The MSX wasn’t particularly popular in the UK compared to places like Japan and Holland, which is a bit of a shame as it’s quite an impressive 8-bit system and is notable for several milestones in the development of gaming and home computers in general.

The MSX architecture was the first attempt by the industry to come up with a hardware standard that could be licensed by different manufacturers, the result of a collaboration between several Japanese companies and the soon to be mighty Microsoft, who agreed to license a fledgling version of MS-DOS for use on all MSX systems. So although it was not a worldwide success and the standard did not take off, you can argue that the MSX was the forerunner to the IBM PC compatibles that we all have sitting on our computer desks at home and work!

The system’s significance to the gaming world came from both hardware and software. While it wasn’t the first to feature them, most MSX computers had a cartridge slot and joystick controllers with two distinct action buttons rather than the standard one that competitors like the C64 had. Both of these features were utilised extensively by Japanese developers and almost certainly influenced the designers of Nintendo’s Famicom, which was of course a massive success shortly after the 1983 release of the MSX.

Software-wise the most notable contribution made by the MSX was that it was the first home system that Konami developed games for, beginning with conversions of their early arcade games but later progressing to several exclusive games and most famously Vampire Killer, the first incarnation of the classic Castlevania franchise. More on Konami later...

So with the history lesson over, let’s focus on my MSX setup. As I mentioned, the system wasn’t particularly popular in the competitive UK home computer market of the early 80’s, but there were still several versions of the MSX hardware. The most common of these is probably the Toshiba HX-10, which is what I own and can be picked up off Ebay for no more than £20 boxed. The unit is quite neat, with a good range of I/O ports including RCA AV outputs allowing good picture quality - quite a rarity in those days!

The MSX had quite an extensive range of games released in the UK. However, these were mostly ports of games from other systems released on cassette and are consequently of no interest to me. I picked up my MSX for one reason only – to experience obscure Japanese cartridge games that never made it to any other computer or console. Sadly when I bought the system I never thought to check how much these would be likely to cost me, and it turned out they are neither cheap nor easy to find – expect to pay £10 or more for unboxed versions of the better games! Anyway, without further ado let’s take a look at my modest collection of MSX carts...

Surprisingly most of my games have some redeeming quality, but there was one exception. Candoo Ninja looked to be a decent place to start, as from screenshots it appears to be a scrolling platformer/beat em up. However in reality your Ninja character shuffles along at a pathetic speed, can barely jump, does not have any kind of Ninja weapons like throwing stars and is killed by pretty much everything in the game - not so much Candoo Ninja as Can’t do anything!

Falling into the mediocre category is High Way Star, a reasonable Rally-X clone hampered by a serious issue with the in-game map – enemy vehicles and obstacles are not shown! Also failing to make an impression was Casio’s Kenja No Ishi (AKA The Stone Of Wisdom), an action adventure game with a similar visual style to Gauntlet but with gameplay that soon becomes tedious. Another Casio offering is Koneko no dai bouken - Chibi-chan ga iku (AKA Chibi Goes On Adventure), a cute flick-screen platformer that is probably as close to a Mario game as the MSX gets. Sadly the nice graphics are offset by a cruel difficulty level that sees poor Chibi the Cat meet his or her maker all too often!

Next I decided to try out some shmups, starting with my first Konami MSX exclusive, Sky Jaguar. Clearly influenced by Xevious, this vertical shooter offers a variety of enemies to be dispatched including a couple of large bases, and even has some rudimentary power-ups. With some nicely-designed backgrounds and a reasonable difficulty curve, this would have been quite an impressive offering for it’s era (1984) but for one thing – the scrolling, if you can call it that, is diabolical! Highlighting an issue with the MSX hardware that competitors such as the C64 didn’t have, it seems there is no hardware scrolling, meaning that action games such as Sky Jaguar shift the screen along by blocks at a time – in this case, around an inch of the screen is shifted with each ‘scroll’ which is incredibly jerky. That said, the game itself does compensate for that somewhat by being both challenging and addictive, and I did enjoy it despite the poor scrolling.

Some of the other shooters on the system actually cope a lot better with the scrolling issue. Scope On from ASCII makes life easier by limiting the background to a scrolling starfield whose white dots obviously take a lot less effort to move down the screen. As a result however the game itself is little more than a glorified version of Galaga with little in the way of innovation. Volguard from DB-Soft is a horizontally-scrolling shooter where your ship must destroy air and land based targets. The majority of the screen is blue sky with just a limited number of ground elements, so again the scrolling effect is achieved by minimising the amount of objects to be moved. The game itself is not bad, with a variety of enemies to dispatch, but it soon becomes tedious and offers little more than high-score chasing as a reason to replay. Also from DB-Soft is Zexas Limited, which avoids the scrolling issue by adopting a pseudo 3D ‘into the screen’ approach. Graphically it is quite impressive but the gameplay is again just simple blasting action that soon becomes boring.

It does seem that the MSX is pretty adept at creating the 3D effect, as the next game I looked at was another Konami exclusive, Hyper Rally. This is a quite impressive rally driving game that for its time offers a pretty authentic illusion of speed from a classic ‘chase view’ perspective. The aim of the game is to reach the next checkpoint within the time limit and also pass a number of cars to finish in a certain position. Each stage appears to change the environment, for example the second stage takes place at night. Sadly the game is incredibly hard – getting to the checkpoint is not too tricky, but finishing in the required position to progress requires almost flawless driving as even the most minor of bumps results in several opponents being able to pass you.

Next up was a platform game – I’m not sure of the Japanese title but it translates as Tomboyish Becky's Large Adventure, which I think is one of the best game titles I’ve ever heard! The game itself is similar to Space Panic – Becky must dig holes for the cute enemies to fall into and run over them, causing them to fall to their doom and be replaced by fruit that can be collected for bonus points.  It’s a neat little game that has good replay value because the levels appear to be randomly generated so no two games are exactly the same.

Sticking with platformers, I come to what was an incredibly pleasant surprise. King's Valley is another MSX exclusive from Konami, with an Egyptian theme. You take on the role of an intrepid explorer who must make his way through a number of pyramids collecting all of the gems in each to enable the exit to be opened, allowing progress to the next level. In each tomb there are mummies that will try to kill you, but these can be dispatched with reusable throwing daggers that can be picked up around each stage. Later levels also add a puzzle element as some gems are inaccessible and you must collect pickaxes to dig through the platforms in order to reach them.

Sounds like a fairly run-of-the-mill platformer doesn’t it? Well I suppose it is, but what makes the game so great is the style and care that has been taken with the game. The graphics are not spectacular but simply ooze charm, particularly the comical mummies that pursue you, and the music is catchy and repetitive but never gets annoying. The control of your character is superb, especially when you consider you have to push the joystick diagonally to run up and down staircases. The fire button acts as a general ‘action button’ – when you’re not carrying anything, it makes you jump, when you have a dagger then the fire button throws it, and when you have a pickaxe then it makes you dig. This means there is a risk/reward mechanism as you cannot jump when carrying an item, so you have to negotiate the platforms differently to reach your target and avoid the enemies. Add in the strategy required to access some of the gems and the varied characteristics of the differently-coloured mummies (e.g. red ones run up and down stairs quickly) and as the levels progress the game becomes more challenging and fiendishly addictive. Score hounds are also catered for by the ability to revisit pyramids you have completed to kill off a few more mummies.

As I work through my collection I have to admit that most older games that I’m playing for the first time fail to hold my attention for more than 10 minutes, but King’s Valley has had me hooked for hours. I truly believe that if it had been released on all the major 8-bit systems this game would be as revered as the likes of Manic Miner and Chuckie Egg – it really is that good!

After that it was unlikely I was going to find anything else quite so impressive from my remaining games, but Casio's Youkai Yashiki (AKA Ghost House) is another decent platform game, a spooky flick-screen adventure where your character is armed with a torch to fend off his adversaries. In a clever twist, using the torch too much or being harmed by the enemies drains the batteries, making it less effective. The one downside of this game is that it uses two action buttons so if you haven’t got a proper MSX joystick or pad then you’ll need to use the keyboard, and the unchangeable default keys are a tad unwieldy.

Last but by no means least we have Penguin Adventure, Konami’s MSX-only sequel to Antarctic Adventure. First of all I have to say this game has the single most sorrowful title screen of any game, showing the game’s protagonist Pentarou gazing teary-eyed across the ocean, contemplating the task ahead of him. Fortunately the game itself is a little less sombre, as you control your penguin hero as he races across the world to try and save his girl. Each level is effectively a racing game, following Pentarou from behind in the pseudo 3D style that I’ve already said the MSX does well. Expanding on the original game, the levels are quite varied, from forest roads and icy tundra to caves, rivers and even underwater scenarios. Additionally there are now boss battles, power-ups and even the ability to drop into underground ‘shops’ where you can exchange the fish you have collected for weapons and other items, or even gamble them in a fruit machine mini-game. Technically one of the most impressive and polished MSX games, Penguin Adventure is challenging and loads of fun.

So after a shaky start it turns out there are some really great games for the MSX, particularly those Konami exclusives and a few of the Casio offerings. Hopefully I’ll pick up a few more cartridges soon to expand my collection, but from what I’ve seen so far this is definitely a system that plays host to some undiscovered gems. You might not consider it worth buying a proper system, but at the very least find yourself an MSX emulator and give the likes of King’s Valley and Penguin Adventure a try because they are superb!

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I've not updated this blog for a few weeks because I've been playing with a new toy. Yes, I finally joined the Hi-Def console generation by buying a Playstation 3! I really have no love for most modern games - stuff like First Person Shooters hold no appeal to me whatsoever - so you may wonder why I've spent a load of cash on this console? Well, the main reason is because I already had Rock Band with all the instruments on the PS2, so I have now upgraded to the PS3 version with all that lovely downloadable content without having to buy a new set of plastic instruments!

I must admit that while I don't think graphics are the most important thing in games, the Hi-Definition visuals on the PS3 are absolutely stunning. Of course I will inevitably pick up a few modern style games eventually - GTA IV and Fallout 3 are both tempting - but for now the games I have are still very old school in style. My first purchases were Street Fighter IV, LittleBigPlanet and Soulcalibur IV, all of which may have modern visuals and online play but definitely have retro gameplay. There are also plenty of cheap downloadable games from the Playstation Store that look like my kind of thing, although I'm content to play around with all the free demos for now...

So if you were worried that I'm betraying my classic gaming ideals, don't! I've been spending a lot of time on my MAME cab recently and will also be posting a review of my MSX very soon. However, if you also have a PS3 and want to get in touch then feel free to add my PSN ID witchfinder76 to your friends list.

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My weekend actually began at 1pm on Friday as I took the afternoon off work to hire a large Transit van, which was filled with several MAME arcade cabinets, boxes full of consoles and games and virtually every TV from my house and garage. Having picked up my good friends Rob and James, we hit the road at around 5pm and enjoyed a relatively painless trip up the M6 to arrive at the venue, the Cedar Court Hotel, just before 7...

 
After checking in we then had a quick look around the venue, which was already shaping up nicely. Our first major concern was access - the main room was above ground level and with two full-size arcade cabs to shift up several flights of stairs, it looked like we were going to be in for a 'fun' evening! So we headed off to a nearby pub for some food to charge us up for the work ahead. Unfortunately the pub was a Toby Carvery, with only a carvery to choose from on the menu - not the ideal preparation for lugging heavy equipment around!

Nevertheless, we filled our stomachs and headed back to the venue to unload our stuff. By this time darkness had descended, which was a blessing as it had been an incredibly hot day so shifting all the stuff in a cooler atmosphere was very welcome. So we emptied out the van, taking the smaller items first (TVs, boxes of consoles etc) before facing the daunting task of getting my full-size MAME cabinet and the incredibly heavy multi-emulator driving cabinet up two flights of unappealing concrete stairs, through the fire exit and to the far end of the room... Thankfully all went relatively smoothly with no damage to the machines and only minimal pain to our hands and backs!

Having spent a couple of hours setting up all my kit, which included an interesting selection of obscure systems, we retired to the Hotel bar for a few well-earned beers with some of the other attendees that had supplied equipment. At around midnight we popped back to the exhibition room to do a few last-minute checks and were on the verge of retiring for the night when a new contingent of people arrived - several members of the Retro Gamer staff had just arrived, having set out from Bournemouth some 6 hours earlier! Much chatting and showing off of consoles and exhibits ensued until finally at around 1:30 SirClive told us all to bugger off to bed!

Saturday morning came around all too soon, and after waking up in a daze and having a much-needed shower followed by a reasonable full English breakfast, I headed up to the event room again with my pals at around 9:30 to start switching everything on and help with the final preparations. Over the next hour or so more and more interesting equipment arrived and the familiar sound of dozens of video games began to fill the air, and shortly after 11 o'clock the event was officially opened by Retro Gamer editor Darran Jones.

So, on to the event itself, and what a cracker it was! Spread across two rooms was what can only be described as a gamer's wet dream, with arcade machines, computers and consoles spanning over 30 years of gaming history. The main room played host to everything from classic arcade cabinets to dedicated zones for Sega, Nintendo, Atari, Commodore and Sinclair, to a special 'Weird Zone' (which I'll come to later) and of course the now-expected Rock Band setup on a stage. This room was also home to several dealer tables (including my own) and an impressive exhibit by the Centre for Computing History.

The second room was home to a theatre-style setup that hosted various Q&A sessions held throughout the day, which featured industry veterans such as Archer Maclean, John Ritman and Charles Cecil. However the majority of the second room was dedicated to Acorn World, a veritable Aladdin's Cave of impressive exhibits related to the BBC Micro, Archimedes, Electron and RISC architecture. On show was everything from new homebrew Beeb games, clever devices interfacing old Acorn hardware to new technology like Compact Flash drives, to the BBC Domesday system (a kind of 80's version of Google Earth) and even a selection of Robot arms controlled by RISC computers!

After barely playing any games at my own event Byte Back earlier this year, I promised myself I was going to do more gaming at Retro Reunited. However, as usual, beer and lost of interesting people to talk to got in the way of that and by the end of the weekend I may actually have played less than I did at Byte Back! I've made quite a few friends at these events in the past and spent plenty of time waxing lyrical with them, but also got the chance to chat to a few new faces. It was a pleasure to speak to everyone I met over the weekend - whether it was in-depth conversation about gaming or pissed-up chat about utter nonsense, there are so many interesting and funny people in the retro gaming community that it really is a joy to spend time with them.

Anyway, I digress... I did of course get to do some gaming during the weekend, the highlight of which was playing Pac-Man, Missile Command, Battlezone and Asteroids in their original cabinets. Ironically I spent more time playing Pac-Man on UK record holder Jon Stoodley's awesome restored cab than anything else. I'm not quite ready to challenge for a world record yet but I definitely got better at it as the event went on! Talking to Jon and also Missile Command world record holder Tony Temple about their passion for the games was great too. It turned out Jon is a bit of a demon on most arcade classics as he also laid down some impressive scores on Track & Field and 1942 on Rob's bartop MAME cabinet during the weekend!

