Retro Gaming Australia

Filling our Mortal Kombat ad requirement for the month.

Mortal Kombat CD is the Mega CD port of the first game in the series. The game is packed with typical early CD game gimmicks – it even opens with a (low quality) version of the “Mortal Monday” commercial. While not quite up to the standard of the arcade game in visual terms, the sound is more than adequate and the gameplay is quite faithful. The load times are absolutely awful, though. This ad is an early teaser – the final version of the game had an MA-17 rating due to the infamous blood code no longer being required.

A mainstay during a misspent youth.

NBA Jam was a case of the right game at the right time. The popularity of basketball was at its peak and NBA Jam let you play as your favourite players (except the then temporarily retired Michael Jordan) and do all kinds of reality breaking dunks and lay ups. This ad is for the home release, which was wildly successful.

We’re back for 2012. Let’s start the year off with one of the biggest releases of the 16-bit era (and one of the most heavily promoted, too).

Mortal Kombat II for the 32X came out quite a bit later than the other versions (in part due to the system launching after their release), but boasted improved graphics and sound capabilities over the standard Mega Drive version. Still not a patch on the arcade version, but a competent port nonetheless.

The bitch is back!

Alien Trilogy was an early 3D era first person shooter developed by Probe Software for Acclaim. The notion of it being based on a trilogy is something of a misnomer, since the game clearly draws the majority of its inspiration from the middle chapter of the trilogy, Aliens (but then just about every first person shooter under the sun does, no?). Pretty cool at the time, but it didn’t really age well. This ad was for the slightly belated Saturn release.

Search for Alien Trilogy on eBay

A guilty pleasure.

The Simpsons: Bart’s Nightmare was the family’s first original outing for 16-bit consoles. Bart falls asleep while studying for a test or writing a paper or something, and you have to round up the lost pages from his work in a variety of mini-games that range from good to downright terrible. This ad is for the later Mega Drive release – the game was exclusive to the Super Nintendo for a short time.

They left out “Four times as hard!”

After the success of Double Dragon II: The Revenge on the NES, Technos decided to create an original version of Double Dragon III, rather than port the far more technically accomplished arcade version to the home systems. However, unlike The Revenge, the two versions of Double Dragon III share nothing in common beyond the same title.

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.

Search for Steel Cage Challenge on eBay

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.

Search for Bart vs the Space Mutants on eBay

The legendary Bock, founder of SMS Power has posted a bunch of images from an unreleased port of NBA Jam for the Master System.

Little is known about the port, other than it appears to have been cancelled in 1994, and offers 2 player capabilities that were left out of the similar-but-actually-released Game Gear port. Bock is led to believe that the port was being created internally at Iguana Entertainment.

The prototype ROM will be circulated in the coming weeks through SMS Power.

You got Starship Troopers in my Turok, you derivative bastards.

Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M. was based on the Armorines comic created by Valiant before Acclaim bought them out. While the original series focused on a crack team of government operatives, the video game was basically a cash-in on the cult-classic film adaptation of Starship Troopers. The game was poorly received due to technical shortcomings.