Velikiy Drakon article on Duke Nukem 3D (Genesis), translated!

Guess who translated it. Of course! It's Crash Nicker, who else? :P
I'm only showing the bottom parts of the page including this article. You remember the Commandos Genesis pirate article? That was on the upper half of the page both times.

(EDITORIAL) (From our beloved translator... :P)
Men, that review is supposed to be translated long ago. But, as you see, I haven't been making it as long as Duke Nukem Forever (who had to shut itself down eventually) and you got it fresh and cold. Enjoy.
COMMENT ON THE GAME: Whoo, PC games keep storming SEGA MegaDrive! Yeah, TecToy's try to port the infamous 'Come Get Some' shooter was not that brilliant as... no, wait. BLOODSHOT WASN'T BRILLIANT AS WELL! Same for Zero Tolerance. Well, you have a save feature (not passwords!) but you have only 9 levels and singleplayer mode to mess up with. And, just for heck, it consumes 4 megs of RAM (for comparision: Super Street Fighter II used 5, Ultimate MK Trilogy uses 10). At least the monsters are not one-si... No, I don't mean gay monsters, I mean monsters' sprites. And the controls. Only one suggestion: WHY DO I HAVE TO PUSH A, B AND C AT THE SAME TIME TO PAUSE THAT GAME!?!? Perhaps these guys at TecToy are way too lazy to make a 3/6-button joy detector (or, no, ONE guy who made the music and the coding) and decided to put an 'activator' feature in there. Stupid. But, overall, worth tryin' at least once.
COMMENT ON THE ARTICLE: Well, it's okay, but LAWL, the author thought that it was developed by pirates. And LAWL it's not Beretta but rather a Desert-Eagle-looking thing. And LAWL again, a team of programmers. A+B+C, CREDITS, list to the TecToy's part.

DUKE NUKEM 3D

The protagonist of our next game is not needed in any kind of introduction. All the gaming people know him or, at least, heard about him. A big lover of women, big guns, stylish cars and a cool comedian. The humanity's savior and leading pigcop-herd. It's nearly impossible to not to recognize that all-known man after such a description - Duke Nukem.
The appearence of this blondie on MD was less unexpected than in case of our previous game, but anyway. It's not actually known why do the great pirates decided to show Duke in his 3D appearence to people since there are a lot of games starring him but consuming much less power. For those who just started playing computer games, I have to admit that Duke didn't become a 3D Action hero from the very beginning as he was popular earlier, in the era of 2D platform games. There, he was running on space stations ripping all the extraterresial flora and fauna on the way. As I remember, the game was playable on the 286 comps, and that's yet another proof of it's ability to be ported to 16-bit consoles. If pirates would rescramble THIS version of Duke, they would deserve, at least, a statue while the happy owners of MD would get a really splendid action game.
But, alas, pirates decided to go the other way around, like, on the progress side, and went 3D. The 3D, however, got scared and fled, so as the result we have a game resembling Zero Tolerance and Bloodshot but much worse than they both are. Of course, there were supposes that the game wasn't created by pirates either but, by known reasons, the supposes didn't go through well.
During the porting, as everyone could expect, graphics were downgraded. But it seems like it could be much worse. The team of unknown programmers did, even if partly, moved that athmosphere that Duke is surronded with. He keeps trashing his neaty jokes and running with countless bunches of monsters on an unknown space station, shooting them at the same time. Talking about shooting, there's a lot of weaponry to choose from. Beginning from a weak Beretta and ending to the alldevastating rocket launcher. When all the ammo is gone, you may kick those alien bastards with a cleany army shoe. When you tap a combination of buttons, you'll be able to see the map which will help you to not get lost in the labyrinths.
Unfortunately, all the good ends here and now we're going to a morbid part where I'm going to shame the game a little bit.
First, when playing it, you feel a catastrophical lack of ammo and medkits, the worst is that both categories of stuff are decreasing at the same time. You don't even know to what to try to keep. But whatever you do, you still run out of both ammo and health. The death comes much earlier now. Even firing at long distances while trying to dodge a fireball launched at you became harder due to the inaccuracy of the crosshair. To mention, that is the main inconvinience. Thank God they've left strafe in, cos' without it, you won't be able to survive even for a minute.
But, in any case, Duke Nukem is an unkillable classic of the genre which you probably might want to try in any of its' instances. And even some cons (that you will meet here) won't spoil that overall Duke feeling whatever they will do.

