Indholdsfortegnelse for No. 280 i Retro Gamer

Mixed martial arts enthusiasts got a game for the ages from THQ and Yuke’s, as UFC Undisputed 2009 earned 90% from Play and 9/10 from X360, on top of 9/10 from Official PlayStation Magazine the previous month. “Undisputed catches the rise of the sport in a timely and accomplished fashion,” said games™ in an 8/10 review, praising the “remarkably technical” game for being “a far deeper fighting experience than anyone thought possible”. Official Xbox 360 Magazine gave it 7/10, calling it “easily the best” MMA sim, but saying “the career mode could have been more imaginative than just a ranking ladder”. “Fundamentally, The Sims 3 is still The Sims,” said PC Gamer. “Although a significant improvement, wishes are just a small change from The Sims 2’s wants and fears. Traits are…

SUBSCRIBE ONLINE NOW AT www.magazinesdirect.com/RET/DH44E TELEPHONE 0330 333 1113 AND QUOTE DH44E TERMS & CONDITIONS Offer closes 31st January 2026. Price is guaranteed for the first 6 months, please allow up to 6 weeks for the delivery of your first subscription issue (up to 8 weeks overseas) the subscription rate includes postage and packaging.*Savings are based on the cover price. Payment is non-refundable after the 14-day cancel ation period. **Access to the digital library will end with your subscription. For full terms and conditions, visit www.magazinesdirect.com/terms. For enquiries and overseas rates please call: +44 (0) 330 333 1113. Lines are open Monday-Friday 8:30am-7pm, Saturday 10am-3pm UK Time (excluding Bank Holidays) or email: help@magazinesdirect.com. Cals to 0330 numbers will be charged at no more than a national landline call, and may be…

Wizball is a memorable game, of that there is no doubt. Challenging, beautifully presented, smooth scrolling and innovative, Sensible Software’s iconic shoot-’em-up has long been considered one of the finest titles to grace the Commodore 64. You get the sense that you’re in for a special time as soon as the game loads and much of that is down to the eerie, ethereal music that accompanies the game’s title screen. Composed by Martin Galway, it’s widely considered to be a real high point in what has long proven to be a glistening career for the accomplished musician. But it’s only the start. From the high-score screen to the bonus section, there are more sterling tunes to enjoy, creating a scintillating, synthesised soundtrack that certainly made the machine sing. Martin, who…

■ There’s a number of things that Enigma Variations could have done so lets look at them here. Creating more original IP would most likely have helped. After all, original IP earned higher and more regular royalty payments compared to conversions. Successful IP would have also produced additional conversions, bringing in even more income for the team. A better understanding of the market could have helped too. Researching future hardware trends and fellow developer fees would have made Enigma more competitive. An agent would have taken a percentage, but their extensive industry connections and knowledge would have likely produced more lucrative deals. Agreeing on work beforehand could have helped, as ensuring that the work description was not ambiguous would have given Enigma a stronger position to get additional work appropriately…

» MEGA DRIVE » 1994 » KONAMI As a rule of thumb, we always use the UK name of a game in the magazine. After all, that’s the name that the vast majority of our readers will recognise. So you’ve probably already clocked that Contra: Hard Corps shouldn’t be the title for this particular Retro Revival. That’s completely on me. It’s not to be annoying or difficult, the name Contra has just been burned into my brain from a very young age and I’ve never been able to call the series anything else. “Ah, but what about the fact that Contra was called Gryzor over here,” I hear you say. It’s a fair cop, but due to importing games from the very impressionable age of 16, it’s the name Contra and…

THE LUCKY DIME CAPER STARRING DONALD DUCK ■ 1991 was a busy year for Donald – besides starring in QuackShot, he travelled the world in this platformer for the Master System and Game Gear. Sporting his classic sailor outfit, a hammer or throwing discs, Donald hunts down Magica De Spell to rescue his nephews and retrieve Uncle Scrooge’s lucky dime. MAUI MALLARD IN COLD SHADOW ■ This PC/Mega Drive platformer, made in 1995 by Disney Interactive and later also ported to the SNES and Game Boy, has Donald starring as Maui Mallard – or as the powerful, stick-wielding Cold Shadow. The game sports some of the best pixel art of the 16-bit era and has long, complex levels. DEEP DUCK TROUBLE STARRING DONALD DUCK ■ To help Uncle Scrooge get…

