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retrocgads · 2 months

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UK 1987

#UK1987 #OCEAN #ACTION #SPORTS #OLYMPICS #BBC #C64 #SPECTRUM #AMSTRAD #C16 #DALEY THOMPSON'S SUPER TEST #DALEY THOMPSON'S STAR EVENTS

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nostalnerd · 3 years

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via Nostalgia Nerd

#FB

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superchartisland · 5 years

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Terminator 2 (LJN, Amiga, 1991)

Gallup all formats chart, Computer & Video Games Issue 121, December 1991

Humanity may try to escape, but the foe it is up against is fearsome. Even when it looks like Ocean movie tie-in games might have been destroyed, their pieces form together and rise up to rule again as if nothing had changed. Well, not nothing. Perhaps inspired by a movie with so many key computer graphics elements already that it lends itself perfectly to games, Ocean carry on with the creativity of Batman the Movie the Game.

It is several whole levels before you get to the inevitable point of a stage of walking along slowly and shooting people, and for that we can be grateful. Instead, the first level (repeated with different backgrounds later on) is a one-on-one fighting game, Terminator vs Terminator, health bars and all. Admittedly, it plays out less like a battle between two perfectly honed killing machines and more like the dance of a pair of marionettes controlled by semi-conscious puppeteers, beating even Way of the Tiger for clunkiness, but at least it’s something different.

From there it’s quickly onto a cartoonish top-down motorbike riding level, via another innovation. It’s time for our first bit of FMV - Full Motion Video! With increased computing power available, how better to make use of it than to give the player a break from doing anything and make them watch some pre-recorded video footage? Especially if it’s taken from a movie your game is tied in to. And so, there are tiny snatches of Terminator 2, played through a narrow slit of screen estate, so perhaps PMV (Partial Motion Video) or LMV (Letterbox Mediated Video) would be more appropriate.

I guess these video segments could work as a reminder having seen the film of which bit the next level is meant to represent. The thing is, though, all of the levels already noticeably value reminding you of a bit of Terminator 2 the film well above being in any way enjoyable to play, so it’s a bit of a needless addition.

Breaking the separate genres of level down into smaller and more distinct chunks than ever has an interesting effect. It stops Terminator 2 from feeling that much like any of its predecessors. Instead, it exists plainly in a separate world of themed mini-games, even if it’s one with unusually and unhelpfully strict restrictions to carrying on from each one to the next (not renewing any health that you lose in previous levels is rather cruel). Terminator 2 does not, for all of its faults, represent another Robocop. It’s closer to a really bad, Terminator-themed Daley Thompson’s Super Test. The beast shifts shape again.

#every number one #Amiga #retrogaming #Terminator 2 #gif #fmv

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mingos-commodoreblog · 6 years

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Olympic Challenge (C64)

Genre: Sport Publisher: Ocean Anzahl Datenträger: 4 Jahr: 1988

Bemerkung: Diese Spiele-Sammling beinhaltet folgende Titel: Hypersports, Barry McGuigan W.C. Boxing, Daley Thompson's Decathlon, Basket Master, World Series Baseball, Snooker, Track and Field, Match Point, Daley Thompsons Super-Test und Match Day 2

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#commodore #c64 #retro #retrogaming #videogames #8bit #80s #collection #tape #sport #compilation

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serialcomposer · 7 years

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My retro games:

NES:

Castlevania Ivan “Ironman” Stewart’s Super Off Road Marble Madness Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt double cart Super Mario Bros. 3

SNES:

F-Zero Mario Paint Populous Sim City (got a European and American cart for that) Super Mairo Kart

N64:

F-Zero X Goldeneye 007 Turok 2 Seeds of Evil Shadow Man

Atari VCS (Atari 2600):

Centipede Combat Donkey Kong E.T. (yes, that one) Ms. Pac-Man Galaxian Pac-Man Pitfall Space Invaders

Gamecube:

Pokémon Colosseum Pokémon XD Gale of Darkness Star Wars, the clone wars Star Wars Rogue Leader, rogue squadron II

Master System:

Lemmings Master of Darkness Parlour Games Sonic the Hedgehog Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Sonic the Hedgehog Chaos Streets of Rage

