Indholdsfortegnelse for No. 256 i Retro Gamer

A trio of gaming legends have sadly passed away recently. Jay Scott was VP of Rockstar Vancouver and worked on titles like Bully. Brian Thalken, who was Rockstar Vancouver’s president, told us, “Jay was such an interesting character. One day he walked into work with Queens Of The Stone Age. I was gobsmacked. Apparently he used to manage some of them.” While Jennell Jaquays’ name might not be familiar, the veteran of id Software, Coleco and other companies worked on the likes of Quake II and Quake III Arena and was the project lead on the ColecoVision’s excellent version of Donkey Kong. Scott Blackwood was an EA veteran and has worked on numerous games, including Beetle Adventure Racing! and the Skate series. “He was responsible for igniting so many careers…

“THEY MADE CRASH A BANDICOOT BECAUSE IT WAS A UNIQUE CONCEPT, AND THE IDEA OF HIM BEING ORANGE AND BLUE REALLY WORKED TOO” DAN AREY By the autumn of 1994, most popular gaming genres had begun to transition from sprites to polygons, with the likes of Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter and Descent respectively showing how racing games, beat-’em-ups and shooters could work in 3D. Polygon platform games hadn’t yet been tackled, however, and so when Naughty Dog founders Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin relocated their company from Boston to California they spent the trip coming up with concepts for a 3D platformer that would ultimately become Crash Bandicoot. At almost exactly the same time, Nintendo began producing Super Mario 64. The two games were subsequently released in 1996 – Crash…

CRASH TAG TEAM RACING Far from just a kart racer, Crash Tag Team Racing distinguishes itself with a mechanic where you merge with an opponent and their vehicle, and get a mounted cannon to take out the other drivers with. It also has platforming and FPS minigames, and unlockable cartoons. CRASH BOOM BANG! Unusual in that progression relies on rolling dice to move between squares like in a board game, Crash Boom Bang! is essentially a series of minigames. The DS title’s varied challenges include blowing into the system to inflate balloons and a stylus-based Whack-A-Mole. CRASH OF THE TITANS Part platformer/part beat-’em-up, Crash Of The Titans sets tasks such as collecting a substance called Mojo to earn new moves and defeating a set number of foes. There are also…

● Pro 2 wired controller gives you more ways to play. The Custom Profile Switch Button holds 3 Custom Profiles that can be switched on the fly. ● With an enhanced grip, Pro 2 wired controller allows you to hold the controller with even less effort. ● Ultimate Software gives you elite control over every piece of your controller - now on Android and iOS. ● Customise button mapping, adjust stick & trigger sensitivity, vibration control and create macros with any button combination. Create Controller Profiles and switch between them at any time with the Custom Profile Switch. ● Mapping - Assign the buttons with the functionality to your liking. ● Sticks - Customise each stick for a higher precision control. ● Triggers - Adjust the ranges of your triggers…

AMSTRAD CPC ◼ There’s a suitably blue hue to the Amstrad’s loading screen, and this version plays well, scrolling neatly and displaying Dermot Quinn’s witticisms in a crisp and clear style. As with the other versions, question marks remain over long-term play, but the branching decisions and open-ended style are well-presented. COMMODORE 64 ◼ For shoot-’em-up-obsessed C64 owners, the Mosaic game no doubt offers a vastly less than visceral thrill. Nevertheless, Yes, Prime Minister’s smoothly scrolling display (including an appropriate auburn office for Hacker) and branching gameplay make it one of the computer’s more distinctive offerings. BBC MICRO ◼ The BBC version of Yes, Prime Minister is (ironically) the most diverse, eschewing the twee scenery of Hacker’s office for a simple set of icons set against a stark black background.…

DELVING DEEP AKALABETH: WORLD OF DOOM DEVELOPER: RICHARD GARRIOTT RELEASE: 1979 ◼ Written entirely in Applesoft BASIC, Richard Garriott’s first commercially published game is nothing short of legendary. Despite being simplistic in looks thanks to its use of low-resolution wireframe graphics, the game set the tone for future RPGs and it’s rightly considered as one of the most important games ever made. Created by Garriott (aka Lord British) while he was still at school, the game was originally self-published with just 12 copies sold in a computer store in Texas. Packaging took the form of resealable storage bags into which a photocopied cover and instructions were inserted. Yet it’s highly unlikely that you will come across this particular version and, if you did, expect to pay huge sums (in 2013,…

“YOU OFTEN HAD TO EASE OFF THE ACCELERATOR AND PICK THE BEST PATH THROUGH ALL THE HAZARDS” Poor Tatsumi. In TX-1 (1983) and Buggy Boy (1985), the Japanese developer created two of the most advanced arcade racing games of the era, yet outside of its homeland, few will be familiar with the name. TX-1 was manufactured in the West by Atari, under licence from Namco, while Buggy Boy was distributed by Taito in Europe and Data East in North America (where it was renamed Speed Buggy). All these big arcade names put Tatsumi firmly in the shade – and to compound matters, when Buggy Boy is mentioned these days, many gamers are likely to think of Elite Systems, the UK developer which successfully converted the game to home computers in…

