Thursday 31 October 2013

Creepy Cartoons !

The Cobweb Hotel

This 1936 Fleischer cartoon features a fly's nightmare holiday destination, run by a spider who could do with a throat lozenge! 





Bambi Meets Godzilla

Marv Newland's 1969 epic was released alongside Godzilla 1985 in cinemas and VHS, and tells the story of what happened when two of cinemas biggest stars had a chance meeting...




The Flintstones Meet Rockula & Frankenstone

Fred wins a holiday to Rocksylvania on an archaic version of Deal Or No deal in this 1979 TV Special, and meets prehistoric versions of famous freaks!




When Halloween Was Forever!

The Real Ghostbusters have to deal with Samhain wanting Halloween to last forever in this 1986 cartoon....It would be handy! I might actually get the Gruesome Games list finished! ;-)






The Curse of the Blog! ( or "The Ranting Madman!" )


Okay, so I've joked lots of times before in the blog that I think it's cursed, as every time I try to get down to writing on it and tackling the Gruesome Games list, something will inevitably go wrong or happen to make it almost impossible for me to do so.....but lately, I'm actually beginning to wonder if it IS in fact cursed!!

At the start of last month when I decided to start preparing, my PC started acting up again, and then I had a massive problem with my 360 not letting me sign in to LIVE....I looked in to this sign in problem, and it was recommended that anyone suffering log in issues delete, then re-download, their Xbox LIVE profile....



Only, my joystick decided to slip just as I pressed the A button, and it clicked on the option to "Delete profile and all associated files".....which managed to make my Xbox delete all my game saves and progress from the last five years! Yes....ALL of it! 

All my Minecraft worlds.....Gone!
All my Red Dead Redemption data, including 5 passes in to Legend on multiplayer.....gone!
All my Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Mass Effect and GTA progress....gone!  
Every created character, every unlocked item...every bloody thing except achievements....all gone!

Understandably, I was kind of fed up with games for a while after that, but I had hope that the latest version of a certain open world title that might involve stealing cars, would get me playing again, and help put me in a better mood!



So I buy GTAV and finish the campaign in three days in order to get ready to play online, and once I'd had a proper bash at that, get back to writing the blog! But of course, as soon as the blog popped in to my stream of thoughts, disaster approached! My visiting nephew accidentally knocked my 360 over, scratching my copy of GTAV and rendering it unplayable.....

Obviously, my mood was not the best yet again after that incident, but I managed to get a new copy after a few days and got back to playing online, which despite it's issues I enjoyed immensely. Trying to get my computer to work was the new problem that I faced, along with an annoying dose of hayfever, but as Halloween approached, thoughts of getting back to the blog and Gruesome Games once more entered my brain....



After posting the last couple of blog posts, I started preparing screenshots and videos for the next games on the list...after a few hours, I started to feel a bit run down and under the weather. I put it down to staying up too late, and so popped off to bed. 

Next day, I woke at 7.00am and urgently needed to rush to the loo for a wee....then again at 8, again at 9, 9.30...you get the picture! Yes.. just for thinking about the blog, I managed to pick up a urinary tract infection, which I'm still in the process of hopefully getting rid of! 

Well, that's what it seems like anyway...any bloody time I get ready to do this games list, I get ill, my PC knackers up or something else annoying happens....


So yeah, I'm hoping this little rant will negate the curse by my pointing it out or something....of course, it might make it bloody worse! Hmm...yeah, maybe Halloween wasn't the best time to mention it.....Anyway, more Gruesome Games soon! *Gulp!*

Friday 25 October 2013

Vincent Price Haunts My Youtube !


Having just discovered that the wonderful site where I got last years Vincent Price recordings from seems to sadly be down, I went for a look to see what I could find on Youtube....I then discovered that it's 20 years today since Mr. Price passed away! I can't let today go by without posting something Vincent related, so here's a few videos I found, some made to accompany some of his radio shows....



The first also features another great horror actor no longer with us, Peter Cushing! You'll need to watch it on Youtube though, as embedding's disabled...here's the link below...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0ZsNWIvq5s
















R.I.P. Mr. Price





The Floating Coffin !!


Well, due to the usual computer issues, general feelings of crap health, real life stuff and a certain recently released 360 game that goes by the name of GTAV, I'm left with only 6 days to post stuff of a spooky nature! I'll say now though that I might only manage to post on a few of these remaining days too, so don't expect me to finally get through the remaining games on the Gruesome list....there's always Creepmas for those though! ;-)

Anyway, to kick things off I thought I'd take another trip to the creepy collection of  comics over at the Digital Comic Museum, where I found this terrible tale of spooky seaweed! It reaffirms the belief that people should leave seagulls well alone too, something I have to remember when they wake me up at 6am knocking on my window wanting bread scraps.....







