Indholdsfortegnelse for No. 255 i Retro Gamer

Sega has recently revealed a raft of new entries in classic series, showing brief snippets of new Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi, Golden Axe, Shinobi and Streets Of Rage games. None of these series has had a new console or PC game in the last decade, with the exception of Streets Of Rage. Details about all of the games are thin on the ground, but the original developers are involved with at least some of them.…

Grand Theft Auto IV was unveiled this month, for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. The first HD entry in the series was to be a return to Liberty City, starring Niko Bellic – “an Eastern European immigrant, whose shady dealings back home have landed him in hot water with local gangs”, according to Official Xbox 360 Magazine. In Official PlayStation Magazine, Rockstar’s Dan Houser explained that the team’s goal was to make the game feel “more organic, fluid and precise” than past GTA games, and that he felt “the artificial intelligence needs to have a similar quality to the visuals or it’s not going to hold together”. Regarding political satire, he noted that the team was “confident about satirising certain people’s responses to [the war on terror], and using…

Summer 1989. Indiana Jones was back on the big screen in The Last Crusade and there was not one but two official videogames based on it: The Graphic Adventure and The Action Game. But if you wanted the thrills and derring-do of the Indiana Jones movies distilled into a single game, there was another option: Rick Dangerous. There was room for this Indy wannabe because it was neither an adventure nor an action game. Rick Dangerous was a puzzle game. Yes, it was a platformer, and that meant jumping and climbing, but it was rarely about reflexes. Generally you didn’t have time to react to the ever-present threats around you. One wrong turn and a spear would skewer you. Another misstep and spikes would impale you. It seemed that instant…

ATARI ST ■ The game was developed on the ST, so all other versions were based on this one. As a native ST game the presentation is top notch, featuring cartoon-style sprites and detailed backgrounds. The audio is excellent too, with effective sound samples used throughout. PC ■ In EGA mode this is like a halfway house between the ST and 8-bit versions, while in CGA mode it gives the Spectrum a run for its money in the crazy colour stakes. As for music: there isn’t any. Not a note. There are sound effects in the form of blips and beeps. AMSTRAD CPC ■ This is pretty good. The graphics are nice and colourful, if a little blocky, and the CPC’s palette is a good fit for the game (particularly…

» PLATFORM: AMIGA » RELEASED: 1994 » DEVELOPER: TERRAMARQUE The Amiga never quite felt like it was in the blast radius of the fighting game explosion of the early Nineties. A compromised conversion of Street Fighter II called the computer’s ability to host arcade-style fighting games into question, and most of the original efforts did little to improve the situation. In 1994, the Finnish team Terramarque made its own attempt to prove the doubters wrong. One look at Elfmania in action is enough to explain why it was so exciting. The background artwork is fantastic throughout – highly detailed with plenty of colour, a good deal of animation and line-scrolling effects. In fact, we’d go so far as to say that they’re arcade quality. The fighters are large, well animated…

KENDO ◼ Kendo began as a variation of sword fighting to ensure that students would survive the training. Over time, this developed into a martial art in its own right. In Budokan, kendo is highly favourable, due to its long range, strength and high speed. KUNCHAKU ◼ The two-piece stick was made famous by Bruce Lee’s mastery in the 1972 film Fist Of Fury. The weapon began life as a flail, used by farmers, and then found its way into karate training. In Budokan, the combination of long range, high impact and speed makes the nunchaku an excellent choice. KARATE ◼ Karate (kara-te), or ‘empty hand’, originated in Okinawa as a means of self-defence for the common people, who were not allowed to carry weapons. In Budokan, karate is the…

» DREAMCAST » 2000 » KONAMI The entrance of my local Sega Park is a location that appears to be permanently burned into my memory. To the right of the Crazy Taxi cabinet literally shouting for attention, there stands a machine taking the opposite approach, beckoning potential punters over with a cool female voice. But more often than not it’s in use, with the radio operator urging the player, “The police are under fire, please provide backup!” Everybody seems to love Silent Scope – and why wouldn’t they? The gimmick of the tiny LCD display in the scope makes for a spectacularly immersive experience. Back when the home versions first arrived, I was convinced that I should avoid them. Magazine reviews told me that the game lost a lot of…

FOCUS YOUR TARGET ◼ It’s tempting to rush into a battle in Diablo II sword a-flailing, but it will often happen that the real threat is on the perimeter of the pack, preparing to ambush you or casting nasty spells from afar. Pay attention to everything you’re fighting, not just the fodder upfront. WALK NOT RUN ◼ We get it, you need to get around quick. But if you’re hit while you’re running, you have no defence and your block chance is reduced by two-thirds. Get into the habit early on of toggling running off as you enter into battle to avoid turning yourself into mincemeat. HIRE A MERCENARY ◼ Diablo II is not an easy game especially when you start notching things up to Nightmare difficulty, so having a helping…

