Monday 26 December 2005

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Flash Amiga game remakes galore


This entry has now been merged with my Amiga game remakes article so will no longer be updated. All links have been removed... because no-one likes 404s.
 
Last Thursday afternoon I was sitting in the office watching the seconds crawl by while I waited to be told I could finish early for the Christmas break. There was nothing to do because pretty much everyone we come into contact with during the course of a more typical day had either already sloped off through the back door or were in no fit state to make any demands of us - apparently there's alc-eee-hole in mulled wine. Who'd have thought?

Bored, tipsy and with time on my hands I started thinking about classic Amiga games, and more specifically, how many of them had been converted to Flash movies and uploaded to the web (it's only a matter of copying and pasting the source code into Swish, right Flash coders?). Finding out ought to kill a bit of time, I thought, so I set about Googling for the answer.

Would you believe some desperados actually go to the trouble of creating Flash buttons with the names of popular games written on them that link to affiliate shopping sites? The web just keeps on giving. Nevertheless, as boredom and idle hands beat spammers every time in the web equivalent of paper, scissors and stone, I emerged - weary and battle-scarred - but victorious.

The list below details all the byte for byte conversions, as well as homage style remakes, I managed to excavate and dust down from the spam-littered detritus of the web. As this appears to be the only list of its kind out there I'm hoping to make it as panoptic as humanly possible. If you can help to fill in any missing gaps please post your suggestions below.

Original game Flash remake / homage
Bombuzal Detonator
Bubble Bobble Bubble Bobble: The Revival

Bubble Boys
Bubble Bobble 2 Bubble Bobble 2
Defender of the Crown Defender of the Crown
Deflektor Reflections
Dynablaster Bomberman in the Land of the Pumpkin
Flashback Flashback
Galaga Hurricane
Gauntlet Gauntlet
Ghosts 'n' Goblins Megaman vs Ghosts 'n' Goblins
IK+ IK+
Ironman Offroad Racer Oversteer
King's Quest Peasant's Quest
Klax Klax 3D
Lemmings Christmas Consumerism

Roadies

DHTML Lemmings - not Flash, but you can still play it in your browser so who cares?
Lost Vikings Lost Vikings (demo)
Marble Madness Gyroball
Micro Machines Nano Machinez

Micro Machines TT
Nebulus Nebulus
Pang Pang 2001

Bubble Trouble

Pang MX

Pang Flash
Prince of Persia Prince of Persia
Raiden RaidenX
Rampage Ravage

Hulk Smash Up

Mutant
Rick Dangerous Rick Dangerous
Robocop Counter Terror
R-Type R-Type (demo)
Sim City Sim City Classic
Speedball 2 Brutal Deluxe Crunchball 3000

X Hoc

Toonami Arena
Stardust Haemorrhoids
Street Fighter Street Fighter

Street Fighter Online
Tanks Tanks

Scorched
Wings of Fury Wings of Fury
Workbench Amiga Demulator

Monday 19 December 2005

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Moles in their midst

The PR entourage of the western world's political heavy-weights were sure they had their taskmasters' backs covered from all possible angles. They were wrong. While the spin-doctors were monitoring the brutally omnipotent paparazzi and pundits, a spy operating much closer to home had been surreptitiously recording and podcasting to the masses the nefarious schemes and mortifying goofs of the likes of Tony Blair, George Bush and their closest confreres.

'Whack My Bush' will take you on a white-knuckle journey replete with intrigue and revelations as heard through the ears of a particularly curious, wall-dwelling fly, of sorts. Reality TV... erm radio even, has never been so unsettling, depressing and yet ultimately gripping.

Thanks to this noble exercise in exposing the wickedness of our esteemed 'leaders' we learn that behind closed doors mild-mannered Tony swears like a trooper, has the words "hello sailor" tattooed above his wang and employs Jade Goody as his personal lifestyle coach. Equally sensational disclosures include the discovery that George is mentored by his more intelligent pet dog, Barney, and dreams of doing unmentionable things to gibbons after lubricating them with Vaseline.
Straight-laced Condi Rice, we learn, isn't quite the girl-scout she presents to the media; after spending a trying day on the phone apologising to foreign dignitaries on George's behalf she likes to unwind by smoking class A drugs.

The Governator and deputy prime-minister, John Prescott, do not emerge unscathed either. Arnie is shown to be a sexist Nazi pre-occupied with heavy artillery and stomping down doors for no apparently reason, while Fatty eats everything in sight and is a tad uncouth, just a tad mind. OK, so some 'leaks' are more controversial and shocking than others.

Mysteriously the podcast has yet to be censored by its unwitting stars. Some say this is because its producer can't be tracked down and 'disappeared', though other theories have also been hinted at. When pushed for an opinion, Bush giggled like a schoolgirl at the thought of a fictional president character coincidentally owning a dog called Barney, just like himself.