So excited to have received my first Homebrew game EVER I made this unboxing and gameplay sample. One difference I have been waiting for this I did not want to spoil it, though I have the ROM I never played it or watched any gameplay vids, it becomes pretty apparent! Lot's of fun though. I gave credit to AtariAge and Ed Fries as well as links in the description.

#9-#15 Bust-a-Move games
Bust-a-Move 2 : Arcade Edition (N64)
Bust-a-Move 3DX (N64)
Bust-a-Move 4 (Dreamcast)
Super Bust-a-Move 2 (PS2)
Super Bust-a-Move All Stars (Gamecube)
Bust-a-Move (Wii)
Bust-a-Move Plus (WiiWare)

I’m big into puzzle games. Like millions of others I was bitten by the Tetris bug around 1990 when the genre was born and I have always picked puzzle games up ever since. I find it hard not to enjoy these – even those games that have garnered criticism such as Tetrisphere.

If I find a particular game enjoyable I will keep on buying different versions across platforms and will follow a series. The Puzzle Bobble or Bust-a-move series is a case in point – it being one of the most addictive. It has that great balance of luck and skill that makes the puzzle video game so great. I'm not going to insult readers with the description of the basic play features but I will cover how these versions differ.

Taking a look at a wonderful series of shmups created by Capcom in the 80's and early 90's. The games were released out of sequence with the 1942 game appearing first and then 1943. The 1941, 1944 and 19xx games came afterwards. Just a simple set of video-reviews that I thought would be interesting to our readers (viewers?) over here at Armchair Arcade. Let me know what you think. The videos can be found within this article. Enjoy!

#8 Addams Family (SNES)

Addams Family was an early release for the SNES and being a licenced game I avoided it at the time. That was my loss as this is a really solid game that would have really impressed me back then. This is a straight-up platform game but it has been blessed with a fair bit of attention to detail and overall effort by the developers which is refreshing to see. Even at the time of launch (the early 90s) loads of identikit licenced games were around - mostly poor Mario ripoffs. While this game does steal some ideas from the Mario series it is different enough to deserve some attention.

This isn't a linear platform game - you can tackle each of the game's goals in any order you like. You control Gomez Addams who must rescue 5 family members secreted around the house. Gomez is wonderfully responsive and "slidey" and has had some graphical attention paid to him. The character artwork mostly resembles the cast of the early 90s film, not the original film series and a pretty good job has been done here.

Gomez has a health bar represented on-screen by a heart meter. Initially you have 2 hearts meaning you can be hit twice before losing a life but there are 3 meter extensions to be found in the house too. In all then you have 8 goals to achieve each guarded by a boss - and I recommend you go for the extra hearts first as this game is tough.

While charging my Kindle up last week I left the 3G on and lo and behold I got a free upgrade to the firmware. The first thing I noticed is the font change (though this does tend to vary from book to book) and the fact that page turns are now a bit quicker.

#6 Mario Party 7 (GameCube).

My Wii was out of commission this week. I had to send it back to Nintendo's UK repair shop - it was starting to reject discs - even new games. Its over 3 years old so I had to pay £28 to get it fixed. Nintendo send you a posting label but I guess the repair cost covers the postage. You can follow the progress of the job on a website using a supplied repair number and password. Its all quite slick and it took just over a week which isn't bad considering the Irish Sea and May Day bank holiday had to be negotiated.

Got myself this non-invasive mod for my Playstation. It comes with a boot disc and three odd little widgets for enabling disc swapping on both PS1 models and the PS2.

So what type of games are available for the 7800? Mostly arcade ports, and very good ones at that. The system is backwards compatible with the 2600 and is in fact in my opinion 'the atari console system' to own.

The system could output 320x200x256 with 25 colors and 100 sprites and that shows. The sound is lacking in quality though as it uses the same limited sound chip as the 2600.

It's a much overlooked system as the 7800 has great games available for it. Excellent ports of arcade games, mostly action arcade style games. It was designed to be upgradable to a full computer - probably something to up-ease worrying parents - but this never became a reality contrary to the likes of some other 8 bit consoles out there offering the same 'expandability'.

System and software library get a whopping 87% from me.

Today, I will be taking a look at Aeropack, from Micah Lee (who generously provided a review copy) and his company, Insurgent Games, which follows my previous reviews of his four star [ (x)(x)(x)(x)( ) ] shooter, teh internets (2009), and puzzle game, Skeleton Key (2009). Lee again gets bonus points for coming out with something completely different in Aeropak, which is best described as a platform puzzle game, and is officially described as "A Steampunk Retro Platformer". The premise? Using your fuel hungry jetpack, walk, jump, fly, and climb to collect all of the gems in a level (and extra fuel whenever possible), and avoid anything that moves.