Free Game Giveaway: ROM CHECK FAIL

This week, Fruitbat looks at an arcade-style oddity

Like the very best arcade and puzzle games, ROM CHECK FAIL concerns itself with one simple idea that spawns endless possibilities, both for victory and defeat. That it features a healthy dose of nostalgia is very much in its favour, too.

Each of the game's twenty levels feature a single screen festooned with level blocks and a set of enemies, which need to be cleared in order to advance. What makes the game so unique is that every element of the level - from player to enemy and music to background - is randomised based on a tidy collection of old-school video games. In any given level you might find yourself pitting Pac Man against the Space Invaders, or the ship from Defender against an army of Goombas. Every player and enemy behaves exactly as they do in their respective games - getting caught as the Space Invaders ship spells trouble, as you can only move left and right, but Link and Pac Man are free to roam the screen at will.

Welcome One and All!

It's a brand new Fortress! Where posts are as punctual as British Rail and factual accuracy is a thing of the past!

Seriously though, with my workload chopped in half (who knew you could work as little as 40 hours in a week?) I'm finally in a position to spend some quality time with my Fortress, and with it will come new articles posted on a weekly basis of all things media (but mostly games, if I'm being honest), as well as some new sections including but not necessarily limited to:

Free Game Giveaway

Man, there sure are some good games out there, and some of them won't cost you a dime! They may be short, a little rough around the edges and occasionally demand runtimes that they should really have the foresight to package with the installer, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve your love, and that's why I'll be featuring them.

Retro|Spective

Like a vintage car, all games have to fall out of fashion and grow old. But unlike a vintage car, they can stay spotless for evermore, without rusting or bits occasionally falling off. Some even improve, like vintage wine! The ones featured in Retro|Spective are my favourites, hand-picked and Fruitbat-certified.

Digital Remix

If there's one way in which video games haven't aged a day, it's in the music department. Retro tunes are as catchy as they ever were, and their synthetic beeps have only retained their charm. From the early days through to the modern day, many is the tune that can be rejuvenated and made new once again by a catchy remix. Check in here for some of the best.

Artist Spotlight

Thanks to the internet and the advent of digital galleries, finding a raft of talented artists and decent webcomics has never been easier, to the point of being ridiculously overwhelming. Since I love rummaging through both galleries and webcomics, I'll be showcasing my favourites in the hope that they can become yours as well.

Series Review

I'm damned if I have the time to pick apart a TV series episode-by-episode, week in, week out, but once the dust has settled and things have run their course, I'll be giving my verdict on whether it was all worth it. Series' both new and old will find a home here.

That's all for now; welcome to the Fortress, and enjoy your stay!

Sonic Generations

Hands-on with the demo

A few months back, I concluded my review of Sonic Colours on a fairly bum note. For the most part it was a fast and fun platformer, and it showed that Sonic Team still have huge creative potential, but they just didn't have the skill to match the creativity with tight, slick gameplay. Judging by the newly released demo of Sonic Generations, I'll be needing to give Sonic Team a little more credit come November.

Tomb Raider

A retrospective that shows why this is one fruitbat who is psyched for the upcoming reboot

The original Tomb Raider games are, without question, the scariest games I've ever played. Well, I say played; after being mesmorised by the very first game on a friend's PC I was compelled to pick up the sequel a few years later. I made it as much as five levels in before the jitters and the willies ganged up and assaulted my nervous system, forcing me to quit to desktop with shaking hands.

There's something, by which I mean several somethings, that I find terrifying about the old-school Tomb Raider. Partly it's the golem-esque thugs who stride towards you in complete silence, not even flinching at a shotgun blast delivered point-blank to the chest. Partly it's the sudden and monstrously unfair traps that wipe out your health bar in a furious storm of pixellated blood. But really, what makes Tomb Raider 1 through 5 so knee-knocking, so breath-catching and so utterly memorable is the pitch-perfect design and atmosphere.

Where next for consoles?

As all three manufacturers announce new consoles for release within the next three years, what can we expect from the next generation of consoles?

How have consoles and games grown in the last generation? A wider variety of controls like Kinect, Wii Remote and multi-touch; better social tools like Steam groups, friends lists and Facebook updates; a sideways leap into movie rentals, digital comic books and television services; even smaller, indie games like Braid, Limbo and Stacking have gone from being marginal titles to some of the biggest on the download stores.

Video games are changing fast and no-one is entirely sure what the next big step will be or when it will hit us. Consoles of the future are therefore in need of flexibility and reactivity, with as few stumbling blocks to unexpected change as possible. With that in mind, I'd propose the following improvements for the next wave of hardware:

1.5 is the new 2.0

Are console bolt-ons the next step?

