Table of contents for No. 284 in Retro Gamer

This is one of the busiest months of the year for new games, when the biggest AAA releases and franchise updates typically arrive to capture Christmas sales. There’s plenty to wade through, but we must begin with Nintendo’s New Super Mario Bros Wii, simply on account of it being the first proper 2D Mario platformer for a home console since Super Mario World, released for the SNES 19 years prior. When it was announced, many believed it was a port of the 2006 DS game, but no, this was a brand-new game that introduced simultaneous play. One to four players could now assault levels together, and while it wasn’t able to fix the inherent pitfalls in co-op platforming, it came pretty close. And it was loads of fun. “It’s essential,”…

» AMSTRAD CPC » 1987 » CODEMASTERS Due to coming from a single-parent family, money was always tight growing up, so the vast majority of games I could afford were budget games. Maybe it was because of the Dizzy games, but I found myself owning more titles from Codemasters in my collection than any other budget label. Often these purchases were carefully considered and based on reviews, but I would sometimes choose something on a whim, because the back of the box took my fancy or I had some rare birthday money to spend. 3D Starfighter was one of those titles that was a purchase that wasn’t given much thought, and in retrospect, I probably should have read some reviews about it. Like many youngsters of my age, Star Wars had…

LINK’S AWAKENING 1993 GAME BOY ■ Link’s first Game Boy adventure is a miniature marvel. Rather than the pared-back experience you might expect, it’s a proper Zelda game that’s delightful from start to finish. The difficulty level is slightly more forgiving, making it a perfect entry point for newcomers. ORACLE OF SEASONS 2001 GAME BOY COLOR ■ Developed by Flagship, and released consecutively with its ‘twin’ game Oracle Of Ages, this emulates the look and feel of Link’s Awakening to excellent effect. Of the two games, Seasons is more cerebral, with a greater focus on puzzles over action, so it gets our vote. THE MINISH CAP 2004 GAME BOY ADVANCE ■ This entry looks great, using the GBA hardware to deliver visuals that channel A Link To The Past. Gameplay-wise…

LINK’S AWAKENING DX ■ The 1993 original worked perfectly within the limits of the Game Boy hardware. With the arrival of the Game Boy Color in 1998, Nintendo chose to remaster the game, adding colour graphics and bringing the visuals to life. A brand-new ‘Color Dungeon’ was also added. OCARINA OF TIME 3D ■ This is how you improve on perfection. The 3DS version sharpens up the graphics (and presents them in 3D, naturally), and makes the controls more responsive. A myriad of small tweaks (such as simplifying the use of the Iron Boots) seal the deal on this brilliant update. THE WIND WAKER HD ■ The game looks amazing displayed in HD, and the Wii U’s GamePad acts as a handy map/inventory screen. But the main improvement is the…

Despite missing out on Crash magazine’s Smash accolade (something developer Jon Ritman never let it forget), Match Day became a perennial favourite everywhere thanks to its innate simplicity and accessibility. Yet it was far from perfect. Its player sprites, scrounged from Jon’s earlier game, Bear Bovver, were functional at best, and there was little variety in the gameplay. “Obviously, there were all sorts of things that could have been better,” says Jon as we begin our latest conversation with the veteran developer. “Such as the way the ball bounced off the players and the graphics themselves. I did the art for my early games, and I wasn’t the best in that department.” International Match Day, released to help promote the new 128K ZX Spectrum, arrived two years later, but did…

■ Issue 59 of Crash saw the second of its inter-magazine challenges, with journalists from the new multiformat magazine The Games Machine pitched against Zzap!64 and Crash writers. Each participant chose their own game, and Crash’s Phil King didn’t need to think twice. “I absolutely loved [Match Day II] at the time,” recalls Phil, “and remember thinking how much of an improvement it was over the original Match Day.” Hugely familiar with Match Day II’s mechanics and having already triumphed in an earlier Crash challenge, Phil was well positioned to hand out some thrashings to the other mags. “I particularly loved the Kickometer and Diamond Deflection system – good for headers. It’s really quite skillful once you get the hang of it.” Phil’s silky skills duly saw him triumph in…

