Innehållsförteckning för Retro gamer - Ultimate retro hardware guide från Retro Gamer

STEVE ‘WOZ’ WOZNIAK ■ Cofounder, engineer An amazing engineer, Woz was the brains behind the Apple I and Apple II computers. Although still technically an Apple employee, Woz has had little to do with Apple since the mid-Eighties. STEVE JOBS ■ Cofounder, CEO Steve Jobs saw the potential in Woz’s work, and became Apple’s vision and taste arbiter. Ousted in 1985, he went on to found NeXT, he then triumphantly returned to Apple as CEO in 1997, reinvigorating a then-flailing company. JEF RASKIN ■ Interface expert Although many people were responsible for the original Mac, Jef Raskin instigated the entire project, noting computers at the time were for geeks, and wanting to create something that was much more usable and friendly. SUSAN KARE ■ Graphic designer Graphic designer on the…

Pipsqueak Apple vs. Microsoft ■ Microsoft started out as a Apple ally but Windows drove a wedge between the companies. Apple fumed at Microsoft’s perceived plagiarism, but many lawsuits later Apple was almost bankrupt. In 1997 Microsoft injected cash and shored up its ailing rival, seemingly to retain ‘competition’. Apple subsequently blazed past, predicting and driving consumer hardware trends in a way Microsoft couldn’t match. Pipsqueak Apple vs. IBM ■ Big Blue killed any hope Apple had of mainstream success in the Eighties. The PC’s arrival in 1981 provided an affordable alternative to anything Apple had to offer. But, over time, the rivalry thawed, showcasing the tangled relationships between tech companies. For years, PowerPC chips from an Apple-IBM-Motorola alliance were found in Macs. Today, Apple and IBM are increasing the…

PITFALL! ■ Curiously enough, Pitfall! is a platformer that doesn’t really have platforms, but David Crane’s classic contains more than enough platforming standards to justify its place in the genre. Specifically, hero Pitfall Harry has to jump over pits – naturally – swing on ropes over hazards, avoid creepy-crawlies, vault rolling logs and collect hidden treasure. Of course, the game’s appeal lies in its implementation, which boasts smooth-scrolling, tight controls, well-constructed levels and slick presentation. H.E.R.O. ■ Arguably the best Superman game never made, John Van Ryzin’s H.E.R.O. was reworked when he discovered that Atari owned the DC Comics licence. Having a vulnerable hero led John to populate the sprawling mazes of his cave-based rescue mission with indigenous threats like bats and snakes. The vulnerability of the game’s rocket-packed, laser-blasting…

What were your first impressions of 2600 game visuals? I first saw the 2600 when I was hired at Atari in 1980. I had been playing arcade games and wasn’t too impressed with ‘Stella’, as the engineers called it. I actually thought most of the games sucked. Until Atari brought in artists, all art was done by programmers, most of whom had little or no art training. The art was so bad in most games you’d be forgiven for not wanting anything to do with them. How did creating 2600 art compare to designing visuals for other systems? I worked on 5200 and arcade games as well, so when I was assigned a 2600 game I would kinda groan. At first, everything was established on graph paper, and it wasn’t…

SPY HUNTER ■ Developed in the US by Sega Electronics, the 2600 Spy Hunter nails the coin-op’s speed and gameplay while making very few concessions. Jeff Lorenz’s adaptation of Midway’s top-down vehicle shooter squeezes in the original’s main road and river sections, its hostile vehicles – including the helicopter – plus the oil slick, smoke screen and missile power-ups. These are triggered by the second controller’s fire button, but given the game’s overall quality this is a tolerable workaround. TAPPER ■ A by-product of Sega’s distribution relationship with Midway, the 2600 conversion of Tapper was ably developed by Steve Beck. As with Steve’s 2600 Up’n Down, 2600 Tapper faithfully translates the mechanics of its arcade counterpart, but unlike Up’n Down, Steve’s Tapper has nicely rendered high-resolution graphics. More impressively, sliding…

ANT ATTACK Quicksilva was so sure that it had seen something special in Ant Attack that it flew creator Sandy White to its offices and had a signed contract within 24 hours. It then applied for a patent for the routines behind the remarkable 3D graphics. Ant Attack was a huge hit and cemented Quicksilva’s reputation as one of the premier software houses of the time. TIME GATE This more complex shooter was a step up from the normal Space Invaders or Missile Command clones. In Time Gate, the player took on the role of an unnamed fighter in a classic one-man-versus-the-empire story, travelling through time and eliminating the enemy craft. A complex tracking system coupled with a fast pace make Time Gate an underrated classic. MINED-OUT Future Incentive boss…

ARCADIA Where else to begin but with the game that started it all for Imagine? Released in 1982, Arcadia was a lightning-paced shooter programmed by David Lawson that saw the player up against the evil Atarian empire as wave after wave of colourful enemy craft descended on the lone spaceship. The instant arcade appeal of Arcadia enticed many Spectrum owners and created a powerful springboard for Imagine. JUMPING JACK Could Albert and Stuart Ball’s debut have been any simpler? It was based around a four-verse limerick, and each screen scaled would reveal two lines. Help Jack through each of the 20 screens and all four verses would be revealed. Hindering his progress were random holes and hazards that caused Jack to be temporarily stunned. Jumping Jack was easy to pick…

