Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 254 i Retro Gamer

The recent Crash Live! event was such a success that the next event has already been announced. Crash Live! 2024 is planned for 23 November 2024 and will once again be held at Kenilworth’s Holiday Inn. Feedback for this year’s event has been great due to a large range of machines to play on and a selection of brilliant guests that included Andrew Braybrook, Steve Turner, Ian Oliver and Charles Cecil. Retro Gamer’s own Martyn Carroll attended the show and was very impressed with it, saying, “Crash Live! 2023 was another wonderful community event from Chris [Wilkins] and the team. I was chatting away with folks so much I managed to miss all the Q&A talks, although I hear they were excellent. I also got schooled playing Jetpac and bought…

It’s July of 1998, and a young boy walks into a newsagent. “I do remember a particular article which was in Edge, it was that famous one that says, ‘Sega Is Dead, Long Live Dreamcast,’” recalls Daniel Crocker, cofounder of WAVE Game Studios. “I remember it was a real head scratcher as to what that meant at the time, as a ten-year-old kid.” Fast forward to September 1999, and Sega is claiming that its new console was responsible for “the biggest 24 hours in entertainment retail history” after a record North American launch day in which it generated $98.4 million in sales. Fast forward a little over a year to February 2001, and another Edge headline follows a bombshell announcement. “Dreamcast: finished. Sega: unstoppable.” To put it lightly, Dreamcast fans…

How did you get involved with fan translations? It was actually the result of the highly popular, never contentious COVID lockdowns where I was at home a lot more often than I had been before, for better or worse. There was one title in particular, one of the Neon Genesis Evangelion typing games, that for some reason I just loved. You can only play the first three levels in English, so back then I couldn’t enjoy the rest of the game. That was the first one I decided I just wanted to look at. I always appreciated fan translations even before trying to do that. The Policenauts translation on Saturn and PlayStation, for example – Policenauts is my favourite game of all time and it never would be the case…

THE DREAMCAST JUNKYARD thedreamcastjunkyard.co.uk ◼ This long-running site is a one-stop shop for all the latest news in the Dreamcast scene, as well as original features, interviews and reviews of new indie games. As well as the main blog, the site produces the DreamPod podcast. DREAMCAST•TALK dreamcast-talk.com ◼ If you’re looking to chat about all aspects of the Dreamcast with like-minded fans, this forum is an active alternative to the usual social media platforms. The site also hosts servers for some of the online Dreamcast games. DREAMCAST LIVE dreamcastlive.net ◼ Anyone who wants to get back online with their Dreamcast should pay a visit to this site, which hosts connection guides, essential downloads, archived DLC, leaderboards, a schedule for online games and even giveaways. SEGA DREAMCAST INFO sega-dreamcast-info-games-preservation.com ◼ The…

◼ Author Charles A Sharp AKA The Dreaming Djinn dominated the commercial adventure market for two years, creating over a dozen adventures for budget-software houses such as Alternative and Top Ten Software. Charles swapped genres throughout this period, releasing sci-fi adventures such as Necris Dome and Life-Term, parodies like Deadenders and SMASHED, and even mixing the two with the amusing Star Trek satire Star Wreck. GAC’s ease of use helped Charles port his games across all three major 8-bit formats, inciting chortles for Spectrum, Amstrad and C64 owners. While the above adventures are all fun, we’ll always have a soft spot for the sporting antics of Charles’ Cricket Crazy and Football Frenzy. Sadly, Charles has kept a low-key profile since the Eighties – Charles, if you’re reading this, please get…

DIZZYING HEADACHES ◼ When Dizzy fell from a great height in the other games in this series, he’d merely bounce and roll but in Spellbound Dizzy, he would land with a thud and nurse a sore head. In most of the versions, it also meant losing some energy. WATER TIGHT ◼ Without a rubber snorkel in Treasure Island Dizzy, our egg-shellent chum would drown when he encountered water. Not so in Spellbound where Dizzy was able to stay underwater for a short time (longer with an aqualung). He was able to grab flippers and swim as well. FANTASTIC FOOD ◼ Since energy levels were easily depleted, the developers ensured there was at least a way of replenishing them: by eating food! Fruit was strewn around screens and munching on one would…

