Retro Gamer

It’s Hugo, after I fell in love with him while playing Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. Expertise: Juggling a gorgeous wife, two beautiful girls and an award-winning magazine, all under one roof! Currently playing: Trauma Center: Second Opinion Favour

A number of famous figures died this month. The first was Eddie Guerrero on 13 November, a former WWE champion who passed away at the age of 38 due to heart failure. Japanese-American actor Pat Morita, best known for his role as Mr Miyagi in The Kara

“I heard that Snoop is a really big Madden fan. I mean, he could probably beat me really bad, but I’m not someone who’s afraid of a bit of competition,” says Will Smith collaborator Jazzy Jeff. “So Snoop, if you’re out there, we need to get in a game

1 – Brian Lara International Cricket (Codemasters) 2 – Medal Of Honor: European Assault (EA) 3 – Cricket 2005 (EA) 4 – Lego Star Wars (Eidos) 5 – Resident Evil Outbreak: File #2 (Capcom) 1 – Delta Force: Black Hawk Down (Novalogic) 2 – Brian Lara Int

Street Fighter II is well-known for inspiring a boom period in arcade fighting games, with popular games such as Mortal Kombat, Virtua Fighter, Tekken and The King Of Fighters all launching within a few years of Capcom’s hit. But when Fighter’s Histo

Of the original Acornsoft releases, the BBC disk version is the best. It has 18 ships to the tape edition’s six and the Acorn Electron variant’s five. It also has military lasers and secret missions. The BBC Master iteration came out two years later,

How did Torus get the job of converting Elite to the Spectrum and Amstrad? The main reason was that we had the technical chops to actually be able to do it. Gyron was a 3D vector graphic game, and we explained that we were going to use the technology

The trick to trading is to sell high-tech goods on agricultural planets for a premium while buying their low-cost food, which you sell on industrial planets for a profit while buying their cheap tech. Of course, you also need credits to pay for the f

When you began working with Codemasters, it was a new company. What made you confident that this would be a good move? We were 18 when we met the Darling brothers at ECTS in London in September 1986 and they appeared to be the same age as us with the

When you set up Codemasters in 1986 why did you aim for the budget-games market? The intent behind Codemasters was to build fun, accessible games that could be bought by players on a budget. As much as the games on the market were interesting and fun

When you were working on budget games, what was in the back of your mind when creating them? Quality was a factor. Well, for me at least. I always wanted to make good graphics and animate things well, while having good playability and interactivity a

BBC MICRO, 1983 ■ One of the earliest and crudest Software Invasion games, heavily inspired by Atari’s Lunar Lander. BBC MICRO, 1983 ■ Inspired by Midway’s Boot Hill arcade coin-op, Gunsmoke literally turned that game on its side. BBC MICRO, 1983 ■ A

At the turn of the Eighties, teenager David Vout was attending North Staffordshire Polytechnic, studying Physics and the relatively new Computer Studies course, but with his mind wandering to the arcades and coinops like Centuri’s arcade shooter Phoe

The game’s simplicity is about all the Amstrad version of Super Space Invaders has going for it. Unfortunately, horribly blocky sprites, uninspired sound effects and, most damningly, slow and turgid gameplay render this port utterly unplayable and a

These constructs echo the original’s buildings and can be pushed up the screen, causing invaders to explode upon contact. This is a solid and robust blue band that thrusts upwards, destroying anything in its path – an excellent weapon for quickly cle

Were you aware of the arcade machine? I’m pretty sure I first heard of it when I was told of some upcoming conversions we might be taking on. When I saw there was a new version of Space Invaders, I was very interested and told my bosses I’d like to w

Our heroic owl Alestes uses echolocation to obliterate the nightmarish creatures blocking his path. That power is weak when you start the game, but by collecting green potions that certain enemies drop, your echo-arc will grow wider and stronger. Ano

Featuring the Greek mythological hero Perseus and his trusty flying horse Pegasus, this Gremlin Graphics creation alternates between side-scrolling shooter and hack-and-slack platformer. Parallax scrolling, smooth animation and gorgeous backgrounds c

