Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
AL82 Retrogaming Longplays
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Wardner Longplay (Arcade) [4K]
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![Wardner Longplay (Arcade) [4K]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/iExpfsjx5nI/mqdefault.jpg "Wardner Longplay (Arcade) [4K]
Wardner Longplay (Arcade) [4K]")
![Cosmic Causeway: Trailblazer II Longplay (C64) [QHD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/iHreNb0_iEY/mqdefault.jpg "Cosmic Causeway: Trailblazer II Longplay (C64) [QHD]
Game Info
Developer: Mr. Chip Software
Publisher: Gremlin Graphics
Year of Release: 1987
Game Review & Impressions
Shaun Southern created some great games for the C64, one of the most technically impressive being Trailblazer. It was awarded a lofty 93% in Zzap!64 magazine, which meant the pressure to deliver was well and truly on with the sequel, Cosmic Causeway.
Much like the original Trailblazer, the purpose of the game is to guide your rolling ball along interstellar causeways of multicoloured tiles, leaping over holes and avoiding other hazards to reach the finish line within the allotted time limit. This is far from simple, thanks to the tiles which can cause your ball to speed up, slow down, jump uncontrollably, rebound, or otherwise fall through the platform into the infinite void below. However, the sequel introduces new tiles, hazards, and a shooting mechanic of sorts where your ball automatically starts shooting blue orbs to destroy waves of strange alien-like creatures when they appear on-screen.
Perhaps the most significant addition is the introduction of power-ups that bestow beneficial abilities on your ball for the duration of the current level. These cost varying amounts of credits, which can be earned by running over the flashing white spheres located in certain levels, or as a reward for destroying end-of-level guardians. The purchasing of abilities can only occur at the start of each level whilst your ball remains in the grey zone, and since theres no way to stop your ball moving completely, you have a limited amount of time to decide on which power-ups to purchase. You also have to know what each icon in the bottom right of the screen actually means, then wait for corresponding item to light up before you can purchase it. Possibly the most useful of these is the ability to roll over black tiles without fear of falling through the grid, which can make levels with vast expanses of void pretty trivial.
From a technical point of view, the game still looks really impressive. The rolling road routine used to scroll the grid, not to mention the rolling ball itself, are brilliantly done. My only criticism are the various raster glitches when the screen is at a standstill you simply cannot see these when the game is motion, so its less of an issue.
As to whether youll enjoy Cosmic Causeway will largely depend on whether you enjoyed the original Trailblazer or not. This is a really difficult game, demanding exceptional timing, reactions, not to mention a ton of patience. Those would probably have been more plentiful back when we were children, but for those of us in middle age and beyond, maybe not so much. As for Zzap!64, the reviewers were suitably impressed with the game, again awarding it 93% - a score I reckon it deserves.
Chapters
00:00 Title music (full loop)
02:20 Level A
02:44 Level B
03:06 Level C
03:44 Level D
04:04 Level E
04:54 Level F
05:22 Level G
06:06 Level H
06:37 Level I
07:21 Level J
07:46 Level K
08:36 Level L
09:04 Level M
09:57 Level N
10:34 Level O
11:16 Level P
11:45 Level Q
12:30 Level R
13:07 Level S
13:39 Level T
14:09 Level U
14:57 Level V
15:20 Level W
16:05 Level X")
![Black Touch 96 Longplay (Arcade) [QHD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/iLPLmbD8LJY/mqdefault.jpg "Black Touch 96 Longplay (Arcade) [QHD]
Game Info
Developer: DGRM
Publisher: DGRM
Year of Release: 1996
Game Review & Impressions
Any game which comes with a disclaimer that the glitches and weirdness youre about to witness are entirely by design makes for instant must play material in my book, and so I finally decided to check out the absurdity that is Black Touch 96.
