Okay, not exactly, but after playing Peter Hirchberg’s excellent wire-frame tribute, Vector Tanks on Apple’s iPod Touch, you’d be hard-pressed to tell the actual difference.

Based on the classic Eighties coin-op the main reason why Vector Tanks is such a triumph is because of the excellent control system it uses. Two tank tracks appear on either side of the iPod Touch’s screen and by pushing these forwards or backwards it possible to move your tank in a variety of different directions.

Shells are fired with a simple press of the screen, while the are a variety of power-ups to pick up, including a dangerous Nuke that can take out multiple targets (yourself included, if you get too close).

Sporting terrific visuals and utterly immersive sound (you’ll need headphones to get the best out of it) Vektor Tanks is a truly astonishing little title that can be currently picked up on iTunes or the AppStore for less than £2.

Vector Tanks is well worth downloading if you’ve ever had a love for Atari’s Battlezone.

Realising that it’s sitting on a huge cash cow (Street Fighter IV has already sold an astonishing 2 million copies this past week alone) Capcom has revealed that new costumes are on the way to Live Arcade and PSN – for a price of course…

Granted we would much rather get to download Hugo, Elena and Dudley, but having the ability to dress Zangief up in Mike Haggar’s Final Fight attire, or making Fei-Long look like he’s just stepped off the set of Enter the Dragon is arguably the next best thing.

Yes indeedy, the first available pack: The Brawler pack is available to download now and Capcom will be releasing the rest over the following four weeks.

The Brawler pack includes alternate costumes for: Zangief, E.Honda, Rufus, El Fuerte and Abel.

The Femme Fatale pack includes costumes for: Chun-Li, Cammy, Sakura, Rose and C.Viper.

The Shoruken pack includes new suits for: Ryu, Ken, Akuma, Gouken and Dan.

The Shadowloo pack bestows stylish togs upon: Seth, M.Bison, Sagat, Balrog and Vega.

While the Classic and final pack (and the one I most want) contain outfits for: Guile, Dhalsim, Fei-Long, Blanka and Gen.

Fei-Long showing off his new scars.

Balrog does his best Apollo Creed impression.

Zangief borrows Mike Haggar’s costume to take on dirty Ken scrubs.

Hooray, it’s yet another exciting issue of everyone’s favourite retro gaming magazine. “But what’s in this month’s issue?” we hear you ask. Well how does this little lot strike your fancy…

The complete history of Mario Kart: Nintendo proves that you can teach an old plumber new tricks

The Making of R-Type: Irem exclusively reveals how its legendary shoot-em-up came to be

Retroinspection – MSX: A machine that’s both a console and a computer? That will never sell. Will it?

The Classic Game: Super Punch-Out!!: We strap on our boxing gloves and get in the ring with the SNES’s mighty 16-bit brawler

The Making of Frak!: Creator Nick Pelling looks back at his classic platforming caveman

A Shock 2 the System: How System Shock 2 changed FPSs forever

The Making of Robotron: Behind the scenes of the frantic, dual-sticked blaster

Something Old, Something New – R-Type Tactics: A new spin on the classic franchise

Eastern Promise – Shinrei Jusatsushi Taromaru: It costs a fortune, but is it worth it?

The Making of Ecco the Dolphin – Defender of the Future: How Sega watery hero went 3D

Advert Rising: An indepth look at product placement over the years

The Making of Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders: One of the funniest LucasArts adventures that doesn’t have a psychotic rabbit in it.

And much more including M Bison, Sir Lancelot, Scooby Doo, Pacific, Bubbles, The Ooze , Homebrew reviews

You may have noticed that we were very impressed with 4J Studios impressive conversion of Rare’s Banjo Kazooie. Well no sooner had we completed it, Rare revealed the first screenshots for the excellent sequel.

But that’s not all. For the first time ever, the Twycross-based coders have also confirmed that the fabled Stop ‘N’ Swop will now appear exactly as they had always planned when the game was first released on the N64.

Obviously those cheeky little scamps refused to divulge any further information about this amazing but of news, but needless to say it’s left as excited as a very excited person who has a special reason to be excited. There’s no firm released date yet other than “sometime in Easter” so expect further news to be drip fed over the coming months.

Now where’s Jet Force Gemini and Blast Corps eh?

Hooray, it’s nearly time to get jiggy again.

Imagine’s Nick Roberts used to work on classic Spectrum magazine Crash, so every now and again he shows up with something that his parents have dug out of their loft and begins regaling us with tales of the good old days.

His latest treasure that’s been recovered by his parents is a promotional jumper for Hewson’s Cybernoid, and very snug it is to. Roberts now thinks that he has his precious garment back in his possession, but we’ve actually done a clever switch with an old jumper that belonged to Stuart. By the time he’s discovered the ruse we plan to have already left the country, using the money we’ve earned by selling this precious heirloom on eBay.

Here’s Nick’s top in all its glory.

Last year I picked myself up an iPod Touch and over the Christmas break I’ve been discovering all sorts of classic games on the clever little portable.While many of them obviously feature next-gen visuals (good luck finding a DS game that looks as good as Hero of Spartan) it’s surprising just how many of them feel like the classics of old.

Gameloft’s Block Breaker 2 Deluxe and Bubble Bash are basically updated takes on Arkanoid and Bust-A-Move, while titles like Bejeweled 2, Trism and Rainbow are just as addictive as the puzzle games of old. There’s even mario styled platformers like Nicky Boom if you’re prepared to trawl through the many games that are already available.

