Please note all opinions expressed in the following article are those of Boffles and not the opinion of New Eden Radio

Remember the days when you would sit in front of a Television screen with a small piece of rubber, plastic and a tape.....?

No not that, I am talking about a Speccie Computer, specifically the masterpiece of the Sinclair ZX spectrum 48k. If you are too young to remember this piece of technology, and I am guessing most of you are, let me remind you a real gaming experience. The ZX Spectrum was my first computer and despite the aims of my parents was a game machine. In these days the experience of gaming was definitely different. About the size of a net book, the Spectrum 48k was a massive piece of hardware at the time and suffered from many of the problems that the net book suffer today. It would get incredibly hot. The Power connection was dodgy, and the screen, even when plugged into a massive 9” black and white TV, could hardly be read most of the time. I would spend hours pressing play on the audio cassette player, loading up a game only for it to not work and have to rewind the tape to fiddle with the volume and to try again. Then there was the joy of pressing a key for the machine to reboot. There were the first freeware games, printed in magazines and taking hours to manually type in, but it was new and exciting, and then there were the games.

This brings me to a series of reviews I will be doing from time to time. A little Retro gaming, with my computer of choice. The games of the past were very different. They were more the flash games of today, but unlike most of the games of today they were very limited. As a result everything had to be there for a purpose and there was no waste. So let’s start with one that holds strong memories for me.3D Deathchase* was not exactly the most amazing game ever written but it was so much fun. Most games of this era had stupid back stories, and this was no exception. To quote from the manual in the cassette case inlay; “It is 2501, 100 years after the Great War. The North American continent is ruled by mighty warlords in constant conflict over forest territory. You are one of the elite mercenaries, Riders of the Big Bikes.”

3D Deathchase did what it said on the can. You rode a bike with a gun. There were other bikes and trees, you dodged the trees and shot the bikes. The controls were simple, accelerate-left, fire-right. There was a stop, but that was for wimps, as was slow speeds. After killing your two highly intelligent biker baddies you were transported through the magic of colour to the night, to do the same thing again. As you moved on through the game you got helicopters and tanks, and the trees get thicker. Very simple and just so much fun .One of the best things in the Retro community for Speccies is that there is an on line site called World of Spectrum (http://www.worldofspectrum.org/) that is fully legal. This site is contains Emulators and ROMs of the Speccies which have been released by the copyright holders. Therefore allowing legal retro gaming for all.

*3D Deathchase is Copyright of Micromega

Please note all opinions expressed in the following article are those of Boffles and not the opinion of New Eden Radio

A while back something happened to gaming that no one was really expecting. You see gamers had always been depicted as a sloth lot. We sit with our joystick in our hand and wiggle and that is about the most activity we got. Then a cheap, compared with the rival at the time, console came out. This was about waving around like a mad thing and bad graphic and simple games. The Wii was a monster hit. Nintendo then topped it with the next hit product, Wii Fit. The other console company saw and were scared and they panic. But one company decided to take on Wii fit in its own way.

EA game, the monster of the gaming world went with a more serious attempt at getting the population fit. The market is out there I have seen it, and I hate to say it I think I am part of it. You see I want to be fit, but nothing on this earth would get me in a gym. After all you have to be fit to use that stuff. However EA Active allows you to exercise in the comfort of your own home, just like wii fit.

EA Active comes with equipment. For a much cheaper price then the original Wii fit plus board, you get something that looks like an overstretched rubber band and a leg strap. As I held the rubber red band in my hand I thought, “This will never work.” And then the games began.

The graphics are simple and functional very similar to the wii fit style, with a fake fitness centre and a trainer, of course I pick a female. There are no games as such, just fitness exercises and something called the 30 day challenge. I jumped into the 30 day challenge, and set the level to easy. And so started a week of exercise. By the fourth day, I was feeling the pain.