◼ Around the time that Buggy Boy was released, Elite Systems made a decision to move away from coin-op conversions, citing the rising cost of licences. Its plan was to release original arcade-style games instead, and one of the first to be developed was Aquablast, an unofficial follow-up to Buggy Boy that swapped buggies for boats and roads for rivers. The gameplay was similar and so was the underlying code, with the C64, CPC and ST/Amiga versions of Aquablast all being built upon Buggy Boy’s foundations. Martin Ward has revealed that he introduced many technical enhancements to the 16-bit version, including a faster framerate, improved 3D effects and more colourful backgrounds. So what happened to Aquablast? Shortly before it was completed, Domark saw the game and earmarked it for its…

One of the real prizes in this particular project is Attack Of The Mutant Camels ’89 – a version of the game intended for the ill-fated Konix Multisystem. That name will be familiar to British gamers of the era but it’s a very obscure piece of history, which Chris sees as an important illustration of just how regionally diverse the gaming market of the late-Eighties was. “From the American perspective, if you had heard of it at all, you had to be a huge nerd reading every issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine. Nobody was talking about it in the American magazines with any seriousness,” he recalls. “Going back and reading issues of The Games Machine and things like that, it was wall to wall coverage, they were very excited…

Jonathan Griffiths grew up near Dover in Kent and spent his early student days in a grammar school, not encountering computers until he was doing A levels in the sixth form. “We initially had a teletype terminal connected to an ICL 2900 Mainframe based at the University Of Kent in Canterbury,” explains Jonathan. “That was the first six months or so and then the school got an RML 380Z. Around the same time I was following all the adverts in the computer magazines, and I put an order in for the Sinclair ZX80. Shortly afterwards I saw adverts for the Acorn Atom, so I cancelled my ZX80 order and went for an Acorn Atom kit instead.” With help from a classmate, Jonathan built the Acorn Atom and immediately began to…

n One of the earliest arcade cabinets ever produced was Tank from Atari and Kee Games in 1974, which simplistically depicted two tanks roving around an open arena with various walls and obstacles to hide behind, with the ultimate goal to destroy the other tank. That top-down view would influence various tank games that appeared later, and that lineage was transformed in 1980 thanks to Atari’s 3D vector Battlezone. The 1981 pseudo-computer-generated imagery that appeared in the Tron movie from Walt Disney included a sequence with battling tanks, which then inspired a whole slew of arcade and home-computer games afterwards, although based on fantasy vehicles rather than real tank hardware. The various home-computer titles ramped up the genre by the end of that decade, with simulators like Microprose M1 Tank…

The early days of the CD-ROM were anything but glamorous: games like Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective (1991) featured postage stamp-sized videos, and cheap shareware collections tended to use the discs’ ample storage space as a digital dumping ground. With filler like this, the hot new format would never take off. It needed a killer app – and that meant creating a killer company first: Trilobyte. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1966, Graeme Devine says he started programming at the age of nine. After working for Atari, Activision and Lucasfilm Games, he set up his own companies, Program Techniques and IC&D, before moving to California in 1988 to work for Mastertronic, where he developed games and acquired a solid knowledge of advanced compression techniques. The second important name is Rob Landeros.…

■ After wowing gamers in the Nineties, The 7th Guest is now hoping to pull the same trick in the VR space. Although it’s only licensed from Trilobyte and doesn’t involve the game’s original creators, it’s obvious that Vertigo Games is a big fan of the original. From the moment you find yourself on a small boat with only a paddle to get you to shore, it’s obvious that this is a new take on the popular game. You’ll still be solving puzzles and you’ll still meet a selection of eccentric guests, but puzzles and plotlines won’t necessarily play out as you’d expect. Puzzles have been massively overhauled to make use of the benefits that VR can bring, meaning that The 7th Guest now feels like an elaborate set of…

■ Fumito Ueda initially planned Shadow Of The Colossus as an online multiplayer game. The working title was NICO: a play on ‘Ico 2’, with ‘ni’ being the pronunciation of ‘two’ in Japanese. Eventually it evolved into a single-player adventure in which you roam a desolate landscape hunting colossi, giant beings you must climb and destroy. First released on PlayStation 2 in 2005, it was remastered first for PlayStation 3 and then fully remade for the PlayStation 4 in 2018 by Bluepoint Games.…

How did you get into the games industry? I think I was about 16, and there was a thing in Commodore User magazine: send in your high score on these Commodore 64 games and you can come and playtest this game up in London. So I sent in my high scores, and they called me up. It was Mega Apocalypse, which Simon Nicol had written, and Simon was there. So I started chatting with him, and when we got to the end of the day, I said if you need anyone to help out, give us a shout. And so I actually spent most of that summer down in Brighton playtesting Mega Apocalypse. How did you end up converting Mega Apocalypse to the BBC Micro? I’d been working at school…

