Three Must-Have Arcade Translations for the Commodore VIC 20

It's hard for some younger gamers to understand that in the early days of gaming, arcades had the latest and greatest games, and after the success of Atari's home version of Space Invaders, the race was on to licesnse arcade games for the home consoles and computers. Sure, Atarisoft translated lots of obvious arcade classics to the Commodore VIC 20, but who else was trying? Commodore licensed a few games, but mostly made clones of their own. Parker Brothers brought three of their licenses over to the VIC 20, but only one was any good. I do not think there were too many others doing direct licenses to the VIC 20, so let's look at some of the best arcade games translated for the VIC 20 that were not by Atarisoft.

Omega Race (Commodore)

Surprisingly, this black and white vector graphics masterpiece of a game was translated nearly perfectly to the Commodore VIC 20, giving the system its first "killer app" as the kids say. Omega Race is a top-down view spaceship game, similar in control to Asteroids or Space Wars, where the joystick rotates and thrusts the ship and the button fires.

The difference here is, that instead of flying off of the edge of the screen and emerging on the opposite side, Omega Race has a border around the outside, as well as the middle of the screen, forming an "O"-shaped rectangular playing area instead of a wide open screen, with the score and extra ships shown in the middle of the "O". On top of that, the walls are rubbery, so the player's ship bounces off of them upon collision.

The enemies start as a slow-moving squad, easy to pick off, but one or two of them will start to spaz out a little before long, and soon they are flying and firing like crazy. They also leave mines behind, which are a tough hazard to avoid, especially when your ship bounces off the walls. I have always played Omega Race by steering more carefully, but a few levels in all strategies are off as the chaos ramps up.

If you have a VIC 20, get Omega Race.

Gorf (Commodore)

Ah, Gorf. I have a history with this game as it was the one arcade game the Galion, Ohio Elks Club bought in the early 1980s, during the great arcade era where every small business and bar had to get a machine. Dad used to drag me along when he went there to drink and gamble, and it was pretty boring until Gorf showed up.

Gorf the arcade game is five waves; the first, a Space Invaders clone, the second has two small squads of ships but the center one in each squad fires a long, deadly laser beam to avoid, the third is a fully licensed cameo by a Galaxian squad, the fourth has ships emerging from a black hole in the center of the screen, and the fifth and final one has a huge mothership to take out by exposing and shooting its core.

The VIC 20 version removes the Galaxian stage but keeps the other four intact, giving the player plenty to do. Each stage of course requires its own strategy, and the mothership at the end even has a pixel-wide exhaust port that the player can send a lucky shot through for a quick victory. You know the drill - beat the mothership and the whole thing starts over, faster and deadlier. 

Gorf is peak fixed-ship shooter, and also frog spelled backwards.

Tutankham (Parker Bros.)

When this major board game company saw the rise of videogames, they were quick to enter this new market themselves, and they really did things right for the most part. Their translation of the arcade hit Frogger and their amazing licensed Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back game for the Atari VCS showed that they not only had the money to license anything they wanted, but they were committed to doing it right.

Like many companies, Parker Bros. took their licensed games beyond the Atari VCS, leading to three games for the VIC20. Based on a quick look on Youtube, Frogger and Qbert do not look that good compared to other available versions, but Tutankham stands out, not just because it was a pretty good port of the arcade hit, but because it was rarely translated elsewhere. I never had a home version of it until Konami's Greatest Hits on the Nintendo DS, where it was translated perfectly but retitled as “Horror Maze”.

Tutankham was one of many underrated arcade games that emerged toward the end of the great arcade era in the early 1980s, and it was a hit. Gorgeous graphics and incredible sound complimented fast-paced top-down gameplay. If I recall correctly, the sound was set louder than other machines in the arcade, too. 

The player is just another tomb raider, exploring a left-and-right side-scrolling maze full of treasures, keys, and constantly spawning enemies. The twist is that the player can only fire horizontally, making enemies coming from above or below very deadly. One must move and fire constantly, as releasing the joystick does not make the player stop in place. Adding to the intensity is a time limit, but in the early levels I’m reaching ,it wasn’t an issue.

The basic goal is to get the key and any treasures you can grab and head to the exit. Some levels have multiple keys and locks requiring backtracking through all that monster spawn again. The VIC 20 version is not a perfect translation of Tutankham, and it has some control issues, but for the time it was released it certainly captured the gameplay and sound. 

It’s also a sought-after rarity, priced around $300 complete with the working cartridge, box, and instructions, in Ebay auctions I’ve observed. Parker Bros. thankfully made sturdy ass boxes, leading me to put together a nice complete copy by winning two cheaper auctions-one with the cartridge and the box, another with the instructions and the box. Of course now I have an extra box. 

Tutankham was an arcade favorite of mine back in the day but I honestly didn’t get to play it in the arcades that much. I would have loved to gotten this Commodore VIC 20 version back in the day, but alas I never saw it in any stores. Now I can finally see if I can clear these tombs.

Beaten: Homefront (360)

 What, you think having the Commodore VIC 20 back and finally  having Steam on my PC would keep me from gaming on the XBox 360? Every era of gaming has a backlog for me, and the Xbox 360/PS3 era is one of the most bountiful backlogs there is. There are all kinds of videogames from that time that were fairly big budget, not all that original, but still fun to play.

When Homefront came out in 2011, the reviews were pretty average, and the only gimmick it seemed to have was thematic - the story takes place in a version of the USA that has fallen to and been occupied by Korean troops. It's an alternate history thing that when it came out seemed more of a stretch than it does now. For players it presents a gritty, well made first person shooter that wastes little time with characters and chit chat and gets right into the action.

Which is exactly what I was in the mood for, with or without the backdrop of American corpses being dumped into mass graves. The action is continuously intense as the player battles alongside some generic npc resistance fighters, and there are a few surprises. Remote-controlling an agile, unmanned vehicle was fun during the couple of times it showed up.

The helicopter level toward the end of the game was also highly enjoyable, leading into an intense final battle at the Golden Gate bridge. Remember that Homefront is a short game, though, so I’ll make this a short write-up. 

Homefront was what it was at release all those years ago and it is what it is today in 2025 - a quick, brutal first person campaign worth one’s time as long as those were the expectations one brings. 

Beaten: FreshWomen Season 1 and 2 (PC/Steam)

Warning: This article discusses an adult visual novel which has scenes of intense hot sex between consenting fictional characters. Stop reading now if you’re uptight about that stuff.

I decided to take a look around Steam's massive store of offerings for something different and I came across something very different- a whole adult section filled with mostly Anime-style games with some lewdness to them, but also with what is called AVNs - Adult Visual Novels. These lean more toward storytelling rather than actual gaming, but they can have choices in them for the player that alters the end, so I will count them as videogame campaigns that can be beaten when they have that. I’m new to this genre for the most part, unless you count all of those Ace Attorney games I’ve played. 

I choose one called FreshWomen, which is up to two "seasons" so far, with each season containing five chapters. You play as the male main character, who has moved to town for college, but also to unwrap the mystery of the father who disappeared on you as a child. The story is told through a series of still screens, with gorgeous graphics, and the player clicks the mouse or joystick button to progress. When the action gets hot and heavy, there may be animated scenes as well.

The player meets all sorts of women as they advance the story, as the town seems to be full of very large breasted gals who dress sexy as hell at all times, along with a few normal-proportional ones. While they are not throwing themselves at the player, there seems to be no way to avoid some couplings. That’s fine, and I may test that out sometime and try for a "nice guy" playthrough.

The player is almost comically well-endowed, but hey I’ve seen things. While one might think his entourage of would-be lovers would be college students like the player, many of them are older, some of them are strippers from the nearby club, and others are just random babes.

They all have their own histories, life situations, ongoing plotlines, interests, and their own kinks. It definitely helps make the game more than about hot sex scenes. Plus, sex is always better when your partner has some emotional depth.

As for the gaming choices, they are sporadic in terms of branching gameplay, but more frequently appear during sex scenes in the form of positions and, uh, finishing targets, if you know what I mean. There are a few small “free roam” segments where the player chooses between mall stores or searches several rooms for clues or items.

