The Master System Directory: (Bu-Cal)

Disgustingly excellent, this port of Bubble Bobble has almost nothing to fault it besides some fairly aggressive sprite flicker which is the understandable result of your little dinosaur chap blasting umpteen million bubbles out of his maw and all over the screen. I’m sure you know what Bubble Bobble is, but here’s a brief explanation; be baby beast, beast blast bubble, bubble bag baddie, beast burst bubble. Basic. But it’s all in the execution and this is one of Taito’s all-time great games for a reason, spawning approximately infinity sequels, spin-offs and cameos from the central dino duo. This Master System version retains the easy to pick up, incredibly hard to put down gameplay of its source material, including its simultaneous two-player mode – which there isn’t nearly enough of on Master System, for the record. I won’t get bogged down in the details of what exactly differentiates this port from the original, but rest assured that work has been done to add to the experience for those who may already have mastered the coin-op. You’ll need to gather unique collectables in order to see the true ending, which with 200 levels won’t be an easy task. Thankfully, there is a password system. The Japanese Sega Mark III version of this game is named Final Bubble Bobble. But it wasn’t. *****

Buggy Run (1994)

Wow! This is great! A fantastic isometric racing game that’s similar to Super Off-Road, Buggy Run is rife with excellent presentation and plays like a dream. Between each three-lap race you’re able to spend your winnings – and any cash you found on the track – on upgrades for your vehicle, such as tyres, suspension and somewhat less sporting explosive mines. None of this is in any way original, but as a late Master System release you can see that developer SIMS have, well, mastered the system. There’s almost no flickering and zero slowdown, just awesome racing action from start to finish. The level of challenge is perfect; buying new parts for your vehicle really feels like you’re powering up over your opponents, but they’ll rise to the challenge. Passwords between each difficulty class let you maintain your progress, and a bunch of modes including a fully top-down single-screen multiplayer option. Projects like the Master System Directory are entirely worth my while if they’re going to throw out classics like this, a game I had barely heard of and certainly never played and is now almost certainly in my top ten on the console. Fantastic! *****

California Games (1989)

This offers up six very different sporting events, a generous little package that impressed me a fair few times, though admittedly mostly in its presentation. The best mini-game is Foot Bag, perhaps better known as Hacky Sack, which I give a number of points just for being a video game version of Hackey Sack. Your chap shuffles bizarrely from left to right in order kick, punt or head-butt an almost imperceptibly small cluster of pixels and keep it in play. You’re also able to use it to assault a seagull named George, which pleases me because I despise seagulls and would gleefully see the species wiped out. The Roller Skating event is fiddly and awkward but also feels very novel, with you rolling your thumb over Up and Down on the Direction Pad to move your skater’s left and right feet respectively, the rest of the buttons given over to jumps and spins in order to both gain points and avoid hitting a crack in the kerb and eating absolute shit. I also liked the BMX Bike Racing, which is a bit like Trials HD except not HD and not nearly as accessible. The Surfing event impressed me visually – the wave effect is great! – but I struggled to make any real sense of it. And yes, I did read the manual, I always read the manuals for these games, thank you very much. Lastly, there’s a Flying Disk (Frisbee, just say Frisbee) game that I was completely incapable of understanding. I could figure out the throw part, but catching seemed basically impossible. There’s a sexual metaphor in there somewhere, but this is a classy Directory and I won’t draw attention to it. Anyway, this is… well, it’s not for me, but it’s clearly gorgeous and varied. Within the event-based sporting mini-game genre, this one of the few I’ve even slightly enjoyed, and you can see the effort pouring out of the screen thanks to its superior graphics and sound. ****

California Games II (1993)

Probe brings us this belated sequel which seems to have lost two of its events on the way to shop shelves. Only four? At least the Skateboarding here is different, acting more like a luge than anything else. You’re careening down a long half-pipe that’s occasionally dotted with circular tunnels that you can perform a corkscrew on if you’re careful. Unfortunately, it isn’t very fun and it looks quite bad, with a lack of detail in the graphics. Visually, the Hang Gliding event looks better, but I found it rather difficult to figure out. You have to use these up-drafts to stay in the air while dropping balls onto targets that are floating in the water, but… the up-drafts didn’t seem to work and my guy kept, well, smashing his head in on the cliff wall, or plummeting into the water to be devoured by sharks. The Body Boarding event is similar to the surfing from the last game, only it looks worse… that’s kind of the theme here. Finally, you’ve got Snowboarding, which you’d expect to be one of the more exciting events only to find it’s simply annoying and weird, like me. I do give it some credit for being bloody odd, however, by making you drop your boarder chap off on top the mountain using a helicopter before you can even get cracking. And by cracking, I mean cracking your brittle little skull off an unforgiving wall of rocks over and over again, because when you’re actually making your way down the mountain it’s isolated to maybe one quarter of the screen for god only knows what reason. The first California Games was difficult, yes, but its systems were pretty transparent. This is just a bizarre mish-mash of ugly sprites and poor conveyance that makes me want to individually question every developer who worked on it. I can’t give it one star simply because so many bizarre sprites popped up and made me chuckle. The game is bad, but it’s worth seeing. **

(Next: Cap-Cast)