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1. Rotten Strawberry Poor Five year old Cherry Putrid aveid at all costs mp ar by Elena Garcia Mendez Super Adventure Island Part i The creator and developer of the Adventure Island games is the Hudson Soft Company a subsidiary of the Konami Corporation based in Tokyo and Sapporo Japan Established in 1973 Hudson focused on PC products before entering the exciting world of video game creation development and publishing Hudson founders Hiroshi and Yuji Kudo could maybe be described as Japanese train spotters having named their company after Hudson locomotives Initially in the business of selling photographs and telecommunications gadgets by 1978 Hudson had expanded into computer games Hudson began creating games for Nintendo including the famous Lode Runner Bomberman and others The company continued the development of several games on numerous platforms Hudson s success continued into the 1990s with the creation and publication of video games for many different systems From 1988 to 1995 the USA division of Hudson was based in South San Francisco From here the company published games for the Game Boy and both Nintendo and Super Nintendo systems Hudson created Hudson Entertainment based in San Mateo California in 2003 It was in operation until its dissolution in 2011 having since created its Java game service for cell phones In 2001 Konami became the major Hudson shareholder and later Hudson
2. In some stages a skateboard will appear By all means jump on It lets Higgins move around obstacles much faster than by running Super Adventure Island is made up of five rounds of four stages each In each fourth stage you will meet a boss you must defeat In the fourth stage of round five you must do battle with the ultimate boss Round 1 7 d j TE d i L iii Ai A POUND 1 1 Our main character has to run run like mad through each stage The basic tools to help you get through the stages are the axe and the boomerang Initially there are no other options offered in this game However if you continue to collect either more boomerangs or axes these weapons can change into powerful fireballs which are even more potent weapons to use against your enemies You have to be particularly careful about your health bar This is shown across the top of the screen made up of 16 units count them if you don t believe me The numbers of units represent Higgins health level As he goes jumping and running Higgins energy depletes and he needs nourishment to replenish his health units If all 16 of your health units are depleted you will lose one life Nourishment is offered in the form of fruits which appear in Higgins path as he goes through the game You must grab every fruit you can as you run and jump along Each fruit you consume adds one health unit to your health bar There are three fruits availab
3. Printing Help THIB ISSUE S TABLE OF CONTENTS Retrogaming Times Monthly ATTRACT MODE insert Coin to Play m Press Fire To Begin m Retrogaming News m CoCoLicious Getting To Know The CoCo m Apple Il Incider Apple II Turkeys m Gaming Tetralogies The Mega Man Series m Retro Collecting 101 Planet Fun In Savannah GA Move 1 Space Forward Q Bert The Board Game 90 November 2011 m Bewitched Brews Candy Catcher Beyond The Plastic Super Adventure Island Part I Beyond The Plastic Super Adventure Island Part Il Commodore Du J our Mail Order Monsters m Dual Perspective Duck Tales MAME Reviews Turkey Shoot mg Standalone Spew The Battle For Football s Second Best Part 2 m A Pixelated 21st Century Game Over E Hn E by Bryan Roppolo With it being November figured we all could use a good wholesome Thanksgiving edition of RTM While most of the columns here are not Thanksgiving themed that does not mean that this issue is not filling On the contrary we actually have two new faces this month that are providing some much needed coverage for RTM The first new face is Elena Garc a M ndez who will be doing a walkthrough of Super Adventure Island Then there is Brian Blake who stepped up to the plate to provide some much needed CoCo coverage Hopefully these new faces provide some interesting reading for you Feel free to leave them feedbac
4. as the obvious theme for this month s MAME review my feelings escalated past relief into anticipation when the lone title found was a little known concoction by Newcomer and other folks at Williams called Turkey Shoot The fact l d never heard of it was yet more of a battering to my sense of being reasonably well informed about all things Williams Last month reviewed another Williams unknown named Blaster a sequel to Robotron that didn t really work as a game but offered an interesting look at some concepts as the company tried to enter the 3D universe Going through a detailed summary of the company s history l ve also discovered several other unheard of titles i e oplat a sort of Food Fighter Robotron hybrid that s part of Newcomer s resume from their less glamorous days during the 1980s that will be scrutinized in upcoming columns As further chastisement discovered a brief five paragraph writeup of Turkey Shoot right here in the RTM issue from Nov 20 2000 as part of Tom Zjaba s collection of MAME reviews for that month Among his observations graphics are simple but fun sound is pretty decent and for a lightgun game it s quite a challenge While it will not go down as a Classic it is still a fun little game that you will gobble up While agree with most of his observations with a less favorable overall opinion the intent of this month s column is to provide a far more detailed analysis in between all the lingui
5. s parent company Though Hudson continued its independent publishing it worked directly with Konami In 2011 Hudson was bought outright by Konami Other Hudson created games some for other publishers include Bonk Fuzion Frenzy 2 and the Mario Party series Super Adventure Island overview can t wait to review this fun game Let s get to it The story starts with Master Higgins who represents you the player and his girlfriend Tina spending some time together in a treetop gazing at the stars Suddenly a dark cloaked villain the dark lord appears riding his broomstick While hovering nearby the dark lord casts a spell that turns Tina into stone Master Higgins then hitches a ride on an eagle which drops him with a bang on the beach Rescue operations to save Tina commence EUROPEAN BOX This is where the adventure begins Controls There are three types of jumping you must learn on Super Adventure Island e The standard jump e The high jump while moving e The super jump The super jump you achieve by ducking and pressing the jumping button It s vital to get familiarized with and master these jumps in order to beat the game Your weapons the axe and boomerang are your most useful tools in completing this game successfully The difficulty however is that it is very hard to aim well at the enemies in order to destroy them Above all remember that if you get hit once you will have to start the whole stage again
6. CPU s to the point where it could compete with even a Z 80 which were usually clocked up to 5 times higher However if you took a survey of people who coded on multiple 8 bit systems many would say that programming the CoCo was a much better experience In fact and 1987 issue of Computer Shopper had the following to say When programming in machine language moving from the PC to a TRS 80 Color Computer is like getting out of a Pinto and climbing into a Ferarri While l m not an Assembly coder l ve heard enough people who say similar things so almost have to take it at face value When planned and properly executed there s few things a good coder cannot do with a CoCo Heck if he d had a CoCo David Lightman may have succeeded at starting WWIII There have been a large number of games for the CoCo that many people do not know about Tom Mix Software was one of the numerous publishers of high quality video games One such game was Donkey King a clone of Donkey Kong which was so close to the arcade version it s rumored it had to be renamed to The King to avoid being sued by Nintendo I m actually looking at doing a review of Donkey King The King for an article shortly They are also responsible for Sailor Man a Popeye clone and Buzzard Bait a Joust clone and quite a few other quality games I m also hoping to try to get interviews up of some of the authors The things that really held the CoCo back were the lack of so
7. Harder than getting up at 3 a m the next morning so you can spend quality time with your spouse in the mob line at Wal Mart so you can fight for the right to a 49 Blu ray player It has nothing to do with using a trackpad or mouse instead of the lightgun for aiming and shooting in MAME In fact it probably makes things easier based on the scant feedback l ve seen from people playing the real thing Targeting is definitely tricky but the real problem is the sheer number of turkeys and short time it takes to commit their heists Novices who enjoyed scoring all of 225 points on Stargate including the 25 for each lost ship might get a buzz during their initial attempts at Turkey Shoot but most will find it tougher than the Pilgrims original Thanksgiving when the birds they captured were so inedible they had to settle for squash as always we try to educate you with useless trivia as you fritter yet more of your life away on those games that consumed so much of your homework time The two extra aids as noted don t do much Grenades launch in an arc so timing them right is an iffy prospect at best giving the fast and erratic movement of the turkeys The damage caused is also dismayingly minimal with just a small blast radius although it does make quicker hash of the tougher turkeys if you can target them correctly The gobble button freezes the turkeys but only momentarily so any hope of targeting more than one or usefully delayi
