Mirror's Edge (XBox 360)

I missed the first half of the Arsenal vs Man Utd match for this... not something I'd do lightly, given that I love my footy.

Just as well it was, on balance, worth it.

Mirror's Edge, it appears, is a very polarising game. That's probably what comes of being so strikingly original. It looks very different... very clean, sharp and bright. And it plays differently to almost anything else. It's a first-person platform game.


Right a bit... right a bit... woooooaaahh! Eeeeasyyyyyy!

That's a concept that takes a while to get to grips with. It's a bit frustrating at first... actually, it's very frustrating at first... as you mis-judge jumps and timing, and crash to the rooftop, or worse, all the way to the ground. It's quite unnerving to see Faith scrabbling for a handhold on the way to a sickening crash...

And then there's the combat, or rather, non-combat. This is not a game where you're supposed to beat up all that stand in your way. Instead, Mirror's Edge encourages you to avoid or disarm. You're a Runner... so run! It's difficult, and does put you off initially, but again, the fact that it's different means it's worth persevering and it feels a little more rewarding when you start to get the hang of it.


They shouldn't encourage you to play in a construction yard... it'll only lead to trouble.

I like the way the game helps you out in the beginning... progress depends on finding your way quickly across the rooftops, which is really hard. So all objects of use are coloured red, so that you know at a glance where you need to go. It's a gentle piece of handholding... knowing where you have to go doesn't make it any easier to pull off the moves required to get there. Quite clever.

I'm not saying I'm particularly good at Mirror's Edge... not yet. But I'm sufficiently intrigued by the concept to want to carry on. It's rare to find a game these days that's different enough to grab your attention from the off... kudos to Mirror's Edge for managing that.

TLL: Tornado Low Level (ZX Spectrum)

Well, my first ever poll to decide which game I would play has ended in a tie. The only surprise is that it wasn't a tie with one vote each! The first game I've gone for is TLL: Tornado Low Level on the Spectrum. I remember seeing the box for this in a friend's house years ago, but never playing it. Apparently, it's quite a well-loved game!

TLL is a fairly simple concept: fuel up your fighter plane, take off, bomb/take out your targets and land. I remember playing Harrier Attack which was a similar idea, but was a side-scroller. TLL has an overhead view, but it features depth, so you have to learn whether you can go under or over certain obstacles.


The black target on the grass is what you're after... but you'll have to drop your altitude to hit it...

That takes some learning, and it's easier said than done. And to make it more difficult, and to make sure the game earns its title, to take out your targets you have to fly at low level.

Sometimes this isn't so bad... the target will be in a field or open plot of land, and you can take your time circling and lining it up. But others will be near houses, trees or powerlines, and these will call for some fancy flying if you want to prevail.

That seems to be it... I wasn't good enough to get past the first level to see how or if things changed. But in that time I could see that TLL was a decent enough game to be worthy of the reverence it's held in. I could definitely imagine it eating up a lot of any Speccy owner's time.

Shane Warne Cricket (Sega Megadrive)

I haven't played many sports games for this blog... odd, seeing as I like a good sports game as much as anyone. So what better way to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon than with a nice game of cricket, in the company of everyone's favourite tubby Aussie lothario?

This is not a game that I was aware existed. I certainly can't remember seeing it on the Megadrive shelves in games stores, and I never read a review. Still, videogame cricket is videogame cricket... it's quite hard to mess it up, but it's also quite hard to make it different, or even good.


Thorpe employs the famous "Gower waft", with familiar results.

Picking England in a one day match against Australia, I settled down for a nice gentlemanly sporting afternoon. And it started off in a sedate fashion, with the computer opponent letting me settle in and get my bearings. I wasn't scoring runs, but I wasn't getting out, either, and I was somewhat getting to grips with the controls.

And then my opponents unleashed hell.

It wasn't that they did anything spectacular... just line and length in the corridor of uncertainty, with a few balls dead on the stumps. And as with any cricket game, if you aren't getting the timing right, you're going struggle, and that was the case with me. Athers departed cheaply. Stewart and Thorpe didn't fare much better. Nor did Hick, or Fairbrother. In the end, my entire England team was skittled for... four.


Pathetic. We did have a nice partnership of two in the middle order, though...

