GameFAN issue 7, Mk2, is out. In fact it’s been out for a while. It also features a review, by me, of Xenoblade Chronicles. Read on for the gossip.
Showing posts with label Retro. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Retro. Show all posts
Thursday, March 15, 2012
GameFAN #7
GameFAN issue 7, Mk2, is out. In fact it’s been out for a while. It also features a review, by me, of Xenoblade Chronicles. Read on for the gossip.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Lady Priest Lawnmower – Windows PC
I’ve programmed a new game, with vocal song! You'll love it..
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Feeling in a bit of a retro mood on Saturday I spent a couple of hours coding a spiritual successor, pseudo sequel and pretend remake to Advanced Lawnmower Simulator, a phenomenal ZX Spectrum game by famed taxidermist and Jazz dancer Duncan MacDonald, of Your Sinclair fame.
I call it (click to download):
LADY PRIEST LAWNMOWER
The story came to me in a vision while using Twitter, which I later refined over several days. The gameplay mechanics were inspired by many different circles, such as Vaudevillian theatre, The BlueMan Group, my time as a Saucier to Prince Guthry Trombert, Treasure’s Gunstar Heroes, but mainly hero to us all, Jazz Dancer Duncan MacDonald and his game Advanced Lawnmower Simulator. Or Duncs as we used to call him, the man made a fine cup of tea round the office and could play polo more than you’ve had hot dinners, son. I remember we once put a bunch of horses in the local public swimming pools to do our bit for charity.
I know a lot of retro purists complain when remakes change things too much, so I’ve kept the classic gameplay mostly as is from Advanced Lawnmower Simulator, but updating the visuals and sound for the modern age – even arranging the recording of a hard-rocking punk theme song. I also added a high-score for competitive play. Mostly though I’m proudest of the story that’s been implemented, a fine piece of gaming literature I’m sure time will judge it to be.I like to think of it as The Brothers Karamazov for the modern age, examining religious faith while at the same time weaving a complex tale of love and redemption in a time of confusion. It follows the struggles and tribulations of woman priest at a time when she questions her purpose in life, there’s an obvious love tension with Sergei, who is also her kidnapper – but! By the end of the narrative becomes her psychological saviour, helping her to come to terms with her beliefs and desires in a conclusion that I’m sure no one will see coming.
Of course if you’re less interested in story and just want the most realistic lawnmower simulator of our time, then you too are catered for. Please read the included History images detailing the origins of Advanced Lawnmower Simulator. Otherwise try my updated version, Lady Priest Lawnmower.More Tea, Vicar?
FEATURES:
* Authentic 8-bit graphics
* Over 11 colours used ON SCREEN
* HYPER-Mega 340 by 200 pixel graphics!!!
* Post-rendered Blast porcsession
* Super Audio Phonic Sounds
* Vocalised theme song by new indie band The Punk Yaks
* 180 minutes of voiced dialogue speech (may be condensed)
* Dynamically tuned pick-up-and-play control scheme
* Easy to learn, even easier to master
* Unique story script, edited down from an original draft of 2000 pages
* Tragic tale of love, redemption, faith and a woman turning into a lawnmower
* Runs on OFFICIAL Microsoft Windows Operating System
* Is NOT a virus
* Beards!
This game is freeware and can distributed and copied as much as desired.
Friday, July 1, 2011
IG Magazine, French retro mag like Hardcore Gaming 101
A look at IG Magazine, a French magazine from France (as opposed to Canada). This one appearing to be a special one-off, focusing on various retro series. It’s titled “Hors-Serie 1” (Juillet/Aout 2011), implying there will be others in the future. Priced at 9.50 Euro it’s 268 pages long and printed on very nice paper. There are also NO ADVERTS. It manages to be entirely self-funded. Best of all, is it seems to take much inspiration from Hardcore Gaming 101 and Retro Gamer magazine. I haven’t gone over every page, but there doesn’t seem to be any developer interviews, meaning it’s not quite as good as HG101 and RG, and this is a shame, but otherwise it’s a lovely coffee table style bookazine. The 19 pages dedicated to sprite transformation moves in various beat-em-ups was a particular highlight.