Jim Bagley Programmer of Midnight Resistance, Cabal and Hudson Hawk for Ocean Software – and currently working on a brand new Spectrum game! You programmed some of the most colourful games to be found on Sinclair’s Spectrum. Please tell us what tricks did you use to get around its signature graphical issues such as attribue clash? Jim Bagley: Well, take Midnight Resistance, for example. In order to get around the colour clash, you needed to scroll the screen in characters, 8x8 pixels. I also drew some of the sprites with attributes for maximum colour effects, like the explosions and the big bosses. It was a balancing act as well squeezing in what we could of the arcade game by removing some of the background characters that were not too different…

Martijn van Der Heide Owner, World of Spectrum What were your early memories of the ZX Spectrum? Martijn Van Der Heide: It really feels like yesterday! One of my friends got a Spectrum for his birthday in 1984 and we all gathered around while he unpacked it and loaded up the Horizons tape. We saw it as nothing short of a miracle: colours, sound and lower-case characters! A very memorable day. What do you think made the computer so popular with the public? MVDH: I believe the prospect of fortune is what struck us most; reading about programmers like Matthew Smith driving around in posh cars while writing successful games showed something of remarkable promise to us. And the games themselves were very varied; everything was open and all manner…

» PLATFORM: VARIOUS »RELEASED: 1983 »COST: £25 (LAUNCH), £10+ (TODAY, UNBOXED), £20+ (TODAY, BOXED) It’s said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and if that’s the case then some designers at Kempston Micro Electronics must have been very flattered indeed, as the Competition Pro joystick was one of the most frequently imitated pieces of hardware during the Eighties. The distinctive layout features a rectangular base, with a red pommel joystick protruding from a square platform. At the cable end of the base two circular, bright red fire buttons with the same function offer a comfortable experience for both left-handed and right-handed players. A standard DE9 connector ensured compatibility with the majority of systems that were on the market at the time, including Atari and Commodore computers as well…

If you’ve read David Sheff’s excellent history of Nintendo, Game Over, you’ll be aware that Nintendo initially approached Atari about distributing its console in the United States, and Uemura was one of the people tasked with showing Atari its work in progress. “They were really surprised we were making our own hardware [for a home console],” he recalls. “We had to show them the blueprint of the PCB to prove we had made it. They didn’t believe it was our work! But the reason we could make such hardware is because we had made such amazing arcade hardware. That was very important. We weren’t just looking at other consoles. We were thinking about Donkey Kong!” Indeed, it was a squabble over the rights to the home conversions of Donkey Kong…

COLOUR TV GAME SYSTEM Nintendo took its first tentative steps as a console manufacturer in 1977 with the Color TV-Game 6. Featuring half a dozen versions of Pong, it was shortly followed by TV-Game 15, which served up more bat-and-ball games and added wired controllers, making it considerably more user-friendly. If you have a white version of the original unit, you have a real rarity as, apparently, only a few hundred were ever produced. DISK SYSTEM This Japanese-only peripheral allowed a disk drive to be attached to the Famicom console via the cartridge port and used bespoke floppy disks called ‘Disk Cards’ which could store 112K, which was a considerable size on its release in 1986. “Based on results, the disk system wasn’t a good idea,” acknowledges Uemura, “but from…

What was it like creating graphics on the Amiga, after moving from the 8-bit systems of the time? I recall it was a shock to the system to have so many colours and for sprites to be so much bigger after the horrible constraints of the 8-bit machines. It took a bit of getting used to, but it was just another part of the learning curve. I know that I relished the opportunity to push the animation a lot more than I had previously. That was great fun. What art packages (if any) did you use and how effective were they? It was the standard, Deluxe Paint. It did everything a games artist or even a hobbyist could ever require. I was still using it long after I had moved…

What gave the Amiga 500 a better commercial edge over previous systems? My belief is that it was the way we positioned our marketing – aimed squarely at out target audience – which was the slightly older child, perhaps getting ready to study for critical exams, from middle class or higher socioeconomic families whose parents wanted to be seen to be responsible enough to equip their child with the latest and best technology. How did strike the deal for the Batman pack? I had heard that Ocean Software had just been to Hollywood and had paid out $1 million just for the rights to use the Batman movie title for the game they intended to produce. So I set up a meeting with David Ward and Jon Woods (joint managing…

MOTOROLA 68000 ■ This is the main processor for the Mega Drive, a 16-bit CPU that had been a staple of Sega’s arcade games since 1985. RAM ■ Two 32KB chips supply the Mega Drive’s memory. RAM prices and availability were volatile in 1988, so the PCB is designed to accommodate both wide and narrow chips to hedge against shortages. SEGA 315-5313 ■ This is the visual display processor – the graphical heart of the Mega Drive, which handles two scrolling background layers plus sprites. YAMAHA YM2612 ■ This is the sound synthesiser chip used by Mega Drive games, providing up to six channels of FM sound. Sampled PCM sounds are also supported, for effects such as drum beats and speech. ZILOG Z80 ■ This 8-bit CPU is included as…

What were your immediate thoughts on the Game Boy as a gaming platform? When I first tried a Game Boy I thought it was a great little device. Of course the first thing I played was Tetris and I was hooked. I also remember that you could connect two Game Boys together and play two-player Tetris. That was the first time I’d seen anything like that. How would you rate the Game Boy’s audio capabilities? The Game Boy had some interesting characteristics. It had a waveform that you could program yourself – 32 4-bit samples that you could define. I remember getting it to make some unusual noises. I also liked the fact that you had some control of stereo placement, though I wish I’d used that a bit more…

