Indholdsfortegnelse for No. 274 i Retro Gamer

It was 1983 and the country was gorging on videogames. Sales were exploding. Games begat books, begat cartoons, begat top 40 singles. Everything short of a breakfast cereal. (Wait. Never mind. That happened too.) The industry had grown nearly fourfold from the year before. It was so lucrative that everyone wanted in. Quaker Oats – the oatmeal people – launched a videogame division called US Games. One of its releases was literally called Name This Game, as if it couldn’t be bothered to name it. Purina, a dog food company, produced Chase The Chuck Wagon, based on its TV commercials. For every porn company dipping a toe – and other parts – into the games business, there was a Christian real-estate developer with a similar kind of blind faith. You…

I haven’t been on the telly for about six years and the radio for five. I am very much what some people might call a ‘has been’. But to quote Shakespeare, “Better to be a has been than a never was.” I still have tiny bits of I’m A Celebrity magic dust in my hair and every now and then I give my head a wobble and get really sweet gigs. One of them happened a couple of weeks ago when Chris Wilkins invited me to host a Q&A at his ZZAP!64 event in Kenilworth. I’ve written before about the lovely vibe at these meets. Loads of middle-aged neurodivergent men all trying not to make eye contact. Most of them are bald while at 52 I have a very fine head…

The UK officially entered recession for the first time since 1991, with a notably severe economic contraction of 1.8% in the last quarter of 2008. 1.9 million people were unemployed, the highest figure since late-1996. In an attempt to improve the situation, the government announced a £20 billion loan guarantee scheme for small and medium businesses, and the Bank Of England cut its base interest rate to 1.5% – the lowest since its founding in 1694. On 15 January, a US Airways plane taking off from LaGuardia Airport in New York lost all engine power after striking a flock of birds. With no reasonable chance of returning to a nearby airport, pilots Chesley Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles guided the plane to an emergency landing on the Hudson River in under…

While plenty of modern games adopt a pixel-art style, that’s far from enough to make a game feel like a lost Nineties gem. “If you look at our back catalogue, the first couple of games we did like 88 Heroes and Ninja trying to create retro games,” explains Matt. “Now we see it as a more naive approach, but we just had a slightly higher resolution than retro would have been, and didn’t really limit things, and just kind of went with it. You can see how the community has embraced it, I would call them a more modern retro-type game – they’ve added in bump mapping and lighting, and coloured effects and glows and things.” So what sets a game like Terminator 2D apart? “I’m working with the Nintendo…

While nothing in life is certain, we were confident that Terminator 2D: No Fate was going to be worth keeping an eye on – Bitmap Bureau has an excellent pedigree as a developer and that announcement trailer was certainly enticing. However, we wouldn’t put a brand-new game on the cover of Retro Gamer without something more concrete to go on, so we took the opportunity to play Terminator 2D: No Fate before anyone else outside of the development process. Having spent a good chunk of time with the game, we’re confident that it’s going to be a treat not only for fans of the Terminator series, but also for fans of classic action games in general. It was a safe bet that the beat-’em-up stage in the biker bar would be…

“It’ll probably sound selfindulgent, but I’d say Crash. I was a reader long before I worked on the magazine and remember the excitement of a new issue coming through my letterbox. Seeing Oli’s covers for the first time, poring over those pages and all the amazing games – it still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up today. To get to work with those talented people was just incredible.” I REMEMBER WHEN THE BROWN LOTUS “I always remember the visit from the guy that was PRing Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge on the Spectrum. He came to Ludlow and took me for a ride in the actual car on the Ludlow bypass. I remember whizzing past three lorries thinking, ‘I’m going to die!’”…

SPLATTERHOUSE: WANPAKU GRAFFITI ■ This Famicom parody of the coin-op substitutes brawling for platforming and gory graphics for cartoon caricatures. It’s sometimes silly, often hilarious, and features two lovely endings – one smashes the fourth wall, the other positions this as a prequel to the coin-op. SPLATTERHOUSE 2 ■ Although billed as a sequel, and featuring a continuation of the storyline, this is best viewed as the Mega Drive conversion of the coin-op. The gameplay is almost identical, with just enough new content to keep fans entertained. And you do get to wield your own chainsaw. SPLATTERHOUSE 3 ■ The third game is what the second should have been – an excellent spin on the formula and a fresh challenge, with refined beat-’em-up gameplay (you can now move freely around…