YOUTUBE VIDEO pt1
YOUTUBE VIDEO pt2
Friday, February 18, 2011
Smithsonian museum = incompetent?
I realise the Smithsonian has an aura of awe surrounding it; an institute of such respectability that no one would dare criticise it. Well, when they decide to take on the realm of videogames, which I have over 20 years experience in and am an unequivocal expert on, and they screw it up, I'm going to say something. The Smithsonian's Art of Video Games exhibit is flawed and appears to have been devised by an idiot.
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You go to the site, you register via an email address and are instantly given a password. You then have 80 votes to spend on games of artistic merit. This in itself is open to abuse, since you could create unlimited fake log-in accounts (which I will be doing), but the worst crime here is how utterly broken their voting system is.
You can only vote for ONE game, in each GENRE category of each system. They don't properly explain this to you, and the HTML is broken anyway in Firefox, forcing me to use Opera, but I only noticed this after I'd voted for Gunstar Heroes under the TARGET category. I then tried to vote for Ranger X but was denied. I had 75 votes left, but they wouldn't allow me to vote in one of the all-time greatest action games on the Mega Drive/Genesis. You're forced to pick between Gunstar, Viewpoint or Ranger X.
The problem here is they expect me to spend the rest of my votes in the other categories. But here's the catch people: who cares about some obscure strategy titles on the Intellivision? I can't vote for Ranger X, but I'm expected to choose either Armor Battle, B-17 Bomber or Utopia? I don't want to vote for any of them! Are they of any significance to anything? 
I realise what they're trying to do. They're trying to force our votes so we don't end up with everyone spending all their votes on Gears of War, Halo and Bioshock, which is fair enough, that's admirable. But the hamfisted way they've devised this means that great games, like Ranger X to give a personal example, are going to be overlooked because they absolutely insist that I need to vote for Utopia on Intellivision. So really, you don't have 80 votes to play around - you have 1 vote for each genre on each system for each era.
The selection of games is reasonable, I will admit, showing that they at least spoke to someone of intelligence in the gaming world. Some will complain about the absence of some games (Demon's Souls?), but the shortlist isn't my problem. They managed to put obscure stuff like Espagaluda and other niche titles in there (Jet Set Radio and Future are both on there too). But because of the way the voting has been forced, it's all redundant, since most categories have a game that everyone will vote for to the detriment of the others, and since you can only vote once in each category it kind of negates the whole exercise. Why put Star Wars next to Super Mario World? No one will ever waste a vote on Star Wars instead of SMW - whereas if they allowed a specific number of votes for ANY game within a specific era, then we'd obviously get a lot of SMW votes, but people would have the opportunity to spend some votes on other games. As it stands, I can guarantee that some great games will receive nothing, simply because of how illogically this has been devised. The only way to correct the shortcomings of this system is to create multiple accounts. I've made several different accounts with email addresses which don't even exist, purely to make use of my 80 votes as I see fit. 80 votes have now been cast, and without the shackles of their arbitrary and illogical system.Whoever devised the voting system had absolutely no clue about games or indeed voting. Or perhaps anything at all. It is a ridiculous exercise in frustration that will only skew the perception of games. Also, Jesus H Christ, Steel Battalion in the same category as Sid Meier's Pirates? Crimson Skies in the same category as Diablo II?
Who in the flaming hell categorised these? Gibbons? Macaques? Mangabeys? If academia can't understand the medium of games, then please just leave it alone and get lost.Man, screw this nonsense.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Retro Gamer 85
A look at the latest issue (actually it came out a few weeks ago).
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I want to say, firstly, that I don’t pay for these issues. I receive a complimentary copy when I write an article. In this issue it was a 2 page piece on Portopia, Japan’s first ever adventure game. But since I have the issue, I thought I’d share some screens since it generally quite an awesome mag. Also, they somehow managed to find hi-res Secret of Mana art, which I thought had been lost at Square. Surely that's the most gorgeous cover ever to grace a magazine?
