Got myself a classic; Strider Hiryu

I'm back from Japan now for a couple of weeks and finally got my things sorted out now. At least almost all. Still no job, so no income and a lot of free time to spend. While in Japan I've seen every single spot in Akihabara and just loved the place. Unfortunately I miscalculated my expenses and ended up with having less money to spend in the end. This resulted in being unable to buy the things I really wanted.

I really wanted to buy a Sega 32X unit to complete my Mega Drive system. Sadly the Japanese version doesn't fit onto my PAL Mega Drive so I ended up not buying one after all. I didn't had the money to buy a Japanese Mega Drive with a Mega CD and 32X. They were kinda expensive. I found a few Mega Drives, the boxed ones I found were close to 50 Euro and went down from their till about 20 Euro. But then I had a Mega Drive without cables etc. I also found a couple of 32X units raging from 60 to 80 Euro. Way to much, since I could get one on eBay for the same price and no need to spend an extra 100 Euro to buy myself a Japanese Mega Drive and Mega CD.

But I got myself a new Mega Drive game. I always wanted this game and maybe played it one time over 15 years ago at a friends house. And because I own a HoneyBee adapter so I can play Japanese games on my PAL Mega Drive anyway I fetched it. For the nice price of 8 Euro I bought Strider Hiryu in some shop in Akihabara (I think it was Super Patato, not sure though). And it's basically in pure mint condition. Sadly... haven't played it yet because connecting my Mega Drive through RF on my 40" Plasma TV is just not it.

[Review] NES - Gremlins 2 - A New Batch

The past 2 weeks I've been way to busy actually but I was able to play some Gremlins 2 in spare hours. A spare hours is maybe not enough to get the good feel of the game, but luckily I remembered a lot of the game.

First off, the music in the game is awesome! It's not some simple 4 note loop that is repeating, it's actual music that really fits with the awesome movie of my childhood. Funny side note on The Gremlins, recently I was in the video-rental store and I noticed they moved the Gremlins movies from Horror to Comedy. I remember the old days when they were under the Horror movies along with Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. Time changes.

Anyway, the music is awesome. So are the sound effects. They've really put some major effort into creating the right setting in the game.

The game itself is about Gizmo fighting off his evil relatives and many other small creatures. Gizmo starts off in the labratory, just like in the movie, and follows a path along the moviestory. Which is quiet unique even for these days. That a movie based title actually stays close to the original story.

Gremlins 2, The New Batch is one of those easy to pick up, hard to master games. The controls can feel a bit stiff in the beginning and due to the graphics of platforms jumping can be a bit odd. The developers really added some time into creating a semi-3D top-view perspective, resulting in shadows on places where you can stand but your mind will tell you it shouldn't be able. Like many games from the era Gizmo suffers of one major set back; he hops back when getting hit. This can often result in you falling off an edge, missing your jump or getting pushed back into the pit. Luckily Gizmo is granted with an unlimited number of continues and a very easy password system so you can really master the game by an easy trial-and-error ritual.

As I said, the music is good and the graphics just look like they should. Gimzo looks like he should look like and all the other enemies are well designed aswell. Sad thing thought, but not very annoying is that the rats (or mouses, whatever they are) are actually bigger then the bats that fly around. Not a really big deal but it's kinda funny. The other key-Gremlins look a lot like in the movie and you can really see that this game is a high quality movie adaptation.

Gremlins 2, is really one of the games I'll remember for a long time.

[Review] Gameboy - Turn And Burn

This is my first review and many more to come.

I have to admit, I always thought I owned the Top Gun Gameboy game and only discovered it was Turn And Burn when, as stated in my opening post, I dusted off the box with old games. Because my classic Gameboy died many years ago and I'm no longer in possession of a Gameboy Color or Gameboy Advanced I'm forced to play this on an emulator, which kinda destroys the feel of it.

As I said, I always thought I owned Top Gun, especially thanks to AVGN. But this is totally a different game. I've no clue how I got it and if I ever bought it myself, but I only remember that I never actually finished the first stage. And I still haven't managed to do it, even now with an emulator.

Turn And Burn is a flight simulator game in which you control an F-14 fighter jet and have to complete missions to proceed. Basicly every mission you do involves shooting down X number of enemy air plains. And that's about it. Thanks to the Gameboy you only playing in monochrome colours and that also influences a lot of the experience. For writing this review I needed the box art and noticed there is also a SNES version of it, which looks way better and probably handles better aswell. 

Turn And Burn is one of many flight simulator / fighter jet games out there. Personally I would skip this one and go straight for the SNES version just because of the better looks. If you really want to give it a try you can easily get a copy of the game on eBay for less then 5 euro. Which is pretty cheap.

Overall, the game suffers a lot from the limitation of the Nintendo Gameboy and therefore kills your fun, rather then you killing enemy fighter jets.

Welcome

A few weeks ago my parents started to clean up the attic and I came across the old box of my Nintendo Entertainment System. It brought back a lot of memories. And that inspired me to hook up my old gaming consoles and play some old games. Too bad, the games don't look as good as they used to be. Not because I'm used too my Xbox 360 and HD graphics, no they didn't look good because of my 42" Plasma TV with some old 8-bit console hooked up to it. Luckily I've got some alternatives and I enjoyed every single minute of playing Mario again.

Playing Mario again and dusting off all the classic games I own, I decided to check into them one more time and write down my opinion. A bit for personal storage, so I know in a few years which games are worth to play with my young nieces and nephews, but maybe also for my own kids.

So stay tuned, soon I'll have my first review ready!