Roughly how many SNES and Super Famicom games do you have in your collection? I have just under 400 now. Around a quarter of my games are stored away. I sold off quite a few games last year, mostly games I never play. They were taking over my games room and filling my wardrobe and I was running out space to store my clothes so I sold some off! What single item has cost you the most? Spider-Man: Lethal Foes. It was around £280. That was a recent purchase. All the other games I have which are worth thousands (according to ebay sellers) were never that price when I bought them. I have always tried to not overspend and I enjoy hunting down a bargain. What item do you treasure…

CYBER-LIP 1990 ■ Despite the odd name and rough visuals this remains a classic and it is said that some of its developers would go on to work on Metal Slug. Borrowing concepts from Konami’s famous Contra franchise, Cyber-Lip is packed with action and is still pleasantly challenging. ZED BLADE 1994 ■ Also known as Operation Ragnarok, Zed Blade is a shooter which has largely been forgotten by the SNK faithful. It’s not in the same league as Blazing Star or Viewpoint, but its status as a true Neo-Geo exclusive makes it worth a closer look. The visuals are also eye-catching, especially for 1994. WINDJAMMERS 1994 ■ Another solid Neo-Geo classic, Windjammers is a sports title where the object is to hurl a disc into your opponent’s goal. Crazy power-up…

Given Apple’s gargantuan profits and global reach, it’s easy to forget it started life as two people in a garage. Much of the tech wizardry back then was down to Steve ‘Woz’ Wozniak, while Steve Jobs was tactician and visionary. The first breakthrough occurred in 1976, with what would become the Apple Computer 1 (later referred to as Apple I). The machine was offered to HP, which declined, and so Apple Computer was born. Apple already was ‘thinking different’, its debut hardware being the first single-board computer, sold fully assembled and utilising a television for output. But Woz was thinking bigger. Inspired by his work on arcade games, he wanted to create a computer that was faster, more colourful and noisier than anything else. Ultimately, as he recalled in a…

Apple Macintosh The Macintosh was a huge influence during the Eighties, and has continued to evolve. At the time it was the first commercially succesful computer to feature both a mouse and a GUI. Apple II The Apple II was first released in June 1977 and had various revisions. Many American developers, such as John Romero, Richard Garriott and Jordan Mechner learned to code on it. Pixar Formed in 1979 as the Graphics Group, Steve Jobs bought Pixar from Lucasfilm in 1986, eventually selling it to Disney for roughly $7.4 billion, making him Disney’s largest shareholder. iPod The iPod not only revolutionised the way we listened to music, but also the music industry itself. As with many Apple products it was continually refined over the intervening years. iPhone The iPhone…

A major milestone in videogame history was marked in July of 1977 when the first Atari Video Computer System rolled off a production line in California. However, Atari’s think tank – Cyan Engineering – had been discussing ideas for a programmable game system as early as 1975. In light of the long lead time required by the console – now better known as the 2600 – it’s perhaps unsurprising that Atari recruited the first member of its launch games team – Larry Kaplan – almost a year before mass production began. “I was working in Silicon Valley, this is August of 1976, and Atari put an ad in the newspaper for programmers,” Larry begins. “Atari at the time was a coin-op company, but there was a new consumer division –…

What did you initially think of the 2600 and its early games? When I attended GameTronics 1976 in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Fairchild Channel F was featured there, and I played tennis with Alan Miller, who was working at Atari on Atari 2600 games. Based on discussions, he invited me into Atari to interview for a position making games there. I saw the potential and took the job. I saw the games at the time as indicative of what the system could do. I appreciated the way the Atari designers could think outside of the box in order to make the limited 2600 hardware play a diverse mix of games. Why were so many early 2600 titles based on arcade games? Atari’s primary strategy for creating the Atari…

STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK ■ Based on the Star Wars sequel’s set-piece Battle Of Hoth scene, Parker’s Empire Strikes Back puts the player in the pilot’s seat of a snow speeder and pits them against an unstoppable fleet of imperial walkers. In terms of gameplay, Empire clearly takes influence from Williams’ seminal coin-op Defender, but its focus on attacking one gigantic foe at a time instead. It’s a great game that’s still fun to play. SPIDER-MAN ■ Although it borrows from the coin-op Crazy Climber, Spider-Man distinguishes itself by having Spidey web-spin rather than crawl up skyscrapers. Thugs appear at windows and try to cut the hero’s webs, but swinging into them tops-up limited web-fluid supplies. The superhero’s webbing is also replenished by defusing bombs set by the…

What was your earliest encounter with the 2600, and what are your earliest memories of the system? The 2600 was a phenomenal success. I was in Mattel from 1975 to 1979 working in new product categories, and I was always impressed when a new product came out that filled a need or was something totally new. I thought a home videogame system that allowed you to play arcade hits – more modestly – was a great idea. So my hat was off to Nolan Bushnell and Atari. What attracted you to running Atari’s videogames division? I liked turnarounds. We started the handhelds at Mattel, which led to the Intellivision. Coleco was almost bankrupt and succeeded [partly] thanks to ColecoVision. I was hired by Epyx, and we made it profitable, but…

