What do you call those things where you blow into them and they make a squeaking noise while a paper tube unfurls from the end? Yeah, party horns. Imagine the sounds of one of those ringing in your ears, because it's VGJunk's 4th birthday! Four years of writing about old videogames, and still I misspell 'damage' as 'damamge' every single time.

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To become a Grand Champion you must explore all areas of the Smash TV studio! If you use the keys to explore all of the secret rooms, you will find the Smash TV Pleasure Dome. Arcade: Smash T.V. NES: Smash T.V. SNES: Super Smash T.V. Games Games by platform Arcade games. Smash TV / Super Smash TV - Arcade, NES, SNES, Master System, Genesis, Game Gear, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC,.

I feel like I should have a cake in the shape of an underwhelming Famicom-only platformer or something. Anyway, long-time readers may remember that VGJunk's birthday just so happens to be the day before my actual birthday, and as a birthday treat I like to play a game that I genuinely love at this time of year. For 2014 it's the turn of a true arcade classic - Williams' 1990 arcade a-brand-new-toaster-em-up Smash TV! The first inspiration is the 1987 action movie / Schwarzenegger-based quip delivery system The Running Man, the tale of a dystopian future where brutal gladiatorial murder is televised in the form of a game show. This is also the plot (oh look, a new record for 'loosest use of the word plot') of Smash TV. In the distant year of 1999 - hey, 1999 was fifteen years ago so I'd say that's pretty distant - Smash TV is the most popular show on television. One man enters an arena packed with thousands of savage killers in the hopes of securing fame, glory and maybe a new VCR.

Every game show needs a host, and Smash TV is no exception. This bloodthirsty spectacle is presented by a man whose jacket is encrusted with such a vast number of crystals that he has to be held up by two young women at all times lest the weight crush him. Existing somewhere between Dale Winton and Noel Edmonds on the creepy-game-show-host-o-meter, he pops up in the corner of the screen every now and then, his shifty eyes darting from side to side as he tries to remember which of the twins is Cindy and which is Sandy. He also chips in with some voice samples, including the already-mentioned 'big money' bit which is one of Smash TV's most enduring legacies. In fact, without wanting to denigrate the quality of the gameplay I'd say the host's verbal interjections are a big part of why Smash TV is so fondly remembered. Nothing sticks around like a catchphrase, after all. The other part of Smash TV's genetic make-up, the part where all the gameplay comes from, is the 1982 arcade game Robotron 2084, pictured above in all its 'neon robots roaming the endless black gulf of terror' glory.

Also developed in part by Eugene Jarvis, Robotron is Smash TV's progenitor in that they share the same style of gameplay, the same battle against overwhelming odds and best of all the same twin-joystick control system. Robotron wasn't the first game to use two joysticks, one for movement and one for selecting the direction you're shooting in, but it did combine that control method with huge waves of enemies that desire nothing but your immediate annihilation, thus paving the way for Smash TV. When you start the game, you're treated to a short scene showing your contestant making his way through the studio and into the killing zone. The contestant isn't just a hovering torso, by the way. He's wearing blue trousers, so his legs are hard to see against the blue carpet.

No such problem for the host, who is resplendent in an outfit that could have been plucked from the very wardrobe of Satan himself if it weren't for the powder-blue loafers. The host doesn't acknowledge the contestant's presence, unable to bring himself to meet the gaze of a man who's about to get his head bashed in by a gang of neo-nazis. If you were going to put Smash TV into a genre you'd probably call it a single-screen shooter or an arena shooter, but what it boils down to is a Kill Everything Simulator. Wave after wave of bad guys swarm onto the screen, and all you have to do - all you can do, really - is make them dead.

It sounds like an extremely limited concept, but the subtle genius of the game's design keeps it from going stale. Enemies appear from the top, bottom, left or right of the screen, so you can't stand there, which forces you towards the corners of the arena. But you can't stand there, either, because with no space to back into you'll quickly be overrun.