David Bishop has worked on numerous gaming classics covering a wide range of formats and genres over the past four decades. People will have experienced some of his titles or recognised his name without necessarily realising why, but David was there from the early days, and he continues to bring his expertise to gaming some 40 years later. Somewhat surprisingly (as you’ll learn), it was his love of playing chess that gave him that first opportunity, and where it took him is a fascinating story. Exploding puzzlers, spooky houses, spice mining and Disney classics are all part of David’s portfolio, as we are about to discover… When did you first get into computer games? How did that happen? I was a student at Aston University, and I spent a lot…

◼ David’s range of roles within the games industry is impressive, covering designing, producing, or marketing games for dozens of publishers. UK developer and publisher Domark used Andromeda to write a game based on a design by Ian Livingstone. David’s marketing expertise helped launch Domark’s publishing label with the result of the partnership being an adventure game with a £25,000 cash prize called Eureka!, which debuted in 1984. David followed that up with design duties on the Domark game that marked Roger Moore’s last assignment as James Bond, the 1985 action title based on A View To A Kill. When David was at Virgin Games in the early Nineties, apart from working on Dune and the Disney console titles, he also had special advisor responsibilities for Westwood Studios on the…

» System: Switch » Buy it for: £24.95 » Buy it from: Retail While all six featured games are available digitally, this Japanese offering is currently the only way to enjoy them as a physical release. It’s worth shelling out for, as even with import charges, it’s the same price as buying them separately and offers plenty of brawling for your cash. Super Double Dragon and Double Dragon Advance are the collection’s highlights, but the three NES games are also fun, with only DD 4 disappointing. While the emulation isn’t quite up to M2’s standard, it’s still good and there’s a slew of display options, regional versions for the later games and even online play for Double Dragon 1-4. It feels a little cheap, but this is still an essential…

<INFO FROM: THAILAND WEBSITE: C64DEMO.COM FORMAT: C64 WORKING ON: SABRE WULF REMASTERED /> HOW DID YOUR SABRE WULF PROJECT START? I’d seen Jon Eggelton’s reimagining of a loader screen – and he’d redrawn a lot of the in-game graphics too. I thought I could just replace the old graphics with new ones – how hard could it be? I needed to find extra memory and the screen-draw routine was using the most inefficient routine imaginable. I realised that it would be more work to patch the game than to rewrite it… and Jon was happy with the idea too. WHAT IS YOUR DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT LIKE AND WHO ELSE IS INVOLVED? Much of the work is in C++ – for converting graphics, generating tables, etc. I use Visual Studio Professional along…

» ATARI 7800 » 1984 » ATARI INC With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to see why the Atari 7800 wasn’t the success that Atari had hoped it might be, and a big part of the problem is that it had all of yesterday’s greatest hits. Asteroids is a great example of that. Though the arcade original is a classic that remains beloved to this day, it was already five years old by the intended launch date of the 7800 in 1984. It was even more dated by the time the console actually reached retail, and that was a pattern – games like Donkey Kong, Galaga and Joust all appeared on the console years past their prime. The thing is, Asteroids may not have been the freshest arcade hit when…

» MANUFACTURER: Magnavox » YEAR: 1972 » COST: $99.95 (launch), £400+ (today, boxed), £290+ (today, unboxed) A defence contractor may seem an unlikely place for the invention of home videogame hardware, but Sanders Associates employee Ralph Baer worked on his “Brown Box” prototype for years until it was ready to go into production. The consumer electronics company Magnavox would produce and sell this invention under the name Odyssey. The console itself is a boxy device made from white and black plastic with a woodgrain trim, with dial controllers that are unconventional by today’s standards. The Odyssey doesn’t have a CPU or ROM cartridges, and different games are produced with the use of program cards to modify the console’s internal diode-transistor logic circuits. It can display very limited black and white…

» PLATFORM: ARCADE » RELEASED: 1982 » DEVELOPER: VID KIDZ You were only a couple of levels into Robotron: 2084 and you were already feeling the pressure. Enemies were attacking you from all angles and the onslaught was relentless. Granted, using a second joystick to fire in any direction was certainly helpful, but it didn’t stop you from being overwhelmed by the sheer number of foes you were facing. It felt like the developer was out to get you and you kept praying for a reprieve that sadly never came. Reaching Robotron’s fifth stage not only introduced you to a brand-new enemy, but also saw the very people you were trying to rescue turn against you. Initially you’re excited by the sheer number of women patrolling the screen as they…

