Firstly you will notice the two controllers sticking out of the system, instead of just one, as well as the Street Fighter II logo adorning both controllers. Radica decided to save space by using the smaller (model 2) style Genesis controllers, player 1 in red and player 2 in blue. But this time Radica gave us both Street Fighter II and Ghouls and Ghosts, two games that offer a 2 player mode and make full use of having two controllers hardwired to the system.

But soon after putting the controller in my hands, I immediately had a pair of problems. The first is the blatant fact that these controllers are obviously smaller than the Genesis controller of this shape; they’re comfortable don’t get me wrong, they’re just smaller. The second is a major issue I’ve voiced many times with Famiclones, and other systems alike, that put the Menu/Reset button right where I expect the Start button to be.

Although placed slightly below the actual Start button, in a hurry to get the phone, take a bathroom break or even just simply not paying attention this is TOO CLOSE to the Start button to avoid! And not only that, but both controllers have a Menu botton, this means either player can accidentally hit the Menu button and screw up a whole game. Perhaps Radica should have made use of where the Mode button on the Genesis controller was for their Menu button, but its too late to complain about it now.

Radica did an ok job on these little systems, but I have seen modders take a crack at them and add cartridge slots, enabling them to play almost any Genesis cartridge (I assume they become essentially a Genesis 3). As these systems are pretty much a Genesis on a Chip (Genechip? Take that and use it freely, just remember where you learned it!) this particular system would be the best one to modify, having 2 controllers. But with how plentiful the Genesis 2, the system these are modeled after, are on the market, you’re better off with the real thing.

I won’t go into any detail about Street Fighter II or Ghouls n Ghosts, as I’m sure we’re all fairly familiar with these games by now. I will however say that I wish Radica had chosen more games with two player modes to put in here and didn’t market it so heavily as a Street Fighter II machine. I’m not a Street Fighter II fan, so the game that I like most in this system doesn’t get top billing, nor does it even get honorable mention (or mentioned at all) until the title screen!

Sure these systems aren’t vintage, but the system they’re inspired by and the games they offer are. If nothing more than a fun novelty to own I would collect many more of these systems, had Radica made more. But on the practical side, these are far easier to pack for trips than the real thing.

The system looks the same, but that controller is WILD!

Now I said pseudo steering wheel because from the look and feel of it one may assume the wheel is analog, but once I took the controller apart I found it only has 2 contact points, making essentially a two direction D-Pad. Another issue with the controller is that in the heat of racing and trying to keep your car on the track, the wheel portion feels weak and I often found myself letting off to avoid breaking the controller, leading my car off track and losing valuable time. However, you don’t need to use the wheel part to steer as you can use the D-pad on the face of the controller, but its too cramped to be comfortable, let alone any real use, subconsciously forcing your hand back to the wheel.

The C button is on the back, for some reason.

Stepping away from the controller and onto the game, OutRun 2019 is a fun game, albeit a bit removed from the rest of the series. OutRun 2019 was developed by a completely different company, but still published by Sega. Despite that you can expect pretty much the same experience as any other OutRun game.

OutRun 2019 is, obviously trying to be, a futuristic version of OutRun, in which you race through the course trying to beat the clock. My only problem with this is that the cars look slightly futuristic but the tracks and environments all seem to be modern day. Other than this slight oversight, again, the game plays just as the same as any other OutRun.

You still pick which direction you want to go to complete the course, but this time there are roads with two tiers, causing you to be more cautious as to not fly off the track. Also something new is if you max out your speed for a certain period of time you will receive an automatic turbo boost. This is pretty neat, but usually speeds the car up too much causing me to let off the gas within seconds to take a turn, really rendering this feature useless.

I have noticed OutRun 2019 seems to be a bit more forgiving in the wrecking department. Almost anything in OutRun that would send your car flying off the track, causing you to wait for it to recover, seem to merely cause your car in OutRun 2019 to spin around, quickly recovering and back on track with minimal interruption. Although the game handles much the same as OutRun, I can’t really connect with it as much as I do the other games in the series I’ve played.

For the past few years I’ve noticed a slew of reproduction N64 controllers that look identical to the real thing, as I haven’t had the chance to get my hands on one I can’t say much in the way of how good they are, or not. But what if you’re looking for something outside the box, something with a different shape entirely? Well Performance made quite a few N64 controllers that looked much worse than the original N64 controller design, somehow, but work quite well.

Performance was always in the market making memory cards, controllers and almost anything else you can think of for the N64, as well as almost any other video game console. Performance was perhaps most well known for providing controllers with built-in turbo features, as well as making simplistically standard replacements for worn out or broken controllers. If you were short on cash but needed something for your N64, you probably bought yourself something from Performance.

