Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 248 i Retro Gamer

I had a lovely bank-holiday weekend in Liverpool. I’m 50 soon and a huge Beatles fan and I had never done the full-on Beatles tourist trip. So I booked a hotel, The Magical Mystery Tour and a few trips to The Cavern. What a weekend. I thoroughly recommend you do it. Once we had completed the tours (you only need to see Penny Lane once) I went for a stroll around town. I walked past a junk shop and then doubled back. Was there a tree growing in the middle of it? Yes there was. I went in and started to feel very excited. It was what my dad would have called a ‘toot shop’. Others would call it tat. To me, every overpriced and weird item was a treasure.…

NOVEMBER 2006 – It’s one of the biggest months ever, as the PlayStation 3 and Wii both hit store shelves for the first time and developers compete for the Christmas sales bonanza. Nick Thorpe is your time-travelling guide to all of the excitement Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer of the FSB security service in Russia, was poisoned in London on 1 November. Large amounts of the radioactive element polonium-210 were found in his body and he eventually passed away on 23 November, after accusing Russian president Vladimir Putin of ordering his death. A UK inquiry and later European Court Of Human Rights case found beyond reasonable doubt that former KGB agents Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun killed Litvinenko. On 16 November, Nobel Prize winning American economist Milton Friedman passed away…

■ By the time the NES was receiving its test launch in the USA, Japanese developers were reaching the limits of what they could achieve with the basic Famicom cartridge, which offered a mere 32KB of program data and 8KB of graphics data. Nintendo looked to the home-computer market to solve the problem, and decided that floppy disks were cheap to manufacture and offered a number of advantages for both players and developers. The Famicom Disk System utilised double-sided floppy disks with a relatively large total capacity of 112KB. Hardware interfaced with the Famicom via the cartridge slot, and featured 32KB of program cache RAM and 8KB of RAM for graphics, as well as an additional wavetable-lookup synthesis sound chip. The benefits of that extra sound hardware can be heard…

SECRET GOOEY BLOB POWER ■ The Gooey Blob spell sends a mass of green goo across the board. Monsters caught in it are released by destroying the Blob. Once freed, any captured illusory creature suddenly becomes real, making the Blob a magnet for any bluffing conjurer. AN UNDEAD CERT ■ Do you want to make your wizard capable of withstanding any normal attack? Then simply cast a Raise Dead spell on any dead mountable creature such as a Horse or Pegasus, hop on, and then you’ll be undead, too. Fangs are not included. BREAKING THE ENGAGEMENT ■ Once monsters (and wizards) become entangled in close combat, escape can be tricky. Fortunately, there’s a handy bug for anyone in a pickle: press ‘I’ and a direction away from your enemy, and…

AMSTRAD CPC Being the platform that the game was created on, this is the superior version. Big, colourful graphics and great music that plays throughout all contribute to the atmosphere perfectly. The satisfying crunching sound effect when you eat people also makes this the easy standout. ZX SPECTRUM The rest of the conversions were outsourced, much to Steve’s chagrin when he saw the finished results. This conversion lacks the polish of the original source. Also, in the original release it came with a frustrating game-breaking bug, when you eat the last person you need to kill, the game crashes! C64 This is bettter than the Spectrum version, with graphics closer to the Amstrad original. It maintains the atmosphere but lacks the music, aside from a funky little number that plays…

■ If you fancy tucking into the Raiden series, there are compilations available. In 1995 The Raiden Project came to PlayStation in most regions, even getting console launch title status in the US. Combining decent ports of Raiden and Raiden II, and a scattering of then-contemporary extra features. If you’re patient, today it isn’t too expensive. Years later, across 2008-2010, all three of the Raiden Fighters games saw a release on Xbox 360 in most regions, bringing a suite of modernisations – and an impactful patch. Again, with a little patience, it’s not too pricey. And it’s very much worth every penny. Finally, in 2012, Raiden Legacy swooped onto Android and iOS, before seeing GOG and Steam ports in the following years. It gathered together the first Raiden, and the…

■ After World Rally proved a hit in arcades around the world, it was natural for Zigurat and Gaelco to create a follow-up. World Rally 2: Twin Racing was released in 1995 with the same core gameplay that made the original work so well: a series of winding tracks, a range of environments and a 60-second timer to beat. However, it also packed some neat technical advances. Among these was a greater level of photo realism, which Carlos attributes to improved hardware. “World Rally 2 used the next generation of Gaelco boards, which were much more powerful in a graphical sense,” Carlos tells us. The sequel also introduced a two-player mode. One arcade board could serve two cabinets stood alongside each other, allowing two players to race the same track…

