SAGE 2010

Have you heard that Sonic Colours theme tune announced not too long ago? Do yourself a favour - conserve your brain cells and don't go hunting for it. You see, the problem with Sonic Team is that despite their name, they can't really make a good Sonic game anymore. My theory is they keep flushing out new experiments as they attempt to appeal to the Japanese (who have never really liked Sega or Sonic), rather than focus on the other, bigger markets that are quite happy with the design choices made back in the early 1990s.

But that's why we have the Sonic Ameteur Games Expo, or "SAGE". People come from all over the world to release Sonic the Hedgehog fangames, many of which like to trump Sega's efforts. Here's a run-down of the stuff Squirrel likes this year.

Zool (Master System)

Unpredictable

Why the Master Sytem version? Why not? Who else is ever going to give a damn about a watered down port from 1993? If you wanted to play Zool properly you'd pick up the Amiga version, or the SNES one, or the Mega Drive version (which I tried to pick up a few years ago but apparently the store only sold second hand boxes).

I do own the Game Boy version though, and that wasn't too shabby considering the console's limitations. Let's see how the Master System fares.

Fantasy Zone: The Maze

Or in this case, the significantly worse title of "Opa Opa".

"Y'know what would make Fantasy Zone better?", said one of the many figureheads at Sega of Japan's board meetings in 1987, "PAC MAN". And so Fantasy Zone: The Maze was born, the runt of the litter (though kids today didn't even know Sega used to keep spaceship-shaped pigs). People either don't like this game or don't know about it, so I guess who better than myself to bring it to the light?

The Lucky Dime Caper

Time for Master System games! The first is the poor man's Quackshot, The Lucky Dime Caper starring Donald Duck. One of many Dinsey-themed games released in the early 1990s to convert Nintendo users to Sega fans, this one only appeared on 8-bit Sega machines, with its partner of crime appearing on the Sega Game Gear. But is it any good?

If you too would like to link to Blog Squirrel

Here's a set of 88x31 buttons. The type the internet uses... for some reason (I mean really... 31 pixels tall?). For some reason I made ten.

Maximise those hits.

EDIT: And now have 20 more, seeing as they're so easy to make.

Halo 2600

I thought it was a Flash game, turns out I'm wrong!

Halo, perhaps the most memorable first person shooter of the last decade, has been brought to the Atari 2600, the most memorable console of the early 1980s.

The frightening thing is... it's actually quite good.

Super Mario Sunshine

"We don't like Super Mario Sunshine", say those Nintendo fans with standards that far exceed those of a regular human being, "it's not Mario enough".

Released in the Summer of 2002, Super Mario Sunshine is a GameCube classic. If you own a GameCube and haven't played this game, there's something wrong with you, but its fair to say it stirs up a bit of tension in Mario communities for one reason or another. But have times changed?

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.

Tetris (Mega Drive)

Because I just know you want to read a review on a game you've played millions of times before.

If you thought Tengen's NES attempt was rare, have a look at this Mega Drive version. Though it was licensed by Tengen (a.k.a. Atari), the majority of this port was handled by Sega. And guess what? Nintendo blocked its sales. Copies of this game are supposedly so rare they've been priced up to $16,000 US dollars, but lLuckily, emulation means we can all play it... but you can also see that it's not worth playing.

B.C. Racers

In 1995 Core Design (who hadn't yet discovered Tomb Raider) hit us with this Mario Kart clone combining kart racing with their Chuck Rock franchise. It was released DOS-based PCs, the 3DO, the Sega Mega CD and the Sega 32X, and as three of the four aforementioned systems bombed in the marketplace, it might have seen a bit more success if it had waited a year for the PS1 and Saturn. But that's what you get for taking risks I suppose.

Frogger II

Christ what is he emulating now?

Frogger II: Threeedeep! for the Atari 5200. Yeah... sorry about this. The best version of the game does indeed lie on outdated Atari hardware. This is the sequel to the arcade hit Frogger, except nobody remembers it. I don't think that's right, so I'm blogging about it, because who better to tell than people I don't know on the internet?