Be Excellent To Each Other

Here's some games (or at least versions of them) that you may not have seen before or perhaps may remember. This is an attempt to broaden the minds of you Xboxstation 3 owners who are probably all shooting up heroin while playing each other on Xboxstation Live.

Here's 3 games that I've plucked at random to evoke memories or general blank looks.


Super Pipeline 2 is a great game where you repair holes in a pipeline until the barrels fill at the bottom. The baddies follow fixed patterns and it's a polished game with good graphics and sound but is largely forgotten. But was there a Super Pipeline 1?



or the C64 version (look how badly it sucks compared to the CPC version)




We're all familiar with Prehistorik 1 and 2. But being a French game the publishers saw a market to produce an enhanced CPC Plus version:



Continental Circus was a racing game but I never rated it much. Anyone here played it and liked it? Yeah nice smooth graphics but it was dull beyond belief.

Continental Circus is the only one of those I remember playing. I like the way the woman(?) at the start runs off like she's stealing that board and you seem to pull away in the manner of a learner driver.

Continental Circus I could see the appeal of in the arcades. Big scale-y graphics, wacky "3D" goggles and a thunderous car explosion effect. Guess it was just another one of those games at the time which home computer didn't have the grunt to replicate the appeal of.

Yeah, but there's lots of good 8 bit racers. Just on the CPC WEC Lemans is a great racer but I think people get put off by the 4 colour graphics. Oddly enough it's not even a Speccy port as the Speccy version has totally different graphics and (IMO) isn't as good:

CPC


Speccy


And for good measure the C64 version which I've never played, and looking at the state of it, never will.


Just for good measure, does this GX4000 game also from Ocean remind you of anything?



Ignore the unfunny cretin doing the "review". It's actually a fantastic 8 bit racer from the people who brought you Chase HQ and WEC Lemans.

How come in most of these racing games everyone else can accelerate faster than you at the start but you can drive faster than everyone else?

Also, you are often the only person who crashes. I think Burnin Rubber on the CPC was the first home computer game I saw where computer drivers could crash into each other. That said I think it happens in WEC Lemans as well.

Also, Speccy Super Monaco Grand Prix. Was great! There was also that Nigel Mansell game that Linda Barker reviewed in YS (must have been 1992) that looked quite good. Can't remember if they did a CPC version.

Super Pipeline II? I never found a SP 1 either. Taskset, yeah?

I seem to remember there being some kind of Pang-alike game from them, before Pang hit the arcades. With a "99 Red Balloons" backing track.

Was looking for the Speccy version of Super Monaco GP but stumbled across the CPC version. Stunning intro and presentation. The actual racing bit loads up and it still looks great. Then the race begins..... Oh dear.

What a great conversion it would have been if they'd managed a slightly better framerate!



Speccy version actually moves but IIRC was spoiled by the usual multi-load pissing around:



That was the version I owned. My mate had it on the ST and I think we both preferred the Speccy version!

Presumably there never was a 1.

What format was your Pang-a-like on? There was a Speccy Pang clone by Hudsensoft. But I'm talking super early 8 bit days as it was published by Sinclair Research and almost certainly pre-dates 99 Red Balloons (and being 48k music would have been restricted to the usual farting noises).

The C64, Computer of Champions.

FTFY.

It's not one of the sub-games in Lazy Jones is it?

Pang/Buster Bros is based on an obscure game from 1983 called Cannon Ball, which I'm pretty sure had a speccy version. According to a quick wiki check 99 Red Balloons came out in 1984, but 99 Luft Ballons was out in Germany in 1983. The plot thickens . . .

Anyway, my entry to the thread - Eliminator Boat Duel, a stunning boat racing game from the late dying days of the NES (which is the main reason it has been all but lost to obscurity). Each race was comprised of multiple parts made up from side-on drag racing, top down Micro Machines style and a traditional over the shoulder Outrun style viewpoint. There were lots of little subtle touches that elevated it way above the average racing game, but sadly hardly anyone seems to remember it and it still appears to be bereft of a wikipedia:

Eric and the Floaters? - Edit - no wait that was bomberman, I can picture it in my ancient Sinclair catalogue though.
Edit again - Bubble Buster - can't find any Youtube vids though.

The CPC version of Super Monaco GP looks really impressive. Multi-load speccy games were too much for me by this stage, so I'd done a runner on the 8-bit market and bought a megadrive. Presentation-wise, that stands up pretty well to the megadrive version of Super Monaco GP. I wonder if they could have got away with ditching the rear-view mirror and got a better frame rate, from what I remember the only think it was good for was watching cars with plumes of smoke fall into the distance because they'd driven into the back of you (although it's possible that I might have been using my mirror to make sure they drove into the back of me).

It wasn't.

The Nigel Mansell game from 1987 however is very good, if tricky.

My memories of Continental Circus on the Amiga are very much in line with those of the thread-starter; the thing someone said about the arcade version being good also had some merit though.

I'll contribute something to this hopefully sometime, I love nostalgia sort of things... but right now I have to drive down to Nottingham to see Matt. What a way to spend a weekend

Becase a: Maybe they're stuck in second and you're stuck in third?
or b) it would be dull as fuck the other way around

Games that do that aren't really racing games, the cars are just another moving obstacle in the road. (Especially on games that don't even keep track of your actual place like Hang on)

From memory the frame rate in the rear view mirror was so poor it was next to useless so they probably should have dropped it or at least made it smaller.

The Lazy Jones sub-game did use the song, which is what makes me think it might have been it. + Buster Bros was only released by Sinclair in the UK as far as I'm aware and didn't ise the song.

Here's a link to some screenshots of both games.

#nigel_mansells_grand_prix" class="postlink">http://www.cpcgamereviews.com/n/index2.html#nigel_mansells_grand_prix

True. Also half these games cheat anyway. You belt past someone, then when you spin off 5 minutes later they are still only 3 seconds behind you. The new Outrun game is a prime offender.

Apologies if the following video doesn't quite fall within the parameters of this operation, but it's certainly an interesting version of a popular game:



No idea who this knockoff is by, but it appears to be a very well executed one that's had quite a bit of effort put into it. It has a unique intro featuring artwork I haven't seen anywhere else (including a depiction of Lord British the Person, from the anime), and some music that isn't in any other Salamander or Gradius game. The scrolling is reminiscent of the MSX games, in that it jerks along rather uncomfortably, the bullets appear to be plain white squares, and the level layouts are a little stripped down in places, but on the whole it's a surprisingly faithful recreation of the arcade game that seems to play really nicely.

That's on the NEC right?

Impressive, but the scrolling is terrible.

Aye, it's on the PC-98. I actually don't mind the scrolling, as I still play the MSX Nemesis games, hehe.

Yeah, world championship is the dodgy one. The older one is hard as nails but very impressive for its time.

I had to review it for the imminent 3rd volume of the Spectrum Games Bible.

Linda B liked it enough to give it 80%
http://www.ysrnry.co.uk/articles/nigelmansellsworldchampionship.htm

And it's hardly like YS were ever that easy to please. They never sank to Amiga Power pettyness, but they always told it like it was.

But I haven't played it myself. If I had time I'd play it and review it!

Another great game everyone has to play, Rescue On Fractalus. So far ahead of it's time the programmers were burned as witches!

Here's the Atari 800 version which is fairly nippy:



The C64 had a slower version. CPC version was OK, never seen the Speccy version.

The first time you encounter an alien pilot you jump out of your skin! Check out the final few seconds of the clip.