Instead you're forced to be constantly moving, always looking for the safe corridors of enemy-less space to dart into, never finding a moment's peace. Smash TV is a game that wants you dead, and death is the only respite you will find. The contestant isn't entirely without an effective means to fight back, however. For one thing, while the machine gun you start with is the most feeble weapon in the game it still has a good rate of fire and can take out a fair proportion of the enemies in one hit. There are also limited-ammo special weapons to collect, as you would expect from both an arcade shooter and a game show about shooting people. Pictured above is the grenade. Well, I was going to say 'grenade launcher' but that's more of a grenade sprayer, a piece of farm equipment modified to cover as large an area as possible in high-explosive fragmentation grenades instead of manure.

There are also protective barriers in both traditional energy shield and 'whirling frisbees of death' varieties, Gradius­-style hovering 'options' that duplicate your shots, three-way spread guns and missiles which, unlike the real thing, travel right through groups of enemies instead of detonating on impact. I was always a bit confused by that. Why not make it a railgun or something? I'm not complaining, I just desire that little bit of extra realism in my futuristic, murder-soaked versions of The Krypton Factor. One pick-up you should be keeping a keen eye out for is the orange bomb icon that you can see at the bottom of the screen. Touching it causes every enemy on screen to explode. I and everyone I know who has played Smash TV refers to them as Bingos, because when you collect one the host shouts 'Bingo!'

Also, all the enemies explode. In a game so relentless that every tiny morsel of success the player achieves is a cause for celebration, grabbing a Bingo when you're surrounded by enemies is like winning the lottery and having the giant cheque handed over by that kid who used to call you names at school.

Here, then, is a screenshot to really sum up the Smash TV experience. Enemies are everywhere, with more pouring in from the bottom of the screen. The grey things on the right-hand side of the arena floor are landmines, giving you another obstacle to negotiate.

The info panel at the top of the screen indicates that you have just won a brand new toaster, which I'm sure will be of great comfort to your soon-to-be grieving widow. The grenade sprayer might buy you some time, but there's a good chance you're going to die. And then you survive. Miracle of miracles, you slice a path through the hordes. You take out the gunners in the walls, and the chunky blokes at the edge of the screen who sneak onto the battlefield and try to catch you unawares by exploding into a cloud of shrapnel. You survive for now, and it's one of those moments of true satisfaction that great videogames can deliver.

Enough waxing poetic about Smash TV's ballet of carnage, because it's time for a boss. His name is Mutoid Man, and he was mutated when a tank carrying toxic waste crashed into a twenty-foot tall inflatable of Kingpin from the Daredevil comics. It's never explained whether the two normal-sized gunners attached to his treads are part of his mutant body, a pair of parasitic organisms that survive on the scraps from Mutoid Man's various rampages or two 'lucky' grunts who are awarded the luxury of being able to sit down at the expense of their seats being horrifyingly close to what you might describe as Mutoid Man's crotch.Fighting Mutoid Man is a two-stage process, and those stages are shooting him and not going near him because he'll run you over. The shooting part is made more difficult by the fact that your basic gun's bullets simply bounce off, and you can only do damage with a special weapon. Luckily they spawn on the arena floor with some regularity, although this may be part of Mutoid Man's plan to lure you in so he can kill you with his laser eye beams.

Yeah, those laser eye beams. The fight has being going on for a while now, but Mutoid Man is as dangerous as ever even though he's been reduced to a skeletal torso with a smug head perched on top like a ham hock balanced on a xylophone. It gets better, because after shooting him some more his torso explodes to reveal another head underneath, attached directly to his caterpillar treads.

There's a reason Mutoid Man is a boss and not some lowly grunt, and that reason is built-in redundancies in the event some maniac shoots him with a rocket launcher. After a long battle, the contestant defeats Mutoid Man and claims his prize - fat stacks of cash and ownership of more sports cars than all the footballers in the Premier League combined. I love that they gave the contestant a boxing headguard to wear. He doesn't look like the sharpest knife in the drawer, so I can just imagine the host convincing the big lug that this padded forehead protector will spare him from a gruesome death. 'No, you don't need body armour, our top scientists have assured me that bullets simply cannot pass through abdominal muscles.'

