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Ultra Space Battle Brawl: It’s Bang Bead For Your Switch!

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If you are craving for some Pong, Windjammers or Bang Bead action for your Nintendo Switch, then keep reading! Hang on, Bang what? Ahhhh, if you don’t know, that’s fine, this game plays it a similar way…

So what do you get when you sprinkle some Pong on steroids, a dose of fighting elements, Japanese 80s aesthetic, some cool Indonesian urban house music and a hefty pinch of Windjammers and Bang Bead for good measure? You get Ultra Space Battle Brawl, that’s what!

For those of you that haven’t played Atari’s Pong or Bang Bead and Windjammers on the Neo Geo, Ultra Space Battle Brawl is a fun competitive game fit for settling disputes, be it with your friends and family or rivals, this couch party game has the essence of a flying fighting game melded onto a single screen that is easy to pick up and play but hard to master.

The game provides a choice of ten protagonists, each with their own unique “Ultra” and quirky skills that can easily turn the tide in the heat of battle. Story mode sees you battling through a number of rivals that will determine your fate in the Intergalactic Society, that is if you manage to beat them all. For those that prefer a party game (of up to 4 players), the ‘Versus’ mode is for you. Versus provides the freedom to set the number of rounds and battle modes, be it 1 vs 1, 2 vs 2, 1 vs 2 or 2 vs 1. Once your character is chosen you are thrown into a battle where the premise sees you smacking the puck towards your opponents end attempting to smash their glass gem while also defending your end. If you manage to win the necessary rounds, you move onto the next (even tougher) opponent.

Sounds simple enough? Um not really, as this game will see your rage meter go through the roof when you battle tougher opponents that require lightning fast reflexes and dexterity to have a chance at beating them. This game does shine when played against other humans, where you rib each other or give high fives when battling on the same side.

The background story to how this game came about is quite cool too – Ultra Space Battle Brawl was first born out of a Mojiken Camp, an internal team building program. During this program the whole Mojiken Studio crew had to build a prototype based on proven products and fresh concepts. From all the prototypes they came up with, it was Mojiken Studio’s co-founder Eka Pramudita’s Ultra Space Battle Brawl that came out on top.

If you also want to come out on top and can’t wait for Windjammers, then you should grab this game for your Nintendo Switch, stat!

Title: Ultra Space Battle Brawl
Developer: Mojiken Studio
Publisher: Toge Productions
Price: USD$14.99

image source: Toge Productions

 

Old School Gaming is Back On Your SNES and Super Famicom!

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There is no stopping the retro gaming renaissance!

If you still have your Super Famicom or Super Nintendo (SNES) handy, then you’ll be happy to know that there are games being re-released on Nintendo’s 16-bit powerhouse!

First cab off the retro gaming rank is the side-scrolling beat’em up, Super Double Dragon / Return of Double Dragon. This exclusive title is available in Japanese (Super Famicom) and English/US (SNES).

This legendary series follows the young twin brothers Billy and Jimmy Lee, who run a martial arts dojo. Their friend Marian disappears, so we reckon you know the rest of that story of what they need to do to save her.

The player controls either of the (suped-up) Lee brothers. There are seven stages including a strewn of extra stages so your fighting reflexes will need to be sharp. Don’t fret, as your fighters have 30 special moves with power gauges to engage in powerful techniques. Oh yeah, if fighting cleanly doesn’t work, then you can throw items such as barrels, stones, knives, bombs, and boomerangs – woohoo, we love dirty fighting!

If you want some action for your Super Famicom / SNES and you are ready to rescue Marian, go ahead and pre-order Return Of Double Dragon!

Pre-Order Links:

  • Super Famicom – Return Of Double Dragon (Expected to ship: Jul 19, 2018)
  • SNES – Return Of Double Dragon (Expected to ship: Aug 21, 2018)

image source: Play Asia

 

Tempest 4000: The Tube Shooter Comes of Age

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In the beginning there was Dave Theurer’s tube shooter, Tempest. Then came Jeff Minter’s Tempest 2000 on the Jaguar, a psychedelic take on Dave’s masterpiece. This was then followed by Tempest 3000 on the defunct Nuon and finally the contemporary take on Tempest for the PS Vita, the awesome TxK. And now we have the imminent release of this iconic tube shooter, Tempest 4000, again coded by Llamasoft’s Yak (Jeff Minter), which means the franchise is still in great hands!

