Hand baked arcade retro game showcase

Posted by: Gary Stanton

We thought you'd like to know that our friends over at handbakedarcade.co.uk are putting on a night of retro gaming fun in East London on the 27th March.

Their retro gaming installations have been well received all over the country at festivals and nightclubs, and featured on the Gadget Show. This, their largest set-up to date, will take over Pure Groove Records EC1.
As well as a great set up of freeplay retro games, some of which on 7ft screens, there will be a great line up of DJs including Hand Baked's founder, E:LF providing chip tunes and other game inspired music.

Venue: Pure Groove Records,
6-7 West Smithfield, London, EC1A 9JX
Date: Saturday 27th March 2010
Time: 19:00 - 23:30
Entry: £3
It promises to be a great night!

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Can I Feel Your Chopper? - Mincing Through The Buttercups With Golden Axe

Posted by: Paul Smith

Apparently, in First Blood, a character called Sgt Galt falls from a helicopter, and registers his concern by screaming.  Elsewhere in the film, someone called Deputy Mitch also has a bit of a scream upon discovering that Rambo is hacking his leg off with a bayonet.  In 1989, it was surprisingly tricky to capture noises like this and reproduce them in a video game.  

If you have a good working knowledge of thinly veiled mainstream homoerotica, you'll also hear the outrushing breath of someone leading something called a Snake Cult in Conan the Barbaian.  Conan himself has just caused the breath in question to vacate the thoracic cavity by elbowing the Snake Leader in the solar plexus.  This sound was also incorporated into the same video game, as was the understandably crestfallen cry of someone called Thorgrim as he is - yes, that's right - fatally impaled on a rotating spike of some kind.

Bearing all this in mind, it's time to pump up those pecs, remove your body hair, get all oiled up, develop a surprisingly good eye for interior furnishing, and follow in the footsteps of Golden Axe, as he battles his way through a medieval fantasy world.  Don't worry ladies - he's a good listener.

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New designs added

Posted by: Gary Stanton

It's a busy time over at RetroGT HQ - we're working hard on a new website, we've got some awesome new products in the pipeline, and we've taken on some new talent in the form of guest designer, Kevin Chang.

You can see three of his lovely new designs below, inspired by classic games Dizzy, Donkey Kong and Pilot Wings.

 

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Have Your Railcards Ready For Inspection - it's Railroad Tycoon 2!

Posted by: Paul Smith

Railroad Tycoon 2 is one of those games where the best way to play is to not win.  It isn't as if you are going to get overrun by barbarians or sacked by your board of directors or, well, die, which are the standard penalties for dawdling about in other, more clear cut gaming genres.

Certainly, if you are playing one of the many scenarios that the Railroad Tycoon franchise offers - which are as diverse as getting Herbert Hoover around every city in the American Midwest during the 1929 General Election to reconstructing the Trans Siberian railway - you can fail to move enough freight or not get your company's share price high enough and find yourself out of a job, but, considering that this is the worst thing that can possibly happen to you within the confines of the game, it's pretty benign.  So - if you've cleared the peasants out of First Class and filled the drinks trolley with crisps and tonic water, let's fire up ol' Steaming Jenny for a blast around the Industrial Age.

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It's All Kicked Off, Sire! Into battle with Medieval Total War

Posted by: Paul Smith

A dark, disease ridden era in which non existent social mobility, fear, war, and religious fanaticism dominated the increasingly apathetic and supine populations of western Europe.  But hey - it's time to forget contemporary society, shake off a few centuries and dive headlong into the middle ages for a right old dust up. 

Of course, 'Total War' itself was conceptually impossible in the middle ages, largely because the idea of nationhood as we understand it had yet to evolve, but also because the industrial infrastructure required to support an all out war effort involving every member of a society simply did not exist.  Happily, in the interests of turning out a quantum-leaping mind bomb of a game, designer Mike Brunton and developers The Creative Assembly decided to ignore all that and concentrate instead on charging through Europe and the Middle East at lance point.  So oil up your metal underwear, stock up on wild boar sandwiches and mead, and prepare to release ye dogs of warre.

