Old Games For Old Gamers
www.youtube.com
Crab-Bob SoulsBorne! Who fights with the power of umami? Crab-Bob SoulsBorne! If nautical combat be something you wish Crab-Bob SoulsBorne! Just jump in a shell and fight like a shellfish! Crab-Bob SoulsBorne! Crab-Bob SoulsBorne! Crab-Bob SoulsBorne! Crab-Bob SoulsBooooooooorne! (it's a review of Another Crab's Treasure, by SwitchUp. Sorry, I was feeling silly and had to post this.)
www.youtube.com
"It took quite a journey to get here," laments the host of Geek Battle Gaming in his review of a surprising ZX Spectrum release... Mighty Final Fight, based on the NES game that was based on the arcade game. (Phew.) In spite of the ZX Spectrum's handicaps, its port of Mighty Final Fight is reasonably close to the NES game, and certainly looks more playable than the Spectrum port of Final Fight that was officially released by US Gold. (UK Aluminum is more like.) Let me tell you, if you have any reverence for Final Fight, nearly any home computer port of the game will twist your stomach in knots. (Except the X68000 version, which actually IS Final Fight, but good luck actually getting one of those stupidly expensive Japanese computers from the 1980s. Even the mini version of that system is eye-wateringly pricey.)
forums.atariage.com
Some people are the masters of their instruments. For Rush's Neal Peart, it was the drums, for Slash, it was the guitar. For John Champeau, it's the Atari 2600. He's coaxed games out of this system that just shouldn't be possible, whether it's a port of Galaga that's better than the Atari 7800 version, or a conversion of Wizard of Wor that measures up to ports on more powerful systems. His impossible 2600 arcade port *d'jour* is Tutankham, the Konami title also known in some territories as Horror Maze. (Stupid name, I say. Did the estate of Tutankham sue over the name rights, like what Edgar Rice Burroughs' kids did with Jungle King?) Tutankham actually had been brought to the Atari 2600 by Parker Bros decades earlier, but like most Parker Bros arcade conversions, it was a pretty sorry affair, bearing only the faintest resemblance to the original. The port by Champ Games is much closer to the genuine article; still a little rough around the edges, but readily recognizable as Tutankham. There are even alternate control schemes to get around the single button joysticks of the Atari 2600. Use a Genesis controller instead and you can fire left or right with separate buttons. Heck, you can take it one step further and play the game with TWO joysticks, giving it more of a Smash TV feel. Anyway. The game's available on John Champeau's web site, [Champ Games](https://champ.games/). If that name sounds familiar, this guy used to make a handful of arcade ports for MS-DOS computers, way back in the 1990s. Those games were already impressive, but what Champeau is doing with the ancient Atari 2600 is nothing short of spectacular. It's like making a stone wheel break the sound barrier.
carletonhandley.itch.io
Guru Logi Champ for the Game Boy Advance was the last game designed by Compile before the company's untimely bankruptcy. This refreshingly unique puzzle title was a Japanese exclusive, but Western players can finally get a taste of its block-tossing, screen-spinning action in Carleton Handley's Spinning Image, for the Commodore 64. You won't get the full Guru Logi Champ experience, including the smoothly rotating game board and those zany cut scenes where a pair of ducks saves the world by turning things clockwise. However, it's not a bad substitute at all, with new puzzles and colorful graphics. You can download it from Handley's itch.io page and play it anywhere C64 emulation is possible. (Which these days is pretty much anywhere. You could play it on your fridge if it's one of those fancy ones with a screen on it.) Hey, is there a Commodore 64 emulator for the Game Boy Advance? That way you could play both Guru Logi Champ and this clone on the same system!
arstechnica.com
Enraged by Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony refusing to sell their consoles in Russia, Vladimir Putin climbed up an onion shaped tower while clutching a damsel in one arm, and said "I shall make my OWN game console! With blackjack, and hookers, and not at all suspicious deaths of my critics!" I'm just imagining this to be like the leading game system in TaleSpin's fictional Thembria. "UTOPIA 256: THE MOST FUN YOU ARE LEGALLY ALLOWED TO HAVE IN GREAT SOVIET EMPIRE." Thanks to Ars Technica for (this very puzzling) scoop.
