Bob's Bad Day (Amiga)

Developer:

The Dome

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Release Date:

1993

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Systems:

Amiga

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Super Adventures Amiga Game Month continues with Bob's Bad Day! For some reason, this is the first game that jumped into my head after playing Bill's Tomato Game, funny that.

I have to level with you folks, this is not going to be a pixel art showcase and there won't be much going on in it for me to talk about. I'm pretty much only playing it as an excuse to show off the intro... though now that I think about it, the intro won't even work without the voices. Damn.

The important thing is that I'll be done with playing the game quickly and I'll not have much to write about afterwards, so I'll be able to move on to the next Amiga game and get that published before I run out of October. Theoretically.

Bill's Tomato Game (Amiga)

Developer:

Bill

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Release Date:

1992

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Systems:

Amiga, Atari ST

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It's the 30th anniversary of the Commodore Amiga 500 home computer! I mean not today specifically, it seems like it hit the Netherlands in April 1987 and the rest of Europe shortly after. But it was released in the US at some point during October, and that's all the excuse I need to make this month on Super Adventures all about AMIGA GAMES!

For the next few weeks it's all Amiga titles, nothing else. Wall to wall Amiga. Though don't worry if you're not keen on that idea; at the rate I've been writing about games lately you're likely to only see two at best.

I started by checking top 100 lists to put together a set of classic titles that really define what the system is, the most Amigary of Amiga games... but then I realised that they'd have me playing things like Sensible Soccer. So I scrapped that plan and decided to play a few of the games that have stuck in my head for whatever reason. Like Bill's Tomato Game for instance! It's a game about tomatoes made by a guy called Bill Pullan. Though it definitely isn't named after him, at least according to the manual, which I definitely didn't check just now out of curiosity.

Secret of Mana (SNES)

Developer:

Square

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Release Date:

1994 (1993 JP/NA)

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Systems:

SNES

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This month on Super Adventures, I'm finally getting around to the legendary Secret of Mana!

I'm running a few weeks late here so I'll get my internet-sourced trivia introduction text out of the way quickly so I can get to the game.

• That 'Nasir' you see on the title screen is Nasir Gebelli, the programmer of Final Fantasy I, II and III.
• Trying to figure out the game's exact relation to Final Fantasy IV and Chrono Trigger could drive you nuts.
• It started out as a project codenamed "Maru Island" before becoming a Seiken Densetsu sequel.
• It was planned for the SNES CD addon, but was drastically revised and cut down for a cartridge release.
• Many of the unused ideas from the CD version ended up in Chrono Trigger.
• The dialogue was cut back even further for the English translation due to space limitations.
• It's getting a 3D remake next year!
• It's one of the games on the Super NES Classic!
• I've never played it.
• Well actually I have, but it wasn't for long and I don't think I liked it much.
• All I remember is walking down a river and maybe visiting a town before getting bored.

Also, it's one of the most popular and critically acclaimed SNES games, so I'm going to have to try not to hate on it too much.

Fallout 4 (PC)

Developer:

Bethesda

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Release Date:

2015

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Systems:

Win, PS4, Xbox One

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This week month on Super Adventures I'm spoiling the first couple of hours of Fallout 4!

You might be wondering why I'm writing about a complicated modern RPG again when I should know better by now. There's already a hundred reviews, streams and YouTube videos out there about it, so it seems a bit redundant. I have a good reason though: I already played all the others (aside from Fallout Shelter and Brotherhood of Steel) and it seemed wrong to leave it out.

Plus it means I get to mention the drama going on in late 2013 when there were competing teaser sites like thesurvivor2299.com and thepropheteer.com all appearing to be revealing the game's existence, and people were trying to figure out which of them was legit and which were fake (they were all fake).

Thankfully the game actually was being developed in secret, because that's typically what you do when your last game was a huge hit (unless you're Valve). Though it seems weird to me that after all this time this was only Bethesda's second attempt at a Fallout RPG. Obsidian were the ones that made Fallout: New Vegas and I'm curious to see if Bethesda decided to take anything from it. Or take anything away from their last game.