STAGE 1 GROUND BASE ◼ Most of Power Strike’s 17 bosses take the form of large ground installations. Master the first, and the rest will fall. How To Beat Them: You can rely on bullet cancelling a great deal here, so try to brave staying straight in the middle while holding your ground. STAGE 3 GOUND BASE ◼ Things start to pick up in Stage 3, with bigger Ground Base bosses that require a little more work to defeat. How To Beat Them: Adopting a strategy you’ll want to apply to most bosses from this point on, focus laser-type shots on one bullet spawn point at a time. STAGE 6 TILE DROP GROUND BASE ◼ By now many bosses have required a very similar strategy – but this stage 6…

What was your opinion of the original Amiga version of RoboCod? When I first saw it I was blown away, like many others were. It was the closest I’d seen to a console quality title on the Amiga. While working on the A1200 version I had a couple of trips to Vectordean where I was in full fanboy mode, but I think I managed to keep it together. How did you become involved in upgrading the game? Before I joined Millennium in April 1993, another programmer had been tasked with getting RoboCod to work on the Amiga CDTV, but he’d run into some difficulties, so it was passed over to me. At this time, everyone realised that there was no point in even considering CDTV as a viable platform. The…

» TENNIS ◼ DEVELOPER: BIT CORP ◼ YEAR: 1991 ◼ Bit Corp’s Tennis looks almost identical to Nintendo’s Game Boy title, even featuring a Mario-like umpire (the shades fool nobody), but it doesn’t play the same. Lob is replaced with a smash, and there’s no way to slice the ball. It lacks nuance, then, but if you can stomach the flicker this is a fun racket for a little while. » PUNK BOY ◼ DEVELOPER: BIT CORP/UMC ◼ YEAR: 1992 ◼ This tricky platformer tells the story of Charlie, who must save his girlfriend from a witch. To do so, Charlie butt-bounces his way across six levels in a style similar to Mickey Mouse’s own colourful adventure in Castle Of Illusion. While not quite a clone, Punk Boy takes several…

» PLAYSTATION 2 » 2002 » TECMO Back in 2008 Tecmo released Rygar: The Battle Of Argus for Nintendo’s Wii. It was an enhanced remake of Tecmo’s earlier PS2 game, Rygar: The Legendary Adventure and I’ve owned it since release… and completed it once. Recently, I bought a US copy of the original PS2 game, despite the fact that it was triple the price of the easily available PAL edition, which only runs at 50Hz, and is considered graphically inferior to the later Wii game (which I’ll now be selling). Why did I do this? I’ll tell you why – because I wanted to. Sure the Wii version does look nice, but the original game is no slouch in the graphical department either and can look great when it’s running…

» System: Switch (tested), PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X » Buy it for: £8.99 » Buy it from: Online We’ve enjoyed the vast amount of Recharged games and this is another good buy. Although it now features modernised controls like twin-stick shooting and a variety of power-ups, it still feels like the original arcade classic. You’ve still got plenty of enemy robots to take out and Evil Otto will still pursue you relentlessly if you dawdle too long. Shooting enemies increases your score multiplier and you can even forgo bonuses to boost your final score. You’ll spend most of your time in Arcade mode, but the Missions mode is also fun, requiring you to clear 20 stages of a set number of enemies. The end result is…

<INTRO> AFTER LAST MONTH’S ABSENCE DUE TO MAJOR SURGERY, ANDREW IS BACK TO THE GRIND – WITH A MASSIVE UPDATE ON AN IMPORTANT AMIGA FPS THAT IS ALSO COMING TO OTHER 16-BIT FORMATS, MORE PROJECTS FROM ANDY VAISEY (AS FEATURED IN RG252) AND THE PREVIEW OF A NEW STRATEGY GAME FOR THE NES. FOR THE REVIEWS, WE GO ON A GAME BOY COLOR ADVENTURE, PARK SOME TRAFFIC, AND JUMP INTO A PETSCII WORLD. ENJOY. </INTRO> <BODY> We originally mentioned John Tsakiris’ involvement with the Dread project in RG230, but after its first public demo, a problem arose. “KK/Altair’s new job came with a non-compete clause: forcing him to disband the team, continue alone (no external help) and make the project non-profit,” John explains. “Our plan was a commercial game with…