CONTROLS:
A - opening doors;
B - strafe;
C - fire;
X - turn run mode on/off
Y - show map;
Z - change the weapon;
X+Y - pause the game (er, X+Y+Z+START I guess - NIX);
X+Y+Z - main menu (that's A+B+C - NIX)

The Ninja's word: I couldn't even complete the goddamn FIRST level! Seriously, this game is just plain cruel on difficulty. If you seriously want to play Duke, then pop in a PS1 version. OR the PC version if you can find a normal one. The pausing in this game is lol - a+b+c... what the hell? - as well as, well the idea. 3D is not always the best idea even on 16-bit, with of course exceptions like Super Mario RPG on the SNES...

Panda World (NES Pirate) Review by ARProductions

My friend Aaron's review of this game.

Dendy: New Reality - Master Fighter II Review (English subtitles)

Crash Nicker, who has became a member of Digital Chimera Entertainment (woot?), translated another Dendy show. This time it's Master Fighter 2, 1992 by Yoko Soft... which apparently seems to be their BEST pirate if Cony = Yoko. Weird. Very, very weird.

His comment:

Here I come with another pirate game review, proudly provided by Steepler [somewhat RIP], Sergei Suponev [RIP], SpaceNinja88 and kinaman. Episode five, season one, Master Fighter II by Yoko, the pirate game that is known to start a GODDAMN HUGE wave of cheaply (and not that cheaply made) SF2 clones. No need to mention them all, because... well, see above, in capital letters.

Background info: Suponev actually told children on how to insert a cartridge properly so your Dendy wouldn't get broken (like, insert the cart first THEN push the Power button) in the FIRST release of this nostalgic TV show, so, if you want me to translate this one, request me, I gonna do this some time...

There was also a 'Tips&Tricks' section named 'What? Where? Where to?' featuring a Steepler expert Dennis Panov with his assistant (forgot his name) and Street Fighter II for MD has been mentioned in this episode... well, IT IS in the episode, moved to thst section, and in here, you will learn how to pull out Ryu's infamous Hadoken... Heh.

The Ninja's word: The review is good although the player got very badly owned by Chun-Li, and almost by Ryu. Otherwise I also recommend some netplay practising first before tackling the "story" mode. However, when I had this game - YES, I had this game on a reset-selector cartridge with... Rockman 5, the first game I have ever played - I could compete fine, and this was when I was 7 years old in 1995. Yes, the game lacks characters. Yes, the game lacks a difficulty selection screen. But also: No, the game isn't super cheap! This is easily a good SF pirate!

Velikiy Drakon article on Commandos (Genesis) translated!

Another article from the Great Dragon, translated by Crash Nicker. Thanks!
The Duke Nukem 3D one isn't translated - YET :P
(EDITORIAL) (Note: This editorial is written by Crash Nicker :P)
Good morning dear malchiki and devochiki. Malchiki particularly, because today is the special release, dedicated to the Day of The Mothership Defender holiday which is celebrated, as far as I know, only in our big and dirty ex-USSR and only on February 23. It's the Great D review of the Commandos port for MegaDrive written by C.J.C. and posted in issue 60 (one of the last ones). My opinon about the game? Well, BEST TOMSOFT GAME EVER. But freaking hard.
Background info. Mentioning 'Ho Sung Pak' in here actually means mentioning the whole Chinese piracy. You know who was that guy actually? He played Liu Kang in Mortal Kombat. Then, one guy (I dunno who was that, perhaps Agent Cooper or Lord Hanta) dicided to koin that name in and here you go. One thing else to mention about that Ho Sung Pak joke. There is a cheat/secrets/easter eggs section in the Great D magazine and (ONCE UPON A TIME) an unknown guy sent them a 'description of an easter egg', where he says something like 'watch the MK staff roll carefully and you'll notice a familiar name'. Then something like 'LOL, I don't get the joke'.
But, just to mention, another guy who wrote an article about Sonic Jam 6 (Super Mario Bros 2 in that case) was even noobier... Well, nevamind Aladdin article coming soon.
Enjoy your coke.

