I think the above title does a good job in explaining the thinking behind this post, but just in case it doesn’t: below is a collection of game box art that remind me of album covers. I’ve only discussed three but may add to this pathetic list if any more scream out at me, or if anyone likes to chime in with more suggestions.

Cup Final by Starsailor

I don’t know why but this bland and minimalist box art for the bland and minimalist game Cup Final just reminds me of that strange orangey photo of an empty stretch of train track that was used on the cover of Starsailor’s first album. I really have nothing more to add other than if you look closely at the box art you’ll see that the match on show is being played by just three people, which means 19 players must have been sent off during the game. Now it might be a 8-bit footy game, but we’re still docking it points for unrealism. Oh and judging by the look of the terraces the match appears to be taking place inside a prison.

Cauldron 2 by Marillion

I’ve always felt that art for Cauldron 2 had the appearence of an album cover for dark prog rock band Marillion – as I think this iconic art for their seminal album Script For A Jesters Tear aptly demonstrates. Maybe the reason my brain has made this weird connection between a Buckinghamshire rock group and a game in which you help a sprightly pumpkin usurp a witch queen might have had something to do with the colours used, the obvious gothic theme both art shares and the fact the Cauldron logo, were you to switch out all the letters to spell Marillion, would look and read identical to the word Marillion.   

Hotel by The Beach Boys

Funny enough, Hotel is a game in which you get to run and manage a hotel. Not one as busy as the hotel depicted on this box art, but nevertheless one that had a reception and some stairs leading up to various corridors that then led into a group of tightly packed bedrooms with colour televisions inside. It was only ever released in Germany, which is where the niche game genre originated and was most popular. Anyway, seeing that it’s just a picture of some people doing something pretty mundane (milling about and checking into their rooms), we thought it very similar to the iconic album cover of Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys, which simply shows a picture of the band members feeding goats. Coincidentally, the title track to Hotel was Hotel California by the Eagles, which obviously has nothing to do with The Beach Boys, but is still music related.

I’m a great advocator of mums, they’re generally awesome most of the time, but today I was reminded of a few instances where mine failed me through her failure to understand just how important videogames were to me growing up, so I felt I’d write a little blog about it. Here are three examples I can remember off hand.

Buying me the game Basildon Bond one Christmas

I don’t recall ever being a Russ Abbot fan. As I child I loved watching the A-Team, Street Hawk and Knight Rider, but never once do I ever recall saying to either of my parents that I was a fan of the eighties’ television personality, and certainly not of his weird spy alter ego Basildon Bond - a creation that lampooned James Bond and a manufacturer of office stationary. True story. Anyway, each Christmas, nestled beneath our tree would be a couple of new games for my Amstrad CPC and more often than not my folks would do me proud with their selections. Well imagine my surprise this particular year when I unwrapped a cassette-sized present and saw this poor man’s Impossible Mission staring back at me. 

Confiscating my copy of How To Be A Complete Bastard

I actually got this game as a covermount on Amstrad Action one issue and it remains the best free thing I’ve ever received in all my 29 years of being alive. The game is basically just Curb Your Enthusiasm the videogame, and sees you playing a dishevelled partygoer trying to ruin a good time by acting like a complete degenerate. It’s a great premise for a game. Anyway, after hearing much noise and laughter coming from my bedroom following an instance where a mate and I got drunk and decided to water a shrub with wee (in-game, natch), my ever curious mum decided to poke her head through the door without either of us noticing to ascertain the cause of the commotion. After then sighting the game’s debased antihero down a bottle of bleach and die on the spot she instantly thought the game was ‘bad news’ and it was promptly confiscated.   

Turning the electricity off when I was seconds away from beating the Devil Car in Ridge Racer.

I rarely shout at my mum. I’ve done it a few occasions in my formative years. I’m not proud of it, and it was generally always for something that seems trivial to me now. This particular occasion though isn’t one of those. It’s one that to this day I still maintain she wholly deserved the barrage of loud agitation that I gave her (arguably). The Devil Car in Ridge Racer is an absolute pig to beat. If I remember rightly you race him in a Time Trial race and you cannot beat him using conventional racing techniques – i.e driving normally. In fact, ironically, I think the only way to beat his lap time is to harness the driving spirit of George Michael and Maureen from Driving School, keeping the quick bugger firmly in your rear-view mirror by blocking his path like you’re trying to annoy a tailgater. Anyway, I seem to remember my mum shouting up to me a couple of times to tell me my tea was ready, and me flagrantly ignoring her as I successfully jostled with Mr. Devil Car for first position. And then it happened. The power went off as I rounded the very last corner of the track. I was fuming. Then my mum was fuming. My dinner ended up in the bin. I got no car and no dinner. I really should have just paused the game.  

I met up with a friend that I rarely see over the weekend. He’s a graphic designer, lives in London, and is always emailing me interesting stuff he finds on the web.

The reason for us catching up was that it was our friend’s 30^th birthday, and to celebrate he had this genius idea of going to a theme park on Saturday. Suffice to say, with every school in the country closed, it was a little like being at the world’s most screechy music festival. 