Nothing was impervious to the Tetris effect. Having escaped its Russian homeland in the late-Eighties, Alexey Pajitnov’s puzzle game and its falling blocks were suddenly everywhere – on computers, consoles, even in our dreams. Tetris was a huge hit in arcades too, with both Atari and Sega producing coin-op versions thanks to the famously muddled rights process. And with success came the clones, including Block Hole from Konami, Block Out from Technos and Puzzled from SNK. Even (quasi) official rights’ holders Atari and Sega created their own spins on the puzzle genre in Klax and Columns. Taito’s response to the Tetris effect was the three Ps: Plotting, Puzznic and Palamedes. “PUZZNIC OFFERED A SMARTER, MORE COMPOSED TAKE ON THE TILE-MATCHING FORMULA” In both Plotting (1989) and Palamedes (1990) you cleared…

■ Not only did the NES version of Puzznic gain an extra 16 stages but it also included a bonus game, Gravnic, designed for expert players. “Are you ready for the next step?” asked the game’s manual. “Gravnic will really test your puzzle-solving skills.” As the name implies, Gravnic was based around the effects of gravity. Rather than moving blocks around, you now moved the whole screen which would cause the blocks to slide to the bottom. The timer was nixed, replaced by a set number of moves in which to remove every block from the playfield (as with Puzznic, the key was to avoid leaving single block types in play). Having no time limit meant you could carefully plan each move before executing it. In total there were 80…

The origins of Bizarre Creations date back to a mid-Eighties partnership between Martyn Chudley and school friend Dominic Frazer, who traded as Powerslave Developments and created Combat Crazy, a hard-as-nails C64 shooter/platformer. In the early Nineties, Martyn worked under the names Lunatic Software and Raising Hell Software. During this time, he co-created the 16-bit hits Wiz ‘N’ Liz and The Killing Game Show for Psygnosis, where he met his future wife Sarah. In 1994, the pair founded Bizarre Creations and began developing for the PlayStation, with two successful Formula 1 racers being their initial output. A subsequent release, Metropolis Street Racer, reviewed well but sold poorly. However, Bizarre later adapted the Dreamcast title for the Xbox as Project Gotham Racing, which shifted millions of copies and spawned three sequels. Project…

REFLECTIVE SURFACES ■ BioForge‘s reflective surfaces are one of the earliest examples in computer games. Some of the enemies can only be dealt with by bouncing laser blasts off walls and hitting them indirectly – which can also mean that you shoot yourself when the shot ricochets right back into your face. MOTION CAPTURING ■ BioForge was one of the first computer games whose animation was based mostly on motion capturing. As those systems were still in their infancy back then, Ken Demarest had to create his own 3D tools, animation systems and even capture suit, while most of the performance work was being done by Starr Long. REAL-TIME CUTSCENES ■ BioForge was one of the earliest computer games to feature scripted real-time story cutscenes – even though there’s very…

THE BACKGROUND If curiosity really did kill the cat, then there’s absolutely no hope left for the inquisitive ginger feline at the heart of BlueTwelve Studio’s debut cyberpunk adventure. That a first-time studio could come out swinging with a game as confident and cohesive as this (in a world as equally realised) is still impressive just a year on from its initial release, especially when you consider that Stray was made by a team of just 28 people. Did Stray have the benefit of Annapurna Interactive’s publishing might and PlayStation’s marketing machine behind it? Sure. But despite the uncannily photorealistic visuals and precedent for being an early-ish showcase for what smaller experiences can achieve with the power of PS5, Stray maintains the spirit of a prestige indie game. Such attention…

GOING BIG ■ When your energy is high and you’re in no real danger, it’s OK to miss a couple of shells in order to grab a huge chain – you’ll likely spawn enough power-ups to cover any energy loss involved in seeking your high score. STAYING SAFE ■ Once your energy is low, switch to a more conservative strategy of favouring small chains that ensure every shell is caught. Make sure that you grab every E icon you see as you do, as those are your energy refills. PRO HOPPING ■ Power-ups are useful because they can be worked into your chain regardless of the colour you’re currently targeting. However, you can’t detonate them alone – you need at least one coloured firework in your chain for a big…

» PLAYSTATION 2 » 2004 » GARDEN, INC Buying games without knowing anything about them feels like a very pre-internet activity, yet that’s exactly what I did when I picked up Fire Heroes in 2013. This wasn’t by choice – there was precious little English language information about the game available, but the disaster theme appealed to me so I took a punt. What I discovered was a cel-shaded game in which you play as either firefighter Douglas Brantley, police officer Max Broderick or architect Scott Winkler, trying to rescue people from the burning Clayton Tower. You get five real hours to play through nine chapters, and there are multiple endings depending on how you do. Frankly, Fire Heroes is an ambitious game but not a particularly good one. It’s…