As I mentioned earlier, one of the areas of systems was dubbed 'The Weird Zone' - this had some truly obscure stuff to behold, including a PC built into a SNES (with CD drive cleverly contained in a permanently-inserted Mario World cartridge!) and rarely seen items such as the Fairchild Channel F and Panasonic 3DO. This area was also home to most of the kit I brought, including the NEC PC-FX, Sega SG-1000 and Nintendo Block Kuzushi, one of the earliest Nintendo systems. Last but not least I provided the ridiculous Action Max system, a lightgun shooting console whose games run from VHS videotapes. Falling solidly into the 'so bad it's good' category, this got quite a lot of interest during the weekend and was even sold to a fellow Retro Gamer forum member on Sunday afternoon.

I'm really pleased to get some positive comments about the obscure Japanese stuff I took, as in the past I've taken that kind of gear to events and nobody has seemed to appreciate it (or at least they haven't told me) so I'm quite chuffed and it made all that lugging TVs and boxes around seem a bit more worthwhile!

Later in the day I ran the event's Shoot Em Ups competition, which around a dozen people had entered. I imagine those people were expecting to play some fancy bullet hell shooter like Dodonpachi or Ikaruga, but instead I decided to go totally old-school and have them play River Raid on the Atari 2600 in the first round! The top four highest scorers then went into an elimination tournament, with the semi-finals played on bizarre Saturn puzzle/shmup Twinkle Star Sprites before going back to the beginning of gaming with the final, playing Space Wars on the Vectrex. The final was contested between Retro Gamer forumite Shaun Scott and hardcore gaming guru John Szczepaniak, with Shaun recovering a 4 point deficit to claim the title 10-9!

As the evening progressed and the quantity of beer drank by everyone increased, I got the chance to crank out a few tunes on Rock Band with Rob on the drums and Retro Gamer writer Andrew Fisher (AKA Merman) on the guitar. I attempted to show off by playing the bass AND sing at the same time, which had mixed results - Queens of the Stone Age tune "Go With the Flow" went pretty well, but Kiss classic "Detroit Rock City" was best described as messy. I do recommend you give it a try sometime though - it's not as easy as you may think!

The story continues on page 2...

 
The absolute highlight of the weekend for me took place over the whole weekend and involved a game called Janey Thomson's Marathon - probably not a game you've heard of, so let me give you a bit of history. Basically the game was created to help perpetuate a hoax. The story is that the game was originally planned to be released in 1984 to coincide with the Olympic Games and it is effectively a button-bashing simulation like Track & Field, except the only event is a Marathon which is run in real time! The truth is that the game was really created earlier this year and is available online as a flash game.

I got in touch with the developer recently and asked if it would be possible to create a standalone version of the game to build into a custom-designed arcade cabinet to be displayed at Retro Reunited and run a competition on it. This was agreed and Rob, James and I worked together to build a cabinet to run the game, which we took to the event. To begin with it didn't get much attention, with people playing for a few minutes at most before wandering off to do something more interesting with their time.

However, at around 2pm a grimly-determined guy called Phil sat down at the cabinet and bashed those left and right buttons to complete the marathon, much to the delight of those watching! By the end of the game Phil was sweating and weary just as if he'd run a real marathon, but a crowd had gathered to cheer him on to the finish line in 2 hours and 58 minutes. Legendary status was awarded to him, but that wasn't the end of the story...

The following day a member of the Retro Gamer forum who goes by the name of Mohicankid sat down at around midday and decided to try and beat Phil's record on the machine. His tactics were very different - Phil didn't drink a drop during his attempt and barely said a word to anyone, while Mohicankid would happily chat to anyone that came by and drank several pints of lager during his effort. And yes, he beat Phil's time by a substantial amount, completing the game in 2:22:10!

Footage of this feat being completed can now be seen on YouTube and other sites. It really made my weekend because when we cooked up the idea of putting the game in a special cab and running a competition, I don't think any of us really believed that anyone would attempt to finish the game, so the fact that two people did it is fantastic, and made the 6 hours of work on the cabinet completely worth it!

Anyway, back to the event review, and although the doors officially closed at 11pm on Saturday night, a vast majority of attendees were staying over at the hotel anyway so the party continued downstairs in the bar, with some people crashing the wedding party downstairs while others sat in the bar, drank more beer and chatted about gaming. I finally hit the sack at about 2:30 after a thoroughly enjoyable but exhausting day...

Sunday was relatively uneventful in comparison (apart from the second Marathon attempt already mentioned) with a few games played here and there, a couple of Acorn-specific Q&As and a charity auction expertly hosted by an increasingly weary looking SirClive. From 2pm onwards people began to drift away and we began the arduous task of packing everything away and back into the van to take home. This ran pretty smoothly and we were away from the venue by 5pm, and home before 7. The van was then unloaded and we returned to our homes to reflect on what was a very tiring but absolutely superb weekend. Hats off to Gordon and his team for putting on a great show!

As I write this I still have half a dozen boxes of stuff to unpack, and I never intend to take so much kit to an event again, but there's no doubt I will definitely be going to more events as it is awesome to spend time with people who share an interest in gaming but are also happy to just spend time chatting. It takes somebody setting up a load of consoles to get us to go to these events, but in the end it is more about socialising than gaming, so if you're reading this and want to spend some quality time with some really great people, make sure you get yourself to the next retro gaming event, wherever it may be...

Special thanks to RG forum members Filecore and Resident Paul for allowing me to use some of their pictures in this report.

Click here for my Photobucket album for the event.
Click here for Filecore's album on Flickr, and click here for Resident Paul's Flickr set.

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As we all know, amusement arcades are not what they used to be. While they were once the best place to play cutting edge videogames, the rise in power of home consoles now means that most of them are filled with Fruit Machines and Prize games aimed at emptying the pockets of unsuspecting parents, whose children crave the pathetic toys that can be obtained by winning tickets from the machines. If there are videogames in arcades then the majority are flashy racing sims or lightgun shooters that cost £1 a credit and rarely give you more than a couple of minutes play.

So, my aim was to see if I could find any classic machines at the remaining arcades along the Welsh coast, or at the very least find something close to the arcade experience that I enjoyed in the early 90’s. As a side quest I was also on the lookout for any shops that sell classic games, given that the likes of Gamestation have pretty much given up on selling retro stuff.

The first significant location we visited on our trip was the town of Barmouth, which we used as base camp for a couple of days. Barmouth itself has two arcades, which I’ll come back to, but my first gaming experience of the holiday was in Harlech, a small town about half an hour North of Barmouth. Our main reason for visiting was to look around Harlech Castle but due to bad weather we didn’t stay long and ended up in a combined arcade/café nearby called Castle Amusements. As expected the majority of the machines were Fruities or Coin Pushers, but they had a couple of modern driving games (which were ignored) and Sega’s Gunblade NY that we had a game on. Dating from the mid 90’s, it feels like a cross between Virtua Cop and Operation Thunderbolt as you try to keep control of a rapidly-recoiling machine gun to mow down wave after wave of faceless enemies.

Heading back to Barmouth in the evening, after eating we ventured into the two arcades near the seafront for a look around. The first seems to be combined with some kind of nightclub and was predictably filled with the usual gambling machines, but there was a Sega Rally twin cabinet in the corner along with two massive sit-down Sega NAOMI cabs running versions of Virtua Tennis and Virtua Striker. Nothing worth putting any money into, to be honest...

The second arcade however was a pleasant surprise. Las Vegas Amusements was a fairly inappropriate name for the place given its rather unglamorous appearance, but inside we found close to a 50/50 split between gambling/prize machines and videogames, which is about as close to replicating the arcades of old as you can hope for these days! There weren’t any real classic games on offer, the oldest probably being GTI Club and Jurassic Park, but had a great selection of modern arcade games such as Fast and the Furious: Super Bikes, Aliens Extermination and Afterburner Climax, which combines the classic playability of the original with cutting-edge graphics. I had a big smile on my face playing this as with the simple blasting action and all the noise of the other machines around me it almost felt like the old days.

Another game that was of interest (and which Anna had great fun with) was Konami’s Fighting Mania, an anime-themed fighting game where you inflict damage on your opponents by hitting six pads that pop out of the machine – very amusing to watch, and seemingly a precursor to the likes of Wii Sports Boxing that ask the player to get physically involved with the game. Sadly we didn’t get to this arcade until shortly before closing time so didn’t get to sample as many of the games as I wanted, but I’d definitely like to go back there sometime.

Click here for the full Barmouth Gallery on Photobucket  

The next stop on the trip turned out to be just as impressive, albeit for slightly different reasons. Having pitched our tent at Devil’s Bridge and spent an hour or so in a nearby nature reserve, we headed into Aberystwyth to get a few supplies and browse around the shops and along the promenade. On the way into the town I noticed an independent games shop called GamePark, so having parked up nearby I headed there expecting the best case scenario of filling a few gaps in my XBOX, Gamecube and PS2 collections. Imagine my surprise when I walked through the door to find not only loads of games for the aforementioned systems but literally hundreds of retro games, everything from 8-bit computer games, to console classics for the Megadrive, Master System and SNES all the way up to PS1 and Dreamcast titles!

This is a retro gamer’s dream store, with prices that are pretty competitive in comparison to Ebay and a vast selection. A year ago I would have spent a fortune here, but as I have already got most of the common games for most systems I own, there wasn’t too much for me to pick up. I still spent £18 however, on 3 loose SNES cartridges for a tenner, plus an official Megadrive 6-button pad and a PS1 game. The guy running the shop advised me that they will be selling stuff on Ebay soon but you really can’t beat a good browse through real stock on a store’s shelves, so I strongly recommend heading to GamePark if you live within a reasonable distance of Aberystwyth.

That wasn’t the end of the fun either, as we went for a stroll along the prom and checked out the arcade on the pier, which had a pretty decent selection of videogames including House of the Dead, Star Wars Trilogy, Daytona and Sega Rally. Of most interest to me however was the one game I’d been hoping to see on my travels – Guitar Hero Arcade! Of course I couldn’t resist a game on this and decided to play the Kiss classic “Rock and Roll All Nite” on Hard level, which I set the high score on. The game is heavily based on the Guitar Hero III engine and setlist, with the only significant differences being that there’s no whammy bar or tilt sensor on the guitars – star power activates automatically as soon as you have charged it up. Oh, and the guitars weigh a ton compared to the plastic ones at home! I was a bit gutted that we didn’t take the camera so I could get a few snaps of this arcade, but Anna did get one on her phone...

Over the next few days we visited a few other seaside towns, but their arcades were not particularly impressive – New Quay had two, with the best games on offer being Point Blank 2, another NAOMI cab running Virtua Striker, House of the Dead III and Sega Rally 2 – nothing even approaching a retro classic there I’m afraid! Tenby was even worse with just one arcade, the extravagantly named Serendipity Amusements, with only a couple of videogames including the now almost-obligatory Time Crisis.

As the end of our holiday approached we had just one more seaside resort to visit, The Mumbles in Swansea Bay. We parked near the pier and headed there with the intention of killing a bit of time before the football match we intended to watch in a bar at 5pm. The pier arcade turned out to be pretty good, with a decent selection of games amongst the usual gambling junk. Highlights were an original Ridge Racer sit-down, the always-excellent Crazy Taxi and the very enjoyable Mario Kart Arcade GP 2 that I played for the first time. It’s pretty similar to the Wii/Gamecube versions graphically but adds extra fun by actually having a steering wheel, the inclusion of Namco characters such as Pac-Man and the ability to have your photo taken by the machine prior to playing the game – pointless but fun!

The closest we came to anything classic however were the gambling machines based on Pac-Man and Space Invaders. It was looking increasingly unlikely that finding any truly retro arcade machines was going to happen...

After watching the match and eating fish and chips on the seafront, we went into one last arcade just to see what they had to offer – Tivoli Amusements is in the middle of ‘The Mumbles Mile’ and looks like it used to be a cinema or theatre. As we walked through the back door it looked like a familiar story – nothing but fruit machines and soft toy grabbers – but at the front of the arcade was as close to a retro jackpot as I was going to get. There in generally great working order and condition were a selection of early 90’s classics including a 4-player Virtua Racing setup, Namco’s Suzuka 8 Hours 2, Sega’s Title Fight, Konami’s 4-player Soccer Superstars and best of the bunch, Virtua Fighter 2 for 10p a go!

Add to that some more recent stuff like the massive House of the Dead II sit-in cabinet (4 credits for a quid) and this was definitely a fitting end to my journey. OK, I never found any real classics like Galaga or Double Dragon hiding in the dusty corner of a seldom-visited arcade, but this trip did at least reassure me that the arcades I loved as a child do still exist in some form and that even some of the newer videogames are worth playing. So if you’re ever in the vicinity of the towns mentioned, get yourself in the arcades and drop a few coins in the older games to help ensure that those games continue to live on...

Click here for the full Mumbles Gallery on Photobucket

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Why Bother Importing?
The Megadrive was incredibly popular in Europe, much more so than in Japan (where Nintendo has always been king) and equally as popular as in the USA, yet strangely it still has a much smaller library of games than those two regions. Additionally there were a number of games released in Europe that were heavily censored or modified compared to the Japanese originals, such as Konami's Castlevania and Contra games. Add to that the sheer number of games available at low prices from the US and you have three good reasons to import for the console!

If you want another, purely cosmetic reason to import, then the box art on most Japanese games is absolutely gorgeous in comparison to the western equivalent.

Hardware Modification
There are probably more ways to import-enable the Megadrive than any other system, and the first of these is about as cheap and easy as it gets - do nothing! The vast majority of Megadrive and Genesis game cartridges do not actually have any region protection in them. The common consensus is that every game released prior to Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in 1992 has no regional lockout, while only selected games that came out after that time have it. There is however a physical restriction with Japanese games as the cartridge won't fit into the standard slot of a western system, but this can be easily worked around by cutting a small piece of the console shell away either side of the cartridge slot.

The next cheapest option would be to pick up an import game converter cartridge, of which there are many, which will generally set you back no more than £10. The most well known of these is probably the Game Genie, which was marketed as a cheat cartridge in the US. The cartridge works as a pass-through which not only disables regional lockout on some cartridges but also allows you to get around widening the cartridge slot for using Japanese games. Be wary however as I believe that some of the games released later in the Megadrive's life employ more complex regional lockout that some cartridges cannot circumvent.

A third option would be to pick up a cheap Japanese Megadrive. You really only need to get the base unit itself as the PSU, AV and controllers from all systems are compatible with each other as far as I'm aware, as long as it is the same model. This would give you full compatibility with all Japanese releases of course, and also allow you to use most European and American cartridges (which physically fit) providing they had no lockout.

