The Xbox Series: Three hundred percent more exactly the same as the last generation console!

That was a pleasant surprise! My Xbox Series S arrived days before I expected it, so now I've got time to share my experiences in one last post before the door slams on this... unenviable year.

And my current impression is... uh, bewilderment. This is a next generation console, right? Then why is the interface a carbon copy of what I was already using on the Xbox One? Please tell me Microsoft doesn't think Metro is the apex of interactive menu design and that nothing needs to be changed!

It's faster than the interface on the Xbox One, but aside from the speed, so much about the Series feels like the previous generation console that it feels like I paid $240 for a system I already had. I'm sorry, but when I step up to a new game console, I need visual assurance that what I'm getting is better than what came before it. 

What I'm seeing here is exactly the same thing as the console I bought four years ago. It's like the opposite of the Wii, which was functionally a GameCube on spinach but became unrecognizable as such thanks to its completely redesigned, motion-dependent interface. Microsoft didn't find a way to elevate or evolve the user experience; they just served up a big steaming ladle of Metro brand porridge and messily poured it into a fancy new cup. Please sir, can I have no more?

What can I tell you, guys?

All the gamers are posting their Best of 2022 Awards, but the only games that interested me much this year were collections. Yes, games first released thirty years ago, partially digested by new developers, then vomited back into my mouth as a highly nutritious sludge. What can I say? They're immediately accessible (set up time for modern games can be so laboriously long, am I right, people?), they're familiar, and they're often cheaper than modern AAA titles.

I just got Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection for Christmas, and let me tell you something, Jack. You're getting a baker's dozen of games that represent Konami's finest years as a publisher, and they're well emulated, and there's a bunch of omake which isn't really why I buy these collections but does add a welcome flourish to the overall package. The people who make these collections- Digital Eclipse and Code Mystics, specifically- treat these games like fine china, and do whatever they can to not only ensure they function as well as they did on native hardware, but that they're sufficiently padded with bonus content.

So yeah, all I want for Christmas are games I already played thirty Christmases ago. I'm not sure if this makes any sense at all, but that's where I am right now. So if you're listening, game companies, I will happily be your baby bird. Just keep puking those leftovers down my throat, so their warmed over goodness can sustain me.

Arcade Games, Without Cereals or Fillers!

(image from MLSchelps,
with some creative editing)

I'm not totally on board with the Nintendo Switch, but there's one thing I do very much appreciate about this system. It's given us a whole lot of obscure arcade games through Hamster's Arcade Archives line, which previously had been restricted to primitive early 1980s game consoles, or not ported to anything at all. And they're emulations, duplicating the arcade version almost perfectly, without compromises or creative liberties.

How long's it been since we could play Mario Bros. on a modern game system? I mean, the real arcade one, not that silly mini-game in Game Boy Advance games where they pretty up the graphics and turn the turtles into Spinies, just so you don't think you can jump on them like you can in Super Mario Bros. There's also all three Donkey Kongs (better than the NES versions, much better than the ColecoVision versions), and Crazy Climber, and Galaga's red-headed stepchild Gaplus, and Kangaroo, and Exerion, and freakin' Moon Patrol, and Scramble, and golly gosh who knows what else? I think even Guzzler by Tekhan and Pop Flamer by Jaleco are offered on Arcade Archives, which is one hell of a deep dive. While I saw Guzzler in a pizza place once or twice, I can't remember ever playing Pop Flamer before the emulation boom of the mid 1990s.

Most of these arcade games straight up vanished in the NES age, or were given inferior ports on game systems with no hope of bringing their excitement home. The supposed "perfect" conversion of Donkey Kong on the ColecoVision was anything but, chock full of unwelcome simplifications to the play mechanics, and even Defender II for the NES was far removed from its arcade counterpart mechanically. After all these years, it's nice to actually have all these ancient arcade hits in one place, on one game system, without being pared down to nothing on the way there, and without having to mess with creaky hardware that looks terrible on a modern television set.

Are they overpriced? Yes. Nobody should have to pay eight dollars (or any dollars) for Phozon. Could Hamster do more to preserve the arcade hits of the past? Yes. We've got some big names attached to the program already- Namco, Taito, Konami, and even Nintendo themselves- but Arcade Archives is sorely lacking representation from Robotron: 2084 creators Williams and Universal, the makers of the Mr. Do! series. Nevertheless, this is the most comprehensive selection of arcade oldies we've seen on a game console since Wii Virtual Console, and elder nerds such as myself appreciate the effort.

I'm unreasonably excited about this.

I'm gonna sneak in this quick post before December, but this one's meaningful to me, for several reasons. I just wanted to let all of y'all know that the lead architect of the Fairchild Channel F, Jerry Lawson was honored as today's Google doodle. And it's a playable game! And it's basically Super Mario Maker!

I had one of these once! I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't fantastic, but it came out way before the Atari 2600 and was even capable of playing Pac-Man. I mean, it's a rather rough looking Pac-Man, with maybe six onscreen colors, but it definitely feels like the real deal, more so than Atari's game. Plus the marketing for this console is weirdly endearing, with Peter Max/Sesame Street minimalism for the game art and various dorky people grimacing and grinning while playing Fairchild games on the front of the console box. 

It's a very, very, very 1970s game system, is what I'm trying to express. It looks like the video game cousin of an 8-Track player. Its controllers look like personal massagers from Sweden. The Tic-Tac-Toe game calls you a "turkey" when you lose. And of course it's sheer woodgrain along the sides. It might as well have come with a pair of bell bottom pants and a lighter for burning your bra.

EDIT: Here's a direct link to the doodle and the game, for those interested.

It's-a... not bad?

The trailer for the Super Mario Bros. movie is out, and it's... kind of promising. Gotta admit, I was not expecting that! It's very colorful, the way a Mario movie should be (and the way the first film by Disney wasn't), and it's playfully self-aware. For instance, when held captive by Bowser, Luigi insists that he doesn't know any other men in colorful overalls... with bushy mustaches... and their first initials embroidered on their hats. It's gotta be one great big coincidence, right? Uh, you're not buying that.

