Retro Gaming Australia

Independent video game books publisher Read-Only Memory, the house behind the recently published Sensible Soccer history book, has launched a new Kickstarter for a highly ambitious book covering the Sega Mega Drive.

Called Mega Drive/Genesis: Collected Works, the book aims to be the ultimate retrospective for Sega’s widely loved 16-bit behemoth. It aims to be a definitive volume – they’ve got Sega on board to give them unprecedented access to the company’s archives and personnel. The book will include production artwork, interviews, development sketches, manufacturing plans and interviews with 20 Sega personnel, some of whom have never been interviewed before.

Mega Drive/Genesis: Collected Works is currently only available in hardback with a pledge of £30 (plus £15 for international shipping) with an expected delivery date of June 2014.

Boogerman was something of a cult hit on the Mega Drive and SNES back in the mid-90s, and former Interplay developers Mike Stragey and Chris Tremmel are hoping that the fans who were wooed by the hero’s farting and burping antics 20 years ago will jump on board for another round with their Kickstarter project for a Boogerman reboot.

The pair are seeking $US375,000 to bring the game to life. They’re planning a release on Steam (Greenlight page is already up), PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and Wii U. Former Rare composer Grant Kirkhope is lined up to do the soundtrack.

THe proposed game is an expansion and reboot of the original game, retreading some of the familiar ground of the original game, as well as new levels, new abilities and a modern presentation.

So if you wanted more Boogerman in your life, here’s your chance.

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.

The Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards remake, which was successfully funded through Kickstarter last year, will be released in the second half of May according to Replay Games CEO Paul Trowe.

Replay Games’ plans for Larry don’t stop with the remake: the company will be releasing a free to play casino game. This would be the third such time that the idea has been attempted – Leisure Suit Larry’s Casino was released in 1998, and before that there was the cancelled LarryLand project. Of course, that project is very early – a design doc hasn’t been written yet.

Following the casino game, Replay is tossing up whether to remake Leisure Suit Larry Goes Looking for Love (In Several Wrong Places) or to create an all-new 8th installment in the series. Larry 2 is the only game in the series that must be played with a text parser.

Yu Suzuki, producer and director of the well-loved Shenmue and Shenmue II, is apparently considering using Kickstarter to fund the development of Shenmue III.

Sebastien-Abdelhamid, a French TV reporter, met with Suzuki at the Monaco Anime Game Show. Following their conversation, he tweeted about Suzuki’s interest in a possible Kickstarter project to fund Shenmue III and in creating an anime or manga to conclude the Shenmue story. So, if Shenmue III were to become a reality, it might not be the long-awaited game many fans are desperate for.

Shenmue III was planned for release – its development was even announced a couple of times, but the projects were ultimately cancelled. In 2011, Suzuki indicated that Sega would likely permit him to make Shenmue III, however budget was a issue to overcome. The following year, Suzuki hinted that he can acquire the rights to Shenmue . The recent revelation of a potential crowd funded Shenmue III has no doubt set many fan’s hearts aflutter.

I suppose now is a time for cautious optimism … again.

Source: Twitter

Frontier Developments’ Kickstarter for Elite: Dangerous initially seemed like, well, a bit of a desperate cash grab – a bit of concept art and a promise and not much else – combined with a huge goal. Compare that to the excellent Chris Roberts campaign for Star Citizen. And that’s not even taking into consideration how long they’d supposedly been working on Elite IV, how much money the burnt on the now shelved project The Outsider and so on.

David Braben and his team obviously listened to the criticism and got their act together – their Kickstarter campaign flourished with all kinds of neat video interviews, gameplay screens and updates. The people responded – the project has met that lofty £1.25 million goal with a day to spare.

Elite: Dangerous is currently scheduled for release in March 2014.

Some of the original creators of Shadowgate, a point-and-click adventure game from the late eighties, have formed a new development studio named Zojoi and are keen to develop a ‘re-imagined’ version of the first-person fantasy adventure classic.

The new Shadowgate boasts many new features and additions which add to the mythology and story of the original game. The re-imagining includes 60+ rooms, lots of new and improved puzzles, both a full digitally-orchestrated soundtrack and a retro soundtrack featuring the original NES music (hooray!), environmental and object-specific animations and will be available for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android devices.

The Kickstarter has 30 days remaining and over $20,000 has already been pledged by backers towards the $120,000 goal. You can back the project here, with a $10 ‘Early Bird’ pledge rewarding you with a digital copy of the finished game.

If all goes well, expect to see the new Shadowgate in November 2013.

Want to know everything there is to know about the Punch Out!! series? Melburnian Daniel Lanciana has launched a Kickstarter campaign to create a 240 page encyclopedia on Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!!.

The book is complete – the campaign is intended to help the team raise money to get copyright clearance from Nintendo and cover the cost of printing the books – vanity publishing doesn’t come cheap!

Chipping in $US10 will get you a high quality eBook version of the guide. If you want a physical copy of the book, you’ll need to up your pledge to $US125. I’m a sucker for these high quality coffee style books, so I hope this campaign succeeds.

The recently successful Kickstarter campaign for the Leisure Suit Larry remake may have been a little too successful, as the extra content that arose as a result of the game breaking its funding goals may end up pushing the game in 2013.

In a new blog post on the project’s Kickstarter page, Replay CEO Paul Trowe stated that “We were originally planning on shipping in October but since we have to pretty much design a TON of new stuff (which I think is extremely positive), there is no way in hell we’re going to make October 2012.”

Trowe added that “We MAY be able to make December but honestly, I’d rather launch the game after the holiday season and put a lot of polish (no, not Pole-ish…I said polish!) on the game and make sure we have beta tested it enough to release. There is nothing I can’t stand more than a game that was released “to make Christmas” that is just riddled with bugs.”

D. Scott Williamson, self-proclaimed Atari fanatic and former Atari employee, has started a Kickstarter campaign to fund production and distribution of a cartridge version of Star Castle for the Atari 2600.

Star Castle, a 1980 Cinematronics arcade game, was planned for release on the Atari 2600 but was never released. Williamson completed his own port of Star Castle for the Atari 2600 in 2010, which received a very positive response when shown at a fan event during the following year.

The Kickstarter campaign is already 64% funded, with 27 days remaining for backers to pledge their support. Williamson seeks $10,000 to have boards made and programmed, cartridge shells cast, manuals and labels printed, reproduction Atari games boxes created, CDs produced and such. The Star Castle 2600 cartridge version will be handmade, serial numbered and be compatible with NTSC Atari 2600 systems. A CD version will also be available, containing everything required to play the game on your PC.

More information about the project and Kickstarter campaign can be found here.

Update: D. Scott Williamson has told Eurogamer that a PAL version in the works.