Finally the most comprehensive way to make your system compatible with imports from all regions is full modification - widening the cartridge slot and fitting switches to allow you to select the system's language (English or Japanese) and also the display output frequency (50 or 60Hz). The two switch mods are particularly useful because it is one (or both) of these two settings that the regional lockout in game cartridges uses to verify the region of the console, so if you are able to modify each of these to emulate a system from any region, there is no game that you won?t be able to play!

If you're brave enough to try modifying the system yourself then detailed instructions can be found at Mmmonkey's Console Modifications, but if you'd rather leave it to an experienced professional then Console Passion offer full modification for £25 plus postage costs, or will sell you a modded Megadrive base unit for the same price.

Where To Buy Cheap Games
As you'd expect, many of the really desirable import-only Megadrive games tend to demand a premium, but there are still quite a few bargains to be had if you shop around, and you should be able to pick up some loose cartridges for under a fiver with many boxed games costing less than £10. As the Megadrive was a very popular console for imports during its original lifespan, you'll find quite a few Japanese and US games readily available on Ebay UK and the independent retro game stores like Console Mad, Genki Videogames and Console Passion, though the latter two tend to be fairly pricey. If you're looking to genuinely import your games then both Hit Japan and Superb Articles From Japan have a decent selection of Japanese titles, while Lukie Games is a good option for Genesis titles, though most are lacking boxes or instructions. As always, buying bulk lots from one seller can offer you significant savings on games from overseas, as can making 'Best Offers' if possible.

Since I last wrote one of these Import Gaming articles I have found another method for getting hold of some decent stuff from Japan at competitive prices. Shopping Mall Japan offers a service where they will buy items on your behalf from Yahoo Japan Auctions (which is generally inhospitable towards western users) and store them locally until you are ready to have them sent over in a bulk parcel.

Setting up an account with them is a little convoluted and it is very important you read and understand their policies regarding fees and shipping options, but there's no doubt that you can get some bargains if you focus on Yahoo auctions that feature bulk lots of games. For example, I bought a bundle of 22 Megadrive games sold in one lot and even after paying all the fees, local and international shipping they still only cost an average of under £4 each!

Finally it is always worth checking out gaming forums such as the one at Sega-16 as some bargains may appear on their sale boards.

What Games To Buy
As I mentioned at the start of the article, I've been importing quite a few Megadrive/Genesis shmups recently, but overall I've built up a fairly balanced selection of games from both the USA and Japan. All of the following were bought for £10 or less and are boxed, though some are missing manuals. A few of them were released in Europe but those versions will cost you a hell of a lot more than their foreign counterparts...

Top Genesis Bargains
Thunder Force III - Technosoft's superlative horizontal shooter, which never got a European release
McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure - fantastic-looking platformer developed by the legendary Treasure
Crossfire - a mixture of scrolling shooter and run n' gun action, known as Super Airwolf in Japan
OutRunners - a very competent conversion of the simultaneous 2-player sequel to Sega's racing game

Top Japanese Bargains
Assault Suit Leynos - Mech-based run and gun action, known as Target Earth in the USA
Puyo Puyo - the eastern version of Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine offers addictive puzzling action
Saint Sword - Taito's hack and slash platformer with a twist
Gaiares - a highly regarded horizontal shooter that allows you to poach weapons from destroyed enemies
Doraemon vs. The Dream Thief and the Seven Gozansu - a Mario-esque platformer featuring the popular Anime character

Remember this is just the tip of the iceberg, and if you pay more than £10 each for any of these then you've not been shopping around enough! If you're unsure what Megadrive gaming delights are out there that you have yet to experience, you should head over to Sega-16 or Segagaga Domain and browse their reviews.

Good luck, and please share your own Megadrive/Genesis import experiences by leaving a comment!

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About a year ago I had a plan. The plan was to work through each system I own chronologically, play on them for a week and review both the hardware and some of the games available. If all had gone to plan then this blog would now be full of info about three decades of games systems. However this grand plan was interrupted by Byte Back and general laziness, and as it stands just two systems have been reviewed – the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64. Whoops!

Now, finally, I bring you a review of a week playing on another of my systems, the one that is probably the most unique of all the consoles I own - the Vectrex!

  Released by Milton-Bradley in 1982, the Vectrex hardware was notable for a number of firsts, some of which have never been replicated to this day. Most notably it was the first and only system to have a built-in vector monitor, enabling it to show crisp, fast-moving graphics akin to those used in classic arcade games of the time such as Asteroids and Battlezone. It was also one of the first systems to have a controller with multiple fire buttons that performed different actions, and you could argue it was one of the earliest portable, self-contained systems that used cartridges, though you still needed a power supply to use it!

My Vectrex was an Ebay purchase from Holland during the traditional post-Christmas Ebay sales lull in 2007, so cost me around £60 shipped and included one unboxed game (Bedlam, which was subsequently sold). I also managed to pick up a second controller from Germany for a £15, which is a very reasonable price as they are generally quite hard to come by on their own. It does have one slight sticky fire button but as long as you whack it hard it is perfectly functional!

Games-wise I only have two official cartridges – an unboxed copy of Fortress of Narzod (with overlay) and a boxed, complete copy of Space Wars. The reason for having so few originals is because I have what every self-respecting Vectrex owner should have - multicarts!

Many years ago the owners of the Vectrex game code released it into the public domain, so while multi-game cartridges for other systems are legally dubious, Vectrex multicarts are totally legal. My main multicart is a rather amateur looking 32-in-1 PCB thing that slots into the side of the console and allows you to choose each game by changing jumpers on the PCB itself. The games include all the official MB releases plus a selection of homebrew games. It may not be the most attractive of cartridges but it was only a tenner so I’m not complaining!

Speaking of homebrew, I also have two multicarts created by John Dondzilla, one of the most prolific homebrew game developers for the Vectrex. Each cartridge features a selection of complete games (usually based on arcade classics) and also some tech demos and unfinished projects. If you want to know more about these I suggest checking out John's site Classic Game Creations where you can buy the carts and read about his latest projects.

So, moving on the games themselves, I started by playing the game that is built into the system, the fast and frantic Minestorm. Arguably one of the best 'pack in' games for any console (at least until Wii Sports) despite being heavily influenced by Asteroids, the game features a quite impressive demonstration of the Vectrex’s capabilities by displaying a large, smoothly-moving spaceship travelling into the screen before the game itself starts. Level 1 is pretty much exactly the same as Asteroids, but things soon get more tricky with mines that fire at you after you destroy them and others that home in on your ship, meaning you have to move around the screen constantly. All good, addictive arcade action!

Next I fired up the multicart PCB to play a selection of the original games released by MB. Berzerk and Scramble are both very good interpretations of the arcade games, the latter being the only official conversion for a home system and the former being just as dull as the arcade version – I’m not a fan of Berzerk! Neither game really held my attention, but Armor Attack was a different proposition entirely. Definitely one of my faves, this game casts you as a small jeep in a maze-like collection of buildings and it’s kill or be killed as you have to take out the enemy tanks and an impressively-animated helicopter. Like most Vectrex games it is simple stuff, but compelling nonetheless.

More time was spent on games with varying degrees of quality and interest, such as Clean Sweep (a Pac-Man clone), Hyper Chase (a mediocre racing game) and Rip Off (another space shooter with Asteroids-style controls) before I met up with the Vectrex’s mascot... Yes, long before Sonic, the Vectrex had it’s own spiky platforming hero called Spike! Undoubtedly one of the most technologically-advanced of all the official MB releases, Spike is a single-screen platforms and ladders adventure that includes basic cut scenes and even some rudimentary digitised speech - possibly another first for a console game at the time. Gameplay is fairly straightforward but the game exudes charm and addictiveness.

Having covered a good selection of MB originals I thought it was time to investigate some of the superb homebrew games that have breathed new life into the Vectrex some 25 years after its commercial demise. So in went John Dondzilla's Vecmania multicart from which I spent a good while playing his brilliant interpretations of arcade classics such as Birds of Prey (AKA Phoenix), Star Fire Spirits (AKA Star Wars) and Patriots Remix (AKA Missile Command), which all show how comfortable the system is with fast and exciting arcade games. Some of his original creations from the Vectopia multicart offer a similar experience, particularly Trakkers, a grid-based shooter, and Wormhole, a 360 degree shmup reminiscent of classics like Gyruss and Tempest.

Finally I went back to the one Vectrex game that I absolutely adore and never tire of, Space Wars. This is a version of Steve Russell’s Spacewar - effectively the first-ever computer game, originally developed in 1962 - and with that in mind you would not expect too great a game, but it is just fantastic flying around the screen with your little ship trying to blast your opponent and avoid the meteor and the sun! Undoubtedly this is the best version of the game that marked the dawn of videogames, and if you’re at all interested in the history of gaming then you owe it to yourself to play it.

So, the Vectrex... Absolutely unique in design, with graphics that still look great now and a collection of really enjoyable arcade-style games that continues to grow. Sure, there are technical limitations to the games and the infernal buzzing of the system can be annoying, but there’s no doubt this is a system that continues to impress all that encounter it. If you haven’t had the pleasure yet, get yourself to a classic gaming event (or on to Ebay) and experience the Joy of Vectrex as soon as you can!

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I won't drone on about how great it was because you can see and read all about that on the post-event review at the official site, but I will share just one photo that I think sums up just how cool the event was...

So, now I'm back and will start posting on here again, probably starting with a review of a week playing on my Vectrex.

Thanks to everyone that has visited the blog over the last few months – I've been averaging over 300 hits a month, which is pretty good considering I haven't done anything!

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I recently bought a new PC, which came with 2 Gigabytes of RAM. 2 GIG!  The amount of memory and hard disk space on modern PCs is just ridiculous. At the same time I was setting up my new PC I was also playing games on my Commodore 64, so named because it had 64Kb of memory.

At the time of the system's release in 1982 this was an impressive amount compared to the 16K of the ZX Spectrum or the 32K of the BBC Micro, and that extra memory seemed well utilised in a vast number of arcade-style games boasting 16 colours compared to the rival systems' 8, and the legendary SID chip providing some of the best sound to ever come from a home computer.

My C64 setup consists of the C64C system, essentially the same as the original brown C64 but in a more stylish Amiga-esque case, with a massive original 1541 disk drive, which you may recall I brought back from the dead a few months ago. My time spent with the system was geared towards transferring a bunch of tape-based games to disk and also to spend some quality time playing C64 games that I never paid much attention to the first time around.

I started with a couple of games that were budget £1.99 releases back in the early 90's and were obtained for even less than that via Ebay. First up was Arnie from Zeppelin Games, a scrolling run and gun in the Commando mould, but using a slightly peculiar isometric perspective akin to games like Zaxxon. Graphically and sonically uninspiring, it is still decent enough gameplay-wise and provided some simple blast em up entertainment for half an hour or so.

Next was Mastertronic's Action Biker, an early example of licensing as it features Clumsy Colin, the 80's mascot of KP Skips, a snack that I believe still survives to this day. The idea of the game is to drive Colin around collecting parts to enhance his motorbike ready for a big race. I never got as far as the race itself but did enjoy trundling round this early example of a sandbox game, doing whatever I pleased. The graphics are functional but theme music is catchy – I was still humming it days later!

Next up were two games I did play the first time around and had fond memories of. Firebird's Booty proved to be a rose-tinted moment as what I remembered to be good turned out to be a pretty dire platformer with no redeeming qualities. On the other hand Fast Break, the basketball sim from Accolade (now Electronic Arts) was just an impressive interpretation of the game as I remembered, down to the squeak of the players shoes on the court! Sadly I rather got my ass handed to me by the computer opponent, but there's no denying that EA really knew how to make a sports game even before the endless FIFA iterations.

Moving on to a more cerebral challenge I tried a game that I'd always wanted when I was younger but never got around to playing, BombUzal from Imageworks. This fiendish puzzler sees you controlling a comical character that has to blow up a selection of bombs on a platform without killing himself. It's a little like Bomberman I suppose but with more of an emphasis on solving puzzles. There's two ways of viewing the action, an overhead 2D view and also an isometric 3D perspective that I found completely impossible to comprehend! The 2D view kept me interested for a couple of hours though, and I even wrote down the level passwords so I can go back to this one in the future.

From the sublime to the ridiculous, my next game was Alligata Software's Kettle, written by Tony Crowther who was known for his quirky offerings. The aim of the game is to control your kettle and shoot bubbles at a number of, um, chimneys (for want of a better description) until you find a can opener that is the key to escaping the level. Yes, it is as odd as it sounds, but not without merit and the inclusion of a simultaneous 2-player mode adds to the appeal.

Last but by no means least I played the most recent C64 release that I own, 1992's Nobby the Aardvark from Thalamus. Arriving at the end of the system's natural life, this platformer showed off a quality of graphics and audio that competed with the NES and Master System, with console-styled gameplay to match. As you guide Nobby from level to level you get to jump, swim and fly in both a balloon and a UFO. It's a bloody tough game but a rewarding one that I'll certainly spend a lot of time with, not least because Aardvarks are great!

If my maths is right then 64kb is 1/32000th of 2Gb, but having played on my C64 I can happily confirm that when it comes to great games, my new PC is nowhere near 32000 times better than Commodore's classic!

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Over the last few months I have been gradually trying to accumulate all manner of goodies related to the original Bubble Bobble, my favourite game of all time. Not only am I attempting to get hold of every release of the original game but also any spin-offs that feature the classic 'trap them in a bubble and pop it' gameplay (so no Rainbow Islands, Parasol Stars or Puzzle Bobble!)

I've also picked up a few collectibles related to the series, as the following selection of images shows.

First, here's all of my stuff together...

And now for some close-ups of the more interesting items in the collection...

Bubble Bobble for the Sharp X68000 system - I love that Japanese artwork! This is one of several BB variants that I can't even actually play as I don't have the system.

Nintendo Handheld versions - Classic Bubble Bobble for the Gameboy Colour, the original BB for the Gameboy and BB Old & New for the Gameboy Advance. I also have Bubble Bobble Part 2 for the Gameboy, unboxed.

Bootleg Famicom 4-in-1 cartridge featuring the very rare Bubble Bobble 2 - not Rainbow Islands, but a revamped version of the original game. This cart also features Street Fighter II, which is a clever ROM hack because SFII was never released on the Famicom/NES!

The Sega Game Gear version - this is fairly hard to come by as I believe it was only released in the US.

BB Dot Pin puzzle - yes, I found one after mentioning it in my article a few months back!

Famicom Disk System version of BB - this is essentially the same as the NES version.

A selection of home computer ports - C64, Amstrad, Spectrum and Amiga.

Sega Saturn version of Bubble Symphony, the first arcade sequel to bring back the classic BB gameplay.

The US Taito disk version of BB for the Commodore 64. This appears to be the same as the UK Firebird version but has a different title screen and runs slightly slower on my C64 - could this be because the code was optimised for a 60Hz NTSC system but is running at 50Hz on mine?

A brand new boxed Bubble Bobble LCD game, released in 2005. I've only ever seen this once on Ebay (and bought it!) and can't find any other info about it online, so I'm assuming it's pretty rare.

