Retro Gaming Australia

This groundbreaking 3D platformer launched alongside the Nintendo 64 in 1996 in Japan and North America, and 1997 for Europe and Australia. It was arguably the first killer app on the system, and blew away the competition. Super Mario 64 was the gold standard by which all other 3D platformers were judged for years to come.

The Death and Return of Superman was a major comic book event in 1992, the mass media success of which could be construed as the catalyst for the bursting of the speculative comic book bubble. Sunsoft teamed up with Blizzard in 1994 to produce a video game based on the arc. It’s a pretty straightforward beat ’em up, but it’s arguably one of the best Superman games ever made, by virtue of not totally sucking. Due to a relatively small print run and a release a year after the SNES version, the Mega Drive version can fetch a pretty penny.

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance marked the debut of the Fire Emblem series on home consoles outside of Japan. It also introduced the world to Ike, who would go on to represent the series in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and the soon-to-be-released Super Smash Bros for 3DS and Super Smash Bros for Wii U.

Out of the mansion and into the city – Resident Evil 2 had players exploring what was left of Raccoon City after a zombie infestation wiped out the vast majority of the city’s populace. One of many reasons why 1998 was the best year for video games.

Before the DualShock, there was the PlayStation Dual Analog Controller. Sony only let the Dual Analog rule the roost for about six months before introducing the force feedback enabled successor. The most notable differences between the Dual Analog and DualShock, other than the obvious lack of rumble, is that the former has longer handles, concave analogue sticks and a third mode to make it mimic the functionality of Sony’s Analog Joystick, indicated by a green LED in the middle of the controller.

Hagane: The Final Conflict is the poster child for so-called hidden gems that have exploded in price on the secondary market due to spikes in demand through increased exposure. The game is decent but not worth the $US275+ it seems to command.

Streets of Rage II is pretty much the best game on the Mega Drive. Great graphics, one of the best soundtracks of all time and arguably the best gameplay in a 2D beat ’em up.

Saturday Night Slammasters (or Muscle Bomber in Japan) is a fighting/wrestling game developed by Capcom in 1993. The game features characters designed by legendary Fist of the North Star artist Tetsuo Hara, as well as an appearance by Final Fight‘s Mike Haggar.

Widely held to be one of the worst games of the fifth generation era, Bubsy 3D is a shining example of just how wrong things could go during early 3D game development. The developer, Eidetic, did eventually learn how to make good games in 3D – they went on to develop the Syphon Filter series and became a first party Sony Computer Entertainment developer known as Bend Studio.

Glover is a somehwat divisive platformer from the fifth generation era. Some people found it to be quite charming, others hold it up as a shining example of the deluge of middling mascot platformers which largely met their demise in the sixth generation era.