Spy Hunter (C64)

Thankfully it's not like Tron. Though Tron's LightCycle game was good.

There was always something amazing about cars when I was growing up. Before I knew of the wonders that were traffic jams and being pulled over having been driving at 90+ MPH (not 100, never take that risk... sometimes), but the fact you could get into a vehicle as a kid meant that you HAD to have high speed car chases. Films with car crashes and chases ruled supreme until you were old enough to watch people getting limbs blown off in high detailed blood splat gore. So here I'm going to review Spy Hunter on the C64, simply because it's got a car that has guns built into it.

Fuck this, I can't handle the pressure of such questions.

It's the ultimate spy car. Inspired by the Bond age (heh, bondage) of cars where you get smoke screens, oil slicks, machinegun placements behind the lights and rockets for the most painful enemy you'll encounter. However the game translates into a top-down display of you chasing your car as if from orbit while you navigate in and around roads, avoiding pedestrian vehicles and taking down other spy cars.

You can only shoot the one that has cotton ear buds for wheels. You'll want to though.

In the arcade, you had a sit down cabinet, high and low speed gear shift, buttons on the steering wheel for you to navigate through multiple weapons and then use them to fullest effect against your opponents and a good rendition of the Peter Gunn theme tune. Not quite so in the C64 version, though you do have a nice rendition of chip tune Peter Gunn theme tune and there's a few extra sound effects that don't sound too terrible on the C64. Instead of a steering wheel, you'll get yourself two joysticks (need the extra fire button) or the keyboard.

All the spy gear in the world and we still use a TUG BOAT

You get to start off with your car being rolled out the back of a van and then you're free to drive along and shoot everything. Though that's a bad idea as you're left with few points if you shoot non-enemy characters. While shooting the spiked wheel cars and ramming off the bullet-proof cars will give you bonus points, while also using oil slicks and smoke-screens will help in this regard. There's the challenge of getting around the spiked cars, slamming into bullet-proof cars while simultaneously avoiding other cars and falling off the track. Once again, this is a one-hit kill game, you get spiked, you're dead. Bombed, dead. Go off the road, dead.

The chopper (mad bomber) will quickly become the bane of your play time

During your driving you'll occasionally hit routes where the track narrows, splits up, goes over bridges and have to take a quick exit into a house where upon you become a boat so you can travel down the river instead of crashing your car off a bridge. Once in the water, you'll be boating your way idly down the river with a rod in one hand and getting shot at by torpedoes and mines. Ok so not so relaxed and the idea of having your rod in your hand makes me wonder who here is thinking that was a wanking joke.

I'm all of a second away from having my tyres blown out.

You can start at either Novice (wuss) or Expert (less of a wuss) where you either get one car on the road at a time, or four. Initially at least, as once you get to the next area, it gets harder anyway for both sides. What is interesting, is that you've a 999 timer, while this is on, it's impossible to lose a life. You can die, but it's not game over. But once the counter hits 0, your lives come into effect and the lovely gun car rolls out to take one straight off if you're not ready for him. He'll turn up every time the 999 rolls around but you won't see the numbers from here on. Once you get to the 2nd area, the helicopter comes in to drop bombs on you.

Being a boat stops things like....

The difficulty ramps up steadily in the game, though it's easy to get caught between cars in Expert mode and blown up or smashed apart. Power ups come in the form of trucks/lorries that have the icons on the roof indicating if it's rockets, oil or smoke screens. To gain them, just let the lorry overtake and drive up into the back of it. While of course not being killed from the various enemies around you. Ammo is limited on oil and smoke to an unspecified volume while you get 3 rockets at a time and you CAN miss the chopper with them.

....this from happening. Unless you cheat like I am here.

For those who are looking to an end to the game, you're in for a bad time as there's no actual end to the game. It loops between the 2nd and 3rd areas in that it's either yellow background or ice level (yes, even in this game there's a fucking ice level!) with the usual situation for bridges being out, boats needing to be jumped into and sudden colour changes implemented at all times. It does however have that appeal of being a game you could quickly play again and see if you can get just a little bit farther into it. Or run up the side of the screen and cheat your way to bonus lives, assuming the chopper doesn't get you while you're doing that. It's still fun but feels a little unfinished.

Moonwalker

Yep, THAT Michael Jackson

I have to thank my cousin for reminding me of this little gem. But Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, is probably one of the most offensive and horrific games of all time... in hindsight. It's a game that was released in 1990, developed by Sega after the release of the original Mish-Mash film, Moonwalker (which was basically several long music videos thrown together and then MJ fights Joe Pesci by turning into a car, a robot and a spaceship before leaving and coming back for a gig... I wish I was making this up but it sounds more impressive than it really is), the unfortunate side-effect of MJ's life is that in this game, you save kids by touching them...

