Retro Gaming Australia

Not a whole lot going on in the world of retro gaming this week. I’ve been a bit all over the shop this week; played virtually no games, did no work on the site and have precisely squat to show for the last 168 hours. Maybe next week will be better.

Atari Flashback 2+ on the way at Atari (via AtariAge)

Atari is issuing a limited number of Flashback 2+ consoles to retailers (presumably in the US) on February 22nd. The Flashback 2+ is one of those system on a chip devices that features 40 or so classic Atari 2600 games (the site has a full list) for $US29.99. Preorder through their website and you get a free XL T-Shirt.

Interview: Chris Bergstresser at Sega-16

For their latest interview piece, Sega-16 caught up with Chris Bergstresser, one of the driving forces behind the short-lived Sega Channel initiative. The interview, while brief, does shed some light on previously unknown plans that Bergstresser and his team had for the service. Good read.

Metal Gear Solid (Game.com), A.I.: The Circuit (Xbox), Road Riot 4WD (Mega Drive/Genesis) and Monster Hunter (Mega Drive/Genesis) at Unseen64

Unseen64 has details on a bunch of cancelled games for older consoles this week. Metal Gear Solid for Game.com looks a little freaky, and A.I.: The Circuit sounds like one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard of. I played a heap of Road Riot 4WD in America, but the shots of the arcade version I looked up don’t look quite as good as what I remembered.

Game Raider: The Science of Game Preservation at 1up

This article is a couple of weeks old, but it came up on a NeoGAF thread about justifiable piracy. 1up writer Frank Cifaldi discusses his adventures in finding prototype games and releasing them into the wild, along with a bit of a discussion on why some games don’t make it to market.

Tommy Tallarico’s NES Development Stuff at 1up

A bloke on the NintendoAge forums was auctioning off some prototype stuff this week, which happened to belong to game music composer Tommy Tallarico.

The History of BioWare at IGN Retro

I don’t think much of IGN Retro, but with Mass Effect 2 out this week, I figure someone might want to read about the origins of the company that made it and many other good C-RPGs.

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