23/07/2007 - New Format Podcast...

 

Righty, new month, new format. It's all chatty and the like and features me and Bob Fearon.

Here's the thing, though. It's rough. Rough like a sandpaper arse'ole. The volume is completely wrong so we're massively clipped and Bob's channel has loads of background noise due to the volume issues - including a small child at one point. We recorded it a week later than we meant to so we forgot a load of stuff and the "feature" about Big Fish games' unique selling points falls flatter than a fat person whose parachute failed. Also, I sound entirely too pleased with myself at several points.

So, it'll be better next time. For a start we'll nix the features and stick to the news and "reviews". And probably explain the games a bit better because you've probably no idea what we are talking about at some points. Also we should really stop trampling on each other's lines.

And I might get around to linking to the mentioned games, but really if you're a devotee of TIGs/IGBS/RR then there's nothing you won't have already heard of.

So anyway, "enjoy"... And please do mail feedback to the contact address on the right because dear God we need it.

Graham & Bob

04/07/2007 - Article - Unlicensed Homages Through The Ages

I love naming and shaming. If I can point out that something is a disgraceful rip-off of something else and engender some bad feeling into the bargain, then it's a win-win situation.

It's probably the scurrilous gossip in me and while I know it's a terrible trait, I don't care. And so I though it'd be nice to take a trawl through the annals of shareware to find five of the most disgraceful rip-offs yet released.

Of course, now it's all the rage for shareware developers to rip each other off, but where do you think they got most of those ideas in the first place, eh? Their own brains? Oh, you're such a card!

You'll probably have heard of a lot of these games, but hopefully some of them will be news to you, causing gasps of horror as you realise that if morale compasses were real compasses, then most of these developers would have died from exposure whilst orienteering.

Puzzloop

We're going to start with an easy one that everybody knows about, and that's Zuma, the game which has done a better job wiping Puzzloop from history than the Spanish Conquistadors did with the Incans. Who, ironically were then made famous again by Zuma. And every other third rate design hack who'd already finished plundering Egypt for ideas.

As a result of Zuma's ubiquitous nature, When your average pleb sees something like Tumblebugs, Karu, Luxor, Pirate Poppers, Tropix, Atlantis, Chameleon Gems, Atlantis Sky Patrol, Dynasty, Sweetopia, Sparkle, Butterfly Escape, Aqua Pearls, Beetle Bomp or Inca Ball they think "Oh look, there's a clone of Zuma". Instead of "Everyone involved in those games is a shit".

How Popcap, the makers - and I'm using that term fairly loosely - of Zuma didn't get sued into the stone-age by Mitchell, I don't know[1]. Now, if you'll excuse me I'm going to go and play an Arkanoid clone.

Crap! No! I mean a Breakout clone!

Such is the similarity between the games that if you where to place this image...

...to the left of this image and then squint, your brain would interpret it as a single three-dimensional object.

STOP PRESS: See hyprocrisy in action as Popcap moan about people ripping off "their" ideas. Then read the comments for lots of juicy swears.

Kings Valley 2

Next on our list is an old favourite of mine, Kings Valley 2 by Konami. This game was released on the MSX home computer and has a very distinctive look and feel. If you were to rip this game's design off you'd have to be very clever to disguise the origin so that sharp-eyed retro gamers wouldn't spot where you'd cribbed your ideas from.

Or - if you're the author of Pharoah's Curse - you could just say "fuck that" and not even bother trying to hide your shameful deed. Pharoah's Curse is one of those delightfully indefensible rip-offs where every detail of the game's design has been faithfully reproduced with the exception of the level layouts. And even then they might have been ripped off as well - I'm damned if I was going to buy the full version to find out.

Of course the main reason I'm mentioning Pharaoh's Curse in this list is because I remember having a particularly acrimonious discussion about it being a rip-off on a forum many years ago. Sadly the thread has turned to dust, so I can't dig it out and use it to illustrate my point. So instead I'm using a pair of screenshots which I'll humourously label the wrong way around.

This is Pharoah's Curse...

...And this is Kings Valley 2.
Wait a minute... I've made a hilarious mistake!

(Here's a link to Pharoah's Curse, although bizarrely no matter how much you try, you can't select Pharoah's Curse in the menu at the left. Perhaps... that is the real curse!

Or maybe it's just shitty web design.)

Solomon's Key

Sticking with platform puzzlers we have the arcade classic Solomon's Key, one of the finest ever arcade platform puzzlers which, unlike Kings Valley 2 was ported to nearly every machine under the sun and so it's very well known. Which means that you'd just have to disguise it if you were going to rip it off.