The console life cycle has started wobbling in the last couple of years; there's barely been the faintest hint that a new home console is on the way, and if the Kinect is anything to go by then Microsoft, at least, is more interested in shoring up the 360 than moving on to another console. And let's be honest here, exactly what point would there be to a new console? The Wii is suffering from an image problem rather than a lack of horsepower; a HD upgrade and an enormous GUI overhaul would be a better option than dropping the console entirely. And as for the PS3 and 360, what would a better model offer? Once upon a time you could look to the ever-advancing PC and arcade markets to see where better capabilities would improve the play experience, but what do either of them offer that consoles don't? Crysis 2 does little new in raw mechanics despite looking pretty as all hell, and the underlying physics aren't proving much of a problem for current gen consoles. And despite native support, console gamers still aren't giving a single shit about the potential of the keyboard and mouse combo. Most of the current innovations in gaming are coming through firmware patches, peripherals and the online arena; what part of that equation requires a new console?

Fruitbat's week: Chiptunes, Mega Man 2.5 and real life Mario Kart

Let's set the mood with a bit of music: through the 80s and early 90s, chip music was the definitive way of delivering catchy beats in your game; because consoles weren't able to play music files like a CD player could, they had dedicated audio chips into which a set of data was fed, which told the console what sounds it should play - like playing the piano from sheet music, essentially. Take that same chip data and port it to another console and you'd have a similar but slightly different sound, like this Megadrive port of Super Mario Bros. It's a fascinating way of creating sound and the distinctive digital beeps are still alive today, in modern music, the retro reboots Mega Man 9 and 10 and the chiptune scene, notably Anamanaguchi, who gave the Scott Pilgrim game its soundtrack. I'm still yet to find anything that tops the very best of the NES era, but that just goes to show what can be achieved with the right talent. So, please check out the video for a few examples of original compositions, or try this one to see how Capcom are still kicking it old school as late as 2010.

With those bleeping in the background (or not) this is the perfect time to introduce Mega Man 2.5, a fangame that throws the 8-bit Blue Bomber into a Paper Mario-esque world of perspective-warping platforms. Speaking as someone who has waded in the rough waters of fangamedom before, it doesn't surprise me in the least to see that progress is going slowly, but while the announcement of this fan-built game is pretty old, a recent trailer definitely seems to comfirm that development is in full swing. The game seems less ambitious in its scope than the original video, which, given the state of progress thus far and the creator's grounding in animation, definitely seems to mark it out as proof of concept rather than a playable game. But with a full co-op mode, calls for more programmers and enormously expansive levels, this has the potential to provide an outing for the series that will rival the upcoming Mega Man Universe in originality. The fangame scene has only been growing stronger, with enormous groundwork laid out by Sonic fans trying to recreate the complex physics of the hedgehog's adventures, and this marks a step beyond mere recreation and delves into the realm of savvy reinvention; definitely one to keep an eye on.

And since we're on the subject of re-imaginings, here's a video of a Frenchman bringing Mario Kart into the real world to a worryingly insane degree.

And that's all until next time.

Meet the NGP

PSP successor confirmed

About five hours ago, Sony held a press conference in Japan to announce the PSP2, also known as the NGP (Next Generation Portable). Given that the current PSP had its share of misguided flaws, especially the PSPgo, it's encouraging to browse through the features currently announced and see that Sony has managed to fix a few of them, especially when I look back through my wish list of PSP2 features from early last year; there's no Cell processor in there, but a quad-core ARM processor will do just as nicely. And there's a few other things that have left me feeling impressed:

A touch pad on the rear

I called this months ago, less because I thought that Sony would actually implement it and more because it's a great idea; frankly, its inclusion has given me hope that Sony still has it in them to deliver smart hardware choices that its rivals don't offer, after playing catch up for the last few years with the PS3 and generally flailing about with the PSP.

Anyone with a modicum of hand-eye coordination will be able to match their fingers behind the console to points on the screen in front of them, theoretically meaning that we could play fully-functional touch screen games without our fingers obscuring and smudging the screen. This is a step forward that not even Apple have thought to do yet, and if it works it'll reflect well on Sony as a console maker.

Flash card storage for games, updates and DLC

The removal of the UMD is no great loss, but even better than the switch to flash drive is that all updates and DLC will be stored and integrated with the game on the same cartridge, making data transfer between systems an absolute breeze. The original PSP stores such data on the memory stick, which means that actual downloaded games tend to get lost amidst a forest of separate icons for updates and DLC; it may amount to housekeeping more than anything else, but for the sake of convenience this is an important feature.

Infinitely better analogue sticks

Aside from the fact that there are two of them, pictures clearly show that the analogue sticks are just that: proper sticks, not just sliding nubs that cripple your thumbs. They'll be more prone to damage when being shoved in bags or pockets, but I'd be very surprised if the inevitable carry cases don't account for that.