And finally, a big cuddly Bub. He looks like he's from the GBA 'Old & New' era, but has no tags or markings on the label so I'm not even sure if it is a genuine piece of merchandise. Can anyone shed any more light on this?

I'm still looking for more items to add to my collection, including ports of the original game for the Atari ST and MSX, the two Nintendo DS remakes, the official NES version of Bubble Bobble 2 and the promotional inflatable Bub that I have seen just once on Ebay in the last 8 years (and was outbid on! )

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For more info visit the official website at www.byte-back.info. I will make occasional updates on the progress of the event on this blog as the big weekend approaches, but more importantly I'll get back to actually playing some games and posting some new topics on here...

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http://www.kwiksurveys.com/online-survey.php?surveyID=ILML_846580fc

Update 12/08 - The survey is now closed but you can read the results here:

http://www.byte-back.info/surveyresults.html

Thanks to the 70 people that took the time to respond. I'm not looking for a venue to host the event next year - more info when I have it!

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It truly was a great day out and I met up with lots of friendly and like-minded people that show just how strong the retro community is. Personal highlights were my first ever go on Rock Band, where my vocal performance on the Foo Fighters "Learn to Fly" earned me a 100% rating, and showing off some of my old Shoot Em Up Construction Kit games to Andrew Fisher (Retro Gamer contributor and C64 guru) who was quite impressed with some of my 18 year old work!

Here's some photos from the event...

There were several arcade machines in attendance including these two fine specimens.

You can't get more retro than this - former Crash! magazine tech guru Simon Goodwin's Video Genie, running a homebrew Pac-Man clone.

My Neo Geo AES was a big favourite with fighting game fans.

Typing of the Dead is always a winner at these events!

Rob's MAME bartop was rarely unoccupied during the day.

The ZX Specadore 64 takes Homebrew to a whole new level!

Impromptu competitions broke out throughout the day. This one is Sensible Soccer on the Amiga CD32.

It wasn't just about the retro games - here we have 8 XBOX 360's networked for multiplayer heaven.

Spectrum Homebrew God Jonathan Cauldwell created this game called Fusion especially for the event.

There were several Q&A sessions with special guests during the day. Here Paul Drury interviews Martin Hollis who worked on Goldeneye for the N64 amongst others.

The Saturn Bomberman tournament attracted nearly 30 entrants!

One of the highlights of the event was the fantastic Rock Band, which saw complete strangers joining together to ROCK day and night...

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I've already registered and posted over 20 game profiles, and I'm proud to say that my first offering Bubble Bobble was chosen last week as the site's Game of the Week.

You can see what other games I've cast my opinion on by viewing my profile page...

If you have an opinion on any classic games, what are you waiting for? Get yourself registered and join the retrobates!

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Yesterday I completed successful transplant surgery to turn two non-functional 20-odd year old Commodore 1541 disk drives into a single working one! Thanks to Ray Carlsen’s Commodore Repair Articles I worked out the likely cause of the problem with one of the two drives, and after an hour of unscrewing, replacing PCBs, putting the original PCB back in again and finally transplanting three ROM chips I managed to get the drive up and running!

All this is particularly timely as the C64 is next on my chronological list of systems to play on, so now I can not only play games but also transfer tape-based games to disk. I can also finally play the copy of Nobby the Aardvark that I picked up months ago – yippee!

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My 2600 is one of the iconic original ‘woody’ versions, and a six-switch variation at that, making it around 30 years old. For its age it is in fine shape, with all the switches fully functional and a reasonable RF picture output. It really is quite remarkable how well these old systems stand the test of time – can you imagine an XBOX 360 still working 30 years from now!?

I don’t have a massive collection of games for the 2600, but I have tried to pick up the titles considered to be the classics, games like Combat, The Empire Strikes Back and Pitfall! Most of my games are cartridge only as it is virtually impossible to get boxed Atari games in good condition for a reasonable price - the majority of my games cost no more than a few quid each.

So 25-30 years down the line, what are these games like? Well, I have to say that a lot of the early Atari releases and some of the third-party offerings are pretty poor. The blocky graphics are a definite turn-off and a single game of titles like Demon Attack and Junior Pac-Man was enough for me to know I’d never play them again -they’re now up on Ebay! On the other hand the multiplayer action on offer in Combat, Video Olympics and Warlords means that while they look basic they will always have an appeal as easy-to-learn pick up and play party games.

One thing that’s very clear is that as the system aged, the game developers really got to grips with the limited hardware and continually pushed it to new heights. This is particularly apparent with the third-party releases from the early 80’s. While the early games were simplistic, single-screen affairs with blocky graphics and limited bleeps of sound, later games like Imagic’s Dragonfire and Tigervision’s Polaris offered more complex gameplay and aesthetics to match.

There is one name however that is synonymous with the very best games for the Atari 2600, and that name is Activision. The original third-party videogame publisher, formed by ex-Atari programmers, Activision was responsible for all of my favourite games for the 2600. Nearly every release offers technically impressive graphics and sound, and compelling gameplay that is as good now as it was 25 years ago. From the changing weather and transition from day to night in Enduro to the smooth vertical scrolling of River Raid, the programmers achieved miracles with the system, culminating with the marvel that is Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns with it’s continuous background music, water effects and inspirational platforming gameplay.

I played through the majority of my collection and without doubt my pick of the Activision bunch was Chopper Command, a great shoot em up that is a kind of combination between Defender and Missile Command as you protect a convoy of trucks from raiding planes and helicopters on a horizontally-scrolling landscape. My crowning achievement of the week was scoring over 10,000 on the game, which back in the 80’s would have allowed me to send off for one of the much-desired Activision patches. I even tried to buy myself one from Ebay but somebody else wanted it more than me...

So to summarise, my week with Woody was both educational and enjoyable. If you can pick an Atari 2600 up at the right price, I highly recommend getting yourself a piece of gaming history – just make sure you pick up a stack of Activision titles to go with it!

If you want to find out more about the Atari systems and games, why not visit the excellent AtariAge site?

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Why Bother Importing?
The number one reason for most gamers to make their Dreamcast import-friendly is so they can play all those fantastic shooters that were released in Japan towards the end of the console’s life. However they will all cost you a substantial amount of cash to get hold of, so since these articles are all about cost-effective importing, let’s just say that there are a number of Japan and US exclusive games that are well worth your time and won’t put too much of a strain on your wallet. This is one console that it probably isn’t worth trying to get cheaper imported versions of PAL releases for, as the majority of PAL Dreamcast games are ridiculously cheap these days. There are a few exceptions though which I’ll cover later.  

Hardware Modification Let’s make this quick shall we? You can get a US or Japanese console for around £50 (Video Game Imports and Japan Game Stock have them) or you could get hold of a Mod chip for £25+ fitted from Console Passion, or £12 from Rob Webb if you want to try fitting it yourself. 

However the cheapest and easiest way to make your Dreamcast import-friendly will cost you no more than the price of a blank CD. There are numerous ‘boot discs’ available that allow you to play imports by loading the CD, then taking it out and putting your import game disc in it’s place. The best of the bunch is the Gameshark CD-X, which not only plays virtually all imports and supports the Dreamcast’s VGA adapter (highly recommended by the way!) but also has a totally unnecessary gratuitous picture of a buxom woman with a gun on the menu screen!  Another alternative is the Utopia Boot CD but that isn’t compatible with some games.

 

You should be able to download an ISO of any of the boot discs and burn it to a CD yourself – just Google ‘Dreamcast Boot CD ISO’ or visit this site and you’re sure to find something suitable. If not, get in touch and I’ll happily do you a copy of the CD-X for the cost of a blank CD and postage!
 
Where To Buy Cheap Games A bit tricky this one. To be honest, your best bet for picking up the worthwhile imports at a reasonable price is to just keep an eye on Ebay. There are a couple of Japanese Ebay shops that have a substantial quantity of games priced £5 or less – Hit Japan and Japanese Retro Video Games – but the majority of titles are either mediocre sports or driving games (most of which got a PAL release anyway) or the kind of thing that only the Japanese would enjoy. Love adventures, text-heavy RPGs and giant robot sims are the order of the day at the budget end of the Dreamcast import spectrum I’m afraid.  You may also find a bargain or two at Japan Game Stock but again the majority of their cheapest games are readily available for a similar price in PAL format.

What Games To Buy As I’ve already made clear, its rather slim pickings on the cheap and worthwhile imports front. If you’re browsing the Ebay stores mentioned above and come across a cheap title that interests you, I strongly recommend cross-referencing it with the opinions on Segagaga Domain before spending any money.

One US-only release that can be found for under a tenner and is worth picking up is Ooga Booga, an entertaining ‘tribal sports battle’ game that supports four simultaneous players, making it ideal for parties.

 

Aside from that, fans of 2D fighting games will find the Japanese editions of Street Fighter III: Third Strike and Capcom vs SNK 2000 a little cheaper than their PAL counterparts, while Survival Horror lovers should be able to pick up Blue Stinger and Bio Hazard: Code Veronica (AKA Resident Evil) for under £5 in their Japanese incarnations. Be wary of the foreign text and voice acting that may affect playability however.

   

Last but by no means least, the American version of the fantastic Typing Of The Dead is far easier to come by than the PAL edition, and more affordable too. Expect to pay no more than £15 for this hilarious and challenging remake of House of the Dead 2, but remember you need a Dreamcast keyboard to play it with.

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Aside from Dig Dug you can also get sets themed on Pac-Man, Mario, Zelda and more. Of course, what I really want are the Bubble Bobble sets, but they've been sold out for over a year - anyone care to sell me some?

I also picked up a partial set of Shooting Game Historica Gashapons. For those that don't know, Gashapons are little vending machine toys that are immensely popular in Japan. Each one features a model kit that allows you to construct a replica of the ships from some of the greatest Japanese shmups, including Gradius, Darius and Image Fight. The most desirable one is of course the R9 fighter from R-Type, which I haven't been able to get my hands on as yet. However, a second series is on it's way featuring the R-90 from R-Type III and Opa-Opa from Fantasy Zone, amongst others.

These fun and relativly cheap items can be picked up from National Console Support in the USA and Play-Asia in Japan. Just search for 'dot pin' or 'shooting historica'...

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A bit too bright and shiny, but it still has that classic Arcade feel to it.

A 4-player Simpsons cabinet in excellent shape

Namco multi-game cabinet, clearly running some version of MAME

RayStorm (AKA Layer Section 2) was only 20 cents per credit - that's 8p in English money!

Sega Rally looking great at 13 years of age

A nice NEO-GEO cabinet featuring Metal Slug

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Why Bother Importing?
Much like the NES before it, the SNES/Super Famicom was far more popular in the USA and more specifically it’s native Japan. Consequently the system was extremely well supported in terms of games in these two territories. Based on articles I’ve read, the US SNES probably had around 200 more games released for it than the European version, while the Super Famicom has an estimated 1450 games compared to the paltry 550 titles that the PAL system had!

Of course, some of those 900 games will undoubtedly be rubbish like pachinko and mah-jong simulations, but it goes without saying that there are all manner of quirky Japan-only titles that are well worth experiencing. In the case of the US, the sheer volume of games available over there means that once again you can pick up many titles from across the Atlantic for a fraction of the price you’d pay in the UK.

Hardware Modification
Effectively your options are similar to what I said in my previous NES and Saturn articles. However there is of course an added complication if you want to play Japanese and US games on your PAL system – Super Famicom cartridges will fit in your console, but have region lockout, while the US cartridges are a completely different shape so you have double trouble in the form of region lockout AND a cartridge that won’t fit in your standard PAL SNES!

So, you can buy a foreign console – a Super Famicom can be picked up for under £40 shipped from Rob Webb or Japan Game Stock, while the same price should get you a US SNES from Ebay or similar. Either way you’re still going to end up with a console that won’t play games from one of the regions.

The next option is modifying the console to remove region lockout and optionally widening the cartridge slot and adding a 50/60Hz switch. Mmmonkey’s Console Modification Page covers two of these three mods but a quick look will show you they are not easy and do not provide 100% compatibility. Consequently the £25 plus P&P for a complete SNES modification offered by Console Passion seems like a pretty good deal.

Finally, and typically the cheapest option, you can pick up one of the numerous import game converters from Ebay for around £10, though they don’t come around too often and are usually pretty desirable. Amazon UK actually has an entry for the Fire International Universal Adaptor which is available from several marketplace sellers, however when I tried to get one I was sent a boxed copy of Phantasy Star IV for the Genesis instead! I tried to get it exchanged but got no response from the seller, so sold the game for double what it cost me...

If you do pick up an import game converter to use with your UK SNES then there will still be some US and Japanese games that may not work due to enhanced lockout chips – Super Mario RPG is a well-known offender. You will also have the usual 50Hz issues if that bothers you – I actually decided to get around this by buying a Super Famicom and an import converter so I now play my UK games in 60Hz through the adapter on the SFC!

Where To Buy Cheap Games
Firstly it has to be said that you’ll be very lucky to pick up any foreign games for the £2-3 you can get some NES and Saturn imports for. Realistically you’re looking at £4-5 for a loose cartridge and close to a tenner for the cheapest boxed games.

As always, Ebay is your best bet for the cheapest games. Several Asian Ebay Shops have substantial quantities of Super Famicom games and accept ‘Best Offers’ that can help you save a few quid if you buy bulk lots. My recommendations are Superb Articles From Japan, Hit Japan and Toys Online HK. The latter has over 1000 Super Famicom games in stock but I have had problems with slow shipping and incorrect items from them, though in each case they have resolved any issues without complaint.

Away from Ebay Japan Game Stock also have substantial stocks of SFC games and offer 4 loose carts for the price of 3, while UK-based ConsoleMAD and Rob Webb offer a decent selection of games from all territories at competitive prices. Finally if you’re prepared to pay collector’s prices the head to Genki, Console Passion or VGI but I strongly recommend checking prices on other sites before buying from these places – quality products they may stock, but at a premium!

What Games To Buy
As I’ve already mentioned, by making your SNES import-friendly you’re opening yourself up to a world of literally hundreds of games that never made it to Europe. I’ve only just begun to explore this world myself and the biggest problem is actually finding a good resource to tell you about the many obscure games that may be worth a look. Thus far I’ve found the reviews at Video Game Den, RVGFANATIC and the product descriptions at Genki Video Games to be of most use, though take the latter with a pinch of salt as they are trying to sell you the games after all!

A few games worth considering from those I have discovered thus far, most of which can be obtained for less than a fiver if you just buy the cartridge, are:

• Rockman Soccer – a football game featuring characters from the Rockman (Mega Man) universe, with lots of in-game options and power ups.
• Vs. Collection - Cute Penguin-like characters battle in four different multiplayer games, including a Tetris-like puzzler, a racing game and a snowball fight!
• The SD Great Battle series – a wacky collection of games that would only ever sell in Japan, featuring Super-Deformed versions of iconic characters Gundam, Ultraman and Kamen Rider amongst others. At least ten games exist spanning genres such as scrolling beat em up, sports, a Mario Kart style racer and even an RPG!