Four all out.

Australia won by ten wickets, knocking off the required runs in three balls.

That's a pretty catastrophic result, even by England's standards. But that's how it usually goes with cricket games... it takes a fair while to get to anywhere approaching proficient. I actually quite liked it, despite my drubbing. I can see it being a good game to play on a rainy Sunday afternoon, just whiling away the hours with a good thrashing. I'm aiming for double figures... I reckon I can get there after a few more games...

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - The Directors Cut (iPhone/iPod Touch)

After the travesty that was 007: Top Agent, I needed something that would reaffirm that the iPod Touch or iPhone can be a decent gaming platform. For that, I turned to an update to a very familiar name. Of course, there are no guarantees, and it could all have gone horribly wrong...

I'm sure most of you have heard of the Broken Sword series of games. I bought this one, Shadow of the Templars, when it was first released on the PC. And I really enjoyed it. It was possibly the first point-and-click adventure I'd really bothered with. The lovely graphics, languid gameplay and (usually) not too obnoxious puzzles made it very appealing.

So, all these years later, is a Director's Cut a good idea? Is it possible to add anything to the original that will enhance it? Or is this just an easy way to cash-grab with an existing title?


Dammit, nobody likes mimes. There's a special level of hell reserved for mimes that murder.

The good news is that Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - The Director's Cut is, as well as being quite a mouthful, really, really good. The main thing that comes as a relief is that they haven't broken anything with the game. There's nothing worse than playing a new version of an old game and finding it's been crippled by some daft revolutionary control method or something.

Broken Sword's control method, on the iPod/iPhone, is fantastic. You'll slide your finger around the screen, and anything of interest will flash with a blue circle. Hold your finger over that, and a range of action icons will appear above it. Choose the one you want, and the game will respond accordingly. It's brilliantly simple and intuitive, and makes this portable version of Broken Sword a joy to play.


Don't do it, Nico! Don't jump! What's that? You weren't going to? Oh.

Well, until you get stuck, of course. Yeah, I'm still rubbish at solving the puzzles, and it's been so long that I've forgotten most of them. Plus, of course, there's a range of new puzzles. With this being a Director's Cut, you get more game, mostly seeming to involve George's French female friend, Nico, and her investigation into her father's death.

The game has also had something of a graphical facelift, or reworking. The original's graphics were nice, and I can see that people would be quite happy to keep them, but this version looks lovely on your handheld device.

For just £3.99, Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - The Director's Cut is one of my favourite iPhone/iPod Touch games so far. It's a big download - over 380MB. There's a lot of spoken dialogue which would account for a fair bit of that, and it's such a polished and enjoyable production that if you enjoyed the original or have never played it but like this kind of game, you'd be daft to ignore it. I look forward to the inevitable release of the sequel... and might it be too much to ask that we could see Blade Runner on the iPhone and Touch?

Krakout (Commodore 64)

Let's face it, there's only so much you can do with Breakout. You can tart it up in all manner of ways, but in the end, you've got a bat, a ball and some bricks to smash. Still, over time, many have tried to give it an appealing facelift. Some have been successful; others, less so.

Back in the 80s, Taito bunged out Arkanoid, a fresh and entertaining take on Breakout. It did alright in the arcades, was ported to almost every home system ever made and still lives on today, such is its popularity.

I had Arkanoid on the Commodore 64, and loved it. It almost looked and sounded like the arcade version, and played about as well as a Breakout game can play without a paddle. But Arkanoid wasn't the only game of its kind on the Commodore 64... there were plenty of others. TRAZ was a fantastic version, and I owned that, too. There was Batty, a perfectly serviceable budget version (also on compilation tapes - I don't remember it ever having a full-priced release).

And then there was Krakout.

Krakout never interested me. I was an avid reader of ZZAP! 64 in those days (who wasn't?), and they didn't rate it very highly. It didn't look anywhere near as nice as Arkanoid, either, although I'm sure the black and white screenshot didn't help. So I didn't bother with it. And yet, there are many that have always rated it more highly than Arkanoid. If you were to look on any C64-dedicated website, you'd probably find the vast majority raving about it. That being the case, I thought it must be worth a try, at long last.

Having played it, I honestly don't see where they're coming from.


