Retro Gaming Australia

Fan remakes of adventure games were a big thing back in the days before the genre was somewhat revived by Telltale and the like. Many of these projects were never fully realised, either stopped by cease and desist orders or by internal wrangling. Such things did not stop Infamous Adventures, however, as they have just released their loving recreation of Space Quest II after five years in development.

Done in a similar style to Sierra On-Line’s VGA remake of Space Quest, the game features vastly improved hand-drawn graphics, voice acting and a much improved interface.

Best of all, the game is available for free. You can download it here

David Jaffe, co-director of the upcoming revival of Twisted Metal, has revealed that first-run copies of the game in North America will include a download code good for a free copy of Twisted Metal: Black, the critically acclaimed PlayStation 2 entry in the series.

The game will be part of the PS2 Classics line that recently started on the North American store, meaning that it won’t be treated a HD makeover.

Of course, since we don’t have access to the PS2 Classics range in Australia, we can’t guarantee that we’ll get the same deal.

Time to make some more crazy money!

Crazy Taxi 2 changes the location to New York City, home of the crazy cab driver and adds the new “Crazy Hop” manoeuvre. It’s not exactly a content rich sequel, but it’s just as fun as the first game.

We’re back for 2012. Let’s start the year off with one of the biggest releases of the 16-bit era (and one of the most heavily promoted, too).

Mortal Kombat II for the 32X came out quite a bit later than the other versions (in part due to the system launching after their release), but boasted improved graphics and sound capabilities over the standard Mega Drive version. Still not a patch on the arcade version, but a competent port nonetheless.

My fellow retro gamers,

2011 was the start of a great push forward for Retro Gaming Australia. We started publishing regular content updates and articles. Our traffic grew by 500%. We launched into social media. And we even posted a modest profit.

It’s not good enough. We have proven that we can do better. Before I started working full time, our numbers for the year at that point were twice as good as the numbers at the end of the year.

It has become clear to us that our strengths lie in the production of content. While we’ll always hope that the site’s forums will play host to active discussions about retro games from an Australian audience, the interest is just not as great as we’d hoped. In fact, with the terrible economy, it seems interest in retro gaming collection is drying up. We’ve decided that trying to build a big happy community of Australian retro gaming fans is not really for us.

We’re going to shift our focus onto producing great editorial content. We want to celebrate our favourite video games, dig up stuff people have forgotten about and explore the history of the industry. We want to be entertaining without being overly cynical or resorting to cheap dick and poo jokes. There are plenty of places where you can get that sort of thing.

We will still help to promote the retro gaming community in Australia. Our friends over at Retrospekt do a fantastic job of organising events, so you should give them your support. If you are organising a retro oriented event in Australia and want a bit of a plug, contact us and we’ll be happy to accommodate you.

In terms of editorial content, you can look forward to the following over the next year:

• More feature content. We’ve planned history articles like our Duke Nukem one for a number of series. These will be joined by articles celebrating some of our favourite games, articles examining some of the worst games ever released, and explorations of video games in other media – both adaptations and portrayals.
• Video content. My capture equipment is ready. I’ll probably just end up sitting around with a beer in hand ranting on a Friday night like a sad old man
• Audio content. We have a decent idea for a podcast, but need at least one more person.
• The return of the Video Game Ad of the Day. Starting tomorrow, we’ll be bringing back advertisements from the biggest games released over the last 35 years. We’ll only be focusing games people actually care about, though
• The launch of our major project. In production for almost two years, this section of the site should provide everything you ever wanted to know (and a whole lot more you don’t care about) about video gaming in Australia and New Zealand.
• An increase in the frequency of Auction Watch.
• The return of the news (maybe).

We will now also be accepting solicitations and pitches for articles about video games. If you fancy yourself to be a decent writer and have a good idea for an article, let us know. If we like what you’ve sent us, we’ll strike a deal and pay genuine Australian currency for your work. It probably won’t be much, but we tried offering people the opportunity to write for us for free and the response was a collective “piss off”.

We’d also like to look at giving the site an actual cohesive design. If you are/know a decent designer who’d be willing to do such a thing for cheap, please contact us.

It should be a great year, so I hope you will come along for the ride.

Matt Keller
Owner & Managing Editor
Retro Gaming Australia

Rockstar Games has recently posted an article answering various fan questions about the development of Grand Theft Auto III in celebration of its recent 10th anniversary.

While there’s little real new information in the article, there is some nice concept art on show.

You might have noticed that RGA hasn’t been updating very often lately. Very astute.

There are a few reasons for this:
– It’s Q4. Nothing is happening in the world of retro because everybody is playing new games. Myself included.
– We’re working on a project behind the scenes that’s rolling out Q2 2012 come hell or high water.
– I resumed working a 9-5 day job in August after a couple of years as a freelancer. I run the site alone and I suck at managing my time.
– I had the nastiest malware attack ever last weekend. Technology and I are not getting along well at the moment.

Expect things to return to some degree of normality after Christmas.

Retro Gaming Australia has learned that Gary Garcia, co-writer of the song (and album) Pac-Man Fever has passed away.

In late 1981, songwriting duo Jerry Buckner and Gary Garcia released an album full of songs about popular arcade games, the most popular of which was the titular Pac-Man Fever track.

Jerry Buckner has written a rather touching obituary at the duo’s official website.

We at Retro Gaming Australia have been hard at work for nearly 18 months on a rather huge project, part of which is a gallery featuring the covers of all Australian video game magazines. We’ve exhausted our own resources for now, but we’ve only got roughly half of what’s out there, so we need your help to complete the project.

If you have a collection of old Australian video game magazines, access to a scanner and a little bit of free time that you are willing to donate to us, please let me know at admin@retrogamingaus.com

We need covers for the following magazines in particular:
N64 Gamer
PlayStation Gamer
Australian GamePro
Edge Australia
GamesTM Australia
Megazone/Megacomp/Sega Megazone
Segazone
GBA World
PSW
GameStar
Nintendo Magazine System
Official Australian PlayStation Magazine (Next)
Official Australian PlayStation Magazine (ACP)
Official Australian PlayStation 2 Magazine (ACP)
Total Gamer

CG sells, evidently.

Final Fantasy VII was the game that turned the tide of the fifth generation console war, bringing the underdog Sony to the top of the gaming market. With the game’s 15th anniversary coming up, you’d think Square-Enix would be looking at doing something special, but evidently not.

Search for Final Fantasy VII on eBay