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.

Catacomb 3D

When people talk about "the first First Person Shooter" often the discussion turns to Wolfenstein 3D (unless they're educated and then it usually involves Maze War). This is fine, because Wolf 3D is a great game, but there were FPS games before it. And good FPS games at that, such as...

Catacomb 3D, one of the early works of id Software. Of course it shouldn't really come as much of a surprise that id Software were behind a revolutionary FPS - they did make Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake. What is a surprise is how good this FPS game is, despite having to rely on the wonderous 16 colour EGA palette.

Dangerous Dave's Risky Rescue

Remember Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion?... No?... Really? I mean it is freeware these days so there's nothing stopping you from playing it... oh well. This is the sequel.

Dangerous Dave's Risky Rescue, a.k.a. Dangerous Dave III. Despite Dave being a character created by industry legend John Romero, DDRR was made by an entirely different team at Softdisk, because by the time it rolled by in 1993, John Romero, John Carmack, Tom Hall and Adrian Carmack had formed id Software and were making things like Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D (and later Doom). Softdisk saw Dangerous Dave as a powerful asset so they made another two games without the Dave 2 team, this and Dave Goes Nutz!. Of course, I'm not entirely sure how powerful they thought the guy was, because despite wielding a shotgun and driving a pickup, the games aren't exactly Mario or Sonic beaters.

Castle of Illusion

Oh look, another Mega Drive classic to add to the pile.

Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse, a game developed by Sega AM7 in order to help maximise the Mega Drive's audience before their blue hedgehog came to town. Minnie Mouse has been captured by the evil witch Mizerabel, and Mickey needs to save her. Personally I'd cope with the loss but then again I'd have got the local police service involved and have this mess sorted out without fairly quickly. And I wouldn't spend 90 years walking about half dressed.

Jump Around 2: Hopping Mad

And now I've covered the sequel, Pocket Monster II, also for the Mega Drive. If I'd known I could have got this done so quickly I'd have bundled it with the last post. Speaking of which, I've managed to match up the second level of that game with the fourth from Mr. Nutz. So I guess this is the first squirrel-related post on Blog Squirrel.

Jump Around

I have a tORP update for you

Yet another Pokémon pirate homebrew, this time it's "Pocket Monsters" on the Mega Drive. I just can't wait to see what the deformed platforming Pikachu turns up in next! This particular pirate wound up on the Super Nintendo as well, and later scored a sequel, "Pocket Monsters II" (though I've yet to cover that). It's not particularly new, but coverage has been so poor that people have been labeling it as public domain for some bizarre reason. Make sure you're not one of them I guess.

Lobo

You can't help but admire Sega Saturno - they've given us prototypes of three unreleased games in as many months, even if X-Men 32X doesn't run in any emulators.

Their latest catch, Lobo, a fighting game based on the D.C. Comics anti-hero of the same name. It was due to be released for the Sega Mega Drive and Super Nintendo in 1996, but was cancelled despite Nintendo Power devoting six whole pages to the thing. It's the Mega Drive version that's surfaced first, and though it's largely complete, it's a rather dull and somewhat ugly fighter with a grand total of six stages.

One of the strangest features is rather than making the start button pause the game, it'll switch Lobo's moves between kicking and punching. You shouldn't need to use this method if you've got a six button controller, but the game seems to forget that these extra three buttons exist after the first stage. It also has a very strange "round" system similar to boxing games that in this version reeks of incompleteness. Crazy. On the plus side, the music isn't too bad, and I'm guessing the graphics may have been better in the SNES version. It had the potential to be a decent game, even if it wasn't one of 1996's greatest hits.

de Blob

"Wii" and "third party" don't seem to mix well. You tend to get this strange hue which looks nice for the first few seconds... until you realise it won't match any of your furniture. But occasionally you get a title such as de Blob, which doesn't really need to match your sofa since it's always changing colour.

