Alien Syndrome (Arcade)

Developer:

Sega

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Release Date:

1987

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Systems:

Arcade first, then almost everything else

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Alien Syndrome! Because I've already played Alien Breed and Alien Storm this year, so I figured I might as well.

I did play this a little bit earlier this year when I was getting a screenshot for my Alien Breed article, but until then all I knew about the game is that it was a side scrolling beat 'em up where you zap aliens... or maybe an overhead view run and gun set on a space ship. The problem I had is that I always got it mixed up with Alien Storm, because they're both arcade games by Sega with gross-looking aliens in them.

The game runs on the Sega System 16B arcade board, which is kind of like the Genesis/Mega Drive's dad. That makes it a bit weird that it never actually got a Mega Drive port, especially as other games made for the board like Altered Beast and Golden Axe did. It didn't make it to the TurboGrafx-16 or SNES either and I'm not sure what happened there, as it was ported to basically everything else at the time. Seriously, this Sega game got a NES port.

But whatever system it's on, it's still an arcade game... which means it'll be really simple and extremely difficult. I'll probably play it for 10 minutes, get hopelessly stuck, and then struggle to think of anything to say about it. I should get some good screenshots out of it though.

Alien Breed (Amiga)

Developer:

Team17

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Release Date:

1991

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Systems:

Amiga, CD32, MS-DOS, Android, PS3, PSVita

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm finally taking a look at classic Amiga run and gun survival horror Gauntlet 'em up Alien Breed! I've put it off for ten years, because it's bastard hard and I suck at it, but it had to happen eventually.

It was made by developer/publisher Team17, currently better known for the dozens of Worms sequels they've made, and for keeping Epic's game store stocked with free games. Alien Breed was their second game (after Full Contact) and their first to be a full-price release. Though it did get a budget re-release, named Alien Breed Special Edition 92. Or maybe Alien Breed '92: Special Edition. It's something like that. Either way it's an interesting choice of title, considering that the movie Aliens: Special Edition was released just a little earlier...

Alien Breed 92 isn't really a special edition however, more like a remix. In fact it's basically a stand-alone expansion pack, with twice the levels of the original and tweaks made in response to feedback, and I expect that if anyone were to ask if you'd played Alien Breed, it's the special edition they'd actually be thinking of. Or maybe they'd be thinking of that Alien Breed: Evolution game from ten years back, I dunno.

I'm going to check out both the Amiga games, original and special edition, to see how different they actually are, and I'll be giving them about an hour each. Though by 'an hour' I really mean '20 minutes', because time works differently when you're being hounded by a relentless murderous swarm of unfriendly extra-terrestrials.

The Lawnmower Man (SNES) - Guest Post

This week on Super Adventures, virtual game reviewer mecha-neko has returned with a quick look at perhaps the best video game to ever have the word 'lawnmower' in the title. It's probably better than a lot of games with 'man' in the title as well, like Superman 64, the DOS version of Mega Man, that Amazing Spider-Man game from 1989, and The Running Man. Though this and The Running Man would both make it onto anyone's "Top 10 Video Games Based on a Stephen King Story" list, because as far as I know there's only ever been five of them.

By the turn of the millennium a technology known as VIRTUAL REALITY will be in widespread use. It will allow you to enter computer generated artificial worlds as unlimited as the imagination itself. Its creators foresee millions of positive uses - while others fear it as a new form of mind control...

Developer:

The Sales Curve

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Release Date:

8th November 1993

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Systems:

SNES, Mega Drive, Game Boy

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Hello, everyone! I'm going to take it easy and play a 16-bit movie license today. This game was recommended to me because it has flashy graphics and fancy effects. The person recommending it to me hadn't actually played it themselves, but what can you do?

I'm not going to go in-depth talking about the original film. In fact I played the game before having seen it! But I'll warn you about potential spoilers for it anyway now if you'd rather not read anything like that.