Compared to places like France or the United Kingdom, the German developer scene in the late-Eighties and early Nineties always felt a bit subdued. Apart from standouts like the Turrican series, many German studios specialised in simulations and generally more menu-driven, business-like titles, leaving action and arcade games to their colleagues in other territories. Yet, there were exceptions – and one of these is a company called Demonware. Founded in the late-Eighties, this developer and publisher from the Frankfurt area set its eyes and focus on action games for the Commodore Amiga, but also the C64 and other home computers. Demonware was started by Peter Uhlich and Alexander Koppisch, its first release in 1988 was a game called Evil-Garden. This Amiga shooter took some obvious cues from Dona Bailey’s and…

» PLATFORM: ARCADE » RELEASED: 1992 » CHEAT TYPE: SECRET STAGE » CHEAT COMPLEXITY: VERY HIGH Every so often, Mortal Kombat’s hidden fighter Reptile will show up to taunt you, but he isn’t an easy fellow to find. For a start, you can only even try to fight him if you see shadowy figures flying across the moon in The Pit, the infamous stage with the spiked bottom. Once they appear, all you have to do is beat your CPU opponent with a double flawless victory, without using the block button, and perform your character’s Fatality move. Piece of cake, right? You’ll need to be playing version 4.0 of the game or later if you’re playing as Scorpion or Sonya too, as the update accounts for the fact that their…

■ After years of laying fallow, Konami surprised fans in September 2022 by announcing a remaster of the first two games in the series – a series many presumed dead and forgotten by the publisher. Finally releasing in 2025, Suikoden I & II HD Remaster: Gate Rune And Dunan Unification Wars impressed fans and critics with a visual update (that worked better for the second game’s more complex environments compared to Suikoden’s tile-based world), a touched-up translation and a bunch of quality-of-life improvements (although outside of the improved visuals, many of these were also in the earlier Japan-exclusive PSP remaster). Not only is this new collection a great way to revisit old favourites – with series founder Junko Kawano returning to redraw new Suikoden character portraits – but it also…

» MANUFACTURER: Bandai » YEAR: 2002 » COST: ¥7,800 (launch), £140+ (today, boxed), £110+ (today, unboxed) Although the WonderSwan Color had enjoyed a brief window of appeal upon its release, the arrival of the Game Boy Advance trampled all over it – weekly sales of Bandai’s machine more or less halved in the weeks approaching the launch of Nintendo’s machine, and never recovered in a sustained way afterwards. To stimulate interest in its format, Bandai introduced the SwanCrystal in the summer of 2002. The primary improvement was replacing the FSTN LCD screen of the WonderSwan Color, which was dark and prone to motion blur, with a brighter and more responsive TFT display. The hardware did its job well and provided a temporary sales bump. Unfortunately, the SwanCrystal’s launch date was…

A good launch game needs to do a lot of things. It needs to justify an upgrade to a new console, show off the capabilities of your shiny new piece of hardware, ideally offer an experience you couldn’t get on your previous system and be worth its financial outlay. Mario Kart World nearly manages to do all these things. Firstly, Mario Kart World is a significant upgrade over Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, not so much in terms of the number of tracks it offers, but definitely in its sheer scope and the ambitious design of its stages. There’s a lot to unpack in Nintendo’s new game, as well as a lot that will be familiar to longtime fans. The standard cup structure is still here, meaning you can attempt to…

» System: Atari 7800 » Buy it for: £24.95 » Buy it from: Retail Here’s a real treat for Atari fans – this is an excellent conversion of Toaplan’s shoot-’em-up, which faithfully recreates the gameplay and level layouts of the arcade original. That means it’s tough as nails, but it has that crucial “one more go” factor as you strive to best your previous scores. The visuals are also as authentic as the system will allow, and the POKEY renditions of the original tunes are very welcome. Make sure you’ve got a twobutton controller if you’re playing on the modern Atari 2600+ as you’ll need it for the crucial bombs. Other than that, all we could ask for is an option for rapid fire. >> Score 92%…