While I'm on the subject of presentation, I should mention the music from the first stage. It's easily overlooked while you're playing the game because there's not much room for the track to shine through amidst the constant rattle of gunfire, the host's catchphrases and the screams of the dying, but it's pretty great. I wonder if the composer, Jon Hey, listen to a lot of gameshow music while he was writing it, because I can totally see this as the theme for a quiz show's quick fire round. Also, the short Bach-esque section at about two minutes in? That's rather wonderful.

Arena two has more of a sci-fi feel to it, with the introduction of mechanical foes like hovering, laser spewing orbs and segmented robot snakes, all of which are that bit faster and more tenacious than the enemies in the first arena. You're also introduced to the red things pictured above, which are apparently called Buffaloes despite looking more like killer armchairs with exposed brains. Honestly, Williams should have gone all-out with the deadly furniture theme. There would have been a grim irony in being battered to death by a futon or padded recliner. Many of the rooms in Smash TV greet you with a brief introductory message. They are rarely friendly, but I think LAZER DEATH ZONE takes the prize for being the most honest about your chances of survival. Plus, it's just a really fun phrase to say out loud.

I think I'm going to designate an area of my house as the LAZER DEATH ZONE. The kitchen, maybe. Then I can say things like 'hey, if you're going into the LAZER DEATH ZONE, could you put the kettle on please' or 'I think that plant your mother bought us would look nice in the LAZER DEATH ZONE.' Ah yes, now I remember. Of course, to the contestant Scarface's chiselled good looks are a mystery, because from his viewpoint all he can see is a big floating pie tin that wants him dead.Scarface's gimmick is that he's surrounded by segmented metal armour, and before you can deal him any real damage you have to destroy every single panel on his outer edge.

Because he's a circle, this means you have to move around him, looking for an opening, and getting to the panels on his right-hand side is a difficult task indeed. Still, with a little perseverance - or, more likely, a sack full of coins to feed the machine with - you'll chip away at Scarface's defences, leaving him vulnerable. Notice I said 'vulnerable,' not 'less terrifying' or 'less deadly'.

Once Scarface has taken enough punishment he loses his fleshy outer casing to reveal the sinister skull beneath, and it turns out all that skin and eyeball weight was really slowing him down because now he moves even faster and launches energy bolts from his eye sockets. I feel a bit sorry for him, though.

Just look at the shape of his skull: he must have had a perpetual frown, unable to express any emotion other than annoyance thanks to the unfortunate skeletal structure of his brow. No wonder he's so grumpy, he can't be any other way. Never mind, he need never be grumpy again because I shot him until he exploded. Arena three takes place on a set recycled from a Nickelodeon game show, a sinister polystyrene landscape where the air is thick with lead and the big stone faces vomit snakes into the playing area, a torrent of slithering, scaly evil that always seems to be in the wrong place when you're trying to avoid enemy fire. Smash TV manges to somehow ramp up the difficulty of arena three even above the madness of the earlier rounds. I know that whenever I play the SNES version with my friend this is always where we start to come unstuck. It's hard to stay alive when you're knee-deep in snakes.

If you play Smash TV for long enough, the action settles into an almost hypnotic flow, a zen state where instead of concentrating on the immediate action your mind attempts to take in the whole screen at once, mapping out safe routes and the locations of power-ups. The power-ups can almost be a liability at times, especially when you're getting swarmed and you're desperate for relief - in the situation pictured above, for example, the Bingo pick-up will lure you in with its explosive siren song, but trying to reach it from this position is just going to get you killed as the enemies surround you. Survival in Smash TV is all about risk and reward, judging what items you can safely collect, and when you get it right - when a trail of enemies is right behind you and you manage to collect a rocket launcher, using the twin-stick control system to fire at them while still retreating - it's a pure example of the satisfaction (that word again) that getting something just right in a videogame can bring. Given area three's snake motif, it's unsurprising that the boss is a pair of giant snakes. The game gives their name as Die Cobros. I was going to make a 'it's German for The Cobras' joke, momentarily forgetting that The Simpsons beat me to it.

Instead I'll just chuckle to myself about the idea of co-bros, cobras who are bros but who don't do very well at the gym due to their lack of arms.The cobras are the least interesting of the three bosses, with there being not much to say about them beyond 'they're big snakes,' Shoot them until they're dead. It's the Smash TV way.