Key franchises right from the off

Enough said. Even if they don't make the console's launch, names like Killzone and Uncharted carry a lot of weight. The fact that they're on their way and comparable to their PS3 counterparts is enough to have faith that the console will have a few essential titles in its first year.

No news yet on the price (expensive) or battery life (short) or even the release date (er... not yet), but head over to Kotaku for big, glossy pictures of the unit. It sounds like a console with potential, and it'll remain to be seen if Sony can overcome its predecessor's stagnation and keep pace with the 3DS. Expect to hear more about this in the coming months.

Gaming PR 666

No, fuck it, I've changed my mind

Do you know why Mario and Luigi had to play their adventures separately, insteading of pairing up for a two-plumber beatdown? Do you know why Tails was a superfluous nobody who couldn't lose any lives, could be left behind and got chucked out in the flaming wreck of an airplane while the first player knuckled down for the end game? Basically, do you know why certain games used to treat the second player as an annoyance that the first player didn't need?

Because for most people he was, that's why. Anyone who grew up with a games console and a younger sibling knows exactly what I'm talking about; you didn't want to shepherd them about in a game-spanning escort mission while they blundered into enemies, and you didn't want to wait fifteen minutes at every slightly tricky jump while they tried to remember that there was a jump button in the first place. You sure as hell didn't want to take turns in the single player, because you knew, every time, that they'd haemorrhage lives at a rate of three per minute, and burst into tears when you tried to wrestle the pad back off them and salvage the crumbling remains of your near-perfect run. Sega and Nintendo, each in their own way, concocted the perfect co-op for siblings; one gave the little sprat his own adventure to ruin, and the other removed any possible way for him to be a liability. With such genius did these giants bear gifts upon the grateful elder children of the world.

If you're wondering why this nugget of childhood has burst out and mugged me on the corner of memory lane, it's because I've realised what it is that's been irritating me all along about these wretched new-wave adverts and that horrifying family attempting to play Kinect through severe muscular spasms: deep down we can see those useless ham-brains we hated playing against, and there ain't no way in hell we're going to put up with that crap all over again, the problem being that this time the kids are fully grown so we can't push them over and steal the pad back off them.

For reference, go watch that Kinect video again: god, they're like a pair of giant man-babies, oblivious to the connection between interaction and action, who have grasped on to the idea that they have to move about but don't have the brains to see that that isn't enough to get them through the game. The many months since that video's release hasn't dulled the horror of realising that the children may actually be smarter than the parents.

And while I'm acutely aware that I've defended Nintendo's adverts as being necessary for this mildly uncoordinated audience, it's only just struck me how terrifying it is that adults - real, honest-to-god grown men and women - apparently need to have it explained to them, with visual aids, that playing games with your friends is fun. They're teaching that stuff to three year olds on CBeebies, yet there's an entire marketing blitz on prime time telly devoted to people who should still be only getting a spoonful of food in their mouths one time out of three. If your opinion of Donkey Kong Country Returns is swayed less by the gameplay footage than by how much Ant and Dec seem to enjoy it then we're starting to fly into flock-following sheep country.

This isn't even a rant about having to show people how to play games; hell, with new tech like the Wii Remote or Kinect it's pretty essential. No, this is a rant about the fact that games are still being marketed as though the players are dribbling cretins, only now they're about thirty years older and have bags of skittles for brains instead of raw meat engorged with testosterone, and I'm not sure if it's an improvement.

Do these people even exist? The Kinect video certainly suggests so, as does the mountain of shovelware that Nintendo have brought upon themselves, but then take a look at the iTunes charts: at the time of writing, the iPhone Top Ten App Chart contains Angry Birds, FIFA 11 and Cut the Rope, two of which are a natty pair of physics puzzlers and the other is a franchise so long-standing that it's outlasted most real footballers. The puzzlers are cheap, casual and fairly basic, but they need a good eye and a healthy sense of trajectory to progress, something that the dimwits we're being told exist couldn't begin to make head or tail of. Or maybe they could, if they first had someone lead them to it first with easy-to-follow diagrams.

So the conclusion at the end of this hazy ramble through my brain is, basically, that I have no idea what to think any more. At first I wondered if we shouldn't just give up on these people, since the current iPhone crowd clearly have a good eye for quality even in the form of five-minute fluff, but that would just be snobbish. What would be nice, though, is if we could market to casual gamers on the assumption that they actually have a functioning brain and don't need to be marketed to in the exact same manner as nine year olds. That, I think, would make me feel a whole lot better.