Mega Drive:

Altered Beast Corporation Ecco the Dolphin (really dark backstory behind that game) Ghouls’n Ghosts Last Battle Golden Axe II Sonic the Hedgehog Street Fighter II Urban Strike Toy Story Two Crude Dudes

Saturn:

Alien Trilogy Athlete Kings Loaded Sega Rally Championship Sonic R Tomb Raider

Dreamcast:

Ready 2 Rumble Boxing Round 2 Toy Commander

Sinclair ZX Spectrum:

Back to the Future Crash Presents July 1990 Survivors Jungle Trouble Cosmic chaos Software House (may not be game, haven’t checked) Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future Deviants Dizzy Treasure Island Dizzy Fantasy World Dizzy FA Cup Football Football Frenzy Gazza II Ghostbusters Gunfighter Kickstart 2 Kokotoni Wilf Live and Let Die Nifty Lifty Daley Thompson’s Olympic Challenge Paperboy Project Future Quatro Adventure Vampire Ghost Hunters Super Robin Hood Dizzy Quatro Sports Grand Prix Simulator Pro Ski Simulator Pro Snooker Simulator BMX Simulator Saboteur Speed King 2 Star Farce Super Stunt Man Super Trolly Super Wonder Boy Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles The Rocky Horror Show Way of the Exploding Fist 128 - 6 Pack Ian Botham’s Test Match Mutuations Who Said That? One For the Road Hard Superfile (may be file management thing rather than game, not checked) 128 - 4 Pack Colin the Cleaner Witchfiend Blizzard Pass Odd Job Eddie Konami Arcade Collection Jail Break Green Beret (called Rush ‘n’ Attack in the states) Yie Ar Kung Fu Ping Pong Yie Ar Kung Fu II Mikie Jackal Hypersports Shao-Lin’s Road Nemesis 5 Konami Hits Just contains five of the games I mentioned for the previous compilation Compendium Ludo Tiddly Drinks Shove-a-Sledge Snakes and Hazards Circus Games Tiger Training Trapeze Tightrope Trick Horse Riding

I do have some playstation games too but I don’t have all of them in Edinburgh so haven’t included any.

#nobody gives a shit david #retro gaming #long post

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retrocgads · 27 days

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UK 1987

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retrocgads · 27 days

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UK 1987

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retrocgads · 27 days

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UK 1987

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retrocgads · 2 years

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UK 1985

#UK1985 #OCEAN #ACTION #SPORTS #LICENSED #OLYMPICS #C64 #AMSTRAD #SPECTRUM #BBC #DALEY THOMPSON'S SUPER TEST

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retrocgads · 1 year

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UK 1985

#UK1985 #OCEAN #ACTION #SPORTS #OLYMPICS #LICENSED #C64 #SPECTRUM #AMSTRAD #BBC #DALEY THOMPSON'S SUPER TEST

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retrocgads · 1 year

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UK 1985

#UK1985 #OCEAN #DENTON DESIGNS #ACTION #ADVENTURE #RACING #LICENSED #SPORTS #OLYMPICS #C64 #SPECTRUM #AMSTRAD #STREET HAWK #FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD #DALEY THOMPSON'S SUPER TEST

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retrocgads · 2 years

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UK 1985

#UK1985 #OCEAN #ACTION #SPORTS #OLYMPICS #LICENSED #SPECTRUM #C64 #AMSTRAD #BBC #DALEY THOMPSON'S SUPER TEST

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superchartisland · 5 years

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Daley Thompson’s Olympic Challenge (Ocean, Amstrad, 1988)

Gallup all formats chart, Computer & Video Games Issue 86, December 1988

Daley Thompson’s Decathlon and Super Test were #1 a year apart from each other back in the early days of AAA in 1984 and 1985. Then, a gap. After an initial rush, sports minigame collections were not to prove a perennial fixture of the top of the charts. Quadrennial, though? That’s another matter. The Olympics and the large proportion of the country watching a collection of different short bits of sports coverage, feeling inspired to do vaguely related things, is an unmissable opportunity. And so, Daley Thompson was back, to considerably more success in the computer game arena than the actual Olympics, where he followed up his golds from 1980 and 1984 with a fourth place.