Handkerchief. (Demo) (PC) - Guest Post

This week on Super Adventures, rogue guest reviewer mecha-neko has returned to dredge up a forgotten piece of PC history. And this time he's even found an ancient demo of it so you can try it for yourself!

Handkerchief doesn't exactly fit in with my 'games from a top 10 list' theme I've been going with this year, as it's so obscure that even the people making 'Top 10 Most Obscure PC Games' lists apparently haven't heard about it. But whenever mecha-neko plays a game I get a week off, so I'm giving the theme a week off as well.

Developer:

Opus Corp.

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Release Date:

22nd September 2000 (Full game)

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Systems:

Windows

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Hello everyone! It's my tenth anniversary of writing for Super Adventures! It seems like just yesterday that I was rummaging through mouldy disks and finding gems like David Wolf: Secret Agent, and doing foolish things like trying out sports games.

To mark the occasion, I'm playing a much-loved game from my secret past. It's one that doesn't appear on any Top Ten lists that I can find, sorry Ray. This is Handkerchief., a demo that I used to play endlessly back in 2000, over twenty years ago!

Let's go!

Metal Slug: Super Vehicle-001 (Neo-Geo)

It's Super Adventures' 10th Anniversary today, which means it's time for a shiny new logo and a shiny new gimmick for 2021. I figured I should celebrate ten years of my site by giving year eleven a theme, and that theme is 'Top Ten'. Super Adventures is mature and respectable now, so I'm going to play only the very finest games... well, games that have made into the top ten of somebody's rankings anyway. Most of the time I'll be getting them from some 'Top 10 Objectively Greatest Video Games Ever Made' list I've found, but maybe I'll throw in something from a list like 'Top 10 Most Embarrassing Movie Tie-Ins' or 'Top 10 Shovelware Releases on the Wii' every now and then to keep things interesting.

It's not a flawless plan, as it means I'll be writing about games that everyone already knows about. Plus I've already played a lot of the games that tend to show up in these lists, especially the console games, so they're out of the running. So to help limit your expectations, here's some links to a few of the legendary titles I've already covered during the last decade:

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To be honest, I only put this row of boxes here because I felt like seeing if I could figure out how to do it. Plus the site needs more game covers on it. More title screens as well, especially the ones that look like this:

Developer:

Nazca

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Release Date:

1996

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Systems:

Arcade, Neo-Geo, Neo-Geo CD, Saturn, PSX, PC

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing the legendary Metal Slug, as seen in arcades and on the Neo·Geo home console. I should warn you that this article will contain flashing GIFs, so if that's an issue for you, then you probably don't want to scroll down much further.

This game almost ruined my 'top ten list' gimmick right at the start, because I struggled to find it anywhere. I did the research, searching through dozens of top 100 lists from magazines and websites, and none of them had the game ranked high enough! Fortunately Shacknews' Top 10 Run n' Gun Arcade Shooters video bailed me out (spoiler, it was #1).

I was a bit surprised when I saw that the game was released in 1996, as it's a bit later than I expected. That's the same year that Super Mario 64 and Tomb Raider came out, and 2D had already started going out of fashion a couple of years earlier, with Virtua Fighter and Daytona USA hitting arcades in 1993 and Donkey Kong Country faking 3D in 1994. The Neo·Geo MVS arcade cabinet and AES console both predate the Super Nintendo by a few months, so this could've potentially come out as early as 1990 and still looked just as good. I guess the original Neo·Geo was tough to kill, as they were still making 2D Metal Slug sequels for the same hardware as late as 2003, long after the N64 and PlayStation had been replaced.

Uh, I should apologise to you for mentioning so many years in one paragraph, it was a bit excessive. In my defence, this is the first time I've ever covered a Neo·Geo game and I want to talk about the system! I suppose it's also technically the first time I've covered a Neo·Geo CD game as well, which is a newer version of the console which came out a few years later in 1994... sorry, sorry.
 

