Innehållsförteckning för No. 260 från Retro Gamer

On the island of Zakynthos they have a town square. It’s dead in the daytime and only comes to life after 9.00pm. It’s rich with the smell of food being cooked in the open, children running around laughing and screaming, and ‘rides’. By rides I mean little cars for eight year olds to drive around in (and yes, it’s as safe as that sounds), teacups and other rather poor activities. What’s interesting about these rides is it would seem the barkers and hustlers have all managed to get the Disney licence! All of these deathtraps are covered in Mickey, Pluto, Minions and even a few Pokémon. These people can’t make more than a few quid a night and I assume to get the rights to use these characters must cost…

Going into the crucial Christmas shopping period, every console manufacturer hoped to tempt console buyers with some exclusive games, and Microsoft certainly had a potent pair on hand for the Xbox 360. Halo 3 continued Bungie’s first-person shooter franchise in fine fashion, earning 10/10 from Edge, and 5/5 in 360 and 9/10 each from X360, games™ and Official Xbox 360 Magazine. Curiously, OXM felt that, “Halo 3 won’t live in the memory as an all-time classic, mainly because it doesn’t push the boundaries of what next-gen gaming can achieve,” while games™ felt that the game “ends with a whimper”. But Edge neatly summarised the overall critical consensus, stating that, “In substance it’s nothing new, merely a magnificent, beautiful monster of an FPS sequel. In concept and execution… Halo 3 is the future.”…

» AMSTRAD CPC » 1985 » IMAGINE SOFTWARE When you were a cash-strapped youngster, compilations were a great way to boost your collection. I had a huge number of these back in the day and it pains me to think they were thrown out into a skip many moons ago. One of my favourites was The Magnificent Seven, which included a number of excellent Ocean Software games as well as some great arcade conversions by its Imagine Software label. Yie Ar Kung-Fu was one of my most-played games from the compilation and amazingly, it was included as a freebie. It meant the name of the compilation itself didn’t really make much sense but it did get a lot of play and I became quite good at it. In fact, I…

AMBIDEXTROUS CONTROLLER ■ The Virtual Boy is the only Nintendo console to have a fully symmetrical control pad – something which could be quite handy for players who’d prefer to swap the layout around. The Wii Classic Controller and Wii U Pro Controller both come close, but for the difference between the d-pad and buttons. KIRBY: TILT & TUMBLE ■ Long before gyroscope players dominated Turf Wars in Splatoon, this Game Boy Color game incorporated motion sensors in its cartridge, letting you roll Kirby around colourful landscapes to your heart’s content. Though Nintendo revisited tilt on the GBA, this was its sole experiment with the technology on the 8-bit handheld. DONKEY KONG: JUNGLE BEAT ■ OK, so the DK Bongos were obviously used in the Donkey Konga games, but the…

GAME & WATCH ■ This is where it all begins – the cross-shaped directional pad sets the standard for digital controls on Nintendo systems going forward. N64 ■ Handles come as standard for the first time, though the third doesn’t last. Having an analogue stick as standard soon catches on across all consoles. WII U PRO CONTROLLER ■ This evolution of the Wii’s Classic Controller is very modern, but shows Nintendo’s ongoing indecision over analogue stick placement. NES ■ Moving on from the bespoke controls of Game & Watch devices, Nintendo establishes two action buttons and two function buttons as standard. GAMECUBE ■ Integrating vibration as standard and borrowing the second analogue stick from Sony’s DualShock, this is pretty close to modern controllers. SWITCH PRO CONTROLLER ■ The Pro Controller…

A RARE CELEBRATION ISSUE 250 ■ Want the definitive article on Rare? This is where you’ll find it. A Rare Celebration breaks down every era of the studio, from its early days as Ultimate Play The Game to its exciting N64 years. It concludes with a look at Rare’s last two decades at Microsoft and classics like Rare Replay and Sea Of Thieves. Don’t miss it. 40 YEARS OF THE ZX SPECTRUM ISSUE 232 ■ This in-depth article features a number of prominent game developers and breaks down the lifespan of the humble Speccy on a year-by-year basis, from its early innovative games to its exciting homebrew era which is still going strong today. If you’re a Commodore 64 fan you’ll find a similar feature on that system in RG…

» MEGA DRIVE » 1994 » SUCCESS When it comes to shmups, I’m not really fussy on what type of shooter I play. I like all subgenres of the genre, whether it’s into-the-screen shooters like Space Harrier or arena-based blasters like Robotron: 2084 – if you can shoot things, I’m generally quite happy. Panorama Cotton has been on my wish list ever since I owned a Mega Drive. Developed by Success and part of its long-running Cotton series, like Space Harrier, it’s an into-the-screen blasting extravaganza; but unlike Space Harrier, it’s not quite as polished. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, Success’ success in converting its popular series into a new dimension doesn’t feel as mechanically accomplished as it could be. Secondly, the poor old Mega Drive simply doesn’t…

