Crab-Bob SoulsBorne!
Who fights with the power of umami?
Crab-Bob SoulsBorne!
If nautical combat be something you wish
Crab-Bob SoulsBorne!
Just jump in a shell and fight like a shellfish!
Crab-Bob SoulsBorne!

Crab-Bob SoulsBorne! Crab-Bob SoulsBorne!
Crab-Bob SoulsBooooooooorne!

(it's a review of Another Crab's Treasure, by SwitchUp. Sorry, I was feeling silly and had to post this.)

"It took quite a journey to get here," laments the host of Geek Battle Gaming in his review of a surprising ZX Spectrum release... Mighty Final Fight, based on the NES game that was based on the arcade game. (Phew.)

In spite of the ZX Spectrum's handicaps, its port of Mighty Final Fight is reasonably close to the NES game, and certainly looks more playable than the Spectrum port of Final Fight that was officially released by US Gold. (UK Aluminum is more like.)

Let me tell you, if you have any reverence for Final Fight, nearly any home computer port of the game will twist your stomach in knots. (Except the X68000 version, which actually IS Final Fight, but good luck actually getting one of those stupidly expensive Japanese computers from the 1980s. Even the mini version of that system is eye-wateringly pricey.)

Some people are the masters of their instruments. For Rush's Neal Peart, it was the drums, for Slash, it was the guitar. For John Champeau, it's the Atari 2600. He's coaxed games out of this system that just shouldn't be possible, whether it's a port of Galaga that's better than the Atari 7800 version, or a conversion of Wizard of Wor that measures up to ports on more powerful systems.

His impossible 2600 arcade port d'jour is Tutankham, the Konami title also known in some territories as Horror Maze. (Stupid name, I say. Did the estate of Tutankham sue over the name rights, like what Edgar Rice Burroughs' kids did with Jungle King?)

Tutankham actually had been brought to the Atari 2600 by Parker Bros decades earlier, but like most Parker Bros arcade conversions, it was a pretty sorry affair, bearing only the faintest resemblance to the original. The port by Champ Games is much closer to the genuine article; still a little rough around the edges, but readily recognizable as Tutankha

Guru Logi Champ for the Game Boy Advance was the last game designed by Compile before the company's untimely bankruptcy. This refreshingly unique puzzle title was a Japanese exclusive, but Western players can finally get a taste of its block-tossing, screen-spinning action in Carleton Handley's Spinning Image, for the Commodore 64.

You won't get the full Guru Logi Champ experience, including the smoothly rotating game board and those zany cut scenes where a pair of ducks saves the world by turning things clockwise. However, it's not a bad substitute at all, with new puzzles and colorful graphics. You can download it from Handley's itch.io page and play it anywhere C64 emulation is possible. (Which these days is pretty much anywhere. You could play it on your fridge if it's one of those fancy ones with a screen on it.)

Hey, is there a Commodore 64 emulator for the Game Boy Advance? That way you could play both Guru Logi Champ and this clone on the same system!

Enraged by Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony refusing to sell their consoles in Russia, Vladimir Putin climbed up an onion shaped tower while clutching a damsel in one arm, and said "I shall make my OWN game console! With blackjack, and hookers, and not at all suspicious deaths of my critics!"

I'm just imagining this to be like the leading game system in TaleSpin's fictional Thembria. "UTOPIA 256: THE MOST FUN YOU ARE LEGALLY ALLOWED TO HAVE IN GREAT SOVIET EMPIRE."

Thanks to Ars Technica for (this very puzzling) scoop.

A few days ago, a warning flashed on my Xbox Series. "The Jeff Minter Story now rated MA-18!" I was thinking to myself, "What fresh hell do we have here? Did they find naked llamas in the game? Or a hidden game, like Hot Coffee in Grand Theft Auto? Eww, them's some gross implications there."

Evidently it wasn't so much the content of the GAMES as it was the content in the VIDEOS, where the always shaggy and psychedelic Yak used language as colorful as the visuals in his audio synthesizers. It looks like as a result, there will be an update to the game where Minter's expletives will be given a good bleeping for the sake of a younger rating.

(Let's be honest with ourselves, though. You really don't need to ask Jeff Minter fans for ID. They're old enough to drink, and experience the ravages of male pattern baldness. You might as well card the guy ordering a margarita at a Jimmy Buffet concert. May he sip in peace.)