Before you can reap the rewards that come with owning ten keys, you have to fight your way through Smash TV's most over-the-top, most action-packed, most murder-tastic stages yet. The sheer volume of the enemy force is such that it's nigh-impossible to shoot your way out of, and even really good Smash TV players are going to run into trouble here unless they're willing to pour credit after credit into the machine. However, playing Smash TV with the intention of completing it is to miss the essential point of the game - it's about the journey, not the destination, it's about surviving for as long as you can and enjoying the small victories along the way, and it's about racking up as big a high score as you can muster. Topping the high score table is made easier by finding ten keys, because doing so grants you access to the Pleasure Dome, a special room that seems to take place inside one of Hugh Hefner's migraines. The room is filled with bikini-clad babes that you can 'collect' for points.

I think they're supposed to be the same women that are seen with the host, with the inevitable conclusion being that Smash TV is actually a front for a babe-cloning operation on a truly terrifying scale. Also, if you don't like the colours of this room - it's difficult to imagine anyone not enjoying this 'robot-vomit green and scalded-skin pink' colour scheme, but different strokes and all that - then not to worry, because the colours in the background are constantly cycling through a wide variety of garish, high-saturation colours. This is a bit of a recurring theme in games Eugene Jarvis worked on - all the text in Smash TV is rendered in a shifting rainbow of colours, and the same is true of the psuedo-sequel. Personally I think it's a hideous graphical affectation.

It's a sign of how much I enjoy Smash TV that I'm reduced to complaining about the way the in-game text looks. I also need a dumptruck to help me cart away my many, many prizes.

I've won enough luxury holidays that I never have to go home again, enough Smash TV board game to bore every family in the country on the next rainy Sunday afternoon, and toasters. So many toasters.

If the world's entire agricultural industry was devoted to producing bread solely for my consumption, I would still have too many toasters. I'm going to built a city out of these toasters. It will be called Toastopolis, and every home will have a detachable crumb tray and a defrost setting. This is my favourite prize, though. In the interests of balance I'm trying to come up with some negative points about Smash TV, but frankly I'm drawing a blank. Sometimes when you're fighting a boss and a piece of them explodes it obscures your screen and you die cheaply.

A couple of the late-game rooms maybe go on for a touch too long. You don't get to use a flamethrower at any point, although I'll admit that one's a matter personal preference. Nope, I can't think of anything else bad to say about it. As the host would say, if I hadn't gunned him down anyway, I love it! So, that's this year's VGJunk birthday article, and it was true to its goal - playing Smash TV really did feel like a treat. How does the chant go?

Four more years? Yes, I probably will still be writing these articles in four more years. Maybe by then I'll have gotten around to telling you in great depth what I think about Mortal Kombat (hint: it's bad). Until next time, I'd like to say thank you as always to everyone who reads the site, leaves comments and spreads the word about VGJunk. Your continued tolerance of my internet presence means the world to me. I'll be back with a new article soon, but for now I'm going to have that quiet lie down I mentioned earlier. I shall dream of toasters.

You ought to spend some time talking about the ports, especially the surprisingly good one on the Super NES. Who would have guessed Beam Software had it in 'em to make such a great conversion?

(The Genesis version was. Uh, less surprising. And more depressing.)Also, happy belated birthday.

I would have responded sooner, but I forgot about it. Of course, that probably means you'll never actually see this or respond to it, so I can say lots of nasty things about the ZX Spectrum and professional cricket, and you won't get the chance to get angry about it!

European SNES CoverFor about as long as video games have been a thing, there have been attempts to take older video games and bring them into a more modern area. This trend has had a few periods where it’s been especially common, probably starting around the late ’80s to early ’90s.

Very rarely, a game’s homage tends to end up even more popular than the game that spawned it, and Smash TV is probably one of those rare cases.Smash TV is a spiritual successor to Robotron 2084, a particularly classic game spawned from the mind of pinball and arcade designer Eugene Jarvis. As one of the very games to use two sticks for movement and firing, Robotron was a game known for its brutal difficulty and insanely fast pace. Eight years later, the basic concept between the two games remain remarkably the same. Sure, arcade hardware has made considerable leaps since then, but the DNA between the games is pretty similar.Smash TV takes place in the grim, cold future of 1999, only a few short years after the conquest of Earth by the. The most popular TV show of the future is Smash TV, a deadly game show where one or two shirtless guys run through room after room, shooting thousands of people for fantastic prizes like VCRs and beef.