<INTRO> Creating a game for these old machines is a challenge. Creating something playable in just ten lines of BASIC is a real achievement, which is why we concentrate on the BASIC 10-Liner competition for our main feature and Champion Coder Matthew Begg. We’ll also be keeping an eye on the GB Compo 2025 – bit.ly/gbcompo2025 – to see what the Game Boy coders can achieve. And there’s news of multiple arcade conversions for you to try. </INTRO> <BODY> Gunnar Karnold formed an Atari group in northern Germany with some friends, which led to a friendly competition. “In 2011, we started the first BASIC 10-Liner competition,” says Gunnar. “After a break in 2012, in 2013, the task was to write a game in Atari BASIC. 2015 was the year in…

<INFO FROM: MANCHESTER, UK (ORIGINALLY MIDDLESBROUGH) WEBSITE: BIT.LY/BEGG-10LINERS FORMAT: ZX SPECTRUM BASIC 10-LINERS PREVIOUS GAMES: ZXFM (2024), HARDWARE HUSTLE (2024), BIMMOBILES (2023) WORKING ON: DELOREAN DASH, MINESWEEPER, BARCODE BATTLE, ZX STOCK EXCHANGE/> WHAT GOT YOU INTERESTED IN THE COMPETITION, MATTHEW? I read about it in Retro Gamer. I liked the immediate feedback of writing short games, the challenge of squeezing it all in. I use a trick with FOR loops to zero so you can fit loads of IF-like statements on a line. The Spectrum stores its commands as a single character, so that helps fit even more. I like the EXTREM-256 category so games can be more complex, with more custom graphics. I use 128 BASIC in FuseX on a MacBook Pro; I make notes to track variables and…

<INFO FORMAT: GAME BOY COLOR CREDITS: SHANE MCCAFFERTY (DESIGN, CODE, GRAPHICS), BEATSCRIBE (MUSIC & SOUND FX), THALAMUS DIGITAL (PUBLISHER) PRICE: $1.99 DIGITAL DOWNLOAD WEB: BIT.LY/HEROGP-GBC /> <BODY> After earlier racing games, Hoonigans and Nitro, Shane has tackled the classic Sega coin-op Super Hang-On. As you compete in motorbike races worldwide, new stages are unlocked if you beat the race criteria (based on time taken and finishing position). Try not to crash into other riders or trackside scenery, as it will cost valuable time. The changing graphics give a decent 3D effect, there is a pacy soundtrack, and the challenge increases as you progress. This enjoyable racer makes us look forward to Shane’s proposed OutRun-inspired title! </BODY> Score: 80%…

» XBOX 360 » 2007 » VALVE SOFTWARE I was recently listening to the Xbox 360 Mega Draft that took place on The Back Page Podcast a few episodes back. It’s a great videogame-based podcast helmed by Samuel Roberts and Matthew Castle and this particular episode also featured Dave Scarborough and Ashley Day, who, like Samuel, all used to work at Imagine Publishing with me and have written for Retro Gamer on numerous occasions. Anyway, in addition to some great banter between the four drafters, I particularly enjoyed Dave instantly going for The Orange Box as one of his choices. Was it particularly fair that Dave chose a game that was essentially five choices in one? Maybe not in the spirit of the draft (although it was allowed), but it’s…

Once upon a time you had to resort to the murky seas of emulation if you fancied a Toaplan fix, as the company was long dead and its games were legally inaccessible. Thankfully, that’s all changed in recent years with new owners Tatsujin intent on making Toaplan’s many great shooters as accessible as possible. Brilliant blasters like Batsugun, Truxton and Zero Wing are readily available on platforms as diverse as the PC and Evercade, and now the studio has announced two new collections. Published by Clear River Games, the two collections essentially contain all the great PC ports that were developed by Bitwave Games across four digital collections. Toaplan Arcade Collection Vol 1 features Flying Shark, Fire Shark, Batsugun, FixEight, Tiger-Heli, Dogyuun, Twin Cobra and Out Zone, while Toaplan Arcade…