Dull, boring and drab. But that's enough about me... look how dreary the game is!

There's no need to explain the game - it's Breakout. So what makes it different? Well, there's the viewpoint for a start. You can choose to start with the bat either on the right or the left. No, not the bottom. It certainly feels different, playing a Breakout game horizontally. It doesn't take long to get used to, but it doesn't raise it above Arkanoid.

Other than that, things are mostly the same. Irritating enemies wobble about the playfield, deflecting the ball at different angles. There are bonuses to help or hinder. The difference here is that, instead of having to collect them with your bat as they fall, you're given them if you hit them with the ball. That sounds great, but in truth it takes away a large part of the risk/reward element that makes Arkanoid such a tense battle.

Harking back to that screenshot... having played it on colour, it still doesn't look very nice. It's nowhere near as clean or sharp looking as Arkanoid. I'm not a big fan of the look at all. Then there's the sound. On the title screen, you can turn off the music and sound effects. That's probably because neither are very good, with washed out sound effects and an irritating tune.

So, having played it at last after all this time, where do I stand, if you can't already tell? Well, I'm with the ZZAP! gang. Sorry, Krakout fans, but in truth, this is the worst C64 Breakout game of the four I've mentioned here. It remains very popular, but for the life of me, I can't see why.

007: Top Agent (iPhone/iPod Touch)

If Quantum of Solace was a shooting gallery, 007: Top Agent reduces spying to a game of rock, paper, scissors.

I quite fancied another bit of Bond after Quantum of Solace, and when this popped up on the "New" page of the AppStore for just 59p, I bit pretty quickly. But, biting quickly is a good way to hurt yourself...


I knew right away this would be bad. When would Bond ever wear trainers and a baseball cap?

Each screen sees you on one side and an enemy on the other. You have icons at the bottom of the screen, representing available moves. You pick one and your opponent picks one, and then the moves are acted out for you. Get lucky with your pick and you'll score a substantial hit... otherwise you'll miss, and likely take damage yourself. You can increase your stats by earning points, and buy weapons and armour with money. Points and money are usually awarded after each fight.

I'm not going to say much more than that... the game really isn't worth it. It's only a Bond game by virtue of the "007" in the name and the fact the four levels are based on Bond films. Everything else about it is poor.

Quantum of Solace (XBox 360)

I must admit, Quantum of Solace is not a game I'd ever thought about playing. It took me months to get around to watching the movie, so I was in no rush to re-enact it. But a mate at work offered to lend it to me, and I figured, "why not?"

I can't help watching current Bond films and thinking it's a bit like Carry on Spying. Not because they're slapstick in any way - Roger Moore did enough of that to last a Bond-lifetime - but because Daniel Craig looks, at least to me, enough like a younger version of Sid James to be able to play him if they ever made a biopic.


Do you see? Or is it just me?

Still, the new Bond films are doing well with their reimagining of the property. Bond games, traditionally, have not been the best, with just a couple of exceptions. It would be interesting to see if Quantum of Solace could give Bond games a shot in the arm.

The game is set up to follow the film, as you would expect. Key scenes from the movie are shown, and at certain points you'll cut to the game, and that's where you come in. Naturally they have to expand these scenes, or you'd only have about half an hour of actual game, so there are loads more baddies than in the film's scenes.


I got him. In my sights.

A lot of emphasis is placed on using cover in this game. That's fine, but it has the odd effect of making the game more like a shooting gallery, or possibly a light gun game, without the light gun. There are a few chase scenes, but most of the time you're hiding behind a wall, rock or crate, waiting for the right moment to pop your head out and take out another bad guy.

It's all done pretty well, and the game does a good job of moving the narrative along with your help. A fun feature for Bond fans comes with the Achievements... they're named after Bond films or quotes from Bond films. It's a bit disappointing, though, to find that here isn't an Achievement called "No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!"

Quantum of Solace is a reasonable diversion, it's very polished and although samey, it provides some decent entertainment. Given that it can be picked up for just a few pounds these days, it might be something you'd want to consider if you're a Bond fan.

Man Goes Down (Atari 2600)

I read about Man Goes Down ages ago, and it's another game that was lost in the back of my mind somewhere. Christ knows what else I'll find there if I dig about!