The exercise slowly increase in difficulty until you reach a level were I was knackered by the end of it. Not stiff or sore, just tired, a good sign in exercising as you are not pushed too far. There were a few exercises that used the balance board, but most involve the rubber band or the strap, which holds the nunchuk while doing some exercise. The accuracy is a bit off some times, like all wii games, and the encouraging from the coach (“You really pushed it there”, “You are like a track athletic out there”) is a little over the top. However the results were good.

So will I stick with it? Yes. I think it will do more for me then wii fit which is basically just a posture improver. You never know I may even turn it to hard one day.

Boffles has written us a review on Dog Fighter. Many thanks to Boffles for his time and the following article.

Please note all opinions expressed in the following article are those of Boffles and not the opinion of Neweden radio

As anyone that plays computer games especially the on-line ones know, most games fall into one of two distinct groups. There are your serious gamer games and there are the games that are made to make you smile.

Halo, Call of Duty and eve-online are the gamer games. They try to represent the aspect of their world in a real way. They explain away death and destruction while giving reasons for the world that you inhabit.

Dog fighter is the other sort. Within three seconds of starting you understand this game. It is a WWI dog fighter bi-plane game with power ups. It is a kill or be killed, fight to the death, TF2 without the running, silly voices, or hats.

After a fight with controls caused by the lack of key mapping before the latest update, I went old school playing just on the keyboard and the results were acceptable. It is clearly designed for a game controller with too many controls, switches and emergency manoeuvre. The power-ups are nicely varied which I am sure would be better if I could have switched between them. However I did find myself always going for the homing missiles, but since all four shots you get have to hit the same plane for a kill, it is not a sure kill.

The beta had nice selection of maps, all with enough space around them to make canoeing around them easy, but cover that enables you to shake off an enemy with twisting through towers, bridges and walkways. Sometimes the sense of scales seems to go a bit wonky, and distracts from the fun of flying inside of a pyramid.

I will certainly be watching this game closely to see how it expands over time. If this gets support like TF2 then I see big things ffor the game as it is fun, easy to play, but most importantly it is also hard to master. At only £8.99*, you can hardly go wrong.

*Price correct at time of publishing

Last week on the show I started a section called torture the DJ. This week's section was "MMO Choice". Unfortunately, for me the votes were unanimous, and I was forced to download, install and play.

HELLO KITTY ONLINE!!!!!!!

I decided to approach this with the appropriate respect, and treated this as a proper game. I choked back the gag reflex at the pastel shades and horrible music of the website, and download the game. The First stage was nice and easy, no problems at all, and once I worked out where I needed to go, I signed up.The first surprise! I received a free email address - @hellokitty.com. With trepidation, I entered the game.

Creating a character was quick and easy, mainly because there was nothing to it, create a face, and the character Boffles was born.

So I enter the game and find it easy to use, just like you would expect.Everything is where it needs to be and there are no great surprises. I dash
through the first stages of introduction and dive into the first task - the usual "gathering of stuff" and this is where things turn pants. quite literally, my reward is "a set of pants".

After playing Hello Kitty for a little while, it hits me... I know why this game is so familiar. Take away killing things and death; replace them with sending things to sleep; and you have changed Runescape (from about 5 years ago) into Hello Kitty Online.

Is that a bad thing? No, not really. Ok so you can't rotate the view, and you disappear behind scenery, but who hasn't done that before in a game? It
is free and there is nothing to get upset about. well except for the music.

Summing Hello Kitty up, it is not my cup of tea. After all, I am not the target audience. It is no worse then Farmville or Allods, it is just as
simple and easy to play. I noticed however, that it ate up a lot of my memory, using more then Eve Online. To liken Hello Kitty to an MMO, is the same as likening Team Fortress to fly fishing: there is just no comparison. A link is available if you search for it, but really, don't look too hard, it's not worth it.
Boffles
(No longer in pastel colours)

PS If you can figure out a link between TF2 and fly fishing then well done. ;-D

PPS I have been asked to point out that I did not meet Tempest or Triton in the game, nor have I been ordered to delete any images either.