A remake of Door To Phantomile, retitled simply Klonoa, arrived to some fanfare on Nintendo’s Wii back in 2008, just missing the original game’s tenth anniversary. We won’t hold that against it. What we will hold against it, though, is its inclusion

This abstract-looking behemoth is intimidating, but ultimately a bit pathetic. It’ll create shock waves and fires ring-beams at you, but nothing you can’t handle. Easy peasy. Mr Lango is extremely vulnerable to attacks from behind. Wait for him to le

What led to the franchise’ resurrection in Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series? This time, as Klonoa is reaching its 25th anniversary, we are celebrating by welcoming it once again and we revived it as a remastered version since there has been some radio

SYSTEM: WonderSwan YEAR: 1999 This first follow-up never left Japan, sadly – and nor did its host hardware – but it can be considered something of the prototype for the Game Boy Advance games that followed. Moonlight Museum’s puzzle platforming gamep

» PUBLISHER: GATHERING OF DEVELOPERS (NA)/TAKE-TWO INTERACTIVE (EU) » DEVELOPER: TERMINAL REALITY » RELEASED: 1999 » PLATFORM: PC » GENRE: ACTION HORROR What happens if you combine the original Resident Evil with some old-timey pulp comics and the BP

Inspired by Blade and The Matrix, Terminal Reality had wanted to pursue a Nocturne sequel following Dhampir Spookhouse agent Svetlana Lupescu. Alas, by then Gathering Of Developers was no longer interested in publishing Terminal Reality’s projects, s

Who said hanging around in arcades playing silly videogames would never lead to anything? Franz Lanzinger did just that and it led to him joining Atari’s coin-op division, producing the wonderfully imaginative Crystal Castles. It did help that he had

Year: 1983 ■ As debuts go, this takes some beating. It was the first game Franz ever wrote and its distinctive look and imaginative gameplay mean it is rightly recognised as a standout title from the golden era of arcade gaming. Just play it with a t

■ Crystal Castles is full of interesting ideas, from level warps to secret passages, and was one of the first arcade games to have a distinct ending, something Franz had to argue for. “Atari had had this great success with Asteroids because people pl

NorthWay: Was a sequel to Crystal Castles ever considered? Back in the Eighties, when I was working on Gremlins, there was some movement towards doing a sequel. I made a couple of new levels and I changed the jump for Bentley so he’d jump a lot highe

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Amstrad owners are eagerly anticipating the Toki conversion from AmstradGGP. (Trailers for this and Mighty Street Fighter are at amstradggp.com) “Some levels will now benefit from parallax scrolling and there’s a big visual surprise for the br

The Street Fighter series has come a long way since its arcade debut in 1987. Nick, Tim and Darran chat about their favourite games and characters from the series. So what’s everyone’s earliest Street Fighter memory? At the back of the Craigavon Shop

It’s the epitome of ‘easy to learn, hard to master’ gameplay. Anyone can pick it up and play, and that gives it lasting appeal. Street Fighter is THE fighting game right? They have a winning formula that has stood the test of time. Slick combat and s

The Street Fighter II SNES cart is a good start, often selling for as little as £10. Inevitably, a boxed copy will set you back more, but generally the plentiful supply of this popular beat-’em-up ensures prices remain under £45. Originally issued in

I have sunk a ton of time recently into the Picross games on Game Boy and Super Famicom. All of them are excellent, and in terms of the latter, a great reason to dust off the Super NES mouse! Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon S: Kurukkurin – I know it has

Editor Darran ‘Hugo’ Jones [email protected] 0330 3906443 Art Editor Andy ‘E Honda’ Salter Production Editor Tim ‘Alex’ Empey Features Editor Nick ‘Ryu’ Thorpe Photographer Phil ‘Ken’ Barker Group Art Director Woz ‘Akuma’ Brown Editorial Dir

Every month, one lucky writer-in will receive a spanking copy of either our NES/Master System or SNES/Mega Drive books Dear Retro Gamer, I hate you. There, I finally said it, whoo that’s a lot off my chest! So let me explain. I recently took stock of

» When it comes to adventure, the first day of a new job often feels like a pretty big one. You’re embarking on a change to your daily routine – going to a different place and interacting with different people. So what happens when a videogame charac