Anyway, it's an indie game, and it was posted on the AtariAge forums by its author, Alex Herbert, back in 2004.

The best Atari games were usually very simple, as they had to be when the programmers had so little room to work with. Man Goes Down is kind of the opposite of PapiJump+,which I played almost a year ago. Or is it the other way You're a little fella falling down a world of platforms and gaps. If you fall off the bottom of the screen, it's game over. If you get stuck and the screen scrolls down without you, it's game over. So you have to stay in a controlled spell of falling to stay in the game.


No, the man in the game is not called Roderick...

Thankfully, you can have some help in the game, in the form of bonus pick-up items. A helicopter backpack will keep you from the drop (while it lasts), as will a bubble, and a skateboard will speed you across the platforms in time to avoid getting squashed at the top of the screen. Stop signs, umm, stop the scrolling, and arrows increase its speed. Fruits increase your scoring multiplier, although if you miss one the multiplier resets. And there are magic mushrooms, which can have more than one effect...

Man Goes Down is a really nice little game. It looks great for a 2600 game, plays really well and has that important "just one more go" factor. Sadly, though, it's not finished. The author (who also wrote the much-loved homebrew Protector on the Vectrex) posted in May 2005 that he had been unwell, and doesn't seem to have said anything after August 2005. We can only hope he's doing OK... I certainly wish him all the best.

Soul (XBox 360 Indie Games)

I had thought about downloading a few indie game demos, and maybe doing a little featurette on them. And then I came across a game called Soul, and was completely stopped in my tracks.

In this game, you start off dead. There you are, just lying there, dead. And then a light rises from your body... your soul. The idea is to guide your soul into the light, and away from the bowels of hell.

The basic gameplay is very straightforward... it's basically a "don't touch the wire!" game. In other words, each screen has a course you must navigate with your soul, without touching anything. Touch something and your soul will burst, and you'll go back to the start of the screen.


This one's relatively easy... there's only one way you can go!

It's the way the game is presented that makes it so effective. The game has a dirty, grimy look to it, which is very atmospheric. Besides the backgrounds, there are nasty, growling monsters which spring up (or down!) at you. And at rare moments, a scary face pops onto the screen and screams at you, which is quite unsettling, at least the first few times it happens.

The only downside is that once you press Start, that's it. You can't pause the game, and you can't save it. And there are no lives or score... you just play to get to the end, or not at all. It can be a bit frustrating at times, but that's the nature of the gameplay, and your own cack-handedness.

Still, I don't see those problems as gamebreaking. Soul is actually a real little indie delight. It's extremely compelling, once you get started, and although there are those frustrations which might see you switching it off, you'll probably come back to it soon after. I mean, come on. It's 80 points. That's about 65p in UK money. Just buy it. I dare you.

Creatures (Commodore 64)

I'm surprised I hadn't played Creatures before! It was one of the most highly rated games on the Commodore 64, and it was by Thalamus, and I had most of their games. For some reason, though, this (and its sequel!) escaped me.

Creatures tells the story of Clyde Radcliffe, a cute and fluffy thing that's landed on a desert island on Earth. The heartless (but cute!) bastard then sets about eliminating all the indigenous species on the island, just so he and his friends can bunk down there. Harsh.


Right turn, Clyde!

It's fairly typical platform stuff, but although it's a bit on the slow side, it plays pretty nicely. In fact, it probably helps that you're not haring around at breakneck speed, because it's quite difficult and it would be easy to miss things. You can fire, erm, fireballs, or you can charge up and unleash a flamethrower. From your mouth.

There are also things to collect and go shopping with, and then at the end of each stage, there's a torture screen. In the torture screen, you must rescue one of your fuzzy friends from a fate worse than death. Or you can just sit there and watch them get ripped to shreds. Your call.

Creatures is a fun game, if possibly overrated at the time. On the other hand, if I've enjoyed it now, I'm sure I would have enjoyed it more at the time and possibly played it to completion. I don't think I'd be awarding it Gold Medals, but it was almost certainly a cut above the competition then, and as far as 8-bit games go today, it holds up pretty well, I reckon.

