Are you a bad enough dude to battle the Flood?

The past twenty years has seen video games and the oft referred “geek culture” rise to a prominence that back in 1992 would never have been imagined, not even by the most fanatical zealot of electronic entertainment. Humble were the formative years of my gaming fascination, playing Super Mario Bros. at my friend’s house, whose parents spoiled him like milk in the sun. And then there were the many Sunday afternoons endlessly slaving over the greasy NES controller battling awful controls and hideous game mechanics for a measly 8 bit food pellet at the games completion. I’m sure I’m not the only one with fond memories of wasted weekends in willing servitude of these simple plastic game machines, and I bet none of us would change a thing. I can still remember playing Streets Of Rage 2 well into the night on my friends Megadrive, then swapping it over for my Super Nintendo to play the centipede boss in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past; all the while munching on popcorn and coffee beans (yes, we were strange).

I remember the magical awe I felt after we spent way too much money hiring a Japanese copy of Street Fighter 2 for SNES, playing against Balrog… or was it Vega? Who can remember, with the names being arbitrarily changed for the western market? Back in my hometown of Perth there was a store called Discount Video Games; I remember it was run by a middle aged super nerd in the front room of his house. The retailer specialised in imports, and rare and expensive games and consoles (Neo Geo anyone?). There was a demand from the obsessive; an unending desire for parity between arcade and the home console arena. Neo Geo was SNK’s answer; game cartridges the size of an ancient tome of knowledge with large digits identifying the (by the standards of the time) massive amount of memory in the plastic case, which as we all know reflects with pristine clarity the quality of the game. The carts were absurdly priced, as if by a madman with the crazy idea that there was a dollar per megabit system in place. (more…)

The original, now even original-ier.

Came across this one on my journeys.

In the spirit of ol’ skool Mario Bros, I offer Super Mario Crossover.

Now you can play the original as one of the original characters from Nintendo’s best games. Pick Samus, and press down to start rolling and dropping bombs.

Megaman is quite fun too, and Link is still rubbish (I will never apologise for never really enjoying the Zelda games).

I would have loved to see some other characters in there. The Double Dragon lads could karate their way to Princess’ heart.

Where is Donkey Kong? Or Snake from Metal Gear?

This starts to feel like blending Super Smash Bros back into the original franchise, but think of the awesomeness.

Enjoy.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to play Alley Cat ON THE COUCH

My love affair with the work of Ben Heckendorn continues to grow by leaps and bounds, as he’s just posted up photos of his new Atari 800 laptop. Fancy the specs on this sucker? Well too bad, you’re getting them anyhow:

• Atari XEGS motherboard.
• XE 130 RAM expansion built-in.
• MyIDE circuitry and custom OS ROM to use a 2.5″ PATA hard drive.
• Large “shinier” 15″ screen
• Original, “new-old-stock” Atari 800 keyboard.
• Flush-mount cartridge slot.
• Amazing old-school styling!

And it’s the last dot point that really makes this case mod stand out. Old school chic barely describes it’s awesome nature.

Of course he’s had practice. This isn’t actually the first Atari that Ben’s laptop’d. His previous attempts had different asthetics however, one was more debonaire and the other was somewhat space age.

As usual Ben gives the entire run-down of how the unit was constructed and how it looks inside. You may want to start saving if you’re after one of these, by the way!

These used to be bleeding edge graphics

Some news for the older school: to celebrate it’s 15th anniversary, Bethseda have released Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall for free download to the public.

While the series solidified it’s spot at the top of the RPG genre with Morrowind and Oblivion, Daggerfall was the game that introduced a lot of us to the sheer idea of size in a RPG.  Not only being able to travel around to hundreds of different towns, but being able to travel in-between them as well (usually being chased by pesky wolves).

The game shows it’s age of course (you’ll need DOSBox to run it!) but I loved the game when I first played it, and it’s still a classic.  And it’s friggin’ FREE, what more do you need?

Head over to the Elder Scrolls site to grab a copy.

After announcing their announcement to be announced today a couple of days back, LucasArts has come good on their promise and announced (just love using this word over and over) that the majority of their back catalogue will be finding it’s way onto Steam. When? Oh, say, by Wednesday? Wednesday good with you?

Apparently at least someone has been listening to my rambling wishes.

