! D L O
THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO CLASSIC GAMES
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GOLDEN AXE: THE REVENGE OF DEATH ADDER
YOUR ULTIMATE GUIDE TO SEGA’S EPIC ARCADE GAME
THE EVOLUTION OF TAU CETI HOW PETE COOKE’S SCI-FI
CLASSIC TRANSFORMED
WE EXAMINE EVERY ASPECT OF KONAMI’S GHOULISH BLASTER
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EXCLUSIVE COVERS TO COLLECT No.1 STREET FIGHTER II
AN ARCADE LEGACY THE MAKING OF NARC
LOAD 217
EUGENE JARVIS RETURNS TO HIS VIOLENT ARCADE HIT
MASTER SYSTEM GEMS TO COLLECT THE KEY TITLES TO BUILD AND EXPAND YOUR COLLECTION
HOW THE COIN-OP KINGS DOMINATED THE GOLDEN ERA
ASTRO CITY MINI HANDS-ON IS SEGA’S LATEST MINI WORTH IMPORTING?
AN ARCADE LEGACY MANY COMPANIES HAVE MADE THEIR MARK IN THE ARCADE, BUT FEW HAVE BEEN SO INTEGRAL TO GAMING’S OLDEST SCENE AS CAPCOM. JOIN US AS WE DISCUSS A LEGACY OF SUBLIME SHOOTERS, BOISTEROUS BEAT-’EM-UPS AND OF COURSE, VERSUS FIGHTING GAMES
WORDS BY NICK THORPE & MARTYN CARROLL
ere’s a mental exercise for you: picture your favourite arcade, any time from the late Eighties onwards. Think about the games in it. How long did it take before a Capcom game crossed your mind? We can’t imagine it was long – the company was a dominant force during the heyday of the coin-ops. You could have imagined 1942 neatly tucked into a seaside arcade, Final Fight at the swimming pool, Strider hiding in the corner of the local pub or even Capcom Vs SNK freshly installed in a gigantic projection screen cabinet. Then of course there’s Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, a game so popular that it can be said to have single-handedly revitalised the Nineties arcade scene. When you think about arcades, it’s impossible to ignore Capcom. Capcom’s roots go back to a company called IRM Corporation, a company that was set up to develop and sell electronic gaming machines, founded in 1979 by Kenzo Tsujimoto. As a seasoned Osaka-based entrepreneur, Tsujimoto was experienced in the field as he was also the chairman of Irem Corporation, another amusement machine manufacturer that had just entered the videogames market. However, Irem was acquired in 1980 by electronics manufacturer Nanao, and within a couple of years Tsujimoto was out of favour with the new owners. In 1981, IRM became Sanbi and Japan Capsule Computer was established, providing the two words that would give Capcom its name in 1983. Capcom’s early products were mechanical games, Little League and Fever Chance, but by December of that year it had opened the Acty 24 video arcade and in May of 1984
ALEX TROWERS GAME DESIGNER
18 | RETRO GAMER
DANNY BURKE GAME DEVELOPER
NIC MAKIN GAME DEVELOPER
it released its first videogame, Vulgus. This shoot’em-up would find distribution in North America via another Osaka-based arcade company, SNK. Before the end of 1984, Capcom would release three more games. Pirate Ship Higemaru and SonSon were both fun games, but it was the December release of 1942 that really showed the way for the company’s early years. Like Vulgus, 1942 was a vertically scrolling shoot-’em-up, but this time the theme was World War II. YouTuber and shoot-’em-up enthusiast Gmintyfresh remembers it as the first Capcom game he ever saw. “I was blown away after my first play by the difference between this and the previous shooters I had played like Space Invaders and Galaga, there was something special about the varied gameplay, fully fledged power-up system, and beautiful bold sprites which drew me in.” Game designer Alex Trowers first encountered the game at a pub in Hambledon, and quickly became a fan. “Nowadays, I can look at it with a more designcentric critical eye and one of the things that stands out is the fact that it’s not about muscle memory,” he tells us. “There are certain patterns, sure, but they’re always modulated by your positioning so it’s never the same game twice. Also the limitation of three player shots can be gamed – getting close to a target to increase your fire rate and damage output – increasing the skill ceiling.” This depth ensured that the game had plenty of staying power in Japan, and stuck around the top ten in Game Machine magazine’s ranking of Japan’s best performing tabletop arcade games for over nine months in 1985. At the end of that year, the Famicom version of 1942 would launch Capcom into the home gaming
BEN JONES
PRODUCT MANAGER, CAPCOM HOME ARCADE
PAUL DAVIES FORMER CVG EDITOR
GMINTYFRESH
SHOOT-’EM-UP ENTHUSIAST AND YOUTUBER (GMINTYFRESH)
STAF F FAVO UR ITES TAIROKU NOZOE
n Pirate Ship Higemaru The gameplay is simple yet deep and endlessly replayable. The nauticall y themed pixel-art characters, item s and icons are so cute and colourfu l and I love both the gameplay and atmosphere of the game. Please give it a try!
» [Arcade] Vulgus showed early signs of Capcom’s key qualities, including attractive art and shoot-’em-up prowess.
DIMITRIS GIANNAKIS
CPS COLLECTOR AND YOUTUBER (MODERN VINTAGE GAMER)
DOSBOXFALCO CHAMPION SPEEDRUNNER
STA FF FAVOU RITES TAKASHI ISHIHARA n Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting To my younger self, this was more than just a game. A person’s value was their skill at Street Fighter II. Their Street Fighter II skill was them. Compared to modern fighting games it may seem simplistic, but the skill it demanded of players was the real thing. It was the kind of game that made people as serious about it as I am. Within the Street Fighter II series, Turbo features high-speed gameplay balanced with reduced attack power, which made for thrilling back-and-forth fights.
