Category Archives: One-Shots

One-off articles about games, cultural phenomena, anime and anything else that isn’t getting the Cover Game treatment.

Centerfold Squares: naughty gaming, 1988-style

Dear reader, as I’m sure you’re aware from the vast number of games I’ve covered on this site to date, I am certainly not averse to a naughty game or two.

For a lot of the time these days, these are Japanese in origin (though the western-developed eroge and nukige scene has grown considerably since several large digital platforms opened themselves up to 18+ content), and people have become a lot more willing to openly talk about them. “Back in the day”, though, erotic games were a relatively unusual sight — and when they did come up, they often tended to be talked about in a rather dismissive way by the press of the period, particularly here in the UK. Some things never change, eh?

They did exist, though, and one that I’ve only recently got around to trying for the first time is Artworx’s Centerfold Squares (aka Centrefold Squares in Europe, because British English), a 1988 release for Amiga, Atari ST and MS-DOS PC. Because I am an Atari boy, today’s exploration will be focusing on the ST version, but all three versions are broadly pretty similar.

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A comprehensive review of Mary Skelter 2 after spending almost exactly 100 hours completing it

One of the nice things about having your own website is that you can take your time over things you want to write about rather than rushing through them in order to meet a deadline. And I knew as soon as I started Mary Skelter 2 that I wanted to take my time over it.

100 hours of gameplay later, and I’ve finally beaten it. So I think it’s time that we talked about it in great detail. Because whew, there is a lot to talk about, and I’m certain that I’m going to miss at least a few things that struck me along the way. (I reserve the right to add to this piece as I think of things!)

I know I’ve written a few pieces about this game already, but I intend this piece to be a full, summative roundup of my experiences with the game and my overall thoughts on it. So let us begin.

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Fuel: criminally overlooked open-world racing

I have mixed feelings about the open-world approach a lot of games take these days, but one genre where I feel it almost always works well is the racing game.

When you have a game whose main purpose for existence is to allow you to take yourself on a thrill ride (or, in the case of more sedate simulators, a comfortable excursion) it makes perfect sense to provide the player with as much freedom as possible.

After all, what’s the point of giving you access to interesting, exotic and, more often than not, downright dangerous vehicles if you can’t really put them to the test?

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Super Hang-On and its two very different ways to play

I must confess, I never played Hang-On or Super Hang-On a great deal back in the day; I always found motorcycles a little less interesting than cars, and the games always struck me as “the Sega racers that weren’t quite as good as OutRun”.

I recently picked up Super Hang-On for Mega Drive, though, and after an evening of playing pretty solidly, it was hard not to come to the conclusion that I’ve been missing out for all these years.

This is an excellent 16-bit racer, particularly in its home console incarnation, and I’m very glad I’ve finally added it to my collection.

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Two Point Campus and the management sim as imaginative play

I am, as I have spoken about numerous times previously, not good at strategy games with a competitive component. But I have always enjoyed a distinct offshoot of the strategic genre: the management sim, in which you tend to mostly be competing against “yourself”.

Ever since I first played SimCity on Super NES — a game that I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy when I first got it for Christmas as a kid, but which I ended up loving — I’ve found great value from games where you get to “play God” to varying degrees, having the opportunity to express your creativity within the constraints of a set of game mechanics.

And the latest of these I’ve found myself having fun with is Sega’s Two Point Campus, the follow-up to their successful riff on Bullfrog’s Theme Hospital, Two Point Hospital.

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Castle of Illusion and the value of simple, short-form games

For those following the ongoing saga of my gaming schedule, yesterday saw me break said schedule to go to Ikea with my wife.

I bought a new chair to go in my study, which contains all my retro consoles and computers, because I came to the conclusion that the “gamer chair” I picked up a while back (actually, my workplace at the time paid for it as part of working from home arrangements) actually wasn’t all that comfortable. And thus, given my renewed desire to enjoy my retro consoles, I thought it worthwhile to have something comfortable to sit on.

Naturally, having acquired a new chair in which to enjoy retro gaming action, it made sense to enjoy the remainder of the evening sitting in said chair enjoying retro gaming action. And I am happy to confirm that it is indeed very comfortable. So I call that a win. I also had a thoroughly pleasant couple of hours playing Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse on the Mega Drive in my new chair, so I also call that a win.

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The joy and despair of loving things that others don’t care for

If you’ve been reading MoeGamer or any of my other work for any length of time, you’ll know that I’m a strong believer that anyone should be able to enjoy what they want (assuming it’s not outright illegal or harmful) without fear of being shamed for it.

By extension, I also tend to believe that anyone who enjoys something should have the freedom to talk about the thing they enjoy — again, without fear of being shamed for it, and with others showing them at least some basic courtesy and understanding, even if they don’t share the same tastes.

It’s this latter bit that the world today seems to struggle with — and it’s an aspect of life that, with increasing frequency in the modern age, leaves me feeling desperately lonely and frustrated, even surrounded by these things I love so much.

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Idea Factory deserves your respect

I am not a game designer.

I have attempted to make games at various points in the past, making use of toolsets ranging from Atari BASIC through STOS: The Game Creator, Klik & Play, The Games Factory, RPG Maker (of various flavours) and all manner of other things — but one thing has been constant: I’ve never gotten anything finished. And, as such, I have developed a good understanding of quite how much work goes into even the most seemingly simple project.

With that in mind, I always find myself gritting my teeth a bit any time I see people being unnecessarily disparaging about certain game developers. Whether it’s an entitled prick on Steam calling an indie dev “lazy” for not building their passion project to one ungrateful gamer’s specific expectations, or targeted campaigns of harassment against larger companies for one reason or another, I can never get behind that sort of behaviour.

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Tasomachi: Behind the Twilight – The Joy of Exploration

The Steam Game Festival is underway at the time of writing. This is an event where developers show off their upcoming games by releasing exclusive time-limited demos — and there are some real belters out there this year.

Over on Rice Digital, I picked out five of my favourite demos from this year’s Festival that are well worth your time. I kind of want to talk more about all of them, but I’ll take them one at a time — starting with probably the one I found the most striking.

Tasomachi: Behind the Twilight, also known as Tasogare ni nemuru machi (A City Sleeping in Twilight), is a 3D platformer with a gorgeous soft-edged visual style and some intriguing exploration-based gameplay. And I love what I’ve seen so far.

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Project Eris and the PlayStation Classic as a “Retro Box”

While we all know that original hardware is best (and dedicated hardware that pays homage to the conventions of original hardware is almost as good), it remains desirable for many retro gaming enthusiasts to have at least one “retro box” within easy reach.

Up until now, my main living room PC has fulfilled this role very well, thanks to a hodgepodge collection of emulators I’ve acquired over the years, plus the excellent Launchbox to keep things organised. This has worked absolutely fine for me for a while now, allowing me to dip into a vast library of digitally preserved games across a variety of platforms whenever I feel like it — and, rather helpfully for what I do here, easily capture video and take screenshots. But then I got a PlayStation Classic for Christmas.

I’m not one of those people who gets a new mini console and immediately wants to hack it to pieces in order to completely destroy its individuality and uniqueness — my PC Engine Mini is staying pristine, for example. But in the case of the PlayStation Classic, I’d seen numerous people online saying that it made a particularly good multi-purpose “retro box”. So I decided to investigate.

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