STICK IT TO ’EM ■ Rick’s stick doesn’t do much, beyond stunning enemies for a second (note that, exclusively on the C64, you can pass through stunned enemies). However, it can also be used for triggering traps. If you spot a block with an indent, try poking it and see what happens. CLIMBING THE WALLS ■ If you find a ladder is rigged with an unavoidable trap, preventing you from climbing up, check the walls for handholds (these can be quite hard to spot on the 8-bit versions). Sometimes these secret ‘steps’ will lead you to an idol or other collectable item. PING IT OVER ■ If you hear a ping sound it means you’ve triggered a bonus. If you then quickly reach another point, you’ll hear a fanfare sound…

◼ Eight different prototypes of Vectorman 2 have been preserved online thanks to the efforts of a gaming preservationist known simply as drx. Most of the prototypes are each dated around August 1996, including one that’s virtually identical to the final game, giving us a pretty clear picture of when it was completed. One of the most well-known features among these August prototypes is a game over screen which features a broken Vectorman desperately reaching out for help. This was cut out at the last minute for reasons lost to time, which was an odd choice as the original beta version was much more memorable than the game over screen in the final game. However, the most interesting finds actually lie in the earlier undated prototype. While some stages, such…

Brilliant Backgrounds Excellently drawn, with great use of shading and line-scrolling floors that mimic the kind used in Street Fighter II, the backgrounds in Elfmania are perhaps the best seen in any Amiga fighter. Delightful Details From tentacles marauding in the foreground of a stage to fish leaping from the water, Elfmania’s incidental animations add a heaping helping of atmosphere while never slowing down the action. Burly Brawlers The characters in Elfmania strike a perfect balance – they can be pretty big, they’re all well animated and they move around the screen as smoothly as you could possibly hope they would. Sensible Size Elfmania comes on just two floppy disks and supports a second disk drive, meaning that disk swapping is kept to an absolute minimum – always a welcome…

◼ Budokan was released on the Mega Drive in the autumn of 1990 – and it was a high-quality conversion: the controls were perfectly adapted to the gamepad, Miyuki Hirose finally made noises appropriate to their female body type, and (exclusive to this version) there was even a storyline! The interesting thing about this version, however, is how it came about. In the early days of the Mega Drive, Electronic Arts was not an officially licensed Sega developer for the console. Of course, this didn’t stop EA founder Trip Hawkins from importing a few systems after the console’s release in Japan and having them analysed and reverse-engineered by a team led by Jim Nitchals and Steve Hayes in a so-called ‘clean room’ process. One team stripped the Mega Drive to its…

By any measurement you can think of, the original Diablo was a booming success. Initially it was hoped that it could sell what would have been an impressive 100,000 copies, but that number shot up to 500,000 on launch and beyond two million after its first year in stores. Yet videogames are unlike most other creative endeavours, there’s no ‘difficult second album’ because those first debut releases are in many ways foundational rather than revolutionary. Think of Civilization, The Sims, System Shock, Portal, Assassin’s Creed, Street Fighter; countless times in the industry we’ve seen an impressive, enjoyable and successful debut game practically humiliated by the next game in the series. Many of the very best games in the world are sequels, and it’s typically down to the fact that their creators…

◼ One of the things about going back in time with videogames is that there can be a concern that things won’t be quite as ‘all-time classic’ as you once remembered. It was the same worry with Diablo II: Resurrected, which as far as remasters go, didn’t aim to do too much. It added modern visuals that could be toggled with the retro original, but the core game and its balancing was all (rightfully) left untouched. A handful of neat quality-of-life changes did make their way in, however, such as a Shared Stash between each of your characters or the merciful option to toggle automatic gold collection. Players could even load in their old Diablo II save and continue exactly where they left off two decades earlier. What was especially…

◼ CAESAR THE CAT [1983] ZX SPECTRUM ◼ EUREKA! [1984] ZX SPECTRUM ◼ SCARABEUS/INVADERS OF THE LOST TOMB [1985] COMMODORE 64 ◼ THINK! [1985] VARIOUS ◼ ZIG ZAG [1987] COMMODORE 64 ◼ BOMBUZAL [1988] VARIOUS ◼ PHOBIA [1989] COMMODORE 64 ◼ WONDERLAND [1990] VARIOUS ◼ DUNE [1992] VARIOUS ◼ COOL SPOT [1993] VARIOUS ◼ MICK & MACK AS THE GLOBAL GLADIATORS [1993] VARIOUS ◼ ROBOCOPY VS TERMINATOR [1993] VARIOUS ◼ DISNEY’S ALADDIN [1993] VARIOUS ◼ DISNEY’S THE JUNGLE BOOK [1993] VARIOUS ◼ DISNEY’S THE LION KING [1994] VARIOUS ◼ THE 7TH GUEST [1994] VARIOUS ◼ TOONSTRUCK [1996] VARIOUS ◼ CIRCUIT BREAKERS [1998] PLAYSTATION ◼ CREATURES ADVENTURES [1999] PC ◼ RAT ATTACK! [2000] VARIOUS…

