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.

Frost Byte (Amiga) (For real this time)

Developer:

JJ & DJA

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Release Date:

1988

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Systems:

Amiga, Atari ST, ZX Spectrum, CPC, C64

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This week on Super Adventures, the long awaited 'screenshots and writing' part of my Frost Byte article! Only five years late.

It took me a while to figure out exactly what I was doing with this video game website of mine. I eventually realised that people are happier when there's a 'Read on' button they can click to satisfy their curiosity, but for the first few weeks I'd occasionally post a single title screen or screenshot I liked and then call it a day. So this grumpy cyclops has been staring out at people from my site with basically zero context since Feb 4th 2011.

But I can now reveal that this is a port of a 1986 ZX Spectrum game, brought to the Amiga by someone called J. Jameson. I could also make a joke about him being Spider-Man's bastard of a boss at the Daily Bugle, but I'm one 'J' short. They have the optimal number of 'J's to be porn star Jenna Jameson though.

Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)

Developer:

Nintendo

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Release Date:

1988 (JP)

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Systems:

NES, SNES

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Today on Super Adventures my Mario Marathon Month continues with Super Mario Bros. 3, the final Super Mario for the NES! It's not the last game he showed up in on the console though, as he got his medical degree just before the SNES was released. Sadly his career as Dr. Mario lasted just four months and then it was all Yoshi games and edutainment after that.

I've timed this one better than most, as today is the game's 25th anniversary... in the US. It's not a particularly special date to me seeing as it came out 18 months later in Britain and a year or so earlier in Japan, but I'm being impatient considerate of my American readers. Whoa, I just did the math there: that's three years that we were left waiting for this, while Americans were already playing Super Mario World! I say 'we'... I didn't get a NES until something like 2001, so it's not like I was personally inconvenienced by any of this.

Super Mario Bros. 3 has actually appeared on Super Adventures before, about four years ago now, but I wasn't the person who played it and the guy who did absolutely hated it. Seriously, I found someone who dislikes Super Mario 3, how amazing is that? Uh, not that I'm implying that I like it, I'm not giving that away until the end, but I have definitely played it before and I have... opinions.

Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES)

Today on Super Adventures, my Mario Marathon Month continues with a tale of two Super Mario Bros. 2s.

Back on the Famicom and NES in the late 80s there was a bit of a trend for sequels to be radically different to the original. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link added RPG elements and swapped genres to become a platformer, Castlevania II: Simon's Quest evolved into more of an open world RPG with NPCs and a day/night cycle, Final Fantasy II encouraged players to beat up their own team-mates to level up skills etc. But Super Mario Bros. 2 managed to be both more of the same and a reinvention of the formula at the same time, by cheating and being two separate games:

The Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 (AKA. Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels in the West) is the next step on from Super Mario Bros. and arcade game VS. Super Mario Bros., with even more challenging levels and a badge on the box saying "For super players" to make sure that regular players realise that it's going to kick their ass.

The American Super Mario Bros. 2 (AKA. Super Mario USA in Japan) is a localisation of an entirely unrelated platformer, repurposed as a replacement Mario sequel due to the Japanese Mario 2's dated visuals and punishing difficulty level making it more likely to scare players away from the unproven NES than win the undying love that the Famicom was currently enjoying in Japan.

At least that's how I think it goes. I'll give each an hour or two and see how they play.

Final Fantasy II (NES)

Wow that's the title screen, seriously?

Today I'm playing the original Final Fantasy II on the NES, not to be confused with Final Fantasy II on the SNES which is an entirely different game (probably). I've got a problem here though, as Square seems to have neglected to release the original Famicom version in English and rule #3 over there on the right strictly forbids me from playing fan translations. So I can either run each line of text through Google Translate as I go, or play a remake. Or better still, I could do both!

Starglider 2 (Amiga)

Today I thought I'd take a look at ancient 80s space shooter Starglider 2 and it's already been worth it just because of this art at the start. That picture is just plain awesome. Fortunately the developers realised that a some people would have to eventually skip past the picture to play the game, or to do whatever else people used home computers for in the 80s, so they thoughtfully provided a poster of it in the box.

Back in the day the developers, Argonaut Software, were known for their 3d graphics know-how and a few years after Starglider 2 was released they were hired by Nintendo to develop the Super FX chip for the SNES and program a certain famous space shooter starring talking animals in spiky starfighters. So yeah this game is pretty much Star Fox's older brother.

Barbarian II & Barbarian II (Amiga)

Today I thought I'd take a look at two games in the same post, both of them called Barbarian II, and both of them on the Amiga. Because playing them separately would just get confusing.

No don't close the page yet! Even if you don't give a fuck about these games (and I can't blame you if you don't) there's a couple of screenshots here that'll make it worth scrolling through. The rest... perhaps not so much.

Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa (NES)

Okay this one's a Famicom Disk System game by Konami called Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa. Sounds like a brand of plant food.

Oh no, don't tell me I'm playing as the baby? Maybe I'll be lucky and it'll turn out to be a genetically engineered bio-weapon disguised as a baby.

