Retro Gaming Australia

Ever play through Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Mega Drive and think to yourself ‘I wonder what this looks like from Sonic’s perspective’? Well, check out the above video and you’ll soon know.

Machinima have released a video of a first person 3D Green Hill Zone Act 1 – movement is a tad wonky and speed is lacking, but it certainly looks the part. This isn’t the first such video though, YouTuber AngusFilms1 created a first person 3D version of this very level a couple of years ago, which you can take a look at here. It’s a speedier run, but lacks the environmental detail present in the before mentioned video.

Source: Retro Collect

Sure, it’s not the HD remake that we are waiting for, but this demake of Final Fantasy VII is still pretty cool.

Australian programmer Lucas Brown is giving the classic RPG the 16-bit treatment, recreating the game in 2D using RPG Maker 2003. And it looks fantastic! Since starting the project in 2008, Brown has remade the menu and battle systems, and created custom (and darling) sprites and 2D visuals, however he doesn’t plan to remake the entire game – and understandably so, it’s a big job. Brown has said that he hopes to have the first mission playable in the near future.

Sadly, the projects future is looking a little unsure as Brown has admitted that he does not have the time to the complete demake as work, love and other projects compete for his attention. Here’s hoping the Final Fantasy VII: 2D Remake’s time the spotlight recently sets Brown’s inspiration and motivation in motion once again, and we can see more of this charming project soon. Check out the media below.

Opening scenes:

Battle scene:

Source: Kotaku

A couple months back we ran a story on Peach’s Castle being ported across to GoldenEye 007 as a new deathmatch map. Well, the group behind that map has been hard at work bringing more maps across to GoldenEye 007, the latest of which is the Forest Temple from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Sogun Studios have posted a blog entry detailing the process of bringing the map across.

The ROM patch, available here, also contains the previously released Kakariko Village and Peach’s Castle maps, in addition to the new Forest Temple map.

Following a successful Kickstarter campaign, new publishing outfit Boss Fight Books will be releasing a number of books on classic video games. Each book will take what the publisher describes as a “critical, creative, historical, and personal look at a single classic video game.”

Five books have been announced at this time: Earthbound, Galaga, Super Mario Bros 2, ZZT and Jagged Alliance 2. The Earthbound book is the first planned release with a tenative release date of December 2013.

The Kickstarter campaign still has 23 days to go, so you can snap up all five books for the early bird price of $US25 for the digital version, or $US100 for both the print and digital.

Ever fancy playing a GoldenEye 007 deathmatch in Peach’s Castle from Super Mario 64? Now you can, thanks to the efforts of Sogun Studio and GoldenEye Vault.

The crew behind the Peach’s Castle map were previously responsible for porting The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time‘s Kakariko Village to GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark, which is included in this pack.

You can find the patch here. Follow the installation steps at the site and you’ll be blasting around the Mushroom Kingdom in no time.

Last night OutRun fan TAGGSTA sent us a link to a little project he’d been working on.

A couple of weeks ago, TAGGSTA had created a scale model of the OutRun arcade cabinet.

Yesterday he completed a new version of his LEGO OutRun cab model – and this time, it’s running a playable version of Sega’s popular arcade game, courtesy of an iPhone 4 and the Mame4all emulator. It’s pretty damn cool if you ask us.

We’re pretty big fans of the website Hardcore Gaming 101, and it just so happens that one of their editors, John Szczepaniak (who also appears frequently in the pages of Retro Gamer) is running a Kickstarter for an ambitious new book on the history of game development in Japan.

Szczepaniak’s book looks to cover the ground missed by Steven Kent’s Ultimate History and other gaming history books, which have focused mostly on the West. His plan is to fly to Japan, hire a translator and conduct as many interviews with Japanese game developers as he can, and then put it into print. He feels that now is the time, particularly with the 30th anniversary of the Famicom and MSX, and a number of Japanese developers, such as Warp’s Kenji Eno, having passed away in the last two years.

If Szczepaniak’s past work is anything to go by, The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers should be one heck of a book should it come to fruition, so we highly recommend that you consider backing this project.

Hot off the heels of his Super Mario Bros. project Princess Rescue, homebrew developer Sprybug has brought Mario’s cross-platform rival Sonic the Hedgehog to the Atari 2600.

A short demo ROM of the game can be downloaded from AtariAge.

The project is quite early, but it’s still pretty impressive what Sprybug has managed to accomplish in a short period of time.

Konami’s all star video game parody Konami Wai Wai World for the Famicom is a crazy little piece of Japanese exclusive software, which series a hero called Konami Man journeying through a number of worlds from Konami games such as Castlevania, and teaming up with Konami heroes like Goemon, the Vic Viper and the ever-popular Moai head.

Thanks to the efforts of Zynk Oxhyde, Konami Wai Wai World can finally be enjoyed in English. Of course, to be able to enjoy the game, you’ll need the translation patch, a copy of the game ROM and either an emulator or a flash cartridge like the N8 or Power Pak.

You can get the translation patch here

Exploding Rabbit will be releasing a third version of their popular Super Mario Crossover game in the coming weeks. They recently posted a trailer for the latest incarnation, dubbed Super Mario Crossover 3.0.

The latest version will incorporate levels from Super Mario Special, an often overlooked entry in the Super Mario Bros. series which was developed by Hudson Soft for the Sharp X1 computer. Levels will also changed based on the difficulty level players select. On top of that, there are a bunch of new map and character skins to freshen things up.

Expect to see Super Mario Crossover 3.0 pop up in May or June.