I'll try to keep away from joking about this, but I make no promises.

Start of almost every level has this comic book approach to the level.

Dancing McPaedo (Never convicted but often insinuated, not quite the best tagline for someone, would much rather have Outnumbered but never Outgunned, but oh well..), is the only "person" for want of a better word, that can save multiple kids that were spotted hanging out with MJ when they saw Joe Pesci doing a drug deal. Joe now wants MJ dead so he kidnaps the kids (MJ's obvious weakness) and forces MJ to rescue them while trying to have him killed.

Smoking, Drugs, Drink... they all kill, but few will name Dancing as a dangerous weapon.

Cue 5 levels of isometric perspective maps, moon walking power moves, dances and turning into a robot when collecting Bubbles the Chimp... We're really trying to shoehorn a lot of MJ's life into a game here. I'm just sorry there's no plastic surgery powerups but then the game would look entirely different. I'm also surprised that arcade cabinets didn't have extra hands under the machine to try and fondle the players, but hindsight is 20-20 after all.

Onto the game, you know, the whole actual point of this article.

The threat level bounces around within the game, some areas are nice and quiet, this isn't one of those areas.

You control Dancing McPaedo (I'll try to stop now) as he moves around the levels and rescues children. Each level looks like it's been fairly closely, but not overly accurately, recreated from scenes in the film. You've Mr Big's base, (Pesci's character name, original isn't it...), a street and bar, another dark street, a graveyard with zombies (to force us to hear Thriller as the music for the game), then the last level which is the first level but backwards followed by an elevator set then the last boss. Most of time you'll get to fight and "kill" Joe Pesci in the same way we fight and kill Robotnik in Sonic The Hedgehog games and that he flies off when defeated to "get you next time, McPaedo!"... Or something along those words, the speech isn't entirely clear at this point.

As far as final bosses go... this is shit.

You move around the level in the standard 8 compass directions, which translate exactly in the game as those directions. This isn't one of those games where pressing up moves you diagonally up into the "background" of the perspective. This does make the game a little easier to avoid enemies as they tend to move on the 4 diagonals provided by the isometric view. It does become awkward when trying to navigate through narrow points unfortunately or when you're up against larger enemies that can tank the damage you dish out.

You too can dance along, and look like as much of a prick as he does.

Your primary method of fighting is a charge/release attack. Hold the button and MJ starts to moonwalk while moving, holding his hand up while charging his laser and then when released, fires in the direction he's moving (not facing, as he's backwards while moon walking... go figure). This charge also determines the size and power of the shot, so a long shot goes across the distance of the room/screen and does huge damage, while tapping the button will fire a short blast that goes less distance than an asthmatic wheezing out a death-rattle.

Joe Pesci chokes a fat kid, and MJ looks like he's being sucked off...

Thankfully, there's some help in this game in the form of Bubbles the Chimp who can be collected and then turns MJ into Robo-Paedo, where he becomes a hulking great moon walking robot that fires lasers and missiles, doesn't require large charge up times for the power move and has a greatly increased range of attack. Though this usually turns up before or around the boss areas. On top of this you've your dance attack, which is your special "Let's slap everything in the face with MJs dick" move, forcing all characters and enemies on screen to dance for a moment before being killed or heavily damaged. You get one per life and can find more in the kids pockets when you rescue them.

Robo Wacko Jacko... Sadly, MJ was the conceptual designer for this game.

More disturbingly, are some of the enemies. If you've played the game then you'll know what I mean when I talking about the 2-legged robo-cock machines. It's like one of those two legged walkers from Star Wars with an extendable strap-on that can be used to punched MJ. Perhaps someone in the design team had a glimpse into the future and saw what was going to happen, wrote this enemy and thought "That's one MJ takes instead!" But given the later years of MJ's life, it's probably even more disturbing with the hindsight.

The aptly named "Location not appearing in the film" level.

You'd think though, that the music in the game would be sublime. MJ, who at the time, was the BIGGEST name in pop-music around the planet, riding the thrill of having the biggest albums and breaking more records than almost anyone else ever, would have had decent renditions of his music in the game. We can get people speaking badly, but the musical over tones are the worst level of hell of Dante's vision for this kind of elevator musak. Bad is barely recognisable, Billy Jean is butchered (and not my lover), Thriller is vaguely recognisable and none of it really represents the music for what it was at the time. Fairly decent (until MJ opened his gob...).