Jonathan Cauldwell Author of Egghead, Albatrossity, Rallybug and many more What were your impressions of the Spectrum, from an aesthetic and technical point of view? Jonathan Cauldwell: It took me several months of saving up in 1983 to buy a second-hand Spectrum, and when I finally purchased it I remember the colours. So bright and vivid! The screen was a riot of green, yellow, blue, red… It was amazing! It had sound tool music, explosions and little men running around. It just blew me away. On the technical side, there was a lot of negative talk about the keyboard in the magazines, but nobody really cared. We just wanted to play games! What was it like programming on the Spectrum? JC: It was never a lazy programmer’s machine as you…

Roger Kean Ex-editor of Crash magazine When did you first see a Spectrum? Roger Kean: Franco Frey brought a 16K Spectrum to Ludlow one weekend. We plugged it in, loaded up some Defender clone, and it knocked us out. Of course, the graphics were simple, but there was no denying the excitement of seeing interaction on your own telly rather than in the arcades. Which Spectrum did you own personally? RK: I never actually owned a Spectrum! First there was Franco’s, and then we bought several as the magazine took shape, so it seemed pointless to own one myself. Why do you think the Spectrum was so popular, and for so long as well? RK: A number of factors: price, especially when compared to other platforms, and the relatively low…

Rod Cousens CBE Formerly of Quicksilva, Electric Dreams and Activision and now CEO of Codemasters You were working at Quicksilva at the time of the Spectrum’s release. How do you recall the general feeling at this time? Rod Cousens: The vibe in the computer industry at the time was something akin to a revolution, and the creative companies of the day – Psion, Bug-Byte, Silversoft, Salamander and us – all thought we could conquer the world. There was a tremendous camaraderie and it was a very exciting time, with young programmers working out of their bedrooms, constantly coming forward with ideas. Do you remember when you first saw a Spectrum? RC: I first saw one in final form at a home computer fair at the Royal Horticultural Halls in London.…

ARMA GEDDON One of Ocean’s first releases following its name change from Spectrum Games Ltd, Armageddon followed in an already fine 8-bit tradition of shamelessly copying famous arcade games of the time and releasing them under a new name. The inspiration on this occasion was Atari’s trackball classic Missile Command, and Armageddon was a decent clone released in 1983 and programmed by Adrian Sherwin. Overlook the brazen lack of originality and it’s a great version. HUNCHBACK Based on a relatively obscure Century Electronics coin-op, Hunchback was another early Ocean game, the sequel to which featured in the infamous Commercial Breaks documentary. As Quasimodo, the player’s task was to rescue Esmeralda, who had been imprisoned within a heavily fortified castle stronghold. Hunchback wasn’t the most complex of games – there were…

Coleco made a big play on the fact its console could be expanded straight away. “The front port for accessories and expansion packs was pretty much there from the start,” says Bruce Popek, former director of design at Coleco. “It made us different.” And yet, ironically, it helped make the ColecoVision into a makeshift Atari 2600 anyway. Expansion Module 1 took advantage of the fact Atari’s console used standard, off-the-shelf components. By stuffing a recreated 2600 into the sizeable module using the hardware only, the reproduction was so faithful it ran almost all of Atari’s games for the machine, substantially expanding the ColecoVision’s catalogue. It had a slot where Atari cartridges could be inserted as well as the necessary switches and controller ports for 2600 compatibility. What’s more Atari was…

ROB HUBBARD MEMORABLE GAME: Master Of Magic ■ At times, the arrangements of Rob Hubbard’s SID compositions make them sound almost orchestral, although quite how this is possible given just three synthesiser voices to work with remains a mystery. Rob’s Master Of Magic score spans multiple musical styles and techniques to great effect. BEN DAGLISH MEMORABLE GAME: The Last Ninja ■ Preferring to freelance rather than work in-house, Ben Daglish was nothing if not prolific during his C64 days. Ben produced over a hundred SID tunes, which typically get described as ‘feel-good’, but his often-understated work on The Last Ninja proves this to be something of a generalisation. MARTIN GALWAY MEMORABLE GAME: Wizball ■ Likely remembered as much for the amazing sounds he coaxed out of the SID chip as for his compositions,…

SUPER MARIO BROS. ■ Of course he had appeared in Donkey Kong, albeit with a different name and profession, and Mario and Luigi had already starred in an frenetic coin-op, but this is where the brothers really showed the world what they could do. Super Mario World may have topped our chart of your favourite games of all time but this is where it all began. MEGA MAN ■ Rock hard – that’s the man himself and the level of difficulty typical in this long-running series which debuted in 1987. The side-scrolling run-and-gun action of the original has you leaping platforms and blasting foes with a weapon handily attached to his arm. Defeating bosses rewards you with new weapons and so the carnage continues. LEGEND OF ZELDA ■ After Mario,…

MEGA MAN 2 CHIP: MMC1 ■ The first of Nintendo’s custom memory management controller chips was used to switch between banks of program and character ROM, and it added support for important things like game saving and multi-directional scrolling. As a result, many games used it – literally hundreds of them, from both Nintendo and its third parties. SUPER MARIO BROS. 3 CHIP: MMC3 ■ The most popular of Nintendo’s add-on chips was used in many NES games, and provided additional RAM, a pair of selectable 8KB program ROM banks, two 2KB character ROM banks and four 1KB character ROM banks. A scanline-based IRQ counter is also included to improve split-screen scrolling. COBRA TRIANGLE CHIP: AOROM ■ Chris Stamper’s memory management controller is relatively simple, offering a 32KB ROM bankswitch…