STA F F FAVO U R ITE S TAKASHI MATSUDA n Street
Fighter II: The World War rior This game brings back bit tersweet memo ries of youth for me! It became the basis for the versu s fighting game genre , and the great thing about it was how dif ferently ea ch of the playable ch aracters looked an d controlled. Each req uired a dif ferent strategy and I think that’s why people got so intensely inv olved in their matches. I not only enjoyed playing the game, but wa tching more skille d players than myse lf play while I waited for my tur n…
THE EVOLUTION OF
Inspired by sci-fi books, astronomy and Gyron, Pete Cooke designed the hit 3D shoot-’em-up Tau Ceti, followed by a string of popular third-person hybrid shooters. Pete charts the evolution of Tau Ceti, its sequels and its spiritual successors WORDS BY RORY MILNE n spite of his love for science fiction, Pete Cooke didn’t explore the genre with any of » [ZX Spectrum] Always switch to infrared mode his early games. In fact, it before starting a night time firefight in Tau Ceti. wasn’t until years later that he found a project that lent itself to a sci-fi storyline, numbers that only needed 100 bytes. and having done so he used his They had drawn the spheres using knowledge of astronomy to find a that, and increased them in size by just » Although best plausible setting – the planetary system scaling up the numbers.” remembered for Tau Ceti, Pete Cooke made of Tau Ceti. “I used to read a lot of Having worked out Gyron’s visual numerous classic science fiction, and Larry Niven was a trickery, Pete refined the technique to games in the Eighties. particular favourite,” Pete notes. “The make more solid-looking graphics. He book that really made me think was called felt they would work best in a shoot-’em-up, Ringworld, and the idea in that was that but he wasn’t planning a simple shooter. “I civilisations in the future would maximise the thought that you didn’t have to draw things all amount of energy they could get from a sun by in one colour – like Gyron,” Pete considers, “so building a ring around it. My mum was interested I drew around 75% of an object in grey – and in astronomy, and I picked up on that too, and it jumped out. At that point it was a shadow. I Tau Ceti’s storyline came from all of that.” thought ‘bloody hell! That looks amazing! I’ve The epic back story that set up Tau Ceti was got to have a game using this’. Then of course far from Pete’s first consideration, however, you had to shoot things, because everything and in fact his initial inspiration came from was about shooting back then! But I wanted a pioneering 3D Spectrum title. “I looked at a bit more, so I put a few other things in to Gyron, and I saw these big spheres coming at have a bit more depth.” you,” Pete enthuses. “I thought ‘how the hell The cities in Tau Ceti were one area where have they done that?’. They couldn’t be sprites; Pete added sophistication, in that he defended they wouldn’t have had enough memory. So I them with more or less robots based on their looked at it, and they had just stored a table of importance rather than the order they were
I » [ZX Spectrum] At the time of its release, Tau Ceti’s interactive map was an extremely impressive feature.
30 | RETRO GAMER
THE EVOLUTION OF: TAU CETI
STAGES OF EVOLUTION:
SECONDARY OBJECTIVES FROM REACTOR SHUTDOWNS AND MAZELIKE TUNNELS TO PERPLEXING PUZZLES
TAU CETI
Far from a simple shooter, Tau Ceti involves much more than just blasting enemies. Most notably, it sends you on a treasure hunt that takes in the whole of its expansive world, where you locate and assemble cooling rods hidden in buildings. You then use these to shut down a reactor.
MICRONAUT ONE » [ZX Spectrum] Figuring out how Gyron’s giant spheres worked inspired Pete Cooke to make Tau Ceti.
no “There was information on the
visited. “If you had a game that was too linear you could get stuck,” Pete explains. “So I designed Tau Ceti so that if there was one city that you just couldn’t do then you could do all of the other ones and come back to it later, or you could just not come back, but you wouldn’t miss a load of stuff.” Of course, the ability to tackle Tau Ceti’s cities in any order also brought exploration into the game, and so Pete repurposed its code to render an interactive map. “There was navigation, which made you feel like there was a big world out there,” Pete points out, “so the obvious thing was to have a map. It was something I could lever in without taking up too much memory,
because it just patched into the game’s code, and that meant it could be zoomed into. In those primitive days, it made a lot of difference having an interactive map.” Having mapped out the robot-infested cities in his game, Pete gave players a side objective of finding cooling rods and deactivating a reactor with them. “It gave you something to do other than killing everything,” Pete reasons. “It wasn’t too difficult, but it meant that you had a reason to visit the cities. So you were collecting something, and I suppose that was coming from adventure games, where you would collect stuff and that enabled you to do something else. So I thought you could be collecting something in Tau Ceti.” Rather than making Tau Ceti’s mission an on-foot endeavour, Pete designed a vehicle called a skimmer for travelling to cities, which started off fully equipped rather than having to be upgraded. “The trouble was that you could go to any city, and it could be the toughest one,” Pete reflects, “so if you had gone there first with a weak skimmer then you would have got hammered. If I’d put in a criteria that rated the cities then that might not have applied, and there would have been more to the game, but I don’t think it occurred to me. So there was no information on the map about how well defended a city was, you had to go there and find out.”
map about how well defended a city was, you had to go there and find out
PETE COOKE
» [ZX Spectrum] When you design skimmers in Academy you select their capabilities and arrange their cockpit layouts.
”
Although Micronaut One is primarily about exterminating parasites with electrical charges, its maze of tunnels provides a second challenge of navigating your way around as you pursue your targets. An in-game map makes this easier, but you have to mark points of interest on it yourself.
TOWER OF BABEL
Each player character in Tower Of Babel performs an action that affects the objects and enemies in the game, but there’s a secondary purpose to those actions. Essentially, you complete missions by clearing a path so that one of your characters can safely reach one or more locations. further enhancement to Pete’s shooter came in the form of day/night cycles, which led to the developer adding infrared sensors and flares to his game’s skimmers to help players pilot them in the dark. “I think the infrared was mainly there because it was a doddle to do,” Pete admits. “Because of the way the screen worked the colour and pixels were separate areas of memory. So the infrared took very little code, it was an easy thing to shoehorn in, and it was less boring than looking at yellow all the while.” On seeing the accolades showered on Tau Ceti by reviewers on its release, Pete’s publisher CRL naturally wanted a sequel – and after working out its back story Pete named it Academy. “I thought Academy had to be mission-based,” Pete remembers. “Again, I didn’t want it to be a linear game; I wanted
A
RETRO GAMER | 31
SO YOU WANT TO COLLECT…
MASTER SYSTEM GAMES It’s rare for the UK to be the best place to hunt down classic console games, but the popularity of Sega’s 8-bit console in the region makes it an outlier. If you’re planning to dive in, this guide to the console’s classics and heavy hitters is for you Words by Nick Thorpe POWER IS MONEY
POWER STRIKE II
DEVELOPER: COMPILE RELEASE: 1993
n It’s the early Thirties, and financial collapse has driven many to take to the skies in airships and engage in piracy, so your job is to get into your retro-futuristic plane and bring in the most notorious criminals for big bounties. In practice, that means you’ll be doing vertical shooting in the same way as the original Power Strike, which was a localised version of the first game in the expansive (and now expensive) Aleste series. Power Strike II was released late in the console’s life and was exclusive to a single region, meaning that supply is limited – other 1993 Master System
releases like Buggy Run and Masters Of Combat are also expensive. But Power Strike II is also very good and arguably the best shoot-’em-up on the Master System, driving the price higher still. Thankfully, Power Strike II is included on M2’s recent Aleste Collection for PS4 and Switch, which represents a far more affordable way to acquire the game – especially if it eventually gets released outside of Japan. EXPEC T TO PAY
5+ £26 EUROPE
» [Master System] Power Strike II is graphically impressive, as it’s speedy and has loads going on.
