Hector ’87 and Starship Hector

May 14, 2013 by stopXwhispering

From May 10th until May 17th HiscoreHeroes are hosting a competition on Instagram to celebrate Hudson’s 40th anniversary! This is the main reason why my interest and also frustration has grown for this game called Hector ’87, also known as Starship Hector in the US.

The goal is to get the best score in the 2 minute score attack mode in either the Japanese version of Hector ´87 or the NTSC NES version Starship Hector. I had the Famicom version since before, never paid much attention to this game until I saw this competition, but I decided to give it a go!

Another very important rule to the competition is that you are not allowed to use any type of turbo fire, you must button mash! So, the right button fires bombs to hit ground targets and the left button fires shots to hit flying targets. After several evenings of button mashing until my entire arm was sore I managed to reach a score of 296.000. But other people have over 350.000!! I know how I could get at least 30.000 more, but the problem is THIS BASTARD:

I’ve tried playing the game with turbo fire just to see if he’s even mortal, and yes he is, but he takes soooo many shots! I haven’t even been able to kill him a single time without turbo fire!! The second problem is the letters.. There are hidden letters under little mud piles that you can collect by bombing with a LOT of bombs, and the last letter will give you 100.000 points! Here’s where you will find them, what the piles looks like and what it looks like when the letters are revealed:

However, the last letter is located right next to the mid-boss-bastard, so without turbo fire, even if I would be able to kill the bastard, I would have no time to collect the last letter! >_< THIS GAME IS STUPID! IT MAKES ME SO ANGRY! I don’t understand how it would be possible to do both, unless you can button-mash in an incredibly stabile and super-fast-turbo-auto-fire speed! Can you???
I sure as hell can’t… :(

After seeing photos on instagram of all the people reaching scores way above 300k I realized they were all playing the NES NTSC version, Starship Hector. This made me wonder if there were any differences between these two games. Maybe I was playing the more difficult one?? :D So, when going to the Swedish retro gaming exhibition this saturday I only had one big objective, which was to find an NTSC version of Starship Hector. AND I DID! :D

That evening me and my friend NinjaBrite played Starship Hector with big hopes of reaching even higher scores . but.. it was just the same. Just as hard, same enemies, same fire rate, same speed, same ship, same damn score, same everything! >_< I give up…

If you have a copy of Hector ’87 or Starship Hector and you want to compete, then you can read more about the competition on HiscoreHeroes instagram :) I hope there will be more competitions soon, this was great fun, even though it has been incredibly frustrating o_O

Some other advice for people trying to reach the high score (cause I’ve given up..)
Don’t kill the bunkers immediately, they will keep spawning flying spike-bombs that explode, however if you manage to shoot and kill one it gives 2.000 points!
There are hidden triggers in the ground that will make everything on screen on the ground explode if you reveal and destroy the triggers with 2 bombs. (You will still get the same score as if you would have shot the enemies) I have found 4 of them and they are in these locations:

And here’s the points you get for various enemies:

1st letter 10.000 2nd letter 20.000 3rd letter 50.000 4th letter 100.000	Mid-boss 20.000	This guy 10.000
Mr. Guy’s tiny friend 5.000	Big Amoeba 5.000	Spike-bombs 2.000
Squiddy 2.000	Angry crab-head 2.000	Boss Cannon 2.000
Bunkers 1.000	Tiny Amoeba 1.000	Ship thingy 500
Round ship 500	Cannons 500	Boss 500 points (x4 for each bomb-thingy)
Health bars (if you have full health) 500	Boss shots 0 points :(

At least this is what I could figure out when watching my replays. Feel free to correct me or fill in if I missed something ^_^

Retrospelsmässan 2013 – Sweden’s yearly retro gaming exhibition

May 12, 2013 by stopXwhispering

Yesterday I went to Gothenburg with my friend NinjaBrite to attend Sweden’s yearly retro gaming exhibition ‘Retrospelsmässan‘. This is the 4th year in a row that they’re hosting this exhibition and I think it’s a GREAT initiative! I was there 2 years ago as well, last year I missed though since I was in Japan. It has grown immensely in these past years, and it will probably be even bigger next year. The amount of people who came was way more than they had anticipated, even though they had hired larger facilities people were still quieing for hours to get in! I myself had to que about 4 hours (arriving at 12, two hours after they opened). It was ok though, since Nintendo was hosting a Streetpass competition everybody had brought their 3DS and so did we, so we kept busy ^_^ And also met some awesome cosplayers, like Pixelninja dressed up as Megaman :)

This year on the exhibition they had all the old consoles displayed and connected to TVs so you could try everything out, everything from old Pong consoles and Odyssey 2001 to the Atari Jaguar and everything Nintendo and Sega of course. They also had a corner for speedruns where you could watch some of Sweden’s fastest gamers ;D They had a Doom LAN, Cosplay competitions, arcade and pinball corner, game competitions and stands with companies and people selling retro gaming stuff and of course games! :D

Of course I had to pick up some games ^_^ I was looking for one game in particular, which was Starship Hector, but I’ll write more about that in a later post, that’s a looong story ^^ But I found it at this exhibition! And I also found Ninja Kid, Power Blade, Castle of Dragon, The Krion Conquest and James Bond JR. All were NTSC NES and I didn’t previously have them! (I am proud of myself that I brought a PDF of my collection in my phone, because I always tend to buy doubles unintentionally when attending places like this)… ;D
So here’s a little photo shoot I had of my latest pickups ^_^

retro_gaming on instagram

April 30, 2013 by stopXwhispering

I’ve also been spreading my love for retro gaming for quite some time on Instagram! Feel free to follow me there ^_^ Sometimes when I have less time to sit down and publish new posts on my blog I at least try to share my recent gaming experiences through Instagram :) Everything from Screenshots, Games, Manuals, Toys etc.

