Retro News

January2014

  • News World Record Speed Runner Just Can't Stop Playing Zelda: Ocarina Of Time

    Playing games to destruction

    Everyone has their own reasons for playing games. Some play for entertainment, others for pure escapism, but for Cosmo Wright games are a sport. Not just any sport, but an athletic one: the sport of Speed Running. From the moment the game kicks off, he’s racing against the clock to get from the title screen to the end...

  • Review Super Mario Bros. 3 (Wii U eShop / NES)

    A truly super Mario game

    Super Mario Bros. 3’s recent arrival on the Wii U eShop seemed like a conspicuously low-key affair compared to the considerable hype that surrounded its hugely anticipated original release back the early nineties. However, that doesn't mean that the lack of booming fanfare should be interpreted as a cause for concern; over...

  • Video Learn How To Play Mega Man: The Board Game

    Figure out the rules and power-up with this sample playthrough

    Let's forget all about consoles for a moment. Mega Man is an icon that defies the medium, up there among the greats and immortalised in song, literature, and even Lego. He's had a shot at just about everything by now, and in December we reported that an officially l

  • News The Rockman X Sound Box Album Set Includes Four Tracks Cut From Mega Man X

    And now you can listen to them for free

    Years from now we may refer to "doing a Capcom Anniversary", with a knowing wink and nudge. For example, in a parallel universe Nintendo didn't celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Zelda franchise by releasing Skyward Sword with a special CD and a game plot right at the beginning of the timeline, but sold us...

  • Video Xbox One vs. Nintendo 64

    There's a reason why the classics are referred to as classics

    A new comparison video by Jeff Rubin, in which he pits the Xbox One against 1996's Nintendo 64, has proven what many of us have known all along: the Nintendo 64 is hands-down the superior system. The short tongue-in-cheek video (see below) actually makes a pretty compelling case as to...

  • Weirdness Snoop Lion's Latest Music Video References Pokémon and Retro Games

    DoggTales...

    Snoop Lion, for those unaware, is the current artistic name of the rapper many will likely know as Snoop Dogg. In recent times he's undergone a fairly major image change, with a shift in his music's themes, that new name and an even more chilled out style. Rather than hitting up the streets with Dr. Dre — or whatever — the most...

  • News Prolific Video Game Box Art Illustrator Greg Martin Passes Away

    Created covers for Sonic, Duck Tales 2, Adventure Island and many more

    The name Greg Martin may not mean anything to most gamers, but if you've been playing since the days of the NES then you will definitely have seen — and no doubt appreciated — his work. Martin created the amazing western covers for plenty of Sega and Nintendo games, such as...

  • News Award Winning Zelda-Themed Short Film, "Escape", To Get Feature Length Follow-Up

    "PRINCESS IN ANOTHER CASTLE" to tackle similar themes

    Way back in October 2012 we shared an award-winning, emotive and challenging Zelda-themed video called Escape. It portrayed some difficult times for a young girl that was miserable at school, before going home to a breaking family as well as physical and emotional abuse. Her escape was in the...

  • Review Super Punch-Out!! (Wii U eShop / SNES)

    Brain over brawn

    Whereas Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream is consistently considered to be one of the best games on the NES, console sequel Super Punch-Out!! seldom appears in the top 10 when recalling the best games on the SNES. Did the puzzle-fight formula not hold up as well for the second time around at home, or was 16-bit competition just that...

December2013

November2013

October2013

  • Review Super Castlevania IV (Wii U eShop / SNES)

    Fangs for the memories

    The Castlevania series is enjoying something of a renaissance at the moment, thanks largely to MercurySteam's commercially successful Lords of Shadow sub-series. However, as many hardcore Castlevania fans will repeatedly tell you until they are blue in the face and you are deeply, deeply bored, the God of War-style gameplay...

  • Review Wario's Woods (3DS eShop / NES)

    It's back like you wooden believe

    Originally released in 1994, Wario's Woods holds the prestigious honour of being the last officially licensed game to release for the NES in North America; that's a remarkably long time after the console itself launched in the mid-eighties. Yet while it's impressive that the legendary system received a first-party...

  • Weirdness Worlds Of Power Is To Rise From The Grave In 2014

    Nintendo Life's Philip Reed is taking a trip down memory lane

    Young gamers growing up in the early 90s no doubt remember Worlds of Power. It was a series of youth-oriented novelisations of classic NES games...and the books have become legendarily awful. They were inaccurate, inept, and very poorly written. While their ostensible mission was to...