FULL POWER Why the original Power Strike could also drain your wallet
Power Strike isn’t a particularly cheap game in any territory, but it’s particularly expensive in North America because Sega decided to use Power Strike as the test case for a new model of software distribution. This ‘special edition’ was offered exclusively via mail order, advertised in the Team Sega newsletter, meaning only a remarkably select group of people ever had the opportunity to buy the game. These copies can be identified by rather cheap looking blue and white covers, and can sell for £110 or more when complete. In Europe, Power Strike was a standard release, with a full colour cover featuring different art to the American version. It isn’t hugely common, so it can fetch a good price – £75 or more if complete. In Japan, where it was released as Aleste, the game costs upwards of £35 when boxed with its manual. » [Master System] Unusual boss designs are standard as the usual Aleste space setting has been ditched.
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SO YOU WANT TO COLLECT… MASTER SYSTEM GAMES
THE REAL DEAL
ROAD TAX
CASTLE OF ILLUSION OUT STARRING MICKEY MOUSE RUN 3D DEVELOPER: SEGA RELEASE: 1991
£3+ (EUROPE)
£1 00+ (EUROPE)
DEVELOPER: SEGA RELEASE: 1989
n By 1991, the presence of the Mega Drive had shifted the Master System’s audience to the budget conscious consumer, and younger children. You wouldn’t know that from playing Castle Of Illusion, though – this Disney-licensed game is a totally different prospect to its 16-bit counterpart, and it’s arguably the more challenging of the two games. It’s just as good though, with lovely visuals and some well-designed stages from a team of platform game experts. The game sold by the bucketload back in the early Nineties, so there are enough copies out there that it’s very cheap and will make a brilliant start to your Master System collection. However, the North American release bears a different cover and is more expensive, owing to arriving late in the console’s regional lifespan. Y EXPECT TO PA
EXPECT TO PAY
n One of the key selling points of the Master System was its home conversions of Sega’s arcade classics, and the original Out Run was a hit on the console. Sega decided to have a second bite of the cherry with a version supporting the system’s 3D glasses, and it’s quite an interesting game as it does more than just add a new graphical mode. The game features three new musical themes alongside the classic Magical Sound Shower, roadside detail has been increased over the original game and there are now three difficulty modes. Despite the code supporting Japan-only peripherals such as the FM sound unit and paddle controller, Out Run 3D was released only in Europe and Brazil. It’s one of the better 3D games for the console, and the brand recognition ensures that the price remains high – £100 is your starting point for a complete European copy, and a Brazilian copy in good condition will fetch the same.
EXPEC T TO PAY
+ £30 USA
» [Master System] While it shares themes with the Mega Drive game, the level design and mechanics here are totally different.
WONDERFUL VALUE
WONDER BOY III: THE DRAGON’S TRAP
» [Master System] This night time stage is a new addition for Out Run 3D, and looks quite nice.
THE SEGA 3D GLASSES
If you can splash the cash, this accessory is essential
DEVELOPER: WESTONE RELEASE: 1989
n If you’re looking to grab all the Master System classics, Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap should be the first on your list – Retro Gamer readers voted it the best Master System game in issue 136. The game is a classic early example of the Metroidvania style, with our hero having lost his human form to a curse. By undergoing various animal transformations, you gain the power to overcome obstacles and access new areas of the game’s sprawling platform world, fighting various dragons on the quest to become human once again. Thankfully, the price spike inspired by the 2017 remake has now passed and the game is about 20% cheaper than its 2018 peak – while complete copies often go for £18-£20, the patient can snag it for a good deal less than that.
» [Master System] The muddy strips by the road weren’t possible in the original Master System Out Run.
EXPECT TO PAY
0+ £1 (EUROPE)
» [Master System] Lion Man can swing his sword in a long arc, letting him break blocks below.
EXPECT TO PAY
£25+ (USA)
Available separately or as part of the Sega Super System bundle, Sega’s 3D glasses allow for stereoscopic display in supported games. These are active 3D glasses, which work by rapidly obscuring your vision with LCD shutters. Your TV will display an image that rapidly flickers between frames intended for your left eye and your right eye, with the glasses synchronised to the console’s refresh rate so that each eye only sees the correct frames. This provides a convincing illusion of depth, though it does mean that each of your eyes only sees 30 frames per second (or 25, on a PAL console). These days they’re not easy to use, as they don’t work with the Master System II because they require the original model’s card slot, and they also don’t work with modern LCD TV sets. They’re not cheap either – if you fancy picking them up, you can expect a boxed unit to set you back £150 or more.
RETRO GAMER | 39
THE MAKING OF
THE EIGHTIES – A TIME OF THE BUDDY ACTION MOVIE, VIOLENCE ON THE STREETS AND A GRIM WAR ON DRUGS. ENTER NARC, THE VIDEOGAME THAT COMBINES ALL THREE OF THESE ELEMENTS INTO ONE GLEEFULLY RELENTLESS AND BRUTAL ARCADE EXPERIENCE
IN THE KNOW
» PUBLISHER: WILLIAMS ELECTRONIC GAMES/WMS INDUSTRIES » DEVELOPER: WILLIAMS ELECTRONIC GAMES » RELEASED: 1988 » PLATFORM: ARCADE » GENRE: RUN-AND-GUN » [Arcade] The chopper drops its agents into the streets.
