Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out – Von Kaiser

Remember Bucky O’Hare, the fearless green rabbit and his band of intergalactic do gooders? No? Well neither do I to be honest bar the theme song for some reason. It was a short lived cartoon in the 90s. I do remember buying a figure off the show as a present for a party of a primary school friend. He cried when I gave it to him. It’s okay though, I didn’t like him much anyway!

The Daily Sun needs delivering. The job demands a brave lad to tackle this treacherous paper round. This street is so dangerous, it makes headline news when you successfully finish a weeks paper round!

This is Technos’s take on an RPG using sprites very similar to those from their Double Dragon series. It plays like a more refinded DD, with less moves, however theres an abundance of weapons to keep it interesting. What sets this aside from other brawlers of the time, is the RPG elements. You an upgrade stats for punch, kick, throw, weapon, stamina, strength, agility, Defense, will power and max power. leveling isnt done through EXP like most RPGs, instead you collect money from defeated foes and purchase items from the many marketplaces.

‘Gra-dius’, or ‘Grade-ius’ however you pronounce it, Gradius is undoubtedly one of the NES’s classics. The system isn’t blessed with shooters, while still playable, many do not hold up well today

Anyway Atari decided to turn the popular game into a video-game. Ironically the game turned out about as mysterious to me as the real thing! Marble Madness, has this strange allure to it that is hard to describe. When put into words, the concept of controlling a Marble across 7 different levels, avoid hazards and falling off edges doesn’t seem anything special, but when you play the game, its like there some deeper meaning lurking in there? Maybe its the somewhat m psychedelic level design? perhaps it’s the wonderfully bizarre music? Or perhaps it’s just the fact that I used to be very stoned when I played this one in my teens?

You start out on a quiet empty street, you can find a Health Food store, but you cant buy anything. There’s a subway you can enter but no train comes. Eventually I work out how to make a Hole, and drop to the lower platform, what now?