Showing posts with label Amstrad CPC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amstrad CPC. Show all posts

Friday, 6 November 2020

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Why there's a stampeding rhino enemy in Ocean's Hudson Hawk Amiga/Atari ST platform game

Undoubtedly one of life's great unresolved mysteries... until now!

Stompy is present in the two 16-bit games, yet none of the five 8-bit interpretations for the home micros/consoles. FYI precisely zero rhinos feature in the 1991 movie starring Bruce Willis, Danny Aiello and Andie MacDowell. Gosh! How intriguing! Almost makes you want to delve into the article or watch the YouTube video version for a thorough explanation.

Monday, 5 October 2020

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Every Slimer has his day

Of course you've always wanted to be a vile, mucous-dribbling slug entrusted with rearing a brood of mini-mes. Crawl the walls, trap grubs in bubbles and feed them to your clan to keep them nourished, exuding a basking glow of green-blooded vitality. You win, you've got the job, congratulations. I've already switched your name to Steg the Slug and informed the social security office.

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Wednesday, 5 August 2020

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Meet Wildcat's big brother

"Blazing your way to glory" in Wings of Fury initially rests on one's ability to successfully lift off from an aircraft carrier situated in the Pacific Ocean. A tricky task that flummoxes many newcomers to such an extent that they give up at the first hurdle, never to fully appreciate the joys of the horizontally scrolling, arcade-strategy flight sim that captivated my inner Maverick as a child. As the pilot of an F6F Hellcat deeply entrenched in America's World War II campaign against the ferocious Imperial Japanese army, our pivotal contribution comprises mowing down exposed foot soldiers patrolling the beaches, eliminating bunkers, machine gun nests and barracks, torpedoing battleships into oblivion and engaging in high-altitude, spine-tingling dogfights.

If you struggled to get airborne from the outset, good luck touching down again to refuel, replenish ammunition supplies and carry out repairs! You'll soon discover that fighter planes are far less efficient resting on the seabed 50ft below the surface.

This article is also available as a video presentation on YouTube.

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reTHINK Pink

If you're rich, sleepwalk and reside in a mansion packed to the rafters with expensive ornaments, don't be surprised if you receive a visit from the Pink Panther, cat burglar extraordinaire. For it is his 'duty' to rob you blind whilst preoccupied roaming the extensive corridors of your home, obliviously unaware of the Panther of colour's crooked, clandestine scheme. Anyway, that's their problem. In Magic Bytes' puzzle-platformer we assume the role of the eponymous predator tasked with preventing our victims from awakening prior to pilfering their precious loot. In principle, it's a lot like Ocean's Sleepwalker, only with less virtuous objectives.

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Three ways to die in Babyland

Baby Jo goes home. That's almost the title and this cutesy, quirky French platformer in a nutshell. Except the eponymous tyke is blessed with genuine personality, a comically novel health-monitoring system and beautifully simplistic cartoony graphics that would entice hardcore cynics and big soft pansies alike. Plus, just for the helluvit up pops Daffy Duck! I got that carried away by this off-the-wall oddity, it's also available as a video presentation on YouTube.

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Tuesday, 4 August 2020

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More fox than you can sheikh a golden scooter at

During the height of the super-cute platformer game era, Titus' contribution was to lend their mascot, Titus the Fox, to the cause. It's an entertaining, solidly constructed effort enlivened with charming graphics, albeit one hampered by excessively rapid motion and infuriating inertia. Interaction with springs, weaponised crates, skateboards and magic carpets further enhance the above-average offering better-known in France for its association with humorist, TV presenter, singer and actor, Vincent Lagaf. In the original iteration, Lagaf is the playable protagonist rather than Titus the Fox.

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Is cloning the future a pre-crime?

Dr A. Noid, perpetrator of the Great Biological Holocaust, remains on the loose in a post-apocalyptic world crawling with slime-oozing zombies high on 'SLU'. Naturally, as a totally coincidental Mad Max look-a-like bounty hunter, we're obliged to engage our ATV in obliterating all vehicular threats in our path whilst dodging mines and gun turrets. Because battering ram combat vehicles generally won't fit through pedestrian doorways, we must occasionally exit to explore buildings on foot with a view to euthanising anything that shambles or groans suspiciously.

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The Unreviewables

Some games are such pitiful non-entities that I'd struggle to find enough words to form what you could justifiably call a review. Here I explain why Dick Tracy for the Amiga falls into such a category, while writing far more on the subject than it deserves.

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hulkhoganwearsyellownickers

Ocean's first foray into sweaty, muscle-bound, square circle brawling wasn't canvas-quaking by any stretch of the imagination, yet when you experience it at the pinnacle of your childhood WWF Wrestlemania fixation, playing against an excitable flesh and blood opponent, it tends to make an impact extending far beyond its impartial merit. Embodying The Ultimate Warrior, stalking Sergeant Slaughter beyond the safeish confines of the ring brandishing a stainless steel chair will do that for you. Especially when previously you've only ever watched the action unfold on the family TV set with no control over the outcome. First wrestling game wow-factor aside, the graphics are colourful, well-drawn and instantly recognisable, whilst an utterly immersive intro sequence drops you right into a front-row seat, oversized foam hand at the ready!

