplay, which greatly influenced my game development.

List of Game & Watch games at Wikipedia
Handheld Games Museum

So even in these early days you were captivated by simple and effective gameplay. Was it at this point that you began programming computers?

I was about ten years old when I saw a TV educational program called マイコン入門 “Mycom Nyumon” (Introduction to Microcomputers). “Mycom” is another name for microcomputer, which was the term used during the dawn of personal computers in Japan. At that time, it was very rare for households to own a personal computer, hence the microcomputer was colloquially called “Mycom”, short for “My-computer”. “Mycom Nyumon” was a program aimed at complete beginners to computers, explaining things like programming. Watching how computers could perform various calculations and control the screen, I thought they were like magical boxes and was utterly fascinated.

Later, my father bought a SHARP PC-1500, a pocket computer, and brought it home. That was my first experience with programming in BASIC, and I thought it had potential unlike any machine I had seen before.

マイコン入門 (Introduction to Microcomputers) at Wikipedia (Japanese)
ポケットコンピュータ (Pocket computer) at Wikipedia (Japanese)
Pocket Computer Manufacturers Database

Despite the limitation of the single line display on those pocket computers they were host to many great games. I can see their influence in your games today. At what point did you decide to create your own game?

The next microcomputer we got was the NEC PC-6001. This was a type that connected to a TV. It was a fresh experience to turn the TV, usually just for watching shows, into something interactive that could be operated with keystrokes and programming. At first, I created games in BASIC, but I was dissatisfied with the processing speed for action games, so I learned to hand-assemble for the Z-80 and began creating games in machine language.

In Japan, there was a magazine called マイコンBASICマガジン “Mycom BASIC Magazine” that accepted submissions of game programs from readers and published them. Each game in the magazine had several pages of source code, which you would enter manually to play the game. These games, despite their compact source code, were full of originality. There were action games about making hamburgers as ordered, race games combined with Pac-Man’s power pellets, puzzle games incorporating rock-paper-scissors, etc. Inspired by how such diverse games could be created depending on the idea, I wanted to make such games too.

I tried submitting some games I made to “Mycom BASIC Magazine”, but it was tough to get them accepted. Only one got published – METEORITE - a game where you shoot down meteors falling from the sky. The game had a unique control where the position of the keys on the keyboard was linked to the attack position on the screen, and you determined the attack location by pressing the keyboard with a clenched fist.

Mycom BASIC Magazine at Wikipedia (Japanese)
Mycom BASIC Magazine at Internet Archive
METEORITE—source code in the 1989-09 issue of Mycom BASIC Magazine
METEORITE—tape file for use with a PC-6001 emulator

Thanks to Dustin Hubbard (Hubz) at Gaming Alexandria for transforming the magazine source code listing into a tape image. This was done using specialist Japanese software ProgamListOCR and DumpListEditor that are tailor-made for getting old source code off the page and into the computer, so thanks also to the authors of those applications. Video game preservation is a worldwide effort.

Your formative years coincided with the “golden age of video games” period from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. What inspired you at that time?

It was Namco’s arcade games. In the 1980s arcade games, I felt that the ideas in games released by Namco were particularly excellent. Dig Dug’s one-shot reversal reward using rocks and the risk of being crushed by them, Xevious’ beautiful graphics and well-crafted enemy flight curves, Gaplus’ super-fast enemy movements yet fair game balance, and New Rally-X and Bosconian’s combination of all-direction scrolling and radar screens requiring complex situational judgment – Namco kept releasing games with very innovative mechanisms. A lot of my belief in the importance of novel mechanisms in game production comes from encountering Namco’s arcade games during this era.

List of Namco arcade games at Wikipedia

I apologise for this next question, as it’s almost impossibly difficult, but I’m keen to learn more about you from the games you like to play. So… what are five of your favourite video games, and what aspects make them special to you?

Transport Tycoon—it’s a railway management simulator, released by MicroProse. I also liked its predecessor, Railroad Tycoon, but I played Transport Tycoon for a longer time. A major difference between the two is that in Transport Tycoon, there are rival companies laying tracks on the same map. It was fun to strategize and lay tracks aggressively to important cities to beat rivals. It’s my favorite game in the city development simulation genre. The isometric beautiful graphics and lively BGM (background music) were great too.

Dodonpachi—the first title in CAVE’s famous Dodonpachi series of bullet hell vertical scrolling shooters, following its progenitor, Donpachi. A fun aspect of bullet hell shooters is the technique called “cutback”. It involves rapidly moving the player to one screen edge to create gaps in bullet patterns, then escaping in the opposite direction through these gaps. Dodonpachi’s stage 5 offers the best experience of this, influencing the shooting games I would create later.

Ikaruga—a vertical scrolling shooter with a unique system where both the player and enemy bullets have black and white attributes, and bullets of the same attribute can be absorbed. This system provided a gameplay experience quite different from previous shooters. Although released as an arcade game, perhaps thinking it too different for ordinary players to accept as is, the first stage offered an “infinite lives trial game” mode. At first, I had no idea when to switch attributes and was helplessly defeated many times. But once I understood which enemies to attack with which attribute and when, the game became addictively charming. The chain combo for defeating three enemies of the same attribute in succession and the complex attack patterns of stage 4’s so-called “Rafflesia” added to its depth. The groundbreaking game system offered an artistic playing experience, impressing me with the high potential of gaming.

THE ATLAS—a PC exploration game set during the Age of Discovery, released by ArtDink. Its feature was a procedurally generated coastline, different in each game. The player dispatches a captain from Lisbon to survey coastlines and ports. Upon the captain’s return, you can choose to “believe” or “disbelieve” their report. Disbelieving discards the survey results, but here comes the twist with the procedural generation. If the captain reports an endlessly long, supply-challenged coastline, or a closed one preventing further survey, disbelieving it could generate a more advantageous coastline in the next survey. The game skilfully integrated procedural mechanics with the game system, deeply enlightening me about the benefits of incorporating procedural elements into games.

Rez—a 3D shooter with abstract wireframe graphics and techno music synchronized with sound effects. The immersion provided by this game was unique, supported by the excellence of its visuals and music. Especially, the sound effects being quantized to match the background music’s rhythm and beat, making game operations and actions feel like playing an instrument, was brilliant. I have incorporated a similar quantization mechanism in the games I’m creating now.

I see a nice balance of gameplay systems and skill in all of those games. That brings to mind the types of games you create. Now, if you could have developed any existing game, which one would you choose, and why?

That’s Herzog. It’s a real-time strategy game released by Technosoft for personal computers. Overseas, the sequel Herzog Zwei, which was released for the Sega Mega Drive, is more famous, and the original Herzog might not be as well-known. It’s an action game where you control a robot that can move both in the air and on the ground. The battlefield is a vertically long strip, with enemy and ally bases located at each end. Players could produce units like infantry, tanks, and anti-aircraft guns at these bases and dispatch them towards the opponent’s base. At that time, it was quite rare to have a game where you could produce allies other than the player and fight together. I was very impressed by this game, where you could fight as part of an army against enemy forces.

Later, I even created a game similar to Herzog for the PC-9801. I made the screen 3D and added an arrangement where you could freely board any friendly unit on the battlefield, intending to make the game even more enjoyable.

Herzog (MSX) longplay on YouTube

At that time, I often played bullet hell shooters released by CAVE at game arcades, especially loving Progear no Arashi. Progear’s bullet patterns were very complex compared to earlier CAVE games, like fan-shaped bullets shot in nine directions, slowly decelerating, and then five straight bullets targeting the player. I wanted to replicate such complex bullet movements in a simple way and developed the BulletML language.

With BulletML, I developed Noiz2sa, aiming to achieve the fun of bullet hell dodging with the immersion of games like Rez. In rRootage, I used BulletML for procedural generation of bullet patterns, aiming to create infinite attack patterns. After developing a technology called Bulletsmorph and extensive balancing, I finally released it. It was challenging to achieve patterns that were fair and challenging without reducing variation, but I think it worked out well. Among my shooting games often featuring auto-generated levels, TUMIKI Fighters, where levels were manually designed, was somewhat unique. But this was simply because I found Namco’s Katamari Damacy so enjoyable that I wanted to combine it with a shooting game. Attaching enemies to your ship until it occupies more than half the screen, this kind of shooting game is still quite rare, so I think it turned out to be a game with originality.

Also, during this period, I entered various game contests with my games. Games for the WonderSwan on WonderWitch, games for Xbox 360 on XNA, and games for contests on P/ECE. Fortunately, some games won awards. I had opportunities to present my games to judges, which was enjoyable. Playing my games on these consumer devices was a fresh experience for an amateur developer. Also, optimizing for each device’s characteristics provided many interesting development experiences.

In the following years I continued to follow your work and noticed a move towards the web browser as your platform of choice. More recently, I was wowed by your prolific output, particularly the 139 games you made in 2021! I’m wondering, what motivates you? And can you outline your creative process?

Around 2008, I realized I could make browser-playable games by implementing them in ActionScript3, a programming language for Flash. I knew about Flash, but I thought of it more as a platform for creating animations than games. However, ActionScript3 was a sophisticated language with diverse features, allowing me to create games using just code. Browser games are more accessible than conventional games, so I started making many small action games that could be played intuitively in a short time.

Through this process, I realized that making lots of small games was ideal for trying out various game ideas and mechanics. Since then, I’ve been experimenting with how to make games enjoyable by thinking about mechanisms that haven’t been seen much in previous games and trying to turn them into fun games. This has become my basic process for game development.

Kenta Cho’s browser games

Already you’ve mentioned multiple programming languages in this interview. What factors do you consider when selecting programming languages, platforms, and technologies for game development?

I flexibly switch programming languages depending on the target device for the game. For the PC-6001 or MSX, Z-80 assembler; for PC-9801, Borland’s Turbo C; for Windows, Delphi or GCC; for XNA, C#; for browsers, ActionScript3 or JavaScript, and so on.

But I don’t just use commonly used programming languages; I also look for languages that are easier to use and equipped with new technologies. For example, the D language as a replacement for C, offering object orientation without the complexity of C++ and faster build speed; Haxe, superior to ActionScript3 with features like Mixins and Enums; TypeScript for type-checking JavaScript, allowing proper error detection and code recommendations. I actively use them even if they are slightly less mature or have weaker ecosystems than traditional languages if they can improve development speed.

I really appreciate how technology agnostic you are. It’s noticeable that the game is the number one priority and the choice of technologies is not so important. This is similar to how I work, in that I’m happiest when the technologies fade away and I can concentrate on the game design and implementation details. Could you tell us more about your approach to game development?

As I mentioned earlier, I think about game mechanisms that haven’t been seen in previous games. However, it’s challenging to conceive completely new mechanisms. Instead, I often borrow and arrange parts of mechanisms from old arcade games or submission magazines like “Mycom BASIC Magazine”. Old games focused more on the novelty of rules and mechanics than on content like scenarios, which is very informative for game development.

I also create games driven by specific technologies. I’ve incorporated procedural content generation and physics calculations into shooting games. Before Windows, I implemented 3D drawing logic and software-based screen rotation, scaling, and shrinking. Recently, I’ve been experimenting with whether everything from game idea conception to programming can be procedurally generated.

I’m also interested in this aspect of game development, it’s a deep well with a lot of opportunity. I can see its influence in many of the games you’ve created using your Crisp Game Lib. What was the thinking behind your framework?

The goal of Crisp Game Lib is to enable the creation of innovative games within a three-hour timeframe. For this, I made it easy to implement collision detection, which is typically challenging. I particularly focused on making collision detection easy for geometric shapes like lines and arcs, allowing the inclusion of geometric shapes as terrain, obstacles, players, and enemies. This makes it easier to create games different from traditional sprite-based 2D games.

It also includes features for procedurally generating background music and sound effects. Automatically generated background music and quantized sound effects make it possible to create enjoyable games even within a short development period.

Your recent games use quite simple scoring systems, especially when compared with arcade or pinball scoring systems. What are your thoughts on scoring?

In a simple scoring system, it’s important to reward the player’s risky actions with high scores. Assigning high scores or multipliers for actions like attracting and defeating many enemies at once, narrowly avoiding enemy attacks, or collecting hard-to-reach items can add depth to the gameplay. Additionally, I make it a point to clearly display the acquired score and multipliers on the screen, making it easy for players to understand how to earn high scores.

The gameplay concepts in your recent games are also beautiful in their simplicity, but at the same time they have depth. How do you approach the difficulty curve to ensure your game is enjoyable for as many people as possible?

I often use the traditional Game & Watch era mechanic of increasing difficulty as time goes on from the start of the game. In such cases, I consciously choose between a linearly increasing difficulty (difficulty = time) and one that gradually becomes milder, using the square root function (difficulty = sqrt(time)). Linear is usually fine, but for parameters like enemy size, which could become unreasonably difficult if too large, I use square root to maintain game balance over time.

As mentioned in the previous answer, rewarding risky actions is closely related to appropriate difficulty settings. Increasing difficulty over time means to achieve high scores, players need to take risky actions and score high from the early, easier parts of the game. This avoids boredom in the early stages, making the game enjoyable from the start.

In January 2024, your game Paku Paku went viral after being featured on Hacker News. It was picked up by various bloggers and news outlets, and was even ported by fans to multiple systems. Were you surprised by this turn of events, and why do you think the game garnered such attention?

When I released Paku Paku a year ago, it was fairly well-received among Japanese players, but I was surprised that it gained attention from international players a year later. Many articles described Paku Paku as a ‘1D Pac-Man’, which likely sparked curiosity about how a 1D version of Pac-Man could be realized. Paku Paku was an example of the demakes and minimalization I often do when making small games. Successfully balancing it as a good game within the strong constraint of 1D might be why it became popular. My experiences with games I made and played during the pocket computer era were very helpful in developing a 1D game.

Play Paku Paku in your browser “…just one more go…”

Paku Paku could be considered the essence of Kenta Cho: from the single-line display pocket computers, through Namco’s arcade titles like Pac-Man, to his love for modern programming languages and the web browser as a platform.

Many thanks to Kenta Cho for this interview. Now go play some of his games!

Casio CALEID XM-700 Mobile Navigator (1997)

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 21:44:00 +0000

I like to think everybody collects something odd. Me? I collect hanafuda video games: digital implementations of traditional physical Japanese card games. Mostly that means physical copies of games for consoles and computers both new and old, for handhelds like Game Boy Advance, WonderSwan, digital versions for computers, handhelds and smart phones, and sometimes versions for platforms nobody has ever heard of.

Down the rabbit hole

At some point last year (shortly before I began writing this blog post!) I found reference to a hanafuda video game created in 1998 for the Casio CALEID XM-700 Mobile Navigator on a random old, Japanese website. It turns out this device is a long-forgotten handheld computer that was released in 1997, only in Japan. The device is what you might refer to as a PIM or PDA, roughly equivalent to Apple Newton or Palm Pilot, particularly as it featured handwriting recognition. Not what we would consider powerful in this day and age, but good at running database lookups and any undemanding software written specifically for it. The CPU was Intel 8086 compatible, like other period CASIO handheld personal computers, and an SDK was available. Cost of the device was 47800JPY, which was around 240GBP or 400USD at the time.

The game file came with a reference bitmap showing hanafuda scoring, which was just the type of guarantee and encouragement I needed to start hunting.

Research first

So, after making sure the related web pages were archived to the Wayback Machine, and the downloads backed up, I did a bunch of reading to try to figure out whether or not I would be able to play this game if I bought a device.

It turns out the device arrived around the same time as USB 1.0. So perhaps its development, and most definitely its buyers, existed in a world that predated widespread support for USB. To that end, the device only has a serial connection. And not only that, the serial connection is on a dock that was not always sold with the device. Without the dock there is no way to transfer files to/from the device!

For me to stand a chance at this, I’d need to buy a device with a dock and the software to put files onto the device. After some searching, lots of waiting, and more searching, one came up for auction on Yahoo! Japan Auctions. I bought it.

CALEID GET!

The screen is 320x240 monochrome (1-bit) which exhibits an odd quirk that active pixels cast a shadow because the LCD is clear and the silver backing is some distance away. This is long before the LCD would be fused to the backing. In fact, some units you see for sale have creases in the silver backing, I’m not sure what must have happened to those devices!

The system software is a charming custom OS, featuring a full mobile office suite, and 2MB of flash storage (1.49MB free for user data). Most importantly it allows user-created Add-ins to be loaded onto it, we would call them plugins or apps today. The device even has an expansion port for communications peripherals, enabling it to do email/fax using a cell phone or pay phone as data connection. A salaryman’s dream in late-90s Japan!

My goal: sideload the hanafuda game, along with anything else I can lay my hands on, using the proprietary dock, sync software and a Japanese install of Windows 98!

I love this sort of challenge that requires discovery and understanding of old hardware and software, and a little (but not too much) messing around with old versions of Windows.

Installation

You can follow this process in a Twitter thread I created last year which contains additional images. I’ve also created an imgur gallery of photos and screenshots from the installation process.

I thought it would be fun to try to do this on period correct hardware, so I tried to use my old Sony VAIO PCG-Z600RE from 1999, but the battery is coming up to 20 years old and even with mains power it no longer turns on reliably enough for me to do anything. I would have had to install Japanese language support into Windows. So I quickly gave up this folly.

A better approach would be to use modern hardware running Windows in a Virtual machine, and I already have one set up running Japanese Windows 98. I hit a temporary roadblock whilst installing the DATA IMPRESSION for CALEID sync software: it is date locked to only run between the years 1988 and 2010. And here I am over a decade late! Thankfully a quick date change and we’re back in business.