But once again people couldn't be arsed and so when Phelios released Abracadabra the only thing which had changed was the level designs and handling, both of which had been made far worse than the original. Oh, and it was missing some of the enemies from the arcade version which would probably have been too hard to program.

If this was a free remake, I'd say it was crappy. As they actually have the gall to charge for it, it means it's as welcome on my hard drive as blood is in my stools. Normally I'd advise you to keep well away from such a game, but I do recommend paying a trip to the website to see exactly how not to make a trailer. It's not often you see such a terribly thought out combination of music, visuals and dialog.

Solomon's Key features levels which have been carefully crafted to provide challenges both dextrous and cerebral.

Abracadabra features levels which look a bit like things you might see outside a window.
NB. Levels which exist purely because they look like things are a bit like crates in first person shooters. They indicate the precise moment at which the designer ran out of ideas.

Bubble Bobble

But for the some of the most shameless of all rip-offs we have to turn to Alawar Games. Nowadays they're known for their insipid titles starring Snowy The Polar Bear, who was tragically born to the least imaginitive parents in the whole of the arctic, but in the past Alawar were better known for releasing several games based on the Bubble Bobble series from Taito.

Now, I know that the recent handheld versions of Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands have made it seem like Taito would happily slap a picture of Bub and Bub onto a fresh turd in a greasy napkin, but once upon a time they actually cared about the series, and so it's really quite surprising that Alawar got away with not only releasing a game called Bubble Bobble Nostalgie, but that the game contained the arcade game's level layouts, characters and bonuses.

Had it looked nice and played well, then there might have been something to admire about their deed, but the final slap in Taito's face with a wet cock is that Alawar's version of Bubble Bobble is shit, with horribly wrong movement, faulty collision detection and background graphics straight from satan's arsehole.

Nnnnnghhh... *splash*

These days, though, Alawar don't sell their Bubble Bobble rip-offs and instead deal in completely original titles. Like a game where you dig holes for treasure and attempt to drop objects onto other enemies call Dig McDug. Another game where you're constantly chased by enemies over a series of platforms which you can dig holes in called Pyramid Runner and finally a game where you jump through gaps in a series of moving platforms in order to reach the top of the screen called Foxy Jumper.

Fucking hell.

"Hmm, what's the very least we can do to Dig Dug's name in order to make it drop out of copyright?"
EDIT: Thanks to Tomas Schonbeck and Dominic White I now know this is actually a rip-off of Digger, which itself is a rip-off of DigDug.

Aah, another classic results from the "take someone else's game and stick it in Egypt" approach.

To be honest, I don't mind Foxy Jumper ripping off Jumping Jack.
Because it was shit.

Bust-A-Move

Our last game which has been ripped off is also from Taito and it's Bust-A-Move, the bubble-popping arcade game which isn't Pang.

As with Puzzloop, there have been many companies which have ripped this off, setting it in such original locations as Egypt (as in Phlinx) and Maya (as in Inca Quest). Some rip-offs of it haven't even bothered changing the main characters much, as in Bubble Oddysey which just stuck goldfish bowls on Bub and Bob's heads and moved the setting to outer space.

But the worst of all the Bust-A-Move rip-offs is the one that defies all explanation, and that's Snood, which despite looking like everything about it was produced by monkies using only twigs and their own faeces, has somehow managed to spawn not only three sequels and innumerable bastard offspring, but has also resulted in handheld console versions for the Gameboy Advance and Nintendo DS. Games, which at his very moment are cluttering up bargain bins, their packaging bedecked with screenshots which are so infectiously bad that I'd recommend putting on a condom before you look at them.

Stop reading this for a moment and check out the images down there, because I find it just inconceivable that something so ugly could be taken seriously by what I assume was a professional publisher, despite this particular choice of license making them look more like a group of absinthe-crazed tramps with wads of cash to burn.

Now there's a menu screen only its mother could love.
Hmm... Maybe it's just a one off and all the rest of the screens are lovely, though?

Oh sweet merciful God, no! Kill it! KILL IT!
JUST STAMP ON THE FUCKING THING!

Now, I know that graphics don't make a game, but Snood just takes the piss. In a world where most games display at least some semblance of artistic ability, Snood sticks out like Joseph Merrick at a beauty pagent.

"Remember, games as ugly as Snood are still rare. So goodnight. And don't have nightmares."

