Indholdsfortegnelse for No. 271 i Retro Gamer

It recently come to our attention that Don Priestley, the creator of Flunky, The Trapdoor, Gregory Loses His Clock and several other classic ZX Spectrum games has passed away after a short illness. Martyn Carroll spotted the news on Facebook, after one of Don’s friends made a post about his passing. Unlike many other bedroom coders of the Eighties, Don made his gaming debut in his 40s, after deciding to learn computer coding with his son in a night-school class. After completing his course he struck up a relationship with Bug Byte and released several games for the ZX81 and Spectrum, including Mazogs and The Dictator. Several big games for DK’Troniks and Piranha followed, including The Trap Door and Flunky, but Don didn’t stay in the industry telling our own…

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MISSILE COMMAND ■ Enemy missiles harass the player’s copter, and dodging them is not easy, especially when your attention is on another combatant. Swerving and tilting from side to side is the most effective way of avoiding these airborne threats. KEEP AN EYE ON THE A-Z ■ Learning to interpret the symbols of Combat Lynx’s map is crucial. White and green squares represent the low and high ground, respectively, while T means Tank, a side-on H means lorry and an upside-down Y is a gun emplacement. Got a circle around them? Check your fire – that’s a friendly. ENEMY MINE ■ Ensuring your chopper has a plentiful supply of mines is vital during loadout. Mines protect your forward bases, and as you can’t be everywhere at once – there only…

» AMSTRAD CPC » 1988 » CHRIS WOODS Ideas for videogames can come from all sorts of places. As a developer, you might be inspired by a film you’ve seen, someone else’s game, or even a slice of pizza. Game ideas can also spawn from creating something technically impressive and then building a game around it, which brings us to Nebulus. Regardless of whether you know it as Nebulus, Castelian, Kyorochan Land or Tower Toppler, there’s no denying that John M Phillips’ game is a technically outstanding one. Starting off life as a shooter with John having his ship flying across horizontal cylinders, Nebulus continued to evolve as it moved from the Spectrum to its eventual lead platform, the C64. While John didn’t fully code the Amstrad CPC version of the…

GHOULS ’N GHOSTS ■ The 1988 follow-up is a visual tour de force, running on Capcom’s CPS-1 hardware. It looks incredible, and plays pretty damn fine too, with Arthur gaining some new moves, weapons and power-ups to effectively take on the ever-swelling army of the dead. A perfect sequel. SUPER GHOULS ’N GHOSTS ■ The Mega Drive received a quality conversion of the second game, while in 1991 the SNES was awarded an exclusive sequel that finally blessed Arthur with the lifesaving double jump. Apart from some unwanted slowdown, this is another excellent entry in the series. MAKAIMURA FOR WONDERSWAN ■ Released for Bandai’s handheld in 1999, and only in Japan, this is not a version of the original but a sequel that introduces branching paths for the first time.…

SKI JUMP ■ It’s lost to the slopes of time who first came up with the idea of trying to fly with two boards on their feet, but Ski Jumping has been an Olympic event since 1924. In Winter Challenge, this requires precise take-off timing, a stable position in the air and a precise landing to avoid becoming a tumbling heap of snow. JAVELIN ■ Has there ever been a bad time to throw around a sharpened 2.5 metre stick? Even the ancient Greeks did it, as Javelin is one of the oldest Olympic events. It’s not the easiest sport in Summer Challenge, but one that feels really great when executed flawlessly. GIANT SLALOM ■ The Giant Slalom is the high-speed version of the Slalom and has been part of…

RETROREVIVAL » NINTENDO 64 » 1998 » NINTENDO EAD Ever since my wife and I have lived at our current home we’ve had foreign exchange students. The vast majority have been an absolute delight, but every now and then one would get a little too comfortable and that was the case with Wolfgang, who joined the Jones residence for nine months in 1999. Wolfgang (and no, that’s not his real name) was a tremendously confident 18-year-old Swiss student (and no, that’s not where he came from either). He was a lovely lad, but did like to push his luck, meaning he’d regularly try to break his curfew, or take treats from the cupboard without asking. One time he even brought a girl home without permission and she stayed overnight (we caught…

