TMNT IV Music - My Big Green Toe (Sewer Surfin' Cover) by tibone
This is a cover of the Sewer Surfin' song, from TMNT IV - SNES version, that i recorded for the Ninja Month theme of a online music competition. It song had be ninja themed, so what's better than recording a song from TMNT ?
Very few things, very few things, indeed.
So, i choose this great rock song, and decided to give it a more hard rock twist on it. It's a little faster paced than original, but still up-beat and lovely.
The keyboard parts were actually played on guitar, so that's why they sound a little extra funky.
This is also the first time, i'm using the new Audio tag from HTML5, so, again, no Flash is being used, and it's all HTML5.
Released back in 1992, The GG Shinobi II - The Silent Fury is the sequel to the very good Game Gear Shinobi game.
While it maintained the same structure and gameplay of the original, the sequel improved upon the original on many levels.
The main game is still the same, you have 4 ninjas to rescue, to form a party of 5 ninjas, each with different strengths, skills and magical technique (tech).
Each level contains a ninja, and a crystal, that is hidden inside the level. To rescue the ninja, all you have to do, is cross the level and beat the boss. The crystal is a item hidden somewhere inside the level. All of the crystals are hidden in passages where you must use a special skill to get through, so you can't really get the crystals, before rescuing the ninjas, there's a faster way through some levels, since you can choose the order of the levels, like the one i used on the video, which only repeats 2 levels, Building and Castle, and plays only once through Canyon and Factory.
After rescuing the 4 Ninjas and 4 crystals, it's time to rescue the red crystal, inside the enemy base, which is a labyrinth of rooms, and makes up for about half of the game. The rooms are all designed to make clever use of each ninja special skill and/or tech, so you will need to learn when to change the ninjas, in order to progress through the game.
The game features slightly improved graphics over the original, with Big sprites, detailed backgrounds, and some cool effects (the tech animation comes to mind), it is a rather good game. You can see that the ninjas sprites are based on the Genesis/Megadrive version of the Shinobi sprites.
The music is completely awesome, composed by Yuzo Koshiro himself, you can't expect less. The man who did Streets of Rage, Ys, Revenge of Shinobi and more, did once again, a impressive job, the limitations of the hardware are obviously when playing the game, but both the level design and the sound design team worked cleverly to develop a fun game, where you can travel through the levels easily and rewardingly.
The video shows an entire run of the game, played by myself on an emulator. However i do own the original game and i can vouch for it's re-playability, because for some time it was the only GameGear game i owned, so i become quite a master at it.
I apologize for the sound mix of the video. I did record a commentary track, however it turned out too low in the mix, and due to a fault DVD, i lost the original files (audio without video and video without audio) so there isn't much i can do.
I hope you can enjoy it nonetheless, this game is really good and deserve your attention, even if it's only for a couple of minutes. Sega did a great job with this little gem.
And the cover art is completely awesome. So Kickass Cover Award, and Epic Name Awards for this game.
Evolution of the Species - Indycar Simulators by tibone
A quick video to show the evolution of Indycar Simulators for PC over the years. Not much in the sense of play, just a lap around Laguna Seca and Indianapolis 500
From 1989 to 2005, lots have changed and simulators are getting more real by the minute. But the are a nostalgic value to those old ones, that will always hold a place in the history of the Simulators.
Express Playthrough : Little Wheel (PC - Flash) by tibone
Little Wheel is a really short and sweet flash game, developed by the guys at FastGames.com.
It is a point-and-click adventure with a really unique, noir-like look and feel that really grabs your attention.
The details of the game are amazing, the animation is fluid and the art direction is pretty well done, with all the graphics being shadowy silhouttes over the beige background with the white lights turned on without flare.
The game ifself is pretty simple, being a less than 10 minute adventure game, in the vein of the old LucasArts adventures (like Day of The Tentacle or Full-Throttle), but it's short and sweet history combined with the great art direction makes up for a really fun game, you can play it at fastgames.com, if you want it, and i think you should.
The video is a full playthrough, so if you don't want to spoil your game, just play it first and if you get stuck, come back here and see how it is done.
(Hi-Res video after the jump).
Released on October of 1990, developed by Distinctive Software and published by Broderbound, Stunts is a racing game for the PC. It focus on Stunt-like racing, which means you have to learn how to drive through obstacles like a corkscrew and a loop. While it was published by Broderbound on most of the world, in Europe, it was published by Mindscape who changed the title to "4D Sports Racing" to make it a part of it's 4D series (along side the excellent 4D Boxing and not so good 4D Tennis). In September of 1991 a new version called Stunts 1.1 was relesed and fixed several bugs of the original release. This is the release we are going to express play today....
(High-res version and more text after the jump).
First released on Japan, May 22, 1980, Pac-Man (Pakkuman), is THE videogame to change all video-games in the history of videogames.
By the time of the release, the popular and dominant kind of videogames were the space shooters (Space Invaders and Asteroids). However upon release, Pac-Man changed the face of videogames forever.
It was one of the first games to introduce multiple colors on the screen, and different sounds, enemies and levels. While of the games at time where repetitions of the same level with upgrade difficulty, Pac-Man introduced the level design concept, and with it, the whole "game design" concept....