An Olympiad on from the Decathlon game, and with Thompson’s event back in the spotlight, Ocean took the decision to make the game about the decathlon again. Very much the same game about the Decathlon. Olympic Challenge is essentially AAA’s first remake of many. The further on we get, the more we're going to see the same games come around again with some fancier graphics and a couple of extra features. Olympic Challenge adds proper tracking of your decathlon points across all the events, which is nice, but not a change worth a whole new game.

Most of the fancier graphics in the gifs with this post come from the fact I'm playing the Amstrad CPC version (thanks Alan Sugar) but the Spectrum one looks different too. The previously generic athlete is replaced with an undeniable attempt at rendering Daley Thompson himself, moustache and all. If the events don't make that plain enough, the extra training session beforehand gives you a big clear view of him lifting weights and doing push-ups.

The training is an odd addition. It sets up how well you can do in the decathlon, so it takes on some importance. All three activities you have to do in it, though, consist of nothing more than waggling the joystick from side to side as many times as you can in a minute. I complained about the original Decathlon feeling like a training session, but this really is just a chore. So what is the point?

Well, the big view of Daley is one thing, a fine bit of personal branding. And branding is the wider key. Your success meter is a bottle of Lucozade which fills up (Lucozade is a registered trademark of Beecham Group PLC., every interstitial screen in the game reminds you in flashy text). The game is a commercial opportunity and a reflection of commercial reality in what it’s depicting. When you go onto the 100m and everything else, you get asked to select the correct Adidas trainer for each event.

And the thing is how I reacted to the realisation that Daley Thompson Olympic Challenge is a four-year-old game merely updated with the latest commercial endorsements. Not with horror, but with a wry and detached sense of recognition. The gameplay may already be ancient and decaying, but this game is nonetheless the future.

#every number one #Daley Thompson's Olympic Challenge #Daley Thompson #decathlon #Amstrad CPC #8bit #retrogaming #product placement

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superchartisland · 5 years

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Game Set & Match (Ocean, Spectrum, 1987)

Gallup Spectrum chart, Your Sinclair Issue 26, February 1988

We’ve previously covered one compilation, in the charity fundraiser Soft Aid. Game Set & Match is another chance to bring together a bunch of old games and is purely for profit, taking as its unifying theme the sports game. If there’s one thing that AAA’s journey so far from 1984 to the end of 1987 has taught us, it’s that the game-playing British public loved sports games. Almost any sports games. So taking a whole bunch of different minor sports games and bundling them into one was a savvy move from longtime savvy movers Ocean. Most of the games come from British former rival turned subsidiary Imagine, and most of those from a deal to remake the games of Japanese developer Konami.

One of the Konami originals is Hyper Sports, which alongside Daley Thompson’s Super Test means that this is the first time (but not the only time) that AAA will review a release containing game(s) already previously covered on AAA. Which is weird. Even more so because the biggest reason for their presence on Game Set & Match appears to be to bump up the numbers on its box. 10 games and over 20 events, it trumpets, on the basis of all of the different events contained in those two games. Although you would have to do better than me at Hyper Sports to even get to all of them.

They remain similar but distinct takes on the multi-sports challenge. Daley Thompson’s Super Test (Ocean, 1985) is the more generous to the player and places the higher value on variety. Hyper Sports (Imagine, 1985) shows its arcade origins through both difficulty and visual flair. They’re not my favourites but they do enjoyable things with small challenges, the better for not attempting the task of tackling a sport as a whole.

Taking the one game at the time in brief approach to reviewing the rest of the contents:

Pool (CDS, 1983)

An early, functional but very simplified version of pool. Only three balls of each colour?

World Series Baseball (Imagine, 1985)

An early, functional but very simplified version of baseball. Decent music for a Spectrum game.

Konami’s Tennis (Imagine, 1986)

An early, functional but very simplified version of tennis, where it’s easy enough to return the ball but working out how to actually score a point is a very different matter, with a slight feel of playing against a pre-injury Andy Murray.