Many consider We Love Katamari to be one of the best games in the series, so it’s rather fitting that a lot of care and attention has gone into this remaster. Developed by Monkeycraft, this is a great reimagining of the PS2 classic with simple quality-of-life improvements, including an enhanced UI, the ability to play levels with the music tracks of your choice, polished HD visuals and a number of exclusive remixed stages (which are a little disappointing). All the game’s original content is included, while Eternal Mode, which lets you play with no time limit, has finally been added. The end result is a great upgrade over the PS2 original. » Score 85%…

<INTRO> I WAS PLEASANTLY SURPRISED TO DISCOVER THAT AT THE 5TH ANNUAL ATARI HOMEBREW AWARDS – BIT.LY/5TH-ATARI-HOMEBREW-AWARDS – A GAME I CREATED MUSIC FOR, 8-BIT SLICKS, HAD WON THE BEST ATARI LYNX HOMEBREW CATEGORY. AWARDS AND PRIZES ARE NOT THE ONLY INSPIRATION TO CREATE GAMES, AS WE FIND IN OUR MAIN INTERVIEW WITH I ♥ PIZZA. YOU COULD BE INSPIRED BY OTHER GAMES OR A TECHNICAL FEATURE OF YOUR MACHINE. READ ON TO FIND OUT MORE. </INTRO> <BODY> “When I was a kid, I imagined what my hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana, would look like as a videogame,” John Springer tells us. Surviving cancer gave John the incentive to pursue that dream. With help he started developing beat-’em-up Summit City Showdown in 2011, finishing it in 2018; and sequels are…

<INFO FROM: FRANCE WEBSITE: REMANTIC.COM (WORK IN PROGRESS) FORMAT: AMIGA PREVIOUSLY WORKED ON: SYBERIA & SYBERIA II, GOLDENEYE: ROGUE AGENT, DEAD BY DAYLIGHT WORKING ON: HAMULET /> WHAT INSPIRED YOUR NEW GAME, RÉMI? <I drew inspiration from Shadow Of The Beast which boasted, “You will be dazzled by the 128 colours appearing simultaneously on-screen.” How about 256 colours just for the sprites and over 2,000 colours for the background? For the gameplay, I looked to classic games like Lode Runner and added my own twist to create a light-hearted 2D puzzle-solving/dungeon-exploring game. I was also inspired by the charming retro look of Crypt Of The Necrodancer. /> WHAT ABOUT DEVELOPMENT TOOLS? <I am developing with Visual Studio Code, a cross-compiler, WinUAE, a game engine called ACE (bit.ly/ace-amiga-engine) and an extraordinary…

<BODY> Inspired by the MSX title Ghost, Android L-3573-R must stop a rogue satellite by shutting down its main computer. Extra equipment is hidden in barrels; Infrared is needed for dark rooms, and you’ll need the Radiation Shield to cross toxic waste. Coins from dead enemies are spent at terminals to restore health or to upgrade Lester’s laser, while switches and key cards open new areas. Dying allows you to continue from the start, but you’ll keep any earned equipment. A bold graphic style and multiple tunes add to the excellent atmosphere in this superb Metroidvania-style game. </BODY> SCORE: 88%…

Dear Retro Gamer, I’m sure you get this a lot, but what’s the big deal about how old something needs to be in order to qualify as retro? I’m in my late-20s and some of my happiest memories are playing on my dad’s Xbox 360 with him or just watching him play games. I associate that machine with my youth, and judging from what I see online, many others do the same with even older machines like the Amiga, PlayStation and Nintendo 64. The Xbox 360 has been surpassed by at least two generations of newer Xboxes now, so there’s no way it can be considered new (in my opinion at least). I play a lot of Xbox 360 games on my Xbox Series X now, so I was delighted…

The PlayStation 3 launched in Japan on 11 November, and the initial response to the system was odd. 81,639 systems were sold in the first two days, with 45,774 being the more expensive 60GB model, but only 66,684 games were sold – meaning almost 15,000 players went home with nothing to play, leading to speculation that many systems were being picked up by scalpers for resale online. Ridge Racer 7 narrowly beat Mobile Suit Gundam: Target In Sight to become the most popular launch game, selling 21,654 copies. The North American launch followed on 17 November, with 197,000 consoles sold by the end of the month – just shy of half the number Sony had promised for the launch. The Wii launched in North America on 19 November, and also…

■ Nintendo is well known for being particularly protective of its products, and the 10NES chip is the first major example of that tendency. This chip was included in the frontloading models of the NES, and functioned as a locking device, which requested a particular code from the key chip on a cartridge. If that key wasn’t supplied successfully, the console would blink on and off. The primary purpose of the 10NES was to allow Nintendo to keep tight control of the NES software market. Publishers had to pay for a licence to create NES games, without which they wouldn’t be able to bypass the 10NES chip. Nintendo argued that this system was in place to prevent a glut of poor-quality third-party games, like the ones that had dented consumer…

