Retro Diary #2 – MTV Sports Pure Ride & Ford Truck Simulator [PS1]

So I’m back from R-cade to give you 2 more games to give thoughts on! This time, I played 2 PS1 games. One snowboarding and one about trucks racing.

To get it out of the way: MTV Sports Pure Ride was just garbage. It didn’t control very well at all, it was awkward to pull off any tricks and you just looped through the same 3 or 4 tracks, and there was no indication of what to do or that I was making any progress.

The game has stunt levels, much like The Italian Job, but it’s broken as all heck. The second challenge required you to grind a rail. Simple, right? Yeah… if it worked.

First off, if you get off the slope without turning, it suddenly veers slightly to the left, making you miss the rail, so you need to so dome weird turns to get on the rail.

Even when you’re absolutely certain that you got it, it just slid off, and you fail the challenge.

I tried to do this for a good 5 minutes, and never got it. And this was the second challenge!

So I decided “Fuck this!” and played something else. Not reccomended!

I picked Ford Truck Mania, also for the PS1. Released in 2003, it was one of the final games for the console.

I expected a game this late would be lazily done and lacking on content.

It’s kind of lacking in content, but surprisingly, it was well made.

The game has some impressive physics for a PS1 game, and nice environments. Though it has some weird LOD moments, like sharp corners end up not being so sharp when you get closer to it.

The only issue I have with the game is that there aren’t many courses, and even fewer available from the get go, but overall, it’s not to bad. I’d say try this before buying.

That’s all I have for this week, until next week, A’m oot!

Retro Diary #1 – The Italian Job [GCN]

I’ve decided to rebrand the Retro Diary series to one where I try out a new game and decide to share my thoughts on it.

I go to a shop called “R-Cade” almost every week with a friend and try out any games I’ve never played before or haven’t played in ages.

I played “The Italian Job” on Gamecube there recently, and was apparently the first to ever do so in the shop.

Surprisingly, it’s *really* good!

I only played the Stunt levels, but just from that, the game felt very solid and well made, and it was a perfect casual play while talking to a friend or, say, listening to a podcast. Me and this friend were just chatting away about current matters and anything we got up to. It was really calm and just generally enjoyable.

The game has a total of 7 stunt levels, which are different areas of the same general area.

It took me a couple of hours to beat it, so not that long, but it was enjoyable.

I played a little bit of the free roam mode as well, also felt solid.

So in conclusion, if you can find the game cheap, and you probably will since it’s a movie game, I’d say get it, why not. It’s something of a hidden gem!

Anyway, that’s all for this week, until next week, A’m oot!

Retro Diary #84 – “I’m great at this game!” *Crashes and loses wheels*

On Tuesday, I played some WWE 2K18 with my brother, and lost all matches… it’s getting really frustrating now!

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On Thursday, I went to meet up with a friend at Geek Retreat, and we playes some SNES and N64 games.

If I recall correctly, we played some Super Mario All Stars, Street Fighter 2, Killer Instinct, Donkey Kong Country and Starwing on the SNES.

On The Nintendo 64 We played WWF No Mercy, Where we made The Coach, of all wresting personalities, Twisted Edge Snowboarding, which didn’t haave much to it and was mediocre, but was very 90s!

Finally, we played F1 Grand Prix, which was frustrating at first, but we got used to it, and had a blast. I found out that this friend of mind has a fascination with F1 and it’s video games, and seemed very knowledgeable on the subject!

He tried (Well, he didn’t try, he was just bad!) to bash the car as much as he could, and actually lost 2 wheels and front wing!

When I got home, I played some games of WWE 2k18 with my brother, and I finally got the hang of the game and how to work around it’s issues, and finally managed to beat him! …once.

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On Friday, my physical copy of Undertale finally arrrived!!!

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Retro Diary #83

All throughout the week, me and my brother have been playing matches in WWE 2k18, most of which I lost…

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On Thursday, I met up with a friend of mine, and we played a bunch of board games, including Connect 4, Hunrgy Hungry Hippos and Jenga! We also tried to play Mouse Trap, but it was way too complicated to set up…

 

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Retro Diary #82

On Monday, I played some matches of WWE 2K18 on the PS4 with my brother, we played 3 8-man matches, all of which he won, then we played 2 one-on-one matches, both of which I won!

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On Tuesday, we played WWE 2K18 again, this time with another brother, too! We played 3 tripple threat elimination matches, all of which I was eliminated first, then we played a handicap match, me and my youngest brother versus he 1st brother, that ended in a draw, and the youngest brother left after that. Then we played 2 6-man ladder matches, both of which I also lost.

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On Wednesday, I met up with a high-school friend at MEGAByted, and I played Supermn 64, and rage quit out of frustration, and then I played Bubsy 3D for the PS1, and got bored of that after 2 levels, but I saved the password for next time…

Then I played some pinball games. I’ve really been getting into pinball recently, it’s so much fun! And Trippy!

I then played the arcade game there (forget the title), with an old pound coin I had! So it was essentially a free game!

After that, we went home.

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Retro Diary #81

Last Sunday, I finished FIFA 17’s Journey mode, now onto FIFA 18’s!

