Saturday 12 May 2012

Month 2 in Review

It’s not quite a month since my last summary, but I’m off on holiday tomorrow so when the second month comes to an end nothing will have changed from today. This second month has been purely focussed on collecting and reviewing, so I’ll dispense with a highlights list and jump straight to the updated Top Ten and Bottom Five, based on my reviews so far.

Top Ten

 1. Ghostbusters (Ricochet, 1988)  **NEW ENTRY**
 2. Street Surfer (Entertainment USA, 1986)  **NEW ENTRY**
 3. Kikstart (Mastertronic, 1985)
 4. Rock n' Bolt (Ricochet, 1988)
 5. Bomb Fusion (Mastertronic, 1989)
 6. Rescue on Fractalus (Mastertronic Plus, 1989)  **NEW ENTRY**
 7. Gemini Wing (Mastertronic Plus, 1989)
 8. Kane (Mastertronic, 1985)
 9. Speed King (Mastertronic, 1985)
10. Mindtrap (Mastertronic, 1989)

Bottom Five (In reverse order, worst at the bottom)

5. Speed Zone (Mastertronic, 1989)  **NEW ENTRY**
4. Growing Pains of Adrian Mole (Ricochet, 1987)
3. Double Dragon (Mastertronic Plus, 1990)
2. FA Cup Football (Ricochet, 1988)  **NEW ENTRY**
1. Sport of Kings (M.A.D., 1987)

Interesting to note that thus far no M.A.D. game has been worthy of making it into my Top Ten. Maybe I just haven’t found the decent ones yet, or maybe that extra £1 per game just wasn’t worth it!

Collection Update – Nine New Additions

Another week and another bunch of games join the collection.


First up came a bundle of five games donated by one of my YouTube subscribers, Retroid64. For just £3 to cover postage I got two Mastertronic games, Hyper Force and Jungle Story, two M.A.D. games, Hole in One and Master of Magic, and also Cage Match which is an Entertainment USA release that completes my collection of games in that packaging.


Also this week came more games from Ebay. For a combined price of £4.22 came three games - Big Mac and Quest for the Holy Grail (both Mastertronic) and Hero of the Golden Talisman (M.A.D.) And finally for this update is a Ricochet offering, the re-release of Ultimate’s Outlaws, which at cost of £2.06 is my most expensive purchase so far!


That brings the total number of games past the 170 mark, with a little over 45 still to go.

Total games: 172
Average cost: £1.02

Game Review – Street Surfer (1986)

My last review before I go away on holiday for a couple of weeks, and it’s one of my personal favourites.

Friday 11 May 2012

Wednesday 9 May 2012

Game Review – Erebus (1988)

This Ricochet re-release is an enjoyable if moderately frustrating blaster. Check it out...

Tuesday 8 May 2012

Saturday 5 May 2012

Friday 4 May 2012

Game Review – Raster Runner (1989)

There’s some superb music on offer in this highly-polished take on the classic Tron ‘light cycle’ genre.

Wednesday 2 May 2012

Game Review – Speed Zone (1988)

I can barely even bring myself to write anything about this miserable excuse for a game!

Collection Update – Ricochet rarities and more...

Another 8 games added to the collection this week, most of which came from Ebay. Check out the video for all the details...


The highlights of this week’s arrivals were the three Ricochet games, all of which are fairly hard to come by – Toy Bizarre, Jet Set Willy and Starquake. I’m very pleased to have picked all of these up for under £2 each.


The remainder are all commonly occurring titles but it’s still good to be adding a few of these to the collection. In classic Mastertronic grid-style packaging we have The Human Race and Space Hunter, plus Back to Reality in the second-wave Mastertronic packaging.


Rounding off this update comes two Mastertronic Plus games – 3D Pinball and the re-release of Activision’s Hacker II.


As always I’m keeping the average purchase price under £2 a game and I now only have around 50 games to acquire...

Total games: 163
Average cost: £1.02

Tuesday 1 May 2012

‘Screen Stars’ Game Review – Transformers (1989)

Rounding off my mini-series is another Activision re-release – lead the Autobots against the Decepticons and stop their nefarious plans to create giant hippopotamuses… I kid you not!