8. Super Adventure Island to you Playing this classic Super Nintendo video game is the perfect way to spend an evening by Marc Douglas Mail Order Monsters Hello again to all As write this there is a chill in the air and a glow on the screen coming from this month s game which I will get to in a moment want to make a quick apology for my review of The Castles of Dr Creep last month as left out one important part of the game left out that there is a two player simultaneous play option It really comes in handy when you get stuck on one part of the board and can have your friend bail you out Loyal reader Louis Wellington Il has been wanting to see a review of m Electronic Arts Mail Order Monsters for some time now and have been telling Bryan that would do it in June July August September October well you get the point Well now that we are into November can finally say that it is time to visit MOM and shouldn t we all at Thanksgiving MOM was released back in 1985 for the C64 and the Atari 8 Bit and was programmed by Paul Reiche III of Archon and Star Control fame along with Evan and Nicky Robinson who worked on the classic The Last Ninja All three would do one more EA title the underappreciated World Tour Golf from 1986 a i ad 4 gt 4 gt E b E p El b Pi 4 koX 4 b 4 gt 4 b EI p 4 The basic premise of MOM is that it takes the combat from Archon and wraps an entire new
9. The pyramid was not modified to fit the board game and contains all 28 cubes with yellow red and blue sides In the arcade game each cube would change colors as Q bert landed upon it The board game version represents the change by removing small white pegs that fit into holes on the top of each cube The pegs are removed as Q bert lands on each cube The infamous colored Flying Discs that wisk Q bert to safety are also included and are represented by colorful stickers applied to a black disc shaped piece with a peg in the bottom Q bert is here in all his glory although he appears in the form of a sticker applied to a very generic traditional yellow playing piece All of the nasty characters Coily Slick Red Ball Green Ball Wrong Way and Ugg that chase and harass Q bert are also present and represented by stickers on the same generic yellow playing pieces with the exception of Wrong Way and Ugg The latter use the same black disc shaped piece as the Flying Discs Game play follows very close to the arcade game allowing for alternate play Players take turns playing as Q bert while the other plays as the Nasty characters There are 3 dice one six sided one eight sided and one character die The eight sided die is used in conjunction with a secret die rolling tube to move Q bert Q bert does not have to move all of the spaces indicated by the roll and can instead save any remaining moves as escaping moves Q bert collects the pegs fro
10. a CoCo also had access to a software library Shortly after got Telewriter 64 one of the premiere word processors for the CoCo found out could make money by writing resumes Not to mention how much nicer my school reports were printed out instead of typed especially for error correction Then found out about DAYCCUG the Dayton Area Color Computer Users Group had found geek heaven Meeting twice a month here was a group of people willing to help teach repair and upgrade all things CoCo related One member had even taken a CoCo and repacked it into a TRS 80 Model Ill case which was the epitome of cool for me Which brings me to this exactly which TRS 80 am talking about l Il give you a hint It s not the band Who is TRS and what s an 80 Even here in the new millennium still know people computer literate people who do not know what TRS 80 stands for nor do they know what the differences are between the different models So I ll attempt to explain at a basic level about the differences in the TRS 80 computers When Tandy released the TRS 80 Model in 1977 it was sold in select Radio Shack stores and was an instant success sold tens of thousands in the first year But what does TRS 80 stand for Many people did not know that Radio Shack had a parent company and that company was Tandy yes the leather people owned by Charles Tandy So it turns out that TRS stands for Tandy Radio Shack Since t
11. all be wrapped up By the way we are nearing the 100th issue of RTM which will be in September 2012 Not only that but it is also our 15th anniversary that month There will be a lot of celebrating going on that s for sure If you want to contribute anything to that issue let us know since we would love to make that monumental achievement a special one Thanks again for stopping by and hope you all left with bellies full of classic gaming goodness
12. as well also like that the losing morph is represented with a little tombstone with RIP on it As far as sounds and music go there is one main theme that gets played at the beginning of the game and then at the end of the battle and there is the victory theme Menu selections are represented with a beep and your morph has a distinctive sound as it moves in combat On the main map a generic walking sound is used The manual and packaging are the usual fine job by EA always thought that they put in the extra effort and that feeling still exists today wish could say really liked the game but it could be that am very biased by Archon which to me had faster combat But just couldn t get into Mail Order Monsters really had a problem with the speed was never a fan of Pok mon either so maybe that has something to do with it may come back to MOM after some time but right now I ll need some time away Again appreciate that EA took chances on games like these and that Nintendo and Bandai do owe Mr Reiche and the Robinsons a tip of the hat for creating this genre But in the end MOM may be for you but it just wasn t for me Wiz MOM gets a 6 out of 10 not my cup of tea but worth a play at least one time through l Il see you in December with a Bizarre review And maybe an Amiga review too Have a great Thanksgiving everyone by James Sorge DIU Tol 4I E 1 1 Hello and this is James Sorge back with Dual Pe
13. as you keep pushing to get that next neat weapon You can also set some rules for each battle If you see your opponent has a chemical weapon choose the no chemical weapon option before combat But remember your opponent also gets to choose a rule as well There is also a no surrender option if you are feeling bold Finally you can set the number of victories that will be needed to have your morph claim victory As you win battles you will win psychons and victory points which can be used to purchase upgrades like that you have many weapons at your disposal You can use energy weapons missile and melee weapons and weapons that can steal energy or sap your opponents mental power so his morph becomes a sitting target This kind of depth for a game from 1985 is very surprising Oh yes one more thing make sure you press S for a little surprise before battle oo what are Urban Defenders and Wandroids Well on the map there are areas colored white these are Urban Ruins If you walk into one you will be greeted by either a human Urban Defender or a mechanical Wandroid Both are dangerous as they have powerful weapons that can wipe you out very quickly if you are not careful If you get killed by either of these your opponent wins without getting a scratch Not cool but it adds to the depth of the game Now remember that the opposite is true as well and if your opponent wanders into a ruin you will control either the UD or the Wandroid an
14. systems plus they came out with an iOS version this year In short it s a coaching sim with considerable depth with a lot of die hard fans leagues and other resources The main site for the game is at www playmaker com Tiger s handheld title while a solid effort is something of a misnomer since all that s offered is four formations for the offense and defense The playmaker in this case refers to the four way direction pad controller which is touted as an effective way to keep your opponent from seeing what direction you re moving your player in The controls definitely are superior to the separate arrows buttons found in most games but its stealth value is dubious since keeping an eye on the field and your opponent s hands is an unlikely feat The features list rivals anything offered by the competition fumbles the players must fight for instant replays a two color display with red and green blips depicting each team and even a halftime show once is cool but sitting through even the brief light sound display every time There s also some things missing and some features that aren t so great The offensive player for instance has three seconds from the time a formation to snap the ball otherwise a down is lost Um that s pretty harsh Whatever happened to a five yard penalty Speaking of harsh there s a five percent chance of a play ending in a fumble a stat from back around that time said the most fumble prone NFL RB lost the ball o
15. the best portable 8 bit Mega Man f title zi y lf i a Se p quus mm e by m LL I Aii lij jil HI LS ale Dr Y A e a m Mega Man X 1994 Super Nintendo When Nintendo moved into 16 bit territory so did the blue bomber In classic SNES fashion Mega Man now called simply X can not only do all of his gimmicks from the 8 bit era but he can also now be upgraded as you find capsules in various levels The bosses are no longer simply modeled after an element but also have an animal twist and the new main antagonist is the rebellious Sigma One of my favorite bosses has to be otorm Eagle with an awesome theme and a unique boss fight stage Mega Man ZX 2006 Nintendo DS Out of all the different reboots of the Mega Man series such as the Zero series Battle Network Legends and Star Force ZX stands out to me as the closest to the original formula without changing too much of what i made the original series great ZX essentially comes after Zero which comes after X which comes after the original so it s essentially the next iteration and has a lot of history The gameplay is a little less linear than the other games in the main canonical series but not as drastically Metroidvaniaish as what the sequel moves towards Overall it is a favorite of mine and one of the best in the Mega Man series by Jeff Wittenhagen x Planet Fun In Savannah GA Stopping in Savannah GA on my way to S
16. Magazine and has been involved with the classic gaming community for some time He will surely be missed and wanted to take the opportunity here to give a shout out to Bill and all that he has done If you want to find out more on his passing and the man himself click on the link above New Homebrews October has seen the release of two new homebrew games Candy Catcher has come out for the Atari 2600 and looks to be quite promising from the screen shots Also for you Odyssey2 fans AstroDodge has been released and again should be a fun one to add to your collection Look for reviews for both of these new games in the December issue of Retrogaming Times Monthly Should they turn out to be as fun as they look you might want to consider getting them as Christmas gifts for that special retrogamer that you know Retro Gaming Connexion 2011 Saturday November 5 10 00am Sunday November 6 5 00pm Meaux France The Retro Gaming Connexion organization is proud to announce that its next RGC convention will take place on November 5th and 6th Like hundreds of enthusiasts during the last seven years participate in one of the greatest retro alternative gaming themed gatherings in France and enter the Retro Gaming Connexion Pantheon There will be numerous thematic booths where you ll be able to discover rare and exotic consoles or different ways of playing e g networked PS1s New game demonstrations contests quizzes sales trading and more I