A few days ago, a warning flashed on my Xbox Series. "The Jeff Minter Story now rated MA-18!" I was thinking to myself, "What fresh hell do we have here? Did they find naked llamas in the game? Or a hidden game, like Hot Coffee in Grand Theft Auto? Eww, them's some gross implications there." Evidently it wasn't so much the content of the GAMES as it was the content in the VIDEOS, where the always shaggy and psychedelic Yak used language as colorful as the visuals in his audio synthesizers. It looks like as a result, there will be an update to the game where Minter's expletives will be given a good bleeping for the sake of a younger rating. (Let's be honest with ourselves, though. You really don't need to ask Jeff Minter fans for ID. They're old enough to drink, and experience the ravages of male pattern baldness. You might as well card the guy ordering a margarita at a Jimmy Buffet concert. May he sip in peace.)
forums.atariage.com
There's a diagnostic suite of software for game consoles which tests input lag and screen tearing on your display. This suite first popped up for consoles released at the turn of the century (Dreamcast, specifically), but someone has made a version of this toolkit for... the ColecoVision. You must understand that while the things the 240p Test Suite does pose no challenge to the Sega Dreamcast, with its full color graphics and its transparencies, they pose a TREMENDOUS challenge to the ColecoVision, a system from the early 1980s with significant visual handicaps. It's outright mind-boggling that this could even exist. Why are Brazilians so damn good at pushing electronics past their theoretical limits? Did Steve Wozniak start a sperm bank in Rio?
github.com
And it's said to run at FULL SPEED? With the 3D features of the 3DS supported? WHAT??? Me downloady now.
www.youtube.com
In the tradition of her previous video about Data East's 1980s coin-ops, gaming historian Kim Justice fixes her critical lens on the arcade games of Konami released during the decade of decadence. Konami's probably better known for its NES and Super NES titles, but you really shouldn't ignore the stuff they brought to arcades. Well, except maybe a handful of the 3D racing games which tried (and failed, rather spectacularly) to compete with classics like OutRun and Chase HQ. Most of the OTHER stuff is great, though, particularly Time Pilot, Circus Charlie, Gyruss, and Gradius, the foundation for the modern side-scrolling shooter.
www.nintendo.com
The classic puzzle game Chip's Challenge, which made its debut on the Atari Lynx thirty-five years ago (oy vey), has now resurfaced on the Nintendo Switch. For those curious, this is the Lynx game running on an emulator, as opposed to the PC version, which has a higher resolution and a wider view of the playfield, but unsettling shareware-quality graphics that make the Atari Lynx version look downright flashy by comparison. It's also worth mentioning that Chip's Challenge is one of the HARDEST puzzle games you'll ever play. Those first eight levels you'll quickly whip through are *tutorials*... once they're finished, the training wheels come off, and the nipple clamps go on. If you've ever played Adventures of Lolo and felt the level designs just weren't vicious enough, this Bud's for you.
www.youtube.com
Mauro Xavier and his team are still hard at work on Final Fight MD, the ambitious Sega Genesis port of the classic belt-scrolling brawler. The first three stages of the game are fully playable in the beta currently available on Xavier's Patreon page, taking you through the bar, into the wrestling ring with a handful of Andores, and straight to the gum-spitting, baton-wielding boss, Edi E. On the downside, Xavier's team is currently wrestling with an issue he calls "cumulative slowdown," where the game runs well in the first stage but performance gets increasingly chuggy the farther you progress. For the moment, Xavier suggests using the level select to jump straight into the scene you wish to play, but clearly, this is a bug that will have to be squashed before Final Fight MD is ready for release. Thanks to Time Extension as always for the scoop, and Sega Guys for the video clip.