Recently I’ve come across four Performance SuperPad 64 controllers, 2 gray and 2 black. The gray ones were in good shape, other than their broken Z buttons, which I will get into later. Three of the four share the same design as you see above, but the fourth controller seemed to be designed by Picasso, with strange angles and an overall strange shape.

Outside of comfort, which there isn’t much comfort when using this controller, the controller does a great job. I assume Performance designed this controller to be even further outside the box of normalcy, while still retaining complete functionality, which they have achieved! Despite its design, the controller isn’t uncomfortable, but sometimes reaching the buttons can be a bit more of a stretch than you’re use to with the original or the Stingray design of Performance’s other controller.

All of Performance’s SuperPad 64 controllers share one common thing that really stand out in my mind, the joystick. I’ve only taken one apart because it was pulled out of place when I got it, but it was very easily put back into working order. Everything inside the joystick seems well thought out for the long haul, unlike Nintendo’s idea to use cheap plastic throughout.

My one complaint about these controllers are the Z buttons. In both of my gray controllers the Z button was broken, not the actual button but the piece inside that pushes in the carbon pad to activate it, rendering the controller useless for many games. I guess with such a robust joystick Performance had to make a misstep somewhere, and the Z button took the hit.

If you’re looking for a replacement controller for your N64, or just want one with a better joystick, I would say the Performance SuperPad 64 isn’t entirely bad. I found mine at the Goodwill Outlet for the standard $.79 a pound, so I imagine they should easily be found in thrift stores fairly cheap. Although they’re not nearly as, dare I say, comfortable as the original N64 controller, the joystick alone is a feature that is worth adding one to your collection.

Now I need to be perfectly honest, when I started playing the game for this article I fully expected to make a gleaming review to garner some respect for this game, thinking it had been judged too harshly. I can honestly say that after playing this game, up to the final bosses, I have nothing, even remotely, to praise about this game what so ever. Ok, so the game isn’t complete trash, but it fails on nearly every level it tried to clone from the games it so shamelessly copies!

A comparison of how Ys (SMS) starts, and how Lagoon starts.

Speaking of levels lets begin there; what is an RPG without a robust leveling system? In Lagoon you’re limited to 35, and although that is over twice the levels in both Crystalis and Willow, there is absolutely no reward, fanfare, or any notification at all for gaining new levels. In almost every other RPG you’re well aware when you’ve obtained a new level, no matter how deep into grinding you may be. With Lagoon levels nearly fly past, without even a hint that you’re gaining them, forcing you to open the menu to check which level you’re currently on.

Another thing Lagoon has in common with Crystalis and Willow is the armor and weapons scheme. You’ll only need to purchase your first set of armor, the rest of the equipment to see you through the game is sprawled out within the caves you’ll be exploring to advance through the pretty abysmal and boringly stock story. Which only has you going back and forth between places you’ve already been a few times, making this game feel entirely too linear for its own good.

Although the armor is setup to be found, once you find them you may be surprised at the detail of actually changing the armor on the main character sprite. Overall the armor and shields look good and are quite useful, but the weapons only get mildly stronger as you progress. Even though the weapons get stronger for some reason they never bothered to change it on the sprite, so for the whole of the game you look as if you’re swinging a dagger, or pocket knife, and the targeting system makes it feel that way too!

One thing I disliked about the two games I keep name dropping because this game so clearly copied them, was the hit detection system, but after a few levels I found the flow of how to center my attack and become more successful, without taking a heap of damage. Not the case with Lagoon, hitting enemies sometimes feels the equivalent of threading a needle while your hands are on fire, it’s virtually impossible! On normal enemies placed around the game to help you level up this may be fine, but it’s an exercise in frustration when it comes to a boss fight.

Not a bad Boss design, just not much fun to kill.

Boss fights are strewn about to help push the story forward, again pretty standard RPG fare, but only require a slight bit of strategy, if any. But, and I can’t stress this enough, you need to hit a certain point or points on a massive boss with your equivalent of a pen knife, possibly leading to many frustrating attempts. Although sometimes the poorly thought out system can play extremely well in your favor, as I’ve sometimes walked straight into bosses and found the hot spot right away and did nothing more than button mash until they were defeated, taking little to no damage at all.

The first boss, learn from the frustration of this one, it doesn’t get any more fun.

