Retro Gaming Australia

Sega Studios Australia is currently putting the final touches on what will be their final game – Castle of Illusion HD, but it was revealed earlier in the week that the studio tried to pitch Sega on making them into a full blown retro revival studio.

The pitch video, which you can watch below, was for a remake of Golden Axe, to be released under a label called Sega Reborn. The crazier part of the idea was that all of the games would take place in the one universe, effectively meaning Streets of Rage would theoretically be set hundreds of years after the events of Golden Axe.

Of course, the last time Sega tried making 3D versions of their classic games, we got the first dozen or so 3D AGES releases, and those were…not so good. Being pre-alpha, this Golden Axe footage looks pretty rough, but there was some promise in there.

Via Segabits

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.

Square Enix has confirmed that a Nintendo 3DS remake of Dragon Quest VII is underway and scheduled for release this coming February in Japan.

Jump magazine’s latest issue (a scan has been provided below) revealed the 3D remake of the Playstation RPG, which is to include StreetPass features.

Dragon Quest VII was never released for PAL regions, so here’s hoping the 3DS remake makes it outside of Japan. We received the Nintendo DS re-releases of Dragon Quest: The Chapters of the Chosen (DQIV), Dragon Quest: The Hand of the Heavenly Bride (DQV) and Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Reverie – so there is hope!

Sources: Tiny Cartridge, Siliconera

Square Enix has just released another port of the 1987 RPG classic Final Fantasy and this time it is for Windows Phone.

Final Fantasy for Windows Phone is based on the iOS version, and therefore includes the Soul of Chaos and Labyrinth of Time additional dungeons as well as featuring the enhanced sprites of the 2007 PSP Final Fantasy remake.

Final Fantasy for Windows Phone can be had for AU$7.49. Not too shabby.

Source: Siliconera

Zelda fans have been clamouring for a remake of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask for 3DS since the release of the popular The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D last year. The remake has been hinted at by Nintendo representatives, however the series creator Shigeru Miyamoto has also expressed a desire to remake or recreate The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (my personal favourite Zelda game <3). Speaking with IGN recently, Miyamoto has indicated that Nintendo are currently in deliberation. “We haven’t quite decided yet, whether we’re going to do A Link to the Past, because there’s also the possibility of doing a remake of Majora’s Mask,” Miyamoto explained. “This is something we’ve certainly been talking about and doing a little bit of experimenting with, to figure out which way we’re going to go.”

Unable to make any announcements at present, Miyamoto said that fans will have to wait “just a little while longer” for information regarding Nintendo’s decision. He went on to say “[Nintendo are] always looking at expanding our audience and giving people the opportunity to get their hands on 3DS and see what kind of fun gaming experiences they can have. And now, we’re also tasked with pushing the Wii U. So we have lots of good opportunities in terms of thinking about which Zelda game is going to be best for which purpose.” It would appear that the question is not only which Zelda game to remake, but also on which system it should appear.

So, which game should be remade, Majora’s Mask or A Link to the Past? Both!

Wolfenstein 3-D recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. Fun was had by all. In celebration of this event, Russian independent developer Chain Studios has released their remake of the game, entitled Wolfram.

Unlike many recent Wolfenstein 3-D upgrades and remakes, Wolfram isn’t just the original game with OpenGL support and nicer textures – it’s been built from the ground up on the studio’s inhouse engine Volatile 3D II. This makes for an almost entirely new game with modern bells and whistles like per-pixel lighting with bump-mapping and parallax mapping; soft stencil shadows; refractions, cubemap reflections, mirrors, ragdoll physics and an achievement system. Hell, you can even aim up and down.

At this stage, only the shareware portion of Wolfenstein 3-D is available for play in Wolfram. You can download it here.

In its latest issue, Famitsu has revealed that a Nintendo 3DS remake of Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers is currently underway.

Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers, a sci-fi turn-based RPG originally released only in Japan for the Sega Saturn (1997) and PlayStation (1999), is a sequel to Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner and a spin-off installment of the Megami Tensei series. The 3DS remake, developed by Atlus, will feature improved loading times, additional battle animations and full voice acting.

Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers will be released in Japan on August 30. There is no word of an English release, but here’s hoping.

Source: Siliconera

The Wii remake of the far too creepy survival horror game Fatal Frame: Crimson Butterfly (known as Project Zero II: Crimson Butterfly in PAL regions) is coming to Europe. Titled Project Zero 2: Wii Edition, the game’s release is set for June 29 – the same day as the 3DS Fatal Frame spin-off, Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir.

Project Zero 2: Wii Edition will feature updated graphics, a new third person camera view, some additional endings and story episodes, revised maps for more scares and the Wii remote will act as a flashlight pointer (hooray!).

A Haunted House mode has also been included, with local multiplayer in mind. There are several courses through the Haunted House to explore, but events are random. Your friends can frighten you by making ghosts appear (using a second Wii remote), while the game measures how much fear you experience.

With the fourth installment of the series, Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, not seeing a release outside of Japan, perhaps Project Zero 2: Wii Edition can satisfy fans’ yearning for more Fatal Frame. There are no currently plans for a western release of Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, however an unofficial English translation patch has been released for the game.

Source: Siliconera

In a recent interview with Edge, Shigeru Miyamoto has once again expressed interest in reviving the Super Nintendo classic The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

Last year, Miyamoto stated A Link to the Past (which he produced) was the game he would most like to see remade for the Nintendo 3DS. Miyamoto confirmed that while he would still like to see an enhanced 3D port or remake of the original game, he would be much more interested in creating a new game perhaps “based on, or starting from, A Link to the Past.” Miyamoto went on to say “I think it’s important to bring some really new software.”

“To be very honest and open, it really depends on the directors that have time at the moment as well,” he said. “Some directors, I can give them the title and I know they will do something great with it. Other directors I’m not so 100 per cent confident [in], so they’re the ones I’d rather take a more remake approach to the title.“

A Link to the Past is my personal favourite of the Legend of Zelda series (hence the site banner) and I would truly love to see the title revisited, preferably by way of a new game. However, it would appear that such a game will not come into existence until Miyamoto can entrust the title to the right game director. That’s A-OK with me; I’ll happily continue to wait with bated breath.

We were all caught aback when 2K Games revealed their reimagined version of X-COM a couple of years ago to be a first person shooter. After years of pining over reluctance to use the property, it seemed like a bit of a kick in the teeth.

Fortunately, 2K Games aren’t complete knobs. In fact, it was revealed today that Firaxis, the studio behind the more recent Civilization games has been working on a full remake of the original XCOM/UFO game for quite some time. Better yet, it’s scheduled to launch later this year.

You can read all about it in the next issue of Game Informer.

However, if you can’t wait until then, you can always grab the original for a pittance.