There were a few of the ladies for which one chooses how much they want to emotionally invest in them, and I suspect that choice might be a more critical branching point than most, but I did not test it. The cute purple-haired girl seen in most of the game’s promotional stuff is Julia, and I had no problem with the game guiding me toward her.

Chloe is the other normal-proportioned college girl who is instantly captivating as well, as a character and a potential friend with benefits. If these two, or the dancer Alyssa, are meant to be more special to the player than the rest of the ladies, it sure makes the player go through a lot of hot action with the other characters before they couple. How am I supposed to feel like I'm being special to someone when in the last 24 hours I had been with a married woman and a hot co-worker? 

The characters and their storylines start coming together at the end of Season 1, with the final "boss battle" being your first time going all the way with Julia. It's handled tastefully before all hell breaks loose at the end of the first season after an epic finale.

I was going to take some time off before playing the recently-released second season, but I clicked on a trailer for it that had a quick scene I knew had to be the Season Two "boss battle", and yeah, boy was I was right. I won't spoil that here, but sure enough, after that the second season ends with a hell of a cliffhanger - just as the first did. My saves from the first season carried over seamlessly into the second, which was good.

I doubt I'll play too many of these going forward, but FreshWomen Season One and Two were good dirty fun, and showed more emotional depth in the characters than I had anticipated. There's a sort of a soap opera feel to it all so you know I've already "wishlisted" Season 3. 

The First Three Games I Reacquired for the VIC 20

I may have mentioned these three in my previous VIC 20 blog entry, but I want to elaborate on them some more. I plan to write about each VIC 20 game I get, either by itself if it is needed, or in batches of two or three like this.

Adventureland (Commodore/Adventure International)

Scott Adams and his company Adventure International pioneered the text adventure on early home computers, and Commodore was smart enough to give him a call when they launched the VIC 20. His first five out of dozens of games were ported to VIC 20 cartridges, and Adventureland was the first among those. It was also my first text adventure once I got the VIC, as well as the first computer game where I beat the campaign, mapping out the world and detailing the game's solution as I did.

It plays like the original Colossal Cave, where the player must collect a certain number of treasures. Various puzzles must be solved to get them, of course, but as always with text adventures it often comes down to a matter of the player figuring out what word to use for an action. Somehow, 16 year old me made it through and detailed all of it. I hope to create a "Maps" section on this blog someday and scan that puppy into it and share it with the world.

Mission Impossible Adventure (Commodore/Adventure International)

There were five Adventure International text adventures ported to the VIC 20, and this obtuse one is the only one I did not beat - yet. I picked it up later in my collecting days and barely played it and had only mapped out a bit. This is literally my oldest "unfinished business" game, and it's a head scratcher.

So far, I've figured out how to get to two new rooms beyond my previous attempts but remain stuck until I get off of my ass and sit down and really get into it. Honestly, text adventures can be dry and require meticulous attention to detail as well as shitloads of trial and error, and I get distracted easily by other shiny games.

Crush, Crumble, & Chomp (Epyx)

This title was my Game of the Year in 1983, acquired by sheer luck just after Christmas at a holiday-decimated-and-probably-closing Swallen's store in Mansfield, Ohio. It was the last copy in a disorganized glass display case with some other gaming stuff, and it took me fifteen minutes to find an employee to retrieve it. I love this game enough to have reacquired it just to display the box.

The game itself is an early example of a real time strategy game of sorts, with events in the game happening whether the player moves or not. It also requires the 16K memory expander cartridge and loads up from a cassette. Thus, this was the game I used to test my reacquired cassette drive for the VIC 20. It passed with flying colors. The load times are of course very, very long using this method but the game is worth the wait.

Talk about variety - six monster types, four city maps to play on, and five variations, which were just variations of the goals the player had. Players move, stomp, grab people for food, breathe fire, and so forth while the humans run in terror. Except the ones that don't run in terror, they shoot back. It starts with police cars but quickly works its way up to helicopters and tanks.

A monster's life is not easy, though, and hunger is a constant threat as well. Starve your monster and they just go berzerk, meaning the player loses control until the beast is killed or actually eats enough in berzerk mode to regain its composure. It's fun to watch but it usually means the game is over. Game over, by the way, means reloading the whole thing again and waiting again. 

But it's worth it. Later in the 1980s the game's publisher, Epyx, released The Movie Monster Game for the Commodore 64, a much more polished version of the concept. Still, Crush, Crumble, & Chomp remains a masterpiece of a game that was decidedly different than anything else out at the time.

 

Beaten: Lunacid (PC/Steam)

Like many gamers, I spent a lot of the 2010s in From Software's now legendary Souls games, after beating Demon's Souls in late 2009 and continuing on with Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2, Bloodbourne, and Dark Souls 3 at the end of the decade. Unlike most of those gamers, I had already known that From was a unique and amazing studio, thanks to their King's Field games in the late 1990s and very early 2000s. Every bit as dark and brooding as the Souls games, the Field games had the seeds of everything folks loved about the Souls games - including the lack of hand-holding and overall difficulty.

While I was elated when From Software finally got the success and recognition they deserved among gamers who played the Souls games, I was kind of hoping for them to do something nostalgic with their King's Field games, but no such luck, as no remake, remaster, or collection has yet emerged. Fortunately, I wasn't the only one fondly remembering those games, as the makers of Lunacid have created an original King's Field style of game for PC that captures all of the wonder and mystery of those old titles.

Lunacid is both a love letter to the King's Field series and a whole new game of its own. It's a first person adventure with stats, currency, loot, and character development, tons of exploration and re-exploration, and lots of that crazy Japanese-style weirdness seen in From Software games. The graphics as well reflect that era, being boxy and clunky at times while still detailed and immersive. 

The music is moody and plays well with the environments. There are multiple large areas to explore, lots of enemies to face, and tons of secrets behind hidden walls to find. Some character and monster designs are original, but some like the Venus Flytrap are almost exactly like they were in King’s Field. 

Combat is also similar to the game’s inspirational roots, where you have to make sure you are close enough to hit by walking into your swing a bit. It’s easy to get used to, and the good news is that Lunacid runs on modern hardware so having to take lag into account as you swing your sword a la King’s Field is no longer an issue. 

There are so many unique weapons in this game and they just keep coming, but you can only have two equipped at a time. With no weight limit you carry them all from the moment you get them, so no time is wasted juggling that stuff at a storage chest, just inside your character inventory. Some weapons have elemental properties and a few can be upgraded a bit at the small settlement the player frequents. 

Magic is done via wearable rings, another shout out to From Software as they love love love them some rings so much they made entire games called "Eternal Ring" and "Elden Ring". Like weapons, the player can have two equipped at a time, in spite of presumably having ten fingers.  I created a fighter character at the start of the game, but the rings are so essential and useful that I also levelled up my mana to be able to use them.

In fact, there seems to be no choice but to use magic in this game, and that is fine, as the rings come at the player as fast as the weapons. At first, I used some of the spells that cast elemental damages as a nice ranged attack to supplement my own archery attacks before engaging in melee attacks.  However, some rings have better uses, like the spell that reveals hit points and weaknesses of enemies. I think there was only one healing spell ring.

Coffin was my favorite. It's a ring that summons a full size wooden coffin. At first I thought it was a joke, but then I jumped up and summoned one under my feet to see if it would help me reach some high inaccessible areas. It did, and that was the whole function of it. Some hallways have ledges I could not reach before acquiring that spell. In one area, there was something on a tall stone tower, but the coffins don't stack very evenly and tend to tip over if one stacks them. I spent about a half an hour summoning coffins at that tower until there was a mountain of them and I could reach the top. It was good, silly fun.

The story was as weird as anything these days, and the game's main ending is not the end. There is one side door that requires the player to do a ton of tasks, and I did not pursue that yet. Other changes in the post-game world offer other things to discover, so maybe I will return to chase down those leads.

Lunacid was a dream come true for me, as the three King's Field games are the only trilogy I've beaten twice. The concept is that good, and the makers of Lunacid have proudly embraced it and delivered it to us few gamers who fondly remember how good it is.

