Pengo

Sega surprised me today. Apparently they're bringing Pengo to the arcades... again. He was last there 28 years ago, pushing ice blocks to crush sno-bees. Now he's coming back with identical graphics to do exactly the same thing but is this time joined with seven other players sharing similar goals. It should be amazing.

But it could be quite a while away, so why not let your uncle Squirrel teach you about the easy-to-emulate original?

Horace and the Spiders

How much credibility does a game have if it can't even fit its name onto the title screen?

The final Horace game, Horace and the Spiders. This one never left the ZX Spectrum, which in this case, is for the better.

Horace Goes Skiing

The gift that keeps on giving

"HORACE GOES SKIING", second in the "Horace" series of games. Highlighting the problems in modern day society Horace has decided to take up winter sports.

Hungry Horace

That's enough of tracking down Russian Mega Drive clones. Time to be mentally scarred with something closer to home.

HUNGRY HORACE, from 1983. Because graphics don't matter apparently. If you were a fan of my Player Adventure series of games (games made within a matter of hours and have purposely bad graphics) you'll love this one. And its sequels... which I might discuss later.

Coca Cola Kid

Squirrel's reviewing Japanese exclusive Sega Game Gear games. What has the world come to?

Thought this might be notable. "Coca Cola Kid", the hottest thing since Pepsi Invaders on the Atari 2600 in soft drink circles (unless you count the 7-up branded Cool Spot). Unrelated to the film it was developed by Aspect (of Sonic 8-bit fame) and never escaped the country for reasons unknown (though it is a bit Japanesey). It might not look or sound like much from this introductory paragraph and that boring title screen but this is almost a Sonic the Hedgehog game in disguise.

Jumper: Griffin's Story

Oh yeah, I own this game.

This sat unopened on a shelf for a couple of years, and only caught my attention after putting my now completed copy of Super Mario Galaxy 2 away. Released for the PlayStation 2, Wii and Xbox 360 in 2008 as a movie tie-in, the game was quickly thrown aside after being given some disastrous review scores that never peaked past 35%. It's the worst type of shovelware, and I can't explain why I own it, but I do.

The New Zealand Story

Taito used to be top of their game in the 80s and early 90s, mostly down to the success of Space Invaders... and then Bubble Bobble... and then Puzzle Bobble. But try and name something they've made recently and you'll have given yourself a hard task. In their glory days, we had The New Zealand Story, probably one of the better platformers on the market in 1988. Better read on to find out why!

Vote 1924... again!

BanjoSonic, the number one SHPDMBGWL4 fan has successfully taken all of my craptacular SHPDMBGWL4 games, linked them up to a front end, sprinkled in some extras and released the collection as a 102MB download. It contains pretty much everything to ever carry the SHPDMBGWL4 name, and there's been various little bugfixes to make the games completable.

The cleverly titled "SHPMBGWL4: Mega Collection" is available at my redesigned SHPDMBGWL4 website! No the games won't be split into separate downloads and no I won't give you any more advice on how to complete them (it's been so long that even I've forgotten).

The games haven't stood the test of time amazingly well. There are issues with the way Windows 7 (and probably Vista) handles sound, so you may find yourself in a situation where sound effects are repeating non-stop and gameplay is lagging. It's awkward but there's not much that can be done.

Nevertheless, a fine waste of two and a bit years.

Super Mario Galaxy 2

Pointless sequel time!

Because I like to go at my own pace rather than playing non-stop, and because of the inevitable yet unnecessary PAL delays, this review comes later than one might expect. Super Mario Galaxy 2, with its 98 score on Metacritic (the highest rated Wii game yet) is sure to spark some interest, and of course even though I am quick to criticise the company, I am a fan of Nintendo, even if they do insist on reinventing the wheel every few months. But I was skeptical that it was rated two points away from perfection, so how does it fare on the Squirrelometer?

Can get this on Nintendo

The original Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System gets everywhere these days, but how about this:

Super Mario Bros... for the Sega Mega Drive!

It's a pretty much perfect port, developed by a bloke going by the name of "Mairtrus". Though it doesn't really do anything fancy with the Mega Drive's hardware, it does have a slightly less bleepy soundtrack. Strangely he's not the first person to make this dream a reality though - Yuji Naka of Sonic the Hedgehog fame wrote a NES MD emulator two decades ago.

But his wasn't released publically, and didn't come with a video.