I would watch this. I would not regret spending the sawbuck to watch this, even if it's disappointing, because I had zero expectations for this movie, and the trailer has already far surpassed them.

Ooh ooh OW OW OW!
(image from Arcade Club UK)

Speaking of Nintendo, there's a sale on a whole bunch of their old arcade games on the Switch eShop. Arcade Archives sales rarely happen, and even when they do, it's never Nintendo's own games, so if you're interested, I suggest jumping on those discounts before they end on the fifth of December. I've personally got my eye on Vs. Super Mario Bros. (the Super Mario Bros. we all know and love, with stages from The Lost Levels that we all know but don't love quite so much), Donkey Kong 3 (Galaga, but the object is to give a gorilla rectal cancer), and at least one of the Punch Out!!s.

Several other Switch titles (not by Nintendo, but nevertheless offered at tantalizing discounts) have piqued my interest, including TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection ($28), the Pocky and Rocky revival ($21), and Elevator Action Returns ($13). Plus there's the Atari 50th Anniversary collection, which is a hefty forty dollars but is nevertheless alluring due to the promise of rock solid Atari Jaguar emulation, something that's been tough to achieve on home computers and was until now unfathomable on the lowly Switch hardware. Something tells me this is going to be a very costly holiday season for old school gamers like myself.

By the way, for those interested, I'm shifting from Twitter to other social networks, including the scrappy up and comer Cohost. I recently posted a retrospective on the Mattel/INTV Intellivision there, which I think is worth a look. Before smart TVs and a game console that was thinking, Mattel promised the world "intelligent television," but how bright was the Intellivision, really? This Cohost-exclusive article holds the answer.

The Social Nyet-Work

You may have noticed that I no longer have a presence on Twitter. I put the blame solely on family jewels fondler and hair plugs enthusiast Elon "The Worst Life-Savers Ever" Musk. As you may already know, he recently purchased the social network for $44 billion dollars, then immediately went to work insulting users, firing key staff, making sweet love to himself, and kissing the ample posterior of the guy who was banned from Twitter for, uh... (leafs through notes) attempting to overthrow the United States government. I mean, it was only one government! It wasn't like he was trying to take over the WORLD, right?

One is a stable genius, the other
nearly got hanged.
(image from AllMovie)

Now look, I'm sure people are going to tell me that Elon Musk did me a favor, chasing me out of a site that's been steadily going downhill for the last six years. The thing is, I was on Twitter for fourteen years, and still have fond memories of the place. Where else could you talk directly to famous actors, politicians, and even writers from The Simpsons without being served a restraining order? It was also a fantastic source of breaking news, at least until the little Dutch boy came along to plug that flow of useful information with the finger he previously had lodged in his ass. Just look at the front page now! It's wall to wall Elon Musk! He's turned the place into a $44 billion dollar fan site!

So I'm done with Twitter, at least until it gets fumigated for self-worshipping  billionaires. Either that or the whole house of cards collapses under the crushing weight of Captain Apartheid's ego, which is more likely. "Gee, I thought the site was supposed to fall apart a couple weeks after I bought it!," Elon sneered mockingly. Just give it some time, you termite. You've fired so many engineers and scared away so many advertisers with your childish behavior that this hollowed out husk of a social media giant is probably being held together with Scotch tape, exploited immigrant labor, and crossed fingers. 

Where can you find me instead? Well, right here on Blogger, same as always. I also have a presence at Cohost, and may re-open my Tumblr account if I get desperate for interaction. Sticking to your principles is noble, but it doesn't help much when the pangs of social media withdrawal leave you chewing your nails down to the quick.

Also, in case I was too subtle about this earlier, fuck Elon Musk. Like, a whole lot.

It's a Hard Naka Life

Sometimes it feels like the drama going on behind the scenes in the video game industry is more exciting than the games themselves. Like that time the Swedish mafia launched a handheld game console as a convoluted long con, before its leader sliced a sports car in half during a joyride through the California countryside. Or that time when Sonic co-creator Yuji Naka was arrested for insider trading at Square-Enix, because he sure as hell wasn't going to make any money from Balan Wonderworld. That just happened, by the way. For all I know Naka could be in prison right now, calling his lawyer and wishing he'd never took that job at Square. (I'm sure everyone who bought Balan Wonderworld feels the same way.)

Unfortunately, I haven't been getting terribly excited about video games as of late, which is why you haven't heard much from me this month. Kiblitzing isn't dead... it's just currently in a state of boredom-induced torpor. It's not that I don't have tons, and tons, and tons of video games to play... my backlog is currently longer than Santa's naughty list. What's missing is motivation. Everything is just too much bother, especially those big-ass eighty hour long epics that all the game companies insist on releasing. You guys know I'm going to lose interest a quarter of the way through, right? It's telling that the only games I care to play these days are thirty year old Neo-Geo titles like League Bowling that can be wrapped up in a matter of minutes. 

Chronic depression and a recent attraction to marijuana probably aren't helping matters much. The latter helps with the former, but it certainly doesn't help with what remains of my creative ambition. I just don't want to DO anything anymore, and this chronically neglected blog reflects that. My apologies to anyone who comes here hoping for new content, only to find indifference.

Weekend Update (without Colin Jost or Michael Che)

Been a little out of sorts this month, but I do want to drop a brief post to let you know what I've been doing game-wise. The most important of these is that after months of going without, I finally bought the latest title in the King of Fighters series, and aside from some aggressive trimming of the cast, I'm thrilled with it. KOF XV is the best damn game in the series since 2002 UM, in my opinion. Even the announcer is loads better, interacting with the fight in the same way the Capcom vs. SNK 2 did, and offering color commentary on the captain of your opponent's team when the fight begins. Battles are swift and satisfying, with massive combo potential for those into high level play, and the DJ Station offers not only a vast selection of excellent tunes, but lets you unlock music from pretty much every King of Fighters release, and even games SNK released before the Neo-Geo existed.

