Bringing Past To Present
Posts tagged XBOX
RetroComment : Happy Birthday to RetroGamer Magazine !!
Mar 5th
Dateline : 5th March 2012
As birthdays come and go, every now and then one of them is a milestone. Be it 16, 18, 21, the dreaded 40 and the even more dreaded 65 – only one stands above them all. That is the Big One and RetroBear joins in the centenary celebrations of Retro Gamer Magazine…..
RetroComment : February-Free-For-All – 29th February 2012
Feb 29th
Dateline 29th February 2012
To close the February Free For All – which in all honesty has been a bit of a disaster content wise but Bear with me because the Mega Drive is up next and I absolutely love that machine – I thought it best to close out with another patented RetroSection list. They are easy to do and don’t require too much taxing of the old brain cells. I can feel the writer’s block gradually lifting and personally cannot wait to get my teeth into the mass of Mega Drive games that await me.
So join me as we bid farewell to February and welcome the much warmer, brighter and altogether more appreciated March with some more retro musings…..
RetroReview : February-Free-For-All – 13th February 2012
Feb 22nd
Dateline : 13th February 2012
OK so this is it. The final instalment of my Retro A-Z 2012 edition. It’s been a fun traverse back through some of the weird and wonderful titles and games of yesteryear, and hopefully I’ll have the chance to revisit this again next year. So it’s on with the show as we go U through to Z…..
RetroReview : February-Free-For-All – 10th February 2012
Feb 18th
Dateline : 10th February 2012
I’d like to make one thing clear about this retro alphabet thing – by no means at all is this a definitive list. There are going to be omissions, this list is simply a start ; a sort of launchpad if you will. It is something I want to add to as time goes on and yes it will eventually see names like Mario, Sonic and Zelda in there. However if you are a regular RetroSection-ite you will know that we prefer to look at some of the more obscure as opposed to the mass marketed.
Prey continue……..
Retrosection in 2012 : A Sneaky Peek
Jan 11th
11th January 2012
A quick look ahead to some of the fun things that are planned here for Retrosection in the next 12 months. Of course there will be other bits and pieces but the idea is to have a nice them for each month. Read on for more details….
RetroEvents : London Gaming Convention (December 2011) Review
Jan 3rd
3rd January 2011
Better late than never, RetroBear takes you on a journey by train to “That London” as he attends the first ever London Gaming Convention and has a thoroughly enjoyable time of it….
You may recall towards the end of November I mentioned I had been invited to the first London Gaming Convention not far from Arsenal Football Club. Well the good news is I did manage to attend. The bad news is it took me so long to write an article about it. However I can report that, despite a few teething problems, and those I can’t really comment on as I did not take take part, I found the whole thing to be really rather good.
30 Days Of Gaming – Game 12 : Turbo OutRun (Sega Megadrive)
Nov 16th
Dateline : 12th November 2011
The law of diminishing returns applies as RetroBear sees how far a concept can be watered down to the point where it becomes a tarnished memory of a one classic game….
I am sure we all remember the original OutRun game in the arcade. You could hardly miss it especially the big sit down version which looked awesome. The feeling of driving through the USA in a huge red big Ferrari is an endearing image and cemented the game in the annals of video gaming history. Yes it wasn’t all that new a concept – time trial racing – but done with such panache it was hard to ignore.
Then it all went horribly wrong. The home conversions handled by US Gold of all people – a software house with a notorious reputation of screwing up arcade conversions on a level matched only by Activision – ranged from the awful to the downright insulting, with most versions at least missing some parts of the original game.
The Amstrad version arrived nearly 12 months later than the rest and had no sound, the C64 version was pale and lifeless and whilst the 16 bit versions were OK they were nothing special. Arguably the best conversion appeared many years later on the Dreamcast.
With these abominations, so began the bastardisation of OutRun. There was OutRun 3D on the Master System which was pointless unless you had the near £40 3D glasses to go with it. Battle OutRun was OutRun only in name and bore no significance to the original., having more in common with Chase HQ. Then there was OutRun Europa which swapped the scenery for more European locations. Don’t call us, we’ll call you was the verdict of gamers everywhere. It can be argued that until we got to the rather splendid Outrun : Coast to Coast on the PS2 and XBOX, that the spirit of OutRun was found again
Take Turbo OutRun on the Mega Drive. The simple idea being that your Ferrari is now armed with a handy turbo boost enabling you to get to checkpoints quicker. Again it is a simple time attack game and for that it is OK, but it’s not OutRun. You don’t need a turbo boost and you never did with the original. The Mega Drive version is a pretty ropey affair with average graphics, some pretty poor road effects and awful in game music which considering some of the musical masterpieces on this console – Revenge of Shinobi, Streets of Rage – is unforgivable.
One hopes now that OutRun can be laid to rest and that we only remember the original game and the excellent PS2 and XBOX games. Otherwise Turbo OutRun is nothing more than a car game with a flash car and a turbo boost to stop you from reaching for the off switch.
VERDICT : Left in the pits and retiring early once it gets going, Turbo OutRun truly sucks exhausts fumes to a suicidal level
NOTES : Copies available on Amazon start under £2.00 whilst on eBay you’ll have to pay around £5.00.
UP NEXT : One for grapple fans – Super Wrestlemania on the SNES.
30 Days Of Gaming……
Oct 31st
Hear ye, hear ye. Guess who’s been off on one of his sabbaticals again ?…
I made a promise a few months ago to keep coming back and posting stuff on a regular basis. Shortly after that I decided to do a piece on Football Manager and that’s pretty much where I have been since. Yep I dug out FM 2055 and have spent a lot of my spare time playing that.
Therefore I am devoting some of my run time each day to sit down and play one game for each day in November. It could be any format or any genre (not football management as I have had enough of that for now) but that’s my aim. I’ll post my thoughts on here when I have played the game and let you know how I get on, and also anything else that springs to mind.
So RetroSection still lives, it’s just the Retrobear needs to sort himself out a bit better in the future…..