After THQ went bankrupt, Nordic Games (later THQ Nordic) picked up the rights to DAH!, among other IPs, for just under $5 million. Despite the high-profile failures of Big Willy Unleashed and Path Of The Furon, players retained a deep affection for the franchise’s silliness and creativity, with many calling for Crypto’s return. In 2020, Black Forest Games released a long-awaited reboot of the original DAH!, with the sequel following two years later. Both performed well, exceeding expectations, as they provided a welcome hit of nostalgia for old fans and introduced Crypto to a new generation on more advanced consoles. Beyond much-improved graphics, differences in storyline and gameplay were minimal. “It’s always hard seeing your babies go. It’s weird seeing someone else do a take on something that you lived…

» System: PC (version tested), Atari VCS, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X » Buy it for: £12.79 » Buy it from: Online Although Atari has already revisited Breakout with its Recharged series, this new offering from Choice Provisions is just as worthy of your time. Patterns of bricks are now arranged to your right and you must break out of the area in a tight time limit. Each time a brick is struck, the rest will move towards you and if your paddle hits them you’ll temporarily freeze in place. Fortunately, your paddle is equipped with a speed boost to reach wayward balls and you can also slow time, although this lowers your combo. With its solid power-ups and stylish aesthetics, Breakout Beyond proves to be an entertaining,…

» WII » 2010 » TEAM NINJA/NINTENDO SPD One of the reasons I enjoy the Metroid series so much is because Samus Aran is such a badass character. I’ve always had a soft spot for bounty hunters, from Boba Fett to Duane ‘Dog’ Chapman and Samus always struck me as someone not to be messed with. She’s one of gaming’s great protagonists and even though she may be quivering with fear inside her suit, you’d never know – and crucially, Nintendo never showed it. That all changed with Metroid: Other M though, and while there’s plenty about the 2010 game that I really do like, the decision to give Samus a voice and greatly expand her back story isn’t one of them. We’ve had access to Samus’ internal monologue and past…

SIDE POCKET » Of all the sport professionals out there, pool players receive the best compensation. Even the winnings from regional tournaments can feed a family of four for a decade, but you’re playing on the world stage for the biggest money. So sit back and watch as we show you the dream lifestyle that can only be obtained via mastery of the cue. 01 » Congratulations, you’ve won the pool tournament – and now you’ve got a shiny trophy to show for it. But surely that can’t be the only fantastic reward for your scintillating display of skill, can it? 02 » No, it cannot. This lovely lady is now interested in pursuing a relationship with you, pretty much entirely on the strength of your ability to strike balls into other…

Official PlayStation Magazine had an exclusive review of FIFA 09 last month and gave it 9/10, but was EA firmly back on top of the football world? The consensus definitely pointed in that direction. “EA has taken its time, but finally it understands both the technicality and the raw drama of football, and it seems like it’s having fun with both,” concluded 360’s 5/5 review. Play lamented “momentary keeper madness”, but still gave it 87%, and it also scored 9/10 in Official Xbox 360 Magazine. The company was similarly successful with its latest golf game, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09, which scored 86% in Play and 8/10 in both X360 and OXM. EA also published Will Wright’s ambitious Spore, a PC exclusive that allows you to develop life forms from…

By the end of 1983, Somersetbased software house Durell Software had already built itself a solid foundation on the ZX Spectrum: Scramble clone and de facto Falkland War shoot-’em-up Harrier Attack, platformer Jungle Trouble and the beautiful and calming Scuba Dive [see Retro Gamer 210]. The latter two were original games from local programmer Mike Richardson, with Harrier Attack, his conversion of Ron Jeffs’ Oric game. As Durell’s first employee, Ron had written the shoot-’em-up as Durell sought to expand upon founder Robert White’s Oric mail-order arcade clones, Lander and Asteroids. However, it was already becoming clear that Spectrum software was where the sales were. Inspired by the Atari game Pitfall!, Mike had programmed Jungle Trouble and sent the result to an approving Robert White. Simultaneously, Robert had an idea…

■ Mike implemented a little treat for the Spectrum owners of Combat Lynx – a loading screen that sprung to life once the game was ready. “It was something I’d done before with Harrier Attack,” he remembers. “For Combat Lynx, I had quite a large area of memory for use as a graphics buffer during gameplay, so it was a helpful space to put some one-off graphics and code.” Upon completion of loading, the Combat Lynx springs to life, rotors twirling as it hurls rockets at a nearby tank. “Loading a game from tape always seemed like quite a chore – so it was a little reward for the player’s patience,” smiles Mike.…