<INFO FROM: WALES WEBSITE: ARKANIXLABS.ITCH.IO/SPHEROID (ON RELEASE), ANDYVAISEY.ITCH.IO FORMAT: AMIGA, C64 PREVIOUS GAME: CHILLER 2, LOST REALMS OF MURKASADA 2 (C64) WORKING ON: SPHEROID (AMIGA, C64), CHILL3R (C64) /> WHAT INSPIRED SPHEROID? <Around 1988 in C64 SEUCK, I made a simple maze of coloured blocks that you moved a metal ball around, some blocks being safe and some causing you to die. That transferred over to the Amiga around 1990 when I bought AMOS and went through additions and improvements. I stopped around 1993, knee deep in A-levels. In 2022, I finally got round to resurrecting my A1200 – it booted first time. Mounting a drive image in WinUAE, I found the source and assets – however, the code would not run. I spent a couple of days relearning Blitz…

Reports emerging from the Game Developers Conference reveal some interesting commentary. Edge noted that the Wii meant Shigeru Miyamoto was finally seeing movement on the ‘Wifeometer’ – “his way of judging how much non-gamers care about his games”, the magazine explained. Indie game advocate and Spore developer Chris Hecker was less kind, with games™ reporting him saying, “The Wii is a piece of shit. I have uncovered the secret to Wii manufacturing… you take two GameCubes and some duct tape.” Both magazines saw the impact of Sony’s major showings, the platform game construction kit LittleBigPlanet and virtual social space PlayStation Home, with games™ claiming that they “eclipsed anything its rivals had to offer”, though Edge felt that “the developer audience was not bowled over by [Home], perhaps already foreseeing being pestered by marketing…

How did you get started on Dreamarena? I joined the Dreamarena admin team in early 2000. We were one of the teams at Egomaniacs.net, part of Affinity Internet Holdings, who had a contract with Sega Europe to run the Dreamarena user-generated content, mainly the European message boards. I came to the job sideways really, through language skills. Since Dreamarena was available across most of Western Europe (officially in five languages across 11 countries), nearly everyone working on the team was multilingual. I saw an ad looking for people with multiple languages and familiar with videogames, so I moved to London for the job. What were your duties? Officially we were community moderators, and eventually I became community moderator team leader. This was relatively early in the history of online communities,…

WIND AND WATER PUZZLE BATTLES • 2008 ◼ The Dreamcast is as capable with low-resolution 2D graphics as it is with silky smooth 3D, and the beautiful pixel art in Yuan Works’ puzzle game demonstrates that excellently. Despite being the oldest game on this list, copies of Wind And Water: Puzzle Battles are still readily available to buy today. STURMWIND • 2013 ◼ It takes something special for a shoot-’em-up to stand out on the Dreamcast, but this one by Duranik has rightly achieved legendary status among fans. It plays very well and its production values set a new standard for indie games at the time, with stunning graphics that rival many officially licensed releases. XENO CRISIS • 2020 ◼ Bitmap Bureau’s overhead shooter was developed for Sega’s own Mega…

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QUICKSTART FOR A QUICKSTART “Incentive kindly included a Quickstart file to save time. It’s called QS.ADV, and it’s an excellent set of starter commands, codes and messages that gives you the basics for most adventures. Load it up when you begin, and it will save you a lot of time.” KEEP A SCROLL HANDY “Good adventures take many sessions, and you’ll forget what you used Marker 7 for when you’re knee-deep into your coding. Keep notes on what each marker is checking for, which room your objects will be used in, what your verbs/nouns are, and everything else. It saves hours.” RE-USE NOUNS AND VERBS “You only have 256 verbs, nouns and adverbs available, so remember to re-use everything you can. This saves memory and allows you to use synonyms…

