Retro Gaming Australia

Gradius: The Interstellar Assault (or Nemesis II: Return of the Hero) is the second Gradius game for the Game Boy. It may well be the only Gradius game that doesn’t have Moai heads. A colour version of the game can be found on Konami GB Collection Volume 3 for Japan and Volume 4 for Europe.

For the longest time, many outside of Japan were led to believe that Snake’s Revenge was the true sequel to Metal Gear, but upon encouragement from one of the guys that worked on Snake’s Revenge, Hideo Kojima set out to make the real sequel – Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. It was not until the release of Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence some 13 years later that the West got an officially translated version of the game.

This week’s episode of Retro Gaming Theatre looks at Konami’s 16-bit masterpiece Rocket Knight Adventures.

On the surface, Rocket Knight Adventures seems like another “me too” furry animal platformer looking to cash in on the success of Sonic the Hedgehog, but really, it’s a wonderfully designed, rather challenging platformer with some excellent boss battles, wonderful level design, amazing soundtrack and amusing cutscenes.

This video covers the first stage in its entirety.

Metal Gear Solid (known as Metal Gear: Ghost Babel in Japan) for the Game Boy Color is an alternate story (i.e. non-canon) set seven years after the events of the original Metal Gear. It plays a lot like Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, but with the wall-flattening introduced in the PlayStation game. It’s arguably one of the best GBC games around.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night marks the start of a dramatic shift in the series, moving away from pure action toward a more exploration based gameplay with light RPG elements – the so-called “Metroidvania”. Finding a PAL copy of the game is an expensive endeavour due to high demand.

Contra: Legacy of War was the first of two maligned 32-bit entries into Konami’s popular series of run and gun platformers. Konami outsourced development of the games to Appaloosa Interactive, better known as Novotrade International, the developers behind Ecco the Dolphin. Due to poor fan reception, Konami has effectively retconned the game out of existence.

Hideo Kojima is known for being active on Twitter, and today he let loose some knowledge regarding his two cult classic titles, Snatcher and Policenauts.

Snatcher was originally known as Junker, after the protagonist’s organisation in the game, but Konami found that the name was too similar to a mahjong title, and changed it. Kojima had to think of a new name – he wanted to avoid using Snatcher after naming Metal Gear after the game’s enemy, and briefly considered the name New Order before settling for the game’s final title.

Policenauts was originally entitled Beyond, but Konami was unable to obtain a trademark for the name. Apparently the game was also intended to be for a “Cinematic Virtual Reality” genre (similar to Metal Gear Solid’s Stealth Espionage Action) – Konami found nothing trademarked along these lines when the project started in 1990, but the term had been trademarked by the time the game was to be released and the naming was dropped.

Source: Andriasang

Those who bought Silent Hill HD Collection on the Xbox 360 will be spitting chips after Konami announced earlier today that they will not be releasing the patch to fix many of the game’s shortcomings. A similar patch was released on PS3 a couple of weeks ago.

“Plans for an Xbox 360 title update have been cancelled due to technical issues and resources,” announced the publisher. “Understanding the issues some users are experiencing, Konami issued a title update for Silent Hill HD Collection (PS3), which fixed frame rate issues as well as audio-synching and other reported issues. Konami apologizes to any players who are continuing to experience these issues on the Xbox 360 SKU.”

It is believed the patch was cancelled because Konami refused to pony up the money that Microsoft charges developers to issue patches (believed to be around $40,000).

Konami struck while the TMNT iron was hot in the early 1990s, and found success on all formats. The Game Boy games aren’t quite as popular due to their more subdued promotion, but Back from the Sewers features some pretty nice sprite and sound work considering the system it’s on.

Metal Gear Solid was one of the biggest hits of the 1998 rush, and its impact on video games through the use of high production values and cinematic cutscenes is felt to this day. Gaming needs more Cybernetic Ninjas.