Initially the lovechild of nine dutch students, de Blob was released for the PC a few years ago as freeware. The deal was simple; paint de city by running over de people and slamming into de walls, while avoiding de INKT police. It was an interesting concept, so interesting in fact that the rights were picked up by THQ, who got developer Blue Tongue Entertainment to spice it up for the Wii, making a pleasant change no doubt from Blue Tongue's usual supply of licensed shovelware. Luckily de Blob Wii has managed to improve tenfold on its PC counterpart, and has proved to be a good reason to turn my Wii on for the first time in months.

tORP 3.0

It was my Birthday two days ago, and I was going to post this closer to that date but sadly 110mb's servers thought it would be fun to break. Again. But now that it's not being stupid...

tORP 3.0: Now with 100% more CSS positioning

The Obscure Research Project now has a fancy new layout (well, "fancy enough" anyway - I wasn't attempting to win any web designer awards). Could be worth a look, though not so much if your browser isn't a fan of web standards. Lots of pages have been re-written and there's been a heap of fixes HTML/CSS wise too. I've also saved about a megabyte of space by optimising images. Hurrah.

Articles such as Sonic Jam 6 now have a lot more meat on the bones. Back when that article was first written the only Mega Drive emulators that would support its brother, Super 1998 Mario 2, were crazy ones like HazeMD, but since Kega Fusion took it under its wing, we can start making baseless theories about timelines and whether Mario protects the tube stopper in Hidden Palace Zone.

Despite claiming that I probably wouldn't cover this game, I've gone ahead and made a Pocket Monsters Red NES article. I went about as far as I can go without having to teach a Pokémon gardening skills, but comparing this thing to the Game Boy classics is a job for more "intense" Pocket Monster fans. At the end of the day, if devoting Wiki pages to LM4 is deemed acceptable by the Pokémon community, I can't see how tearing this NES game apart isn't.

tORP is also the first site to have a nice comparison between both versions of Pocket Monsters: Go! Go! Go!!. Awkward naming schemes both on the Pikachu and the Smurfs sides of things has meant this game has been documented quite badly by the internet. But hey, I made the same mistakes too, hence why I've re-wrote it.

V.R. Fighter vs Taken2 is now a lot more presentable. Dunno what was up with me a year or two ago but I was really writing some tripe. It's looking like a decent meal now. There's plenty of other re-written pages as well, including Rocman X/Thunder Blast Man and Sonic the Hedgehog 4 and of course the promised Tiny Toon Adventures 6, which I've matched up with its Game Boy counterpart.

Some pages aren't going to be brought to the new world of tORP however. I saw no reason to keep the outdated Mortal Kombat II for NES, nor any reason to keep the StarFox 2 SNES/Sonic Crackers articles when other sites are doing a much better job at covering those games.

So, have fun with this I guess and feel free to post feedback (though don't expect fixes for old browsers). If your browser can pass The Acid2 Test you should be fine, and all the main browsers do.

Super Runabout

The Dreamcast's 10 years old today in North America (and it would have been 10 in Europe too if it wasn't for that last minute delay), and what better way to celebrate that fact than review some seemingly random Dreamcast game of years long past.

Today's pick, Super Runabout. A frightening game, because recently I found out it was part of a series. Released in 2000 by Climax Entertainment, Super Runabout came to the DC between the release of the godsend that was Crazy Taxi and the period where Grand Theft Auto 3 made waves on Sony's console. Not a particularly great time for a game that fared lower than Sega's efforts, because GTA3 raised the standard far beyond what Super Runabout could have achieved. It's like if you released a FPS game that was worse than Wolfenstein 3D just months before Doom came along. Bad luck, or a rubbish business plan?

Speedy Gonzales: Los Gatos Bandidos

I've been re-writing my Sonic the Hedgehog 4 page on tORP, which requires actually playing the Speedy Gonzales game it was based off rather than just making guesses about the game like before. I suppose it's a bit sad, because more people on the internet seemed to have played the pirate hack featuring Sonic than the official, untouched Speedy Gonzales game.

Developed by Sunsoft and published by Acclaim for the Super Nintendo, Speedy Gonzales: Los Gatos Bandidos is a platformer involving the cartoon mouse on his quest to save other cartoon mice from some cartoon cats. As you can guess, it's a "fast" platformer and takes a few ideas from Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog series, hence why it was such a good match to throw Sonic in and market it as Sonic 4 for the SNES.