Thanks to the infinite possibilities of the
Multiverse, Ash Crimson has survived his
brush with the time paradox that should have
ended his very existence. Gee, lucky me.
(Image from Steam)

In short, it's really good. My only beef is that while its predecessor offered too many characters, KOF XV goes in the opposite direction, paring down the selection of fighters to about forty. Nobody's going to miss the likes of Alice, Mui Mui, and Ruby Love Heart, but the likeable South American team, comprised of a slick afro-Brazilian ninja, an optimistic gymnast with a toucan sidekick, and a boxer with a metal arm that could shatter concrete, has also opted to sit this one out, with no indication that they'll be back in a DLC pack. What we get instead are a second flavor of the New Face team (uhh...) and three heroes from the Samurai Shodown series, which don't fit in King of Fighters for so many reasons. Nevertheless, KOF fans are going to be quite happy with the overall package here. I've been playing this series since its wonky beginnings in 1994, and XV is as good as King of Fighters gets.

Oh yeah, I also picked up a handful of clearance priced titles from Wal-Mart, because I'm cheap like that. The biggest surprise was Biomutant, a game that was coldly received by critics but I found to be rather entertaining, in its own charmingly odd way. When the dastardly Toxenol corporation leaves the Earth an irradiated mess, new species of furry whatzits rise to fill the ecological niche of humans, and fight among themselves to either save the world from destruction, or hasten its demise. 

Biomutant comes with a free, extra-challenging
bonus game, "What the Fuck is It?" Even the
designers at Experiment 101 don't know for sure!
(image from PCGamesN)

Like the fuzzy but not quite adorable creatures alluded to in the title, Biomutant is something of a misshapen freak itself, going in several vastly different directions at once. Sometimes it's The Matrix, with your hero leaping through the air in slow motion, slicing through hordes of rival tribesmen and emptying clips of ammo into monsters many times his size. Sometimes it's Fallout, with your character navigating the post-apocalyptic landscape and speaking to the eccentric locals. Sometimes Biomutant even takes a sharp swerve into Winnie the Pooh territory, with a friendly British narrator providing translation for the game's cast of freaky fauna, and occasionally poking you in the ribs to remind you that you're dangerously low on health. 

It's a confusing mélange of gameplay and narrative styles and it shouldn't work at all, but Experiment 101 gets a lot of credit for somehow making the various incongruent pieces of Biomutant fit... even if a few whacks of a hammer were occasionally necessary to get that square peg inside that round hole. I would cautiously recommend this one... it's not going to stand toe to toe with a juggernaut like Horizon: Zero Dawn, but Biomutant is certainly worth your time, as well as the sawbuck I spent on it.

What else? AtGames just released a firmware update for its Legends line of home arcade devices. Now if you want to play your own ROMs, you can just do that, without having to ask AtGames for permission every five times. You don't even have to be online at all, a boon for anyone who has their cabinet tucked away in the corner of a concrete basement. Sega also released the sequel to the Sega Genesis Mini, and it's been getting expectedly positive reviews, with one highlight of the package being a more smoothly scrolling version of Space Harrier II. It's hard to overstate just how impressive it is to see a passable imitation of the SuperScaler technology on a Sega Genesis, and just smoothing out the animation goes a long way toward making Space Harrier II a respectable entry in the series, rather than the early embarrassment the original game was when it launched with the Mega Drive in late 1988. 

Look, it's really, really good scaling. Maybe you

had to be there, but if I'd seen this as a teenager,

I would have wet my pants. Wet at a minimum.

Yes, there's excessive flicker, and yes, the number of onscreen objects are kept low to reduce the burden on the system, but this is a Sega Genesis we're talking about here. There's no room for Mode 7 at this inn. Its previous high watermark for dynamic 3D environments was Road Rash 2. Conventional wisdom suggests that Space Harrier shouldn't look anywhere near as good as it does here, yet here we are! Props go to M2 for once again wringing the impossible out of the Sega Genesis hardware.

Oh, What a Tangled Web Atari Weaves

And now, a low-poly, AI-generated drawing of Atari
founder Nolan Bushnell, because I paid thirty frickin'
bucks for a month of Midjourney, and I might as
well have something to show for it.

We interrupt this extended hiatus for this important message! Thanks to SlickDeals user Simoleon, we now know the full list of games that will be included in Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, set to be released on November 11th. I regret to say that if you were looking forward to the Jaguar and Lynx games in this collection, you will probably be a little disappointed. You're getting just nine of the former and a measly six of the latter, with the high points of the Lynx's library being ignored in favor of Basketbrawl, Malibu Mammaries Bikini Volleyball, Scrapyard Dog, Super Asteroids & Missile Command, Turbo Sub, and Warbirds. 

"Why no Gauntlet or STUN Runner or RoadBlasters?," my readers would exclaim, if I had any of those. Well, here's the problem. Those were all by Atari Games, the half of Atari that was split off from Atari's home division after the video game crash of 1983. That company would start its own home division, Tengen, and punch out games for the NES and Genesis until eventually getting consumed by Time-Warner Interactive (yes, the company that used to own Atari in a past life) and ultimately being swallowed whole by Midway, which would also get gobbled up by Warner Brothers.

Confused yet? Wait, there's more. The Atari that's releasing this collection was first owned by Warner, then former Commodore CEO Jack Tramiel, then hard drive maker JTS, then toy giant Hasbro (oh man was this ever a bad period in the company's life), and finally French company Infogrames, which would eventually adopt the name because Infogrames sounds like a breakfast cereal for nerds, rather than a proper video game company.

Epyx gave us some pretty sweet
game covers. Also, they invented
the concept of the procedurally
generated dungeon crawler.
Yeah, all those Rogue-likes and
Rogue-lites you've sank hours of
fruitless gameplay into started
right here. You can blame Epyx
for all that wasted time.
(image from Wikipedia)

So that in not so short is why you're not getting the better games for the Atari Lynx. What's really peculiar is that the launch titles for the system, created by Epyx, are nowhere to be found either. You'd think that the current Atari would have purchased the likes of Blue Lightning and Electro-Cop along with the Lynx, but evidently those games are still the property of whoever owns Epyx at the moment. Google says that's Bridgestone Multimedia Group Global, but whoever these guys are, it seems they weren't willing to play ball with whatever we're calling Atari these days.