Super Star Wars - Return of the Jedi (Super Nintendo)

I've been involved recently in, if not exactly a war, an entertaining discussion around the relative merits of the Sega Megadrive and the Super Nintendo. Or, to put it bluntly, which is the best. It's the kind of argument that has enlivened many a playground break over the years, and it's nice to know that we, as grown adults, can still stoop to that level.

I was a Sega Megadrive kind of chap, mostly because we owned one from early on, and I only got a SNES late on. As I've mentioned before, that came about because my brother swapped my copy of Landstalker for it. That alone meant I felt some resentment towards the machine. Hardly owning any games for it didn't help matters.

Super Star Wars - Return of the Jedi has been recommended as one of the best games the system had to offer. And as it's one of the games I currently own (although probably not for long...), I figured I would give it an outing.


Yeah, I don't remember this bit from the film, either...

It didn't start well. The first level is in the F-Zero vein, only shit. You race into a brown landscape, jumping over holes and avoiding boulders. That's it, and it's terribly dull, almost enough to completely put you off.

Still, the second level reverts to a more traditional platformer, which is better. I wouldn't say it was terribly exciting, though. Lots of jumping and somersaulting, the odd bit of shooting or light-sabering, some being dumped back at an earlier point in the level or falling down holes you didn't know were there... run-of-the-mill, standard stuff, dressed up in a few bits of Star Wars clothing. You get a choice of three characters this time, although there's not that much of a difference between them, and you're going to go for Luke anyway.

And... that was it. I played for ninety minutes and couldn't get past that level. Too much finicky jumping, and getting knocked off a platform and falling miiiiiles down. Pity, I would have liked to have seen if things picked up or what else the game has to offer. Maybe another day, before the SNES is gone for good.

Aliens vs Predator Classic 2000 (PC)

I think it would be fair to say I'd need more time with this game to appreciate it. I didn't have very long today, but I thought this would be easy enough to get into... load up, pick one of three species, and kill lots of things. So in that respect, I found it somewhat disappointing.

Aliens vs Predator, this original version, is interesting for the fact it lets you play as either the classic Alien (from the films, of course!), the Predator, or as a Colonial Marine. I started off with the Predator, thinking that would easily be the best. Not so. You start off armed only with what looks like a dog's paw and your invisibility cloak, which amounts to nothing as the frightened marines will shoot you dead whether you're invisible or not.


These 3D glasses will never take off...

Still, after a bit of sneaking around I was able to kill all the marines in my immediate area. And then... nothing. There were about six rooms available, and I couldn't find any way out. There was a walkway high up, but I couldn't use my grappling hook so I couldn't get up there. Stuck. Bah. So next, I tried the Alien.

I started off in what looked like an Egyptian pyramid. I slid down something that looked like I would imagine a birth canal might look like, into another room... with no exits. What? So with the Alien, I had a total of two rooms and no enemies. This was turning into more of a puzzle game than a FPS!


Die, alien scum! Oh hang on, I've used that, haven't I?

And so, it was on to the more boring and traditional human character. At least, now, I was given a game to play!

It's a very typical FPS, albeit made more tense by the atmosphere that's generated by the standard elements you'd expect. The high-pitched beeping of the alien tracker will always, always set you on edge, and when you round a corner and there's one right in your face, it's jumping-in-fright time. And that's always good.

Still, that alone wasn't enough to keep me in the game. I might go back to it at some point, but I have other FPS fish to fry, and unless someone tells me how to get into the Alien or Predator versions of this, then it'll sit in the Steam "My games" tab, untouched until 2020, more than likely.

Starstrike II (ZX Spectrum)

3D Starstrike impressed me enough to want to go straight on to the sequel. And if that game got the programmers noticed for programming a great arcade game, the sequel is a different entity altogether.

It's a different game. An original game. It's an arcade game with depth. And for me, that's where it goes a little bit wrong.

Starstrike II is a very ambitious game. Rather than just give you the same levels in a set order, you must choose which planet/system you'll visit. Each area has a variety of installations to be taken out: military, agricultural and industrial. The challenges you face in each area will be slightly different, as you would expect.


Die, filled-3D alien scum!

The first problem I had was that, despite reading the instructions, I had no idea what to do. On the second stage, there's a grid with a hole in the middle. In this hole you'll find various shapes, some of which will shoot at you. It's the only way through, but no matter how much I shot stuff, I couldn't get through. Impasse!

