Retro Gaming Australia

The game which pretty much defined deceptive advertising in the video game industry.

Rise of the Robots is infamous for its pre-release promotional campaign, which feature some pretty amazing (at the time) computer generated graphics. Of course when people actually loaded the game up to play it, they were presented with a smelly and pitifully basic fighting game. This ad, which is quite different to the rest of the campaign, is for the US release of the 3DO version.

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The series’ weakest link.

Streets of Rage 3 is the third and final game (so far) in Sega’s smashing beat ’em up series. Despite packing the same stellar gameplay as the second game, it doesn’t really do anything that improves on it – in fact, some aspects of the game are much worse. It doesn’t help that most of the game’s story was destroyed during localisation, not to mention the other content cuts and censoring that occured.

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One for the inferior console versions, at least.

Quake II was one of the biggest hits of 1997 on the PC, so it was only a matter of time before Activision tried to bring it to consoles as well. The results were mixed – it’s pretty impressive that the games are running on the consoles in the first place, but the compromises made are ultimately too much if you’ve already experienced the PC version – which only got better through patches and mods.

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Lemme tell ya something, Mean Gene!

WWF WrestleMania Steel Cage Challenge was the third and final WWF game published by Acclaim for the NES, but the first and only one to be released on the Master System. It was the first home console wrestling game to feature steel cage matches. The wrestlers featured in the game differ based on the system – Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, I.R.S., Ted DiBiase, Bret Hart and the Undertaker are in both versions, while Roddy Piper, Jake “The Snake” Roberts, The Mountie and Sid Justice are NES exclusive and Ric Flair, Tatanka, Papa Shango and Shawn Michaels are Master System exclusive.

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So what’s worse, The Simpsons video games, or the actual show post season 9?

The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants is the first of some 24 games based on the long running animated series. The game was criticised for being a quick cash in on release, but proved to be one of the better Simpsons video games when many of the ones released after it were far worse.

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…San Dimas High School Football rules!

Another classy LJN and Beam Software collaboration, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Video Game Adventure was loosely based around the storyline of the first film, despite not being released until around the time of the second film’s release.

Bad mullet and moustache were trademarks of the late 80s/early 90s “professional” gamers.

Gaiares is a sidescrolling shooter developed by Telenet Japan. Renovation picked the game up for US distribution. All of the ads for the game feature a “professional” gamer called Jamie Bunker, who we’re told was a video game tester since he was 12 (child labour laws, anyone?). Bunker later admitted that he never beat Gaiares, and wasn’t actually very good at shooters.

What’s old is new again! Here are your new re-releases and remakes released over the past week.

Good Old Games
ArmA: Cold War Assault (aka Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis)

Nintendo 3DS
3D Classics: TwinBee (Nintendo eShop)

Xbox 360
Resident Evil 4 HD (Games on Demand)

PlayStation 3
Resident Evil 4 HD (PlayStation Network)
Altered Beast (PlayStation Network, SCEE territories)
Fighting Force (PSOne Classics)

PlayStation Portable
Persona 2: Innocent Sin (Retail and PlayStation Network)
Fighting Force (PSOne Classics)

Another Namco/Midway/Atari partnership.

Galaxian is the first game in Namco’s Galaga series, evidently named after the far more popular second entry. Galaxian was developed with the intention of producing a superior, full color clone of Taito’s Space Invaders. Namco teamed up with Midway to bring it to arcades outside of Japan, and Midway teamed up with Atari to bring the game to homes, which is where this ad comes in.

Goddamn mushrooms.

Centipede involves the player character, a garden gnome (!) fighting against a rather large centipede. Evidently the gnome’s magic wand (or whatever macguffin he has) can transform centipede parts into mushrooms. Milton Bradley actually released a board game based on the arcade game – one of many MB did over the years.