Tag Archives: 8-bit

8-bit beads

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I was planning on blogging about all my newly purchased games both yesterday and today, but I got distracted..

After coming home after work yesterday I sat down and got the idea that I should try to make some of that bead art in 8bit, since I had recently purchased a huuuge box of 20.000 beads for a bachelorette party I was hosting. However we never got to beading so I was just stuck with a bunch of beads!

Beading turned out to be really fun and relaxing, and somewhat addictive! O_o

And it takes forever!

The most time consuming thing is sorting all the beads >_<

But after about 5 hours (I don’t really know, I seriously lost track of time) I had finished my Pac-man and Inky, Blinky, Pinky & Clyde and some variations.

My favorites were these ones:


My boyfriend came home after a fishing-trip at around 11 at night, and I had continued with new characters and hadn’t even taken the time to eat dinner! That’s how addictive it was! I had run out of black beads so I basically had to improvise with the colors..

At 1 past midnight I managed to go to bed… and today after work I said I wouldn’t bead (until I had gotten the new beads I purchased during my lunch hour! I bought 110.000 beads in sorted colours!…i’m serious……they were cheap…) But I still got stuck beading some more.. >_<

It’s fun! You should try it out, unless your easily addicted to things like I am…

Gyromite for NES

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Yesterday I watched the episode ROB the Robot from AVGN, and it made me wanna play Gyromite, even though I didn’t have the Robot.

James from AVGN made it clear that it is possible to play the game even though you don’t have a robot. However, it demands control over both the P1 and P2 controller, since the P1 controller steers the character while the A and B button on the P2 controller controls the pillars that you need to move up and down to guide the character through the stage. Here’s AVGN’s solution:

I didn’t quite go to the extent of sawing apart two controllers and attaching them together with duct tape. Instead I played it together with my friend Becky, it’s a great game for 2-player co-op ^_^ However I did need to use two controllers myself while recording the game today for the review, one in each hand, not too difficult except when you need to pick up or place a radish which is controlled with A on the P1 controller:


The cartridge says Gyromite, but the title screen claims the name of the game is Robot Gyro… anyway, Gyromite or “Robot Gyro” is a classic arcade style game where you have to collect all the dynamite on each stage to clear it.



There are Dinosaurs that kill you if you touch them, and your character can not jump, so you will have to figure out ways to go around them, or try to crush them with the pillars. You can also pick up radishes and place in front of the Dinos, this will make them stop and eat for a while so you can pass them.


Gradually the stages get harder, and you will have to collect the dynamites in the correct order, otherwise you might get stuck with no way to get back up to collect the remaining dynamites. Then there’s no other option than to crush yourself or wait for the time to run out..

I made it to stage 35 today, apparently there’s 65 stages in total. I might give it another go the next time I have a friend over, cause it’s just more fun that way ;D
 

If you haven’t seen the AVGN episode with ROB the Robot you should check it out. I definitely have to get me a ROB eventually ^_^

Here’s a video I put together of the 35 levels I got to:

Gorbachev’s Pipeline (or ゴルビーのパイプライン) for Famicom

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Yes, it’s a japanese Famicom game featuring the former President of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the goal is to lay a pipeline throughout Russia. Each dot on the map represents a stage, and the difficulty rises progressively.

Gorbachev however only appears on the Title Screen.

It’s actually a quite entertaining game if you like puzzle games. It resembles Tetris a bit, except here you have pieces of two pipes in each falling block and you will have to connect a pipeline from the right wall to the left by rotating and placing the blocks correctly.

There are quite a few games that resembles this one, like for example Pipe Dream for Game Boy. However Gorby’s Pipeline has a uniqueness to it. There’s different music on the stages, I only played through the first three, but they were all different. I guess it will start looping eventually. Both the animation and music has a very USSR feeling to it, the japanese have portrayed a very cosy image of old Russia. It makes me think of ballets like the nutcracker and swan lake, snowy landscapes, and of course the old fashioned Tetris.

It was fairly hard though, if you are not used to puzzle games it will take some time to think where to put the pieces. I myself have played quite a few puzzlers and love the genre, but Tetris is always easier. (Unless you’re playing NotTetris2)

Here’s a movie I put together of the gameplay:

Play & record 8-bit and 16-bit consoles on your Mac / computer

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Making reviews and wanting to be able to record what I’m playing so that I can show through video what the games are like. This has turned out to be a difficult problem to solve, but today I managed to solve all my previous issues.. with a little help from my friends ;D

I started out trying to record with a film camera, filming the TV screen. This was crap. Crappy quality, shaky, bad angles, ugly sound.. etc. So i moved on to borrowing my boyfriend’s brother’s HDPVR, this worked on and off, didn’t work with my NTSC or japanese systems, only my PAL. The recordings got a constant humming in the background sound and it was also a hassle to connect the thing, cords from the HDPVR to the TV, to the laptop (not being able to use my stationary computer=inconvenient) and to the console. I then had to transfer the files from my laptop to my stationary to work with them.