Luckily (and I mean that literally!), after many games, for some reason I did eventually find myself past that stage, which meant I could play more of the game. And it's a pot-pourri of spacey shooting. Shoot spaceships in dogfights. Shoot installations in trenches. Don't shoot installations in trenches. Destroy the end-level installation.

It all sounds a lot like Star Wars, or even 3D Starstrike, but it really isn't. It's a more serious game. It's not as much fun. It's probably a better game than its forerunner, by virtue of its originality and ambition. But it's not as pacey... the much-vaunted filled 3D graphics are quite a bit slower than the wireframe originals, and although the Spectrum was lauded at the time for its ability to push this stuff around, the fact that it's slower takes the edge of the gameplay. I'd rather just stick with the original.

3D Starstrike (ZX Spectrum)

This might be a short post, because there's not that much I can say about it. You see, 3D Starstrike is, almost lock, stock and barrel, Star Wars.

And who doesn't know Star Wars? Shoot the TIE Fighters, shoot the towers, fly through the trench... we've all done it. 3D Starstrike does have a few differences, probably so they wouldn't lose the court case in three seconds flat, but at the end of the day, it's Star Wars.


The towers shoot flowers. Big, deadly flowers.

Still, there's nothing wrong with that. Star Wars is great, and this was released in the days when clones were massively prevalent. Certainly, they were accepted as par for the course.

3D Starstrike is a good Star Wars game. I enjoyed playing it quite a bit. It's certainly better than any Star Wars game I played on the Commodore 64 back then. It moves at a fair old lick, and speed is essential in an arcade game of this type. It plays well, and it's a lot of fun. Good on ya, Speccy.

Alisia Dragoon (Sega Megadrive)

Is Dragoon a Japanese mistranslation? I only ask because any game with a dragon in it seems to be called Something Dragoon. I'm wondering if there was a bit of a Donkey Kong thing going on there.

Doesn't matter.


You want to watch what you're doing with that. Could be dangerous.

Alisia Dragoon is a fairly typical-looking Megadrive game. It also plays fairly typically, with your character slowly wandering about the landscape, jumping when necessary. The difference is that you're accompanied, at least for a fair part of the time, by a dragon.

It's a small dragon, though, and what it essentially boils down to is that it's the platform game equivalent of a Gradius multiple. You fire a big beam of lightning, and the dragon fires, erm, fireballs. It's a handy companion to have.


Which one's your leader? The big grey blobby thing? You're welcome to that!

Naturally, as you explore, you'll find power-ups and health bonuses... that sort of thing. They're possibly the most interesting part of the game, in that you can find more if you go a little bit off the beaten track. There's not that many areas where you can deviate from the path, but they are there and they can be missed if you're not looking.

Other than that, Alisia Dragoon is a fairly standard platform-adventure game. It's not bad, but it's not terribly memorable. I was certainly hoping for a bit more out of it.

You Will Die (XBox 360 Indie Games)

Just a quickie... although not as quick as my first game of the day! I thought I should make an effort to actually put some words down for the day.

You Will Die is a shoot 'em up, in which you will die. That much is inevitable. They're just letting you know in advance what's going to happen.

It won't be on the first level. It shouldn't be on the second level, unless you're rubbish. But at some point, the game will get you, pounded to death under a hail of gunfire.


That's not me. I haven't done as well as that, yet.

It's just you against an enemy gunship. On level one, it's a small thing you're up against, and it only fires one stream of bullets at you. But for every level you survive, the enemy ship has more parts bolted onto it, until it's a ludicrously huge, death-dealing monstrosity, filling the other half of the screen. And then, the other half of the screen is filled with bullets. It's almost funny, staring down something that size with almost no chance of surviving!

You Will Die boils down to being a test of reflexes, and it rewards you appropriately score-wise for your efforts. It's short, sharp and snappy, a great way to pass a few spare minutes when you don't want to get too involved in anything. I like the way the game appears to throw different enemies at you, depending on how well you've done on the previous level. It's not a game that you'd pay a lot of money for... that makes its 80 Microsoft Points price tag very appealing indeed.

Thunder Blade (Commodore Amiga)

What a right load of unplayable old shit.