F
WORDS BY GRAEME MASON
year project timeline would introduce For the American the game in 1988, enough time for videogame market in a rebound after the detritus of the particular, the Eighties was arcade crash had settled.” a turbulent time. Having With Eugene settling in as project already fashioned a notable career director and coder, the team chiefly thanks to the legendary arcade comprised of lead artist Jack Haeger, games Defender and Robotron: 2048, supported by John Newcomer, and Eugene Jarvis was right in the thick George Petro and Mark Loffredo of it. “There was a massive decline in handling coding and hardware duties player interest in video arcade games respectively. All were to be part of due to the rise of PCs and quality DEFENDER something that used its technological home consoles such as the Nintendo SYSTEM: ARCADE, advancements to present a game Entertainment System,” the veteran n The veteran games VARIOUS of extraordinary violence and videogame designer tells us. developer has made a YEAR: 1981 destruction, its origins stretching all “A simultaneous flood of string of arcade hits. ROBOTRON: 2084 the way back to the Sixties. “The inexpensive Japanese JAMMA SYSTEM: ARCADE, whole drug thing started off then with flower conversion kit games devastated any remaining VARIOUS children and hippies getting stoned on a little market for new American arcade games – this YEAR: 1982 weed,” notes Eugene. From this point, through killed off Williams’ development efforts.” SMASH TV (PICTURED) the Seventies and into the Eighties, the range of Focusing on a return to its roots – pinball – SYSTEM: ARCADE, substances ballooned – as did the human toll. Williams survived until Eugene returned to the VARIOUS “America wanted to somehow stop this tide company in the winter of 1986 with a new idea, YEAR: 1990 of drug mayhem and human destruction, and “I proposed a reboot of Williams’ videogames thus was formed The War On Drugs.” In fact the using a new ultra powerful hi-resolution campaign had begun in 1971, although it was hardware system,” he says. This system, FBI director William Sessions who connected centred on a graphics-orientated Texas the world of arcade games to create Instruments chip, the TMS34010, another public service campaign, allowed for 256 colours, a 512 x 400 America wanted to Winners Don’t Use Drugs, in the late resolution and – in its most obvious somehow stop this Eighties. In typical Eugene Jarvis trait – photorealistic digitised graphics. tide of drug mayhem fashion, the message was twisted Williams, having scored a massive hit and human destruction, to the max for his latest game. “Our with the pinball table High Speed, was and thus was formed lead artist created our own campaign once more cash-rich and keen to re-enter the videogames market. “The timing was with the classic Narc twist ‘Say no or ‘The War On Drugs’ DIE!’, and the familiar police slogan perfect,” continues Eugene, “as the two-
EUGENE JARVIS
DEVELOPER HIGHLIGHTS
EUGENE JARVIS
44 | RETRO GAMER
THE MAKING OF: NARC
VIOLENCE IS GOLDEN GAMES THAT ANGERED THE WORLD
MANHUNT
» [Arcade] Fending off attack dogs and evil scientists in the chemical labs.
Taking place in a corrupt city not dissimilar to Narc’s urban nightmare, Manhunt is a forbidding and violent survival horror that sees the player assume the role of a death row prisoner forced to take part in a sadistic game of cat and mouse. Developed by Rockstar North, a predictable – and sales-boosting – furore erupted upon its release in 2003.
GRAND THEFT AUTO
It might be hard to imagine today, but even the top-down original of this famous series attracted its fair share of notoriety. The reason was plain. No longer is the player on a mission to rescue hostages or save the Earth from aliens – now they can indiscriminately murder and steal to their heart’s content, something the game cheerfully encourages.
POSTAL
Taken from the saying ‘going postal’, attributed to any Falling Down-style mass-murder spree, Postal’s macabre gameplay contributes chiefly to its infamous reputation. In order to progress through each level, a certain amount of opponents must be killed and there is plenty of deadly weaponry and masses of blood throughout. » [Arcade] You have the right to remain silent… forever!
‘To Protect And Serve’ morphed into ‘Protect The Innocent and Punish the Guilty’. We wanted a bad-ass justice feeling to the whole thing.” Having first worked at Williams in the summer of 1983, initially in its service department, George Petro used the rich collection of gaming experts to gain experience while studying at college. “During Christmas of 1986, my senior year, Ken Fedesna [Williams’ general manager] offered me a post-college job as a programmer on a soonto-be-starting Eugene Jarvis videogame project. Who could turn down that offer?!” In Narc, one or two players controls Max Force or Hit Man, the appropriately named agents of an anti-narcotics branch of the police force. Their mission is to destroy the gangs distributing the drugs, the network supporting them and finally, the man behind it all, Mr Big. From a dingy junkyard to the seedy streets, dark underground levels and Mr Big’s corporate-style headquarters, the two agents are accosted
MORTAL KOMBAT
Utilising a similar display to Narc, Midway’s one-on-one beat-’em-up was designed to cause controversy. The realistic display caused the most concern as each character rips, punches and kicks their way through the game, gushes of blood peppering the screen. The end result of the uproar was the creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) in America.
NIGHT TRAP
While nowhere near as bloodily violent as the other games on this list, Night Trap, along with Mortal Kombat, was one of the examples used at the Senate hearing that resulted in the ESRB. An early interactive movie, it was the game’s realism that worried politicians and parents, and conversely thrilled gamers and teenagers.