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On Wednesday, I went to a meetup at the Geek Retreat, and there was a setup for a new card game called “Lightseekers”, and it was really fun! It was really simple to understand!

I was talking to this couple at the meetup, while watching someone play Prototype on PS3… I have no idea why I remember that…

We were talking about Anime, Manga and Video Games. It was good!

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On Saturday, I went to a meetup with the same group as last week, but this time, it was to a bar called “Super Barios” and it was like a wet dream for me! They had authentic 90s arcades! They had some Neo Geo games, House of the Dead, Sega Rally and Ridge Racer! I played those a heck of a load of times!

I tried out a Simpons Pinball cabinet, and I was blown away! It was a lot of fun, and trippy with all the lights! I’ll definitely be playing more pinball games!

 

Retro Diary #80 – “Help me Superman, help me!!! …but first, kill all the bad guys!”

Last Sunday, I went to a meetup at a restaurant called the Geek Retreat… which ended up not happening… but I noticed that they had a Nintendo 64, so I decided to play whatever they had, and they had Wipeout 64, so I just played that for about an hour, then headed home.

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On Monday, I met up with an old school friend at Geek Retreat, and we played some Nintendo 64 while chatting away, we played some Goldeneye, followed by Wipeout 64, and then WWF no mercy. It was nice playing them and meeting this old friend again!

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On Saturday, I met up with this friend again and his group of friends at MEGABytes, I brought along Superman 64, and decided to play that, and we had a blast just laughing at it! It is such a bad game!

We came up with an alternate backstory for the game, Lois Lane is the real villan, and Lex Luthor is just a hostage! The idea came from when “rescuing” Lois Lane, she cried for help, but then said “Before you save me, take out all the bad guys.”, and she looked so casual and calm where she was… hmm… 😛

We also joked about how Superman would be traumatised after the game ends, and will be triggered if anyone mentions rings, and we came up with all sorts of scenarios where “ring” would be mentioned to him!

After our one hour session was finished, they offered to take it off our hands for free and throw it into the river clyde, which I politely declined! 😛

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That’s it for this week’s retro diary, see youse whenever I do anything else worth of note…

Retro Diary #78

Last Sunday, me and my sister watched Beauty and the Beast… on VHS!

It was an interesting experience, and the quality wasn’t nearly as bad as I would have thought, considering we watched it on a big flatscreen TV and chances are, the previous owner watched this film over and over again, because that’s what kids did.

Though then again, it might not have looked so bad because it was a cartoon, there isn’t as much detail to… well, not be seen…

As for the movie itself, in my opinion, it’s just a run of the mill sing-a-long princess story, only without a princess. The “enchanted” objects do make for interesting characters, though.

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Retro Diary #77

So on Thursday, it was my birthday, and I planned to go with some friends to the cinema to see Cars 3. Only one friend turned up, I’m not going to jump to conclusions as to why the others showed up.

Anyway, we met up,We watched someone play Super Mario 3D world at MEGABytes, and then we went and saw the film. I enjoyed it, you can see my thoughts on the film in this article.

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On Friday, I went to the MEGABytes café, and played some PS1 games. The first was No Onbe can stop Mr. Domino, it was a fairly fun game, although it got really frustrating a couple of levels in.

I then played some Dead or Alive 1. I’ve never played the first game before, and it’s a typical 90s fighter from the time. There’s really not much to say here other than outside the main area are full of explosives, seemingly, if a player falls in this area, the ground blows up, propelling them into the air.

This was also before they started using the gimmick of bouncing tits, so the game was just bland in general. Fun, yeah, but bland, in my opinion.

Afterwards, I visited GAME at St. Enochs, and found that they have eliminated their PC stock, even their digital code cards are gone minus some Sims 4 ones… it’s happening… =(

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On Saturday, I finally got around to playing Watch Dogs 2… and I’m addicted! I’ve already lost several hours because the game!

Gameplay-wise, it feels like Watch Dogs 1, but with better car physics, but seeing as I loved the first game, that’s a good thing!

 

Retro Diary #76 – Back Home!

I’m back!

On Sunday, I met up with an old friend at a retro gaming cafe, where I played Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time on the PS1 for a few hours.

It’s actually a really good game. It fits the theme of the show perfectly, it has some great platforming elements to it! The only major flaw I found was that the controls can be very frustrating! The right analog stick does nothing. You have to use the L2 and R2 buttons to look around. Also, R1 is the action button…

Other than that, it’s a very good game, and I definitely see myself getting it when I can afford it!

After that, me and this friend went to get dinner where we talked about all sorts of things game related!

After that, we went home.

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On Monday, I was talking to a friend online (for a good few hours, I might add!), and we takes about the Tony Hawk games for a bit (because she saw Underground 2 on PS2 for sale at a shop and was thinking of getting it), and how she played one of the games years ago, but can’t remember which, I helper her identify that it was Project 8.

While chatting to her, I found my old PS2 keyring, which broke off ages ago!

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On Tuesday, another friend called me for a little chat, and asked how many PC games I had (I guess just to create conversation), and since I’ve lost count, I decided to just take some photos of my collection and sent them to him instead!

I’ve decided to share them here as well!

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