17. N While the descriptions on the box sounded promising but games were major APPLE N H4 ie OR COMPATIBLE 48K disappointments I was expecting some high action and good graphics Instead I got games that seemed there designed for the public domain Graphics were poor and the games were limited to a single screen with no vertical or horizontal scrolling I guess I should have known better than to expect much from the Bargain Bin I did some searches online and it does appear ALA made software for the Atari 8 bit machines perhaps they thought they could make some quick bucks with the Apple II Worst of all I picked up a couple of application software from ALA as well HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS at the same bin My dad never did find much use for it D DISK DRIVE JOYSTICK c AA Reading this old posting and some of the replies was certainly entertaining and brought back some old memories of both the games and shopping for bargain stuff at KayBee Toys Given the dismal quality of these games it s probably no surprise that couldn t find any game screen shots nor did see them online or in one of the major Apple Il software archives believe still have the disks somewhere though It would be interesting to convert them to disk images and upload them for future generations to enjoy In all seriousness these two games were pretty bad and not worth taking a look at unless you are a sucker for punishment To finish he
18. aces they can be played in As someone who s favorite Super Bowl was Denver s 31 24 win over Green Bay with the Broncos lightest NFL offensive line leaving the Packers heaviest defense line literally gasping for breath that s enough for me to claim the decision is based on solid football credentials by Paul Zimmerman E Hello Pixelated fans Pixelated Paul is here to let you know about some of the retroware highlights for the month of October Enjoy 101 in 1 Explosive Megamix Click here to see a video of the game 101 awful mini games At least it is less expensive than the disc game ANIMA Ark of Sinners Video to the right 21 interconnected levels more than 8 hrs of gameplay 12 different enemies 4 bosses different combat movements multiple combos special attacks This one is being compared to Castlevania but in this your weapon is a sword not a whip 1001 Blockbusters Click here to see a video of the game 1001 blockbreaking levels 4 worlds 300 kinds of blocks and more than 15 different items Castle Conqueror Revolution Video to the right The sequel to the RTS Castle Conqueror More of the same Furry Legends Click here to see a video of the game A real time physics puzzle game 4 different worlds to play in Pyramids 3DSware Click here to see a video of the game An updated version of Solomon s Key Virtual Console Arcade n d Note most of the videos fo
19. ade version is being reviewed this month over in MAME Reviews revisited some of the past columns to see what wrote about Surprisingly the past three years have not written anything specifically for Thanksgiving However a great idea popped into my mind Rather than look for a Thanksgiving themed game how about writing about some Apple Il games that were TURKEYS or also known as some of the worst games have ever played On the surface this might seem like a difficult task However distinctly remembered a couple games got in the 80s that were about the worst l d ever seen In fact in searching for some screen shots or maybe even disk images of these two games stumbled across a posting put on the comp sys apple2 Usenet group back in 2006 Hi all Hope all is well We all usually tend to ask what was the Best Software Hardware etc ever for the Apple II I d like to take a different approach Namely what were the worst games you ever played on your Apple II We all have great memories of our Apple II computers but I m sure we all remember some duds that had us saying what the heck were they thinking A L A My votes go to a couple of games I bought from a bargain bin at Kay Bee toys back in the late 80 s early 90 s SOFTWARE Nitro Alert some alien space shooter IF Highway Trap some ground based car shooter HIGHWAY TRAP Both games were produced by a company I have never heard of ALA Software FOR USE O
20. ated He seems like a simplified version of the spider from Centipede Fortunately jumping is well designed Your character can land on the robot and kill him for points Unfortunately he returns momentarily with a vengeance and increased speed every time you kill him The result is a game that ramps up satisfyingly and stays short like a classic arcade game should The scoreboard has space for six figures but had trouble breaking 300 routinely There are two difficulty levels and although couldn t tell the difference between them did score a little higher on the easy setting Creating games for classic systems is a labor of love and this is a fine first release from Grant Thienemann It would have been nice to have more game variations a background graphic for the action a title screen 2 player options or paddle support None of these shortcomings detract significantly from this reasonably well designed game If you like to add interesting well packaged homebrew games to your collection Candy Catchers is a challenging arcade release that you will enjoy owning l d rate this one a 5 5 7 78 or on the Ms Pac Man Rating Scale somewhere between a Store bought Apple and a Tree picked Pear m Pac Man Rating Scale Perfectly ripened Banana A top notch game that is a must have Tree picked Pear Excellent Store bought Apple Good Unsalted Pretzel Just Okay Slightly Moldy Peach Might be good for a play just for kicks
21. d if you are a bit lucky you can kill your opponent without using up the precious energy of your morph Again this is a nice touch and with a bit of practice you can guide the enemy morph into an Urban Ruin any time you want and get a quick yet cheap kill So what did like about MOM It is very easy to jump into a game and the combat does take Archon to the next level Itis neat to watch your morph grow up into a powerful fighting machine that you will become attached to There are a vast amount of weapons and defenses at your disposal and you can actually get lost in the menus trying to make a selection The Urban Defenders and Wandroids are a nice addition and make it more than just morph on morph combat Graphically the game is of the usual EA quality and the animation in combat is smooth though wish it was a bit faster Even as you put points into speed the game still feels a bit slow don t know if this is the same with the Atari version as did not get to try that one out like that each morph has its own graphic style and that in the selections menus you can see your morph s graphic change as you add new weapons to him build up his muscles and his brain and so on A really neat touch is that after each battle there is a little awards ceremony it feels like you just won gold at the Olympics where if you win a victory theme plays and your morph does a little victory dance The blimp that flies by with the word Rah is cute
22. ealizing a few grades are based on fairly brief experiences since the sheer number of them became massive A lot were also near or exact copies of their own and other companies releases Obviously can t and wouldn t begin to try to review every game with some unique distinction but am including what s left some kind of impression for better or worse over the decades obviously focusing mostly on those that are potential contenders Manufacturers might not like that if this were about products still on the market and if anybody paid attention this column But I m guessing retrogamers reading this can relate to my frequent adolescent experiences of seeing a new game in a store trying it and discovering it was mostly completely an imitation of something owned three of already A few general observations stand out while wading through all the latter day titles 1 There isn t a lot of originality beyond what the best of the 1980 and earlier titles offered A lot of it had to do with making money as ports of famous name arcade games became the dominate genre instead of sports 2 As a whole this group of games has a far highest percentage of titles that are absolute crap a regression almost certainly due to the aforementioned economics 3 The convenient handheld size of the early games is also largely absent as companies either went for ultra portability unusual shapes designed to catch the eye or tabletop units meant to compete with increas
23. ear later when mier affordable disk drives became available Numerous memory upgrades were also offered from 16k to 64k There were kits which offered 256k which was addressable using various bank switching techniques or offering the use of RAM drives Some of the most purchased upgrades however were the err NE keyboards The chiclet keyboard found little love among people who Tour nearest hadio Stark stove considered the CoCo a toy computer because of the keyboard catalog Raa TTP hw for a tire ESITIDCTIM F VEIT Dept il bA a LIDD Qua Diri Cerbtr Foa Worth TE TED ee ey ee ee B The CoCo lacks certain features other computers of the time had hardware sound the CoCo has a 1 bit DAC hardware sprites missing on the CoCo a real full travel keyboard not found on the CoCo You may be getting the idea that dislike the chiclet keyboard and you d be correct However what the CoCo had that no other 8 bit computer of the time did was the MC6809 CPU considered by many to be the most advanced 8 bit CPU ever made Many would ask What s so great about the 6809 Which is a great question really For one it has two 8 bit accumulators which can be combined into one 16 bit register Second there are two 16 bit index registers and two 16 bit stack pointers Essentially this means it s an 8 bit assem CPU with a 16 bit data path which had the effect of making the CPU several times faster than equally clocked
