AUSRETROGAMER

The Pop-Culture E-Zine

You are here: Home / Archives for oldschool

oldschool

Gravitic Mines Is Landing On The Atari Jaguar

By

It is always great to see the Atari Jaguar homebrew and independent developer scene going from strength to strength. With a number of awesomely talented and prolific developers, like Reboot, we always get excited when a new Jag game is about to drop, like Gravitic Mines!

In development since 2019, Gravitic Mines is best described as a love letter to iconic games like Thrust, Lunar Lander and Gravitar, with an injection of contemporary flavour like Gravity Crash plus a lot more! This new and exclusive Atari Jaguar title was painstakingly developed by the Reboot team, with the full version containing 32 campaign missions, 8 training missions, 40 minutes of music, 8 boss encounters, online scores and achievements amongst a plethora of other cool features.


source: AtariAge

According to Reboot, the game is now complete and will be available to purchase in a few months via the AtariAge store – so keep an eye out for it! In the meantime, if you have a Skunk Board (Ed: yay, we do!) or RetroHQ’s Jaguar GameDrive, then you can download the Gravitic Mines demo from here. The Demo ROM is a short teaser, featuring a few levels of the game to whet your appetite.

To say we are excited for the final Gravitic Mines game would be the greatest understatement! Our Jaguar is hungry, so we can’t wait to give it a taste of Gravitic Mines!



LEGO 8-Bit Trip 2 – Awesome Stop Motion Animation

By

Amazing Swedish band Rymdreglage have followed up their 2009 LEGO 8-Bit Trip stop motion video (which took them 1,500 hours to make!) with an even more awesome LEGO 8-Bit Trip 2!

The Trip 2 stop motion video pays tribute to some of the most iconic video games of all time in super duper 4K resolution – it is oh sooo lovely!


source: rymdreglage



The Retro Gaming Vault – August 2021

By

As we come out of a long (southern hemisphere) winter, we look long and hard into the vastness of our retro gaming vault and come out with a number of juicy nostalgia-inducing classic gaming bits and pieces, starting with a couple of pretty cool, but useless NES peripherals!

We also have the mighty Neo Geo featured this month, with its interchangeable console and arcade memory card that we use on our AES and MVS. For the Nintendo fans, we have DK on the NES and a snippet of Super Mario World (you gotta look hard). For the really old school fans we have the Futuretronics Galaxy Invader 1000 tabletop and the cool Space Shuttle Game Watch we used to love strutting at school. The Contra lads make an appearance as well, as does the DynoVisor VR headset we use on the PC-Engine. Last but not least, our all time fave C64 compilation.

Enjoy the nostalgia and we”ll see what we find in the vault next month!

All images are copyright of ausretrogamer



Classic Hudson Soft Games You Need To Play

By

We must admit, it was a sad day when Hudson Soft (HS) was absorbed by good ole Konami (Digital Entertainment) almost a decade ago. However, before the company with the cute bumble bee logo was bought, they produced some iconic games on a multitude of systems from the early 1980s all the way through to the 2000s!

We look back fondly at a few Hudson Soft developed titles you should definitely play again, because they are still darn awesome! Before anyone says Bomberman, yes, that makes the list of course, but there were plenty of others too. This curated list of HS’ developed video games spans some 4 decades, so surely there will be one or a few games that will induce some nostalgia for you.

Here we go!

Stop The Express (ZX Spectrum, 1983)

Who would have thought that Hudson developed games for the ZX Speccy! Stop the Express was one of the best action games on the micro, so check it out!

 

 

 

Hudson’s Adventure Island (Famicom/NES, 1986)

Before you say it, yep, Adventure Island is an adaptation of Wonder Boy. Nevertheless, this game is a superb side-scrolling platformer, filled with 32 stages for Mr Higgins to traverse through to save Princess Tina from the clutches of the Evil Witch Doctor.

 

Star Soldier (Famicom/NES, 1986)

Hudson’s distinguished shoot’em up was a refinement of Tecmo’s Star Force, which they had ported for them in 1985. With that said, Star Soldier was impressively superior on all levels, which Hudson then went on to create awesome sequels, many of them appearing in their ‘Caravan’ competitions.

 

Bonk’s Adventure (PC Engine, 1989)

Bonk (aka: BC Kid or PC Genjin) was Hudson’s answer to Nintendo’s Super Mario. The caveman theme with cool set-pieces was a refreshing take on the platform genre, with Bonk becoming a much loved defacto mascot for the PC-Engine / TurboGrafx-16.

 

Soldier Blade (PC Engine, 1992)

The fourth and last game in the Star Soldier series for the PC Engine, Solider Blade amps up and polishes the vertical shmup action to gold standard. The pace is ultra fast and the action is relentless, making Soldier Blade one of Hudson’s greatest ever games. This is a must for any shoot’em up fan!

 

Saturn Bomberman (Saturn, 1996)

Let’s face it, we could have picked a dozen Bomberman titles, but the wise choice here is its 32-bit version on Sega’s Saturn. Its 10 x multiplayer mode is insanely fun, with a plethora of power-ups to pick up. Grab a multi-tap for your Saturn and blast 9 of your friends!

 

DoReMi Fantasy (Super Famicom, 1996)

This highly collectable platformer for the SuFami has the perfect mix of fun, charm, colour and run and jump action to keep you coming back again and again.

 

 

 

Vertical Force (Virtual Boy, 1995)

We know what you are thinking, WHAT THE HECK is this doing on the list? When it comes to shoot’em ups, Hudson Soft has a gold standard pedigree, with Vertical Force being a brilliant Star Solder like game on Nintendo’s ill-fated Virtual Boy.