OK, I'll Try PC Gaming Again

One of my goals this year was to get a modern, state of the art desktop PC, but not necessarily for gaming.  No, it was to replace an ancient laptop we'd been using for various non-gaming tasks for over a decade. Email, online stuff, music...that kind of use. It played Ultima Online well enough for a few years, and it had a few games like Zuma on it, but the slowass old Dell laptop was never intended for anything as fun as modern gaming.

Even when I owned PCs in the late 1990s and 2000s that were pretty up-to-date, I only had played UO, Everquest, and a few other MMORPG games on them, mostly after becoming discouraged by a few attempts to expand my PC library. There was a Star Wars first person shooter that took over eight hours to install, only to find out that my new computer's graphics card was not good enough or something. Several other game purchases ended similarly, with my lack of understanding about computer hardware and compatibility hindering me each time. 

By the late 2000s I was fully pulled back into consoles anyway, so the slow rise of platforms like Steam didn't catch my eye. What did catch my eye was the PC-only release of Lunacid, a King's Field-style first person dungeon crawler. I wanted that game, but being able to play it was not a part of my calculation when purchasing the behemoth of a PC I ended up with.

No, I wanted the damn thing to just fucking boot up fast, load shit fast, and run shit fast...and be dependable. Thanks to technological advances in the form of whatever solid state memory is, it seems to be that. So a month and a half ago I took the plunge and signed up for Steam, downloaded Lunacid, and played the crap out of it. I'll get to that later.

In spite of my past trauma with PC gaming, Steam has been a zero-hassle experience so far. Synching up a regular Microsoft XBox controller to the PC and Steam has also been easy has hell and I'm grateful for that. I remember failing miserably to get a Logitech console-style controller to work with anything in the 2000s as well.

The offerings in the Steam store seem to be vast but they do not seem to go for any kind of full retro library. There are certainly all kinds of categories of games there that I've never explored, so there is that. Lunacid, while not a graphically demanding game, is playing smoothly so far, easing my fears of having another clunker PC. I'm pretty old, so there is a part of me hoping that this is my last PC purchase and that this buff-ass machine chugs along with me, loaded up with games and memories.

Here's a good memory already, of alternating back and forth between Lunacid on the PC and Sword of Fargoal on the VIC 20. Truly, the best of both worlds.

So, Why the VIC-20?

 My recent re-acquisition of the legendary Commodore VIC 20 computer has been a source of joy here in the end-times, but it's library pales in comparison with its successor, the Commodore 64. The VIC has less memory and processing power, most games are on cartridge or cassette and not floppy disk, and it only enjoyed a year or so of real success before it was overshadowed by the C64, resulting in a small library of great but generally not that sophisticated games.

The idea to start getting games for both the VIC and 64 popped into my head earlier this year, when I saw Crush, Crumble, and Chomp for the VIC on Ebay for a reasonable price, resulting in an impulse buy. It is a gorgeous box to just display on a shelf, but I wasn’t seriously considering reacquiring the hardware to play it. I mean, if I did, I would need the 16K expansion cartridge as well. 

Before long I had that, as well as Adventureland and Impossible Mission, two of the classic Scott Adams text adventure games. They were just so cheap, you see. Adventureland I had beaten back in the day but Mission Impossible was an unfinished business game. If I was going to reacquire the VIC, I would play that since I never beat it. However, I was still on the fence.

Meanwhile, I got Sword of Kadash, The Standing Stones, and Top 20 Solid Gold for the Commodore 64. So the stage was set for me to decide either way. I was leaning toward the Commodore 64 at first, as back in July was the 40th anniversary of my purchase of that computer.

Ultimately, I got the VIC 20 and there are some good reasons.

First, I abandoned the VIC as soon as I got the C64, and even when I began retro-collecting in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I rarely ever added to the small library I had. So my exploration of its library in 1983 and 1984 was short, limited to a few stores around my small town and the neighboring city as well as my high school student/restaurant bus boy budget.

Second, a few years ago I reacquired every issue of the early 1980s Electronic Games magazine. While I have lauded the publication much in the past, I may have failed to mention its use as a guide to what was happening in that greatest era of gaming. The entire print run was trying (and pretty much succeeding ) to cover arcades, consoles, computers, and handheld games (LED and LCD types), and at first seemed tilted toward arcades and consoles.

However, the rapid success of the Commodore VIC 20, making it the first home computer in history to sell over a million units, caught their attention more than the surge of advertisers that started taking out two page ads for their upcoming VIC 20 games and software. By the time they heralded "EXPANDED VIC 20 GAME COVERAGE" on the cover of their July 1983 issue, companies like Tronix had already been taking out two-page ads in previous issues. There were plenty of VIC 20 games to review by then.

The magazine just reiterated what those game publishers already knew - the VIC was getting into homes thanks to its low price, and those new owners wanted games. Reading those issues, however, paints a pretty good picture of a market scrambling to get those games into homes, and by the time they did, the VIC was already being eclipsed by the Commodore 64. 

The result is a large library of arcade-type games with a mix of more sophisticated software as well, that occurred during the absolute peak of early eighties computer gaming. Already established companies like Epyx translated existing Apple and Atari computer hits like Crush, Crumble, & Chomp and Starquest Rescue at Rigel, while other companies scrambled to get anything on the VIC that they could.

For the arcade games, the model of arcade-to-home was absolutely prevalent at that time, and the VIC had the power to handle that. Commodore themselves took on that front by licensing Gorf and Omega Race, two semi-obscure arcade hits that play great on its machine. They also produced clones of Lunar Lander, Space Invaders, and Rally X, among other arcade classics.

Companies like Parker Brothers and Atarisoft brought further translations of arcade hits, but something else was happening in gaming at that point. Game designers were not only bringing ports of popular arcade games to the VIC, they were making incredibly innovative twists on them to help them stand out. I may have mentioned that in my Odyssey 2 article last year. Protector is like Defender, for example, a side-scrolling ship flying left or right across a landscape, shooting enemies and rescuing civilians. It adds much more detail to the background, has specific environmental threats, and sort of a time limit.

These variations on classic arcade themes at the time also pushed the VIC to its limits, with translations of Apple computer games like AE recreating its gorgeous backgrounds as well as possible. The arcade game Tutankham stands out as well with its gameplay and music being pretty close to the original. Almost every major game publisher had something for the VIC, and new companies popped up just because of it.

The VIC 20 bandwagon didn't roll for long, but it happened at one of the most innovative and interesting times in computer software design. I'm having a lot of fun playing those games now, and I can't wait to write about some of them in greater detail. Stay tuned!

Beaten: Mafia The Old Country (PS5)

Like many other gamers, the news of Grand Theft Auto VI being delayed until next year was not unexpected but still disappointing. Many of us surely looked at other upcoming releases for comfort, and I found the release of Mafia: The Old Country as a definite substitute for that kind of fun.

However, Mafia: The Old Country is like Mafia: The Definitive Edition, a linear game taking place in an open world. Completing each mission starts the next one, rather than the player having a list of quests or missions to do in the meantime. Sure, you can veer off the main path sometimes, but the story was so good I only touched on that part once, to make a side trip to the vendor of cars and horses.

Taking place in early 1900s Sicily, which is The Old Country, the player escapes slavery in a copper mine owned by one family and is taken in by their another family. Working your way up from stable hand to enforcer, the third-person action and gunplay is pretty standard. Boss fights, though, are always knife fights for some reason. The knife-fighting is fun enough, but grew tiresome by the game's end. The last two boss fights I tried button mashing, and it worked. 

Since it is the early 1900s, vehicles come in two types: horses and cars. I have to say that these cars are the oldest I've driven in a videogame, and they were classy, long autos with challenging handling. Both horses and cars can be purchased and upgraded, I think, from that one vendor down the road.

Getting back to the story, it was a pretty good adventure. However, knowing it's a Mafia story, I was expecting a tragic ending all along, and was not disappointed in that regard. All the characters are well-written and even the minor ones show unique personalities, adding to the depth of the story. I knew not to get attached to them, though, as life in that time and era were tough.