24. emann Grant programmed the game in Batari Basic in 13 days The original release was promoted in a post on AtariAge on October 9 2011 as a loose cartridge with an original Atari style text label Grant decided to sell the game numbered but not limited Soon after a different version packaging of the game was to be produced to include a box with matching non traditional label style for 35 The cartridge is of excellent quality produced by experienced homebrewer and AtariAge owner Albert Yarusso and comes complete with an authentic text label design Candy Catcher captures the arcade style of classic Atari VCS games and is a solid homebrew with responsive controls The graphics are basic although certainly recognizable Your character is large and bold The game is good fun Candy Catcher is a dropping object game which owes a debt to Kaboom Thankfully it feels different than a simple hack of that classic title Your character carries a Halloween basket along the bottom of the screen for catching the dropping candy If you miss any sweets or touch them with your body you lose points You only get points by catching them precisely in your basket At the same time as you are trying to catch all this candy your character is being antagonized by a robot Berzerk derivative character that appears a little while after you start the game He only has a simple back and forth pattern at the bottom of the screen luckily so nothing too complic
25. extra is a one quarter sudden death overtime in the event of a tie at the end of regulation Unlike even some good football handhelds where there s a bit of relief at getting through all four quarters Long Bomb Football is one where playing a few extra series is no sweat Mattel Look Alive Football D We ll stick with Mattel for the other type of post blip football game that became popular among manufacturers although can t imagine why since none of them seemed to be much good Look Alive Football tries to go flashy with a 3D look but in reality it s basically a bastardized version of a the original Football from a skewed and less fun perspective You re still dodging defenders ona five step wide field only the enhanced 3D view means you can only see five yards downfield You re back to left right forward movements only although it at least improves on Football by retaining some kind of passing game It s the familiar throw when there s no defenders between you and the receiver after which the view switches to the receiver s location The player icons are ugly and the game in general could just as easily be any avoid the oncoming hazard exercise such as car racing or skiing As final evidence of the regression of the genre there s the kicking game The manual offers the tip of trying field goals within 40 yards of the opponent s goal line and punting beyond only that choice is handled automatically by the computer Either
26. f you live in France or plan on visiting be sure to check us out Visit our webpage for more information Houston Arcade Expo 2011 Friday November 11 6 00pm 2 00am amp Saturday November 12 10 00am 2 00am Houston TX This year there will be 200 Pinball Arcade amp Console games on free play at the Houston Northwest Crowne Plaza Again this year we are adding additional cash prizes for our tournaments The Pinball Wizard tournament will start at 100 and increase with a percentage of the entry fees throughout the weekend We re adding a top qualifier prize of 50 this year along with cash prizes for winning the DMD 80 s and EM pinball tourney s of 25 00 There will also be appearances by the Star Wars 501st legion amp the Rebel Alliance Tickets are 20 for 1 day and 30 for 2 days Check out our website for more info If you would like to have your event featured in Retrogaming Times Monthly just send an e mail to Bryan Roppolo at bryan retrogamingtimes com and he ll make sure to announce it in a future issue by Brian Blake j Getting To Know The CoCo Greetings Retro Computing fans My name is Brian and I m told that I m a confirmed CoCoNut CoCoNutz are a small but loyal group of people trying to enjoy what we feel was one of the best 8 bit computers released during the 1980 s the TRS 80 Tandy Color Computer What s that sound Oh that must be the collective sighs from some Apple and Commodore fans Relax I m no
27. g number of fowls and minimized the point total needed for more to do this review but found setting the difficulty on the easiest levels merely slowed the game down in a ae ri way that didn t make it more playable I seemed to have more trouble aiming the T aae gun precisely m and aul Pea D Qm A CAIEM DE mis bebe pie ani Geib dh maed Quse Cal s a Cer Tm Tl Pears ades nzare One DIP switch omission miss is the ability to select a starting level and or continue a game especially since dealer fliers are full of the money money money promises l ve come to expect with any game released more than a few years after Space Invaders What happens to quarters in Turkey Shoot They re gobbled up is Williams cheesy pitch in this instance The company was just starting to implement starting wave continue options in some of their games however so expecting it is admittedly unrealistic just longed for since with MAME the question of quarters is obviously moot With it might work my way through all the levels in sort of a masochistic exercise but without it there s simply no urge Williams didn t make many of the machines don t know how many but one collector claims there are less than 50 still in existence today It has a rarity rating of two out of 100 from The Killer List of Videogames a scarcity l ve seen with only a few other titles by major companies did however fi
28. get me started on the keyboard Who thought up that design anyway While my parents were getting an education sat in a corner being grumpy wanted to play cool games like Donkey Kong Frogger and Zaxxon well Zaxxon hadn t been released yet but you get my point Later on we were discussing the computer while eating dinner at Friendly s got the brilliant idea to tell mom and dad that wanted the Atari 800 or nothing Mom and dad said Fine That s the point in my life when learned about discretion Based on the above you can understand why was surprised when some packages arrived from Computers Plus the day after my birthday Much to my surprise mom and dad had gone ahead and purchased a TRS 80 Color Computer disk drive and an Okidata Microline 82A dot matrix printer While wouldn t exactly call it a religious experience it was still pretty darn cool Looking back now can say that completely geeked out for lack of a better phrase Things didn t work out too well at first the computer didn t work The order was placed for a 64k CoCo what we got was a CoCo with an incomplete memory upgrade Shortly after getting the CoCo back from having the upgrade completed began to see the capabilities it had and the disk drive was awesome far better than the tape recorders most of my friends were rockin at the time and much faster than the disk drives my friend s Atari computers had Also since two of my cousins had
29. he CPU used in the Model was the Zilog Z 80 they took the 80 from that to complete the Radio Shack computer moniker known as TRS 80 In 1979 the Model II was released while 1980 saw the release of the Model Ill both using the Z 80 kept the TRS 80 brand name which also carried to the Model IV later Those are really the main computer sold under the TRS 80 moniker There was also a Model 12 and Model 16 later the Tandy 6000 which were business machines that could run CP M In keeping with the 80 naming scheme these machines were Z 80 powered Later in their model runs late 1985ish Tandy rebadged the TRS 80 line to Tandy This is where the story takes a slightly unexpected turn as Radio Shack wanted to add another computer to their lineup In the late 70 s they teamed with Motorola to develop a product for the agricultural industry which became the Videotex terminal The design was based off the Motorola 6809 CPU the 6847 VDG video display generator and the 6883 SAM synchronous address multiplexer In July of 1980 the same basic machine was released as the TRS 80 Color Computer sporting 4k DRAM and for this es computer Tandy wisely licensed Microsoft BASIC The big difference being Ets the CoCo had joystick and serial ports on the back and a hardware interface port on the right side Upon its release the only mass storage device available for the venerable E eM computer was a cassette recorder That was solved a y
30. ies are installed with a 28 page user manual and 24 page playbook included as documentation Some of the gameplay elements include setting formations and individual player patterns QBs that throw in one of three direction selected during the action and defensive schemes such as bump and run double coverages zone assignments and blitzes Playbook selection is huge with draws screens throwback reverses and other options generally alien to the handheld universe Teams consist of four players on offense and eight on defense a good ratio that ensures a more realistic setting than the three on three sandlot matches of some latter day titles The feature list is missing a few things such as fumbles conversions after TDs selectable punt FG kicks and is a bit short in the defense only computer player category with just two difficulty levels That and Total Control s bulky size a hindrance for solo players during class or car trips are what allow me to let Football II keep its trophy with a clear conscience Mattel Long Bomb Football B vihe palm of yourhand This is a better than average representative of the football games that became ONG BOMB Football er typical as LCD displays replaced LEDs in the early 1980s Tiny and using m ax watch batteries offering a long operating life Mattel spruced up the basics of its Ef EP earliest games in mostly positive ways The players on the six man teams are BEBE now Xs and Os instead of blips a fa