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From Caveman to Costa Coffee - Through The Ages With Civilisation 2

Posted by: Paul Smith

The phrase 'classic is a phrase that is used too much these days' is, in turn, a phrase that is used too much these days.  Civilisation 2, however, is a classic in the literal sense.  It's also an epic in the Homeric sense, and genius in the Archemedian sense.  It was the first of the really big strategy games that you didn't so much play as marry.  This article is late because, in the interests of research, I decided to download a copy of the old time guzzler for a quick half hour blast and effectively deleted Wednesday October 21st 2009 from my life.

But no matter.  The Civilisation franchise is one of the cornerstones of modern strategy gaming, along with the Sim City, Railroad Tycoon and Total War famlies, and everyone with even the vaguest interest in the genre will, at some point, feel the embrace of this migraine-inducing mistress.

The aim of Civ2 is to nurse your small wandering tribe of pre-historic also-rans into an uber-advanced, industrial-military powerhouse over the course of about eight thousand years.   So, if you've booked your annual leave, bid adieu to your loved ones and stocked up on food that requires no preparation, brace yourself to go right back to the beginning of everything, ever, and start history all over again.  It's a bit of an ask, to say the least, so we'd best crack on.

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New design added: Tekken

Posted by: Lawrence Wong

To celebrate the arrival of the new Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 we bring you our latest design. It depicts Kazuya's glove over the japanese kanji for 'Iron Fist' aka Tekken. It's big and bold... just like mighty Tekken itself.

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Nurse - the Screens! Inside the lovely, horrible world of Theme Hospital.

Posted by: Paul Smith

The concept is simple.  It's a hospital.  People come in with illnesses, your excellent staff cure them, and they go home happy - like holding a mirror up to real life, in fact.

The hospital you will be building, however, is more akin to the child of a diabolical union between Fawlty Towers, Green Wing and Carry On Doctor.  Your patients will be troubled by Bloaty Head, which will need deflating, or Slack Tongue, which will need trimming up with a guillotine.  You'll need to shoot any rats you find scurrying about the place quickly, before anyone sees them.  Scrimp on your cleaning budget and risk entire corridors being literally swept away on a tidal wave of vomit.

It's time, then, to snap on your rubber gloves, polish your stethescope and prepare to cure the afflicted as we explore the demented world of Theme Hospital. 

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Think Again, Mr Vader! Atari Does Star Wars, 1983

Posted by: Paul Smith

Over the last few weeks, we've been following Dave Palmer's exploits at the 1985 Video Games Masters Tournament, where, you'll recall, he established six world records, left heartbroken motherboards all over the place, and failed to meet any ladies. This week, it's time for the Death Star to tremble like a jelly as Palmer fires up his X Wing and takes to the skies.

It's the end of A New Hope, and it's all gone right off. Skywalker's hearing voices in his head and has turned off his targeting computer, which looks like an error. Princess Leia, one of many characters who spends the whole film in a dressing gown, is looking nervous, knowing that unless Skywalker, with whom she feels a strange connection - which in the end probably turns out to be nothing - can do the business with the photon torpedoes, the franchise is over. No one really knows what happens after that, but it's this scene that forms the main chunk of Atari's 1983 vector graphic bonanza Star Wars.

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New designs added: Atari mono & Little Chief

Posted by: Lawrence Wong

We like to kick it old school so we've gone back to our early Atari Joystick design to give it a fresh, yet more retro look. In anticipation of the release of Halo 3: ODST on the Xbox 360, we've been engrossed in the earlier games (mostly deathmatch). This lead to our other new design, the Little Chief, a mash of influences. Something old, something new. Check 'em out:

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Bad Crosshair Day - Taking To The Sky With Firefox

Posted by: Paul Smith

We've been looking at Dave Palmer's high score obliterating weekend at the 1985 Video Game Masters Tournament over the last couple of weeks, and it's been illuminating stuff.  This week, we take a look at Firefox, which, before it was search engine, was a film with Clint Eastwood in it, and a not very exciting arcade game.

Mention laser discs now and people will laugh and throw iPods at you.   The format was beset with developmental problems and by the time it finally lumbered into the marketplace it was entirely unable to compete with either VHS or Betamax, and faced growing opposition from within an industry to whom it had promised much and delivered little.  This offering, then, represents Atari's only dalliance with laserdiscs, which - considering that at the time all lasers were owned by global terrorists living in mountains being pursued by James Bond - were a great deal less exciting than they sounded.    That didn't stop Atari from making what was, for 1983, the most technologically advanced game then seen.

'Most technologically advanced' is also a fitting description of the stolen fighter plane to which you have just been handed the keys in the game itself.   The film Firefox, in which Clint Eastwood stars as your character in the arcade game, supplies actual footage, which demonstrates just how wizard-like laserdiscs seemed in world before technology. 

 

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Don't Mention The Score! It's the Red Baron.

Posted by: Paul Smith

Last time, if you recall, we looked at Dave Palmer's girlfriendless heroics playing Battlezone at the 1985 Video Game Masters Tournament, where he managed to break six world high score records in three days.   This week, we examine Red Baron, another of Palmer's conquests during that epic weekend of joystick waggling, transparent soft drinks and Goonies merchandise.

You just don't see iron crosses, Teutonic lettering and general symbols of German military expansionism on video game cabinets like you used to.  Atari's Red Baron, released in 1980, was so festooned with this sort of thing that it resembled a Nazi phone box.   It was also remarkable as the very first first person flight simulator, and honest Tommies everywhere will be relieved to learn that the player takes to the skies on the Allied side for a crack at the Boche.   This is rendered with the same vector graphics at Battlezone, and required an auxiliary motherboard to work out all the 3D bi plane to-ings and fro-ings.   An easier way of spotting similarites between the two was to peel back the aforementioned German martial themed cabinet decorations, which would often reveal a Battlezone cabinet lurking underneath, although this would usually see you beaten up fairly rigourously by contemporary arcade owners.

As we all know, Fritz does not understand the notion of fair play and gentlemanly behaviour.  However, Red Baron attempts to address this somewhat by striving for an average playing time, tweaking the fiendishness of enemy fliers based on the average length of the previous 32 games - known within the trade as 'adaptive difficulty'.  This interesting feature was present on many early Atari games, and while it was doubtless well intentioned - preventing excessive game times - one cannot help but speculate that it inevitably lead to some Red Barons being more difficult than others.

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New designs added: Space Harrier & Pac-Mod

Posted by: Lawrence Wong

Just a quick update to say that we've added two new designs to the range. Pac-Mod is an amalgam of video game and mod culture represented by our beloved Pac-Man in the form of a pixellated RAF roundel associated with the mod lifestyle. Sega's monster hit Space Harrier brings us inspiration for the second design... an astonishing game that, once witnessed, no one can forget. Space Harrier is available in two styles, black or yellow.

 

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Battlezone

Posted by: Paul Smith

A Dave Palmer once played Battlezone - Atari's iconic vector graphic tank combat simulation - for 23 hours non-stop.    Despite having no previous military experience, Palmer clocked up a high score of 23 million points.   This not only offers a neat million points an hour scoring rate: 23 million is also the largest score it was possible to get, and, in 1985, the biggest number in the world.

This was just one of six high scores on various games that Palmer, who was single at the time, managed to achieve in the three day long Video Games Masters' Tournament of that year.     We'll be rummaging through the motherboards of his other arcade conquests over the next few weeks, but for now, Battlezone's under scrutiny, so dust off your combat trousers and climb aboard.

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Retro GT @ Insert Coin 09 & LF&C con

Posted by: Lawrence Wong

We'll be trading at two shows this coming weekend (18th-19th July). London Film & Comic con held at London's Earl's Court brings you guests from TV, Film and comics for signings, talks and of course, merchandise.

You'll also find us in Northampton at Insert Coin 09. This show is the first of a brand new annual event dedicated to arcade gaming. It promises to provide over 250 games on freeplay, both retro and new, including Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion straight from Japan. There will also be prizes, tournaments and various traders of merchandise and arcade cabinets/parts. That sounds sweet.

As usual, our T-Shirts will be available at 2 for £25. We look forward to seeing you. Click the banners for more info on these shows:

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