**********

Article:

Everyone knows that pirates keep watering the plentifying soil of MegaDrive. And now, the comrades and relatives of Ho Sung Pak have a whole bunch of projects for the owners of SEGA 16-bit consoles. Today, we're going to tell you about two of them that stand out against the others.

COMMANDOS

The first game was not actually expected by the others, while thoughts about porting it to MegaDrive would be treated like an unreal insanity. But these agile Chinese proved that there's nothing impossible yet again and made a rush on the bastions of "Cold" PCs. Well, who actually noticed that, not counting us? However, I'm glad to present you Commandos in the 16-bit format.
The stiry of the game is taking place during World War II at the Nazis' rear. A small team is going under control of the player and in that small team, every member is being a pro in their favourite jobs. The goal of each level is pretty simple: to complete a mission without losing even a single warrior.
In the MegaDrive version of this game, you can play as the following characters:

GREEN BERET - the most important and skilled saboteur in the team. Some kind of a ringleader. His strong shoulders will carry all the primary tasks in this game. Has a knife, able to move the dead enemies' bodies to a secluded nook. Has a bunch of medkits and a decoy in his posession.
SNIPER - never leaves his sniper rifle alone, which he uses for shooting the enemies out on large distances without any miss. Use this advantage for destroying your opponent who's being far away. His only weakness is a low amount of ammo.
MARINE - as soon as he has a harpoon, he can kill the enemies without any noise. One more unique ability of this character is a scuba gear that allows him to pass water obstacles without being detected, and, of course, the ability to ride teammates on a boat.
SAPPER - the most explosive team member. Knows how to use dynamite, throws grenades with a precise accuracy and sets beartraps everywhere. But, using his abilities is problematic since it's very hard to get to the place of dynamite or trap setting without a proper weapon.
SPY - has no weapon, and that makes him completely helpless when he meets an enemy. But the lack of weaponry is fully compensated with the ability to disguise that allows him to walk freely even under enemies' noses. In addition, you can also stand closer to the enemy soldier and kill him with a poison prick.

The only loss of commandos is the DRIVER who could control all the types of autotransport. But, even without him, the game is still addictive.
Every character should complete only that kind of task that he's able to. And remember: when one of your soldiers gets killed, you have to restart all the mission over.
But the loss of one of the heroes is not such a big one. Since MD can't outmaster the PC by it's power, we have only five missions to play compared to the original ninteen. However, even that is enough to spend at least a week in front of your TV set. And, in fact, five mission is much better than no missions at all.
But in anything else, the game keeps itself close to the original. And you also play the game with cursor (D-Pad will replace a computer mouse in that case). Add the gameplay that will keep you on your toes where you have to be as quiet as a weapon stock mouse. An interactive world where anything may be destroyed. The availabilty of the footsteps on the snow which may be noticed by guards is a welcome feature too.
I guess that the only unrecoverable loss of the gameplay is the unability to see to where the Nazi guard is looking at the moment. Now, you have to be patient while looking at the opponent's head and then determining where does he actually look. Because of this, at the first sight, little problem, the game became much harder than before. But that's not the reason to reject this game at all. You adopt to this inconvinience really fast and then you begin to be happy about making your humble donation to the Nazis' army destruction.

