Russian Subway Dogs (PS Vita) Review

One of the final games to be released on the PS Vita Store is the wonderfully named Russian Subway Dogs, a game in which you play the part of hungry dogs roaming the Russian subway system scaring the passengers into dropping food as they exit their train which you must then collect.  Sounds easy? Wrong! The game starts slowly but speeds up as more trains arrive and passengers alight, also you have to reach a certain target to proceed to the next level.

Graphically the game looks great and is great fun to play providing a good challenge.  The music is particularly good in a typical Russian style and matches the game perfectly.

A fitting final release for the Vita, excellent value for money and well worth picking up if you own Sony’s handheld.   TRJ RATING : 4.5/5

These SNES books are fantastic!

As a loyal Nintendo fan going right back to the SNES I was very keen and excited to receive these two books containing everything you could ever want to know about the Super Nintendo, and these books are fantastic! Lavishly illustrated, both over 500 pages and of a very high quality they are a must for any Nintendo fan!

Super Nintendo Anthology Gold Edition (Geeks Line)

As well providing a very comprehensive section detailing and reviewing each and every SNES game, this impressive tome also has a number of excellent additional features : Hiroshi Yamauchi : The Man Behind the Machine, accessories, the rivalry with Sega to name but a few.  The section detailing the SNES games is particularly well done, giving a review, star rating and displaying the box art for each game.  A truly fabulous read.

SNES / Famicom : A Visual Compendium (Bitmap Books)

The second SNES book is not quite as comprehensive but still weighs in at over 500 pages presented in a slipcase with a holographic front, this basically details the games aiming to be more of a pictorial companion.  It is still a very worthwhile read, well produced and providing comprehensive information about the SNES games.

I highly recommend both these books for dipping in and out of and as a source of reference, excellent.

Best Android Emulators

Having owned and been enjoying an Android powered retro handheld, the Powkiddy X18s for a couple of weeks now I’m of the opinion that, with it’s superb choice of high quality and great looking and performing emulators Android is the best platform for retrogaming for sure, detailed below are some of the best emulators in my opinion :

Redream (Sega Dreamcast) - A great looking emulator for Dreamcast offering perfect performance with an easy to use and attractive interface automatically downloading the box art too for your selected games.

Drastic (Nintendo DS) - Offers a choice of screen layouts for the Nintendo DS games, you can either display the screens side-by-side, top and bottom or switch between them, again the games run perfectly and is really great to use.

M64 Plus FZ Pro (Nintendo 64) - My favourite emulator for Nintendo 64, again like Redream it automatically downloads the box art for your games offering a visually attractive interface and perfect performance even on Goldeneye!

John GBAC (GameBoy and GameBoy Color) - There are a couple of reasons why this is my favourite emulator for GameBoy and GameBoy Color, one is that full support for Super GameBoy enhanced titles is built-in, it automatically scans your device for the games saving you the job of doing so, it is also possible in the Settings to choose the correct original green palette for GameBoy titles and to top it all off performance is perfect, there is an advert which appears after exiting each game but an optional in-app purchase is available for £3.99 to remove these.  Also when exiting a game you are automatically given the option to save your progress.  A really excellent emulator

Virtual Virtual Boy (Nintendo Virtual Boy) - I am constantly surprised that with the complex nature of Virtual Boy games that emulation of them is possible at all let alone as perfect as they are on this emulator, they look and play great!

PPSSPP Gold (Sony PlayStation Portable) - An emulator for the PSP offering a wealth of tinkering options in the settings for getting the best out of the games, again a visually attractive emulator thanks to the game icons displayed, and it performs great, even God of War : Chains of Olympus runs pretty much perfectly on my X18s, a title which has always struggled on my Anbernic handhelds, the best choice for PSP.

These are just some of the many great emulators available for Android, there are many more great ones available but these are my personal favourites, happy emulating!

Antstream Arcade

A couple of years ago at a retrogaming show I witnessed a stand demonstrating a service which promised streaming of classic videogames called Antstream, well that service is now a reality.  The service is available on Windows, Mac, Android, Linux, Amazon Fire and Nvidia Shield and having had the Android app installed for about a week now on my Powkiddy X18s Android handheld I’m rather impressed!