Fingers hovered over the telephone dial for the umpteenth time: 0 – 8 – 9 – 1, they tapped, then 5 – 5 – 5 – 0 – 0 – 3. Within seconds a recording began that regaled callers with a bunch of hints and tips about Spellbound Dizzy, the fifth adventure game featuring Codemasters’ anthropomorphic egg. Sure, it came at a cost – 36p per minute if you were calling off-peak and 48p per minute at other times – but for those desperate to solve the game’s myriad mind-boggling puzzles, it felt worth every penny. Spellbound Dizzy was difficult and frustrating but it was also varied and absolutely huge, with the latter fact worn like a badge of honour. As well as flagging up the game’s size on the…

◼ Aside from being tempted to phone the Dizzy helpline (and incur the wrath of whoever was paying the bill), magazines would, as with so many games, frequently print hints and tips and include maps to assist fellow players. But what was arguably even more helpful was a built-in cheat code for the Spectrum and Amstrad versions, allowing you to effectively crack open the game. It allowed players to start a game of Spellbound Dizzy, press Q to quit then type IWANTANOMLETTE. After restarting the game, players could press C to call up a menu that allowed them to quickly move from one location to another, access all of the game’s items, gain extra lives and bag five stars at a time (something that was essential for rescuing the Yolkfolk).…

◼ 1988’s Aleste – aka Power Strike – is just the start of an elaborate, spiralling series of shooters mostly created by Japanese studio Compile. After the success of the actual first Power Strike game, Compile released Aleste Gaiden to the MSX2 in 1989, on its Disk Station publication, which brought playable new games to gamers on a monthly basis. That same year Aleste 2 also landed on the MSX2, introducing recurring series character Ellinor, and a technical improvement on its system forebear. The following year Musha Aleste – aka MUSHA – debuted on Sega’s Mega Drive, bringing some very nice visuals and vibrant gameplay, but less than dazzling sales, thanks to a crowded shooting marketplace. SNES owners, meanwhile, were treated to the truly superb Super Aleste – aka Space…

FINAL JUSTICE ◼ Arriving in 1985, Compile’s Final Justice was one of the team’s first console releases, and an early MSX shooting game. It certainly feels primitive compared to the development team’s later works, but there’s a fun game in there that hints at the energy future Compile shmups would offer. ZANAC ◼ Coming out two years before Power Strike, Zanac offers such a similar proposition it can be considered something of a prototype, or even as Power Strike 0. Fast, intense, and stylish, it’s an essential shmup, and available in many revisions on the PS1 Zanac X Zanac compilation. BLAZING LAZERS ◼ Known as Gunhed in Japan, Blazing Lazers stands out as one of Compile’s most popular PC Engine games. Released in 1989, just a year after Power Strike,…

GUNSHIP 2000 ◼ The sequel to the immensely successful Gunship (1986), Microprose’s Gunship 2000 (1991) was a true simulation at its core. You start the game with a choice of five different helicopters, but as your rank increases, two additional models become available: another Apache variant – and the RAH-66 Comanche. LHX ATTACK CHOPPER ◼ Electronic Arts’ LHX Attack Chopper (1990) was the very first game to feature the Comanche, although it goes by a different name there: at the time, the helicopter was still known by its development name Light Helicopter Experimental – which in turn gave this game its title. The name Comanche was finally adopted in 1991. JUNGLE STRIKE ◼ Jungle Strike (1993), the sequel to the smash hit Desert Strike (which featured an Apache helicopter), puts…

