100 More Gruesome Games (31 & 30)

Only 17 days left until Halloween, and 31 games to go in the list! Will we actually make it to the end this year? Well, y'know what I'm like so I'm not promising anything, but if all goes well we might just get there! On with the next lot... 

31 - The Mon Mon Monster (MSX2) :

This MSX2 game from 1989 sees you fill the not-very-small boots of that loveable bolt-brain, Frankenstein! Not having the manual, I have no idea what the actual plot is, but it would appear that Franky has taken it upon himself to rid the world of all the other monsters and spooks! Perhaps they stole his cup-a-soup or something?

Whatever the reason, you bash blocks and shoot electric bolts at all manner of monstrosities as you make your way through the levels, navigating moving platforms & finding shortcuts and secret power-ups to use against the end of level bosses!

The game isn't perfect. Sometimes enemies will hit you with a bullet and knock you back a screen, where another enemy instantly respawns and takes a bit of your precious health as you collide with it, for instance. And if you fall into water, instead of restarting where you die the game plonks you right back to the start of the level....and it's quite tricky! I've played a few games now and I've yet to beat level one! But I'm close, and I will be going back to try and get further. It's a fun little game y'see, and that bloody wolf-man or whatever he is isn't getting off that easily....

30 - Halloween Harry / Alien Carnage (PC) :

Another groovy platformer next...it's Halloween Harry (later changed to Alien Carnage to avoid potential buyers thinking it was a seasonal game)! Originally a shareware title, with the first episode being free and the others available to purchase, you can now pick it all up for download via 3D Realm's site!

Aliens have invaded Earth & are turning everyone in to brain-dead killer zombies! Seeing as this is not very nice at all, Harry sets out to free some hostages and get rid of the alien menace! Armed with a flamethrower, some missiles and a jet-pack, Harry is well equipped to tackle the problem. Both the jet-pack & flame thrower use the same fuel though, and so if Harry is to succeed he'll need to find coins to buy more fuel & ammo from the various vending machines that can be found scattered around the levels! There are other weapons to be found too though, so don't worry...

This management of fuel adds a small level of strategy to an otherwise straight forward romp through the maze-like levels, and adds to the fun of blasting all the alien fiends to bits! The cartoon-styled graphics are a joy to look at too, and the different enemies and animations might make you give a little chuckle occasionally! It actually plays a lot like Duke Nukem 1 & 2 and Apogee even went as far as saying on the box that if Duke had a twin it would be Harry!

Anyway, it's a huge load of fun, and if I was you I'd go and download it immediately! He is called Halloween Harry after all, so there's no better time to get acquainted with the fella! And there's a sequel to find as well, called Zombie Wars...but perhaps that's a game to talk about another time.....

100 More Gruesome Games ( 33 & 32 )

So....this year's blog curse of choice has been a rather nasty cold that has seen me having to deal with the usual nastiness of a runny nose, sore throat and feverish headaches for the last few days, which has been oodles o' fun, but not very many games! And games is what we want isn't it!? So I'll ignore this lingering yuckiness and just get on with it.....

33 - Ghost Battle (Amiga) :

If there's one set of terrifying fiends that people seemed to be a lot less scared of back in the day, it's lawyers! Thalion clearly weren't frightened of them at all, as this game blatantly steals most of its ideas straight from Capcom's Ghosts 'n' Goblins series...

You play as a chap who has had the unfortunate (and yet seemingly very common) upset of his lady friend being nabbed by some great-big-nasty sort, and have to wander through the platform-filled levels defeating zombies, witches, demons, creepy crawlies and all the other usual suspects from these types of games...and it's so blatant in its thievery that there's even those Venus Flytrap type nasties to get past!  There's spikes that pop up to hinder your progress, moving platforms to navigate and you'll be needing a key for coming in at the end of level one too! 

It doesn't quite live up to the task of properly emulating Capcom's success though. There's a lot more awkward jumps, the collision detection can be a bit iffy sometimes and some enemies can't seem to be killed and have to be jumped over to be avoided...which just ends up with you getting jostled annoyingly back & forth as you attempt to clear them.

And yet despite its problems, it remains a fun platformer, with a groovy soundtrack and pretty good graphics, even if the main character's arms do look like they should be his legs ...and vice versa! Still, it's worthy of at least a couple of plays on a cold, October night...and so far I've gotten a tiny bit further every time I play it..so it's keeping me going back to see just how far I can get! It's a grower, I reckon...

