Cybergoth

Hi there! Oh those wild early Amiga days, where one could just clone everything and get away with it Yup, just like Dig Dug, I can't resist a Galaga clone either This game is slightly better than Dugger, albeit only if you accept that it's just a Galaga clone - not Galaga '88 as the name would suggest Well, all Galaga features are there. The only enhancement over regular Galaga is the ability to shoot diagonally at two fixed angles. As shown in the screenshot above, the graphics are hardly 16-Bit worthy. The SFX are sampled and have enough BANG!, but there's no music at all. The playability is okay. It felt as if in higher levels there's often way too many enemy shots on the screen. The diagonal shots remedy that some, since you don't have to navigate straight under an attacker, but instead can take it out from the side. Not much more to say about this one. I played up to the 10th wave, but of course this kind of game will endlessly throw waves towards you, I don't think it will ever end. Some future day the "Playing..." series may see another death from above shmup in the form of "Super Space Invaders", but first it'll continue with something else. Greetings, Manuel

That's a pretty good tune from Hubbard. Maybe a bit too long, but I like listening to it every once in a while http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvVA8pP_Ego

Hi there! I bet you can guess from the screenshot what attracted my attention here: Yup, when reading about Dugger, I was expecting no less than Dig Dug on steroids How wrong I was... This rare swiss game production from Linel starts with a very cool intro sequence showcasing excellent Amiga graphics and music. While the music can hold this quality level during the actual game, the graphics are a first downer. Content wise it's the most blatant Dig Dug ripoff you can imagine. It's really just that, there's not a single new idea in the whole game. What's really a shame though, is the poor playability of the game. There's so many flaws, I wonder if this was playtested at all. Let's start with the boulders, a key mechanic of Dig Dug. Gone is the happy camping underneath a boulder: In Dugger they fall immediately! That is, if they fall at all. Sometimes they're just stuck... Next major problem is the collision detection. You can't blow up ghosts. Sometimes you get already killed when an enemy is still 2-3 pixels away from you. On the positive side of that, sometimes they're hit by boulders 2-3 pixels away from them. Finally, and that's why you still have a chance to beat the first dozen of levels: The AI is mostly random, i.e. your adversaries are not really chasing you. They're more just aimlessly wandering around... I played over 20 levels in a row, I don't think the game has a real ending. Some future day the "Playing..." series may see another game from Linel in the form of "The Champ", but first it'll continue with something else. Greetings, Manuel

Well, there wasn't that much left to do and actually nothing left to fight. The last part of the game is more some kind of a switch riddle, where you have to open a dozen doors with thrice as many keys in the correct combinations. The best part of the end is when you find your fathers mech: The rest is just some more text and a little end screen. For a RPG this was quite short and also rather shallow, but I had a surprising lot of fun with it despite some flaws. Especially the story is great. Some future day the "Playing..." series may see its sequel in the form of "BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge", but first it'll continue with something different.

Ah, today I finally met a mad scientist And old friend of my dad actually and he told me the location of a secret weapons cache. Unfortunately all he gave me was a vague direction (south-east) and I wasn't sure what to look for, so I spent the better part of an hour running around on the map until I finally found it I think this is pretty near the end of the game, so I went back to the nearest town, maxing out the equipment of all of my party members for tomorrows expedition

Okay, I successfully managed to break into jail and get my mate out of it I also found another party member and managed to capture two more mechs, so now I'm commanding quite an impressive force. Still, repairs and ammunition usually eat up every money I find... Apart from that, there's nothing much to report from today - I basically just tried upping my parties firepower some more.

Hm... either this phase is supposed to be very hard - or I'm missing something essential! For the last two hours I've been running around with a single, broken mech and two more party members on foot. I don't have much credits, but what's a lot worse is that none is even selling stuff to me - everyone on the planet apparently hates me Well it happens that one member of our trio was a traitor, so maybe it's all been due to his presence in the party Tomorrows plan is to get another party member out of jail, which sounds like an interesting side quest

Hi there! Kinda fitting follow-up to Shattered Steel, here's the original mech game: When Activision managed to aquire the license, they asked Infocom to develop the first Battletech game. Considering that Infocom did nothing but plain text-adventures before that, this actually seemed like a pretty odd choice, even when Infocom passed on the actual execution to none other than Westwood. Making it an RPG might also look like a questionable choice from todays point of view, but we all know that Activision would launch the real Mechwarrior series soon enough after this one Well, once the shock of the horrible visual impressions had settled, I must say the game so far has actually been fascinating. Basically this first night I spent with training missions and learning the ropes, but I couldn't help to notice the attention to detail and the well scripted story, which I haven't seen that good in an 8-Bit RPG before. The good writing here sure is where the Infocom influence shines through. After the seventh mission the 'Citadel' where I was living was overrun by enemy raiders, so it'll be interesting where my journey continues tomorrow Greetings, Manuel