APIDYA 1992 ■ A very colourful, Gradius-inspired horizontal shooter where you control a deadly bee and blast the hell out of other insectoid-based ships. Apidya is notable for coming with a killer soundtrack, courtesy of composer Chris Huelsbeck. BATTLE SQUADRON 1989 ■ This vertical shoot-’em-up received a very poor port to the Mega Drive, but was one of the best on the Amiga – a classically difficult old school space shooter with plenty of travelling through fortresses, cityscapes and the innards of aliens. BILL’S TOMATO GAME 1992 ■ Essential Rube-Goldberg-esque puzzle game where you have a brief time limit to try and position platforms, trampolines and lord knows what else in order to get a tomato from A to B. The Bill in question is Bill Pullan, designer of the…

What was it like moving over to the Amiga 500 after working on the Commodore 64? Short answer: it was fantastic. I’d owned an Amiga A1000 at home for two years before I started writing games for the Amiga, on an A500. I could see what people were doing on it and had been learning 68000 assembler programming in preparation. Instead of getting three 8-bit registers and 16 preset colours I was going to get 16 32-bit registers and a palette of 16 or 32 colours from my own selection of 4,096. The CPU was also eight times faster and the instructions were much more functional. It was like the driver of an old Ford Anglia waiting for his Lamborghini to arrive. How do you feel the Amiga enhanced your…

BITMAP BROTHERS FIRST AMIGA RELEASE: 1988 ■ Famed for hi-octane, futuristic games with soundtracks that could be club favourites, Bitmap Brothers gave us the likes of Xenon 2, The Chaos Engine and the Speedball series. Nearly every game that it released for the Amiga was a hit. BULLFROG FIRST AMIGA RELEASE: 1988 ■ The land of Peter Molyneux, and home of the God game in the form of Populous. Not content with just that, it also released games like Powermonger, Syndicate, and Theme Park. Ultimately, Bullfrog was acquired by EA. CINEMAWARE FIRST AMIGA RELEASE: 1987 ■ One of the Amiga’s original big developers, Cinemaware released cutscene-heavy games with minigames and a big emphasis on story, such as Defender Of The Crown, It Came From the Desert, and arguably its best…

01 The Mega Drive VDP draws three graphical layers, named Scroll B, Scroll A and Sprites. The Scroll layers are background tilemaps that can be scrolled in any direction and have limited animation, while the sprite layer is for the in-game objects that need to move around quickly and animate fully. These layers are then passed to the priority controller. 02 The priority controller ensures that items are drawn in the correct order. It starts with a fixed order of Scroll B at the back, Scroll A next and Sprites on top. However, if part of any layer has a priority bit set to 1 instead of 0, it is cut out and placed in front of everything with a lower priority, in the same B/A/Sprites order. Here’s how it…

One of the interesting things about the Mega Drive is its security system. Mega Drive consoles featuring the Trademark Security System (TMSS) expect to read the word ‘Sega’ at a specific ROM address, and the word also must be written to a designated RAM address before the VDP can be accessed. If these conditions are met, the system will display a message stating that the game was “Produced by or under license from Sega Enterprises Ltd” Originally, this was intended as a region locking measure – developer manuals referred to it as the “US security code” and early Japanese games were not designed to pass the check. This didn’t matter to begin with, as early consoles didn’t implement the check. However, third parties wanted to develop for the Mega Drive…

BATTERY PACK ■ Not the most exciting accessory, or most essential seeing as the Game Boy was the least power-hungry handheld. But when your AAs did finally give up, this add-on was good for up to ten hours of extra play. And if you were more likely to be found playing Game Boy at home, it also doubled as a handy AC adapter. GAME LIGHT ■ The Game Boy was unplayable in low-light conditions so there was no shortage of third-party add-ons designed to brighten up the display. The Game Light from Nubi was one such solution that bolted on to the front of the screen. It required four AAs batteries so it was probably cheaper to find a decent light source instead. AMPLIFIER ■ Another accessory from Nubi, this…

MARIO VS SONIC ■ While the Sonic games arguably lacked the deep playability of Super Mario, the blue hedgehog was marketed perfectly and stole a lot of the Italian plumber’s thunder in the early-Nineties. The simultaneous worldwide launch of Sonic 2 was an event which eclipsed even Nintendo’s? Sunsoft’s prolific work during amazing efforts. SUPER FX VS SVP ■ As the SNES and Mega Drive grew older and the industry’s focus on 3D gaming became ever more apparent, Nintendo decided to enlist the help of UK developer Argonaut to create a chip to bolster the console’s polygon-pushing prowess. Sega countered with the Sega Virtua Processor (SVP for short). FINAL FIGHT VS STREETS OF RAGE ■ When Nintendo secured the port of Final Fight it was a massive blow to Mega…

