Retro Gaming Australia

A Sonic game without Sonic? Madness!

Knuckles Chaotix was the closest thing to a Sonic game released on the 32X. The concept for the game can be traced back to a leaked beta called Sonic Crackers, which had Sonic and Tails connected by proverbial bungee cord between rings that the two carried. Amusingly, the character Mighty the Armadillo was a character concept created for the original Sonic the Hedgehog before Sega settled with Sonic. This ad is for the UK version of the game.

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My favourite VCS game.

Pitfall! was created by David Crane, who with several other programmers had broken off from Atari to form the first third party video game developer Activision. It was the second most successful title for the Atari 2600/VCS with over 4 million copies sold.

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I knew I had forgotten to do something today.

Arch Rivals was Midway’s first 2 on 2 arcade basketball effort – you could probably even say it was a precursor to NBA Jam in a way. Except for the fact you can punch your opponents out and pull down their pants. This ad is for the NES release of the game.

A somewhat reviled entry in the series, I am told.

The Suikoden games are a series of RPGs published by Konami, mostly on PlayStation family systems. Suikoden IV was the second game on the series released on the PlayStation 2, but was not as well received as Suikoden III, due to a shorter length, fewer dungeons and a return to a silent protagonist.

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One of those cult hits that everyone latches onto years after it came out.

Gitaroo Man is a music/rhythm game developed by iNiS and published by Koei for the PlayStation 2 in 2001. The game is about a boy named U-1, who is taught how to play the guitar by a talking dog named Puma. There’s a sequel of sorts on the PSP called Gitaroo Man Lives.

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Opening line of this ad is very amusing

Chu Chu Rocket was the game that kicked off the Dreamcast’s Online Service…unless you lived in Australia. The legend of Ozisoft’s failure will never die.

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Computer trouble means we’re running late today. Many apologies.

Banjo-Kazooie was one of the finest platformers of the Nintendo 64 era, even if it is unfairly criticised for its collection focused gameplay. The game has a fairly storied development history – it originally started on the Super Nintendo as a game named Dream, starring a boy with a wooden sword who fought pirates.

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An example of how crap advertising can sink a genuinely good game.

EarthBound, or Mother 2: Gyiyg Strikes Back, is the second in a series of RPGs developed by APE Inc and HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo. The series was created by notable Japanese author Shigesato Itoi. It is the only game in the series released outside of Japan, and one of the most heavily demanded re-releases. Unfortunately, due to a variety of potentially copyright infringing issues and large royalty payments to Mr Itoi, Nintendo refuses to re-release the game on Virtual Console, or publish the Game Boy Advance port and sequel. As a result, the asking price for a copy of the game has shot through the roof.

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It also eats a load of batteries.

The Lynx was Atari’s attempt at capturing a slice of the portable video game market. The system boasted a few advantages over the Game Boy, namely colour, but it cost more, drained batteries like crazy, was utterly huge and was almost entirely devoid of quality software. Amusingly, Australian distributor HES still has new/sealed Lynx stock for order.

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Hard to believe it’s already been two years.

Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker was part of a major push by Sega of America to sell the Genesis to an older market. Michael Jackson was a huge Sega fan, owning a large collection of the company’s arcade machines. He was originally lined up to produce the soundtrack to Sonic the Hedgehog 3, but his legal troubles put the cabosh on that. This ad comes from Spain.

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