Thanks once again go to museum uploader tilliban for uploading Farrell's Fantastic Fears 3, from which this story was taken...







Friday 6 September 2013

Massive Load Of Pick-Ups & Stuff ! ( Part 3 )


So...it's been a while! There are various reasons it's taken me so long to get back to writing the blog, but as none are very interesting I'll just say that the main one is that I got really annoyed with Blogger after I wrote a post for 3 hours only for it to get deleted by me pressing the wrong button, and then becoming irretreivable due to Blogger's "wonderful" auto save feature, which saved at the exact moment of deletion! I tried pressing several buttons and the like, but to no avail....needless to say, I was pretty miffed!

Still, I seem to have come out of my huff at the site, so we'll see how we go! Let's just get back to where I left it...with more of these pick-ups! Above you can see a Bananaman special, which I picked up in a charity shop for 50p! 



Next is an issue of Big Comic Fortnightly, a comic that collected various reprinted strips from classic Fleetway comics! Much like Funny Fortnightly, which I also found an issue of that you can see below! I think these were both about 50p each, from the same charity shop as Bananaman...



The next set of comics also came from the same charity shop, but as they were in pretty bad condition, they were a bit cheaper at 25p each. The Return Of The Jedi issue 1 has no back cover, and the Topper & Nutty are a bit tattered and stained with some random beverage splashes, but are readable and worth having regardless...





I found this copy of Operation Wolf on Sega Master System for 1.99 in Cash Generator! Being a huge fan of the arcade game, I snapped it up, as I heard it's probably the best conversion. It was a good excuse to try out a Sega Master System Converter II I picked up for my Megadrive a while back too!


This next item is a bit random! It's a Kojak Crime Story Jigsaw! The cover opens up allowing you to read a story of a crime that's been committed, and you build up the jigsaw and look for clues in the picture to solve the case! It was a charity shop find for a couple of quid, and despite not really remembering much about the series, I thought I'd pick it up anyway...I used to get called Kojak by my family when I was a baby y'see, due to being bald and having a great love of lollypops......



On to the games now, and here's some more PS2 stuff...I won't go in to too much detail with these, as I'll probably cover most of them on here at some point hopefully! I will give a special shout out to GreigShelob 
though, who sent me the copy of Ico, a game I've been looking to pick up for years! Thanks again, dude! All the rest were 2 or 3 quid and picked up either from Amazon or charity shops....







Some PS1 games were also acquired from charity shops for about 50p each, the only exception being Crusaders of Might & Magic, which despite not being the best game in the world, I actually sought out online as I used to have it back in the day and felt like a nostalgia trip! Cost me a couple of quid....




And finally, these bloody Spectrum games I've been on about for ages.....The Konami Collection below was picked up at the same time as the MS Operation Wolf above, and cost me a pound! 


The next lot were purchased off a couple of chaps at World Of Spectrum from there Ebay pages, for some very reasonable prices! There's a few Commodore 64 games in there as well...oh, and More Tea, Vicar? which I bought from Cronosoft for 3.99!




So yeah, another good haul of stuff! I've kind of lost track of the rest of the pick-ups as they've merged in to the rest of my collection, but it was mainly PS2 games that I'll eventually cover, so we'll leave it at that for now! Besides, I suppose I'd better get back to these Gruesome Games soon, hadn't I......

Tuesday 21 May 2013

100 More Gruesome Games! ( 36 & 35 )


Right, it's about time I cracked on with some more Gruesome Games isn't it! Still got 36 to get through, and if I don't hurry up it'll be Halloween again by the time I get finished!! So let's get right back into them....






36 -Dracula - The Undead (Atari Lynx) :


I've never really been one for portable gaming devices...I've always thought that I do enough gaming while I'm indoors, and so like to do other stuff while I'm out and about and be more sociable and look at trees and animals and people and things.... If I had a hand-held, I'd probably never stop playing games....



Because of this, even though I picked up an original Gameboy a few years back, I still tend to play the games via a Super Gameboy on the big TV. Also, I never ever got to experience the joys of playing other handheld systems, like Atari's Lynx! So after discovering this game via emulation, I'm wondering just what other gems I've been missing....




As you start the game, you're greeted with eerie music and a screen featuring the author of Dracula himself, Mr. Bram Stoker! He explains that using the magic of technology he is able to narrate his tale to you through time, and that you'll be able to interact in a way that would be impossible in his day! Which basically means you'll read a lot of text and then get to play a nice little point-n-click type affair for a bit before reading some more....


Once Bram has finished his first little bit of story telling, you find yourself in control of Jonathan Harker, who is staying at Dracula's Castle with a view to doing some business with the old count. Using a slightly odd interface that takes a little bit of getting used to, you can wander the rooms and interact with various doors, cupboards and objects in order to advance the story...