31. ingly sophisticated console and computer games Finally a quick reminder for eBay hunters seeking the better games mentioned here While Football Il is the well deserved champ avoid at all costs Mattel s 2002 classic remake which is full of rule tweaks bugs and display flaws that absolutely wreck the experience Coleco Total Control 4 A OK maybe screwed myself a little by declaring there s already a champ but without a doubt can proclaim this 1981 Coleco tabletop the best multiplayer football portable in the universe hey it s my cosmos and you re just visiting it The 4 refers to the number of possible players but it s also appropriate since it s the number of games it can play It comes with a football cartridge with a basketball hockey soccer trio of carts available as a single package separately The base package cost about 50 at its release roughly 10 15 more than Football II when it debuted the gap was almost certainly larger when they were in direct competition since Mattel s handheld was aging What Coleco s entry loses to Football II s portability and instinctive yet substantial gameplay is compensated for by massive depth for a standalone handheld It might even be competitive with some of the early Gameboy football titles which lame as they were for a Nintendo machine obviously blew away most digital blip gridiron contenders Total Control s depth is obvious even before the required two nine volt batter
32. k in the comments section of their articles In other news have finally finished indexing all the back issues of Retrogaming Times Retrogaming Times Monthly That s right done finally have everything from September 1997 Present indexed and searchable The only things left to do now is go through the data and make sure everything was categorized correctly and then create an interface so everyone can search easily It has been a long time coming and there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel still don t expect to have it open to the public until January or February as want to make sure everything is working good but we are indeed nearing the end There have been some interesting developments in the classic gaming world The biggest news comes from the homebrew front where Revival Studios has released AstroDodge for the Odyssey2 and Grant Thienemann has unveiled Candy Catcher for the Atari 2600 Candy Catcher is in the spotlight this month while AstroDodge should be ready for review in December so be sure to check back next month for detailed coverage on that one Enjoy what we have served up for you this month and hope to see you all next month when our ever popular Christmas issue comes to town Bill Kunkel Dead At 61 Even though this was back in September felt that it should get mention here in Retrogaming Times Monthly It s a shame when someone like Bill Kunkel passes away the person that helped start Electronic Games
33. kes in it This game is definitely improvable The Penguin Says Even though these birds can fly and can t I m not jealous of course still find this game very good and if the TV show was still running this would be as classic as Mega Man and Super Mario Bros The game is phenomenally easy and a well put in effort could probably beat any of the runs listed in this review It probably won t be overnight but one to three weeks of full attempts and you probably will have yourself a new World Record Overall give this one a 9 10 with a world record potential of 2 5 5 all runs by Mark Sabbatini Turkey Shoot If anyone s going to rustle up a savory turkey themed arcade game Williams Electronics has to be considered the master of making fowl things fabulous Joust is the crowing proof rating in a second tier below Robotron 2084 and other coin on games on the best ever list but unquestionably first tier val in the two player category It also takes top honors in a personal category Fpi for my longest single quarter session a six hour marathon that ended ee only because exhaustion drove me to kill off dozens of remaining ostriches as quickly as possible Of course should know by now that second helpings and third fourth is when indigestion sets in Joust 2 Survival of the Fittest for instance is an intriguing but totally obscure effort fulfilling the sequel stereotype of fancier not always being better B
34. latforms and collecting stars and moons If you reach the end you will earn an extra life and sometimes a bottle of milk VOLCANO a t L3 i Wc dm LE ur ai E Lo E ROUND 1 3 We are now into the depths of a cave watch out for the lava It would be convenient to have some light in a cave don t you think Well you do have it but it chases you Yes There are candles with little legs and they pursue you You will also encounter hilly places where you will have to avoid avalanches of rocks which will crush you if you stop running The main difficulty in this stage is again the tiny enemies which are so difficult to destroy Here is one little trick In some areas there is hidden fruit All you have to do is throw axes or boomerangs in order to discover them In this stage for instance there are some right at the end BUDDHA STATUE This is the boss stage The boss we encounter is a Buddha statue Just throw axes to destroy him but watch out for the flames Round 2 f3300 ROUND 2 1 We move on now to a sandy beach What are little penguins doing on a sunny beach wonder And look at those flying fish Everything is possible on this island A new enemy here is a mysteriously controlled shield You will need more than one hit to take him down RUBRA IOO A YS 0 77 8 0 0 e HORE IUD UL E aie Rie dip Jie dir rui rae ren ram rai A ps gu ROUND 2 2 This stage i
35. le banana kiwi and pineapple Yummy The main enemies you will find at this stage are seashells rocks and some blue dinosaurs which fly with the aid of balloons You must eliminate the shells and dinosaurs with your weapons and avoid tripping over the rocks Each time you trip on a rock your health bar is reduced considerably You will also get familiarized with the skateboard love it It helps so much to zip through the stages faster And look how Higgins is equipped He has pads and a helmet for protection Be warned that if you get hit once you will lose your skateboard At the end of each stage you have to catch a red ball with a star on it and that will signify that you have completed that stage a des b ibd 1 MEL bat 5 Ice de PAR dae dU Md ERA MORE JUNGLE E UL SEPA This stage introduces a few platforms some moving and some new enemies such as a mischievous caveman with a spear Be sure to duck so as not get hurt Another annoying enemy is a kind of flying insect that pursues you if you don t kill it Furthermore there are little bugs running on the jungle floor which by virtue of their size are hard to aim at and kill In this stage there are some bonus levels each represented as a star These are hidden on the ground and the platforms as in the Mario games so you must look for them When you do Master Higgins will get prepared and jump into the sky The bonus level consists of more jumping on p
36. lly hurt you Again please be careful with the rocks and those tiny enemies After expending all that energy in climbing the next sequence shows Master Higgins plunging into a pond to cool off We know what s coming next ZA g ee o0 o RS n UNDERWATER This is a water stage with no changes other than you are swimming and the all blue environment representing the pond od 1 l ja f TT PLA h Ae A d Aa aa Fy ia 2 SKELETON What boss do we encounter here A skeleton with a light saber a la Star Wars You will have to duck and dodge his blows but if you have your weapon all leveled up it should be fairly easy to beat this boss Round 5 We are reaching the very end of the game Please stick with me The z 4D 326900 Le PAA al ar e T i j Ba P T w fi i FL TIE m E a Fs ae ado Fa rr a e ak abo ak d ROUND 5 1 SNOWY TUNDRA Brrr It sure is cold in these mountains We are climbing toward Dark Cloak s castle The main difficulties here are the slippery paths and those penguins which chase you The spearmen also don t make things any easier It may cost you a few lives to complete this stage don t advise riding the skateboard here as you will probably crash into your enemies At last you will reach the gates of the castle where the dark lord resides o26900 s3 1i f00 DARK CASTLE You are now inside the castle and this is one of the hardest stages
37. m the cubes he lands on The character die and six sided die are used by the other player to move the indicated nasty character There are too many movement related rules to explain here so will leave that to the instructions but suffice to say that once you have them down you will find it follows the arcade game almost perfectly Once Q bert has been captured by one of the nasty characters the board resets and the players switch roles The game ends after both players have had their turn as Q bert The player who has collected the most pegs during their turn as Q bert wins think this may be the best arcade game to board game conversion have ever played With the exception of the playing pieces Parker Brothers really outdid themselves in truly reproducing all of the elements of the arcade Now it must be said that in doing so they also made for a very large learning curve It will take quite a few games before one is completely comfortable with all the movement rules but in the end you are rewarded with a very accurate arcade game experience This is as true to the arcade as it can be and should provide great replay value with any Q bert fan Remember When Pac Man s away the ghosts will play Wocka Wocka 1 by lan Baronofsky T Candy Catcher Candy Catcher is a Halloween themed homebrew game for the Atari 2600 and released as a cartridge priced at 20 or a free downloadable file in October 2011 by Grant Thien
38. me supporting hardware features sound and sprite capability and Radio Shack itself During its 12 year run Tandy and Radio Shack did more to thwart the CoCo than support it It was the proverbial red headed step child to the other computer lines Tandy sold and it was treated as such I ll go into the details of this in a future article but without support from magazines like The Rainbow Hot CoCo and Color Computer Magazine the CoCo would not have had the popularity it did That s about it for this month Hopefully haven t bored anybody with this discussion of the TRS 80 computers Indeed if m lucky maybe someone out there may have picked up something useful from this article Next month I ll go into a little more detail about the CoCo s hardware the differences between the three models of the CoCo and put up some screen shots of CoCo games of the early mid 80s Future plans include reviews of classic CoCo games some of the new hardware that s available as well as some games that have come out in recent times Feel free to contact me with any questions comments or suggestions by Donald Lee Apple II Turkeys Happy November everyone Welcome to the November edition of Apple II Incider Bryan asked if we could do a Thanksgiving themed column this month poked around for some games that might fit the theme but had no luck read about a game called Turkey Shoot for the Apple IIGS but did not find it anywhere although the arc