Check it out @retro_gaming

Samurai Spirits for Game Boy

April 16, 2013 by stopXwhispering

Recently I connected my new Super Game Boy 2 to my Super Famicom to see that it worked, and I ended up playing a fighting game! Very unlike me since I usually never enjoy fighting games, I find them pointless and I don’t like memorizing combos or just button mashing. However, Samurai Spirits was very cute, and since I beat a few guys in the beginning it kept me going ^_^

The box art is really pretty ^_^ I bought it just for that I think, I’ve had it a long time, but basically just started the game before to make sure it worked.

It’s in pretty good condition, but the manual is a bit bent. I scanned some of the pages though, with all the character info. I don’t know much about fighting games, but perhaps someone will find it interesting ^_^ I do know that there’s been more Samurai Fighting games, I have Samurai Showdown for the Xbox 360, and also a Samurai Shodown for the Sega Mega Drive. It’s the same looking guy on the cover so I guess they’re sequels ;D

If anyone wonders what their names are I can read it ^^ I played as Tachibana Ukyo.

and here’s some more screenshots from the game:

Once I had beaten about 5 opponents I got to meet the same character as myself, and he kicked my ass >_< That’s when I gave up…

Complete Donkey Kong Game & Watch!

March 26, 2013 by stopXwhispering

The history: As some of you might already know, I didn’t get any games as a kid, however, my thirteen year older brother did! I know because when I was really young I got his old Donkey Kong Game & Watch passed down to me, so in a way I did get games, but only one and it wasn’t originally intended for me. I loved this Game & Watch though. I played it all the time, all through the summers I was walking around with it, until it was one day lost. I don’t know what happened to it, if I forgot it at my aunts summerhouse, or if I just misplaced it or something, but ever since I’ve been missing it immensely! And I have always been keeping an eye out for it the last couple of years on eBay. I’ve bid on so many orange Donkey Kong Game & Watch systems that I lost count, but never won them >-< Until now!!

I finally got my hands on a complete in box Donkey Kong Game & Watch Multiscreen! It’s all orange and pretty and brings back so many memories ^_^

The box is a bit worn around the edges and has a price tag on it but apart from that everything is in pretty nice condition ^_^

This game is so much fun! I also have the Game & Watch with Donkey Kong II which is also awesome, but this one brings back so many memories ^_^

The manual is also in really nice condition, here’s some outtakes from it, explaining the gameplay ^_^

And the other little paper inlays inside ^_^

It’s a japanese edition, but I don’t really care, it’s the same game and the same amount of nostalgia and fun ^_^
What’s your most nostalgic game? Let me know in the comments below :D

Sega Sunday #2 – 8bit Altered Beast

March 25, 2013 by stopXwhispering

I love Altered Beast, I grew up playing it on the Sega Mega Drive. Once I started collecting video games I found out it was originally an arcade game and there were ports to several home consoles. Most people know about the Sega Mega Drive Altered Beast, but it was also released for the Sega Master System, the NEC PC Engine (both on HU-card and on CD-ROM) and finally I have also found a port of the Altered Beast (Jūōki) game for the Famicom! There’s probably more that I don’t know about..

This Famicom version surprised me though since Sega and Nintendo were such big competitors and Altered Beast were one of Sega’s pearls. But it actually says copyright Sega really tiny in the bottom of the cartridge.

Here’s all the Altered Beast games I have and know about:

Tonight I’ve been playing the 8-bit versions on Famicom and Sega Master System to compare the two. The Famicom version has been totally re-done by Asmik, and compared to all the other ports of Altered Beast this one really stands out. It’s faster, the character isn’t as stiff as he is in the other Altered Beast games and the sprites have gotten a cute and more rounded makeover, compared to the masculine muscular macho-style of the original ^^ You also have 3 continues which makes the game a bit easier. Here’s a comparison of screenshots from the Famicom version and the Sega Master System version:

What’s really interesting though is that in the Famicom version they’ve put in a whole new stage as a second stage, the regular stage that I’m used to where you transform into a dragon is the third stage of the Famicom version. In this stage you transform into a lion and the stage boss is a pig ^^ I think you will be able to transform into a shark in later stages as well (based on the box cover art)

On the Famicom version I managed to get to the stage where you transform into a bear, which in this version is stage 4. On the Master System version I didn’t even manage to get to the first boss before getting a game over >_< This version is if possible even stiffer than the Mega Drive one. I have beaten the Mega Drive Altered Beast a few years ago after I figured out you could change settings and increase your amount of health and lives, but this Master System version is really really hard and I haven’t found any way to get continues or an easier setting..

The game over text is much cuter in the Famicom version ^_^

I managed to record my efforts on Jūōki for the Famicom, but I was too lazy to bring out the DVD burner to record my failures in the Sega Master System version.. Anyway, here’s the video of my gameplay from Altered Beast on the Famicom, check it out since it’s got some pretty sweet 8-bit Altered Beast tunes! :D