In a press release issued today, LucasArts president Darrell Rodriguez had this to say:

“This effort is going to make it possible to introduce a whole new generation of gamers to LucasArts’ classic games. It also gives more people a chance to play our games by making them available long after they’ve disappeared from store shelves. We hope our fans are as excited as we are about our plans and we can’t wait to share what’s coming next. This is just the beginning.”

-Darrell Rodriguez, man after my heart

The full list of games to be released on the 8th is as follows:

• Armed and Dangerous
• LOOM
• Lego Indiana Jones
• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• The Dig
• Thrillville: Off The Rails
• Star Wars BattleFront 2
• Star Wars Republic Commando
• Star Wars Starfighter

Don’t forget to imagine a smattering of trademark symbols on nearly every second word of the list above, by the way. Given that more is yet to come, we may yet see the wishes of many die-hard Star Wars fans come true with a re-release of Star Wars: X-Wing Vs Tie Fighter.

The older games are also the updated CD-ROM versions too, which means full voice acting in most of the titles. In an ultra-nostalgic move, the games will all come with digital equivalents of their original copyright protection (like the code generating “Dial-A-Pirate” that accompanied the original Monkey Island).

No word on pricing yet, we’ll just have to wait and see. Great news however, another little boost to an adventure revival!

The last few weeks, y’all, I’ve been playing some real ol’ school classics.

Classics, damn you!

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Prepare for a waffling!

WARNING: This post contains Matt rabbiting on, some pixelated pretty pictures and not much else! Hope you didn’t get enough waffle at breakfast!

Once the staple of home PC entertainment, adventure games have seen a steady decline ever since the second half of the 90′s. This, perhaps, is one of the few bad points ever to come out of our increasing fascination with multiplayer gaming. It probably also suffers from the immediate 24 hour support line that we know and love as the internet. Gone are the days that if you hit a block with a game you’d just have to wrestle your brain around it (or worse, BUY A HINT BOOK). These days, and I’ll admit to this myself, if a puzzle takes more than half an hour to figure out, it’s off to plunder the internet for solutions!

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Donkey Kong Country STILL won’t be included (you’ll have to buy that seperately), but the SNES case modded PC is now on sale on eBay in the UK!  It’s got a whole week of bidding to go, but if there is any justice in the world this thing should heartily reward it’s creators.

Take a gander.

You know a game is hardcore when even the ball is covered in spikes

A new trailer has been released for the upcoming reworking of Blood Bowl,  and it’s looking pretty neat.  For those unfamiliar, Blood Bowl was one of the many table-top games released by Games Workshop back in the day.  It’s basically an ultra-violent take on American football, where the objective is to get your team into the scoring zone with the ball … preferably with all your limbs.  The twist of course is that fouls are actively encouraged in this game, alongside any other devious underhanded tactics you could think of.

Before anyone asks, yes, I once played table-top games. I was young and impressionable and hadn’t found out that D&D is just as much fun and with no expensive minatures to buy!

Blood Bowl has seen a previous incarnation as a video game however, in the beautiful glory of MS-DOS no less.  Unsurprisingly it wasn’t that great a game, but it also didn’t have a lot of the great off-field aspects that the table-top game excelled at.  So I’m pleased to read that not only will the new game feature the “classic” play style, in which teams take turns with their actions, but also a mode called “Blitz!” which sees the player take control of the match in real time.  Overall, I’m kinda intrigued.  The game sees it’s release for DS and PSP in around a weeks time, and an 360 version on the way in September.  If the reviews are favourable enough, I might just grab myself a copy!

You can check the game’s site out here

Is your laptop a SNES? Yeah, I thought not.

Thought that a handheld console to play NES games was cool? Well then how about a SNES console which is actually an Acer Aspire laptop?

This particular one-of-a-kind piece of bad-assery comes care of the crew at Asobitech. The SNES case has been adapted to contain this little 1.6Ghz beast, with USB slots available through the original controller ports, and a specially adapted game cartridge that houses both the system’s DVDRW drive and it’s webcam. And if you aren’t impressed yet (you liar!), here’s some further technical necromancy performed on this monster. The case’s power switch is operational for the computer, the SNES logo on the rear of the system lights up for hard-drive activity, it has internally mounted speakers, the system is both WiFi and Bluetooth capable, and here’s the kicker: the internal boards are bracketed and supported by Lego.

Yeah, that’s right son, Lego.

Face it, it’d be difficult to beat the owner of this badboy in a geek-off!  You can check out all the details behind it’s construction and more images here.