The service allows 1,000 free plays before you’re asked to pay £9.99 a month for unlimited access, this is a really generous amount and gives you an excellent chance to try the service out.  There is a great selection of classics to choose from including Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Asteroids to name but a few, there are around 1,000 titles in total to choose from! So far the games I’ve tried out play really well with no stuttering, buffering or lag at all, another useful feature is each time you select a game to play the app tells you how many free plays you have left before you have to pay to continue.

A really highly recommended service and with the 1,000 free plays, no real reason not to try it!

Atari : Game Over Documentary

For many years it had been the stuff of gaming folklore that when the E.T. - The Extra Terrestrial video game was released back in the 80s for the Atari 2600, it was so bad and sold so few copies that the many unsold copies were buried in a landfill in New Mexico, USA.

And so on April 26th 2014 the excavation was begun at the rumoured landfill location in Alamogordo, New Mexico, a total of 30 feet were dug taking approximately three hours and, due to the city authorities only allowing digging for 24 hours, a mere 1,300 of the buried 700,000 games were recovered.  The city’s mayor is now hoping to turn the site into a tourist attraction.

The story is truly fascinating, the whole thing has been made into a brilliant documentary, Atari : Game Over which, at the time of writing is available to enjoy on YouTube (https://youtu.be/O2vWvp8WXQI) and I highly recommend it.

700 games recovered will be sold by the Alamogordo City Commission, a further 100 were given to the film’s development companies and the rest given to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C., and local New Mexico museums for display putting to rest once and for all one of gaming’s longest running rumours.

Confirmed : GamesMaster is coming back!

Well it’s been rumoured for some time but it’s official - the iconic gaming show GamesMaster is coming back!    It has just begun filming for initial broadcast on the E4 YouTube channel followed by a run on the E4 TV channel.  

The lead presenter has just been announced as Scottish comedian, writer, filmmaker and poet Robert Florence.  No word as yet regarding who will follow the late Sir Patrick Moore as the GamesMaster themselves……

Personally as huge fan of the original I’m pleased to see a gaming show returning to our screens, however I find it strange that considering the huge popularity of gaming (both retro and modern) in the UK there isn’t a weekly gaming show consisting of news, features, previews and reviews, this would be excellent, how about it TV companies?    Have also always been a little envious of the fact that those lucky Japanese have a weekly (yes weekly!) gaming magazine to enjoy, Famitsu which has become something of a legend in gaming circles, it’s reviews of new games are highly regarded, surprising that given the wealth of gaming information and news available these days online that it’s still going to be honest, would love a similar publication here…….well one can dream……

Powkiddy X18s Review

For what seems like an eternity now we’ve had one retro emulation handheld after another churned out by Anbernic and Powkiddy using the same chipset each time which is fine as (especially with Anbernic) they’re generally excellent machines providing great performance for everything PS1 and below, however they’ve always stuggled with PSP, Dreamcast, Saturn and N64.  That is all about to change as the next generation are upon us with a much more powerful chipset and considerably better performance on these higher end machines.  

Step forward the first of these, the Powkiddy X18s, a clamshell Android 11 powered handheld boasting some serious power.  I took delivery of mine last week and am seriously impressed thus far, however we have to address the elephant in the room, no Google Play Store (although an update is promised) meaning any emulators have to be downloaded and installed using APK files online, this however is quite easy to do and apart from issues with Retroarch and Mame everything else has worked.

The build quality of the X18s is good, feels great to hold and use and has a nice weight to it, and the performance of N64, Dreamcast, PSP and Saturn really surprised me, it’s pretty much perfect, there are some minor issues but generally all is good.  For the first time I’m able to play one of my all-time favourite games, Nights into Dreams on the Sega Saturn perfectly, also for the Saturn I’ve got Sega Rally and Athlete Kings working for the first time.  I’ve come across no issues on N64, even Goldeneye which traditionally has really struggled on less powerful machines runs perfectly! No issues either on Dreamcast, all runs well and at full speed.   

Also for the first time on these devices it is also possible to play GameCube games which is something I’ve been waiting for for a long time, I was pleasantly surprised, it struggles a little with the demanding F-Zero GX (although it is playable) - everything else I’ve thrown at the Dolphin Emulator so far it’s played with ease.

Being an Android handheld and with currently no Google Play Store it does take a lot more setting up than the Anbernic and Powkiddy devices before it but if you’re willing to put in the time and effort you’ll be handsomely rewarded.  I’m excited to see what Anbernic have planned for later this year with their rumoured RG552, watch this space!