The only boxed game I’ve picked up thus far is one of the few Mario games never to make it to the West. Mario & Wario cost me less than £10 and is a puzzle/platform hybrid that uses the SNES mouse.

Finally there are quite a few games that did receive European releases that you will certainly find cheaper in their US or Japanese formats, examples being most of the Mario games, the Donkey Kong Country series (known as Super Donkey Kong in Japan) and shmups such as Thunder Spirits and Darius Twin.

As always, please share your own SNES import experiences by leaving a comment!

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In case you were interested, the answers to the questions were:

1. Yoshi's Island, Pac-Man, Rayman: Raving Rabbids, Wizball, Out Run, R-Type, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Donkey Kong, Sonic The Hedgehog, Bubble Bobble, Guitar Hero, Space Invaders, Robotron 2084, Geometry Wars, Chuckie Egg, IK+, Dig Dug, Street Fighter II, Pitfall!

2.
- Chuckie Egg
- Open it up and cut a leg off the lockout chip
- Namco's Star Wars

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My top games while I was on holiday were Metroid Fusion and Phalanx on the GBA, and Mario Kart and Yoshi's Island 2 on the DS. I also managed to find a few arcades in New Zealand that had some great older games, such as Metal Slug, RayStorm (the sequel to Layer Section), Raiden Fighters, Sega Rally and Crazy Taxi: High Roller. The latter was played on the North to South Island ferry crossing which coupled with some slightly rough sea made for a somewhat nauseating experience!

Since I've been back I've added an original XBOX to my console collection and been enjoying the likes of OutRun 2, Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus, Rocky and Voodoo Vince. I've also been playing the excellent PES 2008 on the Wii, with it's new control mechanism that revolutionises Football games, and I downloaded my first WiiWare game Star Soldier R. It's a bit of a pity they didn't make a full game, but the time attack style gameplay is a real throwback to the earlier games in the series and makes for an excellent challenge if you only have a few spare minutes. My best score so far on the 2 minute mode is just under 700k...

If you haven't downloaded any WiiWare yet, check out the excellent WiiWare World for an independent view of Nintendo's new service.

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Before I head off though, I thought I'd launch a little competition. I have a bunch of retro goodies that are surplus to requirements, and having failed to sell them off on Ebay I thought I'd offer them up as prizes. To be in with a chance of winning, please send me a message (either via this site or by private message on the Retro Gamer forum) telling me the following:
 

1. My banner image features graphics from 19 different video games. Name the games!

2. Answer any one of the following 3 questions - the answers are all contained within my blog articles...

(a) What is my favourite BBC Micro game?
(b) What is the cheapest way to make a NES region-free?
(c) Which Famicom game did I buy recently even though I don't have a Famicom to play it on?

In addition to your answers, please list in order of preference the top 3 items you would prefer from the following selection of prizes. The first 5 people to send me the correct answers will win a prize!

Midway Arcade Treasures 2 (Playstation 2, UK version, complete)
Mobile Light Force 2 (Playstation 2, US version, complete)
Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega Megadrive, UK version, boxed but no manual)
Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone (Playstation, UK promo version, no book)
The Great Battle Dodgeball (Super Famicom, Japanese, cart only)
Batman (NES, UK version, cart only)
Mario Paint (SNES, UK version, cart only)

Sega Master System Games
All boxed without instructions unless noted

Action Fighter
After Burner
Bank Panic
Castle of Illusion
Great Football
Kung Fu Kid
Mercs
Strider
Super Monaco GP II
World Soccer
Operation Wolf (cart only)
Sonic the Hedgehog (cart only)   

Please note that this competition is only open to UK residents unless you are prepared to pay the postage costs for prizes to be sent to a foreign address! Closing date for the contest is Sunday 24th May, the day I return from my holiday... Good luck!

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Cyber-Lip (SNK Neo-Geo AES)
One of the launch titles for SNK’s legendary “arcade at home” console, Cyber-Lip is a decent looking Run & Gun but we all felt it had one glaring fault – the inability for your player to be able to shoot diagonally. The lack of variety in gameplay and unlimited credits also made it a rather unchallenging and uninteresting game – Rob F and I completed it in around half an hour, and not a moment too soon! One source of amusement to me was that when entering your name in the high score table the alphabet is wrong, with ‘N’ coming before ‘M’!

FIFA 98 (Sega Saturn)
The graphics look crap in comparison to the PC and Playstation releases, and the gameplay is rather sluggish, but FIFA 98 was still the source of much enjoyment to most of us, with several high-scoring games culminating in a 5-3 scoreline contested between the two Robs.

Samurai Spirits 2 (SNK Neo-Geo AES)
SS2 was far more appreciated than Cyber-Lip, with everyone having a good few battles with each other. Still an impressive-looking game and one of the finest fighters on the system!

Stunt Car Racer (Commodore Amiga)
Opinion was split on Geoff Crammond’s 3D racing classic. Personally I think the game looks and plays great for it’s time and was a superb technical achievement, but some of the other guys bemoaned its sluggish nature and tricky control mechanism. Each to their own!

Zool (Commodore Amiga)
Rob S and Rich hogged this platformer for much of the evening and were very complimentary about the graphics and sound, though Rich was cursing the difficulty level! One thing it did do was make us all yearn for Chupa Chups, the confectionery that was the recipient of extensive advertising within the game.

Wonderboy (MAME)
This was chosen in a random draw to be the arcade challenge of the night. Whoever got the highest score would have the privilege of choosing the consoles and theme for the next games night. I actually got the high score (around 85,000) but since I chose the systems this time, it was only fair to let somebody else have the choice next time, and that person was Rob F who got the next highest score.

Once we’d had our fill of the older games, we spent some time playing 2-player Guitar Hero on the PS2 and then embarked on a marathon Mario Kart Wii session, spending over an hour on the 4-player offline multiplayer (where we discovered that it is far easier to play with a Gamecube controller than the Wii Wheel!) followed by nearly the same amount of time taking it in turns to have 2-player online races against players from across the globe. I finally won an online race, beating 10 fellow players on the Luigi Circuit track!

All in all it was a great evening and we’ll definitely be doing it again in the future.

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Why Bother Importing?
The Saturn was a bit of a flop in the West, as the Playstation laid waste to all competition with its exciting 3D graphics and Sony’s ruthless marketing campaigns. However in Japan the system fared far better and was supported long after its demise over here, with many fantastic and innovative games released later in it’s life. The Saturn was a real powerhouse where 2D graphics were concerned, resulting in an abundance of spectacular shoot em ups, fighting games and platformers that never saw the light of day on the other systems of the time.

Also, similar to what I said in the NES article, due to the popularity of the Saturn the Japanese editions of rarer UK games command far lower prices and are much easier to come by. Gameplay in most of these games is unaffected by the Japanese language, so there are seldom issues for English-speaking gamers that want to save some pennies by obtaining imported versions of the games. Oh, and they come in easily replaceable standard CD jewel cases that look great lined up on a shelf!

This article will focus on Japanese imports, as there is little point discussing importing from the US as the Saturn was even less successful over there than in the UK!

Hardware Modification
Just like the NES, there are various options for making your console import-friendly with varying degrees of expense. The most expensive would be to get yourself a Japanese Saturn. There are numerous versions of the console available in a variety of colours, which illustrate how much more popular it was over there. If you want to pursue this option then sellers such as Rob Webb and Video Game Imports offer Japanese systems from a UK base, while you’ll find plenty of Japanese sellers on Ebay that carry Saturns. The cheapest I’ve seen however is the Grey version which you can get for a little over £40 including shipping from Japan Game Stock, but the base cost of the system hovers around the £18 customs limit so be wary that you may be subjected to additional charges if you buy from this source.

The next option could be expensive or cheap, depending on the steadiness of your hand and skill with a soldering iron! I am of course talking about modifying your UK Saturn to allow you to play imports. Mmmonkey’s Console Modification page details how to achieve this, but if you’re not confident in your abilities then Console Passion also offer a modding service with prices starting from £35 plus postage costs. At that price it’s probably worth having a go at modding it yourself considering you can probably pick up a bare Saturn console for £10-15 on Ebay if you break your existing one!

The final option is the easiest by far and is relatively inexpensive – get yourself an Action Replay cartridge, which simply slots in the Saturn with no modification required. The current versions can still be bought new from Rob Webb or Play Asia and not only allow you to play imported games from any region on your UK Saturn, but also include the RAM Expansions for some of the later Saturn games, 4Mb of on-board backup memory and the ability to enter cheats for a good number of games. Depending where you decide to shop the cartridge will cost £15-20. Gaming purists will complain that with an Action Replay you’ll be playing your imported games in bordered PAL 50Hz mode, but the average gamer in the street probably doesn’t really give a shit about that!

Where To Buy Cheap Games
With its reputation as an importers dream, there are probably more online sellers of Saturn software than any other old system. On Ebay alone you will find dozens of ‘shops’ selling Japanese games, based in both UK and Asia. Personally I have bought from around half a dozen of these, my favourite being Hit-Japan, one of the few Ebay stores that allows you to make ‘best offers’ on their stock – typically you can get $1-3 off the asking price of most games if you buy a bulk lot, with combined shipping saving you even more money. Other recommended Ebay sellers for Saturn games are Japanese Retro Video Games, Toys Online HK and the UK-based Ninja’s Castle, but there are many other options.

If you prefer not to buy from Ebay, there are also bargains to be had from Japan Game Stock and occasionally Play Asia, not to mention UK-based ConsoleMAD and Rob Webb again! If you’re looking for collector’s quality items then you could also check out Genki Video Games, Console Passion and Video Game Imports, all based in the UK, but be prepared to pay more for the games than you would from some of the other sellers mentioned.

Finally, if you live in London or plan to visit any time soon there is amazingly a store that still carries a small selection of imported Saturn games. It is called Game Focus and is off Tottenham Court Road on Goodge Street, fairly close to Goodge Street Tube Station. The Japanese import stock can be found on the basement level – there’s not a great selection and most of the rarer games are a tad overpriced, but a few bargains can be found.

What Games To Buy
There is a massive selection of great Japanese Saturn games to choose from, from 2D fighters and shmups to RPGs, multiplayer battle games and even bizarre ‘dating simulations’ and pachinko games if you’re that way inclined. One good way of choosing what games to buy is to visit one of the sellers mentioned above and cross-reference their stock with the games listed on Segagaga Domain to see if they are worth checking out.

The majority of really great Japan-only Saturn games tend to be rare and expensive, for example Akumajo Dracula X and Thunder Force V will cost in excess of £25 while buying the infamous Radiant Silvergun will see you very lucky to get change from £100!  Since this article is about importing cheap games, I’ll ignore the more expensive stuff and focus on the bargains...

First off, a selection of games that received UK releases that now command high prices, but whose Japanese incarnations can be picked up for under £5 each including shipping if you shop around:

• Panzer Dragoon Zwei – the second Panzer Dragoon game, an on-rails shooter with spectacular 3D graphics for the time.
• Baku Baku Animal – a unique spin on the Columns/Tetris style puzzler with great animal animations.
• NiGHTS into Dreams – Sonic Team’s highly respected whimsical collect-em-up.
• Virtua Fighter Kids – classic VF gameplay with super-deformed versions of the characters. The UK version generally costs at least £20, but the Japanese one cost me less than £3 shipped!
• Dynamite Deka  - the Japanese version of Die Hard Arcade, great 3D beat em up action.

And here are some Japan-only titles that you should be able to find for a tenner or less:

• Dezaemon 2 – a shmup construction kit for the Saturn with several decent built-in games too.
• Vatlva – overhead view vehicle-based combat supporting up to 6 simultaneous players!
• Golden Axe: The Duel – a Street Fighter II style 1-on-1 fighter featuring Golden Axe characters. (This did get a US release but never made it to Europe)

If you have any useful info or recommendations about Saturn imports then please post a comment!

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However as a Beeb user since 1982, I can assure you that there were many great games produced for the system and this article aims to highlight some of the best games that originated on the BBC Micro, many of which were never released on another platform.

First off, I’m not going to cover Elite because most gamers know all about it and, to be honest, I never got into the game when I was a kid so have never seen what all the fuss was about!

The Repton Series
Superior Software, 1985-1988

After Elite, probably the most well known game on the Beeb is Tim Tyler’s Repton and it’s many sequels. The object and style of the game is very similar to Boulder Dash – dig through the earth, collect the diamonds and avoid the falling rocks – but the original game was released at virtually the same time so shouldn’t be considered a clone. And while Boulder Dash has a certain charm, Repton has a lot more style with larger, more colourful sprites and the added distraction of eggs that hatch into big green monsters! Also useful was the map screen that allowed you to view the entire playing field to work out your strategy for collecting all the diamonds.

Repton 2 was a completely different matter, with the distinct levels of the original being replaced with one giant, sprawling level where you had to collect every diamond, puzzle piece and piece of earth to complete the game, with only three lives to do it! The game included new aspects such as transporters that moved you to different parts of the level, but with virtually no margin for error and no way to save your progress, it was just too arduous a task for most gamers.

  

Repton 3 was a welcome return to form, taking the more compact level-by-level approach of the original and adding more features such as safes that needed a key to unlock the diamonds within, lethal ‘spirits’ that patrolled the edges of the maze, and the irritating fungus which expanded into any empty spaces it could find! Most significantly the game came with its own construction kit that allowed you not only to create new levels but also modify most of the sprites, a great attraction to any budding game designer. This was not only used by the game-buying public but also by Superior themselves who milked the franchise with a series of themed add-on packs such as Repton Thru Time and Around the World in 40 Screens. The customisability of the game was a big hit with fans of the game and the final release Repton Infinity improved on this further by allowing the user to create their own mini programming routines to dictate the behaviour of the game, as well as including four complete examples.

  

Repton was arguably the flagship character on the BBC Micro, just as Superior Software was the flagship games company, and while some of the games were ported to platforms such as the Spectrum and C64, there is no doubt that Repton was and always will be a Beeb original. The legacy lives on to this day with PC remakes of the games available from Superior Interactive.

Tetrapod
Acornsoft, 1984

Acornsoft was legendary for a collection of near-perfect unofficial arcade conversions, but the company also released some interesting original arcade-style games, of which Tetrapod was one of the best. Upon starting the game you are presented with a single-screen playfield populated with a couple of enemy ships and - quite literally - a load of balls! Your ship is controlled Asteroids-style with left/right rotation, thrust and fire, and each level is completed by eliminating all the enemies. The balls can be bounced around the screen by both your ship and the enemies, and if shot by one of your bullets they hatch into fast moving lizard-like creatures (presumably the titular tetrapods) that chase the nearest ship to them. Shooting them turns them back into the balls.