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF HANNIBAL THE CAT  ◼ DEVELOPER: BIT CORP ◼ YEAR: 1993 ◼ Presentation is rarely a key consideration with Gamate games. From frequent localisation errors to poorly animated sprites and music that makes you want to empty a glue gun into your earholes, these are often basic experiences that, at best, provide a playable-enough version of a better-known title. But The Further Adventures Of Hannibal The Cat, a relatively late release in the console’s limited lifespan (it was discontinued by 1994), looks and feels relatively premium. It even opens with an expression of pride from its makers, as developer names are shown on the title screen. But start the game and it’s clear that director Sheling Chiou and team have a couple of major inspirations for this fantastical…

Raph Koster originally intended to become a writer, but was seduced by the allure of videogames while at university. After he co-created the online RPG LegendMUD, he was snapped up by Origin Systems and became lead designer on the groundbreaking MMORPG Ultima Online. He later worked on an online version of Wing Commander: Privateer, but the project was cancelled, and he moved to Sony Online to become creative director on Star Wars Galaxies. After leaving Sony, Raph established Metaplace, an early attempt at creating the metaverse, then spent several years as a consultant before founding Playable Worlds in 2018, which is currently working on an as-yet-unnamed MMO. How did you get into games? My mom brought home a Sears Pong console, from when Pong was first available in stores. We…

DOOM Atari XL <Modder was inspired by Kweepa’s superb VIC-20 version and unleashed this conversion in 2023, bringing reworked levels and familiar enemies. /> GREY C64 <Piotor Kozka’s chunky-looking FPS has had multiple previews so far, adding new features, music and weapons (including the infamous chainsaw). /> DOOM ZX SPECTRUM 128K <Digital Reality’s Doom conversion demo has been transferred from TR-DOS to TZX by Mario Viegas, meaning more people can enjoy it. /> THE RED SERPENT INVASION C64 <TRSI dropped this impressive demo version at the Evoke 2022 party, with a built-in ray caster for a 40-year-old computer. /> DOOM II: SLAYER EDITION Atari Jaguar <Recently previewed by ZeroPage, Jaguar fans will be getting reworked editions of the original, Doom II and Heretic with enhancements. />…

GRIDLOCK/JAM! <INFO FORMAT: GRIDLOCK (C64), JAM! (SPECTRUM 48K) CREDITS: CHRIS STANLY & MEGASTYLE (C64), CLIVE TOWNSEND &TEKNAMIC (SPECTRUM) PRICE: GRIDLOCK TBC, JAM €1.99 (DIGITAL) /€9.90 (TAPE WITH GYPSY TAROT BONUS GAME) WEB: MEGASTYLE.ITCH.IO/ AND TEKNAMIC.ITCH.IO/JAM /> <BODY> Following each other like traffic, these two variations on the Rush Hour board game (devised by Japanese inventor Nobuyuki Yoshigahara) were created by veteran coders returning to their early machines. Jam! appeared as a mobile-phone game from Clive in 2003, and crams more than 40 levels into the 48K Spectrum. Gridlock splits its 80 levels into 10 days loaded from disk, with multiple tunes and save points (initially every four levels, then every two levels as it gets harder). The aim is simple – move your vehicle out of the car park to the street…

CHANGING THE GAME Dear Retro Gamer, Hearing of the gigantic takeover of Activision by Microsoft is an undoubted game-changer. This could be the best thing to happen to retro gamers in ages, but it could also be the worst. With Activision having such a vast back catalogue, as well as those from its subsidiaries, will Microsoft bring those classics back to life to maybe go on smartphones etc, or will they just draw a line and concentrate on modern systems? It would be nice if someone from Microsoft was available to answer readers’ worries and give us an idea of what their thinking is. I would sure love to hear the thoughts of you guys. Kelvin Courtenay Thanks for getting in touch, Kelvin. We summed up our thoughts on the…

» PSP » 2005 » TAITO If you’re anything like me, there was a time in your life when the phrase ‘credit crunch’ was enough to set you off. Graduating into the worst employment market for over a decade wasn’t one of the best experiences I’ve ever had, and with no job I ended up as a live-in carer at the university. It was only meant to be a temporary thing, but it ended up lasting six months – a long time to go without any home consoles. I greatly appreciated Sony’s efforts to provide a home-console experience on the go with the PSP at that time, but I had plenty of pockets of downtime during the day that didn’t exactly accommodate a God Of War session. Thankfully, Exit was…

