Dark Ages

Hey kids, time to open that box of DOS once again

Dark Ages, a 16-colour platforming legend, released in February of 1991 by Apogee Software. It was paired with a musical score that relied on a Adlib sound card - a first for the shareware market of the time. Yet despite being somewhat groundbreaking, it's often overlooked in favour of later platformers such as Duke Nukem or Commander Keen, most likely because it never recieved any sequels.

One Man and his Droid

Commodore 64 time. It pushed its competition into near-bankruptcy, it had a sound chip that still manages to get used in dance tracks today, and it was superior to all other home computers at the time in almost every way. It also had a selection of games that sold for as little as £1.99, which is a bit mad when you consider these days it can be £20, £30, £40 or more for something fresh.

Here's two pounds worth of game - One Man and his Droid, released in 1985 by Mastertronic (who would later go on to successfully distribute the Sega Master System in Europe before being bought out and merged into Sega). Now strictly speaking this wasn't a C64 exclusive - ports appeared on the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Atari 800 and the elusive Commodore 16, but it's the Commodore 64 version that gets the spotlight because like in most cases, it has the best music.

Juno First

Yet another game you likely haven't played, Juno First. Released into arcades in 1983, it was Konami's first attempt to mimic the frantic shoot 'em up gameplay styles first seen in the likes of William's Defender, Robotron 2084 and Sinistar, but it also draws inspiration from the likes of Nintendo's Radar Scope in the sense that gameplay is made to look as if it is inclined at an angle. Aren't pixels clever?

Dr. Rudy

It's a brand new year and a brand new decade, but that's not going to stop me from finding decaying old programs from the early 1990s that nobody has played in years!

Presenting "Dr. Rudy", a DOS game initially released in 1991 and is quite clearly a Dr. Mario clone. NES emulation through DOS wouldn't really kick-off until 1997 and it would take even longer for other Nintendo systems to be supported, so for many years this was one of the only ways you could play Dr. Mario on your IBM compatible PC.

It's notable for two reasons... or maybe three. One, it's yet another example of a very early Mario fangame... sort of (nineteen years old and still beating modern attempts!), two it'll run on even the most insanely underpowered PCs and three because I still claim Dr. Hello is worth caring about and this shares a similar concept.

3D Bomberman

Managed to get a hold of the Sharp X1's entire library of games... I think. There's no doubt that it was a terrible system, but it did get a few strange obscurities in its several year run. Obscurities such as...

3D BOMBERMAN. Yep, back before Hudson had even given their character the classic "robot" look they were toying with the idea of bringing the series into the third dimension. Obviously attempting to pull it off on systems like the Sharp X1 meant the end result is pretty horrible, but the series hasn't done anything like this since so it must count for something.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii

Truth be told I hadn't played Super Mario Bros. 3 until fairly recently. I wasn't part of the American generation that dragged their parents to the cinema to see The Wizard and that damned Power Glove, and as a Sega fan I didn't see much of a reason to play as the plumber until the days of the Dreamcast came to an end. Thanks to the wonders of emulation in the space of the last six years I've come to know pretty much every Mario title to date, from the dangerously mainstream, to the obscure, to the spin-offs, to the rip-offs and of course the pirates, hacks and homebrews. Admittedly I never saw a reason to dabble in the sports series much, and Mario Party wasn't my thing, but you name a Mario platformer and I'll have probably seen or played it, and then I'll proceed to name ones you haven't.

Hurt me plenty

Saxman of ProSonic fame is writing a program that'll let you transfer WADs to and from the Sega 32X port of id's legendary FPS, Doom. It's still at a preliminary stage but as a proof of concept release here's Doom II's first level running on Sega's craptacular add-on:

Can't get that on Nintendo... yet. The textures aren't all there and things like the music are still relying on the original game, but it does pave the way for 32X ports of Final Doom and of course, Chex Quest. And what better way to spread Christmas cheer than pixelation and horrible music conversions.

Sharpen up

The tORP Super Mario Bros. Special page has been updated. I may have to do a similar thing with Punch Ball Mario Bros. in the future, but that probably won't be quite as interesting.

Super Mario Bros. Special: The Sharp Edition

Remember Super Mario Bros. Special for NEC's obscure PC-88 computer? Well turns out it spread into Sharp territory as well.

Presenting the hideously rare Sharp X1 port, kindly pointed out by local legend Techokami. Like the PC-88, the Sharp X1 is a fairly obscure computer that didn't get very far outside of Japan, but because the Sharp X1 has the advantage of being a better bit of kit, this time the game is actually bearable.