RETRO GAMER | 45
ULTIMATE GUIDE YOU WAIT ALMOST 30 YEARS FOR A HOME CONVERSION OF GOLDEN AXE: THE REVENGE OF DEATH ADDER TO COME ALONG, AND THEN TWO ARRIVE AT THE SAME TIME. WE CELEBRATE BY JUMPING ON A FIRE-BREATHING MANTIS AND BURNING SOME BAD SORTS
S
WORDS BY MARTYN
ega’s sequel to its smash hit brawler Golden Axe barged into arcades in September 1992, running on the powerful System 32 hardware that was to be the final iteration of the famous Super Scaler series. Conversions were anticipated – it was a step beyond the 32X add-on, but the Saturn would have surely handled it – yet no home version appeared. That finally changed last year, first with the release of Arcade1UP’s replica cab, which was headlined by Golden Axe: The Revenge Of Death Adder (RODA) and also featured the original Golden Axe plus Altered Beast, Shinobi and Wrestle War. Then in December, Sega’s Astro City Mini launched in Japan (you can read a review of the system on page 100) and included RODA in its impressive 37 game roster, alongside three other System 32 games: Rad Mobile, Dark Edge and Arabian Fight. This tiny device deserves huge praise for finally showcasing these
NATIVE CHIEF
NATIVE CLUBMAN 50 | RETRO GAMER
CARROLL
titles as the System 32 could be called Sega’s ‘lost’ generation. In the early Nineties it was quickly overshadowed by Sega’s own Model 1 system and the emergence of true, polygonal 3D titles like Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter. And it has remained in the dark due to the lack of faithful home conversions (and yes, that includes Gale Racer, the pared back Saturn port of Rad Mobile). Of all of the unconverted System 32 games, RODA is probably the most disappointing – and baffling. This was, after all, the sequel to one of Sega’s most successful, universally loved games that was a hit in the arcades and at home. The popular Mega Drive conversion received its own follow-up, Golden Axe II, in 1991, but this was a quick rehash rather than a brand-new quest. For RODA, original designer Makoto Uchida returned with the clear objective of ramping everything up to borderline ridiculous levels. And the result was one of the best beat-’em-ups of the Nineties. The game featured a roster of four new adventurers (only Gilius Thunderhead returned, albeit as a sidekick riding on Goah the giant’s shoulders), and all four could be played simultaneously. Each character was now blessed with extra attacks, including special moves and a hidden finisher (dash, jump, then pull down and attack a felled enemy, in case you were wondering). In
MAGIC TREE
CHICKENLEG
BLACK MANTIS
BONE DR AGON
BLUE THIEF
ULTIMATE GUIDE: GOLDEN AXE: THE REVENGE OF DEATH ADDER
“
Original designer Makoto Uchida returned with the clear objective of ramping everything up to borderline ridiculous levels
”
EVIL TREE
» [Arcade] Magic returns and it’s more extreme than ever before. Here, Gilius casts a spell that turns soldiers into stone.
multiplayer you could also team up with other characters to perform a powerful tag-team finisher. Rideable creatures returned, and they too had new moves, plus the ability to carry weapons. So you could be playing as Goah, riding on a giant stinging scorpion while catapulting flaming rocks, as Gilius casts petrifying magic. Throw in three other players and an army of enemies to hack through, and you’ll appreciate how brilliantly over-the-top the game could be.
T
he sequel also addressed criticisms levelled at the original that it was too short and lacked replay value. Each stage – or ‘scene’ – was now much longer, and there were branching paths which meant that you visited five of the seven scenes during each playthrough (the US version tweaked this, forcing you to play all seven scenes, resulting in an even longer game). On top of all the gameplay improvements, the game looked far better than the original. The characters were larger, more detailed and benefitted from extra frames of animation. In short, the sprite work was phenomenal and it was easily one of the best-looking 2D games of its era. Uchida and his team also deserve credit for using the System 32 hardware to deliver great visual fidelity and performance, and not going full-tilt boogie with the scaling and zooming effects. There were several into-the-screen sections, and sometimes things get flung at the screen, typically for comedic effect, but it was nowhere near as disconcerting as fellow System 32 brawler Arabian Fight.
CLUBMAN » [Arcade] By taking the ‘Forest’ path on scene two you’ll encounter a rare golden scorpion that appears nowhere else in the game.
GREEN MANTIS
» [Arcade] Trix’s magic produces tiny trees that give him and every other character a healthy snack. Thanks Trix!
BOWMAN RETRO GAMER | 51
THE STORY OF
THE LAURA BOW
Words by Gem Wheeler
IN THE KNOW
» PUBLISHER: SIERRA ON-LINE » DEVELOPER: SIERRA ON-LINE » RELEASED: 1989, 1992 » PLATFORM: PC, AMIGA, ST » GENRE: ADVENTURE
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sinister mansion filled with deadly secrets is a familiar setting for the puzzle-filled predicaments conjured by many recent games. Back in 1980, though, when Roberta Williams designed Apple II classic Mystery House – the first ever graphic adventure – the setting was a revelation. Mystery House became a smash hit, and its detective tropes would play a big part in the design of Williams’ 1989 MS-DOS title, The Colonel’s Bequest (released on Amiga and Atari ST the following year). Its heroine, plucky student journalist Laura Bow, finds herself alone in a mansion deep in the Louisiana swamps as, one by one, the other guests at Colonel Henri Dijon’s house party are picked off. The game was directed by Roberta and Chris Iden, while credit for much of its innovative design goes to Jacqueline Austin. Her extensive research in New Orleans and its environs helped to create an atmosphere dripping with menace and mystery. Concerned by the lack of female protagonists in games, Jacqueline pitched a murder plotline set in the silent film era – 1925, to be precise – and featuring a young woman as the player character. Her innovative suggestion that eavesdropping
and clue-hunting should govern gameplay is at the heart of The Colonel’s Bequest’s eerie charm. The dark corners of the dilapidated Misty Acres plantation, not to mention the alligator-filled swamp around it, become more sinister as the clock ticks further into the night. Artists Douglas Herring and Gerald Moore use a crepuscular palette to evoke the house’s moody ambiance, while composer Ken Allen’s excellent rendering of music by Satie and Ravel only adds to the tension. As its cast of Cluedo-alikes wander the mansion’s rooms, squabbling over the colonel’s money while a relentless killer lurks, we find ourselves chilled by the brutality of the murders, engrossed by a Civil War-era treasure hunt, and saddened by the terrible consequences of a key character’s tragic psychological breakdown. The game’s framing as an interactive play justifies the relative absence of puzzles and the concentration on character and setting. By the time a PC-only sequel appeared in 1992, Jacqueline had moved on, while Roberta took only a creative consultant role on the project. The Dagger Of Amon Ra sees our heroine move to New York in 1926 to start a job as a cub reporter for The New
BRUCE BALFOUR The second game in the Laura Bow series was produced, directed and designed by Bruce.
JOSH MANDEL
In addition to writing a twoparagraph proposal for the sequel, Josh also provided character voices. » [Amiga] There are a number of occasions on which you’ll wish that you had, indeed, pressed the S key.
» [Amiga] The old house harbours many secrets. Move some furniture, and you’ll start to uncover them.