The first run of sync software post-install requests that you run a Comms check. You have to tap the menu and folder buttons alternately seven times to put the device into a special debug mode, a tip cleaned from an addendum leaflet that came in the box. Without that leaflet I probably would have been stuck.

I used a USB to Serial cable to take care of the connection to the dock and it just worked, though I know from first hand experience that is lucky as some cheap adapters require a bit of fiddling to work with ancient Windows versions. Data transfer is slow at 9600 baud, that’s less than 1KB per second. I’ll try increasing the baud rate later, maybe.

Syncing

Syncing is done using a custom version of Data Impression 2, renamed Data Impression for CALEID. It has an arcane, overly complicated user interface along with a multitude of period and cultural quirks.

After some time spent browsing and translating the menus I found the section of the interface listing Add-ins and imported a bunch that I downloaded earlier. There’s some awkwardness to this process which I’ll describe later.

Syncing was working, but the add-ins were not syncing across for some reason. My thought that it was probably something obvious was correct. In the DATA IMPRESSION app you need to press the button that doesn’t look like other buttons (yellow text) and then enable Add-in syncing! We’re almost there, I can feel it.

Add-ins

The last little bits are worth bullet pointing, as they require some detailed operation:

Launch “DATA IMPRESSION for CALEID”
Select 電子手帳 (“Electronic Notebook”) from the buttons above the clock on the right (2nd from bottom) and then:
1. Make the model selection カレイド (“Caleid”, default)
2. Make the type of communication データ送信 (“data transmission”, dropdown 2, 3rd list item)
3. Click the 動作設定 (“operation settings”, button 3)
4. Check the アドイン (“Add-in”) checkbox (bottom, alt+D)
5. Uncheck all other types of data to disable syncing of those
Select メモ帳 (“Notepad”) from the menu on the right and then:
1. Select the アドイン (“Add-in”) folder
2. Select メモ帳 (“Notepad”) -> アドインデータの読み込み (“Read Add-in Data”) from the menu bar (alt+M, R)
3. Choose an add-in file (*.adi)
4. Repeat steps 1-3 for multiple add-ins
Press the スタート (“Start”) button on the dock. Add-In will be sent to the CALEID.

Gotchas:

Serial ports in VMs can be a hassle, try both the host PC and guest VM ports
DATA IMPRESSION will let you know if it can’t communicate over the selected serial port
Cursor needs to be in the Add-Ins folder for the Add-in menu items to be enabled
Syncing without an Add-in selected will result in a failure message
If you select an existing add-in rather than the Add-in folder, the existing add-in will be overwritten by the newly imported one(!)
If you start with the demo data you’ll have a bunch of test items in the various apps, see note below

Awkwardness: Add-ins have to be transferred one at a time, but a sync of a single Add-in goes fast enough after disabling syncing of all other types of data (notes, calendar, spreadsheets, etc).

Note: the first time I setup the device starting with the demo data it must have been syncing 25 years worth of recurring demonstration calendar events. Each sync of a single add-in took multiple minutes. Maybe that’s why they didn’t want anybody running the sync software so long after the device had been released?

The final, highest supported baud rate is 38400 (4800 bytes/sec theoretical speed, 3840 bytes/s actual speed, that’s 3.75KB/sec). Game sizes range between 3KB and 32KB, averaging 12KB each. So the slowest part of the process is the GUI busy work to install the Add-ins in DATA IMPRESSION for CALEID, and then syncing them one by one.

Game on!

Here’s my Casio CALEID XM-700 Mobile Navigator running 花合わせ (Hana-awase) a hanafuda game made by すーさん (Sū-san) in 1998. Pixels are slightly wider than they are tall so the cards in the game display wider than in the image at the top of the page.

…I wonder how many other people have played this game in the last 25 years?

In a follow-up post I’ll detail the other games that I was able to install on the device.

CASIO Catalog ‘97-12

Extras

caleid.addins.dim.zip (294KB) a profile for DATA IMPRESSION for CALEID that has all the Add-ins I’ve found so far pre-installed and ready to sync
caleid.portmon-serial-addin.txt (44KB) a portmon serial log taken whilst syncing a single Add-in (the sample card game that comes with DATA IMPRESSION for CALEID)

Ball und Panzer Golf: making a Playdate game in a week

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 22:11:00 +0000

I’ve been following the X68000 Z mini computer since it’s announcement in the hope that it will bring new activity to the X68000 scene and it seems to be having that effect. In one video from the recent 「68の日」(“68 Day”, named after the date written in Japanese order, 6-8, that’s 8th June the most special day of the year for X68000 fans) I spotted a interesting looking single screen golf game:

Hello kata68k

It was Ball und Panzer Golf an indie/doujin game by @kata68k for the Sharp X68000 series of Japanese personal computers and the recent Zuiki X68000 Z mini system, a new emulator based reimagining of the original classic computer. The name is a pun on the anime series Girls und Panzer and its shortened version is BuPG which I assume is a pun on PUBG.

kata68k’s game, as the name implies, is golf but with a tank. It was created in May 2023 and fine tuned for a few weeks, released in time for “68 Day”. It’s a single player game where you use the tank to shoot holes-in-one on a golf course and try to destroy all flags. All this to say it plays like golf, kinda, but with a focus on high scores.

Aside: my favourite source of X68000 content is the PipitanTV YouTube channel, run by @pipixvi, which has a longer, screen capture video of Ball und Panzer Golf.

I played Ball und Panzer Golf v0.94 using an X68000 emulator and was instantly hooked, by the strange mashup concept and also by the scoring mechanisms that were involved. Kata’s game design values and methods align with my own to a surprising degree. kata68k grew up with the X68000 much like I grew up with another Motorola 68000-based computer: the Atari ST. We’re roughly the same age and have similar interests in many ways.

Anyway, I had great fun figuring out the different types of shots and opportunities to increase my scoring ability during my few plays of the game. Once I’d figured them out, it became a task of improving my skill controlling the tank and the shot power. The shot mechanism itself is worthy of a mention: there is no real charging of the shot and the ball starts to move immediately. What you do control is the moment the ball starts to come back down to Earth. It’s a very strange way of controlling the ball, but oddly satisfying. It’s reminiscent of the two tap system that sets power in most golf games, but at the same time feels completely alien.

Enter Playdate

I currently spend my time creating games for Playdate, a handheld gaming system with a black and white screen and a unique crank control that can be used as a method of input. Whilst on a walk in the park I couldn’t stop thinking of kata68k’s game and how it might work on Playdate. When I got back to my computer I wrote a little bit of Lua code to draw an elliptical golf green on screen, then added a hole, a flag pole, and a flag with a number on it. Then I added a loop to generate random positions and drew 18 holes, adjusting the size so they all fitted a bit better. It might just work.

After a quick dinner, it was time to draw the tank. I really didn’t want to slow down my pace of progress so I decided to keep drawing the graphical elements in code using filled shapes rather then have to draw a tank in pixels. Another option would have been to use one of the cars from my game Daily Driver, but the path of least resistance was to draw a filled ellipse along with a line to show the turret position.

Day 1

That first day everything fell into place perfectly, with little friction and no refactoring. I started from a blank file and wrote just under 400 lines of code. The two most complicated elements were the randomised background and limiting the tank to its circular area, but I’d done similar things before so there was no problem solving involved, just pure implementation. In fact, a lot of this quick prototype made use of tricks and techniques I’d figured out over the past few years of Playdate development, in particular during the development of my game Daily Driver.

At the end of the first day you could drive the tank around the screen, fire the ball at an angle selected using the crank or d-pad, and when you run out of balls it would trigger game over. What it didn’t have is any logic that would collide the ball with the holes, point scoring, or any sort of win state. For some reason at this point I thought it would be cool to have a black tank with three wheels.

Day 1: Timeline

Time	Event
15:40	draw a single “hole”: flag, hole, green
16:00	loop to draw 18 holes
17:00	(dinner)
18:00	draw tank
18:20	(ask permission from kata68k)
19:00	background (interesting use of Perlin and random)
20:00	add controls to tank
20:10	(send update to kata68k)
21:00	limit tank to circular area (tricky but fun)
22:00	ball moving
22:10	(kata68k confirms he’s OK with my version)
22:30	add game states
23:00	add ball height capability
23:45	(send update to kata68k)
00:26	tweet about it

Week 1

The following day I added a first draft of collisions and scoring. There was slower progress, but it was still very steady with no problems encountered. I was keenly aware that the collision and scoring were very naïve and that I would have to refine and improve them going forward. But, regardless, at the end of the second day it was possible to play a complete round of tank golf!

The next two days consisted of fine tuning, polishing, play testing, bug fixing, adding sound effects, and so on. I even managed to record a GIF where I got all 18 flags …my first speed run!? I also received some great early encouragement and feedback from Playdate Squad community members: Donald @Guv_Bubbs, Steve @ScenicSoftware, Atsu @SquidGodDev, Neven @neven and of course @kata68k himself! The game was shaping up nicely and coming together very quickly.

Opportune timing meant that I could get the game in the hands of some testers on a live stream, over at IGDA Twin Cities (MN, USA) as part of their monthly Playtest. Thanks to Mark LaCroix for sorting that out! It was great to watch them play the game for the first time as they discovered the details of gameplay, mechanics, controls, and scoring! I even spotted a bug.

For the rest of the week I polished and played, addressing areas that I thought could be improved. I added accessibility improvements, more opportunities to score, better hole randomisation, even wind effects, and so much more besides.

For the last couple of days of the week I kept release notes, as I felt the pace of progress slowing down towards the end of my self-imposed deadline of one week. I would categorise most changes in those final days as either quality of life improvements or minor bug fixes.

I had not optimised any of the code and was targeting the default 30 frames per second. On the final evening I optimised all text drawing in my main update path, as I could see that was responsible for a huge portion of where my game was spending its time, with the CPU pegged at 100% and the frame rate not able to hit the target 30fps. So the flags with numbers on were pre-rendered as images during initialisation, and the HUD is drawn only when its contents change, and the image is cached for use at other times. These two small and quick optimisations reduced the CPU usage by 20% and put me at a solid 30fps.

There are many more optimisations to be made but this is not the time to do them. There’s too much still to do and I don’t want to lose focus. But for example: I’m not currently using the Playdate SDK Sprite system and am instead doing things the traditional way of drawing everything every update, so I’m positive I can get some good gains by drawing to a few different sprite layers. There are also some functions I call regularly, such as one that counts remaining holes, that can be optimised or avoided by improving my game logic. I’m confident I can get the CPU time down a good bit more. There’s no real need to do so, but I figure anything that will help reduce power usage or is good for the player is a honourable responsibility for a developer with a conscience to take on. If that goes well I may even increase the frame rate for smoother ball movement.

Shaping up

All the graphics are still composed with filled ellipses, rectangles and lines, varying their dithering patterns to provide different textures. I really leaned into this and over the course of the week fine tuned the tank from a three-wheeled blob to a high contrast, detailed, carefully animated sprite that you might think has been rendered externally. Maybe in a forthcoming post I can put together an exploded diagram of how it’s drawn?

What’s next?

The only things I didn’t manage to fit in in my week sprint were a couple of animations I think will help make the game feel even higher quality and that will increase players ability to read/understand what is happening on screen. I need to make some more changes to the wind feature and the way the flag flaps in the wind. Currently the flag direction is correct but I’d like the length and frequency to be relative to the strength of the wind.

Pretty much all of the maths in this game is high school algebra and trigonometry, wrapped up in some smoke and mirrors to make it feel magical.

Also on the task list are a couple more sound effects, with the goal being one sound effect for each important event or action in the game. I feel that sounds cues are as important as visual cues and players could pick up on one or the other so there should ideally be parity.

I can’t keep up the insanely fast pace of development from this first week, not only because of the physical and mental toll it would take but also because the quick wins of the prototype phase are now gone. To add the animations I previously mentioned, the first serious refactoring of part of the code will be needed. So there is no choice but for progress to be slower from this point at least for a while.

The big remaining task that will take a lot longer than a week is game structure and progression. I have ideas of how I can package the structure of the game now into a short experience with increasing difficulty level and unlimited replay-ability.

But the bigger question is do I want it to be bigger than that? There are no shortage of ideas how how to mashup to concept of tanks and golf, only a shortage of time and budget to make it happen. I could even add a mini-golf type of experience where you’re playing a round of single screen holes with additional hazards pulled from both the golf and tank world.

Launched!

My version of Ball und Panzer Golf was renamed Fore! Track and is available for Playdate via Catalog play.date/games/fore-track/ or on itch where there’s a bargain offline version.

Preserving the Marguerite Hanafuda browser game

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 23 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Marguerite is a defunct Japanese website, previously at marguerite.jp (dead link) that hosted HTML5 implementations of Hanafuda and Mahjong.

Their Hanafuda in particular was very well done, offering a variety of rulesets some of which are difficult to find in video game form and impossible to find in a browser game. The experience was single player versus one or two CPU players.

The complete list of rules offered:

2-player

Koi-Koi
Mushi (aka “Insect”)
Roppyakken (aka “600”)
Hachi-Hachi (aka “88”)
Hachi (aka “8”)

3-player

Hana-Awase
Hachi-Hachi (aka “88”)
Sudaoshi
Roppyakken (aka “600”)

Gone but not forgotten

The site went offline mid-2022, about a year ago at this point, and all was thought to be lost. We had tried the Wayback Machine but the archive seemed incomplete.

This week Marguerite was mentioned on the Hanafuda Discord, so I decided to try again. Taking a fresh look at the state of the site, it seemed to be stalling trying to load two images.

A couple of small changes later (two hard-coded URLs in the JavaScript pointed to the dead website) I managed to get the desktop version of the Marguerite Hanafuda working locally!

It’s alive!

So, I’m now hosting a mirror copy on my website: marguerite.gingerbeardman.com

Notes:

Sound requires Chrome
Safari/Chrome built-in translation works well for this web app
Some links out of the game will be broken
if Marguerite.jp comes back online I’ll remove my mirror

Mobile & Mahjong?

Sadly the Wayback Machine archive of the Marguerite website is incomplete, so Mobile Hanafuda is lost as are both versions of Marguerite Mahjong.

Usajong gaiden ore ga kirifuda! (Game Soundtrack Rip)

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I recently played through COMPILE’s うさ雀外伝俺が切り札！ “Usajong gaiden ore ga kirifuda!” (a ninja-themed Hanafuda Koi-Koi game for PC-98 featured on Disc Station Vol. 10) and took the liberty of recording its great soundtrack as I went along.

Soundtrack download

archive.org/details/usa-suzume-gaiden-ore-ga-kirifuda-pc-98-unofficial-soundtrack

Track listing:

Logo (SFX) 00:02
Intro 03:00
Start (SFX) 00:06
World Ninja Atlas 03:06
Deal (SFX) 00:10
Normal Round 03:07
Final Round 03:05
Chime (SFX) 00:02
Scores (SFX) 00:06
Lose (SFX) 00:05
Win (SFX) 00:03
Ending 01:51

How to play the game

I’m going to recommend using RetroArch to play this:

download RetroArch
download a zip of the game
download PC-98 System files
start RetroArch
system files will need to go into RetroArch System folder, check Settings > Directory > System/BIOS and move them there
download PC-98 core: Main Menu > Online Updater > Core Downloader > NEC PC-98 (Neko project II Kai)
start the game: Main Menu > Load Content > (choose game zip) > Load > NEC PC-98

You can play the game using mouse, though I used the right analog stick and a single button of a game controller…have fun!

Notes

Some interesting things about this game:

a draw results in the round being replayed
koi-koi increases your “level-up” which counts along a sword, pretty cool visualisation
your score doesn’t double if you finish a round after the opponent calls koi-koi
I can’t see any way to check the current score, so i memorise it as i go
if you lose to an opponent you can simply try again by choosing them from the map screen
it has a cool soundtrack!

Five interesting facts about the design of the original PlayStation

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

Some things you probably didn’t realise about the design of the original Sony PlayStation:

it was inspired by Apple’s Macintosh Plus
the colour is grey with a hint of violet to counteract plastic ageing/yellowing
Sony acquired the PlayStation name from Yamaha
it led to the VAIO range of PCs

Bonus fact:

VAIO was originally an acronym for Video Audio Input Output

Photo reference

Taken from Digital Dreams: The Work of the Sony Design Center (1999, Paul Kunkel)

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.

F-MIN INFINITY an obscure Japanese sprite-scaler racing game

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 13 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This is version 2.1 of F-MIN INFINITY, a sprite-scaler 2D/3D racing game by mpulip for Windows 95. You could describe it as Power Drift meets F-Zero.

The copy of its homepage in Wayback Machine was incomplete, as were direct links from an old feature on Vector, so it took a long time to find a copy of the .lzh archive file. Eventually I managed to locate it in an archive of an obscure old type of listing page on Vector.

To run the game correctly it’s best to use DxWnd, which will allow you to play the game on modern Windows with zero configuration, or even through Crossover/Wine and not use Windows at all.

The game includes help files as HTML, the ability create your own tracks, and source code. Let me know if you have more luck running it than I did!

Download at Internet Archive: archive.org/details/f-min-infinity-21

Thanks to my Patreon supporters!

一筆 / Hitofude / Ippitsu Japanese puzzle game

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 11 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

一筆 (“Hitofude” = Single Stroke) aka “Ippitsu” is a puzzle game by H.Hirabayashi.

Released in 1995, a decade before Mitchell Corp & Nintendo’s Polarium 直感ヒトフデ (“Chokkan Hitofude” = Intuitive Single Stroke) & Polarium Advance 通勤ヒトフデ (“Tsūkin Hitofude” = Commuting Single Stroke).

