Retro Gamer

Aside from Sabre Wulf, it’s easily Viva Piñata. It’s a wonderfully inventive game that I still enjoy playing with my youngest daughter. Expertise: Juggling a gorgeous wife, two beautiful daughters and an award-winning magazine, all under one roof! Cu

So here we are. It’s issue 250, which is a pretty impressive achievement for a games magazine in this day and age. I never could have guessed back in 2005 that I’d still be getting to put this wonderful mag together, yet we’re still going strong, and

Blaze has been one of the most consistently interesting players in the retro-gaming market in recent years, and it has recently announced plenty of new products. Most interesting are the two Super Pocket handheld consoles, to be released under the ne

We were saddened to learn that John Gibson, a well-respected and long-tenured member of the British game development community, recently passed away. The veteran programmer first learned to code on a ZX81, and started his career in development at Ima

JANUARY 2007 – A new year brings the first opinions on a new format, as the first import PS3 reviews land. Elsewhere, the Xbox 360 freezes over and a legendary SNES platformer returns. Nick Thorpe travels back in time to bring you all this and more O

Go Play is going away, as the Welcome page says “From next month we’ll be joining the digital age and Go>Play will become a downloadable magazine.” This free PDF magazine would last just seven issues. Rebellion’s Jason Kingsley isn’t keen to write of

1 – Gears Of War (Microsoft) 2 – WWE Smackdown Vs Raw 2007 (THQ) 3 – Call Of Duty 3 (Activision) 4 – Pro Evolution Soccer 6 (Konami) 5 – Need For Speed: Carbon (EA) 1 – FIFA 07 (EA) 2 – Need For Speed: Carbon (EA) 3 – Call Of Duty 3 (Activision) 4 –

It’s said there’s no such thing as overnight success and that’s certainly true when it comes to Ultimate, the label which ACG launched to assail the home-computer market. Having released four standout titles for the 16K Sinclair Spectrum during the f

Studio head, Rare FAVOURITE RARE GAME Battletoads Head of community & communications, Rare FAVOURITE RARE GAME GoldenEye 007 Musician, ex-Rare FAVOURITE RARE GAME Jetpac Project manager, ex-Rare FAVOURITE RARE GAME Jetpac Executive producer, Everwild

■ The best-known of their arcade games, this has lots of touches which would become synonymous with Stamper games, from the cartoon characters, comical animation and very British sense of humour – die quickly and you are asked whether you actually re

■ Ultimate’s debut is as good an arcade shooter as you’ll find on the Spectrum, featuring great graphics, clever gameplay based around refuelling your rocket ship, and eight waves of aliens to annihilate. This is the game that made you realise you ne

To say the Nintendo 64 years were a period of transition for Rare seems silly. The company had already moved from the arcade to home computers in the early Eighties and then hopped into bed with Japanese giant Nintendo to produce console titles later

■ We came for the single-player story and stayed for the deathmatches. Credit to coder Steve Ellis for creating the many multiplayer modes. As David Doak, the man responsible for designing those varied missions, puts it, “It looks dated but the gamep

■ This is a much pared-down version of Jet Set Willy, albeit with the same memorable gameplay. There’s no sound, fewer enemies and screens, but crucially this makes the game much more accessible, especially for newcomers to the genre. The Banyan Tree

■ Situated left of Under The Roof, Conservatory Roof houses four items, each guarded by a grinning meanie. Willy cannot reach the platform on the left in Under The Roof that gains entry to this screen due to a death bug that prevents entry from the s

■ Home of the famous game-breaking bug that lurked inside the original 1984 release of Jet Set Willy. It also contains this impressive Pac-Man snake-type thing. ■ The room that, even today, causes nightmares in middle-aged gamers everywhere. The stum

■ Titled Kiwi Kraze in North America, the NES version by Software Creations is one of the game’s most accurate ports. A wonderful soundtrack by Tim and Geoff Follin, tight controls and great pacing more than makes up for this conversion’s rather wash

■ The SNES version of Jurassic Park features a heavy exploration vibe, coupled with first-person shooter sequences when entering the buildings. Dr Grant completes several tasks to escape the park with his life, along with collecting items and bringin

■ The Sega Jurassic Park games have a noticeably different vibe from their Nintendo counterparts. They are all more action-oriented and with a horror-heavy mood. First, in July 1993, was the Master System/Game Gear version. It was quite late in the h

■ While the team was busy pushing the Super Nintendo to its graphical limits, composer Jonathan Dunn was designing Jurassic Park’s sound and faced his own challenges. “You only had 64KB for everything, code, FX and music, not a lot by today’s standar

■ Polyphony Digital started out as a division of Sony Computer Entertainment’s Japan Studio known as Polys Entertainment, only becoming a separate company following the huge success of Gran Turismo. Before that, the group created the PlayStation titl

MICHAEL JACKSON STATION ■ This is the first song you’ll hear after climbing into the car in the intro mission. It’s the perfect choice for kick-starting the distinctive Eighties vibe that Vice City has. THE BUGGLES STATION ■ Arguments with friends ab

As the Eighties came to a close, Japanese studio AlfaSystem was beginning to forge an impressive reputation. It was doing considerable work porting or otherwise codeveloping and collaborating on games for NEC’s remarkable PC Engine console line. That

■ Series lead Kohtaro Kuga serves as a detective assigned to investigate the murders that were the first game’s narrative foundation. Mechanically, he offers a powerful straight-down-the-middle laser-type shot, and a bomb that sees him summon a Shiki

As much as we enjoy Blaze’s Evercade carts that are stuffed with well-known games, we’re also big fans of its more esoteric releases. Its latest two carts, Sydney Hunter Collection and Piko Arcade 1 contain games we’ve largely never heard of, which m

They’re always nice and striking but I’m a big fan of 242 and 91 in particular as they’re the systems/games of my youth. Didn’t even own an Amiga, just loved playing it at my childminder’s (if her son let me!). Love the first 18 covers as they had co

Emulation only. I do everything on a laptop, thus avoiding clutter, original hardware expense and the need for a dedicated room. Adding that there’s nothing wrong with whatever retro gaming options you choose. Original or emulation? Whatever works an

What’s your favourite Rare game? Jet Force Gemini. It really gave the N64 a good spin, and was different to anything out there at the time. It had a real Saturday morning cartoon feel, and the theme tune still makes me excited to turn on the console.

Editor Darran ‘Viva Piñata’ Jones darran.jones@futurenet.com 0330 3906443 Art Editor Andy ‘GoldenEye 007’ Salter Production Editor Tim ‘It’s Mr Pants’ Empey Features Editor Nick ‘Blast Corps’ Thorpe Photographer Olly ‘GoldenEye 007’ Curtis Group Art