32 - The Astonishing Adventures of Mr Weems & The She Vampires (C64 / ZX Spectrum):

Mr. Weems had reached that moment in life where he found himself unhappy in his profession. An accountant for many years, he felt he needed a little more excitement....he'd always fancied running off with the circus as a child, and so he packed up and left to enjoy life on the road as a fearless lion tamer! But alas, even that failed to live up to his expectations...what could he possibly do to find that elusive thrill he so sought? Poor Mr. Weems....

One day, he heard tales of a certain spooky mansion....a spooky mansion populated by the ever-so-scary she-vampires! He decided there & then to hunt down these fiendish femmes & got to work gathering his arsenal! Now armed with a rapid-fire garlic gun and a single smart-garlic pill to be used in emergencies, he entered the mansion, finally excited by what he was about to face....

...which is a fairly standard Gauntlet clone where you, as the brave Mr. Weems, traverse a flip-screen maze collecting keys and battling bats, Frankenstein-types and the She-Vamps themselves! An ever decreasing blood count can be topped up by swigging blood bottles that have been handily left lying around, and there are a few extra garlic bombs littering the place too.

Eventually you'll need to face the Great She-Vampire herself, and to prepare for that epic battle you'll have to find the vital weapons hidden in a box on each level. Only when you've collected all of these will you be able to face the mother of all bloodsuckers!

It took me a while to work out that to stop monsters from spawning and be able open the coffins you have to kill every single enemy and destroy every pot on the screen! There are some places where this is impossible, so ignore those screens and move on! There are also a few hidden walls that have to be found in order to progress, which can be frustrating if you fail to find out where they are.

The Spectrum version is the one I'm most familiar with, but having now played the C64 version I have to say that it's a lot easier on the eye! The colour scheme and movement on the Speccy game can be a bit headache inducing and sometimes it all gets a bit cluttered. Both versions have minimal sound effects, which are nothing to write about really, but they do the job I suppose.

Both games are fairly okay to play too, but unfortunately for Mr.Weems, aren't overly exciting...so he'll probably be looking for some other career path again once he's done with the Great She-Vamp....

Frankenstein & "Voice Of His Conscience"......

Time for another creepy clamber about the virtual halls of the Digital Comic Museum! And look who we've found! It's Frankenstein from Prize Comic Books Frankenstein 017 (Jan-Feb 1949)! In this story, Frankenstein takes orders from what he thinks is his conscience, but will our freaky friend realise he's being duped??

Thanks go to uploader freddyfly and all the other uploaders who make the museum such a great site to visit! 

100 More Gruesome Games - ( No. 34 - Demolition Girl )

34 : Daibijin / Demolition Girl (PS2) - 

Crikey! It's been so long since I last wrote the list that I've almost forgotten what I've already covered! I'm pretty sure that I've yet to mention this nonsense though....a game that does nothing to help allegations of video games being incredibly sexist, but at least keeps macrophiliacs happy in the knowledge that one game exists that was obviously made for them!

Y'see, poor fashion model Riho Futaba was relaxing after a photo-shoot on Minakojima Island and taking a stroll along the beach, when she found herself staring at a weird half-jellyfish, half-crablike creature! Leaning down to examine the cute liccle monster, she got stung by one of its tentacles and next thing you know, she's the size of Godzilla and confusedly clambering all over peoples holiday homes and swatting helicopters like flies!

It's up to you then, as pilot of a rather useless selection of military vehicles, to combat this new massive missus & try to get her back down to her normal size. Of course you can't just go charging in with a shrink ray without knowing what you're up against, so first you have to scan her face, boobs, hips & butt with a trace beam to "gather data" !!

To help keep her busy while you try to scan her, you can fire a selection of special weapons...and what special weapons they are! Cake to tempt her with, stereos so she dances to music, a bowl to smack her on the head & glasses that didn't seem to do much at all really! 

After that, you have to drug her with sedatives, protect her as she's airlifted to safety from UFOs which seem to be affiliated with the jellycrab, then battle said jellycrab which has grown huge and attached itself to her head, shoot her in the ass with tank missiles as she runs off after said jellycrab battle and then shrink her back to normal as she clambers up the side of a skyscraper!

If any of this sounds like it might be fun, forget about it....the controls for this are terrible, all of the dialogue and cut-scenes have been removed for the PAL version I played and the six stages take little more than an hour to play through...if you manage to somehow beat Stage 3! It might be worth a quick look if you're into weird Japanese games, or indeed big gigantic ladies...but if neither of those are your thing, it's probably best that you forget you've ever read this and go and watch Anita Sarkeesian videos to cleanse your mind or something....