Getting older, time feels increasingly erratic. Things that happened in the past couple of years feel like a lifetime ago, whereas the Nineties feel like last week. I’m sure I’ve documented before how Half-Life 2 is my favourite game of all time. If I had to play one game for the rest of my life, that’d be the one. It’s the only game I’ve played through – from beginning to end – more than twice. Probably four times, at least. Its production design, its physics, the way it delivers its narrative and character – it’s all still up there. You could sit a 14 year old in front of it and they’d still have a good time. There have been rumours recently – I mean, when aren’t there? – that…

Zombies might be cold, dead things, but Valve’s co-op shooter Left4Dead was full of them and happened to be the hot new thing in town. The game received universal acclaim, gaining scores of 5/5 from 360 and 9/10 each from Total PC Gaming, games™ and X360, adding to last month’s haul of 93% in PC Gamer, 9/10 in Edge and 8/10 in Official Xbox 360 Magazine. 360 felt that it was “almost certainly the best co-op shooter ever made”, praising the decision to split the campaign into short sections and saying that there was “just as much joy in witnessing the game punish the single-minded as there is in exploding any number of zombie crania”. The rebooted Prince Of Persia generally received a warm welcome this month, earning 83% from Play,…

» COLECOVISION » 1984 » PARKER BROS The ColecoVision is a console that I have a great deal of affection for, even though its heyday had come and gone before I was born. The library appeals to me not only because of the strong focus on arcade conversions, but the fact that it represents some games that were considered important at the time but don’t necessarily receive a lot of love today. Tutankham is a great example of that – Konami has rarely reissued it over the years, although it did get an Arcade Archives release for the Switch and PS4 in 2024, but Parker Bros went to the trouble of converting it to a variety of home formats. It deserves some attention too, because it’s a cool game. You play…

A key scene leading up to the climax of the movie is a tense chase in which John, Sarah and the T-800 escape the Cyberdyne building in a stolen SWAT van, only for the T-1000 to hijack a helicopter and give chase, flying low over the freeway in pursuit of the protagonists’ unhelpfully slow vehicle. It’s a scene that has proven tough to adapt over the years – the arcade game made it into a fairly straightforward job of shooting the chopper to protect the van, but Ocean’s computer game had a combined driving and shooting section that was somewhat awkward and the console games omitted it completely. “We had so many different mechanics in there, trying to get it going,” says Will, admitting that it was tough for the…

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When the Oliver twins – Philip and Andrew Oliver – decided to create a pinball game, they had a dream. “The goal was to build a pinball engine in a month for the Spectrum and Amstrad CPC, then churn out new themed tables in about a week each – ideal for the £1.99 budget titles which still offered great value for players,” Philip tells us. It was 1988 and the brothers had already made a name for themselves as accomplished developers capable of quickly turning around hits for publisher Codemasters. They had done so largely by coming up with winning concepts that had built upon an existing codebase so, with what would become Advanced Pinball Simulator, there was a chance to take this approach to another level. “We’d done it…

» AMSTRAD CPC » 1985 » JAMES SOFTWARE LTD I was 11 years old when I first watched Ghostbusters and it left quite the impression on me. I never had any toys or anything like that, but I watched the film continuously when it was eventually released on VHS and it’s always been part of my film collection (I’ve owned it on DVD, Blu-Ray and 4K Blu-Ray, upgrading whenever a new version came out). Although I was certainly aware of the videogame, I wouldn’t actually get to experience it until I received an Amstrad CPC for my 14th birthday and by then, the game was already two years old, which is a lifetime when you consider the high-speed nature of the games industry. Fortunately, Ghostbusters was re-released on Mastertronic’s Ricochet label,…

