You can almost smell the retro in the air. The insane on screen action of an arcade classic, another crappy film tie in and the return of the Blue Blur. RetroBear trips the light fantastic and goes on a well timed rummage through some of the games in his collection…..

 

You'll never know what you'll uncover - possibly a lost classic, possibly not

So here’s a rundown of what I have been playing in my hiatus that I have erroneously (and much to the frustration of Mrs Bear) forgotten to write articles about :

 

  • Outrun 2 on the XBOX – Wow now this is a quality title and far, far better

    Revising an true arcade classic and making it as good as the original

    than it deserves to be. You know when sequels to classic games come out and everyone thinks there are a bit “meh” – well not this one. The only thing missing is the sitdown hydraulic cab and the wind blowing through your hair. It has the original arcade version of Outrun 2 as well as challenge stage games, where you perform challenges in order to unlock the next stage. There are over 100 of these to complete so it will take some doing. It’s tremendous fun and definitely worth your time to dig out and play.

 

  • Billy Hatcher & The Giant Egg on Gamecube – Created by Sonic Team

    This is the result of a games designer on a cheese induced dream

    and looking every inch a Sonic game (minus the hedgehog), this is a stunning looking and playable platform game that has you coming back for more. The fact you are dressed as a giant chicken and can roll eggs at your enemies, and the whole thing looking and sounding beautiful, this is one great game of it’s genre. I play a lot of platform games but this is one of the best, so track it down and give it a crack.

 

 

 

  • PGA Tour Golf II on GameGear – Well I like golf games and I don’t give the GameGear enough love. I played the original series a lot on the Amiga and

    Taking minature golf to a new level

    MegaDrive and this is a surprisingly accurate conversion of those games. It takes a while to load each screen but the playability is still there. It proves that the PGA series was (and still is under the Tiger Woods banner) the best golf game around, which is tough on Leaderboard but the difference between these two series is massive.

 

 

 

  • The 2D Adventures Of Rotating Octopus on PS3 – OK so it’s not a retro

    It's awesomely good fun

    game but this doesn’t mean it can’t be included here. A real cute colourful puzzler and right up my street in terms of the quirkiness and “one more go” factor that you need. The fact it’s available as a PS3 Mini goes to show that great games can be found and downloaded for very little cash. Seek this one out and I’ll guarantee you’ll be hooked.

 

  • Smash TV on MAME – If anyone played this insane shoot em up back in the 1980’s then you’ll have fond memories of trying to stay alive. Given the

    Unfair ? Yes. Unforgiving ? Yes. Awesome ? Very.

    amount of enemies on screen at any one time it’s not easy. In fact it’s insanely difficult. That doesn’t stop it from being a real trip down memory lane, with it’s digitised speech, rotating firing system and distinct resemblance to The Running Man. Play this one and see how hard games were back then.

 

 

  • Sonic Generations Demo on PS3 – It looks like Sonic with better graphics,

    Sadly the jury is still very much out....

    it sounds like Sonic with it’s Green Hill theme from the original game and it plays like Sonic (collect the rings, jump on the enemies, get to the end of the level as quickly as possible), and I know it’s a demo, but something isn’t right. The framerate is choppy so everything seems blurred and you can’t just bomb through a level. There is more strategy involved and that’s not really in the Sonic tradition. Hopefully the finished article will address this but it seems to have divided gamers already meaning Sega have their hands full in sorting out the wrinkles before release. File this under intrigued but not that impressed. Stay tuned for a RetroBear Retrospective !

 

  • WCW Mayhem on PS1 – The slowest wrestling game of all time. God it’s

    Love wrestling ? You won't love this

    bad, it’s no wonder they went under in the end.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Batman & Robin on PS1 – Probably the worst film licence game I have ever

    The film was bad enough - this however is worse.

    played. Well at least the music is OK as it’s lifted right from the film, but the rest of it ? Unspeakably awful in every respect (still it was only 20p from the car boot – yes I may be a self-righteous prick but I’ll leave it to you to work out who got the best deal from that transaction)

 

 

 

 

  • Streets Of Rage 2 on PS3 – An awesomely good beat em up available on

    Two of my favourite things - Streets of Rage 2 and the PS3

    PSN for a short while (thanks hackers). I still prefer the original though but as a button bashing trawl through the mean streets it’s a good way to while away a couple of hours whilst thumping the shit out of everything that comes at you.

 

 

 

 

 

We’ve been taking advantage of the free stuff that Sony have allowed us access to thanks to the hacking issues they had a few months ago. I do hope PS3 users took the time to explore their machines it more detail – Blu Ray, video streaming etc – to see what a marvellous bit of kit it really is. Sadly in this day and age and with technology moving at such a great speed something like this was inevitably going to happen. I don’t think any of us were so blissfully unaware at how lax Sony and their security systems were to let it happen though. Let’s hope lessons can be learned and it doesn’t happen again – in the meantime though enjoy the freebies !

 

As you can see, a wide and varied selection of games. Do give the Octopus a go if you have a PS3 – in these days where you are being asked to pay £40 notes a game you could do any worse than throwing a couple of quid at that one.

 

Good old Sony.