And I think that's why Snood inspires such ire in me. It's a barrel-scrapingly awful rip-off which strips away all the charm from the original and yet it's obviously generated enough cash that its author, Dave Dobson, has been able to spin-off its badly crayoned "characters" into other products including Snoodoku, Snood Solitaire and a staggering range of poisonously garish t-shirts, posters, mugs and key fobs.

For me, the mere existance of this assembled rotteness is a blight on an internet known for far more pleasing sights, such as women with beards made of poo and men with wine bottles poking out of their distended sphincters.

Of course I've only managed to cover a small amount of the unlicensed homages out there, but this list wasn't meant to be exhaustive, it was just meant to be an opportunity to say rude things about a big list of unscrupulous people who think it's perfectly okay to sell wholesale rip-offs of other people's games.

Goodnight.

Graham

[1] But thanks to a link on TIGSource you can gain some insight.

1/07/2007 - Review - Hurrican

Turrican is one of those games which has appeared in so many different guises that I genuinely don't know what should be contained in a proper remake of it. I suppose you could just remake the Commodore 64 version, but if there are better ones out there then why not remake them instead? Perhaps incorporate elements from the Megadrive or SNES versions while you're at it.

And that's what I think Hurrican by Poke53280 does. It's certainly not based on any one version of Turrican, plus it appears to incorporate many new enemies. I'm perfectly willing to be wrong about this as I'm not an expert on the series, but a cursory check of the excellent Turrican Seta fanpages makes me fairly confident.

So Hurrican is Turrican Megamix essentially, and I can't think of a more fitting tribute to the series. I don't think I've seen many remakes which have lavished such care and attention on updating an old game while remaining true to its roots.

I would have a lot more action in these screenshots but I had to reach over and press PRNTSCRN so they're a bit empty of bullets.

Although the basic exploratory gameplay shines through - and has even been bettered thanks to signs pointing the way to the exit - there is a problem, in that more doesn't necessarily mean better. Hurrican boasts no less than 5 different fire buttons, one for a switchable main weapon, one for a rotatable beam weapon and three more for various limited resource weapons. And some of these can even be combined with other buttons to activate secondary functions. It's just too much, they should have just picked a single one of the extra weapons and got rid of the others for the sake of simplicity.

Of course, this wouldn't have been such an issue had you been able to use a gamepad to control the game properly, but the gamepad functionality is frankly broken. I found I was only able to use a two-thirds of the buttons on my Xbox 360 pad to do anything, as it ignores the second analogue stick and triggers on the back of the pad, which would have been perfect for some functions. But, that's the kind of problem which is eminently solvable through a patch, so I'm sure it'll get fixed.

This boss encounter is Great...
...But the rest of level 2 is a sod - full of really cheap traps which will claim many of your lives. Old school for the win!

Other than those issues I had a blast playing Hurrican. There's a few gaming no-noes like leaps of faith and spike pits which remain off screen simply because of the default position of the camera, but overall it's got really solid gameplay. It's not going to make you think "ooh, that's ingenious" at any point, but it does remain extremely satisfying throughout.

Graphically the game has gone the route of pre-rendered sprites for everything. While this means that the graphics all hang together pretty well with the exception of a bit of pixelly masking, it also means that most of the enemies are of the robotic persuation and there's only a few organic foes apparent within the levels that I've reached. That's a real pity because the game boasts an excellent array of particle effects and it would have been nice to see some more gooey ones in evidence.

I hope that bomb wants to hug me...

The sound in the game is good, too, with a clear sound effect to warn you when you're taking damage and everything else sounding just like it should. The music also fits the game well, with several tracks standing on their own quite well.

If you enjoy platformer shooters then I can't recommend Hurrican enough. It's a bit meat and potatoes due to staying close to the source material, but - compared to other faithful remakes of old platform shooters - this is at the high end of meat and potatoes. Like a nice steak and cheesy mustard mash. Absolutely worth the 40Mb download.

Graham

29/06/2007 - Review - Nori Kuro Cat

Thanks to Ithamore over at TIGSource, I've been introduced to the work of CroStar, whose latest game is a platformer called Nori Kuro Cat. CroStar's made a bit of a name for himself by producing quirky games which contain original elements, all the while managing not to bleat on about experimental gameplay as if he's some kind of savant. Actually, he might've - I'm fucked if I can understand Japanese.

Anyway, all of his games have simplistic controls, plain but attractive graphics and often, the recurrent themes of chaining attacks together and destructable scenery. Nori Kuro Cat contains all of these elements, with chained attacks leading to more powerful shots which travel further and great swathes of the map which can be destroyed.