SHERLOCK HOLMES: SECRET OF THE SILVER EARRING ■ This is a charming adventure, let down by an ending that cheats us of solving the crime ourselves (as Eric Lindstrom notes, it’s a tough line to tread when adapting Holmes for adventure gaming purposes). It’s the very beginning of a long line of Frogwares titles… SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE AWAKENED ■ Mix Holmes with the Cthulhu mythos, you say? Well, why not. This 2008 Frogwares adventure pits him against a Lovecraftian cult, which feels weirdly appropriate. The Hound Of The Baskervilles has nothing on this scenario… watch out for the tentacles, Sherlock. SHERLOCK HOLMES: CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS ■ This stylish 2014 adventure saw Frogwares (yes, it has cornered the market in Holmes adaptations) take detective puzzling in an interesting new direction. Memory…

» MANUFACTURER: Tiger Electronics » YEAR: 1997 » COST: £74.99 (launch), £45+ (today, boxed), £40+ (today, unboxed) Back in 1997, it seemed as though a gap had opened up in the handheld market. Sega had discontinued the Game Gear, and Nintendo’s Game Boy was eight years old – ancient, in console terms. Enter Tiger Electronics, the tenured purveyor of dedicated handheld LCD games, with a handheld that looked slightly more like a PDA, complete with a touchscreen. The Game.com branding referenced the console’s ability to connect to the internet with a dedicated cartridge and modem, a feature unique among handheld consoles of the time. Tiger’s licensing expertise delivered huge names – film licence Batman & Robin was a pack-in, while other games included Duke Nukem 3D, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, Sonic…

It has been said that many of the world’s great inventions were made by accident. In 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen unintentionally discovered X-rays when a shielded vacuum tube cast an image of his hand-bones onto a nearby fluorescent screen. In 1878, the artificial sweetener saccharin was patented when Constantin Fahlberg forgot to wash his hands after a day in the lab and noticed that his sandwich tasted unusually sweet. Subsequent chemical taste-testing resulted in Sweet’n Low, while Play-Doh was invented as a clay sponge to clean coal dust off wallpaper. In August of the year 2000, the staff of Nintendo R&D1 had recently completed work on Mario Artist: Polygon Studio, a game in the Mario Paint series released exclusively in Japan for the Nintendo 64DD. In Polygon Studio, players were able to…

C64 EMULATOR AMIGA ■ “Because it was my first emulator, and because it showed me how important it is to preserve older titles for future generations.” The familiar blue startup screen allows users to type in BASIC programs and run transferred C64 games on a stock Amiga 500. DRAGON’S LAIR AMIGA ■ “Because I absolutely loved the game and was thrilled to be able to bring it to a larger audience.” The later combination of the original and Escape From Singe’s Castle running from the hard drive provides a huge and seamless adventure for Dirk The Daring. DOOM SNES ■ “Because the experience of working on an ‘impossible port’ was invaluable.” Details such as the automap impress, it retains many bonuses, and X-Band users could play deathmatches – provided they…

» System: Switch » Buy it for: £11.99 » Buy it from: Online The latest offering from Pixel Games UK is a solid collection of Lynx classics. The highlights are California Games, Blue Lightning, ElectroCop and Todd’s Adventure In Slime World. There are also two shmups, Zarlor Mercenary and Gates Of Zendocon. The former suffers from popcorn enemies that take way too many hits to kill, while the latter is a tepid shooter that never impressed us on release. You can’t customise controls, but there are save and load states and there’s a lovely LCD filter we’ve been using. It’s very barebones in terms of its presentation, but the four main games and extremely cheap price tag is enough to make this worth a purchase. Score 67%…

<info From: Oldham, England Website: rwxdesigns.co.uk Format: C64 Previous game: Quasimodo’s Christmas Caper Working on: System X, Tiki, Quasimodo’s Jungle Jeopardy /> How has System X evolved from your original 1989 designs? <The game itself is completely rewritten from scratch. I’ve updated the drone sprite and added an overlay. I’ve improved the jetpack animation and added a lot of other frames; he can shoot diagonally if required. I have four main themes: a rocky Planetoid-like level, an organic level, an ice-themed world and a very colourful crystalline world. There may be a volcanic world, but the exact number of themed levels has not been finalised. I don’t necessarily want big end-of-level bosses. I also think that aliens will be unique to each level. There will be some parallax in the…

THE COVER STAR NINTENDO DS There are numerous cool variants of Nintendo’s innovative handheld. Original models shouldn’t cost more than £50 boxed, while the DS Lite (shown here) is similarly priced. PANORAMA COTTON This is an expensive Japanese exclusive Mega Drive title that you’ll struggle to get much change out of £500 for. Even the recent Strictly Limited re-release hits over £75 now. MADWORLD This excellent Platinum Games action title showed what the Wii could do and it’s cheap to pick up. Most complete copies sell for under £7 with some as low as £4. TECHNICIAN TED Technician Ted can be picked up for as little as £2 for the 48K version, but the 128K Mega Mix version can hit as high as £20. LITTLE BIG ADVENTURE This PC adventure…