■ Richard recalls a hairy moment in 1989 when he was under pressure to deliver the Amiga and Atari ST conversions of Hard Drivin’ in time for Christmas. Richard, development manager John Kavanagh and programmer Jurgen Friedrich had been working around the clock at Domark’s London offices to get it finished. “Our disk replicator was in Bradford,” Richard recalls. “So Jurgen literally popped the disks out of the drives on the Amiga and the ST and gave them to me, and I got in my car and drove up the M1. I hadn’t slept in like two days. And I vividly remember waking up on the M1 as I went over the rumble strip because I’d fallen asleep. I got off at a service station – coffee, cigarettes, Coke –…

» System: Switch » Buy it for: £6.99 » Buy it from: Online Fans of Gremlin’s iconic mole should be more than happy with this new collection. While it’s incredibly bare in terms of its presentation and lacks Monty Is Innocent and Impossamole, it’s still decent value. Sam Stoat Safe-Breaker is the weakest game, which leaves two versions of Wanted! Monty Mole, Monty On The Run, Auf Wiedersehen Monty and Moley Christmas to enjoy. One nice touch is that both C64 and ZX Spectrum versions of most games are included, along with two difficulty levels. The ability to create save points and rewind is useful, but the screen-sizing options, filters, lack of CPC versions and the inability to fully customise controls do bring the overall package down somewhat. >> Score…

<INTRO> MODERN GAMES GET REMASTERED, SO IT IS INTERESTING TO SEE ONE OF MY FAVOURITE C64 ARCADE CONVERSIONS GETTING THE SAME TREATMENT IN OUR MAIN FEATURE. ELSEWHERE, WE SAVE THE PROCESSORS IN DATA MAN, CAST MORE SPELLS WITH THE BRILEY WITCH CHRONICLES SEQUEL, PLOT TACTICS WITH THE STRIFE SISTERS ON PC ENGINE, ESCAPE A ZX SPECTRUM FOREST, AND LOOK FORWARD TO A GRAPHICALLY IMPRESSIVE MASTER SYSTEM PLATFORMER. 2024 IS ALREADY SHAPING UP TO BE GREAT. </INTRO> <BODY> Davide Bottino has fond memories of TAD Corporation’s Toki. “In the summer of 1990 my friends and I went crazy for Toki and played it at our local bar,” he recalls. Although Davide saw the C64 cartridge advertised in ZZAP! Italia, he didn’t play that conversion until many years later. “There are several…

<BODY> Wee Knight’s first adventure was in the entertaining Castle Escape (bit.ly/castleescape-zx), and now he must escape the forest – by finding four keys to unlock four chests. Each screen is filled with numerous gold coins to collect, but there’s also plenty of wildlife that drains energy, and magical flowers and mushrooms that can help or hinder Wee Knight. This is classic Spectrum platforming action, with proceeds going to the PKD Foundation for sufferers of a specific kidney disease. The difficulty is high, but everything is well presented, so give it a go and donate. </BODY> SCORE: 82%…

Dear Retro Gamer, I’m so excited that we’re now entering 2024. Why, because you can now put my favourite game on the cover. I adore the Silent Hill games and particularly love Shattered Memories. It might be a remake of the original game, but it’s done in an incredibly novel way that still feels impactful after all these years. It scared the bejesus out of me as a teenager and it’s still able to make me jump today. The original Wii version is still the best, but I’ve also got the PS2 and PSP versions and they’re not bad either. The remake of Silent Hill 2 is out this year, so putting Shattered Memories on the cover would be perfect timing. Many thanks, Jason Turner Wow, it feels like only…

This is normally a bumper time of year for previews, as the news from E3 makes its way to the printed page. However, 2007 saw the debut of the revamped E3 Media And Business Summit, a much smaller event taking place in July rather than May, so it was up to the summer releases to keep players interested. Fortunately, they were up to the job. On the Xbox 360, Forza Motorsport 2 received scores of 5/5 from 360, 9/10 from Edge, 9/10 from Official Xbox 360 Magazine and 8/10 from games™ – enough to claim pole position for the month. The official magazine felt that it was “not that innovative, but what you’re getting instead is a super-slick, very well presented and polished racing game”. Edge opined that it “fails…

CRASH TEAM RACING The first racer set in the Crash Bandicoot world features tracks based on the platformers that preceded it, and Crash, his allies and foes as contestants. The crates from the earlier titles are scattered around each course, each of which contains weapons and power-ups. CRASH BASH The insane challenges in Crash Bash range from chucking TNT at rivals to pushing them off icebergs! It’s best played against other people, but the fact that it includes everything from hopping around on pogo sticks to driving tanks means that its solo mode is fun too. CRASH BANDICOOT: THE HUGE ADVENTURE Rather than attempting to design a 3D title for the Game Boy Advance, the designers of The Huge Adventure opted to make a 2D side-on platformer. In all other…