BECOME A CAVE SALAMANDER ■ Level 03 (generally known as Villi People) sees Jim being transformed into a blind cave salamander named Sally, floating through someone’s intestinal tract, shooting enemies, collecting mealworms and avoiding pinball bumpers. You think that’s weird? Oh, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! MASTER A QUIZ SHOW ■ At the end of Villi People, Jim becomes a contestant in a weird game show, featuring questions like, “How does Jim spell his first name?”, “What colour is Jim’s red gun?” or, “Does Jim’s mother approve of the girls he dates?” The most absurd answer is usually the right one. TAKE TO THE SKIES ■ The Flyin’ King is the fourth level of the game. In this isometric shooter level, Jim flies his Pocket Rocket, bouncing a Bomb Balloon…

» GAME BOY ADVANCE » 2004 » CLIMAX STUDIOS  After living with me for over 30 years, my wife Melanie is used to buying me things that you wouldn’t typically associate with the average 52-year-old man. When it comes to Christmas presents, I’m not big on surprises. Typically I’ll simply buy everything I’d like for Christmas from Melanie and send her a bill request. It’s not romantic in the slightest, but does ensure I won’t fall foul of unwanted gifts. As the packages start to arrive, Mel will open them up, inspect them (I’ll often buy second-hand goods) and then put them away. Two items last year provoked a reaction from her though. “Why on Earth have you bought these bloody kids’ games, Darran? Do you really want to unwrap these…

Survival roguelikes have become increasingly popular in recent years and this offering from Kenny Sun And Friends is a doozy. Ball X Pit shares elements with Breakout and requires your warrior to take down a wall of slowly moving enemies. Balls can be combined to create new evolutions and it’s a lot of fun working out the best combinations. Once a stage is complete or you die, you head to the town building area where you place buildings and crops to unlock new characters and increase numerous abilities. It’s an intoxicating loop that largely keeps repetition at bay thanks to the sheer number of unique characters and power-ups that can be unlocked. Score 88%…

32X: The Ultimate Doom 32X Resurrection patch adds the Thy Flesh Consumed episode. Get shredding at bit.ly/udoom-32x C64: Tape and disk versions of Rogue-ish 64 (84%, RG 277) are available from K&A Plus. Buy it from bit.ly/rogueish64 Game Boy Advance: Heartwrench Advance is a brilliant puzzle platformer in development by Michael Chase. Play the demo at bit.ly/heartwrench-gba Intellivision: Nanochess has released Pumpkin Taxi (RG 277) in this AtariAge thread. bit.ly/pumpkintaxi-int A physical Pumpkin Trilogy release is also planned. Jaguar: SkyFire68k by sjc is a great shmup entering the Jag Jam 2025. Give it a try by visiting bit.ly/skyfire-jaguar NES: Create NES games in C using the NESkit by Cutaway Shot Games, featuring conversion tools and pre-made features for platform games. Get programming at bit.ly/neskit Oric: The Oric Software Development Kit (OSDK) is available…

Released to mark the 40th anniversary of the Sega Mark III’s Japanese launch, astronaut Gary must reach the escape pod at the top of Frontier Prime station before his oxygen runs out. Gary can jump and use his grapple hook to pull himself up to platforms or grab extra oxygen bottles (giving an extra ten seconds of oxygen). Later levels add patrolling enemies, which can be stunned with the hook, and turret guns to complicate things. Conveyor belts push Gary in the direction they move, and collapsing platforms fall apart. Two continues let you resume at higher levels. This is good fun, and is brilliantly presented with great music and a gradually increasing difficulty curve. It bodes well for Adam’s forthcoming shmup Razing Core. Score: 85%…

What’s your favourite Nintendo 64 game? VirtualAlex Wave Race 64 is a game I have been coming back to for decades. Amazing chill beach vibes juxtapose the Minnesota winter. I love its pick-up-and-play nature, and very challenging tournament mode. MadMan-inc  San Francisco Rush 2, just the stunt course. I could play that for hours. Jamie Harris Outside of the obvious games I’ll have to say Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon. I’d never played anything like it before. The odd humour and storyline, great gameplay and a fantastically quirky soundtrack. Shame there’ll likely never be a rerelease. Lazarus93x Mine would be Conker’s Bad Fur Day! It was one of my faves growing up and very edgy and cute at the time! MYST+ Ocarina Of Time. This isn’t meant to be as depressing as…

