Retro Gaming Australia

One of the best PC RPGs of all time, Fallout, is available for download free of charge from Good Old Games for the next 48 hours.

Normally the game would set you back $US4.99

The servers are being hammered as you’d expect, but you don’t need me to tell you that you totally need to download this.

Disney has confirmed development of Disney Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion for Nintendo 3DS, which sees Mickey Mouse return once again to the Castle of Illusion in a homage to the classic Sega Mega Drive, Master System and Game Gear title Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse.

The Castle of Illusion has fallen into the Cartoon Wasteland, an alternate world home to 80 years of obscure and forgotten Disney characters and theme-park attractions introduced in the first Epic Mickey game. Fans of the original title may recall the evil witch Mizrabel, who is back and using the Castle of Illusion to capture currently popular Disney characters and drain them of their ‘cartoon essence’ in an attempt to escape Wasteland.

Players reprise their role as Mickey Mouse, wielding his magic paint brush to draw and erase objects with paint and thinner respectively. The game also has a cool drawing and painting mechanic that lets you create rough versions of objects that magically transform into classic Disney style 2D illustrations. These can then be transformed into full color, fully rendered 3D visuals.

The game is being created by DreamRift (makers of the cult hit Monster Tale for DS) in collaboration with Disney Interactive’s Junction Point, and is scheduled for release alongside Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two later this year.

We at Retro Gaming Australia would love to see more retro-inspired rewards in the Australian Club Nintendo Stars Catalogue. So, it is fair to say we were a tad jealous when we spied the Japanese Club Nintendo offering original polo shirts featuring designs from some of our favourite Nintendo titles.

For 550 points each, members can reward themselves with a polo shirt for which they can choose both the colour (from a selection of eight) and logo from one of six which represent Animal Crossing, Game & Watch, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros.

Personally, I’m partial to the pink shirt with Animal Crossing’s Rover as the logo.

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.

Neo Geo AES collectors are a different breed. It takes a certain something to part with thousands of dollars for the best games on the system, particularly when the MVS versions are virtually identical and cheaper (though more prone to being fake).

Now you can celebrate the craziness of AES collecting in NGCollector, a homebrew game for the Neo Geo Pocket Color. How meta!

NGCollector puts you in the shoes of a dedicated AES collector, looking to get a complete collection of games – through any means necessary. Including robbing convenience stores, gambling and flipping burgers.

You can get the game here.

A string of recent commercial failures isn’t going to stop the Rampage franchise from making the leap to the silver screen. New Line Cinema is behind the film, and hopes to make something along the lines of disaster pic Independence Day.

According to Variety, movie exec-cum-screenwriter Ryan Eagle (On a Clear Day) will be writing the script and John Rickard (Horrible Bosses) will be producing. Apparently film is a priority for New Line parent Warner Bros. who also owns the Rampage IP after their consumption of Midway’s leftovers.

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.”