STAR LETTER LICENCE TO THRILL Dear Retro Gamer, What has happened to the humble film licence? It felt like a new 8-bit adaptation was being released every week during the Eighties, but now they seem incredibly thin on the ground? Granted, we’ve been blessed recently with new games based on The Terminator, Avatar and RoboCop, but they’re not based on any films. Games based on TV shows seem to be thin on the ground as well, which is particularly galling when rubbish like Neighbours, Postman Pat and Thomas The Tank Engine were all readily available during the Eighties. To me, these licences were just as much fun as the latest arcade conversion and it’s a real shame that they appear to be dying out. We had a few during the…

MARIO’S TIME MACHINE » What do you do if you can’t get your kids to listen to their teachers? Why, that’s simple – you just enlist the help of a plumber. That’s right, Mario can teach the youngsters all about history in this SNES edutainment game. However, you might want to hold fire on that trip to eBay, because some of the lessons Mario teaches aren’t quite so wholesome……

NES ■ The most authentic way to enjoy Metroid is on the NES. Sadly, it’s getting rather expensive nowadays, with cartridges starting at £40. If you want the game complete in the box you’ll need to spend as much as £150 to acquire it. Nintendo Classic Mini ■ Nintendo’s first mini console features Metroid along with 29 other games, including classics such as Super Mario Bros, Bubble Bobble and Pac-Man. While no longer in circulation you can pick it up second-hand for under £80. Game Boy Advance ■ If you don’t own Metroid: Zero Mission, Samus’ original adventure is available to buy separately as part of the Game Boy Advance’s NES Classics range. Like NES Metroid, it’s now rather expensive and can go for as much as £100 today. Nintendo…

For many, Yoshio Sakamoto’s sequel remains the best game in the Metroid canon. While there’s certainly an argument for it to be placed behind the astonishing piece of work that is Metroid Prime, it’s not hard to understand why so many consider Super Metroid to be a 16-bit masterpiece – after all, it’s an exceptionally atmospheric adventure with tremendously satisfying boss encounters, and it delivers a true sense of being stranded alone on a deadly, hostile world. Notable improvements over previous Metroid games include the ability to enable and disable weapons and items via the inventory screen, the ability to move backwards and shoot (far more useful than it actually sounds) and an extremely useful mini-map that makes navigation far easier than in earlier Metroid adventures. It looks beautiful too,…

It’s typical – you wait eight years for a new Metroid game to appear, then two come along at once. While all the Metroid games can be quite oppressive to play due to their moody atmosphere, Fusion is downright terrifying. This is largely due to the introduction of a deadly parasitic organism called SA-X that hunts Samus down during certain sections of her adventure. Metroid games have always excelled at making you feel like an underdog (until you’ve retrieved all your latent powers, at least), but being stalked through the dingy corridors by a virtually unstoppable, fully armed clone of yourself remains incredibly tense and is just as traumatic today as it was when we first experienced it in 2002. Panic sets in whenever SA-X appears and you’ll often have…

SUPER MARIO ALL-STARS SNES, 1993 ■ This superb package includes Super Mario Bros 1-3, as well as The Lost Levels. In addition to including greatly enhanced visuals and remastered soundtracks each game also has a new save option, while the previously high difficulty in The Lost Levels has been rebalanced. STAR FOX 64 3D 3DS, 2011 ■ While this collaboration between Nintendo EAD and Q-Games clearly benefits from overhauled visuals, it’s the tremendous 3D effect and gyroscopic controls that really sell Star Fox 64 3D. The single-player game feels incredibly immersive, while the new Battle Mode offers additional longevity. POKÉMON FIRERED/LEAFGREEN Game Boy Advance, 2004 ■ Game Freak’s highly desirable (and expensive) GBA remakes are great updates of the Game Boy originals that sold nearly 12 million units. Both games…

Samus’ Wii adventure is something of a bittersweet one. While it delivers the greatest action to appear in the series to date, it also turns Samus into an extremely unlikable protagonist. Nintendo’s heroine has always been tough, and was typically someone who relied more on action than words, but here she’s been reduced to a whiny petulant child, unhappy with her lot in life and appears as if she’s waltzed out of a bad soap opera. It’s a weird tonal misstep for the series and adds little to Samus’ character. Still, if you can ignore the overly dramatic cutscenes and personality transplant, you’ll discover Other M to be a rollicking adventure that’s filled to the brim with some of the best boss fights in the series to date. Melee combat…

Like many of you, as of writing this I’ve just finished watching Fallout on Amazon Prime. It is a brilliant show, and the first time any game adaptation has made me feel the way I do when playing a game. Not only is it incredibly loyal to the long-running franchise – I was there in 1997 when the first one came out – but it understands games in a way no other TV show or movie ever has. Take the recent animated The Super Mario Bros Movie; that just felt to me like a bunch of cutscenes. There was no sense that this was gameplay brought to life. The Last Of Us adaptation was great, but that series always had aspirations to be more movie than game anyway. It got me…

Whether or not you’re a fan of Nintendo’s products, it’s impossible to deny its influence on the design of home videogames. Time and again, the company has introduced new design concepts that have become commonplace – and just as frequently, it has popularised technologies that had previously been tried to no avail. Thanks to its lengthy tenure in the business, it’s arguable that Nintendo has done more to push the videogame console forward than any other manufacturer. Prior to its transformation into the company we know today, Nintendo was making toys like the Ultra Hand and arcade games such as EVR Race. Key employees including Genyo Takeda, Masayuki Uemura and Gunpei Yokoi were hired in this era, and they carried the inventive nature required for those industries with them as…