39. nce every 33 carries in his career the best was somewhere around 200 There s nine skill levels for each of the human players and the manual does a good job detailing how many defenders each skill level has one to three and how fast they move But teams with a max of three players per side isn t something I m wild about I m also not wild about the kicking game which treats anything on your side of the field as a punt and anything on the opponents side as a FG try how many teams other than the Raiders try anything outside the 40 and even that s a stretch these days Playmaker Football would certainly be a decent acquisition if a clueless relative picked it out at random as a gift from everything available at the time but anyone knowledgeable doing their own shopping probably would opt for something better OK time to announce our Handheld Super Bowl runner up if the choice isn t already obvious Coleco s Total Control 4 wins by a fourth quarter FG against Mattel s World Championship Football that was reviewed last month Both have massive playbooks and features but Coleco gets the nod for its four play option and ability to play other sports games for a few extra bucks Serious football fans would take either over Football Il in heartbeat and I d encourage them to but the sad truth is eight year olds were considerably less skilled 30 years ago and the more complex games would have baffled many of them The bulkier units also limit the pl
40. nd a reconditioned unit selling for a buy it now price of 800 on eBay so it s obviously not an overwhelming hot collectors item There s no question Turkey Shoot is a great choice for the holidays for those trying to avoid washing dishes and watching the Detroit Lions OK maybe not so much this year before and after the gorge fest But much like that 7 000 calorie meal it s something probably best appreciated on rare and proper occasions by Mark Sabbatini The Battle For Football s Second Best Part 2 It s a mystery why the Denver Broncos didn t just leave Maurice Clarett at the airport after his frantic efforts to locate a small bag that as it turned out contained a water bottle he couldn t live without That first impression was reinforced as he chugged the bottle frequently during training camp saying I gotta get my Goose on which may explain why both his behavior and performance were as disastrous as every team other than Denver knew they would be The surprise first day draft pick was cut before the end of training camp in one of the team s many humiliating draft fiascos Point of this story You don t need to eat a whole meal to know it s lousy Or thoroughly playtest a electronic handheld football game to cite an example more relevant to this month s column As tackle the second half of a contest to determine the second best title ever behind Mattel s Football II this time covering releases from 1981 to today I m r
41. ng their escape should be abandoned Newcomer gets some credit for a mostly original approach with his beloved birds with a few sound and gameplay elements i e saving humans thrown in as obvious comfort food for Williams devotees But given how much he squeezed from inferior hardware and less experience with his earlier hits Turkey Shoot ends up feeling something short of fully cooked opecs seem hefty for a 1984 game beginning with 224K of ROM and RAM including 50K of display and scratch RAM Most of Williams classic games such as Defender Robotron and Joust used 100K in a bank switching scheme due to the eight bit 6809 CPU only being able to address 64K Turkey Shoot s 512 color 280X256 pixel 19 inch display gobbles some of that compared to the 16 color out of 256 color palette 304X256 pixel capability of the earlier machines The rest lacking factual information we ll ignorantly attribute to feature creep The lightgun s optical sensor recognizes a 64X64 grid on the screen but given how hard everything is to hit wouldn t mind a grid providing a blast radius of Doom s BFG9000 That s where tweaking the DIP switches theoretically comes into play you ll need to do some persistent massaging of the F1 and F2 keys in MAME to access them with Williams offering a generous range of settings on the usual things There s 10 difficulty levels and extra fowls can be earned as often as every 5 000 points naturally maxed my startin
42. ning mode is mostly hand to hand so you will need to get up close to pummel your enemy and get his life points down to 0 TRAITS ARHOR i HUSCLE After a few rounds of training where you can see what the speeds of the different creatures are along with their weapons and special attacks the time will come to jump up to the intermediate or tournament levels This is where the fun really begins as you will not only pick a creature to fight with but you will be able to give him new abilities and weapons and watch as he gets stronger with each victory in combat In the intermediate level you are given 500 psychons or ability points to spend on your morph where you can buy things such things as weapons energy claws tentacles and other neat things Before you enter combat you are whisked to a menu screen where you are represented by a small animated icon You can then choose to go to the vat to select a new morph or the corral to select an old morph like how the icon in the corral is the M U L E character Actually the entire menu system is very reminiscent of M U L E After you have purchased your accessories weapons and ammunition the game will choose what battleground you will fight on and those range from a tropical zone to a frozen tundra where the map is a chilly white There are three game options you can choose to achieve victory e Destruction victory is achieved when you kill the opposing morph or a mix of 5 urban defende
43. of the entire game Why do I say this Because there is hardly any light You will have to make your way through this stage almost in the dark with only a halo of light surrounding Higgins While zooming through the dark you will have to avoid spikes pits and enemies In order to succeed in this stage you will probably use up a few lives while practicing all the jumps and learning how to time them Good luck S446 001 11 ROUND DE d di nb b di db di db db db db db db b LIGHT CASTLE i m a E a z a m L Tire E m i SS a E i ROUND 5 3 This stage sure has a lot of tiny enemies It also involves some climbing within the castle with the assistance of both steady and moving platforms You will have to be nimble here ne cte e came cate PNE CS cte ames come came ume DARK CLOAK Fi Fe Cue Fue F be iube es a Cue Ku Ee a Kus L MALU ROSS Here we finally reach the end where Higgins reencounters the dark cloaked lord in the great hall of the castle You will only have to jump a few times to avoid him At first this seems fairly easy but just when you thought it was all over what do we see The dark lord changes into a big pink elephant He will try to crush you though not realizing that with every attempt the stone floor beneath him gets weaker and weaker You will have to take care to position Higgins on the safest parts of the floor Soon the floor will cave in under the elephant and he will fall to his
44. off to Planet Fun and if you are ever in the Savannah area stop by and get some games You can check out their Facebook page at http www facebook com pages Planet Fun Savannah 19255034 7462387 by Jonathan Imberi O Bert The Board Game From the box Q bert A Board Game Based on the Exciting Arcade Game Pains Bros Ages 7 to 14 Number of players 2 Equipment e Game board e character playing pieces Q bert Coily Slick Red Ball Green Ball Ugg Wrong Way 3 flying discs 1 six sided die 1 eight sided die 1 character die Q bert secret die rolling tube 28 pegs Approximate playing time 15 to 30 minutes Object Be one the of the noser elite by collecting more pegs than your opponent First you re Q bert moving around the pyramid trying to get as many pegs as you can But watch out Your opponent controls the nasty characters that want to stop you Will they succeed or will you escape from them Collect all the pegs you can then let your opponent take a turn as Q bert Now you control the nasty characters can you stop your opponent from getting more pegs than you The Q bert who collects more pegs is the winner Rules of the game Click to view the Instructions in PDF format Review After unpacking the game it is easy to identify all the major elements from the 1982 arcade game hit The unmistakable isometric platform of colored cubes is here as large and as bright as ever
45. on the panel each of which can be used once per wave for a tiny bit of assistance they re far less useful than smart bombs and barely more useful than hyperspace A variety of poultry from common Thug Turkeys to Cyborg Mechanoturkeys try to loot the town and hunt the local Citizens Your task is to shoot all the turkeys conveniently turning them into plates of perfectly roasted poultry tell your aunt to try this approach next time since it can t be any worse than the shoe leather she frets about for 10 hours every year But leftovers in this case are worse than being out of mayo the day after Thanksgiving If the birds escape off the screen otherwise achieve their objective i e reaching a patrol helicopter at the top of the screen or harm an innocent bystander the mission is a fowl You start with three of them in the default setting and earn more at default intervals of 50 000 points There s some creatively entertaining aspects of different waves such as turkeys disguising themselves as businessmen and staging aid raids In addition every eighth wave is a bonus stage where the player uses rapid fire to eliminate as many turkeys as possible in 15 seconds Points are also scored by shooting trash cans fire hydrants and freeing kidnapped humans Here s the main problem the game is fricasseein hard Harder than sitting through your drunk uncle s racist tirades with a polite smile Harder than being sent to the kids table when you re 18
