Bionic Ninja on the ZX Spectrum 48K - Hmmmm....

Bionic Ninja was published on the ZX Spectrum by Zeppelin games in 1989.

It's a good name. What's not to like about being a ninja? And a bionic one at that! Kids would have loved that name. Is it a good game though? That's infinitely more important. Names can often be deceiving. Below is my video game play review. Have a watch!

There is a back story to the game here, but it falls into the normal of back stories so I'll summarise it.

"Aliens have attacked and taken over one of our human bases. Earth's solution to the problem is to send in a single robot ninja (that's you) to kick butt over multiple stages, be all round wonderful and generally save the day".

Sounds good.

You have three weapons which are selectable right from the start. There are no upgrades or powerups to be earned here. Weapons are, your fists, a ninja throwing star and a sword. The Ninja throwing stars are unlimited so you can throw them to your hearts content. Not sure why then you'd opt for the other weapons. Ninja Stars have the longest range. It's a no brainier. You're left thinking that maybe later the other weapons are more useful. They're not. Very weird.

The backgrounds, although detailed, are in black and white monochrome. Presumably this was to avoid colour clash problems. However, it also moves quite slowly making Bionic Ninja quite a bland experience.

There is no intro music and in-game sounds are very limited.

Enemies are fairly easy to defeat. The time given to complete the stage is very generous and there are no end-of-level bosses. The stage just ends. It's very underwhelming. No real hook to make you want to play on.

Bionic Ninja is one of those games where the coders had maybe originally planned too much for the 48K memory to handle and had to make a number of compromises. Unfortunately these compromises have ruined any chance of any addictive game play.

I would steer clear of this one.

Nick :o)

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Championship Sprint on the Commodore 64 from 1988

It's time to go eight bit racing! Top down eight bit racing. Some games of course age a bit better than others.

Championship Sprint was released on the Commodore 64 and published by Electric Dreams in 1988. It's the sequel to Super Sprint and ported from the highly popular arcade game from 1986. The full video game play review is below. Hosted on Youtube... although you can watch it directly in this page.

The aim of the game is pretty simple, which is always a good start for the people allergic to reading detailed instructions. You must race a blue car over several laps and finish in the top three of the four cars to progress to the next track.

Fire button accelerates you forward. You do have to ease off on some of the bends so some skill is involved. You can pass through your opponents like they were ghosts, but any collision with the scenery will cost you valuable time. A couple of collisions on the default settings and it's very unlikely you'll be able to catch up with the pack.

A random tornado will appear every so often. Drive into that and you car is sent hurtling in a random direction. Any damage to your car with collisions into the side can be repaired by driving over the yellow spanners which randomly appear on track.

After three races are complete, you have the option to upgrade your car.

The game comes with a track editor and the ability to change the speed of your opponents to match your personal skill level. The editor is easy to use and a kid back in the day may have got some creative enjoyment from it.

Based on that, the game should be fun right?

The experience I got from it was quite underwhelming. It doesn't quite deliver the wow factor. The allure that would have wanted me to play it again is sadly absent. A game from 1988 I would have expected a little more and for me, it will go down as a bog-standard racer.

I suspect you may have had to grow up with this game to feel much attachment to it. This game needs nostalgia power. Good to see for historical purposes. Check out the video review above!

Nick :o)

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Super Street Fighter II on the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive - FIGHT !!!

Prior to this game play review, I'd only ever experienced Street Fighter on the Commodore Amiga. This system was the one I grew up with after owning the ZX Spectrum.

The Amiga version came on four disks which you had to swap quite regularly and of course, you only had one fire button so a lot of the character special moves were very tricky. To get the best out of this, you really need multiple buttons.

Anyway... over 25 years later, I got to enjoy it on another platform, the Sega Mega Drive. Hooray!

Super Street Fighter II - The New Challengers was published on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive by Capcom in 1994. Below is my game play review type thing. I'll always be a bit of a noob with these! It seems to be the long established style we're going with. :P

Street Fighter II first appeared in the Arcades in 1991, was a huge success, then quickly ported to many home computer and console systems.

Super Street Fighter II - The New Challengers is an evolution of this game.