Halloween Harry / Alien Carnage (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

Today on Super Adventures, guest poster mecha-neko has returned and he's brought you the perfect game for Halloween. I wrote about Sanitarium a few days ago so I thought I had Halloween covered this year (the game even has pumpkins in it), but mecha-neko's choice literally has the word in the title. I can't compete with that.

Developer:

Interactive Binary Illusions Sub Zero

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Release Date: Halloween Harry: 10th October 1993 Alien Carnage: 2nd November 1994 Freeware: 24th May 2007

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Systems:

PC

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Spooky greetings to you all! Fancy looking at some classic Apogee shareware?

As Robbie Coltrane might say: it's 'alloween, 'arry!

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.

Demolition Man (Mega Drive/SNES)

Developer:

Alexandria

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Release Date:

1995

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Systems:

Mega Drive/Genesis, Mega CD, SNES

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This week on Super Adventures I'm taking a quick look at another movie tie-in! I hope it's better than that Stargate platformer I played a while ago. Though it will be a platformer, there's no doubt of that.

Demolition Man is a apparently one of just three games developed by Alexandria before they vanished in late 1995, with the others being Sylvester and Tweety in Cagey Capers... and Izzy's Quest for the Olympic Rings, which I wrote about way back in the days when I didn't write much. In fact I kind of sucked and so did that game.

Speaking of 1995, that's also the year that the game was released, which is pretty late for a 16-bit console game, especially one that's based on a 1993 movie. They weren't exactly striking when the iron was hot there. In fact if it'd come out any later then the dystopian future levels would actually be set in the past.

By the way I'm playing the Mega Drive/SNES Demolition Man not the 3DO game, which is one of those variety pack licensed film tie-ins that keep switching genre and are invariably terrible. Though it does have the genuine movie soundtrack and includes FMV clips of Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes and Jesse Ventura filmed exclusively for the game! The Mega Drive and SNES versions, on the other hand, don't. But what they do have is a title that literally explodes onto the screen letter by letter in little bursts of flame before a synthy guitar riff plays, and that's cool too.

Breach & Clear: DEADline (PC)

Developer:

Mighty Rabbit

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Release Date:

2015

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Systems:

Win, Linux, Mac

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This month on Super Adventures, I'm playing Unity 5-powered special forces sequel Breach & Clear: nFΛnLINԷ. Uh, I mean Breach & Clear: DEADline, or perhaps just Breach & Clear: Deadline; I'm getting conflicting information on that and as usual the logo's in all caps so it's no use.

As the name hints, this is the follow up to tactical counter-terrorism game Breach & Clear, though I'm sure it has very little to do with tactical counter-terrorism game Deadline, and I'm doubly certainly there's no connection to "authentic hotel maintenance simulation" Breach & Clean. I can detect a little Call of Duty influence though, as the game's gone from modern warfare straight to... hnng... zombies.

Zombies man, it's always the fucking zombies. Why is it never wizards? Breach & Clear & Dragons: Origins, it could totally work!

I'm coming into this entirely blind, as I've never seen the game, I didn't play it in Early Access, and I know next to nothing about it. In fact I went to do my normal research, looking for some stuff to write up here, and it seems that neither Wikipedia or MobyGames have an entry for it. So if you've ever wanted to add a game to either site and leave a semi-permanent mark on history, now's your big chance!

But one thing I do know about the game, and this is something you should definitely be aware of, is that a friend of mine worked on it. So I can't promise I'll be entirely fair in my assessment of the game. But this site's about showing games off as much as it is about my opinions, and I can still do that while being biased. So if you decide to carry on reading, keep repeating to yourself "This guy's predisposed to be nice to the game," in your head the whole time, and then ignore all my conclusions.

(Click any screenshot to expand it to twice its current size!)

The Adventures of Star Saver (GB)

Developer:

A-Wave

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Release Date:

1992

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Systems:

Game Boy

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This week on Super Adventures, something a little less colourful.