There's a diagnostic suite of software for game consoles which tests input lag and screen tearing on your display. This suite first popped up for consoles released at the turn of the century (Dreamcast, specifically), but someone has made a version of this toolkit for... the ColecoVision.

You must understand that while the things the 240p Test Suite does pose no challenge to the Sega Dreamcast, with its full color graphics and its transparencies, they pose a TREMENDOUS challenge to the ColecoVision, a system from the early 1980s with significant visual handicaps. It's outright mind-boggling that this could even exist.

Why are Brazilians so damn good at pushing electronics past their theoretical limits? Did Steve Wozniak start a sperm bank in Rio?

And it's said to run at FULL SPEED? With the 3D features of the 3DS supported? WHAT??? Me downloady now.

In the tradition of her previous video about Data East's 1980s coin-ops, gaming historian Kim Justice fixes her critical lens on the arcade games of Konami released during the decade of decadence.

Konami's probably better known for its NES and Super NES titles, but you really shouldn't ignore the stuff they brought to arcades. Well, except maybe a handful of the 3D racing games which tried (and failed, rather spectacularly) to compete with classics like OutRun and Chase HQ. Most of the OTHER stuff is great, though, particularly Time Pilot, Circus Charlie, Gyruss, and Gradius, the foundation for the modern side-scrolling shooter.

The classic puzzle game Chip's Challenge, which made its debut on the Atari Lynx thirty-five years ago (oy vey), has now resurfaced on the Nintendo Switch. For those curious, this is the Lynx game running on an emulator, as opposed to the PC version, which has a higher resolution and a wider view of the playfield, but unsettling shareware-quality graphics that make the Atari Lynx version look downright flashy by comparison.

It's also worth mentioning that Chip's Challenge is one of the HARDEST puzzle games you'll ever play. Those first eight levels you'll quickly whip through are tutorials... once they're finished, the training wheels come off, and the nipple clamps go on. If you've ever played Adventures of Lolo and felt the level designs just weren't vicious enough, this Bud's for you.

Mauro Xavier and his team are still hard at work on Final Fight MD, the ambitious Sega Genesis port of the classic belt-scrolling brawler. The first three stages of the game are fully playable in the beta currently available on Xavier's Patreon page, taking you through the bar, into the wrestling ring with a handful of Andores, and straight to the gum-spitting, baton-wielding boss, Edi E.

On the downside, Xavier's team is currently wrestling with an issue he calls "cumulative slowdown," where the game runs well in the first stage but performance gets increasingly chuggy the farther you progress. For the moment, Xavier suggests using the level select to jump straight into the scene you wish to play, but clearly, this is a bug that will have to be squashed before Final Fight MD is ready for release.

Thanks to Time Extension as always for the scoop, and Sega Guys for the video clip.

Sega Lord X just reviewed Golden Axe for the 32X add-on, and it's a beaut, with high resolution backgrounds that are stunningly close to what was in the arcade game. The original Genesis version of Golden Axe had to cut corners to fit into a 512K cartridge, and this plus the low color output of the system meant that the game was a cut below the arcade version. The 32X game still isn't quite up to par with the arcade game, with weaker magic spells, but it's remarkably close, as you can see from the two titles running side by side in SLX's video.

But wait, there's more! Someone's trying to port Tomb Raider to the 32X, using OpenLara as a framework. It's still extremely early and runs at a low frame rate, but like the Game Boy Advance version that came before it, it's still impressive considering the hardware. You can find both games in the links at the bottom of the description. Thanks to Sega Lord X for giving me something to post about after a week and a half of radio silence. Heh.

Remember the Data Frog SF2000? It's a re-donkulously cheap handheld game system sold on Chinese mail order outlets like AliExpress and Temu. You can get one of these for as little as twenty dollars, not a bad deal when you consider there's just enough power packed into one of these systems to play Capcom arcade games and a hefty assortment of 8-bit titles.

Well, the world's cheapest handheld that you'd actually want to play (there are cheaper, but for your sanity's sake, just don't do that to yourself) is that much better, thanks to the efforts of one Madcock and his custom firmware. Multicore Alpha 0.10 was just released, and features support for Atari 5200 and Atari 7800 games, in addition to the dozen systems supported by previous builds.