All twelve varied characters are carried over from the previous game plus four additional new characters for you to get to grips with. These are T-Hawk, Cammy, Dee Jay and Fei Long. Fei Long is the obligatory Bruce Lee type character that these games suddenly liked to include.

The number of matches in single player mode are the same to complete the game. You will face eight random opponents and then have to defeat the adept Grand Masters. The Masters are Vega, Segat, M Bison and Balrog. Along the way are the usual expected Bonus stages involving smashing up some poor person's car.... we never find out who it belongs to. They won't be pleased.

The sound has been re-scored since the previous incarnation. Each character has their own unique location which is represented in the background design. Also some of the characters Special Moves have been either added to or refined.

Admittedly I was a bit of an amateur button-masher with this game, but if you put in the practice Super Street Fighter II - The New Challengers is an addictive and rewarding game which you will just have to complete using every character available.

I much preferred it to the Commodore Amiga version I owned back in the day even taking nostalgia into account. Using three controller buttons was an improvement over just one, but to get the full experience, I think you'd ideally need an eight button controller.

Check out my video review above hosted on Youtube. Good game!

Nick :o)

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Trivia Game Show - Commodore Amiga - Test your knowledge!

We review quite a lot of games on the channel. Very often running into some oddballs. The channel has now reviewed over 300 Commodore Amiga games, so it was perhaps inevitable they one day, I would bump into Trivia Game Show. Have a watch of the video review hosted on YouTube. Oh dear,,,

Trivia Game Show is a rather unusual looking game published by Impressions in 1991.

Other Amiga quiz games covered in the past include, Mike Read's Computer Pop Quiz, Emlyn Hughes Arcade Quiz, A Question of Sport and Red Dwarf Trivia Quiz Championship Edition.

Red Dwarf Trivia Quiz was a bit of a disappointment as I'm a huge Red Dwarf fan, but I don't think this was commercially released or even a licensed game, so we can perhaps let that one off.

Trivia Game Show is designed for one to six human players. Although admittedly, there's nothing to stop you being more than one quiz show contestant. I certainly did in the review. Go for it!

The aim is to correctly answer an increasing number of subject questions within a minute. Not sure who is working the clock on this though. Think it could well be broken. This does often lead to a bit of panic in the last few moments.

A Johnathan Ross lookalike presents the show. He looks like he has spent some time in a lunatic asylum and is just one step away from turning into the joker from Batman. Hooray!

The most fun is at the beginning selecting a contestant and entering their name and occupation. This part is totally irrelevant to the quiz however. Awesome!

It's multiple choice. You need to get speed reading and speed clicking here. Round 1, you have to answer 2 questions correctly within the minute period. If successful you then pick a different subject and need to answer 3 questions correctly. The challenge increases by 1 extra correct answer per round to qualify.

There are some top prizes on offer too! Well... that's a lie. I come away with two packs of playing cards and a garden gnome. Don't think I can retire on this.

Trivia Game Show is ok for one or two plays for novelty value, then it's very unlikely you'll play it ever again.

Nick :o)

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Wriggler on the ZX Spectrum 48K

When it comes to weird and wonderful games, the ZX Spectrum has everything else beat. At time of typing, I've now reviewed 450 Speccy games and it is always a delight when I stumble upon some weirdness I never before knew existed.

And so we find Wriggler. A game published by Romantic Robot in 1985, a company better known for their hardware than software accomplishments. Have a watch of the full game play review below. It is watchable either through this blog screen or clicking through to YouTube.

The character you control is a worm... or is it snake?  Or a maggot?  I'm happier thinking it's a worm. A worm is a lot more wholesome.

Wriggler is a unique maze game. The idea is simple. You must wriggle your way from the Garden, through to the Scrub land, through to the Underground and then to the Mansion. Sounds simple eh? Well... it's a substantially large maze consisting of 250 locations. The maze is also full of energy sapping nasties. One of these nasties is a rather large spooky looking spider which is the stuff of nightmares. Ok then... this makes it trickier.

Wriggler is a really well designed game with charming graphics and beautiful animations of the main character and varied enemies. I particularly like the underground fly. A Map here would be really beneficial. Any contact with enemy insect life depletes your energy, but this can be replenished by picking up a number of items including Iced Buns and Cups of Tea. Worms love tea right?

