Archive
WTTW: Flight Control in Spaaaaaaace
FLIGHT CONTROL TO MAJOR TOM
For today’s Time-WasterTM, we have a clone of a game that made a splash on iPhone not too long ago, though it’s a lot more playable here because you control it with a mouse and not that infuriating touchscreen where your bloody finger blots out the world like a space invading super sausage laying waste to your carefully-crafted flight plans. Grumble.
Anyway, it’s called Saucer Panic, and though it also appears to feature pay-to-play elements, in my experience thus far, they seem to merely allow you to cheat more effectively thus dialing down the mostly-sedate difficulty, so it isn’t as if you’ll actually need that crutch…right?
Unicorns *AND* Erasure??
Wow, where has this been all my life1:
Live it. Love it. Play it.
1 Yes, you can love Erasure *and* be straight. And male. All at the same time. Really.
WTTW: Tony Danza Approves
You blue him away!
You’re the boss:
The tactical arcade game ‘Boss Rush’ is a shoot’em up game with an important twist: You play the boss and have to destroy all the attacking spaceships!
It’s called Boss Rush and basically, it’s Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do To Deserve This? (a.k.a. What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord!?) w/ a shmupy/shootery twist and it’s actually pretty neat-o1 even if it’s really, really ugly.
1 Well, the novelty of it is…not sure how much longevity it might possess.
Mythical Creature Spotted Outside China
Unicorn in the wild
I have to imagine the market for this device is pretty slim, but I’m willing to bet one Arch Nerd would be most interested indeed:
It has been almost 4 years since Neo Flash announced their 9th project: the Neo SNES Myth Cart. Many have been long awaiting its arrival and it is finally here.
This is no ordinary type of flash cartridge. It comes in two pieces that need to be combined together with an additional original SNES cartridge when running backup ROM images in the SNES console. The larger piece contains the logic chip, RAM, USB port, SNES cartridge slot, and GBA cartridge slot. A smaller cartridge containing the flash RAM chip is inserted into the GBA cartridge slot for storing and playing games.
There are a few differences between this and SNES backup solutions we have seen come about in the early til mid 1990s. The device is much more compact and almost the size of a typical SNES cartridge. It also does not have a plug for a separate power supply which means that you will need to use it in a deck that supplies enough power to run the cartridge on its own. On the top you will find a USB port to program the device. Most old copiers used a floppy drive and some had a parallel port built in or an external parallel attachment to program their built in RAM. Onboard, you will not find a handful of RAM chips or a microprocessor like in old copiers. There is one memory chip that you load the games to and a programmable logic chip that controls the device’s functions as well.
What it boils down to is this is a giant flash cart for your SNES that allows you to take ROMs and play them on said SNES rather than on an emulator. (I’m sure at least 80% of the people are now thinking ‘what’s the point, then?’, but it’s for the purists who want to play the games running 100% as-intended, since emulation is just that: an emulation, i.e. an approximation of the real thing, and not the actual, well, real thing.)
Anyway, the actual review is LONG but (extremely) informative if you’re in the market for one of these doodads. (Naturally, I’d guess Nintendo wouldn’t be a big fan of such a unit but in a world of rampant emulation, this is probably not going to give the Big N many sleepless nights.)
One important caveat should you fail to read this in its entirety: virtually1 none of the games that use special, on-board, co-processors, work, e.g. the various FX/C4/Etc. chips (StarFox, Megaman X 2, etc.) will not, as yet, function, so caveat emptor. ()
1 The DSP1 games like Super Mario Kart, Pilotwings, etc. do work.
The Prince of Persia Flashes Your PC
The Prince of Persia1
Relax, ladies, (unfortunately for you) this isn’t a story about Jake Gylen, uh, something, it’s about a Flash-powered prologue to the upcoming PoP: The Forgotten Sands:
It’s actually pretty fun, even though the game is Cannabalt (or Tomena Sanner, if you prefer), um, inspired with the Prince constantly racing right, but you do get the full range of princely perks like running on walls (well, ceilings anyway), time rewind, swordplay, etc. It’s not nearly as good as the Flash version of Mirror’s Edge which is actually a helluva lot of fun, but it’s free, it’s 2D and it’s ‘out’ now.2
(There’s also some ‘foolery about unlocking a playable characer in the retail game, but you actually have to fork over your info to Ubi and, since I don’t think I’m going to get this, I really can’t be bothered.)
