Retro Corner: Bart Simpson's Escape From Camp Deadly

In the early nineties, both the Nintendo Game Boy and The Simpsons were incredibly hot property. The Game Boy was well on its way to becoming a phenomenon, and The Simpsons had already made it there – appearing on billboards, television commercial and merchandise everywhere you would look. It came as little surprise then when a Game Boy title based on the TV series was announced in 1991. This would be a follow-up to the interesting Bart Vs. The Space Mutants which, despite some awkward controls, had some innovative gameplay that fused platforming and puzzle elements. So there were high hopes for this new title.

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The Walking Dead: 400 Days Review

It has been around eight months since the first season of The Walking Dead: The Game reached its climax – it was the end of an emotional rollercoaster that had spanned almost half a year, across five episodes. The game received multiple game of the year nominations, winning many (including our very own). It connected with players in a way that very few video games ever manage to do, by introducing characters that you could bond with and actually care about.

Where can Telltale Games go from there? They have managed one of the most impressive achievements in the field of video games in recent memory. As fans eagerly anticipate the already-confirmed second season, many might begin to think that surely things can only go downhill after season one. 400 Days was initially promised as something that would help tide over fans until season two was released. Rather than be a standalone entity, Telltale have released the episode as DLC for season one – calling it a “special episode”. This should be a clear statement that fans shouldn’t necessarily expect a masterpiece of the same scale as season one with 400 Days. This is a different beast entirely.

Click here to read the full review.

Retro Corner: Rival Turf

When the arcade smash hit scrolling beat-em-up from Capcom – Final Fight – was ported onto the Super Nintendo in 1991, the game was a huge success. Considering the limitations of the home console, Capcom managed to put together a very faithful adaptation, that was very close to the real arcade experience. Except for one glaring omission – there was no two-player option.

 

Of course, many fans noticed this and the fact became a real issue. Players who had enjoyed the game greatly in their local arcades wanted to play through at home with a friend, as scrolling beat-em-ups are always more fun when played with a partner. Other game developers obviously noticed this fact too, and Japanese developer Jaleco looked to take advantage of this shortcoming just a year later.

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Retro Corner: Pen Pen TriIcelon

When gamers think of the SEGA Dreamcast, the inevitably think back to the first-party hits, such as Sonic Adventure and SEGA Bass Fishing, or arcade-perfect ports like Crazy Taxi and Soul Calibur. Or maybe they look back fondly at the cult classics, such as Shenmue and Skies of Arcadia? Either way, there are the select few games that hold a place of honour in the Dreamcast library, followed by the many which just weren’t really good enough.

Of course there were also the many great titles, or under-appreciated gems, which perhaps didn’t quite capture the hearts of the public or were maybe even a little too strange for the tastes of general gamers. One such title was actually one of the launch games for the ill-fated SEGA console, and that game was Pen Pen TriIcelon.

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The Vault - Top Ten Lucasarts Games

Back at the start of April, the gaming community was rocked by the news that LucasArts – one of the most well-known and respected names in the video game industry (historically speaking) – was to be closed down by their parent company Disney. Of course, LucasArts had been a sleeping giant for many years now, struggling to reach the heights of their early days as LucasFilm Games, and their subsequent domination of PC gaming in the early nineteen-nineties.

Many modern or casual gamers won’t blink an eye now that LucasArts is gone, but for those who grew up with the games that the company produced, the games have left many, many lifelong memories. Whether you love the point and click graphic adventures made using the SCUMM engine, or you enjoyed becoming a Jedi in their Star Wars titles, there was quite a selection of different genres that LucasArts worked on across their back catalogue.

Click here to read the full article, and reminisce and look back at ten of the best gaming titles from the house that Lucas built.

 

Retro Corner: Star Wars Jedi Knight - Dark Forces II

The closure of LucasArts Games has left many gamers around the world somewhat shell-shocked and saddened. And for good reason. LucasArts certainly created many of the greatest and most memorable video gaming titles when I was growing up. They produced a massive stable of top-class games – both original ones and movie tie-ins – that captured the imagination of a generation of players.