How did you get into computing, Gabriel? I was always quite interested in computing and started reading programming books. I was fascinated by this new world, so I began researching it, reading the magazines in this field, mostly foreign at this point, as there was only one Spanish magazine. Little by little, I came to understand what it was all about, until I was completely immersed in the world of computers. And from here, you presumably discovered a love of computer games? That actually came later, when I began to work at MicroHobby. I was given the role of writing game reviews, something that was totally new to me at the time, and on which I knew practically nothing. So, slowly, I got involved in that world, too. Do you…

» MEGA DRIVE » 1991 » SANRITSU DENKI I grew up in Northern Ireland, during The Troubles. So while the news was filled with bombings, shootings and general sectarianism (somebody graffitied ‘F**k the pope’ on a wall near where I lived) it kind of washed over me. It was expected, having never known anything else. (It was a bit of a culture shock when I moved to Bournemouth in 2003 and none of the police were armed, or drove about in armoured Land Rover Defenders.) Anyway, I’d bought my Mega Drive and a short walk from where I lived was an independent video rental shop that also rented games. Weird games. Import games too. There was a Joshi wrestling one that was all in Japanese and I couldn’t work out how…

■ Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis was built using LucasArts SCUMM engine, becoming the seventh such release to do so. Released on DOS in 1992, it had standard VGA graphics, allowing for 256 colours, as well as speech in the introductory sequence. It also came on 11 floppy disks. The Amiga version was much the same. It, too, was released on multiple floppies so a lot of disk-swapping was required but, despite having poorer graphics in comparison to the PC, it remained a faithful conversion. The same was true of the game on Mac but, as on PC, it benefitted from a CD-ROM version the following year, with 8,000 lines of dialogue (Indy was voiced by Doug Lee) and this is the version available within the Wii title…

» NINTENDO 64 » 2001 » NINTENDO R&D1  Although I’ve recently sold off my entire Game Boy Advance collection and a large amount of my SNES collection, my N64 games aren’t going anywhere. In some ways it represents two distinct sides of me, the carefree idiot I was before I had kids and the carefree idiot I became afterwards. Before my first daughter Emily came along, the N64 was a constant part of my life. If I wasn’t playing Ocarina Of Time or Banjo-Kazooie, I was having multiplayer sessions of GoldenEye 007, Turok 2 or Mario Kart 64 with friends. Even Mel used to love Nintendo’s console, and when she wasn’t staring at her character’s feet in GoldenEye, she’d be using a guide and helping me through whatever game I…

■ Combat was another area that evolved to reflect the game’s focus on making movement faster, smoother and more satisfying. A wide variety of acrobatic moves could be strung together quickly, creating impressive animation sequences that highlighted the influence of series like Marvel Vs Capcom, Devil May Cry, Soulcalibur and Ninja Gaiden. “We had a combo system. We only had a limited number of buttons (web, jump and attack), but they were contextually sensitive,” says Tomo. “If I hit ‘web’ in the air, I’d yank the guy up to my altitude and stick to it a little bit to accommodate the next button presses. It was fun how Spider-Man moved through space entirely through combat combos.” The experience was primarily designed to be enjoyable and visually appealing, with much less…

■ Channelling hit coin-op racers of the early to mid-Nineties like Ridge Racer and Daytona USA, Screamer brought the thrills of arcade racing home. PC gamers were treated to impossibly colourful polygon courses rendered at breakneck speeds and the highest of framerates. Up-tempo rock music by Allister Brimble only added to the game’s coin-op credentials. A year later, Screamer 2 followed in its wake. To get the best out of it you needed a pretty fast PC, but those that did were treated to Sega Rally-inspired racing action of the first order and a thumping techno soundtrack. Its successor, Screamer Rally, was perhaps more of a revision than an out and out sequel. Its vehicle customisation offered similar options, but these were all the more important to get right if…

CRIMSON BUTTERFLY IS PROBABLY THE MOST BELOVED TITLE IN THE SERIES, WHY DID YOU WANT TO REMAKE THE GAME NOW FOR MODERN CONSOLES AND AUDIENCES? Hidehiko Nakajima: When we released the recent remasters, we received many requests from fans asking specifically for Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly. Responding to those voices was the primary reason behind this project. As it is one of the most popular titles in the series, we felt that a full remake – rather than a simple remaster – would allow it to be embraced by players who enjoy a wide variety of modern horror games today. WHY DO YOU THINK JAPAN-SET HORROR IS SO POPULAR OUTSIDE OF JAPAN AND WHY DO YOU THINK CRIMSON BUTTERFLY IS SO POPULAR AROUND THE WORLD? Makoto Shibata: Horror titles set in Japan…

