Adam Ezagouri
TheRetroCritic is a film and game reviewer specialising in all things great and retro. He runs a blog at retrocriticblog.blogspot.com and can be found ranting on Twitter @TheRetroCritic.
Back in 1993, dinosaurs were all the rage: Jurassic Park was out in cinemas and so was…
We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story, which was, oddly enough, also produced by Steven Spielberg.
Of course, it being a kids’ movie in the 90’s, the film spawned a few video games. Even if the film itself was a major box-office bomb and flopped rather hard.
Let’s take a quick look at the different We’re Back! games and try to find at least one decent 8-bit or 16-bit adaptation.
And now for something completely different…
Monty Python’s Flying Circus: The Computer Game.
Yup, that’s a thing that exists.
And, with Terry Gilliam’s new movie The Zero Theorem out in theatres just last week, what better time to explore this mad creation than right now?
Read More
I’ve played a lot of bad games in my day.
A lot of bad Color Dreams games, in fact.
But King Neptune’s Adventure is… pretty bad.
I’ve been predominantly looking at decent enough games lately so I thought I’d mix it up a bit but I forgot that this meant playing something really not very good.
An unlicenced Color Dreams game for the NES, King Neptune’s Adventure is, as the title suggests, an adventure game in which you play as King Neptune and go around killing starfish and clams, among other things.
Read More
Ikari Warriors was a classic top-down vertically-scrolling arcade shoot ’em up where you played as a couple of soldiers trying to reach some village but having to shoot through ridiculous amounts of enemies before getting there.
The sequel, Victory Road, saw the game’s Rambo-like protagonists time travel, funnily enough.
Which is why a Sega Master System port of the game was planned and… somehow kinda got made.
Except it ended up being called Time Soldiers.
Read More
Life is hard for those who grew up with The Smurfs these days, what with those awful new movies getting endless sequels and all.
People forget that The Smurfs used to be a cute cartoon, a fun comic book and you even had some decent enough games attached to these little blue fellas back in the day.
I’ll be talking about the NES and Game Boy versions of one of those games because…
Because Nintendo, that’s why.
Remember when I reviewed RoboCop vs The Terminator?
Remember how good an idea that was?
Well, since then, a genius studio executive, high up in the Hollywood hills, decided to ignore that and, instead, remake Paul Verhoeven’s 80’s classic RoboCop because everyone wanted that, apparently. Needless to say that the film, which is released this week, doesn’t look good.
Which is why I thought I’d take this opportunity to put a positive spin on things and talk about something both good and RoboCop related: the RoboCop NES game.
Read More
Being a huge fan of the film Beetlejuice ever since I saw it as a kid, my search for a good game based on the movie began early.
Over time, I played three of those games, two of which were more based on the cartoon series than the film itself. You had the DOS game Adventures Of Beetlejuice: Skeletons In The Closet which was pretty playable but which, ultimately, was nothing more than a puzzle game, albeit a well made one.
Then LJN graced us with an infamous NES outing which, for some reason, steered clear from the classic music theme, thereby starting things off with disappointment. Even if that house is shown to us early on, promising us similarities with the movie:
Not sure the afterlife has a sign but I’ll let that slide.
Read More
Here’s a game I’ve been meaning to talk about for a while.
Felix The Cat was, of course, an old cartoon series and I was a big fan of it as a kid. Which is why I was amazed to find that, not only were there games based on the cartoon, but they were really good!
I’ll be talking about the NES port of the game today and no, I won’t mention that godawful movie they made based on the cartoon because it doesn’t exist.
That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway…
The game is a typical platformer which sees you play as the titular cat who walks around Mario-like settings using his trusty magic bag to foil the Professor’s plans. Come to think of it, this is starting to sound a bit like Sonic The Hedgehog as well.
I guess if you’re going to be derivative, might as well follow the good stuff!
Read More
Time to go back to something a little less story-based, a little more basic, I think.
Ever heard of Teddy Boy?
Also known as Teddy Boy Blues, the game was born in the Arcade and, weirdly, the title refers to a Japanese pop song from the 80’s by Yohko Ishino. And what better way to honour that song than by making a game in which you’re a little boy shooting a gun at random creatures?
There is no better way, of course. Read More
I don’t know what Disney games are like now but Disney games were awesome back in the day.
Like, actually awesome.
Aladdin, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, all those cool Mickey games…
Good times.
The animation in those games was usually spot-on and the games themselves were colourful, often detailed, well put together and generally loads of fun.
Pinocchio on the SNES was no exception.
So there I was, wanting to pick a retro game to review that would be based on something Christmassy but not obviously so.