The linear feel is broken up by a handful of caves, castles and other places you need to go through to level up, find essential items/armor and to fight the boss, but unlike any other RPG I’ve played Lagoon leaves you in the dark as to what floor you’re on once you’re inside. You go through door ways and passages and you’re never fully aware if you’ve gone up or down, in a circle or just through a door into another part of the building on the same floor. As I previously stated you’ll need to search these winding corridors to find the, very few, items you’ll need to progress, but when you do find them you’ll be presented with an obnoxiously long fanfare. They can put one in for finding an herb but not for gaining a level, that’s well thought out programming!

Yet another thing Lagoon has in common with Crystalis is a small amount of platforming, requiring you to jump from area to area, or else you fall to your death, Game Over! Which is turned into quite the task by the poorly thought out centering system. The main character will almost walk off the screen in any directly, leaving you unsure of what is along the next step. It could be something you need to kill, or it could be a pitfall that will kill you and take you to the Continue or End screen.

Nasir falling to his death.

Now we get into Ys territory with the ability to save virtually anywhere, expect boss rooms, so if you’ve planned out your save strategy well enough, once that dreaded Continue screen pops up you’ll be able to restart exactly where you last saved. This can be both handy and harmful as you can save almost anywhere, as often as you like, and progress through the game with a frequent save plan. But since the game tends to close things off behind you, in that linear fashion, I also assume if you miss an item and save down the road you may be screwed!

Again, you find almost every item you will need along your journey, but Lagoon does have a currency system. Monsters will drop small amounts of currency, by which I mean you just magically obtain it like exp, once they’ve been killed unless you kill them with magic, which I will get to in a second. The only real item that interested me was a Shiny Ball which speeds up your recovery on HP and MP, but by the time you’ve saved up the 10,000 coins you can’t go back to buy it, and its only a single use!

What would an RPG be without magic? Well Lagoon would probably be much better off as you can only use it on normal enemies and never in a boss fight! You only obtain magic through a variety of crystals and staves, which you can mix and match to create different spell effects. Not an original feature, but none the less the most creative feature in Lagoon.

And finally I’ve reached one of the most important aspects of all RPGs, your HP and MP. This is handled in the exact same way as Ys, you have two long bars across the bottom of the screen, both bars indicate how much HP you and your foes currently have, respectively. Your HP and MP will slowly refill as you sit still, you can’t be moving at all for them to refill, but in some key areas they will both refill rather quickly.

Game Over, well thankfully the suffering is over!

I originally planned to compare Lagoon to the games I name dropped oh so heavily in this review to highlight its strong points, but by the end of playing through the game I felt it mostly highlighted just how poorly they dismantled those games and half baked a game that isn’t as good as any of the games it tried to become. On a scale of 1 to 10 replay ability is a solid 0, but I fear Kemco never cared as they already conned people out of their money. I always try to keep my reviews positive, but I can’t for every game and as much as I wished, hoped and tried to like Lagoon for what it is, I simply can’t!

To some the item shown above may look like nothing at all, while others may get it right away. Perhaps most of you are like myself and are currently scratching your heads telling yourself how this looks familiar, but you just can’t place the shape, or what it has to do with vintage gaming at all. Well I will remedy any and all curiosity, below.

What only says SGRL is actually a Nintendo Game Boy Color rechargeable battery pack. Even on the power supply for the charging base there is nothing at all written about what this item does or what it is for. I did however use the voltage to spur on my hopes that it was what it turned out to be.

If you saw this item sitting alone in a thrift store would you have picked it up on a whim? This item was just one of many things I’ve picked up, hoping it was what my brain thought it was. However, this item was the most cryptic item I’ve ever had to decipher!

Being a, self proclaimed, MacGuyver of retro gaming items, I feel as though I’ve found a solution to my problem! I can’t just leave a Sega Game Gear sitting in such a large bag without proper protection, so I’ve chosen another Sega system to take it’s place. Perhaps you could say its keeping it in the family, my Sega Saturn.

The Sega Saturn fits perfectly, as does a controller or pair of controllers. The AV cable and power cord, once wound up, fit perfectly where game cases fit in the upper part of the bag, which leaves two compartments on the front and back for games, or anything else you need to carry along with your Sega Saturn. So if you ever run across one of these bags without the Game Gear insert don’t just pass it up, take it home, give it a cycle through the clothes washer and once it’s dry pack away your Sega Saturn!

AtGames Genesis Clone with controller.