» ATARI 2600 » 1982 » ACTIVISION If you’ve been reading the magazine for any length of time, you’ll know me to be something of a score chaser. When I first came across Sky Jinks on the excellent Activision Anthology for Sony’s PlayStation 2, I erroneously believed it would be a shooter, similar to 2600 hits like Plaque Attack or River Raid. There may be a plane in Bob Whitehead’s game, but its goal is to not shoot down objects, but to instead avoid them. Essentially, Sky Jinks is a game of dexterity and skill and requires you to weave your plane, slalom-style, through a set number of blue and red pylons across several different levels. Your plane can bank left and right, while accelerating and decelerating is achieved by holding…

“ALIENS HAD A STRONG INFLUENCE ON THE GAME, AS DID ATARI’S GAUNTLET” Following the success of James Cameron’s Aliens in 1986, a trio of licensed games were quickly developed for home systems. In the arcades though – a space-like vacuum existed. Konami would eventually release an Aliens coin-op in 1990, but until then fans had to make do with games merely inspired by the blockbuster movie. The most obvious and blatant example was Alien Syndrome, released in April 1987. It’s not clear why Sega didn’t acquire the Aliens licence at that time, as it would later do with its Alien 3 arcade game. We know that licensing arrangements can be as labyrinthine as LV-426’s terraforming colony, so perhaps the various home versions prevented it from doing so. Regardless, Sega pushed…

» MANUFACTURER: Commodore » YEAR: 1985 » COST: £269.99 (launch), £400+ (today, boxed), £200+ (today, unboxed) Keen not to appear as though it was coasting on the success of the Commodore 64, Commodore introduced the Commodore 128 as an upgraded machine that wouldn’t tread on the toes of the company’s real next-generation product – the Amiga. Beside the headline RAM upgrade, the new computer added a new display controller with higher resolution output, an operating mode for dedicated Commodore 128 software with an upgraded version of BASIC, and a Z80 CPU for running CP/M software. Of course, the new computer was also compatible with software written for the Commodore 64. Unfortunately, the Commodore 128 wasn’t really built with gaming performance in mind, and the Commodore 64 compatibility meant that developers…

■ Although there was music in the bonus part of the game, Wizball didn’t have a tune during the main play. Instead, the game was accompanied by a set of sound effects and Martin says developers had to make a choice if they wanted a tune. “It was a pretty quick process,” he says. “You could have no sound effects (like Miami Vice and Highlander), or have one channel for music and two for sound effects like the Wizball bonus section.” In choosing the latter for one specific part of Wizball, Martin produced a different sound. “There’s only one music part playing so that sound effects can continue. During the title screen music I had access to the entire SID chip,” he explains. There were other possible approaches. “You could…

■ Enigma, Phoenix and Dark Technologies’ unfinished games would never have seen the light of day if it wasn’t for the amazing work coordinated through Frank Gasking’s Games That Weren’t website. In the particular case of The Magician’s Apprentice for the Konix Multisystem, Mark Campbell’s Konix Multisystem website Slipstream and Lee Hammerton’s MSU emulator proved pivotal. “My involvement stems back to an article in Retro Gamer years ago about the Konix Multisystem. Mark Campbell was interviewed, and he put out a request for an emulator author to step in, so I did!” says Lee. “By the time I started looking into emulating the Konix, we had access to some documentation and some MSU era source code, so that’s where I started.” A decade later, Frank reached out to Mark Campbell,…

In the days before Sonic, Sega tried many things to establish an actual rival to Nintendo’s Mario – and one of the most promising approaches was a licensing deal with Disney. The first game to come out of this agreement was Castle Of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse, a well-made Mega Drive platformer released in 1990 and directed by newcomer Emiko Yamamoto. With its beautiful graphics, many clever ideas and precise controls, Yamamoto and her team proved that Sega could absolutely produce excellent, console-style platformers that didn’t need to fear comparison to Nintendo’s output. But instead of going for a straight sequel, which put the famous mouse through another gauntlet of stages, the team went with the second big name in Disney’s line-up. As a result, the ever unlucky Donald Duck…

■ The second section Lorenzen’s Soil (aka Lorenzo’s Soil for later versions) is a very unusual level. Especially from a technical point of view, as its structure is not predefined. A large part of the level consists of soil, which Jim blasts away at the top of the screen with his Electric Cannon (which is used only here), whereupon it trickles down, recomposes underneath him and pushes him upwards, which ultimately leads him to Pedro Pupa, a gigantic larva on a unicycle. The level structure around Jim is constantly redrawn in real-time, which is extremely CPU-intensive, and shouldn’t really be possible on a 16-bit system like the Mega Drive. The fact that this level exists is thanks to the genius of lead programmer Andy Astor, who once said the following…

