Play Til Your Eyes Bleed - It's Emlyn Hughes' International Soccer

Posted by: Paul Smith

As a teenager, Emlyn Hughes would run up and down flights of stairs in tower blocks until he passed out, in an attempt to build up his stamina.   He would do this once or twice a week, and on one occasion ran himself into a coma.   It was this kind of behavior that would, in later life, lead to him being called 'Crazy Horse'.   It worked though - he became captain and defensive stalwart at Liverpool throughout the '70s, winning just about everything the domestic and European game had to offer.   He also captained foppishly underachieving England sides under Don Revie and Ron Greenwood.   Seemingly unable to stop captaining things even in retirement, Hughes skippered a team on the BBC's it-will-never-end quiz show A Question of Sport for three years.   Not bad for a player who, despite having infectious enthusiasm and iron self discipline, was not actually all that good.

In 1983, Audiovision released Emlyn Hughes' International Soccer, complete with the Hughes himself beaming away on the front cover, presumably urging the purchaser to play until he collapsed from malnutrition. 

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Oh Lordy! It's Out Run!

Posted by: Paul Smith

A couple of weeks ago we spoke about - yes, that's right - isometric projection and the way it vaguely brought a kind of 3Dish feel to the yawn-smothering delights of Zaxxon (see 'The angles and the Zaxxons', June 21st.)    An altogether more exciting gobbet hurled from the bubbling white hot cauldron of mid-80s gaming evolution was sprite scaling.    This was a technique that allowed hitherto sluggish sprites to be chucked about all over the place nice and quickly, giving a far greater feeling of 3D movement and, above all, speed.    Not only this, but the word on Arcade Street was of something called force feedback.    This was an innovation which allowed player interface objects - such as, for example, steering wheels - to judder violently in time with game events - such as, for example, accidentally driving off a road at high speed.   With breakthroughs like this going on, it wouldn't be long before someone gave the world a top notch driving game.   Sega were all over it.

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New Megaman 9 goes retro

Posted by: Lawrence Wong

 

Coming to console this Autumn is Capcom's action platformer Megaman 9, also known as Rockman 9: The Ambition's Revival!!. This new sequel to the popular Megaman franchise will be available for download on WiiWare, Playstation Network and Xbox Live Arcade.

Of particular interest to retro heads is that the entire game will be developed to resemble a NES game. Megaman debuted on the NES in 1987 and although it appeared on many platforms including the SNES and Megadrive, it was during the NES era that the franchise hit its height of popularity. Megaman 9's producer Hironobu Takeshita explains the decision to go retro:

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Little computer people

Posted by: Paul Smith

There's a little person in my computer!  And I have to feed him!

Imagine a sim version of the Sims, but back in 1985 before the Sims had been invented, and before the word 'sim' had entered the English language.  

It's a tricky one, but your reward is Activision's quirky Little Computer People.   This was one of the very first games to use digital DNA, which would predetermine the personality of the little chap who was going to come and live inside your computer.   Him and his dog, actually, and the blurb accompanying the floppy disk - which was fourteen foot in diameter - explained that the Little Computer People were always in your pc, and that the software you had just spent sixpence ha'penny on was merely the vehicle which enabled you to see them.   

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Battle of Destiny 2008

Posted by: Lawrence Wong

Last weekend (26th & 27th July) was Neo Empire's Battle of Destiny event bringing together fighting game fans from all over Europe. The event was held in a London venue with 2 floors featuring tournaments and exclusive plays of Street Fighter 4, Soul Calibur 4 and the latest build of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo: HD Remix. The tournament winners get tickets to Las Vegas to compete in the Evolution World 2008 finals.

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The angles and the Zaxxons

Posted by: Paul Smith

When you think of 1982, you immediately think of isometric projection.   It was this go-on-then-but-we're-being-very-generous 3D-ish effect that first came to the popular consciousness with the landmark game Zaxxon, an early arcade hit for the pre-Sonic house of Sega.   In truth, this effect was the only thing that marked Zaxxon out from a number of the fly along and bomb stuff games which were the early glimmerings of a key genre that would one day spawn graphics card gobbling thrillathons as Il-2 Sturmovic, and the Fighter Ace massive multiplayer.

