Collating interviews for Retro Gamer can normally be a painful process. It can often take an age to track developers down, then you have to convince them to agree to an interview, then you have to come up with some decent questions that they won’t have heard a hundred times before. After all that you’re still not done because you have to transcribe the interview (unless of course you’re lucky enough to convince someone to reply via email).

Imagine our surprise then when the wonderful Steve Lycett (known to the users of many gaming forums as Sol) not only agreed to sort an interview out for an incoming making of the game, but turned it all around in a single day! That’s right a single day. We sent the questions off, and received the answers a few short hours later. Special thanks must also go to Pat Phelan who was good enough to answer several probing questions for us, but it’s Steve who constantly manages to impress us.

Always gracious on the many forums he visits (even when the games he’s involved with get an unfair kicking) the man is a complete and utter gent and a real credit to Sumo.*

* Please note, this praise has nothing to do with the free copy of New International Track & Field that we were sent today. Steve genuinely is a lovely chap.

Oh my goodness, this has to be the best news since… well… ever.

Thanks to some scans that are currently circulating the internet, one of the finest shoot-em-up franchises of all time is about to get it’s long awaited sixth outing.

Initially rumoured to be released on Sega’s Dreamcast, Sega has now revealed that it will be bringing the gorgeous looking shooter out later this year exclusively on Sony’s PlayStation2. It’s highly unlikely that this will be getting a UK release (shoot-em-ups are about as popular in the West as a fox in a chicken coop) but that doesn’t mean we won’t be picking up a copy later on in the year. There’s no official pics yet, so you’ll have to make do with a shot or two from the wonderful Thunderforce III instead. More news as and when we get it.

Poor old Captain Picard sums up our feelings about Saturday’s awful finale perfectly. Apart from fobbing us off with a completely naff excuse for the Doctor not regenerating, RTD then proceeded to make us endure such atrocities as Catherine Tate doing a poor impersonation of David Tennant, David Tennant doing a poor impersonation of Catherine Tate and German speaking Daleks.If Tom Baker was dead he’d be spinning in his grave…

It’s just gone 3PM. The wife is still at work, my eldest is at a party for the next three hours and this is the state of my youngest. Time to play some videogames…

If it’s not enough that Sumo Digital has included Pentarou in its latest game, fans of Konami may be pleased to know that Simon Belmont, Frogger and even Silent Hill’s Pyramid Head can be unlocked as you progress through New International Track & Field’s many events. There’s plenty more classic characters to discover, but you’ll have to wait until Issue 54 of Retro Gamer when we’ll be revealing them all in an exclusive new making of.

So is anyone else as excited about this as I am?

I haven’t been too impressed with season 4 as a whole, but last week’s regeneration came totally out of nowhere. As much as I love David Tennant as the Doctor, I’ll be gutted if this is just a cheap trick by the BBC to boost ratings.

Maybe Rose is going to wake up in the shower and discover that it was all just a dream…

We’re simply lost for words…

And here they are again. Filthy girl Marian, filthy girl!

In a brand new series, Retro Gamer champions great games that everyone seems quite happy to ignore.This month we’re going mental for Sumo’s New International Track & Field.

Pentarou used to be Konami’s mascot, but he’s been forgotten in recent years for wannabes like Solid Snake and that Belmont who’s christian name we always forget. Anyway, the little penguin is back with a vengeance and the little penguin proves himself to be a more than worthy adversary.

Sumo we love you.

Slouching on my sofa a few evenings back, flicking through the channels on my digibox, I discovered a little TV gem. “Secret Life Of The Motorway: A three-part documentary which celebrates the birth of motorways and hails the achievements of those behind the ‘road revolution’.”    Apparently the show included interviews with Will Self and a bunch of ‘Caravaneers’. Here’s a brief run-down of all three episodes according to BBC’s website:   The Honeymoon Period “How motorways transformed where people live, play and work over the years.”  Falling In Love“This edition charts the beginning of Britain’s love affair with motorways.” (no, seriously).   The End Of The Affair“A look at the public response to the impact of motorways on town and country.” I didn’t watch the thing; I had a dirty plate that needed washing-up, but nonetheless I do have a few burning questions for the makers of this show…  Why have you called it ‘The Secret Life Of The Motorway’, I can only imaging that you are trying to capture the same crowd as that ridiculously turdish Secret Diary Of A Call Girl show, hoping that some poor misguided souls will switch on after somehow getting call girls and long smoggy stretches of tarmac somehow confused with one another.  

Can you please tell me when it was that the evolution of roadways has ever been a mystery? You know that thing you drive to and from work on everyday, hardly the worlds best kept secret. Oh, and why have you bothered to speak to Will Self? Caravaneers (whatever that means), clearly fine, but I don’t need a show to tell me they like motorways; do they really get a choice in the matter?  Personally, being someone who drives 50 miles on the damn things each and everyday I can’t think of a more disgusting and dangerous place on Earth I could spend a Sunday evening.

Also, why have you split the thing over three episodes? Surely the history of the motorway isn’t that rich, unless of course you’re kicking things off with the Romans, in which case you can ignore that previous question. And what’s with that synopsis on episode two. “Britain’s ‘love affair’ with the motorway”, are you kidding? Britain’s love affair with football; Britain’s love affair with curry; Britain’s love affair with love affairs – all things I could buy into. But are you seriously expecting us to swallow that at some point this nation showed an affinity towards motorways? If so, then that is both a secret and a mystery all rolled into one – it rivals why James Blunt is always smiling and sounds like a ventriloquist’s puppet – and you can ignore everything I’ve said.  

We’ve looked at some truly bad pieces of artwork so far, but even Pac-Man dressed like a prefect and crying athletes pointing at the Playstaton logo show some spark of creativity. For Sega’s US and PAL release of the arcade blaster Dynamite Duke the same really cannot be said.

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