» AMSTRAD CPC » 1987 » MASTERTRONIC I received an Amstrad CPC 464 for my 14th birthday and I absolutely loved it. For some reason it came with two of the special Amsoft bundles so I had a significant amount of games to enjoy (although the less said about Bridge It the better). It was a good job that I had so many games, because there wasn’t a lot of cash flowing in the Jones house in the late-Eighties, so I often relied on borrowing games from friends or getting cash from relatives so I could enjoy new releases. It also meant that I put a considerable amount of thought into new purchases and would normally seek out titles that were arcade conversions or had an arcade theme. One of…

ON•DISC SECRETS ◼ Every GD-ROM has a regular density section, containing a warning about playing the disc in a stereo. Some games, including Sonic Adventure, Shenmue II, Dead Or Alive 2 and Under Defeat, also use the space to store bonus goodies such as desktop wallpapers. These can be accessed with a PC. HANDHELD LINK•UP ◼ Owners of the Neo Geo Pocket Color can swap data with the Dreamcast, so long as they have a pair of games that support one another and the required link cable. Games supporting this feature include Capcom Vs SNK and SNK Vs Capcom: Match Of The Millennium, and Cool Cool Toon and Cool Cool Jam. ARCADE DATA EXCHANGE ◼ Though mainly spotted in Japan, some NAOMI arcade games had VMU slots, allowing for interaction…

The DreamPi is a huge factor in the popularity of online Dreamcast games today. How did it come about? One day I was Googling stuff, and I came across people still playing the Dreamcast online and there was the DC-PC service thing that you could set up. Every few months I’d remember it and then I ordered a modem, and it’s sat in my drawer. Then the Raspberry Pi came out, I first got one because everyone got one, right? I was like, “What can I use this for? This would be perfect for that DC-PC thing.” Then in 2015 I was on paternity leave, and whilst the baby was napping – which was not often – I started fiddling with it. That’s when I realised that it was a…

» PLATFORM: Atari 7800 » YEAR: 1989 » COST: £14.99 (launch), £100+ (today, boxed), £20+ (today, unboxed) Joysticks had been the primary controllers of choice for Atari consoles ever since the introduction of the 2600 in 1977, but by the late-Eighties competing consoles from Nintendo and Sega had firmly established joypads in the console market, so this two-button joypad was Atari’s response. Its design is fairly conventional, although its d-pad is oddly positioned in the top-left corner, and like the Master System’s early controllers, it features a screw-hole for a miniature joystick. The CX78 is intended for use with the Atari 7800, as shown by its two fire buttons, and pairs of them were packed in with consoles in PAL regions. The controller was also packaged with later Atari 2600…

THE LEGEND OF APACHE GOLD ◼ Having already produced Quilled adventures such as Seabase Delta and Subsunk, author Peter Torrance was soon in his GAC stride, submitting this amusing Western lampoon for Incentive’s Medallion range. Apache Gold offers excellent graphics, a nicely balanced difficulty level and some humorous asides. IMAGINATION ◼ With Incentive quickly ducking out of the full-price adventure market, Peter Torrance turned back to budget games, releasing this curious mix of genres in late-1987. Effectively four adventures in one, Imagination begins at a desk, with the player able to select from four parodies of existing games. WINTER WONDERLAND ◼ Released in tandem with Apache Gold, Winter Wonderland is another well-written adventure with a sweet balance that’ll please beginners and veterans alike. The Lost Horizon-inspired plot ekes out intriguingly…

» NES » 1990 » CAPCOM The march of time rarely gets to me – I’d be in the wrong job if it did – but sometimes, I can’t help but notice that I’m getting older. I’ve been working on Retro Gamer for a decade now, and I was in my mid-20s when I started – definitely pretty young, although already getting on a bit as far as games journalists go. These days, I’m closer to being middle-aged than teenaged, most of my friends have kids of their own and I’ve even fulfilled my destiny of becoming Weird Uncle Nick. Amidst all of that, I occasionally wonder if I’m slowing down with age. The game that most recently inspired such a crisis of confidence was Chip ’N Dale: Rescue Rangers.…

