Retro Now!
With the Commodore 64 book firmly in the majority of backer’s hands (still a few more to send), it’s time to turn to the computer’s older brother – the Commodore Amiga. With today being International Amiga Day, it seems fitting to talk a little about the book and the Kickstarter launch. The Amiga was…
Pesky Zark has only gone and done it again, he’s drained Wizworld of colour and left it as a monochrome husk. Now it’s down to the titular hero and his faithful cat to restore it back to radiant glory. Thus begins one of the C64’s quirkiest arcade shooters. Quirky–but also confoundingly hard. Starting out…
Welcome to The Wizard’s Tower, a regular Retro Now feature covering the history and development of computer ‘adventure games’, and the games themselves. Each week, the Wizard opens his Book of Lore to look at a different aspect of adventure gaming, as well as reviewing individual games from time to time. Last week, the…
Great unanswered mysteries of the Spectrum age: just what the hell was Horace supposed to be? His torso is utterly baffling. Are those supposed to be… eyes? Vacant holes? What? Perhaps the shameful truth is that a demented blob was simplest to animate. In the Speccy’s early years, Horace was an all-action hero. He…
I suppose I was lucky. I could have taken the dip and bought a 32X as well – as it was I just shelled out £199 (!) for a mark 2 Mega CD from John Menzies and proceeded to gape in awe at some of the atrocities that were released on this much-maligned system.…
If you are a retro fan, then Oliver Frey needs no introduction. If you don’t know the name – Oli was responsible for the iconic art that emblazoned the covers of many iconic magazines of the 80s and 90s, prime examples being Crash, Amtix and Zzap! 64. With only 3 days to go on…
Little Computer People was, at the time revolutionary as it tried to sell the concept that inside every computer there are hordes of little people working away to produce what you see on the screen (In the case of the Amstrad the little people were clearly still observing the three-day week of 1974). By…
Welcome to The Wizard’s Tower, a regular Retro Now feature covering the history and development of computer ‘adventure games’, and the games themselves. Each week, the Wizard opens his Book of Lore to look at a different aspect of adventure gaming, as well as reviewing individual games from time to time. If you missed…
The ROM event took place over the weekend in sunny Oxford. Check out the video below of the kind of stuff that was available to be played at the event – looks to have been a cracker.
Being a gaming writer, I’m a lover of all games old and new. This is normally with little or no bias to any section of it, as it has all helped to get us to where we are. The thing is though; age doesn’t help to keep things balanced. If I become the gamer…
Remember the days when long cassette loading times were replaced by mammoth floppy disk installations? If you can’t you could always grab an Amiga from somewhere and play this. This was up there with the best of them in terms of just how much data you needed to sift through to play it (all…
Once in a while, a game comes along that makes you remember why we love this interactive medium. A game that pushes at the boundaries of what video-gaming can achieve. A game that is such a self-contained vision, that it takes you on a journey which transcends the controller in your hands. ‘Small but…
Welcome to The Wizard’s Tower, a new regular feature in Retro Now! which aims to look at the history and development of computer ‘adventure games’ and the amazing range of such software which has been published over the decades. The Wizard, from his high vantage point, will also be casting his scrying glass over…
Well it looks like the books is starting to arrive and pictures of the book and perks are appearing on social media. Many have been sent abroad – I would say 80% so far, mainly Scandinavia, Australia and the USA. If your book has arrived, I would love it if you post what you…
The naivety of youth is something that you lose, as you grow older, thankfully. In my teens back home in West Wales I felt protected. My family were around me to cushion me from the outside world and all the stuff that was bad in the world seemed to happen a long way away…
There are certain games that don’t just put companies on the map in terms of people knowing their existence, but they manage to cement a reputation that stretches far and wide for years. This was Team 17’s Mario Bros or Sonic, in that once people saw it and played the game, they knew Martyn…
When I was growing up through my early teenage years, Crash magazine was something in my random adolescent life that was regular. Each month I would look forward to the magazine to devour the reviews of the latest games to buy for Spectrum and to gasp in awe at the sometimes erotic, sometimes violent,…
In a new weekly slot, Retro Now! will be looking at popular theme tunes to the TV programmes we watched as a kid. To kick this regular off, one of my favourite cartoons of the 70s is featured – Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings. From Wikipedia: Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings…
With The story of the Commodore 64 in pixels book now back from the printers and being sent to the Kickstarter pledgers, it’s time to turn attention to the next book out of the Fusion Retro Book stable, The story of the Oliver Twin’s : Let’s Go Dizzy! The Kickstarter completed at the beginning of…
Over the years, I have made some great friends in the retro scene and today I did lunch with two of them, Simon Butler of Ocean Software fame, and Mike James from Retro Gaming Roundup ( an awesome long standing retro pod cast that can be found HERE). The guys had been at an Ocean…