  

So to clear a level you can either shoot the enemies, or try and unleash a tetrapod near to them to kill them. The complexity is added to because any bullets you fire continue to bounce around the screen until they hit something, including you! So not only must you avoid enemy fire and rampaging tetrapods, but also you must be careful not to shoot yourself. Needless to say, on later levels where certain enemies can only be dispatched in certain ways, the action reaches a manic level that rivals the mighty Robotron! Tetrapod is far from being the most well known game on the Beeb, but there’s no doubt it is one of the most challenging and original shooters on the system.

Citadel
Superior Software, 1985

Another classic from Superior, Citadel is an arcade adventure game spanning over 100 screens filled with items to collect, puzzles to solve and enemies to avoid. The aim of the game is rather convoluted – aliens are about to invade Earth via a teleporter in the citadel. You have collect five crystals and place them in a starport, allowing you to teleport to the alien planet and destroy the teleporter, thus stopping the invasion. If this wasn’t tricky enough, you also have to find three crowns and place them in specific locations in order to become ruler of the citadel!

  

Citadel perfectly mixed arcade-style platforming with more cerebral problem solving. Some of the puzzles were truly inspired. For example, the guard of one room has to be fed a roast chicken to allow you to pass, but you only have an uncooked chicken. The solution? Take the chicken to a fireplace in another room, cook it and then take it to the guard. That’s one of the easier ones by the way!

The graphics were excellent for the time, especially the ghoulish cloaked characters that inhabited some rooms that could be dispatched with a well-placed ‘spell’ (a projectile launched from your player’s mouth) only to re-appear when you re-entered the room. Sound was also great and included use of Superior’s speech synthesiser. Overall Citadel is a very polished game containing many hours of head-scratching gameplay. It was followed by a sequel, and has also been remade as a reasonably faithful online Flash game.

Boffin
Addictive, 1984

In this excellent platformer you are cast as a brainy professor that is trapped in a network of caves – so obviously not that brainy! To escape you must negotiate the platforms, collect all of the horseshoes and then touch a large owl to complete the level. Having written that, I’m starting to wonder what drugs the programmers of this game may have been on when they came up with this idea! Anyway, to assist you in your task you are armed with... an umbrella. Hmmm, not that useful you may think, but it can be used to help you safely fall long distances, hang off platforms and even collect items that would otherwise be out of reach.

  

Making use of one of the Beeb’s high-resolution graphics modes, Boffin has a rather psychedelic cyan and magenta colour scheme but shows off some great-looking and detailed sprites, the highlight of which is a massive spider that puts in a terrifying appearance on later levels. The levels themselves are fiendishly designed and in many cases require pinpoint accuracy in jumping and use of the brolly. Boffin is a tough game and there’s a steep learning curve even on the early levels, but once you get to grips with the control scheme and plan your progress before attempting each stage, it really is one of the finest platform games of it’s era.

Thrust
Superior Software, 1986

Probably the most successful export from the BBC after Elite, Thrust was ported to all of the other 8-bit computers of the time and has even had homebrew versions released on the Atari 2600 and Vectrex in recent years! The simple premise of the game – collect an orb with your spacecraft on each level and escape into the atmosphere – was matched by equally simple graphics and audio, leaving the finely-honed gameplay and increasing challenge of successive levels to keep the player enthralled.

  

As much a simulation of physics and inertia as a game, Thrust kept you coming back for another try because the control of your ship was so precise that you never felt cheated when crashing into the wall of a cavern because you knew it was entirely your fault for not mastering the controls. A challenging, original and truly great game that is appreciated worldwide, and it began life on the humble British Beeb!

As well as the homebrew versions for classic consoles, Thrust has also received a PC remake, Thrust Deluxe.

Imogen
Micro Power, 1986

You’d be forgiven for thinking Imogen began life on the ZX Spectrum upon seeing the high-res monochrome graphics, but it certainly originated on the Beeb and as far as I’m aware it never made it to another system until Ovine’s PC remake some 20 years later.

Imogen is a wizard that has been trapped a series of caves. Each cave contains a number of puzzles to be solved, with the eventual aim to collect a crystal that is then used to transport you to the next cave. In wizard form Imogen can move, jump small distances and use any collected items. But the wizard can also transform in a monkey to climb ropes, and a cat to jump larger distances. You have a limited number of transformations and must use your three forms wisely to solve the puzzles and complete each level.

Despite the lack of colour, the graphics are some of the most beautiful to ever grace the BBC with many endearing characters – the bulldog is one of my favourites! The visuals are matched by superb animation, an excellent control mechanism and some fiendish puzzles, making this one of the greatest of all Beeb games.

Transistors Revenge
Softspot, 1983

This unique shooter was an early offering from Chris Butler, who went on to create several great arcade conversions on the C64 (including Ghosts N Goblins and Commando) and develop for the Amiga and Playstation. The premise was fairly abstract – you play the role of a microchip that is under attack from electrical components such as resistors and capacitors, and you have to defend yourself by sending electrical pulses down the circuit board tracks that the enemies approach on. If any enemy reaches the chip, it is destroyed and a life is lost.

  

The game plays rather like a 2D version of Tempest, with enemies approaching from all sides and you madly sending charges down the circuit tracks to dispose of them. Additional points can be gained from blasting the various bonus items that appear, but you also have to be wary of pulses being fired back at you down the tracks. If it all gets too much there is a smart bomb which zaps everything on-screen. Despite being a computer game, the presentation is very arcade-like with the ability to continue play after losing all your lives and even the ‘select the letters’ method of entering your name on the high score table. While it lacks depth, Transistors Revenge is a great game if you just want a quick and challenging blast.

Stryker’s Run/Codename Droid
Superior Software, 1986/1987

The exploits of John Stryker were the subject of two games from the ever-reliable Superior Software. The original Stryker’s Run was a side-scrolling run and gun game that could best be described as a cross between Commando and Green Beret. The mission was to progress from left to right eliminating everything in your path with bullets or grenades. At various points along the journey you would find helicopters that you could take control of to further your progress and deal hot molten death from above!  The graphics and animation for the game were excellent but in retrospect it suffers from rather jerky scrolling and a slow pace.

No such criticism can be levelled at Codename Droid: Stryker’s Run Part 2. Combining the run and gun exploits with platform-based exploration on several distinct levels rather than one extensive one, Codename Droid looked and played like a dream and was a great example of just how far BBC Micro games had progressed compared to earlier efforts. As with the majority of BBC games, these two were never ported to any of the other 8-bit competitors, though there were Java versions of both games available for mobile phones a few years ago from Masabi.

Cybertron Mission
Micro Power, 1983

If you’ve ever read about the making of Robotron: 2084 you’ll know that it’s creator Eugene Jarvis was heavily inspired by Stern’s 1980 arcade game Berzerk. Ultimately Robotron would become a single-screen manic shooter, but if Jarvis had not evolved his original inspiration quite so far, the result would almost certainly have resembled Cybertron Mission.

Micro Power’s game takes the maze-wandering theme of Berzerk, adds the gaudy colours and myriad robots of Robotron and adds an element of item-collecting for good measure. The aim on each level is to avoid or shoot the robots (and also the electrified walls) and find a specified item that will transport you to the next level. Much like it’s influences, each screen is filled with robots that pursue you relentlessly and if you hang around on a screen for too long then you will be attacked by an indestructible ghost, the spiritual successor (pun intended!) to Berzerk’s Evil Otto.

While the game’s influences are obvious, Cybertron Mission is very well presented, adds enough originality to stand out and is a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

Dare Devil Dennis
Visions, 1984

Last but by no means least we have the rather silly Dare Devil Dennis. In this game you take on the role of Dennis who has just been employed as a stuntman, and has to complete a number of stunt-packed levels to earn his wages. Each level involves jumping over or avoiding certain obstacles on either a motorbike, a power boat or skis. You only get three ‘takes’ to get it right otherwise you get fired.

The game is effectively a platformer but there are only three controls – accelerate, jump and stop – so you have to time everything right as you only get one chance to clear each obstacle. Graphically it is very basic and the gameplay is very simple, but there’s something undeniably compelling about the game, which falls into the ‘easy to grasp, hard to master’ category as the levels progress. As has often been said, sometimes the simplest concepts make for the most enjoyable, and Dare Devil Dennis certainly proves that sentiment.

Like many of these old classics, the game has been the subject of a PC remake, this time by Havard Spring.

So there you have it, just a small selection of the many great games that originated on the BBC Micro, firmly laying to rest the theory that the system was purely for educational purposes! If you want to play or find out more about these games, why not visit the excellent Beeb Archive Stairway to Hell?

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Part 1 covers the early Atari 2600 and Arcade games, while Part 2 covers every game from 1987 to date that focuses on the classic original movie trilogy. More episodes covering the many other SW games are coming soon apparently!

One game that was highlighted in the second installment was Namco's Famicom-exclusive take on the original Star Wars movie, which is somewhat wacky to say the least. I never knew this game existed until I saw the video, but as soon as I saw a game where Darth Vader turns up as an end-of-level boss on the first level but then changes into a scorpion, I just had to have it!

So I won a copy of the game on Ebay but I now need a Famicom-to-NES converter so that I can actually play it...

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Why Bother Importing?
Before you read on, it’s worth considering what benefits you will get by choosing to play import games. In the case of the NES the answer is simple – more choice! The NES was absolutely massive in the USA, far more so than in Europe, and consequently there were literally hundreds more games released for the system over there. Also due to it’s popularity, there’s a far greater quantity of NES games in circulation and some games that are fairly rare over here were far more common in America. I’ll cover some examples later...

Hardware Modification
So if you’ve decided that it would be good to import some NES games, the next thing to consider is what you are going to play them on. There are a few choices here:

The first option would be to buy a US NES system. You can probably pick one up for under £20 but by the time you add shipping and possibly the cost of a stepdown voltage transformer, the cost somewhat contradicts the idea of doing it on the cheap.

The second option would be to pick up an import game converter, i.e. a ‘pass through’ cartridge that deactivates the region lockout of the NES. Various versions exist such as the Game Key and can be picked up for around £10-15 from Ebay or sellers like Rob Webb.

However due to the way NES cartridges go into the system they are rather cumbersome devices, as the above example shows, plus there is a far easier and cheaper way to modify your console...

The last and cheapest option is to remove the region lockout in your UK NES system. This will not only allow you to play US NES cartridges but also PAL-B cartridges from across Europe, as the UK had a different PAL-A format. The modification is very easy and takes about an hour, requires only minimal electronics expertise and the only necessary equipment is a screwdriver and a pair of very small, sharp scissors or wire cutters, which can be obtained for less than a fiver.

Full details of the mod can be found on Mmmonkey’s Console Modification site. Opening up your NES for this mod will also allow you to address the common blinking light/flashing screen problems caused by worn-out cartridge connectors.

It should be noted that none of these options will allow you to play Japanese Famicom games as the cartridges have a 60-pin connector rather than the NES’s 72-pin. Having said that, import game converters do exist to allow you to play Famicom games, such as the Family Converter. Also, it is not possible (at least not easily) to modify the UK NES to output a 60Hz picture so if you are a gaming purist, the only option would be to buy a US NES.

Where To Buy Cheap Games
OK, so your console is ready to play imports – where are you going to get them from? My experience so far says that Ebay is your best bet by a country mile. With so many games available in reasonably high quantities, you can pick up some real bargains from US sellers, especially given the favourable exchange rate these days!

Two things to be wary of though are shipping and customs charges. I don’t know if US Postal charges are generally high or if it’s Ebay sellers hiking the shipping costs because they don’t pay any Ebay or Paypal fees on them, but some US sellers charge silly amounts to ship a single loose NES cartridge! The solution of course is to bulk buy from a seller that offers multiple item shipping discounts, but bulk buying then puts you at risk of paying customs charges that theoretically apply to all packages with a value over £18 (that’s about $35). So the safe bet is to buy as much as you can off the same seller but don’t go over the customs limit.

You’ll find plenty of US sellers on Ebay but two I can definitely recommend are Lukie Games and Discount Games. Between them the two stores have over 2000 NES games in stock, and I recently bought a job lot of 13 loose NES games from the latter for a mere $17, keeping me well below the customs limit. Shipping was around $30 but that still worked out at an average of under £2 per game, which is far cheaper than you’d get them for from a UK seller.

If you prefer not to buy from Ebay, other decent sources I’ve found for NES games are Classic Game Source in the US, and UK-based Console Mad tend to have a few US games at reasonable prices.

What Games To Buy
From a basic comparison of the US and European NES release lists at NES World, I reckon there are at least 300 games that were released in the USA that never made it across the Atlantic, so the world is your oyster here to be honest! As I’ve only just started importing for the NES myself, I’m only going to suggest a few titles that are worth checking out. I’m sure there are countless others depending on your preferred genre!

• Guardian Legend – a combination of scrolling shooter and overhead-view run and gun from Japanese heavyweights Irem and Compile.
• Snoopy’s Silly Sports Spectacular – a fun, 2-player game featuring the Peanuts gang competing in events like the sack race and boot throwing.
• Starship Hector (AKA Hector ’87) – vertically scrolling shmup from HudsonSoft that has similarities to their later Star Soldier series.
• The Empire Strikes Back – this Star Wars action platformer was released in Europe but not the UK as far as I can tell.
  

Also as I mentioned at the start of the article, you can pick up games that were rare European releases far more cheaply from the US, prime examples being Balloon Fight, Castlevania III and Robowarrior.

Please leave a comment if you have any suggestions of more great NES imports and where to get them from!

Comments

The games played included Saturn Bomberman with 8 players on a giant projector screen (which I idiotically forgot to take any photos of ), Pac-Man Vs on the Gamecube, Micro Machines 2 on the Megadrive, Wii Sports Bowling and Tennis, Tekken on the PS2 and Super Mario Kart on the SNES.

A good time was had by all, as the following rather poor selection of photos (due to my forgetting to get the camera out earlier) shows....

Worms Armageddon on the N64, which kept crashing throughout the evening.

The nails-hard Micro Machines 2 on Megadrive. Practice makes... still not very good!

The ever-popular Wii Sports - has there even been a better pack-in console game!?

Two of the finalists contest a game of Super Mario Kart

The eventual winner (a last-minute entrant!) got a trophy and a Plug & Play Megadrive

Comments

I bought an old JAMMA arcade cabinet in 2001 for the very reasonable sum of £60 and spent the following few years spending significant amounts of money buying PCBs of my favourite arcade games such as Bubble Bobble, Final Fight, Wonder Boy and Ghosts N Goblins.

In 2006 the monitor began to fade and early in 2007 the inevitable happened and it gave up the ghost, having probably given a good 15 years of service. This left me with a couple of options - I could try and get the monitor repaired or replaced, or I could gut the cabinet and put a PC and monitor inside running MAME, wired up to the existing arcade controls.

After doing a few sums I reckoned that selling all my JAMMA boards would easily pay for the parts I'd need to completely refurbish the cabinet and get MAME running in it, so the PCBs went on Ebay and in February 2007 I set myself a five week target of getting the cabinet completely revamped in time for a gaming night I had planned for the end of March...