Though it's mostly the same game, the X1 port benefits from slightly better graphics, "Zelda-like" scrolling (as opposed to the static screens of the PC-88 copy) and significantly less lag. It also seems to have introduced several new enemies and powerups, inspired by the Arcade classics Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong, and is the first Mario game in history to sport a "flight" powerup. It's actually quite a good game, which is a lot more than can be said of its awful NEC-licensed cousin.

I'll be going into more detail with this in due time, which may possibly involve some sprite ripping like the good old days. Until then, spread the word that this thing exists, because it's been hidden from the mainstream general public for the best part of twenty-five years.

BROS

You can never guess where the obscure Mario titles will pop up next. "BROS" for the Atari 800 computer, a public domain release by German group "KE Soft" in 1989. Initially bundled with a bunch of polish demos on a double-sided disk, this game has largely escaped the gaming public, probably because like the MSX, nobody really cared for what the Atari 800 had to offer in terms of forgotten titles, and because it was a demo infringing Nintendo's copyrights it won't have been widely distributed in the first place.

You got your Mario in my Street Fighter II

Again

More fun for me when I inevitably update tORP. A while back I attempted to create some sort of timeline with Street Fighter II pirates but it was horrific to sort out. Lots of similar dumps splattered all over the net in various locations, undocumented and in many cases, unemulated outside of the likes of FCEU or Nestopia. As far as I'm aware nobody has made a decent stab at trying to make sense of these pieces of garbage, but this will certainly help bridge a gap.

Essentially it's Master Fighter III with Mario (and a Little Nemo background) added. It's nothing spectacular, but these sprites were all carried through to Mari Street Fighter III Turbo so there was clearly some sort of underlying relationship going on here.

Along with this dump, yet another Mortal Kombat pirate popped up, this time going under the name of "Mortal Kombat V Pro". The second outing for our good friend Zoo.

I suspect it pre-dates "Mortal Kombat V Turbo 1996" which I've already written about, though strangely this seems to run at 60 frames per second unlike its sibling, making it the better choice.

Isn't piracy just grand?

Super Aladdin

I'm having to resort to broken builds of FCEU due to a lack of updates on the Nestopia project. A shame I suppose... Nestopia is probably the best NES emulator out there... but anyway look what popped up recently

It's Aladdin on the NES... again. Back in 1992 the Mega Drive title was a phenomenal success as it was one of the first examples of pairing smooth Disney-like animations with a video game. Though DOS and Amiga ports were understandable, for some crazy reason it was ported to the NES... badly, and released only in Europe. In between then and now, two other NES ports have popped up; the hideous "Aladdin 2" which I've talked about briefly in the past, and "Super Aladdin", which has been around a while apparently but only got my attention recently.

Fedora 11

A Linux review on Blog Squirrel?! Bet you never thought you'd see the day. I didn't think I would see the day in this decade, but once you're blessed with sixteen times more RAM you find you're able to see a lot more... but anyway once upon a time I struggled to run one operating system - now thanks to Sun's VirtualBox-inator 3 and the rise of the Virtual Machines I can run half a dozen at once. We can thank Gordon E. Moore for that.

The glitch that stole Christmas

It's safe to say I've worn out Clickteam's "The Games Factory". A follow up to 1994's "Klik 'n' Play", TGF was a reasonably successful game creation tool of the late 90s. In 2001, Multimedia Fusion rolled along, and nowadays MMF2/TGF2 are the ways to go about creating similar applications. TGF is, and has always been, immensely buggy, but somehow I've let myself get by. One such bug is this, which popped up for no particular reason this afternoon:

I can't adjust animation speeds anymore, which pretty much forces me to either upgrade or stop producing garbage for kicks. I've chosen the latter, since MMF's interface isn't half as fun and I'm on a course learning C++ anyway. The SHPDMGWL4 series owes its life to this program, as do many, many other early indie/fangame classics, some of which I may end up releasing for the hell of it (I do have half a decade's worth after all). 13 years is a very long lifespan, and to be honest, it was only really me keeping it alive.

One slight concern was that I was due to make my annual christmas special within the next month. TGF was unlikely to make its way to any future computers of mine, so it would have been abandoned in 2010 regardless, but now all I can give you for christmas is this screenshot:

We're all out of gum.

CD-i emulation in MESS

Your resident Squirrel doesn't have the internet speeds nor the patience to play with 100MB downloads right now, but the Multi Emulator Super System project (MESS) has recently added preliminary Philips CD-i support. It's the second emulator ever to do so, and the first that's fully available to the public for free. A bit of a surprise, since because MESS is ambitiously attempting to emulate every console in existence at once, it tends to lag behind in the emulation scene a bit.