Having had moderate success with Battlecars and Rebelstar Raiders in 1985, Julian Gollop subsequently unleashed what many consider his masterpiece, at least on the ZX Spectrum computer. Don’t let those unassuming graphics fool you – Chaos (sometimes known as Chaos: The Battle Of Wizards) is a game of unprecedented depth that remains a firm favourite for fans and remakes almost 40 years later. Drawing on its coder’s experience of board games, Chaos presents a blank black screen populated by between two and eight wizards battling to the death for victory. Each wizard has a selection of spells allocated at the beginning of the game. A menu appears at the start of each round, and this presents four options: Examine Spells, Select Spell, Examine Board and Continue With The Game. Under…

CHAOS APPEARED IN SEVERAL GUISES – WHICH ONE DID YOU FIRST PLAY? It was actually my friend Scott’s copy of Chaos which he found with a copy of Your Sinclair. I do now have an original large box Chaos. WHAT DO YOU THINK MAKES CHAOS SO GREAT? Replayability and the element of chance. The best games in my experience are the ones with skillful use of a random number generator. A scripted game can be great for a specified number of hours of gameplay, but a randomly generated game can be played over and over again. DID YOU PLAY MULTIPLAYER? Oh yes, although rarely these days. I still always name my wizardly opponents after my friends (including Scott who introduced me to the game, a tradition of mine now). His…

» ATARI 7800 » 1990 » BLUE SKY SOFTWARE Supposedly, an Atari executive once decided that since sports games and beat-’em-ups were both popular, a game that combined both would be very popular, and thus Ninja Golf was born. You’ve probably heard of it as it often shows up on lists of weird game concepts – and that makes plenty of sense, because the title alone makes you stop, take a step back and wonder how such a game would even work. Since it’s an Atari 7800 game, it has become one of a select few games that plenty of people are aware of but relatively few have actually played. The problem with that is that since Ninja Golf tends to end up on comedy lists, it’s often dismissed as…

■ So, we now know the inspiration for the game was after the 1978 Warren Zevon song of the same name, and not a movie. But just like the zombie renaissance in the past decade or so, werewolves were experiencing their own resurgence in the Eighties – kicking off in 1981 with two successful werewolf movies, The Howling and An American Werewolf In London. This was swiftly capitalised on by Michael Jackson for his wildly popular Thriller music video a couple of years later. He even hired the same director, John Landis, who had directed An American Werewolf in London. That was followed in cinemas by the underrated Silver bullet, the great Teen Wolf and the not so great Teen Wolf Too. Talking of sequels, The Howling had no less…

■ There hasn’t been a truly new Raiden release since 2016’s Raiden V. But interest in the series clearly remains, because several of the later games have been released in remastered or modernised form in recent years. And it actually started before Raiden V. The brilliant Raiden IV debuted in Japanese game centers in 2007, before being rebirthed as Raiden IV: OverKill on the PlayStation 3 in 2014. The first European release of Raiden IV, it contained new stages, new ships, a new scoring system in OverKill mode, and the original arcade system. Then, in 2021, Raiden IV X Mikado Maniax saw a worldwide release to Switch, soon spreading to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S in the years that followed. Offering up the ultimate compilation…

» AMIGA » 1993 » JAMIE WOODHOUSE When I had an Amiga I ended up owning a lot of games published by Team17. This was partly because they were often cheap, but also because a lot of its games were riffs on popular arcade games, like Assassin (Strider) or Alien Breed (Gauntlet). One of my favourite games was Jamie Woodhouse’s Qwak and I was delighted to rediscover it on the recent Evercade Team17 Collection 1. It’s a truly tremendous single-screen platformer in the style of Bubble Bobble and it’s ridiculously good fun to play. It’s also incredibly charming to look at thanks to Richard Heaman’s sugary-cute graphics. The pixel-art designs are quite simply excellent and full of character, while the backgrounds have the same distinctive look that made Bubble Bobble…

■ When Blaze Entertainment compiled two Gaelco arcade cartridges for Evercade consoles, it worked with coinop restoration experts including David ‘Haze’ Haywood. “The Gaelco hardware was handled by Peter Wilhelmsen and Morten Kirkegaard while I took duties on the software side in MAME,” David explains. “It was a tough process and one which required them to source many PCBs [printed circuit boards]. This was set against a backdrop of Morten fighting his own battle against cancer, which he would unfortunately lose not long after the work was completed. It provided him with a sense of drive, but we’re worse off now for not having him around, that’s for certain.” The expertise of the team absolutely shows in how smoothly the Gaelco games play, including World Rally and its sequel, which…

