I need to take some time off of regular updates here. This is because I’ve got quite a lot of that going on at the moment — day- (and night-) job work, that is, for much of the foreseeable future. In addition, I’ll shortly be spending a lot of time boxing and fixing up my magazine collection so I can donate it all to the Strong Museum of Play in a month or so. (View my column on gamesetwatch.com for more updates on that, starting this weekend or the next one.)

I’ll probably be back sooner or later once I recharge my “writing about old games” batteries, so don’t be a stranger. Thanks for reading!

I think the month of June is gonna be tough on updates in general. Forgive me. I mean, I’m not even technically finished with May yet, and the only thing that keeps me going is the intense amount of scaling and rotation this video delivers for me.

A video that made me laugh mightily (you’ll see why in the second half), but which I haven’t had a chance to bring up since I wrote a piece on Russian game magazines over on GameSetWatch a year ago.

Back when I ran my NES page (which I now see somebody’s put a Google ad bar up on — where’s my share of that sweet cash, man?!), I used to wonder what on earth these ridiculous pirate hacks were made for. I’m starting to realize that, while X-in-1s and Street Fighter II wannabes were spread all across Southeast Asia and the Middle East, the prime market in terms of gamer population was really the post-USSR region, even if doing business up there was the pain in the ass it undoubtedly was.

Watching this TV clip (the same YouTube user has uploaded a bunch more), I can only imagine the real difficulties Russian kids had back then, trying to figure out which Mario games were “good” and which were copies of something else they’d already purchased.

Still working, but here’s another long video that you’ll want to watch for purely non-ironic reasons. It’s the laserdisc version of Capcom Game Syndrome, a 1989 release that’s basically a video walkthrough of Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, Strider and Forgotten Worlds.

This is actually the first time I’ve seen the arcade version of Strider all the way through to the end. I played the Genesis port extensively and it’s kind of fun to play spot-the-difference between the two titles. I have to say that outside of the pauses in between scenes, Sega did a pretty tremendous job fitting this game into 8 megabits. I do miss the multilingual voiced cutscenes, though.

Work’s got me beat at the moment, so why don’t you let Donn Nauert’s smooth voice guide you through the wonderful world of NES secret tricks for the next half-hour or so instead?

…why don’t you go play some L’Abbaye des Morts?

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I wasn’t aware of this little game until today. It was a very good use of about an hour or so, taking all the things that make 25-year-old ZX Spectrum platformers and making it smooth and modern enough for modern gamers to “get,” at least a little. The music, composed on a fantasy version of the PC speaker that features volume control, fits perfectly as well.

There’s a bit of genius to the concept, too — take the standard Spectrum look, which lends itself to starkly-colored sprites hopping around on top of dark, muted backgrounds, and craft a platformer with a stark and dark, theme to match. It’s memorable.

Sometime soon I won’t be so astoundingly busy, but until then, why not take a trip across the imaginary pipes with me?