Things are a little more encouraging on the Jaguar side of the fence, with Tempest 2000, Cybermorph, and Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy all being included, but you're not getting the goofy Mortal Kombat clones Kasumi Ninja and Ultra Vortek, and to the surprise of absolutely nobody, Alien vs. Predator won't be included either. Hey, you try to negotiate with 20th Century Fox's corporate parent Disney for the rights to these classic horror movie icons and see how well that works out for you. You'd probably have more luck wrestling with a face hugger.

Stadia, we hardly knew ye. Or cared.

You're often judged by the company you keep,
which is why it may not have been wise for the
Stadia to hang around with a Dreamcast, a
Power Glove, and ET for the Atari 2600.
(image from USA Today)

I'd like to close out the month with this news... Google hasn't just abandoned their cloud gaming service Stadia, they're hastily trying to blot it from existence, without so much as an early warning for developers who were making games for the service. Rude. At least the players who took a ride on this Hindenburg are getting their money back from any Stadia purchases they made.

One could argue that the Stadia project was foolhardy from the word "go," and that cloud gaming just cannot work in a country as large and with such poor internet infrastructure as the United States. Google should have known better, but sometimes you've just got to let stubbornly stupid people stick a butter knife in an electrical outlet before they learn not to do it again.

The Last to Fall

The Playstation cast its lot with high-tech
compact discs, while Nintendo was content
to stick with damage-resistant cartridges for
its N64. Meanwhile, the Sega Saturn asked,
"Why not both? Like, at the same time?"
(image from Fully Retro)

Funny how being deprived of something makes you all the more determined to get it, even if what you want with all your heart and soul isn't actually all that great. Take for instance King of Fighters '95 and Ultraman: Hikari no Kyojin Densetsu for the Sega Saturn. I've played roughly a hojillion games for this system, but these two titles were always the odd ones out, since they both rely on special ROM cartridges that were paired with each game. You couldn't make copies of the discs, because they were only half of the equation... without the cartridges, they just wouldn't run. You couldn't even buy the games from Japan and play them on your US Saturn, because although you could technically use a Pro Action Replay to circumvent the system's region locking, uh... where would you put the ROM cartridge while the Pro Action Replay is in the slot?

For years, I had to go without these two vexatious games. Not anymore, though! Thanks to the coding skills of YZB, who you might recognize as the guy who helped bring most of the Atomiswave library to the Dreamcast, we now have hacked versions of KOF '95 and Ultraman which put all of the cartridge data on the disc, then transfer it to the obscenely common Pro Action Replay before the game begins. What this means is that if you've got that cartridge and a mod chip, or a Pro Action Replay with Pseudo Saturn KAI installed on it, KOF '95 and Ultraman are now as easy-peasy to run as any other Saturn game.

AHHH! Sideshow Kusanagi!
(image from RetroGames.cc)

That's great! The games, well... that's another story. King of Fighters '95 is as hyper-competent as any other Neo-Geo port on the Sega Saturn, but the problem is that you're getting a strong conversion of an underwhelming arcade release. It's better than KOF '94 for sure, with the option to build a custom team and slightly less block-crazy opponents, but it's still an early entry in a fighting game series that didn't find its footing until the latter half of the 1990s. Seriously, compare this to the later games in the Orochi saga, and you're going to notice a gap in quality that's better described as a gorge. Completionists will be happy to have this, but with YZB also making 4MB-enhanced versions of KOFs '96 and '97, there's little point for less dedicated fans of the series to partake.

Ultraman on the other hand is an objectively worse game, but also a more tantalizingly unfamiliar one. It's from a pre-Namco acquisition Bandai, so if you've played any of their games on the NES, you already know to keep your expectations ankle-high. However, if you've got a sense of humor, an appreciation for the Ultraman television series, and perhaps a drunk friend you can trade punches with, you'll wring some amusement out of this title.

The gameplay is pretty straightforward... you choose from five different Ultraman characters (including personal favorite and late night Turner network staple Ultra Seven) and battle against giant monsters, including the apparent love child of Godzilla and a flying squirrel, and a butterfly chrysalis that willed itself arms and legs. Your scarlet clad hero fights with punches and kicks, and can use a guard button to block incoming attacks, make a hasty retreat, or throw a nearby monster. Special moves are governed by a charge bar under your hero's life bar, and the more punishment you dish out, the more quickly it fills. There are also super moves that shred a quarter of your opponent's health, but mercifully, you won't need to finish your opponent off with them. That alone makes the Saturn version of Ultraman a big improvement over the Super NES game released years earlier. (Did you know there was also a Genesis version of Ultraman available in other territories? I can't even fathom why. I guess Bandai felt like spreading the misery around.)

One of the game's more visually arresting
stages, with a ring of pine trees circling the
arena and a sheet of rolling clouds
looming overhead.

Ultraman on the Saturn also uses a splash of polygonal graphics for visual depth, turning each stage into a shoebox diorama. Your battles are framed by trees, mountains, and buildings, and when you're thrown by a freaky crawdad creature, the camera briefly shifts perspective for a more dramatic view of your fall. The action is locked to a single plane, but there's enough sleight of hand to sell each stage as just that, instead of a flat background. Sure, it feels like you're stomping through a set of flimsy cardboard buildings, but you'd have to expect that kind of low-budget cheese from a game based on Ultraman. It's just not tokusatsu without bad special effects and the occasional exposed costume zipper.

So there you have it. That's two Saturn games you'll never have trouble playing again. You may not even want to play them again, but you can at least satisfy your curiosity about them after all these years.

Livin' on Channel Z

How many of these ports, switches,
dials, and gizmos on the front are
there just for show? I presume the
floppy drives are phony, at least.
(image from the Zuiki Twitty-
er, Twitter)

In case there was any doubt at all, Zuiki recently confirmed that the X68000 Mini, or should I say, the X68000Z, is a real thing that's really happening, and really soon. They've been coy about the specifics beyond the images that have already leaked online, but Zuiki will be offering more information about their shrunken down super computer on October 8th.