“Towards the end of last year, I was asked to create a Mario Christmas Annual, and started playing Super Mario Bros Wonder to write about it – what a fantastic game! It’s proper traditional 2D Mario gameplay in a stunningly designed 3D world. I’d love to work on a Nintendo game one day – I came close with a Switch demo of Rival Pirates for Netflix!” I REMEMBER WHEN NICK’S NOT SO BIG BREAK-FAST “While working on N-Force, The Big Breakfast had a character on the show called Ben The Boffin. I would write the game content that was covered in his segment with Zig and Zag. I was invited onto the show, but sadly my train to London got cancelled.”…

PC ENGINE ■ The first conversion is generally excellent. The graphics have been downgraded and the house is a bit sparse in places, but the gore score remains admirably high for a 1990 home release. Note: the TG-16 version has been slightly sanitised, so stick with the original Japanese release. FM TOWNS ■ Released for Fujitsu’s Marty console in 1992, this is almost arcade perfect. We say almost, because the display is narrower, which means single rooms like the first two boss battles actually scroll a little. Not a deal breaker. On the plus side, the CD audio is fantastic. PC ■ A belated release for the PC, arrived in 2003, and only in Japan. As you’d expect, this one really is arcade perfect. Everything is here, including the consecutive…

LIVING IN FRANKFURT ■ Starting out in Frankfurt left its mark on Demonware’s line-up. The city is Germany’s banking capital, has a large, vibrant music scene and was one of the few places with actual, well-stocked videogame arcades – all of which influenced Demonware’s owners and the publisher’s projects. A EURODANCE CONNECTION ■ After moving to nearby Offenbach, Demonware shared an office building with various music producers. This not only gave it close contact to many creatives and access to roaring parties, but also led to cooperations with big music acts, leading to releases like Ooops Up and The Power. AN ARCADE FOCUS ■ While most German developers in the Nineties preferred working on business sims and other ‘serious’ genres, Demonware mostly went for arcade-style action, bringing many concepts from…

■ John Manley was originally a member of a production group developing a PC flight simulation. When EA began supporting the Mega Drive instead, an early prototype was quickly retooled into what would become Desert Strike. ■ The enemy HARV units were a nod to a similar vehicle from the movie Stripes. On a related note, the blue VW buses from the Washington DC level were inspired by Back To The Future. ■ While each square foot represented approximately 1.5 miles, that space contained the equivalent of ten square miles of ‘real-life’ targets, so there was always something to do around every corner. ■ Destroying the IRS building in either of the Washington levels netted you 400,000 bonus points. ■ All the co-pilots and characters in the cinematics were EA…

CLOSE COMBAT ■ War is wide and sweeping, but it’s also intensely personal and sometimes it comes down to individual actions and victories. In these duels, Tir McDohl (and one other surprising fighter) faces off against his rivals in a rock-paper-scissors showdown. It looks like a turn-based fighting game, and requires the player to anticipate their opponent’s actions. GROUP COMBAT ■ These battles play out in typical console RPG fashion. With a party of up to six members facing off against a handful of baddies, Suikoden’s group battles are fast-paced and all about juggling limited resources. This is the most common type of battle in the game, and where you’ll face down Suikoden’s bosses. ALL OUT WARFARE ■ If Suikoden’s duels require a portrait lens, you’re going to have to…

TASTY PLANET SERIES 2006-2018 • PC ■ In Tasty Planet, you start life as a sentient bathroom cleaner that absorbs any germs it meets. Unfortunately for the universe, you don’t know when to stop growing. Eventually the grey goo is devouring whole cities, planets, even the fabric of space and time! TORNADO OUTBREAK 2009 • PS3, Xbox 360, Wii ■ Tornado Outbreak has the player controlling an ever-growing tornado as it twists and tears through cities, absorbing everything in its path. The absurd premise and physics-based destruction echo Katamari’s playful hook. It released to little fanfare, but has since sucked in its fair share of fans. THE MUNCHABLES 2009 • Wii ■ Developed by Now Production Co (the same company which worked with Keita Takahashi on Katamari Damacy), The Munchables is…

