We’re pleased to announce that our latest Retro Gamer collection is now available to buy from all good retailers. Personally compiled by Retro Gamer’s editor, Darran Jones, it represents some of the best features and content to appear in the magazine over a 12-issue period, and as a result, shouldn’t be missed by any fan of classic games.   Highlights include an in-depth look at Lara Croft, Prince of Persia and Sabre Man, makings of classic games, including Strider, Super Metroid, Asteroids, as well as exhaustive articles on key consoles and computers such as Sony’s PlayStation and the Apple II.   Retro Gamer Collection Vol 5 is available from WHSmiths, Barnes & Nobles and other popular retailers, and can also be bought directly from the Imagine Shop www.imagineshop.co.uk.   If you love retro gaming then you need this bookazine. It really is that simple.

RG reader and talented graphic artist Lee Griggs emailed us with an impressive 3D rendering he created of the E1M5 stage in Doom.

We can’t say we’re so familiar with Doom that we instantly went ‘oh yeah, that stage, the one with the oppressive grey walls and green acid pools’, but Lee helpfully sent us an image of the original stage so we could easily compare new with old.

Anyway, we thought it was so good it had to be shared.

Fans of Retro Gamer’s hardware bookazines will be pleased to hear that they are now available to buy for Kindle. The Classic Videogames Hardware Genius Guide is available now for jus £5.81 and features in-depth guides to some of the best computers and consoles of all time. The Amiga, Super Nintendo, PC Engine, Atari 2600 and ZX Spectrum are just a few of the machines featured, and all come with the fantastic in-depth information that only Retro Gamer offers. You can buy it direct by visiting the following link http://www.amazon.co.uk/Classic-Videogames-Hardware-Genius-ebook/dp/B0052N2152/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=A3TVV12T0I6NSM&qid=1306488801&sr=1-1

In the second instalment in our brand new blog series, in which we compete in a series of games based on popular television quiz shows from the Eighties. This time we play Every Second Counts. You’ll like this, not a lot.

Every Second Counts was a quiz show presented by never-changing magician Paul Daniels. As its title implies, the basis of the show saw couples take it in turns to answer questions in a bid to bank as much time as possible. The couple that had accumulated the most time then got to use it in the game’s final round - a round which basically just saw them answering questions correctly to light up plastic triangles as their time ticked down. With a concept so simple, the poor developer given the unenviable task of trying to turn the show into a computer game really only had three elements to hang a game off of: Paul Daniels, couples and questions.  As such, it’s therefore understandably that the first section of the game likes to make a bit of a song and show about you selecting your contestants.

You begin by picking two contestants from the six faces on offer. Showing its age, the game forbids you from partnering two men or women together. Anyway, I opt to go for the male sprite that looked the most like me, and the female sprite I found the most attractive. 

With the contestants selected, it’s on with the show… 

Round 1 The first round is made up of simple true or false lines of questioning. The subject topic I choose is inventors and I’m pleased to discover the questions feature easily identifiable red herring answers – hence me effortlessly scoring almost a minute of time in the first round.

Round 2 The next round sees the contestants switch roles, and you having to type out your answers. How I knew the answer to this question I haven’t the foggiest. Anyway, something in my head tells me the answer is Emily, and it’s correct. A complete fluke I know. But every fluke counts.

Final Round After a few more rounds I eventually reach the final part of show. It’s at this point that things start to go awry. The controls scheme that had gotten me this far no longer seems to work, and so, with the clock ticking down, I frantically bash every button on the keyboard to try to work out where the commands have mysteriously shifted too. Getting more questions wrong than right as I do this, I only succeed in alighting three triangles in the earned time. A pathetic effort I know, but I was cheated.

