• I hated how Mostly Harmless ended, but a non-Douglas Adams Hitchhiker’s book (even by Eoin Colfer)? No thanks. http://tinyurl.com/64h5xh #
• Album View in iTunes 8 has some odd flaws (no random album play, as far as I can see), but it’s really got me playing albums again. Nice. #

We’ve got an emergency here

Chase HQ is like injecting the 1980s into your eyeballs. Take one very 1980s sports car (a black Porsche), a duo of American cops (one black, one white, just like in Miami Vice), sprinkle on a dash of OutRun, and bake for 40 minutes. Er, and then inject, obv., otherwise the opening line doesn’t work.

The game is great and a still somewhat rare concept: drive fast, catch your adversary and then ram their car into submission. It makes you want to wear a pastel suit, hum Crockett’s Theme and Bruce Springsteen, and grow a mullet. OK, maybe not, but it is a lot of fun, even in these days of from-every-angle pile-ups in Burnout 947.

Unfortunately, Chase HQ on Virtual Console starkly illustrates one of the platform’s major shortcomings compared to XBLA: instead of using the still rather nifty arcade original, you’re lumbered with the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 conversion. To continue our needle theme, this version is rather like injecting battery acid into your eyeballs.

The graphics are dreadful, flickery and lack animation. The controls are all over the shop. And the gameplay is less fun than kissing a rabid weasel. Even the dire NES and Master System versions would have been a step up from this, and the CPC and Spectrum releases were (and still are) miles ahead of this shambles. Avoid.

Chase HQ is available now on Virtual Console for 500 Wii points (£3.50ish), if you fancy wasting your money.

‘Criminals here,’ it says by the arrow, but the real criminals are the ones charging for this garbage. Oh yes.

• A new Cult of Mac article from me – “Why iPod touch will never be a major gaming platform” – #

Hiiiiyaaaaaaaaaaa!

Once upon a time, all fighting games were about Eastern pyjama-wearing gents kicking each-other in the face. They were sedate affairs, based on tactics and cunning, epitomised by Melbourne House’s Way of the Exploding Fist. And then IK+ arrived, blowing everything else out of the water.

On the surface little had changed: there was an extra fighter and a prettier backdrop. But having that extra competitor on-screen transformed the fighting genre, turning the sedate into the frenetic, ensuring the player rarely got a chance to catch their breath.

In today’s market, IK+ looks blocky and dated. The C64’s graphics lack the charm of a Pac-Man or a Mario and the definition of a Spectrum title. But the animation is fluid, and the collision detection spot-on.

Importantly, though, the gameplay still shines through after over two decades. Moves are carefully assigned to logical control positions, making fights intuitive and instinctive, rather than a memory test. And with its combination of varied opponent styles (they change every level), frantic bonus game (deflect bouncing balls with a shield) and its lack of button-mashing, this classic from yesteryear genuinely manages to give most of its modern equivalents a thoroughly good kicking.

IK+ is available now on Virtual Console for 500 Wii points (£3.50ish). If you think that’s too much for a 21-year-old game, more fool you.

Old man speak wisely. Red player can’t even tie belt properly.

• Nintendo’s releasing a 120-track OST 3CD set for the two Rhythm Tengoku games. Oh my. http://tinyurl.com/5rousf #
• My first-impressions piece on iTunes 8 is now up on Cult of Mac: http://tinyurl.com/6j89j4 – the Genius is misnamed, but Grid View is good. #
• Although it’s cunningly omitted from the cover, the current Retro Gamer (55) has my six-page feature on Defender. http://www.retrogamer.net/ #