Galaxian has appeared on Indie Retro News a few times over the years, especially as it is one particular Arcade classic that homebrew developers love making clones of with special effects and bonus power ups added. Well this time we are going back to the original hit from 1979, as PacManPlus is aiming to bring that retro shoot em up classic over to the Atari 7800 with all the nostalgia intact such as the sound effects and animated enemy waves.
A rather surprising release has just appeared in our inbox, and one I think many people will remember growing up during the 80's or early 90's. As we've just been told that the classic game of Revenge of the Mutant Camels; a game released by Jeff Minter in 1984: C64 and 1992: Amiga, ST, PC. Has just had an improvement update from the developer fixing the collision detection on the C64 version. For those of you who don't remember this game, on the website it says "Possibly one of the most memorable Llamasoft games. Giant camel (with anthropomorphic goat-creature sidekick in the ST/Amiga/PC version) blasting through waves of somewhat surreal enemies".
The Amiga gets another mention this week, as trawling through the Amiga Facebook group, Marecheck has announced that Henry's House has been converted over to the Amiga as the first preview tease prior to other upcoming 8bit to 16bit conversions by 8bit2amiga. For those of you who haven't heard of the game before, Henry's House is an eight level platform game which was originally released on the C64 and then ported to Atari 8-bit machines.
The Amstrad has really set the bar high for 8bit developed games over the years, with incredible releases such as Pinball Dreams, Alcon 2020, Red Sunset, SGT.Helmet Training Day 2020 and even The Abduction of Oscar Z. But here's one game that I think that will really impress the Amstrad community as a complete overhaul, is the upcoming Amstrad Plus version of Ghosts 'n Goblins'; a soon to be released high quality version of GNG developed by Mathieu Delaruelle aka Hwikaa, Julien Riet aka Ixien and Golem 13.
Looking through the itch.io website for new retro styled games to play on your home computer or via an internet browser at work :p, we've just come across a new game called 'Pepper Pengui' developed by All-x Dev and Dotto Meister. This game from the look of the video below or linked here, is an enjoyable new arcade game which is inspired by other games such Pengo and those wonderful Japanese early 80s coin ops.
AntEater and Space Invaders ZX were not the only speccy games worth a shout out this month, as recently Leonardo Vettori contacted us, to let us know that their hellish game of 'Metamorphosis', is taking pre-orders for a physical copy due to be released end of May 2021 through Phoenixware. This game that's currently available as a digital download for the ZX Spectrum, is a rather interesting game, as it looks to be set in an alien like world, with creatures to eat, other enemies to fight and drops from the ceiling that are very toxic for the player.
If you remember the 1982 Arcade classic of 'AntEater ' or the 8bit clones such as The Aardvark, you may be interested to know that as of this week you can download the latest fan based remake of 'AntEater ' for the ZX Spectrum 48k by Antonio Gonzalez Martin (Spain); a game originally designed by Chris Oberth and released in 1982 by Tago Electronics which spawned other clones on other systems such as the Atari 2600, Apple II, Atari ST and the Atari 8bit.
Puzzle Bobble has infuriated and thrilled us in equal measure since its release around the year of 1994. Its appeal captures all age groups, and the fun is doubled with a brother, sister or friend playing to beat each others high score. In fact it even appeared as a clone of Puzzle Bobble which made its appearance on mobiles as a game called Bubble Shooter by Ilyon Dynamics. So why is this game getting a feature on IRN? Well if you have an Atari XL/XE you can look forward to the upcoming Atari 8bit version of Bubble Shooter; a game which blends both Puzzle Bobble and the 2002 clone released on mobiles.
Way back in 2014 JOTD released the PC version of "Super Cars III" ; a game which was his own remake of the hit action racing classic "Super Cars II". Originally developed by Magnetic Fields and published by Gremlin Graphics in the early 90's for Amiga & Atari ST. Well fast forward to today however and do we have some rather interesting news for you. As JOTD has just released an early work in progress alpha version of Supercars 2 AGA; A rebuilt & adapted to AGA ripped from Supercars International 1996. A game which in itself was a re-make of Super Cars II (tweaked gameplay, updated 256-color VGA graphics and a new soundtrack).
As most of you are aware, there are different ways to create Amiga games, either through Amos, Blitz Basic, RedPill or through the rather lackluster Backbone. But one such game engine is becoming the highlight of nearly every new Amiga game or tech demo announcement, and that's Earok's Scorpion Engine; a constantly updated piece of software that gives developers the tools to create graphically impressive games, running at decent frame rates even on the lowest spec'd Amigas.
Putting aside all the great games for the moment, we've just been told through our Facebook and Twitter page, that the very latest version of AmigaOS 3.2 has been released into the wild for all classic Amiga's. For those of you who don't know what AmigaOS is. It is a fully updated and polished operating system for 68k machines, packed with well over 100 new features, dozens of updates that cover nearly all AmigaOS components and a battery of bugfixes that will undoubtedly solidify the user experience.
OpenTTD is one of the most popular open source releases on our site, it is an updated open source version of Microprose's hit game Transport Tycoon Deluxe. A game that's so addictive you'll be spending hours developing your very own transport tycoon company..Well unless you run out of money anyway! So why is this game getting another mention on IRN? Thankfully the team behind OpenTTD are forever keeping it up to date, and have since released a new version with a lot of new features.
It's incredible to think that Indie Retro News was started way back in 2011/12, as an idea to bring as many decent retro games as possible to a wider audience, instead of just forums. I mean heck I was even banned a few times for spamming almost every new game. Thankfully time has progressed since then, and not only has Indie Retro News been a global influence in the retro scene, but we've spoken to so many people online and shared gaming memories with our amazing readers, it's been a pleasure to be a part of this community even with its downer moments.