CHAIN REACTION ■ Chaining together matches can really boost your score – and looks cool too. Instead of just matching pairs, look to create opportunities for chains. Like here, on the opening stage, it’s set up so that when you move the grey tile to the left, it triggers four matches. MOVING TARGET ■ Some puzzles feature platforms that move vertically or horizontally. Often you’ll need to drop a block from above so that it lands on a left/right platform and the timing can be tricky. Blocks fall about a third faster than platforms move, so use this to make a timely drop. BLOCK DROP ■ Matches are not made until a falling block has landed and you’ll need to exploit this by dropping a block and then dropping another…

YOU’D PREVIOUSLY PROGRAMMED THE C64 VERSION OF FLYING SHARK. DID IT SUIT YOU, WORKING ON A SIMPLER CONVERSION? It did make a change doing something different than another scrolling game. It had its own issues though, for example making sure the blocks were correctly dealt with on the moving platforms. Being good at the original arcade game was also a requirement, especially as we didn’t have access to the actual level data. There was a lot of playing the original to gain access to this information. SO YOU HAD DIRECT ACCESS TO THE COIN-OP? Yes, Richard Kaye, the owner of Software Creations had some special cases built to house the coin-op motherboards, so we were able to take the units home if we wanted to get a real feel for…

» PLAYSTATION » 1996 » DREAMFACTORY Do you ever feel like a game has been unjustly forgotten? I often do, and Tobal No 1 stands as a particularly notable example. Why? Well, for a start you probably know the game’s character designer Akira Toriyama from his work on Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger and his massively successful Dragon Ball franchise. Director and designer Seiichi Ishii had just performed the same roles on the first two Tekken games at Namco, and had been a coordinator and designer on Virtua Fighter before that. Main programmer and designer Toru Ikebuchi had worked with Ishii as the main programmer on Virtua Fighter, and stayed in that role for Virtua Fighter 2. While it’s not a groundbreaking game in the same way those previous fighting games…

NURSEBOT ■ This is the very first enemy that Lex encounters when he wakes up. It tries to put you back to sleep, but a solid kick sends it into your cell’s energy barrier, opening up the game. CAYNAN ■ Caynan was originally the former Mondite chief of security, but now he’s a failed experiment. Caynan is notable for only having one arm, really likes his fork and is very blue. MECHBOTS ■ Be careful whenever you encounter Mechbots in BioForge. They can (and will) kill Lex with a single deadly shot. They can only be brought down by several direct blaster hits. CYBERAPTOR ■ This is another one of Dr Mastaba’s failed experiments. Can not be killed but must be beaten into unconsciousness on a specific spot to serve…

MAGIC BUBBLE <“We’ve made some changes for the forthcoming release. If there’s one game I hope retro gamers will discover and enjoy, it’s Magic Bubble.” /> SUMMIT CITY SHOWDOWN <“Our first project – and we nailed the gameplay. We’ll put it up against any beat-’em-up on the system in that regard!” /> WALLOP THE WALLABY <“A classic platformer starring a prize-fighting wallaby. We thought it’d be great to have a mascot-driven game – we’re thrilled with how it came out.” /> BUBBLEPUNK <“Built for speedrunning, with a sci-fi aesthetic and a unique twist. This came out of a game jam session, completed in about six weeks.” /> MAGIC GIRL <“We love this cute-’em-up originally released by Super Fighter Team – we’ve made improvements in preparation for its definitive release.” />…

<BODY> Action fans should enjoy Monte Boyd’s Infeztation “It is a side-scrolling run-and-gun shooter with hi-res graphics and lots of action. There’s a little bit of finding switches to open doors and collecting security keys,” says Monte, stressing that the emphasis is on shooting. “Turrican II is the most obvious inspiration, but lots of other run-and-gun platformers as well – Cyberdyne Warrior, Runn ’N’ Gunn and Ruff ‘N’ Tumble on the Amiga. But it’s also taking influence from non-platformers like Alien Breed,” Monte says. He is also planning a digital release and possibly a cartridge version. “This will be my first scrolling game which is lots of fun. I’m using a style of hi-res artwork that I haven’t seen on the C64 before. I’m also throwing in lighting effects on…

When Callum Stannard bought his first house, he quickly identified the perfect space for a games room. But as his collection has grown, so has his ambition. “My current games room took me two years to plan and six months to build as it was previously a dilapidated garage that we completely renovated and extended,” he says. “It’s genuinely a dream come true to have this dedicated space and I’m very thankful that I was able to document the journey of building the room on my channel.” The channel in question is the YouTube favourite Retro Ghetto which has close to 8,000 subscribers and about 750,000 views. Viewers have been treated to in-depth looks at Callum’s collection which are all neatly displayed on shelves that run along bright white walls…