As Contestants 1 & 2, it’s up to you to survive the studio’s three arenas and win all sorts of fabulous prizes – all while being goaded on by the show’s flashy host, who is sure to absolutely not betray you in any way. The plot takes a lot of inspiration from The Running Man, only this game show happens to actually be sincere. Sure, you’ll probably die a lot, but the crowd is actually rooting for you.The goal of the game is pretty simple. The Smash TV studio is made up of three arenas, each made up of a map of interconnected square rooms. Once you enter a room, waves of enemies will continuously enter from the four doors at its sides.

Once you kill enough enemies, you’re free to enter the next room, and things go on like that until you reach the boss of the arena. Every time you clear the first room of an arena, you’re shown a map. You’ll want to pay attention to this, as you’ll often be given a choice of which door you want to exit a cleared room from. Remembering where the special prize rooms on the map were and taking the right exits can lead you to special prize rooms, where you can use to boost up your score to astronomical levels.The left stick moves your contestant around, while the right stick fires your current weapon in whatever direction you hold it in.

This means that you can move in one direction while firing in the opposite direction, and you’re basically going to need to do this all the time if you want any chance of surviving. Other than that, however, that’s basically all you need to know. All you can do, and all you really ever need to do, is run and shoot. The only button the game actually uses is the Start button, which has no use aside from continuing. And that’s a good thing, because letting go of those sticks for a moment will probably kill you.What the game basically does is send in dozens and dozens of enemies in your general direction at once, spawning more and more without any sort of pause until you clear a room. It gets pretty intense, especially since a close encounter from any enemy or projectile will instantly kill your contestant. Given how many enemies the game throws at you at once, and the fact that you only get a single room within which to move around, keeping yourself from getting cornered and beaten to a bloody mess is always going to be your biggest priority.

Sometimes, you won’t even get a full square to roam, as certain rooms will give you even less room to maneuver by walling off a big corner of the map.The most common enemy you’ll face on your quest for prizes are bald guys carrying bats, of which the game will spawn by the proverbial truckload. A single shot from even your default weapon will instantly kill them, but their sheer numbers mean by the time you kill one group, two more spawn in. There’s quite a few more enemy types than that, as well, each of which adds their own little wrinkle to things. Tanks take a lot more shots to kill, and can spew a spread of bullets around the screen. Shrapnel is a fat guy who will explode if you don’t kill him quickly, sending a ring of deadly shrapnel throughout the room. Orbs will position themselves in place and start creating a laser grid, giving you less room to move if you don’t take them out. All of these come together to cut off your escape routes and surround you, and that’s not even counting the deadly mines scattered all over the floor.

Touching one of these will make your contestant instantly explode into pieces, so they’re best avoided at all costs.The enemies themselves aren’t that smart, as they’ll generally either just wander randomly around the arena, or they’ll take the quickest path towards you that they can. It’s their sheer numbers you really have to worry about, as without some extra firepower, you’ll never be able to kill an entire horde before they close in on you. Thankfully, the game drops in plenty of power-ups to help you out, and you’re going to want to grab every single one you can find. There are a couple of different types of shields to protect you from enemies, shoes to boost your speed, and bombs that clear the screen of enemies. The game’s even nice enough to drop the occasional extra life, although it’ll only buy you about another half minute of game time. What you’ll really want to go for, however, are the fantastic prizes that are constantly dropped in.

The more cash and gold you pick up, the higher your score bonus will be at the end of an arena. You’ll also pick up various prizes that earn you instant points, like a dozen VCRs, six 2600′ inch TVs, and a couple of copies of the Smash TV home game.Most useful of all the powerups, however, are the special weapons that spawn around the arena every so often. These will replace your default machine gun for as long as your ammo holds out, as shown by the green bar underneath your score. Special weapons come in a few different varieties, depending on the weapon icon you pick up. The most useful of these is probably the rocket launcher, since its projectiles will tear through the weaker enemies in a single shot.

