Retroblique » links to the past

Links to the Past for June 7th, 2009

Mark Stevens — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 15:55:34 +0000

If computer & video games were my first love during the early 1980s, then Steve Jackson & Ian Livingstone’s Fighting Fantasy books were a close second. Someone over at Mindless Ones clearly shares a similar passion for the classic mash-up of Dungeons & Dragons and Choose Your Own Adventure books, because they’ve written up a wonderfully nostalgic recollection of the Fighting Fantasy series. Several decades have passed since I last played one, but I still have fond memories of Starship Traveller, City of Thieves, Freeway Fighter and Rebel Planet (I was quite partial to the futuristic ones). While I no longer have the books, I did manage to hold onto all thirteen issues of the spin-off Warlock magazine, all in pristine condition. It was also a geeky thrill to actually meet Steve Jackson while I did a playtesting stint at Lionhead Studios back in 2000. I may very well have to grab a few of the reprinted Fighting Fantasy books one of these days.
The Retroist was kind enough to draw my attention to CoinOpVideoGames.com, home to a collection of hundreds of field recordings of video game arcades. While many hardcore retro gamers already have access to their own home arcade (courtesy of MAME) you can’t really beat that authentic arcade ambience. While CoinOpVideoGames.com offers recordings of individual games in handy DVD format, you may also want to take a look at the Arcade Ambience Project web site, which offers much longer recordings of multiple machines playing simultaneously. Just be aware that these recordings are edited from MAME-generated sound rather than from actual arcade environments.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, this week’s biggest buzz in retro gaming land concerns the availability of the Pocket Retro Game Emulator over at ThinkGeek. This versatile little gizmo, which looks like a chunkier Game Boy Micro, offers built-in emulation of NES, SNES, Mega Drive/Genesis, GBA, Neo-Geo and Capcom’s CPS1 & CPS2 systems. Not only that, it can play back a variety of audio and video formats, display images and ebooks and even has a built-in FM receiver and sound recorder. Not a bad little piece of kit, which I’m seriously considering grabbing before the hordes lawyers of Nintendo and Sega find a way to kill it.
Meanwhile, if you’ve been living under a block for the last week, then there’s a good chance you might be playing Tetris, which recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. Pretty much every web site on the planet wrote some sort of article to celebrate the occasion, so have a browse through Google’s Blog Search results and pick your favorite.
Finally, last week offered a double helping of good news for Monkey Island fans. Not only are we being treated to an enhanced remake of the original game in the series, but also a whole new episodic series of adventures. Adventure Gamers gives us a detailed lowdown of The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, which takes the original game and spruces up the artwork for 1080i displays for XBLA and PC platforms, as well as throwing in full voice acting and a remastered musical score. Meanwhile, Lucasarts reopen their official Monkey Island web site, The Scumm Bar, to announce details of Tales of Monkey Island. Developed in association with Telltale Games, who helped resurrect the careers of everyone’s favourite freelance police officers, Sam & Max, Tales of Monkey Island will be an episodic continuation of the adventures of Guybrush Threepwood for PC and Wii platforms.

More Links to the Past next week, folks!

Links to the Past for March 8th, 2009

Mark Stevens — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 06:00:00 +0000

It’s been a while since we’ve had some Links to the Past, so let’s take a look at some of the more interesting retro-related goings-on in recent weeks:

Whenever I chanced upon an arcade during a family vacation, I’d immediately seek out the nearest Pac-Man cabinet and begin filling it with all my hard-earned cash. I even went as far as buying one of those Pac-Man playing guides that required you to memorize a series of patterns. I never mastered them all, but managed to make my ten pence pieces go further than most. Jamey Pittman, however, could probably teach us all a thing or two about one of the world’s most cherished arcade games. He’s put together The Pac-Man Dossier, one of the most exhaustive guides to the game’s mechanics. Just try resisting firing up MAME for a quick Pac-Man session once you’ve browsed through it.
I must admit to never being a big fan of Sierra On-Line’s adventure games. Too many illogical puzzles, trial & error and instant death scenarios for my liking. However, I did enjoy Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father, which I felt came much closer to the LucasArts aesthetic. Anyway, if you want a quick recap of Sierra On-Line’s contribution to the point & click genre, you may want to check out Gunaxin’s overview. Their omission of the Gabriel Knight series is a bit baffling though.
The upcoming release of Nintendo’s DSi in North America, Europe and Australia has inspired a number of gaming sites to offer up retrospectives of Nintendo’s handheld technology. IGN’s The Evolution of Nintendo Portables is as detailed as they come.
Classic titles are all very well and good, but many retro gamers overlook the army of bedroom coders out there still producing brand new games for classic hardware platforms. RGCD is a discmag (offered as a downloadable ISO) chock full of the very best “new” retro titles for old systems, remakes for modern systems and detailed reviews of each. The whole discmag concept seems a bit redundant (there doesn’t seem to be any good reason why they don’t just put all the content on their web site), but it still remains one of the better resources out there. The long-awaited Issue 5 of RGCD is now available to download.