GamesTM’s deputy editor Ash Day has an 8 page article on the Mana series, chock full of obscure information as you’d expect from the former retro ed on the mag.Also, funny story: on my last day at RG back in January 2007, we had an email from Square-Enix's PR department saying the guy behind Secret of Mana was going to in London the next day and would anyone like to talk to him about his games? Well, with less than 24 hours notice we didn't really have time to prepare, plus I was leaving for a new job, so no one at the office was able to head down to London and see him. EDGE may have made it, but generally it was sloppy, sloppy, sloppy PR work on SQ's part. I won't name names, but he knows who he is, so well done for not informing the press in a timely manner.
There’s a two page feature on an extremely obscure piece of hardware, the Tatung Einstein, written by former editor Martyn Carroll. RG’s new hardware format is now only two pages, which I find is rather a shame. Previously common systems, where coverage is over abundant, used to have 4 to 6 pages, the really cool obscure stuff is stripped down to only a couple, which barely scratches the surface. My interest has always been the unknown, and just as I was really getting into the Einstein piece it ended. I suppose there’s an argument about there not being enough information to fill 4 pages, but I suspect it’s more to do with the always pervasive fear that the bulk of the readers will be scared off by the unknown or less mainstream (a fear which was present even when I was staff on the magazine – despite my best efforts to nix it).
What RG has always done best is its making of articles, where developers talk about their games. This elevates an article beyond superficial nostalgia into a timeless historical document. I’ve always thought there are only two sources you need for older games. RG because it has more developer interviews than anyone else, and Hardcore Gaming 101, because we cover the stuff few others do, in more depth than anyone else does (and we have developer interviews!).
This month there’s Sonic Spinball, Jnr Pacman, Where Time Stood Still and The Pit, which apparently influenced Namco to make Dig Dug, so historically very significant. That’s 4 games which have their inner secrets revealed – you won’t find that in EDGE magazine (and yes, I still begrudge EDGE’s very existence).
Another new aspect which I like is FUTURE CLASSIC. Since it gives an excuse to look at slightly older games which aren’t quite retro yet. Most places have such a perverse aversion to anything which isn’t current, and I find that sad. People talk about older films all the time, released at any time in film’s history, but with games we seem to have this mentality of either only looking at the very old (retro), or stuff which is brand new. So I fully welcome this. Sadly, there were a few readers who have been writing in to complain about Future Classic, and in my view these narrow-minded people are damaging to games as a whole. I look at RG as an almanac of all that isn't right now. So if it's 5 years or older, I'd welcome some intelligent and insightful coverage.
Overall a good issue, even if they hardware coverage is a little too brief.
I don’t have another article due until issue 88 or 89, so don’t expect another one of these for a while, readers.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Club Nintendo advocates drugs
It’s true, the proof is in the photograph....
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Taken from the Rad Racer section in Club Nintendo magazine, the “Classic” issue circa sometime around 1990? Right there in print, it says: rush, as in high on drugs.
There is technically an explanation for this, but I thought I’d let this stew for a while before giving the explanation in the comments section. Full images of the DPS is below.
I will say this: the image is not a hoax. I have said issue of the magazine, and it does indeed say that, and it was officially printed on behalf of Nintendo in its Club Nintendo magazine.EDIT:
The simple answer for this that I can work out is: it's actually the South African edition of Club Nintendo and, due to geographical isolation at a time when the internet didn't exist, a physical copy was never checked by the London/European head office.
In the credits on the inside cover, while it says Published by Nintendo Europe, the editorial office was in Doornfontein, South Africa. Now it has to be said, the NES never really sold in SA. I've heard reports from people who swear they saw official PAL units being sold in some places, but I never saw them my entire childhood over there. The Famicom Clone reigned supreme since it would have been considerably cheaper.
Which means this magazine is probably their only real attempt at generating publicity in South Africa. At least that I saw. It was a free supplement in the first issue of a magazine called KIDZ, which was sold through schools. It featured puzzles, comics, film reviews, short stories, game coverage, and other cool stuff that 7-12 year-year-olds would like. Which makes the drug reference all the more strange.