I’ve also discovered Tower Defence games like Fieldrunners and Crystal Defenders, as well as impressive shoot-em-ups like the excellent rRootage. Perhaps most surprising though is the sheer amount of old retro games that are starting to appear on the system and the actual quality of them. Missile Command, Pac-Man and Pole Position all work exceptionally well on the system and can be controlled by either tilting the screen in the direction you want to go or with a quick flick of your finger.

Best of all though is the brave soul who’s taken it upon himself to recreate five games from Nintendo’s Game & Watch series. Chef, Octopus, Fire, Parachute and Helmut not only look the part but are addictive as now as they ever were. We’ll be taking a more in-depth look at Apple’s handheld in issue 61 of the magazine, in the meantime I’m off to play some more Fish Tycoon.

Fieldrunners is insanely addictive and keeps on receiving fresh updates. It’s well worth its paltry £3 asking price

Before we lazily include the press release that our favourite PR™ Stefan McGarry sent us, here are just a short list of reasons why next year’s Out Run remake will be the best racer on the Xbox 360 and PS3 next year.

1) Out Run 2006 Coast 2 Coast is still the best racer of all time.

2) Sumo Digital couldn’t make a rubbish Out Run game if they had guns pointed at their heads. They’re that bloody good.

3) The original Out Run still has the most stunning locations of any 80s driving game, the new ones look even better.

4) We’ve just had to change our pants. That’s the impact this earth shattering news has had on us. No other Sega announcement, with perhaps the possibility of a brand new Panzer Dragoon game can do this to us.

5) The office is already sick to death of me telling everyone how great this game is going to be and I only received confirmation about ten minutes ago.

So for your viewing pleasure here are some shots of the new game.

Next year can’t come soon enough!

Look at it. Just look at it!!!

This is why we love Sumo Digital.

If Sumo sneaks Retro Gamer bill boards into this, it could become the greatest racer of all time. In fact, it will become the greatest racer of al time.

Oh here’s that press release we were on about…

OUTRUN ONLINE ARCADE
FEEL THE WIND IN YOUR HAIR AS YOU POWER YOUR WAY ALONG THE HIGHWAYS IN OUTRUN™ ONLINE ARCADE

SEGA’s classic arcade racer returns, but this time it’s in stunning HiDef and available via PlayStation® Network and Xbox LIVE® Arcade for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft®. Developed by acclaimed Sheffield studio Sumo Digital, OutRun Online Arcade, will be available early 2009.

Test your time, speed and handling ability as you race through vibrant, colourful stages and rediscover the 15 glorious OutRun courses.  From the steep streets of San Francisco to the beautiful beaches of California, it’s mile after mile of unrelenting acceleration, thrills and action.  Feel the kick as you put your foot to the floor in one of the 10 high-performance, fully licensed Ferrari cars as you race your way across the U.S. to a killer soundtrack.

For the first time on PlayStation® Network and Xbox LIVE®, OutRun Online Arcade delivers online multiplayer racing for up to 6 players, with fast paced OutRun, Heart Attack and Time Attack modes, the draw to the open road has never been so appealing.  OutRun Online Arcade on Xbox LIVE® will feature achievements and voice; and on PlayStation® Network will include trophies, voice over IP and leaderboards.

Which route will you choose on your drive for the highest possible score?

Due to an intense deadline I’ve had to temporarily retire from the magazine in order to get my strength back for issue 60. Worry not though as we’ve been able to find a great replacement.

In the meantime Pac-Man suggested that I relieved all my stress by gobbling down a few Power Pills. His advice was sound, and I’m having so much fun I might stay here forever…

If you’ve picked up our latest eMag (available now from the Imagine eShop for a bargain £19.99) you may have noticed that there’s a large selection of covers there that were put forward at cover meeting, but never actually went any further.We felt the blog was the perfect place to describe the reasoning behind these covers and why we decided to pitch them, so here’s number 1 in what will no doubt be another patchy series from us .

This cover is particularly interesting as it’s the very first one that our current designer, Stephen Williams mocked up when he started working on Retro Gamer. We knew that we wanted to focus on the top 25 fighters feature and knew that we needed something instantly iconic, so Street Fighter II was the obvious choice.

Now I’m not sure who came up with the original idea of having 25 character boxes on the Street Fighter II map, but I do remember that it was Stuart who thought it would be amazingly funny if we had Ken or Ryu facing off against King Hippo. He was right of course (covers always tend to be a collaboration between all three of us, and it’s not unusual for everyone to chip in with the thoughts as the weeks progress).

I think the main reason that the cover didn’t progress any further here was due to the presented piece not being fully realised (you’ll notice that we’ve just re-used Street Fighter sprites instead of ones from the games that would have featured as we had first intended) meaning it didn’t really have the impact that we’d first intended.Still, the addition of the IK+ sprite (from the GBA game I think) is a very nice touch and it proved that Stephen would definitely be someone to keep an eye on.

To commemorate the incoming console release of Street Fighter IV, Capcom recently sent out a selection of rather nifty pin badges.

While we didn’t receive any packs ourselves, we were able to beg a set from Xbox 360′s Simon Miller, who kindly gave us his Chun-Li pack (he wanted to keep Ryu for himself and who could blame him?).

Beautifully made, they’re bound to go down well with fans of the franchise and now look very nice next to the Shanghai Lynx badge that I picked up on eBay the other week. We’ve scoured the office, but so far no one appears to have a badge of Ken Masters.

We’ll put more images up as and when we can convince people to part with them (we’ve got our eye on Play’s Gavin Mackenzie at the moment…)

We were always told to never go out with a girl who had big hands, so poor old Chunners wouldn’t stand a chance.