Strap into your Claw peeps, cause the adrenaline-pumping Tempest 4000 will be available on your PlayStation®4 and Xbox One systems on July 17, 2018 for $29.99!

The original Tempest was one of the first videogames to use 3D vector graphics, securing itself as one of Atari’s hallmark titles and one of the most popular arcade games of all time. It has been featured prominently across pop culture, including Ernest Cline’s dystopian Ready Player One novel.

Developed by legendary game designer Jeff Minter, Tempest 4000 remains faithful to the fast-paced gameplay of the arcade original, while adding brand new features and visually stunning graphics.

As in the original game, players are in control of the Claw, a powerful spacecraft equipped to destroy deadly creatures and other obstructions with rapid-fire shots on vibrant geometric prisms. With three game modes to choose from and 100 levels to conquer, players must eliminate all enemies as quickly as possible to survive, aiming for the coveted spot at the top of the leaderboards.

Additional Key Features Include:

  • Arcade Style Shooter: Hordes of enemies will test players’ reflexes in this fast-paced arcade style shoot ’em up;
  • Visually Stunning Graphics: Revamping the look of the original arcade game, Tempest 4000 features vibrant graphics in sharp 4K resolution;
  • Multiple Game Modes: Three different game modes will push players’ skills to the limit, including Classic, Pure and Survival:
    • Classic: Equipped with three lives, players battle through enemies until all lives run out. Players can begin their next playthrough from the last completed stage with their previous high score.
    • Pure: The classic arcade mode, Pure gives players three lives to start from the beginning and progress as far as possible.
    • Survival: A brutal challenge, Survival gives players eight lives to survive as long as possible.
  • Level Up: With 100 unique geometric levels to progress through, players must equip themselves with various weapons and power-ups, earning upgrades through bonus rounds;
  • Global Leaderboards: Players can duke it out for the top spots on leaderboards for all three game modes in the quest to be recognized as number one;
  • Retro Techno Soundtrack: In true retro space shooter style, the game features a thumping soundtrack inspired by early 1990s techno;
  • Old School Gameplay: Nostalgia is here to stay with the traditional gameplay of the original Tempest with enhanced graphics on current generation consoles.

We can’t wait to EAT ELECTRIC DEATH!

image source: Tempest 4000

Games Room Delights: Nintendo_Master1

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There is something about seeing people’s gaming rooms that invokes our inner voyeurism, in a good way.

We are always fascinated and intrigued of each unique games room setup we see, just like Nintendo_Master1’s – you’ll have to agree (once you check out all of the pics) that it is pretty darn awesome!

Let the drooling begin!

image source: Nintendo_Master1 on Facebook

 

Retro Gamer 182: Sega Mega Drive Overload

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If you are a Sega Mega Drive (Sega Genesis) fan, then issue 182 of Retro Gamer is your mag to indulge in some 16-bit nostalgia.

From all the inside information on how Sega’s magnum opus came to be, to its developers that made it sing and become a classic console.

The regular features are back, from the Classic Moments, Minority Report to Hardware Heaven and The Uncoverted to name just a few, this issue of RG is jam packed to satisfy your retro gaming lust!

This issue is also accompanied with an Essential Mega Drive games guide and stickers, so if you are a fan of Sega’s 16-bit game changer, then there is no excuse to miss this issue – go grab it now!

 

Oz Comic-Con Melbourne 2018 Highlights

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If you missed out on attending Oz Comic-Con 2018 in Melbourne, we have you covered!

With our trusty cameras in tow (thanks Alan Ly!), we snapped quite a few photos (over 60 photos actually) to make you feel like you were there, from awesome cosplay, comic book creators, artists, vendors with tempting gear, to a Star Wars X-Wing waiting for you to enter its cockpit and some Doom shenanigans at Bethesda’s booth.

Scroll through and enjoy what was a pretty epic Oz Comic-Con 2018!

If you made it this far, please consider supporting us by shouting us a coffee so we can keep bringing you heaps more awesome content! Thank you.

 

E3 News: My Arcade To Launch Two Classic BANDAI NAMCO Mini Players

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If Nintendo can do it with their ‘Minis’, then so can My Arcade and BANDAI NAMCO!

Day two of E3 got us excited with the announcement that My Arcade and BANDAI NAMCO have joined forces and to create two new gaming devices filled with Classic NAMCO games. The new machines further expand the line of products borne out of the partnership, which already includes a set of Micro Player Arcades featuring classic titles such as PAC-MAN™, GALAGA™, and DIG DUG™.