If you check out this link:
http://www.nes-bit.com/?page_id=2818
You'll find a PDF download of what I presume is the UK edition. Notice how the design and colouring is different, though the content, assets and cover are similar. There were obviously editions made for each region, since googling Club Nintendo brings up a German version of the cover. There is no equivalent Rad Racer page that I could find in the above linked version.
My educated guess is that South Africa wasn't high on the priorities of Nintendo, they set up some kind of tiny editorial office which knew the NES was never going to make it even before it came out, and so when redesigning the magazine took liberties with it which were never checked. They would have either have had to send physical copies to Europe for verifying, or faxed them. Assuming they were printed in South Africa. Whatever the case, it's obviously an example of someone given free reign with captions and not being supervised.
Still, it was officially endorsed by Nintendo, so is a fun historical anomaly especially given Nintendo's early sanitised image.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Asian script used by Western developers
Everyone knows about Engrish, where a non-English speaker attempts to use English text often with humorously incorrect results. But what about when the west attempts to use Asian text? Wielding a foreign language without knowledge of it, especially one wholly unlike your native tongue, is as dangerous as handing a blind urologist his scalpel. It’s just asking for trouble... We’ve had a great time on the HG101 forums discussing this matter, and I bring you a sample of our thoughts..
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Two things made me think about this. First, I saw an image from my recent Metal Wolf Chaos article, showing neon signs displaying Chinese characters in the San Francisco stage. And then it reminded me of a recent video I saw on Deus Ex 3’s Hong Kong stage, which was full of neon signs with Chinese text. Now with a Japanese company like From Software I would trust their use of Chinese text, since there’s a lot of overlap between Japanese and Chinese, seeing as Japan adopted sections of the alphabet in the past. I’m no expert on the subject, but there’s a myriad of fascinating facts pertaining to the similarities and differences between similar Chinese symbols used by different Asiatic regions. It’s totally worth reading up on.
Having seen around 30 neon signs in the DE3 video, if not more, I was instantly curious to know if anyone had double checked these to avoid mistakes. I went and screen-grabbed all of them, and you can find the results on page 2 of the HG101 forum topic. Also, if you visit the Hanzi Smatter blog you’ll find not only incorrect Asian tattoos on Westerners, but also Western attempts to use the script in everything from music rap videos to T-shirts and website design - and it only makes them look foolish when it goes wrong. Would DE3 find a place on there I wondered? This in turn reminded me of the furore over Sony’s Little Big Planet inadvertently containing Koran expressions in one of the music tracks, which resulted in a recall. DE3 has enough trouble trying to live up to the expectations of DE1 fans such as myself, without embarrassing itself through incorrect text or – even worse – getting recalled because it inadvertently proclaims something offensive in Chinese.Discussion on the forum brought up a few interesting stories.
Mystery Dreamcast Game
This isn’t Western companies using Asian text, but I wanted to share it anyway. On NTSC-uk’s forum about six years ago, I recall a Dreamcast game where someone had taken hi-res images via VGA, and then enlarged some background textures which had English text. As it turns out they were ripped from the English instructions of office supplies. The text said things like keep away from humidity and so on – it was perhaps less Engrish and more copying verbatim what you found on the inside sleeve of a DVD-R box. It also raises the question: do Japanese people find English text exotic? It was for an action game I think, and so the reasoning would be that English text has more of a militaristic feel than Japanese script? Otherwise why would they go to the trouble of copying English text when it would probably be quicker to just type something yourself? I can’t recall the game (it may even have been a PS2 title, but I’m fairly sure it was Dreamcast) – does anyone else recall something like this?
No one lives forever
Again not Asian text, but Derboo’s anecdote is worth reprinting: I remember some signs in the East Germany levels in No one Lives Forever reading "Bewachung heraus!", which obviously meant to say "Watch out!" but made no sense at all in German.
