Retrogaming

After more than ten years since the Your Sinclair Big Final Issue, Retro Gamer magazine surprises everyone by licencing the YS trademark from Future Publishing.

Published in the Feb 1992 YS74 issue

Published in the Jan 1992 YS73 issue

Published in the Dec 1991 YS72 issue

Published in the Nov 1991 YS71 issue

Published in the Oct 1991 YS70 issue

We've all heard of the Atari classic Space Invaders, right? Sure, of course, because we're not a pack of pop-culturally ignorant mother-scratchers. The same can be said about Dig-Dug and Breakout and Asteroids. These are the major titles, the games we all know and love to play.

The first real arcade quality handheld video game was the Nintendo Game Boy which was not released in North America until the 1990s. The Game Boy was the first to have an actual working ( although primitive ) monitor for game graphics to be reproduced on. The fact that no actual miniature monitor existed in the 1980s did not stop toy companies from claiming they were releasing hand held video games.

These reviews are only my personal opinion. Yours may vary depending on taste, expectations, and other criteria. Mine is not the absolute, only what I like. These reviews are here for your enjoyment and to help give you an idea of what games are good and what games to avoid (again based on my personal opinion, worth about two cents, give or take a penny). All games are rated with the simple school grading method (with an "A+" being the best and an "F" being the worst). All games are rated in comparison to other games of the same era. In other words, a game on the 2600 may get a great rating compared to other 2600 games and comparable systems (Odyssey II, Emerson Arcadia, etc..) and may not be as highly rated if compared to a Nintendo game. So keep this in mind. Look for more reviews to be added in the future. Please e-mail your favorite games, reviews you agree or disagree with, or reviews of your own. Thanks and enjoy!

Some people say that the Game Boy is just like your old Aunt Ethel - it just refuses to go away and die (but these people should be pitied because the Game Boy is the coolest thing ever made!). Now that the Game Boy Color is in town, it's a good chance to go digging through the thousands of old games in your local software store, and we've given you a shopping list of the best ones you can still get (as well as some to put on your shopping list).

Generally, these games are those which once left a mark on the community but have been long forgotten or are now unavailable for download for whatever reason. I've included my irreverent reasons for hosting each of them. Enjoy!

Following up on my feature of the Games That Defined The Dreamcast, I wanted to cover the list of the best Sega Saturn games that gave Sega's 32-bit console its character.

MAME Database: Search for game info by name, year, manufacturer, category, status, etc... This site contains screen shots, cabinet images, control panel images and technical specs for all games emulated by MAME. If you can't find the game here then it isn't emulated by MAME.

This is the current home of rankings.ini, a MAMEUI support file that categorizes all original MAME games according to how much FUN they are to play.

So I just got my Dingoo yesterday, and after checking out a few games, videos, and music on it I thought I'll write up a review. Overall, I'm impressed with this portable gaming system, though it has a few software flaws which hopefully will be improved or corrected.

Konami means "small wave". The MSX is probably best known for its Konami games.

Here are my top five MSX games - rated according to the amount of time I used to spend playing them during the 1980's. They may not be regarded by others as particularly ground-breaking, but at the time they gave me hours of enjoyment - and started an interest in computer games and programming which has lasted to this day...

There's a lot of PC Engine pages out there, and if you really wanted to read the same old history with the same old pics you'd probably have stopped there and never found this page. I'd rather go over some other stuff, and to that end I present to you 101 Secrets of the PC Engine! Irreverent trivia and technical tidbits tonight!

In the world of action-RPGs, Falcom's Ys series is the sad underdog. Despite the fact that the Japanese practically have a annual holiday for it, Ys has remained unfortunately obscure outside of its homeland. Maybe this due to the burden of being saddled with a slightly unpronounceable name (hint: it sounds like "ease"), and its full title - Ancient Ys Vanished Omens - is a grammatical quandary of tremendous proportions. Or maybe it's because they never really appeared on mainsteam systems in America - the original games were released on the Master System and Turbografx-16 CD, hardly places for them to truly show gamers what they're all about - fast paced action and adventure in faraway lands, damsels in distress, and some of the best music in the history of all video gaming.

Thinking back to most of the games you played on the NES, it's easy to remember the 8-bit library as being simple and possibly even primitive. However, if you dig deep into the library, there is a surprising amount of games that maxed out the NES hardware to produce some impressive graphics and sound. With the Famicom / NES hardware remaining popular and active on the retail scene for over a decade, game developers had a lot of time to perfect their programming techniques and squeeze every last bit of power out of the iconic console. Below, RadarScope1 and racketboy team up to review some of the most demanding NES games in terms of hardware resources.