◼ “I did a preview of Little Computer People, the early life sim by the genius David Crane released on the C64 back in 1985. I chose to make it a ‘diary of an LCP’, so everything was from the little guy’s perspective looking out at the world from the other side of the TV screen. I shared it with David Crane who also really liked my treatment. He even sent me a development version where the LCP’s dog took a dump every minute or so leaving an ever-increasing number of doggy poos littered all over the house!”…

TEE TIME by Jan Volz (apollo) <This superb mini-golf game works well with its overlay, and later holes add switches and teleporters to increase the fun./> VECVENTURE by Alexander Bauer (R4G3H4CK3R) <A fully fledged Rogue-style RPG with plenty of different enemies and effective use of the controller’s multiple buttons./> WETCAT by Sebastian Leininger (nop) <Reminiscent of Splatoon’s Squid Jump, keep your cat above water by jumping between platforms to collect fish and scratch enemies./> VECDRIFT by stackoverflow <There are certainly other Vectrex driving games available out there, but this has a starting choice of car and smooth handling./> FREERIDGE by Adrian Thees (the_last_bitbender) <A cute infinite runner where the penguin snowboards down the slope, jumping over boulders and ducking under trees./>…

It’s quite possible we’ll never have a decade like the Nineties in gaming again. Think about it. When was the last time you can recall a span of ten years that saw not only spectacular growth within the industry itself, but an incredible variety of consoles, systems and games to enjoy? In the early Nineties you had the rise of 16-bit systems and handhelds, which quickly gave way to 32-bit machines like the PlayStation, then powerful systems like the Dreamcast in the decade’s twilight years. That’s an exponentially huge leap in technology in a short space of time and that technology unlocked all manner of interesting games as the decade progressed. Humble 8-bit computers were still offering gaming experiences like Lemmings, Turrican and Mayhem In Monsterland in the early Nineties,…

» SNES » 1992 » KONAMI One of the things I loved about the SNES on release was the console’s Mode 7 graphic mode. Whenever I played a new SNES game I always looked out for games that utilised it and I was rarely left disappointed by what I found. From its extensive use in F-Zero to more sparing effects like the overhead map of Actraiser, developers always found a way to impress me and I was always looking for my next Mode 7 hit. Konami made some fantastic use of Mode 7 on the SNES, from its eye-popping top-down levels in Contra Spirits to the mesmerising swinging chandeliers found in Super Castlevania IV, but one of my favourite uses of Mode 7 is in its 1992 hit Turtles In…

◼ Early during Vectorman 2’s preproduction phase Jason intended to build the game around an open non-linear world that was slowly unlocked as the protagonist collected more transformations in the vein of Nintendo’s Super Metroid. This version of the game would have rewarded exploration and experimentation by allowing players to utilise transformations to unveil hidden secrets. Areas would have also naturally flowed from one to the other as Vectorman battled his way to stop the insect queen. Sadly, these plans had to be scrapped once the crew learned of the eight-month deadline looming over them. It was simply impossible to pull off such an endeavour in so little time. Still, traces of those initial ambitions can still be found in the final game. While the rest of the game jumps…

The Nippon Budokan is a sports hall in Chiyoda, Tokyo, built in 1964 to host the martial arts events of the Summer Olympics. Since then, it has been used not only for competitions but also for concerts – The Beatles, ABBA, Depeche Mode, Bon Jovi, Prince and The Rolling Stones have all performed there. Development of the game of the same name began in the early summer of 1988 and was driven by three people in particular: Michael Kosaka, Ray Tobey and Rick Tiberi – three gaming veterans who not only had hits like Skyfox (1984) and Skate or Die! (1987) to their credit, but also had personal martial arts experience. “Michael Kosaka was very experienced in aikido. I think he taught in his spare time. I had learned some…