The Apprentice on CDi
Probably the only Western game which features lolicon porn (Google Hot Coffee and the game’s name for the story). The game was western developed, and one of the staff must have had a serious hard-on for anime, because the whole game is full of this really awful pseudo-anime artwork, with random kanji in many places (I would photograph all the kanji used, but my camera is on holiday, so I could only find these few on Mobygames).
The first - 城 – makes sense, as explained by Trickless: In Chinese, it would usually be read as 'City', as in '城市'. In Japanese kanji, it would usually be read as 'Castle', as in '悪魔城ドラキュラ' Although I think those definitions can be used in both languages, sometimes it depends on the context. Yuan on the forums elaborated further on the symbol, and his unedited explanation on the forum highlights some interesting points: As for the example above, 「城」, it actually means EXACTLY the same in both languages, which is kinda like "brick wall" or "surrounding wall". However, depending on context and usage, you can interpret the "word" differently on BOTH languages.
Which is all fair enough. But then why does The Apprentice have random boxes with the kanji for horse on them? The game is set in a sickly sweet cartoon environment, I highly doubt the castle’s owner has a penchant for forcing his horses to live in a box. Perhaps it’s boxes full of my little ponies?Red Steel
Kobushi made an interesting example regarding Red Steel on the Wii: I think they just don't care. When I mentioned Red Steel, I was talking about the Japanese version of the game. They didn't even try to fix their mistakes for the gamers in the one country that would be 100% guaranteed to notice. The Japanese signs and billboards in Red Steel were laughably bad. Weird text, incorrect katakana, and some of the signs were completely upside down, IIRC.Fear Effect
A game where the Asian text features in puzzles. I’ve not played it so can’t comment.Strider
Not really text based, but I was fascinated to discover this tidbit about the spoken Mandarin in-game. As explained by Ganelon: Tong Pu speaks proper Mandarin with no noticeable accent. Followed up by Yuan: Yup, in Strider the Mandarin sounds like from the North. And it is a native Chinese-speaker.Deus Ex 3
Which leads us on to DE3, the game you mainly want to hear about, right?
Trickless posted first after seeing the video, saying the only thing that stood out for him was老果奴水果店 – which means Old Fruit Slave Fruit Store. A quick Google of this compound brings up Chinese forums, where they’re apparently amused by it.We discussed this for a while, with Yuan playing detective for this seemingly strange word combination:
「老果奴水果店」
Let's unravel the mystery!!
水果店 ----> water pulp infrastructure = fruit store PASS TEST
老果奴 ----> old pulp slave = someone who loves fruit PASS TEST
老果奴水果店 ----> old pulp slave water pulp infrastructure to sell = Fruit Addict's Fruit Joint ----> PASS TEST
So, nothing about old fruits slaving anyone, or selling them back in fruit form. It is a possible name for a fruit store, and not even too far-fetched at that.
This was backed up by Ganelon: Yeah, I entirely agree with Yuan. If some folks object to "Fruit Slave's Fruit Shop," then they either don't know Chinese very well or they think it's supposed to be a common term when it's not. Some of the signs are proper nouns. How silly would it be if every fruit store was just labeled "Fruit Store?" All the stores in Deus Ex 3 have proper Chinese store names. There are no obvious errors. My guess is they have an employee with a Chinese background.
I find this quite re-assuring. Not only is the fruit store name correct, but it appears to have an element of jovial slang to it – something informal which suits the context of the setting. It’s an extra layer to an already rich environment which almost no one in the west is even going to notice. If a company is willing to go to such effort, or at least have a member of staff with a Chinese background handle this content, compared say against the lazy efforts of Red Steel, then I’m optimistic for DE3. Even though almost no one would have been aware of such things, there was that extra bit of thought which went into it. Now I only hope they make the game as complex as the original, and don’t dumb it down for the mass market.There was a lot more discussed, far more than I’m willing to retype here, so if you’ve seen western games which incorrectly use Asian script, or you’re curious read more, pop by the forum.
A big thanks to everyone who helped with the translation and explanation of things.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Retro Gamer issues 80 to 84
In the spirit of Christmas my friend, and ex-boss on Retro Gamer, Darran Jones sent me some copies of Retro Gamer. I praise the magazine’s many positives, but first I must share some flashbacks.
