One Lump or Two?

I was talking about one of Telenet Japan's games in an earlier post, and in light of that discussion, this feels worth mentioning. I was poking around the internet and found an article about the company on another blog, Videogames: Reflections of History. Telenet's been shuttered for thirteen years now, with most of its intellectual property migrating to Sunsoft, but while it was active, it was using this logo:

Uh, what. This looks less like a company logo and more like the end result of an altercation between Bugs Bunny and Italy's biggest cartoon star La Linea.

"Whaddaya MEAN 'abba shabba doobie?!' Thems FIGHTIN' words!"

(Yes, I watched a lot of The Great Space Coaster when I was a kid. I had to do something while waiting for the bus to arrive.)

Enough of that silliness. I wanted to mention that a Russian programmer has hacked Rock 'n Roll Racing for the Genesis, to not only get it up to speed with its Super NES counterpart, but to add a lot of content that neither game had. There are new tracks, new characters, and smarter AI, along with rotating planets in the character select screen (oooh!), six car races (aaah!), and the soundtrack peacefully co-existing with announcer Larry Huffman (wow!). If you've got a Sega CD, you can play real songs from Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Steppenwolf, rather than their grating Genesis covers. 

I've never been a Rock 'n Roll Racing fan, but you've nevertheless got to admire the dedication in reviving a game that hasn't seen an official release in over fifteen years. Here's a little footage of the hack in case you're interested.

And while we're at it, here's some footage of a PC remake of the Ghosts 'n Goblins game released for the Wonderswan!

It's ostensibly based on the Wonderswan game Makaimura, but it's more of a melange of the first three Ghosts 'n Goblins games, with new attacks, reactions from Arthur, and even a little voice work to round it all out. The game costs... whatever you want to pay, but the suggested donation is four Euros ($4.41). Thanks to Ed Mandy for mentioning the game on his Twitter page and adding a little, uh, flavor to my life.