Links to the Past for September 14th, 2008

Mark Stevens — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 02:48:37 +0000

Here’s our weekly cherry-picking delve into the retro gaming blogosphere:

Ever wondered what Silent Hill 2 would have looked like had it been released on the NES? No, neither had we, but evidently someone did. The Indie Games blog drew my attention to Soundless Mountain II, a homebrew NES version of Konami’s classic survival horror game. It’s a bit rough around the edges and far from finished, but well worth a look.
Over at Critical-Gaming, KirbyKid examines the phenomenon of remaking and updating retro classics for modern systems, going as far to suggest such games are now a genre unto themselves.
Anyone who still has a passing interest in the interactive fiction genre (the posh way of referring to text adventures) should head on over to the IFWiki, where the winners for this year’s IntroComp have been announced. For the benefit of those in the dark: the IntroComp is an annual competition designed to fill a gap between the bigger IFComp competitions. Rather than develop full-length games, entrants are encouraged to submit games in an unfinished state. The winners usually go on to finish making their games. Others, embittered by the experience, usually fall into a downward spiral of drugs, prostitution and suicide.
Still have a TI-89 calculator gathering dust somewhere in your home? Do you continue to pine for the days when there were decent Ultima games to be had? If you answered “yes’ to both questions then run over to Fidgit and celebrate a new Ultima V port for the TI-89. Yes, Ultima V on a frigging calculator!
CaptainD’s PC Gaming Blog has an interesting little article on the Atari STe’s unsuccessful attempt to bridge the gap between the basic Atari ST and Commodore’s Amiga. I’d completely forgotten about this machine. I did have an Atari ST myself. While it remained a decent games machine (perhaps let down only by its weedy sound chip), as the 80s gave way to the 90s I only really used it for its built-in MIDI ports and whopping 20MB hard drive (“That’ll take me years to fill up!”).

Links to the Past for September 7th, 2008

Mark Stevens — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 18:13:43 +0000

Welcome to the first of our weekly excursions into the gaming blogosphere.

There’s a rather large number of gaming web sites, blogs and journals out there, so separating the wheat from the chaff can be quite a challenge. I thought I’d make your lives a little easier by plundering my Google Reader feeds for articles that may be of interest to my fellow retro gamers.

Here’s what caught my eye this past week:

If you grew up during the early 1980s and had a penchant for motor racing, there’s a good chance you dabbled with Scalextric or Total Control Racing. (I had both, but preferred the latter for its superior overtaking and cars with working headlights.) Over at Child of the 1980s, Big Boo gets a little misty eyed as he recollects his Scalextric experiences. I thoroughly recommend subscribing to Child of the 1980s if you’re after a regular dose of eighties nostalgia. There’s a bias towards UK eighties culture, but there should be enough of interest to our international cousins.
My experience with the NES is pretty much limited to Zelda, Metroid, Mario and Mega Man, so I’ll gladly take any opportunity to explore some of the hidden gems the system has to offer. Retro Thing came up trumps this week with a retrospective of a little known shooter called Recca. It’s a technical marvel—the sheer speed and number of sprites being thrown around puts many 16-bit shooters to shame. All in 256KB of code.
Fans of Microprose’s Kennedy Approach on the C64 will be interested to know that a PC port has arrived on the scene, some 22 years after the game’s initial release. Head on over to Play This Thing for the lowdown on this rather addictive air traffic control game.
The Hero’s Journey, also known as the monomyth, has long been a mainstay of comparative mythology. It comprises common patterns found within narrative works stretching back thousands of years. There’s an excellent discussion over at Brainy Gamer concerning the use of the monomyth within contemporary gaming; Michael Abbott notes that one important stage is often neglected by developers.
While the C64 budget classic Thrust tends to be remembered more for its Rob Hubbard soundtrack, it also happened to be an excellent game that presented outstanding value for money. The ever reliable Rock, Paper, Shotgun drew my attention to Gravitron 2, a new and similarly inexpensive title inspired by the likes of Thrust and Gravitar. There’s a free demo and the game itself only costs five bucks. Well worth it for a blast of nostalgia.
Take 9 were kind enough to give us a list of fan remakes of classic point & click adventures. For the most part they simply give old titles an enhanced visual makeover, although the ones we’re most excited about are the brand new Indiana Jones games inspired by Fate of Atlantis. They’re a long way from completion and will probably be crushed by the legal weight of Lucasfilm Ltd before they see the light of day, but we live in hope.
With the gaming industry hurtling towards a digital download future, boxed games will soon become a thing of the past. While I certainly prefer the convenience of having all my games, movies and music on digital tap, I will lament the passing of the box & manual era. It’s given us some remarkable examples of packaging design over the years—both inside and outside the box. The Artful Gamer and 1UP both have interesting articles on the art of game packaging and its ongoing demise.
The entire X-COM series (minus the superfluous Email Games edition) is now available on Steam for a very generous $15. An essential purchase for turn-based tactical shooter fans.