Retro Gamer

It feels like only yesterday that I saw Sonic tearing his way through Green Hill Zone at a speed that made my head spin. Astonishingly that first brush with Sega’s blue blur was actually 30 years ago and now I’ve made myself rather sad. If you’re a f

Super Potato is widely considered to be one of the best retro shops if you’re planning a trip to Japan. It’s now even easier to visit the fabled store as it has recently opened up a shop on eBay, making it easier to see why the store is so popular. I

If you enjoyed issue 217’s Zombies Ate My Neighbors Ultimate Guide, you’ll probably be happy to hear that the game is being remastered by Dotemu for all modern home systems. Even better, its obscure sequel, Ghoul Patrol is also being released. Physic

The 2004 Summer Olympics took place in Athens from 13-29 August. The Greek city became only the fourth to host the event twice, having last hosted the Olympics in 1896. The USA topped the medal table with 36 gold medals, 39 silver and 26 bronze. Grea

Everyone’s excited for the next gen, right? Not Nintendo’s European managing director David Gosen. “In every cycle, a manufacturer not profiting from the current cycle is eager to kick-start the next one,” he said, taking aim at Microsoft. “For every

What would Sonic be without his speed? Roadkill, probably – after all, he does have a habit of being chased by trucks, whales and other large things that could very easily crush him. But in gaming terms, Sonic’s speed is both a blessing and a curse –

Constantly trying to catch Nick out by making him admit that Sonic The Hedgehog 2 is actually Sonic’s best game. Expertise: Juggling a gorgeous wife, two beautiful girls, a SNES-loving cousin and an award-winning magazine, all under one roof! Current

■ It’s easy to assume, just from his name, that Sonic The Hedgehog is able to run at least as fast as the speed of sound. But is there a definitive answer as to his maximum speed? The short answer is no. The longer answer is that we have some measure

1 – Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (Ubisoft)2 – Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban (EA)3 – UEFA Euro 2004 (EA)4 – Red Dead Revolver (Rockstar)5 – Shrek 2 (Activision) 1 – Red Dead Revolver (Rockstar)2 – Thief: Deadly Shadows (Eidos)3 – UEFA Eu

When it comes to creating levels, Sonic can be a tricky character to design for. Exploration is often a key part of the platform game genre, and the 16-bit Sonic games in particular are known for having some fairly large, sprawling stages. But with S

Some people believe this is cringeworthy, but they are massively wrong. These vocal tracks will appeal to anyone who can truly feel the sunshine – which should be all of you. There aren’t many tracks on this album, but Live & Learn, Escape From The C

Although better known for its movies, Warner Bros was also a major player in the early years of US videogames. It famously bought Atari, Inc in 1976, and then funded the set-up of Lucasfilm Games in 1982. Less well known is that Warner later bought i

Designed for first-run syndication, Sonic and Tails take on Robotnik in all sorts of one-shot adventures that are heavy on the comedy. Jaleel White’s Sonic is fondly remembered, but it’s Long John Baldry’s portrayal of Robotnik that has generated the

You don’t have to use Spy Vs Spy’s traps, but pranking your foe provides endless entertainment – as does watching them trip their own traps! The game’s bombs, springs, electrified buckets of water and guns on strings can be deactivated, but there’s n

There’s nothing that says “I hate you!” like bashing someone with a wooden club, so it feels right that the opposing pair in Spy Vs Spy carry them everywhere they go in case of battle. There are only two moves: a forward thrust and an up/down attack,

Pretty much anything in Spy Vs Spy can be used to hide things in, under or on. As well as office furniture like safes and filing cabinets, there are TVs, paintings and even first-aid kits that you can use to stash traps, their remedies and the object

The editor of the controversial comic Oink! was a pig. Uncle Pigg to be exact. He oversaw 68 issues between 3 May 1986 and 22 October 1988, providing kids with a swill of satire and toilet humour that put it as far apart from the Beano and Whizzer An

■ It took a bit of time to figure how the frontend interface worked in Jon Williams’ original but being able to jump into any of the three minigames without sticking to any particular order worked in its favour. This carried through to the ports whic

■ Over the three games, the Amstrad version just about edges it thanks to the clean, swift window system and a Ben Daglish tune that is stripped of the complexities of the Commodore 64 music, creating a toe-tapping, if somewhat beepy, adaptation of T

Picking the correct team is imperative. Every job needs a getaway driver – unfortunately the boss failed his test! Everyone can crack a safe or pick a lock (they’re criminals after all), but experts use fewer seconds to get them open. With the fuzz h

This master safecracker and picker of locks has worked for 28 years without a single conviction. If there are locks to be picked and safes to be cracked, Tumbler’s yer man. Has his own stethoscope. Joe is able to pick open practically any lock, as de

After gaining their engineering degrees in 1983, Paul Voysey and Tayo Olowu learned to program in machine code and wrote a sci-fi strategy game for the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 called Psytron, released by EMAP-owned publisher Beyond to much accla

