I reckon it was all downhill for Ultimate after Jetpac. Not a reflection of how poor any subsequent games were (post-US Gold aside, they were far, far from it) but how fantastic Jetpac is. Alongside Pssst and Cookie, it oozed an arcade sensibility that would largely disappear as Ultimate’s games got larger and more ambitious and it remains my favourite out of all their games.
There’s been a nice handful of remakes and tributes over the years (there’s a couple on Switch even), Rare took a punt at a remake of their own in the early days of XBLA and that turned out pretty alright for the most part. It’s part of Rare Replay so it’s not been lost to time like plenty of other games from around that era, which means you can still give it a punt fairly easily if you haven’t already given it a shot.
Anyway. My preferred remake is the excellent Rocket Smash EX, for my money it gets pretty close to besting the original and Saul’s graphics are wonderful, making good use of the C64 to really shine the thing up. However, Super Jetpak DX for the Gameboy is pretty fine too and it’s this that one of the other Robs reviews in their latest Beyond The Scanlines video. The game’s naturally a bit more cramped than your normal Jetpac given it’s got to work on a handheld but for the most part it’s a sterling job and Rob provides a great introduction to it.
Four Minute Warning is a small (very small) two screen videogame that tasks the player with collecting a few objects to take with them into a fallout shelter, all within the 4 minutes from the warning siren going off to the nuclear missiles hitting.
What sounds like a fairly simple task is made all the more difficult by having the play areas be rather fiddly and unforgiving mazes of clutter. But also, that’s sort of the point. The game expects the player to fail, this is the onset of nuclear armageddon after all. And, indeed, if the player doesn’t fail at their task then eventually, radiation gets to them anyway.
Whatever happens, that’s it. Over. Bummer, huh?
It’s a pro peace, anti nuclear war, anti Tory and anti Reagan vignette. It is unsubtle in every possible way and it’s a game that wants to remind the player that voting for warmongering rightwing hawks probably isn’t the best idea ever.
Part of what I find fascinating about it is it’s the sort of game that would have sat perfectly at home in the indie flash/art game period of a decade and a bit back, except it was made and released in 1985. It’s almost uncanny how well it would fit in the latter half of the 2000’s if you just swapped a few names round here and there and maybe had a black – rather than white – background.
Admittedly, these days nuclear war seems a bit further down the list of worries of where our more immediate existential threats are going to come from but still, I think “don’t vote tory” is as relevant a message as it ever was.
You know, I was absolutely convinced I’d put words down on Zeroptian Invasion some time back but perhaps I should have double checked that one sooner because no, no, I had not.
I am really fond of Zeroptian Invasion.
I’ve long nurtured an appreciation of the single screen shooter, from Space Invaders, Galaga and the usual suspects through a whole bunch of home computer games, PD, homebrew and indie titles. In my old age, I’ve lost none of my love for the things and Zeroptian Invasion is no exception.
The opening stage presents the player with a really quite lovely Space Invaders-esque game in a gorgeous 70’s arcade meets ZX Spectrum style. Over the course of a fair handful of stages, it adds a wee bit more complexity to the mix, not a great deal because the game stays wonderfully true to its aesthetic and videogame inspirations, but certainly enough to ensure that it keeps the player on their toes.
Think a modern Gorf, you know? It’s that sort of deal.
It’s the kind of game that had it actually existed in the eighties, I’d have fallen in love with it pretty easily and would probably bend your ear off over even now. Given I’m still every bit as awed by similar games today as I was then, it was pretty easy for me to fall in love with it now, nevermind.
It helps in no small part by it being an absolutely gorgeous game! The sprite work is often wonderful and I’m a real sucker for the bezel artwork too.
Revisiting Saboteur for the first time in a very long time, all thanks to a slightly messy but the game is perfectly intact recent-ish port.
I was pleasantly surprised how much I still enjoy the game!
I can’t quite put my finger entirely on how it works as well as it does for me but a part of it is how irrevocably tied to a certain strand of VHS film it is. Look, I can’t explain why or how (I’m not entirely convinced anyone knows why), just know that the eighties had the most amazing preoccupation with ninjas and Saboteur gets that.