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DEVELOPER HIGHLIGHTS
MYSTERY HOUSE SYSTEM: APPLE II YEAR: 1980 KING’S QUEST (PICTURED) SYSTEM: IBM PCJR, VARIOUS YEAR: 1984 MIXED UP FAIRY TALES SYSTEM: PC YEAR: 1991
THE STORY OF: THE LAURA BOW MYSTERIES
GIVE US A GERTRUDE DIJON
Gertie’s the widow of the colonel’s late brother, Jacques. Proud of her two glamorous children and disdainful of her in-laws, she’s a relic of the past with the snobbery to match. Still, you won’t have to put up with her for long…
» [Atari ST] Your dad, policeman John Bow, will sometimes appear to you to give advice. Always appreciated, that.
York Daily Register News Tribune (known to locals, thankfully, as The Trib). Tasked with investigating the theft of the titular dagger from the Leyendecker Museum, Laura soon finds herself trapped in the building overnight as another killer cuts a bloody swathe through staff and guests at an ill-fated fundraiser. Lively art deco graphics, a Roaring Twenties soundtrack by Chris Braymen and Mark Seibert, and a tongue-in-cheek script made Laura’s second case a worthy follow-up.
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ruce Balfour directed, produced, and designed The Dagger Of Amon Ra. With a background in writing, film and computer science, the one-time NASA employee, academic, novelist and racing driver was the ideal man for the job. (His life would make for quite the adventure game, it must be said.) The company culture at Sierra On-Line was sometimes pretty cut-throat, as Bruce makes clear. “Things could get weird at times. There was a point when [Sierra CEO and cofounder with wife, Roberta] Ken Williams decided to lay off part of the staff, but for whatever perverse reason, he made a game out of it. The staff was invited to a big meeting in the downstairs conference room, and I remember a lot of people were mooing like cows being herded to
RUDY DIJON AND GLORIA SWANSONG
These faintly incestuous siblings are trouble. Gloria’s an actress whose career has fallen on hard times following a scandal, while Rudy’s lavish lifestyle has left him short of money. They’ve both got a motive, but Gloria’s feather boa will be her undoing. Those screen sirens, eh?
ETHEL AND LILLIAN PRUNE
Never the better for drink, Ethel is the colonel’s sister. After her husband’s suicide, her relationship with her unhappy daughter Lillian deteriorated. Lillian seems typical of the decade’s bright young things, but behind the cheerful façade lurks a terrible misery that will reveal itself during this long night.
DR WILBUR C FEELS
The not-so-good doctor is possibly sampling a few too many of the wares he carries around in his black bag. Quite apart from his wandering hands, he shares a secret with the colonel’s shifty lawyer, Clarence Sparrow, that will bring about their downfall.
JEEVES
Jeeves is the colonel’s seemingly devoted butler and fits the stereotype of that profession to a tee. His relationship with Fifi is more pleasure than business, but their evening would have gone a lot better if they’d skipped the cognac and gone straight to dessert.
FIFI
» [Atari ST] The game’s characters take the stage, with you in the spotlight. Bequest’s theatrical trappings are part of its charm.
Fifi’s officially the mansion’s housemaid and unofficially the colonel’s lover. Like Yvette Delacroix in Dagger, she’s a sexy French stereotype; also like Yvette, she’s a fundamentally decent person who meets a very nasty end. Only kind housekeeper Celie is left standing as dawn finally rises.
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E D I U G E T A M I ULT SOLDIER
DOG EXPLORER
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BABY
ZEKE
ER HOOT LL S E Z T: A MA ENA / T ITS BESUR OF R A N A O -DOWCASARTS L SPLENDSLAND, P O T LU D PIXE NKEY I N OF 1993 THIS PRESENTS MO TIO R AN RE E HUMOU ECRET OF DISTILLA-ACTION D S OF THING LIKE A REFINE’S ARCADE IAK TH DE AN ITH SOMEUPLED WOUS DECA ZEP C Z S CO PREVI OHN J THE Y B DS WOR
JULIE
t wasn’t always going to be called this. According to the manual Mike Ebert and his team at LucasArts were considering a variety of titles, including Return Of The Teenage Son Of The Bride Of A Zombie, Part 2. Given the NTSC/PAL name change, and America’s misspelling of ‘neighbour’, we’re just going to refer to it as ZAMN from here on. But this exemplifies the sort of cheeky, comedic fun everyone was having bringing a game (about the undead) to life. There’s no consensus on precisely when ZAMN launched, other than around the second half of 1993. It was the year that brought us Star Fox and Sonic CD, closing out with the US congressional hearings on violent games. In a lot of ways ZAMN is a perfect example of the zeitgeist of this moment in time: LucasArts was riding high on a wave of successes, including the first two Secret Of Monkey Island games and Super Star Wars; the 16-bit consoles were in their ascent, trying to outdo each other; although CD media was around, the PlayStation was over a year away and 2D games still flourished; there was not yet an Entertainment Software Ratings Board in the US, meaning the only ‘content guidance’ came from platform holders. The world was a simpler place. Plus, of course, the preceding 60 years had produced a rich catalogue of eclectic and entertaining cinema. Such an intense focal point in the crossroads of space and time and media would gift us all
» [Mega Drive] Items are found lying around, inside jars, cupboards, dustbins, chests, cabinets, under sinks… touch everything!
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ULTIMATE GUIDE: ZOMBIES ATE MY NEIGHBORS
Conversion Capers SNES
WHICH VERSION IS BEST?
The lead platform which development started on, the SNES version has all the usual benefits over its Mega Drive rival, such as a nicer manual and higher colour palette. There’s also an exclusive obscenely difficult to find oneoff secret weapon: the flamethrower. Being on a Nintendo platform it’s been defanged, with the blood-red game over screen changed to purple, and severed heads in the ending stage changed to puppet dolls. It’s a fantastic release, but we prefer the Sega version because…
Mega Drive
…this superior release benefits from a higher resolution! The SNES version is 256 pixels wide, whereas the MD port increases this by 25% to 320 pixels. Some YouTubers incorrectly claim the MD version has a reduced play area, but for both versions it’s still only 256 pixels across. On MD those extra 64 pixels are reserved for a dedicated HUD and radar, allowing for better viewing and strategy during hectic levels – just look at how less cluttered it is!
