Typical isn’t is? You take a few weeks off to move home and lo and behold those weeks turn out to be some of the busiest in your website’s history! Consequently I thought I’d put a quick post together to say hello! If you’re a Read More …
Author: Fatnick
Streets of Rage 4: a Less Enthusiastic Review
It’s no secret that I wasn’t particularly fond of Sonic Mania. Having replayed it more recently, I still stand by my view. Sonic Mania was a game which had a complete mastery of the character at the mechanical level, but didn’t seem to understand why Read More …
32-bit Audio Fight Club: The Saturn, the PlayStation and the End of the Chiptune Era
The first rule of 32-bit Audio Fight Club is that you don’t talk about 32-bit Audio Fight Club. Actually, that’s not quite true: the first rule of 32-bit Audio Fight Club is that…well…you probably wouldn’t even think to talk about 32-bit Audio Fight Club. Or Read More …
Website Update
It’s fun seeing how far you’ve come over the years anyway? Lets have a look at some of the Mechafatnick front pages over the ages: Overall, I’m pretty I’m pretty chuffed at how this place turned out considering it started life as a very simple Read More …
Megapong
This is a Megadrive game made following Andrej “OhSat” Preradovic’s MegaPong tutorial. If I can Do it you can to! (Use the arrow keys to move the paddles, ‘1’ to start the game) Play MegaPong on itch.io Download the rom file for free from: Here
Strider: The Unfortunate Mr Hiryu
In gaming there are the origin stories we all know – like the origins of Mario and Sonic the hedgehog – but there are many more characters who remain relatively obscure – like the stars of most microcomputer budget games or Japanese cassette titles. More Read More …
Retrospective: Headhunter
Uh oh, Christmas is inevitably a time for misty-eyed nostalgia isn’t it? Oh well – at least its the perfect time to look back 18 years to the festivities of 2001, back to the first time I played Headhunter on the Sega Dreamcast. The back-half Read More …
Holiday!
Whoops. Sorry It’s been a bit quiet around here hasn’t it? I know it’s normal to announce these things in advance, but I’ve been on Holiday! Back in the middle of October the long-suffering Mrs FatNick and I loaded our little FatNicks into a plane, Read More …
I wasn’t enamored with the Sega Dreamcast
Originally, I wasn’t enamored with the Sega Dreamcast. In fact, it’s a bit strange I even remember my first encounter, really: While my first encounters with new hardware generations were generally outlook-changing, my first look at the Dreamcast was a bit of a damp squib. Read More …
Nothing New in the Villlage: The 35 Year Old Ancestors of Untitled Goose Game
Everyone loves the Untitled Goose Game. I love the Untitled Goose Game. If you haven’t played the untitled Goose Game, you should play the Untitled Goose Game: A stealth game that follows in the footsteps of Metal Gear Solid and Hitman, Goose Game’s masterstroke is Read More …
Joystick Wagglers: Were Left Handed Control Sticks an Industry Conspiracy?
Have you ever wondered why arcade control sticks were always placed to the the left of the buttons? To be honest I’d never given it much thought until I saw this tweet the other day: Have you ever noticed that no matter what arcade game Read More …
Final Fight: the Zx Spectrum Versions
I noticed the basic ZX Spectrum version of well-known Capcom beat ’em up “Final Fight” didn’t really have much of a soundtrack…so I decided to make one myself! This album features the original bleeps and blerps of the ZX Spectrum’s Ay-3-8912 sound chip playing 4 Read More …
The Surprisingly Modern Cult of Horace
All good things come to an end. In my case this turned out to be the relatively cushy storage solution i had for all of my old Spectrum gear. Still, silver linings and all that: One of the big advantages of having to get your Read More …
Carjacking down Memory Lane: Returning to The Getaway’s Digital London in 2019
This article was originally posted over at https://www.gametripper.co.uk. Why not head over there and see what lovely articles they have ready for you to read right now? (well, after you’ve read this one obviously) When is a game not a game? The usual response to Read More …
8-Bit Showdown: How popular were the Master System and the NES in the UK?
When it isn’t doing is it’s upmost to sabotage Western democracy, one thing that can be said for Facebook is that it does have some of the friendliest retro communities on the internet. A few weeks ago one particular discussion caught my eye: how popular Read More …
Forestal Foreteller – The Spectrum Versions
Because FatNick knows what makes commercial sense, here’s a piece of Sharp x68000 music covered using the sound hardware of the zx spectrum – both 48k and 128k. There isn’t really much to say about this one really. I was playing the ominously titles “Genocide Read More …
FatNicK Reviews Stuff: Bits and Pieces A History of Chiptunes
I’m pretty surprised that its taken me so long to get round to reading this book myself, to be honest, but here it is: A quick review at Kenneth McAlpine’s scholarly examination of the history of chiptunes. I suppose the first thing that needs to Read More …
Dreamcast SD Adaptors: Are They any Good?
The cold embrace of death, eh? It comes for us all eventually, but for some – in this case CD-based games consoles – it comes quicker than most. While older cartridge-based machines will keep going until either their capacitors go pop or the universe falls Read More …
Jonestown Politics
As i write this on the 13th of March 2019, the United Kingdom is on the precipice of a peacetime crisis on a scale beyond the comprehension of anyone who’s younger than about ninety. The two main political parties are fiddling about, each looking to Read More …