If you’re a writer, they say you should write about what you know. For Technician Ted’s Steve Marsden, the same goes for games programmers. “After leaving school and college, I worked as an electronic engineer in a semiconductor factory, making a variety of silicon devices – chips,” begins the coding veteran. “We had access to many computers in that field, so naturally, I ended up buying home computers to dabble with.” Before this point, Steve experimented with a Sinclair programmable calculator and a PDP8-E while at secondary school. “It was a room full of fridge-sized hardware!” he laughs. Then, on to the ZX81, and finally ZX Spectrum. As you might expect, this led to Steve becoming more interested in games creation than the games themselves. “A computer was a tool,…

» PLATFORM: Famicom » YEAR: 1984 » COST: ¥14,800 (launch), £130+ (today, boxed), £80+ (today, unboxed) That Family Computer name wasn’t just for show – if you fancied programming a game on your Famicom, this collaborative effort between Nintendo, Sharp and Hudson Soft allowed you to do just that. The Family BASIC package cost as much as the Famicom console itself, and contained a handbook, a keyboard and a ROM cartridge containing the main program. The keyboard shared the console’s colour scheme and plugged into its front expansion port, and featured both the English alphabet and Japanese katakana characters. Family BASIC came with some pretty severe restrictions – only 2KB of RAM was available, and users had to make do with built-in sprites such as Mario. Saving programs required the additional…

Another World ■ Also known as Out Of This World, Éric Chahi’s masterpiece defined the cinematic platformer as we know it today. Its brilliantly fluid animation, impressive world-building and wordless storytelling still make for a highly entertaining, if sometimes frustratingly difficult, experience. Flashback ■ Often touted as ’the sequel to Another World’, even though it had little to do with it other than also being a cinematic platformer, Flashback was the quintessential French game of the early Nineties: beautiful to look at, difficult to play, and astonishingly creative. Gobliiins ■ In the Gobliiins series, you control a team of quirky, well, goblins, each with unique abilities, and solve a series of increasingly bizarre puzzles by constantly switching between them. A wonderfully strange game, presented in an incredibly imaginative art style…

On paper, point-and-click adventures and detective mysteries seem to go together like Holmes and Watson. Suspects to grill; clues to chase; tiny pixels to, er, squint over until you discern the vaguest shape of a key: a perfect match, surely? Rather surprisingly, the crime-solving capers from adventure gaming’s Nineties heyday tend to be overlooked in favour of the kings, pirates, and wisecracking cartoon animals that everybody remembers. (It’s worth noting that Sam and Max were Freelance Police, though.) Delphine Software gave us the Christie-influenced Cruise For A Corpse, while fellow French developers Lankhor created the innovative – and infamously difficult – Maupiti Island. Sierra On-Line’s Gabriel Knight trilogy and Access Software’s Tex Murphy adventures lent the genre a touch of Chandleresque grit, as, with a comic twist, did Perfect Entertainment’s…

■ Both Lost Files games were released in MS-DOS format, but the first instalment in the series – The Case Of The Serrated Scalpel – got a 3DO conversion. Not surprising, given that The 3DO Company was founded by Electronic Arts’ Trip Hawkins in 1991. The 3DO Serrated Scalpel appeared in 1994, two years after the PC release, and has differences from the original game which make it worth a look for adventure gaming completists. While the background graphics are very similar, the 3DO version’s most striking feature is the replacement of the VGA character portraits with fully voiced video of actors playing Holmes, Watson, and the supporting cast. Initially jarring if you’ve played the original first, the sprightly performances keep things engaging and bridge the gap with the blue…

Gold Digger ■ We recently chatted with Gail Tilden, the editor of Nintendo Power for over a decade, and when we mentioned WarioWare she reflected, “Oh, yes, the one with the nose-picking.” Seems that everyone remembers Gold Digger. Pick a winner! Mashin’ Martians ■ A perfect example of WarioWare’s rich and varied style, Mashin’ Martians is a whack-a-mole-like microgame in which you must smash aliens back into their burrows. The claymation characters are reminiscent of Nineties games like ClayFighters and Claymates. F-Zero ■ In the F-Zero microgame, you control Captain Falcon’s Blue Falcon racer as it screams along the track of Mute City. Avoid the obstacles and enjoy the nostalgic rush provided by four seconds of Mute City’s iconic theme song. Nighttime Allergies ■ Another microgame which showcases the variety…

Jump Forever! How to unlock: Beat Jimmy’s stage ■ There are 12 unlockable bonus games in WarioWare. The first is Jump Forever, in which Wario must jump rope, apparently forever! Reaching 100 jumps unlocks optional player’s choice background music. Fly Swatter How to unlock: Score 25+ points in Jimmy’s Remix No 1 ■ An altered port of Gnat Attack, a minigame from the SNES game Mario Paint. The player must swat flies, bees, bombs and, eventually, King Watinga, a giant robotic fly. VS Chiritorie How to unlock: Beat 3 stages ■ WarioWare also includes two-player bonus games, including this one. Chiritorie is based on a Nintendo game from 1979 in which players use vacuum cleaners to pick up trash. Skating Board How to unlock: Beat Jimmy’s Remix No 1 ■…