As huge fan of the Polarium games this discovery has rocked my world.

You can read about it in this 1997 feature at Vector and download it from its listing page. The author’s website is archived in the Wayback Machine. It will run on Windows 3.x and Windows 95, at least. I’m running here in English Windows 95 through DOSbox-x.

MaciGame user created graphics

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 04 May 2023 12:00:00 +0000

I recently collected over 250(!) sets of user created graphics for MaciGame the classic Macintosh tile-matching puzzle game by Takeshi “KEN” Takahashi.

まきがめ (MaciGame) was a wildly popular game worldwide in the mid-to-late 1990s, and there was even a play guide book published about it in its native Japan! The game is a variation of さめがめ (SameGame) by Eiji “Kyoto” Fukumoto, which is in turn a variation of the original game in the genre: Chain Shot by Kuniaki “Morisuke” Moribe.

The goal of this type of game is to clear the board of blocks by clicking on groups of two or more, empty space is then removed vertically by the remaining blocks dropping down and horizontally by empty columns being replaced by their rightmost column. This means that over time blocks converge in the lower left of the play area.

The user-created graphic sets were all sourced from the amazing Vector.co.jp, extracted from all manner of esoteric vintage archives, organised and packaged as a single compressed disk image to make using them much quicker and easier. Download it at Macintosh Garden.

Tips: you can browse the folder as a GraphicConverter slideshow to more quickly and easily figure out which you’d like to use or install. The easiest way of using a graphics set is to double click it and it will open MaciGame with the new graphics loaded. A few images may not have the correct SaMe creator code so may need to either have that set, or be loaded manually using the game menu.

Thanks to Izumi Okano for letting me know about this archive of user created graphics, and also my Patreon supporters for allowing me to preserve this type of content.

DiscMaster

User created graphics can be found and viewed in DiscMaster using this search: http://discmaster.textfiles.com/search?format=pict&detection=PICT%2FSaMe which indexes and makes browsable all of my Japanese CD-ROMs as well as many more uploaded by other people.

My Favourites

As well as recovering the infamous Panty Cat graphics set—which was removed after version 1.74 of MaciGame—I also discovered all manner of beautiful, clever, and some times brain-melting graphics.

Tile sets with 16 cells allow tiles that change their appearance based on matching neighbours. That means melting faces, multi-headed xenomorph, water pipes, DNA sequences, impossible key chains, mutant fish bones, weird blobs with faces, intertwining branches, mole burrows and more.

A small selection of my favourites are below:

Sparrow Solitaire for Playdate

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve previously written about the Playdate game Sparrow Solitaire, when we released the Early Access version of the game. That was almost 9 months ago and a lot has changed!

This week the hugely expanded full version of the game released on itch.io, where it’s been for sale for a while, and on Playdate Catalog the new on-device store. It even got its own website!

This post is a continuation of the history of the development of the game, going into the conceptual decisions and visual inspiration.

Mahjong or not Mahjong, that is the question?

This type of game is commonly called Mahjong Solitaire, because it uses mahjong tiles to form the layouts and it’s usually a single-player game. But the traditional tiles are somewhat inscrutable to newcomers. They are from a totally different game that goes by the name of Mahjong, which further confuses the situation. For this reason most Mahjong Solitaire games use alternative, more recognisable and approachable tile patterns.

Whilst reading about the history of mahjong, I discovered that in Chinese the game was originally called 麻雀 (pinyin: máquè)—meaning sparrow. This seemed like a nice alternative name for the game, allowing me to use alliteration, and avoiding the complexity that comes with the traditional mahjong tiles, and of course having cultural sensitivity top of mind.

A brief history of Mahjong Solitaire

Mahjong Solitaire is widely considered a Western invention in much the same way as French-suited playing cards and their related Patience/Solitaire games, but both have their origins in China.

Computer game Mahjong Solitaire was originally created by Brodie Lockard in 1981 on the PLATO system and named Mah-Jongg after the game that uses the same tiles for play. Lockard claimed that it was based on a centuries-old Chinese game called “the Turtle” that he had been shown whilst in hospital after a serious accident that left him paralysed from the neck down.

Not only did Brodie create the PLATO version in 1981 using only his mouth to type the code and draw the graphics, but he went on to make the Apple Macintosh version which was published in 1986 by Activision, as Shanghai, which sold millions of copies. Shanghai II came in 1989 and a whole new genre of games was born.

Wherefore art thou Macintosh?

An interesting point about the first two versions of the computer game: they both had monochrome displays (also referred to as 1-bit). PLATO was orange on black, and Macintosh was black on white. Funnily enough Playdate is also monochrome: dark grey on pale grey. Upon seeing the Sharp Memory LCD display that is used in the Playdate I was instantly reminded of the original Apple Macintosh. I mean, I still use System 7 on an iPad Pro and have a 1991 Macintosh Classic at home so it did not take much to remind me, but it did.

My initial explorations around 1-bit graphics happened on Macintosh, long before I had ever held a Playdate in my hands. I explored fill patterns, dithering algorithms (eventually discovering and popularising a little known algorithm), old drawing software optimised for 1-bit graphics, and diving head first into old clip art collections. Sparrow Solitaire could be considered the culmination of all of this exploration and gathered knowledge presented in a single game.

Once I got hold of a Playdate I started thinking about implementation details. Coding prototypes, figuring out sizes, textures, shadows, frame rate, tricks, optimisations, but with no particular game in mind. Just sailing free across a sea of ideas.

I struck upon a novel way to generate patterns of dots. Instead of using organised Beyer dither patterns, I used error diffusion dithering and fed it a solid colour. When a shade of grey is run through Burkes dithering algorithm it produces organic-looking patterns of dots that are ever so pleasing to the eye. Interestingly, other dithering algorithms don’t exhibit the same result. This image became a catalyst and the core of Sparrow Solitaire.

After this I drew the traditional Chinese mahjong tile set, and figured out a tile size that would allow the standard Mahjong Solitaire layouts to fit fully on screen. Unlike the PLATO and Macintosh games, which used border thickness to denote the height of a tile in the layout, I offset the tiles in a sort of isometric view and added a repeating shadow dither pattern. After this I drew regional variations for Japan, Europe and America. I drew tile sets inspired by the original late-90s Japanese Emoji set, others based on Egyptian and Toki Pona heiroglyphs, and an alphanumeric tile set I thought might be easiest for newcomers. I even recorded sounds of my own mahjong tiles.

Sunset

I found (and promptly forgot about until just now!) royalty free sound effects of sparrows, rain, button presses, confirmation tones. During all of this, amongst my normal music listening, I stumbled across a song that I thought sounded really great: it was the track “Starry Dish” by Yuyake Monster a Japanese music producer. The track is a sort of bouncy low-fi video-game hip-hop and piano thing. I wanted to hear more by this musician, so I clicked on their profile and listened to the next track. It was “Herbal Remedies” and I liked it even more! It featured plucked strings and a melodic bass line and… about half way through… bird song! And these tunes were already tagged as royalty free, so it was meant to be. When I reached out to Yuyake Monster they were super happy to have their music used in a game.

It was at this point that I released a prototype with graphics, sounds and animation of the layout dealing. I quickly realised that it would take a lot of time and effort to finish the game, so I made the difficult decision to abandon it. But work resumed later on with the help of Mac Vogelsang, as you can read about in my earlier blog post.

One vision

Mac had taken on the majority of the programming, slowly eroding what remained of my prototype code and refactoring things into a more solid foundation. I was concentrating on graphics and animation. We shared game design decisions. By this point we had both played a ton of mahjong solitaire games from the original Shanghai on Macintosh, through versions on almost every home console, handheld and home computer platform, to versions on the latest Nintendo consoles. We had a thorough understanding of things that worked well with a mouse, what did not work so well with a game controller, what worked best on screen and what limitations these old platforms imposed on the games.

Comparing Playdate to the best handhelds from the 90s it became obvious that we were working with a much more capable device, in terms of both CPU power and graphical fidelity. We could lean into the strengths of the device and provide a tailored experience that made use of the Playdate’s unique control mechanism - the crank - as well as its excellent sound and graphics hardware. I hope Mac will write more about getting the most out of the device, writing code that made the most of Playdate performance to do things that have never been done before in a mahjong solitaire game. Sparrow Solitaire has truly ground-breaking features some of which are only possible on Playdate.

Meanwhile, with the prompting and encouragement of Mac, I researched classic Chinese and Japanese painting techniques and drew some Eurasian tree sparrows and cherry blossom in the classic ink and watercolour style.

These illustrations were used to create the game’s launch animation. I started to create the animation the traditional way, but quickly changed tact and created it programatically instead.

Content matters

For the full version of the game I created additional backgrounds, cursors, grids, animations, tools to aid development and more besides. I created several fonts, all carefully kerned and tweaked to look their best on the Playdate. I’d created a popular font in my teens and it was fun to get back to that. More backgrounds, more tile sets including my favourite “zen”. Even now, when I see this tile set in the game, I often shake my head in disbelief. How was I capable of drawing these symbols so well at such a small size? My Susan Kare moment, if you will. If ever there was a lesson that you should believe in your own abilities, this was it for me.

Hidden in plain sight

The influence of the Macintosh and the nostalgia in the final look and feel of the game is something I wear proudly. Sparrow Solitaire is the sum total of all my passions and interests, wrapped up in a neat little game that will provide hundreds of hours of fun and relaxation.

But what about if you look a little deeper? You will find brush/fill patterns from MacPaint, Atkinson dithering as first seen in ThunderScan, elements drawn in UltraPaint, pixels generated using DeBabelizer, and so much more. Heck, we even use Garamond as our brand typeface which is the same one Apple used in their classic Macintosh advertising, the most well known of which is the “Think different” campaign. Sparrow Solitaire is my love letter to the Macintosh, but runs on a device that fits in the palm of your hand.

One of my favourite “Easter Eggs” in Sparrow Solitaire is some clip art from the Scroll collections, published in 1986/87 by Japanese Macintosh specialists Enzan-Hoshigumi. Specifically I have used a border for the manual/credits overlay, and several sections of artwork for our patterned backgrounds. These sections of artwork were not bundled as brushes/fills, but are nevertheless easy to cut out and use as a repeating fill in an image editor. They are based on repeating elements that are much larger than the 16x16 pixel patterns of MacPaint, so they allow for patterns that are not as garish and easier on the eyes. Plus, I love the fact that in 2023 Enzan-Hoshigumi finally have their first video game credit, almost 40 years after working on their first video game.

The Great Wave of Mahjong

Finally, to come full circle back to the image seen in the trailer at the top of the page: “The Great Wave of Mahjong”. I came up with the concept for the image and commissioned the wonderful Vxcl to create it, leaving them free to interpret the brief. They pretty much nailed it first time, and there were only a handful of small notes from me - in the form of screen grabs with coloured highlighter markup - to tweak the alignment of details of a few elements. This is the second such render I’ve commissioned, a look inspired by 1980s Japanese PC/game mags.

You can download a high resolution version of this image at itch.io to use as PC/phone wallpaper.

Update!

Less than two weeks after version 1.0 we released an update to address a few small issues and add a bunch more content! It features dynamic weather effects, three new tile sets and more cool stuff. You can read about version 1.1 in this Twitter thread.

Elsewhere

2024-03-08—Playdate Community Awards 2023: Best Puzzle Game

Pairing a Wii remote on macOS

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Universal

If you’re using the Dolphin emulator, by far the easiest method of syncing a Wii remote with it is to use a cheap Bluetooth adapter and Dolphin’s “Passthrough a Bluetooth adapter” controller option.

If you want to use the Wii remote outside of Dolphin, on modern macOS, you have a couple of options:

software: WiimotePair will pair a Wii remote at system level, only needed once per remote
hardware: MAYFLASH MAGIC-NS Bluetooth adapter (any version will work for Wii remotes)

The following section remains only for historical sake:

Intel-only

Pairing a Nintendo Wii remote used to work just fine on macOS, but starting with Monterey Apple changed something and Wii remotes now require a PIN code. Maybe they took out the Wii remote special case when they rewrote IOBluetooth? The method below only works for Intel Macs.

Anyway, some very clever people have already documented how to calculate the PIN code for any Wii remote. It’s the Bluetooth network MAC address of the device in reverse.

But a PIN code made up of hex numbers is difficult to type by hand. It isn’t a decimal number, or ASCII text, and it quite probably contains special characters that are not represented on a keyboard. All that to say: we can’t enter it into the macOS Bluetooth pairing window.

However, we can use the blueutil command-line tool to automate the following steps:

get the MAC address
calculate the PIN code
pair
connect

All you have to do is hold down 1+2 on your Wii remote and wait a short while.

If you’re using an Intel Mac you might have luck with the script below, but if you’re on Apple silicon you’ll be sadly out of luck and unable to pair your Wii remote.

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

Fixing bugs using Bird on Palm OS

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Tenohira Hanafuda Kai (掌花札 kai) is a koi-koi card game for Palm OS, created in 2001 by Hiroki Takahashi. It’s a fun game with varying difficulty, stats tracking, and lovely high-resolution (for the time!) colour graphics.

But, it has one serious problem: sometimes it will forfeit the current round when you choose to continue!

Analysis

After repeated play I figured out that the game would continue as intended only if I pressed the right half of the こいこい (koi-koi) button.

But if I pressed the left half of the button it would not behave as expected and forfeit the round. More on that later.

The Plan

One of the beautiful things about Palm OS is that apps and their resources are viewable, and even editable, right there on the device itself! It’s a lot like Classic Macintosh in that regard, which is no surprise as Palm took a lot of inspiration from the original Mac.

And much like ResEdit on Macintosh, Palm had it’s own equivalent app in RsrcEdit by Quartus, though I preferred to use an app called Bird by Philippe Guillot. You can view strings, bitmaps, menu bars, and other user interface elements (organised as Forms).

Let’s do this

So I launched Bird and loaded up the contents of Tenohira Hanafuda Kai, and went through all the forms until I found the one that displays the continue prompt.

Interestingly the form is dual-purpose. It contains the continue/stop buttons (a List of two items) and also a single button (了解; confirm) used on a different prompt. It’s overlaid on the continue button in a close enough position to be suspect. Perhaps it’s moved slightly at run time?

We can easily change the order of the controls on the form by cutting and pasting, so we do that with the List and it now comes below the button in the order and will be drawn last on the screen. Presumably the things drawn last are the first to capture interactions? Let’s see.

Result

I apply all changes and they are saved directly into the app data. Launching the game again and playing enough to trigger another continue/stop prompt, I tap the left half of the button and… the game continues as expected. There is no strange forfeit. The problem has been solved!

Addendum

I figured this out back in 2019 and edited the app on my Sony CLIÉ device. Recently I’ve been using CloudPilot to run Palm OS apps and games on my iPhone. So to play Tenohira Hanafuda Kai I had to either find the old modified game file, or do it all over again from scratch. I chose to do it again to test my memory and so I could document the process.

Playing Hanafuda on Palm OS in a web browser

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 03 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I recently found out that it’s possible to run Palm OS in a web browser, using cloudpilot-emu.github.io which is optimised for use on iPhone and Android, so you can use old Palm apps and run old games and apps on your smart phone!

Koi-Koi

I play a lot of video game hanafuda and out of all platforms Palm OS has three of the most interesting games. To play these games I carry around either an old Palm OS device (Sony Clié PEG-SL10) or an Android phone (Galaxy Fame Lite S6790) that runs an old Palm OS emulator.

So it’s great news that Palm OS Hanafuda games can now be played easily on modern devices.

Preparation

We’re going to use CloudPilot to create two Palm OS devices, both running in Japanese, and install the games we want to play. You could create English devices, but there will be issues with some text displayed in the games as they expect Japanese text support.

Sony Clié N700C (Colour, Japanese)
Palm V (Greyscale, Japanese)

You can source alternative Palm OS system files from PalmDB. You might choose to add an English device to run other Palm OS games and apps.

Support files

Download Palm OS Hanafuda games and required support files

Installation

Steps to play in Japanese, carry out twice to create one device each of Grey/Colour:

add new device and pick the respective .rom file
go through first launch setup and touch screen calibration
top right button to add the .prc files to device
top left button to reset, normal boot
launch and play the games
switch devices using the Sessions button in the website toolbar

Games

Koi-Koi (1999, by Keisuke Mitani/Palm Boarderz)
- fudawiki.org/en/hanafuda/video-games/palm/koi-koi
- my favourite
- cards can be picked from the field as well as your hand
- only works on old greyscale devices
Tenohira Hanafuda Kai (2001, by Hiroki Takahashi)
- fudawiki.org/en/hanafuda/video-games/palm/tenohira-hanafuda-kai
- low and high resolution support
- multiple opponents/difficulties
- tracks play history and win ratios
palm Hanafuda (2001, by Oruge/e-frontier)
- fudawiki.org/en/hanafuda/video-games/palm/palm-hanafuda
- has 5 game types, including Mushi
- I could swear this displayed in English on my real Palm OS device
Catch-A-Bird (2003, by Juergen Bermann)
- fudawiki.org/en/hanafuda/video-games/palm/catch-a-bird
- similar to Go-stop
- no idea how to get it to display in colour
- doesn’t work on old greyscale devices

Wire Hang Redux for 64-bit macOS

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 23 Apr 2022 15:40:00 +0000

I just uploaded a 64-bit macOS version of my 2004 game Wire Hang Redux that I had forgotten all about. So now you can play it on your 64-bit Mac. This version built using BlitzMax. I’ll try to build it for Apple Silicon some time this decade, but no promises!

Read more about the game in the original blog post.