"Now for today's caption contest, just send in your own quote for this picture to..."

Interestingly, the arcade game was for 1-3 players, with each rendition of MJ being in a different coloured suit, though player 3 had the added bonus of being in a black suit, with a red arm band... They got to be the Gestapo version of MJ, adding in holocaust bonuses along with playing as Dancing McPaedo. 2 fuckups for the price of 1.

It's the power of DANCE!

It's a short game, even for 1990 and won't take too many credits to get through, between 1-4 for a seasoned player of arcade games and less for someone who's played it before. But it's worth playing, just to see how MJ liked to see himself as the saviour of kids while the rest of the world recognised him as being a filthy little pae- [Obscured on legal advice] -p his own rectum.

Like Joe Pesci, this is pretty much my reaction to this entire game.

Contra (Probotector) 2

1 Player or 2, to be brutally abused by a NES game?

Contra 2, Super Contra (not on the SNES) or Probotector 2, all of which are the same game on the NES in whichever guise you want to take them. Is likely the quintessential Run and Gun game for the Nintendo Entertainment System in all of its 8-Bit glory. Though in fairness, I'll state now that the 16-Bit versions with Super Probotector, Contra 3 (same game on SNES) and the Megadrive (......Genesis) version, are the same for that generation of console. It's a solid platformer series (I'll discuss the later games another time, or not, I'm talking of the sprite-based games here) and this game is no exception to the rule.

Toothpaste sales went through the roof

You take the guise of the two main characters, one Red, one Blue, which some will argue are Bill, Lance, Dave, Sharon, Twatface and Fuckwit. Names for this type of game isn't really an issue, it's the controls, it's the action and the challenge that is represented by the game. Which I'll say right now, it's a lot harder than the first game and a lot harder than the 16-bit games.

It's not actually a boss, it's a mid-boss. Hard to tell and where the hell is the background?

It's also different from the arcade version, which stops after the 2nd Bird's-Eye-View boss, while this carries on but I'm getting ahead of myself here. For the controls, which are much more developed and tighter than the arcade version (which may or may not have been trying to fuck cash out of your pockets with poor directional shooting) with your usual run, jump, shoot for the D-Pad, A and B buttons. You can shoot in all 8 directions though sometimes hard to shoot down unless jumping or falling as you'll ending up ducking. Your jump is a set height for a maximum and you've little to no inertia problems with acceleration and deceleration, movement is steady and consistently paced which makes for a near flawless control system.

The first boss, you're outgunned but not outplayed. Especially with the scattergun.

You've also got your selection of weapons to enjoy, standard shots from your rifle, machine gun, a much improved fireball gun from the first game, the spreadgun/scattergun and the laser. There's a few barrier shields for you too while there's also more smart bombs littered through the levels giving you a few moments of peace before the relentless armies assault you once again. It's a solid game with a decent mix of weapons and each one giving clear advantages over the other with a better balance to the system than the first game had.

It's big, it's ugly, it's... I've no idea what this thing is.

The level's are intriguing enough to be uniquely interesting though lack the coherency between levels without plot and such in that they simply become "levels" almost for the sake of levels with later levels steadily becoming more and more organic to match with the theme of aliens being the suppressive rates. There's also the inclusion of a few mid-bosses which comes as a bit of a surprise at first when you kill them and the level continues to be played while some levels have just one boss fairly quickly after the start of the level and of such low difficulty to make you think it's the mid-boss, then the level's over almost as quickly as you started it.

Mouths in the floor, spider things approaching, it's another day in bio-flesh levels.

There is however the key problem in that dying is very easy, very quick and usually instant as there's NO health and the mildest touch of a faint feather brushing to your cheek is just as lethal as the XM190BigDick-super-death-cannon (version 4) is to your character. On dying you lose your weapon and the advantage it gave you and dying often occurs at a new boss that's attacking you with a weapon, with which you are not currently familiar. Bonus points if it's the last life and by the time you get back to the boss on a continue, you're already dying and haven't remembered it has the Giant-Willy-Wang-Death-Blast move. More lives were lost.

And so it begins!

There is the further dick-move on the part of the developers where some enemies won't spawn until you're right at the edge of the screen with no indication they're going to spawn there, until they actually DO spawn and by then it's already killing you and mopping up your entrails with half a loaf of bread. There's few design flaws along this scale in the game but in a one-hit kill series, you can't help but feel cheated by not your lack of skill but lack of foresight on the designers part. Especially when everything else is so responsive, there's little to no lag/delay between hitting a button and getting a reaction from within the game, so unless reflexes are required of the super-human level, or there's simply insufficient time to get synapse to muscle firing within the boundary of "alive" character and "dead" character.

