More (Australian) retro gaming blogs

Posted Wednesday, 13th July 2011 under Video game websites
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Last week I posted about some retro gaming blogs I’ve been reading of late, but two other have caught my attention:

• Retrospekt – Coming out of Adelaide, Retrospekt features reviews, tidbits, guides and other thoughtpieces on retro gaming in Australia. Of special note is its coverage of DJ TR!P’s Ultracade series, and entertaining ventures to local specialty stores. The recent C64 special (part 1) also gave me the warm fuzzies.
• Retro Game On – Written by Brendan, who happens to be from Perth and enjoys wearing pants. He’s also recently taken steps to attack a mangled Game Gear with a soldering iron (good luck! My soldering iron and I regularly catch up to discuss current events and make smelly burning solder smells) and bought Dreamcast games in France for a good price from a reluctant business owner.
• Retro Gaming Australia – As the name suggests, this blog is about retro gaming. In Australia. I found this one while procrastinating, and I’m very impressed. The daily video game ads are a great trip down memory lane, especially when they’re coupled with topical humour relevant to Australian Dreamcast fans from 1999. But for those who fondly remember when the illustrious video game magazine of the 90s ruled supreme, you’re in for a treat as they’ve compiled a massive list of game reviews spanning a rather large gamut of Australian publication; being irrational, I checked to see if the score for Rocket Knight Adventure from Sega Megazone was there, and voila:

  

  Gold!

That reminds me of the time when I made a poster of Rocket Knight Adventures back in 1993. It was hand-drawn and everything, and included a quote from the Sega Megazone review that mentioned it being far more enjoyable than a night with Cindy Crawford and a barrel of jellied eels. I’m sure my parents were delighted that their 11-year-old son would put such a memorable comment on a poster about a video game in 1993.

Now I feel sad because it reminds me that I sold off all my video game magazines for practically nothing on eBay when I started Uni in 2000 in an effort to have something of a right-of-passage and farewell High School Sean, as well as scrape some extra cash for Uni life (a serving of chips and gravy from the Unibar made for a cheap but tasty lunch). Now as a man-child in their late-20s (with an understand wife), I regret selling everything off. But I rest at ease in the hope that someone else is dancing a merry jig with their bargain purchase.

The Rocket Knight Adventures revisit looks promising (new trailer!)

Posted Wednesday, 14th April 2010 under New old games
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Rocket Knight Adventures on the Mega Drive was/is awesome. When I was reading up via 1up and heard via their awesome nerd podcast Retronauts earlier this year that it was getting a revisit via PSN/XBLA, I was mildly excited. Some of the early promo artwork looked like it had potential, but I was still sitting on the fence.

However, after checking out an update over at PALGN and watching the trailer, I’m pleasantly surprised by how it’s shaping up:

I’m really loving the visual aesthetic here – there’s a classic storybook fantasy feel to the visuals that looks great, and the animation and particle effects are spot on. I didn’t have the speakers on while watching it though, so not sure on the direction with the audio. Hopefully it’s not poxy!

The original Mega Drive game in the series featured everything that made Konami such a powerhouse back in the 16- and 32-bit eras, with loving attention to detail on the visuals, great music perfectly suited to the hardware, plenty of colour, passion, spot-on controls, innovation and even a little story to boot! While the sequel on the Mega Drive was in comparison pretty disappointing (I’m guessing a different team handled it), the concept was still fun. The only game in the series I never got a chance to play was Sparkster on the SNES. I really should track it down though, Konami made some brilliant games on the SNES.

So yes, new Rocket Knight Adventures game for May. Can’t wait 😀

Gaming sessions – 4 January 2009

Posted Tuesday, 8th September 2009 under Gaming sessions
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Obviously I was enjoying my last weekend before heading back to work around that time 🙂

Anywho, played through a couple of retro games – first up are a few screen caps of Asterix on the SMS. This was the first game I bought for my SMS after I got it for my birthday back in 1992, and I bought it primarily based on the cover and the fact I liked the Asterix cartoons I saw on TV and the comics I read 🙂 Turned out to be an awesome purchase, it still holds up as a great platformer today.

The cool thing about it is that I actually finished the game in one sitting – I’d never finished it when I was a kid, so that was pretty awesome. The last screen is of the ending.

Next up is Rocket Knight Adventures, an absolute cracking piece of original IP from Konami on the Mega Drive. While the sequel was pretty lackluster on the SMD (must have been a different studio working on it), this one exudes charm, precision, beauty and a bit of typically Japanese quirkiness. I originally got this one for my birthday in… 1994 I think, I still remember playing it for a few minutes before school that day too!

I was actually sending the pics in this set to my brother who is teaching up in the country while I was playing – he paid me out for pausing the game to take screen shots, so there are a few in there I slipped in whilst trying not to die 😛

Finally there’s Jeffrey from Virtua Fighter Kids on the Saturn. Because he’s awesome.

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