  • Review Pinball (Wii U eShop / NES)

    Ball out?

    Back in 1985, when Nintendo launched the NES in North America, there were a slew of games released with to-the-point titles like Baseball, Golf, and the game of the hour, Pinball. At the time, inviting these simple, accessible games into your home was almost life changing, and we have great memories bouncing around our heads of how they...

  • News Sega's Most Successful Console Is 25 Years Old Today

    Happy birthday, Mega Drive

    A quarter of the century ago, Sega released its most successful console. The Mega Drive hit Japanese retailers on October 29th, 1988 and would go on to sell an estimated 40 million units globally. Known in North America as the Genesis, the system was the first to genuinely challenge the supremacy of Nintendo's NES, and the...

  • Review Urban Champion (Wii U eShop / NES)

    Won't somebody think of the children?

    Urban Champion is back, and is a menace to society. It's a danger to young gamers for two reasons. If you're the type of gamer that thinks brutality and violence has no place in a title played by children, this tale of brawling 8-bit thugs bringing mayhem to the streets is a primitive but potent example of those...

  • News This Zelda Super NES Design is Rather Pretty

    A lick of paint can do a lot

    It's common for enthusiasts to take existing hardware and apply their own twists with alternate shells, skins and paint; just recently a surprisingly attractive 'Luigi 2DS' looked good enough to be official. The practice of tweaking consoles is perhaps most common with retro consoles, however, as the old are made new...

  • Review Clu Clu Land (Wii U eShop / NES)

    Clu Clu Bland

    Back in the NES days, Nintendo had a lot of experimental, arcade-like games, many of which never quite made it into the big leagues in order to get sequels and the like. Perhaps one of the most often forgotten of these games is Clu Clu Land. Similarly to Kuru Kuru Kururin, you need to know a bit of Japanese in order to understand the...

  • News Data Says - Choose Squirtle in Pokémon Red & Blue

    Logic once again seeks to ruin an Internet debate

    It is one of the greatest questions of our common era: who is the best Pokémon to begin with in Red & Blue? Everyone has their own opinion they will likely take to the grave, but science writer Kyle Hill decided to try a data-backed argument in a recent blog article for Scientific American. In...

  • News Sega Genesis Owners Very Nearly Missed Out On Treasure's Gunstar Heroes

    Sega of America almost passed on the legendary run-and-gun title

    Localising Japanese games for western release is a costly process, and even today we still see a lot of titles remaining Japan exclusives and therefore tantalisingly out of reach. Back in the '90s it was very much the same deal, with many amazing 16-bit games failing to make the jump...

  • News SEGA's Retro Remakes Down to Fans for "Next Lineup"

    Europe and North America still awaits retro 3D series on the eShop

    While now a software developer and publisher with other major interests in entertainment such as Pachinko machines in Japan, for some SEGA will always be the hardware and arcade company that brought joy to their early gaming years. It's a strong legacy, and the company often shows a...

  • News Readers Of EDGE Consider Ocarina Of Time And Mario 64 To Be The Best Games Of The Last 20 Years

    GoldenEye 007 and Super Mario Galaxy also make the top 10

    Long-running UK video game magazine EDGE recently turned 20, and to mark the occasion it ran a poll to see what its readers consider to be the 20 greatest games to be released since the publication's birth in 1993. Unsurprisingly for Nintendo fans, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and...

  • News Proposed Boogerman Reboot Will Feature Earthworm Jim

    16-bit icons stick together

    We recently reported on a Kickstarter campaign to make a new version of Boogerman, a gross 16-bit platformer which originally appeared on the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis back in the '90s. The creators are seeking $375,000 to fund the project and have raised just over $24,000 so far, with 27 days remaining. They'll no doubt...

  • News NECA's New RoboCop Figure Is Based On The 1989 NES Game

    Dead or alive, this figure is coming home with us

    Toy maker NECA has revealed the next entry in its video game-inspired figure line, and it's none other than augmented officer Alex J. Murphy, better known as RoboCop. The figure takes inspiration from Data East's 1989 NES adaptation of the 1987 Paul Verhoeven movie. The concept has recently been...