It doesnt take long to realise the game is a complete rip-off of Final Fight. The player characters, fighting moves, roster of enemies and much of the artwork are deliberate copies of those from Capcoms coin-op classic, shoehorned clumsily into a game which only just about works at a functional level. I dont know if the developers of this game ripped the original sprites from a Final Fight arcade board and simply painted over the designs, or whether they were created from scratch, but the net effect is a cast of characters that look like theyve tried to disguise themselves with cheap Halloween costume paraphernalia.
I wouldnt normally recommend bothering with stuff like this, but theres novelty value in just how stupid Black Touch 96 is, which makes it worth playing. Enemies glitch off the top of the screen, get stuck behind part of the scenery, or disappear entirely. The knock-off Poison women masquerading as Geisha girls who literally take off their wigs and whack you with it are positively bonkers, and the weird overall-wearing, pipe wrench-packing dudes with oversized heads bedecked with little more than a couple of whisps of hair look like the net result of too much familial interbreeding. You also get some low-res anime girl pics as a reward for beating the boss of each stage, if things werent weird enough already.
I couldnt find much information on DGRM, and apart from small number of Pool-style games, Black Touch 96 seems to be their magnum opus. It seems to have been released exclusively in Korea, but thanks to the Internet, the rest of the world can now enjoy the full weirdness of this glitched-up oddity.
Chapters
00:00 Attract mode
02:11 Stage 1
05:52 Stage 2
08:59 Stage 3
14:32 Stage 4
18:04 Stage 5
24:17 Ending")
![Lee Enfield: Tournament Of Death Longplay (C64) [QHD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/iTL8LCoDon8/mqdefault.jpg "Lee Enfield: Tournament Of Death Longplay (C64) [QHD]
Game Info
Developer: Infogrames
Publisher: Infogrames
Year of Release: 1988
Game Review & Impressions
Already I was well aware of this games reputation before I loaded it up, but even then, I wasnt quite prepared for how terrible it proved to be. Its effectively a rebranding of a game called Bob Morane: Chevalerie I, a game based on a Belgian comic series starring, unsurprisingly, a character called Bob Morane. The character and comics would have been an obscurity within UK and other markets, so I guess Infogrammes changed the name to give it broader appeal outside of France/Belgium. Quite why they decided to use the name of a bolt action rifle is beyond me.
From what I can gather, Morane (Enfield) has been sent back in time to a Thirteenth century castle to prevent his arch enemy, The Yellow Shadow, from acquiring the Holy Shroud and becoming Pope, altering the course of history. The player must scour the rooms of the castle in search of the Shroud, battling the various denizens he encounters therein.
In reality, this is just an embarrassing excuse of a game. The fighting mechanic is utterly ridiculous, involving little more than waggling the joystick frantically so the blue power meter to the right of the screen reaches as high as possible. The black line shows the current enemys relative strength, and you must get the bar above the line to actually defeat them. Defeating weaker enemies appears to restore a chunk of your health, represented by the white bar to the right of the screen.
The graphics in this game are so laughably bad that its difficult to make out exactly what the enemies are. The white sack-like blob is supposedly a bear, although it looks more like a mound of mashed potato to me. They all fidget about the screen with barely any animation at all, and the combat is laughably bad. Morane and foes simply flail their arms at each other until one of them falls over.
Theres little else I can say about this, other than it absolutely warranted the 8% review score and savaging by Zzap!64 magazines Julian Rignall and Gordon Houghton. Its an absolute crime of a game, and I cant believe Infogrames charged £9.95 for this - outrageous.
Information & Trivia
- Alternate Title: Bob Moran: Rittertum
- Alternate Title: Bob Morane: Chevalerie I")
![Heavy Unit Longplay (Arcade) [QHD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/izD0g01S-dI/mqdefault.jpg "Heavy Unit Longplay (Arcade) [QHD]
Game Info
Developer: Kaneko
Publisher: Taito
Year of Release: 1988
Game Review & Impressions
I reckon Kaneko must have been fans of R-Type when they created Heavy Unit, because this horizontal shooter certainly has similarities. Youre shooting wave-upon-wave of weird bio-mechanical aliens within equally strange environments, but to Kanekos credit, they did a really good job.
