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Adventure (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Yes, the best Atari 2600 game. Well, one of the top three, anyway. I got “Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration” for Christmas and although I’ve played a fair few of the games, most aren’t actually “completable”, what with being mostly score-attack arcade titles. Adventure, though, has an end goal – take the Chalice to the Yellow Castle.

The game has three modes. The first is a shorter game with just one dragon, fewer objects and fewer rooms. The second is the “main” version, with the full quest, three dragons, mazes, etc. The third is the second game with objects in random locations.

The random mode is sometimes a bit stupid, because it can mean that (for example) the key to get into the Black Castle is actually… inside the Black Castle. There is a bat which wanders the map randomly picking up items, sometimes swapping them with other items (and hilariously it sometimes swaps whatever you’re holding for a dragon, who then eats you), which can allow you to get hold of these “trapped” items, but it’s hit and miss and may take aaaaages.

I ran through both of the first two modes, completing them (which only takes a few minutes) then completed the third mode six times. It’s a good game, brent.

Mega-lo-Mania (MD): COMPLETED!

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It was time to play this again. I mean, sure, it’s almost always time to play this, but it was especially time to play this just now.

Choosing Madcap this time, for no real reason, I made it through to the final level where I was once more unopposed. So an instant win, again. Ah well. The real fun was the fun we had along the way, or something.

Wiz ‘n’ Liz (MD): COMPLETED!

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After a write-up in Retro Gamer magazine, I was reminded how much fun this was all those years ago, so since I already had my RetroFlag GPi out for Mega-lo-Mania purposes, it seemed rude not to have a quick go.

Which turned out to be a couple of days of play and ended up with me completing it. As you do.

Somewhere, I have a hand-written, self-worked-out list of every single fruit combination for all the magic spells you can do, but I don’t know where that is so resorted to The Internet for some interesting ones. Most important were the ones that either gave you extra lives, or gave you stars with which to buy extra lives. Because extra lives are Important.

The aim of the game is to collect wabbits. But you have a timer and this seems to get shorter, and unless you’re lucky and collect a million “time extend” pickups dropped occasionally by captured wabbits, invariably you’re going to run out, and die. Especially in later levels where the number of required wabbits increase, and they start dropping the odd time penalty pickup too. Hence the need for extra lives. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to rack up loads of them with the right fruit and stars. Phew, eh?

Rod Land (Arcade): COMPLETED!

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Now this game I have heard of. It’s one of those single screen, clear out all the baddies games like Parasol Stars and Snow Bros, only in this one you grab them with your rod and then bash their brains out on the floor. As you do.

I had forgotten, however, that there were bosses! But, and like most of the rest of the game actually, they were surprisingly easy to beat.

A very happy jolly platformer with cute graphics. Not as good as Parasol Stars though.

64th Street: A Detective Story (Evercade): COMPLETED!

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Despite the name, there’s no actual detectiving in 64th Street. Sure, at the end of each level a wall of text comes up to say you found a clue to, uh, whatever the thing you’re supposed to be doing is, but actually, the game is 100% punching and kicking people. Because, it’s a Final Fight type game after all.

I’d never heard of it before, and, when I came to write this I’d already forgotten what game it was. But I do remember the gameplay and it’s fine. Nothing special, it’s not up there with Streets of Rage or Final Fight, but it’s fun enough even if it does nothing new and copies pretty much everything from those two games (which, to be fair, are very similar already!).