Retro Gaming Australia

Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles for the GameCube marked the triumphant return of the Final Fantasy series to Nintendo hardware after 5 years. It was quite the departure from the standard Final Fantasy fare – it was a multiplayer action RPG which required use of the Game Boy Advance link feature for the full experience, much to the chagrin of some at the time.

The latest version of Exploding Rabbit’s popular Super Mario Crossover flash game is now available. The update was previously planned for release in June, but unforeseen circumstances held the game back another month.

New to version 3 are the Super Mario Bros. Special levels, based on the maligned version of the game released for the Sharp X1 computer, a selectable difficulty mode which adjusts layouts of the levels and more game specific skins.

The next project up for Exploding Rabbit is an original title – Super Retro Squad, which expands upon the formula seen in the Super Mario Crossover game and features original characters and designs.

Source: Exploding Rabbit (via Destructoid)

I am a real sucker for crossovers, so it pleases me to hear that Tekken X Street Fighter is still in production.

Street Fighter X Tekken and Tekken X Street Fighter were announced together at Comic Con in 2010. The former has been released, but the latter, a crossover based on the Tekken style of gameplay and presentation has fallen off the radar.

Speaking with Siliconera, Namco’s Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada confirmed that the game is indeed happening, but is under radio silence. The reason? They needed to give Street Fighter X Tekken room to breathe, since the game still had new content being released until recently, and had built a solid following.

We’ll hear more about Tekken X Street Fighter in the future.

Source: Siliconera

The Australian Classification Board has assigned a rating of M to the Metal Gear Solid: Digital Novel Pack, a pack containing the Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel released previously on the PSP, and its sequel Metal Gear Solid: Bande Dessinee.

The graphic novels, written by Kris Oprisko and illustrated by Australian artist Ashley Wood are based on the first and second Metal Gear Solid games respectively. They were released in paper form from 2004, before being converted to motion comics with voices provided by many of the original cast members.

There is some sentiment that this could be a sign of a separate retail release for the graphic novel pack, as previously seen in Japan, but it is more than likely that this rating just refers to the disc that is included in the Metal Gear Solid Legacy Collection, due to hit Australian retail stores in September,

Source: Australian Classification Board (via Siliconera)

Over the weekend, Bethesda announced that they will release an anthology box set for their phenomenally popular Elder Scrolls series.

Dubbed The Elder Scrolls Anthology, the box set contains The Elder Scrolls: Arena, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and its expansions Tribunal and Bloodmoon, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and its expansions Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and its expansions Dawnguard, Hearthfire, and Dragonborn.

Enthusiasts might note that the box set does not include the many spin-offs such as Battlespire and Redguard – but we think Bethesda might want to forget about those. The set also includes a map for each game. It all comes packed in a rather nice looking collectible box, too.

The Elder Scrolls Anthology will be released in September for the PC and will set you back $US79.99.

Via Bethesda

Mario’s Super Picross is a member of a rather exclusive club: Mario games that Nintendo never localised. As you’d expect, it’s very close to Mario’s Picross on the Game Boy, but the lukewarm market response to that title meant Nintendo passed on releasing the sequels outside of Japan until the rise of the Nintendo DS.

Retro Gaming Australia has jumped on the latest social media bandwagon – Instagram!

We’ll be publishing photos of items from our collection on a regular basis, and whatever other doofy crap we uncover along the way.

You can find our Instagram page here

Hagane: The Final Conflict is one of those games which flew under the radar and now commands a ridiculous price on eBay and the like, owing in part to the North American release being a Blockbuster rental exclusive, and the European print run being tiny. The concept is pretty cool – Hagane is a ninja who survives a nearly fatal attack from a rival clan and is giving a new lease on life with a cybernetic body.

Two previously unreleased Nintendo Entertainment System prototypes have found their way out of obscurity in the last week.

The first release was Dino Hockey, a bizarre take on ice hockey by Sunsoft which features dinosaurs in place of humans. What makes this release more interesting is that there was almost no coverage in the press of the time about Dino Hockey, so it was relatively unknown among the NES community. The only sighting of the game was at the 1991 Summer CES. The prototype is barely playable, but it is still an interesting piece of history.

The second release is of the scrapped NES port of Atari arcade racer Hard Drivin’. This was released as part of the 10th anniversary celebrations of the prototype focused site Lost Levels, run by Frank Cifaldi. Cifaldi had recently caught up with the NES version’s programmer, Mark Morris, who was working on the game for Tengen. As you’d expect, the game was a bit much for the NES hardware, but it’s still a pretty admirable effort.

Via RetroCollect

Hard to choose what to put into this week’s list. Lots of good stuff – some of it probably a little too pricey even by today’s standards, though.

Game Boy Advance SP – Torchic Pokemon Center Version

Super Nintendo Bundle – 5 Game Pak (Super Mario All Stars + Super Mario World) – Caution, zero feedback seller

Super Nintendo Bundle – Starwing/Starfox

Atari 7800 (unboxed) w/ 21 boxed games

Atari Jaguar w/ 17 games

Donkey Kong 64 (Nintendo 64) – Complete with Expansion Pak and removal tool

Super Mario Bros. 1, 2 & 3 (NES) – You’d want to replace the Mario 3 manual, though

HES Funblaster Pak for NES

GameCube w/ 18 games – Including Ikaruga, Luigi’s Mansion, Pikmin, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Super Mario Sunshine, Resident Evil 4 and Metroid Prime

Bionic Commando (NES)