Bringing Past To Present
Posts tagged Retro Memories
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 25-30
May 16th
Has RetroBear bitten off more than he can chew ? Can he stomach yet more dodgy arcade conversions, twee tunes and multiloads ? What lurks in that large pile of tapes that needs loading ? Wouldn’t it have been easier to use an emulator ? Would he have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those meddling kids ? No dammit he’s a retro gamer and playing games the old fashioned way is what retro gamers do. Either that or he’s a glutton for punishment….roll on games 25-30…..
PS Videos to follow again – they take a while to encode you know…
I could do with a large pile of these....
Commodorathon : Games 19-24
May 16th
After a longer than expected hiatus but still managing to beat the Playstation Network in restarting, RetroBear goes back to mid April with the next 6 C64 games on his list. It starts badly but slowly gets better and takes in a couple of classics to ease the pain inflicted so far…..
PS Videos to follow
Load dammit !
Monday 18th April 2011
Outside the sun is shining. It’s another beautiful day but dammit I have Commodore 64 games to play. No rest for the wicked and these games will not play themselves…..
Everyone loves a Royal Wedding…..well not everyone
Apr 28th
Everyone's a winner baby....
Given the sheer amount of holidays and days off we are all experiencing at the moment it’s probably a good time to pack up the old Game Boy collection and head off for a few days myself. So posting and updates will be back to normal next week with the following :
- Games 19-30 in the Commodorathon
- Retro reviews including the games I have been picking up at car boots and charity shops in the last month
- Reviews of some of the arcade originals via MAME that I have been playing on the C64 to see how they compare
Until then put your feet up, settle down with some retro goodies and normal service will be resumed shortly……
One day......
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.
Retro Reviews : The Nintendo Game Boy
Mar 28th
This time Retrobear embarks on a journey of tiny screens, funny shaped and coloured moulded plastics, sore fingers and a gem of a machine. It’s the juggernaut of the handheld world, the Nintendo Game Boy.
Truly a robot in disguise - the original Game Boy with Handy Boy attachment - providing additional light and stereo sound
Ahhhh the Nintendo Game Boy and it’s family of smaller more portable sequels that completely and utterly dominated that sector of the market. Never mind fighting the console wars on the 16 bit front, Oh no, Nintendo had a much bigger trick up it’s sleeve. The launch of the Game Boy in 1989 gave it an almost unrivalled position as King Of The Mini Micros. That’s not to say that there wasn’t any competition – there was and many firms tried their best to wrest the stranglehold that Nintendo had, but all failed.
Retro Review – An A-Z Through My Collection
Mar 23rd
Michael Jackson once sang that ABC was easy as 123. If only he knew what that meant at the time. This week, Retrobear has a walk through his collection, stopping off at letters D, F and Q as well as the other 23 in the alphabet. Sesame Street this isn’t and any comparisons to Muppets will be frowned upon….
An every day occurence for Retrobear - the endless struggle against the simple things in life
Its quite often hard to pick a favourite computer or console, let alone a favourite game from my collection of retro goodies. Quite frankly I would think about hurting the feelings of the ones I neglected and the amount of hours (or in The Running Man on the C64’s case, minutes) we had together, getting to know one another and the sheer joy that we gave to one another during those few stolen moments. OK, that is sounding a bit sick so I shall move on.