You will not survive long without a special weapon in hand, as your default gun is just too weak to kill anything before it rams right into your face. Something like the spread shot, on the other hand, can clear out enough of a crowd to give you enough space to dash to the next special weapon that spawns.Every arena ends with a boss fight, a long, grueling affair where you’ll not only have to destroy the boss, but in some cases, dismantle it piece by piece. Take Mutoid Man, for example, a giant, musclely guy who somehow ended up with a tank for legs. While you’re avoiding his laser vision and trying not to get run over, you’ll have to blow off both of Mutoid Man’s arms, before moving to his head, blowing his torso open before blowing up the actual torso, and finally, blowing up his other, smaller head hiding just underneath his torso to actually kill him. It should also be noted that only special weapons can actually harm bosses, meaning you’ll have to risk death to pick up weapons that show up around the boss arena.

Bosses tend to soak up a lot of damage and can take up quite a few of your credits pretty easily, usually because they’re just so huge on screen that they’re way too difficult to actually avoid.Pretty much any sort of high level play you’ll be doing will involve finding the many secrets the arenas hold. Some rooms have hidden exits that’ll lead you to secret rooms full of goodies. You’ll need to discover all of these, as well as pick up the keys that spawn in the game every so often, to earn access to the Pleasure Dome.

And what is the Pleasure Dome, you may ask? Well, it’s a secret room where the floor cycles through a bunch of retina-burning colors, while bikini-clad women can be collected like the cash and gold bars you’ve been picking up throughout the game. Totally worth it.There was actually a bit of controversy regarding the Pleasure Dome in the original arcade release. The game would constantly egg you on to find all of the keys in order to unlock them, but there was absolutely no way to access them. In fact, they weren’t in the game at all, just an empty promise on the part of the developers for gamers to keep playing. After receiving criticism from both gamers and arcade operators, Midway issued revised ROMs which included the Pleasure Dome, if the players were skilled enough to get there.And that’s how the game goes, quick, unrelenting, and brutal. The most valuable resource you have is space, and you’re always doing anything you can to gather as much of it as you can.

The only real breaks in the action are when you’re ready to leave the current room you’re in, but even then, the game will try to kill you if you mess around for too long. The whole problem with the game is that due to its very nature, it gets pretty repetitive quickly. While the game throws in plenty of new enemies, the general concept never changes for as long as the game lasts. Eventually, it’s hard not to get sick of it by the time you start to reach the end, especially for how blatantly the game stacks things against you. On actual hardware, you likely won’t get to that point, however, because the game is so difficult that you have to be some kind of wizard to even get through the first arena without losing a credit.Where Smash TV really shines, and what’ll drive you to finish it, is the presentation.

Like any good arcade game should have, there are tons of goofy sound effects that are loud and easily recognizable. The music does a great job of establishing that frantic “game show” feel, as well.

It’s a pretty nice looking game for its time, as well, with varied environments to shoot your way through. While the first two arenas look like futuristic studio sets, the third puts you in something that looks like an episode of Legends of the Hidden Temple. The bosses are comprised of several huge sprites, which get progressively more mutilated the more you fire onto them, which is a pretty nice touch. There’s plenty of ultraviolence everywhere else as well, from the way most enemies explode into red splatters, or the way your unfortunate contestant gets blown to bits when he steps on a mine.The best parts would have to be the occasion where the host of the show will appear, popping off a quote like “Total carnage!

I love it!” when you enter a particularly challenging level. He’ll even quote Robocop every so often, saying “I’d buy that for a dollar!” when you come across the first boss of the game. Also note the absolutely sinister grin he gives the two ladies by his side just before his little box scrolls off the screen. He’s just so infectiously cheerful about his job that it’s actually a shame that you have to kill him in the final stage of the game. The entire game is just so delightfully goofy that most of its issues are easily forgiven, from the way your contestant explodes into pieces from contact with a mine, to the way the levels get names like “BUFFALO HERD NEARBY”.Overall, despite its flaws, Smash TV is definitely a game worth trying, just for the sheer spectacle of it. When you’re just getting into it, it’s incredibly fun, helped by a fantastic presentation and an intuitive control scheme. It’s the game’s “classic” arcade difficulty that really keeps it from being great the entire way through, sadly.