The Noughties was a sensational time for music-based games. But while some of the bigger headline releases like Guitar Hero and Rock Band were about simulating playing music, some of the most memorable were about synchronising the rhythm gameplay with a story that had charming characters you could easily root for. This had started back with 1996’s PaRappa The Rapper on Sony’s PlayStation, and other story-driven rhythm games had also originated in Japan. But Ose! Tatakae! Ouendan, as you might guess from its exclamatory title, was uniquely and culturally Japanese. For those unfamiliar with the concept, ouendan are basically cheerleaders, usually from Japanese high school or university sporting events rallying support for a team. However, they differ from the image we tend to have of acrobatic teenage girls waving pom-poms…

GITAROO MAN PLAYSTATION 2 • 2001 ■ This big-hearted rhythm game about a young boy fighting aliens with a magic guitar to save the girl of his dreams was the cult hit that remains iNiS’s most beloved, with bold visuals from Japanese artist Mitsuru Nakamura and an original soundtrack from Japanese band COIL. LIPS XBOX 360 • 2008 ■ Essentially Microsoft’s version of SingStar, this karaoke game made use of motion sensitive wireless microphones while even letting you use songs you owned on your iPod. While the game scores you in categories like rhythm, pitch and vibrato, it generously doesn’t fail you if you sing badly. THE BLACK EYED PEAS EXPERIENCE XBOX 360 • 2011 ■ There were two versions of this twist on Just Dance, with iNiS working on…

<BODY> Richard Garriott’s classic early role-playing games set in the land of Sosaria were never available for the VIC, and so Aleksi’s ambitious ports (cleverly reworked and compressed to fit onto a single disk image) are very welcome. In Ultima II: Revenge Of The Enchantress, after the defeat of the wizard Mondain in the first game, Minax takes her revenge by unleashing a nuclear war on Earth. A new hero must travel across time and space, fighting monsters and finding equipment to stop the destruction of the Earth in this game’s quirky and unusual plot. And in Ultima III: Exodus, the child of Mondain and Minax (called Exodus) must be stopped by the hero. This instalment allows you to generate four characters (choosing race, class and spending stat points) and…

<BODY> Mike tells us his latest game was inspired by Sega classic Columns. “I started to pour my personal influences into the game – Puyo Puyo and Pnickies by Compile, Tetris Attack by Intelligent Systems, and my undying love for 2D fighting games of the Nineties. Hell Breaker features asymmetrical battles against the CPU – the player uses a standard match-three system while the CPU uses a dice-based system to drop obstacles onto the player’s field and defend against their attacks.” Development is being done in GB Studio, with sound by Robotmeadows and Tronimal, and the help of Tara Touzie. “She is involved in all high-level concepting, game design, narrative and art direction,” explains Mike. “The full release will get an Endless mode and 2P Versus mode, where players can…

Hyper Sentinel from Huey Games and Four5Six Pixel originally debuted in 2018 and proved to be a slick spiritual reimagining of Hewson’s Uridium. That makes sense because Huey Games is cofounded by Rob Hewson, the son of Hewson’s Andrew Hewson. It also makes sense that in creating a sequel, Huey Games and Four5Six Pixel have turned to another classic Hewson game for inspiration, Andrew Braybrook’s Paradroid. While the opening sections of Hyper Sentinel Fusion will be familiar to anyone that’s played the original, things change significantly once your craft lands. Upon landing you can now investigate the Dreadnought, plundering it for goodies against a strict time limit. Interestingly, this new addition to the game wasn’t planned. “The original view was to revisit the original game but expand its size and visual…

Given that Andrew Braybrook helped define 8-bit and 16-bit gaming by pushing the C64 and Amiga to their limits he could be forgiven for relaxing during his well-earned retirement. Instead, he’s been spending his time working on a series of new games: Astierods, Rock Stars, Monster Molecules and Wreckie. Why did you develop Astierods after retiring, Andrew? I had moved mainly into quality control and activities relating to releasing software, and I wanted to get back to programming. So I created a new version of our 16-bit game system in C. Someone helpfully suggested I look at SFML, and it was just what I needed. I thought it would be easy to write an Asteroids tribute, and a few weeks of setup and a couple of all-nighter sessions later I had some…

