This Book is Sweet

Sure, some of it is a little obvious, but it's nicely produced and brings back lots of good memories.  Be warned, it is drastically tilted toward modern day consoles.

Here it is at amazon...  Link

Game of the Day - Hat Trick

Simply designed games like Hat Trick depend almost entirely on the gameplay/control mech.  Playing Hat Trick is a good time because of how fun it is to control your player on the ice.  You skate down the puck, pick it up, shoot and score.  Meanwhile your opponent, is chasing you and the puck down the whole time.  There is a momentum/slide-on-the-ice effect that makes the control particularly enjoyable to play, they emulated the lack of friction on the ice well.  Speaking of ice effect, a cool little touch is that you see your skate marks on the clean ice as the game progresses - crack out the Zamboni!  (On a side note, I once stole a Zamboni and drove it around the hockey rink when I was in college - how many people can make that claim?)

You also control your goalie (simultaneously).  He simply goes back and forth in net.  So you have to judge when the puck is close to your net whether to use the control to get your player to the puck, or pay attention to controlling your goalie.

It's one of those games that is extremely fun with two players.  And if the game is tied, it automatically goes into O.T.  Good stuff.

Game of the Day - Alien Syndrome

Alien Syndrome is an Omni Shooter with fun "squishy alien" type graphics.  You play one of two characters and go through different areas shooting the squishy aliens and rescuing comrades.  You have a time limit or the whole place blows up.  Within the time limit you have to rescue a predetermined number of comrades and then high-tail it to the exit.  If you do this, you are promptly rewarded with a Boss Squishy Alien to confront.

There are lots of power-ups, your weapon changes and each weapon type can be powered up.  There are also alcoves all over the maze where you can view a map so you can see where you still need to go.

Reminds me a little of Ghostbusters.  Fun graphics and REALLY chaotic gameplay.

Sports Poll Result

Punch-Out won the battle of the Sports games - Track & Field finished second of the 5 choices.  Check out the results on the "Previous Polls" page.

Game of the Day - Skull & Crossbones

Skull & Crossbones is a weird little game and more importantly, lots of fun.  It's a platformer that looks like a Saturday morning cartoon.  You control a pirate going after some enemies that stole your booty (insert your own joke here).  You collect health and wealth.  Coins collected increase the power of your sword.  You can dig to find additional gold.

What make the game unique is its control mechanism.  There are two buttons: Sword & Turn.  The sword button is used to attack the enemy.  The turn button makes you face the other way.  When you attack with the sword button, the key is that you use the joystick to control your attack (where you are striking and combos).  You use the turn button to face the other way to attack opponents coming from all directions (although you can strike behind yourself while facing either direction).  It's the swordplay controlled by the JS that makes the game a little different than others and lots of fun.  Oh, and as you take hits, you get all bloody - sweet.

Two can play simultaneously, you compete to collect the booty.

Game of the Day - Sega Naomi Hardware

The game of the day is not a game, but a bunch of games.  I've recently had the chance to play Naomi games on Demul and Makaron - games I never played in the arcade (I'm a geezer after all).  And holy crap are most of them awesome.  I'm only knee deep into most of them, and many have been ported to various home consoles, but the set of great games is highly impressive.

I've been enjoying lots, but here are a few that I thought were cool...

Cannon Spike
DOA 2
Guilty Gear Series
Radilgy Noir
Toy Fighter
Virtua Tennis
Zombie Revenge
Chaos Field
Melty Blood
Jingy Storm
Spikers Battle

As I said, lots of these have a version I've played elsewhere and many have very close (if not perfect) ports onto Dreamcast, but as a collection, they are great.  And if you haven't played a lot of them (in this incarnation), take a crack at Demul or Makaron.

Post-Its in the window of a Seattle Building

Game of the Day - Astro Blaster

Astro Blaster is an old-school vert shooter.  More folks may be familiar with it than the usual GOTD, but it's a little more obscure than some, so I wanted to give it some P.R.

Your ship fires at a wide variety of enemies coming from the sky.  Many of which seem to be tweaking from a bad trip with crystal meth.  You have two buttons: fire and warp.  The fire button does what you think, and the warp button (once per ship) slows everything down for a short period of time (and counts it down so you know when things are going back to normal).

