Charming British Guy Doing Terribly At A Bunch Of Turbografx 16 Shmups.

We've peeked into the world of Steve Benway before, and I've finally set aside some time to take a decent tour of his Youtube channel. And boy, did I not set aside enough time. With 614 videos on just his main channel, he is quite the busy retro-gamer. Becoming familiar with the charmingly self-effacing "watch me play very badly" style of his gaming videos, I resolved with no small bit of schadenfreude to open this post with a vid of him tackling what is admittedly one of the most difficult games on my favorite video game system. The Turbografx 16 actually has several nail-bitingly difficult shooters and, God bless him, he jumps right in and plays them anyway. You can see the results here.

Dragon Spirit (TG-16) No-Hit Run.

Probably one of the hardest Turbografx shooters in existence, and this guy makes it through not only without dying, but without being hit. I mean seriously, you have to pilot along that fist-sized dragon through the game without getting hit. Crazy.

The BEST Stage From Any Batman Game EVAR!

Actually, tho, this is a coveted and highly debated designation, considering the impossibly excellent Sunsoft NES "Batman" games.

This is stage 3-1 from the Sega Genesis game "Adventures Of Batman And Robin"... twenty minutes of straight holy-crap awesome. The whole fact that the stage is a (literal) "stage", with lights and gaffes and other theater crap crashing down on you is fun, blah blah blah and electrified gnomes or something...

But we know we're all waiting for what comes up at the 3:10 mark... I'll wait with ya, or you can move up the scrollbar to the MOST AWESOME MINI-BOSS fight that has ever existed.

Then, exploding bunnies. And giant mushrooms. And flame-spewing flowers. And more electrified gnomes than you can shake a stick at. And then, the game literally disentegrates into a full-on grand-mal seizure right before your eyes before the mini-boss appears.

And still, you're only half done.



Unfortunately, the second half is about half as inspired as the first half. Yes, I really did write that.

Anyway, a truly amazing and innovative boss makes his appearance at about 5:28. Catch up with me as you find appropriate.

One of the things that is kind of a shame about the prevalence of actual for-real 3-D graphics is that a boss stage like this cannot (or rather will not) be properly rendered ever again - this boss stage probably holds the position of being the last gasp of the "Space Harrier" engine... *sigh*

Let's see a more drawn out and dramatic playthrough of that boss-


There ya go. You can thank me later.

Space Fantasy Zone! Legendary Unreleased Game

Ok, so technically this was intended to be a game for the Turbografx CD System, the game itself was a mashup of two games licensed by Sega, which makes it Sega-tastic.

This game could have been awesome. The bright and surreal landscape, flora, and fauna of Fantasy Zone, with the gameplay of Space Harrier! Unfortunately, when the games were pressed, it turns out NEC didn't have all the licensing figured out and the game was shelved. A sad, sad story.

All we have to work with is the same 5 screenshots that a dozen other video game blogs have posted (so I'll abstain), as well as the above video. I'm also practically obligated to mention the mysterious bootleg ROM floating out in cyberspace that everyone seems to be able to get to work but me.

Amiga Longplay - Apidya

And when I say long-play... I mean LONG-PLAY. This video is about 45 minutes long.

It's a really great SHMUP, tho, with amazing music, gorgeous stages, and huge, mind-blowing bosses.

And the bonus stages are just nuts. The one at the 4 minute mark, where you are suddenly randomly capturing cherubs and avoiding demons, or at the 15 minute mark, where you traverse the guts of a fish, and then blast him once you come out the other end, and then at the 19 minute mark, where after blasting the giant maggots out of a dead rat you apparently decide to search through it's guts as well... wait, the boss of stage 3-2 is an inexplicable face at the bottom of a Pepsi can?

If you've never seen or heard of this game, I'd reccomend jumping straight to the middle of the video, where you fight the giant doll.

And then the music for the next stage, which could easily have been an Information Society B-Side.

Crazy, crazy game.