If you're an Atari fan, this is very good news. Thanks to this firmware update, the Data Frog runs the libraries of nearly every Atari game console, save for the 64-bit Jaguar. (I've played the Jaguar. Trust me, you're not missing much.)

Here's a Christmas curveball for you. Galix's GGPie uses the Game Gear TV Tuner and a Raspberry Pi Zero to turn your Game Gear into a most-in-one game console. The problem is that while the Raspberry Pi has more than enough power to emulate everything up to the original Playstation, the Game Gear has a severe button deficit, so you'll be stuck playing 8-bit consoles and maybe the Sega Genesis.

Beyond that, the Game Gear screen is... less than optimal for game consoles that aren't the Game Gear. Heck, it's not even that great for Game Gear games... those color displays from the early 1990s leave much to be desired compared to what's available in 21st century handhelds.

It may be extraneous to the extreme, but the GGPie is nevertheless an option for gamers who aren't ready to put Sega's chunky handheld into retirement. Special thanks to AtariAge for the scoop.

Good news for fans of obscure side-scrolling shooters! Rabio Lepus (which I remember in arcades as "Rabbit Punch") is now half off its original price on the Nintendo Switch, bringing the total down to $3.99. This was one of developer Video System's first games, starring two rabbit droids blasting and punching their way through the galaxy in an effort to rescue a kidnapped princess. Yes, there's actually a melee attack, reminiscent of the close range sword swipes in Lords of Thunder for the TurboDuo.

But wait, there's more! Masaya's Gynoug (aka Wings of Wor) and Advanced Busterhawk Gleylancer are on sale for $3.49 each, a historic low for both games. And Aero Fighters 2, created by the aforementioned Video System, is also reduced to half its retail price. Now you can take to the skies and blow up world monuments as a baby or a dolphin, all for just $3.99!

Alas, the long-running Electronic Entertainment Expo, a convention created especially for the video game industry, is no more. Started in 1995, E3 gave publishers and developers a chance to show off their latest releases and works in progress, without fear of being eclipsed by the more general purpose technology featured at the Consumer Electronics Show.

E3 was important to the video game industry in its early days, a high-stakes competition between console manufacturers. The winners would emerge as dominant players in the industry and plot the course of gaming history, while the losers would watch helplessly as their reputations were tarnished by humiliating online memes. E3 was instrumental to the success of the first Playstation... but it also left Sony with a black eye in 2006, when the overpriced Playstation 3 failed to impress players with its promise of "giant enemy crabs," "real-time weapon change," and "famous battles that actually took place in Japan."

By the 2010s, the Ele

Digital Eclipse is on fire lately! The creators of Atari 50 and Karateka Gold are now setting their sights on cult game designer Jeff Minter, who made dozens of twitchy arcade-style titles for home computers like the VIC-20 and Atari ST.

DE's latest collection, Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story will feature over forty of Minter's games, stretched across four decades and numerous systems. When you're done playing Llamatron 2112, Gridrunner, and Tempest 2000, you can sit back and enjoy interviews with the games' eccentric designer, where he describes his influences and the programming tricks he used to give his titles their retina-rupturing psychedelic visuals.

Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story will come to your favorite modern game console in early 2024, along with the Steam and GOG distribution services. I'm as surprised by the news as the rest of you, but just as excited to get my hands on the finished product.

The YouTube channel Mike's Gaming Channel came across this peculiar ColecoVision release... a multi-cart featuring two dozen games for the Magnavox Odyssey2.

They're mostly accurate ports, albeit with slightly smeary graphics tucked inside a rough drawing of a CRT television. However, the existence of this cartridge raises some questions. How is this possible? Why does this exist? Was there someone out there who absolutely had to play KC Munchkin, but on a ColecoVision?

An Odyssey2 multi-cart for the ColecoVision is the most curious retro gaming curio since the Vectrex cartridge with a Raspberry Pi inside, which emulates Vectrex games ON your Vectrex. (Yeah, the Pi-Trex was a thing. Heaven only knows why. Maybe Xzibit made it.)

Thanks to Mike's Gaming Channel for the footage, and AtariAge for the heads up about this cartridge's existence, puzzling though it may be.