The games principal mechanic is the ability to switch between two different forms by collecting T token power-ups. Spaceship mode enables faster movement and reduces chances of being hit by enemy projectiles due to its smaller size, whereas mech mode is bigger and bulkier, but benefits from higher-powered weapons and more versatility. Both forms can benefit from the barrier shield collectible, which provides limited protection from collisions with enemies and their projectiles.
Heavy Unit is a solid shoot em up with some great graphics and a decent soundtrack. Its good fun and the gameplay still holds up.
Chapters
00:00 Attract mode
00:43 Stage 1
02:55 Stage 2
05:14 Stage 3
08:14 Stage 4
16:21 Stage 5")
![After the War Longplay (Amiga) [QHD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jAZf4_QHvp8/mqdefault.jpg "After the War Longplay (Amiga) [QHD]
Game Info
Developer: Dinamic
Publisher: Dinamic
Year of Release: 1989
Game Review & Impressions
After the War is one of those games I had for the Amiga which I had something of a soft spot for back then. The gameplay is distinctly average, but it features some truly excellent pixel art and animation for the time; the more I look at it, the more impressed I am. I recorded a longplay of the Amiga version several years back, but having had to endure the pain that is the C64 port, I simply fancied revisiting this edition of the game again and create a new play-through in higher fidelity.
I took the time to peruse the game manual to learn about the plot for the game. Jonathan Jungle Rogers must brave the horrors of a post-nuclear Manhattan, searching for the headquarters of Professor McJerin in a bid to escape the horrors of an irradiated Earth by launching in to space. You dont ever encounter the professor, or see yourself blast off into space for that matter, but its excuse enough to beat up/shoot a load of bad guys with a truly colossal machine gun.
As with most of Dinamics games, After the War is divided into two distinct sections. The first part of the game is set above ground in the crumbling ruins of downtown Manhattan, where Jungle Rogers must duff up mohawk-sporting punks, corrupt cops, emaciated skater dudes, as well as deal with the rabid mutts which infest the streets. In their infinite wisdom, Dinamic decided to spread the controls across joystick AND keyboard, requiring the player sit in front of the Amiga to be able to access all the controls. Its a problem throughout the game, persisting into the second part, which is undoubtedly the trickier of the two sections.
Set under the streets of Manhattan, Rogers must cut a swathe through giant rats and mutated humans hiding in the abandoned tube tunnels, searching for an entrance to McJerins secret base. The key to success here is learning when and where bad guys will spawn, bringing a storm of hot lead to bear on where you know theyll spawn. Youll often have to deal with multiple targets at once, and as most of them are complete bullet sponges, its difficult to avoid taking damage. Inside the base itself, shotgun-wielding guards and automated sentry guns will make short work of Rogers if youre not careful, and the countdown timer will tick away all too quickly, so you should be on the look out for timer power-ups to top it up.
The final boss of the game is, perhaps unsurprisingly, an exceedingly cheap war of attrition against a massive tank with multiple cannons. The cannons track your location no matter where you are on screen, so the only real strategy available to you is hope you have enough spare lives in reserve to soak up the damage and destroy the guns before they destroy you. Theres little point trying to avoid the shells being fired at you, so you best get really good at clearing the earlier sections without losing lives or wasting too much time. Your reward for beating the game is a brief page of text advertising Dinamics next game, which is another kick in the teeth.
So the game is distinctly mediocre, but as I noted at the start of this review, I just love the games aesthetic. The graphics are highly detailed and look fantastic, so its a shame that the developers forgot to adjust the colour palette values when the ported this from the Atari ST to the Amiga. Despite using the same RGB format between the two systems, the Amiga interpretation of these values results in colours only half as bright as the ST counterpart. Its an issue that affected a number of games where the ST was effectively the lead platform, but the developers simply failed to fix this issue before the Amiga port shipped, with the end result looking really dark. WinUAE has an in-built fix for games with this dark palette issue, but anyone playing this back in the day either had to squint really hard, or crank up the contrast on the TV to rectify the problem.