» GAME BOY ADVANCE » 2003 » KONAMI COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT JAPAN I love a good gimmick so Boktai’s main mechanic instantly appealed to me. Hideo Kojima’s vampire game relied on actual sunlight to make progress, so you were actively encouraged to go outside and get a dose of the good stuff if you wanted to give the game’s many vampires a good battering. What I really loved about Kojima’s new game though was that the Japanese edition of it launched alongside a black-and-red Game Boy Advance SP, which looked incredibly cool compared to the single colour editions we often got in the UK. So after paying about £250, I ordered a copy from PlayAsia and waited for my new GBA to turn up. I loved that machine and I took it…

» System: Evercade family » Buy it for: £19.99 » Buy it from: Online, retail Blaze continues to delve into the fantastic back catalogue of Taito and it’s come up with another solid cart that’s filled with some great titles. The excellent Puzzle Bobble is easily the highlight here (particularly when played on a VS) but Qix, Zoo Keeper and Cameltry are great fun too. The remaining games are Crazy Balloon, Football Champ, Lunar Rescue and The Fairyland Story, which range from OK to good. The emulation is of a high quality, there’s a nice poster alongside the usual manual and a good mix of variety with the featured games, but this collection is definitely not as strong as the previous two releases. >> Score 78%…

<INFO FROM: BRAZIL WEBSITE: MXRETRODEV.ITCH.IO / PATREON.COM/CW/MAUROXAVIER FORMAT: MEGA DRIVE WORKING ON: FINAL FIGHT MD, DRIFTIN’ RAGE /> WHAT GOT YOU INTERESTED IN MAKING MEGA DRIVE GAMES? <I always wanted to create videogames for retro consoles and ended up choosing the Mega Drive because of the SGDK. For programming, I use the C language and Visual Studio. For graphics I use GIMP, and for sound effects I use Audacity and Goldwave. /> WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO CONVERT CAPCOM’S FINAL FIGHT? <I did a demo on a platform called Colour Maximite 2; Master Linkuei encouraged me to create a Mega Drive version. I had already designed everything, thinking about three players, but I kept quiet since I didn’t have much hope that the console would be able to run it. After…

THE COVER STAR THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: OCARINA OF TIME (NINTENDO 64) Nintendo’s classic adventure title can be bought loose for about £10. Boxed complete PAL copies are around £45, while mint editions can go as high as £300. The US version is surprisingly more expensive, particularly in mint condition. MATCH DAY II (ZX SPECTRUM) Scoring a copy of Ocean’s hit sequel can be had for a transfer fee of about £5 for a complete copy. 3D STARFIGHTER (AMSTRAD CPC) Not many copies of this space game come up for sale, but they only cost about £7 when they do. WARBIRDS (ATARI LYNX) Cart prices range from £10-£20, which is odd, as boxed copies start at £20 and rarely pass £30. REPTON (BBC MICRO) This one shouldn’t cost more than…

They say the best legends are destined to be retold, and over the past four decades, the stories behind the creation of The Legend Of Zelda series have been shared countless times. Its primary creator and torchbearer, Shigeru Miyamoto, is not shy when it comes to talking about the series. Back in 1997/8, in the long lead up to the release of Ocarina Of Time, he was in full PR mode, giving enough interviews to fill a tome or two. You might argue that the voices of Miyamoto and his team have been exhausted on the subject of Zelda. Yet, the various interviews often throw up fascinating tales and obscure details that deserve spotlighting – particularly as many were conducted in Japanese and not translated until years later. To tell the…