Stage 1 - Out With the Old
The first job was to get rid of all the parts in the cabinet that would not be required for use with a MAME setup, which was effectively everything but the wooden shell and the control panel. I started by removing all the easy stuff like the cabinet door and the joysticks and buttons from the control panel. Then came the scary part...

Yes, the scary part was of course removing the monitor. The picture may have gone but the tube was very much alive and still capable of kicking my arse into oblivion! So I followed all the advice online, got some thick rubber gloves on and my girlfriend Anna at the ready with a broom to separate me from the monitor if it shocked me, then unplugged all the wires, unbolted the monitor from the cabinet and safely deposited it in large cardboard box. No worries in the end, but that didn't stop me shitting myself while I was moving it around!

So with the monitor disposed of safely at the local rubbish dump, I could then get on with removing all the remaining wiring, the power supplies, T-molding and random debris that I found in the bottom of the cabinet, which included the instruction manual for the monitor and a very grimy 20p piece!

The last thing to do was to get rid of some of the old chipboard panels at the base of the cabinet that were completely knackered, which I would ultimately replace with new MDF panels.

Stage 2 - Shelves and Holes
With all the old crap removed from the cabinet, the next step was to make holes for any new stuff that would be added (such as extra buttons) and also put in a shelf to hold the PC monitor. Speaking of which, I got myself a nice 19" CRT monitor off Ebay for just £11 from a seller that lived fairly local.

The monitor shelf was constructed from a sturdy piece of MDF (approx 2cm thick) and fixed in place with four heavy-duty shelf brackets. Unfortunately I made the angle of the shelf a little narrow so had to put an extra piece of MDF at the front to tilt the angle of the monitor in line with the cabinet. I also used several small shelf brackets to secure the monitor in place on the platform.

Stage 3 - Back in Black
With all the drilling and other messy stuff out of the way, I was at the point where I could clean up and paint the cabinet. First I filled any minor holes and dents and then sanded the whole cabinet down, then removed all loose debris with a vacuum cleaner and gave the whole cabinet a damn good clean inside and out with soapy water and multi-surface cleaner. I also replaced the kickplate at the bottom of the cabinet (removed in Stage 1) with a piece of MDF.
 
With all the preparation done, it was time to paint the cabinet. As time was of the essence and I'm an impatient bugger, I didn't bother with a coat of primer and just went straight for the top coat, which was a rather cool black satin water-based gloss from B&Q that I applied with a small roller. It took three coats to obscure the nasty old faux woodgrain finish of the cabinet but the net result was bloody nice!

Stage 4 - Control Freak
Whilst the stripping-down and tarting-up of the cabinet had been taking place, I had of course ordered all the required new control panel pieces. Having decided to go with a snazzy electric blue colour scheme, I bought new buttons and two ball-topped Sanwa joysticks (supposedly the best money can buy) from Ebay. The buttons cost about £1.50 each including microswitches, and the joysticks were about £10 each.

I also bought the glorious little device known as the Mini-PAC from Ultimarc. This fantastic piece of kit comes with a wiring harness that supports a control panel with 2 joysticks and up to 8 buttons each, but most importantly the harness plugs into the Mini-PAC itself, which converts all inputs into the standard MAME keystrokes and sends them to a PC via a PS/2 or USB cable. The device costs around £40 from Ultimarc or Gremlin Arcade Solutions and trust me when I say that it is worth every penny unless you're an expert at manually hacking a keyboard and stripping and crimping 40-odd wires!

Having already drilled the extra holes in the steel control panel to allow six buttons per player, I filed the holes to avoid me accidentally hacking off my own fingers, and also removed any surplus paint/rust from the panel. Then I gave the panel assembly several coats of shiny black enamel lacquer. I then mounted all the buttons and the two joysticks, using those little round black plastic things you get with kitchen cabinets etc to cover up the four exposed screws for each stick. Ideally I would have liked to use nice chrome 'cup square' bolts (with no screw heads in the top) to mount the sticks but I couldn't find any the right size anywhere!

Last but by no means least, I attached the Mini-PAC wiring harness to all the buttons and sticks and tested it with the MAME PC - amazingly it worked first time!

"What MAME PC?" I hear you ask. Well, read on...

Stage 5 - Bits n' PCs
The death of my arcade monitor handily coincided with a big clearout of obsolete PC hardware at work, so I managed to get myself a Pentium III 866GHz PC with 96Mb RAM and a 10Gb Hard Disk, and a set of reasonable powered speakers for nothing. Whilst the spec may not have been considered good enough for running high-powered office applications like Windows XP and Outlook  it was more than adequate for me to set up DOS MAME and run all the ROMs of my favourite games, most of which date from the mid 90's or earlier.

So while the above revamp of the cabinet was underway, I was also in the process of setting up the PC. I found the very useful DOS MAME Boot Disk ISO online, which reduces the process of installing DOS and configuring MAME and a front-end (Game Launcher) to a few mere keystrokes. I decided on MAME version 0.65 as I had read that this was a very stable version and it supported virtually all the games I was interested in.

The only additional hardware I required was a sound card, several of which I had lying around from old systems. First I tried a Soundblaster 64 PCI but had no joy getting that to work - PCI cards are notoriously difficult to configure for DOS MAME. Next I tried a massive old AWE32, but again I had problems with that, so in the end I went for a bog-standard 16-bit ISA Soundblaster clone (An OPTI 931 to be precise) that may not be the greatest card ever made but works perfectly and the games generally sound fine.

So with the PC set up, all that remained was to load on all the game ROMs I required and spend a laborious number of hours going through each one checking it worked and taking a screenshot to be displayed on the Game Launcher menu.

Oh, and I also had to come up with a way to power the PC up from outside the cabinet. This was achieved by wiring a new button to the existing power button cables, which would eventually be mounted into the side of the cabinet.

Stage 6 - Let There Be Light
With the control panel and MAME PC completed, it was back to fitting out the cabinet. I decided I wanted a light-up marquee at the top of the cabinet, so having bought a suitable MAME-themed marquee and bezel from MAME Marquees, I also bought a mini fluorescent light fitting from B&Q for around £10 which was mounted behind the marquee. The power cable for this was then clipped down the inside of the cabinet and plugged into a 4-way surge-protected socket that would also allow me to plug in the PC, Monitor and Speakers and just run a single power lead out of the back of the cabinet.

Stage 7 - In With The New
Everything was now pretty much ready to be put together in the cabinet. The Mini-PAC was mounted on the existing wooden framework below the monitor shelf. The PC handily fitted perfectly in the base of the cabinet. The speakers were secured in place with small shelf brackets, and the plastic speaker grilles (typically used in the back shelf of a car) were mounted on the sides.

To prevent the cream-coloured surround of the monitor showing through the smoked glass, I gave it a coat of black paint and then mounted the monitor on the shelf. Everything was then plugged together, the new PC power switch was mounted in the cabinet side and I held my breath and switched it on... Success - everything still worked!

Stage 8 - Finishing Touches
All the internal work was done, but there were still plenty of tasks remaining to get the cabinet finished. First, I cleaned up the original smoked glass screen bezel and applied my new bezel over the top. In a rather foolish "Mat knows best" moment I thought it would be easier to apply the vinyl bezel after first removing the 'white space' where the screen would show through, despite the instructions suggesting it would be better to apply the bezel as provided and then cut out the relevant area afterwards. As a result I had to make a small cut in the bezel to fit it to the glass correctly - fortunately it is barely noticeable, except to me who curses my own stupidity every time I see it!

Next job was to replace some of the old panels on the front of the cabinet. The space where the old coin box would have been was now to be home to the PC keyboard (in case of emergencies) and the cover for this was another piece of MDF painted black. Then there was the replacement for the old coin door/mech, which was again a piece of MDF attached with hinges and a magnetic catch - the door can easily be opened to allow access to the inside of the cab if required.

Last but my no means least was the new T-molding - that's the neat plastic edging that goes round the edge of the panels to cover the rough edges. I bought some snazzy new electric blue T-molding from t-molding.com (around £8 plus shipping for 40ft) but in a classic Mat mistake, I chose the wrong thickness for the part that you plug into the groove in the edge of the panels! So instead of the T-molding fitting snugly, I had to spend time putting a rubber sealant into the grooves and then gluing the T-molding in place! Talk about creating work for yourself...

And that's it - everything fitted in place and the overall cabinet given a polish, it was completed with a few days to spare ready for my games night! And here's the finished article...

Lessons Learned
If I was to undertake this project again, there are certainly a few things I'd do differently, such as:

1. Follow instructions more closely when applying the screen bezel.
2. Realise that the two sizes of T-molding are very similar and measurement of the groove size in the panels should be very precise!
3. If using a DOS-based version of MAME, it is worth spending time to get a USB driver and wireless keyboard working to enable easier access to the system for adding new ROMs etc.

In all honesty though, the project went pretty much according to plan and I am still very happy with the results.

If you're considering building your own MAME cabinet or converting a JAMMA cab to MAME, I offer the following pieces of advice:

1. The project needs a considerable investment of time, effort and money. Be sure you're prepared to invest these things before you start.
2. Decide what you want from your MAME setup before you start and don't deviate from the plan - this should ensure you end up with a nice MAME cabinet and not one of these abominations.
3. Do some research - buy the Project Arcade book or read about the many MAME projects on BYOAC.
4. Don't rush - it's worth spending time getting things how you want them. I love my cabinet, but it would have been even better if I'd spent a little more time on certain aspects.
5. Be careful - if you're messing around with electronics, especially arcade monitors, make sure you know what you're doing and that there is someone there to help you if you need it.

If you have any MAME cabinet experiences to share, please post a comment or a link...

Comments

1. Bubble Bobble
Taito, 1986, Arcade

  
Bub and Bob's girlfriends have been captured by some big geezer in a white cloak, who has also turned our heroes into unfeasibly cute bubble-blowing dinosaurs. To rescue their sweethearts (and presumably get turned back into unfeasibly cute humans) they must successfully negotiate 100 levels by capturing all enemies on each level in bubbles, and bursting them.

I first played this game in an arcade in around 1987 and have loved it ever since. So much so, in fact, that I have bought a version of it for pretty much every system I have owned - Commodore 64, Sega Master System, Gameboy, PC and finally it was one of the primary reasons for me buying a JAMMA arcade machine. I also have the game's wonderful theme music as the ringtone on my mobile phone!

Bubble Bobble is incredibly simple to get to grips with - only truly crap gamers won't get past the first 5 or 6 levels on their first play - but as the levels progress it gets harder and harder, yet never ceases to be playable or addictive. The key to getting big scores is by triggering what at first seems to be the random appearance of power-up and bonus items, and after countless games I recently finally managed to score over a million points on a single credit, and yet only reached level 37 in the process. So 20 years on, there's still plenty of life left in this game for me!

Bubble Bobble was followed by a number of sequels featuring Bub and Bob, including Rainbow Islands, Parasol Stars, Bubble Symphony and Puzzle Bobble, but none of them hold a candle to the original!

2. Wizball
Ocean/Sensible Software, 1987, Commodore 64

Wizworld has been drained of colour by the evil Zark. As the Wizard that lives in this once vibrant land, you are a bit miffed by this turn of events. Fortunately the colour drained from your world is still around, enclosed in clusters of paint-filled bubbles. All you need to do is burst the bubbles and collect the paint...

Sounds simple, doesn't it? But there are some issues surrounding this task. Firstly, Wizworld is now populated with a variety of lethal alien creatures, all tasked with stopping your mission. Secondly, for reasons not entirely clear, you have turned yourself from a powerful Wizard into a virtually uncontrollable bouncing green ball whose only plus-point is the ability for fire laser beams. And finally, you are not actually able to collect the paint to re-colour your world - only your pet cat Nifta can do this, in the form of a 'catellite' that follows you around. The problem is the cat is not with you when the game begins!

Wizball is initially tricky to get into, with your character bouncing all over the place as you master the controls, once you shoot the first few aliens and collect the power-ups to enable you to move less erratically and bring the catellite into the game, it becomes one of the most action-packed and addictive games going. The thrill of collecting your first pot of colour and seeing Wizworld start to get back to normal is, for me, one of gaming's finest moments. Great as a one-player game, Wizball really comes into it's own in the co-operative two-player mode, where the second player controls the cat. I still have fond memories of the late 80's when me and my mate Andy sat in front of his C64 for hours until we completed the game!

Sensible Software did everything right with this game - the graphics and sound are superb, and the difficulty level is just right so that while you won't get too far on your first go, you will do enough to think that you'll do better on the next try. 20 years on I still enjoy playing this game as much as I did when it was brand new, and judging by the almost universal respect it is given by the gaming community, I'm not the only one!

3. Chuckie Egg
A&F Software, 1983, BBC Micro

One of the all-time classic platform games, especially on the Beeb, Chuckie Egg sees you play the role of a yellow dude in a big yellow hat who has to traverse a number of levels consisting of platforms, ladders and lifts. To complete each level you must collect all the eggs whilst avoiding the birds that wander the platforms. Also lying around to collect are piles of seed, though these can be eaten by the birds so are sometimes best left as a distraction.

There are eight different level configurations which when completed the first time round are repeated, but this time instead of the blue birds patrolling the platforms, the big yellow bird that was previously trapped in a cage in the corner of the screen starts chasing you. This adversary can move through platforms and ladders so you have to keep moving to avoid it. If you successfully get past the eight levels again, you must repeat them again with both the blue and yellow birds after you!

Chuckie Egg's graphics and sound are pretty mediocre, even by the standards set in the early 80s, but the game is really enjoyable to play. Once you get to grips with the way your player interacts with the scenery, you can become a blur of perpetual motion that slides down ladders and rebounds of the edge of platforms to reach the eggs and avoid danger. A simple aim, great playability and that little bit of uniqueness make this a perfect example of why retro games are as popular as they ever were... And it was my dad's favourite game too!

4. Star Wars
Atari, 1983, Arcade

Amazingly it wasn't until 1983, the year that 'Return of the Jedi' was released, that a game based on the original Star Wars movie hit the arcades, but the wait  was certainly worth it! If you're aged around 30 now and grew up as part of the Star Wars generation then I'm sure you have the same fond memories of playing this game as I do.

Housed in a massive sit-in cabinet with a huge monitor and a nifty yoke controller, the game focused on the finale of the movie as you take control of an X-Wing fighter and mount an assault on the Death Star. The first stage sees you shooting TIE Fighters until eventually you zoom into the trench of the battle station itself and have to dodge fireballs and girders before attempting to fire a torpedo into the exhaust port and destroy the Death Star. Succeed and you have to repeat the task over and over with more TIE Fighters, more fireballs, more girders and an intermediate level where you fly over the surface of the Death Star destroying towers.

It was actually a very simplistic game and you might say that the vector graphics were simple too, but they were very effective and allowed the action to be fast and furious. With authentic music and the digitised voices of Obi-Wan Kenobi and others to encourage you, this was as close as it got to being Luke Skywalker and the kids just loved it!