Some doors and objects can be tricky to see, mainly because of the graphical limitations of the system. It took me quite a while to discover a door at the back of the antechamber where I started for instance, as I couldn't make it out by looking at the screen and only discovered it when I saw "door" pop up as I walked past...
But you'll soon get used to hunting around everywhere and trying every command available to find things and work stuff out, and it becomes a little easier to play. And then you'll find your way to the Dining Room, where you'll meet our old pal Dracula himself!
                                                                               
It can still be a bit tricky to work out what you have to do sometimes, and I'll admit I had to cheat a couple of times and look at a walkthrough to progress... but I reckon if you were a bit more patient than me you would probably discover what to do by yourself eventually anyway....


But yeah, I still haven't finished it...and I would have had to start again anyway, as I discovered that when you find your notebook, you have to keep using it every now and again to take notes...or when you get to the end of the game, you'll get a bad ending and need to play again for a good one!







It is a good little game though, and has lots of nice cut-scenes and sound effects that help add to the classic horror atmosphere! But I suppose it won't be for everyone, as the puzzles can frustrate and there is a lot of text in the game, although if you like such stuff and want a nice little spooky treat,  you could do a lot worse than this! Oh.. and it sticks close to the book! It even has the Dracula crawling down the wall bit in it!!






35 - Chakan The Forever Man (Megadrive/Genesis) :


Way back in the mists of time, when sorcerors and warriors still held sway over the lands, a swordsman named Chakan reckoned he was pretty good at the death-dealing business, slaying anyone and everyone who crossed his path and didn't bow to his greatness. So sure was he of his abilities that he'd often boast that one day, Death himself would fall at his feet after being bested in battle....

Some fearful wizards and gods decided to test this claim, and using a mysterious ancient ritual summoned Death to the world, where he found Chakan on a misty plain and proposed a wager...Happy with the souls that Chakan had sent him over the years, Death decided that although Chakan had become far too powerful he would offer him immortality if he could actually beat Death in battle! Chakan accepted, and after many days actually achieved what no-one had ever managed before...Death lay at his feet!



Chakan called upon Death to acknowledge the wager and bestow immortality upon him.....Death honoured the agreement, but as always when you do dealings with the reaper, it came with a few unwanted extras.... Stripped of most of his powers and with a face changed to resemble that of his fallen foe, Chakan was cursed to walk eternity in constant pain and suffering, only being able to find peace if the last of the dark beings was slain, and evil was ended....


Starting life as a comic strip by Robert A. Kraus, Chakan was licenced and became a Sega Genesis game...one that has been tormenting my existence since I first picked it up almost 15 years ago. The game picks up the story after Chakan has been cursed, with Death telling him if he slays all the evil lords he will lift the curse and be able to die in peace....But this is a task that is easier said than done! This is quite possibly one of the hardest games ever! 


You start the game in a hub world, able to choose one of four elemental stages...Earth, Air, Fire & Water...via doors which will teleport you to the different realms. These individual realms consist of three levels of platforming and a boss stage. However, once these levels are completed, you've only cleared the "terrestrial plane" and a further 3 levels and a boss await for each of the four elements!





As I've already mentioned, you'll have to get really good at the game if you want to see the later levels, as it is far from easy...I've had the game for years, but have never gotten further than the first few levels! I was sure I had beaten it at some point, but after going back and playing it I realise that I must have been thinking of something else....Luckily, the fact you can pick different levels from the start means you'll still get to see a decent variety of stuff, even if you are rubbish at it...

Despite being insanely difficult, the atmosphere and playability of the game mean that it's still one of my favourite games on the Megadrive. It has a dark, depressing feel that was a bit different from other games around at the time, and I've always felt that the setting and story would make for an awesome sequel on a modern console or PC....In fact, a sequel was planned for the Dreamcast, but for whatever reason this was cancelled. Interestingly though, it was later revealed that a lot of the concepts and designs were actually later used in the Legacy of Kain game Blood Omen 2

Below is an animation video of what the Chakan model would have looked like in the Dreamcast game...someone needs to get on the case and get a new Chakan released on the next-gen machines I reckon! The story is perfect for videogames....



I also managed to pick up the Chakan The Forever Man - The Compendium comic just after I decided to include Chakan in the list, and the drawing you can see at the top of the post comes from it's cover. Anyone interested in Chakan as a character would be well advised to hunt down the comic strips as well as the game, as the atmosphere and general groovyness of the story is present in those too! Here's a couple of pics of some of the stuff you can find in its pages.... 

 So yeah, if this sounds interesting and you've yet to play the game, I heartily recommend you seek it out and add it to your collection...unless of course you hate difficult games! If that's the case you should run screaming in the opposite direction! Although it's rather odd that other really hard games infuriate me to the point of making me want to destroy every copy on the planet, but this one, possibly the hardest game I've played,  just makes me want to try again and again until I beat it!?  I can't quite understand it....but yeah, choose your own fate wisely!