Queuing for the best part of 8 hours, we found ourselves standing around talking complete rubbish most of the time (which is what happens when you’ve been standing for so long gravity has sucked all the blood away from your brain), but some interesting discussion did come from our mostly nonsensical queue babble. The highlight of which was my designer mate masterfully killing almost a whole ten minutes by showing us a couple of cool things on his iPhone.

The first thing was some hilarious new retro-style Old Spice commercials, which are brilliant but have absolutely nuttin to do with retro games (but you can watch them here if you’re curious), and the second was a cool mock comic book cover, seen below, by artist deankotz over at deviantART, which depicts a cool comicbook/videogame crossover happening between DC’s Dark Knight and Nintendo’s famous ape. 

Being a big Batman and Donkey Kong fan, not only do I now have some snazzy new wallpaper for my desktop, but I also have an impressive pair of powerful armpit mountains thanks to those Old Spice ads causing me to switch deodorant. Cheers queuing!

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.

Thought to be videogames most unbreakable high-score, the staggering 41,336,440 points set on the classic shooter Asteroids by Scott Safran in 1982 – a record that had stood unbeaten for 28 years – has finally been bested by Seattle locksmith John McAllister with a score of 41,338,740.

While McAllister was unable to sleep during his three-day marathon record attempt, he was able to take quick toilet breaks by cleverly banking enough ships to exchange for wee seconds – although given what was on the line we’d probably opt to play the game in a nappy, or stand in a paddling pool full of Radox to ensure no ships needed to be sacrificed to our human imperfections.

McAllister must now submit the lengthy video recording of his record attempt to Twin Galaxies for verification, and, if given the thumbs up, will be crowned the new King Of Asteroids – doesn’t quite have the same ring to it does it?

…Ok, how about: and, if given the thumbs up, will be crowned the new Ruler Of ‘roids!         

Anyway, speaking to KGW TV about his impressive achievement McAllister said: “It’s basically considered a Holy Grail…It was a title that a lot of people would want, and I wanted it.”

For quite obvious visual reasons, Karnaaj Rally’s box art is legendary. It’s essentially just a Polaroid of a man on his stag weekend. From the odd composition, garish colours, and haphazard way this box art looks thrown together, Karnaaj Rally starts out looking like the result of what would happen if you gave NDubz a billion pounds and a million years to come up with a serious and saleable video game concept.       

Here’s the game’s character select screen, which kinda explains the deal behind the bizarre box art. It’s a racing game that lets you assume the role of one of several characters you’d never willingly ever want to assume the role of.  

After selecting our driver, we were introduced to this guy, Leppa. He’s our sponsor and is here to take us through the bizarre world of Karnaaj Rally, though given the fact that he can’t even afford a shirt we’re not expecting this relationship will prove to be any kind of gravy train.

He does give us some useful tips though, like this one here, which helps explain how you go about getting ‘ultimate pleasure’ from the game – and it doesn’t involve Paraffin and a match. Surprised? We were.

If you think the driver selection process was bad then you should check out the vehicle selection, it’s somehow even worse. Our initial choice of motor vehicle consists of Fred Flintstone’s car or something that looks like a giant pencil. Geez.    

Finally we get into the game, and to be honest it isn’t all that bad. It’s a playable and decent looking top-down combat jostle racer in the style of Badlands meets Micro Machines. While not a patch on either of those aforementioned games, if you’re a fan of the genre, and play your games wearing sunglasses, you may be able to find some fraction of enjoyment from this weird little GBA racing oddity.

Digital versions of Imagine Publishing’s magazines are among the most popular paid for books on the Apple App store less than three weeks after launch.

Powered by PixelMags, the games™ and Retro Gamer apps enable iPhone and iPad users to read the latest issue of each magazine free in its entirety, as well as purchase back issues or subscribe within the App using their iTunes accounts.

The digital editions are stored on the device, enabling users to read, zoom, scan, bookmark and browse through each issue. The digital version of the prestigious UK gaming magazine games™ ranked 7th in the App store’s Book section making it the most popular videogame publication on iTunes, while Retro Gamer, which focuses on classic games ranked 22.
 
games™ Editor in chief Rick Porter commented: “The popularity of the App is excellent news. It offers a great opportunity for those outside the UK to sample a magazine that we are very proud of and put a lot of hard work into – and the upcoming iPad will make the Apps even more relevant.”
 
Follow the links to check out the games™ app and Retro Gamer app right now.

Story via Nowgamer.com

Donkey Kong maestro Steve Wiebe has reclaimed the title of Donkey Kong Junior World Champ by beating the previous high-score record set by Mark Kiel of Enid, Oklahoma.

This is the official word from Twin Galaxies, the organisation which records and verifies videogame high-scores, who congratulate Steve on his impressive achievement.

“On behalf of Twin Galaxies, I’d like to congratulate Steve Wiebe of Redmond, WA for re-claiming the WR on Donkey Kong Junior! Steve reached the kill screen and scored 1,190,400 points on his home machine on 2/12/2010 to take back the crown.”

Great work Steve, does this mean another world record attempt at Donkey Kong is on the cards? Here’s hoping