Great. Just let me know once you made a SNES game better than Demon's Crest. I'll be first in line to buy it. Meanwhile over at Capcoms, Firebrand got the frontpage spotlight today: Capcom Retro Idol #9 Demon's Crest

I can see hardly anything in this game because of the massive flicker everywhere Of course had I known there was a large breasted girl in bondage to be found somewhere... (Maybe worth another look! )

They're all three pretty good, the original GB game as well

Hm... I don't mind, it was just perfect right from the start

Today the spotlight finally is on Demons Crest! Here's the discussion and it should get a frontpage blog entry pretty soon!

Hi there! I've been waiting for this ever since I'm owning my Wii: http://wii.nintendolife.com/news/2010/05/sid_meiers_pirates_sets_sail_in_autumn That's just the perfect game for it!

Hi there! That's kinda ridiculus. I got my WM+ bundled with Red Steel 2 and it didn't even work long enough to finish the game About ~10 hours into the game I noticed that my nunchuck stopped working within the game. I tried all kinds of hardware combinations with another remote and nunchuck and tried to reconnect things half a dozen times without any success, so I'm now pretty certain something inside the WM+ died, most likely the pass through port for the nunchuck. Meh... I think I was pretty close to the end of the game, somehwere after a mine shaft, on the way to the endboss' headquarters already. I hope I'll get a replacement from amazon... Greetings, Manuel

I have played all of them already, except Super Paper Mario

Did you per chance already play a version of Enclave? How is it? I'm so hoping for Arc Rise Fantasia to arrive in Europe some day, it looks very cool.

So, since there were no objections I switched the topic over to Demon's Crest BTW: Todays Capcom Retro Idol game is the only other GnG universe title that made it into the show, NES Ghosts'n'Goblins.

It seems Enclave might make it in time, so I added it to my list

Yup, they're still around. They made half a dozen WiiWare games lately, like remakes of Arkanoid, Bubble Bobble or Rainbow Islands.

Oh noes! :o SGnG didn't even manage to enter the show! Here's a rundown of the 17 titles that made the cut: http://www.capcom-unity.com/jgonzo/blog/2010/04/26/capcom_unity_retro_idol:_your_top_17_games What do you all say, should we switch to support Demons Crest instead now? The GnG universe absolutely needs some love!

After cheating through one very hard mission two days ago, I managed to play through some more missions tonight, until I hit another brick wall in the ~26th. It isn't that much depending on luck, but this time you're lacking the fire power. It plays a bit like "Empire Strikes Back" for the 2600, just in 3D. You're supposed to stop three enemy supply convoys and well, I usually run out of ammo long before the third one arrives. Those At-At like walkers can take an incredible amount of hits until they fall appart - and you're supposed to stop 18 of them! So while this article started with shattered steel, it ended with shattered pride Anyway, it's a cool game despite its flaws, one of the best I've Interplayed so far. For some unrelated Interplay news, after Earthworm Jim, Clayfighter and Stonekeep they just announced a 4th franchise returning to life on WiiWare: Descent ;) Let's hope that they don't just continue announcing things, but also start delivering soon! Watch this space for "Blood & Magic", the next game I'll be Interplaying!

Unfortunately none of my plans worked out, Instead of a four week vacation around christmas I got called back to work after two weeks already from my boss. I remember I spent and evening or two going through all the great info provided by Hornpipe2, but didn't get far. All I remember is that I ran into some issues when trying to compile the war1tool.c mentioned above, mostly because I never worked with Cygwin before. (At work we use either Microsoft or Qt for C++ )

BWAAAAHHHHH! What a fucked up mission was that tonight?!? Are they nuts or what? I tried it for 2 hours on normal and another hour on easy, before I finally gave up. That's 20-30 tries. What an unfair bitch! At least when trying to find a solution for this I found a poor soulmate of mine, facing the same problems. Unlike me, he had a lucky run on the 9th try already though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEp18pQ2H4c In the end I learned from gamefaqs that to end this torture for today, I could just type <ENTER>imouttahere<ENTER> to win this mission nevertheless and so I did

Hm... I don't think we had this game over here... at least I've never seen it. Is it the one from Microprose? B.O.T.I.C.S. or so? I remember reading about that ================= Time sure flies when fighting an intergalactic war. I managed to defeat the Alien headquarters on Lanios III tonight and finally got to see another story movie. A pretty generic one I must say though, not half as impressive as the introduction I then got sent to help on another planet, where the same Aliens are attacking. Of course, with all my experience, I'm the best choice to defend mankind here as well