starflight

Notables Gamers

Profiled: Derek Smart

When you have a chance to talk with someone who created over 17 games you’re going to want to pick his brain on the state of gaming today in comparison to gaming in the past. Derek and his independent game development company based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida has developed a number of games from Battlecruiser 3000AD to the current Line of Defense MMO which can be found on Steam Early Access. We talked with Derek about his early days, including what influenced him to get into game development and the struggles one can go through when creating their first game. We also talked a little about GamersGate and the evolution and near extinction of the video game manual. We even talked about the rumor of Derek purchasing the IP of the Decent Freespace license.

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Editorials

My Favorite Games: Part 9

This first Shinobi game may have eventually been a little overshadowed by Revenge of Shinobi on the MegaDrive but it’s still a fantastic game, and this Master System version is my favourite. It’s impressively faithful as a conversion whilst also making life a bit easier for us by adding a life-meter as opposed to the one-hit deaths of the arcade game. It does suffer a bit from sprite-flicker (although you could say that about most MS games) but that’s pretty much the only criticism you could level at this classic run n gunner with its five, dual-plane, ninja-infested stages. It’s unquestionably the best game of its type on the system and still plays as good as it ever did. Now if only I could beat that damn final boss!

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