Download: gingerbeardman.itch.io/wire-hang-redux

BOSS controller shell for Nintendo Wii

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

If you don’t know already, I am of the opinion that the Nintendo Wii is the greatest console of all time and host to the greatest collection of games of all time. My Wii was a gift for my 30th Birthday, and still play games on it regularly to this day.

I also have a love for odd controllers. On one of my searches for alternative classic controllers I found this beauty: the BOSS (Big Oversized Super Shell) by PDP. I love everything about it, from the forced acronym of its name to the colour schemes echoing famous Nintendo character colours.

Roly-Polys World Tour (Demo)

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 01 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A previously unknown/lost demo of Roly-Polys World Tour (ローリーポーリーズの世界旅行) [aka Banabana’s First Big Adventure] has been found in my Japanese Macintosh magazine CD-ROM collection. It was featured on CD-ROM MacPeople 1998 No.2 1.15 in a folder of product demos.

Creator Osamu Sato is best known for cult game LSD: Dream Emulator released for Sony PlayStation in 1998.

Thanks to both the Shockwave and Osamu Sato Discords.

Mouse-controlled Super Mario Kart clone for classic Macintosh

by Matt Sephton — Sun, 31 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It doesn’t get much more Japanese Macintosh than this!

There were only two mentions of this game on Google at the time of writing, and only one screenshot. So I felt it was worthwhile documenting the game in some detail.

My copy of the game, version 1.0, came on CD-ROM MacLife No. 161. This disc was included with the January 2002 issue of the Japanese magazine MacLife. This specific issue was released 9 months after the launch of OS X, so it’s interesting to see the magazine staff providing content - a folder labelled “Vintage”—for users of the older Mac OS, whether that was using the Classic environment of OS X or on legacy hardware.

HyperKart?

えもらのカート (Emora Kart) is a racing game created in June 1994 by OYU!-san (土屋悦男). It is named after the lead character, a somewhat dinosaur-like creature called Emora, who would go on to star in further releases by the author.

The game starts with a short qualifying course, which doubles as a tutorial. Finishing first on this course will unlock four further courses that are substantially bigger and more challenging. Finishing first on all courses unlocks a special course. Whilst the speed of the game is limited by the performance of the host computer you should be able to find a speed that is neither too slow nor too fast and have an enjoyable time with the game.

Your character automatically accelerates and you use the mouse to influence its direction. If the mouse pointer is too far away then it will have no effect, so it’s better if you trail the mouse pointer in front of the character at a short distance—a bit like a carrot on a stick - which gives the feeling that you’re almost pulling them around the track. The player can only move in straight lines and at 45-degrees which affects possible driving lines. And just like in Super Mario Kart there are coins littered around the track and they can be collected, not only by driving over them but also by clicking on them with the mouse pointer.

It’s interesting to note that this type of pointer control feels very much like a Wii game, which was a nice surprise. In particular I’m thinking of the way you guide your player in Pro Evolution Soccer, and the way you pick up things with the pointer in Super Mario Galaxy.

Fastest lap times are recorded and you need to make sure you do proper laps for them to register properly - cheating and shortcuts are discouraged! Driving off-road will cause you player to slow down and it will take time for them to accelerate back up to cruising speed once they are back on the track. Hitting track side obstacles will cause you to spin out and slow down. If your player stops completely, you’ll need to click on it to get it moving.

Features:

1-bit monochrome graphics
Created using HyperCard
Inspired by Super Mario Kart
Mouse-controlled aiming/steering
CPU-controlled opponent
6 characters with different stats
6 tracks of varying complexity
Construction guide included

The construction guide is really interesting addition. It’s an illustrated document that details how the game can be comprehensively modded using nothing but the game itself running inside HyperCard.

Where did this come from?

I found this game in my collection of Japanese Macintosh Magazine CD-ROMs, which at the time of writing consists of over 120 discs and almost 500,000 files. It’s a real treasure trove of old software that has many more secrets waiting to be rediscovered! You can help me preserve more lost software by joining my Patreon.

How can I play this game?

You can play the game in your web browser at archive.org/details/emora-kart though be warned it runs very slowly in this emulator.

Alternatively, you can download it to play on your real Macintosh or in a different emulator.

Shifting perspective

A sequel of sorts was made a couple of years later, in 1996. えもらのバギー (Emora Buggy) which shifted the camera to behind the player and featured simultaneous 2-player operation. Controls are now via keyboard, the window is much smaller, and the courses are shorter. The vibe is a mix of Out Run and Micro Machines and quite different to the first game.

HyperCard Hanafuda

by Matt Sephton — Sun, 31 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Good news, everyone!

For over a decade I’ve wondered if there was a 1-bit Hanafuda game for Macintosh made by somebody in Japan back in the day. It turns out there is!

It’s called 花札スタック (Hanafuda Stack) and was created by Kenji Chihara (千原健次氏)in 1992/3 using HyperCard. YES! ✨🎴✨

I couldn’t find a single thing about this game online. My first Googlewhack!

According to menu system on the disc it came on, this game was the Winner of the Miyuki Oshige Award, the judges’ prize in the “1st HyperCard Stack Contest” which was sponsored by Japanese Macintosh magazine MacPower Monthly.

Where did this come from?

How can I play this game?

You can play it in your web browser right now at: archive.org/details/hanafuda-stack

Alternatively, you can download it to play on your real Macintosh or in an emulator.

Version history

This page refers to version 0.6. However, the DOS game HP-華時雨 (HP-Hana Shigure) from 1997 says that it reuses, with permission, the card images from version 0.8 of Hanafuda Stack.

Hanafuda Resources

If you’re into Hanafuda, be sure to check out the Hanafuda Discord and Fuda Wiki where a fantastic group of people from around the world are building a comprehensive resource for these traditional Japanese flower cards. There are rules for a multitude of different games (not just Koi-Koi), a list of over 300 Hanafuda video games and so much more. Come on!

T&E SOFT 3D Golf Simulation Series Dokuhon (1993/04/30)

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 30 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This is a Special Appendix that came with the 1993-04-30 issue of Japanese magazine Theスーパーファミコン (The Super Famicom)

This guide book shows tips for all 18 holes on each the four T&E SOFT golf games available on SNES:

Harukanaru Augusta
Pebble Beach no Hatou
Waialae no Kiseki
Devil’s Course

These courses were also featured in games on other platforms so the guide has much broader usefulness.

FAQ: Pebble Beach no Hatou

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 20 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/pc98/256450-pebble-beach-no-hatou/faqs

Ace Mega Blaster controller for Sega Mega Drive

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I recently did a teardown and clean of one of my Japanese Mega Drive controllers. When I received it I notices that it had some sticky residue in the inside of the the d-pad causing up and right to feel a bit sticky.

The controller is called the BLASTER, sometimes MEGA BLASTER, and was released by ACE which was a sort of hardware sub-brand of the game developer Sur Dé Wave.

This particular controller is one of two colours that were available for the Sega Mega Drive, though you could buy an equivalent for PC-Engine and maybe some other platforms.

Rapid fire for all three buttons (off/fast/faster)
Slow does the usual rapid pressing of the start button (off/on)

The bottom half of the shell is held together with three small Philips screws, all visible, and three clips on the bottom and sides that need to be carefully pressed to release the shell.

Playing old 32-bit iOS games in 2021

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 13 Sep 2021 23:59:00 +0000

With the introduction of iOS 11 in 2017 Apple stopped supporting 32-bit apps on iOS. This event came to be known as the app-ocalypse with users forced to stay on iOS 10 to keep their apps or upgrade and abandon them. I seem to remember I stuck around on iOS 10 for a while but eventually succumbed to the upgrade and said good by to a bunch of stuff.

At this time, I was still managing my iPhone and app updates through iTunes, with a weird ritual of downloading the latest updates to my Mac. It was useful for keeping on top of what I had installed and deleting apps I was no longer interested in. Around the same time Llamasoft were disillusioned with the App Store and pulled all of their games.

Anyway, I took one or both of those things as a sign to download and backup a couple of games in particular: Llamasoft’s Minotron: 2112 and Gridrunner, part of their Minotaur Project series of games. I bought a few more from that series but I only kept my two favourites.

Earlier this year I uploaded them to internet archive as an act of preservation. Somebody recently downloaded them and was trying to make them work on their devices, without much luck. It seemed that the apps were tied to my account and I’d have to share decrypted versions. I’d need an old device capable of running iOS 10 or older, and one susceptible to jailbreaking. I figured that would be a fun afternoon. Here’s the process I went through:

Restore working system

Bought a used device that supports iOS 10 (or earlier, if you prefer)
Downgraded my device to iOS 10.3.3 using leetdown
Installed my two .ipa files using Apple Configurator 2
Confirmed that the games work by playing a little of each

Jailbreaking the device

Installed sockH3lix
Did jailbreak with sockH3lix (only takes a second or two!)
Noted that Cydia has been installed
Installed Clutch (took a couple of tries to find a working repo)

Decrypt the Minotron game

Installed OpenSSH via Cydia
Logged in over SSH from my Mac
Ran Clutch -b uk.co.llamasoft.minotron
SFTP in from my Mac and copy the decrypted .ipa to my Mac

Video

I could capture the attract loop using QuickTime Player but for some reason the recording crashed whenever a sound was played.

And here’s an Instagram video of me playing the main game, albeit quite badly is I’m only using one hand!

Gridrunner

For some reason Clutch and other decrypting apps don’t work for me with Gridrunner. Since then, somebody was kind enough to create a decrypted version and upload it to Internet Archive.

Aquaplus P/ECE: Game Reviews Vol. 2

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 28 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

If you’ve not yet read my review of the P/ECE hardware comparing it to Playdate, now is the time to catch up! It includes my 6 favourite games on the system.

Below I cover more of the interesting and unique games that I enjoy on the system.

Delta Star, by BLACK FTZ

A new game for P/ECE in 2021! Well, technically it’s a re-release but I’ll take what I can get after all these years. Especially for only 500¥ at BOOTH (pixiv account required).

At first glance you might think this is a simple Asteroids clone, but you’d be wrong. Whilst it does share much with that concept it adds in enough of its own ideas to make it unique.

First, the big differences: you can pass through enemies if you’re careful, and you can shoot down enemy bullets. That’s right, these aren’t lifeless hunks of rock floating around in space! There are multiple types of enemies some of which will fire either normal bullets or homing missiles. Your ship has forwards and reverse thrust, forward dash (a predictable and much more enjoyable equivalent of Asteroid’s teleport), sideways strafing (which I should use more often), and emergency braking. You can fire multiple shots at once, as expected, but they’re limited in number and have a short range of roughly a quarter of the width of the screen.

There are 52 levels, with 4 boss encounters, and continue points. Gameplay is against the clock with remaining time being converted into points. Extra lives are awarded at key point milestones and greeted with one of many great sound effects. The initial levels are easy and can be completed quickly, almost like a tutorial, and after that difficulty ramps up quite nicely. As an example, enemy bullets aren’t seen until level 9. And I adore for the motivational messages at the end of each level that let you know how you did “don’t mind, nobody is perfect”.

The game features smooth 60fps vector graphics with sub-pixel accuracy, plus some nice effects using multiple lines of different shades of grey. And amazing chip tunes. Listen to the high score entry tune at the end of the above video!

I’ve been playing the free “Gratuitous Version” which has only one boss type and lacks music, so I’m excited to spend more time with this fleshed out version now that it’s available once again. Awesome work by BLACK FTZ team, what a lovely surprise for 2021.

Speed Barricade, by Kenta Cho (ABA Games)

This was previously shown in my blog post comparing the P/ECE with Playdate, but I neglected to mention one cool thing…

Speed Barricade LIVE, by Kenta Cho (ABA Games)

If you play with your P/ECE connected using USB cable to your Windows PC you can use a special client app, Speed Barricade LIVE, to show real-time 3D footage of your game in full colour at high resolution! A true spectator sport.

Majang Project, by Hiroshi Makabe

This game came out of the first of two P/ECE Hand Books written by Hiroshi Makabe. The development of the game was outlined in the book and on an accompanying website. It has impressive greyscale graphics, nice animation, wonderful chip tune music, sampled voice clips, win/lose scenes, and hosts a nice VS CPU game of Mahjong. And that’s Riichi/Japanese Mahjong, not the Solitaire type you might associate with the name. I’d say this game is definitely of retail-release quality and was a good showcase for what is possible on the platform.

ALERT (アラート), by Jumpei Isshiki (HELLO WORLD PROJECT)

A nice little barrage shmup with procedurally generated boss fights! Prize winner in the Megastore Cup official contest. There’s a lot going on here, not just the bullets but also the gameplay logic and music. Remaining enemy bullets turn to points which offers an engaging risk/reward mechanic. Three game modes, Easy, Hard, and ENDLESS. Let’s go for the high score!

I read that there was once a port of this game to Dingux-based devices, and found it on a download site (I guessed “alert” was the password, how lucky!).

Delivery Bird, by Hafupon

This is a Sokoban that shifts the view to side-on rather than top-down, which allows for height and gravity to enter into the puzzles. As with many of the best games on P/ECE, it was entered into one of the official game development contests run by Aquaplus. This game won a runner-up prize.

There’s also a Windows version that expands on the concept.

Norito, by Gorujii

Another runner-up in the Megastore Cup official contest. A great looking game featuring fluid wire-frame 3D with dithering for distant objects. It’s a strange sort of shmup that makes me think of both Jumping Flash and Battlezone. Controls take some getting used to but after that score attack is quite a challenge. The game system and stages are intertwined with a story, and things like the “one-shot” fortune-telling add extra flair.

In the next volume of reviews I’ll cover the official bundled games in addition to some homebrew ports of popular games from other systems.

Aquaplus P/ECE (vs Panic Playdate)

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 19 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The P/ECE was a Japan-only handheld/mobile gaming console released in late-2001. It was created by Aquaplus, a company better known for visual novels, so it carries with it a certain oddball charm. After 20 years I find it heart-warming to see that the official website is still online!

What is it?

An early preview of the P/ECE referred to the P/ECE as a portable game console though the water was somewhat muddied by the fact that one of the built in apps, Picket, was a PIM (Personal Information Manager). This means it was often referred to as a PDA. It has a d-pad, start and select buttons, and you can play games on it—that makes it a console in my eyes. But a console where each unit could be used as a development device by connecting it to a desktop computer.

Looking back at the P/ECE it was ahead of its time in many ways. To get a feel for what was going on when it came out:

the most popular phone manufacturers were Nokia and Sony Ericsson
the battle between the PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast was ongoing
ICO was the latest PlayStation 2 game
Rez was the latest Dreamcast game
the iPod and Game Boy Advance had both just launched
YouTube and Facebook had yet to be created

…it really was a different era!

Discovery

I learned of the P/ECE several years ago when looking at the output of one of my favourite video game developers, Kuniake “kuni” Watanabe. He’s probably best known for Panekit, and open-world sandbox game on PlayStation. Though my favourite of his games is MaBoShi on Wii (and DS via download play) which is a razor sharp focussed set of three games that interact with each other in an innovative (and patented) way. I’d go so far as to say that Circle mode in MaBoShi is my favourite game concept of all time.

The same preview article I mentioned above also says “in terms of specs, (P/ECE) comes above the PocketStation and below the Game Boy” though I think that’s selling the P/ECE a little short. The CPU was quite fast and efficient for its time, and the fact that it had no specific graphics hardware meant that people had to get creative and optimise. Some of the results, seen below, would have been very tricky or impossible to achieve on the original Game Boy.

Over its short term of popularity the P/ECE platform had a vibrant homebrew scene and received ports or demakes of everything from Mitchell Corp’s masterpiece Polarium, through arcade gems like Flipull (aka Plotting), to console classics Panel de Pon (aka Tetris Attack) and more besides. It was home to proper Japanese RPGs and small arcade games and the number of games stretch into triple figures.

Selected Games by Kuniake Watanabe

Anyway! During his indie days, Kuni developed for a range of platforms and in a variety of languages and wrote several games for the P/ECE. Here are my favourites:

spout

A lunar lander style game where your thrust can destroy the scenery. Your task is to get as high as possible, though that is much easier said than done as the scenery becomes gradually more complex and time is always ticking away.

This is perhaps the most famous P/ECE game as it was released with source code for an SDL version and received ports to GP32 and related platforms. There’s a modern remake for iOS and Android by a different developer, though it keeps the same title.

edit: kuni’s game design notes

fencer

A snake type game where your head has momentum and your tail length depends on your speed, allowing fine and fluid movement. The goal is to avoid bombs and use your tail as a barrier that will destroy them. Chaining together multiple explosions is the key to high scores.

There was an official updated version for iOS, titled fencell, but it’s not longer on the App Store due to Apple removing all 32-bit games back in 2017. Yet the 20-year-old P/ECE version is still available for download. There’s a lesson for us all.

edit: kuni’s game design notes

interground

In this game you must use a rotating stick to push sand around in an attempt to bury the little people running on top of it. If the stick touches a moving enemy or you run out of time that means game over.

edit: kuni’s game design notes

Selected Games by Kenta Cho (ABA Games)

Whilst digging into P/ECE forgotten history, I also found several old games by Kenta Cho (then: Saba, now: ABA Games) who even today continues to crank out brilliant little games at an inspiring rate.

Barrage Reactor

A twin-stick shmup played with a d-pad and two buttons! The d-pad moves your ship around and the buttons rotate your aim as you fire automatically. Waves of enemies appear and a surprisingly tactical game ensues.

Speed Barricade

A 3D “Tron” light cycles game where the aim is to stay alive for as long as possible whilst outwitting an increasing number of computer controlled players. Quick reflexes are definitely needed for this one!