Rather than just kick or punch things for points, you’re tasked with sneaking into a waterside warehouse to pilfer a floppy disk and, of course, getting out alive. Naturally the warehouse is crawling with guards, security cameras and guard dogs (which is only a Tadashi Yamashita short of everything you need to make this work) and you’ll have to make short order of them to escape in one piece. I find throwing bricks helps.
What I find most impressive about Saboteur is that it feels like a segment from one of these low budget VHS tat films. You ride in by dinghy, you creep through the warehouse kicking security guards in the face as you go, you fiddle with computer terminals and shunt through underground tunnels in train carriages. It’s probably a whole five or ten minutes of a film made game yet somehow it completely nails the vibe.
It is incredibly eighties action film in a way a lot of other ninja-y games just aren’t. Partly it’s the animations which though super limited, I just love the sneaky ninja walk cycle. Nobody ever ran like this outside of VHS ninja films, except in Saboteur! Partly it’s the vehicles – a dinghy and a helicopter? In the same videogame? Well now!
If you want a tenuous Rob comparison, Saboteur is the American Ninja to the Datasoft Bruce Lee’s Shaw Brothers film. I’d go out on a limb and say Bruce Lee has the better ninja, solely because they’ve got a big stick and don’t need to rummage around in rubble for something to hit somebody with BUT there’s always room for a bit of variety.
It is worth mentioning that Saboteur is very 1985 and from 8 bit home computers so don’t go expecting wonderfully fluid graceful movement here. It totally is clunky!
You don’t chain moves or combo or anything, you stand still to punch someone in the nose, you jump kick them in precisely one (1) frame. The port does very little to remove that old clunk and friction, adds a bit of its own if I’m being truthful, and I don’t think sticking with that hurts the game especially either.
I’ve rarely cared about clunky and that’s the case for Saboteur too. It works enough, you know? Perhaps it may not work enough outside of the hazy VHS moment it’s forever trapped in for me, I’m not sure. To be brutally honest. I don’t really care if it doesn’t – not while it’s still got that magic for me.
Saboteur, a port of its sequel and a new entry into the series (which I really must check out when I have some spare cash) are all available across the usual videogame formats. As usual, I’ve been playing on the PS4.
Video Of The Week is just any excuse really to link to a video or series that I’ve been enjoying. Chances are there won’t be one every week, mind.
It’s a bit of a silly conceit but I really do enjoy watching someone else play a videogame until they run out of energy/lives in it, just to see how long they can go. I’d totally be down for a festival of this similar to _______ Games Done Quick.
Namcos has been doing Until I Die for aaages now and built up quite the supply of old vids you can work through if you’re so inclined. Latest in that series is Ultimate’s Cookie.
A few minutes in Cookie is good going, I reckon. It’s one of those games that, depending on how luck falls, I find I can either play for ages or have a round over and done with in no time.
As you’ll see in the video, it’s very easy to get caught out by something you have absolutely no way of stopping or avoiding. Luckily, super arcadey and quick to restart means being back in the game really quickly to try again.
If you want to have a try yourself, a Spectrum emulator and a quick search on the internet will see you right seens as it was missing from Rare Replay.
I finally remembered to get round to buying Last Train To Tranz-Central a few minutes ago after legit forgetting for a ridiculously long time.
Since I first saw the screenshots, I was in love. It’s such great spritework, not only does it carry off the whole futuristic train thing well but screen to screen, manages to look like very little else.
I’d tried the demo, loved that too. Managed to wax lyrical about it on Twitter one time then by quirks of payday timings and my increasingly terrible memory, simply forgot to go back and buy it.
I ended up thinking about it again a few nights back because really, I can’t overstate how much I love how it looks, and finally remembered to punt a few quid over for it.
Better late than ever and I get there in the end.
You’ll either need a Spectrum emulator or the real deal hardware to give it a shot. I’ve been playing it on my phone through Speccy Deluxe and it works just great.
Ye Olde Videogame is a once a month-ish (or more if I’m feeling fruity) retro game recommendation.