AXELAY 1992 ■ Konami’s superlative shooter was not only the perfect advertisement for the console’s amazing graphical capabilities, it also played like a dream – no small feat when you consider how unsuited the SNES was to this kind of game. Amazing music, gripping gameplay and timelessly attractive visuals make for a true classic – a sequel was hinted in the end credits, but never came. ARCANA 1992 ■ Unkind observers might brand this little more than a shameless clone of Sega’s Shining In The Darkness, but it’s actually a much better game that doesn’t get near enough credit. Turn-based battles and dungeon-crawling make for a stern challenge, while the gorgeous visuals and a painfully beautiful soundtrack ensure it looks and sounds as good as it plays. SOUL BLAZER 1992…

Modern machines may have done away with the archaic concept of memory cards thanks to their roomy internal hard drives, but when CD systems first arrived in the Nineties such items became utterly essential for saving in-game progress. However, despite what you may assume they didn’t actually originate with the likes of Sony’s PlayStation and Sega’s Saturn – SNK beat both to the punch by almost half a decade. The memory card which shipped alongside the Neo-Geo had a slightly different aim to the one which would become such an intrinsic part of our lives when the PlayStation arrived – it was designed to allow arcade players to carry over their progress on the home console, and vice versa. It could hold a whopping two kilobytes of data. A built-in…

POCKETSTATION ■ Effectively a portable device akin to the Dreamcast’s VMU, PocketStation never saw the light of day outside of Japan. Over 50 games supported this interesting device, which plugged into the console via the memory card port and had its own LCD screen. MEMORY CARD ■ While cartridges sometimes allowed game data to be saved to internal memory, the CD format offered no such luxury. Sony’s solution was a proprietary storage solution – a 15-block 1MB memory card to which game data could be saved. MULTITAP ■ Two controller ports was enough for most games but to fully enjoy something like Micro Machines V3 (whose predecessor had additional ports built into the cartridge itself) or Bomberman, you’d need more. Enter the Multitap. GUNCON ■ Light gun arcade games were…

1 APRIL 1976 ■ The now-corporate giant that is Apple is founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne. 11 APRIL 1976 ■ Apple Computer 1 (later known as the Apple I) is released, each unit hand-built by Steve Wozniak. 10 JUNE 1977 ■ The Apple II is launched, and its success bankrolls Apple for a decade, giving the company breathing space. 19 MAY 1980 ■ The Apple III hits the market and fares poorly, not least due to iffy Apple II compatibility. It was later reintroduced in 1981. 19 JANUARY 1983 ■ The Apple Lisa launches. The UI was revolutionary, but the computer was sluggish, and the sales were poor. 22 JANUARY 1984 ■ The Ridley Scott-directed 1984 ad plays at Super Bowl XVIII. It’s hailed as one…

CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN ■ Apple II ■ 1981 Silas Warner’s stealth-based arcade game finds you deep inside a castle full of armed enemies during World War II. Its combination of tense moments, strategy and arcade smarts won it plenty of fans. PRINCE OF PERSIA ■ Apple II ■ 1989 Karateka’s take on side-on fighters wowed on the Apple II, but with Prince Of Persia Jordan Mechner went one better, your hero carefully working his way through dungeons to save a princess. Realistic animation and challenging gameplay cemented the game’s classic status. ULTIMA ■ Apple II ■ 1981 Following up on debut title Akalabeth, Richard Garriott used his Apple II to fashion the first step in the Ultima series. One of the earliest open-world RPGs, Ultima has influenced countless games throughout the…

COMBAT ■ The 2600’s first game, and the system’s original pack-in title, Combat still represents a highly compelling competitive experience. Largely based on the coin-ops Tank and Jet Fighter, the two-player-only Combat is a top-down shootout against the clock featuring tanks, biplanes and jet planes where the player that destroys their opponent the most times is declared the winner. The game’s 27 modes feature embellishments such as mazes, corner-turning bullets, invisible tanks and giant jets. ADVENTURE ■ Widely considered to be the earliest example of the action adventure genre, Warren Robinett’s Adventure was nothing short of a revelation when it was released in late-1979. Before Adventure, videogames had either one or a sequence of separate single-screen playfields, but Warren’s game depicts a sprawling world using interconnected screen-sized locations. Adventure’s challenge…

DEMON ATTACK ■ An early Imagic release, and the subject of a lawsuit brought by Atari, Rob Fullop’s Demon Attack became a bestseller for the third-party developer. Inspired by Namco’s Galaxian, but closer to Taito’s Phoenix, Rob’s multicoloured shooter constantly reinvents its challenge by rotating a cast of winged opponents from round to round and tweaking their offensive capabilities on each repeat appearance. As well as varied gameplay, Rob’s game boasts slick presentation and high-res sprites. COSMIC ARK ■ The sequel to Atlantis – if you believe Cosmic Ark’s manual, but actually the two games only have a starship sprite in common. More importantly, Rob Fullop’s title excels in gameplay terms by alternating between shooter and rescue mission, and becoming progressively harder from level to level. Cosmic Ark’s main appeal…

What was your earliest encounter with the 2600? Well I first came to the 2600 when I started working at Atari. I hadn’t really been getting into videogames that much at that point. When I saw the 2600, and started to see the games, I just thought: ‘This is kinda cool!’ I was a huge fan of television, and I just thought this was a great thing to do with television. Why do you think that early 2600 titles weren’t more original? Quite simply, creativity is a tough thing. There’s also a fundamental rule that the first thing anyone does in any new medium is recreate everything that’s been done in past media. Prior home games were ridiculously elemental, but arcade games had variety and potential, and so it made…