After talking to some stores, I got convinced to buy a DVD recorder. This worked, but not with my NTSC or japanese systems.. also it was a hassle having to record on DVD’s then transfer the files to my computer and convert them to files I could use. The recordings also carried a constant humming sound in the background and the image was laggy..

However the DVD recorder purchase was not in vain. A friend advised me to get the Elgato Video Capture from the apple store.

When I first connected it to the system and straight into the computer it didn’t work. Apparently because the consoles have some built in anti-piracy code (according to my engineer friend). The image looked like this and froze immediately:

BUT when I connected it through the DVD burner into the console the image was perfect, no lag, and I could play the games straight on my iMac, while recording!

It doesn’t look too messy, not too many cords or machines to connect together, and best of all, the sound is perfect!

I’ve been playing a bunch of Streets of Rage on my iMac tonight, with headphones, and OMG that games’ music is just so awesome! This is what the image quality looks like:

This is totally ok for my purpose ^_^

Now I haven’t had time to try it out with my NTSC machines or the japanese yet, but I hope it will work o_O The Elgato is said to be able to take all formats, however I’m not sure if the DVD burner might f*ck it up..
I’ll update once I find out ^_^

Wolfchild for Sega Master System

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I recently bought Wolfchild for Sega Master System, mainly because the cover made it look like a really cool game:

Doesn’t that look absolutely rad?!

Well it’s not.. it could have been a really great game, the graphics are really good for an 8-bit game, the enemies and the stages are well designed, the gameplay is kind of fluent.. but.. there is NO MUSIC in ANY of the STAGES! why?? There’s a song during the start screen, this song is totally ok, if they were too lazy to just make any other songs then they could’ve just kept that one during the stages as well! But no, it’s just plain quiet, and you just hear the sounds of your punches and jumps… it’s weird..

Also the story is never being explained during gameplay, or even before that.. you will have to read the back of the cover to know that:
“Chimera terrorists have kidnapped Saul Morrow’s father and killed his mother and brother. Will his ability to transform into a lycanthrope warrior – a man-wolf with psychic powers – be enough to defeat an entire army?”
Or start reading the manual, where they’ve actually made a comic explaining the events, it’s 4 pages long.. or short…:

“Sometime in the future, high atop a remote island somewhere in the southern pacific”… WTF



Still, this comic only explains the event of Saul transforming into a Wolfchild. What about the Chimera terrorists? Who are they? Who is their leader? Why have they kidnapped Saul’s father?
When you’re Game Over the game tells you:

Who the hell is Draxx?!? There’s nothing about him/or her in the manual, or on the back of the cover! This story is really confusing and vague..

Well apart from this, here’s Saul:

After collecting hearts you turn into a wolf (or Wolfchild??) that has Psychic Powers, which apparently makes it possible for you to shoot laser from your paws….

The first boss i ridiculously easy.. you just walk under him and stand behind him and keep punching.. it doesn’t hurt you to touch him.

The game really has some nice graphics and environments, here’s stage 2:

The second boss wasn’t too hard either. There was a simple pattern to his appearances on the screen and you just had to position yourself away from his line of fire and try to get some shots in whenever he appeared.

On the third stage they increased the difficulty level quite a bit. The stage was overall longer than previous ones, also it had a lot of traps and enemies that came at you without a warning, like the larva randomly falling from the ceiling, and this almost always got you hurt.

When I got to the third boss I was really irritated by the game, not having any music and all.. the constant jumping, bumping and punching sounds really got on my nerves.. I wasn’t able to try the spider boss enough to figure out a pattern, and I got Game Over.. I did not feel like starting up the game again.. even though it does give you password codes for each stage, which is a bonus! And the codes are only 5 letters long! Thumbs up Wolfchild, you did something right!

Here’s a video where you can experience the frustration of not having any music while playing.. I eventually looped the intro song (since it is quite good) so you wouldn’t have to listen to the quietness forever.

Someday I might try to finish this game.. but not until I’ve forgotten about the traumatic experience of playing a 16-bit game that feels like an Atari game with bad sound effects and no music.. probably won’t take long though since my memory is terribly short >_<

Championships of Shitty…

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Actually, Champions of Europe, however it is exceptionally shitty. Not only do I not like sport games to begin with, but this just turned out to be the worst sport game I have ever played.
 Look how fucking psyched they are! Don’t be fooled by this misleading cover!! The game is nothing like what they’re apparently experiencing..

