• 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!

Related posts:

1. Links to the Past for March 8th, 2009
2. Links to the Past for September 14th, 2008
3. Links to the Past for September 7th, 2008

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