The graphics are gorgeous, as expected, and a version of Mt. Etna is in the background, sometimes rumbling, but for the final boss fight, it put on a nice, historically-inaccurate eruption. I've loved all the Mafia games so far, but this one is the best. A future patch promises to do more with the open world, but the main game, with its setting and story, was enough for me.

Beaten: Heretic (Series)

They are remastering many classic 1990s first person shooters these days and I am here for it. I’ve recently enjoyed Powerslave: Exhumed and Quake, but one series I had no hope of seeing redone has finally emerged with the complete series in one collection, with new add-on levels as well. Heretic + Hexen was a surprise announcement a few weeks ago with an immediate release at a low price. For me, it appeared on XBox's Super Elite Platinum Plus Game Pass thing, so it was there as a part of my subscription.

I had only played the spin-off game Hexen previously, on a great Nintendo 64 version, but I found it pretty cool and will eventually go back and beat it too. But first was Heretic, because I like to play series of games in order if I can. In essence, Heretic is a re-skinned Doom game, using a modified version of the Doom engine, that plays like Doom with a few exceptions. 

There is now an inventory and items that can be used at will, rather than as it was in Doom where the item activated once you picked it up. They were fun to use and added another strategic dimension to the whole thing, where I would hoard them and then use them in a panic as needed. 

Just like Doom, there are secret areas to be found, and the game totals your kills and the percentage of secrets you found at the end. The magic weapons are fun to explore, and like Doom, get better and more powerful as you go. Ammo is not unreasonably tight in supply but shortages can happen if one relies on one particular weapon too much, as I did the green crossbow.

It was long enough to be fun but short enough not to wear out its welcome, so I will definitely be back to beat Hexen sooner rather than later. With all these remakes of 1990s first person classics, won't somebody remake Redneck Rampage? I only got to play a few minutes of it back in the day so I'd appreciate an update of that one too, if any game companies or their AIs are listening.

Snapshot: How Far We’ve Come

 

Expanded VIC 20 Coverage!

 

(Yeah, this story deserves a big headline. I wasn't sure how to do it with Blogger.)

It was always inevitable that, if I felt my personal income could do it, I would look back at the golden age of videogames and nostalgia would take me over and I would pull the trigger on Ebay to get some of those games back. It finally happened a few weeks ago.

I have reacquired a Commodore Vic 20 computer and cassette drive, along with a few classic games to start, with more coming in. Earlier this year, the idea to get either a Vic20 or Commodore 64 took root when I picked up a few games on Ebay out of nostalgia, but also because the prices were lower than I thought they would be.

Then my mind began to consider "Is there room for it on my desk?", "Can I trust Ebay sellers on this?" and other such important aspects of adding a new member into your videogame family. As time passed and the rationalizations fell away, I knew that in the summer I would probably be able to get one of those computers. 

I found what looked to be a reputable seller on Ebay who had the VIC 20 and a cassette drive, selling them as is. Seeing that the seller's other items were all vintage electronics and not just computers, I took the dive and bought it for about the same price Dad had paid in the summer of 1983. The cassette was another fifty dollars on top of that, well worth it as the best VIC 20 games are on cassette.

Look for Commodore VIC 20 game reviews and other articles soon. The VIC 20 is a very special computer to me, but it has an important place in computer history that few people are aware of. 

Beaten: Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising (GBA)

 Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising is an important game to me for a lot of reasons. In the early 2000s, I had pretty much abandoned consoles for PC gaming, thanks to MMORPGs hitting the scene. I was all in on Nintendo 64 and Playstation in the late 90s. When I got Ultima Online in January of 1998, it was the same week Resident Evil 2 finally hit. I barely played it as UO was such a new and refreshing game.

I didn't miss The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time of course, but console gaming lost its luster once I was online experiencing new and amazing things. I had also been disappointed by the Game Boy Pocket and had soured on handhelds. Even when I saw a co-worker with a Game Boy Advance, I said it looked like a cheap Game Gear and passed. 

The turning point was a magazine I had purchased which showed off two things of great interest. The first of course was Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising. Having not heard of its predecessor, or that it was a portable turn-based strategy game like Military Madness on the Turbografx 16, I was surprised that what I thought was an obscure genre was showing up and looking so good on the Game Boy Advance SP, the second thing of great interest in that magazine.

The Game Boy Advance SP had a better screen and an awesome clamshell design that made it more portable, more playable and just plain cooler. Combined with the possibility of a portable turn-based strategy game that allows you to save your progress, it was a no-brainer purchase. 

Advance Wars 2 was exactly what I had hoped it would be-Military Madness-level complexity-challenging enough to be tough but not deep enough you need a spreadsheet. My first playthrough ended at the final battle, so overwhelming to me that I never finished it. It is a hard game to just pick up years later, jump into the final battle, and do any better.

No, to resolve this unfinished business with Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising, I had to start over from the beginning. After finally beating Advance Wars a few years ago, I was primed for the sequel. I will state right here that Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising is a much more advanced Advance Wars than Advance Wars was. 

In the first game in the series, the learning curve is pretty evenly paced throughout the campaign, bringing the player up to speed on each aspect of the gameplay as the story progresses alongside. In the sequel, the first few maps are the curve and then it gets really....advanced.

The battles get more difficult quickly, and I know because there is a difficulty rating shown next to each battle on the map screen based on a number of stars.  I seem to recall Advance Wars had battle difficulties of 2, 3, or 4 stars, with some of the last levels reaching 5 stars. Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising breaks past the five star ceiling pretty quickly. None of this is a complaint, it's a compliment as a sequel should do exactly that.

Players control infantry, vehicles, ships, subs, aircraft, and so forth, and capture cities, factories, airports, and naval bases to help fund the war and generate new units. Each turn is about movement, attack, retreat, and generating new units with the funds you have. It's all presented in a cutesy-fun 16-bit sprite look which is a weird juxtaposition with the horrors of war you have to unleash to win.

The game has you pick a CO, or commanding officer, in each round to lead the troops. These characters have different strengths and weaknesses, and each has a special attack that they can use once charged up by combat experience.  The back-and-forth between these characters, and the enemy CO's, help tell the loose story.

When they say advanced they mean it. The battles each have goals, usually to take out the enemy by eliminating them or capturing their base. Some missions have time limits as well. In one seemingly hopeless battle, the player has to hold out with only a few resources for a certain number of turns before rescue arrives. My strategy to defend it quickly fell apart so I just kept generating infantry troops to flood the battlefield and stall the enemy. Sorry, little cannon fodder guys.

The enemy deploys some fixed super-guns in some levels that the player must take out or avoid to win the battle. These have a greater range than mobile artillery so they player's movement is often restricted. There are battles that are all air power or predominantly naval power, but most of the action is on the ground. In another cool level, a volcano erupts regularly, spraying liquid hot magma onto certain spaces. I never figured out the pattern.

When I finally made it to the final battle, I remembered why I gave up. It, too, is time-limited. Of course, the final enemy CO is way overpowered and has all the resources he needs to wipe out your troops fairly quickly. It took about four tries to beat it, and I did so in an unexpected and heroic way.

To win, the player has to take out the control base for a doomsday rocket that will launch after a certain number of turns (thirty, I think it was). I developed a strategy to draw the enemy south to meet my main force near my base. Their super guns covered the area north of it, so there was no going that way. For this battle, the player gets to command three COs working in tandem.

So I put the CO that was good with air power on the east side of the screen, the guy who could do the best at ground battles in the middle, and the guy with the snowstorm special attack on the left, knowing he could do some damage to all units once powered up.

The enemy certainly took the bait in the middle, but also noticed the danger of the air power guy on the right as he built up some bombers for an assault on the guns protecting the doomsday rocket. But, I had also created a bomber on the left as well, with the guy not known for air power, to try the same assault.

The enemy went after air power guy's stuff hard and wiped out his first wave. In the middle, as expected, the main battle was all over the place but I was grinding down everything the enemy was throwing at me there. So to my surprise, the snow guy's bomber was able to penetrate their defenses and take out one of the big guns protecting the doomsday weapon. While that got the enemy's attention, they only took one shot at the bomber with an anti-aircraft gun before deciding to aim elsewhere.