» NINTENDO DS » 2004 » NINTENDO SPD, INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS One of the reasons I love Nintendo’s DS is because its games felt so different. Some gamers saw stylus controls as a gimmick, a way to blind you to the older technology that was at the heart of Nintendo’s new handheld, but I just saw all the possibilities those controls offered instead. Granted, there’s a lot of shovelware on the DS, but there is on any successful console. The trick is to find the gems, and WarioWare: Touched! is not only a gem of the highest order, but was one of those early launch games that highlighted just how innovative Nintendo’s new console could be. Developed alongside WarioWare: Twisted! for the GBA, Touched! was designed to showcase the capabilities of…

Blaze Entertainment recently excited Evercade owners with six new cartridge packs that will be heading to its systems by the year’s end. Utilising a Nintendo-style Direct structure, Evercade Showcase Vol 1 proved a big success for Blaze, with its head of marketing Sean Cleaver telling us, “It went very well, and beyond our expectations! It’s great to give our fans and interested onlookers new announcements, and seeing the interest and response is very humbling.” The 18-minute show kicked off with Delphine Software Cinamatique Collection 1 which includes the Amiga versions of Another World, Future Wars: Time Travellers, Operation Stealth and the Mega Drive version of Flashback. Interestingly, two of the games are mouse-based so we were keen to know how Blaze will adapt them. “Original hardware did use a mouse but…

In 2021, BBG Entertainment released Boulder Dash Deluxe – a game which not only included 20 stages from the original game but 180 new ones. It achieved a score of 80% in issue 219 but now the company is back with not one, not two but three new retro revivals: a reimagination of DynaBlaster alongside fresh renditions of the Intellivision classics Shark! Shark! and Astrosmash. BBG Entertainment president Stephan Berendsen gives us the lowdown. Hi Stephan. BBG Entertainment is no stranger to revisiting classic games, but what makes them attractive today? Many of these early games feature great game design. Forty years ago, computers were very limited in terms of graphics and performance, so what mattered was a compelling game idea. These excellent game concepts still inspire today and that’s the…

WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO CREATE A VERSION OF ALWA’S AWAKENING FOR THE NES? So originally there was this guy called Paul Molloy, of Infinite NES Lives. On Twitch, he did a fan remake on NES for Alwa’s Awakening – without us being involved, he did it for fun. We just helped out and promoted it and, you know, joined the chat and watched the videos. So Martin Lindell of Embracer saw these Twitch streams and just emailed me and said, “Would you want to make a full NES release of Alwa’s Awakening?” I asked Paul but he was too busy and had prior engagements. But here I was with Embracer wanting to fund the whole project, so that’s when we put out a job ad looking for NES programmers.…

BUFF YOUR WIZ ■ The player’s wizard is hopelessly outclassed against higher-level computer opponents. Level the playing field by beefing up your character’s defence (Magic Shield and Armour) and attack (Magic Knife, Sword and Bow). The latter items prove to be quite useful as they will also allow you to attack the undead. EXAMINE SPELLS ■ Each spell has an information page detailing statistics such as Combat, Defence and Movement Allowance. However, the most crucial stat sits at the bottom: Casting Chance. This percentage figure adjusts according to the wizard’s ability and the alignment balance of the Plane. Play the odds before casting. TIP THE BALANCE ■ Each wizard usually possesses one or two alignment spells called Chaos or Law. Successfully casting these influences the mood of the board and…

Back in the early Eighties, when the bedroom coder revolution was gaining momentum, a young Steve Howard spotted an ad in the local Job Centre that piqued his interest. Having already developed his first game on the Sharp MZ-80K, Steve wanted a job before he went to university and from the advert, successfully applied for a company called Software Workshop. When Steve started he immediately struck up a friendship with an artist who also worked there called Paul Smith. “Paul was a bit annoyed that we did all the work for a relative pittance while our boss got the big money, so he persuaded me to leave, and we would create games and get to keep all the money,” Steve says, reflecting back. The first game of the new partnership…

Although the Famicom was the first Nintendo console to include a traditional control pad, the company had plenty of experience in designing controllers – and contrary to most companies, which drew upon arcade standards, Nintendo chose to use the expertise it had gained with the Game & Watch line. The cross-shaped d-pad from the Donkey Kong handheld was adopted, along with two action buttons, two buttons for menu selections and on the second controller only, a microphone. Both controllers are a standard inclusion, wired directly into the console, with a red and gold colour scheme to complement the system’s look. Does a controller truly count as a peripheral if it can’t be detached and wasn’t sold separately? Perhaps not, but we’ll let that slide since the Famicom controller is one…