Depending on where you live, a mention of the Sega Master System might generate nostalgic gushing about the hidden Snail Maze game and having to memorise rockpaper-scissors routines, or it might just draw a confused blank – such is the regional nature of the machine’s fortunes. Still, there’s no denying that the Master System was a beefy little machine when it first hit the market, and in many cases it was the best way to experience the best of the arcades at home. Over time, the console’s fortunes faded in NTSC regions, but a thriving audience in Europe and Brazil kept the machine going well into the mid-Nineties, serving as a wallet-friendly alternative to the Mega Drive. With hundreds of games officially released during the console’s lifetime, it’s impossible to…

NES ■ The first conversion to arrive set the bar pretty high. All of the content from the original is here, and you even have to run through the game twice to get the good ending. Bar a few graphical glitches and performance issues, this is admirably close to the coin-op. ZX SPECTRUM ■ This version is held in high regard and it’s easy to see why, delivering a decent interpretation – of the first two stages at least. The third stage is a mess and then it ends abruptly with a final battle against two Red Arremers. We guess no-one got that far to be disappointed. AMSTRAD CPC ■ Structurally this is similar to the Spectrum version, with just three stages (the third one is more faithful, ending with…

» MEGA DRIVE » 1996 » TRAVELLER’S TALES Back when I was growing up, I really enjoyed Sonic 3D. I wouldn’t say that it was my favourite Sonic game, and it certainly wasn’t the one I played the most as I didn’t own a copy of my own, but I found plenty to like about it. It’s a great-looking game for the hardware, the music is so good that some of it ended up being recycled for Sonic Adventure, and it offered a different kind of challenge to Sonic’s other Mega Drive outings – which was probably a good thing, as it would have been tough to push the formula much further than Sonic 3 & Knuckles had. Consequently, I was very surprised when I first got online and discovered that…

MindSpan Technologies was founded in Vancouver in 1987. And of course the studio’s first game had to be an ice hockey simulation (FaceOff!, 1987). Various smaller projects followed until 1991, when the company’s first proper title was released under the banner of distributor Accolade – The Games: Winter Challenge. In December 1991, two months before the start of the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville. The game’s sequel, Summer Challenge, was released in November 92 – three months after the 24th Summer Games in Barcelona. Following the tradition of Epyx’s Games series, neither game had an official licence from the International Olympic Committee. This was not for lack of trying, as John Boechler, graphics artist for both games, tells us, “Accolade was our publishing company. I believe they looked into obtaining…

Bringing Bond to cinemas after a six-year hiatus, with a fresh-faced Pierce Brosnan in the coveted role of secret agent 007, GoldenEye was a shot in the arm for the James Bond series upon release in late-1995. Now approaching its 30th anniversary, the videogame it inspired – GoldenEye 007 – helped launch the new Nintendo 64 into the stratosphere. But it was also a long-drawn-out process that took its toll on everyone involved, including the game’s composer, BAFTA nominee Grant Kirkhope. Dialling in from the east coast of America, Grant recalls his start at Rare in October 1995, a month before the film release of GoldenEye. Initially assigned to port the music from Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy Kong’s Quest to the original Game Boy, he was soon pulled aboard…

STALKER: CLEAR SKY (2008) ■ The first expansion for STALKER, Clear Sky, is a prequel, in which you play Scar, a STALKER uniquely able to survive violent weather emissions. As you make your way to the centre of the Zone, you must negotiate a full-on faction war, picking your favoured sides. Clear Sky added weapons-repair and upgrading plus a dominant-faction system to the STALKER blueprint, which was welcome. Its depiction of a less settled Zone than the original game makes it worth checking out. STALKER: CALL OF PRIYAT (2009) ■ Call Of Pripyat takes up the storyline after the original game’s events, with the centre of the Zone suddenly accessible after Strelok disabled the Brain Scorcher. You play a soldier masquerading as a STALKER, sent in to find what happened…

The idea for Destroy All Humans! emerged out of frustration at seeing months of hard work go to waste. Pandemic Studios’ Australian team were devastated when Oddballs, a quirky co-operative game they were developing, was shelved by Microsoft for lacking edge. In response, they created something radically different that became an unexpected cult classic. Destroy All Humans! (hereafter referred to as DAH!) was released on PlayStation 2 and Xbox in the summer of 2005. Behind such a brash, attention-grabbing title lay a game with a puerile attitude and an abundance of personality. In a delightful twist that captured the imagination of players, they were tasked with becoming the bad guy, someone intent on conquering Earth rather than saving it. “It was significant because of the angle on it,” says animator Lachlan…