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Sim City - Here Comes The Neighbourhood

Posted by: Paul Smith

Tiredness?    Sore eyes?   Headache?    Forget  Lemsip and Clarityn.   The best way to clear all these symptoms is to remove Sim City from your hard drive.

So what's going on here.   Well, the early versions - and it was originally designed for the Commodore 64 back in 1857 - were a flat bird's eye view of a simulated city (do you see?) in which the player could apportion land to industrial, residential or commercial activity.    The zones then build themselves, and then flourish or not according to how astute the player (ie Mayor) had been in planning the layout in the first place.    This initial version was called Micropolis, and the creator - Will Wright - was inspired by a short story entitled 'The Seventh Sally' by Stanislaw Lem, in which a tyrant is given a tiny artificial city to oppress.    Because of the non-winnable nature of the game, it was ignored by the industry at large until 1989, when the-size-of-a-dining-room-table software minnows Maxis picked it up and republished it as Sim City.  

Like all the major franchise games, it has various versions, but essentially has not changed at all.   You start with a flat (or landscaped to however you want it to look) piece of land, and you build a city on it.   Remembering the golden rules for starting up - industrial land should equal same as residential and commercial combined, get everything supplied with water and electricity and chuck a primary school in for good luck - your city starts to grow.    It actually does appear to literally grow too - you can zoom right in and see individual construction workers hammering away at scaffolding, reading the Sun or shouting into mobile phones in Latvian in some versions - and it is genuinely heart warming.    It's an altogether gentler buzz to the Championship Manager rollercoaster we spoke about last week, but absolutely no less addictive.   It's like watching the most interesting fish tank in the world.   

 

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What game would you bring back?

Posted by: Danny Morgan

After a marathon session of gaming on my SNES, I began wondering what it would be like if some of the games from my childhood were remade on current-gen systems.

Looking through my retro catalogue, I would love to see what an up to date version of some of the games would be like. Donkey Kong Country, Super Bomberman are among my favourites to see revitalised. Donkey Kong Country (DKC) on the SNES was revolutionary in terms of graphical prowess. Colourful level design and smooth 3D animation were a big part of what made DKC so great. But, in all honesty there hasn't been a decent DK game since - c'mon Donkey Konga hardly counts!

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Championship Manager

Posted by: Paul Smith

Shropshire is like pipe smoking tobacco, Last of the Summer Wine box sets and spleens: you'll never need them, but it's nice to know that they're there.   It's the home of the British Hedgehog Preservation Society and Ditherington flax mill, the first skyscraper in the world, which is probably about twenty foot high.   I once visited Shropshire on a school trip to look at, I dunno, geology or something, and found a badge which was a take off of a Coke advert, and had something along the lines of 'smooth running goal getting cup winning Liverpool FC' on it.   At around the same time, two brothers - Paul and Oliver Collyer - were fiddling about with Commodore 64's in a bedroom not so far away.   Less than a decade later, they would unleash Championship Manager on the world.   That's right.   Spouse ignoring, divorce getting, custody losing Championship Manager.

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Clocking Defender

Posted by: Paul Smith

When I was younger, I did two paper rounds every morning, which provided me with the then-massive weekly income of £9. I would be paid this on a Saturday and, if West Ham were playing away, would convert this into nine quids' worth of enormous ten pence pieces and head towards an arcade in Bow for a morning of grubby entertainment. Our arcade was typical of many at the time, being a dark room with a line of games machines circling round like a Blade Runner version of Stonehenge, in the middle of which block sprite galactic battles would take place, under the twinkling gaze of kindly old gentlemen - or, as they prefer to be called, paedophiles - who were always happy to provide Fanta and crisps to thirsty space warriors, or, to once again use the correct term, jailbait.

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