This is the first part of an endless longplay of Compile's MSX2 game Gorby's Pipeline, as played by me, FiXato. I finish the first 7 stages in this (long) video. After my earlier video of this game, in which I played all through stage 7 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9qpDYcPfig), I decided to record another, but this time starting at the very first stage and see how far I can go. The game was developed by Compile and published on a 3,25" DoubleDensity disk by Tokuma Shoten in 1991. *Purpose:* In Gorby's Pipeline, also known as Gorby's Pipeline Plan, or ゴルビーのパイプライン大作戦 or Gorubī no Paipurain Daisakusen, you have to lay water-pipes all through Russia. There are 9 stages you have to plumb your way through to be awarded with fireworks. Depending on the level you are playing, you'll have to connect a number of pipe from the right to left side of the screen to let the water flow. With each stage, the number of available pipe connections becomes smaller. A couple of bonuses will also drop after a certain number of tiles have fallen, which can make things easier (or harder!) for you. *Bonuses:* The first bonus to fall is a jar of (ice-)water. If you place it on your current water connection, this will fill up the bottom part of the screen with ice-cubes, and take away the bottom pipe connections. It might seem like a stupid thing to do, but it will actually allow you to rack up significant scores! The next item is a drill. You can put both drills on top of each other to drill a single row quite far down, or side-by-side to drill 2 rows half the amount down. Use this to fix some errors you might've made. The last item is a drop of water. When you land this on your open water connection, it will magically connect one set of pipes, which can be a lifesaver at times! *Top Score Animations:* At certain scoring points you'll also get a small animation going from the bottom to the top of the screen. The one's I've spotted are a rocket (probably at a 1.000.000 score), a hot air balloon (probably at 1.250.000 points) and a fish (likely to be an Unagi (Japanese freshwater eel) or Koi) (probably at 6.000.000 points). If there are any more, I haven't spotted them yet. *Music:* The game features rearrangements of classical compositions of renowned composers such as Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Modest Mussorgsky, Alexander Borodin and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. It for instance features Mussorgsky's "The Great Gate of Kiev", Tchaikovsky's "Swan's Theme" from Swan Lake (1876) and Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee". Because of this, this game probably was one of my first introductions to classical music, even though I didn't realise that at the time. I still can't listen to Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake for instance without wanting to play a round of Gorby's Pipeline. According to http://vgmdb.net/album/6995 there is a soundtrack CD which features rearrangements by MIGHTY.K, J.SAKODA and HARRIS. While the first letter doesn't match that of Toshiaki Sakoda, I do believe that he was responsible for the MSX music of this game as he was a composer for Compile around that time, and according to this interview with him at Hardcore Gaming 101 (http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/interviews/toshiakisakoda-interview.htm), a lot of his projects were ghostwritten. Apart from the excellent music that would get stuck in my mind for hours, I also have some wonderful memories to this game from the many hours I've spent watching my mother play this game, or us taking turns. She was the better player though. ;-) *About the recording:* This game was recorded on Windows using the openMSX emulator; a free, open-source cross-platform, MSX emulator. Minimal use of the 'reverse' feature was made in order to achieve an endless play-through. Official builds are available at http://openmsx.sourceforge.net while the latest daily unofficial development builds for Windows and Mac OS X can be downloaded from http://openmsx.fixato.net. *Want more information? See:* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorby_no_Pipeline_Daisakusen http://www.generation-msx.nl/software/compile/gorbys-pipeline/1607/

• published: 21 Sep 2013
• views: 341