The Darkness

Here's a game that made me physically unwell!

The Darkness, a 2007 release for the Xbox 360. I'm not going to be kind.

Willy the Worm

Because graphics are boring.

Willy the Worm, a not-so-brilliant title for a very brilliant 1985 DOS game. It's optimised for colour monitors!

Skunny: Back to the Forest

Oh god. Skunny: Back to the Forest, a 1993 DOS platform game by Copysoft. They still charge money for this. And yes, it does star more squirrels. And no, I'm not doing this on purpose.

SOOG: Fangaming in 2012

It's Sonic Amateur Games Expo (SAGE) 2012 time! I've covered this event in previous years in varying degrees, but this year, I'm not going to bother. Shoot me.

Exceptionally poor management and conduct has allowed SAGE 2012 to underperform by leaps and bounds, but for me, the whole subject of fangaming is something I have started to drift away from. Of course, long time followers of Squirrel will note I used to run a fangaming website - arguably the most popular one of its day, but times have changed, and fangaming... isn't the same anymore.

Here's why.

Squirrel's Guide to DOSBox

(last updated: 05/03/12)
Some emulators can be seen as intuitive for all age groups. Others, less so, and only deter users from playing great games. Running old PC games through DOSBox is particularly daunting for newcomers, even though in reality, it may be the simplest emulator of all.

So, struggling to mount a C: drive? Not sure if a "Gravis Ultrasound" beats a "Sound Blaster 16"? Can't tell the difference between CGA, EGA and VGA? Maybe I can help with this guide.

Kid Chaos

Sound the alarm, it's another Sonic the Hedgehog clone.

Kid Chaos for the Commodore Amiga (and CD32!), developed by Magnetic Fields and published by Ocean Software in 1994. That's one stunning title screen there - appeal to the kids of the 90s with a reject from The Beano. Give that man a medal.

Shifting Stuff

Once upon a time I set up The Obscure Ripping/Research Project, a website which attempted to document unlicensed tat before better attempts emerged. tORP has always relied on crappy freebie hosting services because it was a hobby, and when I started beefing up this blog with "guides" and "specials" I recycled the hosting to avoid opening my wallet.

I chose 110MB.com as the host of tORP, and a couple of years ago, this made sense. The URLs were short, the uptime was reasonable, and 110MB of space was all I really needed. Unfortunately the owners of 110MB have allowed the service to deteriorate into something pretty horrible. Servers are constantly down, support is scarce, and even registering a new account is a pointless challenge, yet the team still have the audacity to promote their paid options. There are people who haven't been able to log in for over six months - what a great service!

In an age where uploading videos, making blogs, hosting large downloadable files and connecting with your friends can be done without paying a penny, it baffles my mind why uploading HTML documents requires an investment, but such is life - it's an issue nobody wants to address (or even acknowledge) for whatever reason, and I'm not going to fight it today. But I will be severing my ties with 110MB in the coming months and doing everything of value here.

My last guide was posted in blog form, as opposed to the usual method of hosting pages off-site. The plan in the next few weeks or so is to shift earlier guides and specials over to this blog to be absorbed, so you'll likely see a few repeat posts in the days ahead. I plan to update some of them during this process, but if you've got bookmarks (*cough*) you might have to update.

Splinter Cell: Conviction

I'm not plucking games out of the sky, whatever do you mean?

Splinter Cell: Conviction for the Xbox 360, released back in 2010. Fifth game in the long-running-but-actively-ignored-by-me Splinter Cell franchise. And now, having played a game starring Sam Fisher and his three eyed friend(s), I can actually justify why that is.

Squirrel's Guide to Macintosh Emulation

(last updated: 30/07/2012)

Following my troubles emulating Dark Castle for black and white Macintoshes, I felt it was worth writing a guide. Put simply, Macintosh emulation is dreadful from a user perspective, so any help to solve that issue is time worth spent.

This is intended primarily for Windows users, though no doubt there'll be some tips for other platforms too. I'm not an amazing source for knowledge when it comes to Macs, but I solved a problem and want to share results.

Super Hang-On

Many thanks to Andlabs, who demonstrated that in order for a game to work in one emulator, sometimes you have to use two.

A quick one because it's interesting. Super Hang-On, the Macintosh version. This is a rare breed - for one, it's a Sega game on a Mac, and in 1987 that didn't happen. It's also almost entirely different to the arcade version, so it hardly qualifies as a port at all. How fancy.

Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad

...on Blog Squirrel.

Can't get this on Nintendo!.. or Sega... officially. Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad, once set to hit your Sega Mega Drives in early 1994, before being cancelled by the man, plunging the world into fifteen years of misery and turmoil.

Thankfully we have been liberated from the darkness and oppression, as we now have both prototype source code and working ROMs of this game to play with. No doubt a good day for the world.

Spitting Image

Such is the life of Squirrel that this is the second fighting game involving Mrs. Thatcher to cross my path... but the first not to display all its text in Korean.

Erm yes, look, another comedy sketch show turned video game for the Amiga. This one's a fighting game, made in the days before we knew how to make fighting games. What such productive lives we lived in the late 1980s.

Monty Python's Flying Circus

This is what the kids want - a platform/shoot-'em-up game based on a then-twenty year old comedy sketch show. Monty Python's Flying Circus for the Amiga, released in 1990 by the future creators of Tomb Raider.

My brain hurts.

SOOG: Squirrel's Laws on Sequels

I'm a part-time Sega fan - there's a statement that will stun the world. Once in a while I wander over to SegaBits to get a glimpse of Sega-related news, only to then wish I hadn't, because as lovely as the site is, they clearly need to read up on the company they're plugging.

Not too long ago an article entitled "reasons why Sega is failing in the western markets" was posted. It's universally agreed that Sega is clueless these days, but one area of "concern" caught my eye - "too many risky, new IP's. Not enough of the old ones". Misuse of the apostrophe aside, this statement needs a response! Because inter-blog fights are fun or something.

High Speed

Pinball on the NES. Think it will work? My vote is no.

Vigilance on Talos V

There is only one major issue I have with Super Metroid - it's a SNES game. Try as I might to sit down and finish it, Nintendo's unique take on audio coupled with the slow and dark nature of 16-bit Zebes means I often struggle to keep my eyes open while playing.

Thankfully, there are alternatives. Here's one; Vigilance on Talos V, released in 1996 for DOS. Gradient heavy mid-90s graphics, questionable voice acting, low production values... it's perfect.

SOOG: Sega Pico

Something new, something fresh. Something with fewer images because ImageShack keeps deleting them.

Because I'm not entirely sure whether the whole "Squirrel reviews a game you're not aware of" format always works, I figured it was time to try something different. So I present to you a potentially short-lived column: Squirrel's Opinions on Gaming. Or SOOG.

I also thought I'd start on something more positive (I use this term very loosely) before this degrades into rants about trivial features of the industry. My adventures with the Sega Pico - the Sega console nobody talks about. It'll be educational for all sorts of reasons.

Dark Castle

A few months ago, the horrendous Mega Drive (and CD-i) release of Dark Castle was roasted by the Angry Video Game Nerd for horrific controls and stupid design, and a good deed was probably done for the world.

Unfortunately, the AVGN show isn't always well informed. Turns out there's a second opinion on the internet coming from the Macintosh fans. Dark Castle, a classic? It has sequels? It has a following? Oh no!

ATF II

Look what I found on my shelf. ATF II - a two decade old "arcade" flight simulator for the IBM PC which I've never bothered to play. How does this masterpiece fare in 2012? I can't say, because I couldn't get it to run.

But that's okay, we can still experience the redundancy through this Amiga copy! What a glorious day for the world!

Vote 1924... yet again

Not that I'm expecting anyone to care, but I've redesigned the SHPMDBGWL4 mini site. It was something I was meaning to do quite a while ago, a.k.a. last year. It's nothing special, but certainly better than before.

Don't ever expect to see anything "new" from the series, but if you haven't played these games yet, I urge you to give them a try. Yes the file size is a bit excessive, yes there are many references to things you won't understand, but I am genuinely interested in whether there's a market for this sort of "joke" game. SHPMDBGWL4 has broken gameplay, rubbish graphics and stolen audio, yet it still resonates with people (or at least it did in 2008).

One day I'd like to bring Quackers to the big leagues, because five years on this stupid concept still makes me laugh. The implementation here is often lousy (most of the earlier games make me cringe) but I honestly feel it's a idea with potential. I'm still waiting for the video game equivalent to Airplane! but the best the industry has managed thus far is a Stan Helsing. It's a long-term goal of mine to change that.