Although new cartridges didn’t start appearing until March, 2025 remained a packed year for Blaze Entertainment and the Evercade brand in general and it’s finishing things off in fine style with five brand-new carts. First up we have NeoGeo Arcade 2 and 3, which feature 12 games between them. The incredible Garou: Mark Of The Wolves can be found on NeoGeo Arcade 2 and is arguably the highlight of an otherwise OK collection. Metal Slug 2 is solid enough but hampered by performance issues (just like the arcade version) while Art Of Fighting 2 and Crossed Swords are just weak games and unlikely to prove big time sinks. That leaves Ninja Command and Sengoku 2, which are both entertaining enough, but hardly big hitters. NeoGeo Arcade 3 is a far…

Zenovia Interactive’s slick futuristic run-and-gun/gallery shooter plays like a cross between Metal Slug and Wild Guns. Filled with gorgeous pixel art and a stylish soundtrack, you play a New York assassin who takes on a series of dangerous contracts for the Family while fighting off the firepower of the NYPD. Switching between foreground enemies and those hiding in the background (as well as the ability to deflect bullets) is initially tricky to master, but once it all comes together it makes for a terrific experience. It’s rounded off with some challenging boss fights, an entertaining two-player mode and the ability to replay completed stages. Score 76%…

MIRACLE BOY IN DRAGON LAND (Atari ST) With pre-orders shipping in 2026, work continues on the Wonder Boy-inspired RPG, including this spider boss. METAL CANARY (Dreamcast) Luiz Nai’s bullet hell shmup is due out in Brazil in May or June 2026 and hopefully worldwide, with a built-in level creation tool. DRIFTIN’ RAGE (Mega Drive) While finalising his port of Final Fight, Mauro Xavier is developing a good-looking 3D racing game with multiple drivers, cars and circuits. SHAPESHOOTER 2000 (Jaguar) This Songbird Productions title mixes polygons with Smash TV-style arena shooting and bosses, due for release later in 2026. IMPOSSIBLE MISSION 3 (C64) With final testing underway, this long-awaited C64 sequel (see RetroGamer 244) features a gun to help you fight the robots.…

Collect fruit. Avoid Enemies. Don’t Die. That simple tutorial text belies how addictive this game can be, following earlier iOS and Steam versions. With three difficulties and a choice of colour for Mr Robot, skilled players will learn to ‘skim’ close to enemies to earn extra ‘danger’ points. Fruit explodes when collected, hopefully causing a chain reaction and knocking out enemies; watch out for the giant red fruit-stealing enemy and lasers firing from the screen edges. Check out the spin-off puzzle game Fruity Pals’ Revenge (bit.ly/fruity-pocketcolor) for more free fun. Score: 84% NEW GAMES NEEDED Our new email address is waiting for all your homebrew news, previews and more: retrogamer@futurenet.com…

THE GAME Knuckles has teamed up with the Chaotix Crew for a mission to thwart Dr Robotnik and Metal Sonic as they try to capture six Chaos Rings and take over a mystical island. The game is a lot like other Sonic games, featuring fast-paced platforming action and the bold, bright visuals that the series is known for. The biggest departure from the usual Sonic gameplay is that players use two characters at once, tethered together by a magic rubber band. This gives a new way to play a Sonic game and creates some unique gameplay mechanics to experiment with. Players can use a charge-up move to create a speed blast or throw their teammates upward to reach higher platforms. As with other games in the Sonic universe, each of…

» XBOX 360 » 2007 » G.REV As a frequent importer of Dreamcast games, I came to love a small studio called G.Rev. If you don’t know the name, you might know the games, as the team was key to many of the best shoot-’emups of the era – as well as releasing Border Down and Under Defeat, G.Rev assisted Treasure with Ikaruga and Gradius V. However, the game I was most interested in was Senko No Ronde, an arcade release that combined concepts from fighting games and shoot-’em-ups. Like the company’s other Dreamcast releases, it ran on the Naomi arcade board and would have been an easy port. Sadly, that never happened. Fast forward to December 2007, and I’m in Game, having just received my Xbox 360 as a birthday…