FULL SPECTRUM WARRIOR ■ A real-time tactics game where players lead an American invasion of the fictional Zekistan, following a series of terrorist attacks. Critically acclaimed, there was controversy surrounding its development as a training tool for the US army, which invested in the project. STAR WARS: BATTLEFRONT ■ The first instalment of this popular and highly regarded series sold more than four million copies. It’s a first and third-person shooter that combined impressive visuals, versatile gameplay and fidelity to the source material. Players experience iconic settings and battles from the original and prequel trilogies. MERCENARIES: PLAYGROUND OF DESTRUCTION ■ Play as a hired gun drafted in to help prevent nuclear war breaking out in North Korea. You are free to explore a vast open-world environment and carry out missions…

» ARCADE » 1999 » SEGA R&D4 Back in the Nineties, the Virtua brand was built on AM2’s breakthrough 3D interpretations of staple arcade genres including racing, fighting and lightgun shooting. While 3D visuals had been normalised by the end of the decade, there was still some value in the brand, as proven by the excellent Virtua Tennis. So when I saw Virtua NBA in my local Sega Park for the first time, I had extremely high hopes. It certainly looked the part, with its detailed players reflected in the shiny court surface – I’d honestly never seen such a spectacular-looking sports game. Of course, the game featured full teams of five rather than the reduced numbers seen in games like NBA Jam or Street Hoop, and it was a much…

» System: Evercade family » Buy it for: £24.99 » Buy it from: Online, retail The latest release from Blaze is another one of its Giga Carts and it houses two of the best point-and-adventures of the Nineties. Like Konami’s Suikoden games, both titles have aged like fine wine and they remain genuinely great to play. This is down to their scripts and a selection of memorable and often eccentric characters. Based on the PlayStation versions, you can expect a fair bit of loading on both games and we noticed that transitions between areas took longer when playing on the Alpha. There’s the usual customisable controls and the ability to save whenever you want, but it’s a bare package that feels a little pricey at the new £24.99 price point.…

<YOUR MONTHLY GUIDE TO EVERYTHING HAPPENING IN THE HOMEBREW SCENE/> <MAIN HEADER> <INTRO> WE WERE SAD TO LEARN OF THE PASSING OF TONY KINGSMILL IN FEBRUARY 2025. TONY HAD RETURNED TO PROGRAMMING WITH THE UPDATE OF HIS 1992 BBC MICRO GAME AIRLINE BOSS AND HAD PRODUCED NEW TITLES, INCLUDING TEXT ADVENTURE GHOSTSHIP DELGADO AND THE VERTICALLY SCROLLING SPECTRUM SHMUP XENOBLAST PUBLISHED THROUGH CRONOSOFT. OUR THOUGHTS ARE WITH TONY’S FAMILY AND FRIENDS AT THIS TIME, AND WE WANT TO THANK TONY FOR THE GAMES. </INTRO> <BODY> Artist Joachim Ljunggren is no stranger to the Monkey Island series, having played all the games before joining project. “It’s the coder Andreas Larsson’s idea. He worked on this for a long time to get a grip on if this was even possible. He contacted…

Despite his films being full of dramatic setpieces, thrilling action and interesting characters, Indiana Jones hasn’t actually appeared in a huge number of videogames. Nick, Darran and Tim look back at some of the ones he has featured in. DARRAN What’s the first Indiana Jones game that you can ever remember playing? NICK That would be Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade on the Master System. I remember it being pretty tricky, to the point that I’d use the Action Replay cartridge to disable the time limit. TIM The arcade version of Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom. I can’t remember exactly where I played it, but I do remember being absolutely rubbish at it. DARRAN Mine was the original Raiders Of The Lost Ark on the Atari 2600. I…

» ATARI 2600 » 1982 » HAL FINNEY Combat is an iconic Atari 2600 game, and rightly so – it accompanied new consoles and served as a demonstration of what it could do. However, it didn’t get an awful lot of play in my house, and that’s largely thanks to Armor Ambush. The fact that I played it with my dad at home dates it as one of the first videogames I ever encountered, as it must have been before I was even four years old. Clearly at that age I wouldn’t have known what an Intellivision was, never mind that this game was based on the Intellivision game Armor Battle. What my dad did manage to impress upon me was that while Armor Ambush didn’t have bouncing shots or missiles…