» [Mega Drive] Sometimes these plants produce brown spiky weeds, other times it’s fields of mushrooms. Get strimming!
a complex, freeform, emergent, ultra-dynamic, hyper-kinetic, simultaneous-two-player arena-based shooter paraded as a hilarious smorgasbord-pastiche of classic silver screen Hollywood horror tropes. At the time it was nostalgic on a thematic level, today the multilayers of pixelated reminiscence peel away like skin on the zombies being fought. If any one auteur can be attributed to this masterpiece it would be Mike Ebert – chief designer, map maker and contributing artist – who had previously worked on the art for Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, Super Star Wars and Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis. Such artistic pedigree is immediately apparent when seeing how beautifully the game recreates many beloved horror classics, both old and new. From the usual Universal Classic Monsters of vampires, Frankenstein’s monster, mummies, gillmen and werewolves, to modern fare like chainsaw maniacs and evil dolls. The teenage heroes meanwhile evoke the youthful tone of Eighties films like The Monster Squad. Look over the screens across these pages and note just how much love went into satirising the cinematic inhabitants of ZAMN.
DR TONGUE (SPIDER)
DR TONGUE (HUMAN)
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gain, it was the perfect time for Mike and his talented team. They were all of an age where they would have watched classic creature features in early childhood and developed a fondness for them, subsequently living through the Eighties and experiencing both the remakes and the surge in new horror films thanks
PURPLE TENTACLE THE ELUSIVE SON OF DR TONGUE RETRO GAMER | 65
THE MAKING OF
IN THE KNOW » PUBLISHER: OCEAN SOFTWARE » DEVELOPER: SENSIBLE SOFTWARE » RELEASED: 1992 » PLATFORM: AMIGA, ATARI ST, PC » GENRE: PUZZLE
WIZKID IS SENSIBLE SOFTWARE’S EXPERIMENTAL JAZZ RECORD: A CRAZY, OUT-THERE, ONE-HOUR WURLITZER SOLO SANDWICHED BETWEEN THE MAINSTREAM POP HITS MEGA-LO-MANIA AND SENSIBLE SOCCER. SO HOW DID SOMETHING THIS STRANGE EVER GET MADE?
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WORDS BY LEWIS PACKWOOD
izkid was a bizarre game, even by Sensible Software’s standards. As just a couple of examples of its weirdness, the titular protagonist gets trapped in a toilet maze at one point (see The Toilet Mystery) and meets a digitised woman who barks like a dog (see Whatever Happened to Dog Girl?). For Sensible Software cofounder Jon Hare, the game was like an experimental b-side slotted between mainstream hits, “We would do sensible games like Microprose Soccer, Sensible Soccer, Shoot-’Em-Up Construction Kit – these are pretty sensible, straightforward ideas. And then we would intersperse it with more off-the-wall, left-field stuff like Wizball and Parallax. And Wizkid was totally off-the-wall. Every time we did that, it was kind of expressing a different side to ourselves, you can call it jazz music, I guess.” Jon and his old schoolmate Chris Yates – the original Sensible Software duo – had a history of noodling around with experimental tunes. “We’ve been writing music and stuff together since we » Jon Hare sold were 15,” says Jon. “We were in a band together Sensible Software in 1999, and now he for about three years before we even started making runs Tower Studios. games.” In their early years the band played fairly traditional prog rock – but once the drummer left, Jon and Chris took the chance to embrace their inner strangeness. “The next gig we did was, like, really off-the-wall. We were both wearing dressing gowns and rubber masks, and doing this really weird music. And if you look at some of our cover disks, if you look at some of our budget games, we had this taste for quirkiness that went right back to our musical performances.” » Sensible Software circa 1992. Top Chris and Jon had created a slew row, from left to right: Chris Yates, Chris Chapman, Jon Hare. Bottom row: Richard Joseph, Dave ‘Ubik’ Korn.
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of games for home computers throughout the Eighties, including the wonderful Wizball (see Retro Gamer issue 215 for the evolution of that game). But Jon can’t remember exactly what made Sensible decide to create a sequel to this oddball shoot-’emup. He suggests it could even have been the suggestion of Ocean, the game’s publisher. “It might have been Gary Bracey basically encouraging us to do something. Gary was a producer there, and he was extremely supportive of us. I mean, he was properly looking after us and backing us up as a creative force to the people inside Ocean.” Jon admits it’s not every day that a publisher lets a developer get away with releasing something as strange as Wizkid. “We were lucky, I guess we had a reputation for being good. And in general people trusted us to do a good job and didn’t make us justify ourselves. Most great art comes from artists being pretty much allowed freedom – with constant self-editing as you go.” It helped that the game was released on the Amiga, before consoles came to dominate with their more proscriptive regulations. “The Amiga was the best machine in my opinion,” says Jon. “It was a massive jump up from the 8-bit machines that came before it, and it was totally free from platform holders telling you what to do and vetting things. You could do whatever you wanted, basically, and in that era, all of the outlets were very open to new ideas. We were just doing what the fuck we wanted.” Wizkid ended up being sandwiched between the genre-defining Mega-Lo-Mania (1991) and mega-hit Sensible Soccer (1992). By this point, Sensible
» On the title screen, Wizkid conducts the 1812 Overture, complete with its famous cannon shots. Then at the final crescendo, his head explodes. “It sets a feeling for the game coming,” says Jon.
DEVELOPER HIGHLIGHTS WIZBALL (PICTURED) SYSTEM: C64, VARIOUS YEAR: 1987 CANNON FODDER SYSTEM: AMIGA, VARIOUS YEAR: 1993 SENSIBLE WORLD OF SOCCER SYSTEM: AMIGA, PC YEAR: 1993
THE MAKING OF: WIZKID
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO DOG GIRL? THE PUZZLE OF THE LADY CANINE EXPLAINED
» [Amiga] Level 4, Elementree My Dear Wizkid, features a clown-run pawn shop inside the tree, as well as a plane that you can pilot if you buy the flying scarf. » Chris Yates and the real-life Nifta the cat.
Software had grown to around six people, and Jon had developed Mega-Lo-Mania with Chris Chapman. But Wizkid saw the old band getting back together. “Wizkid was the last game that myself and Chris [Yates] did together as a pair,” says Jon. “All of the early Commodore 64 stuff was me and Chris, and Wizkid is the final expression of us just doing what the hell we want with no rules.”