■ When 2023’s The Super Mario Bros Movie earned a sizeable $1.36b at the worldwide box office, it prompted Nintendo to chew over other potential film projects. A live-action Zelda movie was quickly greenlit and it’s due out in 2027, directed by Wes Ball and starring Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as Link and Bo Bragason as Zelda. This is not the first time the series has been adapted for the screen. Back in 1989, an animated The Legend Of Zelda segment was included as part of The Super Mario Bros Super Show!. A total of 13 episodes were produced, which drew inspiration from the two NES games. The plots were typical kids cartoon fare, but what’s particularly interesting is the depiction of the main characters: Link is a rather annoying, reluctant…

ZX SPECTRUM ■ With its Crash Smash (finally!) and Your Sinclair Game Of The Month awards, Match Day II arrived to great acclaim on the Spectrum in early 1988. Featuring all the playability of Match Day, plus a host more gameplay options, for most Spectrum owners, this was the pinnacle of football on the Sinclair computer. AMSTRAD CPC ■ Converted by Jon Ritman himself, the Amstrad game replicates every facet of the Spectrum game, albeit with a touch more colour and sound. As such, there’s little innovation, and while colourful, it’s hardly vibrant. A decent footie game, but still too lethargic for many fans of the sport. COMMODORE 64 ■ As with the other versions, the pace of C64 Match Day II divided gamers and critics. Some fans enjoyed the…

» ATARI LYNX » 1991 » ATARI CORPORATION One of the biggest challenges as a Lynx owner was simply finding other Lynx owners. I longed to play my many multiplayer games with others, but it never happened. That changed when I met Bob (not his name, but let’s go with it). Bob was a friend of a friend who played D&D occasionally and he was known as being a little ‘shifty’. He was always the first to pull out a spliff during a D&D session and would often tell some outrageous story that started off with, “You’ll never guess who got in trouble with the police the other day.” Needless to say, if there was any sort of drama, Bob knew about it. One weekend Bob stayed at the person’s house…

HOW DID YOU GET YOUR START WITH SUPERIOR? I was just finishing up an HND Computer Studies course, and I used the time when I should have been revising on making a version of Q*Bert. I sent that off to a whole bunch of publishers. I went with Superior because they were run by a programmer. Everything always went pretty well with them. Essentially I could do what I wanted. The relationship was more like working with a book publisher in the way that I could come to them with something I’d written and say, “Right, this is what I’ve done.” WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO CREATE OVERDRIVE FOR THE MICRO? Richard Hanson sent me a sprite routine. That let me do things that I couldn’t have done otherwise. I was thinking about…

“DEVELOPED BY LUCASARTS USING ITS SCUMM ENGINE, FATE OF ATLANTIS WAS THE COMPANY’S EIGHTH RELEASE” To beat Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis, you need to have your wits about you. Failing that, you can let your fists do the talking or team up with an archeologist-cum-psychic to tackle the game’s many puzzles as an intrepid duo. As it happens, the choice is entirely yours and your decision will have a big impact on how you experience one of the most spellbinding point-and-click adventures ever made. Developed by LucasArts using its SCUMM engine, Fate Of Atlantis was the company’s eighth release. Hitting the shelves in 1992, it followed on from the success of Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade which was produced as a tie-in to the 1989 movie…

■ Immediately after work on Renegade was completed, the developers turned to a sequel, as Louis confirms. “We rarely built a new IP without a notion of how we would expand it. In the case of Renegade, we talked about moving into the Red Alert universe to follow the path of the original C&C games.” Renegade 2 (which had the working subtitle Battlegrounds) would have used an advanced W3D engine to tell a new story in the popular Red Alert scenario. The hero would not have been Havoc again, instead players would have fought their way through the dark world in the role of a renegade Soviet commander, using vehicles and weapons typical of the scenario. However, Renegade 2 never made it past the preproduction phase. Publisher Electronic Arts had…

SPIDER-MAN ■ Developed by Parker Brothers, the first-ever Spider-Man game was released on the Atari 2600 and Odyssey 2 in 1982. Swing up to the top of each building, targeting bombs and henchmen along the way, before defusing the Green Goblin’s Super Bomb at the summit. SPIDER-MAN VS THE KINGPIN ■ A major commercial success, this 1991 title was originally released on the Mega Drive, before being ported to various other Sega systems. The Kingpin frames Spider-Man for stealing a nuclear bomb, which he must deactivate before it explodes, as well as saving Mary Jane. SPIDER-MAN: THE VIDEO GAME ■ An arcade classic from 1991. This is a sidescrolling beat-’em-up where you must take down a wide variety of enemies, including Venom, Scorpion, Sandman and Doctor Doom, to retrieve a…

