I've never before played Ponpoko, an ancient arcade platformer produced by a company called Sigma Entertainment, but after reading about it over at redparsley.blogspot.com a few days ago, I plan on rectifying the situation as soon as possible.
That's not only because this 1982 release features, as suggested in the headline above, pixelated cobs of corn, mind you. No, it's also because it stars an adorably big-bellied (at least I think that's its belly...) tanuki. I also like that it has mice that look kind of like scorpions and can fly through the air as easily as they can skitter across the ground.
Now that I've piqued your interest in this maniacal quarter-muncher, I'm guessing you'd like to see how it looks in action? If so, here you go:
Awesome, eh? OK, so "awesome" may be too strong a word, but it's certainly pretty cute, don't you think? Granted, I'm a complete sucker for games that are filled with fruits and veggies, so maybe I'm the wrong person to ask such a question.
Anyway, I plan on giving this one a go fairly soon--despite my oft-reported disdain for playing games on a PC.
Monday, July 09, 2012
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22 comments:
Saw redparsley's review the other day, and this does look pretty cool. But it looks like the tanukis are missing the gigantic scrotums for use in flying. And that makes me sad.
As far as playing games on the PC, like hooking my netbook up to my TV over hdmi and using my Xbox 360 USB controller. It works pretty well, and it's not even hard to set up.
That looks like my kind of arcade game, Bryan! I'm in.
warp: Yes, the fact that the tanuki (tanukis?) in this game don't have gigantic ballsacks is quite distressing. That said, I'm still interested in it :)
As for your "playing games via your PC" setup: Yeah, that's a possibility. I'd prefer to not have to play games in our basement, though, which is where our main TV is. Maybe I just need to get a controller that'll work with my laptop?
Will an Xbox 360 USB controller work w/ a Mac? If so, maybe I'll get one of those...
Justin: Yay! I was hoping this post would convert at least a few people :)
BTW, what's up with your tumblog? Have you given up on it? I hope not, as I love visiting it :)
Haha, this game certainly piqued your interest, didn't it?! :) It's good fun too. As I said in the review, it doesn't look very original but it was actually made before most of the games you'd think it ripped off! :) I have no special love for tanukis but I do like games with fruits so I liked it a lot!
Yes, Simon, you certainly got my attention with it. Now i just have to play it :) Hopefully it isn't as difficult or frustrating as it appears in the video I linked to? It just looks like all of those little daggers/pins could become annoying...
I was playing this the other day. I get annoyed by any game that kills me when falling through a gap.
haha, holy crap.. I just tried it out again in MAME, then was going crazy trying to figure out why it was still running in the background when I quit.
It was the embedded video in this page.
Hey there, coolpowers! (You're a Simon, too, aren't you?) Anyway, I agree about being annoyed by games that kill you when you fall through gaps. That's how it was done back when this game was made, though, so you can't be too hard on it, can you? Especially since it features tanuki and fruit :)
It's a game that rewards practise - it took me a good few tries to get past the first screen but once I'd gotten used to its 'ways' I could get to the sixth stage without losing a life :) Let me know how you get on
Oh, and ha ha! I'll bet you thought you were going a bit nuts for a bit there, eh? Sorry about that :)
Oh, that doesn't sound bad at all, Simon. I'll give it a go and let you know what I think of it, OK? Thanks again for turning me onto it!
Bryan, as long as you have a USB plug for your 360 controller it should work fine on a Mac. It looks like you may need this free driver here
I would think a bigger problem is finding emulators that work on a Mac. I will never understand why a gamer would buy one. :>
Also, don't you already have a 360? You shouldn't need to buy anything.
Thanks, warp! The only emulators I care about are the ones that play older systems. I know some of them work on Macs, but I'm definitely not sure about all of them. I guess I'll have to do some digging.
I don't buy computers to play games on them, by the way, so I didn't even give it a second thought when I bought my MacBook. That said, we also have a Windows PC that can play pretty much any emulator I could think of. (Well, maybe not the PS2 or GC emulators...) The problem is, it's a regular PC (not a laptop) and I absolutely hate playing games on it :|
Warp: Yep, I have a 360. So, all I need to do is buy some sort of USB adapter to be able to use it on my computer?
I see your problem. I think there's 2 kinds of 360 controllers -- wireless and wired. I can't speak for wireless, but I assume they have USB cords for charging. My wired controller actually came with a USB attachment -- but I'm thinking I may have only got it because I bought it separately (not with the system). If you only have the one wired controller that came with the system, then they maybe didn't give it to you. But you can get one online dirt-cheap here
warp: Nope, I have a wireless controller. And it didn't come with a USB cord for charging. It uses batteries, so I just use rechargeable batteries and deal with it that way.
Anyway, I'll do some digging and find out if I can somehow use this controller on my Mac and PC or if I have to get a new one. No biggie either way.
So you don't have any kind of gamepad for your emulation already? I used to try to go the keyboard-only route, and I had no idea how bad it was until I got a gamepad about 1.5 years ago. It's like I've entered a whole new world -- I spend a LOT more time emulating now.
Oh, no, I havd a gamepad for emulation purposes, but it's a piece of shit :) The d-pad is terrible, and the analog sticks aren't much better. I should have gotten a new one long ago, but I've been too cheap and lazy, I guess. I can't imagine going the keyboard-only route. Ack!
My tumblog...well...I've been using my mornings more productively lately. Or...at least...differently. My mornings have been taken up with plugging away at Xenoblade like it's my job. I've determined to NOT quit this game in the middle for once. I'm going to make it to the end if it kills me.
Well, Justin, if you're spending time with Xenoblade rather than your tumblog ... that sounds OK to me. I do hope you'll get back to it at some point, though, as I REALLY like it!
BTW, you've now shamed me into getting back into Xenoblade. Damn vacation! (I say that because I was plugging away at Xenoblade like a champ -- and loving it -- before our most recent vacation, but I haven't even touched it since we got home. Sigh.)
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