AtGames Genesis Controller

Front View

Back View

But now we get into the major downside of the Genesis Arcade Motion, firstly and mostly this system is emulation and that means it is rife with all the problems emulation brings, such as: poor sound quality, some video game effects don’t work properly, squished game text, some video games are not compatible at all (Virtua Racing) and the fact that some ROMs may not work at all, by which I mean you may need to try many different versions of the same ROM to find one that works. One plus side is that this system is seemingly region free, as I’ve tested various Japanese and PAL ROMs and they have worked as well as can be expected. But given that this is a Genesis emulator you may also have the delusions I had that the system will work with other ROMs and the fact here is no, it will NOT work with 32x, Sega CD or even SMS ROMs.

So with this system you are limited to Genesis and Mega Drive ROMs which isn’t so bad, until you realize the system will not create a save file on the SD card for games that require a save. This system is, however, really well suited for games that are password saves or even good old arcade classics such as Golden Axe or Street Fighter. Given it’s limitations the SD card expansion is still a pretty neat idea to open up a much bigger library than one might have hoped.

I have the Sega Genesis Arcade Motion Dual, but I’ve read that there is a deluxe version with even more games packed inside. Overall the system isn’t something I would pack away to play over my actual Genesis, its more of a novelty for when I’m bored and want access to games I can’t find or don’t yet own. So many good RPGs on the Genesis I will never get to play because this system can’t make a simple save file, what a shame.

4) NES game carry case
You may know how I love to buy the canvas travel cases for retro systems, but I’ll buy almost anything branded that allows me to store my video games and systems. Such is the case with this NES game carrying case. Back in the NES days Nintendo put their name on anything, sometimes it was utter junk and other times it was decent, in this case it was JUNK! This thing was meant to carry up to 10 NES games anywhere you needed to go. The problem was these things were merely plastic covering cardboard, not the strongest combination! The strongest part of this thing is the brass parts, which have tarnished. This is still a pretty cool retro piece to own, and it does hold 10 games quite well, even if it is slightly misshapen.

3) 1080 Snowboarding N64
In a previous edition of Sam’s Scores I discussed how I may have bricked my N64 Gameshark. After a little bit of research I learned that fixing it may be as easy as buying the game that corresponds with the key code I changed it to. Lucky for me it did the trick and fixed my Gameshark to usable condition once more! Even if it hadn’t, it was cheap enough that I wouldn’t have minded just adding it to my collection anyway.

2) Krazy Kreatures NES
Most of the unlicensed games for the NES are naturally harder to find than the official releases, such as Krazy Kreatures. When I found this I originally thought it was an old 8-track tape, it looked so strange inside it’s American Video Entertainment sleeve. Although the game isn’t very fun, this is one of only two games actually developed by A.V.E.

1) Tecmo Super Bowl
About a year ago I happened to find Tecmo Bowl for $1, but could never find Super Bowl for a price that I felt was good enough to warrant owning both of them. Until recently, when I found one at such a good price that I couldn’t turn it down!

The Atari 2600 and the NES had pretty much the same processor.

The NES used a MOS Technology 6502 processor. The 2600 used an offshoot of the 6502 called the 6507, which had fewer pins and, as a result, could address only 8 KB of memory.

Night Trap & Sewer Shark were developed in the late ’80s.

In 1985 development began on the Nemo. Nemo began as a prototype that was essentially a modified ColecoVision, designed to combine graphic images with video. It stored data on VHS tapes that contained audio and video as well as the game itself. Development was started by Axlon and later funded by Hasbro.

The first game was Night Trap. In 1987, the second game called Sewer Shark was created. After filming Sewer Shark, Hasbro left the project and the games and footage were stored in a warehouse. It wasn’t until 1992 when the Sega CD came out that the technology to do the game as originally envisioned was on the market.

The NES was almost an Atari system instead of Nintendo.

In 1984, Nintendo wanted to break into the America video game market and approached Atari to release the Famicom in America under the Atari name. Both companies had a tentative agreement until Atari learned Coleco was demonstrating a prototype of Donkey Kong for the Coleco Adam home computer system. This angered Atari who thought they would have exclusive rights to any Nintendo properties. They pulled out of the deal. Nintendo decided to make the Nintendo Advanced Video System themselves. Later they renamed the AVS to Nintendo Entertainment System. The rest is history.

Steve Jobs basically cheated Steve Wozniak out of money when he worked at Atari.

Steve Jobs started working at Atari as a technician. In 1975 Atari created a game called Breakout. Jobs was assigned to create a circuit board for the game. It had too many chips. Al Alcorn, the project manager, offered Jobs $750 and $100 for each chip he could remove from the design. Jobs made a Deal with Steve Wozniak and they reduced the amount of chips to 50. The design that was too complicated for an assembly line. Jobs told Wozniak that they paid him only $700 instead of the $5000 that he received. Wozniak only received $350.