So with only 5 out of the 10 bombers left and all of them low on fuel and ammo, I went for the doomsday weapon. It took two shots and I just had enough ammo for exactly that. I won.

The crews of those five bombers were I assume given a ticker-tape parade later. Finishing Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising was a pure joy, and it certainly reminded me of how much I enjoy those types of games from time to time. Next up is Advance Wars: Dual Strike on the Nintendo DS. I might not wait too long before starting that one, though.

Beaten: Control (One)

 After being surprised by and subsequently finishing Alan Wake 2 roughly a year and a half ago, I made a note to go back and play the studio's previous shared-universe game, Control. References to the game were scattered in Alan Wake 2, with one of the agents being a Federal Bureau of Control agent sent to investigate all the wackiness in that small town.

It turns out that their shared universe is full of reality bending objects and extradimensional messiness, so the Federal Bureau of Control was created to collect it all and house it in a building that is also some weird reality-bending place. The main character you play is there to find her missing brother, but quickly takes the lead of the agency as the building itself is under siege from extradimensional creatures called The Hiss.

There is a lot of backstory here but it is not presented in a linear fashion; instead, pieces of it fall into place as you fight your way through the building. It's an interesting and sophisticated storytelling technique, but the result for me was to not really care and just work my way through the game and take it in as I go. There's lots of lore to discover, and I didn't devour it ravenously, but took little bites as I went.

The action is third-person shooting with lots of great aspects. Your gun, of course, is itself some extradimensional shape-shifting device that transforms from the usual pistol to variations of shotguns, rifles, and so forth. It was truly cool and unique, but the other power you have, telekinesis, is handled exceptionally well. Grabbing objects and hurtling them at great speed toward enemies was absolutely joyful and never got old.

So the action is good, with the Hiss levelling up alongside you and presenting new enemies and challenges as you go. The building itself is vast, requiring you to capture and cleanse certain points that then become fast travel locations as well as restart points. New challenges pop up too, since you were put in charge after all, giving you side quests, but I ignored them for the most part.

Control is a pretty good game and in another life I would have had time to give it more of my attention and seen more of its world. However, the constant respawn of enemies in areas you had already cleared discouraged me from exploration beyond the main story. I can recommend Control to any Alan Wake fan, but only if they just can't get enough of that world. 

The King of Wacky Packages

 It was a humbling lesson, to eight-year-old me over half a century ago, that no matter how much passion you feel for something, no matter what level of expertise you bring to it - there's always someone else out there who is better at it than you and has more resources to pursue it. It took some nifty packaging parody stickers to teach me that in 1975, as Topps, the famed baseball card company, released Wacky Package stickers to the world.

I saw them first on a short family trip to southern Ohio to visit a relative. We had stopped at a gas station that had them on sale and I convinced Dad to buy me a pack, which was a classic road trip move most kids probably had then. It had a few stickers and a stick of standard Topps petrified gum in it, and I was mesmerized:

The following week, back home, they turned up at the Summit Street carry-out and there went a cut of my lunch money. We kids called it "Harold's" after the owner/operator, and he was glad to see us there buying candy after school when we could. The Wacky Packages were funny as hell to me in third grade, sort of an introduction to satire if you will, and I wanted to collect them all. I wanted to see them all, possess them all, and become the King of Wacky Packages, a title made up in my own weird childhood head.

Summit Street Carry-Out AKA Harold’s, now just a home.

Anyone who has collected anything like that knows that - when there is a series of anything to collect - that the last two or three will be the hardest to get. One never knows how much care went into shuffling them up at the printer/packager, but to get a complete set may mean weeks and weeks of purchasing the item, hoping to get a pack with that one rare one. 

That's where I was in third grade, down to one or two, when the rich kid in class showed up and laid out his two full sets and extras. While he had an extra one of the last one I needed for a complete set, he would not trade anything I had for it. All of the extras I had, he had in more numbers anyway. Plus, he felt special being the only one with a full set, and if I accomplished that, it would diminish his achievement.

The lesson I learned that day was that all my passion for it, all my careful moves to get a full set, were not enough to make me the King of Wacky Packages in third grade. My own sense of accomplishment was diminished knowing that whoever has the most money wins most things in life. Still, the stickers were funny and I kept picking them up.

Later, I grew up and did not let other people's accomplishments shadow my own, learning to enjoy what I enjoyed in life without comparing it to others'. I collect things I want to enjoy them as I want, not to compare them to what others have.

Here is most of what is left of my 1970s Wacky Packages. I had peeled the stickers and put them in a blank book, and later transferred them to a photo album, before finally framing them in 2013:

In the 1980s, as a teenager, I collected the new series as well. I did not want to grow up and lose my sense of humor. This time, I had enough financial resources to complete a set. I had peeled them and put them in a similar book to the one I used in the 1970s, but that booklet was lost sometime after I moved out of my parent's home. My best guess is that I left it in the basement and Mom threw it out later during a junk purge. A damaged checklist was recovered from the basement later:

In the 1990s, as an adult, I collected them again, as the Wacky Packages showed up at my comic book store. I completed that set and still have those in an album today. There was also a cool poster one could assemble by using the back of the checklist card:

A few years ago, I saw that there were two art books for sale showing the 1970s Wacky Packages, and picked them up too. What was cool about those art books were introductions from the original artists and some never-released designs made into actual Wacky Packages!

At some point in the 2010s, someone I knew bought me a modern pack of Wacky Packages. You can tell the era by the one sticker for “Super Mario Fart”.

Finally, sometime after the pandemic in the early 2020s, my adventures took me to a fancy stationary store where, by the cash register, there were little 3D-printed Wacky Packages of various products for sale. I didn’t buy one but smiled as the parody of products and packaging continues, even if not in sticker form.

I'll never go gung ho for Wacky Packages save for what I currently have. Vintage video games are expensive enough, and what I have saved of my Wacky Packages - especially those two books - are enough to get a chuckle out of me as they are.

Now, Trog-Lo-Dytes Action Packs are another matter entirely. That's a story for next year, though.

Beaten: Lego Star Wars The Complete Saga (360)

 While I was smart enough to not have children in pre-apocalypse America, a lot of my friends and co-workers did, and they raised them on videogames so they could keep playing too. Starting around 2010, I heard from those friends how great the Lego games were, even for them as adults. While the Lego games covered a lot of pop culture (Star Wars, Marvel Comics, Harry Potter, etc), they never seemed like something I would enjoy.

The recommendations continued over the years, focused on how the games had humor and were easy to play co-op alongside your offspring. I pushed those endorsements aside as I had other games to play. My recent decision to throw a "palate cleanser" easy game into my mix, however, brought me to play Lego Star Wars The Complete Saga on the Xbox 360, via Gamepass on the Xbox One. I choose "The Complete Saga" over "The Skywalker Saga" because those last three movies were tragically bad.

So I had six movies, each broken down into six chapters, to play through and see if those old recommendations were valid or just another case of parents endorsing things to their childless friends because misery loves company. It turned out about as I expected. It was fun but only in small doses, and challenge existed mostly through environmental puzzles that needed solving to progress.

The story diverges from the movies here and there, the dialogue-less characters give puzzling expressions at times, and there’s a huge focus on collection quests and unlocking stuff.

Which makes sense. Keep the kids busy with those time-consuming tasks and you don’t have to get them the next big game yet. 

I probably won’t play any more Lego games but I’m glad I got through this one so that I have a better understanding of what my dad-friends were going through. I hope they made good memories of playing side by side with their sons and daughters with those Lego games.

Beaten: The Castlevania Adventure (Game Boy)

 Finishing up yet another classic Game Boy platformer with my modern Analogue Pocket and its save anywhere ability, I did something I’ve only done once before: I beat a Castlevania game! 

This series is special to me and I have lots of Castlevania games unfinished in my collection, but I’ve only beaten Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest before. The rest, I play, I’m in awe, but then I hit a wall that breaks down my resolve to continue.

