12-25-2023, 05:55 PM
Now that my gaming collection is down to the literal bare minimum (literally just a few Mario games, racing games and if you can class them as games VNs), it'll mean that I have more focus to finish the rips. Yet... the rips are taking too long, struggling with whatever rips that I have and even playing the games themselves is like climbing a mountain these days.
Originally considered splitting the racing games to their own project however felt that it would have been a burden considering how many are yet to be ripped and the ways things are going, it probably be best to leave them here until that day comes...
So yeah... Just a small amount...
C64
Out Run
I've lost count how many times I've ripped this classic game...
Top Cat Starring in Beverly Hills Cats
A bonus purple palette is provided since in game TC wears a grey coat rather than... you know... his purple waistcoat. He doesn't wear that in the Beverly Hills film either what the game is supposed to be based off.
Smiths Super Champs
Rally Cross (Anco)
Rally Cross (Codemasters)
Believe it or not this was Codemasters first rally game, way before the Colin McRae Rally and DiRT series (not to mention the recent WRC game).
Would have done more but there are issues with the rips including a certain doctor...
Amstrad
Doctor Who and the Mines of Terror
A quick rip, mainly because there aren't many sprites. Also I couldn't rip the items, they are either glitched or not in the graphics viewer...
Very rare that you get a game not too far from where you live or grew up in. Unless you either live in a place known for developers e.g. California, Montreal, Vancouver, Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto, historically Manchester, live near a studio or you live near the developers that you keep contract with (at least with indie/demoscene type). In this case where I grew up, there was a publisher called Micro Power who mainly focused on BBC Micro games and were one of the two main companies for the computer, the other being Superior Software. I recently discovered that the home computer versions of Star Wars was also done not too far away, within a bus ride. There were a few other games that I knew as well e.g. Bill's Tomato Game and ResQ (Genesis, both unreleased), WipEout 3: Special Edition, HardWar. Game companies don't seem to last long...
This looks very close to the BBC Micro version that was considered by the company to be the main version. Said version was also why Micro Power had financial problems and was their downfall due to the needed expansion ROM chip (that the Amstrad and later BBC Master versions don't, also affected the unreleased Spectrum version as it was done before the 128k adoption and the approach was similar to Saboteur on the C16) and the marketing costs, probably licensing costs too. This game was considered AAA and a price to match, like paying $70 for a PS5 game. Especially when most games were generally less than £10 or £15 if you got it on disk (the disk version did price drop though). After this they only released a few more games (including a Chess game) and that was that... By the time I got to see where they were based, it became a windows and doors company.
It's a bit strange, two of the leading companies that published games on the computer were close to each other, you would think that I would grew up using a BBC Micro? Nope. When I was at primary/elementary school, only thing that the school had was an Acorn computer with Badger Trails being the only thing resembling a game and funnily enough, was one of the few people who got to go on it because people weren't as interested in computers back in the late 1990s. It's not like now where nearly everyone has a computer, phone or tablet. By the time that I was leaving school, it had just started to move to Windows (and there was only 1 Windows based computer at the entire school on my final year). There might have been a BBC Micro unused somewhere but this is over 23 years ago. That's enough of that memory...
Yogi Bear & Friends in The Greed Monster
Despite the name, you only play as Yogi and was a quick rip. The name is linked to Yogi's Treasure Hunt where the Greed Monster is one of the characters in the show.
Ruff and Reddy in The Space Adventure
Again, you can only play as Ruff (Reddy only shows up on the Loading Screen & the HUD). Speaking of Space Adventure...
Cobra
Yep, the French loved Space Adventure Cobra so much that this was the first game of the series before the Japanese did the adventure games on the PC Engine.
Err... Did you rip this game before? Not on here... Besides the original Cobra rip was from January 27, 2018 and felt that it could do with a re-rip plus rip the enemies, Crystal Bowie, Dominique and that Lady is actually a recolour of the android enemies that pop up so she's not on the graphics viewer. As an extra note, the game runs on Mode 1 (4 colour mode) so the sprites are baked into the blue background.
Daley Thompson's Super-Test
Finally something from this game.
Leader Board
Not having much luck... The Spy Who Loved Me is partially compressed (enemies and when the Lotus spins out on a oil slick) so that can't be done. Iron Trackers is half way done but it seems that the screen size isn't right with half of the screen missing. Still there's a surprise...
DS
Lupin the Third: Shijou Saidai no Zunousen
It's December 25 and people this time of year celebrate an important birthday. Yep, one Inspector Koichi Zenigata.
[Nearly December 26 because I'm too slow ripping...
]
(Oh and in case anyone is confused why Zenigata has so many sprites for what is an enemy. That's because Lupin can also disguise himself as Pops, it's a series trademark usually seen in Part 2 but has popped up in other series, films and TV Specials, even the manga I believe... There's even a moment in Part 2 where Jigen and Goemon were also disguised as Zenigata.)
Also to add on top of that... The game must have been rushed out because internally it doesn't seem to be cleaned up for release. Duplicate tiles, nearly entire sprites being duplicated (Zenigata and Zenigata_2 share sprites, only the animation positions have changed) and as mentioned before, early sprites of Lupin are still in the game. Doesn't help that viewing the animations causes Tinke to crash or doesn't display the poses. Probably why it also explains why this never came out of Japan and surprisingly didn't get an Italian release like a couple of the PS2 games (Lupin was not popular at the time to justify an US release, a different story now... this just happens to be the LAST Lupin game on a console).
Going to do something a little different in a couple of days time...