With this in mind, it's the perfect time to speculate about what will be on this thing! The suspicion is that Zuiki will stick to titles that are easy to start (and not every X68K title is) and whose licenses they can procure fairly easy. What that means are a bunch of arcade titles from "cheap date" game publishers; most likely the wealth of games by Jaleco (now City Connection) but also possibly Taito and Namco. Konami and Capcom are the biggest names associated with the original X68000, but due to their recent involvement with other mini-consoles, they may not be willing to get their hands dirty with this one. However, since those two companies published the bulk of the killer apps for the system, Zuiki will likely work extra hard to get them onboard the X68000Z train.

What I'd like to see on the system could be quite different from what we actually get due to the aforementioned licensing issues and the Japanese appetite for role-playing games. Nevertheless, here's a handful of X68K titles I think would be welcome additions to the Z.

CHO REN SHA X68K

YouTube replayers like Shuhalmo
make Cho Ren Sha look easy, but it's
about as easy as the nuclear war
it so closely resembles.

This indie shooter is an absolute must, and Zuiki needs to move heaven and earth to guarantee its inclusion on the Z. It's kind of plain on the surface, looking like the caravan shmups that were popular in Japan through the 1990s, but there's nuance hidden beneath the minimalist gameplay... fly into a ring of power ups and you'll collect them all, if you've got the nerves of steel to stay inside it as the screen fills with fleets of ships and their bullets. Some boss fights even let you trick your enemies into blasting themselves with the massive plasma balls meant for you! Past the clever twists and some pumpin' synth tunes, Cho Ren Sha is the explode-iest shooter on the X68K, with bombs bursting in air and scrap metal flying past at any given moment. Set off a smart bomb and things really get hectic! (Go ahead. You know you want to.)

AKUMAJOU DRACULA/CASTLEVANIA CHRONICLES

A Castlevania game most Americans haven't played, at least until the release of the Playstation port Castlevania Chronicles many years later? Don't mind if I do! Presented as a retelling of the original game in the series, Akumajou Dracula steps the graphics up to top shelf 16-bit quality and swaps out some of the stages for new ones. The new levels aren't as good as the ones from the first Castlevania, with a raft-bound battle against a dragon skeleton being particularly aggravating, but props to Konami for serving up something fresh rather than giving X68K owners a predictable rehash. The game has the distinct feel of a long-lost sequel to Super Castlevania IV, something fans who didn't like Bloodlines on the Genesis will appreciate.

NEMESIS KAI '90

No Moai heads in Stage 1, but you get these
ugly customers instead.
(image from STG-SLK)

A Gradius game most Americans haven't played? Like, anywhere? Oh Konami, you spoil me! Like Akumajou Dracula, Nemesis Kai '90 isn't entirely original, borrowing its stages from the MSX version of Gradius II, but the graphics are considerably improved, and there's a novel play mechanic that rewards you with more devastating weapons if you're able to squeeze your ship past the defenses of the stage boss and into its vulnerable core. It's early 1990s Konami, so don't expect an easy go of it.

BOSCONIAN

This is one of those arcade titles on the X68000 that was blessed with an enhanced mode, offering new stages and the rich, vibrant graphics you'd normally expect to see on the Super NES. The option to play the game in its original 8-bit form is available, but if you're going to hunt down space stations while swatting away pesky swarms of enemy ships, you might as well do it in style. An enhanced X68K-exclusive mode is also available in Namco's other shooter Super Xevious, and you can pretty much count on its inclusion with the system, given Japan's enduring fondness for that series.

GRANADA

Sure, you've played it on the Genesis, and will get a chance to play it again on the Sega Genesis Mini 2 once that arrives next month. However, you've never played Granada with this soundtrack, an intense collection of synth tunes that instantly bring the television show Airwolf to mind. It adds a lot of ambience to this exciting search and destroy mission, set in (and occasionally above) the war-torn wastelands of Africa. One stage sets your tank on top of a flying fortress many times its size, and tasks you with taking out each of the massive aircraft's jet engines. You'd better hope you have an escape plan for when all those engines are destroyed, because it's a long way down... 

ARKANOID: REVENGE OF DOH
also, CAMELTRY

The X68000 has no hardware scaling
and rotation, but somebody forgot to
tell Taito that.
(image from PipiTan/YouTube)

Hey, they've got to have at least a couple games to justify that crazy mouse/trackball hybrid, and these two Taito arcade classics should fit the bill. Revenge of DOH is the sequel to the familiar, futuristic brick breaker, and while its new features (including a Twin power-up that doubles the effective size of the Vaus, while leaving a precarious gap in the middle) make the game more aggravating than the original Arkanoid, it will nevertheless give that mouse a proper workout. Same goes for Cameltry, a fast-paced trip through a surreal labyrinth, with the player rotating the maze to speed a marble along to the goal, dodging time penalty squares and other hazards along with way.

BUBBLE BOBBLE

Home versions of Bubble Bobble are typically at least competent, and this eclipses the already fondly regarded Commodore 64, NES, and Amiga versions. If you liked the cuddly characters and surprisingly nuanced action of the arcade game- and who doesn't, really?- you won't find much to complain about here. One odd hidden bonus is Sybubblen, a crossover that merges the bubble blowing dragons of Bubble Bobble with the metallic, flame-spitting space dragon from Syvalion. Nuts 'n gum, together at last!

DAIMAKAIMURA
aka GHOULS 'N GHOSTS

Those vultures are already thinking
about which sauce tastes best on knight.
(image from ISB/YouTube)

Look, you've played this spooky, if just slightly silly, platformer on a million different formats, but another one won't hurt, and it is a good sight more faithful to the arcade game than the Genesis version was. Ghouls 'n Ghosts makes a good showpiece for any console capable of handling it, and with its cutting-edge hardware, the X68000 is more than up to the challenge. 

(You might not be, though. Just sayin', this game is hard, even with the new magic attacks and multi-directional firing. At least this time, you can keep your quarters. Well, the ones you haven't already used to buy this system.)