■ Paul Voysey and Tayo Oluwu write Psytron for the ZX Spectrum, published by Beyond Software. Psytron sells over 50,000 copies and is a huge success. They then write the Commodore 64 conversion themselves. ■ Paul and Tayo’s new Commodore game for Bey

■ Bill’s decision to move to marketing business Target Action just a year after helping set up Nexus Productions meant that he left the games publishing industry for good in 1987, never to return. Almost 35 years later, he has now taken stock of his

■ NEXUS was not only the title of their new Commodore 64 game, but it also became Paul Voysey and Tayo Oluwu’s own development team name. It then became the name of their new publishing company. NEXUS the game was also converted by Pennsoft to the Am

DEVELOPER: P&P MARKETING YEAR: 1996 GENRE: LIGHTGUN ■ This lightgun game is one of those sorts of games that isn’t poorly constructed, it’s just incredibly bland. The premise of the game is that it is a training tool for police officers, and thus off

DEVELOPER: KONAMI RELEASE: 1990 ■ You can get the original Snatcher on MSX but you should really set your sights on the Mega-CD version instead. Not only is it in English, it also includes a bonus third act, way better visuals, music and lightgun con

DEVELOPER: TECNOSOFT RELEASE: 1988 ■ Esteemed shoot-’em-up developer Tecnosoft may be best known for cutting edge Sega shooters like Thunder Force or Hyper Duel but it started off with much simpler fare on Japanese computers like the MSX. The little

DEVELOPER: KONAMI RELEASED: 1988 EXPECT TO PAY JAPAN £100+ DEVELOPER: NIHON FALCOM RELEASED: 1989 EXPECT TO PAY JAPAN £70+ DEVELOPER: KONAMI RELEASED: 1986 EXPECT TO PAY EUROPE £130+, JAPAN £125+ DEVELOPER: ASCII CORPORATION RELEASED: 1984 EXPECT TO

DEVELOPER: COMPILE RELEASE: 1989 ■ Compile’s classic shoot-’em-up series recently flew back onto the radar with Aleste Collection. It’s a superb compilation of the Master System and Game Gear entries but certainly not a comprehensive one. If you want

■ Increases attack. Covet it like an idol – the game revolves around this! Collect four for maximum attack potential; you lose potential each time you die. ■ This increases the speed of your axe slashes – slow, medium, or fast. But if you’re being pa

This optional mini-boss graces the cover on both the Japanese and US versions of the game, and relinquishes the first Power Supply – do not skip it! HOW TO BEAT THEM: Just jump and attack. The webbing it shoots can be dispatched with your axe. Every

Is Legendary Axe II the sequel to The Legendary Axe? The English name claims it to be, and the two share programmer Mamoru Shiratani, but is it really? We posit that contrary to evidence the two games are not related, and the true sequel by Tokuhiro

If you’ve never heard of the Pico-8 before, you may find yourself stepping into something of a conceptual quagmire. It is a console that doesn’t exist. Its games look and sound like undiscovered Eighties retro titles, but most are less that five year

■ Undoubtedly the Pico-8’s most famous game is the original version of Celeste, which would later be elaborated on to create the critically acclaimed platformer that hit PC and consoles in 2018. The original is still great, as is the sequel Celeste 2

■ The first element of the Pico-8’s built-in development tools is the code editor. The Pico-8 uses the Lua programming language and allows for easy copy and pasting to make replicating code between projects and sharing easy. You can also see the code

This relatively faithful mini-version of Intelligent Systems’ classic strategy game Advance Wars is fantastic fun. Rendered in an 8-bit style, the game uses the core mechanics of the title it is based on, including unit types, movement, capturing and

When it comes to classic gaming, it seems as though education is a must, according to Shantae series director and WayForward creative director Matt Bozon. “As kids we all strove for straight As so we could cash our report cards in at Showbiz Pizza to

■ Shantae’s quite adorable little monkey form allows her to zip around as a much smaller target, not to mention scale sheer walls with a frankly reckless abandon. Given the small screen and tendency for enemies to leap out of nowhere, it’s easy to ac

■ Shantae’s second adventure is an easy-breezy quest through a mere two major dungeons, but it packs some of the best sprite work seen on the Nintendo DS thanks to the input of the absolute pixel artisan Henk Nieborg. Not a bad game by any means, but

■ For reasons so mysterious that neither its makers or IP owners (most recently Activision) have all the answers, neither No One Lives Forever nor its sequel are available to buy digitally. However, thanks to the release of the game’s source code in

■ Like in so many games, dogs can be the swift undoing of an otherwise valiant attempt at stealthy operations. Luckily, Cate can use this persuasive mechanical poodle to woo guard dogs while she sneaks past them and avoids getting chomped by them. ■

■ Cate Archer’s adventures are entrenched in many gamers’ memories like a flashback-inducing LSD trip, but not as many people remember the spin-off Contract JACK. Taking place between the events of both No One Lives Forever games, the game casts you

This burly warrior is slower than the others but makes up for it with strength, starting with an extra health point. He’ll bash foes with the cannon he slings on his shoulder or can smash through them with a shoulder charge. The cannon obviously also