CRASH: MIND OVER MUTANT Although based around missions as opposed to levels, Mind Over Mutant has similar combat and collectables to Crash Of The Titans. Its new features include character interaction, storing and then summoning defeated Titans, and power-ups such as spin-digging underground. CRASH BANDICOOT NITRO KART 3D In most respects, Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D is an iOS Crash Team Racing, where you race rivals from the Crash games and get weapons by smashing crates. It differs in that you accelerate automatically and steer by tilting your device, both of which work really well. CRASH BANDICOOT NITRO KART 2 This Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D sequel doesn’t mess too much with the formula of its popular predecessor, but it does add a number of new options. These include touchscreen…

» PLATFORM: Atari 5200 » YEAR: 1983 » COST: $79.95 (launch), £80+ (today, boxed), £60+ (today, unboxed) If your goal is to bring the arcade experience home, a good default joystick will go a long way – unfortunately, the Atari 5200 doesn’t have a good default joystick. Still, the range of games you need to cover ensures that you’ll eventually need to provide other options for players, and Atari was on the case in this regard. Recognising the importance of trackball controls in some of its existing hits, Atari advertised the Trak-Ball along with the console, though it was rather slow to arrive. Atari’s hardware designers made sure that the Trak-Ball shared the same attributes as the console it was designed for, creating a large, heavy unit. Its size was…

◼ “I remember going to the game launch overlooking the Houses Of Parliament to show the game off to MPs, and the BBC News was there. I was demonstrating the game to one of the MPs (I can’t remember his name – honest!), and he was trying to get the hang of using the mouse – he had never used one before. He was trying to move the pointer down and got to the edge of the desk and, in a panicky voice, asked, ‘What do I do now?’ I told him to pick the mouse up and then move it towards him again. So he raised the mouse 12 inches off the desk and then tried moving it in the air! Well, it made me laugh anyway!”…

◼ Richard Garriott went on to develop the Ultima series, continuing with (and building upon) Akalabeth’s dungeons, monsters, quests and themes. To that end, it made for a rather familiar follow-up franchise which is why Akalabeth is often referred to as Ultima 0. Since the Apple II was blessed with the first five Ultima games, you may want to grab the lot as a mini-collection. If you do, prise open your wallet. The original release of Ultima I from 1981, came in a plastic folder with a manual and reference card, yet we could only find a standalone floppy disk selling for £96 in the US and £178 in Canada. Meanwhile, a complete Ultima II can sell for upwards of £809 (try to get one with a map), Ultima III…

COMMODORE 64 ◼ This is quite a different game compared to the arcade version. The graphics are smaller and the racing is pacier, but the changes work and it’s an absolute blast to play. Despite the differences, it’s the only conversion to feature rival racers. It deserves its Zzap!64 Gold Medal. AMSTRAD CPC ◼ Visually this is similar to the C64 version, but it’s not as fast or as responsive, and the 3D effect is a bit wonky. Most of the coin-op’s features make it across, including footballs, embankments and the ability to whiz around on two wheels. Overall it’s not too bad. ZX SPECTRUM ◼ Featuring one of the biggest main sprites of any Speccy game, this deserves full marks for ambition. But it’s a mess. Other elements are…

What was your opinion of the Buggy Boy arcade game? Elite loaned me its arcade machine and I became quite a fan while I was developing the Atari ST version. This was due to the need to master the game in order to record the complex layout of all the courses. The ST game needed to be the flagship computer version and closely match the arcade game. So, I opted for copying the arcade game’s courses as precisely as possible, rather than taking the easier option of generating new course data from scratch. The race courses are actually very skillfully designed, with just the right amount of tempting traps to avoid, and strategically placed bonuses required for progression. There are a lot of fun elements too, I particularly liked the…

Every creator’s story is different, but Jeff Minter is a singular figure in the world of gaming. He’s a legend to those in the know, the kind of people that read Retro Gamer – a developer whose work you can identify at a quick glance, thanks to his fondness for psychedelia and furry creatures. At the same time, much of his career was spent making games for platforms that were primarily popular in Europe, or simply not popular at all in the case of the Jaguar and the Nuon, ensuring that he’s always had a cult audience over his 40 years in game development. Jeff’s story is undoubtedly worth telling, but the idea of it being told by an American developer is perhaps surprising. So why has Digital Eclipse chosen…

Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story includes plenty of video clips, with interviewees including fans, journalists and other developers as well as Jeff himself. Unlike with previous projects, Digital Eclipse partnered with an external filmmaker named Paul Docherty in order to produce this footage. “At the very beginning of this project, it was like, ‘Oh, let’s set up a meeting with Paul Docherty,’ who we knew was doing this documentary,” says Chris, explaining the origins of the partnership. “We had a meeting of, ‘Hey, you’re doing this, we’re doing this, maybe there’s a way that we can help each other out.’ He’s obviously still working on the Heart Of Neon documentary, but he had a very early, very lengthy, four-hour rough cut. “At first, it was like, ‘We’d love to just…

SNAPPER BBC MICRO, ACORN ELECTRON ◼ An unashamed homage to Pac-Man, Snapper was released by Acornsoft for the BBC micro in two versions. The original was a little too close to the coin-op, and so the music, items and appearance of the characters were changed for version two. ROCKET RAID BBC MICRO ◼ Another early title, Rocket Raid was a fairly typical sideways-scrolling shooter using the bright and sometimes rather garish BBC Micro colour palette to mimic the coin-op Scramble. Shoot ground-based enemies and missiles, collect fuel and survive for as long as possible. JCB DIGGER BBC MICRO ◼ An early example of a licensed product computer game tie-in. JCB Digger featured an eponymous yellow digger machine. Due to the licensing deal, the JCB wasn’t depicted as being damaged or…

» PLATFORM: GAME BOY » RELEASED: 1992 » DEVELOPER: T&E SOFT It really is amazing how far LCD technology has come – the TVs and other displays we use today are a world apart from early examples of the technology. If you ever played an early handheld console like the Game Boy or Game Gear, you’ll be very familiar with the ghosting effect that accompanied any moving graphics, which made high-speed games less than ideal for portable play. But what happens if a developer works with the peculiar characteristics of those early displays, rather than against them? Chikyuu Kaihou Gun ZAS provides an excellent case study in that. T&E Soft’s Japan-only shoot-’em-up manages to simulate two background layers, relying on the slight image retention of the Game Boy’s display to…

■ A sequel to The 7th Guest was sort of announced in the credits of the first game – because it was called The 7th Guest, Vol I there. And according to Graeme, development of The 11th Hour actually began while work on The 7th Guest was still in full swing. A ‘more of the same’ quick-release was planned, which would have been in the shops in March 1994. But then Trilobyte’s ambitions got the better of it. Much more sophisticated filming and lots of modern technology meant that The 11th Hour was not released until November 1995, on four CDs and costing $11 million – but it only sold around 500,000 copies. But that was far from the end: there was a spin-off called Uncle Henry’s Mindblower, which bundled…

» PLAYSTATION » 1997 » SKY THINK SYSTEM I’ve always wanted to own Harmful Park. I first heard about it in the mid-Noughties and by then it was already rising in price. In fact, it was so expensive that I gave up on ever owning it and instead opted for a digital copy via the Japanese PS3 online store. Sadly, when Sony got hacked, I lost my password details and couldn’t reactivate my account, meaning I lost Harmful Park and several other pricey Japanese exclusives. Over the years I convinced myself that Sky Think System’s game wasn’t all that, but that was largely because the price had sailed past the £500 mark. Never say never though, because in 2023 I went to the London Gaming Market and sold a decent…

KEEP CLOSE ■ If you stray too far from Yorda for too long, shadow creatures will always materialise and snatch her. Unless you get back to her in time, she’ll be pulled into the darkness. Stay close and be quick if a puzzle requires you to leave her alone. BE OBSERVANT ■ The writer Anton Chekhov famously advised that a gun should only be mentioned in a story if it’s eventually fired. Ico follows a similar principle – anything that stands out in your surroundings, from cracks in bridges to uneven flooring, will be there for a reason. FIGHT FAST ■ The combat mechanics in Ico could not be simpler. There’s one button to lash out with your staff or sword, and mashing said button is often quite effective. Try…

■ After a troubled development spanning nine years, during which time Ueda and Team Ico left Sony to form GenDesign, The Last Guardian continued the legacy of Ico on PlayStation 4. Playing as a young boy, you partner with a massive bird-like creature named Trico who responds to your commands as you move through ruins solving puzzles. It contains some stunning, moving scenes as you and Trico work together. It made several Game Of The Year lists, despite some critics complaining about performance issues.…

■ Richard worked on the story for Microcosm, as well as appearing in the game’s snazzy FMV intro alongside other members of the development team – like artist Paul Franklin, who went on to form the visual effects company Double Negative, and won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for Christopher Nolan’s Inception and Interstellar. But back in the early Nineties, things were a bit more scrappy. “We had no blinds in the office,” recalls Richard. “And we couldn’t film in daylight because there was too much light coming in, so we had to film from, like, eight o’clock at night to three in the morning.” They used a rented video camera, and filmed the actors running on a treadmill against a blue screen, although “I think we actually…