The NAMCO Museum Mini Player will be packed with 20 classic titles and features a large vertical-oriented screen for authentic arcade gameplay. It also features dual front facing speakers for optimal sound, a detachable joystick, and back-lit marquee and coin trap. All of the titles included on the device are the original arcade versions of the games, unless there was no original arcade version available. The Namco Museum Mini Player™ is slated to release in the Holiday 2018 season (between now and end of August).

The PAC-MAN Pocket Player is a brand new 16-bit handheld console designed by My Arcade that is compact, portable, ergonomically designed, and boasts a full colour screen. The Pocket Player™ will include three classic PAC-MAN titles, including original arcade favourite PAC-MAN, along with PAC-PANIC™ and PAC-MANIA™. The Pocket Player will be available starting July 2018 at retailers such as Walmart and Amazon.

We finally got to get excited about something at E3 2018! We can’t wait to get our hands on these units!

source: My Arcade®

 

The Lost Arcade on SBS On Demand

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If you missed watching The Lost Arcade, don’t fret, you can now catch it on SBS On Demand. For those of you outside of Australia, you can catch The Lost Arcade on a myriad of streaming services.

Kurt Vincent’s The Lost Arcade is an intimate story of a once-ubiquitous cultural phenomenon on the edge of extinction, especially in New York City, which once had video arcades by the dozen. These arcades were as much social hubs to meet up and hang out as they were public arenas for gamers to demonstrate their skills. But by 2011, only a handful remained, most of them corporate affairs, leaving the legendary Chinatown Fair on Mott Street as the last hold-out of old-school arcade culture. Opened in the early 1940’s, Chinatown Fair, famous for its dancing and tic tac toe playing chickens, survived turf wars between rival gangs, increases in rent, and the rise of the home gaming systems to become an institution and haven for kids from all five boroughs.

A documentary portrait of the Chinatown Fair and its denizens, The Lost Arcade chronicles the evolution of arcades, while celebrating the camaraderie and history of a pop culture phenomenon.

You better hurry Australian peeps, as you have 29 days left (from today) to watch this on SBS On Demand. After that, you’ll have to watch it via a paid streaming service.

Sources: SBS On Demand & The Lost Arcade

Getting Our Nostalgic Fix on the PS4 with Sega Mega Drive Classics

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Let’s get this out of the way, if you are still enjoying the Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection on previous systems, then stop reading this review (even though you will be missing out!). If on the other hand you are yearning to play some classic 16-bit Sega games on your PS4, then read on. Oh yeah, Sega Mega Drive Classics is also available on Xbox One, but we don’t have a XBone, so there you go.

Now, should we connect our Sega Mega Drive console and compare the games side by side? Actually, if you are lucky enough to have a working Mega Drive console connected to your TV with all the titles that are in this Classics pack, then you know what, you should stop reading too!

Ok, we are glad we got that off our chest! Wow, two paragraphs in and we still haven’t started telling you about the games and the other bells and whistles in this nostalgia inducing package.

Sega Mega Drive Classics on the PS4 is the largest collection of retro classic games in one pack. There are over 50 classic Sega 16-bit games, ok we counted them all, there are actually 53 games (and that’s not counting the games that have region specific variants) to satisfy almost every genre under the sun, from arcade action, adventure, pinball (sort of), shooters, beat ‘em ups, fighters, puzzlers, hack’n slashers, tactical RPGs to everyone’s favourite, platformers – and there are lots of platformers!

These old favourites aren’t just dumped from their cartridges and thrown in this package, no sirree, they have had a raft of very cool modern features injected into them including mirror mode, rewind (for when you slip up), controller customisation, online multiplayer and achievements, optional emulation enhancement filters like pixel scaling and save states to save your game at any time, meaning players – both old and new, should find revisiting these retro games an absolute Sonic 3D Blast (Ed: Oh dear, that was terrible!).

Upon loading Sega Mega Drive Classics we were totally impressed by the opening title sequence, which we will leave as a surprise, but we can tell ya this much, it’s pretty darn awesome – either that or we are too easy to please. Anyway, once you stop drooling from the title sequence (unless you hit X!) you are greeted by the new-look menu system, developed by d3t, from which you can access the 53 Sega Mega Drive games and other options. The menu resembles the bedroom of an early nineties Sega fan, which is a great throwback, with dynamic time-of-day conditions, retro SEGA paraphernalia, a shelf full of the aforementioned 53 Mega Drive games, and of course, a CRT TV with the sexy Mega Drive console underneath it.