These games are top level Konami platformers, which were kind of like From Software’s Souls games of the 2010s, just in the NES/ SNES era and mostly 2D hellscapes of painful sidescrolling. Only the most dedicated players would beat them.

I picked up The Castlevania Adventure for my Game Boy on August 9, 1991, which was over a year after it had come out. Hey, I was on a tight budget and supporting a Turbografx 16, an Atari VCS, and a Commodore 64 at the time, so the Game Boy library grew slowly.

I think I made it past the first boss once back then, but quickly used up my remaining lives in the next level and put it away. Over the years I pulled it out and played it many more times, but I never made it much farther than that.

Playing through, I realized that I’ve been getting psyched out by the difficulty of these and discouraged by the repetition, when, in essence they are not insanely hard. Each encounter I had after each save point I made was reasonably difficult to figure out, meaning that the attacks, dodges, and jumps I had to make would only take a few tries to get right.

Even the final boss, Dracula himself, had an easily discernible attack pattern for both of his phases. Once the player knows it, it isn’t too hard finish him off and start the end credits rolling.

I’ve just about finished all of the old Game Boy platformers that are in my meager library at this point. The two remaining - Ren & Stimpy’s Space Cadet Adventures and The Amazing Spider-Man - were pretty bad.

I really need to toughen up and go after the first Castlevania game next. Then like ten of its sequels. They are great games, but I’ve always taken them in small doses and never felt guilty about abandoning them when things got tough. 

For now, though, I’m good with just beating The Castlevania Adventure on the Game Boy. 

Beaten: Atomfall (Series)

 Back in the day it was a risky thing to buy a brand new game without having waited for the magazine reviews. You could get home with it and find out quickly that it was not the game you were hoping for based on the box art and description on the back. These days, there are downloadable demos, quick internet reviews, plus the fact that many new games end up in one of the subscription services that exist.

I admit to not taking full advantage of XBox's Game Pass Platinum Ultimate Game Pass thing, but rather just using it to try out one or two new games a year. It was in this manner that I came across Atomfall, a new first-person adventure set in 1960s England in a countryside area sealed off after a science experiment goes wrong. I tried it out for a few hours to see if it was worth diving into, and it was.

It's got first person gunplay and melee combat, lots of exploration across 5 large areas, with smaller areas opening up within them. The areas are gorgeous, with ruined buildings, flowing rivers, and trees and bushes all over. Learning each area, and the various routes to navigate through them and between them, was a blast. The world is very well designed in this manner.

Combat is fun first-person stuff but there are limited weapons available, as one would expect in an area of the country that has been shut off for apparently years before the gamer joins. There are some slight upgrades available, I think, but I never explored that.

Enemies are limited to several factions, one being the usual post-apocalyptic outcasts, another being fascist British soldiers that are oppressively locking down a tiny town with like 15 people. The fascists have tall robots which are fun to fight, too. Finally there are nature freaks deep in the woods that are trying to make things worse as well.

Critters include ferals, bees, and very angry plants, so there is medium variety. You can clear an area out for awhile but return visits later usually result in respawned foes. Random patrols also come through to keep things interesting, so the frequent backtracking one does can be full of surprises.

The player gets a couple of cool gadgets in the form of a metal detector and a signal redirector. The detector beeps when the player is close to something, but then requires a few seconds of finesse to nail down the exact spot before the loot can be had.

The signal redirector allows power to be rerouted at junctions and a few other functions. These puzzles are pretty easy but rewarding nonetheless. The player doesn’t get the metal detector or signal redirector right away, so lots of Metroidvania backtracking is needed, but I found it enjoyable as the map design is devious at times, with tunnels and other routes between areas. 

The game’s story concludes with not a boss fight (although there are tough enemies to fight if one chooses) but with several choices based on what faction or scientist or other asshole the player decides to listen to. I enjoyed the ending I choose but could easily load up a save before the final area and make a different choice to see the other endings.

I enjoyed Atomfall quite a bit. It was big enough and deep enough to pull me in but didn’t bloat itself up with content. It concluded in a timely and satisfying manner and gave me the first person adventure fix I was looking for.

Another Great Use for the Analogue Pocket with Save States

I’ve been gushing about the Analogue Pocket portable for over a year now, lauding its crisp screen and its ability to create “save states” anywhere in a Game Boy, Game Boy Color, or Game Boy Advance game while playing. These saves are created on a regular everyday micro SD card thingy plugged into the device.

This ability has allowed me to play through old 2D platformer games without having to repeat difficult sections or battles. Traditionally those games have no save points at all, just continues, making repetition the difficult part of playing those games to completion.

For games that do have saves built into them, the Analogue Pocket’s save states can be a good secondary save option. A game may only save at the end of each level by design, for example, but with save states one can create convenient mid-level saves. 

Finally, I’m starting to see the save batteries fail in Game Boy games older than thirty years. My saves on the Final Fantasy Legend trilogy, for example, are all gone. Thanks to the save states of the Analogue Pocket, those games are still playable by using the micro SD card to create saves instead, should I desire to play those games again.

A new use occurred to me the other day: use the save states to save high scores on arcade games that do not have a battery backup. Games without the battery only save the high scores for each session of gameplay, and the scores are erased as soon as the game is turned off. With the save state on the Analogue Pocket, one can save their high scores for much longer. 

I’m testing it with Xevious for the Game Boy Advance. That mid-eighties arcade classic holds a special place in my heart as it was in the student rec room at Mansfield OSU when I was taking classes there, but I digress:

That’s not a very high score yet, but I just started playing it again.

The ability to play old games with new hardware has been a middle aged joy for me. Finding clever ways to enhance those games using features like save states just adds to their value.

Beaten: Powerslave Exhumed (Saturn/One)

 I've been getting my fix of late 1990s first person shooters over the past few years, beating Marathon:Durandal and Quake for example, but when I saw that Powerslave Exhumed was available I had to get it, as the original Powerslave was one of my "unfinished business" games, which are games that I played in the past but never beat. 

I had purchased the Sega Saturn version of Powerslave in late 1996 as it beat the Playstation version to market for some reason. My purchase of the Sega Saturn at release in May of 1995 had proven to be a mistake once Sony released the Playstation later that year. By late 1996 Sony had clearly already vanquished the Saturn by having games like Wipeout, Resident Evil, and Tomb Raider out, so I felt that I needed to boost my Saturn library, and Powerslave sounded cool.

I cannot remember where I was stuck, but it might have been on the first boss, Set. So I downloaded Powerslave Exhumed, a modern port for consoles and PC created by Night Dive Studios that retains the graphics and gameplay of the original. Since the original was so good, that is a plus.

It's a first person shooter, sure, but also a first person platformer at times, getting both gameplay aspects right. The other awesome aspect of this game is it's "Metroidvania" style of progression, created well before that was a word, meaning that the player opens up areas as they go and those areas will require repeated visits once the player acquires new items. Some areas, for examples, have multiple exits with one of them on a high ledge, meaning the player needs to acquire a certain artifact to make the jump.

Powerslave was an Iron Maiden album before it was a game, with a cool ancient Egyptian theme, and the game Powerslave recreates that theme in each level. The levels are large and varied in theme, each with the standard 1990s keys and doors that must be acquired and used during each visit to that level. So the backtracking one does is not that easy, as each key needs to be reacquired and each door reopened, every time one goes through the level.

It's not frustrating, though, as the level design is absolutely awesome, making levels fun to revisit. The weapons keep coming throughout one's playthrough, and once acquired, they remain in one's inventory forever. Starting with a sword (great for underwater fish fights), the player gets a pistol, a large machine gun, a grenade, and then some interesting magical weapons like a snake staff, a fireball ring, and a lightning bolt spell before it's all done. 

Ammo drops from fallen enemies are generic, meaning that whatever weapon one is holding will get the ammo refilled. So if the player is low on machine gun ammo but was using the pistol to kill enemies and some ammo drops, the player must switch to the machine gun before picking up the ammo.

There are a few boss fights, and they are memorable and challenging, but there’s no health meters on these guys, so just keep shooting and moving. While Set gave me some trouble again (I almost gave up there again), I got the final boss on my first try.