Re: W32/Badtrance

A 3D demake of Rez where the Microsoft Outlook(!) icon produces waves of enemies that need to be shot down as efficiently as possible by locking on to multiple enemies before firing your missiles. With the strap line “Gentlemen, open your Outlook. Go to Cyberterrorism.” maybe Kenta Cho was sick of email back in 2001?

If there’s enough interest I’ll feature more P/ECE games in a future blog post. Let me know on the comments link at the bottom of the page.

20 years later

Here we are in 2021 and Panic’s Playdate will soon be shipping. By now I’m sure you’ve spotted several similarities between the P/ECE and Playdate. The main one being that both devices offer immediate, unfettered access to developers wishing to make their own games, and those games can be side-loaded.

Of course, 20 years is a long time in technology so the Playdate has many improvements compared to what the P/ECE achieved in 2001. More storage, faster CPU, better connectivity, plus a bigger and better screen. Playdate offers cross-platform development using either C or Lua and, and you won’t need a device to develop for the platform. In contrast, P/ECE offered development only for Windows and only in C, plus you needed a device to test your code. A homebrew emulator was eventually released, which is what I’ve used for the screen recordings shown earlier.

Oh, and both devices have names that make web searches a bit tricky. 😅

Specifications Comparison

	Playdate	P/ECE
Manufacturer	Panic	Aquaplus
Release date	2021	2001
Battery (active)	8h	2h
Battery (standby)	2w	1w
Battery (type)	Rechargeable internal battery	1×AA
CPU (type)	STMicroelectronics STM32F746 (ARM Cortex-M7F)	EPSON S1C33209 (32-bit RISC)
CPU (speed)	180 MHz	24 Mhz
Storage (RAM)	16MB	256KB
Storage (Flash)	4GB (3.9GB usable)	512KB (348KB usable)
Device (colour)	Yellow	Silver
Device (dimensions)	76×74×9mm	101×65×17mm
Device (inputs)	D-pad, A, B, Menu, Sleep, Accelerometer, Crank	D-pad, A, B, Start, Select
Device (weight)	85g	92g
Data connection (wired)	USB-C to A	USB-B to A
Data connection (wireless)	Wi-Fi & Bluetooth	Infrared (IR)
Sound (type)	Software synthesis, Digital audio	Software synthesis
Sound (speaker)	Mono	Mono
Sound (headphone)	Stereo	Mono
Display (technology)	Sharp Memory LCD	FSTN LCD
Display (size)	59×35mm (2.7” diagonal)	45×31mm (2.15” diagonal)
Display (resolution)	400×240	128×88
Display (colours)	2 (1-bit)	4 (2-bit greyscale)
Display (rendering)	Software	Software
Software (bundled)	24	6
Software (SDK)	C & Lua	C
Launch price	$179 (¥19000)	¥11000 ($100)

Aquaplus P/ECE: Game Reviews Vol. 2

Kururin Paradise: Translation Guide, Save & Credits

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Kururin Paradise is the Japan-only sequel to Kuru Kuru Kururin.

To encourage people to revisit this masterpiece of a game I’ve put together a Translation Guide that should help people navigate the menu and understand what the game offers.

I’ve also uploaded one of my Game Saves which has all mini-games and magic-tricks unlocked.

A full set of credits from the staff roll were also submitted to GameFAQs.

Translation Guide

gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gba/582341-kururin-paradise/faqs/79375

Save

gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gba/582341-kururin-paradise/saves

Credits

gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gba/582341-kururin-paradise/credit

FAQ: Kururin Paradise

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/gba/582341-kururin-paradise/faqs

Pixel-Perfect retro gaming on LCD 480p EDTVs

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 06 May 2021 11:00:00 +0000

I recently saw a feature on Racketboy about “The Best 4:3 LCD Monitors for Retro Gaming” which is an interesting list that misses the mark for one reason: it ignores scaling.

LCDs are best at their native resolution and all the listed monitors in that article are odd PC resolutions so most images will be scaled by uneven, non-integer amounts. If we think about retro gaming display outputs then we’re squarely sub-480p. Anything higher will mean the image gets scaled and the results will be suboptimal.

What we need is a display with a native resolution of 480p. Do such things exist? Why, yes, they do!

LCD 480p EDTVs

For a handful of years I’ve been using a 20” LCD 480p EDTV which offers great support for 240p and 480p with zero scaling. These types of TVs mean you get pixel-perfect (1:1 PAR) results for PC, Dreamcast, Xbox, Xbox 360, and as near as dammit for Wii/GC, PS3/2/1 and other consoles without native PC output. PAL resolution 576p games are a fly in the ointment and won’t fit, so we won’t be playing those here. For resolutions lower than 640x480 you still get integer scaling with the output in the centre of the display, for example Mega Drive (Genesis) has a resolution of 320×224px that maps with scan lines to 640×448px with small black bars top and bottom. RetroArch users will be very familiar with this kind of pixel mapping technique. Seeing the 480p output of a Wii on this kind of display is a real shock and truly amazing.

I also use my modern emulation PC to output at 640×480p using a DisplayPort to VGA adapter. This gives me perfect video output from Windows, and from RetroArch for everything up to and including 480p, which covers what I consider the golden period of arcade and console gaming. On occasion I’ve run some PC software (Dolphin emulator, Richard Burns Rally) at much the higher UXGA resolution and used a scaler to supersample it back down to 640×480 which gives fantastic, smooth results for specific games where I feel that might be worth doing.

The pixel density of a 20” IPS panel like this is such that the sub-pixel gaps look a little like an aperture grille. Adding a 640×480px scan-line overlay image in RetroArch brings me very close to the look of my PVM but with a display that is much easier to manage. That said, CRT emulation isn’t really the goal here—we just want a display that is able to display these low resolutions without any scaling.

The 480p EDTV also proves unremarkable to my wife, I guess because unlike my PVM it doesn’t like a microwave, which means it can happily live in the lounge.

Which one to get?

Philips made the best 20” 480p EDTVs: they have an LG/Philips IPS panel (yes, in 2006!) and PC input connector. The trick is to find a set with DVI/VGA input so you can use the PC mode which does not have any image processing applied to it. I’m in Europe so I use the Philips 20PF4121, which is simply glorious. Response time is less than one frame, and there is little to no motion blur on my TV, as measured by the EIZO monitor test. It has a hardware scaler by Genesis Logic that can handle 240p and is pretty good at deinterlacing (though I use a GBS-Control for better deinterlacing on PS2).

Connections: you want to use DVI and whatever adaptors you need to get your signal there. Analogue signals over VGA and Component (YPbPr) can be used with a simple pin adaptor. Digital signals like HDMI and DisplayPort, or even those modern HDMI dongles for old consoles, can be used with a suitable signal converter (pick a good one to avoid lag) to get to VGA and then go from there. TVs with HDMI input are different in that it is not used for PC mode.

Notes: some other manufacturers used the same LG/Philips IPS panel. Be aware that Sharp used their own panel technology, and Samsung used a different panel again, neither of which are IPS and so not as good. Sharp also use their own scaler hardware which is not as good as the scaler in my Philips. Scalers by MStar are used in certain EDTVs - including some later Philips sets - and do not support 240p.

I’m yet to find a 16:9 aspect LCD 480p EDTV with PC input. Though I continue to look for one!

The Hit List

Here’s a Google Docs spreadsheet that should help you find a suitable LCD 480p EDTV. The top and most well-tested EDTVs from that list are displayed in the smaller table below.

BRAND	MODEL	REGION	CHASSIS	IPS	SCALER	240P	INPUT	YEAR
Philips	20PF4121	EU	LC4.1E	Y	Genesis	Y	DVI	2006
Philips	20PF5121	EU	LC4.1E	Y	Genesis	Y	DVI	2006
Philips	20HF5474	EU	LC4.1HE	Y	Genesis	Y	DVI	2006
Philips	20PF4110	EU	LC4.1E	Y	Genesis	Y	DVI	2005
Philips	20HF5473	EU	LC4.1E	Y	Genesis	Y	DVI	2005
Toshiba	20LS30	JP	—	Y	Genesis	Y	VGA, D2	2005
Toshiba	20DL75	US	—	Y	Genesis	Y	VGA	2005

Note: three Philips EDTV available in the USA have been removed from this list as they only offer processed YPbPr over the VGA connector via a cinch to VGA cable.

When looking for one of these you need to check the following:

DVI or VGA connector?
- quick check: specification brochure
- long check: take a look physically
IPS panel?
- quick check: spec brochure, viewing angle ~178 degrees
- long check: service manual parts list, check panel part number manually
Genesis Logic scaler?
- quick check: parts list or PCB photo
- long check: check PCB manually, feed it a 240p signal

Places to get this info are: photos of spare parts, specification brochure, service manual parts list. It’s useful to cross-reference LCD panel numbers on panelook.com and browse for 480p EDTVs using the icecat or productz websites.

Feel free to contact me @gingerbeardman on twitter with details of your buying choice and experiences and I’ll be sure to update the spreadsheet.

Photos

I also use the #20PF4121 tag on Instagram to share photos and video footage.

Connections

The goal is to get the video output from your gaming system into VGA or DVI, depending on the input your TV has.

Specifically when using the EDTV’s PC input we need DVI-A (Analogue), rather than DVD-D (Digital) even if the TV supports both via DVI-I (integrated analogue and digital).

Here’s how to connect the most common systems. Let me know if you connect one that’s not on the list!

Straight VGA cable (with VGA to DVI adapter if needed)

Dreamcast
Xbox 360
Xbox
Vintage Mac/PC

Component cable to VGA/DVI adapter (analogue pass-through)

Wii
GameCube
PS3/2 (and PS1 via backwards compatibility)

HDMI/DisplayPort/Thunderbolt to VGA/DVI (digital to analogue conversion)

Xbox One
Wii U
PS4/3
Mac
PC
Other systems using HDMI output

SCART/Composite to VGA/DVI adapter (analogue to analogue conversion)

Most other systems (those not mentioned above)

An example external scaler that can take SCART/Composite to VGA would be the GBS-Control.

Deinterlacing quality

To improve deinterlacing for 480i content (eg. PS2) you might consider using a scaler that has motion adaptive deinterlacing and good 480p output, such as GBS-Control.

Alignment of multiple sources

A scaler such as the Extron DVS 304 is useful when using a VGA KVM Switch as it will align the position of all different inputs, so you will not have to do Auto Adjust on the EDTV to centre the display when switching from system to system.

Video

April 2026: check out this great video by @f4mi for a quick recap!

FAQ: Kururin Squash!

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 04 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/gamecube/922054-kururin-squash/faqs

Level viewer for Pang (Nintendo DS)

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a huge fan of the Pang series of video games. In my experienced and humble opinion the best game in the series is the one on Nintendo DS. It takes the core Pang concept—refined from the original game in 1990 through to Mighty! Pang in 2000—and turns everything it up to 11. It makes full use of the dual screens to add in some novel level layouts, with a near perfect difficulty curve across the 60 levels that make up Tour mode.

Back in 2017 I tried to reverse engineer it, with the goal of creating custom levels. I got so far as to extract all 256 levels from the ROM and wrote some software to process those into more human-readable formats:

Extract stages tile maps from ROM (using PHP)
Convert stage data to JSON (using PHP)
Level viewer (using JavaScript and HTML canvas)

Source code at GitHub

Level Viewer

Below is an iframe containing a web page hosted on my server:

Notes

The levels are stored in the standard format for Nintendo DS tile-based levels, so these scripts could well work for levels from other games.

It was interesting to find one of the levels shown on the back of the box, seen in the top right of the image below, which is not featured in the main game. My theory is that this level was created to make the game seem more appealing to anybody looking at these supposedly in-game screenshots.

Performance

The performance of the level viewer at the time was much better in Chrome than in Safari, so I raised a bug at WebKit. Several years on bug lays dormant, but things don’t seem quite so bad today. Though there have been three major browser upgrades, one major macOS update and a computer upgrade since!

To do

I never did figure out where the definitions for the various balls and other objects on each level were stored. Maybe one day.

You need to play this game!

Two Old Llamasoft iPhone & iPad games

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Back in 2017 a large number of games and apps were rendered obsolete when iOS 11 removed 32-bit compatibility: the appocalypse. At that time I was still downloading apps into iTunes as backups, and seem to have put aside these two great Llamasoft games. What foresight!

You should be able to side load them onto any jailbroken iOS device running iOS 10 or earlier, like an iPad mini (1st generation will be usable as-is; later generations may need to be downgraded), iPod touch (1st to 5th generation will be usable as-is; later generations may need to be downgraded) or similar iPhone.

I’m still hoping for an easy way to play these on modern devices, so let me know if such a thing exists!

Minotron: 2112 (iPhone, iPod touch & iPad)
Gridrunner (iPhone, iPod touch & iPad)

Edit, 2021-09-13: I’ve added a decrypted version of Minotron that should be easier to install on a jailbroken device.

Edit, 2025-02-06: I can’t remember when exactly, but a kind somebody provided me with a decrypted version of Gridrunner which I’ve now uploaded to its page.

For more info on generating a decrypted IPA file: /2021/09/13/playing-old-32-bit-ios-games-in-2021/

Samurai Mech

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been digging up old Macintosh games, and this search has resulted in the website for the classic Japanese game Samurai Mech coming back online after over a decade! Thanks Ritsuko! See: patreon.com/posts/48174477

Samurai Mech サムライ・メック is a Japanese sci-fi RPGs set in a future-medieval-space Japan. You assume the role of the eponymous Samurai Mech over the course of 40h of exploration/battle/puzzle gameplay.

You can practice your swordsmanship at the dojo, and upgrade your Samurai Mech suit with parts obtained through winning battles. The first game has a whole city to explore whilst you solve a mystery involving a group of ninjas.

Here is Samurai Mech running on my 1992 Macintosh Classic, using System 7.1.0 with Japanese Language Kit installed.

In the sequel Samurai Mech II: Heaven サムライ・メックII・天 you are a bounty hunter in an archipelago colony at the edge of the universe. The setting includes an ancient castle, an amusement park, an adult ballroom, and a giant corporation. An all new scenario, more freedom, improved mech system, improved combat, and a choice of colour or mono graphics!

Staff

Samurai Mech

Yukito Morikawa (森川幸人)
Shūji Nomaguchi (野間口修二)

Star Odyssey
Jumping Flash series
Astronōka

Akihiko Miura (三浦明彦)

Otocky
Bombliss
Pokémon series

Minoru Mukaiya (向谷実)

Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2/3
Samurai Warriors 2

Samurai Mech II adds the following notable Staff:

Hitomi Amakawa (天川ひとみ)
Shigenori Miyamoto (宮本茂則)

Jumping Flash series
Astronōka

1992: Samurai Mech (HuLINKS)
1994: Samurai Mech II: Heaven (HuLINKS)
1994: Geograph Seal (EXACT)
1995: Jumping Flash! (EXACT)
1996: Jumping Flash! 2 (EXACT, MuuMuu Co Ltd)
1997: Ghost in the Shell (EXACT, Production I.G.)
1999: Pocket MuuMuu (Sugar & Rockets)
1999: Robbit Mon Dieu (Sugar & Rockets)

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.

Famicom Mahjong/Hanafuda controller USB keyboard mod

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 09 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Difficulty: 7/10
Cost: < £20

I play a lot of Hanafuda games. In the arcade these games share a control panel with Mahjong. It’s basically a keyboard featuring the first half of the alphabet, presented as a long row of keys in alphabetical order. This makes playing Arcade Hanafuda games a bit of a chore without a bunch of keyboard remapping and emulator faff.

Some people were using arcade control panels connected to their PC. In Japan you can buy a custom electronics kit to make a USB Mahjong/Hanafuda controller, but it’s expensive at about €85 plus shipping and import duty. There had to be a better way!

I saw that a couple of old Famicom Mahjong games by Capcom were bundled with a custom controller. It was essentially two controllers in one, so won’t work with my controller adapter cables. So I wondered how easy it would be to convert one to USB? Posting on a NES developer forum helped me verify that it should be possible.

Christmas 2019 I bought a bunch of games from Japan and added a Famicom Mahjong controller to my order. It arrived, I put it on my to-do list, then a global pandemic happened.

Almost a year later I picked it up and decided to figure it out. I would need a little Arduino, a usb cable with data and power, and I’d have to write some Arduino code to poll the buttons a couple of times every update. Back in 2019 nobody had done this mod so I was in my own.

Just before I started to write code, I figured I’d do a quick Google search to see if anything had changed. And, unbelievably, somebody else had done this exact mod in February 2020 and open sourced their code. I thanked them and that meant the project was instantly half done.

I bought an additional Pro Micro (Arduino compatible) and set it up on a breadboard that made it easier for me to wire up a prototype and check everything was working.

Finally I cut the old controller cord and wired my new setup into the controller. It worked perfectly. I went back in to trim some supports and add some alternative reinforcements to prevent the controller bending and creaking.

Using this controller makes playing these games so much easier, and I’ve discovered a couple of games that have made this well worth the time and investment.

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.

EPOCH Instruction Manuals

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 26 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A recent friendly nudge from Jason Scott at the Internet Archive let me know that somebody had lost their manual for their 1981 Epoch Cassette Vision and tweeted EPOCH to see if they could help. But EPOCH did more than that, spending time to scan and upload manuals for all of their vintage consoles!