When selecting a game to play, its corresponding cart is removed from its case and then inserted into the Mega Drive console – pure nostalgic nirvana. On top of the already mentioned modern conveniences and features jammed into this package, the most important thing we can tell you is that the emulation of the games is spot-on. The word ’emulation’ may trigger negative connotations, but we are here to tell ya that this is as close as you will get to playing Mega Drive games without forking out for the console on eBay and then fishing around for the game cartridges.

We touched on this earlier, but we’ll elaborate – each game has additional options, some more than others, like region specific versions (L3), modifications (Y) and extras (R1) like target milestones that earn you specific trophies.

As we aren’t much of adventure or RPG fans, we stuck to Sega’s arcade conversions, platformers, beat’me ups and puzzle games. After playing a lot of Sonic, Ristar, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, Gunstar Heroes, Columns, the Wonder Boy and Shinobi games, we can say that we definitely felt like we were back in the early 90s – good times!

Before we go on, here is the full list of games included in this package:

  • Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle
  • Alien Soldier
  • Alien Storm
  • Altered Beast
  • Beyond Oasis
  • Bio-Hazard Battle
  • Bonanza Bros.
  • Columns
  • Columns III: Revenge of Columns
  • Comix Zone
  • Crack Down
  • Decap Attack
  • Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine
  • Dynamite Headdy
  • ESWAT: City Under Siege
  • Fatal Labyrinth
  • Flicky
  • Gain Ground
  • Galaxy Force II
  • Golden Axe
  • Golden Axe II
  • Golden Axe III
  • Gunstar Heroes
  • Kid Chameleon
  • Landstalker
  • Light Crusader
  • Phantasy Star II
  • Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom
  • Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millenium
  • Ristar
  • Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi
  • Shining in the Darkness
  • Shining Force
  • Shining Force II
  • Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master
  • Sonic the Hedgehog
  • Sonic the Hedgehog 2
  • Sonic 3D Blast
  • Sonic Spinball
  • Space Harrier II
  • Streets of Rage
  • Streets of Rage 2
  • Streets of Rage 3
  • Super Thunder Blade
  • Sword of Vermilion
  • The Revenge of Shinobi
  • ToeJam & Earl
  • ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron
  • Vectorman
  • VectorMan 2
  • Virtua Fighter 2
  • Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair
  • Wonder Boy in Monster World

The problem with a pack like this is that players will concentrate on all the games Sega left out of the mix. Granted, Sega probably could put the entire Mega Drive catalogue on one Blu-ray and flog it for $90.00, but then we would find something else to complain about – you just can’t please everyone. The games that are included are solid, bar a few questionable titles, however, just because we don’t like adventure and RPG titles, it doesn’t mean they should be excluded. Same goes the other way, if you loathe platformers, beat’em ups and puzzlers, it doesn’t mean these genres should be thrown out for more RPGs. Actually, if there was a driving game like Super Monaco GP or a motorcycle-racing-bashing one like Road Rash, then we could say that most, if not all, genres are well represented. Come to think of it, a few more shoot’em ups, like Truxton and Thunder Force would have rounded out this already pretty awesome package. Ah, we can speculate all we want, but we have to give it to Sega, they have tried to cater for the majority and we reckon they have done an admirable job.

After waffling on about this Sega Mega Drive Classics package on the PS4, the ultimate decision to buy or not buy is yours, but we’ll leave you with this little nugget – if you want to get your Sega 16-Bit gaming fix on your modern console, then you can’t go too wrong with Sega Mega Drive Classics.

Review System: PS4
Release Date: May 29 2018
Format: Xbox One & PS4 (sorry Nintendo Switch owners)
Price: $49.95

image source: Mega Drive Classics

Disclosure: Sega Mega Drive Classics [PS4] download code was kindly provided by Five Star Games for this review.

 

Behind The Scenes: Making of the Ausretrogamer Header Image

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After her awesome work on the Ausretrogamer Fun Factory, Ms Ausretrogamer’s turned her talents to creating the ausretrogamer social media header image you have all seen (and hopefully like) on Twitter and Facebook.

Check out the behind the scene of making this header image, as it it definitely wasn’t easy. The end result was all worth it!