Posts Tagged ‘pc’

It’s been a month, possibly more since the last update which I majorly apologize for- with a small staff and busy lives it is bound to happen every so often! Personally I’ve just had a wisdom tooth taken out, which has reared its ugly head since Armageddon last month, but thats sorted now, and I’m ready to announce a project for RetroActive.

Are you a seasoned “Starcraft” player? Retroactive wants to hear from you ASAP for a documentary about to hit pre-production in the next month, and hopefully release a few weeks after Starcraft 2.

We’re looking at interviewing modders/mappers/and players both casual and “hardcore”, as well as filming the release of the game’s sequel in Wellington.

Please email ross@retroactive.co.nz for more information. NZ’ers only for interviews sorry!

Hi every one, I’m the new guy Impish. As my first appearance at You Tube may have shown, I’m a bit of a Sonic-head, and so, for my first review, I will be covering one of my favorite games, Sonic Adventure. It might not seem all that old, but Sonic Adventure came out in japan in 1998, definitely fitting into our pre-1999 policy.

Sonic Adventure

Platform: Sega Dreamcast (Original Release). Nintendo Game cube & PC (Director’s Cut), Xbox live (Coming Soon)

Released: 1998 (Japan) 1999 (Internationally) on Dreamcast (2003 Director’s cut)

Developer: Sonic Team

Publisher: SEGA, (PC version by Activision under Sega PC)

Features: 6 different single player storylines, dozens of mini-games, A-life Virtual Pet Chao Garden, VMU game Chao Adventure (DX also includes 12 Game Gear Sonic Games)

Sonic Adventure was the first actual 3D Sonic game. It was released as a launch title for Sega’s final Console, the Dreamcast. Sonic Adventure was the best selling dream cast game during the consoles entire history, selling 2.5 million copies. And in my humble opinion was one of, if not the greatest, Sonic titles ever.

The games story focuses around six different playable characters, Sonic the hero, his young sidekick Tails, the gruff and tough Knuckles, Sonic’s wannabe girlfriend Amy Rose and newcomers Big the Cat and E-102 Gamma. These six characters have a wide variety of game play, and give the game a huge amount of replay ability. The game also introduced the English speaking world to Dr Eggman, the name of the villain known to us English speakers as Dr Ivo Robotnik .

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WINTER GAMES ROUND UP

The world has gone nuts in the past few weeks, the Winter Olympics in Vancouver has really brought people together. Even long time bitter rivals, Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog have even put their competition aside for 2 games.

With all this kerfuffle it’s easy to forget about the non Olympic sponsored games, some of which are pretty good in their own right.

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Fury 3

Developer: Terminal Reality

Format: PC (Windows95/3.1)

Released: August 1995

Features: Game save, customisable controls with joystick/game pad support, detail settings.

First a little story. WARNING: Rose tinted glasses ahoy!

It was September 1995, my dad has just purchased a new PC to move on from our old Amstrad cassette tape driven machine. My dad asked me if I wanted a game for it for my birthday. This machine was top of the line- brand new os on it, a whole 16mb of RAM and an 800mb (!!!) hard drive. It cost about 2000 pounds sterling. It was a BEAST. I was the coolest kid on the block. I also got a nice beige joystick with it.

Cue 2008, I’m now up to 8 years of living in New Zealand, 13 years after my first real PC experience. I hadn’t forgotten about this game. I have no idea where my original discs went even. They were probably lost in the move. Anyway, I waltzing through Cash Converters and in a bin full of CD’s, sitting at the top, is the first REAL 3d game I ever played or owned. For $3, I couldn’t pass it up.

Putting my aforementioned rose tinted glasses on when I get home, I’m amazed to find it actually runs perfectly in Windows XP. In about 20minutes I get further than I did in all my first few years of PC gaming. What. The. Heck. Still, it was a blast.

Now I get to tell the world about it.

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Strife

Developer: Rogue Entertainment

Format: PC (MS-DOS)

Released: May 1996

Features: Game save, voice overs, multiple endings and dialogue options.

This is a game that I had only heard of (let alone played) until recently. One of those games that I see mentioned everywhere as one of a few first person Sci-Fi RPGS (the main one being “System Shock”, by looking glass studios). Needless to say it has blown my mind at what could be done with a good idea and a drive to change what a game engine (that’s normally associated with hell on Mars) can do.

Released in 1996 by Velocity, “Strife” is one of a lowly few first person RPG’s released in the early-mid 90’s, in a genre dominated by the fantasy territories of Ultima Underworld, and the bleak space station of System Shock.

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Facets of the GamePlex

Introduction

Words by ColdBain

Foreword:

   We gamers live in a very privileged world. We have access to all the modern gaming technology, we have a raft of choices we can make, and we are supported through gaming media to make educated decisions about our purchases. In addition to that, the median is still developing, and access is still growing.

   Individuals will dedicate their lives to figuring out how to complete your new game for you and post their results on the internet for free, some will go so far as to make narrated videos for us via youtube. It is very clear the gaming industry is a complex organism and has become a legitimised past-time for many people around the world… this society, this world, this arm of entertainment I call, the GamePlex.

The GamePlex: introduction

   Gaming has become such an entrenched past-time to our societies that is nearly impossible to accurately summarise in a single paragraph what being a ‘gamer’ means. Gone are the days where people were defined by their choice of console, the distinctions have become blurred as the variety of gaming ‘clicks’ increase. Such ‘gaming communities’ are not necessarily exclusive, people will and can identify with a multitude of ‘sub-communities’, retro-gaming (the most appropriate to this article) is simply another arm under-which many gaming communities can gather and associate with one another.

   The GamePlex is a term I’ll use as a starting point. It is a term that acknowledges the complexity within the divergent gaming societies and various supporting media, as well as their pasts, present and future. The following will be a series of articles examining the various flags, terms, societies and media within the GamePlex, in an attempt to create an extensive and ongoing list of the various Facets within the GamePlex (no association to The Matrix).  Read the rest of this entry »

Hey guy’s, I’m back from having a bit of a summer break and raring to go!

Since it’s moved a year forward I’d figure I’d review something as late in what I would define as “retro”….

Developer- Epic Games

Release- November 1999

Platforms: PC/Linux/Mac and later Dreamcast and PS2

1999 was the year I’d consider one of the last years of “current gen-retro”. By this I means its more than 10 years old, and a huge turning point in the industry as far as how we looked at online gaming.

Until then, multiplayer was just something that came up alongside other games main campaigns, there was no focus to create a multi player only shooter. The only strictly multiplayer shooters were modifications such as Team Fortress or Counter-Strike- however these were just mods to retail games that allowed you to mess with the map editing and code of the games (not to say this wasn’t a bad thing).

Then along came Epic who broke the rules with “Unreal Tournament”.

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Desert Strike: Return To The Gulf

Platform:  Practically everything: Sega Mega Drive, Amiga, GB, GBC, GBA, PSP,  PC, SNES etcetcetc

Features: 1 player,  Password Save

Release Date: February 1993

Dateline 1993:  An unnamed country much like those found in the Middle East, and an evil dictator known as “Kilbaba” bent on mass destruction and oil proliferation.  You could be forgiven for drawing parallels to our own Gulf war, which ended a year before the release of this title.

Much like Konami’s next-gen but announced-but-canceled title “6 Days in Fallujah”, the release of this was paved in controversy with many cries of  “too soon!” and claims of cashing in on the recently ended war.

What finally came out was one of the most amazing action games of the first half of the 90’s, known simply as “Desert Strike”.

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