Retro Gaming Tougher Than Current Day Gaming?

Do you remember those days? The days when you couldn't just save your progress and come back to your game a few days later? The days when it mattered how many lives you lost and how accurate your gaming had to be to beat just one title?

Those were the best days of my life!

It wasn't the summer of 69 though, more early 90's when NES and Mega Drive were all the rage. I enjoyed spending endless hours of fun on those consoles and wouldn't change a minute of it. I even revisit my old games on occasion even though modern gaming takes up the majority of my time.

So being a veteran gamer I thought the old games of my childhood should be no problem to complete right? How wrong I was!

I died. A lot.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow 2

Good but not great.

That's my overall feeling of Lords of Shadow 2. 

I was quite looking forward to this game and the release date came around quicker than expected. I really enjoyed the first and thought the second would be just as good or better. However I'm not sure if it was.

Who Would Win? Angry Birds VS Worms

A while back I decided to do a series called 'Who Would Win?' Since then my mind has been blank until I wrote about Worms recently. So welcome to the 2nd 'Who Would Win?'

The early bird catches the worm right? 

Well what if that worm pulled out a bazooka or shoved a Holy Hand Grenade down that bird's mouth? Boom!

I have been playing Worms for years and have only ever played one Angry Birds game. So I might be a bit biased but...

Sure birds can fling themselves like bombs at the worms and deploy smaller bird bombs but a worm could just retaliate with their own version known to us as a cluster bomb. Yeah the birds might have their tricks and squash a few worms here and there but look at the arsenal the worms have.

Bazookas, grenades, shotgun, minigun, dynamite, sheep, super sheep, banana bombs, air strikes, teleport, blow torch, ninja rope and of course if a bird is flying straight at you then the best option is to pull a baseball bat out and wham! Smash that bird out of the park! 

So in my eyes regardless of your boomerang type birds, heavy, small etc the worms would destroy them all.

Victory!

No birds or worms were harmed during the creation of this post.

Worms

Late 1995 or early 1996 I was over a friend's house watching him play a video game on the Sega Mega Drive. My first thought was what kind of war game was he playing today as he loved his strategy games. I saw him controlling one of the soldiers across the landscape and selecting a bazooka. Ok nothing new here I thought until I realised the soldiers occupying the screen were actually worms!

What!? Worms? With weapons? Wait is that dynamite they're using? A Cluster Bomb? Banana Bomb?

Team 17 had created a classic.

A short while later I persuaded my parents to buy it for me and it became an instant favourite.

It didn't take long to get used to and I spent many hours blasting away at enemy worms. Shotgun, fire punch, dragon punch, teleport and kamikaze were just a few of the options available although being the first game in the series the selection wasn't huge but enough. 

You could name your own worms too. As I was huge into Xena at the time I named my team after the show. Of course I had Xena, Gabrielle, Joxer and Callisto. Sometimes Ares too haha. I often named them after my friends and myself and would always try to keep 'Mat' alive and be the best in the team! The imagination of a child eh?
The only unfortunate thing was that you couldn't save your data so I ended up manually inputting the names each new play session.

The game featured it's own teams and I always remember disliking Old School and having a rivalry with them. 

I remember my friend announcing she had worms once. She meant the game but many laughs were had at her expense.

Worms was that popular that a sequel would be released for the PC. I loved the short animation sequences they would have at the beginning of the game. The sequel would offer more weapons such as Super Sheep and the Old Woman. You could also make your own maps and select what theme to use for the landscape. Also you could now edit your teams and give them unique accents and head gear.

Now everyone say cheese!

One of my favourite things to do on Worms is to teleport all the worms on top of each other and place a dynamite at the bottom. Boom! Watch those worms fly!

The Holy Hand grenade was awesome too and Concrete Donkey. You could change the settings to these weapons and if you increased the range and power of the minigun you could wipe out entire maps in a small number of moves.

Anyone ever play a level and attempt to destroy it all without killing the other worms first?

Speaking of killing worms...when they lost all their health they would blow themselves up and become gravestones.

This game is really fun to play online or with friends, however, I hate bad losers. A random added me on PSN after I defeated them at a game of Worms. They challenged me to another and I killed 3 of their 4 worms in two shots. So what did they do? End the game...

If you can't stand the worm then stay out of the garden! 

That is the saying right?

I don't like losing but I will always play a game to the end. I've won with just one worm before so just try it. Maybe I'll list their PSN ID to shame them mwahahaha!

Ah man now I got to go play this great game! The only problem with writing this blog is that it makes me want to play and watch all the old childhood favourites when I really need to crack on with Castlevania 2!

Ha! Something I just remembered from my childhood. I used to draw scenarios of worms battling each other when I was bored in school or at home. Personally I think they were pretty good (actually pretty bad) and if I find any I will upload them.

18 years later and I'm still playing this great game with friends! Wait? 18 years!?!? Man that is crazy as! Take me back to my childhood! 

However old this body gets my inner child will always be here. 

Release the inner worm!

Wee Fictional Scottish Characters

This past weekend my best friend and I travelled up to bonny Scotland to visit our wee friend Mara. You may remember that I wrote about her in a pervious post entitled 'why I stopped playing Mortal Kombat'. The weekend was great except for travelling up on a Megabusgold sleeper service on very cramped bunk beds. Never again I tell you! This was my first time in Glasgow and Edinburgh and next time I will likely fly up.

So I got to thinking how could I tie my trip in with my blog? Then I started to think of related Scottish content in regards to TV, gaming and other media. I found it difficult to think of Scottish characters so asked a few friends for suggestions on this one.

Muppet Treasure Island

There are a few occasions in your childhood where you discover a film or game that you know will stick with you for the rest of your adult life. The film in question is none other than Muppet Treasure Island, believed to be the most popular Muppet film by the majority of fans.

I saw the the film for the first time when I was 9 years old at a cinema in Cardiff with my parents. It was one of the best films I had ever seen at the time and one that cemented my love for the Muppets forever.

Nice face Kev...

My Local Game Only Had 3 Copies Of Castlevania LOS2!

Yesterday I set out to trade in 2 games and purchase Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2. Expecting there to be plenty of copies I was somewhat surprised to learn that they only received 3 copies of the game in the store. This was due to the fact that they had only 3 people pre-order the game hence no more stock was ordered. Strange, no?

Although, the HD remake of Tales Of Symphonia Chronicles accumulated 8 pre-orders and they ordered plenty of the game in. I would have thought Castlevania would have had a few more orders. I ended up buying Tales Of Symphonia in the end.

This just proves to me how more popular it is to order games online and get them sent directly to your door. Take Shopto.net for example. Most of the games they sell are cheaper than what you find in stores and usually arrive the next the day in the post! They come with DLC bundles too. 

I do buy most of my games online but sometimes tend to have a look around the high streets. 

However it makes me wonder how long shops like Game are going to last?  

Cardiff Comic Con March 1st 2014

Cardiff Comic Con came around quicker than expected with last years only taking place in August. I awoke on the morning with a banging headache and was slightly concerned that I'd caught my Dad's cold who had been rough the night before.

However it was just tiredness and I quickly recovered to set off to my 2nd official comic con. My mates and I arrived before the gates opened and I realised that we were queuing in almost the exact same spot as last year!