GALAGA '88
aka GALAGA '90

Namco and the men from Dempa (not to be confused with The Denpa Men) team up to deliver yet another sterling arcade port on the X68000. It's pretty much exactly what it says on the tin; a flashier, more colorful sequel to Galaga where the insectoid enemies burst like fireworks and warp capsules can be collected that tear holes in the fabric of time and space, granting you access to alternate dimensions. And possibly resulting in the eventual collapse of the universe, I'm not sure. This game is notoriously difficult to run on emulators, typically leaving the player stranded on a loading screen, but I have little doubt Zuiki can find a way to circumvent this bug. It'll be up to you to squash all the other ones.

BUTASAN

There's the referee now, making sure this
death sport with explosives is conducted
fairly. I guess you get a red flag for using
a nuke or something.
(image from Vyze the Determined, who's
a cool guy despite my not liking his RPG.)

If you thought it was painful getting hit with dodgeballs in gym class, try playing the game with explosives! That's the core concept of Butasan, a chaotic battle with brightly colored swine hurling bombs at each other. You've got remarkable control over the length and trajectory of your throws... with practice, you can even ricochet bombs off the edges of the screen, taking your opponents by surprise. Alternately, you can just grab a gas mask and put all the other pigs to sleep, leaving them helpless to defend themselves. Hey, the ref says it's not cheating! After you've played a few rounds of this simple yet exhilarating action title, you'll learn to love the smell of napalm and bacon in the morning. 

TERRA CRESTA
with MOON CRESTA

Activate interlocks and connect dynatherms! It's time to tackle the Mandora army with your fleet of ships, which can either be merged for a concentrated blast, or spread out into a formation that fills the screen with sonic waves and other weapons of mass destruction. Collect them all and you can merge them into a flaming phoenix, burning all who dare come near to a crisp. As expected of the X68000, Terra Cresta is a damn near perfect port, but wait, there's more! You also get the considerably less impressive Moon Cresta, one of many early arcade titles that uses Namco's Galaxian hardware as the foundation for a shooter that's inferior to Galaxian. Don't complain... it's not like anyone is making you play it.

GAROU DENSETSU SPECIAL
aka FATAL FURY SPECIAL

Seriously, you can dip a dessert spoon
into Big Bear's shoulder.
(image from PipiTan/YouTube)

There are plenty of cost-conscious ways to play Fatal Fury Special, albeit with compromises to the graphics and sound. However, the X68000 offers the dubious distinction of giving you a less than perfect port of the Neo-Geo game on a system that's more expensive than a Neo-Geo. It's still a competent conversion with the same towering characters and overload of sherbet oranges and reds, even if the sound effects and especially the MIDI-based music seem like they're pulling a few punches. There are better versus fighting games on the X68000, but they're all some flavor of Street Fighter II, and really, haven't you played that to death already?

MAD STALKER: FULL METAL FORTH

This futuristic beat 'em up is a big surprise from Fill-In Cafe, which is better known for its long-running Asuka 120% series. Instead of a teenage girl with Popeye arms battling for schoolyard supremacy, you're a gleaming blue mech, stomping through the streets of Tokyo while sinking your hydraulic powered fists into rival robots and those annoying aerial drones that always seem just out of reach. Don't expect the complex combat scenarios and infinite customization of Armored Core... performing Street Fighter joystick motions for special attacks and playing footsie with the bosses is about as complicated as this joyously mindless action game gets. Imagine Final Fight if it had been directed by Masamune Shirow.

X68-what now?!

It's hard to believe in this day of X86 everything, but back in the 1980s and the early 1990s, the home computer market was a very splintered, and very provincial thing. A half-dozen different machines, all vastly different architecturally and mutually incompatible with each other, would battle for control of the industry, until the cheapest and most versatile of these systems would ultimately come out on top. These skirmishes all followed a similar template, but had a different cast of home computers and entirely different outcomes depending on the territory in which they took place. A machine that was successful in one region wasn't likely to carry that success to other countries, and may not even be recognized outside its home turf.

Sure helps keep the costs down when you
effectively steal half your computer's parts.
Isn't that right, Jack?
(image from Hack-A-Day)

In the United States, Atari, Apple, Tandy, Coleco, and Texas Instruments all succumbed to the Commodore 64, thanks to its massive software library and ethically questionable cost-cutting by the company's founder Jack Tramiel. Meanwhile, in Great Britain, there was a fierce battle between the ZX Spectrum and its bitter rival, the BBC Micro, along with a handful of minor competitors like the Amstrad CPC, the Oric, and the Commodore 64. Surprisingly, the C64's popularity in America didn't translate to the European market. It was crushed under the garishly colored heel of the Spectrum, just like every other computer that dared to challenge it in the British computer market.

Then there's Japan. Its dominant force in home computing was the MSX. Co-designed by Microsoft and ASCII Corporation, the MSX was a hardware standard that any electronics manufacturer could adopt by paying a licensing fee to ASCII. Licensing the technology meant the companies selling the MSX saved money on research and development while erasing the burden of manufacturing for ASCII, with the added bonus of offering cross-compatibility between computer brands. Whether you owned a system by Sony, Casio, Samsung, or Fujitsu, they were all guaranteed to take each other's software as long as the MSX logo could be found on the case. The MSX was legion, and contemporaries like NEC's PC-8800 and Sharp's X1 could not withstand the assault.

Here's Shadow of the Beast, one of the headliners
of the Amiga library and a demonstration of its
16-bit power. It's shallow and punishing, but
you're willing to overlook little things like
lackluster gameplay when your video game
looks like your uncle's progressive rock
album covers.
(image from YouTube)

By the end of the 1980s, consumers demanded more from their computers than the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and MSX could provide, resulting in a new generation of powerful 16-bit and 32-bit machines. In America, the x86 PC started to establish its dominance, due to lowering hardware prices, the success of multimedia titles like The 7th Guest and Myst, and the rising popularity of shareware titles like Wolfenstein 3D. Great Britain saw the rise of the Commodore Amiga thanks to jaw-dropping Psygnosis titles like Shadow of the Beast and the megahit puzzle game Lemmings. 

Finally, Japan turned to cutting edge arcade technology for its next generation home computer, the Sharp X68000. Since the early 1980s, game systems and computers alike made the promise of bringing the arcade experience home, but only the X68000 delivered. Capcom designer Hiroaki Kondo even used the X68000 as a development kit for arcade hits like Street Fighter II, and earned the nickname "X68K" for his skill with the computer.