www.youtube.com
Sega Lord X just reviewed Golden Axe for the 32X add-on, and it's a beaut, with high resolution backgrounds that are stunningly close to what was in the arcade game. The original Genesis version of Golden Axe had to cut corners to fit into a 512K cartridge, and this plus the low color output of the system meant that the game was a cut below the arcade version. The 32X game *still* isn't quite up to par with the arcade game, with weaker magic spells, but it's remarkably close, as you can see from the two titles running side by side in SLX's video. But wait, there's more! Someone's trying to port Tomb Raider to the 32X, using OpenLara as a framework. It's still extremely early and runs at a low frame rate, but like the Game Boy Advance version that came before it, it's still impressive considering the hardware. You can find both games in the links at the bottom of the description. Thanks to Sega Lord X for giving me something to post about after a week and a half of radio silence. Heh.
github.com
Remember the Data Frog SF2000? It's a re-donkulously cheap handheld game system sold on Chinese mail order outlets like AliExpress and Temu. You can get one of these for as little as twenty dollars, not a bad deal when you consider there's just enough power packed into one of these systems to play Capcom arcade games and a hefty assortment of 8-bit titles. Well, the world's cheapest handheld that you'd actually want to play (there are cheaper, but for your sanity's sake, just don't do that to yourself) is that much better, thanks to the efforts of one Madcock and his custom firmware. Multicore Alpha 0.10 was just released, and features support for Atari 5200 and Atari 7800 games, in addition to the dozen systems supported by previous builds. If you're an Atari fan, this is very good news. Thanks to this firmware update, the Data Frog runs the libraries of nearly every Atari game console, save for the 64-bit Jaguar. (I've played the Jaguar. Trust me, you're not missing much.)
Here's a Christmas curveball for you. Galix's GGPie uses the Game Gear TV Tuner and a Raspberry Pi Zero to turn your Game Gear into a most-in-one game console. The problem is that while the Raspberry Pi has more than enough power to emulate everything up to the original Playstation, the Game Gear has a severe button deficit, so you'll be stuck playing 8-bit consoles and maybe the Sega Genesis. Beyond that, the Game Gear screen is... less than optimal for game consoles that aren't the Game Gear. Heck, it's not even that great for Game Gear games... those color displays from the early 1990s leave much to be desired compared to what's available in 21st century handhelds. It may be extraneous to the extreme, but the GGPie is nevertheless an option for gamers who aren't ready to put Sega's chunky handheld into retirement. Special thanks to AtariAge for the scoop.
www.nintendo.com
Good news for fans of obscure side-scrolling shooters! Rabio Lepus (which I remember in arcades as "Rabbit Punch") is now half off its original price on the Nintendo Switch, bringing the total down to $3.99. This was one of developer Video System's first games, starring two rabbit droids blasting and punching their way through the galaxy in an effort to rescue a kidnapped princess. Yes, there's actually a melee attack, reminiscent of the close range sword swipes in Lords of Thunder for the TurboDuo. But wait, there's more! Masaya's Gynoug (aka Wings of Wor) and Advanced Busterhawk Gleylancer are on sale for $3.49 each, a historic low for both games. And Aero Fighters 2, created by the aforementioned Video System, is also reduced to half its retail price. Now you can take to the skies and blow up world monuments as a baby or a dolphin, all for just $3.99!
www.nintendolife.com
Alas, the long-running Electronic Entertainment Expo, a convention created especially for the video game industry, is no more. Started in 1995, E3 gave publishers and developers a chance to show off their latest releases and works in progress, without fear of being eclipsed by the more general purpose technology featured at the Consumer Electronics Show. E3 was important to the video game industry in its early days, a high-stakes competition between console manufacturers. The winners would emerge as dominant players in the industry and plot the course of gaming history, while the losers would watch helplessly as their reputations were tarnished by humiliating online memes. E3 was instrumental to the success of the first Playstation... but it also left Sony with a black eye in 2006, when the overpriced Playstation 3 failed to impress players with its promise of "giant enemy crabs," "real-time weapon change," and "famous battles that actually took place in Japan." By the 2010s, the Electronic Entertainment Expo's massive influence had faded, due in large part to the instant gratification provided by the internet. Why wait for gaming news every July when it's delivered straight to your home on a daily basis? After game companies like Nintendo and Sony abandoned E3 to hold their own exclusive press events, parent company Reedpop put the expo on hold, then cancelled it entirely. The expo that helped plot the course of video game history is itself now video game history. Pour one out for E3, a legend in its time that couldn't find a place in this one.