Hang on... Is that Spit The Dog?

As mining through blocks is one of my gameplay happy-buttons, I was always going to like Nori Kuro Cat, even if the rest of it was merely average. Luckily it's not as this platformer has good solid gameplay and boasts a fair bit of variety in its level so that they feel suitably disparate. It also boasts a couple of crazy ideas straight out of left-field which really make it memorable.

The way that attacks are chained together is simple. As long as each shot you fire kills an enemy or destroys a certain type of block it powers up the next shot to a maximum level of 3. If you fail to kill an enemy then your shot resets to its basic level and the chain is broken.

I've just realised that these two shots are quite atypical of Nori Kuro Cat and probably misrepresent it as some kind of Doggy-Bullet-Hell game.

Once you kill an enemy while your shot is at it's highest level, the power bar will start ticking down and will need to be topped up with further kills in order to keep it at maximum power. During this time you can also press down and fire to completely drain it and fire out a deadly radial spray of bullets.

So far, so unextraordinary. But something odd happens when you shoot one of the tree-trunk wearing dog enemies with a fully powered up shot, because it creates a massive influx of floating dogs which start pouring into the screen towards you. And they will only stop spawning when you break the chain, either by missing a shot or by firing the bullet spray. While you're in this mode you can rack up some really high chains and it creates an nice risk-reward element in the gameplay, where the only thing which will kill you is your own greed, because you can easily end the onslaught at any time. It's slightly reminiscent of Bangai-O, which is just about my favouritist thing ever, and it's a pity that the idea isn't explored further.

The sound in the game is simplistic but perfectly pleasant with a satisfying crunch as your bullets tear through numerous blocks. The graphics... Well, you can see - they ain't gonna' win any awards but some of them are decently animated. The game is well worth downloading, but like many of the smaller platformers, it's not going to distract you for more than an afternoon.

And if you're downloading Nori Kuro Cat then I'd also recommend grabbing Supa Kingu Rato, which shares a few traits with this game but is different enough to be worth playing.

Super Kingu Rato - Play this.

Two other of CroStar's previous two games, Sky-Whirling Geo and Round and Round the Tsuchiyui[1] aren't really worth it as the former is too slow paced and has enemies spawning right on top of you and the second is a bizarrely misjudged blend of Kuri Kuri Kururin and a shoot 'em up which just ain't much fun to play.

Sky Whirling Geo - Ignore this.

Round And Round The Tsuchiyui - Actively avoid this.
If you can't avoid it, then don't look it in the eyes as it will perceive this as an act of aggression and attack you.

Graham

[1] It's pronouncing names like that which made me stop doing this as audio...

27/06/2007 - Review - Zub

Richard Jordan's finally released Zub, after literally weeks of being in the works, the lazy, slothe-like, turd-master. Of course, I'm not being serious, because at eleven weeks, Zub's development cycle is about fifty times shorter than the average game from Retrospec. I should know, because my involvement in projects is generally what causes them to have their development schedules measured against ice ages instead of calendars.

Wait, what's the game called?

But despite being developed in less than three months, Richard's managed to pack just as much polish and finess into Zub as he did into Atic Atac. And this is also the same style of remake as Atic Atac, keeping the original gameplay almost unchanged - apart from fixing Zub's horrible jumping - and just making the visuals and sonics far more appealing.

I wouldn't normally add a picture of the main menu, but it really is very lovely.
Plus, all the game's levels look identical, so I only need one screenshot of the sods.

Richard was aided in this respect by Pierre Jovanovic who drew the very pleasant graphics about seven years ago for a remake that never happened, and James Redfern who remixed the original game's tunes just the right amount, adding a couple of new ones into the mix to create a very complete audio package.

In fact the only mistep in the development of it was introducing a nasty horizontal push-scroll and getting rid of the bumpy vertical scrolling as you run around.

This is level... Um. Er... Q? As you can see I'm jumping from one platform to another.
Later on, I will be repeating this action.

But even though Richard, Pierre and James put nary a foot wrong, there's a problem - because of all the Pickford Brother's games, Zub is the least of them. It's a neat idea in search of a proper game to live in and it badly needed more development resources. So while it's nice to have another remake in the world which can be considered fairly definitive, it's of something which probably didn't deserve to get remade in the first place. Unlike Feud.

So, by all means download and have a play of it, but I'd be amazed if it flew into your top ten remakes of all time.

Graham