Two other interesting additions... You have a fuel gauge and you need to make sure you finish the round/wave before your fuel runs out.  You can get more fuel during a wave by shooting certain specific enemies.  You also replenish all your fuel between waves with a docking sequence that frankly, I could do without (it's easy and pointless).  The other addition is a weapon temperature gauge.  If you fire your weapon too much too fast, it will overheat (you can see the temp rise on the gauge).  If it overheats. you will not be able to fire until it cools for a few seconds.  This gives the game much more strategy as you can't just fire ad infinitum.

Those extras and some unpredictable enemies make Astro Blaster today's GOTD.

Game of the Day - Viewpoint

Viewpoint owes its heritage to Zaxxon.  It's the same 3/4 isometric view.  And your ship flies in the same kind of direction.  One big difference is that in Zaxxon you are able to fly up & down (elevation) as well as left and right, wherein in Viewpoint, rather than up & down, you simply push forward faster or pull back - there is no 3D element to the gameplay.  Advantage Zaxxon.  Conversely, graphics and action and satisfying gameplay - advantage Viewpoint.  Though the graphics are a little simplistic, these are some of my fav graphics in any shooter.  They are just very clean, colorful and unified.  It adds a lot to the gameplay.  Also, the action is very strong; you are always moving in all directions and there is a wide variety of things to shoot.  There are even some puzzles - like in the first stage, you have to fire at a lever that turns to open a gate that you need to fly through (you can't shoot your way through the gate, you have to shoot the lever several times to open it).

Controls are simple.  Two buttons - one for fire (and hold it for charged fire) and one for bomb (there are 3 different types of bombs to acquire).  A few power-ups are smattered around.

All in all, a very polished game.

New Poll - Vertical Shooters... Old or New?

Take the poll on the right, be part of history!

QuarterZone Shots - Tron

Game of the Day - Andro Dunos

 

Andro Dunos is a nice all-around horz shooter (side-scrolling).  It's a lot of what you expect from the genre with good action, nice graphics, power-ups and bosses.  Andro Dunos just does it better than most.

The one thing a like special about it is the weaponry.  As you see from the pics, you can have up to 4 diff weapons equipped at one time, and you get power-ups specific to each weapon.  The upper part of the screen tells you (numerically) what power-up level each weapon is currently at.  The really cool part is that you can switch this configuration at any time by pressing a button, and all 4 weapon types change to something else.  It's a little hard to see in the bottom pic, but plyr 1 & plyr 2 each have 4 diff weapons to use - and they can change this at any time (all four change together).  It amps up the strategy in the diff stages and with the diff bosses.

Go check it out.

Game of the Day - Desert Breaker

Desert Breaker bears more than a slight resemblance to Mercs and others of the genre (a genre I call "Omni Shooters").  But I don't care how derivative a game is as long as it's fun and puts its own stamp on the gameplay/graphics.

You choose your character and enter the battle.  Three buttons and a JS control the action.  The buttons are Fire, Run, & Spcl Weapon/Grenade.  The "Run" button is particluarly cool because you dash like the flash for an instant and wind up a good distance from where you started - better yet, during the run you are invincible, so you can use it to escape hairy situations.

Gameplay is typical but that doesn't mean it isn't fun.  Really nice visuals, lots of good enemies, serious JS jerking action and loads of weaponry make this a great entry into the genre.

Game of the Day - Colony 7

Colony 7 is a little like Missile Command.  You destroy incoming enemies from ground based guns before the guns and your cities are blown up.  Instead of incoming missiles, they are ships shooting at/bombing you.  You have to destroy the ships, and you do this by moving the cross-hair and firing your weapon.  The big difference between this and Missile Command is that you control the cross-hair with a joystick, not a trackball.  The weapon automatically fires from both your guns simultaneously.  If one of your guns takes direct fire, it blows up and you only fire from the other.  If you lose both, you are a goner.  Also, you have to protect your cities from fire.  They are below a little protective belt/shield that takes the enemy fire first and gets chipped away.  Once holes are exposed, your cities and fuel cells (I'll explain) are vulnerable.  You get more bonus at the end of a round with more cities left (like MC).