www.youtube.com
Digital Eclipse is on fire lately! The creators of Atari 50 and Karateka Gold are now setting their sights on cult game designer Jeff Minter, who made dozens of twitchy arcade-style titles for home computers like the VIC-20 and Atari ST. DE's latest collection, Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story will feature over forty of Minter's games, stretched across four decades and numerous systems. When you're done playing Llamatron 2112, Gridrunner, and Tempest 2000, you can sit back and enjoy interviews with the games' eccentric designer, where he describes his influences and the programming tricks he used to give his titles their retina-rupturing psychedelic visuals. Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story will come to your favorite modern game console in early 2024, along with the Steam and GOG distribution services. I'm as surprised by the news as the rest of you, but just as excited to get my hands on the finished product.
www.youtube.com
The YouTube channel Mike's Gaming Channel came across this peculiar ColecoVision release... a multi-cart featuring two dozen games for the Magnavox Odyssey2. They're mostly accurate ports, albeit with slightly smeary graphics tucked inside a rough drawing of a CRT television. However, the existence of this cartridge raises some questions. How is this possible? Why does this exist? Was there someone out there who absolutely *had* to play KC Munchkin, but on a ColecoVision? An Odyssey2 multi-cart for the ColecoVision is the most curious retro gaming curio since the Vectrex cartridge with a Raspberry Pi inside, which emulates Vectrex games ON your Vectrex. (Yeah, the Pi-Trex was a thing. Heaven only knows why. Maybe Xzibit made it.) Thanks to Mike's Gaming Channel for the footage, and AtariAge for the heads up about this cartridge's existence, puzzling though it may be.
www.nintendolife.com
Good news for owners of Atari 50, the anniversary collection released by Atari and Digital Eclipse (now *part* of Atari) earlier this year. Multiple DLC packs are planned for the game, with the first of these debuting next week. The first DLC pack includes a dozen yet undetermined Atari 2600 games. That's not so exciting, but later DLC packs open the door to a much-needed boost in the collection's anemic selection of Atari Lynx titles. None of the games developed by Epyx were included in Atari 50 when the collection first launched... a cruel blow to fans, considering that titles like Slime World, California Games, Electrocop, and Blue Lightning were among the standouts in the color handheld's library. (Seriously, an Atari Lynx collection without Blue Lightning is like a taco without the shell. It just completely misses the point.) Thanks to ~~Time Ext~~ er, Nintendo Life for the scoop. Sorry, force of habit.
www.timeextension.com
Coming soon to a Nintendo Switch or PS4 near you, whether you like it or not! It's the Taito arcade title Tokio, a decidedly lackluster shoot 'em up from 1986. Tokio plays like a halfway point between Capcom's 1942 and Nichibutsu's Terra Cresta, with your biplane flying over the Japanese cityscape, blasting formations of stealth planes and dropping bombs on ground targets. Blasting red ships releases them from the enemy fleets and, once captured, adds them to your own. Tokio is... playable? I guess? Slow and frustrating and unsatisfying, but functional. However, with the dozens and dozens (and dozens) of shoot 'em ups available on the Switch, sometimes for less than Tokio's retail price of eight dollars, it's hard to recommend this flaccid mid-shelf release. May I recommend Sophstar instead? Or Radiant Silvergun, or Exerion, or... anything other than Tokio? There are so many shooters on the Switch that *aren't* Tokio that there's no point in settling for less. Thanks as always to Time Extension for the scoop. Don't buy Tokio.