MANUFACTURER: MATTEL ELECTRONICS » YEAR: 1979 » COST: £199 (LAUNCH), £25+ (TODAY) When the toy giant Mattel decided to investigate the possibility for a home videogames console in 1977, it was looking at new ground that nevertheless had a big flag already planted on it. The arcade colossus Atari was getting ready to launch its 2600 console, and although Mattel had identified a suitable product from General Instruments (the Gimini 6900) that it could base its own console on, the company decided that it would instead focus on handheld games. These sold well and established the Mattel Electronics brand, to the point that by 1979 the company had mustered the will to take on Atari. A team of engineers headed by Dave Chandler then worked to build the final Intellivision…

JETPAC The debut of Jetman, Jetpac took a dash of Joust and added a sprinkling of platforming and a large dollop of shooting. It was the company’s first game on the Spectrum and a huge hit in 1983 thanks to its superior graphics and smooth, if limited, gameplay. Ultimate’s high standard of presentation already marked it out as a developer of real potential, and eight years later Jetpac sat alongside Wizball, Uridium and Zarch as one of the greatest shoot-’emups of all time according to multiformat mag ACE. An XBLA remake appeared in 2007 courtesy of Rare and included the 1983 version, which reportedly sold over 300,000 copies when originally released. ATIC ATAC “It looked like an arcade game – but in my mate Neil’s bedroom!” exclaims the former Ocean…

Simon Butler Ocean Software When did you first encounter the Spectrum and what were your initial impressions? Simon Butler: I saw my first Spectrum when I went to work at Denton Designs. Although I was developing graphics on the C64, it was by then my gaming machine of choice. Anyone could see the obvious advantages the C64 had from a graphics point of view, but for some reason I was a Spectrum fan from day one. What was the first game you were involved in? SB: That would be The NeverEnding Story for Ocean. Developing these graphics just felt right. Sure, it was totally different from paper and pencil, and the end result was never exactly what you saw in your head due to the character boundaries or colour limitations,…

Hitman_Halstep My first experience was my brother getting one for Christmas. It was a complete eye-opener going from a Pong machine to watching Manic Miner, Monty or Pitman Seven running. Sputryk Saving to buy the 48+ for Christmas and buying issue 20 (Red Moon) of Crash in preparation. Monty On The Run was reviewed and it became my first game purchase and favourite platformer. Brilliant Christmas! Have managed to complete the game over the years, though not often as it is evil. psj3809 I had heard about computers but only saw them in catalogues or on display in Dixons. I went round my best friend’s after Christmas one day and saw he had a 16K Spectrum and loved it. I was amazed you could just keep swapping in different tapes…

BMX SIMULATOR Written by Tim Miller from Richard Darling’s C64 original and with graphics by Codemasters regular Jim Wilson, BMX Simulator was the publisher’s first foray into Spectrum software in 1987. It was a simple game, capitalising on a BMX craze that had passed, yet nonetheless contained clear graphics and a nifty two-player option. The famous Codemasters hyperbole was already featuring on the inlay: “AMAZING REALISM!” DIZZY Released in 1987, the adventures of the little ovoid quickly became a mega-hit for Codemasters and the start of a successful career for its authors, Philip and Andrew Oliver. Somersaulting around and collecting the ingredients for a potion to kill an evil wizard was the aim of the game, and Codies surpassed itself with its back-cover exuberance: “A brilliant game by brilliant programmers…

CASSETTE PORT Slightly redundant in the US where the preference was for disk drives, the C64’s cassette port was essential in the UK where cassettes were the primary storage format for games. RAM Typically filled to its 64K capacity when in the hands of a seasoned games developer, the C64’s RAM is best thought of as a largely empty space used to load software into. ROM Essentially the C64’s permanent storage space, in gaming terms, the ROM stores the BASIC language used to load games and the font used to display commands like ‘LOAD’ and ‘RUN’. CPU The 6510 CPU puts the ‘64’ in C64. Unlike the Spectrum or BBC’s CPUs, the 6510 can manage 64K of RAM by disabling access to BASIC and everything else stored in the C64’s…

CPU ■ The Ricoh 2A03, a modified version of the popular 6502 CPU, is an 8-bit processor running at 1.79MHz. It’s a close relative of the CPUs used in the Atari 8-bit range, the Commodore 64, the Apple II and the BBC Micro. RAM ■ The biggest limitation of the NES is its limited RAM: 2KB for reserved for general usage and 2KB for graphics. Cartridges often supplemented this with their own onboard RAM, according to their needs. EXPANSION PORT ■ This expansion port was included for the possibility of any extra add-on devices for the console, such as disk drives and modems. However, none of the projects using the expansion port ever saw the light of day, so it’s a vestigial connector. PPU ■ The Picture Processing Unit was…

What did the Amiga 500 offer over earlier Amiga models? I think price was a major feature, and the form factor was very attractive, too, as it was an all-in-one’, with disk drive, etc.. What made Ocean focus on the Amiga 500? When Commodore shared their plans with us, we believed it would be a very successful home computer and so we offered our support in terms of making compatible games for it. Where you concerned about given Batman away from free in the Batman Pack? Not at all as they paid us per-unit! Obviously we didn’t receive as much for each sale as retail, but we knew that the quantity would be significant. Did Amiga games require more development? No, not that I recall. Why do you think that…