Despite its considerable power, the Sharp X68000 was practically unknown in the United States. If American tech enthusiasts knew of the system at all, it was likely through obscure emulators or the peculiar release of Castlevania Chronicles for the first Playstation. Even if they knew about it, they weren't likely to be able to afford it... the X68K debuted in Japan at a mammoth three thousand dollars, and with only 150,000 units sold, it has scarcely gone down in price in the years since.

The X68000 Mini comes with a teeny
little carrying handle. Good luck holding
the original behemoth of a computer with
just one finger. You'll be sans one finger
after ten minutes.
(image from AusRetroGamer)

Consumer tech manufacturer Zuiki is hoping to close that price gap with the release of the X68000 Mini. Like the C64 and the A500 before it, the X68000 Mini hopes to shrink both the intimidating size and price of the machine, while including a handful of the X68K's most memorable games. What games, exactly? We don't know that yet, although Castlevania Chronicles and the X68000 exclusive extension of the Gradius series are likely candidates for inclusion. How much is this thing going to cost? We don't know that either, but early images of the system, including a mechanical keyboard and a nifty trackball/mouse hybrid, suggest that the X68000 Mini won't be cheap. Cheaper than the original, yes, but that's not saying much. If you want one, you'd better save your pennies, along with your nickels, dimes, quarters, high-yield savings bonds, and bars of gold-pressed latinum.

Special thanks to Madlittlepixel for spilling the beans on the X68000 Mini, along with AusRetroGamer for additional details.

Genesis Does... Steroids!

I've been screwing around with that AI art generation program Midjourney, having the service create various images in the style of popular science-fiction artists. I recently entered this prompt...

video game controller Syd Mead style

...and here's what popped out.

I could have sworn I've seen one of these before.

image from Planet Virtual Boy
(natch)

I knew I recognized that from somewhere! Actually, with all due respect to the late Gumpei Yokoi, I like the imitation Syd Mead design better. It's very "1960s vision of the future," as opposed to the Virtual Boy, which is more "only has a future as a conversation piece in someone's worryingly large video game collection."

Anyway. More great stuff is coming to the Sega Genesis, courtesy of some very talented hobbyist programmers from Brazil. You know that Genesis port of Final Fight I was talking about in a previous post? It's Mega Final Fight now, and it includes a mode where you have to patch a hole in the time-space continuum... by punching a lot of guys. I mean, it is Final Fight. You solve all of your problems by sticking your fist in the throats of street gangs and just-barely-legally-distinct professional wrestlers.

16-bit Mayor Cody? And new characters?!
This game is bordering on swagger at this point.

The expanded mode is purely optional, but it's worth exploring, as it increases the number of playable characters. Now you can fight as the nimble lady ninja Maki from Final Fight 2, and Captain Commando from his eponymous game. (Eponymous? I never liked the mouth feel of that word.) Maybe the designers will really go nuts and include one of the characters from Battle Circuit, an obscure beat 'em up that somehow manages to outweird Captain Commando. Yes, the game that features a baby in a mech and a zombie who can turn his foes into sludge with a swipe of his "genetic knives."

Also on the menu is a new demo for Mega Man: The Sequel Wars, and most ambitiously, a work-in-progress port of Real Bout Fatal Fury Special, a later Neo-Geo release which common sense would dictate would be well beyond the reach of the Genesis. "Ao contrário!," claims the design team, as they crank out a game that's surprisingly close to the original, aside from an expected drop in color and detail for the backgrounds. The characters, though! They border on magnificent, nearly as vibrant and well animated as they were in the Neo-Geo arcade game... all 394 megabits of it. Ooh, ooh! Now do Garou: Mark of the Wolves next!

(They're Brazilians, Jess, not miracle workers.)

Last and certainly least, it seems we've seen the last of the bitter fruit from that online harassment site. You know the one... douchebag central. They've become so toxic that not even the Russians will touch them, leaving them to drift in the depths of the dark web like so many turds flowing through a sewage canal. You may have had to wait too long for it, Near, but at last, vengeance is yours.

Welcome to the Next Level, More or Less

There comes a time in every gamer's life when he must leave the past behind and look to the future. No no, I'm not quitting this hobby and doing something more productive with my life, that'd be crazy! I meant leaving the last generation of game consoles behind and stepping up to the fertile fields of more powerful hardware. I think I've found a sneaky back door into the next generation that even I can afford... but it comes with its own hidden and uncomfortable cost.

A classic case of wicked X-S.
(image from IGN)

You see, Microsoft has taken a different approach with the latest installment of its Xbox brand of consoles. Instead of releasing a more powerful version of its flagship console a couple of years after its launch as a bonus for cash-flush fans, they've split the Series into two separate systems... the budget-priced S, and a luxury model called the X. After all, you can't spell "sexy" without an X. Then again, you can't spell it without an S, either. Maybe Microsoft should have considered that fact before using those letters as quality designations.

Wait, what was my point again? Oh yeah... separating devices into pricing tiers is a business model in consumer electronics that dates back to the home computer market of the 1980s. Can't afford an Atari 800? Just buy an Atari 400, which is more or less the same thing. Can't spare the shekels for a Commodore Plus 4? Grab the economy model, the Commodore 16, instead.

Of course, you'd be far wiser to shun the whole
Plus-4 line and just stick with the C64. Too
bad nobody at Commodore could figure that out.
How many computers did Commodore have
competing against each other at one time? Yes.
(image from Retro Gamer)

It's not as simple as I'm making it sound, of course. When you pay less, you get less, resulting in a less than ideal user experience. That Atari 400 had half the RAM of its more costly cousin and a flat membrane keyboard that would give Mavis Beacon nightmares. Similarly, the Commodore 16 had significantly less memory than the Plus 4, no suite of home office software available at the touch of a button, and an ugly breadbox shell borrowed from the VIC-20 and early models of the Commodore 64. When you pinch pennies for the sake of your budget, unfortunately, the pennies pinch back.