www.youtube.com
Finding news on retro games, or games that invoke the feel of old favorites from the 1990s, can be tough. However, sometimes you get lucky, and that news just comes out of nowhere. Case in point: I was recently taken by surprise by a YouTube video promoting Good Feel's Mameda Bakeru, a 3D platformer starring a young hero armed with drumsticks. He looks a lot like the star of The Legend of the Mystical Ninja, and early footage suggests that the game will have the similar (ahem) good feel of a Goemon title, complete with color drenched Japanese landscapes and suitably Eastern enemies. What's different is that the combat in Mameda Bakeru is more nuanced than the Goemon games of the past. Our hero can use a drum to block and deflect attacks, but use it carelessly and the enemies will tear right through it, leaving him open to damage. Speaking of big damage, the star of the game can also charge up a devastating ground pound that clears away swarms of incoming foes. Mameda Bakeru is scheduled to hit the Japanese Switch on November 30th, 2023. I think I speak for all Goemon fans when I say, "American release when?"
Lately, not on the Switch. The entire Johnny Turbo's Arcade line, featuring middling emulations of Data East arcade titles, has recently been purged from the eShop. Golem's Retroclassix, also featuring Data East titles like Heavy Barrel and Bad Dudes, has similarly been excised from Nintendo's online store. For those who might have missed it, Johnny Turbo was the short-lived mascot of the TurboDuo, a game system that briefly went toe-to-toe with the Sega CD in the early 1990s. Ironically, Jonathan Brandstetter, the inspiration for the husky, hirsute hero who battled the legions of "Feka" in a series of GamePro comics, later migrated to Sega to work on games like the Sega CD sequel to Eternal Champions. (Johnny, how could you? They're not even human!) As for the Data East library, it's likely that those games will resurface under Hamster's Arcade Archives brand. Hamster already published Burgertime under that label... although it's not yet been confirmed, it's not hard to imagine the rest of Data East's arcade titles following suit. The good news is that Hamster's emulation will be better than Johnny Turbo's or Golem's... the bad news is that you'll have to pay for them all over again. More news as it happens.
cohost.org
Here's a Cohost post I made paying tribute to McDonald's Treasureland Adventure. It's the kind of game that could only exist in 1993, back when McDonald's wasn't ashamed to be tacky and weird, and when Treasure was hungry enough for work that they'd take on a nutty project like this. It's not the best Treasure title on the Sega Genesis/Megadrive, but it's near the top of the heap when it comes to fast food tie-ins. It's certainly more diverting than say, Sneak King or Grimace's Birthday.
www.timeextension.com
If you were a little shaver during the Genesis years who was disappointed that they couldn't squeeze Earthquake's Texas-sized tushie into its port of Samurai Shodown, take heart! A team of South American programmers lead by Gabriel Pyron have done the impossible, putting The Incredible Hulk and a full-sized Juggernaut from Marvel Super Heroes into the Genesis, without the compromises expected from home ports of 1990s arcade games. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. "These guys probably hobble across the screen with two or three frames to their walk cycle!" Nope, it's nearly as smooth as it was on the CPS2, and certainly as smooth as it was on the Playstation. "Well, there's probably a crap-ton of flicker!" You'd think that, and yet these two gigantic characters remain solid through the entire demo, a feat even the makers of Final Fight MD couldn't accomplish. "Well, this program is just a demo and you can't actually PLAY it." Okay, that much is true. This is just a proof of concept, but it demonstrates just how far the humble Genesis (the system that brought Barney the purple dinosaur to video games) can be pushed when properly coaxed. (Probably helps that Genesis cartridge storage has been expanded exponentially in the 21st century. A cartridge this size would have cost you $20,000 back in the 1990s! At that point, you might as well just buy a Neo-Geo.) Thanks once again to Time Extension for the scoop. Thumbs up, soldier!
