Certainly not over hyped

I’ll keep this quick because I want to go back to it later

Earlier this year I was lucky enough to go to the retro show in Manchester now that was an experience and a half particularly for somebody who’s a little on the crippled side like myself as it’s not really designed for people walking but that’s another matter

Anyway it was quite interesting show there was a nice talk about the very interesting spectrum addict video which apart from a few people in the audience making comments about a certain handheld which I am not going to go on about was rather interesting

Some interesting stands lovely old machines saw a zx81 running with one of the expanded storage units and I think the dragons lair conversion by Jim Bagley. Very impressive work indeed and I really wish I knew how we can press that and resells and it’s something I really would like to see on the blue-footed one

There was some interesting stands particularly for Raspberry Pi tinkerers and two particular favourites were the Llamasoft stand and of course the Hewson stand.

I’m really pleased to a finding that Mr Jeff Minter himself,who is a very nice chap indeed, and his game which my voice recognition cannot understand … but it’s the one used in the Nine Inch Nails video less than, is very impressive. Especially in 3D.

If you’re reading Mr Minter,which I doubt but you never know, then I’ll try and bring some lion bars to your stand next time because I know that you rather like them.

Hewson stand had a great book written by Andrew Hewson and the demo of a very impressive game called hyper Sentinel.

Let’s be direct me honest here hyper sentinel is definitely very very very inspired by a certain well-known spectrum and Commodore 64 scrolling shoot Em Up.

And let’s be honest it is bloody good.

In fact that’s rather an underestimate.

It’s a simple game in the sense that you can jump straight in without any convoluted storylines. But it is fast, it is fun, it looks good, it sounds good, it plays incredibly well.

It has tributes to the Commodore 64 and the spectrum in the form of of switchable graphics Styles. That’s nice, not crucial, but it’s fun to see.

Apparently it was a Kickstarter project and it’s good to see any of these that work well although that’s not something I’m afraid I’m touching myself (no innuendo intended there …. gosh this is starting to sound like your Sinclair on a bad day).

Anyone there was a recent sale on. I finally got around to ordering it. I’ve got it now and my goodness I am very impressed.

If you order a physical copy then you will get a very nicely designed cassette shaped box with a cassette shaped USB drive. This really looks nice and takes me back to the days of decent games.

My only niggle about the physical version and to be totally honest I can understand why it is so is that you still need to sign up to steam to play it but with these days out more and more piracy it’s unavoidable.

There is very interesting extra contents with videos, which I do need to sit down to enjoy properly, with Mr Hewson. These seemed to tie in with the book I bought earlier. Also some nice archives and classic Hewson adverts and reviews.

I’m a little disappointed they didn’t include some of their original games but of course they are available out there so that’s not a big problem but it would have been nice.

I suspect that some rights issue regarding including them on the USB drive I doubt it space but is probably some legal reason.

Anyway no spoilers on the game it’s fast it’s fun it’s frantic my reactions are rubbish so I’m not scoring brilliantly but I’m enjoying it. I Will had some screens up later but you probably know what it looks like and you probably know what it’s very inspired by. I will say is it is definitely worth the money.

There’s some interesting demos of new products on there. I tried the point and Click adventure which I wasn’t very good at but looks quite nice I’ll get round to the others.

Anyway topmarks to all involved I’ll stick a link on later for it but have a look on Facebook if you use a horrible system because there is a few adverts running and with the crazy sales at the moment you might even spend less than I paid.

Sorry for the run on text as usual muscle pains in my hand