Konami Wai Wai World (NES)

I love Super Mario Crossover (browser game link), and I'm kind of surprised Nintendo hasn't taken the idea for themselves yet. Someone put Mario, Mega Man, Samus Aran, Simon Belmont etc. together in one game, and for once it wasn't in a fighting game or a racing game! Uh, not that there's anything wrong with those genres, it's just not really their natural habitat. So when I found out there was a game called Wai Wai World starring famous (pre 1988) Konami platformer heroes, I thought it might be worth a look.

I just hope they don't make me play as that Captain America wannabe sticking his head through the title screen.

007 Games Part 2: The Living Daylights, Live and Let Die

Super AiG's Guide to Every (old) James Bond Game Ever, Volume 2

Sadly not a real thing that actually exists.

James Bond week continues! In part one I took a brief look at the first four years of Bond games, from James Bond 007 on the Atari 2600 to Goldfinger on PC. I can't say any of them really impressed me, but hopefully that just means I've gotten past the worst of them now.

Speedball (Atari ST)

Super Adventures in Bitmap Brothers Games - Game 2

There aren't many sports games on this site, and the main reason for that is they're generally not very interesting to look at in screenshots. This is the left side of the pitch, this is the right side of the pitch, you've just seen the entire game.

Plus I'm bad at them. Really really bad at them. And I hate them.

But whatever, I'm going to play Speedball anyway.

Xenon (Atari ST)

Super Adventures in Bitmap Brothers Games - Game 1

You know, I suddenly have an inexplicable urge to play every game made by (legendary 16-bit era developer) 'The Bitmap Brothers' in chronological order. Or a week's worth of them anyway.

Okay, their first game was a space shoot 'em up called Xenon. I can tell that without even playing it because, well, what else is a game called Xenon going to be?

Wasteland (MS-DOS)

Wow, that's pretty bad. Maybe not the worst title screen on my site so far... or then again maybe it is. They probably should have switched to a different idea when it became obvious they didn't have the colours to pull off a mushroom cloud. Though for all I know they DID have the colours, and they did this deliberately.

Uh, I apologise to any Wasteland fans reading this, because I'm probably going to be saying crap like this about your game for the entire post. I mean I'm so bad at classic rpgs that there's a good chance I'll be whining about getting a game over on the character creation screen. Sorry.

Donald Land (NES)

Super Adventures in McDonaldland Donald Land - Game 1

This week I'm going to play through the McDonald's games. I suppose.

This looks like it's going to be a wild west quick-draw shooter starring a cowboy hero called Donald Land, but I promise you it really is a McDonald's game. This was only ever released in Japan, where the McDonald's sinister mascot clown is known as 'Donald McDonald'. So this is named after his first name.

I left the title screen on for a bit to see if anything happened, and eventually Donald himself dived out of the door at me. Like an alien bursting out of some poor spaceman's chest.

Bloody clowns.

Blaster Master (NES)

I played one of the sequels to this a while back on the Mega Drive, and it didn't really win me over. I hear this is better though.

Atomic Runner Chelnov - Nuclear Man, the Fighter (Arcade)

Super Adventures in Gaming Replay - Game 3

Today I’m playing the original arcade version of Genesis/Mega Drive game Atomic Runner, which I wrote about exactly one year ago today.

That title screen is very different to the one on the Mega Drive port, which had the hero standing in a city firing lightning from his hands. I’m going to make a wild guess and say the game might possibly have something to do with the Cold War in some way.

Gain Ground (Arcade)

Super Adventures in Gaming Replay - Game 1

Super AiG is one year old today! So I thought this would be a good time to go back to some of the games I wrote about during the first few months and take another look at them. And maybe do a better job of playing them this time around.

I wouldn't even dare animate that title screen in case the flickering static gave someone an epileptic fit. I don't know what Sega were thinking.

I wrote about the Genesis/Mega Drive version of this way back on the 3rd of February last year. In fact I managed to write about eight lines about the game and finished off by saying "There's just... nothing good about this game at all."

Well how the hell do you know that Ray? You played it for literally 20 seconds according to the timer on the screenshots. You basically just made an idiot of yourself in front of the whole internet. Yeah I think this game definitely requires another look.

Bad Cat (Amiga) - Guest Post

Hey mecha-neko, why don't you play a game about cats?

Sure, cats are awesome!

Bad Cat aka Street Cat in crazy, far off countries.

"It's the year 1984 and Los Angeles prepares for the Olympic Summergames."

"The dignitories and celebrities prepare their speeches, preparing for the huge crowds who are expected to attend."

"But, there are still the straying city-dweller cats - despised by all. The infamous cats are well known for they are planning their own competitive games."

"Will Bad Cat live up to his name?"

Will he? WILL HE?

The Uncanny X-Men (NES)

Today I'm going to check out the very first X-Men game, Uncanny X-Men! Or 'Marvel's X-Men' if you're going to believe the title screen over what's written on the box.

Ninja Gaiden (NES)

Guest poster ZXLink has already written a lot about the sequel Ninja Gaiden II for Super Adventures, but this is my first look at any of the original 2D Ninja Gaiden games.

Weirdly the game isn't even called Ninja Gaiden in Japan, it's called Ninja Ryūkenden (Legend of the Ninja Dragon Sword). Maybe when they brought it over they liked the idea of a Japanese sounding title, but wanted something catchier that English speaking gamers could remember.

On the other hand Europe got stuck with the name Shadow Warriors, which is just boring.