The Adventures of Star Saver is a Game Boy game... and that's pretty much all I know about it. I just saw the name and realised it had to get played. My best guess is that it's a management sim based around running a discount supermarket chain, but I'm not going to completely rule out the possibility that it's a platformer.

Either way no one wants to stare at 300 black and white screenshots so I'll be keeping it short this time. This'll be a Regular Adventure rather than a Super Adventure.

Skeleton Krew (Genesis/Mega Drive)

Developer:

Core Design

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Release Date:

1995

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Systems:

Mega Drive/Genesis, Amiga (AGA), CD32

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Today on Super Adventures I'm having a look at Skeleton Krew, which is something I vaguely remember playing off an Amiga demo disk! Apparently I subconsciously set an alarm in my head to go off exactly 20 years later, because I woke up today with a sudden inexplicable urge to see what the full game's like.

This is one of the final 16-bit games released by legendary UK developer Core Design before they embraced the PlayStation and Saturn and let Tomb Raider consume them. It's definitely the last game they made for Amigas, possibly the second last for the Mega Drive and Genesis, and it seems like they got bored of making SNES games way back in 1992 so it didn't even make it near Nintendo's system.

I'll be playing the Sega version of the game because I have a feeling it came first and will give me the better experience. Plus I've only put one other Mega Drive game on the site so far this year and that's kind of shameful.

RoboCop 2 (NES)

Okay, that's how you do a title screen. Shame they had to squash up the title a bit to fit it all in though; that poor letter 'B' has ended up overlapped and mangled.

Today I'm taking a look at RoboCop 2 on the NES, obviously, and I'm amazed that it's taken me this long to get a RoboCop game onto the site. Well okay my associate, mecha-neko, wrote a guest post a few years back about the 2003 PC game, but that thing's more of an eldritch abomination trapped in a crude video game form, and knowing too much more about it could drive you mad.

I've played a couple of the old RoboCop platformers in the past, but I've never seen this one before so it's all going to be new to me. If it's anything like the others I've seen though... we're not going to get on.

Postal (PC)

Not the prettiest title screen, but at least it's more cheerful than the music collection of sounds playing in the background when it comes up. I figured the game would be leaning more towards dumb comedy than grim psychological horror, but that shows what I know.

Hi, welcome to Super Adventures. I'm Ray Hardgrit and I know absolutely nothing about the first Postal game. I've played a lot of Postal 2 and I've heard that Postal 3 is so bad that developer Running With Scissors basically disowned it (in fact it's so bad that they added the game box into Postal 2 and you get an achievement for pissing on it), but the original Postal remains a mystery to me. I'll soon fix that though.

(Fair warning: there's a good chance I'm going to end up calling the game 'Portal' instead of 'Postal', and it likely won't just be once, so try not to be confused if you catch me screwing up.)

Mercs (Arcade)

Super Adventures in Gaming Replay 2014 - Game 2

This one might seem like a bit of a strange choice to replay as it's a pretty basic run and gun arcade shooter, not the kind of thing you need to play much of to get an impression of how it's going to carry on. Plus I got two levels into the Genesis/Mega Drive version the first time around, so it's not like I didn't give it a fair chance. But I'm reasonably sure I promised someone I'd take a look at the arcade version at some point, so here it is.

Here's something I didn't mention last time: Mercs is the second game in the Wolf of the Battlefield series and a sequel to 1985's Commando (which has absolutely nothing to do with 1985's Commando movie). It started off as an arcade game in 1990 and was ported to around seven home systems the following year (and there's no way I'm going to be comparing them all this time, sorry.)

Apocalypse (PSX)

I guess the symbol for the apocalypse is the anarchy symbol with a cross on top then.

Today I'm finally getting around to another requested game: Apocalypse on the PlayStation, starring digital Bruce Willis. In fact they're so proud of their Bruce Willis model they've even shown off its wireframe mesh on the title screen.