Originally considered splitting the racing games to their own project however felt that it would have been a burden considering how many are yet to be ripped and the ways things are going, it probably be best to leave them here until that day comes...
So yeah... Just a small amount...
C64
Out Run
Ferrari Testarossa Spider (PAL)
Ferrari Testarossa Spider (USA)
I've lost count how many times I've ripped this classic game...
Top Cat Starring in Beverly Hills Cats
Top Cat
A bonus purple palette is provided since in game TC wears a grey coat rather than... you know... his purple waistcoat. He doesn't wear that in the Beverly Hills film either what the game is supposed to be based off.
Smiths Super Champs
Bike
Buggy
Car
Rally Cross (Anco)
Car
Rally Cross (Codemasters)
Car
Believe it or not this was Codemasters first rally game, way before the Colin McRae Rally and DiRT series (not to mention the recent WRC game).
Would have done more but there are issues with the rips including a certain doctor...
Amstrad
Doctor Who and the Mines of Terror
The Doctor
Splinx
Enemies
A quick rip, mainly because there aren't many sprites. Also I couldn't rip the items, they are either glitched or not in the graphics viewer...
Very rare that you get a game not too far from where you live or grew up in. Unless you either live in a place known for developers e.g. California, Montreal, Vancouver, Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto, historically Manchester, live near a studio or you live near the developers that you keep contract with (at least with indie/demoscene type). In this case where I grew up, there was a publisher called Micro Power who mainly focused on BBC Micro games and were one of the two main companies for the computer, the other being Superior Software. I recently discovered that the home computer versions of Star Wars was also done not too far away, within a bus ride. There were a few other games that I knew as well e.g. Bill's Tomato Game and ResQ (Genesis, both unreleased), WipEout 3: Special Edition, HardWar. Game companies don't seem to last long...
This looks very close to the BBC Micro version that was considered by the company to be the main version. Said version was also why Micro Power had financial problems and was their downfall due to the needed expansion ROM chip (that the Amstrad and later BBC Master versions don't, also affected the unreleased Spectrum version as it was done before the 128k adoption and the approach was similar to Saboteur on the C16) and the marketing costs, probably licensing costs too. This game was considered AAA and a price to match, like paying $70 for a PS5 game. Especially when most games were generally less than £10 or £15 if you got it on disk (the disk version did price drop though). After this they only released a few more games (including a Chess game) and that was that... By the time I got to see where they were based, it became a windows and doors company.
It's a bit strange, two of the leading companies that published games on the computer were close to each other, you would think that I would grew up using a BBC Micro? Nope. When I was at primary/elementary school, only thing that the school had was an Acorn computer with Badger Trails being the only thing resembling a game and funnily enough, was one of the few people who got to go on it because people weren't as interested in computers back in the late 1990s. It's not like now where nearly everyone has a computer, phone or tablet. By the time that I was leaving school, it had just started to move to Windows (and there was only 1 Windows based computer at the entire school on my final year). There might have been a BBC Micro unused somewhere but this is over 23 years ago. That's enough of that memory...
Yogi Bear & Friends in The Greed Monster
Yogi Bear
Despite the name, you only play as Yogi and was a quick rip. The name is linked to Yogi's Treasure Hunt where the Greed Monster is one of the characters in the show.
Ruff and Reddy in The Space Adventure
Ruff
Enemies
Again, you can only play as Ruff (Reddy only shows up on the Loading Screen & the HUD). Speaking of Space Adventure...
Cobra
Cobra
Dominique
Crystal Bowie / Salamandar
Yep, the French loved Space Adventure Cobra so much that this was the first game of the series before the Japanese did the adventure games on the PC Engine.
Err... Did you rip this game before? Not on here... Besides the original Cobra rip was from January 27, 2018 and felt that it could do with a re-rip plus rip the enemies, Crystal Bowie, Dominique and that Lady is actually a recolour of the android enemies that pop up so she's not on the graphics viewer. As an extra note, the game runs on Mode 1 (4 colour mode) so the sprites are baked into the blue background.
Daley Thompson's Super-Test
Giant Slalom
Finally something from this game.
Leader Board
Golfer
Not having much luck... The Spy Who Loved Me is partially compressed (enemies and when the Lotus spins out on a oil slick) so that can't be done. Iron Trackers is half way done but it seems that the screen size isn't right with half of the screen missing. Still there's a surprise...
DS
Lupin the Third: Shijou Saidai no Zunousen
Zenigata
It's December 25 and people this time of year celebrate an important birthday. Yep, one Inspector Koichi Zenigata.
[Nearly December 26 because I'm too slow ripping...
](Oh and in case anyone is confused why Zenigata has so many sprites for what is an enemy. That's because Lupin can also disguise himself as Pops, it's a series trademark usually seen in Part 2 but has popped up in other series, films and TV Specials, even the manga I believe... There's even a moment in Part 2 where Jigen and Goemon were also disguised as Zenigata.)
Also to add on top of that... The game must have been rushed out because internally it doesn't seem to be cleaned up for release. Duplicate tiles, nearly entire sprites being duplicated (Zenigata and Zenigata_2 share sprites, only the animation positions have changed) and as mentioned before, early sprites of Lupin are still in the game. Doesn't help that viewing the animations causes Tinke to crash or doesn't display the poses. Probably why it also explains why this never came out of Japan and surprisingly didn't get an Italian release like a couple of the PS2 games (Lupin was not popular at the time to justify an US release, a different story now... this just happens to be the LAST Lupin game on a console).
Going to do something a little different in a couple of days time...