Sunshine Blogger Award

A big thank you to Megan of A Geeky Gal for nominating me for the Sunshine Blogger Award.

For the unfamiliar, these “awards” are an occasional community affair that give all of us writing for our own (and hopefully, your) entertainment the opportunity to  break free of our usual formats and give our readers and blogging comrades the opportunity to get to know us a bit better. Then we tag a few more people, and we can all find some great new sites to read. Everybody wins!

All right. Let’s see what’s going on with all this, then…

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Waifu Wednesday: The Hundred Honeys Project Neo

It’s been a good while since I’ve done one of these, and I’ve been meaning to have a proper full-on play with Honey Select Unlimited Extend’s Studio Neo for a while. No time like the present, eh?

For those just joining us, Honey Select Unlimited is a legendary hentai game from developer Illusion that is most well-known for its excellent character creation tools rather than its filthy content. (Its filthy content is very good too, mind.) Honey Select Unlimited Extend is an expansion pack for it, and part of that expansion is an all-new photo studio app to complement and/or replace the original Honey Unlimited Studio application.

The Hundred Honeys Project, meanwhile, is my ongoing attempt to break the Honey Select Unlimited studio applications by ramming as many characters as possible into a single scene without my computer exploding.

Continue reading Waifu Wednesday: The Hundred Honeys Project Neo

Warriors Wednesday: Heavy Weapon – Warriors Orochi #48

In today’s episode, Cao Pi, Xu Zhu and Xu Huang hit the jungle in an attempt to convince their ally Zhang He that Orochi is a cause worth fighting for.

Of course, with Cao Pi being Cao Pi, he’s up to something. Exactly what isn’t quite clear just yet, but at some point in the very near future, he’s clearly going to strike.

In the meantime, it’s a case of biding his time and at least attempting to look like he’s doing the great serpent’s bidding…

Crawlco Block Knockers: A Game That Indeed Contains Both Blocks and Knockers

If you were to tell me a couple of weeks ago that one of the most addictive, satisfying games of the summer would be a peculiar combination of venerable (but largely forgotten) Sega arcade title Pengo and ’90s Japanese arcade eroge I’d… have probably believed you, to be honest, but here we are anyway.

Yes, the aptly named Crawlco Block Knockers is a deliberate homage to dank, smoky, sleazy Japanese arcades in the ’90s and the games you would find therein. Drawing particular inspiration from Kaneko’s Gals Panic series and Mitchell Corporation’s Gonta the Diver duology, the game combines strategic thinking, arcade action, ’80s inspired vaporwave music and the opportunity to gradually reveal images of attractive, curvy women not wearing very much.

Sounds like a party, right? Let’s take a look. Some mildly NSFW shenanigans after the jump!

Continue reading Crawlco Block Knockers: A Game That Indeed Contains Both Blocks and Knockers

Atari A to Z: Wavy Navy

I’ve always kind of been fascinated by games that get “bad” reviews. And my gaming experience over the last few years has demonstrated that it’s always best to make up your own mind about things rather than going purely by one person’s rant — as amusing as those rants can be sometimes.

Today’s Atari 8-bit title, Wavy Navy from Sirius Software, is a great example of this. Poorly received by at least one reviewer for its similarities to the system’s excellent port of Galaxian, it’s actually a rather fun fixed shooter with an interesting twist.

Sometimes it pays to go back and revisit those “bad” games… in many instances they’re actually nowhere near as bad as you might think!

Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.

Why Collect?

Collecting games is a major hobby for many people — whether they’re into modern titles or retro stuff.

Thankfully, although certain portions of the industry are trying desperately to push us towards an all-digital (or, worse, an all-streaming) future, there are still plenty of companies out there who understand that there is still very much a collector’s market: people want to fill their shelves with their favourite games, and they want cool goodies to go with them.

Why bother, though? Aren’t you just cluttering up your limited living space?

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Around the Network

Happy Sunday everyone! Apologies for the quietness of the weekend just passed (including a lack of an Atari A to Z Flashback video) — I spent yesterday at Digitiser Live in London, so didn’t have much time to do anything else!

It was a really great day. If you’d like to find out more, check out my daily personal blog over on Patreon; suffice to say it was a pretty magical experience, and I’m glad I took the time to go and see that shambolic nonsense. Normal business will resume this week!

So, with that out of the way, let’s take a look at what you might have missed this week, then.

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NES Essentials: Wrecking Crew

Wrecking Crew is one of Nintendo mascot Mario’s more underappreciated adventures — and a fairly underappreciated entry in the NES’ overall library, in fact.

First released for Famicom in June of 1985 and subsequently as one of the 17 launch titles for the Western Nintendo Entertainment System, Wrecking Crew is something of a departure from what you might typically expect from a Mario game — even outside of the main Super Mario Bros. series.

It’s a puzzle game with a strong emphasis on strategic thinking and forward planning rather than fast action or precise platforming, and it’s actually been one of my favourite games in the NES’ library since I first encountered it via the Wii’s Virtual Console service. Let’s take a closer look.

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Final Fantasy Marathon: The Slumbering Prince – Final Fantasy I #3

Our Final Fantasy I adventure continues as the Warriors of Light cross the ocean to Elfheim and discover their prince is having a bit of a sleep problem.

Never ones to shy away from an apparently supernatural-inflicted disaster, the group sets out to find out exactly what is going on, setting their sights on the first full dungeon of the game: The Marsh Cave!

In this episode, we start to see some more of the Dungeons & Dragons influences at work as well as how the game expects you to explore rather than leading you down a linear path. A bit of an adjustment if you’re accustomed to some modern JRPGs, for sure!

Sega Ages: OutRun – Chasing the Horizon

Trivia of the day: the shiny red car in the original OutRun is not, as many people assume (and as both numerous sites on the Internet and some incarnations of the game’s original manual claim), a Ferrari Testarossa; it’s just a car designed to look uncannily like a Ferrari Testarossa — in other words, it’s a thoroughly unlicensed knockoff.

The fact that the car in OutRun is almost-but-not-quite a Ferrari is probably why this first game in the series has been so widely ported and still remains relevant today, while the officially Ferrari-branded OutRun 2 and its expanded quasi-sequel OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast remain tragically trapped in licensing limbo.

The original OutRun has been ported to enough platforms to make the original Final Fantasy and Ys games blush over the years, as well as putting in occasional guest appearances in games such as Shenmue 2 and Yakuza 0. The latest direct port at the time of writing is for Nintendo Switch as part of the Sega Ages collection and is the work of emulation maestros M2, so let’s once again put our foot to the floor and get driving.

Continue reading Sega Ages: OutRun – Chasing the Horizon

The best of overlooked and underappreciated computer and video games, from yesterday and today.