Golden Axe II

Well it's a better idea than removing status bars. We don't all use netbooks.

Golden Axe II, one of many sequels to Golden Axe. Released exclusively on the Sega Mega Drive in 1991, it's a sequel few seem to remember these days, but those who do recall its existence also pair it with the fact it's pretty much identical to the original game, and in many ways worse. Most therefore look towards Golden Axe III for salvation, but I'm here to ruin your day with number 2. Because I'm crazy like that.

You got Green Hill Zone in my Sonic Crackers

I'm sure you're all fans of Sonic Crackers!... no? I don't blame you, but I've been fascinated by this one since I first saw it mentioned in an old copy of the Official Dreamcast Magazine.

Anyway it might have taken a decade, but Selbi of Sonic Retro has actually turned Sonic Crackers into something interesting. Sort of. Now you can play through a very dodgy rendition of Green Hill Zone, with extremely broken collision and other glitches. But hey, it's pretty much the first notable Sonic Crackers hack, and that's a start right?

Crack Down (Mega Drive)

I've put Nintendo on the firing range a few times for their obsession with re-releasing the same old tat (Urban Champion) time and time again, but since the Virtual Console's birth in 2006, news of first-generation NES re-releases are now few and far between. Sega, on the other hand, have made great strides in trying to take Nintendo's place in the "re-release wars", flushing out yearly Sega Mega Drive compilations comprising of their early 16-bit releases. Logic states you should release the older games before the newer ones, but Sega often seem to get a bit bored by about 1992 and move onto a new system to fill with Eccos and Golden Axes. And they don't like touching their other consoles.

Crack Down is one of the many first party Mega Drive games that Sega seem to love. Originally a 1989 Sega System 24 game (I'd be reviewing that version if it were emulated properly), it was brought to the Mega Drive in 1991. But does anyone really care?

Grand Theft Auto IV

hmm

Hey Niko Bellic, you "eastern European" Bosnian war veteran out to hunt down other Bosnian war veterans while fighting against Russians, Albanians and Italians... welcome to America! Why are you here? Because... erm... well... it's Grand Theft Auto IV, the 2008 spectacular aiming to prove for the fifth time that Liberty City is a great place to live, and we're too frightened to change the setting. According to Metacritic this game is two points away from perfection, and as I love other GTA games, it had to be one of my top purchases when getting an Xbox 360. Yet something doesn't feel right about this one...

Wacky Races (NES)

Out of all the Hanna Barbera shorts produced in the 60s and 70s, Wacky Races stands out as being one of the only franchises that lends itself well to video games. So as you can imagine, the bigwigs have tried to make it into a Mario Kart clone to steal cash from kids. But the franchise hasn't been damaged too much - the Dreamcast game was nice and the Game Boy Color game ended up being a fairly big deal.

But that's not to say it hasn't had its fair share of garbage. Perhaps the weirdest adaptation of the franchise is this 1992 PLATFORMER for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Though it is indeed fair to say that perhaps the NES couldn't handle a third-person perspective racer, by 1992 there was a perfectly capable SNES console that Atlus could have supported. Instead they chose to tie it to an inappropriate genre to catch the last waves built up by Super Mario Bros. 3.

Commander Keen (GBC)

Yeah I'm running low on ideas.

A younger, more naive me had this game bought for me as a Birthday present not too long after it was released. Feeling that my eleven-year-old self was smarter than Nintendo's hardware manufacturing and marketing divisions, I had come to the conclusion that this would run on my Game Boy Pocket. It didn't. But it did run on my Game Boy Advance when I picked one of those up in the coming months.

Commander Keen 5: The Armageddon Machine

It frightens me that in this day and age there are still people out there who claim to be "gamers" that haven't played Commander Keen. To these people: what the hell is wrong with you?

Back in the day, Commander Keen was by far one of the best games on the planet... and other planets for that matter. Having since ventured onto the internet it now ranks in my books as not only being a great set of platformers, but also some of the finest examples of 16-colour EGA graphics ever known to man. No game before nor afterwards has topped the Commander Keen series (especially the latter half) while working with these limitations. As I've said before, it did such a good job that it took my nearly ten years for me to realise its palette was ¹/₁₆th the size of later DOS platformers.

Rock n' Bolt

At the time of writing I've played roughly half of the SG-1000's library. It's not overly surprising why Sega's first console failed - 90% of its games library came from Sega themselves. Nobody supported this thing!

Even Rock n' Bolt here which started life of as one of Activision's creations was ported to the console by Sega. I looked at this one on SMS Power and instantly came to the conclusion that it was tat... before playing it and realising it isn't.

Hocus Pocus

Often when you read people reminiscing about their DOS-based childhoods Hocus Pocus is conjured up during conversation. It doesn't make much of an impact, but it does result in a few nods of approval.

And indeed, Hocus Pocus played a minor part in my childhood too, but the difference is... I've never seen its appeal. Granted I've never been into the whole "magic" "fantasy" thing - I have a feeling that even the earliest of firearms could puncture a dragon's face, but Hocus Pocus always struck me as a very bland platformer that performs worse than games made three years before it. It's one of the few games out there that manages to be overrated and underrated at the same time.

Bio Menace

The good data type Char of MFGG fame raised a interesting point the other day. There's no Bio Menace posts on Blog Squirrel. That's can't be allowed to continue.