Please sir, I cannot tell a lie, Alchemist is one of a number of videogames I’ve bought over the years for no other reason than it had a big wizard in it. A few weeks back I tried counting up exactly how many games I’d bought for this reason alone and I needed more fingers than I have! So, out of necessity, I stopped counting after ten.
It’s a thing, sorry. I’m trying to deal with it.
I’d hate to experience an invisible adventure so good call, Imagine.
Anyway! Overdelivering on the promise, the big wizard (the eponymous Alchemist) can turn into an even bigger bird. How good is that? I’ll tell you, it’s seven good. That’s the best number of good.
Thinking on, I’m not sure what this means in turns of scale. Like, is the big wizard really a small wizard that turns into a perfectly normal sized bird? Is that it? Have I gotten things all wrong? I’m not sure I could take that right now so let’s just keep believing big wizard, even bigger bird. It’s a videogame and we can have a bird the size of Uranus if we want to.
Playing it now and I’d politely describe it as “compact” – there’s a relative handful of baddies and slight few tasks to be done, all of which can be cleared in a relatively brief amount of time once you know your way round the map. I still like it a lot! My only complaint is the exact same one as I had at the time – the push scrolling can be kinda painful, but you know, 1983 so cut it some slack.
The one thing I absolutely love about Alchemist – and it’s far from alone in doing this at the time – is how well each screen feels like a distinct elsewhere. With only a small map, the game has a lovely sense of place with the castles and caverns making it feel way, way, way more expansive than it is. Using a few screens for each ‘room’ is an especially neat way round achieving this.
Alchemist reminds me that I never needed a massive open world to feel like I’m truly exploring a place and Alchemist is a lovely, early, example of a game world I enjoyed getting lost in, felt present in.
Also, you can shoot lightning from your fingers in it and that’s always a win in my book.
Clunky and borderline tuneless but still, Manic Miner has the most recognisable rendition of The Blue Danube outside of 2001. It sounded better in black and white, I swear.
It’s the flashing border that really makes it though. A tremendous intro to a tremendous game.
Sorry that it’s a bit of a Dare-fest round here at the moment, just in a comfort read mode for some reason.
art by Martin Wheeler, pic from ZX Art.
Anyway. One of my more profound early (earlier?) inspirations lies with Martin Wheeler’s art for Dan Dare II. Both of the Gang Of Five Speccy Dare games are great (Probe’s entry, not so much) but gosh, the tile work in Dan Dare II still kind of blows me away. It’s up there with the more recent Vallation as one of the best examples of Speccy tile art.
Look at this! What an amazing thing to wring out of a Speccy. The colours! Just wow stuff still for me.
art by Martin Wheeler, screen from ZX Art.
Martin’s still plugging away at games, their latest is Separation for PSVR. Sadly, I can’t play it due to my sore noggin not really being receptive to weighty things being placed on it. It does look gorgeous though.
Had cause to remember Avalon a day or so back and yeah, I remember the cover art/advert being a tad more imposing than it is. Plus, there’s not much to say about the nuddy fairy beyond “that’s well dodge”. Because it is well dodge.
I’m still in awe of Steve Turner all these years later and Avalon is just one of many reasons for that. It’s one of a special few games that through some exceptionally smart sleight of hand gave the impression it was so much more, so much deeper, than it was.
That’s not to underestimate how much was crammed into the thing or to do it down, on the contrary – it’s to point at the sheer skill involved in making an already pretty hefty game feel even more.
It’s a magic (yes, magic) that’s worked on so many different fronts! The wonderfully large player character, Maroc, who floats ethereally around the screen, bouncing against walls and obstacles rather than the usual few frames of walking animation. The sparse landscapes, enough to paint an image of a forest or a dungeon and to leave the rest to the imagination. That the player controls Maroc through the use of a ‘MOVE’ spell, just one of a number of spells, does wonders in selling the whole controlling a projection of Maroc lark.
It’s an especially clever design. Everything is in service to selling the whole wizard thing and it works a treat. An early fantasy exploration game that took familiar videogame parts and sewed them to create something that still feels kinda special 40 or so years later.
It’s a remarkable thing indeed and hard to believe it came so early in the lifespan of the Spectrum. 1984! Games were still in short trousers then! Ridiculous! But brilliant. Very very brilliant.