ZX SPECTRUM ■ The Lynx helicopter dashes across the screen at a remarkable pace, the rolling hills fairly zipping past. One of the first Spectrum games to portray such an effect, it perhaps balances between strategy, simulation and shooter a little unfairly for fans of the latter – but put the time in and you’ll be well rewarded. AMSTRAD CPC ■ Converted by Mike himself, the Amstrad game is another technical marvel, with its large play area and smooth 3D landscape impressing the dedicated press of the time. Mike’s improvements over the Spectrum original – including a lovely rotating wireframe chopper on the arming screen – make this the best version. C64 ■ Durell assigned Ron Jeffs to C64 Combat Lynx, reversing its Harrier Attack working order. Sadly, Durell’s poor…

BLUE THUNDER ■ Cheekily swiping the name of the movie and TV series, this game from a pre-Elite Richard Wilcox features a jetcopter nicknamed, you guessed it, Blue Thunder. Your perilous-sounding mission is to destroy an enemy nuclear reactor with jet fighters, gun emplacements and more standing in your way. GUNSHIP ■ MicroProse began publishing its own Spectrum software in 1987, and this helicopter game appeared in a large box containing a cassette, 85-page manual, keyboard guide and more. Over several missions, the player pilots the AH-64A Apache, taking on enemies with Hellfire missiles and 2.75-inch air-to-ground rockets. TOMAHAWK ■ The masters of the simulation, Digital Integration, liked to put out the occasional arcade-style game (Night Gunner, ATF), but which was this? Created by Dave ‘Fighter Pilot’ Marshall, the player…

What’s your history with the Master System? I don’t know that I have any history with the Master System, growing up I had a neighbour with one so I was familiar with it, but I personally had a C64 and NES at the time. As far as inspiration, I became interested in sound chips and FM in particular, so I thought the YM2413 would be a good place to start learning about FM, since the 4-op chips can be kind of overwhelming. You’ve put out some very impressive demos in under six months – how were you able to get to grips with the system so quickly? I’m not really sure. I was more familiar with the 6502, so I started with the C64, then tried the NES. I liked…

Ghosts ’N Goblins is easy. Retro Gamer came to this surprise revelation recently, when rediscovering the original coin-op at the Arcade Archive in Stroud. After failing to make much headway in the second stage, an onlooker casually stepped up and proceeded to breeze through the game, providing a running commentary on how to approach the tricky bits, the chokepoints, the boss battles. It was an education. Yes, the game is no cakewalk, but he made it look easy. Some of it was learned – the hidden locations of new armour to protect Arthur’s modesty, the glitches you could exploit to avoid some bosses entirely – but a lot more was down to quick reactions. Even when surrounded by enemies, he was jumping and ducking and firing. Surviving, gracefully. The game…

Can you tell us about your earliest videogame memory, Dave? As a child, my family used to holiday in Llandudno in the Seventies and there was an arcade at the end of the pier called The Golden Goose. It was smoky, smelly, had sticky floors and was full of kids looting the machines and sticking wires in the coin slots to get them to register free credits. I loved it. The whole family used to go. I was around seven or eight at the time and remember playing stuff like Night Driver and Boot Hill with my sister – who would always beat me. As much as I adore videogames and enjoy collecting them, I’ve never been very good at them. What type of games did you enjoy the most?…

DESTROY ALL HUMANS! 2 ■ In 1969, a decade on from seizing control of the United States, the second instalment of DAH! goes global, with missions in fictional versions of London, Tokyo and Siberia. Following Crypto’s death, his clone has stepped up. After the KGB destroys the Furon mothership, Cryptosporidium-138 seeks retribution and to foil Soviet plans for world domination. A co-op multiplayer mode was introduced, alongside new weapons and abilities. DESTROY ALL HUMANS! BIG WILLY UNLEASHED ■ The first of two games made without Pandemic’s input saw a considerable decline in quality. After PS2 and PSP versions were abandoned, this was released exclusively on Nintendo’s Wii in 2008. Crypto must conceal the truth about the Big Willy fast-food chain, which is used to dispose of the dead bodies he’s…

» MANUFACTURER: Sony » YEAR: 2009 » COST: £249.99 (launch), £50+ (today, boxed), £30+ (today, unboxed) The original PlayStation 3 was not Sony’s finest console design, even if you don’t mind its resemblance to a George Foreman grill. Despite its high retail price, Sony lost plenty of money on early hardware sales because it was complex and expensive to manufacture. A combination of feature cuts and manufacturing process improvements drove those costs down though, and the culmination of these efforts was the introduction of a redesigned model, known colloquially as the PlayStation 3 Slim. The new machine retained all of the key features of the previous model, but its exterior featured softer curves and textured matte plastic, rather than the glossy finish of the original. The machine was introduced with…