Something Gruesome This Way Comes.......

Bad craziness has meant that the blog has fallen by the wayside in recent months....we'll forget about reasons why for now though, as apparently time has apparently lied to me once again and it's now October rather than June or something.....

And we all know that October means Halloween! And time to finally finish off the 2nd list of Gruesome Games! So, hopefully starting from tomorrow I'll be writing about the last lot of those, and getting all spooky-dooky and posting more about films, comics, toys,etc. that are of a horrifically halloweeny nature! Yes, you can expect more from old horror comics, Cinema Of Stuff & whatever other groovy ghoulishness I can find! I'll also explain at some point what I've been up to these last few months, and why it's been so quiet! So see you here tomorrow then, my freaky friends! :-) 

Happy Star Wars Day!

Once again, May the 4th rolls around and everybody's going silly for Siths, 'Sabers and Starkillers! I thought I might as well stick a post up as well, but first off, before we get into all the Star Wars stuff, yesterday was Free Comic Book Day and Dark Horse Digital had  all sorts of things to read for the massive price of nothing!

They do, of course, also do a whole load of Star Wars comics, and so here's links to starter packs for Star Wars Empire, Star Wars : Knights Of The Old Republic and Star Wars : Legacy! Again, these are free! Definitely not free is the Star Wars May The 4th Megabundle! This will set you back $100, but you get 151 comics to download for your cash! 

You might also want to head over to Marvel and other comic-type places to see if they've any free stuff to download! Anyway, that's nowhere near enough Star Wars for May The Fourth, so have a few cartoons and things....

Like Droids!

Ewoks!

And Caravan Of Courage! 

Update & Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Another month passed all ready! Where the heck is time going these days? I'm a bit busy getting stuff ready for something pretty major, so haven't had as much time as I'd like to be posting on the blog...but it's all going to be  very exciting! Well, for me anyway...and hopefully for a few of you at least! All very mysterious I know, but more news will be coming about this soon, so keep yir eyes peeled! 

Zombie Shamrock by SheWhoStamps on Etsy

The much delayed end of the Gruesome Games list is being held off until October now because of all this though, where I'm planning to change it up a bit and just have one game a day after the initial catch-up...which should mean I actually have time to get through them and we won't be left with 20 still to do next year! This also frees me up to concentrate on some other new things I've been wanting to stick on the blog, so after the next month or so, the posts should be more frequent and a little more varied...In the meantime, Happy St. Patrick's Day! And have another lazy cartoon post filled with gold and leprechauns!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Blimey! Valentine's Day again already! Time for another lazy cartoons post then.....

By The Power Of Grayskull !

"In today's story, Deadpan Flook discovered that some fans have decided to be awesome and create a beat-em-up based on Masters Of The Universe! Many actual companies have tried to create games based on He-Man before, but they have all failed to capture the feeling of the original show...Well now we all fail sometimes, but we should never be afraid to try again. And we should always keep believing in ourselves. As the old saying goes 'if at first you don't succeed, try try again.' Until later, bye."

You can get the playable demo here.......and read more about how it came to be here!

And to celebrate, let's listen to the He-Man single by Masters Of  The Universe!

Cinema Of Stuff Presents - The Undying Monster !

In this 1942 20th Century Fox film based on a 1936 novel by Jessie Douglas Kerruish, the Hammond family are trying to deal with a curse that sees its members dying or commiting suicide under mysterious circumstances. Helga Hammond (Heather Angel) and her brother don't believe in all this curse nonsense and put it down to foolish superstition. However, when Oliver Hammond (John Howard) and a local girl are attacked by a strange creature one starry, frosty night, Scotland Yard send out Robert Curtis (James Ellison) and sidekick Christy (Heather Thatcher) to try and find a more scientific, logical explanation for all the spooky shenanigans! But what will they actually discover? And why is everyone at the Hammond House acting so strangely?

Coming Soon To Cinema Of Stuff....

Sinister!  Savage!!  Supernatural!!!

"There are some things that are beyond

 the understanding of us that live on 

this earth!"

Happy New Year!

I'm going to try and make it my New Year's resolution to get more stuff done on the blog this year. Last year was beset with problems...we'll see how it goes! 

But yeah, yeah let's get things started with something nice & simple but hopefully interesting and groovy! Some badly scanned comic strips from the 2nd January 1982 issue of Buster to see in the New Year...

Oh, and Happy New Year by the way!