ALESTE COLLECTION ■ Porting four games from Compile’s acclaimed Aleste series clearly wasn’t enough for M2. Aleste Collection also included a brand-new shmup, GG Aleste 3. While most played it on the PS4 and Switch editions of Aleste Collection, it also arrived on a special Game Gear Micro bundled with special editions. BATTLE GAREGGA REV.2016 ■ Famed for depth rarely seen in other shooters, Raizing’s Battle Garrega is famously complex. It has taken the shmup community years to unpick. And then this favourite of the genre’s most obsessive fans was cracked open for a wider audience by M2. It even got a US release. DANGUN FEVERON ■ There aren’t many shooters like Dangun Feveron, otherwise known as Fever SOS. CAVE’s disco-themed shmup exudes character, and plays very lively. Boasting a…

BUBBLE BOBBLE NEO! ■ For Bub and Bob there’s only one thing worse than the Cave Of Monsters and that’s the XBLA Abyss. Rescue them and you’ll receive the 100 original arcade stages, plus 100 arranged stages which support up to four co-op players. There are also two sets of DLC to save, featuring another 100 expert stages. HAPPY TREE FRIENDS: FALSE ALARM ■ Based on the animated web series, this is a fun spin on Lemmings where you have to guide our forest friends through several perilous stages, using your god-like abilities to influence the characters and the environment. The game was delisted on Steam years ago, but survives on the Xbox 360 – for a little while at least. RAYSTORM ■ The Taito shooter series that’s not Darius…

» NINTENDO DS » 2008 » RARE Although it launched on Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Viva Piñata was originally envisioned for a far more humble system. Rare’s garden-tending simulator was earmarked for Microsoft’s Pocket PC, but it was eventually moved over to the original Xbox before releasing on the Xbox 360. Viva Piñata’s portable roots were never forgotten though and in 2008, a reimagined version of the game, Pocket Paradise, debuted on Nintendo’s popular DS handheld. While it shares many elements with the original Xbox 360 game, it does make several distinct changes so that it’s more suited for portable play. For starters, the stylus is used heavily throughout Pocket Paradise meaning it’s far easier to tend to various aspects of your garden. Other changes include how you collect fertiliser and…

» System: Switch » Buy it for: £39.99 » Buy it from: Online, retail The third game in Arika’s Endless Ocean series is an odd one. Opting for procedurally generated oceans to explore there’s a clear emphasis on online play. Teaming up with a group of other divers means you’ll uncover the secrets of each area far quicker than trying on your own and it also lets you fully enjoy the game’s UMLs (Unidentified Marine Life). The decision to hide the story behind constant grinding is rather odd, but there’s something strangely compelling about seeking out the many creatures that inhabit the game’s depths. Luminous relies on its endless loop of seeking out creatures and uncovering salvage and offers very little beyond that. And yet, we can’t stop playing it.…

<YOUR MONTHLY GUIDE TO EVERYTHING HAPPENING IN THE HOMEBREW SCENE/> <BODY> “I love the Neo Geo,” says Michael Monaghan, who joined the Vengeance Hunters project in August 2022. “We’ve taken inspiration from all over the place. Originally, the gameplay was inspired by Cadillacs And Dinosaurs – basic movement, combat mechanics and gunplay (we no longer have those kinds of guns). I would describe our gameplay more like a beat-’em-up that goes for Marvel Vs Capcom combos. Hit, hit, hit into a launcher that allows you even more options in the air or ground. We also have a bit of Aliens arcade in there with the new power-up/gun system.” Vengeance Hunters is written in C, with the artists using Aseprite. “A PNG or GIF is created, and a conversion tool is…

What’s your favourite Nintendo hardware innovation? Tony Cruise Taking the world into 3D worlds in partnership with Silicon Graphics with the Nintendo 64. The first time the world saw the 3D Mario head was a groundbreaking experience. Craig The N64 controller was a game-changer along with the 3D world in Super Mario 64. The analogue joystick and the different ways to hold it was amazing back in 1996. Nick Westwood Unpopular choice, but the 3DS 3D screen, I was blown away when I first saw it, it was so different and exciting, shame it didn’t take off. The new 3DS showed what could be possible but it was too late. Now 3D is relegated to VR. Shiiiva TM The Nintendo DS. The touchscreen was revolutionary for gaming and everyone fell…

After the sheer scale and popularity of Metroid on the NES, its sequel certainly had a lot to live up to. The popularity of Nintendo’s Game Boy meant that Samus’ adventure continued on the portable platform, and a rousing little caper it was too. Although Metroid II might not have reached the same heights as its critically acclaimed predecessor, it remains a resoundingly solid adventure in its own right, and, like the NES classic, is beginning to rapidly rise in price. There are caveats, however, and they largely apply to how Metroid II looks and sounds. While Samus and many of the game’s enemies are instantly recognisable, the overall game fails to capture the sombre tone that made the original Metroid so interesting to explore. Fortunately, Metroid II is a…

