Clogging Up The DS

March 30, 2007 · Filed Under Articles · 4 Comments 

So, thanks to the generosity of Mr Smayds who kindly purchased me an R4 Cartridge for my DS, I’ve spent the past 24 hours rediscovering some games I really haven’t set enough time aside for of late. The ability to sit in bed and play through some of my favourite 8 bit games is a temptation too good to resist, so what else was I to do other than fire up SpeccyDS and see if some of the games that stole my formative years still stand up today?

3d Starstrike

3d Starstrike

It took far too much time for an official conversion of the Star Wars arcade machine to actually appear on the humble Speccy, not that many people actually cared too much - not considering we had 3d Starstrike to play with. Y’see, 3d Starstrike is without a doubt one of the fastest, most perfect arcade thrills you can get on an 8 bit machine. All the stages from Star Wars are relatively intact (although no Death Star visible for obvious reasons, we’d hate for Realtime to have gotten in trouble) with a little bit of tweaking. The Equatorial Duct (Trench Run) now ends with a pair of Reactor Cubes that have to be shot instead of the old Star Wars port on the floor lark which serves to add more tension to an already intense run.

Its easy to forget with time just how fast and frantic this game is, and its been 2 years since I last dug it out for a play (the last time was to come second place in the RR Score League with a piffly 1866800). Even on the DS screen I find myself ducking and weaving in my chair as I navigate the Duct section.

Here’s hoping that Uncles remake of Starstrike II maintains the pace and brutality that makes Realtimes efforts so darn playable.

3d Deathchase

3d Deathchase

Nenads excellent recent entry into the Calculator-me-do competition over at RR, Deathchase:UFO has only one criminal flaw in it. I can’t play it on my DS! So, with that in mind - its back to Mervyn Estcourts fantastic original. It may not be the prettiest of games, but none of that really matters when you’re belting through tree’s at high speed attempting to take out the other bikers.

There’s nothing cerebral about Deathchase, its gaming brilliance distilled down to its rawest essence and whilst I’d highly recommend knocking the volume down to a tolerable level as the squelch of the bike can grate after a while, its lost none of its magic in all these years.

Robotron 2084

Robotron 2084

…or the single biggest reason to be thankful that Stuart Campbell exists. Take a good look at that menu system for a moment, as there’s a reason I’ve chosen this screenshot rather than an ingame shot. See the final option before keyboard? Sinclair with 2 Joysticks. 2 Sticks on a Speccy. Fantastic. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it you lot with the arena shooters.

In all the years I had a Spectrum, I never had a single stick, never mind two. Not that it would have mattered as Robotron 2084 didn’t see the light of day until many years later, thanks in no small part to Stuart Campbell we can play it today. Whilst for bang ber second kicks, I still prefer Wild West Hero it hasn’t stopped Robotron getting a kicking on the DS for a good while.

So, yeah, I’m having a shitload of fun right now when I can prise the DS away from Mrs Bob long enough. Mega props and thanks to Smayds, and equal props to Craig for SpeccyDS which is getting an absolute hammering right now.

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Media Whorage

March 28, 2007 · Filed Under Articles · 6 Comments 

Oh, I’m such a slut.

G-Force is featured in this months premier issue of RG:CD, with a very nice write up. I’d love to say when the game will be finished but I’ve given up setting myself dates now as they don’t seem to work out given my hectic home life of late. However, the version featured on the CD is a little different to previous versions I’ve put out there. Only a little, and I can’t actually recall what changes there are… but hey ho. The diskzine is rather neat as well I might add and well worth a download.

I’ve also not long done an interview along with Stu, Smila and Scottige with regards to Jet Set Willy Online, which should be in issue 37 of Retro Gamer. I’ve been given a sneak preview of the draft and its a great little read, even if I do say so myself.  More fun than the interview, mind, was the screenshot session where a fair few all tumbled onto the server and had a good old romp around for a few hours. Should be interesting to see how many times Retro Gamer had to delete the word “cunt” from the chatbox for the magazine…

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Further Reading…

March 27, 2007 · Filed Under Articles · Comment 

My good friend Smayds has his opinion on the Geometry Wars debacle and the news post about Veck 2 over on his blog. Worth checking out some of his other work whilst you’re there (if you’ve not already whipped some of it from this very site before now)

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