In 1992, the Nintendo Game Boy was a runaway success, and the most popular handheld gaming device in the world. The only people who did not want a Game Boy were those who already had one. A product of the 8-bit era, the system’s catalogue leaned heavily on sprite-based 2D visuals, but Dylan Cuthbert and his colleagues at Argonaut Software thought the Game Boy could do more. The game they came up with, X, delivered 3D wireframe graphics on hardware that frankly had no business rendering them. At its heart, X is a first-person vehicular combat game. The player pilots a starship-like vehicle through a series of missions across a sprawling map, and each mission has its own set of objectives. These range from protecting a base from enemy fire,…

The Yu-Gi-Oh! series has been a mainstay of the trading card game scene for over 25 years now, and that’s an impressive feat. Although it’s not technically an original property, being a spin-off of the manga of the same name, we’ve seen the likes of X-Men, Harry Potter and WWE games all come and go while Konami’s game has remained consistently popular. Videogame representations of the card game have also been very popular over the years, and Konami has seen fit to jam 14 of them into this new collection. The Yu-Gi-Oh!: Early Days Collection concentrates specifically on the games that originally released on Nintendo’s Game Boy consoles, starting with the monochrome Game Boy game Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters from 1998 and finishing with the Game Boy Advance release Yu-Gi-Oh! 7…

» System: Switch » Buy it from: Online, retail » Buy it for: £49.99 When Earth becomes collateral damage in an alien conflict, humanity flees and crash lands on the planet Mira. You play as a newly awakened person in this open-world RPG, joining the colonisation effort by joining up with other party members, taking on missions and piloting the Skell mech suits. The original version is one of the Wii U’s best games and this update preserves its best qualities, particularly the impressive scale and design of Mira. Combat benefits from some changes to how ability cooldowns work, and there are additions including a new story chapter and new Skells. Only fanatics need to upgrade, but if you haven’t played it, this is a treat. >> Score 87%…

YOU HAVE TO WIN THE GAME bit.ly/yhtwtg-c64 <The CGA-style graphics of this charming Metroidvania have been beautifully reproduced by Kabuto./> LUFTRAUSERZ bit.ly/luftrauserz <Paul Koller makes exceedingly good demakes – with this, Vlambeer’s Super Crate Box, the recent Spelunky, Micro Hexagon, Canabalt and more./> BALLS LIKE A FROG bit.ly/balls-c64 <Dr Mortalwombat gave C64 fans his take on Zuma – then tackled Plants Vs Zombies (which was renamed as Veggies Vs Undead)./> DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: EYE OF THE BEHOLDER bit.ly/beholder-c64 <The dungeon crawler got an incredible conversion, adding an automap (C128 users can display it on a second screen)./> VVVVVV bit.ly/vvvvvv-c64 <Terry Cavanagh’s gravity-defying game is a bona fide indie classic, and this 2017 conversion plays superbly./>…

THE COVER STAR INDIANA JONES AND THE INFERNAL MACHINE There are a few options to consider here. The PC version is cheapest, rarely topping £15 for a boxed copy. The N64 version was a Blockbuster exclusive and only released in the US, so it can fetch as much as £350 (and even higher if it is still sealed). The Game Boy Color option isn’t as desirable and rarely passes £40. COMBAT LYNX This chopper sim won’t leave your wallet embattled, as it’s relatively cheap to acquire – Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad versions all tend to hit the £3-£5 range. GHOSTS ’N GOBLINS 8-bit home-computer versions of Capcom’s cruel platformer can go for as little as £5, while complete PAL copies of the NES game can be pretty frightful at…

FLIGHTS OF FANCY Hi Retro Gamer, There have been many flight sims over the years from Ace Of Aces on the C64 to B-17 Flying Fortress, Longbow and Falcon on the Amiga and PC. Recently, publishers seem to be revisiting and remastering old sims or releasing new ones with a distinct retro feel like MicroProse’s Tiny Combat Arena. It’s just a thought but have you considered a feature or article on flight sims? Thanks, Rob Santiago If you enjoy flight sims Rob, you’ll probably want to read this month’s piece on Combat Lynx. Graeme Mason is our flight sim expert and he wrote a Bluffer’s Guide to the genre back in issue 103 so be sure to check it out. STEAMING AHEAD Dear Retro Gamer, Like Darran, I am also…