Metroid Prime is not in any sense a traditional first-person shooter. Samus’ ability to lock on to enemies and evade incoming attacks immediately made it stand apart from similar-styled games on release, while its carefully balanced controls made the numerous platform sections incredibly easy to pull off. While it’s predominantly first-person, Samus’ Morph Ball ability utilises a third-person perspective, which is typically used for the few puzzle-like elements found throughout the expansive game world. It features the same organic exploratory approach of previous games in the series, but introduces new gameplay mechanics in the form of a number of different visors that Samus must switch between. In addition to thermal imaging and X-Ray vision, Samus can also scan pretty much anything she encounters, from enemies to locations. Scanning not only…

What inspired the creation of Metroid Prime? “Our main inspiration, without a doubt, was Super Metroid. That’s all you need.” Why did you decide to make Metroid Prime a first-person adventure? “When Metroid Prime was released, no one else was concentrating on the exploration and platforming elements in a first-person game. We were dubbed as an FPA (first-person adventure), which to us meant that the core gameplay was not about shooting enemies but rather the immersive experience of being Samus and exploring the environment. We were able to differentiate our game by focussing on those aspects, and I think people felt it to be unique.” What development challenges did you face? What goals did you have? “We also tried to preserve the essence of the Metroid experience in its move to 3D.…

The big draw for Retro Studios’ sequel to Prime was the addition of a much-touted multiplayer mode. While it’s certainly a nice idea, it makes for a rather clunky and unsatisfying experience due to the lock-on system used and the paltry amount of included gameplay modes. In fact, its biggest success is that it proves that the Metroid Prime games aren’t traditional first-person shooters at all, despite the viewpoint they share. Luckily, the single-player aspect of Echoes is far more enjoyable and sees Samus switching between two parallel dimensions known as Light and Dark Aether. Crossing these dimensions isn’t without issue, though, as Samus’ health continually deteriorates while she’s in contact with Dark Aether, causing her to seek out the small safe zones found there. It adds an additional layer…

This entry seems a little like cheating, as it’s effectively a collection of all three Prime games. It’s so much more though as the Wii’s brilliant controls for Corruption translate perfectly to Prime and Echoes, greatly improving them in the process. Other enhancements include shorter load times, upgraded textures, bloom lighting and a general graphical upgrade to a pair of already gorgeous-looking games. Corruption’s award system is also retrofitted into both titles, while the boss encounters from Echoes have been made a lot easier. It’s a superb collection of games that now maintains a decent price on auction sites, so be prepared to dig deep. Rather interestingly, both Metroid Prime and its sequel were released as separate games in Japan as part of the Wii’s New Play Control! series. Metroid Prime:…

The work of Frederick David Thorpe invariably sticks in the mind of ZX Spectrum gamers. His knack for creating vivid, scene-setting loading screens within the colour limitations of the machine earned him the respect of peers and he would end up creating graphics for some of the biggest names of the day, notably Ocean Software, Imagine and US Gold. It’s with great sadness, then, that we report his passing, on 29 January this year, aged 84. Having become an acclaimed pixel artist late in his career – he worked as an architectural technician, illustrated features for magazines published by Whitehorn Press and created Christmas cards for ICI’s pharmaceutical division – he was in his mid-40s when he began playing around with graphics on a BBC Model B. His decision to…

Since 2008, the Retro Computer Museum, nestled in the heart of England, has been serving as a dedicated hub for retro gamers and computer enthusiasts. Having recently moved to newer, larger premises, the museum now offers an even more relaxed and informative experience, with obscure systems, games, literature and retro-gaming history all waiting to be discovered. “The idea was to make people smile, reminisce and teach the next generation how good our kit was”ANDY SPENCER How did the Retro Computer Museum come about? The original idea was to share my collection. I had around a dozen systems – including a Dragon 32 I’d picked up for 99p – so I created a website to show them off. But it was terrible, so I got a friend to do a better…

N64 OPTICAL DISCS ■ It’s arguable that the SNES CD-ROM drive was a misbegotten concept that was better left unreleased. However, sticking to cartridges cost the N64 the Japanese RPGs that the SNES thrived on, as developers who were hungry for the high capacity that discs offered flocked to the PlayStation and Saturn instead. GAME BOY ADVANCE ILLUMINATED DISPLAYS ■ Maddeningly, Nintendo released the backlit Game Boy Light in Japan in 1998, but failed to add any lighting to the Game Boy Color or Game Boy Advance. Hardware costs may have increased, but as the popular Afterburner kit proved, players would happily shell out extra to render their games visible. GAMECUBE ONLINE GAMING ■ Despite supporting both dial-up and broadband, you could count the GameCube games with internet support on one…

ZX SPECTRUM (48K) ■ While far from original, Technician Ted offers refined gameplay and mischievously designed screens to complement its technical flourishes. Ted himself moves sharply, and there are some wonderfully weird enemies, most ripped from a standard office or factory environment. While its gameplay may be familiar, Technician Ted has enough of a challenge and novel environment to set it apart from the swathe of Jet Set Willy clones on the ZX Spectrum. ZX SPECTRUM (128K MEGAMIX) ■ One of the few criticisms of the original Technician Ted was that the player had very little clue as to which order to complete Ted’s tasks. This 128K remix, released just over a year later, solves this by numbering each task; but with double the amount of rooms to explore and…