■ The most vibrant Raiden games were actually spin-offs; the Fighters trilogy. Starting with 1996’s Raiden Fighters, which was followed a year later with the unrelenting Raiden Fighters 2: Operation Hell Dive, the trio of games reinvented Raiden as a faster, more elaborate entity. The sheer array of ships and weapons – including those from earlier Raiden games – gave players a huge variety of options to explore, and subsequently ways to play. Again, the Raiden series’ capacity for personal flair had increased. But those two games were soon eclipsed by 1998’s sublime Raiden Fighters Jet, which remains a titan of the shmup genre. It is a game so packed with complexity and depth that it can keep you busy for years, and yet casual players can get plenty from…

Carlos Granados was visiting the US on a school exchange trip when he saw a computer for the very first time. On returning to Spain, he knew more about computing than his teachers. “Sometimes they said, ‘Carlos, go ahead and teach the class,’ and they would just listen in!” he laughs. After gaining access to a Sinclair ZX81, he began creating simple games in BASIC with some friends. Those creations then became more advanced when the group began to use a ZX Spectrum. “In the beginning it was just a hobby,” Carlos tells us. “Then at some point we got hired by Indescomp, the main company importing games into Spain.” Initially the friends simply translated games for Indescomp. “After school we would spend two or three hours working for them,”…

After achieving unexpected success with the SG-1000 in 1983, Sega set about updating the design of the system. Rather than the toy-like simplicity of the original model, the new look aimed for a more high-tech aesthetic, and included some gratuitous English text extolling the virtues of the system. Storage bays on the side were built-in due to the inclusion of the new Famicom-style SJ-150 joypads as standard, rather than the SJ-200 joysticks that accompanied the original machine. Since the Sega My Card format was yet to be introduced, the system still only has a cartridge slot. Beyond the new controller and new look, the SG-1000 II had exactly the same capabilities as the first model, which meant that Nintendo’s Famicom was still superior technology. It was also beginning to pull…

C64 ■ A solid effort from Software Creations, featuring everything from the coin-op including in-game music (the only 8-bit version to do so, and also the only one to replicate the coin-op’s attract mode). Zzap!64 rated this higher than the Amiga version. GAME BOY ■ Puzznic feels right at home on the Game Boy and this Japan-only version works well on the original monochrome screen. Unlike every other version this one features no timer, which does change the nature of the game somewhat. AMSTRAD CPC ■ Another admirable job that uses the CPC’s 16-colour mode to bring the arcade visuals to life. It lacks in-game music but otherwise no complaints here. In 2014 a fan update was released which added support for the extended CPC+ palette. PC ENGINE ■ This…

You were expecting Capcom’s new game to be tough, but the stiff opposition you faced in Forgotten Worlds was still a little overwhelming. You’d battled through the first two stages with a mate, but they’d run out of credits so you were facing the third stage on your own. Quickly getting used to Forgotten Worlds’ interesting control scheme you found yourself weaving through enemy waves and mowing down numerous foes while you manipulated your handy satellite drone. Brimming with confidence, you felt a wave of relief as you made your way through several barriers and encountered someone kneeling in prayer in front of a huge statue. This should be a quick fight. Suddenly, and without warning, the screen begins to scroll upwards and you quickly realise that a gargantuan god…

There are some buzzwords, like ‘multimedia’ that dominated the gaming culture in the Nineties. But the one word that was even more ubiquitous than that was ‘interactive’ – absolutely everything just had to be interactive and, if possible, an ‘interactive movie’. Which in reality usually meant cheaply produced postage-stamp sized, direct-to-video quality level clips on CD-ROM, giving the player only the lowest possible level of actual interaction. Ken Demarest, who started work at Origin in 1990, had a different point of view on the matter, as he came from the technological side of things: as a coder on Wing Commander and the lead programmer on Ultima VII: The Black Gate, he saw interactive movies as a chance to create games that were as movie-like as possible without reducing the players…

■ “Variable identity outcomes – your choices throughout the game determine your former identity from a list of experimental subjects,” this is the first entry in the feature list on the back of some of BioForge’s game boxes. The idea behind it is that by doing certain in-game actions you define which one out of a dozen possible personalities (male or female) you used to be before becoming Experimental Unit AP-127. The path to unveiling that secret is quite convoluted though: 1. Did you kill Roland, the guard at the top of the base? 2. Did you kill Dane, another one of Dr Mastaba’s victims? 3. Did you help the injured Dr Escher? 4. Did you kill Alien Learner Gen? These four decisions create choice trees that ultimately lead to…

