Retro Gaming Australia

Madden NFL ’95 is the first game in the Madden franchise to feature the licenses of both the NFL and NFL Players Association – real teams, real players.

Fighting Force is a beat ’em up developed by Core Design that’s pretty much the poster child for why the beat ’em up died off. Dull environments, shitty character design and gameplay that’s freakishly slow.

After the smashing success of Aladdin on the Mega Drive, Disney and Virgin Interactive teamed up to produce a game based on The Jungle Book. However, the talent behind Aladdin had moved on to start Shiny Entertainment, so it wasn’t nearly as good.

Early Olympic games are pretty much the same – controller smashing trash. Of the two Summer Olympics video games on the Mega Drive, Olympic Gold is the better one by a mile.

Chuck Rock is one of those games that originated on the Amiga that Amiga fans think is the bees knees, and nobody else gives a hoot about because there were far better games on the consoles.

Sometimes I think it’s amazing that the people who managed Sony Imagesoft as it put out one godawful game after another were the very same people who fostered the success of the PlayStation. ESPN Baseball Tonight was one such “gem”.

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.

ClayFighter is a middle-of-the-road fighting game whose visual presentation was far more remarkable than its gameplay on release.

Aero the Acrobat is a middling platformer from Sunsoft from the days of games starring “mascots with attitude”. As with most later 16-bit Sunsoft efforts, it commands a high price that has nothing to do with the quality of the game.

A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia is a fantastic little puzzle game designed by David Crane and developed by Imagineering for Absolute Entertainment. You play as a young boy accompanied by his alien friend Blobert. Blobert has the ability to change into different things based on the flavour of jelly beans he eats. It’s a bit janky, but still a unique concept that’s reasonably well executed.