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Despite my reservations, these are actually really amazing. In fact, they kind of make me wish I’d taken a subscription, or at least accepted Darran’s offer for a monthly column, which would have guaranteed me a regular supply. Unfortunately I’ve never bought a copy, and never will, since despite having left 4 years ago, I still harbour what many would call undue psychological baggage. So although I praise the magazine’s writers and skilled designer, I do have reservations.
As staff writer I earned £12,000 per year. That’s £1,000 a month. After tax and national insurance it was more like £750 (income tax was 22% in 2006, NI was on top of this). Then I lost something like £400 on rent, plus there were utility bills on top of that: electricity, gas, phone, water, food etc. I lived on a diet of boiled rice and tinned pilchards since that was the cheapest food I could find. Each month after all the above deductions I had £100 of “fun money” to play around with. Also, working on a retro mag, I didn’t get free games like my colleagues, unless it was retro compilations. And apart from the Sega ones (which I gave 96% to once), these compilations were mostly crap. So I was poor, hungry, overworked and seldom had games to play. My average hours per week regularly reached around 45 hours. Sometimes more.
After 6 months I thought bugger this, quit, and landed a job as sub-editor at a massive corporation, doubling my salary (yes, DOUBLING it), and halving my workload. Instead of running around to meet ludicrous page quotas per week, my days were spent casually proof reading articles in an unrelated field. This is when I realised that getting a job based on your hobby is NEVR a good idea. A hobby is fun because you’re in control of it – when it becomes a job there are rules to adhere to and you’re doing on someone else’s time, to someone else’s schedule. I stopped playing games and ended up hating them – they represented the prison cell I had volunteered for. I didn’t play games again until the winter of 2007 I ended up so burned out. Also, when your job is also your hobby, there is no middle ground, everything ends up becoming AMAZING, or ABSOLUTE CRAP, and you lose any sense of impartiality.
My advice is always this: aim for a job which pays AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE, because screw the hippy liberals, by the time you hit 25 money is the only thing that matters anymore. And make sure it’s a job which is EASY and which you are mildly apathetic towards, so you can do it proficiently 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year, FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. I really liked my new job and my new colleagues were wonderful and very carefree (working in games magazines my colleagues were all underpaid, underfed and psychologically abused by upper management). I gave my new job after leaving RG all my effort, because I could still leave it at the office, whereas on Retro Gamer I never left the office, my home became the office, the pub was the office, wandering the high street was the office.
Anyway, long story short, I wasn’t paid enough, I was worked too hard, and all of us were treated very badly by the CEOs at the top. It’s traumatised me somewhat – made worse by the fact that I volunteered for the position. If I had been forced into it, I could maybe forgive myself. And so although seeing these issues today makes me think it’s a fantastic looking mag, with some great written articles, I will never be able to see Retro Gamer without having really awful flashbacks of working long under-appreciated hours and only being able to afford a scummy apartment, drinking neat Stolichnaya and occasionally punching the wall with anger at life’s unfairness. Jeez, they paid me so little it’s disturbing. Never again.
If you’ve never worked as a professional games writer on a UK magazine though, and I implore you not to, then Retro Gamer is a pretty good magazine with the best design I’ve ever seen. Still, they don’t pay their staff anywhere near enough fucking money, so when you enjoy it, pause for a moment and think of the poor individuals who are burning away the best years of their life to create it.
THE MAGAZINE
The Mario cover had this neat gimmick like an advent calender, where you could lift each square to find a screen from a Mario, with a date of release and info. This must be one of the coolest covers I've ever seen on a games mag. Ever.
I'm not a fan of the author behind the Axelay article, but the design is so incredibly beautiful.
Retro Gamer also covers things like TV shows based on games - in this case it's Bad Influence, a UK TV show covering technology and videogames.
A big feature on the adventure games of Dynamix. Pretty good, with a lot of interesting inside anecdotes.
