Retro Gaming Australia

As part of the celebrations for the 25th anniversary of the Metal Gear series this year, Konami and Kojima Productions have been working with Square Enix to produce figures of the most popular characters from the series.

The first figure, the Cyborg Ninja/Gray Fox, is now available in Japan. You can get it for 4400yen from AmiAmi.

The lighting in this room is awful, but I figured you all might like to see the actual box and figure, rather than the same old promotional stills.

Final Fantasy’s 25th anniversary will occur in December, if I am not mistaken, and Square Enix is intending on making the most of the celebration throughout the year.

The first thing they’ve announced is a pair of piano opera CDs – in other words, piano orchestrations of classic tracks from the Final Fantasy series.

The first CD, PIANO OPERA FINAL FANTASY I/II/III released today in Japan. It features 13 tracks from the first three games in the series and will set you back 2800 yen. The second CD PIANO OPERA FINAL FANTASY IV/V/VI will be out on May 16. You can buy the first CD here.

Apparently today marks 25 years since Contra debuted in Japanese arcades way back on February 20th, 1987. You should celebrate by playing Contra, or by watching this video of Neo Contra.

Yes, he is running on top of a helicopter propeller.

We’ll have some sort of feature on the series in the coming months. Maybe Konami will get around to revealing that reboot before then.

Diablo is 15 years old. Doesn’t time fly? Just think how many left mouse clicks that is.

To celebrate the occasion, Blizzard has put up a couple of pages and interviews celebrating the occasion, which you can find here.

Wirt is still a jerk, by the way.

It has been 30 years since the Commodore 64 was revealed to the world at the 1982 Winter CES. A lot of places out there seem to be treating this as the computer’s 30th anniversary, but it wasn’t actually released until August 1982 if I have read correctly.

I’m sure plenty of you have fond memories of the Commodore 64, so you should share those memories with us either in the comments section, or in the forums.

Ten years ago, Grand Theft Auto III took the world by storm. For most, the game came out of nowhere – it seemed like there was little to no hype, the game’s E3 2001 appearance was sketchy, and the previous games, albeit hits, were not breakaway successes.

For a while, we were concerned that Rockstar would not do anything to celebrate the major milestone for the series which arguably put the company on the map and made them the major industry force that they are today.

First of all, the game is getting ported to iOS and Android devices. Whoopee!

More interesting is the 10th Anniversary limited edition figure of GTAIII‘s protagonist Claude. Sideshow Collectibles will be producing the figure, which is limited to 1,500 units and priced at $150. $150 bucks for a figure might seem crazy (and to most it is), but this is the usual price range from premium collectibles.

So a couple of months ago, Square Enix announced their plans for the 25th anniversary of Dragon Quest – namely that they’d be releasing a collection containing the first three games in the series in Japan. Now we’ve got a little more information on what’s exactly in that package.

Dragon Quest 25th Anniversary Collection contains the first three Dragon Quest games – both the original Famicom and the remade Super Famicom versions, a 130 page book of articles written by famous manga authors sharing their fond memories of the series and a special 25th anniversary medallion.

In addition to the games on the disc, there is also an archive section with concept art and planning documents for the series, special anime introductions for the first three games in the series produced by Kamikaze Douga, and a special sneak peek at the upcoming Dragon Quest X.

Seems like Nintendo could learn a thing or two from Square Enix on this front, eh?

Nintendo might be doing its darndest to forgot the 25th anniversary of the Metroid series, but the fans are not. In fact, a group of Metroid music fans, Shinesparkers have released a double CD album called Harmony of a Hunter in honor of the milestone.

The album is free to download, and includes the series’ trademark mix of ambient tunes and rock music, albeit remixed in a variety of styles, from technosynth to orchestral. The entire series is represented, from the original Metroid through to last year’s Metroid: Other M.

If you want a physical copy of the album, you can buy it from the group’s website for $US12.

Via Destructoid

As mentioned several times before, Nintendo is hosting various events during the year to promote the 25th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda series (as opposed to Metroid, which got nothing for its 25th anniversary on Saturday).

Now they’ve launched a website celebrating the occasion, which has all sorts of fancy things like an interactive series history, wallpapers and a FlipNote Studio contest for those with DSi consoles (and compatibles).

Nintendo has announced dates for the Zelda 25th Anniversary Symphony concers for Tokyo (October 10), Los Angeles (October 21) and London (October 25). An Australian concert date has yet to be announced, but I’m willing to be that it’ll be in Sydney.