Retro Gaming Australia

Skate or Die: Bad ‘n Rad is an oft-overlooked early Game Boy platformer. Players have to manage their skater’s momentum to negotiate their way through some pretty taxing levels – it’s a bit frustrating at times, but the concept is pretty neat.

As an Australian, I should theoretically have no understanding of ice hockey. However, acquiring NHLPA Hockey ’93 as a kid changed that. It’s arguably the best version of video game hockey EA Sports produced in the 90s – a lot of people will tell you NHL ’94 is better because of the inclusion of official team logos and one timers, but the 1993 game has fights, proper injuries and plays just as well as NHL ’94 anyway.

Sonic Adventure 2 was released to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the series debut in 2001. The 10th Anniversary Birthday Pack release of the game is well worth tracking down. The game itself…well, the Sonic bits are pretty good, but the rest of it…yeah.

Working Designs’ localisation of Lunar: The Silver Star Saga Complete is one of the most sought after PlayStation releases, due in large to the fantastic package the publisher put together when releasing the game, which included a few trinkets, an art book and CD soundtrack.

Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was one of the last big releases for the 16-bit consoles for Acclaim, who by that point was shifting resources onto the Saturn and PSX. The game is kind of impressive, given what the developers were working with – weak systems and limited cartridge space, but it is quite compromised when compared to the full arcade experience. Sheeva was the only character lost, but the number of stages was severely limited.

This ad can be used as an example of an instance where a good game was produced from a lousy movie (Alien 3), and a lousy game was produced from a good movie (Terminator 2). It’s not incontrovertible proof that bad movies make good games and vice-versa, because The Crow: City of Angels game we showcased last week exists.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is the most divisive game in the Legend of Zelda series, largely thanks to its spirit-breaking difficulty spikes. Seriously – if you can finish this without save states, you are my hero.

Soulcalibur II was the most successful fighting game of the sixth generation era, by in large due to the amazing upgrade its predecessor received when it was released on the Dreamcast. It was the first game in the series to see “guest fighters” – Link for the GameCube version, Heihachi Mishima for the PlayStation 2 version and Spawn for the Xbox version. Funnily enough, the GameCube version was the best selling one.

The Crow: City of Angels is universally recognised as one of the worst games of the fifth generation era, which shouldn’t surprise you given that it was published by Acclaim.

The Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak boosts the RAM of the Nintendo 64 from 4MB to 8MB. Most games used the memory expansion for high resolution modes, boosting the outputted resolution from 320×240 to 640×480. Unfortunately this typically resulted in even worse framerates (looking at you, Turok 2). A number of later generation games either required the Pak (Donkey Kong 64, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask) or greatly benefitted from its use (Perfect Dark).