This was the second game developed by Neversoft, made just before they hit fame and acclaim with their Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series. They actually made nine Tony Hawk games before switching over to make seven Guitar Hero games and a Band Hero. Apocalypse on the other hand got exactly zero sequels, but I'm sure that's no reflection on its quality. Probably.

Turrican (C64)

"Hello and welcome to Turrican, be my guest! Another day another try, but remember... shoot or die! Ha ha ha!"

Today I'm playing legendary run and gun platformer Turrican, created by two of the blokes that brought the world The Great Giana Sisters: designer Manfred Trenz and musician Chris Hülsbeck. Apparently some anonymous artist with the initials 'MT' thought it'd be good idea to entirely rip off this badass Manowar album cover for this loading screen artwork, and hey it probably was. Definitely smarter than ripping off something like Lovesexy by Prince anyway.

Turrican came out on a lot of systems and is probably best known as an Amiga game, but I'm going to be mainly focusing on the C64 version as it's the original all the others were based on. Shouldn't take me long to regret that choice I expect.

Night Slave (PC-98)

I'm always eager to try games for systems I'm not familiar with, but it's surprisingly difficult to find out about good Japanese computer games that are both playable without understanding the language, and not filled with cartoon porn. So I decided to compromise this time around.

Wikipedia tells me that Night Slave on the PC-98 is an eroge game, warning that it's gonna have naked anime ladies in the cutscenes in place of an actual storyline. But it also comes with an option to turn the cutscenes off in the menu and play it as a pure action game about giant robots shooting things. No sex, just good clean violence.

So I'll assure you upfront that this post is going to be entirely safe for work, for so many obvious reasons.

Abuse (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

At last, some more words by someone who isn't me! This time I've brought alien bug killing expert Jihaus in to talk about about killing alien bugs in frantic DOS shooter Abuse.

Let's do this.

The game doesn't really have a proper splash screen so I'm using the box art.

This awesome run and gun platformer made by Crack Dot Com came out in '96 and gave us an early vision of what you'd get if you combined a platformer with the mechanics of an FPS (such as multiple weapons and mouse aiming). The game sports a control scheme that at the time was crazy different, resulting in a fast paced and unique alien/mutant blasting experience that you didn't really see in platformers at the time (or at least I didn't, I was poor).

I played and finished this game long ago but it's been so long that I am pretty much playing this as a newbie again.

Metal Warriors (SNES)

Today I'm taking a quick look at Metal Warriors on the SNES. It... apparently has giant robots in it. Plus that starry background leads me to assume it'll be set in space. I don't know much else about it really.

Ever notice how many title screens feature a shiny metal logo in front of a black background or starfield? Because until this month I had no idea it was so common. For some reason my site's front page has become a sea of chrome and darkness, and every new game I play seems to perpetuate it.

Doesn't matter if it's a classic Japanese fantasy RPG, a cartoony first person shooter, or even an isometric platformer about a snake eating balls, almost everything I've played lately has gotten the shiny text. Manic Miner probably would have had it too, if the game hadn't been created way back before the human race invented metal.

G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (NES)

Wow, you sure you've squeezed enough text on that title screen there? I'll admit right now that everything I know about G.I. Joe comes from the 2009 film, but I'm pretty sure this isn't the insanely cheesy theme from the TV series playing in the background right now. It's a catchy tune though.

I wish I could say I played this game because of the request I got on twitter, but the truth is that I originally wrote this post in April 2012 so that I'd have it ready to put it up on the site in time for the cinema release of G.I. Joe: Retaliation. Unfortunately for me it seems that Paramount realised at the last minute that killing off a popular character at the beginning of the movie was probably a bad idea and delayed the film by a year for reshoots, ruining all my plans in the process. The bastards. I didn't think there was any rush in showing off what I thought of a 1991 NES game though, so I held onto this until today, when the time was finally right.