We really enjoyed last year’s 8-bit revival project The Spectrum, saying that it “should please any fan of the original machine looking for a quick and authentic way to revisit some 8-bit favourites” when we reviewed it in issue 268. Now, Retro Games Limited and Plaion Replai have announced a limited edition version of the plug-and-play system. This special release is coloured white, as a tribute to the white ZX Spectrum produced to celebrate the production of a million of the iconic computers. Like the standard edition, it emulates 16K, 48K and 128K models and will include 48 built-in games including Manic Miner, Head Over Heels and The Hobbit. Beyond the new casing colour, the system is bundled with The Quickshot II, a USB joystick, The Printer, a thermal printer…

ASOPHY ■ The first boss is foul – and formidable. It will slowly advance on your position while ejecting deadly yellow globs and purple wormies. HOW TO BEAT THEM: See that, erm, slit in its body? Laser it when it briefly opens. After its body explodes, concentrate on the head (it’s only vulnerable when it rushes at you). HUGGER ■ This boss is cowering within circles of fleshy organs. Lovely. Every few seconds it will spit mini organs that home in on you. HOW TO BEAT THEM: Destroy the outer circle of organs with your Laser, then shoot the boss through the gaps in the inner circle. Attacking from below is advantageous. TAKAPY ■ This many-legged, bug-eyed beastie is protected by a permeable membrane. Beware its roving eyes and stomach…

When marketing exec Dominic Wheatley spotted his brother playing an early computer adventure game, he instantly saw the potential. Along with partner Mark Strachan, the pair quit advertising and formed Domark in 1984, developing their own adventure game, Eureka!. With marketing inevitably at the forefront, Domark (an amalgamation of the names Dominic and Mark) withstood early difficulties before securing a company-shaping licence, James Bond, via a contact in the Ian Fleming estate. A View To A Kill (1985) was a moderate success for Domark, but it was another licence, this time of a phenomenally successful board game, that forged the company’s fortunes for the next few years. Developed by Oxford Digital Enterprises, Trivial Pursuit (full story in RG 263) and its multiple sequels and add-ons, secured Domark’s existence for several…

Darren Melbourne became studio development director, and head of production at Enigma Variations in Harrogate in late-1992. Mark Greenshields was the owner and main programmer. Both knew that the company had to adapt to a rapidly changing industry. A deal was struck with Anil Gupta at Anco, which led to Nintendo console conversions for the Tokyo-based company Imagineer. “I’d known Anil back in the early eighties, when he was running a computer shop down in Dartford called Anirog,” says Darren. “Unfortunately, his business partner Roger died in a car crash and the company changed to Anco afterwards.” Imagineer wanted NES and Game Boy conversions of Kick Off 2. “At that time Dino Dini had left Anco, and Steve Screech wouldn’t have been able to take on the wor» kload, so…

HIDDEN PALACE HIDDENPALACE.ORG ■ Hidden Palace has been around since 2006 and represents a community of dedicated people who strive to preserve as much videogame development material as possible, before the original physical media deteriorates. The list of preserved titles is huge and covers a multitude of platforms. UNSEEN64 UNSEEN64.NET ■ Born in 2001, a group of passionate Italian gamers decided to try and find and archive prototypes and unreleased games for fun. This pet project grew over the years, and is now a large resource of articles, videos and some lost media for 16-bit platforms and beyond. GAMES THAT WEREN’T GAMESTHATWEREN’T.COM ■ Originally started by Frank Gasking in 1999 as a website covering lost Commodore 64 games, his hobbyist project eventually grew into a site that covers any format.…

THIS MONTH IN APRIL 1994 In 1994, for a brief moment in time, the CD32 felt like the future. Amiga owners were dreaming of a next-gen revival, with the CD32 promising AGA power and the vast storage space of CD. The system’s first coverdiscs were spectacular, with the sheer breadth of CD content feeling revolutionary. Music, books and art all sat alongside oodles of games. Sadly, by the end of April Commodore was bankrupt and the Amiga would fall by the wayside with it, its limited power no match for the soon to launch 5th generation consoles. It was over, but it had been fun while it lasted. THE MAIN EVENT: FIRE AND ICE DEMO Created by developer Graftgold, Fire And Ice, is a delightful shooty platformer. You guide hero…

SNES ■ The SNES port was released at the same time as the Mega Drive version and differs from it only in graphical details. For example, there are some different backgrounds here and there, and a kind of glowing border around Jim in the Lorenzo’s Soil level. In terms of content, however, everything is the same. PC ■ The PC version was released in April 1996 with the subtitle “The Whole Can ’O Worms”, and included Jim 1 and 2. The second game received a considerable graphical upgrade, with more colours in full VGA resolution, better voice quality and excellent music coming directly from CD. What was missing, however, was the Lorenzo’s Soil level. SATURN/PLAYSTATION ■ In May 1996, Jim also hopped onto Sega’s Saturn. This version was identical to…