You have 3 buttons, but NOT like MC.  One button fires your guns.  The 2nd button (Mega-Blaster) creates a temp shield that kills enemies in its event horizon as it expands.  The 3rd button (Eradicator) is a super-bomb that annihilates everything on the screen (once per round).  The Mega-Blaster can be used up to 3 times (once per fuel cell as shown with your cities), but if you lose a fuel cell to enemy bombs, you can no longer use the associated Mega-Blaster.  Each fuel cell turns blue once it has been exhausted (Mega-Blaster fired).

Another cool touch is that the game always informs you of how many enemies remain before the round ends.

Graphics are sparse but don't take away from the fun.

Arcade Wars III

Make your choice among the sports games in the poll on the right.

The last Arcade Wars was as close as it could get...  R-Type won with 22 votes, then Pac-Man & the 1941 series with 21 each.  Finally, the fighters came in last with MK getting 15 votes and the Street Fighter series getting 13.  You can see the chart and all poll results by clicking the "previous polls" tab near the top of the page.

Game of the Day - Battle Chopper

Battle Chopper looks cutesy - but it constantly kicks my ass.  The game is a side-scrolling (most of the time) shooter where you collect crystals for money and use the money to get power-ups.  The twist here is that you have to shoot the landscape to expose the crystals and then collect them (sometimes they fall).  Then, when you have enough $$$, you collect weapon power-ups by flying into them as they are buried in the environment.  You can see them, but they aren't collectable until you've collected enough $$$ by collecting the crystals first.  Then, the weapon-ups light up and you can fly into them and they power you up.

The difficulty level is very high as the crap just keeps on your ass.

The other interesting thing is that one button fires your gun (left or right depending on how you are facing) and the other button fires a missile straight up (the way you blast away at crystals).  BUT, there are also crystals below you and it took me a few minutes to figure out how to blast them (since the missile button fires straight up).  The answer is, if you land on the ground (or lowest level of the screen), the missile button drops bombs on the ground instead -- thus blasting away at the crystals.

Graphics are cute but nothing special.  The fun here is in the challenge and the constant moving to stay away from the pesky enemies.

Poll results - Why don't you have more games

To see the chart, click on the "Previous Poll Results" tab above.  Not surprisingly, $$$ was the number one issue (a little more than half the voters checked it) - narrowly beating out space.

Almost 20% said they can't find what they want... Bummer.  11% said they don't want any more (yeah, right).

Pac-Man Stomach Troubles...

Game of the Day - Armored Warriors

Armored Warriors is a side scrolling beat-em-up platformer with lots of weapons.  You can start as any of four characters who then put on some whacky armor and it's off to battle.  The fun here is in the very good graphics, solid gameplay and variety of weapons and power-ups.  The graphics are particularly good and detailed when you use the drastically diff kinds of weapons (drill, guns, saw, etc).  Also, you fight against other big armored dudes and tiny little men that you can steamroll.. nice.  You can gain power-ups and new weapons all over the place, the weapons attach to your armor in different ways.  Sometimes, when you kill an opponent, his weapons fly off and you can pick them up and add them to yours.

There are three buttons to go along with a joystick.  The buttons are direct attack (punch), jump and weapon attack (your artillery can be limited).

Colorful and creative stuff, one of my favorites of this genre.

Game of the Day - ESP Ra. De.

Just go play it... now!

While I vacillate some, ESP Ra.De. is most frequently at the top of the list of my favorite vertical shooters.  It's ridawesome (ridiculously awesome).  You play as one of 3 characters.  Of course they all have diff firepower.  And you even start on diff stages based on which char you choose.  You have three buttons, normal fire (and hold), small bombs (limited but plentiful) and special attack (hold button for bigger attack that uses more energy).  There's bonuses and stuff to collect and everything you could think of in a game like this (except direct rescues - I'll have another Vert Shooter GOTD with rescues soon).

It seems a little obvious to write this now, but the graphics, control, scoring and overall gameplay are all off the charts.  It's just a home run in every way.