Project Zero (named for the internal team that made it) is an oddity. It popped up in 2002 on the PlayStation 2 and pitched a Japanese haunted house – Himuro Mansion – which the cover claimed was based on a real story (it was not). The player wanders the halls as Miku Hinasaki, who is looking for her lost brother, with only a mystical camera for protection and defence. This meant the player must use grades of film and stare into the face of terrifying Japanese ghosts – onryō and yūrei, called Wraiths in the upcoming Remake – to defeat them. While the original (also known as Fatal Frame) was difficult and censored in the West, the game was a moderate success so it was no surprise, thanks to the…

» System: PC » Buy it for: £2.49 » Buy it from: steampowered.com If you’re looking for a hardcore old-school shooter it’s hard to go wrong with Area Wars. Each stage has you shooting down enemies while contained in a small area, which changes in size with each new enemy wave you encounter. You’ve a limited amount of bombs and lives, while a useful timer bar tells you when the next wave will begin. You’ll also have to contend with some exceedingly tough bosses. Later levels get almost puzzle-like in their structure and the difficulty ramps up significantly as well, perhaps too much. It’s admittedly very basic and there’s very little in the way of extras, but it’s hard to argue with the £2.49 entry point. >> Score 68%…

<INTRO> WE’VE SPENT A LOT OF TIME THIS MONTH PLAYING THE BRILLIANT ROGUECRAFT DX FROM BADGER PUNCH SOFTWARE. DIGITAL VERSIONS ARE AVAILABLE FOR AMIGA, MEGA65 BY RETRO COGS, AND A CLEVER TOP-DOWN VERSION FOR GAME BOY COLOR BY SHANE MCCAFFERTY. CHECK THEM OUT BY VISITING THALAMUSDIGITAL.ITCH.IO. PHYSICAL BOXED COPIES ARE PLANNED TO FOLLOW FROM PUBLISHER THALAMUS DIGITAL AS WELL. AND CHECK OUT OUR FEATURES FOR THE NEXT, NES, AND MEGA DRIVE, PLUS OUR USUAL REVIEWS. </INTRO> <BODY> Richard Faulkner started as a publisher after collaborating with Patricia Curtis (get more information at technoshedsoftware.com). “Patricia had initially tried to launch TX-1696 directly through her Lucky Red Fish label/website,” says Richard. “Unfortunately, things went awry with PayPal, so having contributed some code and all the music, it fell to me. I spent…

FULL SPECTRUM DEFENCE <INFO FORMAT: ZX SPECTRUM (128K ONLY) CREDITS: SAUSAGEWARE GAMES PRICE: DIGITAL DOWNLOAD £1.99 / PHYSICAL CASSETTE £9.99 PLUS SHIPPING WEB: SAUSAGEWAREGAMES.ITCH.IO /BITMAPSOFT.CO.UK /> <BODY> Tower defence games are unusual on 8-bit systems, so this game set inside a computer being attacked by viruses is a welcome one. The player switches between three modes: Build lets you build new towers, each with a specific range and weapon (including ice to freeze enemies, Tower lets you reload a tower’s ammo, upgrade a tower to make it stronger, or sell a tower to regain cash (with a limited number of towers allowed per level), while Target gives a secondary bomb attack, which can be upgraded. All these actions cost cash, earned by destroying enemies before they reach your base (whose…

THE GAME Ristar is a side-scrolling platform game that contains many of the usual gameplay mechanics found in the genre at the time. All the levels have a set theme, such as a forest or a pirate ship, and involve reaching the end without losing all your life points. Each set of levels ends in a boss fight before Ristar shoots off to another planet in his quest to save his people. The gameplay hook that separates Ristar from other platformers of the time is Ristar’s grabbing mechanic. This is used to grab enemies and headbutt them, to grip onto ladders and platforms, to swing around poles, activate switches and open treasure boxes. It’s quite difficult to get the hang of it at first, but once you practice aiming Ristar’s…

