Top Fighter 2000 MK VIII

Fighting games generally aren't my style, but they soon become my style when one allows Muhammed Ali to punch Michael Jordan in the face.

It's Top Fighter 2000 MK VIII, unlicensed tripe for the Sega Mega Drive. What happened to the seven earlier versions? Who knows, who cares. Apparently it's a pretty awful game but they said that about the other two as well. Will this one break the trend?

Much better

Slightly edited default templates are boring. Now Blog Squirrel has a heavily edited one. Generally I think it's an improvement but whether I'll keep those web 2.0 diagonal lines is a different story.

Feel free to point out gaping flaws. Things might break in old browsers... but you shouldn't be using old browsers.

TTFN tORP

All good things come to an end. Except this was never a good thing, and it hasn't technically come to an end. Fan favourite The Obscure Research Project, founded in 2006-ish by myself... isn't going to get any bigger, though you might have guessed this already. It's reached the end of its natural life and I probably won't be updating it anymore. I don't know if it did its job but hey, rest in peace you badly named mess. Keep reading for the autopsy.

Bible Adventures

Are you ready for the potentially fourth best religious-themed video game ever?! It's Bible Adventures for the Sega Mega Drive. Unlicensed 1995 tripe by Wisdom Tree, Bible Adventures was aimed at crazy people in American society and failed to take note of important industry standards. Sounds like a blast!

Scud Race

Spare a thought for Scud Race. Or SPORTS CAR ULTIMATE DRIVE... race. Americans may know it as "Sega Super GT" because confusion is fun, but generally not many people know of this game at all because it was never ported to home platforms. It's a fate it didn't deserve, so time to do it some justice.

Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing

Hurray big images

I saw Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing come and go and I didn't really pay all that much attention to it. Once upon a time I'd happily claim I was a big fan of both parties, but this release just struck me as some sort of uninspiring cash-in. The poor man's Mario Kart, which just happened to be priced higher. But opinions can change when you get 4.3GB worth of PC game for free.. right?

Truxton II

Still not quite Cosmic Carnage.

Here on my little blog, I like to review games I can't play, witter for a few paragraphs and give a meaningless final verdict which both fails to attract new players and fails to impress the veterans. But rather than break the trend here's TRUXTON II (a.k.a. Tatsujin Oh!), sequel to Truxton (Tatsujin). It's a vertical shoot-'em-up by Toaplan, first released into the arcades in 1992, and if you ever needed a good definition of "hardcore gaming" this should do you quite nicely.

Sonic Labyrinth

And this time lets hope Blogger doesn't break down!

Stupid ideas regarding the Sonic series is nothing new. Before the gun crime, bestiality and god-awful dialogue plagued Sega's top dog there was Sonic Labyrinth for the Sega Game Gear. Take Sonic's speed away from him and put him in a maze. Of course it will sell!

Donkey Kong Land

In 1989 Nintendo released the Game Boy to explore new lands. And explore new lands it did. It found Mario Lands, Wario Lands, Kirby's Dream Lands, and a Game Boy continent was formed.

Perhaps the most interesting of the lands on the Game Boy contintent are the Donkey Kong Lands. The world is divided on whether they're a top class representation of Game Boy brilliance or an insult to human eyesight. Either way it's fair to say they weren't the most upmarket of places to live.

Jim Power in Mutant Planet

Say, do you value your eyes? According to 1992's Jim Power in Mutant Planet for the Commodore Amiga, it's a pair of organs you could do without. It's yet another game in the collection of early 90s titles which the world has tossed aside for the wrong reasons, so I think it's time to embrace it once again.

Space Launcher

In 1979 Nintendo released Space Launcher. Nobody cared. It's now 2011... and we still probably don't care, if we even have the knowledge of Space Launcher's existence. Luckily for you, if you don't have that knowledge, here it comes in the form of a blog post. Hurray.

Zero Wing

I don't know about you, but if I were on the way to destruction after war began in 2101, I think I'd prefer a spaceship with a wing.

But who am I to dictate the engineering standards of ninety years in the future? I shall instead review the infamous Zero Wing, a 1991 Sega Mega Drive port of the 1989 arcade game. It's a horizontal shoot-'em-up whose fanbase mostly exists of people who get their thrills from poor sentence structure. It's a also game great.

Peggle

It's almost assessment period. For the thirty-or-so viewers I average a day, there might be an update drought for a bit.

But for now, it's post-2000 time which means more stolen images from IGN. This is Peggle, had you failed to see that giant image. Not really all that obscure, but still classed as demon spawn by the select few who think they know what gaming is.

Bio Force Ape

I'm not one to monkey around with Nintendo products (yes I did just post that sentence), but check it out, it's BIO FORCE APE for that entertaining Nintendo system, the Nintendo Entertainment System. Shown to the world in 1991, hidden from the world by 1992, it's come back to the world in 2011. And this time you can actually play it. But do we want to?

Silpheed

Firefox 3.6 is more competent than 4.0 on this machine. That's progress!

It's like Christmas came early, and it was a really terrible Christmas. It's just what you've always wanted - DOS-based shoot-'em-up Silpheed. It was a big-ish deal back in 1988, but is it still a big deal now?

Sonic Classic

If you too are feeling the need for a Sonic the Hedgehog 4 alternative, Sonic Classic might just float your boat. It's a glitchy, unpolished fangame with a questionable selection of music, but aside from that it does exactly what it says on the tin - it's a classic Sonic the Hedgehog game, free from poor voice acting, odd storylines and stupid ideas... well... aside from having two water levels. And most importantly, it's a complete game. What's not to like?

If I were to grade it, I'd give it a high C, but in a world where most fangames fail to hand their work in, it still stands as being pretty good.

Adventurous Boy

That was one long radio show.

"Unlicensed drivel!? I thought you'd grown out of that, Squirrel!". Not quite. Top time travelling duck fan BanjoSonic likes to feed me forgotten pirate games once in a while. This is one such game, Adventurous Boy for the Sega Mega Drive. It's a broken Fantasy Zone clone... how could I resist?

Space Harrier II

Space Harrier Harder

Space Harrier II is one of those games people love to hate. Released for the Sega Mega Drive in 1988 (as a launch title in Japan!), it's aged pretty poorly and is has always lived in the shadow of its older arcade brother. But that doesn't mean it's a bad game... does it?

Gloom

The Amiga's nice and all, but can it run Doom!?

No. But it can run Gloom, a 1995 Amiga game desperate to prove its worth against DOS-based IBM PC compatibles. It fails, but it's still a remarkable piece of technology for a system not designed for the third dimension.

Space Harrier

1985 saw Sega make one of the most cutting edge and legendary pieces of software to date - Space Harrier. It's a game I've grown up with in one form or another, and though the modern gaming media have different views, I still believe this is one of the greatest arcade games of all time.

And predictably it was ported to everything, including computers so bad that the fantasy zone was reduced to mere rectangles. This port, for the Amiga, was hailed as one of the better options upon its release in 1989.

I wonder how it stacks up today!