After the War is by no means a classic, but I still think it has a certain charm. If youre sufficiently deft of finger to deal with the clunky control scheme, you might just have some fun with it.
Chapters
00:00 Part 1 - Manhattan Streets
18:47 Part 2 - Manhattan Underground")
![Sega Arcade Gallery: OutRun Longplay (Game Boy Advance) [4K]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jJauoYj3I54/mqdefault.jpg "Sega Arcade Gallery: OutRun Longplay (Game Boy Advance) [4K]
Game Info
Developer: Bits Studios
Publisher: THQ/Sega
Year of Release: 2003
Game Review & Impressions
I have to assume that if youre a regular to my channel, youre already familiar with OutRun and how it was a watershed moment for driving games back in the day. The original coin-op was powered by a monstrously capable arcade board with multiple CPUs and custom chips, delivering a gaming experience that would take close to a decade before it could be replicated at home.
The version released as part of the Sega Ages collection for the Sega Saturn in 1996 was impressive enough, turning in a better-than-arcade perfect port with improved framerate and CD audio, but Im even more impressed by the conversion included as part of the Sega Arcade Gallery collection for the Game Boy Advance. Maybe its the fact I had to suffer a countless number of dire coin-op conversions on the Commodore 64, but the fact this game runs as well as it does on a bloody handheld from 2001 blows my mind somewhat. Its definitely the star of the show on this compilation from Bits Studios, running at a smooth 60 fps and featuring just about everything you could wish for. The amount of sprites being push isnt as high as the arcade, but it doesnt matter, because it still looks fantastic. The recreation of the iconic soundtrack is just the cherry on top!
OutRun is a timeless classic, and this version for the GBA is a gem of a conversion. For anyone wanting to play OutRun on the go back in 2003, this would certainly not have disappointed.
Chapters
00:00 Route A
08:12 Route B
13:23 Route C
18:44 Route D
24:00 Route E")
![Lady Master of Kung Fu Longplay (Arcade) [QHD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jvf6TpkSZqc/mqdefault.jpg "Lady Master of Kung Fu Longplay (Arcade) [QHD]
Game Info
Developer: Kaneko
Publisher: Taito
Year of Release: 1985
Game Review & Impressions
Lady Master of Kung Fu is a peculiar entry from Kanekos back catalogue. Its a mash-up of Kung Fu Master and Elevator Action, in which the titular Lady must kick and nunchaku opponents in her quest for the magic letters secreted behind one of the doors on each floor of the building in which she finds herself. The added complication is that certain rooms contain mid-stage bosses, which will sap your health if not careful.
It wasnt until I beat the second stage that I realised that the Lady was progressively shedding garments in each successive victory pose. Im not a prude by any means, but the third and final victory screen proved just a bit unnecessary in a game like this - its not even a particularly GOOD game, just another obscure oddity from the Japanese arcade scene at the time.
Chapters
00:00 Attract mode
00:38 Stage 1
03:53 Stage 2
06:40 Stage 3
15:48 Ending")
![Wings Longplay (Amiga) [QHD] [Part 2 of 2]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/k-l-U-Xzrwg/mqdefault.jpg "Wings Longplay (Amiga) [QHD] [Part 2 of 2]
Game Info
Developer: Cinemaware
Publisher: Cinemaware
Year of Release: 1990
The second and final part of my longplay of this epic World War I game for the Amiga computer.
Related Longplays & Videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5IJ06MR3SI
Chapters
0:00:00 Gameplay
8:02:00 Ending
8:04:00 Bonus: Death and Dishonour")
![Bug Bash Longplay (Amiga) [QHD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kA1shiYjPn4/mqdefault.jpg "Bug Bash Longplay (Amiga) [QHD]
Game Info
Developer: Mutation Software
Publisher: Microtec
Year of Release: 1990
Game Review & Impressions
I discovered Bug Bash after completing a longplay of its sequel Doodlebug (stay tuned), and reckoned it was worth checking out. It marks the earliest period of Adrian Cummings game development on the Amiga, and is an intriguing title. My initial thought was that Bug Bash might have been a public domain title, and whilst it did end up as a PD title, it was originally sold as a two-game commercial release.
