Retro Gamer

When I first dipped my toes into the murky waters of import gaming, Sega’s Mega Drive was the first machine that I purchased. It introduced me to the joys of 60Hz gaming, getting releases months before the UK, a host of fantastic Japan exclusive shoo

When the Capcom Home Arcade was first announced in April it instantly set the internet ablaze. Some were aghast at the staggeringly high entry point of £200, while others were disappointed with the amount of announced games and the bizarre decision t

You can always expect some solid announcements to come off the back of the annual Evolution Championship Series, but this year’s reveals have been particularly good. The recently released Samurai Shodown got off to a fantastic start by revealing a bu

I had very limited experience with the Mega Drive when I was young. The only time I got to play on it, that I can remember, was when I was about 16 or 17 years old. After a night out on the old razz (just fizzy pop for me, honest!) a group of us woul

Something that today’s modern kids, with their Fortnites and their Minecrafts and smartphones, take for granted is how easy it is to get games. Not only are half of them free (loot crates and DLC notwithstanding), but if you decide you want to play s

Nintendo’s woes continued to accumulate in October, as the European Commission found the company guilty of operating a price-fixing cartel with seven of its European distributors. As a result, Nintendo was hit with a whopping €149.1 million fine, one

The other day, I was visiting my friend’s house and watched his son play Fortnite. “Did you play Fortnite, uncle Darran, when you were my age?” his son asked me. I then explained to him that the Switch wasn’t out when I was his age, and that back the

Just as the high-end console market has evolved over the decades, so too has the market for plug-and-play retro consoles. In the dark days of the early Nineties, systems of questionable legality such as the TV Boy were your only option, but publisher

As Miyazaki alluded to, both officially licensed and bootleg Mega Drive plug-and-play systems have been doing the rounds for the best part of a couple of decades now. These haven’t always been particularly great, though – in fact, in recent years the

Though Taito’s shoot-’em-up was converted to a number of home computer formats here in the UK, the Japanese market only received contemporary conversions for the PC Engine. The Mega Drive did receive a conversion of Darius II, but never received the

The inclusion of Tetris on the Mega Drive Mini is exciting, as the Mega Drive version of Tetris is known to be one of the rarest games in existence – just a few copies made it out into the wild, as Tetris was subject to a licensing nightmare that ult

YEAR: 2016 INITIAL PRICE: £59.99 CONTROLLERS INCLUDED: 1 GAMES: 30 60HZ: YES REGION SELECTION: NO SCREEN OPTIONS: PIXEL PERFECT, 4:3, 4:3 WITH CRT FILTER ADDITIONAL FEATURES: FOUR SAVE STATES PER GAME Nintendo’s first entry into the plug-and-

We’ve largely focused on the sterling retro work that M2 has created over the years, but it’s worth remembering that M2 doesn’t just remake and port old games for a living. The developer has actually made a number of original titles since the late Ni

M2’s first game set a tradition of going the extra mile, which has persisted within the company to this day. The actual conversion of Gauntlet is impressive enough, but it also comes with an expansive Quest mode, which adds light RPG elements and has

Sega’s budget series for the PS2 was rather hit and miss initially, thanks to a range of remakes that ranged from the great ( Virtua Fighter 2) to the terrible (Golden Axe). M2 became involved with the series from Volume 20, contributing perfect port

The UK games magazines of the Eighties worked really hard to connect with their teenaged readers, with the likes of Crash and Zzap!64 even going as far as trusting their reviews to schoolkids. But despite these recommendations, the sales charts of th

■ Your first trip into space is through Seiddab-free territory, but Astroclone’s occupied sectors are full of enemy ships. Your craft can only take a few hits, and even crashing into opponents drains your limited energy. So the key is to blast a safe

■ At its core, 3D Space Wars reimagines Namco’s Galaxian in three dimensions, with the Seiddab forces swooping in and out of the screen, rather than up and down. Of course, there’s more to Steve’s debut title, most obviously the need to refuel by doc

» ARCADE » 1988 » DATA EAST When I was a youngster, I would regularly visit Quay Amusements in Poole because it was an incredible arcade that had virtually every big game you could think of at the time. I would regularly visit it with friends at the

■ We may have been a bit harsh on US Gold’s 16-bit arcade conversions in the past, but it’s a reputation it unfortunately often deserves. Credit where it’s due, however: this port of Shadow Dancer is an excellent conversion, even boasting better musi

The arcades were a brutal battleground back in 1987 as machine after machine begged for the coins from your pocket. Lurking in the corner, bathed in shadows, was Sega’s Shinobi, and it was the breakout hit of the year, instigating a franchise that co

■ Fans of the Mega Drive semi-sequel The Revenge Of Shinobi will be familiar with this heavily armoured chap. He’s slow, but lobs lethal glowing balls at the brave ninja. ■ Quite simply, actually, given this first boss only has two types of attack,

By the early Eighties, a decent living could be made from making computer games, and although commercial programmer Steve Turner didn’t immediately leave his salaried job when he found this out, he did commit his spare time to testing the waters. Th

Flanked by two shotgun-toting orcs, you grit your teeth and slam your back against the wall, slinking into the shadows as bullets fizz past and spatter little pixel debris off the wall. Right after the shooting subsides, you jump out and blow one of

» PLATFORM: GAME BOY » RELEASED: 1991 » COST: ¥5,800 (launch), £45+ (now, boxed), £10+ (now, unboxed) The key appeal of the Game Boy was its portability, but that didn’t stop enterprising manufacturers from creating devices intended to turn it into

