Champions of Europe (1992)

There’s always a point in these projects where I hit the sports games and today, it seems, is that time. California Games happened (twice), sure, but those feel more like mini-game collections in practice. Champions of Europe, though, is dedicated to the beautiful game. Unfortunately, it is not itself a beautiful game. Indeed, it is rather wretched, with ball control being almost unbelievably annoying. There’s clearly been an effort made to differentiate the experience from other footy titles by avoiding having the ball stick to the player’s foot. Admirable in a way, but in practice it’s just irritating and you barely feel in control. Visually it isn’t bad, with a smooth scrolling pitch and a pleasing icon-only menu that was easy to parse, but out on the field it’s an absolute dog. The lack of any music whatsoever is unusual, with only the extremely limited sound effects of the referee’s whistle and your player’s boot hitting the ball in entirely the wrong direction. There isn’t even any crowd noise when you score a goal, which seems unforgivable. If this is what we’re getting out of Europe, then I’m glad Brexit happened. *

Championship Hockey (1995)

This is embarrassing. For a 1995 game it has the visual clarity of Haribo vomitus, with the puck getting lost in a sea of indistinct, flickering players that wouldn’t be out of place in a latter Atari 2600 game. In fact, I used to play Activision’s Ice Hockey on the TV Boy when I was a kid and it offered a superior experience to this. The opening menu is decent and offers a clear-cut set of options, but then you get into the match and it’s appalling stuff. The controls are barely responsive and what should be a fast-paced and exciting time is a boring, ugly, technically inept waste of leisure time. Ice hockey is one of the sports that translates best to video games thanks to its speed and (relative) simplicity – not to mention its propensity for violence – but this is shoddy, half-arsed feeling stuff. Like Champions of Europe it completely lacks music, making for a truly empty experience. Doot, doot, doot. There’s no excitement, giving only a fumbling, rabidly imprecise feel in the hands. Every aspect of the game feels undercooked and unsatisfying, feeling like the slapdash Game Gear conversion that it apparently is. Rubbish. Hopefully there will be better hockey games along eventually. I know there’s going to be a brilliant bit of football coming up, at least. Though, sadly, not for some months. *

Chase H.Q. (1990)

Weirdly, this is called Taito Chase H.Q. on the title screen, but I’m putting it here. If that’s wrong or it offends your sense of aesthetics, please by all means sound off in the comments. Anyway, I used to have the Spectrum version of Chase H.Q. and it was absolutely rad so you’d better believe I was excited to check out the Master System port. Thankfully, I wasn’t disappointed, though it’s a bit titchy compared to the bulky, impressive Spectrum version I’m so familiar with. This is the Master System, though, and Chase H.Q. is far from a slouch here. If you’re not familiar with the game, it’s basically about chasing down criminals and ramming the living shit out of them with your car, which seems like it’s almost certainly illegal but hey, it’s a power fantasy, lean into it. The road here scrolls nice and smoothly, but the handling will take a little getting used to – with only acceleration and turbo to take into account (providing you use automatic transmission) it’s a very simple game, but learning how to swerve your car through traffic and obstacles by easing off the gas is nice and satisfying. The game gives you time to get to grips with things thanks to the first two extremely easy missions, then turns up the heat for the third stage. Between rounds, you’re able to spend your score on single-level upgrades for your car that can help make things easier, and this time there is optional background music. A first for this instalment of the Directory! I missed the contours in the road that pop up in the Speccy game, but overall this is good fun. ***

Note: No, I haven’t missed Chapolim x Drácula: Um Duelo Assustador. It’s a reprogrammed version of Ghost House, which is coming later. I can exclusively reveal that it will be featured under the letter “G”, when I get there. Next September at this rate.

Cheese Cat-Astrophe Starring Speedy Gonzales (1995)

At last! A licensed platform game on the Sega Master System. I’m being facetious, but this is surprisingly good. Not great, not by any means. But good. Speedy Gonzales, known for his fastness, moves at a reasonable clip here but never threatens to go out of control. In fact, it’s a game that feels shockingly good to move around in. The good will this generates carries quite a lot of weight here, because it’s quite pedestrian in terms of level design. It never, even once, even briefly threatens to be challenging outside of some slightly awkward dynamite wrangling during the boss battles, but once you’ve got the rhythm of those sections there’s really nothing between you and the credits. To clear each stage you’ve got to find a not-very-well-hidden key and then make your way to the exit. Cheese Cat-Astrophe is such a short, sweet, great-looking and overall a thoroughly impressive cartridge (no slowdown or flicker?!) that I find it easy to ignore its minor shortcomings. I can't really stress enough how much of a visual miracle this is; I think it would pass as an early Mega Drive game and the sprite work has tons of great character. As a platform game it's certainly not any kind of masterpiece but there’s a sense of variety, with everything being introduced and polished off so quickly that I never really had time to be annoyed by anything. I never had this as a kid, but if I did you’d better believe I’d throw it on just to blast through something I could easily beat. Oh, and Speedy can throw hats at enemies. I forgot to mention that because it’s pretty useless outside of one Mega Man style battle with Sylvester in the late game. He throws hats. Did he do that in the cartoons? I don’t really remember, despite Speedy being one of my favourites. He must have tangled with Sylvester, then. Where was Tweety in all of this? Where was Granny, for that matter? ****

(Next: Cho-Cl)

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