Christ. That could put me off liquorice allsorts for life.

Spending Saturday with my girl.

I was looking for games to play for the blog tonight, but I've been neglecting someone, and I thought I should show her some love. She's quite a girl, and as much as I love spending time with her, I've been busy with work, or playing these games. It's quite a new relationship, too, so I don't want to risk letting things go cold.

Let me tell you a little about her. She's very athletic, for a start, with a great body. She's well educated and witty, with a snappy line in comebacks. She's flirty, and more than a little bit naughty. Oh, and she likes to get rough. Very rough, in fact... she can be a right witch.

I've always loved brunettes that wear glasses...

Jumping Jackson (Commodore Amiga)

So much for my huge pile of Amiga games. It's not as big as it looks, purely because a lot of them don't work! And the ones that don't work are the ones that are boxed and complete and in immaculate condition! But the ones that are disk only and slung in a big cardboard box seem to be fine...

I just picked anything out of desperation tonight, after three fails. Jumping Jackson was the lucky winner. I'd never heard of it, and as I only had the floppy and no instructions, I had absolutely no idea what it was likely to involve.

You can imagine my "joy" when I discovered it was a puzzle game. But wait! All is not lost! Because Jumping Jackson actually turned out to be good fun! Is that a flying pig...?

Jumping Jackson sees you take on the role of a big-nosed music fan, whose world is a little on the quiet side. What he loves most of all is rock music. He has a collection of record players in his odd world of grey slabs, but no records to play on there. So he has to fashion them from somewhere.


Are they... audio cassettes in the bottom bar? Wow, this game really is old!

There are a number of coloured slabs in the world. Walking over them changes their colours. Once you have all the slabs in a group at the same colour, you'll be given a record. You then have to collect the record, and put it on the appropriate coloured player. Do this, and a line of the tune (bass, drums) starts up. Do the same with the next colour, and another line starts. Once you've placed all the records on the appropriate turntables, the entire tune will play.

It's a fun game mechanic, and it feels good to build the tune up. Of course, it's not as easy as that... there's a variety of classical music instruments wandering around in an attempt to stop the rock! You do have teleports around the levels to help you, and you'll need to figure out where these take you if you want to win the level, and use them strategically to avoid the bad guys.

It's a bit on the crazy side, but fairly typical of that era, and quite endearing. And most of all, it's enjoyable and not all that frustrating, which is rare when it comes to me and puzzle games. Looks like my desperation pick turned out alright, after all!

Deja Vu (Nintendo NES)

This is more my wife's game than mine. As I've mentioned before, I didn't own a NES back in the day. Lorraine, though, grew up in America, and she did have a NES. One of her favourite games was Deja Vu, so I thought it was only right to educate myself of her past.

Deja Vu, it turns out, is an icon-driven murder mystery adventure game. I think it was released on pretty much every format you can think of before it hit the NES, but as that's the version my wife played, that's the version I wanted to play.


And that you've only got one eye! Jesus! How did that happen?

I've been a bit more at home with adventure games of late, thanks mostly to the brilliance of the Lucasarts games that I've been playing. So although this was released for the NES in 1990, it had been out for years on other systems by that time, and as a result, the icon system that probably seemed fresh at the time feels a bit clumsy to me now.

I think that's partly down to the fact that it's like a graphic representation of a text adventure. So whereas with the SCUMM games, if you try and do something you can't, you get a charming shrug of the shoulders, or some other fun little graphic "reward". But here, you just get the typical "You can't do that" type of message which has frustrated so many gamers over the years.


Awwww, man. I bet that happened after the cleaner went home.

Still, that aside, I was finding the story in Deja Vu pretty interesting for as long as I was playing it. Certainly compelling enough that I want to carry it on. It has an interesting atmosphere... you wake up in a public toilet in 1940s Chicago, and you've lost your memory. Wandering about the building, you find a dead body. I'm sure you can guess where it goes from there.

I'm a bit surprised to find that this was a NES title... it doesn't really seem like the kind of game that would fit on that system. Maybe, being released toward the end of its lifespan, they were trying to appeal to a now-older gaming audience. No matter... it's an appealing game that's managed to get me hooked. And I have to play it more now... it'll get me brownie points with the missus!