First of all we couldn’t even start a game, we had to resort to the manual (which I rarely do, I prefer figuring out shit myself) to find what all the icons meant and what the hell you needed to choose for a game to actually start.

Most obvious seemed to press the button at the bottom, but they put a demo as the default so before figuring out to change that we watched the demo three times.. >_<

Gameplay.. omg.. you can’t even grab the ball and bring it with you. You have be exactly ON the ball and even then your character will constantly give it tiny little kicks so you can basically just go straight forward with the ball. It’s not easy steering around on a giant football field with the tiniest little character in 8-bit with a D-pad..
We just ran around in circles around the ball until somebody accidentally touched it and it flew out of the field. That’s basically what we did for 2 whole games. No goals. Just chasing the ball around, without results..

You could apparently shout out some kind of formation codes for your teammates, but I don’t know football, so I don’t know the freaking codes!! >_< and they didn’t seem to do much use anyway..

4-3-3 guys! 4-3-3!!!

no wait.. 4-2-4! no! 5-3-2.. or wait was it 4-4-2? no I’m pretty sure it was 5-3-2.. FOUL!

This was the last time I had my boyfriend choose which retro game he wanted to play with me >_<

I advice you NOT to play this game if you ever come across it..
Here’s a funny video I put together summoning up the game:

Psycho Fox for Sega Master System

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Yesterday I played through Psycho Fox for Sega Master System.

I’ve visited this game many times, and I always really liked it. It is however pretty hard, the steering is stiff and it’s hard to maneuver the characters, which makes you inevitably fall into the arms of death. This has always led me to give up after a few stages, but not this time! (Thank heavens for unlimited continues!)

Psycho Fox is a side scrolling platformer, with good graphics for the 8-bit era and cute characters with some nice ability differences. You can eventually play as four different characters and change in stage whenever you have a ladder. You just have to press the PAUSE button which is on the Sega Master System located on the console and not the controller, just right next to the reset button.. so don’t be hasty!

You start off playing as the Fox. His speed and jump is moderate. He’s the character in the middle, which you eventually will end up not using, unless you need a continue and start off without ladders again.. This character is definitely the cutest though in my opinion!! ^_^

And as soon as you have collected a ladder, by either killing enemies or finding it in an egg you can change to either one of the other three characters. The Hippo is only good for one thing, which is breaking stone walls. Apart from that ability he is the slowest character.

Then there’s the Tiger, he is by far the fastest character, but his jumps are as good as the Fox’s. There are a few areas in the game where he can be beneficial, but mainly I preferred playing the last character.

The last character is the Monkey, he runs like the Fox but he jumps spectacularly! This gives you an advantage on most places in this game. Since the movement is still pretty stiff and jumping far won’t be possible unless you have some space to make a run for it first the Monkey gives you a chance to survive in some places where precise jumping is needed, since he has a little more airtime for you to steer him towards where you want to land.

There are 7 bosses in total in the game, which means 7 worlds each with 3 levels where you always encounter the boss at the end of level 3. The first three bosses re-appear on stage 4-5 and 6, and the 7th boss is unique.
The first boss is a thing made of layers that jumps around, you will have to shoot off his middle layers by jumping on a little canon. He will re-appear on stage 4, but this time sliding towards you instead of jumping.

The second boss is a mosquito which you will have to spray 3 times with the giant bug spray can. He will re-appear the same on stage 5.

The third boss is a giant tiger-cat-thing that just runs back and forth, you just have to jump on him three times. This doesn’t sound too hard, but in this game, with the shitty movement, and not to forget ONE HIT AND YOU’RE DEAD AND HAVE TO START FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE STAGE, then it is actually quite frustrating at times..

The final boss is a giant Fox! I always thought that you were playing as the Psycho Fox, but I guess it’s the Fox at the end who’s Psycho..

This guy shoots lightning bolts at you and you have to punch the container on the ground to shoot bouncing red balls at him. After just three hits he’s dead. However, watch out for that lightning.. this took me quite a lot of tries.. and having to run through the entire stage after getting hit once is not uplifting I tell you….

It felt really good after having finally beaten the game though! =D

This game had the weirdest ending..

A Sumo-like fox stomping his feet and clapping his hands in slow-motion with a bunch of random animals and a retarded horse.. shouting DOSUCOI! I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.. and the credits after that where quite entertaining, there was an animated polaroid camera showing pictures of each of the creators. Imaginative ^_^

“Responsible Person” hahaha ^__^

Here’s a video I put together of the gameplay:

Here’s another video of all the full length boss fights:

And here’s a final video of the entire ending: