Retro Gaming Australia

Konami tried to revive its beloved Blades of Steel hockey game in 1998 with NHL Blades of Steel ’99 for the PlayStation and Nintendo 64. The game was not a success due to Konami abandoning the arcade style gameplay that made the original famous, and trying to mimic the simulation-style gameplay of EA’s NHL offerings.

A patch for the PlayStation 3 version of the Silent Hill HD Collection has been released via PSN, addressing many of the issues plaguing the recent re-release.

As a result of unfinished versions of Silent Hill 2 and 3 being used to port across to the Xbox 360 and PS3 (Konami lost the complete source code), the Silent Hill HD Collection was released with numerous bugs and problems that left purchasers with a bad taste in their mouths. Konami announced a patch to fix these issues for both versions of the title a few months back, however it seems Xbox 360 owners are being left waiting a little longer.

Fixes included in the patch:
– Improved frame rate
– Voice synch is greatly improved
– Missing sounds have been fixed
– Missing music has been addressed
– Fog density issues are resolved
– Other minor visual/audio improvements

With the patch now available, now might be the time to revisit Silent Hill. Well, unless you are a Xbox 360 owner.

Source: VG24/7

On the 7th of July, 1987, Metal Gear for the MSX2 was released in Japan. The game wasn’t actually all that successful until Konami ported it to the NES and released it in North America later that year, where it went on to sell a million units.

Metal Gear was originally a straight up shooter until Hideo Kojima was assigned to the project to sort out development difficulties. Inspired by The Great Escape, he decided to abandon the game’s focus on action and emphasise stealth.

Konami decided to make a NES sequel, Snake’s Revenge, without Kojima’s involvement. Kojima was allegedly persuaded into making the sequel, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake by a co-worker who was on the Snake’s Revenge project, who wanted a true Metal Gear sequel.

Neither game did especially well, leaving the series dormant for 6 years until the release of Metal Gear Solid, which turned the series into the powerhouse franchise it is today.

Konami does not appear to have planned any special releases or events for the actual date of the anniversary, though we’ve seen a series of Uniqlo t-shirts and Play Arts Kai figures released over the past 6 months. The next Metal Gear game, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, is due out in early 2013.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was a turning point for the series. It was the first of what the fans dubbed “Metroidvanias”, called such because the game adopted a non-linear approach to gameplay that teased you with places you couldn’t access without the necessary ability. It also introduced English voice acting to the series with hilarious results.

Kojima Productions is hard at work on Zone of the Enders HD Edition, which will be released on October 25 in Japan – and like every other KojiPro release, it’ll be getting the premium package treatment.

The package is quite similar to the Metal Gear Solid HD Edition package from last year, with the game, a sturdy outer box, a CD soundtrack featuring remixed tracks from the games, the Chronicle Artbook (containing the art from the 2001 and 2003 premium packages) and the reBOOT Artbook (which looks at the HD edition’s development). It’ll cost you Â¥8,980 for this package on either the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.

Of course, those with a bit more scratch could opt for the Konamistyle edition, which takes the above and throws in a Blu Ray featuring the Zone of the Enders Idolo original video animation and an Idolo illustrations book featuring more Yoji Shinkawa art. The Konamistyle Edition will cost ¥9,980.

Before the Arkham series blew us all away, Konami’s Batman Returns brawler for the SNES was generally considered to be the best game to feature the Dark Knight. It borrows a generous number of concepts from other brawlers, but it executes them well.

Castlevania: Bloodlines (The New Generation for PAL, or Vampire Killer for Japan) is the only Castlevania game to have been released on a Sega system. That has led to it gaining a bit of a “red-headed stepchild” treatment at the hands of series fans due to the game’s weird attempt to tie the series into Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel, which has mostly been retconned now.

Lethal Enforcers was Konami’s take on the light gun game, and one of a scant few games by the publisher to use digitised actors. There were three games in the series, but few are familiar with the third entry which was released in mid 2004. This ad is for the Mega CD version of the game.

Nemesis is the first portable Gradius game, and the only one to use the original European name of the series worldwide. The game is a weird combination of elements from both Gradius and Gradius II: Gofer no Yabou. Like many of Konami’s early Game Boy efforts, a colour version was released as part of the Konami GB Collection series.

5th Avenue Frogger is a new Frogger hack that aims to have players dodging real time traffic from New York’s 5th Avenue.

The project is the brainchild of Tyler DeAngelo, who started the project in celebration of “Frogger‘s 30th(ish) anniversary”

You can follow the project’s development here.