New (Unique) CHRISTMAS Games!

For the 2014 Christmas season, I had prepared a special Unique Games entry on some of my favourite Christmas themed games for various platforms. Although I have found some more Christmas-themed games mostly from the olden days for the classic platforms, I decided to do a special entry on comparatively new unique and/or exclusive Christmas- and winter-themed games for old machines, most of these made within the last ten years, since there are plenty to be found. Links to games' pages provided as far as legally and/or officially possible.

As usual, I have tried to be as thorough in my investigations as possible, but it still could be that I might have missed some of even the more notable Christmas/winter-themed games from this list, so if you can think of anything to add, feel free to throw in a comment at the end of the post.

FRGR #15: The Complete Works of Simo Ojaniemi (Amersoft, 1984)

For this year's Finnish Independence Day celebratory blog post, I decided to take a closer look at all four games by Simo Ojaniemi, who is one of the pioneers in Finnish game developing. He started out developing games on his brother Juha's Commodore VIC-20 in 1982, and ended his game developing career in 1984 after the release of his fourth game, RahaRuhtinas. All four games were briefly mentioned in the History of Finnish Games series in 2013-2014, so now is a good time to give them all more in-depth reviews.

MEHULINJA, HERKKUSUU and MYYRÄJAHTI written for the Commodore VIC-20, and RAHARUHTINAS written for the Commodore 64 by Simo Ojaniemi; all games published by Amersoft in 1984. MYYRÄJAHTI was released on the same cassette tape as HERKKUSUU.

Impact! (Audiogenic, 1987)

Written for the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga by John Dale with graphics by Martin "Spiny Norman" Day. Originally released by Audiogenic in 1987. Also published as "Blockbuster" in North America by Mindscape.

Acorn BBC Micro/Electron conversion written by Gary Partis (in 1987). Amstrad CPC conversion programmed by Keith Prosser and Nigel Alderton; graphics by Dean Lester; sounds by Andy Williams. Commodore 64 conversion written by Steve Snake. IBM-PC compatibles conversion written by Brian Cotton. Sinclair ZX Spectrum conversion written by Steven Tucker.

All the conversions published by Audiogenic (EU) and Mindscape (US) in 1988.

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INTRODUCTION & GAME STATUS

I haven't made nearly enough comparisons of breakout-clones, perhaps because there aren't that many breakout games that have all that many versions of, apart from one. Obviously, I still haven't picked any of the Arkanoid games, because they still have too many versions to bother, but just so this wouldn't be too simple, I managed to pick a game that is available for IBM-PC compatibles, but doesn't work in DOSbox, so this should be interesting. Impact, with an exclamation mark, is a relatively unknown beast, that tends to generate wildly opposing opinions, but are the opinions more based on the played versions or is the game just an acquired taste in a more general sense?

Combat School (Konami, 1987)

Developed and published by Konami to the arcades in 1987.

Commodore 64 version:
Programming by David Collier and Allan Shortt
Graphics by Simon Butler and Shaun Ridings
Music by Martin Galway

Sinclair ZX Spectrum version:
Programming by Andrew Deakin and Michael Lamb
Graphics by Ivan Horn
48k Music and sound effects by David Whittaker
128k Music and sound effects by Jason C. Brooke

Amstrad CPC version:
Programming by James Higgins and Michael Lamb
Graphics by Ronnie Fowles
Music and sound effects by David Whittaker

Published in Europe by Ocean Software in 1987.

Arcade and Commodore 64 versions published in North America as "Boot Camp" by Konami in 1987 and 1989.

Converted for the IBM-PC compatibles by James R. Sletzer, with artwork by Brenda Johnson, and
published by Konami in 1989.

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INTRODUCTION & GAME STATUS

Since the early days of FRGCB, I have been wanting to do more comparisons of sports games that I have always enjoyed to some degree, but found them impossible to make reliable observations of, thanks to peculiarities of emulation. With my purchase of an Amstrad CPC 464 last year, these games are gradually opening up for comparisons, but there are still some aspects that cannot be taken into consideration. For example, the original Combat School arcade game had a trackball and two buttons, instead of a joystick, so I cannot actually do any reliable observations on that version. Happily, the global version, which was manufactured and released in 1988, had a joystick instead of a trackball, so I can use that in this comparison. It's been a long time coming, and now it has the honour of ending this year's Ocean October.