Mirroring these at Internet Archive was a nice bite-sized task to help burn off some of the Christmas fat and get things moving again over here. I went about it as follows (high level information only, comment or @ me on twitter if you’d like to know more):

Download all PDFs locally using jDownloader (total=240)
Copy titles from Japanese listing, store in a file
DeepL translate Japanese titles to English, store in a second file
Write shell script to loop through filenames and collate titles etc into CSV ready for batch upload
Check CSV for errors and fix (there were mistakes in the original Japanese titles and/or DeepL translation)
Test batch upload using a single file, tweak script
Do the full batch upload using ia CLI tool
Confirm any failures, fix and reprocess those in a second pass

My script ended up like this:

After the first pass there were only a few errors: 2 corrupt PDFs that needed to be uploaded manually, 2 duplicate identifiers that I had failed to spot looking through the translations, and 1 identifier that had trailing spaces that I had missed during my finessing of the titles. Pretty good going, though!

They’re now accessible at: archive.org/search.php?query=identifier%3Aepoch-manual%2A

Have fun & stay safe!

Band-kun バンドくん musician simulator (1990, KOEI)

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been playing an old (1990, KOEI Co Ltd) Japanese NEC PC-9801 game バンドくん [Band-kun; Mr. Band; Band Man] where you start a band and have to recruit members, make some recordings and live a life of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. It was also available for the Fujitsu FM Towns and Sharp X68000 Japanese personal computers.

Band-what?

Band-kun is a hybrid simulation/adventure/rhythm game. You explore a fictional city taking to various inhabitants, learning about the music and the music industry, recruiting band members and performing and recording music. You perform the music using mouse gestures, so it’s possible to ad-lib and receive better/worse results a little like playing a musical instrument. After recording you need mix the song in a studio, then get your friend Bob Marley to sell your CDs on the street corner, or figure out how to get the music played on the local radio station which is, of course, broadcasting from a zeppelin riding high above the city.

You need to work dead-end jobs to pay your way, and repeat the recording/gigging process to work your way up through soul-destroying small club gigs to a big arena gig, and allegedly you can even die from the excess partying.

Playdate version?

It’s originally B&W so I figured it would look great on Playdate, so I made a little proof of concept.

Band-kun required a MIDI-capable sound card PLUS an external MIDI sound module - a very expensive 30,000JPY piece of equipment back in 1990. So it wasn’t a success and was forgotten about. But it eventually led to Guitaroo Man and the birth of the music game genre on PlayStation.

Anyway! I’d love to licence Band-kun and re-release it on a modern device that can do the original concept justice. The Playdate crank and accelerometer could be used to perform the music!

I wondered if anybody knows KOEI founder Youichi Erikawa (aka “Kou Shibusawa”)? Hook a brother up! バンドを組んでメンバーを集め、レコーディングをして、セックスとドラッグとロックンロールの生活を送るという昔（1990年、KOEI）のPC-9801のゲーム「バンドくん」をプレイしています。@koeitecmogames からライセンスしたいので、襟川陽一に協力をお願いします。

Edit: since I originally wrote this twitter thread and blog post, contact has been made with KOEI’s licensing department. 🤞

Period reviews

Detailed review from the 1991-01 issue of #マイコンBASIC micomBASIC

Courtesy of a scan at Internet Archive.

Super Soft Hot Information: Band-kun #バンドくん in #micomBASIC1990/12

Courtesy of a scan at Internet Archive.

“SLG in which you form a band, gain experience through practice and live house performances, and aim to win a contest. After winning, the game turns into a highly flexible session software. MIDI compatible.”

Review of Band-kun #バンドくん in Technopolis #テクノポリス 1991/01

Courtesy of a scan at Internet Archive.

“We borrowed a studio and practiced hard with our friends to win the contest. Hone your skills!”

“In the city, you’ll try to win a fight against a band member. It’s hard to get them to play with you at first.”

Translation (WIP)

I’ve been poking around in the Band-kun game files.

Everything is stored uncompressed in very simple structures across a few files. I’ve not figured them all out, yet, but can see graphics (done), dialogue (partial), music (to-do). Band-kun ships with Scenario 1 “ZAP CITY 1991” and is able to play additional scenarios, but none were released.

Regardless: it should be easy to create a translated version of the included scenario. And maybe even create a new scenario (varying difficulty depending on changes).

User Manual

A scanned PDF for Band-kun #バンドくん is available with thanks to the Neo Kobe project archive.org/details/band-kun-manual

Promotional leaflet

Download the game

Get the disk image at Internet Arcchive for PC-9801 or FM-Towns

All the faces

Here are all 120 “famous” faces, extracted from PC-9801 Band-kun, thanks to @fukui_keeekn on Twitter.

Birthday blog post?

Check out my other #birthday blog posts.

Dreamcast GDEMU installation

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 03 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Difficulty: 5/10
Cost: ~ £100

My Dreamcast is an NTSC-U model that I bought in the middle of the Dreamcast’s short life. It was a special order from UK mail order firm Madeira Games based out of King’s Lynn, Norfolk, and is chipped to play import games. It has a replacement UK PSU and has served me well over the years. I’d resisted GDEMU, making do with a serial USB Micro SD adapter. But I eventually decided the ease of use and ability to play certain WinCE games like Super Runabout was enough reason to upgrade.

I ordered a bunch of stuff and then fitted it. There’s not much to say. The replacement lid release mechanism was the most difficult part to fit.

After install I wasn’t impressed by the noise reduction but after measurement it is as advertised on the fan box. But it’s far from “silent”. So, I’d say that the GDEMU is the only essential upgrade. You can probably live without the fan, riser, etc.

Whilst trying a few things I noticed when putting the lid on that it increases the noise levels due to echo in the now much emptier shell. Quick measurements showed somewhere around 3dB. So I put some plastic board along the edge of the GDEMU effectively halving the inside space whilst creating a direct passage from the fan directly to the PSU. This idea isn’t mine, it was something I’d seen/read that came back to me when I heard the noise increase as I put on the lid. I believe it’s done for air flow reasons but I did it for echo noise reduction reasons. New fan noise measurement <20dB which is as Noctua advertise.

PC Engine Fanatics, Console Ma’zine, Electric Brain & Games Amusement Pleasure

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 30 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This collection is a British video game fanzine/magazine that ran from 1989 to 1993 for an almost uninterrupted total of 35 issues.

The first 8 issues went by the name PC Engine Fanatics which was a hand made fanzine/newsletter that was promoted in period magazines. The following 10 issues received a name change to Console Ma’zine along with expanded coverage of Sega’s Mega Drive, Atari’s Lynx, and Nintendo’s Game Boy as well as NEC’s PC Engine. The “final” 17 issues went by the name Electric Brain (taken from the Chinese word for computer) and it was during this run that, at least for a brief handful of issues, the fanzine turned into a proper magazine that was available to purchase from major newsagents on the high street.

After Electric Brain there was a year silence until GAP (Games Amusement Pleasure) followed for one last 5 issue finale, by which time the Internet had started to go mainstream and editor Onn Lee’s momentum finally waned after more than 15 magnificent years.

This publication is little known even in its native United Kingdom, but it is notable for featuring an English translation of an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto from the time of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past_. This interview was next translated into English over 20 years later. There was a wiki page about these publications, but it fell victim to deletionists—but that’s a story for another day.

I’d like take this opportunity to thank Andy Harris for loaning me the majority of his collection of issues so I could scan and share the complete run rather than my few issues. I tracked him down a couple of years ago and thankfully managed to persuade him I wasn’t trying to steal his stuff! Thanks for trusting me Andy.

Enjoy!

archive.org/search.php?query=%22electric+brain%22+%22Onn+Lee%22&sort=titleSorter

Daily Driver: Influences

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Some fellow Playdate developers commented that at this point the game reminded them of Ivan “Ironman” Stewart’s Super Off Road, Super Sprint and even Rocket League.

A few of my influences for vibe:

Atari’s Sprint series, including Badlands
Ivan “Ironman” Stewart’s Super Off Road
Wild Wheels (a car soccer game that pre-dates Rocket League by ~20 years)

And for gameplay:

ExciteBots: Trick Racing
Mario Kart DS/Wii
Power Drive
Richard Burns Rally
The Italian Job: LA Heist
Pro Rally
Runabout series
GTi Club series
1080° series

…so many more, some of which are not even driving games!

Shinji and Good Friends: Second Hanafuda Impact

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 22 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Shinji and Good Friends: Second Hanafuda Impact is a hanafuda video game for Windows, released by Gainax in 1999. You can unlock wallpapers though beating each of the characters in the game.

Just for fun I reverse engineered and edited the save game to unlock all the wallpapers. The save game data is not very big so I decided on a brute force approach: I beat one character to get enough save data and then set about changing and reloading it to figure out the location of everything else.

I was surprised to find the 10th image, shown large in this post, as it did not have a typical placeholder like the others. Also surprising are the reserved save slots for more (seemingly abandoned) unlockable wallpapers.

Anyway, these wallpapers are probably new material for most Evangelion fans!

Whilst doing this hacking, I found a debug mode (dialog/speech tester) which is now documented at The Cutting Room Floor.

Download

Grab the ISO at archive.org/details/shinji-and-good-friends-second-hanafuda-impact

Credits: MaBoShi (WiiWare)

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 28 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

One of the best (according to MetaCritic, and IMHO) Wii games is a WiiWare game called MaBoShi that is now mostly lost to time in that Nintendo have closed the Wii Shop Channel. Of course, there are other more nefarious means to procure the game, but I’m not going to go into those here.

Anyway, I still play this game regularly (still not managed 1Million on Wii but have on the DS download version) and recently unlocked the Staff Credits (Staff Roll).

Staff Credits

Producers

Mikito Ichikawa
Satoshi Kira

Director

Mikito Ichikawa

System Design

Mikito Ichikawa

Game Design

Kuniaki Watanabe
Mikito Ichikawa
Jun Shimizu

Programming

Kotori Yoshimura
Tadashi Itō
Kuniaki Watanabe
Jun Shimizu
Mikito Ichikawa

Design

Reiko Sato
Hiroki Takahashi

Artwork

Toki Kando
Takanao Kondo

Sound

Daisuke Shiiba
Johan Krafft

European Localisation

Edoardo Dodd
Miguel Ángel García Segovia
Carsten Harmans
Kay Hermann
Geraint Howells
Sonya Mazet

NOE Localisation Management

William Romick

Debug

DIGITAL Hearts CO. LTD
Super Mario Club
Shigeo Kimura
NOA Product Testing
NOE Testing Team

Project Management

Hiroshi Sato
Toshiharu Izuno

Special Thanks

Koji Sato
Toru Inage
Kenta Tanaka
Kozo Makino
Rumiko Hoshino

Executive Producer

Satoru Iwata

All Rights, including the copyrights of Game, Scenario, Music and Program reserved by

Nintendo
Mindware

Addendum

During a chat with Kuniaki Watanabe by Twitter DMs, he outlined the responsibilities of the team:

Programming

Kotori Yoshimura (Wii system, Bar game)
Mikito Ichikawa (NDS system)
Tadashi Ito (Square game)
Jun Shimizu (procedural level generator for Bar game)
Kuniaki Watanabe (Circle game)

Game Design

Kuniaki Watanabe (original game prototypes)
Mikito Ichikawa (reconstruct for Wii)

Level Design

Mikito Ichikawa (Bar game)
Kuniaki Watanabe (Circle game)
Jun Shimizu (procedural level generator for Bar game)

Graphic Design

Reiko Sato

FAQ: Junclassic C.C. & Rope Club

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 25 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/ps/573058-junclassic-cc-and-rope-club/faqs

FAQ: Maboshi’s Arcade

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 11 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/wii/946472-maboshis-arcade/faqs

Searching for: The Claque Beignet

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 04 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday on Twitter I spotted a plea for more information on an old Flash game “The Claque Beignet” - a game in which you slap singing characters with an extended arm. Apparently there was no maker’s mark on the game nor ties to any website. I was intrigued!

Here are the steps I took to trace the creator of the game.

1. Searching with Limited Knowledge

The earliest mentions of the game I could find with a simple date-range google search were from 2004 and 2005. The game had been pegged as possibly from 2003 so I was not happy and kept on going!

2. Obtaining the Game

I did a simple Google search for the game and found a site with the game, then saved the SWF file locally by inspecting the source to grab the URL of the SWF file. Here I assumed that the game was a self-contained single file.

You can check that assumption by playing the game in Chrome (at least whilst it still supports Flash!) and checking the web inspector network tab to see if any other files are loaded during play.

3. Decompiling the SWF

I have the tools to decompile SWF files so this was an easy fist step for me. I found minimal interesting information, but it turned out to be enough.

There were indeed no maker’s details or credits, but some interesting variable naming (noise spelled noize) and some relative URLs for the online high score system. These URLs involved the .php3 file extension, which was a good clue.

PHP3 was around from 1997–2000, followed by PHP4 from 2000–2004. One thing we can assume is that the developer was active during the lifetime of PHP3, so it gave us a window of years to look at.

The online high score system could have pre-dated the game, so it was not safe to assume the game was developed in that period.

4. Searching with Learned Knowledge

So, armed with some idea of the year the game was made it was simple enough task. Let’s start with the last year PHP3 was available. I went to Google and entered:

“The Claque Beignet” 2000

Halfway down the first page of results:

Bingo!

The game was published on 21 November 2000 by Raoul Sinier. His older website domain is on archive.org going back to 2001, so it can be confirmed.

And there we have it. C’est ça!

Music: T&E SOFT “New 3D Golf Simulation” games

by Matt Sephton — Sun, 01 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a huge fan of the music in T&E SOFT’s “New 3D Golf Simulation” series, so I have spent some time to digitise the music from those games in the series I did not have in my music library. That makes 13 new soundtracks!

Devil’s Course (PC-98, 3DO)
Eight Lakes G.C. (PC-98, X68000)
Harukanaru Augusta (PC-98, X68000)
Harukanaru Augusta HD (PC-98)
Masters: Harukanaru Augusta 2 (PC-98)
Masters: Harukanaru Augusta 3 (3DO)
Pebble Beach no Hatou (3DO)
T&E Selection (PC-98)
Waialae no Kiseki (PC-98 + 3DO)

For PC-98 and X68000 I used a Windows app called HOOT to play back the “chip” music and export it as WAV, then I trimmed any loops and added fades, then finally converted to FLAC and MP3.

For 3DO I extracted the filesystem from CD-ROM ISOs, then converted files containing audio into WAV and then FLAC. For AIFF/AIFC files I converted using command line ffmpeg, and for Stream files I used ZStream CHUNKS Reader (version 0.96).

www.mediafire.com/folder/tcm6u1rhz1xsy/vgm

They should make it on to the Video Game Music website soon, but they are available first here. Enjoy!

Iwata Asks Downloader

by Matt Sephton — Sun, 05 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This tool downloads the Iwata Asks series of interviews, saving as Markdown and HTML with images. ePub files are optional and can be generated in a secondary post-process phase.

I created this tool in Spring/Summer 2019 so that I could more easily read and search the Iwata Asks interviews.

More details: github.com/gingerbeardman/iwata-asks-downloader

FAQ: Soreyuke!! Hanafuda Doujou

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 10 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/ngpc/916535-soreyuke-hanafuda-doujou/faqs

FAQ: Hanafuda

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/921032-hanafuda/faqs

FAQ: Hanafuda Shiyouyo

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/wonderswan/577014-hanafuda-shiyouyo/faqs

FAQ: Hana to Ryuu

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/ps/572974-hana-to-ryuu/faqs

FAQ: Bomberman Blast

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/wii/945463-bomberman-blast/faqs

“Game Machine” magazine archive

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 20 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

343 issues of Japanese arcade magazine GAME MACHINE spanning 1974/08 to 1988/12: https://onitama.tv/gamemachine/archive.html

Mirrored as one archive: https://archive.org/details/game-machine And as a collection at: https://archive.org/details/game_machine_magazine_jp

Interesting issues:

Yoshikazu Endo honors Special Issue (No. 72 May 15, 1977) https://archive.org/details/game-machine-magazine-19770515p Invaders boom heyday (No. 117 April 15, 1979) https://archive.org/details/game-machine-magazine-19790415p Video game machine Special Issue (No. 201 November 29, 1982) https://archive.org/details/game-machine-magazine-19821129p Thanks to the fine folks at ONION software / onitama and Amusement Press Inc. for making these available. The scans are well done with OCR selectable/searchable Japanese text.

I took some time to mirror the collection at the Internet Archive. Enjoy!

Update, May 2023: A further 269 issues of Japanese arcade magazine GAME MACHINE spanning 1991/01 to 2002/06 have been uploaded to Internet Archive, which brings the current total to 612!

List of video games featuring Moai

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I created a website mashing up a bunch of things that I love:

Moai
Videogames
Lists

moai.games

FAQ: Suujin Taisen

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/ds/939118-suujin-taisen/faqs

FAQ: Youkai Hana Asobi

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 04 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/ps/583577-youkai-hana-asobi/faqs

Replacing bitmap graphics in a PlayStation game

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 04 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

A version of this article was originally posted on my Patreon

I found an old Hanafuda Koi-Koi game that I can no longer easily play due to… sigh… what they call progress? It’s called Koikoi Komachi and was released around 2005 for Mac OS X (initially for PPC, and later Intel).

I really like the cards images that it has, and was able to extract them using File Juicer which is a kind of Swiss Army Knife for easily extracting files that might be embedded in an app, archive or disk image.

But just looking at the cards is not enough. I really needed to play a video game with them, you know? So I thought it would be cool to transplant them into the PlayStation game Youkai Hana Asobi.