Desert Island Disks with Larry DeMar, written by the always excellent Paul Drury. These have always been a highlight of the magazine, with fantastic writing and some incredibly personal stories from the interviewee. DID is the gold standard for video game interviews I feel, and blows away a lot of the basic Q+A pieces phoned in by other magazines.
A detailed Making Of feature on Ms Pacman. This is another strong point of RG. EDGE magazine does one making a month, RG sometimes does three. In 50 or 100 years time, these Making Of articles will still be read, and will still be worth something. How many other magazines can claim that?
GamesTM's deputy editor Ashley Day wrote a 4 page on the Pokemon Mini, one of the most intelligently written features I've read in a while - a personal favourite in fact. So many games commentators today take the Seanbaby or AVGN approach, of moronic criticism, without trying to understand what's being covered. The Pokemon Mini might not be a hugely relevant piece of hardware, but it's still a fascinating topic when handled with decorum.
I like these Complete Guide To articles, since by showing every level, every boss and every enemy, it negates any need to play the game any more. For me, it helps put the game away, so I feel like I can move on to other titles.
Making of Day of the Tentacle. They like their adventure games almost as much as HG101 does.
The Mario issue featured a massive article on Mario as a character. It was OK, not badly written. But for my money I would have liked a bit more coverage on the Hudson ports, and perhaps an explanation for them. And furthermore, they claim that Hotel Mario is a bad game, when in fact it's a fantastic single-screen arcade style game, like a cross between Elevator Action and Donkey Kong. Also, for a laugh they really should have included a boxout on Mario as a communist. Maybe also some weird Mario fan-art for good measure. Still, without an author's byline it must have been done in-house, which meant they didn't have much time. So I can forgive them. They got famous games people like Carmac and Hawkins to explain what they thought of Mario, which is ingenious. I want to see more of the industry commenting on itself.
I know the artwork shown above has been discussed online across various forums, but I wanted to mention it again. The Mario 3 article was by Ash Day and, as usual, was of an excellent quality. Considering how flogged to death the Mario 3 topic is, he handled it quite well. Also, the design, look at how gorgeous that design is. If you look at the collection of sprites on page 2, you'll notice that every Mario sprite is doing a different animation. One is standing, another running, another running with his hand out, one kicking, another jumping, then jumping with hands out, and so on. It's not all standing poses, each is different. And that map double spread - oh lord is it beautiful. Every single magazine should look this good. Only GameFAN has matched this level of style.
A making of Leather Goddesses of Phobos. Very detailed, very interesting.
The Making of Gorf - RG usually has a good blend or arcade, computer and console coverage.
Parker Brothers!
Sid Meier!
The Primal Rage making of was fascinating. I had no idea they'd implemented so much copy protection. And I didn't even know about PR2.
This article is a personal favourite. It covers copy protection in games, from old computer games right up to Earthbound and its super difficult mode that occurs with a pirate copy. Six pages, and one of the best researched pieces I've read in a long time. Actually, I'm tempted to scan the entire feature and put it up - this is the kind of article everyone should read and have access to.
A big Donkey Kong arcade feature, including an interview with the guy who did the Atari 2600 port.
I love these spreads where they show a version of every port. Now, I've read every RG since it first started, and I'm fairly sure that this level of obsessive detail was done first by HG101. In which case, imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery.
Harvest Moon is a great series, and this is a great look at it behind the scenes. TRUE FACTS: Kim Wild isn't actually Kim Wilde, plus I used to live just two streets down from her after I left RG. Always does well researched features.
And that about wraps up the 4 issues I got. I didn't cover everything, because it doesn't all appeal to me. There's lots of stuff which I don't even read - but after flicking through these 4 issues, it does tempt me to start picking it up.
Interestingly, Retro Gamer recently won an award in the UK for best games magazine. Which they deserve considering the effort that's needed compared to other magazines.
Ignoring the fact that management DON'T PAY ANYONE ENOUGH, the writers and designers do a great job, a far better job than they should considering the low pay.
But perhaps I'm just a bitter old scoundrel.
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PS: they don't pay their staff enough.
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