I'll be playing it without any mods, by the way, because I'm not really keen on tweaking my game. I feel like opening the box like that lets some of the magic escape (plus I'd be too tempted to give myself an infinite ammo rocket launcher and fly around on a fire-breathing unicorn or something). Also this means I get to ignore the Creation Club entirely and all of the bullshit that goes along with that!

(Click the screenshots if you want to make them very slightly bigger.)

Vixen (Amiga)

Developer:

Intelligent Design

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Release Date:

1988

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Systems:

C64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Amiga, DOS

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This week on Super Adventures I'm writing about another obscure Amiga platformer. And I'm going to keep on doing it until you're all suitably grateful for the modern games we have now.

This one's called Vixen, unless you're in Germany, then it's known as She-Fox instead. According to Wikipedia, the reason for the change is that in German "vixen" is pronounced like wichsen, an obscene word meaning "to jerk off", and judging by the title screen I guess was a little too on the nose for them. Surely there's an actual German word for 'female fox' they could've used though?

Some people took issue with the game's cover as well due to the fact it has dancer and tabloid 'Page 3' model Corinne Russell wearing a skimpy leopard-skin bikini on it. The publisher apparently had to reissue the game with 'a less provocative cover'. Then Your Sinclair magazine went and put her on its cover and they got complaints as well. I'd show you a picture of it, but it's the same image as the title screen, except without the flesh-coloured hair and painted on clothes.

This was all happening in 1988 by the way, so the game's from the NES/Master System era, which I haven't visited in ages. It never came out for the consoles though, only home computers, and I'll be mostly playing the Amiga port. Not because I'm nostalgic for it exactly, but it is the version I remember playing as a kid... briefly.

Ganpuru: Gunman's Proof (SNES)

Developer:

Lenar

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Release Date:

1997

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Systems:

SNES

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This week on Super Adventures I'm playing a game definitely absolutely did not ever get ported to the Commodore Amiga, for a change. In fact this one wasn't even released in English, though it did eventually get a fan translation.

I like fan translations, I think they're a fantastic idea and that everyone who's put their time and effort into making games accessible to more people for absolute zero financial reward is awesome. But I don't play fan translations on my site (it's one of the rules written in the box on the right), so I'm going to be struggling through the original Japanese version of the game for an hour or two. Well, unless it's got a lot of dialogue in it, then I'll be struggling a lot longer than that.

The katakana in the title says Ganpuru, so some people call it Gunple and others say it's probably a compound word formed from 'gunman' and 'proof' (like how Pokémon comes from the words 'pocket' and 'monsters'). Man, if the very first word in the game's giving me this much trouble then that's not a good sign. Google Translate tells me that my two choices beneath it are “From the beginning” and “From the rest”, so at least I don't have an options screen to interpret.

Teenagent (MS-DOS)

Developer:

Metropolis Software House

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Release Date:

1995

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Systems:

DOS, Amiga

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This month on Super Adventures I'm playing another point and click adventure game! But this time there's a twist: I have absolutely zero idea what this is. All I know is that GOG.com gave it to me for free when I signed up and the graphics looked a bit amateurish in the screenshots.

One thing I'm sure of though is that it's got nothing to do with the 1991 Teen Agent movie (called If Looks Could Kill in the US). This is Teenagent, one word; totally different thing. I'm guessing that it's probably a play on the word 'teenager'. It might also be a play on the word 'newsagent' but I'm kinda hoping it isn't as I'd rather jet around the world immersing myself in international intrigue than sell crisps. In fact I'd better check Wikipedia to make sure...

...oh that's interesting, it turns out that Teenagent was the first Polish game to be released on CD, though it seems GOG's given me the floppy disk version without the voice acting because those voices were all in Polish. I'm not considering that to be a problem. Plus it's running through ScummVM, but that's not a problem for me either.

Wikipedia also tells me that developer Metropolis Software isn't quite as obscure as I thought, as they made games like Gorky 17 and Infernal. In fact it was one of the longest operating game development studios in Poland before getting bought by CD Projekt in 2008 and shut down in 2009. Another fun fact: it was founded by opinionated video games bloke Adrian Chmielarz, who did programming and writing for Teenagent, before going off to make Painkiller and Bulletstorm for his new company People Can Fly, and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter for his newer company The Astronauts. So that's interesting.

Okay I'm going to take screenshots of the first hour or so and write words under them now.