Issue 99 of Retro Gamer hits retailers tomorrow, and 8-bit lovers are in for a real treat this month. Miss it and you’ll be missing out on:

The Making Of 3D Monster Maze – we chat to Malcolm Evans about the creation of his seminal ZX81 game.

Top 25 Amstrad Games – We reveal the best games released for Sir Alan Sugar’s unfairly mocked 8-bit underdog, as voted for by readers of Retro Gamer.

Signature Series: Mega Man – With some 100 games to his name, we give you the complete lowdown on the Blue Bomber’s NES series of games.

Playground Battles (C64 Vs Spectrum) – We attempt to put an end to this epic playground dispute once and for all.  

As well as that, there’s also…

A Moment With Jonathan Temples

Minority Report
From The Archives: Platinum Productions
Retro Revival: Zynaps
The History Of SoulCalibur
Classic Game: Bruce Lee
The Making Of Monty Python’s Flying Circus
The Unconverted
Classic Game: Golden Axe
The Making Of Thing On A Spring
Future Classic: Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance
In The Chair: Eric Chahi
Retro Revival: Robocop Versus The Terminator

Renowned among many Game Boy collectors, For The Frog The Bell Tolls is an obscure adventure game created by the same dev team responsible for Zelda: Link’s Awakening, and Metroid II: The Return Of Samus. Regarded by many to be a precursor to Link’s Awakening, the game tells the story of two princes who race to rescue a princess from an evil king – we’re assuming they get transformed into frogs along the way. The game never saw a release outside of Japan and is therefore a relative unknown in the West. However, some passionate fans have recently translated the game into English, meaning you can now experience this little-known Nintendo gem for yourself.

NowGamer has revealed its Top 50 Greatest Gaming Moments. It’s an epic look back at those moments that have really helped define the medium. Memorable scenes, events and moments of games that live on in the memory long after their worlds have been saved, the credits roll and they’ve been traded in.   

We were pleasantly surprised to see how much retro gaming love made it in (admittedly though, it’s mostly console centric). Entries include the first pair of trousers you ruined fighting your first Cyberdemon, zombie dogs providing business for Raccoon City’s double glazing salesman, and (one of Darran’s suggestions) the second stage of Strider.         

Best of all though, accompanying many of the entries are quotes from the developer responsible, with the likes of Naughty Dog, Telltale Games, Epic Games, Sony Santa Monica, Hideo Kojima and Infinity Ward all contributing.

Check out the Top 50 Greatest Gaming Moments now – and have your say in the comments section below. 

Imagine Publishing’s games website breaks records.

NowGamer, Imagine Publishing’s flagship games website, has passed 1 million unique visitors for the first time in its history.

NowGamer reached 1,151,450 unique visitors for the month of November. The figures include 402,309 visitors in the UK and over 2 million page impressions.

More readers than ever before are coming to NowGamer to get their buying advice, gaming news and guides to playing the latest games.

Launched in 2009, NowGamer has attracted a strong, dedicated following of core gamers with high quality, exclusive content.

Nick Jones, NowGamer’s Editor in Chief, commented, “To reach this milestone in such a short period of time is a fantastic achievement for the team and I want to congratulate everyone involved. But this is just the beginning for NowGamer, and I see this as very much just the completion of stage one. We’ve got our sights set higher now, which is ultimately to make NowGamer the best gaming site in the UK.”

See why NowGamer is read by over a million people every month. 

[Source: Google Analytics]

30 years ago today the BBC Micro was first unveiled. The computer became a firm fixture in classrooms across the UK in the Eighties thanks to its tie with the BBC’s Computer Literacy Project, a television show aimed to teach children the basics of computer science.   

Looking for a versatile computer with which to base its project on, the BBC approached a number of British computer manufacturers in its search. But it was Cambridge-based Acorn Computers who won the contract after impressing with a demo of its new machine, the Proton. The Proton was unveiled on December 1st as the BBC Microcomputer System and came in two flavours, Model A (16K) and Model B (32K)

Thanks to the publicity of the show, the BBC Micro became hugely popular on its release, particularly in the education sector. However the arrival of the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 the following year saw these more affordable computers dominate the interest of Britain’s software industry and with it the lion’s share of the market. Having established itself as a bit of a teachers’ pet, the BBC Micro failed to enjoy the same level of success.

It was a real shame too as the BBC Micro was a versatile piece of kit with a library of fantastic games – Frak!, Repton and of course the epic space trading game Elite – that show off its power.

As the Beeb celebrates its 30th birthday today, Elite’s co-creator, David Braben, shares with us his thoughts on the computer.

“The BBC Micro (and the Acorn Atom – which in many ways was very similar), inspired a generation with the accessibility of technology. A great many people, me included, had our eyes opened to how easy it was to get a computer to do amazing things. Through schools, this changed the lives of many people in a good way. Many of those people went on to do great things as a result; just look around places like here on Cambridge’s Science Park to see the results 30 years on!”

Ron Gilbert has revealed two pieces of character art from his new project for Double Fine.

Unveiled on his personal blog grumpygamer.com, Gilbert revealed that the ‘playable’ characters are from a game idea he’s had rolling around in his head since before Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island.

Knowing Ron was big into adventure games before creating Maniac Mansion, and enjoyed the Seirra graphic adventure games King’s Quest and Space Quest, we’re guessing the project will be of a similar mould to his early adventure games.

The two characters, the bespectacled scientist and imposing looking mobster seen here, certainly have a Maniac Mansion/Day Of The Tentacle vibe to them. Could this be Double Fine’s first proper iOS game?

In a new feature we’ll be trying our best to explain to you why modern games such as Skyrim and Batman: Arkham City fail to match up to retro games. In the firing line this week is Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and doing the shooting is Capcom’s Commando.  

