Ice Trek (Intellivision)

Developer:

Imagic

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Release Date:

1983

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Systems:

Intellivision

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This week on Super Adventures, my Star Trek 50th Anniversary Week continues with Ice Trek!

Chances of this having anything to do with 'Star Trek' aside from the name seem kind of slim, but it gave me an excuse to get an Intellivision game on my site at last. Now I get to make a new category for it on my 'Console Games' page!

The low detail nature of the game means that I can (and will) go crazy with the GIFs this time, but some of them might get a bit flickery. Game developers loved flickering back in the 80s. Just giving you a heads up.

Mario Bros. (Arcade)

Super Adventures is four years old today, and yet somehow in all that time I never did play a proper Super Mario Bros. platformer for the site. I looked at the Game Boy version of Donkey Kong a while back and that had a bit of jumping in it if I recall, but otherwise I've stayed well clear of the classics. I figured that I'd have nothing to say about the games that hadn't been analysed and argued about a thousand times by now, making my trivia trite and all my observations entirely pointless. But that excuse is four years old now as well and I've grown bored of it, so I decided to kick off Super Adventures Year Five with a month-long MARIO MARATHON, showing off the top titles from the iconic plumber's first 10 years in the hero business! I'll also throw a few non-Nintendo requested games in there as well, because too much undiluted Mario could drive anyone crazy.

Also, if you scroll up you'll see that I've made the site a brand new, slightly more dynamic hand-pixelled logo for its birthday! Kinda starting to wish now that I'd baked a cake instead though.

Developer:

Nintendo

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Release Date:

1983

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Systems:

Arcade, plus a couple of others.

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Wario Bros? Ohhhhh...

Today on Super Adventures I'm having a quick go of the original Mario Bros. This was Mario's third role I believe, after Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr, but the first to feature his name in the title. Nintendo were still exclusively an arcade developer at the time this was released (if Wikipedia is to be believed, and I trust them implicitly), but this only lasted about... say a day or two longer before the Famicom was launched on 15 July 1983. Only a lunatic would decide to launch their début console right in the middle of the great American video game crash of '83 though, and that's why Sega launched their first console on the same day!

Mario Bros. didn't quite make it onto the new console as a launch title in Japan, but I suppose they had to get some money out of the arcade machines before letting people play it at home. Two months later Mario Bros. though was able to join the rest of the Mario Trilogy as the sixth ever Famicom game.

Manic Miner (ZX Spectrum)

Today I'm taking a brief look at classic platform game Manic Miner, prequel to the slightly more infamous Jet Set Willy, and still fairly notorious in its own right. It'll be 30 years old this year and has been ported across to a dozen systems so far, from the C64 and BBC Micro to the Game Boy Advance and Xbox 360, though I'll be playing the original ZX Spectrum release because it's the most genuine article.

Most of the time I'm playing these games blind, but I have to admit that I know a bit about this one already. Manic Miner and I go way back. Though I never did get past the level with those damn toilet monsters, so If I can just manage that then perhaps I'll feel like I've actually achieved something.

WARNING: The game over screen flashes like crazy. Do not stare directly at my inevitable game over screen gif. In fact, it's a ZX Spectrum game so it's probably best to not look at any of the screenshots at all.

007 Games Part 1: James Bond, A View to a Kill, Goldfinger

Super AiG's Guide to Every (Old) James Bond Game Ever, Volume 1

This is what happens when I have Photoshop open when I'm bored.

It's another Super Adventures special event! Every day for the next week I'll be going through the first 10 years of the Bond game series, from James Bond 007 to The Duel, and hopefully everything in between. So if for whatever reason you don't like reading about James Bond, or looking at crap screenshots from ancient Atari and Commodore systems, I'll apologise now. Sorry about that.

Asterix (Atari 2600)

Whoa, some actual artwork on the Atari 2600.

Chuck Norris Superkicks / Kung Fu Superkicks (ColecoVision)

A.k.a. Kung Fu Superkicks. Seven screens of Chuck Norris kung fu action, shit just officially got real.

Jumping Jack (ZX Spectrum)

Okay I'm tired of playing random retro games I've never seen or heard of before, and that more often than not turn out to be crap. This week I'm taking a break...

GOOD RETRO GAME WEEK SPECIAL, day 1!

For one week only, I'm playing 12 games I used to love. But it's possible/likely that these games won't quite live up to my hazy childhood memories. Will any of them still hold up today?

Well I might as well start at the beginning. This was perhaps the first game I ever played, and it was ancient even then.