CONTROLS:
X - take
Y - draw the pistol
Z - get up/lie down
A - confirm action
B - change the character
C - cancel

**********

The Ninja's word: Awesome article. I can understand why it's the best Tomsoft SDK game ever made. I'd definitely take this over the HORRIBLE NES port by ESC, AKA Waixing. Even though this one has absolutely no ending, just the results screen and then the title screen... so yeah. Still, it deserves a ride.

Dendy: New Reality - Somari Review (English subtitles)

Crash Nicker yet again got something very interesting for you.

Quoting him:

Before you watch this video, some background info. The boom of famiclones on the territory of ex-USSR began in the year 1993, when the newborn Dendy 8-bit console (distributed by the Steepler Company) breached into every family's house. To PR themselves, Steepler decided to go make a specialized magazine named "Video-Uss Dendy" and a TV show named "Dendy: The New Reality" (in Russian: Dendy Novaya Realnost). Both soon transformed into the "Great Dragon" magazine (Velikiy Drakon) and "The New Reality" TV show (without the word "Dendy", as you may see).

The host of this program is Sergei Suponev, widely known among the children of 90s for hosting a quiz show "Zvyozdny Chas", a competitive show "The Call of the Jungles" (Zov Djoongley) and taking part in the Russian version of the Survivor reality show named "Last Man Standing" (Posledniy Geroy). Died some years ago in a car crash. Rest in pieces, dude...

For the show itself. For a starter, it made a quick description of those cartridges for Dendy and SEGA MegaDrive that have been recently appeared in Steepler's stores in Moscow, along with a quick walks to the stores itself and interviewing the customers and sellers... SNES, GameBoy and Virtual Boy games came sooner. For the ex-USSR, the program was merely unique since nobody made a TV show dedicated to the videogames before and, of course, VERY popular, since I'm showing this vid to you.

This is an extract from the 11th episode of the first season (broadcasted on 2X2 channel) where a particular game is being "reviewed". It's name is Somari. Everyone who has been interested in pirate games knows it. Basically, it's a port of Sonic the Hedgehog made by J. Y. Company (AKA Hummer Team and AKA Somari Team). Some people said that the port itself is actually strong, while the others hated it (and still hate) for the squeaky JYish music and for the physics. No matter if you like this game or not, this translation's gotta be in your collection if you love NES games d:).

The game that was reviewed before is actually Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. DON'T FLAME PLEASE IF YOU HATE THIS GAME TOO!!

...and, at the end, the ugly truth about every famiclone's owner about copyrighting... and pirates particulary. Heh.

SPECIAL THANKS GO TO:
- SpaceNinja88 for hosting this translation on his Pirated Games Central blog (No problem, dude!)
- BrydoRX/Retinex, Cheetahmen92 and Lin for their moral support
- J. Y... well, you know for what
- The creators of Media Subtitler
- Sachen for the dino and TomSoft for Metro Goldwyn Mayer
- Sergey Suponev (R.I.P.) for a piece of nostalgie
- Kinaman for collaborating all the episodes of this program
- Grandma for teaching me English d:D



My comment on the video: Well, the Indiana Jones part was directly left in. But, about the Somari part... Quick review, though you only get to see two acts. The first zone only... This is my main problem with the otherwise good review. Also, the copyright part... this is VERY risky to talk about on the television. But, since ex-USSR countries, including Hungary where I live, had piracy a huge time, especially in my childhood, this is somewhat accepted here. It also mentions Mario 16, a Joe&Mac hack, what I too had... memories. Definitely worth a watch.

Darkseed NES pirate. The (almost) full breakdown.

First, the playthrough. :o I'll look around for certain deaths too. XD Requested by 34Bahamut.





Darkseed
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System / Famicom
Seen on cart?: No, but was released
Year: After 1992, around 2000

Darkseed. The infamous mystery/horror game from 1992, being very abstract and dark, thanks to Giger's design. It got released on Amiga CD32, PC, later on PS1 and Sega Saturn but sadly, the latter two ports got only released in Japan. Years (?) later, Chinese people decided to port this onto the still-alive and kicking 8-bit console, the Famicom. This port was done by the Chinese/Taiwanese company named Mars Production, which in most of our opinions are just Waixing's worse quality game releasers. Let's see how did the port turn out...