MegaMan, Bionic Commando and Super C are just a few titles, that I’m aware of, that were totally and completely destroyed in the transmission over to PC. When it comes down to it, I don’t think we can blame the same companies we respected for giving us these games on the NES, other than allowing another company to tear it to shreds for the PC. So prepare yourself to see some of the classic NES games as you may have never seen them before!

There are no redeeming qualities here!

Bionic Commando is a game that I took right to, when I found it for the NES a year or so ago, so I figured the PC version would be much better. Not only was I wrong, I was completely wrong! The graphics, although I imagine the PC has a much bigger color palette, are so much worse than the NES that they’re laughably ugly.

Not only is it ugly, I was completely lost when it came to key functions. The NES has a simple A, B and D-pad to worry about, and being familiar with NES emulation I can easy map those keys to my preference, but when it comes to a DOS game it seems they made the commands so cryptic it rendered the game unplayable for the first 10 minutes.

After looking up the key commands I quickly realized that I wished I hadn’t. Even though I now knew the commands, the game play was still so horrendous that I quickly removed all traces of the game. It didn’t follow the NES game at all, and in general it just wasn’t easy to start nor was it good enough to keep me hooked.

Yeah, what the hell is this!?

Megaman is another such title that earns itself a place in this article of shame. The series is among the most treasured of the NES franchises, with a total of 6 games on the NES and expanding over into the SNES generation. But with such a strong franchise on the NES, why would Capcom have ported or allowed anyone to port it to the PC?

Again the graphics are ugly, rendering Megaman into more of a blue dough-boy who downs E cans with swiftness, abusing their effects, instead of using them when he truly needs them. I have to be completely honest and say that I didn’t play this one for more than 5 minutes total, and a few extra for this article. The simple fact is that although the controls are super simple and intuitive, there is no level selection and the first level it starts you in is impossible.

You start off at what seems to be a border checkpoint, perhaps USA/Canadian border for all I know, where you run head first into a bionic cat. No matter how much you fire at this cat you simply can not kill it, and to make matters worse if you try to run away the cat pounces right on Megaman, quickly draining his energy without even a hope of a chance of survival. Needless to say, I gave up on this pile of trash.

Mega Man 3 doesn’t look too bad, this gives me hope!

Megaman 3 takes us back to a more NES familiarity. After the opening screens of the people who sadly take credit for porting this from the NES, you are actually presented with a level selection screen! But you’ll notice Megaman seems to have been caught taking a dump for his picture in the center. The bosses all look ok, given the port, but only one is actually from the NES version and they changed his name!

After selecting your choice of level you are presented with a more familiar, yet not completely, level filled with extremely hard to kill foes. If you can manage to keep yourself interested enough you will eventually reach the boss, something I never manages so I can not comment on how that goes. Overall the controls are the same as Megaman, easy to remember, the enemies are still way too difficult for the game and the overall feel is closer to the NES, yet still too far removed.

Not a bad title, but whats behind this screen?

Super C takes this spot on the list because I could not find a working version of Contra, although I’ve read it exists. Again it took me 10-15 minutes to punch around aimlessly at my keyboard before finally realizing I wasn’t trying the numerical keypad, I mean who would right? Quickly I took control of my character, and although the controls were functional, it was way too cramped to really manage to play the game to any functional capacity.

Graphically Super C really depends on your choice of settings, although now they’re obsolete, back then different systems required completely different settings. The game can look and sound great, but I never bothered to remember which settings I chose. I’m sure had I given this game more time and become more familiar with it’s controls I would have thoroughly enjoyed it, but as-is it was the most enjoyable port in this list.

All these games were horrifyingly mangled, to be truly honest all of the games seemed more like a Chinese clones of their original titled counterparts. I was never really exposed to many DOS games when I first got a computer, but I have since gone back and enjoyed quite a few DOS games, so I may be missing some knowledge that diehard DOS gamers would know to make these games more fun. But when it comes to the ports of NES games to the DOS platform I had preconceived standards in my head because these were games I already enjoyed on the NES.

It may only be my stubborn ways of being stuck in my comfort zone of 2 action buttons and a D-pad, that the NES gave me, or it may well be that these games truly stink. Regardless of my standards I still believe these games are all overly complicated, even more so than Nintendo Hard. The graphics are poor, the games are almost impossible without spending countless hours planning your every button mash and overall these games just lack in appeal.

I’m sorry DOS, but I will stick with my NES, thank you very much!