Retro Gaming Australia

Body Harvest was meant to be one of Nintendo’s early, high profile releases for the Nintendo 64. However, clashes in the design of the game with developer DMA Design and massive delays saw them drop the project. It’s one of those “what could have been” moments, given that Body Harvest is a kind of progenitor to Grand Theft Auto III, albeit without the same level of detail and polish.

The Terminator 2: Judgment Day arcade game was one of Midway’s finer shooters. The home versions were renamed to T2: The Arcade Game to differentiate them from the other (godawful) Terminator 2 games Acclaim had in development at the same time they were working on the arcade port. The truck level is still a bastard.

Rampage World Tour was the…erm…”long awaited” sequel to the classic building smashing game. It was conceived and developed by Brian Colin and Jeff Nauman who created the original game, but doesn’t really push the envelope in terms of game design.

Mortal Kombat 4 was the long awaited transition into 3D for the most violent fighting game series around. Arguments will continue to this day as to whether this was a good move. It’s worth playing for the hilarious ending cinematics, though.

A string of recent commercial failures isn’t going to stop the Rampage franchise from making the leap to the silver screen. New Line Cinema is behind the film, and hopes to make something along the lines of disaster pic Independence Day.

According to Variety, movie exec-cum-screenwriter Ryan Eagle (On a Clear Day) will be writing the script and John Rickard (Horrible Bosses) will be producing. Apparently film is a priority for New Line parent Warner Bros. who also owns the Rampage IP after their consumption of Midway’s leftovers.

Ms Pac-Man is best Pac-Man (behind Championship Edition DX, that is)

Ms. Pac-Man is the follow up to the smash hit Pac-Man. It was not actually designed by Namco in Japan, but by a couple of young entrepreneurs in America running a company called General Computer Corp. which designed conversion kits for existing games. The Atari 2600 version, which this ad is for, is way way way better than the original port of Pac-Man.

Filling our Mortal Kombat ad requirement for the month.

Mortal Kombat CD is the Mega CD port of the first game in the series. The game is packed with typical early CD game gimmicks – it even opens with a (low quality) version of the “Mortal Monday” commercial. While not quite up to the standard of the arcade game in visual terms, the sound is more than adequate and the gameplay is quite faithful. The load times are absolutely awful, though. This ad is an early teaser – the final version of the game had an MA-17 rating due to the infamous blood code no longer being required.

A mainstay during a misspent youth.

NBA Jam was a case of the right game at the right time. The popularity of basketball was at its peak and NBA Jam let you play as your favourite players (except the then temporarily retired Michael Jordan) and do all kinds of reality breaking dunks and lay ups. This ad is for the home release, which was wildly successful.

We’re back for 2012. Let’s start the year off with one of the biggest releases of the 16-bit era (and one of the most heavily promoted, too).

Mortal Kombat II for the 32X came out quite a bit later than the other versions (in part due to the system launching after their release), but boasted improved graphics and sound capabilities over the standard Mega Drive version. Still not a patch on the arcade version, but a competent port nonetheless.

Another Namco/Midway/Atari partnership.

Galaxian is the first game in Namco’s Galaga series, evidently named after the far more popular second entry. Galaxian was developed with the intention of producing a superior, full color clone of Taito’s Space Invaders. Namco teamed up with Midway to bring it to arcades outside of Japan, and Midway teamed up with Atari to bring the game to homes, which is where this ad comes in.