It’s another month, which means another retro helping of ‘Back in Time’.  This time we go back twenty years to take look at the best videogaming magazines from March 1992. This was a time when the quirky platformer Harlequin appeared on the Amiga, WWF Wrestlemania grappled all comers on all formats, Buck Rogers showed everyone how to do a Sci-Fi RPG, Space Crusade made strategic [... read more ...]

Back in 2005, it seemed unlikely that Retro Gamer would survive past issue 20, never mind 100. Fortunately, the magazine was revived by its current publishers and still produces the goods to this day, content and design wise. With its 100th issue, the Retro Gamer team have pulled out all the stops and packed the 100 odd pages with superb content from start to finish. [... read more ...]

With the PC being this author’s main gaming platform for nearly 20 years, it would be unsurprising to see a return to the digital archiving of PC Player. As this author has mentioned previously, the magazine was vastly underrated with superb content and design, so hopefully, people everywhere can now see what was so great about the magazine. With issue 2 of PC Player, we [... read more ...]

This author has spoken about his fondness of the Mega Drive magazine, Mega, for some time, here and here, but has it really been two years since the release of Mega issue 1? Apparently so. Well that is going to change as one this author’s favourite gaming magazine of all time will start to appear slightly more frequently. Starting with issue 2 right now. With [... read more ...]

New year, new ‘Back in Time’ article. This time we go back twenty years to take look at the cream of the videogaming magazines from January 1992. This was a time when the Sega magazine scene was kicking off big time with two new launches, Sega Force and MegaTech, while the first dedicated Nintento mag, Total!, also appeared. Games wise, Another World was simply out [... read more ...]

As Retro Gamer rushes headlong towards that milestone 100th issue, we are treated to yet another fine issue. Taking centre stage is SNK’s Metal Slug, as the team look at the making of the classic run-’n’-gun games. Other standout articles include Coin-Op Capers Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, In The Chair With… Bruce Everiss, The Making Of Alone In The Dark and The History Of Space [... read more ...]

The RGCD C64 16KB Cartridge Game Development Competition 2011, to give the full title, has recently been concluded with the judges’ results. This very author was kindly asked to serve as one of the judges and it was an honour to play through the games and comment on them. Some games were familiar already having had previews released through CSDb and RGCD, but others were [... read more ...]

As another year has just ended, we take a look back at the year’s highlights: the games, the ezines, magazines, podcasts and other retrogaming activities…   One of the first homebrew games reported in January 2011 was 1,000 Kung-Fu Maniacs. Developed by Alf Yngve and released through Psytronik, the game follows the kung-fu exploits of Master of Awesome as he travels through the Ninja invested [... read more ...]

It’s not often we get to play much in the way of NES homebrew games at Retroaction. However, Zooming Secretary is one game we simply couldn’t ignore. Developed by Shiru in collaboration with PinWizz, the game has the player in control of a new secretary who must make it through a week’s trial without getting fired. This involves answering telephone calls, filing and the usual [... read more ...]

Man, we’ve been meaning to look at this fantastic compilation for some time (sorry for the delay, Alf). To be honest, when we first heard about Shoot ‘Em Up Destruction Set 2, we didn’t know what to expect and weren’t that thrilled about playing a bunch of shoot-’em-ups. Our initial trepidationwas soon unfounded, as the compilation features such a varied mix of classics from Alf Yngve. [... read more ...]

As Christmas is fast approaching, Retro Gamer produces another festive themed cover in the same vein as Newsfield Publications’ classic gaming mags, Crash and Zzap!64. And that’s fitting, because the highlight of this issue is undoubtedly The Making of… Zzap!64, the Commodore 64′s much loved gaming magazine, with input from Oliver Frey, Roger Kean and Gary Penn – a must read. Tying in with Newsfield’s [... read more ...]

We’ve previously commented on the brilliance of RetroManiac over the past year or so, and, once again, we’re amazed at the quality, in both content and production values, of this brilliant gaming zine. The ezine features super design throughout, including internal links – click on an article in the contents page and you will be taken to that page – and external links, which really enhances [... read more ...]

To celebrate their 15th Anniversary – founded late in 1996 – Protovision have released a special boxed compilation set comprising of four of their Commmodore 64 games. The 4 Player Games Compilation features the four player games Bomb Mania (Bomberman clone), Hockey Mania, Team Patrol and Tanks 3000, which can all be played with four players simultaneously. Hurry, though, as stock is limited to 40 [... read more ...]

The Christmas edition of Commodore Free focuses on the short lived Commodore 64GS (basically a C64 minus the keyboard/tape drive). This includes a look at the machine itself as well as reviews of the four games that were bundled with it, including Fiendish Freddy’s Big Top O’ Fun, Flimbo’s Quest, Klax and International Soccer.  Also notewrothy within the feature is a screen grab of one boxed C64GS going [... read more ...]

The ‘Back in Time’ article is back for another helping of classic gaming magazine nostalgia. This month, it’s December 1991 when RoboCop 3 patrolled the 3D gaming scene on the Amiga, Smash TV was ported to many home machines, RoboCod swam onto the 16-bits, Sid Meier’s landmark Civilization emerged and Populous returned for a second coming… Along with the main feature itself, there are four [... read more ...]