Category: Retro

Kings Bounty

October 2, 2018

I’ve been on a bit of a retro gaming bender recently, and have bought (and played!) several games for Game Gear, Genesis and NES. One of these was a favourite of my youth, King’s Bounty.

The game was originally released back in 1990 on PC and Mac but this is the Genesis version from 1991. It’s a turn-based strategy game where you control an ever-increasing army on a quest to find a magic item. It’s a classic, and led to the very popular Heroes Of Might And Magic series.

I loved this one half a life ago but hadn’t played it in years. A couple of weekends ago I hooked up the Genesis and gave my newly repurchased (for $15) cartridge a whirl.

I started with the Crusader, playing at the easiest setting. At first I stumbled around forgetting what to do or how to beat the clock but it didn’t take me that long for it to all start coming back…

Within an hour or so I was fiendishly addicted once again, and as the day went on I advanced through the quest until the fourth continent when I upgraded my army to flying units. If you know the game, you know this is the final step to victory.

And shortly thereafter I did indeed win! My very first game in maybe 25 years and I won handily. Although maybe just because I had used the easiest character at the easiest setting? Couldn’t I do better?

I had enjoyed it so much I immediately restarted on a higher difficulty with the mage, who many say is the hardest character.

This time I min-maxed like crazy and was laser-focused on victory. While the Crusader took me about five (real time) hours to win with, it was less than a single hour before I reached the victory screen with the mage. As you can see I took far fewer days and got a much higher score:

And yet, I could have done better! Three of the boss villains remained alive, and had I killed them before finding the treasure I could have squeezed out a few more points. However I’d spent an entire Sunday playing and ran out of time. But just in case you’d like to ‘load’ my save right before victory so you can kill those bosses yourself, here’s the password:

Let me know if you beat my score 🙂

Passage To Maouv

September 18, 2018

I bought this at a local con some months ago:

It’s an old book and record set from 1975 and yes it still includes the record:

The idea was that kids would read the comic while listening to the record, and these things were very common back in the day.

This particular story involved the Enterprise transporting a telepathic catlike creature between planets only to be jeopardized by its mental powers when it escapees it’s cage and becomes terrified. It’s empty fluff of course, but would have made for a curious tv episode. Amusingly, it was written by Alan Dean “I’ll write anything” Foster!

When I bought this it was sealed in a protective sleeve and as soon as I opened it the stench of cigarettes overwhelmed me. This is a prime example of why collectibles that come “from a smoke-free home” are worth more on the secondary market!

Anyway let’s enjoy the story, albeit briefly. You’re about to hear this page:

Here’s the video:

Your first question is whether or not this is a performance by the original actors, and I don’t know the answer. I found conflicting information either way online but since my record player seems to have a perishing drive belt there’s a slight pitch offset on the audio which confuses things. (At the end of the video I set the pitch back to the default so you can hear the speed issue.)

I will say if these aren’t the original actors they’re very good soundalikes!

Your second question is what the hell is up with Uhura in the comic! That’s another I can’t answer…

Anyway it’s a good product overall and I was very surprised by the quality of the record. Even though it’s short (~16 minutes) it’s professional and very respectful to the show and I reckon Star Trek lovin’ kids in ’75 went bonkers for this!

Oh and if you’re wondering they managed to avoid disaster due to a feline crew member who was able to calm the alien cat down before it enslaved everyone:

My Collection: Neo Geo Pocket Color

September 8, 2018

Neo Geo was well known for high-end and arcade quality home game consoles when it decided to enter the handheld market, and expectations were high for the Neo Geo Pocket Colour when it launched in mid 1999. I bought mine later that year with six of the launch games. I immediately fell in love with it.

That’s my original handheld – I chose the ‘anthracite’ color – in it’s box. I hadn’t played it for many years before preparing this post, and had forgotten just how much I loved it.

The system is smaller than the original gameboy, and very lightweight. Though entirely plastic it feels very solid and professionally built. Special mention must be made of the tiny 8-way joystick that utilizes microswitches than click when used. It’s extremely satisfying. Oh and if you wonder about the specs, they’re printed right under the screen!

The screen is reflective rather than backlit, which was fine in those days but is charmingly old fashioned now. The contrast however is excellent and there’s almost no blurring. Here’s a shot of the bioryhtym calculator included as part of the basic OS:

The games came in cardboard boxes (as did gameboy games in those days) with the cartridge itself in a tiny plastic box. Manuals were full colour.

The cartridges are on the small side. Of course compared to Switch and Vita games they’re not but in those days these were quite a bit smaller than the competitors games:

The Neo Geo Pocket Color failed as a system, due mostly to the financial woes of the parent company. It was demonstrably a better system than the Gameboy and was priced competitively but poor management coupled with competition from the juggernaut known as Pokemon helped seal it’s fate in less than a year. As the months passed games became increasingly difficult to find (this was before such things were easily purchased online) and I recall it was a bit of an effort to buy games into early 2000.

All in all I managed to obtain 14 games:

Most are boxed; some are not. All were purchased new. The reason for the lack of boxes is that there were games that had been produced but not distributed when the system was pulled from stores in early 2000 and boxes for those games were never made. I bought them online (for almost nothing) years later.

As you can see there are many Neo Geo arcade ‘ports’. These have been mostly redesigned to fit the different style of control and display, and are almost without exception excellent. The Metal Slug games in particular play very well, and Gal’s Fighters is probably the best handheld fighting game I have ever played. The standout game though is Card Fighters Clash, a strategic collectible card game with astonishingly good graphics. I loved this game to death, and am strongly considering (yet) another playthrough from scratch for old times sake 🙂

As with most of my games, my NGPC collection is in virtual mint condition and is complete with all boxes and manuals. I don’t think much about it though, and was surprised in preparing this post to see how much this once-clearanced and mostly forgotten system has appreciated. Consulting my database I see that I paid a total of $389.71 for the system and the 14 games I bought (the system cost $70, the games averaged $22 apiece). And yet these days the boxed system alone is ‘worth’ about $180 and one of the games (Evolution) may even fetch more than that! A brief tabulation at one of the internet price charting sites values my collection at just shy of $1000 so I’ll be sure to keep it safe and sound for many years to come 🙂

Robot Claw