» PLATFORM: PlayStation 2 » YEAR: 2000 » COST: £29.99 (launch), £17+ (today, boxed), £5+ (today, unboxed) When Nintendo put four control ports on the N64, the world took notice. The undeniable multiplayer appeal of games like Mario Kart 64 and GoldenEye 007 ensured that when the next generation of consoles arrived, four control ports would be standard – or at least they would have been, had Sony played along. For reasons unfathomable, the market leader decided that access to such sociable antics would remain locked behind an accessory. The PS2 Multitap’s horizontal lines are designed to resemble the console and, just like its PlayStation predecessor, the device allows four controllers and memory cards to be connected via a single port. The Multitap received plenty of support over the years,…

» DS » 2005 » INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS Although I’ve never been a big fan of conventional RPGs, I do love ones that contain a nice dose of strategy. As a result, you’ll find series like Fire Emblem and Advance Wars in my collection, while the likes of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest are rather thin on the ground. While Fire Emblem is perhaps my favourite SRPG, the Advance Wars series comes a close second. I didn’t care too much for the Battalion Wars games, but I love all the core titles that received a Western release, with Dual Strike being a particular favourite. Released roughly two years after Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising, Dual Strike ramps up the ambition for the series in a number of ways. It focusses on…

» System: Switch (tested), PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X » Buy it for: £17.99 » Buy it from: Online, retail Last Boss 88’s new shmup doesn’t disappoint when it comes to value for money. In addition to numerous difficulty modes, Shinorubi offers a staggering number of ways to play, including Caravan modes, Boss Rush options, one mode that replaces your bomb with a shield and even an option that focusses on collecting cute pigs. What a pity then that its core gameplay is lacking. Bullet patterns feel a little too messy, your ship’s firepower takes up too much of the screen, and the decision to scroll vertically on a horizontal layout means everything feels too zoomed in. If Shinorubi’s core mechanics matched its game modes it would be…

<Amstrad CPC: Mighty Street Fighter (pictured above) from AmstradGGP should be available by the time you read this. Fight your way to amstradggp.com/> <BBC Micro: Matthew Atkinson released Repton 3 Redux, requiring 16K Sideways RAM, which adds levels from the data disks and multiple improvements. Go digging for it at bit.ly/repton3-redux/> <C64: Evil Dungeon II is the dungeon-crawling sequel to 2022’s Evil Dungeon. Both games are available digitally via retroarts.itch.io or physically at shop.retroarts.de/> <Dreamcast: DreamSDK is a new Windows-based development system, with dedicated support on the DCEmulation forum. You can find more information at dreamsdk.org/> <Game Boy: Tony Wang’s GB BASIC is a “retro fantasy console” with built-in asset editors (for tiles, maps, sprites and sound) that can export a Game Boy-compatible ROM. It’s available at bit.ly/gb-basic/> <NES: The NESDev…

<BODY> The origins of this prequel are quite unusual. “I found a game jam where the theme was ‘cat and dog protagonists’, and imagined a case where a cat doesn’t land on his paws,” says developer Yann. “I thought of a funny name, and Waffles came quickly!” The original point-and-click game was for PC, while the GBC prequel has been successfully Kickstarted. “I had much more to tell about my characters, especially their early days; how Waffles started as an inspector,” continues Yann, mentioning the game was created on GBStudio as, “It’s the perfect game engine for beginners.” Inspector Waffles is notable for its story and clever interrogation system. “I ‘borrowed’ the system from LA Noire and adapted it to make it simpler (no face recognition), adding the clues list,”…

For Phil Garner, his life in gaming is all about family and friends. “My first game system was a Spectrum 48K which was shared with my brother Stephen and dad, David,” he tells us. “My dad would play Gulpman while my mum was pregnant with me, causing me to writhe around. We [later] perfected Rainbow Islands and Bubble Bobble, trying to beat my best friend Jon who was a cut above the rest when it came to high scores. We fought for the potions, letter bubbles and diamonds that filled the secret rooms. My dad passed away in June 2023 and as he started this all it’s my job to continue it for him. As a tribute to him, I framed a copy of Gulpman and displayed it in my…

THE COVER STAR SUPER MARIO WORLD Nothing says the Nineties like the world’s most famous plumber in one of his best adventures. PAL prices vary depending on condition, mint copies hit £130 while a used copy is about £35. Those who just wish to play the game can pick up a cart for about £10. PRINCE OF PERSIA The Apple II version doesn’t come up for sale often. A loose disk recently sold for less than £15 with unsold listings of complete boxes hitting over the £100 mark. RICK DANGEROUS This is a common Atari ST release that can be picked up rather cheaply. Loose disks go for as little as £2, although a complete boxed version did sell for £130 in France recently. VECTORMAN 2 This exclusive North American…