If there’s one thing players expect when a new console launches, it’s a spectacular first-party game to really show off what the technology can do. In the late-Nineties, Nintendo used Super Mario 64 as an ample demonstration of the impressive 3D worlds that the N64 could host and Sega highlighted the ever-decreasing gap between home console and arcade graphics with Virtua Fighter 3tb. With the PlayStation 2 being perhaps the most anticipated console launch of all time, you’d naturally expect Sony to bring out the big guns to justify the hype. Instead, it chose to lead with a quirky puzzle game based around fireworks. For game director Katsuyuki Kanetaka, Fantavision was the realisation of an idea he’d first had as a student in the 16-bit days. “Between the time I…

■ After two decades of dormancy, Fantavision has finally returned to our screens. “I had been working as a freelance game designer for the past ten years or so. It was during this time that I became acquainted with Mr Kazunobu Mori, the representative of Cosmo Machia Inc, and Mr Mori asked me if I would like to create a game like Fantavision,” says Katsuyuki Kanetaka, explaining how Fantavision 202X came to be. “The name Cosmo Machia is both the name of the company and the name of a game based on the night sky’s 88 constellations developed by Cosmo Machia. Mr Mori thought there was an affinity between the night sky of Fantavision and the world of the constellations of Cosmo Machia. I was also very interested in how…

In D Life you’ve discovered a new life form comprised of six colours, and your job is to take photographs of it – simply achieved by holding the left mouse button to expand the circular view, and releasing it to capture the photo. The catch is that every photo involves a mission, such as including a particular number of colours. The Basic Mode is good, but the Time Limit Mode is great – after each photo, you get a choice of two missions with tougher ones typically offering higher score multipliers or greater time bonuses. The unique premise and great risk and reward mechanics make this well worth your time. » Score 90%…

<Amiga AGA: Mutation Software launched Cyberpunks 2, 30 years after the original, for the Amiga 1200 and CD32. It’s available from bit.ly/cyberpunks2/> <Amstrad CPC: Sly Spy Allegro adds music to Ocean’s conversion of the Data East coin-op. Download it from moodler.pl/SlySpy.zip/> <Apple II: Renowned RPG Nox Archaist has had its latest expansion released. Lord Of Storms can be summoned by visiting nox-archaist.myshopify.com/> <Atari 2600: The prototype of 1979’s lost game Sonar has been recovered. Head on over to bit.ly/sonar-2600 and give it a try/> <Atari XL: Homesoft’s Diskette 473 includes recent releases such as the reworked International Karate RX/RXC. It’s availalbe at bit.ly/disk473-atarixl/> <BBC Micro: Recent releases including Pitfall!, Battlezone and the brilliant BeebChase (based on Deathchase) can be played online at bbcmicro.co.uk Also, check out Soko-Ban for BBC and Electron…

<BODY> Demons on bicycles are trying to escape Hell, but there are fiery canyons in their way. You help by building bridges across the gaps, gradually earning new materials and skills as challenges are completed. In Blueprint Mode, you can click and drag pieces into place. Then in Play Mode, the demons try to cross – without falling into the lava, being hit by fire demons (which burn bridges) and by exploding imps. Skillful players will build with fewer pieces than the construction limit and grab bonus skulls on the way. This ingenious game has similarities to classic indie titles World Of Goo and Bridge Constructor, with cute graphics and an easy-to-use interface. It’s a hair-tearing, brain-teasing puzzle game with 40 challenges to beat. </BODY> SCORE: 87% NEW GAMES NEEDED…

THE COVER STAR NES If you fancy owning Nintendo’s 8-bit console you’ll find them unboxed from £75 climbing to as much as £130. As is often the case, you’ll be paying a lot more money for a boxed version, or one that comes with additional games. WEREWOLVES OF LONDON Although a French seller recently asked for £200 for this game on disk for the CPC, you can pick up a dual Spectrum/CPC version on tape for about £8. CHAOS Julian Gollop’s strategy gem can be had for as little as £10 if you’re happy to grab the covertape from issue 57 of Your Sinclair. Otherwise be prepared to pay between £40 and £60 for an official copy. BIOFORGE This 1995 action adventure game really is a bargain with the game…

UNDERPOWERED, BUT EXCITING Hi Darran, Regarding the Acorn Electron. I recall at school there was a big buzz around the BBC Micro due to its great arcade conversions, so people were checking what the Electron could run and how much compromise there might be, as it was a cheaper alternative. My best friend, Matt (RIP), bought an Electron along with Escape From Moonbase Alpha. I remember watching with intrigue; a sci-fi graphic adventure with 3D rooms, it was a really exciting time. The only problem being Matt was rather reluctant to let me have a go for some reason! I don’t recall the Electron being a massive success, though we were just getting in to booze and girls so perhaps my memory is vague. Regards, Skeleton O’Rourke We’ve not played…