In the hit-and-miss business of movie sequels, few hit harder than Terminator 2: Judgment Day. It’s a modern classic thanks to its combination of thrilling action scenes, revolutionary special effects and far more humanity than anyone should expect from a tale of killer robots, and it’s been referenced in everything from The Simpsons to Splatoon 2. As a result, even readers who haven’t seen it are probably aware of the plot – the shapeshifting liquid metal T-1000 Terminator is sent back in time to kill a young John Connor, the future leader of the human resistance against the machine intelligence Skynet, while a reprogrammed T-800 model is sent to protect him. Unfortunately, while the arcade lightgun game is decent and the Game Boy game received a good reception, developers generally…

One of the most intriguing aspects of Terminator 2D: No Fate is hinted at by its subtitle, as the story can take different paths to that shown in the movie. We were intrigued as to how this might happen – although we’d seen screenshots that show decisions that could clearly affect the story, we had to ask if that was the only method. Was there a chance that other aspects of gameplay could alter the story outcome, with success or failure in a stage changing your fate? “No, it’s quite arcadey in that respect – if you die, you’re going back to the last checkpoint, and you continue,” says Mike, shooting down our speculation. “The story paths, they only diverge when you make a choice during some of the cutscenes.”…

THIS MONTH IN APRIL 1991 The covertape wars got more and more competitive over the years and in April 1991, Your Sinclair raised the bar with the Magnificent Seven. Crammed with seven things, the tape offered readers incredible value. The tape featured a stunning five full games. True, one was a reader game, but one was the fantastic Spindizzy, and another was the first (unofficial) sequel to Street Fighter. There were also two games from French publisher Loriciels that were unreleased in the UK. Along with a demo of a doomed arcade conversion and a few POKEs, April was a bumper month for Spectrum fans. THE MAIN EVENT: SPINDIZZY: Spindizzy was a banger of a freebie. A venerable classic, Phil Snout gave it 9 out of 10, and full marks…

AMSTRAD CPC The Batman Group in 2019, showed just what the CPC can achieve. By comparison, this game feels far less visually impressive and a tad clunkier. The ball physics aren’t quite right either. Yet it was still fun and challenging. [I owned and enjoyed it – Ed] ZX SPECTRUM The Spectrum port was near-identical to the CPC version and it played in a similar fashion. But while it boasted the same digitised speech at the start of the game and had cleaner-looking graphics, it dropped the large image of the wizard from the left-hand side of the screen. C64 Although it retained the table layout of the CPC and Speccy versions, this port used the computer’s hardware sprites and it felt smoother and more polished with noticeably improved ball…

As great as shmups are, playing them can be a pretty lonely experience due to many of them catering to a single player. This makes sense, because there’s something truly satisfying about taking down an entire enemy force by yourself and Thunder Force IV is no different. There’s no friend to help you take on the Orn Empire, but you’re a veteran gamer and you’re more than happy to shoot down the Orn scum on your own – because let’s face it, it’s more points for you at the end of the day. The first few stages of Thunder Force IV follow this solitary approach, with you shooting down anything that’s foolish enough to stray into your gunsights. But then something happens. As you gawk at the colossal ship you’re…

» AMIGA » 1993 » CTA DEVELOPMENTS Back in the Nineties, school holidays typically meant at least one trip to the local play scheme – a council-owned service in a dedicated building with a pool table, plenty of board games, computers, outdoor play equipment, even a pottery wheel. Of course, the most important thing it offered was adult supervision, and therefore respite for parents. This was where I had 99% of my childhood Amiga experiences, and by far the most popular game when I was there was Sleepwalker, a visually appealing platformer that some of you may remember for its role as a fundraiser for Comic Relief. You play as Ralph, a dog whose owner Lee happens to be a somnambulist, and your job is to keep the sleeping stroller from…

When free-roaming helicopter shooter Desert Strike became Electronic Arts’ biggest non-sports hit in 1992, thoughts inevitably turned to a sequel. The core team would remain the same: on the technical side, Mike Posehn handled programming and engine refinements with Tim Calvin once more contributing the excellent 3D models. Meanwhile, John Manley would continue to be the driving force for the budding franchise, acting as lead director and designer, encompassing mission design, storyline and the implementation of new features; assisting him again was Tony Barnes. Jungle Strike was cleared for take-off. “Actually, even early in the development of Desert Strike, we considered that there might be a sequel,” begins John, “and when it came to designing, we wanted to take what players liked about it and give them a wider variety…