Always nice to see that someone is creative with the sprites and artwork.

The music picks along at a steady pace, suitably composed for your standard level, your creepy-alien level and works well for most boss fights where the tempo picks up and the further use of adrenaline inducing tempos add to the subtle increase in thrills when combating more difficulty opponents, from mid-boss, to bosses and the final boss. Though sometimes the music can be a little overwhelmed by the sound effects but there's always going to be that kind of trade off when you've a lot of action on the screen and only so much power available in the game and console as it is.

I'm sure there's a reason everything looks like this, I'll be damned if I know why.

Not forgetting, there's the co-operative mode, it should be noted that two players of equal skill in almost perfect synchronicity should attempt this otherwise one will become more annoyed at the other dying regularly, likely caused by the better player trying to rush on ahead and get through the level and traps. In this particular instance, the co-op mode is likely harder than the solo unless you're truly a co-operating pair of players. Having said that, it's not my place to put people off playing the game in this way but I'd recommend that both players KNOW the game somewhat before attempting it outright. It's a LOT harder than the first game.

H.R. Geiger might sue someone here...

But I love that it is. It's hard, it's proud that it's hard and it's going to bash you to death repeatedly for you making your own mistakes with this game. My real regret with this game though is that it feels shorter than it should do. There's an underlying feeling, an odd sensation when playing this game that there's some half-levels in here rather than full levels and that it's just not fully the game it was originally intended to be.

My mission complete, it's time to go enjoy some Chinese Takeout. Bring on the Lemon Chicken!

But, I still love it.

Deadlight

Dark, foreboding, foggy. This is about as bright and promising at the game is going to get.

The platformer. An often overlooked genre of gaming these days with the big budget licenses out there seemingly opting for more and more use of the First Person Shooter, or that over-the-shoulder Third Person perspective given to games like Gears of War, Silent Hill, Resident Evil 4 (and onwards). Yet the platformer seems to be running in the background along its 2D plane and gathering focus from smaller developers that are taking it into this bullshit term "2.5D" which means nothing. The games are 3D in many cases but the control is suited to the 2D plane. Games of this ilk have been made ever since Quake was adapted and modifiable into a Total Conversion. Rather fittingly, it seems, that Deadlight has taken the Unreal Engine and done the same thing.

No... I didn't make this jump as I was too focused on taking the picture. Looks nice though.

Deadlight, takes the "2.5D" (sod it, it's a platformer, let's leave it at that) and gives us a back-story, a setting and a form of play not unlike Prince of Persia (the ORIGINAL) or Limbo. You're a survivor in 1986 where there's been an outbreak of a disease that causes blackening of the whole body and bright lights to appear in your eyes, while also removing higher brain function and has the patients wandering around infecting others with bites and clubbing/clawing them to death if they won't succumb to the munchies. So yes, it's a zombie affair.

Death, incidentally Randy has the amazing ability to drown faster than most people can hold their breath, let alone choke.

We're introduced to Randy, our husky-voiced protagonist while he's blowing out someone's brains and then telling his fellow survivors to run for it before the shadowy zombies turn up. Which they do, breaking the ladder on their way out, which nicely shoehorns us into the "lone survivor searching to reunite" story through a wrecked and bashed up Seattle. Add into this the dilemma of hallucinations, bad dreams and whether or not Randy will find his wife, daughter and friends, and we've got ourselves all our motivation and reasoning for running, jumping, rolling, shooting, axing and dying through the burning backdrops of Seattle, apparently, I cannot vouch for historical accuracy or landmarks and given it's an alternative history for 1986, it pretty much gives the level designers carte blanche on creativity.

Cutscenes are shown in a very impressive "moving comic" fashion. The design and execution fitting in aptly with the overall setting of the game.

But creativity is certainly the focus. The entirety of Deadlight looks wonderful with its dark and bleak tones, the sense of gloom and despair almost so thick you can cut it with an axe. Everything looks rancid, rotten and ruined from the warehouses and homes to the sewers, subways and hospitals. There is very little that looks positive in this game and when the flashbacks happen, showing times before the end of the world has happened, the game looks overly fake. Whether this is because it's trying to ham up the 1970's view of hot apple pie on windows and every man in a suit and hat returning home saying "Hi honey, I'm home" to the 2.4 children nuclear household, is up for debate.

Another wonderful use of the 3rd dimension interacting with this plane of existence. Namely by a helicopter and machinegun trying to add to your problems.