Every month, Retro Gamer asks a question on social media and prints the best replies. This month we wanted to know… What’s your favourite moment from The Legend Of Zelda series? FPL Gills Playing Link’s Awakening on the Game Boy at eight years old, finding the sword on the beach at the start of the game, and the music kicking in. Even now it gives me goose bumps. karolinakom In Breath Of The Wild, reaching Kakariko Village after experiencing the Blood Moon for the first time was sooo soothing. I wish I could experience it again. Wambam Wammy A Link To The Past, entering the forest for the first time looked amazing with all that transparent mist everywhere. Exploring it and not being able to find the Master Sword. Then…

» XBOX 360 » 2009 » PLATINUMGAMES I left the world of videogames in September 2009 to do a master’s degree in multimedia journalism. It was a bit of an assbackwards way of doing things, and not having a bachelor’s degree in anything made it all the more daunting. I was also faced with real-world issues like potholes, the decision to knock down the Imax cinema in Bournemouth, court reporting… all sorts of things that I realised I just wasn’t that interested in. To escape from all that I had my Xbox 360 and halfway through-ish the master’s Bayonetta was released. I’d read the previews and reviews, and somehow managed to buy a copy (leftover Christmas money maybe). I fired it up and was instantly taken by the smoothness and massive…

The weather dominated the UK news this month. In the time before we named storms (so let’s make one up), Storm Colin caused severe flooding in parts of Dorset and Sussex. Then, extreme rainfall resulted in around 200 people having to be rescued from Cockermouth in the Lake District, as the town experienced the worst flooding in its history. On 9 November, Germany marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall with a Festival Of Freedom – and yes, David Hasselhoff was involved in the celebrations held at the Brandenburg Gate. On 16 November it was announced that British actor Edward Woodward had died, aged 79. The star of Seventies folk horror classic The Wicker Man and later the US crime serial The Equalizer, passed away in…

Can we begin by asking about your relationship with The Legend Of Zelda series? Fabian Rastorfer: Ocarina Of Time ended up being my gateway drug into the Zelda world and it had a huge impact on me. It made me realise games can be more than just fun to play, they can be an entire adventure you can get immersed in. This feeling was only further amplified when I played Majora’s Mask, which I actually found quite frightening back then! Rob Maher: Some of my earliest memories are sitting cross-legged in front of a CRT television playing Zelda with my older brother. Every secret we uncovered felt like a discovery we had made ourselves, and every Game Over was something we shared. Later, when I got into game development, I learned…

UNLOCKING THE DARK WORLD ■ After a few hours of play in A Link To The Past, you’ll battle the evil wizard Agahnim who will draw you into the Dark World, a gloomy version of the Sacred Realm. With Link standing atop the Pyramid Of Power at the world’s centre (with Death Mountain looming in the background), you suddenly realise that this quest is much bigger than you first thought. ENTERING HYRULE FIELD ■ It’s perhaps the quintessential moment in the Zelda series. Having finally escaped the confines of Ocarina Of Time’s Kokiri Forest, young Link is allowed to roam Hyrule Field for the first time. Suddenly, this vast overworld appears, with wide open plains spreading out before you. The door to the rest of the game is opened and…

■ Tim Follin has composed audio using many different computers but he certainly had his favourites. In terms of the 8-bits, he enjoyed working on the Commodore 64 the most, and he was frustrated with some of its rival machines. “I hated the AY-8910 chip found in the later Spectrum and Amstrad CPC,” he admits. “It was so annoying that so many computers used that chip which was already dated at that time.” For this reason, he didn’t like working on the Atari ST either, preferring the Amiga which he says was always full of promise. “But I was never given enough sample memory to make the most of it and I was never happy with what I was able to do with it,” he adds. Tim seemed to get…

GOLDEN GOAL ■ Try to position your attacker at the middle of the lower half of the 18-yard box, as in the picture. From here, aim a full-strength lofted pass goalwards. The computer goalie is caught in the lower section of its goal and, if you place it right, will be unable to save the shot. TRACK YOUR RUNNERS ■ As in real football, it’s important to keep an eye on where the opposition players without the ball are heading. Anticipate which pass the computer can make, and also prepare to know which of your own players is likely to be called into action. STAY GOALSIDE ■ A key part of defending. Whenever an attacker enters the penalty area with the ball, try to ensure your defender stays between them…