5. R-Type
Irem, 1987, Arcade

In true heroic fashion, R-Type sees you blast off in your R9 fighter on a one man mission to defeat the evil Bydo empire and presumably save the earth. To help you face the seemingly insurmountable odds you have a powerful beam weapon which blasts through everything in it's path (but needs to be charged by holding down the fire button) and can also collect power-ups which give you 'the force' - a pod which fires it's own weapons and can be bolted on the front or back of the R9 as a shield, or detached and sent off on it's own to do some serious damage to the bad guys.

The basic style of R-Type is no different to the numerous horizontally-scrolling space shoot em ups that came both before and after it but it just has that certain something which sets it apart from the others. The level layouts and Giger-esque biomechanical design have a lot to do with it I think - especially the monstrous spaceship of level 3 - and there are some really memorable end-of-level baddies and superb music. It also helps that you can, with repeat plays, work out a fairly safe path through each level. But there's no doubt that the iconic R9 and it's bolt-ons are the stars of the show, not to mention one of the biggest influences on shoot em ups for years to follow...

Entries 6 to 10 on Page 2...

6. Final Fight
Capcom, 1989, Arcade

Central to the storyline of Final Fight is musclebound former street fighter/wrestler Mike Haggar, who has become Mayor of a big city in the USA. Anywhere else in the world that would be the most ridiculous premise going, but amazingly it actually happened in Minnesota with ex-WWF star Jesse Ventura just a year after this game was released. Haggar even looks a bit like Ventura too!

What follows is probably the greatest scrolling beat em up game created, as you and a mate take on the roles of two of the three heroes and beat your way through stage after stage of thugs, smashing up scenery and wielding swords, knives and pieces of drainpipe along the way. Each player has a different fighting style and their own special moves, so the game can be different each time you play it. There are some great locations including subways, bars and industrial areas, not to mention the wrestling rings you get pulled into at various points during the game. And who can forget the fabulous bonus stage where you get to pummel the crap out of some guy?s brand new car!

The graphics and sound are pretty standard for this era of games, but the gameplay more than makes up for any other shortcomings. Final Fight is one of the best co-operative games there is, and is always a popular choice on my MAME cabinet at parties!

7. Robotron: 2084
Williams, 1982, Arcade

Robotron is probably the only game in this list that I never played when it was originally in the arcades. For years I heard people raving about how great it was, but having only played emulated versions on my PC or Playstation 2 I didn't get the appeal at all. That all changed when I made my MAME arcade cabinet and finally got to play the game with two joysticks as nature intended!

For the uninitiated, the aim of Robotron is simple - clear the screen of killer robots while protecting (and collecting) any hapless humans wandering around. The aforementioned twin-joystick control mechanism is what makes the game special. One stick controls movement, while the other controls direction of fire, so you can run away from the enemies and still shoot at them. With the number of on-screen enemies reaching ludicrous levels after just a few stages, you really have to become one with the machine and use higher brain functions to keep ahead of the game.

While the game gets horrendously difficult very quickly, the perfect controls and precise collision detection mean that when you inevitably die, you never feel cheated and just curse yourself for doing something stupid, put in another credit and have "one more go". For those of you that love Geometry Wars on the XBOX 360 or Wii, you owe it to yourselves to experience the madness that inspired that game!

8. Wonder Boy
Sega, 1986, Arcade

Long before a certain blue hedgehog burst on to the scene, Sega had another platform hero to try and compete with Mario. Wonder Boy sadly never really hit the heights of its rival games but in my mind is an often-overlooked classic.

The premise is simple enough - run and jump your way through a series of levels to rescue your girlfriend. The levels typically consisted of four stages featuring jungle, cave and sea locations and a variety of cartoony enemies such as snails, octopus and bats. To help you combat these, you could break open eggs to get power-ups - a hammer to throw at enemies, a skateboard to speed you up, and a fairy to make you invincible for a short  time. At the end of each level you'd face a giant who could only be defeated by throwing hammers at his head until it dropped off, at which point he'd grow another one and scarper!

My fondness of this game stems from playing it on holiday in Menorca as a kid - over a two week period I became a bit of a master at it, being able to get to the third or fourth giant on just one credit - much to the annoyance of all the other kids that wanted to play!

An interesting side note - due to some licensing issues between the game developers and Sega, Wonder Boy actually appeared on a variety of consoles with an altered main character under the name Adventure Island.

9. Bad Dudes vs Dragon Ninja
Data East, 1988, Arcade

In this two-player arcade beat 'em up you (and ideally your mate) play the Bad Dudes, a pair of Bruce Lee lookalikes who are identical except for the colour of their combat pants. You have to battle through hordes of Ninjas until you finally face the Dragon Ninja himself and rescue the President - well at least it's not your girlfriends!

This is actually a fairly standard fighting game, made special by the great level locations - the two stages that take place atop a truck and a train especially - and the inventive end-of-level bosses, including a green ninja with the ability to generate dozens of clones of himself, and even an appearance by the fire-breathing Karnov who had his own Data East game several years earlier. And who can forget the proud cry of "I'm bad!" that the heroes uttered upon completing each of the levels? Classic!


10. Sonic The Hedgehog
Sega, 1991, Megadrive

The game that really put the Megadrive console on the map, Sonic was designed to be Sega's answer to Nintendo's Super Mario series, and in my view was more than a match for the mustachioed plumber!

Taking on the role of Sonic the blue hedgehog, you must make your way through dozens of beautiful-looking but fiendishly designed levels in an attempt to rescue lots of cute, furry creatures that have been enslaved by Dr Robotnik. Obstacles in your path include the usual collapsing platforms and spiky pits but also pools of water and an assortment of mechanical traps, not to mention plenty of cybernetic beasties and the evil Doctor himself with whom you face off at the end of each zone.

There are several power-ups that Sonic can collect, including speed-ups and limited invincibility, but the most useful items of all are the golden rings that appear throughout the levels and whenever an enemy is killed. Collect 100 rings and you get an extra life, collect 50 and you have the chance to enter a pinball-themed bonus stage at the end of the level, but even just one ring is handy as if you're hit by an enemy you lose all your rings, but you'll only lose a life if you have no rings.

What gives Sonic the edge over the Mario games of the same era is the vastness of the levels and the flexibility to roam around them as you please. The levels are fabulous in look and design and the music is catchy and memorable, all of which makes the whole package just as enjoyable now as it was 15 years ago.

Entries 11 to 15 on Page 3...

11. Golden Axe
Sega, 1989, Megadrive

Another great co-operative game, Golden Axe took the scrolling beat 'em up template of Double Dragon and added a Fantasy/RPG influence. Taking the role of a musclebound warrior, a bikini-clad amazon woman or a powerful dwarf, you hack and slash through a number of levels taking on a variety of minions before eventually facing the evil Death Adder.

As well as the impressive scenery and memorable background music, two things that made the game great were the ability to collect and store up magical potions that could be used to unleash devastating 'smart bomb' attacks when the odds were stacked against you, and also the chance to ride dragons and other beasts.

Golden Axe on the Megadrive is one of those rare cases where the home conversion is actually better than the arcade original. For some reason it just plays better and has more levels and options than the coin-op version, so was certainly one of the major selling points for Sega's 16-bit console during it's early days.

12. Ghosts N Goblins
Capcom, 1985, Arcade

Ghosts N Goblins is yet another platform game where you must negotiate several levels to rescue your girfriend - they weren't very inventive plot-wise in the 80's were they?! In this game you play Arthur the Knight and must fight through a variety of zombies, demons and fierce end-of-level baddies to complete your quest.

One hit from any enemy will knock you out of your armour and leave you running around in your underpants, while a second hit will turn you into a pile of bones! Some of the creatures will carry collectable items such as improved weapons and replacement armour that will help you along your way.

Ask most retro gamers what was the hardest arcade game ever and I'll wager a good number will say Ghosts N Goblins. Never mind the fact that you get just two hits from an enemy before losing a life, and there's only one restart point on most of the levels, the really frustrating part is that most of the enemies appear in random places and varying numbers, so you can't establish a gameplan to get you through each stage.

Despite the obscene difficulty level, GNG is still a great game due to the great graphics, level design and cool music, not to mention the amusement caused by running round in your underwear!

13. Park Patrol
Activision, 1984, Commodore 64

In this neat little game you play the role of a Park Keeper that has to clear up all the litter to complete each level. Some of the items to be collected are on land, and some are in the lake, so you have a boat to help you get around. Of course, there are obstacles in your path - turtles wander around the banks, while snakes swim in the water - both are lethal. You must also be careful not to hit any of the logs in the water as these will throw you out of your boat, and there is the added distraction of struggling swimmers to rescue too.

One impressive aspect of the game is how customisable it is - you can change the number of enemies and swimmers on each level, and also the gender of your character, options that were pretty much unheard of at the time the game was released. Aside from that there's nothing really spectacular about Park Patrol - the graphics are nice enough for their era and the music is great, but overall it's just a really fun game with a simple premise and just the right difficulty level to keep you playing.

14. Super Mario Bros 3
Nintendo, 1988, NES

The original Super Mario Bros revolutionized the platform game genre and was one of the main reasons that the NES was so successful, but Mario 3 is exponentially better in every way. The graphics and sound are vastly improved, but more importantly there are numerous gameplay improvements that were again revolutionary for their time.

Just as the original game introduced features such as power-ups and secret rooms, SMB3 introduced features such as map screens, non-linear level progression and minigames, not to mention a whole new set of power-ups for Mario. All of this innovation would have been for naught of course if the game itself had been rubbish, but with fantastic level design, superb controls and graphics that pushed the NES to it's limits, Super Mario Bros 3 is rightly regarded as one of the best platformers of all time!

15. Dig Dug
Namco, 1982, Arcade

Most people would probably not regard Dig Dug as highly as other Namco arcade classics like Pac-Man and Galaga, but there's just something about it that I love. Sure, it's a very simple idea - run around and blow up the creatures habiting the underground tunnels - but it's a lot of fun and on later levels can become rather manic as you get Pookas and Fygars coming at you from all directions.

There's no doubt that the game would be far less memorable if it weren't for the endearing and hapless Pookas - it almost seems a shame to pump the little buggers up and make them explode, and yet at the same time there's devious pleasure to be had from it. Another amusing touch is the fact that the music only plays when you're actually moving around.

As with many of the older arcade games, Dig Dug has a lot of hidden depth and it is only by playing it a lot that you work out how to get bigger scores. So although it will never be regarded as one of the greats by the majority, there will always be a place for it in this gamer's heart.

Entries 16 to 20 on Page 4...

16. Tetris
Tengen, 1988, NES

Back in the early 90's my dad bought the family a dodgy NES clone from Hong Kong - to be fair, it actually looked just like a real NES aside from not having the Nintendo logo on it. Anyway, with this console came one of those 200-in-1 game carts that really only had about 30 games on it. The first of these games was Tengen's version of Tetris, and without a shadow of a doubt that was the game that got played the most. My sister and I would spend literally hours playing the game in both competitive and co-operative modes.

I'm sure the story above is one that the majority of gamers can relate to. Tetris was, and still is, one of those games that is universally recognized and loved. Simple to play but hard to master, released on virtually every games system ever invented, one could argue that this endless game of forming shapes into lines can't really be classed as retro because as many people are playing it now as ever have.

I didn't know it at the time of course, but my dodgy copy of Tengen's Tetris was doubly dodgy because Atari released the game without getting a license to do so from Nintendo, who were producing their own version!

17. Dune II: Battle for Arrakis
Virgin Games/Westwood Studios, 1992, PC (DOS)

When people talk about retro videogames, they tend to focus on 8-bit home computers, arcade games and consoles from Atari, Sega and Nintendo. The PC that most of us use in the home or office is often forgotten when talking about classic games, but there are hundreds of great PC games that are just as retro now as the SNES and the Megadrive.

All of which brings me to Dune II, the forefather of Command & Conquer and the Real-Time Strategy genre. A simple concept inspired by Frank Herbert's books and David Lynch's godawful movie, Dune II casts you as the commander of one of three alien races charged with conquering the sand-covered planet of Dune. This is done by harvesting spice from the sand and using the money earned to develop your base and build an army that will ultimately be sent to destroy any opposing bases in the area.

The later games may have done it better, but for me Dune II will always be the best RTS because at the time there was nothing like it, and I would regularly play into the early hours of the morning trying to complete one more campaign.

18. Gauntlet
Atari, 1985, Arcade

One of the first arcade games to allow four simultaneous players, the Gauntlet machine certainly looked impressive with a massive control panel and colourful artwork on the sides. The game itself had substance to match the style of the cabinet, with countless levels to get through with your chosen adventurer - Warrior, Elf, Wizard or Valkyrie.

While it was enjoyable enough as a one-player game as you battled your way through maze-like dungeons shooting ghosts, collecting potions and so on, Gauntlet really came into it's own when you had all four players in action at once, often controlled by a group of complete strangers! It could also be frustrating if you had just spent the last 15 minutes battling through a horde of demons only for some cheeky git to put 10p in, join the game and grab the food you desperately needed!

With unique gameplay, sharp graphics and great digitized voices, Gauntlet is one of those games that everyone of a certain age should remember playing - if you need to jog anyone's memory, just say "Elf needs food badly" to them and it will all come flooding back...

19. Monkey Island 2 - LeChuck's Revenge
Lucasfilm Games, 1991, PC (DOS)

Bought just after Christmas 1991, I'm fairly sure this was the first game I spent over £30 on and it was certainly one of the first games I bought for our new multimedia 386 PC! I can't really recall why I chose the game - I hadn't played The Secret of Monkey Island, but I was a fan of the early Sierra point-n-click adventures like Space Quest. Of course having played those games I was expecting that I'd die a lot whilst playing Monkey Island 2! I even remember restarting the game after being robbed by Largo LaGrande at the start, assuming that if I walked off the screen I would escape from being robbed...

That first experience of the game tells you everything you need to know about the Lucasarts adventures – for those that have not played it, suffice to say that walking off the screen didn’t work. And of course there are no cheap deaths in these games, in fact no deaths at all unless they are part of the plot. That’s what makes these games so great – you get to explore, try all kinds of silly things and be safe in the knowledge that you won’t get punished for doing something wrong. Add in the great sense of humour and gorgeous graphics, and you have one of the all-time timber-shivering adventure classics.

20. Skate or Die
Electronic Arts, 1987, Commodore 64

Skateboarding was a big craze in the late 80's so inevitably there were a number of skating games released on most systems, but none of them were as good as Skate or Die. Similar in style to the Epyx 'Games' series, you participate in a number of skating events including the classic half pipe and a  time trial through a park. But the best events are the street jam and pool joust, where you earn points not just for your skating abilities but also for doing damage to your competitor (a second player or the computer)

With excellent graphics and sound, the ability to customise your player, and a wealth of tricks to try in each event, Skate or Die was the perfect game for those wanting to skate like the pros without grazing their knees!

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