All posts by Mallo

Writer and screenshot enthusiast. Ex-PC Zoner.

Battletoads, NES/Famicom

Battletoads is a scrolling action game, developed by Rare and published by Tradewest in 1991. It satirises (and takes advantage of the popularity of) the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and features a group of cartoon toads, called Zitz, Rash and Pimple.

Two of the toads – Zitz and Rash – are on a mission to rescue their third member, Pimple, and Princess Angelica, both of whom have been kidnapped by the evil Dark Queen and taken to her planet. The toads fly to the planet in their spaceship and lower themselves down to the surface using their ‘Turbo Ropes’. From there they begin the fight to free their friends.

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Castlevania ReVamped, PC

Castlevania ReVamped is a homebrew remake of the original Castlevania, for Windows and Linux, by Lv.4 Games. It was initially released in March of 2024 and was inspired by the developer’s love of the Castlevania series (“it’s something I have wanted to do for many years,” he says, and “it took about four/five months to create“).

The game was made in Game Maker Studio 2 and is based on the first NES Castlevania, and Akumajō Dracula on the X68000 (and the remake in Castlevania Chronicles), and in it you play as the iconic Simon Belmont, with his trusty “Vampire Killer” whip.

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Gods, Amiga

Developed by The Bitmap Brothers and published by Renegade Software for the Amiga in 1991, Gods is a stylised platform game in which you play as Hercules, on a quest to make his way through five large stages, themed with Greek mythological motifs.

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Starglider, Apple II

The Apple II version of Argonaut Software‘s classic cockpit shooter, Starglider, was ported by Solid Image, the same developer who made the flawed C64 version. And – unsurprisingly – it retains all the flaws of the C64 version, and brings a few problems of its own to the party, just for good measure…

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Starglider, PC

The 1987 PC MS-DOS version of Argonaut Software‘s classic 3D shooter, Starglider, was ported by Realtime Games Software, who did the excellent Amstrad and ZX Spectrum ports. Unfortunately, the game is available only with four-colour CGA graphics, which does diminish the look of the game significantly.

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Starglider, Commodore 64

The Commodore 64 version of Starglider was ported by Solid Image and published by Rainbird in 1986. Unfortunately, the developers didn’t manage to convert Starglider‘s unique control method over to the C64 – instead they chose to use a fixed aiming reticule in the centre of the screen, and this results in a rather degraded gameplay experience.

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Starglider, Amstrad CPC

The Amstrad CPC version of Argonaut Software‘s classic 3D shooter, Starglider, was developed by Realtime Games Software, who also coded the excellent ZX Spectrum version. It could be argued that it is even better than the Spectrum version, because it runs faster and also uses more colours in the polygons, although the game does have a smaller cockpit and play window than the Spectrum version.

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Costa Capers, ZX Spectrum

Costa Capers is the sequel to the classic Spectrum platformer, Technician Ted. The game was published by Firebird Software in 1985 and features similar gameplay to the original, with the same distinctive Ted sprite.

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Technician Ted: The Megamix, ZX Spectrum

Technician Ted: The Megamix is a special version of the game, created for 128K Spectrums, which contains many more screens than the original release. It’s also been improved visually, and has some new AY-based music. Technician Ted: The Megamix was released by Hewson Consultants in 1986.

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Ultimate Qix, Megadrive/Genesis

Released as “Volfied” in arcades, this sequel to the original Qix was re-named Ultimate Qix for its Sega Genesis release in North America in 1991. And – let’s face it – “Volfied” is a crappy name anyway, so it’s no great loss.

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