Retro Gaming Australia

I am in a bit of disbelief about it being a month since our last Retro Reading post, but there hasn’t been much going on in the world of retro. There has been plenty going on behind the scenes of RGA though – new site features, content planning, and an overhauling of the forums. We’ve even started to update regularly with book reviews on Fridays and the new daily Video Game Ad of the Day.

Retro News
Guardian Heroes is headed to Xbox Live Arcade this year for 800 Microsoft Points. Frankly, I’d use that money to buy a JP Saturn copy because the cleaned up graphics don’t look so good. Apparently it’s a filter you can turn off, but still.

Atari’s Greatest Hits are now available on iOS devices. It’s $US0.99 for a bundle of games or $US14.99 for the lot. Personally, I’d go with grabbing Activsion Anthology and Atari Anthology for the PlayStation 2 or Xbox, and playing these games with a controller instead of the hopeless touch screen controls utilised on the iPhone et al.

Crimson Nocturnal, the translation group responsible for the patch for SaGa 2, has split up. You can read their reasons for calling it a day at their website.

A new translation patch for Mother (or Earthbound Zero) has been released. This retranslation is for the Game Boy Advance version of the game in the Mother 1+2 pack (note that Mother 2/Earthbound is not translated with this patch). It also adds a few optional items that help players contend with its high difficulty and encounter rates.

A trailer for the Tetris World Championships documentary Ecstacy of Order: The Tetris Masters has been released.

Events & Gatherings
The Mana Bar will be hosting a Mario Kart 64 tournament at their Brisbane venue on May 24th. The event gets under way at 5PM, entry is free and there are some Grill’d burger vouchers on offer for the winners.

Our friends over at Retrospekt are planning a bash to coincide with the launch of their new website. If you’re in Adelaide and are free on June 4th, head over to Hotel Metro after 8PM for the festivities. Entry is free, and music comes courtesy of DJ Tr!p and other chiptune artists.

Recommended Reading
The Making of Crusader: No Remorse at The Gaming Liberty
This article is about a year old, but I found it during the week while reading about one of my favourite games from the golden age of PC gaming – Crusader: No Remorse. The author of the article tracked down a bunch of people who worked on the game, along with two of the actors who appeared in the game’s video sequences.

31 Homebrew Games Worth Playing at 1UP
1UP’s Ryan Winterhalter has dived into the dark world of homebrew development for retro systems and made a list of the ones he considers to be worthwhile. The games are all original efforts rather than ROM hacks, and there are a few demakes, which are featured in our next link.

Best Playable Demakes at 1UP
Ever wondered what Mega Man would be like on the Atari 2600, or how God of War would fare as a Game & Watch release? Read this article to find out more about demakes, a growing trend where indie developers produce versions of new games on older systems.

Kakuto Chojin at Hardcore Gaming 101
Kakuto Chojin was one of Microsoft’s early first party “efforts” for the original Xbox. It’s a fighting game, and not a particularly good one – it’s better known for being pulled from shelves (and having its PAL release canned). One of the game’s characters, Asad, is depicted as a devout Muslim in a way that’s less than ethnically friendly, but what ended up getting the game withdrawn was the use of versus of the Koran in Asad’s background music.

10 Unreleased Video Game Consoles at PCMag
Benj Edwards of the Vintage Computing and Gaming Blog has produced an article for PCMag on a couple of consoles that didn’t make it to market. You’ll be able to guess a few of them, but there are some surprises in there.

Sonic Duel Toys at Sega Memories
There are some strange licensed items featuring Sonic out there. This is a set of dueling tops featuring Sonic characters – quite an oddity. Seeing the old style Dr. Robotnik makes me nostalgic…then sad.

Super Famicom Hotel Box at SNES Central
SNES Central recently got their mits on a Super Famicom Hotel Box, a system which as the name suggests, was a Super Famicom specially designed for use at hotels. It was a coin operated device – slot your 100 yen in and you get five minutes of playtime on a selected range of titles.

Super 8: The Ultimate Downgrade Peripheral at Dizrhythmia
Ever wanted to play NES games on your SNES for some reason? With the Super 8, you can! Dizrhythmia recently got his hands on one of these devices and gave it a thorough run through on his blog.

The Extraordinary, Underground Museum of Soviet Arcade Games at Kotaku
When we talk about the world of gaming, we so often seem to only refer to Japan, North America and Western Europe. There is, however, a rich gaming culture in many of the places of the world which get overlooked. This article focuses on the world of Russian arcade games, both video and electro-mechanical.

Unseen64 Updates
G (Xbox)
Firefly (PSX)
Professional Sports Car Racin (PSX/PC)
Monstrous City (PSX)
The Big Comfy Couch (Xbox)
Dragon Horde (PC)

Virtual Console
The Ignition Factor (SNES)