Top Gear 2

Tonight, I take this Mega Drive game round our track, and a violent goose is the star in our reasonably priced car.

Look, it's the Clarkson-less Top Gear 2, the sequel to... well... guess. Among other systems it was brought to the Sega Mega Drive, and is a fine example of a pseudo 3D racing game from the early 1990s. I don't talk about these sorts of games much, so here's an opportunity for me to do so.

Sonic 2 LD

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on the Sega Master System is a nice game in its own right, but having been built by an entirely different team for a completely different console, it doesn't look much like its more famous Mega Drive counterpart.

But look, Doc Eggfan and co of Sonic Retro fame have changed all that. It's Sonic 2 as you remember it running on Master System hardware... sort of.

Frozen Bubble

I seem to spend a lot of time being screwed around with last minute cancellations and two hour breaks to kill. So fortunate then that I have an Android "smartphone" with enough freebie software to keep a Linux fan thrilled for life.

Frozen Bubble is one such piece of software. A completely free Puzzle Bobble/Bust-A-Move clone which has already absorbed several hours of my time.

Billy the Kid Returns

Well... this is bad.

Billy the Kid Returns, another remnant from my DOS-based childhood. It was developed by a company known as "Alive Software", but trust me, this one's better off dead. Billy the Kid is a prime example of a truly poor and flimsy title worth the time of no man.

So lets spend some time finding out why!

Arcade Classics

Classic game compilations are great. With the power of modern technology the expensive arcade machines of years long past can now be played in the comfort of your own home, for cheap, instantly. Of course in some cases such as when Sega hop on the re-release train, you don't get the best results. Sega's classic "cat in a blender" additions to many Mega Drive musical scores repeatedly give your childhood that extra level of cringe, but others seem to do a reasonable job.

But what were things like before the days of emulation? Like this, Arcade Classics on the Sega Mega Drive (and Sega Game Gear). Can they get it right? Is it even possible to get Pong wrong? Better find out.

Mega Man (Game Gear)

American culture is an odd thing. Arriving on the internet full-time in late 2003, I was told that a FIGHTING ROBOT known as "Mega Man" was the bees knees among "most gamers". This theory was based on supposedly two decades of success and many childhood NES-related memories. Shocking, then, that I had never played nor even heard of a Mega Man game up until this point. Was I missing something?.. aside from a NES?

Well, if I had I known about the series, it might have been through this. Mega Man on the Game Gear. Other contenders are Mega Man: The Wily Wars on the Mega Drive, or something like Mega Man X3 on the Saturn... though being honest it's unlikely I would have came across any of them, and I couldn't have played this one since it wasn't released in the UK. But it's an entry to the series that isn't discussed much, so that makes it ideal for Blog Squirrel treatment.

Jumpjet

A fan of Luigi alerted me of this game. A Defender clone for DOS, released in 1990. It may look simplistic, but simplicity is one hell of a lot easier to blog about than the stuff I've been trying to push out for the last week... and it's got a few tricks up its sleeve which makes it that extra bit special.

Fire & Ice (Master System)

The Winter months are drawing near, and according to Procter & Gamble of Pringles crisps fame, the Christmas season starts in September now. So time to don your woolly hats and play something slightly festive.

It's Fire & Ice... for the Sega Master System. Why haven't I gone for the Amiga copy? Because I have no interest in messing with WinUAE on this laptop. Fire & Ice is one of those games I've known about for most of my life, but haven't had the urge to sit down and play until now. As with many games that originated in the first half of the 90s, you just expect they're mediocre platformers attempting to fit the gap which Nintendo were best at filling.

Commando (C64)

This game's theme song has been stuck in my head for the best part of a week. An impressive feat for a twenty five year old Commodore 64 title I hadn't played until now.

Commando is regarded as some sort of C64 classic these days. I know very little about the C64 scene so I guess I better find out why.

Sonic Fan Remix

Hey I'm not too thrilled about saving it as a JPEG either, but this is indeed a playable Sonic Fan game running in real time on this computer. It's the talk of the town at the moment - a fangame designed by Sonic Retro users pelikan13 and Mercury which, even if you're not a massive fan of the strange art styles employed here, completely wipes the floor with Sonic the Hedgehog 4.