TWO-FER #25: Yie Ar Kung-Fu (Konami, 1984/1985)

Originally developed and released for the arcades by Konami Industry Co. Ltd. in 1984.

Acorn Electron & BBC Micro version written by Peter Johnson. Published by Imagine Software in 1985.

Amstrad CPC version written by Keith Wilson and Brian Beuken, with graphics by Brian Beuken. Published by Imagine Software in 1985.

Commodore 64 version:
Programming by David Collier
Graphics by Stephen Wahid
Music by Martin Galway
Published by Imagine Software in 1985.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k version written by Brian Beuken, with loading screen by F. David Thorpe. Published by Imagine Software in 1985.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128k version written by Brian Beuken, Jonathan Smith, Mike Weeb, Paul Owens, Ian Martin, Tony Pomfret and Colin Gresty, with music by Martin Galway and loading screen by F. David Thorpe. (No further details are known.) Originally published as "Yie Ar Kung-Fu +2" in the "Stars On The 128" compilation by Imagine/Ocean Software in 1986.

Commodore 16/+4 version: no credits known, apart from being produced by David Ward; published by Imagine Software in 1986.

Game Boy Advance version released on the Konami Collector's Series: Arcade Advanced (US) / Arcade Classics (EU) compilation cartridge in 2002.

Unofficial conversion for the Atari 320XE written by Krzysztof Gora, with music by Michal Szpilowski and graphics by Daniel Kozminski and Krzysztof Gora. Released into public domain in 2006.

Also, official digital downloads of more or less the emulated arcade version were released for Xbox 360 in 2007, Windows in 2010, and Sony PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in 2019. These versions will not be included in this comparison.

Completely re-designed for the MSX and Nintendo Famicom and published by Konami in 1985.

Game Boy version of the 1985 re-designed Yie Ar Kung-Fu released on Konami GB Collection Vol.3 compilation cartridge in 1997; the European version was released as Vol.4 in 2000.

The MSX version was ported to the ColecoVision by Opcode Games in 2005.

Unofficial conversion for the Sega Genesis/Megadrive based on the Famicom/MSX version written by Evgeny (with music engine by Shiru) in 2008.

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INTRODUCTION & GAME STATUS

This October, we're going to have a bit of a weird sub-theme. Since 2021, October has been the month of games released by Ocean Software, at least in some regions, or some of the versions of the games in question at any given time. We still continue with Ocean to some extent, but this time, we're taking on a couple of Konami arcade games Ocean released under the acquired Imagine label. So that's basically three different publishers responsible for these two chosen games.

FRGCB's Let's Play series returns for another set of episodes!

While the comparisons are still on a break of sorts, it's time for another announcement. After an unnecessarily long break, we're back with another set of Let's Play videos. In case you haven't seen these videos before on FRGCB's YouTube channel, it's all unemulated gameplay footage with unscripted commentary of games I like to revisit more or less often.

This year, the plan is to get three more Let's Play videos out, with one platform that hasn't had a chance to get its place in the spotlight yet. For now, here's Saboteur on the ZX Spectrum. Enjoy!

Scuba Dive (Durell, 1983)

Originally written by Ronald Jeffs for the Tangerine Oric-1/Atmos.

Converted to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum by Mike A. Richardson.

Converted to the Commodore 64 by Nigel Dewdney.

All versions published by Durell Software in 1983.

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INTRODUCTION & GAME STATUS

While I was preparing FRGCB's special 10th Anniversary post, I realized I needed to focus more on games that would bring forth the superiority of versions made for other than C64. So, to start working on getting that balance more balanced, I start with another Durell classic that I used to play a lot back when I originally had a ZX Spectrum in the mid-80's.