You start the game alongside three other fellow worms who seem to have the same objective as you to get to the Mansion. This gives you hope then. Without a Map, you can opt to follow one of them. They may not all take the same route. There are several ways through the maze. If you fall too far behind, those sneaky fellows may well give you the slip.

Playing Wriggler is a very pleasurable experience. The action moves at a leisurely pace and I found it to be very relaxing... apart from when that spider showed up!

Nick :o)

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Master Blaster - ZX Spectrum 48K - A Cover Tape

Back in the day, when a ZX Spectrum magazine come with a Cover Tape sellotaped to the front, I always got a bit excited. Staring at it as a kid in the newsagent, the mag was just screaming out, Buy Me! My mind just raced. What greatness was inside? How good was the free game on it?

Well... more often than not, it was a bit rubbish. There was a lot of disappointment back then. That's why the game was often on a Cover Tape in the first place and not a commercial release. There were exceptions though. Thankfully this can be said for Master Blaster given away with Crash Magazine in 1990. Click on my video review below hosted on YouTube.

Master Blaster is a cracking little vertical shooter. Very hard at first, but practice is rewarded as you slowly learn the enemies wave patterns. Those aliens do tend to come at you kamikaze very fast. It's just a question of being in the right place at the tight time. Once you've learnt that, you could probably make you way without having to shoot hardly any of them.

Many Shoot 'um ups on the speccy of this era and before had very monochrome graphics, but not so with Master Blaster. The game is awash with colour and some of the background is even animated giving the game so amazing style. The attention to detail in all the graphics is outstanding.

You control a ship that looks very much like the USS Enterprise from Star Trek and you can tell that movie franchise has had a healthy influence over the games creation. The first end of level boss you come to will look very much a Klingon Warbird. Bosses after this tend to go their own way and all are impressively animated.

If it is so good, why was this not released as a commercial game then?

I'm not sure of the answer to that one. Maybe by 1990, the author Cybadyne, thought the game would do better through a popular magazine than sitting on a shelf somewhere waiting for people to buy. 1990 was quite late in the Spectrum's run.

As far as cover tape games go, this is one of the best ones I've come across and well worth tracking down. An awesome shooter !!!

Nick :o)

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GTA V - Actually doing Missions... oh dear

GTA V by Rockstar games. I'm sure you've heard of it. It's one crazy place.

In the game you eventually can control any one of three main characters in this sprawling open-world. They are Michael, Franklin and Trevor. At the start, Michael is the only playable one. The others need to be unlocked.

Admittedly, up until now, I haven't really got the best out of this masterpiece. Never perfected my skills or the controls, never experienced the true Los Santos and all it has to offer. Which is a shame. Most the time I have just run around the map as Michael (the start character) in the same clothes he starts with, just generally causing mayhem.

Missions are where the real action is at. Missions are where the character stories slowly introduce you to the finities of the game. Teaches you new skills. Makes the World become more alive. Thought it was high-time I started doing them then! Check out the video below.  Noob alert !!!!!!!

Father / Son : If you complete this mission, you unlock Franklin as a playable character. I think there are other missions also which would achieve the same thing.

Basically, your stupid lazy Son, Jimmy, has attempted to sell your boat to get some much needed cash. The deal has gone bad, and the Boat has instead been stolen and driven off on a big truck. Great. Jimmy phones Micheal (that's you) and lets him know. So... now a big chase ensues and this is where you jump into the action... or try to in my case!

Taking your wife Amanda's sports car, which I hope is heavily insured for damage, you drive to the seafront with Franklin and make chase along the road. You must get the car close enough for Franklin to climb out of your car and onto the boat being pulled along. There is traffic getting in the way everywhere making it particularly treacherous for someone with super noobie skills.

Once Frankin is aboard, you then have a shoot a thug off him from your moving car. Yes... I did say moving. Is super tricky. The Boat boom suddenly swings out with you son Jimmy holding onto it! You must drive underneath and catch the fool.

It's not over yet.

Once you've caught Jimmy, you then need to drive to the rear of the boat again so Franklin can jump back aboard.It's a complicated business and this is one of the early missions! Think I could be in a bit of trouble here. :P

What happens next? Am I succesful. Well... I'll let you watch the vid. Los Santos is a dangerous place... but of course, that's why we love it.

Nick :o)  

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