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[Retrocity] Driver

March 21st, 2010

Right, time to stop being lazy. Retrocity has returned!

Today I’m looking at a relatively modern game, released in 1999 for the Playstation, and then ported to Windows and Mac a year later. This game gives me a chance to reminisce a bit. As you may know, I’ve never owned any gaming machines other than a PC and a GameBoy Color which is lying around in a cupboard somewhere. But I first came across Driver on the Playstation. Back in those days, I would go round to a friend’s house. A friend who was obsessed with gaming. You might know him; his name was Tom. When the Megadrive was turned off, it was Driver that kept us entertained. We’d take it in turns to lead police cars on a chase up and down multi-storey car parks, or shunt cars onto the tracks and watch them get demolished when the tram came along. » Read more: [Retrocity] Driver

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[Retrocity] Lode Runner

January 17th, 2010

Firstly, apologies for not doing this last week when it was due. I had an exam on Monday and obviously had to do last-minute panic revision. This one is quite short, due to the combined effects of laziness and the exam season, although this week I haven’t actually got one tomorrow.

I got offered joint authorship of this feature on the basis that “I haven’t bought a new game in ages” and “most of the games I play are pretty old”. Not old enough in some cases, it seems. I’ve found myself having to look up when certain games were released to see if they fitted in our rough 10-years-or-older guideline. And a few of my favourite games have turned out to be only 7 or 8 years old. Thankfully, though, there are many great games which cause no problems of this kind, and it is one of these true classics I’ve been looking at this week.

Lode Runner is a platform game, perhaps the platform game, originally published in 1983 by Brøderbund for the Apple II. Certainly it’s the original and best as far as I’m concerned. You control a stick figure. You can move left and right, you can dig into the platforms left and right. You can climb ladders, swing on ropes and fall. That’s it. Crucially, there is no jumping action. This makes the game extremely difficult at times when the enemies trap you. The whole level is shown at once; there is no screen scrolling involved.

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[Retrocity] New Year Special

January 3rd, 2010

Well as it’s exam season and new year I have decided to be pretty lazy and do a special. Hooray and whatnot. Well for this special I want to know what are you favourite retro games and what you thought of them. Pretty much like weekly play (and this week making up for lack of one) with games you have played earlier in your lifetime.

I shall be trying all games suggested here if I can and probably writing my views of them on later weeks as well. So bring on the comments and don’t kill me for lack of content this holiday.

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[Retrocity] Christmas Special

December 20th, 2009

This article is about a few games which I doubt many people reading this will have heard of before. But it gives me an excuse to call this the Retrocity Christmas Special.

FamilyGames.com (AHA! Software) have developed three semi-educational point-and-click adventure games. They are responsible for what was my favourite childhood game, and one which is still very high on the list, Uncle Julius and the Anywhere Machine. You go to visit your uncle, who is a famous scientist and adventurer. When you arrive, he has vanished.

Uncle Julius' house

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[Retrocity] Tyrian

December 13th, 2009

Years ago when windows as we know it today was young, DOS gaming was still going strong producing games I still remember to this day. One of these I happened to find whilst searching a database of games and lucky for me there was a shareware version (requires DOS Box on newer Windows versions) so I got the chance to enjoy it again. You might not have heard it but Tyrian is one of the early games for Epic Games (Epic Megagames as it was know back then) created by a small group of 11 people.

The Tyrian story mode follows the classic scrolling space shooter game with waves of enemies heading your way which you have to shoot and destroy for points. This continues for several levels with different enemies and scenery; however the main reason you’ll play this is the ship customisation and upgrading. There are several weapons for both front and rear guns to choose from at the start of each level, along with sidekicks (additional weapons or mini ships) shields, and ship types. The weapons can also be upgraded through 11 power levels and the rear weapon usually has a different fire mode allow you to adopt a different style each level. Score links directly to points in this game mode so buying upgrades will reduce your score for the chapter, yet may help you survive the next assault.

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