BRAHMA Force: The Assault on Beltlogger 9 (PSX) - Guest Post

What a title! It's got a bit of everything!

What could it possibly be about?

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.

In Cold Blood (PSX)

Today I'm finally taking a look at In Cold Blood on the PlayStation, after getting hundreds of requests for it over the past few months. Well two requests anyway, which is still a bit of a surprise to me because it seems like something very forgettable.

This is the fifth game by adventure game specialists Revolution Software (of Broken Sword fame) and this time around they've apparently tried something new and added a bit of stealth action into the mix. Fortunately I'm the kind of guy who likes to keep an open mind, or else I would've been predicting that this is going to turn out to be a total train wreck right about now.

Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

Good news everyone, guest poster Faust has appeared to recite to us the legend of his journeys through the land of Bobbits, Gelatinous Cubes and EGA graphics in Ultima I, the semi-sequel to Akalabeth!

HAIL SAG READERS! It’s the period of the year where I get an arbitrary two week break from work thanks to an event of religious significance, ergo I’ve elected to enter the fray here at SAG and play a game that’s been eating up space on my GoG.com shelf for a while: the original Ultima!

As I load the game up, the text informs me that this is a masterpiece by ‘Lord British’, and I’m treated to a picture of a castle:

The home of Lord British I presume? I vaguely remember this guy as he’s the alterego of the brain behind the series. I also think he went into space at some point, but I might be making that up. Either way: THE CASTLE BECKONS!

Hurricanes (Genesis/Mega Drive)

After playing Soccer Kid, Hurricanes, Marko's Magic Football and Go! Go! Beckham! I had a feeling I'd seen all the football platformers. But just when I was resigned to the fact I'd have to move on to basketball platformers or whatever, I learned that there was actually still at least one of them out that I'd missed.

You see, I played the SNES version of Hurricanes, but there's actually a Genesis/Mega Drive game that apparently follows the same storyline (ie. the generic platformer level themes appear in roughly the same order), but seems to have different content and gameplay. So really it's another game entirely.

Bonk's Revenge (TurboGrafx-16)

At last I've finally gotten around to playing another requested game: Bonk's Revenge for the TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine, aka. PC Genjin 2.

This is the second in the Bonk/PC Genjin series of games, which were actually based around a character from comic in a PC Engine magazine (the name's a clever pun, see, as genjin means caveman). So this guy was basically Hudson's own Mario or Sonic, the mascot for their console. Though weirdly this is the first in the series to be exclusive to the system, as Bonk's Adventure came out on like four other formats. I played it for the site a couple of years ago on an Amiga, where it was called BC Kid just to confuse things even more for no good reason.

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!