Story:
Since the intro only has one picture and the three lines of Chinese text, if you don't know the original game, you might be thinking "What is that guy doing on that one screen and what the fck is that?" Well, if you don't know: Mike got an alien embryo implanted into his forehead (...in the original's cutscene, it looked like a result of male sexual liquid... well, you get the idea.) and he has three days to save himself and the mankind by stopping the invasion.
Story is good, even though it isn't developed very well in this port. Thus I give it a 6.

Music:
You get one, yes, ONE track playing all the time. No differency if you go into the Dark World. No differency in the city. Nothing. It is a nine second loop which might seem random Beeps and Blips (hello, Action 52 reference!) to you, it has an actual rhythm... but still, it is very bad. But how might it turn out in a Shizuka (& Yoshikoto?) remix? Who knows! XD (Note: I run under the name Hagane Shizuka when it comes to music.)
Music gets a 1.

Sound effects:
Hardly any of them, one when you select an item, one when you exit from the inventory / trying to save (with that woman face on the left... resembles the face from the alien computer... hmm...)
Crap. Thus I give this one also a 1.

Graphics:
The game goes around TWO colours. Brown in the real, green in the dark world. I know the NES can't handle many colours, but come on. And why the hell is the screen always in a frame? Why not giving it an Ancient-ish frame like in the original? Would it have been hard? No.
However, the nightmares are ported okay, but still, coloured badly...
Graphics get a mild 4. (And I'm light-hearted on this one, otherwise, it would have gotten a 2.)

Controls:
No problem with this one, although it is very picky when using/wanting to get the items. Pixel-perfection almost...
Controls get an 8.

Gameplay:
The gameplay seem to follow the original, but three (counted them) screens were cut out. One between Mike's house and the city, one between the entrance of the cemetery and Mike's house, and one before the pathway to the alien police station. Also, there are differences which ticked me off, because of them, I had to restart a few times. One of them is around the scotch whiskey. You get it from the shop (SERVE YOURSELF, MISTER DAWSON XD.) and then Dilbert (who only appears ONCE and NOT twice... also, he is BLUE XD.) comes in to invite you. Well, on the second day, you can only get to his garden after six... and the place is empty and NO stick there... but luckily, no alien puppy neither at the alien police station. Ohohoho, wait, it isn't all. The scotch is a MUST to beat the game. Normally, you would pour it into the car (which is better than yours XD.) on the third day. WAIT A SECOND HERE. The alien policeman, who will be ticked off for taking the gun in the real world after getting out of there using Dilbert's card, will take away ALL your stuff and you cannot get another bottle of scotch. So, if you don't use it on the first day, you will be fcked and bam, you will never beat the game. Plus, you can get something from the shop on the third day, but I have no idea what it could be. So, you can see that Mars/Waixing did mess around which is a bad thing. Otherwise, it almost totally follows the story, and MIKE WALKS FASTER than in the original. Yay!
Gameplay gets a 5 because of the edits. If you port something, port properly.

Ending:
This fucks up everything. No cutscene showing the flying away ship. No animation of the braking mirror. But this is not all. You probably think they still managed to port the ending, right? In the original, the librarian, who is an Ancient (...my enemy has an ally helping me, ironic, like the whole game!), gives you pills (which destroys the embryo, stopping the headache (face shown in the original.), then the house is shown with the "For Sale" sign, with "The End" at the bottom.
But NO. Here, you see the librarian (who looks awful, I say) in the door, whose legs are seen, but not Mike's head, genius, and some text scrolling in the bottom...
...and nothing else. This text keeps fucking repeating. No staff list. Nothing.
This is not an ending. I tried TWO different dumps. Nothing different.
Ending gets a 2.

Replay value:
This game can be completed in 20 minutes sped up. No replay value, neither in the original, so this gets no score to be fair.

Let's see the scores.