“LBA 2 was one of my favourite games as a child, Benoit Limare, cofounder and CEO of 2.21 tells us. “I used to play it a lot with a classmate of mine when I was eight years old, which led me to the discovery of LBA 1 – which I consider a hidden gem! Most young players don’t know about it. With Didier Chanfray, we wanted to make a comeback that has a chance of reaching new players.” As a result, 2.21 has been working since early 2023 on the official remakes of Little Big Adventure 1&2, which will be released on PC and consoles in 2024 and distributed by Microids. The company is made up of six in-house developers, including Didier Chanfray and Sébastien Viannay, one of the original…

In 1962, IBM had a major problem. Its cutting-edge System/360 mainframe computer series wasn’t compatible with software designed for its older 7070 models. After attempts by others failed, engineers Larry Moss and Stuart Tucker found success with a hybrid software/hardware project they called The 7070 Emulator. Decades later, similar approaches resulted in accessories that made the C64 behave like an Apple IIe and allowed the ST and Amiga to run PC software. Then in the early Nineties, Sega developer Yuji Naka created an in-house NES emulator for the Mega Drive, and Argonaut Software developed a Game Boy emulator for the Amiga for internal use. The first console emulator aimed at a public audience appeared in 1994, in the form of the MegaDrive Emulator for the PC, with others following, including…

» SATURN » 1995 » SEGA AM2 It’s easy to feel like there are no bargains left in retro gaming, but every so often I find something that gives me hope. My local CeX was the last place I expected that to happen, given that a £525 Mega-CD copy of Snatcher spent the best part of a year acquiring sun fade in its front window, but I recently happened across an official Arcade Racer wheel for the Saturn in there. I decided to pick it up, and as the cashier went to hand it over, she said, “Oh hang on, we’ve got the box for it here, do you want that?” I definitely did, and it turned out to also have all the bags and instructions. Not bad for £10 all…

Most celebrity licensing deals lead to fairly obvious games – while oddballs like Shaq Fu and Go Go Beckham do exist, chances are if Mike Tyson’s on the cover you’re going to be playing a boxing game. Penn & Teller, though? For all of the fame the popular pair of magicians have acquired, they don’t quite fit any existing genre easily. That didn’t stop Absolute Entertainment from approaching Penn & Teller with a licensing deal, though. Speaking in the February/March 1995 issue of Sega Visions, Penn Jillette explained that while the duo had turned down licensing deals in the past, they chose to accept Absolute’s offer because their creative input was sought. He also claimed that the team had told them that they had “no ideas” at the start of…

■ As M2 continues to unleash remarkable ports of acclaimed shooters with deep roots in the Japanese arcade tradition, at Retro Gamer we can’t help but wonder what it might do with a Western game informed by similar genre origins. And it’s too tempting not to wonder what an M2 ShotTriggers release of Turrican might offer. Originally developed by German outfit Rainbow Arts for the Commodore 64, the vibrant run-and-gun debuted in 1990, taking design cues from Metroid and Psycho-Nics Oscar, and inspiring numerous ports, sequels and imitators. We can only dream what an M2 ShotTriggers version of Turrican might include, but we’d love to see a handful of different versions of the original Turrican, all ported to M2’s meticulous standards, and resplendent with the extras, settings and widgets that have made…

Fans of Toaplan have been well served in recent years. Many of its classic shmups have snuck onto Blaze’s Evercade system, cropped up on the odd mini console and have even been the subject of various M2 projects. It has been no different on PC where Bitwave Games has been delivering impressive quartets of Toaplan shmups and now we’re at the end of the line. Worry not though, for despite a few little niggles, the developer has gone out with a bang. Before we look into the various tweaks and enhancements that Bitwave has made to this latest selection of shmups, it’s probably best to look at the game’s themselves, as they represent some of the deeper cuts of Toaplan’s rich legacy and may not be familiar to you. Our…

» System: Switch (tested), PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X » Buy it from: Online » Buy it for: £17.99 It’s a brave move to re-release a game that wasn’t very good in the first place. Kudos then to developer United Games for attempting to polish what was a very rough Dreamcast shmup. Highlights include far better control over your targeting reticule so it doesn’t get obscured by Cotton like in the Dreamcast version, energy bars for bosses, cutscenes with English subtitles and a silky-smooth 60fps (it was 30fps originally). Movement of Cotton feels very sluggish though and it’s still very hard to judge the distance between enemies and incoming projectiles. Yes the game is a decent improvement over the Dreamcast original, but there are far better shmups…