Here’s what I did

Split the new card image into individual cards
Resize/shrink the individual cards to the dimensions used in the PS1 game
Extract the images I want to edit from the PS1 game
Edit the extracted images to add the new cards and make any other changes
Replace the images in the PS1 game with the new ones

Image Manipulation

To do the image splitting and resizing I used Retrobatch which makes this kind of stuff really easy. I created a workflow to crop out the individual cards and do the resizing all in one batch. Very cool!

Image Editing

PlayStation images are palette-based so you need to use an image editor that respects the embedded indexed colour palette. There may be other capable editors, but Adobe Photoshop is very good at this sort of thing so that’s what I used. Any old version will do, you definitely do not need the latest version.

I pasted each of my small card images into the two images used by the game, replacing the spectre/monster cards that are default. I also took time to change the options screen to modify the thumbnail that signifies which card design you’re using, and I also added a “NEW” label to the title screen.

I stopped short of changing the “help” card images because that would have been a lot more work and I do not personally look at those whilst playing.

ROM Hacking

There are many ways to get images out of a PS1 game, but I settled on Tim2View because it offers an all-in-one solution for extraction and insertion. It is as easy as:

Export PNG… (F4)
(do your image editing elsewhere)
Import PNG… (F5)

Warning: Tim2View writes to your PS1 bin file at each operation—without prompting—so always keep a backup just in case something goes wrong!

Gotcha: be sure to respect whatever colour is marked as transparent when making your image edits. In my case this was the colour black (0,0,0) so I had to make sure to use an almost-black colour in my new graphics to avoid unwanted transparent pixels. You can quickly check the state of your image by toggling the background transparency type at the bottom of the window. If it’s wrong just tweak and re-import.

That was fun!

I then used MultiPatch to create an IPS patch file from the changes, so I could make this mod easy for other gamers to enjoy.

The finished patch is available at: www.romhacking.net/hacks/4593/

Screenshot

Redumping Discs

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 14 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Redump is a Disc Preservation Project that requires multiple verified dumps of the same game disc before it is marked as good. It’s a worthy endeavour that secures the future for disc-based games. Their data is public and downloadable, and I’ve heard that the game data is available at archive.org.

To get involved with such dumping and verification, you’ll need:

a compatible disc drive/reader (mine is a Plextor PX-716UF)
some free/open-source software (and a Windows install)
time (most discs take a quite a few minutes)

I started out dumping my rarest discs, some titles for the ill-fated NUON system. More recently I’ve been dumping my collection of obscure Japanese PS1 games, amongst others.

You can check out my dumps so far at redump.org/discs/dumper/gingerbeardman/

FAQ: Devil’s Course

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/genesis/570461-devils-course/faqs

What a FAQ up!

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 22 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

If, like me, you can’t read katakana and hiragana then Japanese games can take a fair bit of deciphering to be able to play and enjoy. I use the Google Translate iOS app and some other tricks (which I’ll save for another post) to translate game menus and text, and have mostly kept notes of my findings.

With my most recent game translation, I realised that I should make more of an effort to share that work so it can help others enjoy these amazing games. So I went through my notes and pulled out several translations of various obscure Japanese games that I’d done in the past for myself. No apologies that they’re mostly golf and hanafuda games—my catnip.

The Golf (1988, MSX)
New 3D Golf Simulation: Pebble Beach no Hatou (1993, SMD)
New 3D Golf Simulation: Harukanaru Augusta (1993, SMD)
New 3D Golf Simulation: Devil’s Course (1994, SMD)
New 3D Golf Simulation: Waialae no Kiseki (1994, SMD)
Cross Romance: Koi to Mahjong to Hanafuda to (1997, PS1)
Jun Classic C.C. & Rope Club (1998, PS1)
Simple Characters 2000 Series Vol.04 - Jarinko Chie - The Hanafuda (2001, PS1)
Pang: Magical Michael (2010, NDS)

You can find them all at GameFAQs: gamefaqs.gamespot.com/community/msephton/contributions/faqs

GameFAQs happens to have a fantastic new (to me) editor that makes creating a guide as easy as typing a WordPress or Patreon post.

Also crazy to see that I submitted my first FAQ in August 1996—some 23 years and almost half a lifetime ago!

FAQ: Pebble Beach Golf Links

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 21 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/genesis/586373-pebble-beach-golf-links/faqs

FAQ: The Golf

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 20 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/msx/953282-the-golf/faqs

FAQ: Pang: Magical Michael

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 20 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/ds/997750-pang-magical-michael/faqs

FAQ: New 3D Golf Simulation: Waialae no Kiseki

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 20 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/genesis/570462-new-3d-golf-simulation-waialae-no-kiseki/faqs

FAQ: Harukanaru Augusta

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 20 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/genesis/570460-harukanaru-augusta/faqs

FAQ: Cross Romance: Koi to Mahjong to Hanafuda to

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 20 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/ps/572768-cross-romance-koi-to-mahjong-to-hanafuda-to/faqs

Recovered: Forgotten SEGA Exclusives on Palm OS

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

As part of my ongoing efforts to uncover lost gems from Japan, I recovered two exclusive games made by SEGA in their brief flirtation with Palm OS back in 2002. These games were presented by their Smilebit division at PalmSource Japan Forum 2002. This was around the time SEGA were abandoning consoles and Palm OS seems to have been part of an effort to figure out “what next?”.

My journey to these games started with the my purchase of a GC10 game controller adapter and playing its bundled games, one of which featured an old website URL. I then fell deep down the archive.org rabbit hole and managed to find mention of the two games—one had screenshots but neither had downloads—on an old SEGA website. From here I managed to find the PRC files in a set of just over 100 on chip.de, a German computer magazine and software download website, the only place they still resided and where they had been long forgotten for decades. Finally, I used the Mu Palm emulator and my Sony CLIÉ SJ22 to try them out and take some screen grabs!

Triangle Magic トライアングルマジック

Use the stylus to position triangles on a grid, the aim is to deflect a ball to the goal and collect coins on the way.

This one feels quite familiar today, I can remember several games with a similar concept. Edit: Sega’s 1990 arcade game Borench features a very similar concept.

Borkov ボルコフ

Use the hardware buttons, or stylus, to make an overweight red-haired man eat chunks of chocolate to match the goal shape.

It’s reminiscent of COMPILE’s 2001 GBA game Guru Logi Champ, in that you rotate the play field and shoot/suck blocks from the middle. Pretty cool.

Columns for CLIÉ

The only commercial result from this particular period at SEGA was a version of Columns bundled only with a game controller accessory for Sony’s CLIÉ range of Palm OS “personal entertainment organisers”.

Download

You can grab Borkov and Triangle Magic at palmdb.net/?s=sega

Columns for CLIÉ can be found in the All Games or GC10 downloads at sonyclie.org/drivers.html

References

Door Door redrawn

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 19 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I redrew the box art from Door Door (1985, Famicom). It’s a great game and worthy of your time.

Door Door was designed by Koichi Nakamura, known as one of the creators of Dragon Quest. The game was the runner-up in the Enix-sponsored “First Game and Hobby Program Contest” in 1982, winning the “Outstanding Program Award” with a prize of 500,000 yen. Enix was given the rights to the game and ported the game to several Japanese home computers.

Out of all the versions I think the Famicom one plays best, even though it has an annoying squeaky walking sound. I just lower or mute the audio.

Affinity Designer is my tool of choice for doing most of my vector illustration work. Below are the vector outlines for the above drawing. As you can see I like to keep things fairly minimal! Lots of gradients were used, and the noise function to give things a bit of texture.

The coloured image was originally posted on my Dribbble account, but the outline image is new for this blog post. I hope you like it!

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.

Koi-Koi by KIN SOFT for MSX (1994)

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 11:13:00 +0000

I read about an old doujin user-created Koi-Koi game 花札こいこい made by KIN SOFT in 1994. This is my document of the hunt I went on to be able to find and play it!

MSX・FAN

Firstly, the game came with MSX・FAN Issue 26 (1994/06) and by that I mean in the pages and on one of the two cover disks. So I had to find them in the existing archives. I found them on a Spanish website that I’ve since lost the link to. The game could be installed on a blank .dsk, which of course you have to generate and format. The resulting .dsk played just fine in OpenMSX but not fMSX. 🤔

dsk2rom

After some thought I figured out that using the Windows tool dsk2rom.exe I could convert the .dsk into a .rom file that would boot straight into the game when using fMSX.

dsk2rom.exe -6d blank.dsk boot.rom

Those command-line options:

6 = use 60Hz video (the Japanese standard)
d = allow booting of other diskroms (was required for compatibility)

But there were still some errors in certain situations:

without MSXDOS2 or TurboR: "Syntax error in 40"
with fMSX in RetroArch: "Disk full in 40"

With some help from my MSX friends it became clear the game required:

RAMDISK command (part of MSXDOS2)
256KB RAM

Note: I think I had to create a .dsk containing both MSXDOS2 and then install the game onto to that. The MSX Turbo R has MSXDOS2 built-in.

RetroArch

But fMSX in RetroArch doesn’t allow you to set RAM and VRAM and in fact its defaults for those were wrong for some types of MSX. I made some changes to fmsx-libretro core and whilst I was in there made several more improvements. I even updated the core to fMSX version 4.9 for all RetroArch users. I’m skipping over the huge effort that all these changes took, but it was fun hacking on libretro!

After all this I had a test build of the fmsx-libretro core for 3DS that I could use to play the game. 🎴

The Game

The game is really interesting because of the yaku (card combos) it contains, and the fact that it has a Special Card Shop where you can use points to buy Special cards for cheating in imaginative ways against the CPU.

Peek at Deck: Check the next card in the deck
Peek at Opponent: View the opponent’s hand
Card Explosion: Destroy a card on the table + force the opponent to skip a turn
Card Swap: Swap cards in your hand
Landmine Card: Explodes if the opponent takes it
Deck Collapse: Turn over two cards from the deck consecutively
Time Reversal: Reset the game
Lightning Card: Prioritise acquiring 20-point cards
Electric Vortex Card: Makes it easier to take 20-point cards from the board
Storm: Swap the cards you are about to take
Bamboo Cutter Card: Probability effect allowing you to acquire any card
Atomic Bomb Card: Significantly reduces the opponent’s available cards

Download

A .zip of both the .dsk and .rom file: koikoi-kin-soft-1994.zip (247 KB)

If you are interested in Hanafuda video games or cards, why not join the Hanafuda Discord server?

Magazine spread feature detailing the game, its controls, hanafuda, and valid yaku (card combos)

Game Archaeology: No Man’s Sky

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 19 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Video game news outlets are currently abuzz with articles about No Man’s Sky, one of the most eagerly awaited and massively hyped games in recent years. The game sees you dropped somewhere in space with the goals of exploration, resource management, trading and combat.

The dubious matter of how closely the released game resembles the one that was hyped over the past few years will no doubt be hotly debated for many months or years to come.

Regardless, I think the premise of the game is worth talking about because of its influences. Let’s take a trip back through space and time…

Merchant of Venus (1982)

The oldest space trading game I know of, this took the form of a menu driven interface where you could buy your first ship and then transport and trade cargo at a number of different spaceports. Very much a resource management game, but with manual landings akin to Lunar Lander (1979) that were drawn on screen using groups and combinations of letters from the character set. You can play Merchant of Venus online now or read more about it.

Elite (1984)

The grandfather of space exploration games: Elite. This featured 3D graphics, a whole procedurally generated Universe (8 galaxies, each containing 256 planets), exploration, trading, combat, hyperspace jumps, manual docking to refuel, missions, multiple ship types and space pirates. All in 32KB of RAM!

But there was no landing on the surface of planets. Also, somewhat bizarrely, the cassette version lacks the preset missions and has fewer types of ships. You can’t have everything, I suppose.

Read more about the game.

Explorer (1986)

We now come to a game that allows exploration on land, thanks to its scenario of crash-landing on an unknown, unexplored planet. The game features an overhead map and procedurally generated screens as you explore the surface, where you make contact with alien species and are able to open portals to get around more easily.

The graphics were quite impressive for the time, though the fact you’re on one planet was a cunning way to get around the limitations of the procedural generation and the similarities between screens of the various land types. Still worth playing.

Read more about the game.

Starflight (1986)

Whilst Explorer was being released in the UK, over in the USA a development studio called Binary Systems were releasing an all-encompasing space exploration, trading and combat game called Starflight. Arguably even more comprehensive than Elite, it offered exploration, trading, combat but graphically was missing 3D graphics instead going for a hybrid menu-based system with panels of 2D animated graphics to give context to the current objective.

It was released on a range of 8-bit and 16-bit home computers, and also the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. Game designer Greg Johnson went on to co-create the cult ToeJam & Earl series of games. But, for me, Starflight is his magnum opus. It’s easy to play the game (and its sequel) today on PC thanks to a re-release by GOG or read more about it.

Starglider 2 (1988)

Argonaut Games, a studio best known for creating Star Fox and the Super FX coprocessor chip with/for Nintendo, have an interesting part to play in this story. They’d forged ahead with software-driven 3D engines on computers that had very limited processing power, culminating in Starglider 2 for the Amiga, Atari ST and PC. A tour de force of cutting edge technology, the game allowed exploration of a solar system, planetary surfaces and everywhere in between. Whilst it was set in an open world, the game featured a plot and overall goal for the player: to collect the parts of a neutron bomb and use it to blow up an enemy space station.

Read more about the game.

Hunter (1991)

The final game I want to mention doesn’t involve space, but it does involve a huge open world to be explored and a mission to complete. Hunter was the perfect example of an open world game where you could use many different types of transport to get around the world, from bicycles to boats and helicopters. You could enter buildings, amass an inventory of collected items that can be used to solve puzzles and progress towards your ultimate goal.

The game had three modes: Hunter (a long story-based mission), Missions (a series of smaller missions), and Action (against the clock search and destroy around the map). The game was the most convincing depiction of a real world I had seen at that point, and remained that way for some years until the often compared Grand Theft Auto series of games.

Read more about the game.

No Man’s Sky (2016)

My hopes for No Man’s Sky were that it would combine the best features of all the space exploration games that went before it. It could take the Universe, trading, combat and missions from Elite; procedural generation from Explorer; plot-driven goal from Starglider 2; the land exploration and variety of vehicles in Hunter. Heck, maybe it would just be Starflight with a veneer of wonderful 3D graphics.

But the released version of No Man’s Sky is different. Whilst it has all the trappings of a great game, it falls short in several key areas: balance, plot and—most importantly of all—gameplay. So, in a lot of ways the game is actually no more advanced than the 30-or-so year old games I’ve mentioned.

Stylistically, of course, No Man’s Sky is light years ahead. Gameplay wise it’s no better than Elite or Starglider 2, in fact it could be described as being worse. It appears to be rushed, hurried, incomplete, unbalanced.

Most interestingly, the released game lacks a host of features that had been repeatedly mentioned to the press and shown to the public over the last several years. It almost seems as if they’ve chopped huge important chunks off the game in the last few months.

The Gameplay is in Another Galaxy

So what happens next? In my experience it’s uncommon for such deficiencies in the game to be patched or updated after a few initial patches that correct serious bugs and game-breaking features.

To that end, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hello Games and Sony roll out a different—more and capable—version of No Man’s Sky for the soon to be revealed PlayStation 4 Neo.

In a funny way that would make the game even closer to Elite with a different game depending on the platform you choose to play it on.

Game Archaeology: Rocket League

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 01 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

One of the most successful console games of 2016 has been Rocket League. It features cars playing football (soccer) rather than people. Cool!

Some would say it’s both a surprise hit, apparently coming out of nowhere, and also a novel concept. A while go I was chatting with Simon Hade, COO and Co-Founder of Space Ape Games, who made exactly these observations. At this point the game librarian in me couldn’t help but correct him, so I mentioned that it wasn’t novel at all. 😱

During my formative years I had played a game called Wild Wheels on my teenage crush computer—the Atari ST—some time around 1990, and I’d also played Konami’s GTi Club on my Wii in 2010. Both of these games offer a take on car soccer, and I was sure there had to be even more car soccer games I wasn’t aware of.

On my way home I put together a list. I do love lists.

www.mobygames.com/game-group/ball-sports-with-vehicles

We can see that Rocket League is the latest in a long line of car soccer games, and the sequel of Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars from seven years prior. The earliest game of this type is from 1977 and there are at least a couple of dozen others between then and Rocket League.

The Secret of Success

So what made Rocket League a success in light of all the preceding games? Perhaps it was a well executed online mode? But you could then argue that half of the games in the list also had online play.

The most important differentiator is that Rocket League was released on the right platforms to target the right users. The trifecta of PS4/PC/Xbox One means every platform that is home to those “hardcore” gamers who play online seriously. In that respect I think of Rocket League as being more similar to FIFA than you might first expect.

Apparently there are signs of life outside of mobile after all.

Game Critique: Frantic Architect

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Frantic Architect for iOS and Android is a great casual game by Will Kwan/BulkyPix in which you have to build as tall a tower as possible, with the kicker being that you have limited control of where exactly the next building block will go. A video will help explain better:

The game has a high degree of polish and the user interface design and screen layout is excellent. However, play of more than a few minutes will lead to frustration, which is something that really needs to be managed by the developer. Too much frustration and the player will go away and never open the game again.

I think there’s one change that could be made that would make the game easier and less frustrating to play:

The block should lock into place on the “touch up” event, rather than on the “touch down” event as it is now.

This simple change would enable the player to reduce their reaction time by keeping their finger on the screen until they exact moment they want to lock a block in place.

The physical movement of lifting the finger off the screen is a lot faster than the the double movement of first touching the screen followed by lifting the finger off again.