While Henk’s first credited game was technically 1989’s Amiga puzzler Charly, it’s Ghost Battle that really showcased his pixel skills with character design, even if the game itself was mostly a clone of Ghosts ’N Goblins and Shadow Of The Beast. Thi

■ Violet’s TV company made CheatFlash for The Children’s Channel, which had many cartoons and a fair amount of original programming. “That was the most fun!” she says. “I was dressed up as an American-style news anchor, then we’d do a cheat or a fact

Violet Berlin ended up with a regular column on Teletext’s Digitiser from 1994. “I was a massive fan of Digitiser,” she says, “and read it every day. Out of all the gaming journalists, I wanted to meet them most of all. So I went to a trade show, and

THEALEX: What games most inspired your current role of creating interactive and immersive experiences for the public? All of them. I constantly draw on my games experience in my work in all kinds of ways. It’s like if you’re a writer drawing on every

» System: PS4 (tested), PC, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S » Buy it from: Retail, online » Buy it for: £34.99+ When it comes to Kickstarter revivals of classic games, we’ve come to expect that they are made squarely with the backers in mind – peop

» Buy it from: bitmapbooks.co.uk » Buy it for: £34.99 Bitmap Books has once again outdone itself with an incredibly lavish book, this time devoted to Japanese RPGs. Although it’s disappointingly short on interview content, it does an excellent job of

» System: Switch » Buy it from: Online, retail » Buy it for: £49.99 Nintendo’s snap-’em-up has always been one of our favourite Pokémon spin-offs and this new edition does nothing to dampen that. It takes the mechanics of the N64 original, but adds i

After presenting the youth-focused satellite TV show Cool Cube and the kid-focused animal programme WildBunch, Violet Berlin went on to host the CITV videogame show Bad Influence! alongside children’s television stalwart Andy Crane. The programme ran

» Buy it from: amazon.co.uk » Buy it for: £19, £6.24 (Kindle) We’re big fans of Hardcore Gaming 101 and we always enjoy a new book release from Kurt Kalata’s team. As with previous titles in the series, this second volume is a mix of existing web con

Zool on the Amiga: looks great, but suffers from slowdowns in framerates, annoying, respawning enemies, horrible janky controls, especially the wall jumps – it never deserved the massive scores it got in the Amiga mags. The Grand Theft Auto games. It

For PlayStation 2 fan Zoë, the successful console represents the last time when videogames could be truly considered retro. “It was the last bastion of the old style of gaming,” she tells Retro Gamer, “where you got everything on the disc and that wa

There’s good news for fans of the blue hedgehog looking to buy or rebuy the original games: with most of them best sellers, there is no shortage of CIB copies of most of the Mega Drive games and beyond. For the first two games expect to pay no more t

As we look back on 30 years of Sonic The Hedgehog this month, I’ve been doing a bit of thinking about how I relate to Sega’s speedy mascot. It’s no secret that I’m a fan, but it does go a bit beyond that – far beyond that, in fact. The truth is that

It’s Sonic for me too; I actually met my husband because of Sonic! We met on a Sonic forum in the early Noughties, with him being in the US and me in the UK, so we wouldn’t have found each other without that. We both also have an amazing group of fri

What’s your favourite Sonic memory? Seeing the opening video for Sonic CD. I was about six years old when my parents got me the game for our PC and I had no clue games could do stuff like that. The song was awesome, it got me hyped, and I played that

Editor Darran ‘Sonic’ Jones darran.jones@futurenet.com 0330 3906443 Art Editor Andy ‘Shadow’ Salter Production Editor Tim ‘Big The Cat’ Empey Features Editor Nick ‘Dr Robotnik’ Thorpe Photographer Phil ‘Tails’ Barker Group Art Director Woz ‘Metal Son

» Lisa’s been kidnapped, and it’s up to Bomberman to save her! Why? Because Dr Mitsumori doesn’t really fancy going to fight Black Bomberman himself, and would much rather send his prized invention. Fortunately, Bomberman is a robot and doesn’t have

Sega’s speedy mascot has come a long way in the last 30 years. After making his debut as an ornament hanging from a rearview mirror in Rad Mobile, he found immediate success on the Mega Drive and Master System. Sega quickly realised the strength of i

Yuzo Koshiro’s studio Ancient was founded to take on the task of bringing Sonic to Sega’s 8-bit consoles, and it did a very good job. Rather than trying to produce a cut-down version of the Mega Drive original, Ancient’s adaptation offered some of th

The development studio Aspect was given the job of creating the 8-bit versions of Sonic The Hedgehog 2, and right from the start it planned a wholly different game to the Mega Drive version. This time out, Sonic’s goal is to rescue Tails, who has bee

What pressures did Sonic 2’s short deadline create? If I recall properly, the first game took 14 months. To try to create the sequel in nine months – with a culturally divided team – was really stressful. Given the commercial importance of a sequel,

Tails is so named because of his distinctive two tails. He was mercilessly bullied as a child because of his unique attribute. Tails’ first appearance in a videogame is the Master System version of Sonic 2 by Aspect, which arrived just before the Meg