Retro Gamer

Now Sega owns the Thunder Force IP, I’d like a brand-new 2D shooter with eye-melting visuals and an ear-thrumming soundtrack. Expertise: Juggling a gorgeous wife, two beautiful girls and an award-winning magazine, all under the same roof! Currently p

There can’t be many Master System owners who weren’t aware of Alex Kidd. Sega’s big-eared mascot had a great run on the 8-bit console and he got off to a brilliant start with the excellent Miracle World, which many later Master System gamers would ex

Amstrad replaced the tape deck of the 464 with a internal three-inch floppy disk drive but the decision to include 64K of memory meant it was produced for just six months before being replaced by the CPC 6128. Codenamed IDIOT (Includes Disk Instead O

ININ Games has announced that it will be releasing Clockwork Aquario, a 1992 Westone arcade game previously thought to be lost, later in 2020. The 2D platformer was the final arcade game developed by the company, and was designed by Wonder Boy direct

A complete and unpublished Days Of Thunder game for the NES has been found and preserved by the Video Game History Foundation. It had been worked on by the late Chris Oberth, who was then a coder and designer at Mindscape. A backup spread over more t

Philip and Andrew Oliver like to keep busy. Despite being in lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the developer duo have been doing plenty to keep themselves occupied, including setting up a new version of their website (olivertwins.com) and contri

AUGUST 2003 – As temperatures rise across the UK, are things heating up in the gaming market? Frankly, no – it’s a standard-issue summer lull, with even the return of Lara Croft unable to generate much excitement. Time traveller Nick Thorpe investiga

1 – EyeToy: Play (Sony) 2 – Tomb Raider: The Angel Of Darkness (Eidos) 3 – SOCOM: US Navy Seals (Sony) 4 – Enter The Matrix (Atari) 5 – Formula One 2003 (Sony) 1 – FIFA 2003 (EA) 2 – Brute Force (Microsoft) 3 – Halo: Combat Evolved (Microsoft) 4 – Pr

In a feature on the endangered art form of 2D gaming, games™ flipped the question on its head. “Will gamers come crawling back to sprites for a break from tireless photorealism or will it be time for something entirely new to take over, sending polyg

■ In the Dragon Ball series, the titular items enable those who possess them to make wishes. The orange balls come in sets of seven, each bearing up to seven red stars. The telepathy ball in Alex Kidd In Miracle World is visually similar, being blue

As terrifying as the velociraptors in the Jurassic Park kitchen sequence, 3D Monster Maze drops you in a series of mazes with a hungry T-rex and challenges you to find their exits before you end up as a meal. Worse still, the mazes are randomly gener

They don’t come much scarier than the T-rex; Malcolm’s monochrome monster is terrifying. Perhaps not in a still screenshot, but once you’re immersed in 3D Monster Maze and your anxiety is raised sky high by its sinister commentary, then the mere thou

Technically, 3D Monster Maze isn’t impossible; you can appeal if Rex catches you, which gives you 50/50 odds of being eaten or being freed, which is represented by the game resetting. This risky option aside, 3D Monster Maze is an endless series of m

■ Where 3D Pool led the way, others followed. One of the best alternatives was Archer Maclean’s Pool (Virgin, 1992); it was a sequel to Jimmy White’s Whirlwind Snooker, by the same author, and offered a choice of UK and US pool variants, played again

Ultimate’s game is full of trap-filled rooms that can be terrifying to navigate. You’ll often find yourself in a situation like this one, where spiked death hangs precariously above your head and the only way to get past it is to gingerly move whatev

■ Alas, another poor Spectrum port plagues the Amstrad CPC, reducing Black Tiger to a rather dull and unsightly platform game. There’s at least a tune to enjoy but it’s fairly unrecognisable to the arcade ditty, and the choppy, erratic scrolling is t

■ These two oblong statues wait for you at the end of the first level. They slowly leap over each other, with their touch deadly to Black Tiger. As you approach, try and land a few hits before they’ve even moved. Then it’s just a simple matter of dod

Were you working for Softworks/Softworx when coding Black Tiger? I was freelance, along with the guys I was working with. Our dev manager, Dave Baxter, insisted we needed a company name for our first cheque to be made out to, and he suggested the nam

“With Settlers we got lucky, it really caught people’s attention,” recalls Thomas Hertzler, cofounder of German studio Blue Byte. “It was the best game that we’d ever had the opportunity to deliver. We all thought it was the bee’s knees.” And best of

■ This is probably the first thing you’ll build. The lumberjack chops down trees, which can be sent to the sawmill to be made into planks. ■ When supply lines are stretched, this comes in handy to store goods where they’re produced, rather than shipp

We can’t stress enough how impressive it is to see a prerendered intro video on the Game Boy Color. That’s the kind of thing that’s normally the preserve of machines with the benefit of CD-ROM storage. Okay, it’s a little bit scratchy because of the

The biggest draw of the game is its inclusion of eight extra tracks – three from WipEout and five from 2097. This essentially doubles the content over the standard release, and makes the game a greatest hits compilation. Special Edition features enha

■ If you’re looking to maximise your opportunities for bargains, you’ll want a wide range of systems, and the ability to switch between regions as needed. ■ Futuristic racers encourage you to live fast, but Buy It Now prices rarely offer value. Wait

DEVELOPER: NINTENDO EAD RELEASED: 1998 EXPECT TO PAY: £13+ (EUROPE) £35+ (USA) £5+ (JAPAN) DEVELOPER: CURLY MONSTERS RELEASED: 2002 EXPECT TO PAY: £1+ (EUROPE) £3+ (USA) £10+ (JAPAN) DEVELOPER: NDCUBE RELEASED: 2003 EXPECT TO PAY: £40+ (US) DEVELOPER

Namco decided to crank Yoshimitsu’s ridiculousness up to 11 in Tekken 3. The masked ninja suddenly became a lightsaber-wielding cyborg, with crazy helicopter moves. But better than that was when you discovered his pogo attack – hopping around on the

▶ There’s nothing like keeping your stamina up by cooking some good old meat. Learning to roast a well-done steak with a portable spit is, in fact, your first task as you time the results to a delightful ditty. Looks tasty! ▶ Gestures weren’t just in

Chris Cannon seems to know everyone. We first met him at Play Expo Manchester in May 2019, where we were hosting an event to mark the 35th anniversary of the release of Jet Set Willy. As we chatted with Chris about his early coding on the TRS-80 and

■ Originally coded by Chris for the Oric-1, this text adventure follows a familiar format, as you find yourself seeking treasure and then escaping from a fortress full of lethal hazards. The humour and sweet touches, including some unlikely Morse Cod

MERMAN: Did you playtest each other’s games and give honest feedback? Yes. I especially remember The Master. Dave McGee, the programmer, and the artist, John Robinson, were my mates. The game was originally based on Blade Runner and it looked great b

What’s your favourite Alex Kidd game? Miracle World. It was one of the first games I played on the system after it was bundled with it, much like Hang-On. It really felt like a massive jump from my trusty Speccy and I really felt like I was playing o

Editor Darran ‘Alex Kidd’ Jones darran.jones@futurenet.com 0330 3906443 Art Editor Andy ‘Gooseka’ Salter Production Editor Drew ‘Parplin’ Sleep Features Editor Nick ‘Chokkinna’ Thorpe Photographer Phil ‘Octopus’ Barker Group Art Director Woz ‘Monster

» That dastardly wizard-type chap, Chew-Man-Fu, has put a curse upon everyone – a curse that means they can’t have egg rolls and fried rice. What’s more, he’s backing up his curse with a menacing menagerie of porcupines, penguins and whatever else GW