Bringing Past To Present
Posts tagged Game Rage
30 Days of Gaming – Game 5 : Super Pang (SNES)
Nov 6th
Dateline :5th November 2011
It is the most explosive night of the year and what better way to relax than whipping out your own brand of fiery fun. RetroBear must burst as many balls as he can and light up that dark night with the many bright colours of Super Pang…..
There is not much I can add to that - what is a pang anyway ?
The great thing about arcade conversions is that every now and again a machine which didn’t collect all that many 20p’s gets licensed for the home computer market, and then gets a stunningly good conversion into the bargain. Being a decent arcade smash doesn’t guarantee a belting home conversion – why for example could the Amiga not produce a full arcade version of Bubble Bobble whereas lesser versions contained extra elements missing from the arcade ?
30 Days of Gaming – Game 3 : Bionic Commando (NES)
Nov 3rd
Dateline : 3rd November 2011
Going undercover and minus the spandex of Day 2, RetroBear goes for a more bionic look than ever before. Armed with a gun and a bionic extending arm which he uses to tap people on the back from long distances away, it’s the Battle of the Decade : RetroBear v.s Hitler. Hitler ? Really….hmmm well read on !
Yes it is Hitler. Or Charlie Chaplin. Look just see below and you'll find out why it's Hitler
30 Days Of Gaming – Game 1 : Dick Tracy (Sega Mega Drive)
Nov 2nd
Dateline : 1st November 2011
Wandering through the criminal underground armed only with a dodgy looking yellow mac and Madonna for company, RetroBear tackles the more seedy people in society as he takes the role of Dick Tracy. Will he be a hard Dick or a limp Dick ? Only one way to find out…..
How many Dick jokes will this review contain ?
There have been many great detectives over the years : Sherlock Holmes, Poirot, Inspector Morse, Lovejoy (OK well that last one is pushing it a bit but he didn’t just deal in antiques you know), but Dick Tracy is a name that probably wouldn’t make it into most people’s Top 10. Largely confined to American comic strips and animated TV series, the first real wind we got of Dick Tracy was in the blockbuster film of the same name starring Warren Beatty, Al Pacino and Madonna.
RetroReview : Views From The Dugout
Jul 30th
No amount of shouting, gesticulation, pointing, waving arms around and wearing a 3/4 length sheepskin coat has any affect on the outcomes of a football management game. Just don’t tell RetroBear that, especially as he wears a suit when playing……yes, it’s the wacky world of PC footie management games.
You. The stadium. The fans. The players. And the balls - you definately need balls
Way, way back when I was still making my way through the educational minefield (College) I happened to stumble across a game which through one form or another would stay with me for the next 13 years. Other things I have picked up and either dropped or gone back to and wished I hadn’t, but there was something about this one game. I just couldn’t get enough of it no matter how hard I tried. It would come back to batter me senseless at university where it was a toss up between “extra reading” or playing this game. My degree (3rd Class) indicates what won my heart.
RetroSection Returns !!
Jul 1st
It has been a while but back from the retro wilderness he comes. Armed to the teeth with all manner of retro goodies, RetroBear returns fully released back into the community. And he’s not all that happy with how things have been whilst he was away……
Seriously - how much ????
Commodorathon – Games 13-18
Apr 18th
For the next six games RetroBear takes on the role of a soldier wanting revenge, a large ape, some kind of space warrior, a large headed boy in a nappy and the Last Slapfighter. Sounds like a cheese induced nightmare but it isn’t….
How I might look when the remaining 405 games have been played.....
Saturday 16th April 2011
Six more games, six more ranges of emotion. The task is proving very tough indeed if only for the failure of games to load. There are still hundreds of games to get through so let us waste no time and crack on with the next batch of games to see what joy/despair they bring.
Commodorathon – Games 7-12
Apr 15th
Up next for RetroBear are more technical problems, an ancient arcade conversion, one of the most popular board games in the world turned into a computer game and two of the most notoriously bad C64 arcade conversions. Cover your eyes and ears as this will not be pretty…..
Oh no - not WEC Le Mans AND Enduro Racer !!!
Thursday 14th April 2011
I am not looking forward to the next batch of games considering that it contains two absolute all time C64 nightmares. At least that is what legend says, after all my opinion may differ from those who have gone before me. We shall see as Day 2 of the Commodorathon commences….
The Commodorathon – First Games Reviewed…..
Apr 13th
So the moment finally arrives. RetroBear reviews the first games in the C64 collection and encounters a dodgy coin-op conversion, two crappy film tie ins (and we all know how much he loves those) and a few technical problems….
Rumble In The Jungle
Ridding the streets of scum
Jungle Fever
Tuesday April 12th 2011
The Commodorathon begins. Armed with little more than a pint of orange squash and having surveyed the task ahead this show is officially on the road. This does mean starting with a lot of film tie ins which from previous columns you will notice are not my favourite genre. However they were first out of the drawer…..
GAME 1 : RAMBO FIRST BLOOD PART II (1986, OCEAN SOFTWARE)
You are Rambo armed to the teeth with weapons and your tasks are simple – rescue the POW’s without engaging the enemy. That is easier said than done as the enemy are quite happy to engage you. Escaping the first task in a helicopter, you then return to the camp you just visited to rescue some more POW’s before then taking on an enemy helicopter. Beyond that, well it’s difficult to say because that is as far as I got.
At the time of release it went head to head with Elite’s conversion of the arcade smash Commando. The two games are very similar except with Rambo you go up the screen, then back down it and then back up it. I’ll get to Commando at some point in the future but having played it a few months ago I do prefer it, though it is far from a good game.
Call Me Ishmael – RetroBear tackles his Moby Dick
Apr 6th
One man. One machine. Over 400 games. Retrobear is on a quest to play every single Commodore 64 game in his collection, without prejudice. That is not going to be an easy task.
The only rules are as follows :
- All games in the collection must be played – no exceptions no matter how bad a game’s reputation
- A minimum of 3 games per post will be reviewed
- Where possible the games will be compared to the coin-op original
- I must keep the faith
C64 Goodness
This week got me thinking as to what to do next with the site. Whilst posting comments on various systems and bits of gaming history is all well and good, what I feel is lacking most is actually playing the damn games and reviewing them. The problem with that is where to start ? I mean it’s not as if I have a small amount of games to be going along with that would take a short period of time to cover.
Tripping Down Memory Lane Again..
Feb 25th
The Retro Bear looks back at the second stage of his retrohood, including those all important first encounters with Mario Kart and Street Fighter II without the aid of rose tinted spectacles….
Originally Posted to GameFancier.com on October 12th 2010
Lame gamesplayers need not apply
My knowledge of game consoles was rather poor when I was younger and just discovering games. Spoiled with the Amiga 500 you came to believe that anything on that machine was arcade perfect, and you sneered at the mention of anything to do with Sega and Nintendo. How wrong we all were – by the mid 90′s home computing, as it was known, was restricted to slow running PC games (and most of those games were flight simulators, ideal if you fancied a career as a pilot) and consoles such as the Mega Drive and Super Nintendo were the must haves.
My mate Jim got me interested in the console side of things. He originally had a Master System and raved about the delights of Psycho Fox and Shinobi, all titles that were not available on the home computers. I even made him an offer to buy the console and games off him for £10 a week, but he was unsurprisingly dismissive of the proposal. He then upgraded to a Mega Drive and was the only person I knew (and still know) to have a Mega CD. More >