This is the Sun Titan. A massive red giant who will create a headache for your opponant.

I’ve been taking a break from conventional computer games recently and hammering the hell out of Magic the Gathering. In particular the latest core set.

At one stage the core set consisted of 100% reprinted cards and was released every other year. As a result it was a great introduction to the excellent card game that is Magic the Gathering, but it wasn’t off as much use to seasoned players, many of whom would already own the cards.

Wizards changed this with the release of Magic 2010, as it was the first core set to feature 50% of new cards that players had never seen before. While this was initially met with howls of scepticism – after all Magic is already a relatively expensive hobby and a near own brand new set wasn’t going to make the wallet stretch any further – key cards like Vampire Nocturnus and Baneslayer Angel soon ensured that many collectors bought into it.

So now we come to the latest release and we’re delighted to say that it’s the best core set for some time. This is due to several important factors. Firstly it’s excellent fun to draft. There are some great bombs in the form of big creatures and plenty of removal, ensuring that games rarely drag on and can be full of momentum shift between the two players. Another nice touch is how the 5 core colours continue to be perfectly tweaked and represented. Blue now has some excellent counterspells, red has been bolstered by some strong new burn (direct damage) while green has plenty of nice new meaty creatures to attack with. Black gets a great new discard spell, and while it loses Vampire Nocturnus, it does receive Captivating Vampire, which can begin stealing creatures if the conditions are right. White keeps Baneslayer Angel, arguably one of the best cards ever in print, and also gets the wonderful Serra Ascendant, which has finally made life gain decks actually viable.

By far the best addition to the set however is the gigantic new titans; huge powerful giants that completely swing the game when they come into play. Each titan costs six mana to cost and is a 6/6 creature. If this wasn’t enough they all have specific abilities related to their colours and a further ability that activates whenever they enter play or attack. Primeval Titan for example has trample and can fetch two lands a turn from your library, while Grave Titan has death touch and let’s you put two 2/2 zombies into play.

As a result these powerful mythic rares are becoming extremely desirable on the second hand market, with sales of the green Primeval Titan already reaching £40 for a single card.

With Scars of Mirrirdon due out very, very soon there’s never been a better time to investigate the world’s very best collectible card game. For more information head to www.magicthegathering.com

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!

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.

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.

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.

A virtual arcade you can fill with all your favourite games

Anyway, for the last couple of weeks we’ve been running our own challenges on the Retro Gamer forum and we’d love it if you could join us. All you need to do is add your gamertag to our main Game Room list and look out for whatever game we’re currently playing. Then it’s just a case of getting the highest score you can and posting it for everyone to see. The winner will get heaps of deserved praise bestowed on them, the loser will be simply laughed at.

You can get more information by visiting http://www.retrogamer.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=18 We’ll see you all online

As many regular readers will know, one of my passions beside Strider is the excellent collectible card game Magic the Gathering. Anyway, the latest set, Rise of the Eldrazi was released a couple of weeks ago and now that I’ve been able to witness all aspects of the game I’ve decided to give you a little lowdown on it.

First off Rise of the Eldrazi is all about the Eldrazi, huge monsters that not only cost a fortune to cast, but have truly devastating abilities once they do come into play. While this means that games have slowed down greatly compared to the releases of Zendikar and WorldWake it does mean that the metagame has greatly changed, mainly thanks to the awesome new play mechanics that have been introduced.

The most exciting of these is Annihilator. It’s an aggressive combat mechanic that all Eldrazi possess and it really helps to cripple your opponent. Whenever a creature with Annihilator attacks the defending player must sacrifice a set amount of permanents as stipulated by the attacking card. Needless to say it makes the Eldrazi pretty much unstoppable once they’re on the battlefield, so you’ll really need to have your wits about you whenever you’re dealing with them.

The next mechanic, Totem Armor is an enchantment that is cast on your creatures and gives them a second chance of life in addition to any actual bonuses the actual enchantment offers. When a creature with Totem Armor is destroyed the creature is instead saved and the enchantment is deleted. Needless to say, this gives aggressive colours based around red and blacks no end of problems because all your creatures effectively have to be killed twice.

Another interesting new mechanic is Level Up. By paying a specific casting cost it’s possible to level up certain creatures. This cost can be played as often as you like (providing you have the mana to meet the demands) but can only be done in your own turn. When a creature hits a specific level it will sometimes (but not always) grow in power and toughness but also gain new abilities as well. It’s a great new addition for decks playing many small creatures, as it gives them as way of still being effective as the game continues.

The last, but easily the most interesting mechanic is Rebound. Whenever a card with Rebound is cast it is exiled (removed from play) instead of immediately going to the Graveyard (where are cast cards end up). Then, at the beginning of your next upkeep you’ll be given the opportunity to cast the card for free. It’s a great little concept, although instant spells (spells which can be cast at any moment) aren’t quite as effective the next turn around as your opponent will know to expect them.

In addition to the above mechanics, Rise of Eldrazi also features colourless creatures, the Eldrazi. These gargantuans cost huge amounts of mana to cast and are extremely powerfully, easily becoming game changers when they hit the battlefield. Despite the high casting costs, many cards now creature Eldrazi Spawn, small weak creatures that can be used a blockers or sacrificed to create colourless mana. Needless to say, a smart deck builder can soon get around those seemingly high casting costs.

So what do these play mechanics mean then for the game in general? Well as noted the actual pace has greatly slowed down, meaning that draft games do take longer to play. The same can be said for normal constructed games, although key cards like Polymorph are already abusing the high costing Eldrazi casts by effectively cheating them into play without paying their actual casting costs.

Rise of the Eldrazi is a fantastic new addition to the core Magic franchise. While it definitely isn’t for fast-paced players, it does take the game into exciting new directions, something that has always been Magic’s core strength. It’s still too early to see what impact the new set will have on future tournaments – although polymorph decks featuring the Eldrazi and a new Planeswalker deck featuring Gideon Jura have been doing extremely well – but you can rest assured that its impact will be felt for many months to come.

For more information about Rise of the Eldrazi and Magic the Gathering in general please visit http://community.wizards.com/mtguk

I was always strong enough to resist it though, probably because my wife is normally wife me and she’d remind me that it’s pointless paying £60 for something when you already have a version that’s totally playable at home.

Of course, you can’t explain to your other half however that something is better because it comes in a cardboard box and has a free plastic monster head with it, as they’ll never believe you. It’s true though. I already own Monster Hunter Tri, and the Wii Speak device, and the free Classic Controller Pro that comes with it, but it still managed to ensnare me.

Now all I have to do is sneak it home and pray that the wife doesn’t notice it. Wish me luck!

I love cooking things in Monster Hunter almost as much as I love fighting monsters

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.”