Interestingly, it's successor - ESPGaluda was not functional in the previous version of MAME I was playing - but now I'm playing the latest and greatest.  So, I'll have to see how it and Ketsui and a couple of other newer shooters compare, but it's gonna be hard to supplant ESP Ra.De. at the top of the totem.

Game of the Day - Rafflesia

So I looked up "Rafflesia", and it's apparently a type of parasitic flower.  What the fuck's with that?  Nice name marketing dept!

Anyhoo, the game is great fun.  It is a 1986 vert shooter in the vein of Astro Blaster with some Galaga thrown-in and some other crap.  You fire from your ship at all kinds of strange things coming your way.  You collect some of the stuff flying at you to power-up your weapon.  Pretty traditional stuff.  You actually have two buttons - one is the normal fire, the other is rapid fire.  Use of the rapid fire diminishes your energy (there's a gauge on the bottom of the screen), and when you are out of energy, you can't use the rapid fire until it builds up again.  Strangely, this is one of the first games I've ever looked up in KLOV that had an error in the control info on KLOV - it says that there is only one button.

The fun here is in the variety and craziness of the enemies.  They all look good or funny or goofy and there are MANY different patterns/ways they come at you.  Some of the enemies fly and I mean FLY right at you, and you only have a split second to react.  The variety of the attacks and the cute graphics make this game a cut above the hordes that play like it.

Console Ownership Poll Results

You can see the chart on the "previous poll results" page (click the tab above).

The NES eeked out first place - just ahead of PSX, SNES, Genesis, Wii & PS2.  Of course Neo-Geo and 3DO pulled up the rear.

Modern systems:  Wii killed Xbox 360 which in turn killed PS3.

Game of the Day - Horizon

Horizon seems to be a fairly obscure game.  It is essentially Moon Patrol with a 3D element thrown in, but with lots more action.  You control a ground based vehicle with a JS.  It is a side scrolling game where you moved the JS left/right to slow down or speed up.  You fire with the button and it simultaneously fires up (at stuff in the sky) and forward (at stuff on the ground).

But, in addition, you can also move the JS up and down which causes your vehicle to move up and down the screen.  But rather than being able to move anywhere up and down in the foreground, you move is restricted to three tracks that you jump between.  So if you move up and you are on the middle track, you jump to the upper track, etc.  Meanwhile, attacks come from the sky and at you on the ground from all three tracks.  You have to jump between tracks to avoid attacks and obstacles while firing to kill things above and in front of you.  you can fire backwards, so when enemies appear on one of the tracks behind you, you have to maneuver to get behind them so you can blast them.

It's an older games with subpar graphics, but the design is unique and the action is constant.  You are always moving the JS U/D/L/R and watching attacks from above and on the ground - it' lots o' fun.

Strangely, the MAME info says there are two buttons and so does some of the other info I've found on the Interweb (some info says only one button).  I can't seem to detect anything a second button does.  And the game is so obscure, I can't find a pic of the machine or actual control panel anywhere.  So if you happen to know anything about a second button having some purpose, let me know.

Game of the Day - Dragon Blaze

 

Another great shooter from Psikyo.  Dragons in all their glory... Several to choose from.

There are three buttons used on the game (Fire - Dragon Bomb - Dragon Shoot), and as you can imagine they do diff things based on which Dragon you are and your collected power-ups.  The graphics are redonkulous and the bosses are spectacular.  You couldn't ask for much more on a quasi-modern (post 80s) arcade shooter.  There's not a lot to tell you about that you wouldn't rather discover and be amused by on your own, just know that for the genre, it's among the best.

New Poll - Why don't you have more games?

Choose your answers in the poll on the right...

Retro Looking Arcade Game Posters

These are pretty cool - from ThinkGeek.com

http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/posters/de7f/?srp=2

Game of the Day - Liberator

If Freddy Krueger reached down the throat of Missile Command and turned it guts inside-out, you'd have Liberator.  Or, another way of saying it, if Missile Command walked in the the hall of mirrors at a carnival, it'd see some twisted version of itself in the curved mirror, and that would look like Liberator.

