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85: My First Brand New Chainsaw

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Sneaking in just before the tail of the month like some sort of ninja in audio form, it’s time for Episode 85 of that podcast you subscribed to that time and you keep intending on listening to it but you’re a busy person and other podcasts keep filling your app and it’s OK, we know you love us anyway even without your ears.

This time, deKay, Kendrick and Toby tell each other, and you, our listener, about such things as Humble Games shutting down (or is it? (yes, it is)), why college football is so popular in the US, target audience Skibidi toilet news, dodgy Intel, and how in the olden days we had to perform Dark Arts in order to have a LAN party. What’s a LAN party? Oh my sweet summer child. Plus! Games!

  • Frog Detective
  • Shin-chan: Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation – The Endless Seven-Day Journey
  • Another Code: Recollection
  • Wolfenstein Cyberpilot
  • Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle
  • Agents of Mayhem
  • Putt and Putter
  • Valkyria Revolution

And you thought you could escape the Olympics by listening to us instead? Hahaha, nope.

(Direct link here)

Intro music credits: The morning dance routine from Shin-chan

Don’t forget, if you want to contact us with questions or comments for or about the show, you can email podcast@ugvm.org.uk or publicly shame us https://mas.to/@ugvmpodcast on the Mastodons.

Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg: I’m rolling

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For years I had the theme tune from Billy Hatcher on my phone to use as an alarm, though I had cut the initial spelling off the front so I would be woken with a cockerel crowing.

I never really played much of the game, however – this was back in the days where I had more money than spare time, and £20 spent at HMV on the reduced-price GameCube stock was good for an afternoon of entertainment. At the time there was a glut of 3D platformers, and despite its Sonic Team heritage this just didn’t feel like it stood out. It didn’t help that the first part of the game is set in comparative darkness, with shadowed colours and a lack of spark.

Going back to it today, though – albeit via the slightly glitchy Dolphin emulator, since I currently can’t connect my GameCube to the TV – the egg rolling mechanic does actually make the game a bit different to the standard platformer, adding in a sense of vulnerability when you lose your egg, and fostering an element of wanting to collect and hatch different egg types.

The controls work pretty well, and the camera doesn’t get in the way as much as other games of the era. I have rescued the Chicken Elder, who has brought morning back, and then found and beat a big lizard thing who tried hiding in the grass. The relatively free-form nature of the levels (as opposed to something like Crash Bandicoot) has meant I’ve had to do a fair bit of exploring at times, which is only problematic because I’m still not sure I’ve got the controls down pat.

I died a fair few times falling off those rails, even though I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to be able to.

Sonic Advance: completed!

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You may notice an uptick in the image quality on this post compared to the last.

I tried to persist, and played Sonic Advance on my GBA SP all the way through the six acts and to the final boss. The first two boss battles made me smile, being replicas of the Green Hill and Emerald Hill bosses from Sonic 1 and 2 respectively. And then the proper boss battle nearly led to my console being embedded in the wall.

The screen resolution on the GBA isn’t amazing. It’s better than the GBC, of course, but it still needs to have some allowances made for a relatively small viewport. A famous example of this is Sonic Genesis, a port of the original Mega Drive game, which suffers from you not being able to see far enough ahead. Generally, Sonic Advance avoids this through clever level design, slightly smaller sprites, and a more exploratory nature.

Not the case with the final boss. Robotnik is in a spike-covered machine with multiple attacks, and you have to avoid each of them in a different way. Laser? Duck. Bouncing bomb? Jump or move to the apex of the bounce. Grabby hand? Jump out the way. You can only know which attack is happening by standing all-too-close to Robotnik, or by looking at the blurry few pixels right at the edge of the screen. The laser fires almost as soon as the weapon appears, so you have to stay in a ducking position while waiting. Then you have to peer through the blur to work out what you need to do to avoid the attack – and also to put in your own attacks.

I lost a large number of lives.

So I decided to try the game in an emulator instead, so I could see what I (and more importantly what Robotnik was) doing. I initially grabbed my save file from the GBA cartridge, but for some reason it wasn’t recognised by the emulator and I decided it was actually worth playing through the game again. So I did.

When played like this the game is immensely colourful, and it’s much easier to judge jumps with the higher quality screen. I quickly progressed through the levels, losing no lives, and exploring more. On one of the later levels I jumped on a red spring near the top of the level and it took me to a special stage – which I found entirely uncontrollable and where I failed to get enough rings to even pass the first checkpoint. Even the level with the reversed gravity wasn’t too difficult.

I reached the final boss with a full complement of lives, even getting past the annoying wobbly bridge boss (where you have to jump on the ground near to Robotnik to make his machine flip upside down so you can hit him) on my first go. I did still die a couple of times on the final final boss, but it was so much easier when I could see what was happening.

The end was ripped straight from Sonic 2, which was a bit disappointing, but otherwise the game is actually really good and enjoyable. I’m not sure I will ever explore it fully to find the springs to get to the special stages and the chaos emeralds, or even play it through as Amy Rose who is annoying, but I’ll be back at some point.

Sonic Advance: quite literally a blue blur

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I love the 2D Sonic games. The best is still Sonic 2, as in the Mega Drive game, but Sonic Mania runs it close. It probably helps that I’ve never played Sonic 4, which I know is almost universally derided – I know of only one person who liked it. Still, the Sonic Advance games are generally thought of as ‘good’ to ‘great’, and I’ve never played those either, and it’s time to rectify that – particularly because I’ve just bought a GBX Cart so can do things like back up saves and so on. I dug out my copy of Sonic Advance, my GBA SP, ordered a new USB charging cable, promptly found my old charging cable, and settled down to play.

How did we ever manage to actually use this?

The screen is incredibly hard to see, washed out colours, blurry, and it seems to have a refresh rate that doesn’t match the game. The picture above was taken in bright sunshine, and you can see that in order to get anything resembling a good picture you have to content with overly-reflective front glass. I was constantly having to contort myself to angle the screen just right, and whenever the sun went behind a cloud I had to squint to work out what was happening at all. Playing in the evening was even worse, with the house lights leading to a strong blue tint to the screen.

The game itself is actually really good. There’s not quite enough of a forward view to be able to run fast through the levels, so it feels a bit more exploratory than other Sonic games. I’ve not found out how to get to any sort of chaos emeralds or special stages yet, but the limitations of the physical hardware means that I’m very tempted to try playing this through emulation instead, once I’ve finished the first run through – so I won’t look up any other details until I try that.