46. one of the times where the manual was written from specs without actually seeing the final product or the programmer omitted something from the specs Either way this kind of sloppiness was frequent as companies started rushing droves of cheaply made games out the door quickly in a quest for ever increasing profits in a fickle market Tudor NFL Electronic Football D This is largely a replica of Mattel s original Football that earned a B grade so why does this get such low marks The questions contains some of the answer for starters Beyond that while the gameplay is the same Tudor rearranged the control buttons into one of the worst layouts possible short of putting the up arrow underneath the down one Everything feels backward which makes me wonder if the designer cough was left handed or at least those so equipped might have an easier time with it Finally this is reportedly the only handheld of the era to actually obtain an NFL license With that kind of clout not to mention decades of experience making magnetic football games you d think the creative minds at the company could have come up with something massively better than this Tiger Playmaker Football C Tiger released enough football titles to populate a fantasy league but this one caught my attention because it s also the name of what was my favorite computer version back in my black and white Mac days it s still a great game in current release for Windows Mac
47. oth games came from a team led by John Newcomer a former toy designer who originally envisioned a War of the Worlds type game for his first project and eventually instead ended up making a list of things that could fly and picking birds as the most interesting He was also involved with Sinistar plus a couple far less known Williams games to be reviewed soon more on this below Side note The also obscure Joust Pinball is fantastic but doomed to be a massive commercial failure from its conception It s a cocktail table game with two playfields sloping in opposite directions from the center allowing two players to score not only points on their half but raid and or deny targets to their opponent one player controls both sides in a single player game At least two balls are always in play When both players lose all their balls there s a final 30 second unlimited four ball free for all probably the most enjoyable frenzy ever on a real pinball game Daring as the game is it s also not hard to figure out why it flopped only 402 were made since the cocktail console drastically limited its placement possibilities and pinball was hardly the best thing to promote during Great Crash My mini sidetrack shows I m obviously a huge fan nonetheless When started perusing various video game archives in search of turkey themed coin ops which it turns out are about as scarce as people whose favorite Thanksgiving dish is green bean casserole
48. outh Carolina expected the area to be very uneventful as nothing showed up on Google Maps on my phone s GPS or even in the Yellow Pages in the hotel room Using my last ditch effort checked around on Craigslist and found a place called Planet Fun in downtown Savannah Savannah is a pretty rural place however downtown is a vast area where you need to park and walk a mile or two to get where you need to go After confirming that the place was open headed out and what found was completely unexpected According to the owner he had just opened the store a week or so prior and basically thought it would be cooler to have an awesome retro gaming store instead of an awesome retro gaming collection Looking around there were tons of gems such as Earthbound and Final Fantasy VII however even the games not in the display cases were above the normal par of games and most of them were in amazing condition This store is a true testament of someone who really loves video games and it shows Lucky for me wandered into the shop right after someone brought in their vast Nintendo collection which consisted of over half of the NES library keep a list of not only every game that own but also every game that want to get with only a few dozen left in my to get list It was amazing that was able to find 18 games that were on my list Never did expect in my rest stop to find a place that would have so many uncommon video games My hats
49. own destruction in a pool of boiling lava which lurks below Congratulations You have saved your girlfriend Tina Now you can relax and lie on the beach The Upshot There are a few aspects to consider while making a general recommendation for this game For starters one of the biggest differences between this and the NES version is that the weapons are very much improved here It s relatively easy to level them all up and go through the stages without bothering much about becoming weaponless Another advantage is that there is plenty of fruit to pick as you go through the stages so you don t have to be in constant search of it The stages are extremely short so the game goes fairly quickly except in the few more complicated stages On the negative side it s difficult to aim accurately at your enemies causing you to get hit more often and lose lives The environments are pretty wide and perhaps only the water stages might seem repetitive to the eyes But the variety is still there jungle desert forest caves snowy areas mountains take your pick You should like the soundtrack Composed by Yuzo Koshiro it s packed with catchy tunes and tribal rhythms Taking into account the short yet sometimes difficult stages and that Hudson Soft removed some ideas which were in the NES version where is that great fairy that made you feel invincible overall would give this game 8 out of 10 stars If you enjoy platform games recommend
50. r better choice than the goofy football ee uc player icons favored by many companies Only one of the offensive players MM is a receiver giving the four offensive players more than the usual protection against the computerized defense there s no option for a second human player sensible since the unit is too small for head to head play Calling offensive plays is simple with the receiver programmed to run one of six predefined distances between six and 50 yards Successfully executing a play however requires some extra dexterity and acquired skills The short route is much like Football Il with the QB throwing to the WR when there s no defenders in between But the player need to hold the pass button down until the ball is in the air since the faster the player releases the button the farther the ball is thrown The player also gains control of the WR as soon as the ball is in the air not when the catch is made The tap distance passing becomes trickier on longer routes when the WR runs off the screen First the QB has to wait for the receiver to go far enough OK now those extra linemen are handy and then figure out how long to tap to button to throw it the appropriate distance an instant tap release for the 50 yard bomb is not easy Kicking adds a similar element with the extra boost of the player selecting if it s a punt or FG Short button releases make for longer kicks but they also have a greater chance of being blocked One other fun
51. r the games below are of the originals meaning they not being played on the Wii This is because the Virtual Console is emulating the original system and therefore they are identical BurgerTime Deluxe Gameboy Video to the right Make the burgers avoid the hot dog pickle and egg Use the pepper Different than the classic arcade version Catrap Gameboy Click here to see a video of the game oolve the puzzles in 100 mazes Play as Catgirl and Catboy Also make your own mazes Double Dragon Gameboy Click here to see a video of the game Brothers Billy and Jimmy Lee must save Billy s girlfriend on the mean streets of the city Side Pocket Gameboy Click here to see a video of the game On the go pool fun As always send me an email and let me know if you purchased any of these games and what are your thoughts about the games Also let me know your thoughts about any games did not list will see you next month for hopefully some more retroware goodies by Bryan Roppolo That s it The feast is over It s now time to put the dishes in the dishwasher and leftovers in the refrigerator However have no fear as we will be back with even more retrogaming coverage in December By that time we should have a review of AstroDodge ready for you so you know whether or not to add it to someone s stocking also expect to have as usual more news on the article index project with an even better idea as to when this will
52. re s a description from the game box Check it out and you ll see the game description is not bad though it s telling that there were no screen shots on the box itself Happy Thanksgiving everyone by Jeff Wittenhagen The Mega Man Series Gaming Tetralogies covers four of the best games from any single game series on any platform The games will not be listed in any particular preference order but by release date and will be more of a must have list for each series Feel free to comment on any games in the series you feel should have been included Mega Man 2 1989 Nintendo Entertainment System M The second iteration of the original Mega Man series is the best polished with an increasing difficulty and some strategy thrown in near the end This was before gimmicks such as the Mega Buster Rush the Dog I although there were item numbers that were kind of similar and even the slide were implemented The music in Part 2 is some of the best not only in a Mega Man game but on the NES as a whole oe Cin si 1 EE 4 Mega Man V 1994 Nintendo Game Boy f Almost all of the Game Boy Mega Man games were a rehash of the console versions bringing in a couple of bosses from 2 sequential games However Mega Man V was something of an entirely different beast The bosses were named after planets and their levels were all themed accordingly The gameplay was challenging yet not impossible and the ending was very memorable By far
53. roller 1 FD 500 FD Controller 3 FD 501 FD Controller 1 Tandy 1000HX Below is my CoCo setup use regularly e 512k CoCo3 w 63CO9EP e MPI modified for use with a CoCo3 with the following in the slots 1 FD 501 FDD controller 3 5 floppy 2 Cloud9 Super IDE with 2GB CF card and a 6 4GB Maxtor HDD 3 Roger Taylor MicroSD DrivePak the last slot is swapped with the following depending on what l m working on 4 Roger Taylor Serial Pak used for wireless serial CoCo lt gt PC communication with XBee modems 5 Roger Taylor Serial Pak used for wireless serial CoCo lt gt PC communication with a Bluetooth module 6 Video thru a Roy Justus VGA adapter to a 24 Asus LCD Me and my CoCo To start with though I ll provide a little information about my experience with the CoCo Right before my 13th birthday my parents decided to get me a computer We looked all over and at many different models was partial to the Atari 800 just thought it looked cool Mom and Dad were not convinced yet and decided to talk to a couple of my cousins who had already purchased a TRS 80 Color Computer and were using it in their businesses When we got to my cousin s place all saw was this grey wedge sitting on his desk with a grey hunk of metal and black plastic later found out was a disk drive To say wasn t impressed would be an understatement It had NONE of the sleek lines saw in the Atari 800 or even an Apple Il and don t even