Personally, being an adventure game fanatic, I love the graphic adventures produced by LucasArts in the late nineteen-eighties and early nineties, with The Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango – and many more – all ranking high in my list of the top games of all time. However, if adventure games is the first thing that fans think of when they hear the name LucasArts, the second thing would definitely be Star Wars. For better or worse, LucasArts produced a wide array of titles based on the Star Wars universe that George Lucas created with the first film in 1977. Strategy games, racing games, desktop utilities – nothing was safe from the merchandising of the Star Wars brand. And today we are going to take a look back at one of the most successful uses of the Star Wars license in gaming, the first/third-person shooter Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II.

Read the full article here.

 

Surgeon Simulator 2013 Review

What do you get when you put several British game designers together in a room with only forty-eight hours to create a new and interesting video game? Apparently, you get Surgeon Simulator. The small team at Bossa Studios put out their own “interesting” take on Heart surgery at the last Global Game Jam and since that time it has acquired somewhat of a cult following.

Originally released as a free-to-play browser-based game after its short, forty-eight hour gestation period, it has now been given the go-ahead by Steam Greenlight for release on said gaming platform, complete with the snazzy new Surgeon Simulator 2013 title.

See the full review of this really strange title by clicking here.

 

Retro Corner: Star Trek 25th Anniversary

The recent re-boot of the Star Trek film franchise by J.J. Abrams has opened up a whole new world of possibilities for the crew of the Starship Enterprise. To say that the original cast of William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, et al had already had their time in the sun – and perhaps even outstayed their welcome a little as they got older – is certainly no over-statement. And by the time that the crew of The Next Generation took over the movie series, they were already past their prime too.

Things needed shaking up, and the man behind innovative television series LOST has somehow managed to re-imagine the iconic crew and bring them to a new audience – but at the same time without aggravating and alienating all of the enthusiastic long-term fans. So it is little surprise that this year both a sequel to the re-launched film, and an accompanying video game, will be released shortly. In this new game from Namco Bandai Games and Digital Extremes, players will get to control both Captain Kirk and Mr Spock in co-operative action.

In the meantime, take a look back at Star Trek 25th Anniversary by clicking here.

 

Retro Corner: Film to Game Adaptations

So, a news story has broke that your favourite film is to be made into a video game. For most gamers this would some alarm bells rather than rejoicing and dancing in the street.

With the recent critical-flop that was Aliens: Colonial Marines, anticipation had been building for years that finally we were going to get the classic video game in the Aliens universe, that the source material deserves. But somehow – through a combination of many factors – the game didn’t live up to its billing and it will be remembered as just another failed movie adaptation.

Many are rushed out in time to coincide with the theatrical release of the film, meaning that not enough time and care has gone into the title. Others may come years after the film was popular, trying to leech off the success of a well-loved property, yet somehow manage to miss the point of the film entirely.

See the worst offenders by clicking here.

Retro Corner: Dynamite Cop

When Die Hard 4.0 was released in cinemas back in 2007, most movie fans would have been forgiven for thinking that would be the end of the saga for Bruce Willis and his John McClane character. What more could he do? This latest movie had passed the torch in a way from the bombastic physical action films of old to a more modern, technological thriller – complete with a new young protagonist. However, just as his enemies have learned in all of the previous films, you just can’t keep John McClane down, and Bruce Willis is returning to the role this February in the fifth film in the series, A Good Day to Die Hard.

Now, there have been a few licensed games based on the Die Hard saga, and as you would expect, there have certainly been some mixed results, but perhaps the most interesting Die Hard-related games are the two Dynamite Deka titles from SEGA. The first game was released as Dynamite Deka in the Arcades in Japan in 1996, before getting a SEGA Saturn home console version. It was a Final Fight style arcade beat-em-up, that featured several police officers infiltrating a skyscraper in order to save the daughter of the President from terrorists.

For the full article, click here.