Deadlight plays very much like Prince of Persia, Flashback and Limbo. You've your main character, he can run, jump, climb, wall-jump, duck, roll, axe, pistol and slingshot (contextual puzzles, trust me) his way out of most difficulties while also having to navigate around and over most of the enemies. It's highly unlikely you'll kill everything, in fact in some situations there are infinite enemies hiding around the corner in the background waiting for you at key points. It's an odd situation, since some of the set pieces will require you to kill 2-3 enemies, some will require you to fend them off until you can escape and others are simply that you have to outrun, out-maneouveur and outwit the shadow zombies. This can be from summoning them to you and watching them go swan-dive off a cliff, drop things on them, have them walk through electrified flooring, push them into machine-gun fire coming from the background and a whole host of other ways to dispatch them.

Brief moments of quiet are often accompanied by rather exquisite detail showing the dilapidation of the surroundings and structures.

You've got your health, which can be upgraded, your stamina which also can be upgraded but there's no puzzle in this game that requires the use of more stamina. If anything it just gives you a little extra breathing time between one awkward jump and another, they're often hidden in very out of the way places that most people wouldn't consider or stop to explore given their hidden nature. Jumps need to be made to places that don't look like they'd support Randy landing upon them, or alternative routes found in the middle of speed puzzles that require fast dexterous reflexes and reactions or they'd die before reaching the end and have to start over.

The axe. Nothing really more needs to be said.

Speaking of which, the game is fairly forgiving. Dying at any point only really puts you back barely a screen's worth unless it's one of those ongoing, lots of things to avoid, puzzles. Like running away from helicopter gunships, or escaping from a collapsing building. Speaking of which...

It's not an easy thing to navigate through but by the time you're here, you'll have mastered most of the moves and can throw it all together almost flawlessly. Though what is a shame, is the fact that you won't have much time to master everything and use it, for the game is over in around 3 or so hours. Perhaps the sign of a good game, perhaps not, but when you're seeking to enjoy a game and it leaves you wanting more, you can always replay it but there's little scope for alternative solutions to situations.

There's often a way for players to kill the Shadows by using the environment.

Herein lies the problem. It's a lovely game, there's no two ways about that, it's very well thought out and fantastically executed in showcasing a dark and foreboding environment but there are, as almost always, issues with the game itself. In particular in this case the control system. There's something counter-intuitive about the layout of the buttons that leads you using the triggers and shoulder buttons in what isn't apparent to be a sensible manner at the time and the causes of death will be simply, hitting the wrong button at the wrong time or the right button but only after you ran a self-diagnostic check on your muscles and synapses. Occasionally there is the issue that the game won't let you jump a specific direction in time and combat with the shadows can be rather hit and miss where you'll be dependent upon scoring a knock-down but find yourself running out of stamina before it falls so you can run past it.

Though in some cases it's quicker to run past them by running through and jumping.

Rooms like this are often a puzzle in themselves. Here you can fight the Shadows and run the risk of death, or use the environment to skip around them.

In some cases the game also acts rather unfairly and expects you to play via trial and improvement. Deliberately goading the player into causes a mistake to happen, punishing them with death and then handing them back the controller as if to say "Go on, try again, next time you get a slap". Not exactly the most rewarding way of playing a game, while succeeding the first time through a trap or level will leave the player feeling unsatisfied at the prospect and idea that they've rushed through and likely missed something or some such trinket and item.

"Oi dead guys!" and watch them go haplessly to their deaths.

Thankfully, the game, for the 100% completionists, will let you replay previous chapters and scenes of the story in order to gain all of the diary pages, memories for Randy's stock book and even old-style LCD video game controllers with jokes taken aimed at Monkey Punch animes, Chthulu Mythos and Guitar Hero as if done via Tiger Handheld machines. It's a cute little throwback and nod to the older days of gaming and thankfully more fun than the actual handhelds were.... Except the Turtles one, that was quite fun.

If you can see a vent or alternative route to the one you're currently on, you can pretty much guess you'll be taking it at some point

Overall a fun romp, punctuated with comic-styled cut scenes between levels and scenes, marred by gameplay hiccups, brevity and a slight dependence upon trial-and-improvement development to passing through the levels and scenes. That aside, it's certainly a game worth playing at least once all the way through, particularly if, like me, you enjoy the scopes and imagination behind apocalyptic worlds and visualisations, in all their horrid splendour.

The hazards come thick and fast, numerous too in their approach. This helicopter providing the infamous "Scrolling wall of death" following you across the rooftops.

And you get a fire axe!