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My samoflange is all out of whack

Beyond the Ice Palace is by and large an unremarkable Ghosts 'n' Goblins-esque platforming romp concerned with redressing the wonky balance between good and evil. What makes it worthy of deeper analysis is an intriguing origin story that belies its non-licensed status. More specifically, Beyond the Ice Palace was initially developed as an official accompaniment to the ThunderCats cartoon, later debranded when another game being produced in parallel was instead chosen to represent the popular '80s IP. A story originally discovered, exhumed and reported by Guru Larry Jnr. I simply rehashed it, interweaving a review of the ThunderCats game that wasn't.

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Xeroxmorphs in Dittoland - Indiana Groans and the Dead Ephalump Pilgrimage

One man's dream has become one man's destiny! But which man, Tusker or Indiana Jones? Either way, we're duty-bound to follow in our father's footsteps in search of the legendary elephant graveyard, sequestered somewhere deep within the undiscovered, inhospitable tropics of African. Will we unearth ivory beyond our wildest dreams or just the desiccated bones of Sean Connery?

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Hair today, gone tomorrow

Scientific boffin genius, Dr Bakterius, has been kidnapped by a shady terrorist organisation known as O.M.A., impelling bumbling private eye detectives, Mort and Phil aka Clever and Smart, into incisive action. If you're Spanish and have terrible taste in illustrated fiction, you may recognise the not-so-dynamic duo from a newsagent comic book stand near you. In the top-down action-puzzle game of the comic book, our goofball protagonists begin their misguided reconnaissance mission wandering about the local town armed with a magnifying glass and their limited crime-solving nous. Following their amply bulging noses, Mort and Phil descend deep into the city's manky sewer system in search of the nefarious underground organisation. Our main challenge is negotiating hazardous streets as we juggle scarce resources such as food and the money required to buy disguises and solve other simplistic puzzles. It's all about as sophisticated as the degree of care and attention dedicated to in-game consistency, grammar and spellchecking.

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Games coder Steve Howard discusses Bride of Frankenstein and Werewolves in London

I chat to the frightfully talented coder of two blood-curdling 8-bit arcade-action games of classic horror origin. We explore the design decisions taken, artistic influences and what might have been without the imposition of the primitive host systems' limitations.

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Talkin' bout a revolution

Despotic mononymous nutjob, Fernandez, has overthrown the legitimate government of the Democratic Republic of El Diablo. As a fearless Commando substitute for hire, we're drafted in to oust him from his cushy self-appointed kingdom via a top-down, vertically scrolling shooter that takes inspiration from all the usual suspects... Ikari Warriors, Rambo, Gun.Smoke etc. Enhancements to the basic formula are evident in the provision of multiple modes of transport and the option to play cooperatively with a second player, splitting aiming and navigation duties.

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When it's clear as MUD, in your neighbourhood. Who ya gonna call?

I explore the gaming life and times of multi-talented artist, coder and musician, Antony Crowther, quizzing him specifically on Captain Planet and the Planeteers. Because for no logical reason it fascinates me.

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Monday, 3 August 2020

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Gremlins Not Included

A brief biography of Gremlin Graphics founder, Ian Stewart. This was to be the introduction to an interview with the gaming industry veteran that never happened.

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Galvatron, oh, Galvatron, I still hear your particle accelerator cannons crashin'...

In the game of the animated TV show, Challenge of the Gobots, inspired by the transforming toyline, we clamber into the cockpit of Leader-1, big cheese commander of the Guardians. To scupper Dr Braxis' scheme to destroy earth, having taken hostage of our chums for bartering chips, we must flip into F-15 fighter jet mode to tackle the threat by way of a Defender clone set on planet Moebius. Spaceships are tackled with lasers blasts, land-dwelling vehicles with rocks of all weapons. Neutering the onslaught at source, however, necessitates the destruction of enemy bases by unleashing land-tracking bombs, clones of Leader-1's sidekick, Scooter.

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Extremely safe violence

Techno Cop is the kind of law enforcement officer who investigates criminal activity by blasting Death on Arrival gang members to smithereens with his .88 Magnum... and asking questions, never. To stay one step ahead of the delinquent punks he'll need to arrive at the scene of the crime before DoA even know which law they're about to violate. Fortuitous then that our high-tech crime-stopper comes equipped with a hyper-tuned V-Max Ferrari, neatly splicing the game into distinctive against-the-clock driving and scrolling shoot 'em up platformer segments.

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Just a sec. Hey, is there a Butz here. Seymour Butz. Hey, everybody! I wanna Seymour Butz!

Seymour Goes to Hollywood... because The Oliver Twins didn't approve of Dizzy crossing the boundary between fantasy and 'reality' to star in Movieland Dizzy. That, in a tiny eggshell, is the origin story of Dizzy's lesser-known poor cousin, Seymour. Many of the key elements responsible for popularising Dizzy remain, yet the amorphous, anthropomorphic blob failed to captivate the eggy one's core audience to the same extent, corroborating the Oliver twin's astute stance on the matter.

This article is also available as a narrated slideshow video presentation on YouTube.

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SEGA's ESWAT faces prosecution for violation of police felony code 146a

With a plague of crime haunting Liberty City, it's feeling less free by the day. Time to call in LCPD's experimental new ESWAT (Enhanced Special Weapons and Tactics) squad. What are the chances our cyber-suited heroes were trained by everyone's favourite cyborg, Alex 'RoboCop' Murphy? Regardless, I'm not sure how he'd advise handling the King Kong or tiger bosses encountered in this surreal dystopia. Perhaps beyond his usual remit.

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