retro gaming – Page 12 – Obsolete Gamer

Super Double Dragon

Super Double Dragon is also known as Double Dragon 4 and it’s by far the best Double Dragon game to date. The game’s soundtrack is a joy to listen to and the gameplay is incredible. You feel like you are in control of your guy more than in most other beat em up games. Billy and Jimmy come packed with amazing moves that help you create different ways to defeat the bad guys. Just like the other Double Dragon games, you don’t know how much life bar your opponent has so all that’s left to do is to beat the hell out of him (or her at some times but not in this game) and hope they will vanish after getting their ass kicked.

Spectrum

Simon Lethbridge

Exolon

The marine is outfitted with the snazzy Exolon suit, a powerful exoskeleton equipped with a hand blaster and backpack grenade launcher, and it is these that will facilitate your progress. The screens, or ‘zones’, are occupied by a mixture of targets. Some feature aliens themselves who swarm from right to left across the screen indefinitely. These can be taken out easily with your hand blaster but there are also ground-based guns and missile-launchers which can only be taken out by grenades, and it’s the same for the non-hostile but still inconvenient obstacles which appear to consist of hardware such as satellite dishes as well as strange alien structures.

Game Reviews

J.A. Laraque

Motivational Monday: Goat Wisdom

Somebody’s got a case of the Monday’s.

Computer Games

Luis Zena

Commander Keen 4

The music of the game is enjoyable as well, if you are lucky enough to play it in true DOS then you will also be able to choose from the PC speaker sound which isn’t bad at all just very retro. If not, you can always use the wonderful and probably best emulator ever released DOS BOX and find yourself a copy of the game, you’ll do fine like that as well. I wish I had my classic PC out so I could be playing it in pure DOS but I will have to settle for Dos box which is not bad but I think most of you know how much I love classic original stuff(Except Famicom, I wuv Famicom pirates).

Editorials

Simon Lethbridge

Top Five PC Engine Shoot-em-ups

Until the PlayStation came along, this remained the most faithful conversion of this eternally worshipped, all-time classic yet seen (Lord knows why it never appeared on the MD, come to think of it, that could’ve been a cracking version). Despite the fact that it was initially spread over two separately released Hu-Cards, it was still hard to fault it. The graphics and music are near- faultless and as close to arcade perfect as anyone could reasonably expect, and the timeless level design and gameplay is faithfully recreated.

Arcade Games

Simon Lethbridge

Gun Frontier

As might be evident from some of the screenshots, Gun Frontier looks and plays a lot like some other well-known vertical scrollers, notably Flying Shark. It features the same sort of tanks, squadrons of enemy fighters, and ground targets such as gun turrets and buildings, and even some of the backdrops are reminiscent. Not that this makes it a bad game, of course, just not very original. Maybe that’s what the Wild West theme is in aid of.

Interviews

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

The Super Fighter Team Interview

Super Fighter Team has an absolutely brilliant name. And it possibly is the only indie developer for retro platforms that has managed to impress the mainstream gaming media; after all, shiny new cartridges for the Sega MegaDrive / Genesis and the Atari Lynx aren’t a common sight. Here are Brandon Cobb (president, Super Fighter Team; Zaku producer) and Osman Celimli (president, PenguiNet; Zaku designer / developer) to discuss both SFT and its latest release: Zaku. Mind you, this is only part of a rather extensive interview filled with exclusive bits of info. The rest of it (including more of said juicy exclusive bits) will be published in issue 4 of the excellent (and very free) Retroaction retro-loving magazine.

Game Reviews

J.A. Laraque

Motivational Monday: Epic Crossovers

What do you get if you crossover Monday with Saturday?

NES

Luis Zena

Kirby’s Adventure

The gameplay delivers a very satisfying experience. You feel like you have total control of Kirby as you can fly anywhere and suck monsters to get their powers. The power up system is great as well as you can get certain powers that will help you defeat stronger enemies later on the level. The difficulty of the game is moderate so I suggest you have some patience especially in the later parts of the game. You’ll just have to find the right strategy for certain levels.

NES

Simon Lethbridge

Bomberman

The first stage only features the most basic enemies which seem to be the ‘Floaters’ from the Speccy game I looked at recently, except here they’re called ‘Valcoms’ which look like balloons and don’t cause too many problems. As early as the second stage you’ll encounter the next type of enemy, a blue water-drip type creature called ‘O Neal’. The other enemy types (most of whom have equally obscure names) are apparently introduced one per level thereafter and include ‘Dahl’ which look like wobbly barrels

Blog

J.A. Laraque

E3 2011: Classic Gaming Museum

They had what I called a 80’s living room complete with a couch, a radiation level 6 television and an Atari 2600 and best of all you could sit down and play. Now, while I was still just a baby when the 2600 launched I remember setups that looked exactly like this.

Arcade Games

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Kino One Review

Despite not being incredibly original and at times feeling slightly repetitive (some stages do drag a bit), one can’t help but notice the amount of care and polish poured into the thing. It features more than enough levels, impressive end bosses, different difficulty options and even comes packed with cute faux arcade flyers. Besides, the control scheme that effortlessly lets players cloak, use smart-bombs and shoot everything in sight works like a breeze and helps Kino One become a most addictive fun little high-score chase.

NES

Luis Zena

Donkey Kong 3

The game is as simple as any of the arcade games back in the 80s. Your main goal is not to finish the game but to accumulate the highest score. Your skills will be crucial to score big in this one. The usual mechanics of the game work as other arcade classics, which means the further levels you go, the harder the levels get. You will eventually have no room for error as you try to dodge and kill the hundreds of bugs coming after you. That’s not all, you also have to worry about the big ape climbing down and once he does, you are toast! But wait! It’s not over just yet, you also have to prevent the bugs from taking away your plants!

Computer Games

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Empires and Dungeons

Empires and Dungeons is basically a quasi turn-based dungeon hack with a simple, albeit purely turn-based, strategy game bolted on top of it. It plays surprisingly well, for it manages to be as simple and intuitive as Diablo, almost as rightly paced as rogue and as one-more-turn-syndrome evoking as HOMM or even Civ. More than that, the graphics are way better than ascii @s and Xs, and the Deutsch-English language used throughout the game, is not as badly translated as one would expect.

NES

Luis Zena

Castlevania

The gameplay is your usual hack and slash action with the help of some of the most classic Castlevania items ever like the cross or the holy water. These are the signature items that would help us reach Dracula but in the end it would only be up to our kinky whip to tame the vampire beast. The gameplay does deliver a very satisfying experience but you will find problems while jumping in the air as that’s when you are more vulnerable to damage and a quick death due to the amazing gravitational pull when you fall. Other than that, it’s a very playable game.

Game Reviews

Simon Lethbridge

Shinobi

As previously mentioned, the poor, traumatised children being held hostage in positions of questionable strategic significance are apparently each in possession of a special reward that Joe will receive upon rescuing them. Unlike the arcade version in which Joe starts with shurikens before he obtains a gun, here the transition takes longer. His normal shurikens are first upgraded to a rapid-fire variety before being replaced by fast-firing knives, then small, bouncing bombs, before he finally receives the powerful gun, with each upgrade being provided by a child.

Game Reviews

Luis Zena

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years

The game starts you off in a quest to become a knight. You play as Ceodore, son of Cecil who is accompanied by Biggs and Wedge to help you on your quest. As usual you should know that when characters are named Biggs and Wedge, they usually hit the bucket real quickly(Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy VI did this). The game plays like its 1991 counterpart and delivers remixed music from the same with great success. It’s such a blast from the past listening to the battle music of Final Fantasy IV once more.