» System: Atari 2600 » Buy it for: $59.99 » Buy it from: atari.com Dark Chambers was originally released in 1988, and is back with a brand-new cover illustration by Brazilian artist Butcher Billy. It’s very much like Gauntlet as it shares a common ancestor, the Atari 8-bit game Dandy, and involves exploring a maze with 26 levels while grabbing a bunch of treasure and fighting dangerous ghouls – many of which spawn from generators. It’s technically very advanced for the hardware, with smooth animation and scrolling stages, but it’s also a tad easy as it’s quite slow and you’ll never find yourself overwhelmed by enemies. Fortunately, Dark Chambers does support two players simultaneously so you can rope a friend in for some dungeon-crawling fun. >> Score 70%…

TOKI Atari 7800 <In 2015 a beta of the unreleased 7800 conversion was found but the ROM was never released: see bit.ly/toki7800 for details. /> TOKI Switch, 2018 <This remaster had new cartoon graphics by French artist Philippe Dessoly (who had worked on the Amiga conversion) and an orchestral score. /> TOKIMAL ZX Spectrum, 2021 <Pat Morita Team’s Tokimal was not a direct conversion of the arcade game, but it earned joint first in ZX Dev 2021 (see RG 233 for more info). /> TOKI Amstrad CPC, 2022 <Although Ocean planned a GX4000/Amstrad Plus port, Amstrad GGP eventually produced Amstrad Toki between 2019-2022 – earning 88% in RG 241. /> TOKI ARCADE NES patch, 2022 <This ROM patch – bit.ly/toki-patch – altered graphics including the main sprite, added a title…

<BODY> “You play as a tiny wizard trying to defeat an evil sorcerer and release a curse from your village,” says Adam about his new project. “It’s inspired mainly by Wonder Boy III and Castle Of Illusion, two games I loved growing up. I’m using devkitSMS by sverx: bit.ly/devkitsms. It’s a development kit and collection of libraries for SMS and Game Gear and allows you to program in C language rather than assembly. I program in Visual Studio Code and debug using the SMS emulator Emulicious. I also use Aseprite for pixel art and Tiled for constructing level maps.” Adam will be looking to work with a chiptune musician later, for sounds and music, but how long will the game take to complete? “I’d guess at least six months. I…

» ATARI 2600 » 1987 » ACTIVISION The copy of Kung-Fu Master that I own may just be the least-ostentatious game cartridge of all time. Its white label has no illustration at all, just black text detailing basic information about the game – most of which is copyright acknowledgements. I should have recognised the Activision name from games like Pitfall! and Ice Hockey, but other than that there was nothing to suggest that the game was anything special. Yet when I booted up Kung-Fu Master, I was blown away. It’s not that I hadn’t seen anything better – this was deep into the Mega Drive era, after all – but I certainly wasn’t expecting a game like this from the humble Atari. The stage graphics were detailed, the characters looked…

CRASH BANDICOOT 2: N-TRANCED The sequel to The Huge Adventure has nods to level designs and mechanics from Warped and Wrath Of Cortex. Although it’s 2D, N-Tranced has into-the-screen and out-of-the-screen stages like Huge Adventure, and a cool jetpack level that recalls the Atari 2600 classic HERO. CRASH NITRO KART Essentially Crash Team Racing for the PS2, Crash Nitro Kart nonetheless differentiates itself in several respects. As well as new tracks it has new crates. Some of these activate boost pads and set traps for rivals, while others give you multiple power-ups and weapons. CRASH BANDICOOT PURPLE: RIPTO’S RAMPAGE One half of a Spyro crossover, Ripto’s Rampage has 2D platforming like The Huge Adventure, but its main challenge comes from its minigames. Some of these channel coin-ops like Breakout and…

CRASH TEAM RACING NITRO-FUELED If there’s a racing equivalent of N Sane Trilogy then Nitro-Fueled is it. As well as remastering the original Crash Team Racing it adds courses and content from Crash Nitro Kart and Crash Tag Team Racing, with the end result being the ultimate Crash racing experience. CRASH BANDICOOT: ON THE RUN! A Crash Bandicoot endless runner seems appropriate given that the level where he’s chased by a boulder in the original game was essentially a forerunner of the genre. On The Run adds to the format with Crash staples such as crate smashing, spin attacks and boss fights. CRASH TEAM RUMBLE The two teams in Crash Team Rumble are tasked with amassing Wumpa Fruit at drop-off points while stopping their rivals from doing the same. Strategy…

Created by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, the original Yes, Minister series ran for three series in the early Eighties. Its popularity led to a sequel, Yes, Prime Minister, in which the original series’ lead character, Jim Hacker, is promoted to the head of his (unnamed) party. Replete with satirical barbs on political life, the series is revered today and, sadly, as relevant as ever, “I mean you… lied,” chides cabinet secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby to Hacker in one particular episode. “Yes, I know this is a difficult concept to get across to a politician. You… ah yes, you did not tell the truth.” Yes, Prime Minister the game thrusts the player into the weighty shoes of Jim Hacker, guiding the PM across a turbulent week in charge of the…