Bio Menace for DOS computers is perhaps one of the greatest platform-shooters of all time. While many American kids with their Nintendo Entertainment Systems ran around the flickering and predictable worlds of Mega Man, cooler British kids such as myself were guiding sunburned men with mullets through sixteen colour cities, shooting aliens and saving equally red citizens. You didn't get that on Nintendo... though at the time you didn't get anything on Nintendo here until it was obsolete.

Sonic Blast

Pre-rendered fun for everyone.

We like to forget Sonic Blast exists. As a Game Gear (and Master System title if you're living in Brazil) game released in the extremely late year of 1996, it's always been tarred with the "average" brush and shoved aside in favour of other 1996 Sonic disasters, such as Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island. Sad then that it was actually the last 2D "classic" Sonic platformer with its own set of new levels.

It's an odd game, but surely in these days of endless mediocre Sonic titles we can start caring for it... right?

Elfland

ELFLAND. Oh how the title makes your mind go wild. What could possibly lie beyond this line of text? A fun Christmas-themed game in the style of Super Mario Land? A on old DOS platformer from my childhood whose existence I forgot about until writing this sentence and will probably blog about it in the near future? Of course not... it's an unlicensed NES game from "Tip Top" in 1992.

And wouldn't you know it, it has absolutely nothing to do with elves. It's actually a strange Bubble Bobble clone, without the bubbles or bobbles. The catch this time is to eliminate your enemies by changing colour in a de Blob style manner, and if it had been presented a little better... it might have been quite nice.

ASDER 20-in-1

An update to The Obscure Research Project? Madness.

I'm not all that sure what posessed me to play through this pirate NES compilation, but I did, and and here's the page to prove it. Unlike most compilations it's not just a bunch of stolen games tied to a menu, but is, in fact, 20 completely original titles... well okay some are hacks... but still, not many people will have played these games before.

I don't know Nintendo's history as well as Sega's so chances are there might be a few more hacks included in this compilation. I spotted Crush Roller (or Make Trax) but there might be others so you might have to take this with a pinch of salt and I'll update it at a later date.

NHLPA Hockey '93

Yeah I went there. Take a trip to your local second hand game shop or eBay sometime. Have a look at all the sports titles. See how they're sold for ridiculously low prices and watch as you find yourself asking "who buys this stuff". There's no doubt about it, the entire sports genre is the very definition of "shovelware", and it's mostly Electronic Arts' fault for shipping this stuff out annually.

So I picked a game at random to see if the older titles once praised by the press are still worth playing today. This is NHLPA Hockey '93 for the Sega Mega Drive, the second in EA's NHL series. My experience with both Ice Hockey games and the sport itself is quite limited (I think I might have played a demo for a later game on the PlayStation once at a friends' house... that's it), so can an eighteen year old game make me into a fan today? Let's find out (spoilers: it can't).

Gex

Yeah that's right, on the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. You can hear the cheers of excitement.

Before the Gex series started introducing strange stories and stupid characters there was this, the original 1994 2D platforming game that gave people a reason to buy the 3DO console... until it was shipped to better platforms a couple of years later. But how does the original Gex hold up today?

Snow Bros.

In 1997 the first decent NES emulator, NESticle, was released. Not long after that, people started hacking the first Super Mario Bros. game, sticking everyone and their aunt in the place of Mario and releasing their efforts to the world. At one point I actually had a collection of these, and most were horrible. Problem is, when you start having hoards of hacks being called "xxx Bros." you forget of the real games that copied Mario Bros' naming scheme.

Like Snow Bros., an arcade game released by Toaplan in 1990. It was Toaplan's answer to Bubble Bobble, except it was released four years after Taito's creation and few people cared for it as a result. I, however, think it is a great game. Here's why.

Penguin Land

I don't know about you but when I lay an egg I don't spend my days rolling it around on the surface of the moon. Somebody does though!

This is Penguin Land for the Sega Master System. It's part two of a history of Doki Doki Penguin Land games that nobody remembers (the Japanese name for this game is "Doki Doki Penguin Land: Uchuu Daibouken", and it follows "Doki Doki Penguin Land"). This one had the advantage of being released outside of Japan, though you'll still be struggling to find people who remember it as a classic.

Shui Hu Feng Yun Zhuan

what how when why

China, my greatest foe. And my greatest ally. Actually to be honest I don't really know China and it doesn't really know me, but I do know of the products it produces. This is one of them, a Mega Drive beat 'em up under the awkward name of Shui Hu Feng Yun Zhuan. Catchy isn't it?

When I saw this game I couldn't really care less for it, though it was made for an entirely different audience so that might be why. But don't ignore this post. My statistics say you like this weird crap so this might be right up your street, and after playing it, it gets to a few houses on my road too.

Fatman

Oh my god what am I doing with my life.

Remember a while back when I played Shaq Fu and claimed that it wasn't as bad as people made out? Well I think it's probably time to show you a fighting game that is truely terrible. That game is "Fatman", or to give it its localised and more disturbing title, "Tongue of the Fatman" (or in the US, "Slaughter Sport"). Hold on to your children.

Pipe Mania

If you've not played Pipe Mania before there's clearly something wrong with you. Perhaps you should do the world a favour and jump of a bridge - we don't need you in our society, you haven't connected bits of tubing together in an unconventional manner to redirect sludge.

My Pipe Mania, the one that I remember and love, is the DOS version. It's been released in numerous formats for numerous systems, sometimes under the title of "Pipe Dream", but the DOS copy is, as far as I'm concerned, the best. Most versions either underperform on the hardware, look or sound awful or screw up the formula, whereas the DOS game has none of those issues. It's great.