1 Persia, IA, that is.
2 Works great on FireFox and IE, but it’s a choppy mess on my fav browser, Opera, sigh.
Jedi Knights: Always Around When Spiderman Needs Them
Flash a-ah, Savior of the Webslinger
Marvel Team-Up goes cross-universe (and cross-reality):
But luckily, Mr Baulderstone’s “Spider-sense” was tingling and he was able to thwart a robbery attempt at his shop in the South Australian capital of Adelaide, with the aid of The Flash and some trusted Jedi Knights wielding light sabres.
And even more fun:
“My colleague, who was dressed as The Flash, kept running the shop and stayed calm, it really was a team effort.”
That’s what the Flash1 does: he runs! Get it! Ahahahaha!
/crippling lack of sleep
1 Useless fact: The Flash was my favorite superhero until I was about 12 (they killed Barry Allen, you see) then I went Superman and never looked back. (And, yes, I’m a DC>Marvel guy.)
Galaxian-A-Like Distracts You From Work
It’s hard to “print screen” and play at the same time
Top Shmups has the goods:
Nayhax is a timed vertical shooter in the form of Galaga and games like that where the enemy come screaming down towards you. You only get three minutes of play but you can at time by collecting time capsules that are dropped on various levels throughout the game but you can also lose time doing the same thing. You only get one weapon of choice however there are upgrades that you can collect and you will need them in later levels and when you reach the boss stage they aren’t difficult but if you want to save time you need al you can get. Graphics and sound are very retro so retro fans will love this. Controls are Cursor keys to move and Ctrl to fire. This is a must for retro fans who want a quick shooter.
It’s actually quite good, as it turns out which, for a browser-based game, is saying something.1 (It doesn’t huirt that Galaxian is about the least-copied game design of all time2, just behind…Alisia Dragoon3.)
1 I place most browser-based games one notch above iPhone games and somewhere below the Bally Astrocade.
2 Yeah, yeah: it’s a Space Invaders riff—don’t bother me w/ details!
3 Yeah, yeah: it’s a Mystic Defender/Peacock King riff–don’t bother me w/ details!
Bill Gates Lops Off Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand
All I wanted was some more storage space that didn’t cost me an arm…oh, wait…
On the plus side, they don’t ask for your firstborn…yet:
According to the retailer, each drive includes one month of Xbox Live Gold. A quick look at other SanDisk 16GB flash drives shows a $20-$30 mark-up on the Xbox-branded product, though Microsoft and/or SanDisk has yet to confirm if GameStop’s prices are accurate.
The Xbox 360 will be able to use USB-based hard drives and memory for game saves and other data after a system update, coming on April 6. Up to 16GB will be usable per device, with users able to connect two at a time for a total of 32GB of USB storage.
As they rightly note, comparable prices for the same thing (minus a month of Live) are $20-30 cheaper. This would be shocking except MS has been ripping people off for 3.5″ SATA drives for years now, so the only surprise is that the price is only double what a comparable, non-360-branded, product costs. And that someone at MS isn’t gnawing on your bone marrow. For fun.
Now I’m as cold-blooded and capitalist as they come, but this is pretty clearly just this side of aggravated assault so, in the interests of poking MS in the eye (again), here’s a few links to far less expensive alternatives:
Amazon: 8GB/16GB
New Egg: 8GB/16GB
Pricewatch: 8GB/16GB
Oh, and if you really need a bigger HDD for your 3601:
1 Because there was no chance they were going to start letting you use drives with anything more than meager space to protect their HDD monopoly–a Monopoly where the only ones collecting $200 are them.