The purpose of the game is to help our insect-like protagonist tidy up the garden, for it has been littered with junk by less environmentally friendly bugs under the control of the Evil Slug. Each of the seven levels involves collecting pieces of litter and depositing them in a trash can located somewhere in the garden. You can only ever carry a single item at a time, which means plenty of travel back-and-forth across the zone, and as theres no counter to tell you exactly how many items remain, its easy to waste time and energy both of which are limited in finding the next piece. Insects of various shapes and sizes will also take every opportunity to get in your way, but these can be dispatched with a few blasts from your spray-gun. Each stage culminates with a fight against an oversized boss, who can only be defeated by hitting them repeatedly in a specific part of their body.
The core mechanics remain consistent across each of the levels, but each stage adds some new variable to spice things up. This includes increasing the rate at which your energy decays, introducing rain droplets that cause damage if they hit you, or reducing the number of magic mushrooms from which you can regain energy. Later levels even see parasitic bugs sit atop these lifegiving beacons, munching on them steadily until they disappear entirely. This becomes one of the major challenges in the later levels, because collecting litter in specific order becomes something of a priority; youll need to figure out a strategy where you can top off your health and collect litter without wasting time, because once those mushrooms are gone its only a matter of time before youll run out of energy.
If youve read this far, youd be right for thinking that the odds are stacked heavily against you. The difficulty curve in Bug Bash is particularly high, especially the boss sections, which really should have been redesigned or rebalanced to make them easier to beat. You get no refill of energy before starting these sections, so youre screwed if you forgot to top off your health from a mushroom before depositing the final piece of litter. The sense of fun from the first couple of levels quickly turns to an overbearing sense of frustration, and with a fairly limited gameplay loop I doubt many will bother persevering with the remainder of the levels.
The lasting impressing of Bug Bash is a game thats too difficult for its own good. Therere some good ideas, but it really needed a fairer difficulty curve and perhaps some more levels and mechanics to hold the players interest.
Chapters
00:00 Attract mode
02:34 Stage 01
05:48 Stage 02
09:32 Stage 03
13:21 Stage 04
17:25 Stage 05
21:45 Stage 06
25:34 Stage 07
30:15 Ending")
![Rise of the Robots Longplay (PC DOS) [4K] [CD-ROM Edition]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kCGqM8glvMs/mqdefault.jpg "Rise of the Robots Longplay (PC DOS) [4K] [CD-ROM Edition]
Rise of the Robots Longplay (PC DOS) [4K] [CD-ROM Edition]")
![The Sword & the Rose Longplay (Amiga) [QHD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kRGGwMIqNCs/mqdefault.jpg "The Sword & the Rose Longplay (Amiga) [QHD]
Game Info
Developer: Codemasters
Publisher: Codemasters
Year of Release: 1990
Game Review & Impressions
Also known as Prince Clumsy, The Sword & the Rose is a budget Ghosts n Goblins clone that dispenses with scrolling, and most of the fun. This is a very basic flick-screen platformer where the only real challenge is staying alive, locating the occasional key to open a locked gate.
The games chief problem is the way enemies constantly spawn on every single screen, often overwhelming you. Without a weapon that can defeat them in a single hit, youre doomed to failure, which means avoiding most of the extra equipment you find.
Codemasters earned a reputation for putting out some quality budget games, but The Sword & the Rose is not one of them. Its overly difficult, too short, and devoid of any enjoyment.
Chapters
00:00 Attract mode
03:55 Gameplay")
![Wardner Longplay (Arcade) [4K] @AL82RetrogamingLongplays](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/iExpfsjx5nI/hqdefault.jpg)