www.bbc.com
It's been a fun sixteen years, but due to internal strife within The Escapist, Ben Croshaw (known professionally as "Yahtzee") has left the company, leaving the future of his YouTube series Zero Punctuation in question. Wherever Yahtzee goes, he won't (or can't?) take the Zero Punctuation brand with him, and it's unlikely that whoever The Escapist chooses as his replacement will be embraced by fans. (It's not strictly retro gaming news, but Croshaw has been around long enough to have reviewed Xbox 360 and PS3 games when they were new, so I'm reporting it anyway. Besides, it's been so long since I've updated this magazine that I think I can justify it.)
mastodon.online
Digital Eclipse, one of the pioneers of retro gaming emulation on home game consoles, is now the property of Atari. Under the leadership of current CEO Wade Rosen, Atari has been buying anything and everything that could conceivably be related to Atari, including Berzerk creators Stern, Accolade, the publisher that gave the world Bubsy the Bobcat (and won't take him back), and the formerly independent AtariAge web site. Digital Eclipse is Atari's latest retro-focused acquisition, and knowing them, it will be far from the last. Slow down, guys! Leave some chum in the water for Piko Interactive!
www.timeextension.com
Visco, a small but ambitious game developer from the 1990s, has been trying to establish itself in the 21st century with everything from new games (Andro Dunos II) to an arcade cabinet filled with their older ones ([the Visco Mini Arcade Bartop](https://www.timeextension.com/news/2023/08/a-visco-mini-arcade-machine-is-coming-this-year), manufactured by Unico). Unfortunately, one game they can't bring back is Neo Mr. Do!, originally created in a since dissolved partnership with Universal Games. After losing its claim to SNK at the turn of the century, Universal (aka Aruze) bounced hard off the video game industry and has shown little interest in a comeback, refusing to release its Mr. Do! series for modern game systems. It won't even let Visco release Neo Mr. Do!, forcing them to take... drastic measures to sell the game in the 21st century. After a little graphic editing, Neo Mr. Do! has become Punky Circus. It's pretty much the same game as before, except now the hero looks like he came from the Insane Clown Posse rather than an arcade from the early 1980s. (You know, Insane Clown Posse? The Faygo swilling hip-hop group whose members frequently wonder how magnets work? Look, you had to be there.) ~~Neo Mr. Do!~~ Punky Circus will be released for the Neo-Geo CD and Neo-Geo AES (for that handful of people who actually own one of these), and presumably will be ported to all those consoles that Visco couldn't publish it on with its old title. Thanks as always to Time Extension for the scoop.
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YouTube personality John Hancock takes a detailed look at the classic action game Super Mario Bros. This ordinarily wouldn't be a big deal, except the game is running on an unexpected console... the Intellivision, released in the late 1970s. Even more surprising is that while the Intellivision port of Super Mario Bros. is technically a demake, with chunkier, less colorful graphics, much of the innovative gameplay remains intact. You want smooth scrolling playfields? They're here. You want the warp zones? They're also here. You want a million lives by bouncing a turtle against the steps of a staircase? That's here, too. (Also, poor turtle.) You want a fireworks display by grabbing the flag at the end of the stage with the last digit of the timer reading six? The designer's got you covered. Super Mario Bros. is a surprisingly full-featured conversion on a pre-crash game console, suggesting that the Intellivision could have been pushed even harder than it was during its late 1980s renaissance. The only problem, of course, is trying to play the game with the Intellivision's uncomfortable hard-wired dial controller...