This pair of zoo management titles published for PC by Microsoft still remain great additions to the ‘tycoon’ genre of business simulation games, though with no digital version you’ll need to track down a physical copy. There’s a lot of depth within

Tired of a guest constantly complaining about your prices, or did someone just puke outside the toilets? Pick them up and drop ‘em in the water. It won’t stop the complaints, but it’s cathartic. Guests can be pretty indiscriminate about chucking the

» PLATFORM: AMIGA » RELEASED: 1988 » DEVELOPER: CINEMAWARE Early in Cinemaware’s game, players are given an urgent mission to rescue the kidnapped Dr Barnstorf and his daughter Jane from a Zeppelin making its escape over the Atlantic. The Nazis want

DEVELOPER: SNK RELEASE: 1999 ■ Though it’s now 20 years old, this Fatal Fury series reboot is still one of the most gorgeous fighting games that we’ve ever had the pleasure to see. It’s easy to expect the detailed, attractive sprites that were SNK’

» MANUFACTURER: Sharp » YEAR: 1989 » COST: ¥43,000 (launch), £700+ (today, boxed), £400+ (today, unboxed) Sharp manufactured a number of interesting Famicom variants under licence from Nintendo, but this one is arguably the most desirable. The bulky

Walt Bilofsky was never one to tread familiar ground. At high school, he caused a minor stir, when he hacked his maths teacher’s IBM 1620, swapping out the “program loaded” message for a “snarky” one. Studying at Cornell and MIT, he blossomed into a

■ Born in the golden age of microcomputing, The Software Toolworks was created to give purpose to hardware. From Walt’s earliest software, through Adventure, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, Chessmaster 2000, the Miracle Piano Teaching System and Mario I

» PLAYSTATION » 2000 » POLYGON MAGIC Though some might contest whether the PlayStation truly deserves the accolade of ‘bringing gaming into the mainstream’ (didn’t Space Invaders and Pac-Man do that 15 years earlier?),  it was undoubtedly responsible

The first thing that strikes you about XIII is its style. Even today, 16 years after its original release, the game looks great; at the time, its cel-shaded comic book style was stunning, garnering it plenty of attention. That comic-like aesthetic is

How did the remaster of XIII come about? First, it is an IP from a sister company of ours (Dargaud), which is huge in France and in the world, that we always loved. Also, we were so fond of the original game that we have always wanted to do a remast

The anti-gravity racer feels like something of a starved genre. We have seen titles come and go, such as Fast RMX and Redout, but nothing that has really had the quality to satisfy those of us craving a brand-new WipEout or F-Zero title. Enter, R8 Ga

The visual design is the skin of all futuristic racers, and their soul if you like. From the gritty and neon-like design of WipEout 2097 to the clean and clinical look of WipEout 3, each style has its own merits and fans within the genre. “The aim fo

■ Released for Switch on launch day in 2017, Fast RMX is a port of the Wii U title Fast Racing Neo and it’s more in the F-Zero mould than WipEout. Though visually impressive with a 60fps target, Fast RMX never really gets into a good flow due to a fr

Developer Lucas Pope came to prominence on the back of critically acclaimed indie hit Papers Please – a game about playing as a border guard in a fictional Eastern Bloc country. The success of the former Naughty Dog developer’s first indie title inev

“Bravo for all your research!” says François, who we discovered was originally studying to be a vet. That changed after his games were first published, but did affect his military service. “I pushed it back as much as I could. With a degree you are m

In UK schools, BBC computers taught computer literacy. France had informatique pour tous and Thomson computers. François was not impressed. “I made a chess game, Le Jeu Du Roy, with the floppy drive for development. I’m not lying: it was nearly one c

» PLAYSTATION » 2000 » Z-AXIS While the vast majority of my writing is published in Retro Gamer, I’ve been known to contribute to other magazines around these parts, from the likes of Play (RIP) and games™ (RIP) to Linux User & Developer (RIP) – and

» System: Switch(tested), Xbox One, PS4, PC » Buy it from: Online, retail » Buy it for: £17.99 (digital) £34.99 (retail) Shockingly, we never got around to reviewing this old-school racer when it was first released digitally, so a recent physical of

The UK national curriculum was updated half a decade ago to include computer programming, so teacher Douglas McGregor at Bearsden Primary School decided that, rather than look at the topic in a general fashion, he would instead bring programming conc

Where did the idea of using Arcade Game Designer in the classroom come from? I have been developing the teaching of programming for several years. Although there are many excellent tools out there to help build coding skills, there is no major end p

» PLATFORM: AMIGA » DEVELOPER: RICHARD LöWENSTEIN » DOWNLOAD: KIKSTART.ME.UK/RESHOOT-R-AMIGA » PRICE: FROM €29.95, DOWNLOAD Long-distance space travel has always been fraught with all kinds of perils and it’s not always possible to allow for every e

“I found an auction up in Newcastle where a collection of brand-new videogames was going under the hammer. I hadn’t seen boxes (let alone contents) in such pristine condition since the Nineties.” PAID: £275 “I’d wanted one for years. It felt like co

Dear Retro Gamer, Have you ever covered any Conan The Barbarian licensed games in the past? I’m taking a stroll through the Hyborian Age in the Amiga classic, and I was thinking it would be fantastic to see some fur and blades on the best magazine in