Sonic Colours

A magnificent effort sadly goes to show that Sonic Team have used up all their chances

One less dimension to worry about means that Sonic's 2D journey has had a lot less bumps to smooth out over the years, and while the Advance and Rush series brought their own enjoyable flavour to the franchise, his three dimensional adventures have been patchy at best; Sonic Adventure was rushed out to prop up a fledgling Dreamcast, while the sequel was rushed out to support a dying Dreamcast. Heroes was inexcusably broken, and Sonic the Hedgehog even more so, while Unleashed got half the formula right but stumbled with the rest. Sonic 4 had things easy; with expectations for Colours riding high, it's the 3D hedgehog who is yet to impress. And like its predecessor, it's a tantalising snapshot of what Sonic could be.

Colours isn't a bad game per se, coming straight off the back of the much-loved daytime stages from Sonic Unleashed in which players blasted through the level at breakneck speed, but it still manages to carry across the flaws of previous games, from flaky controls to ridiculously unfair obstacle placement and overly busy level design, all of which transform what should have been a breezy joyride into a nerve-shredding dance on the brink of oblivion. The levels are bizarrely cluttered and often ask you to take in more than the eyeball and brain can handle, and while it's many the fine game that can keep the player on a knife-edge, there are numerous cheap deaths that have an almost smug, mocking feel to them, as though half a second is clearly ample time to spot the bottomless pit that just rushed around the corner.

So far so 3D Sonic, then. It's as well that the gimmick du jour, the Wisps that grant Sonic a variety of powers mid-level, are fairly well realised and generally quite inventive; the Cyan Wisp lets Sonic ping-pong off walls at ultra-fast speed, usually clearing hoards of enemies and firing you a small but significant distance through the level, while the Yellow Wisp gives you an all-destroying drill that takes you far below the main level. The one major criticism of the Wisps is that they rarely feel organic; you can't stockpile different kinds of Wisp energy to maximise your options, and every part of each level is clearly designed around the specific Wisp power you've just picked up, even if it's an option rather than an essential.

It's a sad reflection of the fact that Sonic Team just can't quite seem to get the various gameplay elements they concoct to mesh together properly. The drifting and side-stepping from the running sections of Unleashed are back, but are only useable during specially marked segments rather than at any time. They've made an effort to merge the various modes of control into one fluid whole, but all they've done is diced them up in the same bowl rather than actively blending them into one smooth mixture.

It isn't all bad; in fact the irony is that Colours really begins to shine when it learns to slow down, drop the sparkling bombardment of visuals that plague the 3D games and get down to some serious old-school Sonic platforming, measured and exploratory and never punishing inquisitiveness. The best can be seen in Aquarium Park, where speed relents in the face of a haunting, serene wonderland that spreads open around you and invites you to make a day of it. Better still is that the hard lessons Sega had to learn for Sonic 4's retro revamp have clearly made an impression, with Spinies and Motobugs making an appearance almost unchanged from their 16-bit counterparts, while the Special Stages, disguised as a (probably unintentionally) nightmarish arcade side-scroller are all based on the distinctive level design of Sonic 1, from the odd curves of Starlight to the treacherous platforms of Scrap Brain, and these elements feel entirely natural and organic with not a single knowing wink thrown in their direction.

Moreover, the colourful aesthetic is still paying off two years after Unleashed, and while Sonic's new English voice is diabolical, it's at least helped by a script that has thrown all of the po-faced seriousness of previous games out the window while still maintaining the eye for scope and scale that makes Sonic consistently feel epic. Detail abounds at all levels as Sonic Team somehow channels the same technical forces that power every first-party Wii game, something they are clearly aware of as a delicate touch gives depth to the visuals, from the deep blues that illuminate the first dash into Aquarium Park and the gentle tff-tff-tff that sounds as Sonic scatters petals and grass blades on the Wisp home world.

Despite this, Colours is not the salvation of the Sonic series. Not quite. It isn't ambitious enough in its mechanics, and Sonic Team plainly lack the skills required to take Sonic any further forward. Although the series clearly still has an enormous well of lifeforce yet to be tapped, it isn't Sonic Team who are going to get there; they're like an ageing thoroughbred that refuses to be put out to pasture, and the fact that they're making small improvements doesn't mean they're going to keep pace with the prime fillies any more. Colours is a defiant statement that Sonic still has life left in him, but he needs a strong team behind him, and Sonic Team isn't it. There's a strong creative force at Sonic Team that's bursting to show us what they can do, but a lengthy spell with an equally passionate third-party dev is the only way for Sonic to reach his peak.

Verdict
An aggravating first play means it isn't worth renting, but it is worth buying if you can push through to the end game; Colours is short, flawed and symptomatic of a team that simply doesn't have what it takes no matter how hard it tries, but amongst the cracks can be seen a franchise straining to become what it knows it can be.