Another excellent Hijong Park retro tribute game – this one possibly his best so far – Steel Alcimus is an overhead helicopter shooter with either twin-stick joypad, or keyboard and mouse controls. I played it with mouse and keys and found the control system to be really quite ingenious.
Tag Archives: Modern Retro
Modern games, made to look retro.
Frantic Dimension, PC
Frantic Dimension is another great, free game, made by talented Korean Hijong Park and released on Steam in 2018.
The opening animatic in Frantic Dimension is quite funny – made even funnier by the slightly off-kilter use of English (it’s not a criticism – I like it). 🙂
Rolling Bird, PC
Rolling Bird is a modern tribute to the classic arcade game Rolling Thunder.
Graphically it looks a bit like an NES game, or an old arcade game. The colours are bold and the animation simple, but still excellent.
Manos: The Hands of Fate, PC
Now this is a game I never thought I’d ever get to play… A game based on arguably the worst film of all time. A film called Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966), and a film that is so bad that it has been known to reduce grown men to tears… And – believe it or not – I’ve sat though it twice. Yes: twice. Anyone who’s seen Manos: The Hands of Fate might want to congratulate me on that feat since sitting through the film twice requires a special kind of skill… Thankfully – as a lover and connoisseur of bad films – I have developed an immunity to [most of] them over the years, and it was with some excitement that I purchased this game on Steam and installed it…
Manic Miner, XBox 360
The original Manic Miner, emulated perfectly on XBox 360 by Elite Systems in 2012, plus with historical background notes, “Winter Mode”, scan lines on or off, pixel filtering, cheat mode, and more.
More on The King of Grabs: 10 Best Manic Miner Conversions
More: Manic Miner on Wikipedia
Manic Miner, Game Boy Advance
Jester Interactive‘s 2002 remake of Manic Miner must surely rate as the best version of Manic Miner available (excepting maybe the Spectrum original), although it might play too quickly for some.
Golden Hornet, PC
Golden Hornet, by Hijong Park, is an excellent ‘modern retro’-style, ‘twin stick’, helicopter-based shoot ’em up, set in a variety of different scrolling levels.
Frogger Arcade, Commodore 64
This superb homebrew (unofficial) Frogger, by Hokuto Force, was published (for free of course) around Christmas 2015 for the Commodore 64.
VVVVVV, PC
Terry Cavanagh‘s VVVVVV is an extremely smart-but-simple platform/indie game that feels a lot like a Commodore 64 game from the ’80s, although it was actually released in 2010.
Head Over Heels, PC
Which leads me up to this 2003 remake of Head Over Heels, by Retrospec.
A re-imagining of Ritman and Drummond‘s classic game, with updated visuals and sound. Does it cut the mustard? Does it live up to the greatness of the original?
The King of Grabs 