Tag Archives: Retro Gaming

International Tennis (1985), Commodore 64

Commodore‘s go at tennis, as part of its series of C64 sports games, is a pretty poor game overall. It’s got a side-on view and the feel and presentation of the game are lacking.

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Super Monkey Ball 2: Sakura Edition, Android

Like the majority of Android games (although certainly not all of them), this 2010 mobile version of Sega‘s classic Super Monkey Ball is available as an advertisement-filled free version, or a paid version with no ads.

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Urban Upstart, ZX Spectrum

Pete Cooke‘s graphical text adventure, Urban Upstart, was first published by Richard Shepherd Software in 1983. It’s a first-person game, where you use a text parser to move around and issue commands, and is set in the fictional English town of “Scarthorpe” – a rough place to live, by all accounts. So rough, in fact, that the aim of the game is to escape the place by any means possible.

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Magical Hat no Buttobi Tābo! Daibōken, Megadrive/Genesis

Developed by Vic Tokai, and based on the “Magical Hat” manga series by Yōji Katakura, Magical Hat no Buttobi Tābo! Daibōken was first released, by Sega, for the Megadrive in Japan in 1990. It is a colourful platform game with smooth movement, easy-to-understand controls, and gameplay that is fairly forgiving overall.

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Decap Attack, Megadrive/Genesis

Decap Attack is a side-scrolling platform game, developed by Vic Tokai and published by Sega in 1991. This game was originally released in Japan, in 1990, as “Magical Hat no Buttobi Tābo! Daibōken“, but developer Vic Tokai failed to secure the Magical Hat license for use outside of Japan, so decided to remove all traces of it, and completely re-skin the game. So Decap Attack is essentially a Westernised re-skinning of Magical Hat no Buttobi Tābo! Daibōken.

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Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Nintendo Wii

The 2007 release of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption was something of a milestone for Nintendo, the game’s publisher, and Retro Studios, the game’s developer. For Nintendo this was a landmark release, showing off the Wii‘s impressive capabilities as a games console, and for Retro Studios it was the end of years of experimentation with the control system. In the end, it turned out to be a masterpiece…

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Tōgi Ō: King Colossus, Megadrive/Genesis

Released in Japan only, by Sega, in 1992, Tōgi Ō: King Colossus is an obscure JRPG with real-time combat that has been fan-translated into English (and Spanish) and is therefore playable to gamers outside of Japan.

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Beach Head II, ZX Spectrum

The ZX Spectrum of Beach Head II was developed by Platinum Productions and published by US Gold in 1985.

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Beach Head, ZX Spectrum

The ZX Spectrum version of Beach Head was developed by Ocean Software and published by US Gold in 1984.

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