Ho Hum. It’s raining outside, you’ve just polished your array of skull drinking cups, nobody wants to go down the tavern with you, and all the princesses in the neighbourhood think you’re a total jerk. Nothing for it but to don the old armour and go on a crusading rampage, save up a load of money looted from the corpses of your fallen foes and buy a huge army with it, falling upon the next hapless nation like a tsunami of barbed steel, to smell the blood of a your vanquished adversaries, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
This has got to be some form of copyright violation. Imagine if Halo was orange juice. This is Sunny Delight. I should think it’s horrible and tasteless and not like it at all. But I actually did. It might be tedious, it might be one paced. It might have a near identical progression of levels, no variation in enemies, and a plot, characters, weapons and generally everything else lifted wholesale from another game, but it reminded me of Gauntlet, and that is enough. Play it, disagree with me, and go back to www.1980s-games.com and play some more ripped off arcade emulations. I particularly recommend Black Tiger, for what would be a hideously frustrating experience were it not for the fact that credits are free these days. I remember putting two weeks pocket money in to the RoboCop arcade machine, and getting killed by the third incarnation of ED-209, the last phase of the last boss. Bastards. Speaking of which – I still need more robots for my top trumps game. Suggestions in the comments please; we already have Johnny 5, ED-209 and some frightening real-doll type android in a french maid’s outfit…
Cause, um, I heard there’s like, monsters down there or something?
The blank look you’re giving me is probably due to the fact that you didn’t grow up in the UK during the 1980′s, and have no idea who Berk is, or of the whereabouts of my dinner, OR what Globbits are. This may go some way to rectifying this lacuna in your knowledge.
Right. So Now you should be over the joke, and fully prepared to play a little adventure game. You have to use your imagination a bit, but there are some nice touches – good banter in the item shop, some good bosses and little in jokes. Here it is… the epic D&D adventure that is Monsters Den. There’s no facility for deleting old save games, so if you want to start a new campaign, keep a slot free.
Yeah. Sorry about that. Sometimes the puns just happen by themselves.
Anyway, the game’s pretty good – it’s a slowly animated card-battle game; don’t pretend that you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ve noticed you looking wistfully at the Live Action Roleplay messageboards, you don’t need to pretend to me… At least with this you can be nerdy all by yourself and no-one else ever needs to know. It can be our little secret. Just like the dodgy embed frame. Shhhhh.
If you had been born in Japan, this would be your national sport. Standing in front of an arcade machine rhythmically slapping buttons faster and faster until you look like Neo on speed.
Of course your parents wouldn’t understand it, and would wonder why you couldn’t just put electric eels down your pants and see who could hang from their nostrils the longest, like they used to in the good old days. Theirs is a country where waterboarding is considered an amusing pastime and televised for the amusement of the masses. Bless their little silken kimonos.
