The second MSXdev entry for 2010 was made available for download yesterday; it's from Z80ST Software, called QBIQS and is a clone of the fun but relatively obscure Konami action puzzle coin-op Quarth, so essentially the love child of a shoot 'em up and Tetris where blocks are shot up the well into the mass of shapes that slowly trundle downwards. This was actually a cancelled entry in the 2008 competition, so it's good to see it finally released.

  • External link:   News on MSXdev

She's back... and this time it's even more personal than before! Anybody who has played the original C64 budget "classic" Bionic Granny (developed by the little Darlings who went on to found Codemasters) will find the action in the new Richard Bayliss game Bionik Granny Returns familiar, but the titular cybernetic biddie's wrath is no longer limited to mercilessly beating school children as they head for home and she takes on the crowds at the supermarket, park and even the local bingo hall with her trusty walking stick as she struggles through the world at large to collect her pension.

  • External link:   CSDb entry

Goodness, what a busy time for new releases! Maziacs on the Plus/4 and indeed other 64K 264 series machines is a conversion of the Don Priestley Spectrum game of the same name (and presumably the code of the C64 version was involved in the conversion process) where a brave adventurer must grab all the gold they can from within a twisting, evil-infested maze.

  • External link:   Plus/4 World

Released as part of the 2010 Your Game competition, Magic Tokens is a match three game for the Spectrum with similarities to Bejewelled Blitz; the objective is to collect a specified number of special gems by removing them from the playfield whilst simultaneously trying not to rip all of your own hair out in frustration when the rather strict time limit expires!

  • External link:   World of Spectrum thread

Safecracker for the Spectrum is a puzzle game - in fact it offers three different puzzles in one, all of which have to be solved in order to... erm, crack the safe. The programmer reckons that there's not a lot of longevity once it's been completed, but getting that far should prove fairly amusing and it at least look and sound decent.

  • External link:   World of Spectrum thread

We've already covered its original Spectrum incarnation and there's a rather snazzy Megadrive version out there too, but now the Mojon Twins' well-received action platformer UWOL: Quest for Money has just been released on the Commodore 64. If memory serves, this is the first Mojon Twins title to leap from platform to platform in this particular direction (did you see what we did there?) so that's news in itself, and what we've seen so far is certainly promising so, since the original scored a nine when Gordon had a look at it a couple of updates ago, we'll have to take a squint at some point soon.

  • External link:   Mojon Twins website

Jeff Daniels' Pillow Fight is a collecting game with some quirks; once the player starts moving they can't stop even if a wall gets in the way and, unless the border colour is red or blue to match an object, it can't be collected.

  • External link:   Denial forum thread

There's a new platformer for the Spectrum from Retroworks called Nelo and Quqo - The Last Butifarreison (the last what...?!) which has cartoon-styled graphics and a bizarre storyline involving Nelo's quest to rescue his friend Quqo from jail after a botched bank robbery and dodge the rozzers in the process... but first he needs to head down to the basement to locate a tool to repair the telly. Well that's fair enough I suppose, everybody loves telly!

  • External link:   Retroworks website