Formed in 1982 by developers Richard Hanson and John Dyson, Superior Software launched with a handful of arcade-inspired BBC Micro titles. Then when the publisher’s 1983 Beeb coin-op clone Hunchback topped the charts, a deal was made to make it an officially licensed title. In 1984, Superior released its biggest seller to date in the form of the Pole Position-style racer Overdrive, and a BBC version of Sinistar called DeathStar did similarly well for the publisher in 1985. Two other 1985 games further established Superior’s reputation for quality BBC Micro fare: the puzzle platformer Citadel and the Boulder Dash-like Repton. The following year, the company brought out more acclaimed Beeb originals like the gravity game Thrust and the run-and-gun Stryker’s Run. It also re-released Acornsoft hits like Elite and Revs…

FLOATER ■ Not to be confused with the mess your uncle made in your washroom the last time he visited, the Floater is arguably the most iconic of all Lemmings. It’s easy to see why: it was the deciding factor between level completion or ending up a green and blue mess on the floor. A choice many of us intentionally decided against for our own morbid humour. BOMBER ■ Where the Floater was a choice of omission, the Bomber is the Lemming for those who preferred to brutalise these creatures with a little more clarity. Maybe we’re feeling a bit poetic, but there’s something noble about that one hero – an individual selected out of a mass of sprawling clones – to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. POLE VAULTER…

The Madrid computer expo SIMO TCI had been running for several years before the wave of Eighties micros moved it away from stuffy IBMs, software utilities and (believe it or not) office furniture. Originally devised in the early Sixties, the show initially focused on corporate concerns, before the games entertainment industry entered its space, causing attendance to balloon and paving the way for its peak years of the late-Nineties and early Noughties. “The first SIMO I attended was a special moment,” remembers Gabriel, “as it marked the arrival in Spain of computers and the world of computing at a popular level.”…

ICELAND ■ Iceland is where Sophia Hapgood previously found Nur-Ab-Sal’s necklace. In Fate Of Atlantis, Indiana Jones and Sophia Hapgood fly from New York to Iceland to visit a dig site and they meet archeologist Bjorn Heimdall who is looking for Atlantean artefacts. He’s in the process of excavating a device resembling an eel. MONTE CARLO ■ Indy (and Sophia) will find themselves in the luxury surroundings of one of Monaco’s finest administrative areas and, depending on the chosen path, gain access to a classy hotel room. Monte Carlo is where Indy obtains the Sunstone and goes round in circles trying to find a specific street’s location. TIKAL ■ This ancient Mayan city is where Indy and Sophia first encounter Dr Charles Sternhart, having made their way through a jungle…

■ Renegade’s multiplayer mode (called C&C Mode) is basically a game of classic Command & Conquer – only from a first-person perspective and with significantly more action. On the GDI or Nod side, you work as a team (originally a maximum of 32 players, later up to 128) to destroy your opponents’ base. Tiberium Harvesters bring in money that can be used to buy equipment, weapons and vehicles. It’s great fun that fans kept alive over all these years and still play it today. Its development presented some unexpected problems, as David remembers. “For multiplayer, we really struggled with how to integrate super weapons. But how could you not have an ion cannon or nuke? We also took a lot of inspiration from Counter-Strike with placing and defusing the bomb…

■ While Treyarch were responsible for the acclaimed console version of Spider-Man 2, its best features – dynamic web-swinging, nonlinear gameplay and freedom to roam – were sadly lacking from the games made for other platforms, leaving some players feeling misled. The Fizz Factor, a branch of Amaze Entertainment that specialised in delivering licensed games on a budget, made the PC version. Targeted at a younger audience, it was criticised for being simplistic and clunky, especially the web-swinging and fighting elements. Vicarious Visions, now known as Blizzard Albany, fared better when developing Spider-Man 2 for the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable. On the PSP, the style of gameplay was very similar to Treyarch’s original Spider-Man, but the missions were often too easy to complete. The DS game posed a tougher…