 

 

Ninja Five-O (GBA, 2003)

Ninja Five-O is another obscure Hudson release for the GBA which nowadays is highly sough after and extremely expensive. The hack and slash ninja action is reminiscent of Ninja Gaiden, which isn’t a bad thing at all.

 

 

Lost In Shadow (Wii, 2010)

Shortly before Hudson was shuttered and swallowed up by Konami, they developed one last darn cool and innovative platformer for the Wii – Lost In Shadow. The Wii had a ton of shovelware titles, but this one was not one of them. If you manage to find Hudson Soft’s last great video game, give it a go!

 

If the above Hudson Soft titles didn’t tickle your nostalgic nerve, then hopefully these honourable mentions will:

  • Victory Run (PC Engine, 1987)
  • Neutopia (PC Engine, 1989)
  • Military Madness (PC Engine, 1989)
  • Final Soldier (PC Engine, 1991)
  • Mario Party 3 (N64, 2000)

Well, there you have it peeps, Hudson Soft may no longer be with us, but their legacy is forever etched in video gaming history with their iconic titles. Go play some now!



image sources supplied

The Amiga 500 Mini Is Coming in 2022

By

It was bound to happen! After the success of TheC64 Mini, Retro Games Ltd has announced that they will be releasing an Amiga 500 Mini in early 2022.

Based on Commodore’s iconic 16-bit Amiga 500 (A500), the new The A500 Mini will be able to emulate the original A500/A600 chipset and the Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) of the latter Amiga model, the Amiga 1200 – pretty darn cool indeed.


source: Retro Games Ltd

The Amiga 500 Mini will come with a 2-button mouse and 8-button game-pad, as well as USB inputs to plug in a standard keyboard and the ability to add your own games (with WHDLoad support). Speaking of games, The A500 Mini will be bundled with 25 games, with the following 12 titles being confirmed at this stage:

  • Alien Breed 3D
  • Another World
  • ATR: All Terrain Racing
  • Battle Chess
  • Cadaver
  • Kick Off 2
  • Pinball Dreams
  • Simon The Sorcerer
  • Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe
  • The Chaos Engine
  • Worms: The Director’s Cut
  • Zool: Ninja Of The Nth Dimension

Other features include the ability to save and resume games, flick between 50Hz and 60Hz screen refreshes and various CRT filters and scaling options.

With a retail price of £119.99 / €129.99 / US$139.99, we won’t be expecting TheA500 Mini to be less than $200 Aussie dollars, which is quite a bit for a Mini, even for an iconic one like the Amiga!



Keeping San Francisco’s Musée Mécanique Open to the Public

By

We last visited Musée Mécanique in San Francisco in 2012, which was a major highlight for us, so when we heard that this antique arcade was doing it tough, it was definitely difficult to hear.

We had a blast when we last visited Musée Mécanique! To view the album of our visit, go here
Musée Mécanique

The below ‘Nostalgia Museum’ short documentary by Sofie Kodner and Eleonora Bianchi, provides an intimate portrait of owner Dan Zelinsky as he struggles to keep the legacy of this iconic San Francisco institution alive in the face of economic loss and mechanical deterioration.


source: KQED Arts



The Retro Gaming Vault – July 2021

By

Going deep into our vault for more intoxicating nostalgia for the month of July, we uncover some cult classic JCVD LaserDiscs, tabletops that go pew, pew, pew, a Neo Geo AES, a Sonic VHS tape (remember those!), some old school gaming patches, a Star Wars rip off for the Bally Astrocade and everything in between!

Go on, take a look, but scroll slowly to take it all in! Happy Retro Gaming to you all!

 



Slow Mole: 8-bit Platformer For The NES

By

Slow MoleErik Rosenlund, take a bow! Erik has created and released, SLOW MOLE, an awesome speedrunning platformer for the NES!

Playable on both real hardware and other modern devices, Slow Mole challenges your speedrunner skills to the max with a unique checkpoint mechanic that will only award a checkpoint when the player proves their mastery! The game provides the player with two difficulty options which affects the timer, thus making an impact on game play. For those that have twitch skills who can truly master the game, the game ramps up its mechanical challenge to nightmare levels!

Grab Slow Mole for free (or for a small token of appreciation for Erik) from here and get running!

Slow Mole (NES) Trailer – The 80s NES claymation trailer that never was



The Legend Of Zelda and Super Mario 64 Sell For Mega Bucks!

By

From NFTs selling for millions to other ephemera going for ridiculous amounts of money, we now find video games entering this realm of the ludicrous money!

In the last week we have had two record breaking auction sales of Nintendo video games, first it was The Legend Of Zelda (NES) selling for US$870,000, only for this record to be broken a few days later by the US$1.56 million fetched by Super Mario 64 (N64)!

Now don’t get us wrong, both of these games are great, but come on, these prices are scary as hell! Anyway, as long as there are buyers with deep pockets, then stuff like this is going to go for mega bucks! So if you have some old-school games in mint condition, get them rated and hit Heritage Auctions, you never know, you may be an instant millionaire.

We wonder what video game will break the sales record next?

image source: Heritage Auctions and CNN US

source story: The Verge



 

Wii U Playing Games From Zip Disk

By

We always love coming across clever folks doing extraordinary and clever things, and Will It Work? is no exception!

Will It Work? caught our eye with his cool mods with old school media being used on modern consoles, which is quite impressive.

In the below video he attaches an Iomega Zip Drive (Ed: remember those 100MB disks!) to the Wii U to test whether such a small piece of media (Zip Disk) can be formatted by the console, and even better, if any games will fit on the disk. Watch and find out!


source: Will It Work?