Game Critique: Hill Racer 2

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

From time to time I’ll be posting critique of video games in this way. It’s meant as constrictive criticsm in the nicest possible way. It also goes to show the type of feedback I give to developers when asked to test or review their games.

Recently I’ve been playing a fair bit of Hill Racer 2 on my Apple TV. It’s kind of like Tiny Wings, but with cars. Right up my street! Check it out:

It’s quite well done, but there are a few small details that the developers could look at to easily improve both user experience and engagement.

Game over, man!

When you run out of gas (or petrol as we say in the UK) the game ends immediately. This is quite jarring, and it would be much better if the accelerator stopped working and the car could then slowly come to a halt under its own moment. The benefit of this would be twofold:

the experience would be smoother and less jarring for the player,
the player stands a chance of reclaiming their game as they might be able to reach the next checkpoint even when they have run out of fuel. I have fond memories of clinching victory from the jaws of defeat like this in SEGA’s arcade classic Out Run.

Caught in a trap

Once you upgrade your car a few times you’ll have quite a decent top speed. This should be a good thing, but in fact it’s not. This is because the car body moves about a bit and can actually get stuck in bridges as you drive across them. This should be an easy fix by adjusting the collision of bridges against the car body only whilst the wheels are touching it.

Grinder

You can tell that the game is an iOS port, as it’s built around grinding, in this case that’s earning in-game currency to be able to upgrade your car or buy a new one. On iOS this keeps users in the game and means that the developer can run more ads, and earn more money. On Apple TV ads in games are not an option, so I think the developer should have rebalanced the game to favour less grinding. This last one is a judgment call, though, as it would mean the game would be different across platforms.

Game Analysis: Boom Dots

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 01 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

One thing I occasionally do is a sort of third-person-post-mortem of a game I’ve been playing a lot of. I think about how it might have been put together from a game design and programming perspective. Of course this sort of analysis is just my opinion, but I do try to think things through far enough to prove my point. Often I go so far as to recreate the core game mechanic as a rapid prototype, just to be sure that my thinking is correct.

Boom Dots by Umbrella Games is a great minimalist, arcade-style game that has enjoyed continued success on the App Store. What struck me about the game—other than how well it has been put together—was how simple and elegant the concept is. I see it as a simplified version of Space Invaders. The developer has sucessfully reduced an already simple concept to its bare essentials, doing away with both player movement and enemy formation in the process. You might think that removing those two keys elements would remove the fun, but you’d be wrong. I think it actually amplifies the fun!

Anyway, I was playing Boom Dots, marvelling at the elegance of the concept and wishing I’d come up with it first, and I began to think about how it might be put together. That’s either a blessing or a curse, but I can’t help but think about games in that way after they get a hold of me. Boom Dots is a great game with which to start this occasional series of posts, as it’s a very simple mechanic.

There’s an Enemy Dot. And there’s a Player Dot.

The Player Dot can be released at which point it will move upwards. Meanwhile the Enemy Dot is moving back and forth across the screen.

If the Dots collide, you score and a new Enemy Dot appears. If you miss, it’s Game Over.

Testing whether the two dots, or circles, overlap is as easy as testing whether the distance between their centre points is less than the sum of their respective radiuses. A little bit of trigonometry is required. Easy.

Tapping the Player Dot gives it some velocity to it, and sends it on its way. Super easy.

Now to the Enemy Dot. The way this comes on the screen is really nice: such a smooth curve! And the way it moves back and forth: so smooth! Surely this is difficult to replicate? Well, yes, if you’re doing it from scratch. But absolutely not if you have the ability to perform tweening animations, which I tend to do using a set of tried and tested Easing functions.

Easing functions allow you to specify a curve that the speed of the animation should follow on its way from the start value to the end value. Normally it would move at a constant speed from start to end: Linear. But by adjusting the how fast we go using a mathematical formula, we can make the animation play at a different speeds depending on how far along between we are.

Perfect.

Types of curves that can be applied in this way are: Quadratic, Cubic, Quartic, Quintic, Sinusoidal, Exponential and Circular. Then there’s even Elastic and Bounce, which add a bit of wobble to proceedings.

Easings are easier to understand by looking at interactive visualisations.

So, back to the Enemy Dot moving side to side. We want the animation to start slowly, speed up, then slow down. Looking at the visualisations we see that easeInOutSine will do that, and it’s not as severe as some of the others so it’d be a good one to try first. By applying the easeInOutSine Easing function to the Enemy Dot as it travels back and forth we can get just the effect we require. We can apply a similar function to animate the dot as it comes down onto the screen. When both animations happen at once a smooth curve emerges—mathematics is great!

At its core Boom Dots is as easy as that: two tweens, some velocity on tap, and a simple collision detection check. Cool, huh?

That’s all well and good, but there’s only one way to really know if the analysis is correct: to make a game that way. So that’s what I did.

Play the game right now in your browser or watch a short video of it.

I chose the Phaser JavaScript framework for this particular prototype. I’d been reading its documentation and it looked well suited to the task at hand. For example, it has the Easing functions that I wanted to use to get the dots moving smoothly. SpriteKit, to contrast, doesn’t have built-in Easing functions—though of course you could write your own or port some code across if you wanted to do this natively on iOS. I tend to experiment with a variety of frameworks and tools just to keep things interesting.

Phaser is great because it takes care of the dull boilerplate work enabling you to concentrate on the actual game. It uses WebGL or the HTML Canvas depending on what is best for the device it is running on, and also provides some useful shortcuts for loading of assets, managing game states, easily adding physics and lots more. Explosions, for another example, also come for free. I used a small plugin to add the “screen shake” effect. The circle-to-circle collision I talked about earlier is also made even easier using Phaser:

Is the distance between the two centre points less than the sum of the two radiuses?

The prototype took me a few hours from start to finish, with another few the following day balancing, polishing and adding high score saving. I tend to do these reconstructions a few times a year, mostly on Bank Holidays.

The complete source code for my version of Boom Dots is on GitHub.

Of course, Boom Dots goes a lot further than the core simple mechanic. It has a thick layer of presentation varnish. It tracks every bit of gameplay and uses them to give a steady stream of meta challenges to the player. These “missions” encourage the player to approach the game in different ways; to achieve certain goals in the gameplay such as getting a perfect hit, or surviving for a certain amount of time. It also introduces graphical themes that can be unlocked with extended play. These things keep the player in the game and the developer earning money through ads and in-app purchases.

The developer, Sven Magnus, certainly knows how to juice up a game. That’s a topic for another post.

FAQ: The Hanafuda: Jarin-Ko Chie

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/ps/566070-the-hanafuda-jarin-ko-chie/faqs

Boom Matt

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 14 Mar 2015 23:59:00 +0000

This is my version of the mobile game Boom Dots by Umbrella Games, made this one Saturday evening in 2015 using Phaser HTML5 game framework just to see what it was like.

Works on mobile, of course.

Play in your browser: gingerbeardman.itch.io/boom-matt

Review: Fly Guy

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 21:15:00 +0000

Raise da Roof!!!

Fly Guy takes me back—way back. Whilst 2002 seems so long ago, it comes as no surprise that it is so long ago. Screens were smaller, computers were slower, web browsers were much less capable and had to be helped along by plugins; so long ago that there was no iPhone! It was also the year I met the girl who would become my wife. Good times.

To give the timeframe a bit of context, the consoles of the day were the GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox. How strange it must have seemed when Fly Guy appeared in web browsers using the once popular Macromedia Flash plugin to provide animation, sound and keyboard control in the small browser windows of the time.

Purposefully eschewing 2002-era graphics, and opting for monochrome pixel artwork reminiscent of the original Apple Macintosh, turns Fly Guy into something timeless. Trevor Van Meter also injects a good dose of humour on top of his excellent animations. A chilled, looping melody, and various spot sound effects round out the package. This is one stylish and psychedelic game.

But Fly Guy is more of a multimedia piece, or an interactive work of art, than a game. There is a goal, of course, and various things happen along the way (I won’t spoil it by telling you what they are), but there is no high score and no fire button. Everything that appears in the game serves a purpose, and it’s the exploration and discovery that brings a smile to your face in the few minutes you should take out of your day to play through this forgotten gem.

Let’s hope it’s not too long before we enjoy a new trip in Fly Guy 2?

July 2016: some 14 years after it was originally launched Fly Guy has been re-released on mobile! Links below.

Polarium Advance: Daily Puzzle Challenge

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I started a new job at Apple in June 2013, and seeing as I was living away from home a fair bit I had a bit of free time and the hunger for a big puzzle game to get my teeth into. So I bought an extra copy of Polarium Advance. I’d played the game before but had never finished all of the puzzles.

It’s a typically brilliant game by Mitchell Corporation which was in development for Game Boy Advance when Nintendo saw it and requested a version for their new handheld: the Nintendo DS. After that version was released the team returned to the GBA version, which probably explains why it’s a more fully featured and all round better game than the DS version.

The game’s Daily Puzzle mode has 365 puzzles and I started playing them on 8th August 2013. I made quick progress: by 13th August I’d done 87 puzzles and after a week I’d done more than one hundred. The half way point of puzzles was reached within two weeks! Things slowed down during September as the puzzles became more difficult.

I’m writing this looking back and the first mention of finishing it by New Year was on 11th October 2013. But I have to think I’d considered before that point.

Anyway, it was a bit of a squeeze in between Christmas and New Year but I managed it!

You can download CSV data of my progress.

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.

Music from the 3DS game Pullblox/Pushmo/Hiku-Osu

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:18:00 +0000

Music from the 3DS game Pullblox (EU), Pushmo (USA), Hiku-Osu (JP).

soundcloud.com/gingerbeardman/sets/pullblox/

Wire Hang Redux: update

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:54:00 +0000

An update to Wire Hang Redux my version of the Java game Wire Hang, with improved controls and graphics. This version was built using BlitzMax.

Read more about the game in the original blog post.

Download: gingerbeardman.itch.io/wire-hang-redux

Flicky (1984)

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I own a Bally/Midway arcade cabinet of the SEGA game Flicky from 1984.

So, I decided to make a Tumblr blog all about the game.

Check it out flicky1984.tumblr.com

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!

FAQ: 1500DS Spirits Vol. 5: Hanafuda

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I translated the Mission Mode screens:

www.flickr.com/photos/emsef/albums/72157614337766883

2020-06-29: I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/ds/940888-1500ds-spirits-vol-5-hanafuda/faqs

Wire Hang Redux

by Matt Sephton — Sun, 20 Jun 2004 00:34:00 +0000

I made a new game! It’s a from-scratch remake of an original Java game, Wire Hang, by Masaki Kobayashi (D2AC) who went on to become part of the Gran Turismo team.

I had a pretty underpowered laptop at the time, and writing my own version of the game was the only way I was able to play it comfortably.

My version of the game, Wire Hang Redux—made with Kobayshi-san’s blessing—went onto to receive over one million downloads from early download sites like Tucows, Version Tracker, Download.com, Mac Update, Home of the Underdogs, Game Hippo, Hyper Jeff, Windows Forest (Japan), and even a little website called Apple.com—back when it had a download section! It was featured in computer magazines all around the world.

Archived web page: gingerbeardman.com/archive/wirehang/

Download: gingerbeardman.itch.io/wire-hang-redux

JUS4QIX: the story of a classic arcade video game

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 22 Jul 2003 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a big fan of the 1981 arcade game QIX.

Back in 2003 tracked down the author of the game, Randy Pfeiffer, who had moved on from the video game industry to run his own business creating CAD software for model railway enthusiasts. I asked him some questions about the game and he was gracious enough to answer, albeit a little puzzled why anybody would want to know!

I’ll outline a few facts here:

The game is credited to the programmer, Randy, and his wife, Sandy
Randy created the bad-guy, or QIX movement as a simple programming demo
Sandy suggested making a game out of it, “sort of like video-game etch-a-sketch”
Their eureka moment came in the jacuzzi with a bottle of vintage champagne
Being a pretty successful silicon valley programmer, he did so for Taito America
QIX was one of only a few games made by the US division of Taito
The game was named after his car licence/number plate at the time: “JUS4QIX”, which was pronounced “Just For Kicks”

In all the time since the game was made in 1981, he said to me that I was the first person outside of Taito to ever contact him about the game. The first person in over 20 years!? This was a shock to me, but perhaps I’m living in a dream world thinking such a classic video game should get more attention? Sometimes the game is more famous than the creator, Tetris being the best example of that.

After finding out this information I added it in various places, such as in the MAME notes for the game. This interview is the original source of “JUS4QIX” and the other facts about QIX.

Circuit Heat

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 23 Jan 2003 12:00:00 +0000

I made a prototype of a game called Circuit Heat. It is a version of the classic network completion puzzle (aka Pipes, FreeNet, Net, NetWalk, etc). The graphics remind me a little of the Atari Lynx classic puzzler Chip’s Challenge.

Notes:

At this time, long before iPhone, I was playing Java games on a (Sagem?) cell phone so many of my concepts around this time were targeted at that sort of platform
The game was was later featured on PC Format 161 (May 2004) cover disc

Screenshots

Terra Firma

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 23 Aug 2002 11:00:00 +0000

This is my entry into the BlitzCoder Stupidest Game Competition, 2002. You need to guide a sky diver—whose parachute has failed—past obstacles and attempt to land on a cow. Fun!

It was written using BlitzBasic and later recompiled in BlitzPlus.

This is the game that made me realise I could make games.

Archived web page: gingerbeardman.com/archive/terrafirma/

Download: gingerbeardman.itch.io/terra-firma

Yaking

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 27 Mar 2002 12:00:00 +0000

A small prototype for a kayak/canoe “simulator” game, featuring water currents, a gate to paddle through, and somewhat unique paddling controls (press left/right alternately).

Made using BlitzBasic and targetting Game Boy Advance resolution of 240×160.

Archived web page: gingerbeardman.com/archive/yaking/

Download: gingerbeardman.itch.io/yaking

Bendertron

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 14 Feb 2001 14:11:00 +0000

This is my Futurama-themed fan-game inspired a little by the Williams arcade classic Robotron and a lot by Jeff Minter’s Llamatron. Written in BlitzBasic for Windows 9x.

Created in Feb/Mar 2001 during the dot-com boom and released in Jan 2002 after the bubble burst!

Explosion animation by the wonderful Alex Amelines
Sounds and graphics ripped from the TV show
It’s a 25-year-old free fan-game, you know?

Play it on an old install of Windows, or on modern Windows using DxWnd.

Free Download: gingerbeardman.itch.io/bendertron

Simple Soccer

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 29 Sep 2000 11:00:00 +0000

Simple Soccer is my take on the classic Sensible Soccer. It was written in BlitzBasic and ran at 800×600 under Windows 9x.

I built multiple parts—player control, dribbling, cpu and formation, goalkeeper behaviour—but never managed to combine it all in a finished game. Still, I count it as my first real game.

Archived web page: gingerbeardman.com/archive/soccer/

FAQ: Micro Machines V3

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 08 Apr 1997 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

gamefaqs.com/console/psx/file/micro_machines_v3.txt

FAQ: Wipeout XL/2097

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 21 Oct 1996 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

gamefaqs.com/console/psx/file/wipeout_xl.txt

FAQ: Hermie Hopperhead - Scrap Panic

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 04 Sep 1996 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

gamefaqs.com/console/psx/file/hermie_hopperhead.txt

FAQ: Choro Q Racing

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 28 Aug 1996 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

gamefaqs.com/ps/572737-penny-racers/faqs

FAQ: Motor Toon Grand Prix

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 06 Aug 1996 00:00:00 +0000

This might be the first entry on this blog, but it’s not quite my oldest content on the internet. For that you’ll need to check out the archive linked to from the bottom of the about page.

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

gamefaqs.com/console/psx/file/motor_toon_gp_2.txt

Get Info: #videogame

New (Old) 3D Golf: porting PC-9801 & Virtual Boy to Mega Drive

T&E Selection

Eight Lakes G.C.

Papillon C.C.

A few things I learned along the way

Four volumes, one evolving engine

Inside Waialae

Variable zoom

Two deeper cuts

What the old magazines turned up

What Next?

TV’s TV (1987) & TV Games Encyclopedia (1988)

テレビゲーム―電視遊戯大全 / TV Games Encyclopedia (1988)

The object

The name

The structure

The content

The people behind it

A note on names

People featured

Companies featured

Interviews

Authors

It’s been scanned

Contemporary references

Further reading/viewing

Buying the book today

Postscript

Serenity: zen gliding to the sound of procedurally generated music

The Universe Provides

The Demo

The Inspirations

The Future

The Trailer

Wormhole for Perplexity Comet

Prototype 1

Prototype 2

Prototype 3

Procedurally generated

Never quite made it

Finishing touches

Abandoned project: Band-kun/Beatnik for Playdate

The Idea

Challenge Accepted

Open Pitch: Band-kun

Season 2 Pitch: Beatnik

Go/no-go

Atari/Jeff Minter game jam results, Llamasoft, and ST Format

The Results

HERD NERD

Back in the day

A yak’s favourite games (of all time), 1991

Abandoned project: Soccer for Playdate

Abandoned project: firework builder puzzle game

Video Demonstration

Talking about Moai in Games on Tokyo Game Life podcast

Station: Travel Through the Four Seasons (1994)

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Introduction

The making of MaBoShi

The Long Tail

Hot Soup Processor

Mosser

Circular

All bar one

Missing in action

Reading list

Review: The Italian Job (2001)

Links

TETRIS: 1984 is the date of conception (1989)

Bibliography

New 3D Golf Simulation (video game series)

Translation Guides

8-bit Computers

16-bit Computers

16-bit Consoles

Real 3D?

The 19th Hole

Music