When someone (tried asking who it was, but I never got a reply… sorry, whoever you are) first suggested on Twitter that I review Sneak ‘n’ Peek, I decided to head to Youtube to have a look. I’d never played the game as a kid and actually hadn’t heard much about it before. I had a vague idea that it was basically hide and seek, but that’s it. It sounded like a really stupid concept to turn into a game, and thus perfect Atari Poop fodder.
Whether for transportation, combat, or a glorious combination thereof, vehicles have served an important purpose throughout human history, and thus in gaming history as well. What follows are, in no particular order, ten great examples of vehicles featured in classic video games. Read More
Originally released for the 3DO and ported over to PC, Road Rash was a continuation of Electronic Arts popular Road Rash series, which began its life on the Sega Genesis/MegaDrive back in 1991.
So what is Road Rash, and what warranted six games in the series between 1991 and 1999? Read on, as the answers lie below!
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Greetings Readers! Today, Carl fires up the PC and DosBox for 42 rounds. 42 rounds of aliens attacking you. 42 different ways to die. 42 Rounds? Round 42? Or is it Round42? (25 years later and I still can’t figure that out..)
Don’t act like you’ve never played this one.
You were a Simpsons fan, like everybody else at the time, and bought any game that had these big-eyed freaks on the cover. You played it for like a day, got stuck and gave up. Occasionally going back to it and getting stuck again, of course.
Weirdly, I have fond memories of Krusty’s Fun House on the Sega Master System.
But then again I have fond memories of most Simpsons retro games, no matter how ridiculously hard (Bart Vs The Space Mutants) or flawed (Bart Vs The World) they were.
Krusty’s Fun House is basically Lemmings but nowhere near as involving.
There are always a lot of discussions about world record scores in video games, from the first perfect this to the first kill screen that… it’s all documented and discussed.
Outside of one: The oldest standing video game world record.
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Last time in Character RETROspect, we began our look back on Cecil Harvey, the dashing Dark Knight from Final Fantasy IV, and this week we’ll take a look at the second part of Cecil’s journey. When we last left off, Cecil was on his way to Mount Ordeals in an attempt to become a Paladin.
Let’s get back to it!
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For some strange reason, the Atari 2600 seems to have had a thing for games that have exclamation marks in their name (Pitfall!, Oink!, Mr Do!, etc). It also seems to have had a thing for having absolutely terrible games among its best-selling games. Kaboom! fits into both of these categories… or does it?
The third installment of the popular “X-Wing” series, X-Wing vs Tie-Fighter was released in 1997 to meet the needs of fans who wanted to face off against each other in a multiplayer environment. While the game succeeded in doing what it set out to do, it managed to forget one thing along the way; a single player campaign.
So how enjoyable is this game? Where does it stand in the legacy of Star Wars PC games? Read on, the answers lie below!
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Greetings Readers! This week, Carl wants to know about your M.A.D. skillz. Not MAD, but rather, Missile Attack and Defense. Huh? He’d like you to defend all of civilization against an onslaught of missiles and helicopters falling from the sky. No NOT Missile Command. As this game is one or two players, he wants to play too, you know. WTF? Why is this pesky salt shaker being so vague? Read on.
You’d think games based on nothing but soulless fast-food/soda logos would be worse than this.
Remember McKids on the NES? Hardly a must-play but really not that bad a game. Kinda like Super Mario Bros. except way worse and near incomprehensible. It was a fun mess for the most part, a guilty pleasure.
Cool Spot however, a game based solely on a bubbly Sprite double, was just plain good.
I’ve long been an advocate of preserving the history and culture of video gaming, and it started with me in the late 80s. In 1994 I bought my first arcade games out of a classified ad and became obsessed with restoring the old beasts.
Even as big as the arcade industry was in the early 80s, the number of arcade machines made have never approached the same numbers as most console products. Even the best selling arcade title in US history, Ms. Pac-Man, sold 115,000 – 119,000 units… a number that doesn’t even start to approach the numbers of even poorly selling home console games of yesteryear.
As a kid, I played Adventure for the Atari 2600. I remember it fondly. I never really had any idea what I was doing. I would pretty much just run around, find an item, get eaten by a dragon, start over, get the item again, open a door, get eaten by a dragon, the go play outside or something. I thought it was great even though I had no idea how important the game was in the history of video games or what the game was really about.
This is Bidoof:
This is Bidoof’s face:
Claiming to be the “Mother of All Games” upon it’s release (in reference to the then topical declaration of a forthcoming “Mother of all Battles” by Saddam Hussein after his invasion of Kuwait), Scorched Earth is a simple artillery game originally released in 1991.
So how does this game live up to it’s claim of being the “Mother of all Games?” How does it hold up today? Read on, and learn more about the shareware classic, Scorched Earth!
Criminals run rampant in our streets. It’s time to grab your metal pipe and beefy martial arts friend and go clean up the city! Or, watch this Streets of Rage episode of Retrocity.
Greetings readers! This week, Carl has fired up his desktop PC in order to save Earth from the sickly red glow of the slave shield. The Alliance of Free Stars is waiting to be recreated, with you as leader. The Ur-Quan tyranny must be stopped. Are you up to it?
Of all the movies, of all the TV series, of all the characters I would have picked to lead a video game: Larry, Curly and Moe were WAY down on my list.
Like, waaaaaaay down.
But with a new Three Stooges movie out this year (another brilliant idea) and a classic NES game to make fun of, let’s not waste anymore time and check out one of the console’s strangest, most unnecessary creations.
A remake of WWE WrestleFest, the early 1990s arcade game that got a LOT of my quarters back in the day, should hit XBox Live the day after this column runs. That, along with all the previews for WWE ’13, have had me thinking about the older WWF wrestling games and how they captured very specific periods of history.
These days, WWE games are pretty up-to-date by the time you get them, with DLC content that gives you updated gear and new roster signings. Back in the day they were pretty much out of date by the time you got your hands on them. Frankly, I didn’t mind too much.
Cecil Harvey, the main protagonist from Final Fantasy IV, is the focus of this week’s Character RETROspect. When thinking back on how enthralling the story of the “Dark Knight” is, I knew I had to do an article on him. Deception, love, loss, and personal redemption — it’s all here in one of the greatest entries in the Final Fantasy series.
Let’s go!