Liberator plays just like Missile Command, use move the trackball around the screen and launch missiles from your ships to destroy the flying enemy missiles and ships.  But there are some differences from MC.  First, your ships are in the four corners of the screen.  They are what you have to protect, like the cities in MC.  Second, the enemies come at you from the rotating planet in the middle.  Missiles are lunched from enemy bases on the planet.  You have to destroy these bases on the planet to end the level.  Meanwhile, you have to destroy the missiles they have launched before they destroy your ships.  So, focus on the bases as much as you can, but protect those ships.  Third, you have shields.  Limited use shields protect your ships from incoming missiles for a second if it's too late to destroy them with fire.  The shields are operated by button #2.  Also, you only have one fire button (unlike MC) and your missiles are always launched from the nearest ship.

Another interesting aspect of the game is that the planet with the enemy bases rotates.  So not all the bases are visible at all times, and you have to wait for the planet to rotate to bring the bases back around.  There's more stuff to discover but you get the picture.  The graphics suck, but it doesn't matter.

Old Photo Found of Q*bert

Been trying to prove for years that Q*bert is immortal.  This helps...

Deadwood, South Dakota   -- circa 1877

Game of the Day - Super Gem Fighter Mini-Mix

Kids beating the crap out of each other  - check!
Long, crazy game title - check!
Lots of moves to master - check!
Fewer buttons to master than other fighters for us novices - check!
Bright, colorful scenes - check!
Fun fighting animation - check!
Action up the wazoo - check!

SGFMM is a fighting game with child-like versions of some of your fav characters from SF2, SF3, Darkstalkers and others.

Big caveat here:  I am NOT an expert at playing fighting games, so all this is from a novice point of view.  The more important combos/supers/defensive moves/etc. are often lost on me in fighting games.  That being said, here's more about the game...

You only have 3 buttons: punch, kick & special.  But there are lots of combos and lots of special moves.  You collect colored gems that match up with certain moves.  The gems only power the moves that match that color and the more you collect of that color, the more power the move has.  There is also a display of how to make the move right on the associated color block on the bottom of the screen.  You collect the gems from treasure chests during fighting, from landing blows that cause your opponent to cough them up and from other sources.  Obviously, you can cough them up, too, when your opponent lands a blow.

Despite the compact size of the characters, the fighting is fast, furious and has lots of variety with great animation.  Very imaginative.

Game of the Day - Tac/Scan

 

Excuse me if the following sounds incoherent, but Tac/Scan is a little hard to explain.  You control a fleet of ships at the bottom middle of the screen with a spinner/dial.  They don't really move from their spot, they simply rotate left/right (clockwise & counter) in unison.  You fire at ships coming down the screen in a quasi-3D perspective - all ships firing together every time.  The spinner is used to fly left or right, but your ships don't really move, the background/enemies/environment does in response.  Kind of like a first-person shooter with a 3rd person view.

As your ships take hits, they disappear and your fleet becomes smaller, but you can add ships back in by hitting the 2nd button.  You start with a stock of extra ships that aren't part of your flying fleet of 7.  So, as you drop down in the number of ships, you have a backstock to add to the empty places in your armada by hitting a button.  You can do this at anytime: when you lose your first ship, or when you are down to one, or any number in between.  So you can play the game with any number in your armada, 1-7.  You can always add a ship with a button as long as you still have some in stock (ships remaining are indicated in the upper left corner).

There are some really unique things here...  First, if you lose the last ship in your armada, the game is over, EVEN if you have ships in stock - so don't let all your armada die before adding ships back in.  Second, you can only have seven missile in the air at any give time.  So if you have seven in your armada and fire, you CAN fire again, but the previous missiles will disappear.  So be patient when firing, let the missiles get to the enemy.  The fact that you can have seven missiles flying becomes an interesting tactic when you have less than seven ships in your armada.  For instance, if you only have 3 ships flying, you can fire twice (only 6 missiles) without any missiles disappearing - if you have only one ship flying, you can fire at something seven times without the farthest one yet disappearing.  It makes it sometimes advantageous to not add your stock ships to your armada immediately.  Third, you have the opportunity to capture bonus ships that come at you and add them to your armada.

