Retro Gamer

Few games have excited me as much as Resident Evil 4. I can still recall when games™ received early info about the game, revealing all the changes being made to Capcom’s popular series and no one quite believing what they were reading. When I finally

There’s no denying the buzz that accompanies a Nintendo Direct – the company has nailed the formula for making them more than just video presentations, with big surprises and sudden releases that allow players to feel like part of an event. That’s ex

I’m hooked on a couple of games at the minute which are only available on the Apple Arcade. Yes, I’m one of those people locked into the Apple ecosystem – and we can debate the pros and cons of that some other time. However, I am a big fan of the App

I have written in the past about how in my middle school if you wanted to use the computers at lunchtime, you had to book it. At the beginning of the week, a piece of paper would be slapped on the door of the computer room and everyone would rush the

Sometimes you just have to wait until things are ready and that’s exactly why Rob Wass has spent over ten years developing Clive ‘N’ Wrench. The retro-inspired 3D platformer is hotly anticipated by fans that have followed the project and we speak to

The magazines filed their reports from E3, and there was certainly plenty to discuss. Sony’s showing was “widely accepted as an underwhelming media event” according to Edge, with online commentators making memes of the flat reaction to a PSP running

» ARCADE » 1981 » ALPHA DENSHI The Neo Geo Pocket Color really grabbed my attention when I was a young teenager, in part because I was aware that so many of its games had a distinguished history on other platforms. I recognised names like Fatal Fury

Whether you’re a fan of the series or not, there’s undoubtedly no argument that Resident Evil helped redefine videogames in the mid-Nineties and propelled the Sony PlayStation into a more mature demographic. Open and tense locations, limited ammuniti

If you need further proof of Resident Evil 4’s brilliance you should really consider experiencing it in VR. Boasting a brand-new first-person perspective and developed exclusively for Oculus Quest 2, Resi 4 VR is mind-blowingly good fun and not only

■ With reported sales of over 1.5 million, comfortably eclipsing the 2002 Resident Evil remake and Zero, Resident Evil 4 remains one of the GameCube’s biggest third-party games. It also helped banish Nintendo’s reputation for a younger demographic an

■ Following the success of Resident Evil 2, Capcom’s Shinji Mikami concludes that the series needs a new direction. ■ A few months later, development begins on Resident Evil 3 for Sony’s incoming PlayStation 2 console. ■ Capcom repurposes off-shoot R

Released as this issue goes to press, Capcom’s latest remake, following on from the hugely popular Resident Evil 2 (2019) and Resident Evil 3 (2020), looks set to remind fans of Resident Evil 4’s great level design and gameplay while bringing a new f

• Soft memory foam earpads to keep you comfortable during the longest sessions • Foldable construction for easy storage • All metal hinges for maximum durability • Detachable 1.4m cable included • Multi-platform: Compatible with PC, Mac®, PS4™, PS5™,

» MANUFACTURER: Bally » YEAR: 1978 » COST: $299 (launch), £320+ (today, boxed), £160+ (today, unboxed) The Bally Professional Arcade was certainly an ambitious machine. Designed by Midway, then the videogame subsidiary of Bally, it was designed to of

The cover of Jet Bike Simulator made something of a splash – internally at Codemasters at least. In a list of features promoting the virtues of this top-down racer (among them a free colour poster and an official Codemasters sticker, no less), were t

■ Jet Bike Simulator did not sell well, primarily because it was put out on the Codemasters Plus label. As Philip explains, shops placed the game in the same section as full-price releases. “Budget games were always in standard, single-cassette boxes

» MASTER SYSTEM » 1988 » SEGA R&D2 I started working full time at 15 and quickly took advantage of my aunt’s catalogue so I could buy a Master System. I opted for the Master System Plus pack which not only included the Light Phaser, but also two game

When Geoff Crammond left university in the mid-Seventies there was no such thing as a home computer. It wasn’t until six years after he graduated that they first started to appear, at which point he bought himself a BBC Micro. After developing a vers

■ The C64 original feels pretty realistic while allowing you to pull off stunts that are anything but. Its lack of music somehow helps its true-to-life credentials, as does its convincing depiction of driving at speed. Its levels are nicely varied an

The Game.com is one of the more intriguing failures in gaming history. Although the system is now renowned for its poor-quality games and practically unusable display, Tiger’s assessment that there was space for a new handheld in 1997 was actually qu

■ Get up to full speed on the long straight by boosting, then slow down coming out of the banked corner. Speed up to clear the gap, then after landing get back up to medium speed before the second corner. Keep dead centre while leaping the second gap

“Enigma Variations was only ever going to be producing endless budget licensed games written to a very tight schedule, with no apparent aspirations beyond that,” says programmer Andy Swann. Although that situation would change at Enigma shortly after

■ Although the founding members of Twilight were keen to get away from kids’ cartoon series licences, it was a handy place to start, allowing Twilight to produce a good half-a-dozen or so games across multiple platforms in quick succession, whilst pr

