Retro Gaming Australia

Anthony and Nicola Caufield, a husband and wife British filmmaking team have a dream. A 90 minute documentary about rise of the British video game industry between 1979 and 1996 entitled From Bedrooms to Billions. The couple has been working on this project for nearly four years, and has been turned down by just about everyone under the sun, including a heartbreaking last minute withdrawal of funding from the BBC.

They’ve turned their attention to crowdfunding website Indiegogo in the hopes of getting the project finished. The fundraiser is currently at about $4,500 with 25 days to go. The goal is $30,000. Pre-production has been completed and several interviews filmed (including the likes of Julian “Jaz” Rignall, Archer MacLean and Iain Lee), with the filmmakers ready to go into full production mode when they’ve got the money.

Like your usual crowdsourcing project, there are a number of perks up for grabs for those who pledge at specific tiers, including portraits drawn by legendary Crash and Zzap 64! artist Oliver Frey.

Via Eurogamer

A couple of months ago we published a story confirming that Pix’n Love Publishing’s The History of Sonic would be seeing an English release in June.

After hearing little from the publisher about the release of the book over the last three weeks, we’d assumed the worst. Fortunately, it appears that Pix’N Love will be teaming up with Udon Entertainment to bring the book to a wider audience. Udon has regularly teamed up with Capcom and Sega to release localised versions of their art books, as well as publishing a long line of comics based on Capcom characters.

Unfortunately, the release date of the book has been pushed back all the way to late October. Hopefully that means that Udon will be working with Pix’n Love to ensure that the quality of translation is up to par, since that was the only weak point of the first two History of Nintendo books.

You can pre-order The History of Sonic here.

Source: GoNintendo

Matthew Smith’s ZX Spectrum classic Manic Miner has dug its way through to the Xbox Live Indie Games service.

For 240 MSP (about $AU4), you can get your filthy paws on this upgraded version of the game (called Manic Miner 360), which includes a few enhancements like a toggle between a full screen and portrait display, pixel filtering, auto save, an option for infinite lives, and that all important authentic ZX Spectrum sound.

Although you cannot officially download XBLIG stuff from an Australian Xbox 360 account, setting up a UK or US console and purchasing points from a reputable online store should eliminate that inconvenience.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine

It’s Mega Man’s 25th anniversary in December, and although Capcom is mostly focusing on the earlier Street Fighter series anniversary, they’re not leaving their most prolific character in the dark.

The first piece of merchandise for the anniversary to be revealed is the Rockcan, a 10 disc soundtrack bringing together the original tracks from Rockman/Mega Man 1 through 10, as well as the arranged tracks from the PlayStation Rockman Complete Works re-releases in the last 90s. It’s packaged together with a small booklet in a case that’s shaped like an energy tank.

The Rockcan will be out September 19 and will set you back 14,700 yen (~$AU184). You can order it here.

Source: Rockman Corner

Good Old Games is running a new promotion called Battle of the Games, where two select titles will go head to head each day from June 20 to July 6 (Australian time).

Users will vote for their favourite game out of the two each day – the winner will be discounted by 60%, while the loser will be discounted by 40%. No matter the outcome, you’re getting stuff for cheap.

Today’s fight is between Series Sam: The Second Encounter and Postal 2 Complete.

Bethesda’s Doom 3: BFG Edition, the prettied up version of id Software’s 2004 hit, will be released on October 16 for North America and October 19 for Europe.

The package includes The Ultimate Doom, Doom II: Hell on Earth, remastered versions of Doom 3 and Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil and the new 7 level pack “The Lost Mission” and will set you back $US29.99 on the PC and $US39.99 on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

We look forward to getting our monster closet action on then.

A fan translation of the 1993 PC Engine classic Castlevania: Dracula X Rondo of Blood is now complete. Titled Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, the patch translates the in-game text to English and replaces the games audio with the PSP remake’s English dub.

Castlevania: Dracula X Rondo of Blood was first seen outside of Japan in 2007 in the form of a 2.5D remake featured in Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles for the PSP which also included an unlockable port of its sequel Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

The patch can be downloaded here.

Source: Retro Collect

The silent hero of the Half-Life series, Gordon Freeman, will be available in action figure form this September, courtesy of NECA.

The figure will set you back $US18, and has twenty points of articulation, a crowbar, gravity gun and a head crab.

You can preorder the figure here.

Pokémon Trading Card Game, titled Pokémon Card GB in Japan, is a video game version of the super popular tabletop trading card game based on the Pokémon video game series. Pokémon Trading Card Game released in 1998 (2000 outside Japan) for the Game Boy Color and was received well by both Pokémon fans and industry critics alike. It is no surprise that game received a sequel, entitled Pokémon Card GB2: Great Rocket-Dan Sanjō! (Pokémon Card GB2: Here Comes Team Great Rocket!) – sadly, it was Japanese-exclusive and never saw a western release.

Enter Pokémon Trading Card Game 2: The Invasion of Team GR!, an English fan translation of Pokémon Card GB2. ROM hacker Artemis251 has completed the patch which enables English-speaking fans to finally play the Pokémon Trading Card Game sequel, featuring a new group of baddies called Team Great Rocket, the ability to play as a female character and cards exclusive to Japanese vending machines.

All you need is the original ROM file for Pokémon Card GB2: Great Rocket-Dan Sanjō! and the fan translation patch which you can download here, and you’re good to go.

Source: Retro Collect

Nintendo eShop (Australia, Europe)

Wii Virtual Console
Mega Man X2 (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) – 800 points

3DS Virtual Console
Sonic Blast (Game Gear) – $AU7.50

Nintendo eShop (North America)

3DS Virtual Console
Donkey Kong Jr. (Nintendo Entertainment System) – $US4.99

PlayStation Store (Australia, Europe)

New Releases
Arc the Lad III (PSOne Classics) – $AU8.45
Football Generation (PS2 Classics) – $AU1.95

Good Old Games

New Releases
Fragile Alliance – $US5.99
Silent Storm 2 – $US9.99

Discounts
Ubisoft Summer Selection – 50% off the following:
Beyond Good & Evil – $US4.99
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time – $US4.99
Rayman – $US2.99
Rayman 2: The Great Escape – $US2.99
Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc – $US2.99