Good news for fans of the SF2000, the el cheapo handheld game device sold by AliExpress and other Chinese retail sites. YouTube user S1eepy reports that hobbyist programmer Adcockm has brought over twenty new emulators to the system. What this means is that in the near future, you could be playing the software libraries of over a dozen retro game consoles on your Data Frog, along with the handful it currently supports. The newly supported consoles include the Atari Lynx, the Neo Geo Pocket and its Color upgrade, Ataris 2600 and 5200, the ColecoVision, NEC's TurboGrafx-16, and for British gamers who can remember that far back, the ZX Spectrum computer. Consoles you probably *shouldn't* expect on the Data Frog include the Commodore line of computers and of course, more demanding machines like the Playstation and Saturn which no rational person should expect to work on a twenty dollar handheld. There's currently no ETA for the release of Adcockm's custom firmware, but believe me when I say I'll be eagerly waiting for news about its continued development.
www.timeextension.com
It's been a while since I've posted, hasn't it? Chalk it up to a lack of available retro gaming news and garden variety depression. Annnyway! Blandia is coming to two major game consoles tomorrow, courtesy of Hamster. Try not to get too excited... the people who named the game certainly didn't. As dull as the title may be, the game itself is noteworthy for being the sequel to Taito and Allumer's Gladiator. That was the Roman-themed action game where players would fight through dangerous side-scrolling gauntlets of arrows and magic fire, on their way to duels with towering bosses. The nifty thing about the boss fights in Gladiator is that you'd have to chip through the defenses of each combatant, knocking away bits of armor until your sword can find purchase in your opponent's bare flesh. Striking at enemy weak points and defending your own was pretty innovative for a game released in 1985. Blandia is more in the vein of a 1990s versus fighting game, but some of the characters from Gladiator make return appearances, including the hero Gurianos. One more note: evidently, Hamster owns a whole buttload of IP from obscure Japanese companies, including not just Allumer, but Universal Playland, NMK, Video System, Athena, and Nihon Bussan. They're like the Far East's answer to Piko Interactive! Special thanks to Sarah Sowertty for that list of acquisitions, and Time Extension for the news of Blandia's impending release.
www.timeextension.com
The always reliable Damien McFerran from Time Extension reports that Retro-Bit is set to release the Saturn Pro controller, a sequel of sorts to the original Sega Saturn joypad. That pad was absolutely fantastic for 2D games of all stripes, and especially versus fighting games, but the Saturn Pro pad adds two (tiny) analog thumbsticks to the bottom of the unit, along with numerous other features players have come to expect from controllers in the 21st century. The new controller is wireless thanks to an internal battery, works with consoles beyond the Sega Saturn, and has extra buttons for those games which demand it. It remains to be seen how it'll compare to the current king of Saturn controller clones, 8bitdo's M30, but the Saturn Pro joypad is nevertheless a welcome addition to the already crowded third party controller market.
www.timeextension.com
It's an inauspicious anniversary, but the N-Gage is not as awful as its reputation would suggest. It was wrong-headed in its design, with an over-encumbered button layout and a tiny vertically oriented screen, but it could push polygons in a way no other handheld of the time could, particularly the Game Boy Advance. Damien McFarren takes a brief look at the equally brief history of the N-Gage in this Time Extension article. If you'd like a little more information about Nokia's ill-fated handheld, there are detailed video retrospectives by [Stop Skeletons from Fighting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk7Pf12tUpA) and [Rerez](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKjR71VSTMU). Apparently the machine's reputation took a swan dive into the toilet before it was even released due to a botched unveiling at E3, where an unfinished and under-powered N-Gage prototype was shown off to an unreceptive public. First impressions really are killers, it seems.
Honestly, it was a little puzzling that the game didn't ship with these controls in the first place... the Dual Shock had been around for a few years, and the Playstation 2 came with these dual analog controllers by default. But hey, better twenty three years late than never, right? Special thanks to VanLaser for this much needed patch.
www.youtube.com
Well, this came out of left field. Time Extension reports that a team of two programmers have released a port/demake of SNK vs. Capcom for the Commodore 64. Not surprisingly, it's not a perfect conversion of Match of the Millennium for the Neo-Geo Pocket Color, with fewer features and chunky graphics. It *is* running on a forty year home computer, after all. However, SNK vs. Capcom is pretty impressive in its own right, with tons of stages, two button control (!!), and super moves. It's certainly a massive step up from the official Commodore 64 port of Street Fighter II by US Gold, if you can remember that far back. SNK vs. Capcom can be downloaded for free, and requires either a Commodore 64 with a flash cart (such as the [Kung Fu Flash](https://retrorewind.ca/kungfuflash)) or a Commodore 64 emulator such as VICE.