Story: 6/10
Music: 1/10
SFX: 1/10
Graphics: 4/10
Controls: 8/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Ending: 2/10
Replay value: No score

Total: 27/70 ~ 3,8/10 ~ 4/10

Now, the SNAPSHOTS! Don't tell me I'm not prepared... Also, since Blogger's imageuploading fucking sucks, I've thrown the pics on ImageShack, click on them for full size.

01: The adventure starts, now in Chinese!
02: Ah my head hurts. Fuck this game has bad music.
03: Lalalalalalalala, my singing is better than the only track in the entire game.
04: Pills are good for headache, but bad for music.

05: Everything looks fudge brown. Even this room.
06: A hidden door, a must to find.
07: The rope. An absolute must to beat the game.
08: The statue, must be used to avoid the cops on Day 03.

09: The battery still works! Get the gloves!
10: Ah, how cute... :)
11: Hey, it looks like me in a gasmask! Er... yeah.
12: SERVE YOURSELF MISTER DAWSON!!!

13: A BLUE Dilbert, who we will NEVER see anymore. Not even meeting him!
14: The bobby pin. Leave it there, and you fuck up in the alien jail.
15: Find teh green bookie! Where's Hotel Mario's enclosed instruction book!?
16: The barber. Cannot get in here.

17: The cemetery. Pretty sad looking.
18: Push those buttons...
19: Pretty bald looking. No animation here.
20: Definitely reminds me of Mike's wine cellar... hm...

21: Look around here.
22: Going home!
23: The book, gotten by the library card.
24: The save screen with the Ancient woman. Nice porting, however, the colour is a no-no.

25: We didn't break it! We just fucked up making everything look like shit brown!!!
26: Nightmare after Day 01 - no music changing. Shit.
27: Okay, this reminds me of a pasta monster. XDXDXD
28: The broken mirror piece. A definite must to get.

29: Welcome to the Alien world! Green is the colour you must get used to!!!
30: The Ancients await their moment to get awaken by the embryo... OR DO THEY!
31: What does THIS remind you of? Yeah, it's Mike's house basically.
32: The library in Mike's house in the Alien world. The embryo screen is missing. Bad.

33: See? Nothing. Stupid thing.
34: Teleporting from point A...
35: ...to point B!
36: This room is... well, it's no use here.

37: Got the spade. Dig it baby...
38: ...to get this peace of paper, pushing the storyline forward.
39: YOU ARE UNDER ARREST.
40: No way out? Oh really? Hide the money, the bobby pin and the gloves into the pillow!

41: GET OUT OF JAIL FREE. Nice present from our blue friend Dilbert.
42: A FRIEND OF DILBERT, HUH? COME WITH ME, DAWSON.
43: Get the gun and get the fuck out.
44: Absolutely pointless. Dilbert and the dog not here, stick not here and it only lets you here after 6.

45: SO THAT'S WHERE MY GUN WENT. YOU'RE GONNA ROT FOR A FEW CENTURIES, HUMAN!!! Too bad there is no close-up on the alien policeman. Would have been cool.
46: This is why you have had to hid those three items into the pillow. Everything gets stolen from you, so if you haven't used the scotch on Day 01, you're fucked, buddy.
47: Give him the bobby pin. You will be rewarded with the invisibility bandana in return.
48: Get out of jail free? XD

49: Almost there. No need to use the bandana yet.
50: Use it here. Just stay at the entrance point. You won't be blinking in this port, but if you see that it's gone after usage, you're fine to go in.
51: Turn on the computer. She was sending you the message through the radio earlier this day. Go home and sleep.
52: The second nightmare. Starts out weird...

53: ...and goes even more weird!
54: Oh, my, God.
55: Hammer time. Or Miller time. XD
56: This is what you MUST see to move on. This microfilm was given to you by the woman at the end of day 2.

57: Going there...
58: Still going...
59: Even still going:
60: Use the loose rock, the stick and you got your hammer.

Nine pictures got kicked off.