And so it goes with the Xbox Series S. There's no optical drive, roughly half the RAM of its big brother, and hardwired restrictions on its resolution. The Series X can take its games all the way to 4K, while the Series S is stuck puttering at the foot of the high-definition hill, limited to 1080p or, if it tries really, really hard, 1440p. 

Not to get all "get off my lawn" up in the joint,
but I remember playing games in stunning 102p
on my Atari Lynx. There was no thrill like playing
Blue Lightning and watching the system's
hardware scaling turn big, chunky pixels into
even bigger, chunkier pixels! It was like your
little brother was throwing his Duplos at you!
(image from Retro Gamer)

Okay, so you're probably thinking, "If I can't afford a 4K television set either, what's the point of emptying my wallet for features I can't use?" Ah, but that's the other issue. Buying a low-octane console brings with it a nagging sense of uncertainty about its future viability. "Will this still be supported two, three, four years down the line?," you wonder to yourself. "Even if Microsoft keeps supporting the basement model of the system, will its limitations restrict the full potential of the Series X? Will my Xbox owning friends hit me because they can't play the absolute best possible version of Mega Super Hyper Street Fighter 6 Turbo... with Almonds?" 

Sure, the Series S seems like a good idea now, but as anybody who's followed technology for a while can attest, today's cost-conscious purchase could become tomorrow's regret, consigned to the dusty corner of the basement or garage. So I'm conflicted about a purchase, even with the massive discount I've managed to find on a used model.

Another motivating factor in my wanting an Xbox
Series S is King of Fighters XV. Does this look
like something beyond the scope of the last generation
Xbox One? Not to me. Then again, maybe SNK didn't
want to wait fifty years for the damn thing to load.
(image from Xbox Wire)

What will likely clinch the deal is not how well the Series S will handle the games of the future, but how much better it will run games from the past. I've been more or less happy with my Xbox One S, but even a woolly mammoth would concede at this point that the system has gotten long in the tooth. Sure, it plays games well enough, but actually getting to them with the system's agonizing load times and constipated interface has become a trial. 

Worse yet, video streaming apps move with all the steady grace of a rhinoceros with a drinking problem. If you listen to Don Mattrick (and I suggest you don't... it didn't help Microsoft much), the Xbox One was designed with video playback as a focal point, with an episode of The Price is Right playing on the system during its 2013 unveiling. Try doing that on the One S now. You'll grow older than Bob Barker and collapse into a pile of dried bones before the damn show even begins.

Prepare to enter the stage of history! After
you've waited through the entirety of history
for your match to start.
(image from Steam)

I've asked around, and have been given every assurance that the Xbox Series S makes short work of tasks that would buckle its predecessor. Streaming apps start up right away, and load times get hacked down to a reasonable amount. Imagine, Soul Calibur 6 matches that start at some point in the temporal continuum, instead of never! Welcome to our shiny new SSD-powered future!

It's all relative, man.
(image from Roni Kurniawan)

Is the Xbox Series S less powerful than its beefier big brother and both flavors of the competing Playstation 5? Sure. Is the lack of an optical drive, with no apparent peripheral planned to remedy that omission, a hassle? Of course. Will I get as frustrated with the Xbox Series S five years down the line as I currently am with the Xbox One S? That's certainly possible. But right now, in the waning months of 2022, the Series S might be just good enough. Heaven knows the One S is no longer cutting it.

The Dream We All Dream Of

I'm currently fascinated and slightly terrified by AI programs such as DALL-E and Midjourney. They take bits and pieces of existing online assets, and assemble them into new drawings, based on parameters entered by the user. You would think that a computer making its own artwork is the stuff of science fiction, but I've seen some of the stuff churned out by these programs, and it has genuine artistic merit. Someone instructed Midjourney to create images based on lyrics from the Electric Light Orchestra song Mr. Blue Sky, and what it produced were moody backgrounds and a nebulous face made of clouds. Wait, let me show you what I mean.

It's fascinating because it's stimulating artwork which demonstrates, or at least convincingly duplicates, creativity by the machine that created it. That could credibly pass for a being named Mr. Blue Sky, couldn't it? It's terrifying because I draw as a hobby, but know dozens of others who do it for a living, or at least for supplementary income. A computer program that can churn out furry artwork on a whim for ten dollars a month is going to put a big crimp in the incomes of living, breathing artists. After all, why buy the cow when you can get an extremely detailed, slightly eerie AI-generated cow for nearly free?

Anyway, enough of that. Speaking of seemingly impossible feats performed by modern technology, the Italian programmer Rinnegatamante (a name which is so much fun to say, you have no idea) has developed a Sega Dreamcast emulator for the Playstation Vita. This is one of the trickier emulators to install, requiring several plug-ins, and you're discouraged from taking the easy route with Autoplugin, but the end results are beyond what you would have expected from this abandoned and increasingly dated handheld. Capcom vs. SNK 2 is not perfect, but it's playable, and a portable version of that game is something I've wanted for a long, long time.

Under Defeat, shown at its actual frame rate!
No no, I kid. This is bound to improve after
a few updates.

Sadly, but perhaps expectedly, not every Dreamcast game runs well. In fact, Under Defeat, a vertical shooter released years after the Dreamcast's official demise, struggles mightily under Flycast, with the emulator trying its damnedest to keep up with the game's copious smoke effects. Drop a bomb and the software crawls, dropping to a single digit frame rate as it tries to juggle all the explosions and particle effects. Under Defeat is also a game I'd love to have on the go, but it just ain't happenin' on the Vita. At least, not yet.

What else? Oh yeah, the Astebros demo recently received an update, and it's shaping up to be one of the best games ever released for the venerable Sega Genesis. It's especially surprising, as previous builds didn't excite me much. However, this new build is like a whole new game, offering three playable characters with their own unique abilities, an overworld map, and some lip smackin', European-influenced graphics. It's at least as pretty as anything Psygnosis cranked out for the Genesis in its glory days, but the gameplay is tighter, more satisfying, and less punishing. Unlike Shadow of the Beast, this is no show pony that leaves a strong first impression but leaves a bad aftertaste.