» SATURN » 1996 » SONIC TEAM Being a big Sonic fan, I spent years wondering what NiGHTS Into Dreams might be like. I was keen to see what the hedgehog’s creators had come up with for the transition to 3D gaming, but without the benefit of YouTube or even a Saturn-owning friend, all I could do was read and re-read magazine coverage. That all changed when my friend James gave me his Saturn during a clear out in 2002. His great taste meant I had games like Virtua Fighter 2, Virtua Cop, Sega Rally, Street Fighter Alpha 2 and Tomb Raider straight away – but not NiGHTS. He did have Christmas NiGHTS though, and that convinced me I needed the full game. Within months, I’d found it for about £5…

You were a well-known name before you’d ever written for a magazine, because you were the UK and later European Sega champion. How did that come about? I saw a piece in Sega Power saying that there was a double decker bus being driven around the country where you just go on and have a go. So I just entered and, you know, won Manchester, won the UK, won Europe. However, I was a published videogame reviewer before that happened. When I was about 13 years old, I sent a review into – it was either Teletext or Ceefax. This was pre-Biffo, pre-Digitiser. I sent a few reviews in, but eventually they picked one and put it on and it was for Vigilante on the Master System. It wasn’t professional,…

There’s no denying the ambition of Yuke’s Double Dragon reimagining. It’s big on special moves and flashy attacks, there’s the ability to smash enemies into environmental objects, it has online play, and some of the remixed tunes sound great. Unfortunately, while each character’s moveset is the most comprehensive it’s ever been, fighting sometimes feels stodgy and it’s all too easy to not pick up weapons or hit downed enemies when they’re nearby. Visually it all looks a bit dour, but there’s a good range of enemies, plenty of challenges and lots of call backs to the original game. A solid, rather than exceptional update of an acclaimed series. Score 68%…

AS WE REACH THE END OF 2025, THE HOMEBREW SCENE SHOWS NO SIGNS OF SLOWING DOWN. OUR MAIN FEATURE LOOKS FORWARD TO 2026, THE CHAMPION CODER IS WORKING ON AN AMAZING MEGA DRIVE PORT, AND SONGBIRD PRODUCTIONS PREVIEWS A GAME MORE THAN 30 YEARS IN THE MAKING. WHETHER IT’S THE FORTHCOMING AMIGA PORT OF URBX WARRIORS OR IMPRESSIVE NEW BBC MICRO TITLES, WE WILL CONTINUE TO BRING YOU THE BEST NEW GAMES FOR OLD MACHINES. Dutch musician Jorrith Schaap is our guide to this spooky MSX project. “Nightstalker started back in March 2024, when Frederik Boelens started experimenting with a ‘Castlevania MSX concept’ engine. A homebrew game in the style of the proper Castlevania games has never been made on MSX. Therefore, it seems to be a great challenge to…

On planet Suinio, the Evil Masters have turned all the toilets into tiny potties. Zampo The Pig must collect them all across five levels (Factory, Towers, Fun Park, Cliffs and the Fortress), returning them to Cotechina The Witch to turn back to full size. Zampo is constantly hungry and needs to eat the food items that appear on the screen. Switches and keypads will open barriers, while portals move Zampo between sections but can only be used once. Flags act as checkpoints – the most recent one touched is where Zampo returns when he takes damage from a hazard or enemies. Additionally, collecting the Spinach Tin activates Pig-Of-Steel mode, allowing Zampo to kill the Evil Masters, while hidden tiles in each level activate Pig-Of-Gold mode, making Zampo invulnerable to enemies…

Beyond Games created the Jaguar beat-’em-up Ultra Vortek in 1995, combining digitised actors and stop-motion models converted into digital characters. Founder Kris Johnson originally planned a Lynx conversion, but in 2000, Songbird’s Carl Forhan purchased the rights and renamed it to Ultravore. “I have the complete source code for Ultravore, and it’s 100% 65C02 assembly,” we’re told. “Part of the challenge is parsing what the code is doing, as there are few comments. I’m using the original Epyx toolchain (which only works on Amiga machines) to build the code, then I test either on emulators or real hardware.” The demo offers one player versus the console or two players using the ComLynx cable. “The two characters currently in the game, Venom and Razorback, are the ones created by Beyond Games…