The wave of first person shooters following Doom were often creative in their attempts to stand out in the crowd, but the under appreciated Powerslave had more going on in it than I realized back in late 1996. I’m glad the folks at Night Dive Studios released Powerslave Exhumed so I could wrap up that bit of unfinished business.

Beaten: Grand Theft Auto 3 The Definitive Edition (PS4)

There are lots of games I missed over the years, but in 2001 when Grand Theft Auto 3 landed on the Playstation 2, I was off in MMORPG land, playing Ultima Online, and not really paying attention to consoles anymore. Of course I heard about it from all sorts of media and from co-workers who were playing it, but I was too busy with UO and the fansite I had to take notice.

Not that third person open world traversal was all that new to me in gaming (Tail of the Sun on PS1), but the model was solidified with GTA 3. In its aftermath I enjoyed The Simpsons Hit and Run on the Gamecube and later Bully on the Wii before finally getting on board with Grand Theft Auto 4 in August of 2008 on my shiny new XBox 360. 

With the long wait for GTA 6 supposedly ending later this year, I decided to go back to the roots of all this mayhem with Grand Theft Auto 3 The Definitive Edition and just try it out to see if it could hook me. I could have gotten the PS2 version and played it as it was released, but the Definitive Edition has multiple graphic, control, and interface improvements that reduced the frustration of missions that require multiple attempts. The icing on the cake was playing it on my PS5, with load times reduced to seconds.

The core story and gameplay are all intact and GTA 3 reminded me of how much I love the chaos that sometimes comes with these games. The physics of how cars handle takes getting used to as they seem to be lighter than they should be and even a low speed collision can have silly physics consequences.

The story is about what I expected with the glaring exception of the player’s character being mute. It works as a storytelling device as the cast of criminal underworld characters gets to shine with their demands. Cut scenes are all made from the in-game engine and the blocky characters are good for 2001. Whatever level of upgrade they did graphically kept the 2001 look but polished it up really well. Performance is quick and smooth.

The missions that make up the main story are varied, with some on strict time limits. Normally these time limit missions frustrate me, but GTA 3 is so well designed that all it took for most of them are repeated tries once one figures out what to do. One such tight-on-time mission required the player to take out a series of taco stands across all three islands in under nine minutes. It felt impossible at first, but once I realized that they are in the same location during every attempt, it was matter of memorizing those locations, figuring out the most efficient route, and then trying it a few times until I got it right.

Another great design standard established in GTA 3 is the balance between exploration and story progress. By that I mean, if the player follows the story missions, they are introduced to enough of the map to understand the basics of traversal across the three islands and the waterways between them. For explorers like me, the rewards were great enough to give the maps a little more scrutiny. Players can find spawns of health restoring hearts, essential body armor, weapons, and hidden packages by checking out incredibly well-designed map.

The hidden packages were fun enough that I spent a little more time searching for them, and the reward granted for every 10 recovered - a weapon spawn at one' s hideouts - was also worthwhile. I got to about 82 of them, and in the searching I got to to the hidden area in the screenshot above. Other side missions were fun to varying degrees but I did not delve too deep into them.

I had so much fun playing this landmark game over the last month, which is so well made that even the frustrating parts - mostly time limit missions - were manageable and even fun to repeat. Like real life, even when you plan every detail out, running a mission in Grand Theft Auto The Definitive Edition can go a lot of unexpected and crazy ways that are usually so chaotic and silly that one can't help but laugh.

Beaten: Wizards & Warriors X: The Fortress of Fear (Gameboy)

One of the hardest action-platformers I had left unfinished for the Game Boy was Wizards & Warriors X: The Fortress of Fear, a continuation of the NES game series. Those games were fun and frantic, with the first one made easy to beat with unlimited continues, and the second one being much more challenging.

For the Game Boy entry into the series, they made a tighter, tougher, and shorter experience built solely around horizontal side scrolling in a single fortress. There are no wilderness areas nor vertically scrolling levels. 

Armed with just a sword and a flighty, pointy-toed jump, the player fights their way past all sorts of monsters and other defenses, picking up minor loot like gems, food, drink, keys, and extra lives. Every ten gems collected equals an extra life as well.

Keys unlock the chests one encounters, but the placement of these items is not usually connected. Grab keys when you see them, a chest will be around at some point. Chest items are either more gems, an extra life, the Shield of Protection (no idea what it did), and the most useful Boots of Jumping.

I always tried to get and keep those boots, which allow for farther jumps and soft landings. Luckily the chest loot is not random so one can note which chest has what reward.

Some levels have multiple paths through them and hidden areas discovered by exploration, including the classic “above the screen” areas as seen since Super Mario Bros. The healing items are relatively scarce so it’s best to not get hit at all.

Of course this was easier to achieve with the use of save states on my Analogue Pocket. The crisp screen and the elimination of blurring while scrolling helped as well. There were five sections to the game, with the first four broken into subsections 1.0, 1.1, etc. The final section was just one large area with multiple paths. 

I entered the final boss battle with Malkil unexpectedly but had six hearts and nine lives to burn as the battle does not stop upon death and regeneration. He fell after I sacrificed about three lives. 

The under appreciated Wizards & Warriors series was unique and challenging and I’m glad I got to play three of them. On the Game Boy, Wizards and Warriors X: The Fortress of Fear captures the style and gameplay of its NES brethren while presenting its own vibe as well.

Why Do I Still Have My Matchbox Cars at 58?

 I'm a nostalgic guy, and have kept a few toys from my childhood. There are scattered parts and pieces of Micronauts, one small Lego spaceship, a few other minor things of sentimental value to me. This includes a small, officially branded carrying case with a few dozen Matchbox toy cars in it. Unlike my old Odyssey 2 videogames, none of these memorable trinkets of my youth that somehow survived are engaging to me now.

But there they sit, my Matchbox cars, on a high shelf in a closet, where they have been in the seven years since I moved to my current apartment. Before that, eleven years in storage at a previous apartment, eight years at another apartment, and so forth back through my past of many apartments I've lived in since leaving home forty years ago.

Once in awhile I do check on them, get them down, admire the craftsmanship, remember their old value to me and the times my friends and I had with them, and put them away. I never wanted to pass them along to a child in my family (I was smart enough to not have kids myself in our pre-collapse civilization), they certainly never will reach a meaningful collector value without their original boxes, they just...take up space.

In our youth, those cars, as well as the American made Hot Wheels toys, were a part of all of our lives. Each of us curated a collection and finding that one Matchbox that no one else had was always a win. 

They were cheap enough in cost that it was relatively easy to convince mom or dad to get you one when they dragged you along to go shopping for something else. One time, mom took me along to a craft store a few blocks away, a quaint basement store with a side entrance under the owner’s home. Sure enough, they had a few toys by the cash register and I got mom to buy me this beauty:

 I never had much in the way of those orange Hot Wheels tracks, but some of my friends did, and I would take my cars over to enjoy their elaborate racing setups. Those were good memories.

Our “peak Matchbox” times involved two small model cities we constructed to play with our cars. The first one was called Ourtown and was a spontaneous creation one day when we were hanging out in the far back scrap yard of Gledhill Road Machinery. The dirt was dry having not been rained on in awhile, but there was a small gully that was the width of a two lane Matchbox road.

We didn’t even have our cars there that day, but we brought them back later. Over a few weeks we expanded the roads, created our own “homes” out of the scrap around us, and made little roads signs using pieces of slate we had found, scratching names of places in them. It grew big enough to have a countryside and a second, smaller town, with the whole area becoming called Miniland.

It didn’t last very long, though, as someone from Gledhill ran a tractor over the area to cut down grass and weeds. Years later I had the thought to draw a map of Ourtown to the best of my memory:

Next came an indoor Miniland, built on the unused ping pong table in my folks’ basement, which rested atop a similarly unused and neglected pool table. We used construction paper to build shops and homes, roads and a bay with a dock. In the center of downtown I used a piece of poster board to create a massive skyscraper.

It was all pretty cool, but we were kids and got bored with it in a few weeks. I don’t remember getting any other Matchbox cars after that and we soon reached an age where our activities were more teenage in nature.