I’d already reviewed the likes of The Die Hard Trilogy, Batman Returns and Gremlins 2: The New Batch so my mind, for some reason, instantly went to Lethal Weapon, a movie I had re-watched very recently and which was set around Christmas.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I started playing Lethal Weapon on NES and realised that, not only was it not Christmas-themed, like, at all, but it wasn’t even Lethal Weapon!
It took me a while to realise what the heck was going on and it was only until I tried Lethal Weapon on the SNES that it all clicked:
Lethal Weapon is Lethal Weapon 3.
Because THAT’s the Lethal Weapon movie everybody loves… right?
For some reason, both the NES and the SNES games chose to not call themselves what they actually were instead going by the franchise’s name.
Can you imagine playing a game just called The Bourne Identity and, for some reason, your main character looks like Jeremy Renner?
Read More
Time to go back to some good old retro NES nostalgia, methinks.
Remember the cartoon series Bucky O’Hare?
Green hare in space? Friends with a duck and a robotic eye?
Hates intergalactic toads?
Yeah well Bucky got his own game on the NES back in 1992 and, to the risk of shocking you, it was actually surprisingly really good. So much so that it does really deserve a little more attention.
Some games sound ridiculous but are so iconic that they totally get away with it, I’m thinking Sonic The Hedgehog, but others, in retrospect, maybe could have done with slightly less silly titles. Then again, why would you want a game like Chester Cheetah: Too Cool To Fool, Wild Woody or Shaq Fu to not be called something goofy?
In case you can’t tell, I went for obscure with this one.
So obscure in fact that the chosen game, based on a manga and an anime series, is on a platform I’ve, as yet, pretty much ignored.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Dr Slump Arale: Ncha! Bycha…
…the Tiger Electronics game.
Read More
So I recently realised that I had never reviewed a HuCard PC Engine game, which isn’t so crazy since I grew up playing consoles and only discovered the crazy world of computers much later, but also because I kinda… forgot those games even existed.
Thinking about anime-themed games, I remembered a specific one based on one of my own personal favourite anime series which I had painstakingly tried hunting down through the dark backwoods of the “interwebs” some time ago: City Hunter.
Read More
After Fist Of The North Star, I thought I’d talk about something, indeed, anime-related but slightly lighter in tone and what better show to choose for that but Sailor Moon?
After all, there are a bunch of Sailor Moon games out there and the idea of a Streets Of Rage-style beat ’em up with that character, I must admit, I always found random, in an awesome kind of way, of course.
And I’m all about awesome/random things.
This particular game (aka Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon) had three main incarnations: on the Super Famicom, the SNES and the Sega Mega Drive. I’ll focus on the latter two because they’re the ones I’m most familiar with.
Seeing as I’m currently filling up my blog with anime-themed content, something which it was seriously lacking, I thought I’d take this opportunity to review a famously not-very-good NES game called Fist Of The North Star.
Based on the classic anime series, this game has received something of a reputation for being pretty bad.
Now I’ll tell you right now: it’s not THAT bad.
Finally, Halloween is upon us and you know what that means: it’s the end of Vampire Month!
Not too long ago, I checked out Castlevania: Bloodlines for the Sega Genesis and, because reviewing another Castlevania game would be somewhat redundant, I thought I’d take a good look at the Sega Master System’s answer to the popular franchise: Master Of Darkness.
If you’re a regular listener of this wonderful site’s wonderful podcast, 1 More Podcastle, then you’ll recall Master Of Darkness as one of the Retro Showdown picks from episode 17.
It lost out to Advanced Lawnmower Simulator…
You could call this game a Castlevania ripoff but if you grew up with a Sega Master System, then you couldn’t have cared less. Sure this wasn’t officially a Castlevania game but as its own thing, it was still a very well made game and hardly a rushed, half-baked cash-in.
Read More
Now, before I talk about old DOS game Dracula In London, I thought I should mention another vampire game which I attempted to play this week, a text game this time.
See, I’d do more text game reviews but as much as I love them, I’m mostly not very good at them. Especially since each text game has their own set of rules altogether. The Hobbit was fast-paced and pushy whereas Vampire’s Castle Adventure, the game I’m going to talk about now briefly, is limited but has time restraints so it really relies on a lot on trial and error.
I say limited because it only has like 70 words that you can say throughout all of it and with just over 180 lines of BASIC code, it’s pretty short.
The goal is “concealed”, we’re told early on, but really, from what I can gather, you just need to enter this vampire’s castle, find him before he finds you and kill him with whatever crap you’ve picked up along the way. Actually, I like how the game limits you to how many things you can carry yet you’re fine just walking around with a sledge hammer, an axe, a bucket full of water, cheese, wine and like two other things.