The Philips CD-i is one of the worst consoles ever made. It came at a time where CD-based games were the bees knees, but the equipment to run CD-based games was sub-par. Its creation was the result of Nintendo's demands to create a CD add-on to the Super Nintendo, similar to what Sega's Mega Drive and NEC's TurboGrafX were offering, but the deal was never fully realised. Both Sony and Philips were tasked with the job, Sony's attempt resulting in the long running PlayStation line while Philips resulting in this pile of molten garbage. There are very few decent games for the CD-i - most are haunted with very poor quality FMVs, long loading times and terrible controls due to a terrible controller, not to mention most of its software isn't even targetted at a gaming market.

But there are a few interesting features of this console, such as the dodgy Mario and Zelda titles and various one-hit-wonders. Anyway the point is up until now the only way to emulate this stuff was to dish out €25. Now it's free.

Revenge of Shinobi prototype found

Sega are known for releasing half-assed Mega Drive emulators to the public. You may think it's a fairly new thing, but it actually dates back to the late 90s, just a few years after the emulation scene began. During this time Sega released several "compilation packs" (mostly in America), throwing in a few ROMs and an emulator in the hopes of achieving a few bucks. Sega PC Smash Pack was one of their PC attempts, relying on Steve Snake's first Mega Drive emulator from 1997, KGen.

Do note though, a "good emulator for 1999" tends to suggest that it's a terrible choice today. KGen was considered good because it was the first emulator to have a decent amount of compatible games and Yamaha YM2612 sound emulation, both of which are a standard in all modern emulators, even the ones adopted by Sega.

One of the bundled games in Sega PC Smash Pack was Revenge of Shinobi, a 1989 classic. RoS has been ported to numerous platforms over the years (not to mention it was re-released on the Mega Drive half a dozen times too), but this was its first PC outing. And a strange outing it certainly was.

Turns out for whatever reason instead of using the final US version, whoever created the pack opted for a Japanese prototype, hence the title "The Super Shinobi". Surprisingly, nobody noticed, and in fact the box art actually calls it "Super Shinobi" despite the fact it was NEVER called that in the US.

There was clearly a distinct lack of testing within the walls of Sega of America at the time, because this prototype is surprisingly early. It's missing a lot of music, a couple of bosses and various copyright screens. A level select is enabled by default, and there's a "No death" mode selectable, so not only was it poorly emulated the game wasn't even complete.

Recently the ROM has been extracted and can be run on most emulators. There's probably a load of differences I haven't mentioned, but I'm not a massive fan of the game outside of the music and crazy bosses. Hilarious stuff that something so broken could be released to the public though. Too bad they didn't learn from their mistakes when the Game Boy Advance's Sonic Genesis got put on the shelves.

When emulation goes too far...

... you find yourself emulating menu systems to old computers you used to use such as this (click for a bigger picture). PowerMenu by Brown Bag software was the GUI of choice when Bedlington's council offices were powered by DOS computers in the late 80s/early 90s. One of those computers arrived on our doorstep after a clearout in 1994/95 and served as my "gaming computer" for half a decade before this machine came along and rendered it, and it's Windows 98 step-sister inferior.

Dave

Yes I'm a gamer, but being away from home means I don't actually have games to play, or rather, I haven't installed any programs for taking perfect optimised screenshots. What I do have, however, is a TV, and my TV can receive...

Dave, the home of witty banter. Dave is probably my favourite digital channels at the moment - it pretty much took all the great shows from the BBC (plus some from Channel 4, Five and other lesser channels), added some great stuff of its own and rolled them into one nice package with elephants and indoor marching bands.

This review was created for the BBC, chosen by Blog Squirrel.

X-Men 32X

The MegaDrive emulator Kega Fusion has been updated to version 3.63. Though Kega has been out-performing the competition since Christmas 2008, it's now doing so with significantly less memory consumption, and as there's been a lot of work in the 32X department...

X-Men 32X will run! Sega Saturno released this one a month or two ago after some donations, however no emulator could run it so we were reduced to a few off-screen YouTube videos, which wasn't really sufficient for an unreleased and potentially groundbreaking game.

Afternoon

There's not going to be as much activity from yours truely for the next coming months. 'Tis the first year at university and I'm having to make do with a connection that varies between <1 and 20Mbps, as opposed to my usual constant 7.6Mbps. I call it the "kitchen dependant connection", because both the WiFi and radio seem to struggle when someone is cooking up a mess. The move affects my entire internet career and is likely to screw up the sending of emails and uploading of files so don't expect the craziness of the summer where I was able to do 42738942 internet tasks a day.

I'm likely to still be around at weekends though... such as now.