In short bursts, however, it’s a great game for the sorts of times when you want a game about shooting a whole lot of things without much getting in the way of said shooting.There’s a vast number of ports for the game across all sorts of computers and consoles, and these tend to vary wildly in their quality. The console ports are generally your best bet for an accurate port, although some versions do better than others at replicating the game’s control layout. The computer versions tend to go off on their own little tangent entirely, which works better on some versions than others. If you want the most authentic experience short of emulation, there are quite a few retro compilations you’ll find the game on, as well.The big problem is that most of the ports limit the number of times you can continue, some of them not letting you continue entirely. As you’d imagine, this makes beating the game a lot more difficult without a ton of practice. Most of the older ports, aside from the SNES version of the game, also have to deal with that there just aren’t enough buttons to replicate the arcade’s control set up.

They get around this in a few ways, with some ports letting you use a second controller’s D-Pad as the second stick. If you don’t have two controllers to spare, most ports will have a ‘Lock’ button that will freeze your firing direction in place. It’s a decent compromise, although it’s lacking the precision a second stick offers.The Super Nintendo version, renamed Super Smash TV on the box and cartridge, is actually probably one of the best ports you’ll find. The second stick has been remapped to the face buttons of the SNES controller, which generally works just as well. As far as gameplay’s concerned, it plays almost exactly like the original game, with only a slight drop in speed. Surprisingly, they’ve even managed to fit in most of the violence from the arcade version, with only the big bloodsprays from some of the bosses being removed. There’s also a secret “turbo” mode, unlocked by picking up five question mark powerups and beating the game.

If you can do this, you’ll begin a second loop where the game plays at double speed and sends even more enemies at you. You’ll need it!” indeed.The NES version, while cut down pretty heavily from the arcade version, is actually pretty enjoyable. This is mostly due to the fact that there are generally never as many enemies on screen as once as the arcade has, and the pace is somewhat slower. This means that, with some practice, it’s actually possible for actual human beings to clear this port on a single credit. And that’s good, because you don’t really have a choice: Run out of lives, and you’re done. The graphics are cut down pretty heavily, especially with the shade of orange that’s pretty much all over everything, but there’s a surprising amount of digitized speech kept from the arcade.

It also supports the Four Score four player adapter, so you can have two players, each using two joypads or joysticks, for the best multidrectional control. It’s actually a pretty fun game on its own, differences from the original version aside, and it’s worth seeking out. It’s also interesting to note that the cover artwork of the NES (and some of the European computer ports) are censored, removing the gun from the blue guy’s arms.The Genesis version is more or less inferior to the SNES version in just about every way, sadly. The controls don’t suffer that much from a three button pad, since you can get by just using the button that locks your firing direction in place. Something about this particular version feels very off, however, and it feels like all the hitboxes are somewhat off center, which makes an already difficult game even harder on you then it already is. While you do get seven lives per credit, you only get a single continue per player, which means even beating the first arena isn’t a sure thing. All the graphics have been redrawn entirely, with almost everything coming out worse, and even a Matt Furniss soundtrack doesn’t do much good for this port.But the Game Gear port makes the Genesis version look like the arcade game in comparison of how awful it is.

It should be noted, first off, that this is a terrible, terrible game to have on a handheld. This is a game where tons of enemies are constantly moving around en masse, and when you put on a screen as blurry as the Game Gear’s well.

The result is a game where you have absolutely no room to move and you have absolutely no idea what anything is, even if you happen to be playing on an emulator. That might not even be so bad if the game didn’t run at about five frames per second, meaning that you’re dealing with a choppy, indistinct mess, especially when you figure the Game Gear’s screen into things. The only good thing about this port is that the main theme sounds kind of nice. That’s literally the only redeeming thing.The Master System is based off of the Game Gear port, only with a larger screen and bigger sprites occupying it. This is good, as this lets you see the many underlying problems with these two ports much more clearly.

You’re still dealing with a choppy framerate that’s only marginally more playable then the Game Gear version. The many other reasons this version as well as the Game Gear version are so unplayable is that everything is too damn fast, meaning that every enemy rockets around the screen before you can react.