» ARCADE » 1988 » TECHNOS JAPAN When you make a game as phenomenally successful as Double Dragon the prospect of a sequel must always be a daunting one. Do you drastically overhaul your original game, or simply tweak its existing mechanics? Do you take your sequel in a bold new direction aesthetically, or do you just upgrade your existing engine? Technos Japan largely decided to stick rigidly to the concepts that made its first game such a success, but it did make one significant change and it was one I could never get on with when I first encountered the game. Double Dragon II was graphically very similar to its predecessor, but its speed was generally improved (although it still suffered from slowdown) and it visually looked that little…

3D MONSTER MAZE ◼ Malcolm Evans’ ZX81 hit had you navigating a tricky maze in the hope that you’d find the exit before you were discovered by its resident Tyrannosaur (affectionately called Rex). Despite featuring no sound, cleverly crafted visuals and on-screen messages ramp up the tension to frantic levels, meaning you’ll want to make your way through Rex’s domain as quickly as possible. Look out! He’s behind you! PREHISTORIC ISLE IN 1930 ◼ SNK’s slick shmup not only features one of the most interesting power-up systems of its time, but is also loaded with terrifying dinosaurs to battle. While we’d question their ability to fling out fireballs, whirlwinds and other projectiles, there’s no denying they make for challenging foes. Special mention to the huge bosses that are introduced with…

Imagine being a young kid in the early Nineties, flicking through Nintendo Power. One preview stands out above all the others – it details a game that offers “the fastest action ever seen on the NES”, and lets you play as a “genetically altered super chimpanzee” who is “practically indestructible” and has “great pro wrestling-style moves to use against his bizarre opponents”. You’ve been introduced to Bio Force Ape, which is clearly going to be the most brilliant game ever made. It sounds like an elaborate joke, but Bio Force Ape was a real game in development by Seta, announced at the 1991 Summer Consumer Electronics Show. It was due to be released in both Japan and North America, and plenty of kids would have waited patiently for it to…

GRIDRUNNER: REMASTERED ◼ Digital Eclipse has made a habit of remastering and reimagining classic games, and Gridrunner was chosen here as it was one of Jeff’s first big hits. Though it’s based on the original Commodore 64 code, there’s a new 3D graphical layer on show here. LIGHT FANTASTIC ◼ Jeff’s passion for light synthesisers is well-known, and two of them have been included here alongside his more traditional games. Psychedelia for C64 and Colourspace for the Atari 8-bit are present, with controls configured for modern pads. TIMELESS TEMPEST ◼ The amazing shoot-’em-up Tempest 2000 is presented here, and uses the same Jaguar emulation as Atari 50. That makes it one of the best ways to play the game, as you get the option of boosting the framerate and turning…

» MEGA-CD » 1994 » CORE DESIGN One of my earliest conscious retro purchases was a Mega-CD II, which I got for £15 from Cash Concepts. Unfortunately, I found collecting games for it to be a bit of a rough ride. I was still in secondary school so I had no debit card for eBay purchases and no real income even if I’d had one, so I was mostly limited to the games in Cash Concepts, common ones like Road Avenger, Sol-Feace and Cobra Command. None of these really showed off the scaling and rotation capabilities that had made the add-on so attractive to me, but thanks to glowing reviews in Sega Pro and Sega Magazine, I knew a game that would – SoulStar. I just had to find it.…

MICROPROSE M1 TANK PLATOON ◼ Simulation specialists MicroProse released this game in 1989 on PC and 1990 for Amiga and Atari ST. Not just a 3D tank simulator but a full-scale strategy game with NATO confronting the Warsaw Pact countries. The game gave the player control of multiple vehicles and troops. BATTLE COMMAND ◼ A futuristic battleground was the setting for this 3D arcade strategy tank game created by 3D experts Realtime Games Ltd and released by Ocean Software in 1990. It’s considered by many people to be a spiritual successor to Realtime’s seafaring 3D arcade strategy game Carrier Command. ABRAMS BATTLE TANK ◼ US developer Dynamix also gave players command of an M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank in a solid 3D simulator, with eight challenging scenarios to battle through,…

Near the beginning of Ico you find yourself leaping across a broken bridge before gesturing to your companion – a ghostly, glowing girl named Yorda – to take a leap of faith and join you. When she hesitantly jumps but falls short, you reach out and haul her away from the deep chasm below to safety. The scene plays out like an impressive setpiece on first encounter. But you soon discover there are many surprising, dramatic moments like this on the paths Ico leads you down, giving the experience a cinematic feel that stood out in the PlayStation 2 era and feels more akin to modern game design when you play it today. That Ico has influenced the creation of some huge contemporary games is in no doubt. Dark Souls…