» SATURN » 1998 » KONAMI COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT YOKOHAMA Ever since I first started buying games, I’ve always been aware of the MSX. I would often see a small section of MSX games in Densham, an old computer shop that existed in Parkstone, but I never knew anyone who owned a MSX, so it’s a system I never experienced as a youngster. That all changed in the early Noughties when I bought a Japanese Saturn collection for £500 and out of the 30-odd shmups it was bundled with was a compilation of MSX games called Konami Antiques MSX Collection Ultra Pack. I had no idea that it was effectively a repackaged PlayStation collection (that had been issued across three separate discs) but I didn’t care. I could finally play some…

SUIKODEN II ■ Released a few years after Suikoden, its sequel took everything that was great about the first game – a huge cast, intriguing political story, castle building – and filed off the rough edges for an experience most fans consider the best in the series, which doesn't bode well for the rest of the entries… SUIKODEN III ■ Swapping Suikoden and Suikoden II’s sprite work for clunky 3D graphics, Suikoden III was an awkward step back for the series in the wake of creator Yoshitaka Murayama’s departure mid-way through development. Its story, however, spread across three protagonists, is among the series’ most compelling. SUIKODEN IV ■ For the first time in the series, Suikoden IV looks backwards in time, taking place 150 years before the events in the…

It’s characteristic of Keita Takahashi to be humble. In our hour-long conversation the creator of Katamari Damacy apologises no less than nine times for such criminal offences as: being tired, for being bad at interviews, for making “stupid games”, for his “silly answers”, for being a game designer instead of a doctor or a teacher or a musician, and for the fact that he must charge money for his games. For a creator whose work is beloved by millions and has been exhibited at the Museum Of Modern Art in New York City, he’s almost pathologically understated. “I was just lucky,” he says almost bashfully. “I still don’t understand. I still don’t believe that I have been working on videogames for 20 years. It’s crazy.” But let’s go back to…

■ In many ways, Keita Takahashi’s newest game, To A T, is very obviously a Takahashi game. It’s dripping with cuteness and aesthetic simplicity, it has lovely, charming characters, it’s a bit weird, and it has a phenomenally catchy and eclectic soundtrack. But unlike most of his previous work, the game’s narrative takes centre stage. “I think I was cursed with interactivity. Katamar isaboutrolling. Noby Noby Boy is about stretching, and Wattam is about connection. With To A T, I didn’t make interactivity the first priority,” Takahashi says. “[I wanted] more mood and atmosphere, like a nice vibe. Because of the current situation, our real world is [not] so nice. I wanted to make something very positive to put the spotlight on our normal lives.” To A T is set…

» DREAMCAST » 1999 » CAPCOM As the UK launch of the Dreamcast approached in the autumn of 1999, one of the games that really caught my imagination was Power Stone. After years of excellent 2D fighters, Capcom was taking advantage of the next-gen hardware to do a chaotic fighting game in proper 3D arenas, all the magazines loved it and the still shots looked great. I was desperate to find out whether it lived up to the hype, but that wasn’t straightforward – I never saw it on demo units, and I even had to exchange the first copy I got, because it didn’t work. Thankfully, it was a sheer delight when I finally got to experience it for myself. Those 3D arenas aren’t quite as large as I’d imagined…

<info Format: Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum Credits: David Programa (based on FanCade game by LukaszM) Price: Free download & play online Web: bit.ly/davidprograma /> <BODY> A trial of 60 different levels awaits, each containing a mixture of crates, holes in the floor, and crumbling tiles, preventing you from reaching the exit. Coloured discs grant a special skill, with six different colours to discover. Yellow allows you to push a crate, while cyan lets you pull a crate behind you. If you get completely stuck, you can skip to the next level three times. A level code is displayed as you start each new level and can be entered to get back to that point. This is a great variation on the classic Sokoban format, but we do prefer the presentation…