Joffa in typical off-the-wall mode

It’s with a heavy heart that we must announce that famed Spectrum coder, Jonathan ‘Joffa’ Smith passed away at 10.30 on Saturday 26 June at the age of 43.

Although Jonathan was something of a recluse – his last public appearance was at last year’s Byte Back event – he was a regular on certain forums like World of Spectrum where he was affectionately known as Frobrush.

Famed for his technical coding, he was behind some truly impressive Spectrum conversions including, Green Beret, Hyper Sports, Terra Cresta and Ping Pong. He was also a dab hand a creating brand new games, many of which featured his trademark slickness and still remain popular with Spectrum fans everywhere. Cobra, Daley Thompson’s Supertest and Firefly were all excellent examples of his 8-bit work, while the likes of Midnight Resistance, Red Heat and the highly underated Hudson Hawk represented his 16-bit work.

Famed for his off-the-wall humour he was a staunch member of the Spectrum community and was actually working on a new game called Saucer.

Farewell Joffa, you will be sadly missed.

With both Nintendo and Sony’s keynote speeches delivered yesterday there’s far more news to get through today. And with Darran on holiday and a magazine to pull together I best get mi skates on. So, without further ado, here’s a quick rundown of more retro news to come from this year’s E3. 

Nintendo

The big news from Nintendo was the announcement of its new DS, the 3DS – which, as the name suggests, is Nintendo’s second stab at trying to bake 3D technology into a handheld – the first being the Virtual Boy. Thankfully, rather than looking like cumbersome eye test equipment Nintendo’s latest offering is something that you can actually hold in your hands. The 3DS features an anolog nub on its front and two cameras on its back that will allow users to take 3D photos. It also has a new top screen that is said to be made of some kind of lenticular material - the bottom display remains the usual touch-screen - which will also allow games, photos and movies to be displayed in 3D without the need of glasses. The first game making use of the tech will be a brand new Kid Icarus title, but a Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, and new Pilotwings game are also coming to the handheld.  

- somewhat fitting that Nintendo has selected Kid Icarus to be the franchise to demonstrate the 3D technology of its new portable; seeing that the Virtual Boy and Kid Icarus were both produced by the late Gunpei Yokoi.

Nintendo also announced that a new Zelda title, Skyward Sword, and an exclusive remake/update of the N64 smash Goldeneye is heading to Wii. Donkey Kong Country will also be returning with a new 2.5D platformer for the console too, while Kirby will be getting his first proper Wii platforming debut with the release of Kirby’s Epic Yarn this autumn.  

Sony

For us, the best bit of retro news from Sony was the announcement that a new Twisted Metal is coming to PS3. David Jaffe denied its existence for a while, but yesterday, during the Sony conference, he took to the stage and announced that his studio, Eat Sleep and Play, is working on the game. Twisted Metal Nuke will be heading to the PS3, and will feature 16 players online, 2-4 player split screen, new game modes and flying vehicles for the first time.        

Visit NowGamer.com for all the latest news and info from the event.

We’re very excited about this year’s E3. Why? Well we love games of course. This year’s E3 event officially kicked off yesterday evening (our time), so this morning I thought I’d give you a very brief rundown of a few announcements that you could tentatively argue fall within the bubble of retro. Be warned, I did say tentatively.   

Child Of Eden

From Sega Rally and Rez creator Tetsuya Mizaguchi comes Child Of Eden. Developed by Q Entertainment, the game makes use of Microsoft’s Kinect peripheral (formerly Natal), and Sony’s Move, and seems to look and play like a first-person (so the trailer would have you assume) version of Rez, with players waving their arms around the air like Tom Cruise in Minority Report to actuate all sorts of abstract gorgeousness and actions on screen. Your mission in the game is to stop a virus from attacking ‘Project Lumi’ – a mission to try to recreate a human personality inside of Eden. We’re not entirely sure what Eden actually is - that bit wasn’t explained. Could it be the very same Eden from Rez?   

Project Dust (working title)

This 2011 XBLA and Playstation Network game looks utterly gobsmacking. Project Dust has all the hallmarks of a Peter Molyneux game, except it’s actually by Eric Chahi of Another World fame. While the trailer gives very little away, it seems to be some kind of god-sim very much in the vein of Black & White and Populous, and finds players altering the gameworld’s landscape to save an ancient tribe from the elemental forces of the natural world.

And in other news, though some of this was announced/leaked prior to E3, Microsoft and Konami announced a new XBLA 2D side-scrolling HD Castlevania title, titled Castlevania: Harmony Of Despair, Reflection’s Driver series is getting a reboot and Lara Croft will be appearing in a downloadable co-op twin-stick shooter coming to XBLA and Playstation Network, titled Lara Croft And The Guardian Of Light.

Visit NowGamer.com for all the latest news and info from the event.

Some of you may be aware, particularly those of you who subscribe to Darran’s YouTube channel, that I got married recently. Now from the very start I was keen to add some kind of retro gaming aspect to the day, and after racking my brain thinking up ways of how to do it tastefully (that was the caveat laid down by Helen) settled on doing something with the table plan – although RG freelancer Paul Drury had this great idea of having the wedding cake resemble the ‘Pie Factory’ stage from Donkey Kong (sadly, though, the cake order was already placed and couldn’t be altered). Anyway, I figured some of you might appreciate this so have posted it here for you guys to see.