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hris and Jon wrote their first C64 games in Chris’ dad’s spare bedroom, complete with Flintstones wallpaper, but by the time they were working on Wizkid, they had moved on to the more business-like surrounds of Sensible’s offices in March, Cambridgeshire. Nevertheless, they retained their schoolboy anarchic humour, which permeates every facet of the game – and in many ways Wizkid is the embodiment of a very old and very close friendship. The game’s development was intuitive, with the pair pinging ideas back and forth gleefully, knowing that
» [Amiga] On the first level, after you get past the dog in the outhouse, you reach this purple room. Press the hidden button to summon a donkey, then control it with a carrot on a stick. Naturally.
» Jon Hare used this photo of his mate Iain as a model for Iain the Clown on level 4 of Wizkid. » [Amiga] The blocks that you juggle throughout the game take on a variety of shapes, from simple Arkanoid-style rectangles to peanut packets and TVs.
the other would understand. It’s the kind of ease that comes from an intimate long-term collaboration, says Jon, “You don’t have to think too much.” Wizkid is a direct sequel to Wizball (1987), but the game itself is remarkably different. Whereas Wizball was essentially a shoot-’em-up, Wizkid is almost two separate games in one, combining puzzle-like brick-juggling sections with a Dizzy-style adventure. “We started off with the Arkanoid brick bashing, I think,” says Jon. “And we thought ‘Yeah, this is alright. Now how can we make it a Sensible game and put something more into it? It could be one of our budget games with just the head bashing bit, so how can we turn it into a full game?’” The solution was to add a detachable body and send Wizkid on the craziest adventure they could imagine. “We just decided he’d grow a body,” says Jon. “Because he couldn’t have a body while he was bashing bricks, so it needed to be separate. And once we’d done that first level, where he rings the bell and the toilet comes down, once we’d
Out of all the many weird things that happen in Wizkid, Dog Girl is possibly the weirdest. As our hero reaches level 8, he’s confronted by a giant black-and-white photo of a woman. In the background, the tune How Much Is That Doggie In The Window? plays, and every now and then the woman will bark along to it, revealing pointed teeth. If you time your jump carefully, Wizkid can leap into her open jaws, at which point he’s transported into a nightmare featuring his mother, Wizball, before waking up in his bed. But who is Dog Girl? Jon Hare explains, “We wanted this thing opening and shutting that you could jump in. And then we turned it into a mouth. And then one of the guys, who was actually our producer on Cannon Fodder, was around the office and he was a friend with Stoo [Cambridge], who was our artist on Cannon Fodder. And Stoo for some reason had a photo of this guy’s cousin – and his cousin turned into Dog Girl. And then we added the dog teeth and How Much Is That Doggie In The Window? as the theme tune!” And did the cousin ever find out she’d been turned into Dog Girl? “I’m sure he told her… I hope he did. I’m sure Stoo told her, he was the one who butchered her picture!”
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»
Brian in his Tokyo home, which he shares with a beautiful Egret3 arcade cabinet.
I phoned Ocean, pretending to be my careers teacher, saying I had a very talented pupil called Brian Flanagan… Brian Flanagan
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9000
BRIAN FLANAGAN Brian Flanagan sailed the Ocean and ended up on Japanese shores, via Miami Beach. He tells us about pixel art, going to the Core and his journey to Japan Words by Paul Drury
Living far away from the coast, Brian’s story is truly one about following your dream. As a local lad, he set his sights on Manchester’s preeminent software house Ocean and managed to land a job as an artist there, just as the company was moving from home micros to the new 16-bit consoles. He applied his talents to big licences, such as Total Recall and The Addams Family, and created striking visuals across a range of computers, consoles and handhelds, first at Ocean and later at Core Design and Warthog. He left the UK in the Noughties and has been making games in Japan for over a decade, embracing all aspects of the country’s culture. “If you work in Japan, you will go to karaoke bars,” he laughs. “My go-to song is the rap from a robot anime series called Gurren Lagann. It has a really cool call-back so everyone can join in. In Japanese culture, you do things together. It’s all about the group.”
You’re based in Japan now, Brian, but you started out in Manchester, England. We once interviewed a chap called Ian Grieve who argued Britain and Japan had a shared history of bedroom coding due to the proliferation of home computers in the Eighties and the rainy weather which kept kids indoors. Ah, I used to work with Ian at Warthog. We have a rainy season here in Japan but that only lasts about two-and-a-half weeks and the rest of the time the weather is great! I’d agree there is a culture of bedroom coding over here and there were companies back then who would publish games people had written on their own, like Ocean did in the UK. Not so much nowadays, though. Things have changed and got a lot more serious and corporate. Were you a bedroom coder back in the Eighties? I was a bedroom pixel-pusher, without a doubt. Ever since seeing Space Invaders in the Seventies, I wanted to make games and there was nothing that was going to stop me. I was drawing graphics on graph paper long before I actually got a computer. I was prepping for when my dad finally got me a Commodore 64 in 1987, when I was 15.
»
Brian (left) with fellow Ocean graphic artist Ste Thompson, at the ECTS show in 1989.
God, that’s the coolest guy ever. I want to be him!’ Turned out it was Simon Butler.
Ah, one of Ocean’s graphic artists. I was there a week, mainly just watching people working. Imagine having this teenager next to you, just staring. I probably started pissing a few people off. I went back the next summer, even though I was now in the sixth form and you weren’t supposed to. Steve Wahid, the graphics manager at the time, had me do a few bits on the C64 version of Operation Wolf. I did one of the kids that run across the screen and you’re not supposed to shoot.
How did you break into the games business? We had work experience at school and I kept hassling my careers teacher to get me into Ocean. They said they had a placement where I could repair buses. God, no. So I took the initiative and phoned Ocean, pretending to be the careers teacher, saying I had a very talented pupil called Brian Flanagan, very into videogames.
But we all did. Yeah! I had some abortive attempts doing the larger sprites. Remember, I was still only 17 and the only graphics work I’d done was in my bedroom, with no professional software, just Garry Kitchen’s GameMaker to do animations. This was my first real experience.
And it worked? Yeah, that got me in. I arrived at 6 Central Street for my first day and saw this very tall guy, with bleached blonde hair and an Ocean bag, and I thought ‘Oh
Did this lead to you landing a proper job at Ocean? Yes, I left college at the end of my first year and started at Ocean in July, 1989.
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