In a brand new blog series we compete in a series of games based on popular television quiz shows from the Eighties. First up, Blockbusters. Let’s see how we did…

Round 1 I didn’t get off to the best of starts. Geography was one of my worst subjects at school, but I was confident I could guess the answer – after all, how many American states begin with the letter V? After a quick think I came up with Vancouver and Virginia.  With time rapidly running out I decided to go with the former. Big mistake. No sooner have I hit return it instantly occurs to me that Vancouver is actually in Canada. I’m putting my idiocy down to the pressure of appearing on game shows. And being rubbish at Geography.

Round 2 Thankfully the next question I did know the answer to, and the battlefield was once again looking level.

Round 6 I was now cooking on gas, getting the last few questions correct. In the excitement of knowing the answer to this question though, I misspelled peasants. Thankfully virtual Bob Holness was generous enough to give me the point. Realisation then dawned on me that I had clearly forgotten the rules of how Blockbusters worked and was making a bit of a dog’s dinner in getting from one end of the board to the other.    

Round 9 The Spectrum had started to make a bit of a comeback, but all was not lost. Bob asked me a question about beer, one of my specialist subjects, and I returned confidently with the answer. Better than that though, my unusual long-winded method of winning control of the board was actually starting to pay off - the Speccy was getting bottlenecked.

Round 14 By round 14 this was now starting to become one epic round of Blockbusters. I’m down to the last question to win the round and I could almost hear Bob himself delivering the final question. I have this one in the bag; I type ‘jack’, not even concerning myself with capitalising the J, and confidently hit return.

The game is mine and the Spectrum is beaten. *

*Ignore the total score of 1-1 - the first round was simply a practice game to get fully acquainted with how the game works.

To celebrate the release of Kirby’s Epic Yarn tomorrow, Nintendo has been spreading a little Kirby love to the streets of Elephant & Castle today – which, according to a recent poll, has been voted the greyest place in the UK by 32 percent of Londoners. 

As the poor denizens of E&C come to terms with the news, Nintendo and the Kirbster were thankfully on hand to inject a bit of fun, twee and colour into their lives.  

As well as giving away copies of the game, to tie-in with Epic Yarn’s charming embroidered look Nintendo asked Knit The City to weave the Elephant a colourful Kirby seat cover to help transform one its uncomfortable concrete benches into something that a high-class Nan would be proud to sit on. Here are some pictures.

There are some truly fantastic games currently available on all the next gent systems, and each and every one of them is worthy of your hard-earned cash. Dead Space 2, Mario Sports Mix and Test Drive 2 Unlimited offer something for everyone and are all currently available to buy from www.ShopTo.net.

Simply spend £10 or more at ShopTo on any of their items that are currently in stock and you’ll get a £1 discount off your purchase. The discount price is available until 28-02-2011 and it is limited to the first 2000 customer orders, so don’t delay if you want to save yourself some cash.

Simply enter the following code: SHOPTOIP02 at checkout in order to receive your discount.

Having seen it over Christmas, I thought I’d share with you some quick thoughts on the extremely late Tron sequel that hit cinema screens a few weeks back…

Going into the movie my memory of the original Tron was hazy. I remember enjoying it as a kid, but only really the CG sections. The confusing company espionage bits bored me to ignorance, so all the entire movie boiled down to me was the tale of a programmer trapped inside a computer and trying to escape (at the time, though, I remember thinking he was trapped in a computer game, he isn’t - but as I said, the story isn’t all that clear).

Tron: Legacy is pretty much the same story as before except this time there’s a trio of people trying to escape, and the corporate undertone is used in a way that a layman would salute - using it as device to introduce us to the film’s central protagonist, Sam Flynn, the son of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges).

Sam is a bit of a troubled soul who believes his father walked out on him when he was a kid (the truth is Kev actually went and got himself trapped inside a computer again), and is someone who clearly knows his way around computers and motorbikes – explained by us seeing him lose a police car on his motorbike with a sharp turn, and bypassing a security system to access the building of his father’s company ENCOM. Anyway, once Sam enters the Grid - the digital world of Tron - this is where, rather nicely, the 3D in the movie starts to kick in, and it’s also at this point the film also begins treading more familiar ground. It quickly tosses Sam into a quick, but exhilarating, disc battle, which seem to now take place inside giant Ferrero Rocher boxes, before quickly leading into an even better (but just as short) light cycle race – the film’s action highlight.