54. rs or Wandroids more on these in a bit e Capture the Flags You must capture the 8 flags on the battlefield in order Oh yeah each flag has a guard that must be taken care of as well e The Horde A group of monsters starts at the top of the screen and slowly makes its way down You and your opponent must team up to stop them Whoever kills the most wins unless the horde makes it to the bottom of the screen then you both lose chose a game of destruction and outfitted my morph I chose the Wasp then proceeded to get my butt kicked by the computer Like Archon if you have a melee weapon and your opponent has a missile weapon you are at a disadvantage Unlike Archon the computer opponent is much smarter and harder to kill What puts you at a great disadvantage is that to swap weapons you must double tap the fire button quickly and then choose what weapon you would like to switch to from a menu at the top of the screen It seems easy enough but you must do this in real time while your opponent keeps attacking This is where a second joystick button would come in VERY handy Well after getting my feet wet decided to jump into the tournament mode This is basically a career mode where you will pick a morph and start from scratch As you win tournaments you will be able to collect more psychons which you can then use to buy upgrades It will be quite some time till you have a maxed out morph This gives MOM a good amount of replay value
55. rspective the column that reviews games from both the playing and the World Record Perspectives This month the victim is Duck Tales the game based off of the hit cartoon back in the 1980s Graphics 8 5 10 This game holds its own The graphics are recognizable and look good for a late NES game Scrooge is well defined and can do a variety of movements animated well I m taking a few points off for not being revolutionary Sound 8 10 The sound comes directly from the cartoon it sounds quirky and fits the game Once again good but not revolutionary It doesn t hurt the gaming experience but it adds a bit to it Difficulty 4 10 A good easy game to get introduced to NES titles It s short not terribly hard enjoyable and good for kids and adults alike Even the most notorious of the fail streams have beaten this game live It s very doable q0T8L Replay Factor 9 10 Once you memorize this it will become easy to replay and get more and more money You ll have fun with this one The World Record Perspective Yes there are speed runs on this game e Giel Goertz of Speed Demos Archive did this game in 8 14 with glitches e Patrick Stanley of Twin Galaxies did this game without glitches at 9 15 But the show and game emphasize one thing mostly money money and more money The big winner is Nolan Martinez with 16 524 000 000 While the runs are efficient the game is easy and even the SDA run had a few slight mista
56. s mostly platforming You will have to jump from platform to platform so as not to fall into the water Here you will find another strange creature a puffy seal It s so puffy it can fly As soon as you complete this stage you will see a sequence where Master Higgins is on a boat and suddenly Moby Dick swallows him Oh no primm md or 00111 i a ees Ie Mn eee Now you are inside the whale This time you will have to swim your way through the whale s belly to finish the stage The new enemy is an eel and your old enemies are still there to harass you gut j Pair parr Da I O p Here you will encounter the new boss a big blue octopus but first you have to dodge those nasty bombs The technique to beat the octopus is to move to the very lowest part of the screen so as to stay out of reach of the tentacles Flip over to the next page to read Part Il amp to leave comments on this article amp A x Super Adventure Island Part HI Round 3 TTE bd s Mnt 1555 7s rent WE POUND 5 11 TREETOPS a ee Ce ee NES i Do you like climbing trees If so this stage is for you This level is good practice for the three types of jumps noted earlier You will really have to be fast or your health bar will keep decreasing like mad There are few fruits to grab so you will have to keep a sharp eye peeled for the hidden ones That s my advice The good news is there are no ne
57. shell around it Instead of a variant on chess MOM can be best described as the predecessor to games like Pok mon and Digimon If MOM were to be released today it would probably be called Mail Order Mon After a nice animated title screen you are given some options Do you want to pick one of the 12 stock monsters and jump right into some combat or would you like to create a new creature from scratch and equip him with the latest in weaponry and skills and then start him on what will hopefully be a long and successful career of beating up other like minded monsters started by doing a few rounds of the beginner game in which you pick one of the 12 monsters some of the creatures available to you are Tyro Think a T Rex Hominid Human Arachnid Spider Squid Likes water Lyonbear Morph of a Lion and a Grizzly After you choose your creature also called a morph you are deposited on a large world map where you and your computer opponent are represented by small squares Player 1 is a yellow square while the Computer or Player 2 is red The terrain on the maps vary but you can make out mountains water and open areas as well When you bump into the other player the map zooms in to an Archon like combat environment where you and your opponent will duke it out Unlike combat in Archon the map will scroll in all directions giving you more freedom and the ability to escape if your life points are getting too low But combat in trai
58. stic stuffing can t say the concept of Turkey Shoot got me salivating much beyond the cute the day they took over theme The well narrated attract mode instructions tell us it s 1989 so apparently we re now playing a mission somebody completed successfully It seems the side effect of something called turkey transformation is a tendency toward violence and comradery sic between these turkeys to organize for rabble rousing in the urban areas LI a d E Lom Lest this seem absurd right about now is a good time to mention the Wikipedia summary for a 1982 film also called Turkey Shoot It s a 1982 Australian dystopian futurist exploitation film directed by Brian Trenchard iini Smith notable for its extreme violence and sadistic prison sequences The i cast is a mix of international actors and Australian soap opera stars and television personalities AskMen com labeled it Easily the cheapest and nastiest piece of mainstream celluloid ever stitched together by our Australia s mad cinematic scientists 1000 7 Back to the arcade dystopian exploitation you re part of a special group of agents known as Turkey Terminators I vote for Weird Al Yankovich to play the role of Arnold in the movie and must eliminate all of the turkeys in 100 missions you ve been given to succeed The lightgun is a positional trigger mounted to the front panel The trigger also has a second lighted grenade button and there s a gobble button
59. t here to try and restart the 8 bit wars rather just try to provide some useful info to folks who may be interested in learning about a very under rated 8 bit machine I m a big fan of retro computing in general In my not so humble opinion the computers of today while far more powerful are equally less personal The 8 bit machines of old are far easier to learn to work on and repair down to the component level Manufacturers provided schematics and service manuals for people to use to diagnose their own machines to repair them Not so much for today s machines While I m partial to the CoCo also have a smallish collection of other classic computers Here s a list of what have e 5 512k CoCo3 3 have 6309 s e 1 My ongoing repack CoCo3 which is 512k upgraded to a 6309 2 3 5 floppies A Roy Justus VGA adapter connected to a 15 HP LCD MPI and a Radio Shack multimedia sound system is being installed All jammed into a Model Ill case using a Model III keyboard 2 CoCo2 s one is a 3127B lowercase capable 1 grey CoCo1 w CoCo2 k b 1 grey CoCo1 w aftermarket k b 1 White CoCo1 5 MPI s 3 upgraded for use with CoCo3 s 3 FD 501 1 with 2 3 5 DS DD drives 1 with 2 DS DD 5 25 s and 1 with 1 5 25 and 1 3 5 1 FD 502 with a single DS DD drive 1 TRS 80 Model IV 1 CoCo mouse 1 Tandy RS 232 pak 1 Speech Systems The Voice 2 R S Speech Sound Paks 1 WICO j s adapter for the CoCo 1 26 3022 FD Cont
60. w enemies to report in this stage Hurray EEUU 1 59 2 09911111 0L UH mL I a T FOREST Abr Aa ahi a la i zs Tar i j ux n ROUND E wey The setting now is a misty forest The new enemy featured here is a ghost fish with gigantic teeth Oh how long for my skateboard to escape those teeth E Eus MMU 214862001 E T 754111 ce 198400 PF i i INSIDE THE MINE ROUND 3 3 This stage reminds me somewhat of the classic Super Nintendo game Donkey Kong Country because in both games you control a mining car This is the main novelty you will find when you reach this stage Pm Ss S800 58888 LL a Fe i LS e a iom iesu i ie he Here we fall fall fall until we land on the new boss a snake You will have to carefully time all your jumps while you land on this snake because it s continually in motion Its movements are timed so that you will have to coordinate your own as you touch down on the platforms which the snake provides Round 4 JOQUUQU000U00000 P35 01000090000000000 i TEEPO Or NTI ea 22 220 JO 32 3j 9 dd 82 THE DESERT ROUND 4 11 Things in this stage are similar to that in the first stage of Round 1 except here the environment is a desert DESERT CLIMB Remember the tree climbing Well if you were fond of it now you have the desert version Here we go The new enemy here is a skull with legs and a spike on its head It can run and climb and rea

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