■ A decade after the original release of Ico, a high-definition remaster from Bluepoint Games – a studio known for specialising in remasters and remakes, from Metal Gear Solid to Demon’s Souls – arrived on the PlayStation 3. Also included was a remaster of Shadow Of The Colossus. Both games retain their core gameplay with no changes, but graphical and audio improvements bring extra fluidity and polish that enhances the original. One such change is the introduction of stereoscopic 3D graphics to give a greater perception of depth as you explore the large environs of the castle. Although he was not directly involved in crafting the update, Fumito Ueda has spoken highly of Bluepoint for its work, and it’s not surprising that the studio was later commissioned to take on…

» MANUFACTURER: Nintendo » YEAR: 2006 » COST: £99.99 (launch), £20+ (today, boxed), £15+ (today, unboxed) Fine and functional though it was, it always felt like the original model of the DS never fully satisfied Nintendo, at least in terms of its looks. The system’s final design wasn’t ready for its public unveiling at E3 2004, and was confirmed just a few months ahead of launch. As a result, a new model was announced in January 2006, just 14 months into the platform’s lifespan – the earliest point at which Nintendo had redesigned one of its consoles. The DS Lite launched in March in Japan and June in other territories. The DS Lite is slightly smaller and lighter than the original model, with brighter LCD backlights, with the only…

» DREAMCAST » 2000 » OVERWORKS I love Skies Of Arcadia. Whenever I play Valkyria Chronicles, I put Vyse and Aika in my team just because I love the fact that the developers put that reference in the game. When I play Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, the Skies Of Arcadia track Rogue’s Landing is one of my absolute favourites – I love the way the track is blasted out from beneath you for the final lap, leaving you to fly among the ships as the battle rages, and the music is exceptional. Yes, I love Skies Of Arcadia – or rather, I love the characters and the setting, because the truth is that I don’t have any experience with the actual game they come from. You may be wondering…

» System: PC » Buy it for: £16.59 (£6.69 separately) » Buy it from: steampowered.com/gog.com The latest quartet of blasters from Bitwave Games continues to raid Toaplan’s excellent back catalogue. This is the developer’s most esoteric selection so far and includes Tiger Heli, Toaplan’s very first shmup, the incredible Batsugun, the progenitor of the bullet hell subgenre and two more obscure gems: FixEight and Vimana. As you’d expect, the amount of options on offer is staggering with a host of tweakable display modes, the ability to practice any aspect of a game, regional variations, online leaderboards, rewind options and a whole lot more. The end result is another excellent offering from Bitwave Games. >> Score 90%…

Our new email address is waiting for all your homebrew news, previews and more: retrogamer@futurenet.com <BODY> The fighter Rei and witch Violet must save the world in this entertaining tactical RPG. The first few levels explain how to move and fight, nicely setting you up for the later battles. Extra fighters can be hired to join your squads, but you must learn new Formations in order to add them. This can be done in Strife Sisters’ Training and Challenge modes by generating enemy squads to fight against. In the main Battle mode, however, units will be lost permanently if they die (as in the Fire Emblem titles that influenced this game). Cute sprites and backgrounds sell the idea of a fantasy world, although the music can be a little repetitive.…

This month’s cover star has had us yearning for the days of yore when the platformer was making its first tentative steps into 3D. Nick, Darran and Tim look back at the stars and duds of this transformative era. DARRAN What’s the first 3D platformer you can remember playing? NICK I think mine would have actually been Crash Bandicoot on a friend’s PlayStation. Well, unless Pandemonium counts? TIM Well Pandemonium is a platformer that uses 3D visuals, so yes. I played it too, but Tomb Raider was the big one for me. Funny-ish story, Woolworths in Portadown didn’t have it so I got a friend to drive all the way to Belfast and I picked it up there, while my mate picked up a fine from the police for some…

» WII » 2009 » RAINBOW STUDIOS One of the things I love about Nintendo’s Wii is the sheer amount of odd software available for it, and Deadly Creatures is a great example. A quick glance at the box art suggests that it’s little more than shovelware, but that would be doing Rainbow Studios’ game a great disservice. Conceptually, Deadly Creatures is quite the interesting game. It lets you play as a tarantula and a scorpion and has you explore a dangerous world filled with predators that would love to make a snack of you. Both creatures have their own unique abilities, and, as you’d expect, the Wii’s motion controls are heavily used throughout. They work exceptionally well though, with a good amount of accuracy. It’s fun leaping around as…

» Here’s Wally, sidling up to the multi-legged menace. By the looks of the devastation, there’s not really much of Wally’s home left to defend, but by gosh he’s going to try anyway. What else would a hero choose to do? » Wally decides that there’s no time to be timid, and opts for a bold approach that literally flies in the face of the marauding monster. As he enters its line of vision, his entire life flashes before his eyes. » Fortunately, Wally is so young and his eyes so comically oversized that this process takes 0.4 seconds. He quickly regains his composure and starts executing his master plan to finish the destruction for good. » Contrary to stereotypes linking glasses and intelligence, Wally isn’t a master strategist and…