The launch wasn’t as sad

This year’s Call Of Duty launch mania is thankfully over: its an annual steeplechase that sees millions of men and put upon wives/girlfriends flocking to their local supermarket at early doors to hastily stick £50 worth of surplus groceries into a trolley to obtain a new copy of the game for £10 off the RRP. We weren’t there when the first ever Commando arcade machine was installed in an amusement arcade but we can imagine the scene was far, far less absurd.

If Carlsberg did paintballing sites.

No hand holding

COD’s gameplay is notorious for its hand holding and finger pointing. Stick this lump of C4 here, stand there and fire at those Russians over there; shoot that guy in the back of the head when the Injury Lawyers 4U man says to. The game does this because it’s petrified you might miss one of the six million set-piece moments that it crams into a five minute window. The problem with this is that it can make you feel like a clueless film extra rather than an experienced solider. In Commando there is no such signposting or hand holding. Just you and an open vertical scrolling battlefield filled with enemy militia.      

Those guys aren't telling me where to go. Honest.

More coherent story

MW2’s story was basically a confusing mess of news graphics and military jargon. This year’s COD has its fair share of both these things but does at least try to fasten them to a slightly more coherent story. While we wouldn’t want to give the finer points of Commando’s story away, as that would be spoiling it for those who have yet to play it, we will say this: Commando’s arcade flyer sums up everything concisely and brilliantly.   

Destroy the enemy army !! Simple !!

I’d just like to take this opportunity to wish Darran a very happy birthday, who turns one year older today. I can’t for the life or me remember how old he is, but I believe his new age falls somewhere within the late thirties threshold.

Anyway, to celebrate Darran turning a year older here’s a creaky old picture of him I found in his drawer. It shows a young melancholic looking Daz (circa early-Nineties judging by that Blur bootleg album on that draw unit) sporting a Morrissey haircut.  

Bounder’s World, the first game to come from Ian Stewart’s newly resurrected Gremlin Graphics label, Gremlin Presents, now has a release date.

It will be available to purchase for iPhone and iPad this coming Bank Holiday Monday, the 29^thAugust, and will sell for £0.69p (iPhone) and £2.99 (iPad).

This new version of the top-down platform puzzler is a complete reimaging of the original that has been rebuilt to pander entirely to the touch-screen platform. In addition to snazzy new retina display visuals and touch-screen controls, Bounder’s World will also feature new levels and a remixed soundtrack too.

If you’re a fan of the original (and who isn’t?) and have nothing planned this coming bank holiday then why not treat yourself to this new take on an old classic? In all seriousness, 69 pence wouldn’t even buy you half a tennis ball these days.

So the finalists for this year’s Games Media Awards have been announced and Retro Gamer is really pleased to be up for Best Magazine again.  

If you somehow missed last year’s awards, we managed to scoop the award for Best Magazine – something that’s still yet to fully sink in.

We just want to say thanks to everyone that nominated for us again this year. By our maths (which isn’t great), if everyone who voted for us to win last year picks up the phone and does the same again this year there’s a really good chance we could come away consecutive winners.

Also, as an added incentive, if we do win again then Darran has promised to change his name to ‘Mr. I romance Strider Hiryu’s handsome smooth face Jones’, via Deed Poll.

…To be honest though, he’s been toying with doing that for a while anyway.  

So with that pathetic attempt at trying influence the vote over, here’s a full list of the categories and respective finalists for the awards ceremony which takes place at the Vinopolis on October 26^th.     

THE FINALISTS ARE…

GAMES MAGAZINE

* Edge
* GamesTM
* NGamer
* Official Xbox Magazine
* Official PlayStation Magazine
* Retro Gamer

GAMES WEBSITE

* GameSpot
* Videogamer
* Gaming Union
* Eurogamer
* The Sixth Axis
* God is a Geek
* IGN
* CVG

SPECIALIST WRITER PRINT

* Matthew Castle – NGamer
* Chris Scullion – Official Nintendo Magazine
* Steve Hogarty – Official Nintendo Magazine
* Jon Blyth – Official Xbox Magazine
* Christian Donlan – Freelance

SPECIALIST WRITER ONLINE

* Jane Douglas – GameSpot UK
* Mark Walton – GameSpot UK
* Keza MacDonald – IGN
* Gillen McAllister – Game Reactor
* Gwynne Dixon – Total Video Games
* Wesley Yin-Poole – Eurogamer

COVERAGE IN A NATIONAL NEWSPAPER

* The Guardian
* The Observer
* The Telegraph
* The Sun
* The Star Sunday

COVERAGE IN A MAINSTREAM MAGAZINE

* BBC Focus Magazine
* Shortlist
* T3
* Nuts
* Wired
* Front

REGIONAL GAMES COLUMNIST

* Steve Wollaston – Sunday Mercury
* Dan Slingsby – Syndicated Regional
* Dave Cook – The Scotsman
* Ed Hill – Derby Telegraph
* Ian Crump – Southern Daily Echo
* Phil Harris – Craigmillar Chronicle
* James Harvey – Cardiff & South Wales Advertiser

GAMES BROADCAST/PODCAST

* Gamesweasel
* GameSpot UK Podcast
* Saturday Edition 5live
* Start/Select
* Gamewank
* SentUAmessage
* OneLifeLeft

GAMES BLOG

* London Calling
* XboxGameZone
* VG247
* Rock, Paper, Shotgun
* Ready Up

RISING STAR

* Johnny Chiodini – GameSpot UK
* Seb Ford – GameSpot UK
* Martin Gaston – Videogamer
* Andrien Gbinigie – XboxGameZone
* Jamin Smith – Videogamer
* Hollie Bennett – Destructoid
* Dan Webb – Xbox360Achievements.org
* Matt Lees – Official Xbox Magazine