When left to its own devices in the Grid, this is where the film starts to deflate rapidly. Its thin story creates just as many questions as it offers answers, and what remaining action ideas the movie introduces following the retreads – a dull fight inside a dull nightclub and a jet battle finale - just fail in being as exciting as the earlier light cycle set-piece.

I also take slight umbrage at the fact that in the wake of Avatar Tron: Legacy seems to have touted itself as the next must-see spectacle 3D movie. The only thing I found ‘spectacle’ about the picture was the 3D glasses needed to help you look for the missing spectacle. I just wasn’t all that impressed by the 3D effects in the film to be honest. In fact, I was struggling to notice it for the most part. Though you could argue this is because it’s used unobtrusively, I’m not so sure – apparently 3D doesn’t like black backgorunds and, as the Grid is swathed mostly in darkness, I suspect that this is most likely the culprit for the lacklustre 3D effects. But I’m no expert.

For me Tron: Legacy’s best achievement is something that I wasn’t expecting: Clu – the film’s antagonist, a program written by Kevin to help him create the perfect digital world that gets obsessed with the idea, becomes a bit of a tyrant and basically turns on his creator. While the look of the Clu (a completely built from-the-ground-up human-CGI character based on a young Jeff Bridges) looks undeniably CG, his appearance and mannerisms are both haunting and well captured, making him not only one of best computer generated characters in recent memory, but also a great villain.

In closing, had there been about a 80% more light cycle action (which, let’s be honest, is what most people going into this film want to see), I probably could have forgiven the film’s shortfalls. As it stands, Tron Legacy is watchable, but ultimately a dull and disappointing experience.

Darran, Stuart and Rick pose with their lovely award

Well this is a pleasant surprise. We’ve only gone and won the UK game’s industry most prestigious award!

For those who don’t know, the GMAs (or Game Media Awards) are given out every year. People within the industry nominate from a whole host of different categories ranging from Best Website to Best Magazine and 150 judges eventually pick the short list finalists. It’s a huge event that draws a large number of press and this year the number of attending people was so large the event had to be moved to London’s swanky Bloomsbury Ballroom (previous functions were held at Jongleurs).

So anyway, there we were sitting at a table, munching on burgers and hot dogs and conversing with the lovely ladies of Sega Europe while the awards were being announced. We weren’t expecting too much, simply because we’ve been nominated for the last 3 years in a row and it’s always gone to either Edge or sister mag GamesTM. Imagine our surprise then when the amusing Stuart Francis – not the crush a grape one – finally managed to get around to announcing the winner of best magazine and it turned out to be us!

All I really remember is choking on my beer, excitedly punching the air – the charming Pat Garrett would later refer to us as ‘going bonkers’ on his live blog update – and rushing up onto the stage with Stuart and our editor in chief Rick Porter. Only to be hit by glaring lights and be rendered virtually speechless, which to anyone who knows me, doesn’t usually happen. Instead of giving a stirring heartfelt speech I managed to witter out something along the lines of “I was convinced PC Zone were going to win this” and about 25 thank yous until I was politely directed off the stage.

So with hindsight here’s what I would have said.
“I’m absolutely delighted that Retro Gamer has won this award. Stuart, Stephen and myself have worked incredibly hard over the past year and done everything we can to make Retro Gamer as enjoyable as possible. If it wasn’t for our loyal readership, who are never afraid to point out where we might be going wrong, or our crack team of freelancers who deliver so many great exclusives we wouldn’t be anywhere near the magazine we actually are and it’s a real honour that our humble little magazine has finally been recognised.”

On second thoughts maybe my first response was better…

Ultimately though, while this award belongs to Stuart, Steve and myself, it’s also your award, because without you guys we’d just be creating an amazing magazine that no one actually read.

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.