WARNING! Spoilers all around this review.
So proceed with care!
Ronnie James Dio has just left this world. And to pay my homage to this great man, fantastic singer and most excellent person. I decided to review this game.
Not many know about this game, which is named after Dio's most famous song. Which is also the title track for the game. Developed by Irem and released on April, 1989, Holy Diver is a side scrolling platformer, in the veins of Castlevania or Contra. It was scheduled to be released over seas (USA and Europe) but for unknown reasons, it never happened. So, it will always be a Famicom exclusive game.
Many things are unclear about this game, and internet research doesn't seem to help. In fact, i've never seem a manual scan for this game, which would probably solve many questions regarding this unknown gem of a game. But until them, everything is speculation and reference to Dio's lyrics......
Thunder Force IV - Stand Up Against Myself - On guitar. by tibone
I arranged and recorded this song,for a online festival called "PunchFest", the main thing with this festival is : The song has be arranged, recorded and submitted, in under 6hrs. The theme (in this specific case : "Sega Genesis games without Sonic") is announced a couple of days earlier, but work doesn't begin until you are logged in the IRC channel for the festival. I had a great time doing this arrange, while chatting to some very talented musicians and friends.
So, i decided to record a video of this song, to try out my new home "studio" video habilities. I'm still looking for the perfect position/lightning without investing too much money. But this specific video turned out to be a tad too much yellowish, in my opinion, but the next ones won't definetely be so yellowish. I'll make sure of that.
Also, i am trying to break into the world of HTML5, the not-so-new web standard for coding. So, i'm providing this video (and probably all sub-sequent videos on this site, whether it's music related or not) in Theora/Vorbis, using HTML5, which means that not only it's Flash free, but it's also compatible with a lot mobile devices. However there's still one big problem with HTML5 video, the codecs. Firefox/Chrome and Safari, supports Theora, and don't support H.264, while iPhone and iPad, it's the opposite way. So as a test, i am going to do this one in Theora, and probably the next in H.264. But anyway, too much rambling, let's shred a little bit ?
For those of you who doesn't know, Thunder Force IV (Lightening Force), is a shmup for the Sega MegaDrive system. It's held in high standards as the pinnacle of the series, and one of the best games of the genre for this system. It pushes the hardware a lot, using parallax scrolling and fake alpha-blending effects for achieve a polished look. The gameplay is solid, with multiple power-ups and upgrades, different stages and very clever bosses and bullet patterns. While it maybe not be as well known as Gradius in the general public, between niche fans it is a classic game. The rocking soundtrack is a beast on it's on terms, featuring blazing solos and beautiful up-beat melodies. This specific song is the 'staff roll' credits, named "Stand Up Against Myself" on the sound test. It's is a very cool, straight forward, moderately fast rock. Very good.
New version of this "demo game" made by myself on Flash CS3.
I added a lot of stuff into this new version, here is the change list of versions so far :
v.1f - 04/05/2010 - Public Release
- Finished boss of stage 1.
- Fixed "boss_health" meter bug (it was not being removed after boss was killed or boss killed player).
- Fixed sound bug. Boss song and stage clear fanfare were overlapping.
- Player bullets now removed from the field, once they hit the boss.
- Stage one complete! Everything seems to be in place.
v.1e - 03/05/2010
- Fixed bug with power meter.
- Coded bullet pattern for Boss 1.
- Source Code : Moved All frames into the same scene.
- Source Code : Added Comments on Stage 1 code.
- Added Stage Clear screen.
- Added Stage Clear Fanfare.
v.1d - 30/04/2010
- More work on boss, including:
- defined bullet pattern for boss 1, being 3 streams of bullets, 2 spread around the screen, crossing each other and other straight down the middle, but not constant.
- Defined boss health, boss hits and player being hit by the boss.
- End of Stage 1 screen added.
- Boss 1 is gonna be static on screen.
- Added Boss Theme Song.
- Added Boss Health Meter.
- Added Power-Up Meter (with bugs).
v.1c - 29/04/2010
- New power-up (Glowing Bullets)
- Power-up sound
- Bomb Code (3 bombs, and working on every enemy, except bosses, by choice)
- Bomb Sound
- Boss Placing Routines
- Boss Alert
- First Boss Prototype (still needs work on his bullet patterns, i want to add a spray/spread pattern into this first boss)
v.1b - 28/04/2010
- Power-Ups (2 level)
- Wide-Shots
- New key for Start (S)
- Gameover screen now static
- More speed (now close-ish to 40fps).
A new "demo game" in Flash CS3.
Not fantastic by any means.
But i finally finished a little demo shmup in Flash.
I've rewritten this at least 7 times, but get the code down to something fast, small and useful.
Now, it's pretty much done.
The demo shows :
- ship (slightly modifying the ship while moving left/right)
- 1 kind of weapon (no power-up yet)
- 1 stationary enemy that follows the player
- 1 random scrolling enemy.
- scrolling background.
- overlay "cloud" (the semi-transparent green box).
- music and sfx.
Like i said, nothing major, but just to keep in mind that i finished something.
Classic Games - Where retrogaming is modern 