» MEGA DRIVE » 1993 » THE KREMLIN You can’t have missed the fact that GoldenEye 007, the most celebrated James Bond videogame of all, recently returned to consoles. It was great to see how many people were excited to revisit the game on modern hardwa

1988 ■ Talk about an inauspicious debut to show off the new System 24 hardware. It plays fine, and is quite fun in multiplayer, but it’s just such an ordinary racer in almost every regard. Commodore User called it “dull and frustrating” and it’s hard

■ With colourful backgrounds that seem to stretch far into the distance and intricate sprites, Lionheart was a visual spectacle. The animation was smooth too, with little touches like your character swaying precariously as you teeter on the edge of a

■ Released in 1990 after three years in development, Dragonflight delivered role-playing action with hints of Zelda and Ultima. Guiding a party around dungeons and forests while battling monsters and managing your inventory, it would set the tone for

■ The world of Lionheart is full of secrets and hidden paths. You could argue the game has some parallels with the level design of the Turrican games, in that many areas allow you to explore vertically as well as horizontally to find shrouded ledges

» SATURN » 1996 » PSIKYO Even though many of its shmups are arcade ports, one of the things I love about the Saturn is its sheer diversity. Sure you’ve got the big hitters like Radiant Silvergun, Battle Garegga and Hyper Duel (often with big prices t

Turn-based tactics games have arguably never been bigger. In 2022 alone we had Triangle Strategy, Mario + Rabbids: Sparks Of Hope, Marvel’s Midnight Suns and Tactics Ogre Reborn, to name just a few, with Fire Emblem Engage squeaking out this January.

Before you begin your quest, the story is framed by this elf reading a book. It’s a series tradition for Shining games to be bookended by a storyteller. At one point Max meets an inventor and agrees to step into his experimental machine. Turning into

With deck-building games being so popular in the board-game community it was perhaps inevitable that the formula would be used by inventive videogame developers. While a large number of great examples now exist, including Slay The Spire and Monster T

We like to think that Retro Gamer readers are pretty clued up on games, but despite that we’d also be willing to wager that quite a few of you have never heard of The Rumble Fish. Unfortunately the local bookies gave us a confused look when we tried

■ Easy chain combos, as seen in Darkstalkers and Guilty Gear. Normal light attacks can combo into light attacks and heavy attacks, heavy attacks can only combo into other heavy attacks. ■ By pressing heavy punch and heavy kick together, you can spend

■ The Rumble Fish 2 was released for home systems late in 2022, marking the first official home release of the game, as well as the first home release for the series as a whole outside of Japan. But why did it take so long for this to happen? “This p

» GAME BOY ADVANCE » 2003 » TOSE/NINTENDO Back in 2007, I was fortunate enough to snag a brand-new Game Boy Micro for less than £20. I didn’t need it – I already had two Game Boy Advance SPs and a DS – but there was something about that brilliantly b

» System: PC (version tested), PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch » Buy it for: £16.75 » Buy it from: Online Playing the original version of Akka Arrh on Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration recently was a fascinating look at what could have bee

EXCITING NEWS FLOWS INTO RETRO GAMER REGULARLY ABOUT NEW HOMEBREW PROJECTS. AGENT 4125 IS COMING OUT OF RETIREMENT TO STAR IN A NEW IMPOSSIBLE MISSION, AMIGA OWNERS WILL BE PRACTISING A BIT OF ROGUECRAFT, AND THE MEGA DRIVE HAS SEVERAL IMPRES

WHAT TOOLS DO YOU USE, MATT?

You may have noticed that we quite like Capcom’s Resident Evil series (we’ve done three covers after all). As the remake of Resident Evil 4 prepares to drop we look back and have a chat about the popular survival horror series. So chaps, what was you

Garth Coyle has always been into his gaming, but his collecting really started during the last decade. “I got serious about collecting around ten years ago when I completed university,” he tells us. Gaze at the images of Garth’s games room (which reg

In the Nineties, when 3-inch disks became harder and more expensive to buy, I purchased a 3.5-inch disk drive for my Amstrad CPC 6128. As a consequence, most of my public-domain software and homebrew purchases ended up on 3.5-inch floppies but the dr

Dear Retro Gamer, I am Dylan, a 15 year old who lives in the US. I have been an avid reader of your magazine since 2019. I always enjoy reading your top 25 games for a console articles and for a future issue, I thought it would be amazing to see a to

Dear Retro Gamer, I’ve been quite annoyed recently and it’s all because of Zero Wing. Well, not Zero Wing but the people talking about it. The arcade version has recently been released on PC and I’m fed up of people moaning that it doesn’t have the,

» Here’s a question for you – if these worlds have been forgotten, what are these two super soldiers doing trying to save them? It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but they’re going to do it anyway, so we suppose the best thing to do is skip to the end t

» XBOX 360 » 2008 » BLACK ROCK STUDIO I’ve never been one for simulations, particularly when it comes to racing games. Give me an arcade racer though and I’m all over it. Give me one as fun as Pure and I’ll be a very happy chappy indeed. Pure really