  • Video Nintendo Releases a Pokémon Series Showcase For You to Enjoy

    The presenter says "Pokémon" roughly one billion times

    While Nintendo's marketing for Pokémon X & Y has featured the usual excitable adverts and footage, with the games now released the company has taken a step back to present a Pokémon Series Showcase. For those new to Pokémon or perhaps too young to have been around since the earliest...

  • Video This Stop Motion Mega Man Video is a Bit Awesome

    Over 10,000 photos used

    As regular readers will know, we like drawing attention to some of the best and most interesting examples of gaming culture, where fans go to extraordinary lengths to simply produce something fantastic for others to enjoy. One YouTube creator we've featured is FinalCutKing, a channel that gave us the rather brilliant Post-It...

  • News If Nintendo Did Make A Smartphone, We'd Want It To Look Like This

    Feast your eyes on these Famicom and Super Famicom phone mock-ups

    There have been calls for Nintendo to enter the mobile phone market for years, with some even going as far as to create 3D renders of what they believe a "Nintenphone" should look like. While the Kyoto company has so far resisted the urge to leap into the handset arena, if it does...

  • News Overlay Gives an Old NES Controller Some New Zelda Sleekness

    Wii U isn't the only one who looks good in black and gold

    Have you been hearing this strange, quiet sighing noise ever since you got your limited edition Zelda Wii U bundle? It's probably coming from your old NES controller, wistfully eyeing that totally dope, gold-emblazoned GamePad and wishing it could have been as radically awesome in its day...

  • Feature A Supersonic History of Sonic Cartoons

    I’m waaaaiiiiting...

    For anyone growing up in the early nineties, there was one gaming rivalry that dwarfed all others – Nintendo vs SEGA. While the feud gave us classic moments such as “Genesis does what Nintendon’t” and the infamous Genesis ‘blast processing’, this gaming cold war would split playgrounds and even families over who...

  • News Nintendo Wants To Close Down This Open-Source Web Version Of Super Mario Bros.

    "Full Screen Mario" infringes copyrights, claims Nintendo

    Full Screen Mario is a recreation of the original Super Mario Bros. which runs in your web browser. It has all of the original levels and even allows you to create your own stages. It's an impressive feat of programming by a single person — college student Josh Goldberg — but Nintendo is...

  • Feature Last Night A Hedgehog Saved My Life

    Damien McFerran recalls his once ardent love for Sega's Sonic

    This week sees the launch of Sonic Lost World on Wii U and 3DS. Two of the most anticipated Sonic games in years, these new instalments have been subject to the usual level of hype which seems to surround any new adventure starring Sega's popular mascot. I've been swept up in this...

  • Events Nintendo Life at Play Expo 2013

    How retro can you go?

    Last weekend, thousands of gamers descended upon EventCity in Manchester, UK to attend Play Expo 2013. Organised by Replay Events, the yearly expo focuses in four key areas of gaming: current gaming (now.play), retro (re.play) tournaments (pro.play) and activities for the ever-growing Cosplay scene (cos.play). Being the video...

  • Review GOLF (Wii U eShop / NES)

    Sub-par

    Before the hyper-realistic, face-deforming technology of modern Tiger Woods games was conceived in the deepest dreams of Electronic Arts (a company busy with Marble Madness at the time), there was Golf for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The game wears its no-nonsense attitude on its sleeve, focusing on simulating the time-honoured sport...

  • Review Tennis (Wii U eShop / NES)

    Net-net, a loss

    Tennis — the NES game, not the actual sport — hails from an age when the most rudimentary of virtual simulations could be entertaining and notable simply by existing, perhaps causing a passing family member to comment on how it looks just like the real thing. Although a genuine novelty in the 80s, this dull-as-toast recreation of...

  • Review Final Fight 3 (Wii U eShop / SNES)

    Third time lucky?

    Following the enjoyable-but-flawed SNES conversion of the original Final Fight and its disappointing sequel, Final Fight 3 can be viewed as Capcom's attempt to atone for its previous sins and give fans a domestic exclusive worthy of the name. Released relatively late in the lifespan of Nintendo 16-bit's console, this third entry is...

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Game & Watch 1989

Game & Watch 1989

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A Rhythm Heaven Topic (because the series is pretty much dead)
The GameBoy Advance Thread

The GameBoy Advance Thread

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The resurgence of Gamecube

The resurgence of Gamecube

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What was your first game? ...again
The N64 Thread

The N64 Thread

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