Retro Gaming Australia

The creator of Shadowrun, Jordan Weisman, and his new company Harebrained Schemes are looking to make a new Shadowrun game and have launched a Kickstarter campaign to make it happen. Shadowrun Returns will be a 2D, single player, turn-based RPG which returns players to Shadowrun’s much loved world of magic and machines. It just might be the game that fans of the series have been waiting for.

Shadowrun Returns, for PC and Apple and Android tablets, has until April 29 to reach its $400,000 goal. With 6,995 backers thus far, a total of $325,790 pledged and 24 days to go, it looks like Shadowrun Returns will become a reality.

WayForward Technologies, creator of Shantae and developer of many great 2D titles of recent years including A Boy and His Blob (Wii) and Contra 4 (NDS), is partnering with Majesco to bring us Double Dragon: Neon.

The high-definition 2D update of the classic side-scrolling brawler is an 80’s style reboot featuring a familiar mix of martial arts and weapon-based combat. “The gameplay is the same brand of 2D side-scrolling popularized by the original game several decades ago, albeit with even more of a wild, 80s flair” says IGN.

Players will reprise their roles as Billy and Jimmy Lee to fight the villainous Skullmageddon and rescue love-interest Marian.

Double Dragon: Neon is scheduled for a July release on both PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade.

Hirokazu Yasuhara, designer of gameplay and stages for early Sonic the Hedgehog titles, has joined Nintendo.

Both Yasuhara and Nintendo have confirmed his new position at Nintendo Software Technology in the U.S., Gamasutra reports. Nintendo Software Technology has developed many games for Nintendo consoles including Metroid Prime Hunters, Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem and various DSiWare titles. However, the Sonic co-creator’s new role at Nintendo currently remains a mystery.

Yasuhara worked on the Sonic franchise on and off up until 2002, he then moved to Naughty Dog as a senior game designer working on both the Jak and Daxter and Uncharted series.  Before his recent shift to Nintendo, Yasuhara was senior design director at Namco Bandai Games America.

Prince of Persia creator, Jordan Mechner, has finally found his long lost original Apple II source code for Prince of Persia (1989).

Mechner’s dad had been doing a spot of spring cleaning, and happened upon a box of old games in the back of a closet which he shipped to his son. Upon opening the carton, Mechner was surprised to find the missing source code in amongst a bunch of Spanish Drosoft versions of Prince of Persia and Karateka.

On his website, an excited Mechner wrote “The carton arrived yesterday. My jaw dropped when I saw what was inside.”

Locating the lost source code brings Mechner’s ten year search to an end. He intends to convert the disks content into a more modern and useable version of the game, which he plans to share online.

Square Enix have today confirmed their involvement in Google’s April Fools’ Day shenanigans, the distinctively Dragon Quest inspired Google Maps 8-bit for NES.

A U.S. representative has told Game Informer that Square Enix provided assets for the collaborative project, stating “Google came up with the idea, then we provided the assets and helped them to create the map.”