MIO AMAKURA ■ The younger twin and the protagonist of Project Zero II: Crimson Butterfly, Mio must find her sister with only the Camera Obscura to protect her. She holds a lot of guilt over causing her sister’s disability when they were younger. MAYU AMAKURA ■ The elder twin who limps due to her leg being damaged as a child. Mayu (left) finds herself in All God’s Village with her sister after noticing a strange, glowing crimson butterfly which leads the girls towards a terrible destiny. ITSUKI TACHIBANA ■ Itsuki is found imprisoned and offers aid to Mio, mistaking her for Yae Kurosawa. He is a Remaining, which means he killed his twin, Mutsuki, in the ceremony prior to the one which failed, destroying All God’s Village. SAE KUROSAWA ■…

SNAP THEM QUICKLY! ■ Ghosts wander the village, but not all of them want to hurt you. Malevolent ghosts are orangered while other ghosts will be blue, often flashing in and out of your field of view. Snap them before they’re gone for special photos. EXPLORE! EXPLORE! EXPLORE! ■ All God’s Village is huge and filled with ghosts. But resources are finite so it’s very important that you look everywhere for the various grades of film, Sacred Water and Herbal Medicine, as you will need it. WHAT’S IN AN ENDING? ■ For your first playthough, focus on the story and the combat. You’re more than likely to get the Crimson Butterfly or Lingering Scent endings (where Mio leaves Mayu behind). On your second run, aim for the Hellish Abyss ending…

» System: Switch 2 » Buy it for: £58.99 » Buy it from: Online, retail The latest Pokémon spin-off is a delightful fusion of Minecraft and Animal Crossing and as you can imagine, it’s a gigantic time sink. The main appeal of Pokopia comes from building suitable habitats to entice new Pokémon and then doing numerous tasks to keep them happy. Playing as a Ditto, you can learn abilities from other Pokémon to reshape your environment and the aim of the game is to make the region habitable again so that humans (and hopefully your trainer) will return. This is a genuinely delightful experience, largely thanks to the interactions you have with the Pokémon and the many things you can build. More please, Omega Force. >> Score 80%…

<Atari 8-bit: The unreleased conversion of the C64 game Trap has been dumped and is fully playable. Uncover it by visiting bit.ly/trap-atari /> <C64: Kornel Kolma released his Poker-based Rogue-like Bal8tro. Shuffle on over to bit.ly/bal8tro-c64 /> <Commander X-16: HAZARD: Let Us Out is a brilliant NES puzzle platformer that has been converted, with $12 giving you the download for both systems. Head to bit.ly/hazard-x16nes /> <Dreamcast: The DreamDisc ’25 game jam organised by Orc Face Games proved very popular. You can check out at the entries available via bit.ly/dreamdisc25 /> <Game Boy: You can now play Dangerous Demolition by Dr Ludos on the Game Boy/Game Boy Color and Super Game Boy. Homebrew Factory is running a preorder campaign for physical cartridges. A digital download is $4.99, including Game Gear and…

<BODY> Christian started NES development during COVID. “With my son, we brainstormed the idea of four chickens with different abilities,” he says. “The first year was trial and error. I started writing the game in Notepad ++ and NESASM, but I switched to ASM6. When I learnt new approaches and ways to implement game mechanics, we played around with those, and my son asked, ‘Can’t we add x and y?’ so I did all I could to implement it.” The game mixes poultry, platforms and puzzles. “Our main goal is a physical release – the feeling of opening the box, browsing through the manual, and popping the cart in,” explains Christian. “Another goal my son and I had was to showcase the game at a retro game expo. We achieved…

FEELING BOSS Dear Retro Gamer team, I’ve noticed that you use the terms ‘mayor’ and ‘boss’ seemingly interchangeably to refer to special, usually end-of-level, videogame enemies, but I’ve almost never seen ‘mayor’ being used in this way anywhere else. Everyone else seems to only use ‘boss’! What’s the history behind using ‘mayor’ in this context? Does it come from a particular region or games genre? And do you make any distinction between a ‘boss’ and a ‘mayor’? Thanks! Henry ‘The Etymology Mayor’ Petrie Thanks for writing in, Henry. Darran saw the term used in some old Japanese-focussed game mags, as well as some D&D magazines and just always liked the term. We make no real distinction between the two terms. We hope that clears things up for you. A TRIBUTE TO…