ZX SPECTRUM ◼ If you’re going to play Spellbound on its lead platform, then be sure to try the 128K version rather than the 48K one. The developer made full use of the extra memory with improved graphics and animation. There is also more dialogue, making for a richer experience. AMSTRAD CPC ◼ The CPC version (with 128K enhancements) is a Spectrum port but it looks better than previous Dizzy outings on the computer thanks to its more detailed graphics. They actually go beyond the four-colour palette of Mode 1 thanks to the use of the raster technique. COMMODORE 64 ◼ There are two versions of Spellbound Dizzy for the Commodore 64: one is ‘lite’ with fewer screens and multiple bugs while the other is complete. There’s some nice audio…

» PC » 1992 » LUCASARTS I’ve always enjoyed LucasArts’ adventure games, and Fate Of Atlantis starts off brilliantly, with the famous archaeologist bumbling his way through Barnett College’s archives in search of a small statue. It not only highlights the excellent voical work by Doug Lee, who does a canny Ford impression, but also gives you a good indication of the humour that will follow as Indy goes on his epic quest to find the fabled lost city of Atlantis. Although Melanie has never been a big gamer, she certainly took an interest in anything that had cost us a lot of money, which meant she took a lot of interest in our first PC. When she wasn’t using it to send emails, she’d join me for the odd…

JAMES POND: UNDERWATER AGENT ◼ Released in 1990, initially on the Amiga (pictured), the original game became a surprise hit and introduced the world to a slick new hero. Its appeal is limited if you return to it after playing the sequel, but it’s still pleasing to play and provides plenty of challenge. THE AQUATIC GAMES ◼ While RoboCod was making a splash, Vectordean capitalised with this spin-off that dropped Pond and friends (the Aquabats) into a Track & Field-style game for the Mega Drive, SNES and Amiga (pictured). The events are all generally fun but it wears thin rather quickly. JAMES POND 3: OPERATION STARFISH ◼ Instead of a computer game imitating a console title, Pond’s third mission was actually developed for the Mega Drive (pictured), and it largely…

» MANUFACTURER: Panasonic » YEAR: 2001 » COST: ¥39,800 (launch), £900+ (today, boxed), £600+ (today, unboxed) Though the PlayStation 2 was capable of playing DVD movies as standard and the Xbox could play them with an inexpensive add-on, the GameCube had no such functionality. This was of little concern to Nintendo, which has rarely positioned its consoles as multimedia devices, but Panasonic felt that there was an opportunity to be seized upon. The company was already in partnership with Nintendo as the supplier of optical drives for the GameCube, so it was in a good position to negotiate the rights to manufacture an official variant of the console capable of DVD movie playback. The Panasonic Q was introduced exclusively in Japan in December 2001, with its launch price being roughly…

◼ A voxel is a volumetric pixel, ie a three-dimensional pixel. A pixel is a two-dimensional entity that contains a colour and a brightness value. A voxel, on the other hand, has an additional Z-axis – and this three-dimensionality offers significantly more space for further information. For example, the density and composition of the material it represents, the light source angle or its reflection potential. Voxels as a visualisation technique have been in use in various scientific fields since the late-Eighties – such as meteorology, where it is used to realistically calculate cloud formations. Or in medicine, where it is used in areas such as computer tomography to visualise the inner workings of the human body in three dimensions. Comanche was the very first product to bring voxels from serious…