What was the situation like at Commodore before the announcement of the A500 and 2000? Things were pretty dire. The A1000 was critically acclaimed but financially a bomb. At $1,295, it was too expensive as a home computer, and wasn’t expandable enough to be a business computer nor did it have mainstream business apps. So the A500 at $500 filled the home computer void, and the A2000 filled the ‘can’t expand this sucker’ void. Although it took the better part of a year to pivot that way… the results speak for themselves. It was the right thing to do. As head designer for the A500, how often would you interact with CEO Thomas Rattigan? He was relatively hands-off. Of course there would be high-level meetings where the end result was,…

What was your involvement on the Amiga 500? I was brought onto the fairly early Amiga 500 project from the 8-bit world, in 1986. I had already been learning to program the Amiga, as I bought an A1000 in 1985, not too long after they came out. We were trying to interest management in some new version of the C128, but most things were moving [towards the] Amiga at that time. So I spent most of that month learning the Amiga and A500 architecture, helping track down problems, that kind of thing. Why do you think the machine struggled in the US compared to the Commodore 64? Commodore marketing in the USA really had no clue how to sell the A500. It might look like an A500, but at the…

SUPER FAMICOM ■ Sleek, playful and undeniably classy, the Super Famicom boasted a design which was far removed from the plain and boxy Famicom. The controllers were revolutionary and the four-colour logo has become a cult icon – Nintendo even resurrected the colours for its recent New Nintendo 3DS handheld. On the base of the console an expansion port exists which allows it to connect to the Japan-only Satellaview addon. The PAL version (shown here) looks identical, but sports SNES branding. SNES JR/SNES MINI ■ Launched in 1997 – a time when most players had moved onto more powerful hardware – the SNES Jr was marketed as a cheap, entry-level proposition for younger players. Smaller in size and cheaper to produce, this revised system lacks RGB output as standard but…

CASTLEVANIA: VAMPIRE’S KISS / DRACULA X £200 (US) / £90 (JPN) / £225 (PAL) / (VC) £5.49 ■ While it’s not a patch on the PC Engine CD title from which it is derived, Vampire’s Kiss is insanely collectable in its physical form, and demands a steep price for the most committed Castlevania fan. As such, this download is a much better choice for anyone interested in playing it. FINAL FIGHT 3 £130 (US) £120 (PAL) / (VC) £5.49 ■ The third Final Fight outing on the SNES may not be as refined as Streets Of Rage 2, but it’s the finest example of the genre on Nintendo’s console. Haggar returns with new allies and Street Fighter-style moves. Its pricey secondhand but this digital release is infinitely better value. DEMON’S…

Did You Know? ■ Official software support for the machine ran from 1990 until 2004, but unofficial, unlicensed games are still being produced for the console. NEO-GEO ★ CPU: Motorola 68000 (12 MHz), Zilog Z80 coprocessor (4 MHz) RAM: 64KB SRAM (main), 84KB SRAM (video) ★ COLOUR PALLETTE: 65,536 ★ COLOURS ON-SCREEN: 4096 ★ SPRITES ON-SCREEN: 380 ★ YEARS ACTIVE: 1990-2004 UNITS SOLD: 980,000 (as of 1997) PRICE: $649 SNES CPU: Custom 65c816 (3.58 MHz) RAM: 128 KB (main), 64 KB (video) ★ COLOUR PALLETTE: 32,768 COLOURS ON-SCREEN: 256 SPRITES ON-SCREEN: 128 YEARS ACTIVE: 1990-1999 UNITS SOLD: 49 million ★ PRICE: $199 MEGA DRIVE CPU: Motorola 68000 (7.6 MHz), Zilog Z80 sub-processor RAM: 64 KB (main), 64 KB (Video) COLOUR PALLETTE: 512 COLOURS ON-SCREEN: 64 SPRITES ON-SCREEN: 80 YEARS ACTIVE:…

LAST RESORT 1992 ■ An early shooter release for SNK, but arguably one of its finest. The gameplay may not offer anything particularly original but it’s addictive and compelling, helped in no small part by the unique visuals which possess a grim and foreboding atmosphere. One of the more underappreciated gems in the Neo-Geo library, Last Resort is well worth a look for shooter fans. PUZZLE BOBBLE 1994 ■ A spin-off of Taito’s famous Bubble Bobble franchise was renamed Bust-A-Move in some regions and went on to become a considerable hit on consoles like the PlayStation and Saturn. The match three bubble-popping gameplay means instant playability, and the concept has been cloned many times over the past few decades. A 1999 Neo-Geo sequel is also available. PULSTAR 1995 ■ The…

ADVERTS ■ It used to be that advertising agencies would target the same demographic as toy retailers when producing campaigns for games. But by making interesting and original shorts that broke free from that, Sony’s marketing proved to generate both conversation and interest in the brand. CD FORMAT ■ It used to be that taking a few games around to a friend’s house would involve lugging around a bag full of chunky cartridges. With the rise of disc-based media, one game case could hold a collection, plus the format also allowed for better audio quality than older hardware could manage. NIGHTCLUBS ■ Placing consoles running stylish and exciting games like WipEout in bars and nightclubs taught an entire generation one very important lesson – games aren’t for kids any more,…