<Amstrad CPC: Either type in Pirka (by Crazy Piri) from the PDF – or load the free DSK image. More at bit.ly/pirka-cpc /> <Aquarius: Roy Templeman’s Paqu Deluxe (16K) will get a physical cassette soon (containing a bonus game). Order it at bit.ly/paqu-aquarius /> <Atari 2600: Champ Games release Tutankham Arcade in September. Play the free demo at champ.games/downloads /> <C64: Carleton Handley’s Spinning Image comes with 50 levels. Name your price at bit.ly/spinning-image /> <Game Boy: GBStudio celebrated its fifth anniversary with an interactive history lesson. Discover it at bit.ly/gbstudio-5th Also, GnomeKIng Games released The Train Part 2 digitally for £5, after the physical Kickstarter. Buy it from bit.ly/thetrain2 /> <Master System: The latest SMS Power coding competition produced great new titles. You can find them at bit.ly/smspower2024 />…

<BODY> “This is my second attempt at an Atic Atac remake,” Adam tells us. “The first was back in 2002, as I love this game from my BBC and Spectrum days. A mate of mine gifted PICO-8 to me, so not wanting to seem ungrateful I started to code in it! It feels like an old system with its brutal limitations, yet it is so much fun to use.” The preview we played is almost complete, with Adam telling us, “The map is complete, all doors, trapdoors, warps, objects, food, etc are there. I’ve also made a few minor changes I hope improve the game – moving one set of warps to fit into my code easier, changing Dracula so he will vanish if he’s in the room you’re in…

» WII » 2009 » PLATINUM GAMES The Wii has a complicated legacy, doesn’t it? It was a hugely popular machine in its day, but one that attracted plenty of criticism – even today, plenty of people dismiss it out of hand for being the underpowered, family oriented home of the dreaded ‘waggle’ controls. In short, it’s a console for casuals. So what happens when a game comes along that is practically everything a Wii game isn’t supposed to be? Well, MadWorld is just about the best example you can get. For a start, the 18 rating on the box indicates that it’s certainly not family friendly – on the contrary, it’s a gloriously over the-top celebration of lethal violence in which our chainsaw-armed protagonist Jack executes countless hapless goons, all…

Metroid arrived a few short months after The Legend Of Zelda, and like Shigeru Miyamoto’s game, it made its debut on the Famicom Disk System. While both titles are adventure games at their core, their approaches couldn’t be more different. Where Zelda opts for a fantasy approach, with a sprawling top-down game world to explore, Metroid delivers a claustrophobic side-on adventure. Both games are classics, but we’d argue that the journey of bounty hunter Samus Aran is far more ambitious. The real beauty of Metroid is in the organic structure that initially offers only small sections of the huge planet of Zebes to navigate, but as Samus explores, she gains access to new items and weapons that not only give you additional gameplay mechanics to master, but also unlock previously…

Super Smash Bros ■ Samus has been a mainline addition to Nintendo’s popular fighting series since it debuted on the N64. As you’d expect for such a seasoned bounty hunter, she’s a strong character who isn’t to be messed with. Bayonetta ■ Although Samus herself doesn’t appear in the Wii U or Switch versions of Bayonetta, her classic Power Suit does. It’s one of several Nintendo-themed costumes that Bayonetta can wear during play. Tetris DS ■ This excellent DS game features numerous Nintendo characters, Samus Aran among them. Catch Mode is themed around Metroid and sees you frantically trying to catch and detonate Tetriminos as they fall towards you. Nintendo Land ■ This Wii U launch game is themed around classic Nintendo franchises including Metroid. Metroid Blast comprises three different…

■ Metroid Prime could have been a mess. Nintendo had been struggling to create a 3D Metroid for years, bypassing the N64 completely and eventually setting its sights on the GameCube. Texas-based developer Retro Studios was given the unenviable task of creating Samus’ first 3D adventure and began work on a third-person action game. Shigeru Miyamoto wasn’t happy with the game’s direction, insisting on a first-person perspective and causing Retro Studios to scrap virtually all of its existing assets. Many developers would have quit right there, but rather than give up, Retro Studios crafted one of the most astonishing adventures to ever appear on Nintendo’s diminutive console.…

Even today, Zero Mission remains one of the best remakes on Nintendo hardware, matched only by Capcom’s astonishing GameCube update of Resident Evil. It’s effectively a reimagining of the original NES game rather than an authentic remake, built with the Metroid Fusion engine after director Yoshio Sakamoto decided against porting Super Metroid to the Game Boy Advance. While many sections of Zero Mission will feel instantly familiar if you’ve played Metroid before, there is enough variance to the stage layouts to ensure that even veterans will find the return to Zebes feels fresh and different. Some aspects of the game have been improved thanks to abilities from later Metroids being retrofitted into the game, but the biggest change comes as you reach Zero Mission’s conclusion. Rather than ending with the…

Corruption was a suitably epic end for Retro Studios’ Prime trilogy. As its title suggests, Corruption’s gameplay mechanics revolve around Samus becoming corrupted by the events that took place at the end of Metroid Prime: Echoes. This corruption comes in the form of the nifty ‘Hypermode’ that augments Samus’ powers at the expense of her health. It’s a clever spin on the risk vs reward mechanics of other games, and spurs you on to finish this excellent adventure, which is a strong improvement upon Echoes. The sublime use of the Wii’s motion controls is what really makes Corruption stand apart from its peers, though. Retro Studios worked on them extensively, which led to Corruption receiving several delays, but we’d argue the wait was worth it. They work amazingly well, making…