FANTASY ZONE ARCADE, 1986 ◼ Another side-scrolling shooter with surreal visuals, Fantasy Zone remains a feast for the eyeballs so many years on from its 1986 debut. True, Opa-Opa is no Totoro in popular culture terms, but at least this game’s star is a Sega original. PARODIUS ARCADE, 1990 ◼ Konami’s cutesy but challenging shooter series is one of the core influences on Hannibal The Cat, and Parodius (or Parodius Da! as it’s known in Japan) is where this Gamate effort pinches one stage’s boss enemy from. POP’N TWINBEE GAME BOY, 1990 ◼ The Game Boy version of Pop’n TwinBee does a terrific job of translating the SNES original’s colourful action to monochrome portable play. Another so-called cute-’em-up, this is amongst the best vertical shooters on Nintendo’s famous handheld.…

How Ultima Online changed the world ◼ “We wanted to make an alternate reality,” says Raph about his ambitions for Ultima Online. “We were all sci-fi readers, we had all read Snow Crash, and we knew that we were building the next generation of what a MUD could be. We leaned really heavily into all kinds of things that were really unusual. We insisted that in our game, you had to be able to sit down. We put in a pet system, we let you own a house, we let you dye your clothing and customise your avatar to a degree that had not been seen before in games. We let you form guilds. We put in crafting. Ultima had allowed you to bake bread as a one-off here and…

◼ “People made fun of us in Ultima Online for having crafting,” recalls Raph. “Competitors ran ads that were things like, ‘Do you play games to bake bread, or do you play to crush?’ And the answer was baking bread, it turned out. With Galaxies, it was, ‘Why do you have hairdressing and dancing in this game?’ A lot of people objected to what they called the Uncle Owen/Aunt Beru version of Star Wars, rather than it being the Luke Skywalker version of Star Wars. Of course, everyone being Luke Skywalker is a little bit incompatible with an MMO.” The sandbox freedom of Star Wars Galaxies inspired some remarkable creativity, like player-run beauty pageants. “The birth of machinima was happening around this time period, and a lot of the early…

» System: Switch (version tested), PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC » Buy it for: £26.99 » Buy it from: Online This collection comprises seven Jurassic Park games from the NES, SNES, Game Boy and Mega Drive, which are top-down and side-scrolling action games that were moderately to rather well received in their day. The games are well emulated and it’s nice to have access to save states, a CRT filter and a rewind function, and the in-game maps are a great idea. The music players are good but extras are otherwise lacking, and digital manuals aren’t included – perhaps because a printed one is included with the limited-edition physical versions. It’s a mixed bag, but if you liked the deadly dinosaurs 30 years ago you’ll have fun now. >> Score 75%…

<Amiga: Superb shoot-’em-up Reshoot Proxima 3 (see RG238’s interview) is now available. Head to bit.ly/rp3-amiga /> <Amstrad CPC: You can check out the numerous entries to CPCRetroDev 2023 by visiting bit.ly/cpcdev2023 /> <Atari: VHZX Games released the Game Of The Bear puzzle-platformer trilogy (first two on 2600, third game on 7800) and Ninjish Guy In Low-Res World (also 2600) via vhzc.itch.io//> <BBC Micro: Bop7 by Tom Nash is based on the mobile hit Drop 7. Try it at bit.ly/bop7-bbc /> <Commander X16: Jimbo released a trilogy of his PETSCII conversions – Portal, Space Invaders 2 and Side-Scrolling Platformer (see Databurst) – at jimbo.itch.io /> <Mega Drive: TheRoboZ (see RG243) released the demo version of Mega R-Type with three levels, two ships and extra options. You can play it at bit.ly/mega-rtype /> <PC…

<BODY> “My main inspirations are the Front Mission and XCOM series,” says developer Wonder about the incoming Summer Island Battle Tactics. “I’m aiming to create a unique visual experience. It takes place on a tropical island across several locations and times of day – battles take place at sunrise, midday, sunset and midnight. Not everything is planned in advance. One thing I know is that the game will feature a cocktail bar – it will play a significant role between missions.” The game is being written in C using 8bitworkshop online IDE, with graphics created in NEXXT using Python scripts and Photoshop. “For coding assistance, I know I can always count on my buddy ChatGPT (GPT4) and the NESDev community,” Wonder tells us. But when can we expect the game?…