Samurai-Ghost (TurboGrafx-16)

There hasn't been enough TurboGrafx games on the site lately, or at all really, so I thought I should do something about that. Then I remembered that thinking makes my brain hurt and decided to just pick one to play randomly.

So here's Samurai-Ghost, I'm hoping it's a clever spook 'em up where I get to float around a house haunting the shit out of the living, harassing them by possessing their furniture and chasing them down the halls waving my spectral katana at them. Though it's on the TurboGrafx so it's probably a shoot 'em up.

Batman: Arkham Asylum (PC)

Today I'm taking a look at Batman: Arkham Asylum, a third person action game about an eccentric billionaire who habitually dresses up each evening as a bat to violently assault people in the street, and how this inevitably results in him being locked up in a mental hospital.

Except he doesn't really dress as a bat though does he? Unless there's a species of flying mammal out there known for wearing a cape, spiky metal gauntlets and underwear over their pants. That gear he's wearing is basically a custom Solid Snake style sneaking suit with a really hot and uncomfortable looking armoured cowl in the place of Snake's stylish bandana. Sure it has thin pointy ears sticking out the top of it, but bats don't even have thin pointy ears so...

And as far as the whole 'violent vigilante' thing goes, well if I was skilled enough to effortlessly take out a whole room full of evil ninjas with both my arms tied behind my back while simultaneously disarming a nuke using only my mouth and a half a toothpick, I'd probably go fight crime too. If only because I didn't want to get drowned/poisoned/frozen etc. every week by a supervillain's nefarious scheme while Gotham's finest were busy tripping over each other.

(Click the pics to expand them into semi-glorious 1280x800 res images.)

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.

Metroid: Zero Mission (GBA)

Today I'm finally getting around to Metroid: Zero Mission, only a year or two after it was requested. This is the fifth 2D platformer in the series and despite the name it's actually about bounty hunter Samus Aran's first video game mission, as it's a remake of Metroid 1.

I have played this one before, though just enough time has passed now for me to have entirely forgotten everything about it. I actually managed to finish the game... on the easy difficulty. This time though I'll be playing it on normal mode, so I'm expecting it to be closer to the original's level of challenge and kick my ass from one side of Zebes to the other.

Final Fantasy Tactics (PSX)

Here's another obscure cult Japanese RPG I'm sure you've probably never heard of, released for a classic CD based Sony console called the 'PlayStation'.

Final Fantasy Tactics was released a mere six months after Final Fantasy VII in the US and Japan, but took a little longer to reach Europe. Like, a decade longer. A strange decision perhaps considering how much cash FFVII was raking in at the time, but I'm sure they had their reasons.

Little Inferno (PC)

Today I'm planning to find out exactly what this Little Inferno thing I've heard so much about is. All I know is that it was developed in part by 50% of the team that gave humanity World of Goo (artist/composer/designer etc. Kyle Gabler), and that it's meant to be a satire about dumb time-wasting unrewarding videogames. But I'm hardly the kind of person who constantly throws their time away on tedious pointless games, so it's possible that the entire message may go drifting past my head when it emerges.

(Click the pics to see them in relatively huge 1280x960-o-vision).

Sensible Train-Spotting (Amiga)

I knew I'd have to find something really special today to drag people's attention away from e3, and I think I may have found it. From the legendary Sensible Software, creators of Wizkid, Cannon Fodder, and Sensible Soccer, comes their ultimate Amiga game: Sensible Train-Spotting. I mean that literally, as it's the last game they ever made for the system, released on a magazine coverdisk (Amiga Power issue 53 to be precise) in 1995.

There's no catchy theme song like they usually have though. No music at all in fact.