Retro Gaming Australia

To close out our Mega Drive based Retro Gaming Theatre videos for 2012, I decided to drag out my favourite game on the system – Streets of Rage II.

The game has amazing graphics, fantastic action and the single best soundtrack of any game on the Mega Drive. Our video showcases the first full level of the game.

Alien Storm is one of Sega’s oft-forgotten arcade games from the late 80s/early 90s. It’s a bit like Golden Axe with a few shooting sections, and some pretty cool alien designs.

Like Golden Axe, the Mega Drive version of the game had a few extra levels added for good measure, but the structure and flow of the levels is quite different. We play through the first four levels of the game in the video.

Our latest episode of Retro Gaming Theatre takes on the Master System iteration of Wonder Boy. This is my preferred version of the game, probably due to the fact I played it first. We ended up skipping a couple of levels to make the video a bit more snappy – don’t judge us!

It’s arguably one of the best games on the Mega Drive, if not of all time, but Sonic the Hedgehog was the recipient of a totally crude PAL conversion. I decided to take the opportunity to illustrate just how slow and sluggish that particular version of the game is in this latest edition of Retro Gaming Theatre.

This video runs through the first four acts of the game, and a couple of special stages.

As you may recall from a couple of months ago, I posted some ads in our Australian video game commercial section. Two of these ads were CG ads which Sega Ozisoft aired in 1993-1994 that all featured a place called “The Net” (prior to the Internet becoming big).

I was recently contacted through Youtube by a user named antdavisonNZ, who let me know that he had worked on these commercials in the 90s while working for a New Zealand based advertising company called Giant Productions (I guess that technically makes them Kiwi Oddities).

According to antdavisonNZ, there were two series of ads, but only the second series of ads aired in Australia. There were eight or so ads in the second series – I don’t know how many are in the first. The campaign lasted for 11 months. (continue reading…)

We promised you Duke Nukem TV commercials, so here they are. These are all tied to the major console releases – there wasn’t an ad for the PC release of the original game that we know of.

First up is a teaser for Duke Nukem 64 and Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown

(continue reading…)

Those good updating habits are difficult to keep up between projects and the fact that nothing interesting is happening in retro gaming right now, but we’ll do our best to continue.

We’ve got another selection of 14 Australian video game commercial to add to our collection, bringing it up to 60. They are:
Amiga CD32 System Ad
Atari 2600 System Ad #5
Atari 2600 System Ad #6
Atari 7800 Rap Ad
Burger Time for Intellivsion
F-Zero for the SNES
Intellivision System Ad #2
Mission X for Intellivision
Nintendo 64 Clear Purple Controller Bundle
Mega Drive System Ad 1990
Mega Drive: The Next Level Ad #1 from 1994
Timezone Daytona USA
Toe Jam and Earl for the Mega Drive
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link for the NES

Asura and Gaia Crusaders at Hardcore Gaming 101
Couple of interesting detailed articles on some arcade games at HG101. Burn Cycle and Oh Shit are the last two kusoge featured.

Unseen64 updates:
Urban Decay (PC)
Cyber Fighter (PC-FX)
X-COM Alliance (PC)
Necrocide: The Dead Must Die (PC)
Elysium (PC)
SwitchDeath (Jaguar)
Bounty Hunter (MD)

GB Hunter and Gamebooster at NES World
NES World has a pair of articles on these two passthrough devices that allowed you to play Game Boy software on your Nintendo 64.

Recent Virtual Console releases:
Bomberman Hero (N64)

We’re proud to announce that we’ve added a new section to Retro Gaming Australia today – TV commercials! We’ve rummaged around the Internet and scrapped together a small collection of commercials which aired on Australian television between the 1970s and 2005. We’ve got ads ranging from the well known Tim Ferguson Nintendo 64 ads to the obscure John Sands Sega SC-3000. The links currently redirect you to our Youtube channel – we’ll be reviewing this in the future, but it works fine for now.

We’ll be adding to this collection over time, so if you’ve got something that we don’t have here, please drop us a line at admin@thisurl.com

You can access our commercial library here.

Konami was renowned for two particular licensed brawlers in the early 90s: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989) and The Simpsons (1991). These were not the only two the company produced, however. Popular French comic book series Asterix was given the arcade game in 1992.

Watch a gameplay sample of the first level of Asterix in the video below.

Asterix captures the essence of the comic book, not only in its visual style but also its core theme. Players take Asterix the Gaul or his brother-in-arms and best friend Obelix through a series of seven levels where they fight against the oppression of the Roman Empire. Romans can be dispatched with a variety of attacks, ranging from the standard punches (greatly powered up from the Gauls’ magic potion) through to more humorous and humilating slaps to the face and ragdoll tossing.

The game plays out much the same way as other Konami brawlers, with one attack button and one jump button which can be combined to access more attacking moves. By holding the attack button down for a short burst, players can use their super punch attack, which delivers a great deal more damage. Asterix and Obelix are of relatively even power in the game, which is the only notable deviation from the source material. Gameplay is occasionally shaken up with a tough boss fight or bonus stage, one of which is a chariot race at the end of the first level. Asterix‘s visuals are of a high standard, with excellent pixel art and animation consistent with many of the best arcade brawlers of the era. It’s a great all-round package.

While Asterix is highly popular in continental Europe, he is still relatively obscure in America and other Western nations, meaning that this game did not receive the same widespread distribution as other Konami brawlers. Though numerous Asterix games were released for home consoles, this one did not, as Sega held the home console rights to Asterix for a number of years around the time of this game’s release.

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When many of us think about Konami, we think about games such as Contra, Metal Gear and Castlevania – games which are still the company’s bread and butter in the present day. Konami is a company with a rich history, but many games they’ve produced have simply been forgotten over time. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be unearthing some of these titles in a new article series called Forgotten Games.

The first game we’ll look at is Combat School, a 1987 release which combines the button mashing fun of Track & Field with basic military training. Take a look at the video below to watch RGA play the opening level of the game.

Combat School pits two recruits, Nick and Joe against each other in a series of basic military training exercises such as the obstacle course, target shooting and a canoe race. Competing each event in the alloted time and you’ll progress to the next – the better you perform, the more extra time you’ll be awarded for the next event. Players will get to fight each other in hand-to-hand combat after completing the arm wrestling event (when playing alone, you will fight the instructor). Most games follow the button mashing control system established in Track & Field, so players will find that the game has little depth. However, the theme of the game is obscure enough to keep you coming back for more.

Should you defeat the instructor, Combat School will veer off on a weird tangent where you take on your first mission, which involves rescuing a bunch of VIPs from a terrorist attack. Unfortunately, the game proves less than competent in this area, with shoddy gameplay mechanics, poor collision detection and wretched controls. It’s pretty difficult to make it this far into the game, so many of you will be spared this bit.

Unlike most Konami games of the era, Combat School did not receive a port to the NES, which is probably the main reason why it has been forgotten. It did make to homes on various computer formats (Commodore 64, DOS, Amstrad CPC, and ZX Spectrum), but these ports are largely terrible.
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