What I've described is only the first stage.  The second stage changes the perspective to flatter and more 3D.  The 3rd stage is simply flying thru some 3D hoops and obstacles (it's stupid slows down the other fun of the game).  Then the stage type repeats.

You won't ever find another game like Tac/Scan.

Game of the Day - The Punisher

The Punisher is a well done classic beat-'em up.  It's plays a lot like others of the genre, but I particularly like the graphics, gameplay, weapons and other details in The Punisher.  The graphics are very comic-booky (even with talk bubbles) and the weapons are plentiful and draw blood (nice splattering).

There are a many good move combos despite there being just two buttons (punch/fire and jump).  If you push both buttons simultaneously, you to a special circular sweep (go Karate Kid!).  If you jump in the air and then you push both buttons, you throw a bomb/grenade (you have a limited supply enumerated in the lower left corner).

Lots of enemies. color and weapons make for lots of fun.

Game of the Day - Black Tiger

I just found Black Tiger recently.  It wasn't even on my recent list of best platform games, but it will be now.  It's a follow-up to Ghost & Goblins & Ghouls & other stuff, but without the letter "G".

I haven't yet played it too deeply, but decided to list it as today's GOTD because of the great graphics, nice level design and responsive controls.  Sometimes games like this are too slow for me to enjoy.  The weapon or jump action can seem like slow motion or delayed in these kinds of games, but that's not the case with Black Tiger.  Blast away with your weapons and jump and climb all over the place in a blink.  There is much more vertical stuff here than in the G & G games and it makes for a less linear experience.  Another nice touch is the collection of coins leading to areas where you can meet a shopkeeper to buy power-ups for you weapons and potions and skills.

That's all I'm gonna write now because I have to go back and play it some more.

Coolio Light Switch

Saw this on Etsy and ordered one.  Don't have it yet.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/74059377/working-arcade-light-switch

New Poll - Which consoles have you owned?

Check all the consoles you've ever owned in the column on the right.  Wondering how popular each of them were among the blog readers.

Previous poll results now have their own page, just click on the tab at the top that says "Previous Poll Results".

Game of the Day - Gyruss

I usually try to choose games a little less popular as my games of the day.  (It'd be stupid to have my GOTD be Pac-Man and Donkey Kong all the time).  I know lots of you have played Gyruss, but recently I've talked to several guys who haven't, so...

KLOV describes Gyruss as Tempest meets Galaga and that couldn't be more accurate.  Gyruss is a great game from '83 that stays challenging today.  You command a ship that travels in a circle around the screen, firing shots inside the circle towards the middle of the screen - just like Tempest, but without the tubes to define the pathways.  Meanwhile, enemies materialize near the middle and take their positions inside the middle of the screen while you try to blast them.  They appear on the screen like Galaga and then fly in formation towards you (like Galaga and Tempest).  You move around the perimeter of the circle you are melded to, blasting everything.  There is even a way to get a double shot (like Galaga) and after every few stages there is a benign "Challenge Stage" (like Galaga).

If you haven't played it, and this doesn't exactly make sense, it will as soon as you begin.  Lots of action and lots of fun.  Play it.

New Pages

There are now dedicated pages in the blog for Games of the Day (all listed chrono) and Previous Poll results.  Simply click the tab of the page you want to go to under the title at the top of the page.

Game of the Day - Elevator Action Returns

I never really got into the original Elevator Action, but the 1994 sequel has all kinds of good stuff going for it.  In Elevator Action Returns you play one of three characters exploring buildings and other locales, collecting power-ups and items to complete your missions, and blowing away tons of bad guys.

The graphics are gritty, grainy and great.  They capture what they were trying to do in a very appealing way.  Also, the satisfying sound of gunshots and other ambient sounds are done very well leading to an overall immersive environment.  You go into red doors to collect items for your mission and blue doors to collect power-ups.  There are two buttons: fire and jump - but you have a third option... throwing grenades by pushing both buttons at once.  The levels are well laid out and they vary enough to keep it interesting.  They also put in fun little things like getting crushed by the elevators if you happen to be caught under one when it comes down (or using one to crush an enemy the same way).

A very nice sequel.