Fanatical is going way out of left field with a selection of old school video games owned by Piko Interactive. They've been scooping up whatever abandoned IPs they can find from the 1990s, and most of these games from the island of misfit toys can be purchased in this collection for as little as fifty cents each. These titles are in no way heavy hitters, but if you're looking for obscurities, the kinds of games you may have rented for your Genesis or Super NES back in the day and then forgotten, you're likely to find them in this bundle. Some highlights include First Samurai, Risky Woods, Iron Commando (imagine Great Value Punisher), and Iridion II. Games that might be fun just for the morbid amusement of their crappiness include Dark Rift (the sequel to Criticom, as featured on Matt McMuscles' YouTube channel!), Super Noah's Ark 3D, and the confounding Castlevania clone 8 Eyes. There's also Zero Tolerance, an attempt to bring first-person shooters to the Sega Genesis which illustrates just how far the genre has gone in the thirty years since. If Doom is a "boomer shooter," Zero Tolerance is more of a stone age shooter.
nintendoeverything.com
This just in from Nintendo Everything... after decades of blissful ignorance, Americans will learn all about Horace, the hollow-eyed specter which starred in a handful of games for British computers. The Hidden Gems collection by Pixel UK features four Commodore 64 titles, including Gilligan's Gold (essentially a home port of the French arcade title Bagman), NOMAD (a colorful shooter with a focus on exploration), and Mutant Monty (scoop up gold in an action title with an overhead view). However, the headliner is Horace Goes Skiing, where the spooky blue title character first crosses a busy highway to buy skis, then uses them to steer down a mountain littered with trees and slalom flags. Yes, this was a video game mascot in Britain back in the 1980s. He makes Dizzy the egg and James Pond look pretty appealing by comparison, doesn't he? Anyway, the Hidden Gems collection is a reasonable $6.99, and that comes with free nightmares about Horace sneaking up on you in the middle of the night, a knife clutched in his... well, wherever a creature without arms would keep a knife. (No, that's not an arm on the back of his head; that's supposed to be his hair.)
www.timeextension.com
Time Extension recently posted this excellent interview with Cameron Sheppard and Mike Merren, formerly of Crawfish Studios, about its ambitious Game Boy Advance port of Street Fighter Alpha 3, and how it significantly contributed to the downfall of the company. Numerous delays to the game led to Crawfish losing the royalties it desperately needed to stay afloat... a tragedy, considering the high quality of the finished product. It's what you might call a Pyrrhic victory.
I purchased this game a year or two ago and didn't think much of it, as it doesn't make a strong first impression. However, if you really dig into it, and get past the ninja werewolf (!?) that caps off the first level, you start to see the hidden brilliance of Goblin Sword. Put simply, this game is the epitome of "no can dunk, but good fundamentals." Goblin Sword looks fine and sounds okay, but the control is incredibly tight, and the level design borders on sublime, with treasures and crystals devilishly hidden in the game's nooks and crannies. Think that treasure is just out of reach? Maybe it is *right now*, but thoroughly exploring every stage, particularly the most dangerous parts, will reveal alternate paths to your prize. Fans of old-school, grid-based action platformers will get more than their money's worth ([all two dollars of it!](https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/goblin-sword-switch/)) out of Goblin Sword. Just try not to hold the merely competent presentation and the unremarkable first level against it.
Old Games For Old Gamers
!OldGames4OldGamers@kbin.socialDiscussion of retro video games (circa 1972 to 2013), from the perspective of those who played them the first time around. Pull up a chair and share your experiences. What was your first game console? What retro games have you played lately, and what recent homebrew titles hope to fill gaps in an orphaned console's library? This is the place to talk about it!