Konami’s Ping Pong (Imagine, 1986)

An early, barely functional version of table tennis. Its most distinguishing feature is the demonic laughter of the crowd in response to each rally.

Basketball (Gamestar, 1987)

An early, garish and confusing version of basketball. A two-on-two match where all the four players wear different colours from each other.

Jonah Barrington’s Squash (New Generation, 1985)

An early version of squash, where to be honest I don’t understand the sport well enough to make any judgements about functionality or otherwise. A bit like Konami’s Tennis except with half of my shots being ruled out for reasons I don’t understand, plus the audio has synthesised speech which you can just about make out reading out the score, as long as you already know what the score is.

Super Soccer (Imagine, 1986)

An early, not even functional version of football in which you have accelerate/brake/turn left/turn right controls for your players for some reason. On the other hand it includes a degree of customisation of how it looks which allows you to play on a magenta pitch, which is not to be sniffed at.

Barry McGuigan’s World Championship Boxing (Gamestar, 1985)

This game stands out a mile in these surrounds, due to such factors as better-than-minimal graphics and a career mode, even if the punches its boxers throw feel a bit weedy and weightless. When you define your character at the beginning you are asked to choose between them being Black or White, which is an age ahead of its time.

Overall these are some of the games which have aged least well, or rather aged the least to my liking under the approach I’m taking to playing them, which is a very different statement. For a start, the barrier of complexity, and that of the difficulty of making AI advanced enough to play realistically badly, would be significantly lessened if I was playing them with someone else two player. That would be a more natural fit for what they’re representing, and there can be something fantastic and joyful in trying to work out how to play a game alongside someone else while competing with them. More relevantly, childhood experience would suggest that while such a process of competitive co-operation works best with the best games, it works better with bad games than mediocre ones.

#every number one #Game Set & Match #ZX Spectrum #Ocean Software #Daley Thomspon's Super Test #Hyper Sports #Konami

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superchartisland · 6 years

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Daley Thompson’s Super Test (Ocean, Spectrum, 1985)

Gallup Spectrum chart, Your Sinclair Issue 13, January 1987

Another #1, another sports game. People in the UK kept playing them, which is a theme we’re going to get to think about a lot in the course of this project and one of one of the major places where standard historical narrative emphasis doesn’t quite match up. Even outside of that trend, Daley Thompson’s Decathlon was such a success that a sequel was just about inevitable. But what form to take? A Decathlon II could be a do-over and improve on some of its flaws, though simulating the same events again would not be the most exciting prospect. But doing anything else would lose the link to the event of the guy whose name was on the box.

Ocean opted for the second with a dash of the first -- a lot of new events that Daley Thompson did not compete in, bulked out with a few returnees, packaged with a new title. His name was much more important than the event, they decided, which makes sense given that Decathlon wasn’t really about the decathlon as a competition anyway.

Following through from that good decision, Super Test is a sharp lesson in how transformational context can be. Not that it isn’t a constant feature of games, where the player is often doing the same basic actions but having a very different experience dependent on how those actions are being suggested and responded to. But with Super Test there’s a particularly direct comparison with Decathlon and its problem of feeling like it was a training run.

In Super Test’s first event, rowing, you hit alternate keys or waggle a joystick in alternate directions, left right left right left right left right, and travel at a speed dependent on how fast you can do that. No change at all there. You’re even, in reality, competing against the clock to preserve one of your three lives again. But just having a competitor on screen, in a display which throughout looks suspiciously similar to Hyper Sports’s swimming, makes it more involving. It’s that little bit easier to imagine you’re actually part of a competition, even if it’s a fleeting sensation.

Tug-of-war involves the same waggle input once more, but having to keep up the motion to drag someone past a line makes for a different experience again. Even getting to choose a named opponent at the start adds a bit extra. The wide assortment of events -- there’s a football penalties round in there too -- leaves very little sense of a coherent narrative, but it’s not like Decathlon managed to do that either. Sacrificing it for creativity and variety is barely even a sacrifice. And the slow building, beeptastic version of “Chariots of Fire” on the title screen is lit.

#Daley Thompson's Super Test #Daley Thompson #ZX Spectrum #gif #computer games #1985 #every number one #sports

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