Help identifying a few games

[Mindfield]

I recieved a Brazilian 32-in-1 cart the other day, and just finished going through all of the games. It's pretty cool 'cos there are a few titles on there that aren't normally available in NTSC. I've managed to identify 29 of the 32 on the cart, but 3 elude me. Here's the list and what each one is a pirate/clone of:

 

01: S.O.S. (Imagic/Fire Fighter)

02: Megamania (Activision/Same)

03: Soccer (M-Network/International Soccer)

04: IQ-180 (Home Vision/Same)

05: Little Bear (Activision/Frostbite)

06: Squirrel (Bit Corp/Snail Against Squirrel)

07: Niki Wanders (Bit Corp/Bobby Is Going Home)

08: Catch Time (Activision/Plaque Attack)

09: Bermuda III (Sega/Sub Scan)

10: Q. Bert (Parker Bros/Q*Bert)

11: Tank Mission (Sega/Thunderground)

12: Beany Popper (20th Century Fox/Beanie Bopper)

13: Normandy Landing (US Games/Commando Raid)

14: Pyramid War (Activision/Chopper Command) (Hacked graphics)

15: Mission 3000 A.D. (Bit Corp/Same)

16: Spider Man (Parker Bros/Spider-Man)

17: Bermuda I (Activision/River Raid)

18: E.T. Go Home (ITT Family Games/Alien's Return)

19: My Way (Activision/Freeway)

20: Boom Bang (Activision/Crackpots) (Hacked graphics)

21: Puzzled World (Atari/Maze Craze)

22: Sea Ghost (???)

23: Mariana (Activision/Seaquest)

24: Pac Kong (???)

25: Pac Man (Atari/Same)

26: Racing Car (???)

27: Grand Prix (Activision/Same)

28: Chinese Konfu (Zimag/Dishaster)

29: Hey! Stop! (Activision/Keystone Kapers)

30: Fox & Pig (Activision/Oink!)

31: Karate (Froggo/Same)

32: Lily Adventure (Bit Corp/Bobby Is Going Home) (Hacked graphics/level layout)

 

Really crappy pics of the unidentified games are below (sorry, my Palm takes even worse pics than my digicam), but here's a brief rundown of each:

 

Sea Ghost: Strange. A bit like Sub Scan; move your craft side-to-side and destroy what are presumably fish by dropping depth charges. This is not a clone of Sub Scan; the graphics are markedly different, they flicker rather annoyingly (not because of sprite multiplexing, but whatever routine controls their horizontal movement is jerky at best) The gameplay also varies -- things move at different velocities and in different directions, and depth charges are much quicker than in Sub Scan.

 

Pac Kong: Now this is an odd one. I think there was discussion of this before. At any rate, it looks kinda like the girder level of Donkey Kong -- your character even looks like Mario. The object is to make your way up the ladders and jump over gaps to reach the top. For what purpose, I don't know. There are various "things" floating around the level. The diamonds just travel diagonally, bouncing as they hit an edge. The spiders(?) appear to travel horizontally or vertically, but do not appear to observe the laws of physics -- like solid objects. They just float around like the diamond thingies. Touch them and you'll fall down and die. There appears to be little variation other than level layout between levels. This game features some of the worst sprite multiplexing flicker in the known universe. I'm talking a good 3-4 frames per object, here. This may induce epileptic siezures whether or not you actually have epilepsy.

 

Racing Car: Interesting. Like Gran Prix, only with less colourful sprites and more lanes. The object appears simply be to drive along the highway from right to left and avoid cars coming from both directions, orange squares (pylons?) and oil slicks. Of course, the oil slicks (at least, I assume these large gray squares are, since they cause you to slide into other lanes) are often placed at the same spot in every freakin' lane, so avoiding them is slightly impossible in those cases. Colission with another car will make yours explode and you'll have to start over.

 

Here's the crappy pics. Hope they're somewhat legible.

[sku_u]

Racing Car = Hell Driver (Known PAL title)

Pac Kong = Spider Maze (known already, alothough who came first is very debatable).

 

That third one I don't recognize. Could be a previously unknown game!

[Mindfield]

It's a CCE title, and a little more digging revealed that Sea Ghost is actually Puzzy's Sea Monster (at least, the description on AtariInvader matches it to a T, even if I couldn't find a screenshot)

 

Thanks for the other two, tho -- I'd never played Spider Maze before, and I'd never even heard of Hell Driver. :-) Cool ... so I get a few neat titles that I couldn't ordinarily get in NTSC. I love Brazilian pirates... :-)

[Mindfield]

By the way ... what the hell were K-Tel thinking when they released Spider Maze? That flicker is intollerable! It's like being inside a drug-addled brain.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

By the way ... what the hell were K-Tel thinking when they released Spider Maze?  That flicker is intollerable!  It's like being inside a drug-addled brain.

I suppose, Atari's Pac Man had defined a new "standard".

[highinfidelity]

It's a CCE title, and a little more digging revealed that Sea Ghost is actually Puzzy's Sea Monster (at least, the description on AtariInvader matches it to a T, even if I couldn't find a screenshot)

Normal: Atarinvader IS pictureless by definition. The game seems definitely the same. Osmeroid wrote the review, you can eventually PM him for more details: he's a well known fellow here even though he didn't post in this specific section frequently lately.