Built with the Unity 3D engine, Sonic Fan Remix is a three level demo which surprisingly still looks great on slightly under-powered hardware. Things to note are an almost perfect physics engine and of course all those neat graphical effects. I can't say I agree with all the graphical and audio choices, but it's certainly the most impressive Sonic fan game I've ever seen... don't know about you.

The topic of discussion can be found here, though do note that thanks to the likes of Kotaku a lot of download mirrors have died hosting this thing. Nevertheless, fantastic stuff and certainly worth your while.

Super Skidmarks

A.k.a. Super Off Road II: Super Off Road Harder.

There were a lot of games like this in the 1990s because rendering racing games from any other perspective put huge strains on the hardware. This one, which by the way contains no skidmarks whatsoever, is a little-known game developed by Acid Software and published by Codemasters (of Micro Machines fame) for the Sega Mega Drive (and the Amiga... and once again the trainwreck that was the Amiga CD32) in 1995. It's not too shabby.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1

uuhhh ahhh eerrhhh

Star Wars: Episode 1 is a nice movie but I'll admit, it is a bit far-fetched to claim it's "just as good and relevant" as the original trilogy... well at least without filling the gap with episode 2 and 3, anyway. Until quite recently I had simply thought the Jar Jar Binks hate squad were running low on chill pills, but now I'm starting to understand their frustration.

Because this is Sonic the Hedgehog 4, the Sonic fan's equivalent to pod racing. It shouldn't exist, yet here it is to ruin our childhoods.

Wario Land 3 (Mega Drive)

NMMX of Sonic Retro has done the world a favour by dumping this slightly infamous hack of the Mega Drive platformer, Puggsy. There were a couple of videos floating around YouTube, with all sorts of uneducated simpletons claiming this was some sort of amazing pirate original.

Is it worth caring about? Well if it gets more people to play Puggsy I suppose so. It's a very bare bones hack which essentially just replaces the title screen, credits, and Puggsy sprite (as well as removing the Sega logo), but Puggsy is a very good game, sporting great graphics and sound for the time as well as PHYSICS. There's also a version for the Mega CD.

Oh and a fun fact for you - supposedly Puggy's anti-piracy tactics are still in-tact here so make sure SRAM is disabled on your emulator.

Super Off Road

In the early 90s, everything was super. From the fun houses to the star wars to the Metroids. But this is Super Off Road, in which the road isn't just super, it's off. Someone should have eaten it quicker.

Dick Vitale's "Awesome, Baby!" College Hoops

Every generation spawns a certain class of video games that are doomed to never have a future. EA's licensed sports titles are the obvious culprits as I've mentioned before, because regardless of how great the game was back in the day, nobody wants to buy FIFA 98 in 2010. They have a shelf life of about nine months.

But here's something even worse! A basketball game (with commentary by Dick Vitale) based around North American college basketball teams. It's not even the real NBA deal here! How many of these nails does it want in its coffin?

BioShock

Arrrgh

Perhaps I've been spending too much time with obscure gems from the past, but I'd have thought that playing broken software from two decades ago would give me a new found love for the blockbusters of today. Yet I can't shake this feeling that BioShock, the supposed 96-point masterpiece by 2K Games, is also a piece of broken software too. I'm having to question my own taste in video games - not a single person in the gaming press gave BioShock a score of less than 80%, and some people have the audacity to give it a perfect score. What's going on? When did I develop a dislike for this genre? Why don't I like this game?

Rainbow Islands Extra

Well I don't know about you but Taito's classic, Rainbow Islands, just doesn't have enough Darius in it. Guess we'll have to fix that.

Rainbow Islands Extra. Yes it's real, and it's not a fan-made hack (which was my assumption at first). This is Taito's Rainbow Islands combined with Taito's Darius shoot-'em-up franchise (sorry, no kings of Persia here). I can't say I understand why such a game needs to exist, but it does, and I'm here to review it... sort of.

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?