An old-fashioned game save

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Switchblade: exploring the caves

Switchblade was always touted as one of the great games on the GX4000, using the power of the console over the standard CPC version and benefiting from instant loading.  Given the size of the map, that’s not surprising; the disk version certainly seems to chug regularly.  Despite having owned it for many years, I’ve never given it a proper go beyond making sure that the cartridge worked.  Over the Christmas holidays I had some time to rectify that.

The first thing I was surprised about was the accuracy of controls. When playing many 8-bit games, there’s a noticeable lag in inputs, and games are often designed to allow for this.  Some games did this better than others – Titus the Fox, for example, allowed a bit of leeway in jumping.  That’s not the case here, but the response to inputs is instant, making you feel much more in control.

Crazy Golf: crazy as in idiotic

When looking back at the 8-bit computers and consoles, there is a natural tendency to think of them as home to many stone-cold classics, games that stand the test of time and are replayable even now, after countless refinements to gameplay have been developed.  What we don’t tend to remember is the dross that got pumped out.  Dross like Crazy Golf.

Golf is a precision sport, and it’s important that you can easily judge angles and distances.  But this is crazy golf, so let’s stick it in Mode 0 where the pixels are rectangles, not squares, and even better let’s make it so you can only hit the ball at twelve predetermined angles.  Oh, but let’s make sure the angle the ball travels at isn’t actually the same as the indicator used to aim.

Populous the Beginning: unexplored territory

I have now progressed further than ever before.  Bloodlust has been conquered.

Back in 2005, I wrote of my troubles.  I started optimistic, settled for a war of attrition, then got a bit gung-ho and lost it all.  I tried many times to complete that level, and never managed it.  I did this time, though – on the fourth attempt.  This was a hard level.

I think my focus was initially misplaced. Just over the ridge from my starting position was a stone head, which the red tribe began worshipping at pretty soon after the start of each game.  I was dashing over there as soon as possible, to stop them gaining a spell that I thought would be catastrophic for me.  In fact, by leaving them to it (and blocking off access to the reds from my village) they used the bloodlust spell they gained on the yellow tribe part way through the game, causing chaos in my enemy’s village.

Populous the Beginning: a love affair with balloons

Level 13, Aerial Bombardment, saw the introduction of balloons.  There were two enemies – the greens, who were building up on the other end of my island, and the yellows, who were on a separate island which was much smaller.  The yellows knew of building balloons; the greens knew earthquake.

It wasn’t long before the yellows started to attack one end of my island, coming over a large cliff with their balloons filled with fire warriors and spies.  My village was severely damaged, and I had to quickly rebuild my firewarrior and priest training huts.

Populous the Beginning: juggling armies

Level 10 was another timed one, with an established village being sunk at the start by the enemy.  I was able to get two boats built quickly, and ferried nine followers and my shaman over to a stone head, which raised a partially-built village from the depths.  Converting all the wild men on that island to my cause, I rebuilt the houses and trained up some firewarriors, then took my meagre army over to the other island to quickly worship at the stone head there before the timer ran out.  I only succeeded because I made the worshipping party invisible, and they were therefore able to pray while my other warriors and preachers acted as bait for the attacking hoard.

Gaming moments: D

Dear Esther (Mac) 
The end sequence will probably stay with me for a long time – but only
when combined with the crash scene and hospital bed at the bottom of the
cave.

Dancing Stage (arcade)
I only played this a couple of times, at the Trocadero.  The machine
felt huge, and even before getting on the platform you felt energised by
the lights and colours.  I had seen someone playing already, so knew
what to expect, but the first time that two arrows came up the screen at
the same time still threw me off guard.  Unfortunately none of the home
versions quite hit the same spot, partially because of crappy dance mats.

Daytona USA (arcade)
A four-player cabinet at the bowling alley in Bexleyheath.  I had just
learnt to let the back drift out and powerslide around the corners, and
overtook my friend John doing so.  He shouted at me that it wasn’t a
powerslide, just a lucky skid.  So I did it again the next race.

Desert Strike (Mega Drive)
I actually remember this more from my playthrough on the PSP, given the
use of save states which allowed me to actually complete the game.
There were a number of memorable points, but the best was chasing the
madman across the map in his speedboat at the end of the penultimate
level.  I was raining missiles on the speedboat the whole time and it
didn’t explode.  Of course not; where would the last level come in if
that happened?

Donkey Konga (GameCube)
The instructions speeding up a few bars into Don’t Stop Me Now.  We
played this again recently, and it’s still great.

Doshin the Giant (GameCube)
I played this when it was first released, back in 2002, to completion.
I can remember very little of it now, other than the moment when I first
realised you could pick up and throw villagers.  I did it many times and
they all hated me, so I had to restart the day.

DLC Quest (PC)
Three points:

1. Being unable to move left at the start of the game, and audio cutting
   out.  I thought the game was broken; evidently not. 
2. Meeting an NPC called Phil at the end of a long cave, who informed me
   that he was just there to fill space. 
3. The ending of the game not actually being the ending of the game
   unless you buy some DLC and finish it. 

Driver (PS)
I have never completed the last level because it was just too hard. 

Populous the Beginning: an enforced restart

The best game ever?  I have often wondered if that was just nostalgia talking, with the game’s sublime mix of action and strategy existing only in my memory.  I’ve been without a means to play Populous: the beginning for some time now, but a recent GOG.com promotion let me rebuy it for £2.50 with various patches to allow it to play on modern machines.

Or, at least, that was the idea.  In order to run the game I need to delve into the game directories and find one of the executables, rather than running from the installed shortcut.  Most annoying.  Anyone else who’s having issues, look for a file called popTB.exe and run that – you’ll need admin rights though.

Tomb Raider 3: awkward

I bought the entire Tomb Raider series on Steam a while ago, and I was inspired to play something after a short conversation with Sue on Twitter.

@suekitchen But which game? Looks like TR2 or TR3. Not angular enough though!

— Tim Miller (@Xexyzx) October 31, 2013

I never completed Tomb Raider 3, despite loving the first two, so this was an obvious thing to try. It took quite a while to get it working on my work laptop, and then configuring it to use the Xbox 360 pad took even longer.  I eventually settled an a scheme which meant I only needed to use the keyboard for crouching and walking slowly, and set off the the jungle.

Populous the Beginning: total massacre

I killed the greenies, at last. It was a long hard battle, but I won by manoeuvering all my fighters to the green shamen worship site, and killing her as soon as she reappeared, over and over again. Eventually she died for good, but her and her warriors had severely reduced my fighting capacity.

According to the markers, there were battles going on between the red and yellow armies. Or so I thought. I returned to my village to regroup and strengthen my army, to find the reds attacking from the north and the yellows from the south. My village laid in tatters and my tiny army offered no resistance. I died.

So I’ll have to go back to the pre-greenie-battle save. Bah, humbug.