Oh, also, every enemy now kills you on touch. Actually, they don’t even have to touch you to kill you. That pretty much kills any chance of having a good time with this port right there. But hey, the one single song in the game is pretty nice.The ZX Spectrum version feels like a different game entirely, which makes sense, given the limitations the system had.

While the basic concept remains, this port has a much different feel to it, so much so that it almost feels like an entirely new game. Most of the enemies that would normally show up much later in the game, like the tiny snakes, show up right from the first room here, and they usually spawn right in the middle of the screen. Even the guys with the bats behave completely differently, spawning in the middle of the room and moving around randomly, which makes them much more dangerous. The game never spawns nearly as many enemies at once as it would in the arcade version, which might explain some of the enemy behavior changes.Aside from that, though, it’s still a pretty similar game, although the gameplay differences might take time to get used to.

It’s also a pretty impressive feat for the hardware, since it manages to hold together with so many enemies on screen pretty well, without much of the “bleeding colors” you usually get on the hardware at all. It’s still not an especially pretty game, however, and the sound effects are more or less non-existent, aside from a nice chiptune cover of the game’s main theme on the title screen. It’s a pretty good shooter for the hardware, although it’s best thought of as its own, unique game that shares a similar concept.The Amstrad plays about the same as the ZX Spectrum version. It does, however, look much nicer than the Spectrum version, given that the CPC version uses more colors and has a generally chunkier look to it.

The sound effects are also generally much meatier, which definitely beats out the static that the Spectrum version uses for pretty much everything. Overall, it’ll really depend on your preference on what obscure British computer you prefer, since both versions play nearly identically.The Commodore 64 version is much closer in terms of gameplay to the original arcade version, and it’s actually a pretty playable port. You can use both of the C64’s joysticks to play the game just like you would in the arcade, with the tradeoff being that there’s no two player mode. Surprisingly, this port is actually one of the easier ones you’ll find, even more so than the NES version. There’s not quite as many enemies sent out at once, the pace is a little slower, and the game spawns extra lives a lot more often.

Even the graphics come through pretty well, including the big boss sprites, and the only real flaw is that there’s no in-game music, leaving everything somewhat quiet. It’s still a pretty great port, otherwise, and it’s worth at least emulating.The Amiga version looks and sounds a good deal closer to the arcade version, since it includes a lot of the digitized speech and sound effects the 8-bit versions were missing. It also includes the two player mode, and it even lets you plug in four Amiga joysticks for a “2 players, 2 joysticks mode”. Unfortunately, something about this version feels a little choppier than other versions, and it has the same issue as the Genesis version where the hitboxes feel ever so slightly off center.

Combined with the fact this port is just as tough as the arcade version, it can be a little difficult to actually play. The sprites are also much bigger in this version, which can occasionally make things even more difficult for you. There’s no in-game music, either, even though the system probably should have been able to support it. It’s not an awful port, especially for the home computers, and it’s nice to have a computer port with a two player mode. The Atari ST version, aside from a smaller color palette and weaker sound hardware, including a lack of digitized speech, is exactly the same as the Amiga version.

Unfortunately, the C64 version is still a little more fun, given its kinder difficulty and smoother speed.You can find Smash TV on the Arcade Party Pak for the PS1, which isn’t much more than a no-frills emulation of the arcade game. It does come with some video interviews with the developers, however. The game can also be found on the Midway Arcade Treasures compilation for PC, GameCube, PS2, and XBOX, as well.

This is basically a standard emulation of the arcade version without any notable extra features. It does, however, support the right analog stick for something closer to the original arcade control scheme.

While playable, it’s subject to slowdown and music glitches. The Xbox 360 version is an emulation of an arcade game, much like the other ports to modern systems. What makes this one unique is that it features online play for two players over Xbox Live, as well as having achievements. Unfortunately, with Midway’s bankruptcy, this version was taken off of the service some time ago. Finally, you can find the game on the Midway Arcade Origins compilation released for the XBOX 360 and PS3, which Is, once again, an emulation. No online play, either, but hey, at least you get leaderboards. Everybody likes leaderboards, right?Comparisons.