So the Matchbox cars went into the case and travelled with me from apartment to apartment, providing occasional reminders of the above memories, but something else too. 

Holding onto them is holding onto a small part of myself that, to this day, doesn’t want to grow up and hopes that my friends and I will gather again and play with those cars. It’s absurd and will never happen, but it’s there. Adult friendships are a lot different than childhood friendships and a part of me misses the simplicity of those bonds.

I can spare the closet space for the foreseeable future to hold onto that.

Here is the carrying case:

Here are a few of my favorites:

Parked in front of the open case, from left to right, we have: 

Commer Ice Cream Canteen

This is my oldest Matchbox, made a few years before I was even born it seems, and acquired as a hand me down toy, I think. There is no number or date on the bottom of it. It’s actually kind of creepy too because the little guy inside is oversized compared to the rest of the vehicle. His legs should be sticking out the bottom, Flintstones-style.

Racing Mini (Series No.29, 1970)

This early acquisition (I was four years old) was a personal favorite as I seemed to like small, zippy European cars. As an adult I had a few VW Beetles, but joy came during a trip to San Antonio a few years back when we got a real Mini Cooper as a rental car. 

Volks Dragon (No.37, 1971)

This red souped up VW Beetle became reality for me in the mid to late 1980s as my second VW Beetle of the era was a souped up, jacked up, near replica of this toy. Hot rod red with after market modifications including jacked up rear tires and a pair of badass Monza exhaust pipes. The Matchbox sat on the dash for awhile.

Cosmobile (No.88, 1975)

Competition with Hot Wheels was fierce back then, so things got weird, with Matchbox releasing some strange space-themed models with different colors of metal and amber-tinted windows. 

Rolls Royce Silver Shadow II (No.39, 1979)

This gorgeous toy features a silver finish with red interior, front doors that actually open, and tiny shock absorbers. It was one of two Matchbox cars that sat in the driveway of my home at indoor Miniland.

Porsche Turbo (No.3,1979)

This remains the pride of my collection and was the other car sitting in my driveway at indoor Miniland. If filthy rich money ever rains down on me, I’d track down a restored real life version of this car. The Matchbox sports a unique metallic root beer brown color with a dull yellow interior. My friends were able to find this Matchbox too, just not in this color.

Editor's Note: This is the first entry into my "Half a Century" series which will explore not just video games, but other nerdy stuff I was into fifty years ago. 

Beaten: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (Series)

 I've only ever played two Indiana Jones videogames, and I've beaten them both. The first was the masterful Raiders of the Lost Ark on the Atari VCS, when I figured out that the clock was actually moving and you had to be in the map room at the right time, just like the movie. After that I just never came across an Indy game in my decades of gaming across various hardware, but they kept making them.

The most recent one dropped into my lap - or more accurately, onto my pricey XBox Gamepass Ultimate Super Platinum thing, and seeing it was from trusted studio Machinegames, I decided to download it and see if it was as good as their Wolfenstein games.  It was better.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has been carefully crafted to be a videogame that feels very much like playing through an Indiana Jones movie. The look of everything, the music, the font used to introduce a new area, all are very authentic. As is the incredible voice talent they found to sound like Harrison Ford. Speaking of voice talent, the late Tony Todd put in one last performance here as the mysterious giant Locus, another perfect role for the horror movie legend.  It was kind of bittersweet knowing it was his last.

A break in at Marshall College sends Professor Jones on a journey to capture the thief, which in turn leads to a bigger mystery with another Nazi once again arrogant enough to try to use the power of God resting in some ancient device for evil ends. This seems to take place in the timeline, if one cares, after Raiders of the Lost Ark as it’s prize is mentioned once if I recall correctly.

The game plays in first person and while Indy can use guns and blast away at enemies, it clearly wants the player to be more Indy like and just whip and punch enemies. Shooting summons every guard in the area whereas a stealthy approach is better. With a few upgrades, the whip-punch combo works well, Whip an enemy to make them drop their weapon and stun them, then punch them repeatedly until they fall. There is a block option too, so some fisticuffs require finesse.

And since the enemies are fascists, it was timely fun just punching them over and over. By that I mean, in the game's larger areas, the respawn of enemies behind you means that all the backtracking one does requires clearing out areas repeatedly. I'd take it as a sign of our times rather than design intent that makes punching fascists the least tedious part of such a game.

The game's main areas are pretty large and deviously designed to require tons of exploration. Later in the game, the player gets the option to travel back to them to complete any unfinished business, a feature which encouraged me to do exactly that. I did not go for 100% but I was close.

There is lots of lore to collect and read, as well as a camera that didn’t exist in the 1930s because it somehow instanly puts the printed photos into your inventory. Indy uses the camera a lot as a puzzle solving tool, and for general sightseeing. Weirdly enough, he doesn’t use it during the endgame cutscene where some truly historic shit is happening.

There were some weird design quirks and a few glitches but the game autosaves frequently enough that this was not an issue. Enemy AI was a little dopey, too, sometimes missing obvious chances to detect me. Or was it actually truly accurate AI, as being a fascist does require an unbelievable degree of stupidity? I’d say in this America “You know who you are” to them, but they are also too stupid to know how stupid they are.

There are lots of great puzzles for Indy to solve and they are not too challenging, but are rewarding nonetheless. Truly each large region itself is a puzzle in and of itself to explore. Indy uses his whip to swing over pits and to pull on certain switches out of reach.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a complete joy of a game, authentic to fans of the character while fun for us few gamers who appreciate archaeology and punching fascists.

Beaten: Cthulhu Saves Christmas (Switch)

 “What the what?” I said to myself as I pulled the small red case that said “Cthulhu Saves Christmas “ off the shelf of my local mom and pop video game store, where it blended in with hundreds of other Switch games.

As I turned the case around and read the back it was clear what I was holding. Chtulhu Saves Christmas is a classic 90s style top down turn based RPG from the same crew at Zeboyd Games that brought us Chtulhu Saves the World as an XBox 360 indie game way back in 2010. Mind blown.

I purchased and downloaded Chtulhu Saves the World when it came out but only sampled it at the time, so I had to check to make sure it was still there on my 360, as a part of that console’s downloaded library. Thankfully, it was, because it turns out Chtulhu Saves Christmas is actually a prequel to Saves the World, so I was right to hold out these fifteen years so I could play them in order!

It’s also worth noting that I am out of touch with wherever video game journalism is these days, so news about this game never reached me until I found it on that store shelf. Finding it that way was also a weird thing, as it is a Limited Run game, produced by a small company that releases physical versions of some downloadable games for a premium price. So, it's sort of rare.

Graphically, it's gorgeous, as these modern top-down games tend to be. Cthulhu is joined by three party members as they attempt to save Santa from various non-Grinch Christmas villains. The party themselves are also characters from Christmas lore and each has unique abilities to add to the mix. Even though Cthulhu desires to destroy the world, he's a likable, personable character who gets along well with others in this quest.

The story is great and the writing and humor are superb. There is a central hub called Christmastown where, in between parts of the quest, Cthulhu can do various activities with the other party members or on his own which lead to useful loot items for the four party members. This part is important as the relationships he makes with the party members seem to play some role.

Turn based combat is fun, and sometimes challenging, but never unmanageable. What is manageable is the grind, thanks to monster variety in each area, as well as an actual countdown of the random encounters per area. A three bar meter on the screen builds up as the player explores the area, and when it turns red, a battle begins. After the first area I noticed it had a countdown number above it for the number of these encounters remaining.

In addition, there is a button on the menu to just go ahead and start an encounter. So I would start a new area, fight every encounter, then be free to explore and loot the remaining dungeon before fighting the boss. There is not a lot of loot, and it's just items, no money. There are no shops and upgrades come from the few chests found as well as the relationship quests back at Christmastown.

I had a great time playing and beating Cthulhu Saves Christmas, even though I hate the holidays myself. It's just long enough to matter and a great game for the Switch itself. I also love the fact that small games are getting physical releases thanks to Limited Run Games. I'll certainly be paying them and their releases more attention going forward.