Retro News

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...

  • Video Check Out WaterMelon's New SNES Title ProjectN

    Going underground with the developers in Germany

    Indie developer WaterMelon is perhaps most famous for its Mega Drive title Pier Solar, which is coming to the Wii U eShop next year. However, the small studio is also working on a brand-new SNES title, currently referred to as ProjectN. WaterMelon has been uploading some rather amusing — not to...

  • Review Zombie Blaster (DSiWare)

    A grave disappointment

    Throughout DSiWare's long and not always distinguished history, we've seen a lot of games come and go. From puzzlers to RPGs to interactive storybooks, we've spent the past several years wading through every single release, doing our best to separate the rare diamonds from the dirt. Zombie Blaster interested us simply because,...

  • Review Tales to Enjoy! The Ugly Duckling (DSiWare)

    A load of quack

    Another Tales to Enjoy game? Yep, we regret to inform you that it’s true. But this time it’s the most repulsive of all…The Ugly Duckling. If you haven’t been following along as of late, Tales to Enjoy is a series of games that uses the same exact interface and activities, but swaps out one fairly tale or fable for another...

  • Review Densha de Go! 64 (Nintendo 64)

    Lost in "trainslation"

    The massive surge in the number of simulation games over the past few years has been nothing short of baffling. Years ago, Microsoft Flight Simulator was essentially the sole attraction in this specialist genre, but now it seems virtually anything can and should be turned into a simulation. Road Works Simulator, Farming...

  • Review Final Fight 2 (Wii U eShop / SNES)

    The Sophomore Slump

    The SNES port of the original Final Fight may have successfully translated the gameplay from arcade to home console, but it was missing some key elements: the third character Guy, an entire level and — most important of all — the vital two-player co-op mode. Capcom sought to rectify these shortcomings in the SNES-exclusive...

  • Review Final Fight (Wii U eShop / SNES)

    Because the world needs more wrestling mayors

    Back in the late '80s and early '90s — when arcades were still the biggest draw for dedicated gamers — Capcom was the company to beat when it came to coin-op success. It produced a string of classics around this time, most of which saw conversions on the popular home consoles of the period. While...

  • Review Astro (DSiWare)

    Lost in space

    Just when you thought that the DSiWare service had nothing left to offer except some word puzzles and interactive children’s books, along comes Astro. It's quite clear that this is intended to pay homage to the Atari classic Asteroids in its design and gameplay, but it falls short of recapturing what continues to make the original a...

  • News Yoshi's Cookie to Be Removed From European Wii Shop Channel

    Oh how the cookie crumbles

    Nintendo has updated the Wii Shop Channel with a new message stating that Yoshi's Cookie will be no longer available for sale as of 11th October. The surprise announcement doesn't provide any details as to why the NES game is being removed. It was originally developed by Bullet-Proof Software, with Nintendo acting as...

  • News News Site Claims That Zelda "Takes A Dim View Of Workers, People Of Colour And Women"

    Best not mention GTA, then

    You might assume that time spent in the mythical land of Hyrule is unlikely to cause anybody any undue distress, but according to some, that simply isn't the case. News and entertainment site Salon.com — which has a monthly unique readership of 15 million — has controversially branded The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of...

  • News Tommo Refuses to Follow SNK's Neo Geo X Termination Demand

    Send in the lawyers

    Yesterday we reported that SNK had retracted its license and demanded an end to the manufacturing and sale of the Neo Geo X, a portable version of the iconic '90s console. We rather thought that'd be the end of the matter, as the IP holder had issued a rather blunt demand — lesson learned, never underestimate the power of...

  • News Neo Geo X Handheld Shut Down By SNK

    And just like that, it's gone

    Not so long ago we reviewed the Neo Geo X and Mega Pack Volume 1, a potential low cost option for gamers to own a piece of portable hardware that could run games from the iconic system, ideal if a Wii Virtual Console or pricey Neo Geo system aren't handy. While it had its merits, our conclusion reflected some...

  • News Meet Molotov Man, Sensible Software's Unreleased Answer To Bomberman

    Little-known SNES outing is detailed in new book celebrating the UK studio

    Sensible Software is a company which is perhaps more famous in the UK than the rest of the world. Founded in 1986 by Jon "Jovial Jops" Hare and Chris "Cuddly Krix" Yates, it produced titles for 8 and 16-bit computers, many of which were ported to consoles such as the Sega...

  • Feature Nintendo Life Book Club - Mega Man II

    Who needs a new game, huh?

    Due to the huge success of our first entry in the Nintendo Life Book Club (our look at the novelization of Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, which you can read here), we have decided that it's a series worth continuing. Yes, it took us two solid years to reach that conclusion. Leave us alone. The point is that we're finally...

  • Review Milon's Secret Castle (3DS eShop / NES)

    A secret best kept hidden

    Hudson had many classics in its NES library - Adventure Island, Faxanadu and Bomberman are just a few of the great titles it gave us all back then. Milon's Secret Castle probably shouldn't be counted among those. As the title might reveal, you play as Milon, who has to make his way through a castle filled to the brim with...

  • News Microsoft Wants You To Know That Its Surface Tablet Can Play SNES Games

    It's OUYA all over again

    Emulation is a grey area at the best of times, but one thing that is a massive no-no is rival companies using the emulated titles of others to promote their own products. We've already seen the team behind the OUYA console attempt to use SNES emulators to sell their micro-console, and now Microsoft is getting in on the act...

September2013

  • Review Tales to Enjoy! Three Little Pigs (DSiWare)

    A case of swine flu

    If you’ve been hanging around the site during the past two weeks, chances are you’ve at least stumbled onto one Tales to Enjoy review. These games are compilations of activities targeted at kids who are just learning how to read, write, and develop basic problem solving skills. Each one uses an identical interface, but...

  • Weirdness New York Times Finally Issues a Correction for Describing the Mario Bros. as Janitors in 1988

    The error was spotted in Hiroshi Yamauchi's obituary

    Writers and journalists, no matter the prestige of their publication, make mistakes. Facts are incorrect or the wording may be wrong, and corrections are made. The New York Times, in an admirable sense of perspective and maintaining standards, has corrected an error from an article published 25...

  • Review Letter Challenge (DSiWare)

    Missing the mark

    There isn’t really an interesting or unique way to introduce Letter Challenge, but that might be the point. There are plenty of word-based puzzle games available in the world, and so many of them already exist in one form or another on the Nintendo eShop, but that wasn’t enough to stop Enjoy Gaming from throwing another one...

  • Review Gradius (Wii U eShop / NES)

    Just keeps shooting

    To say that the original Gradius was influential on the evolution of the side-scrolling shoot 'em up would be a gross understatement. When it hit arcades in 1985 it was lauded for its amazing level designs and simple, yet wildly playable, power-up system. This NES release was one of the first home ports of the game and has become...

  • Review Tales to Enjoy! Puss In Boots (DSiWare)

    Give it the boot

    Tales to Enjoy! Puss in Boots is a compilation of activities and games geared towards the youngest audience, ages 3-6 years old. If you’ve taken notice of our review for Tales to Enjoy! Little Red Riding Hood, then you should know exactly what to expect here – exactly. The activities and interface are identical, but the...

  • News Online Multiplayer Comes To The Super Nintendo Thanks To SNESoIP

    You can't stop progress

    When the SNES was released in the early '90s, the concept of online play was very much in its infancy. PC gamers had dabbled with crudely beaming data over telephones in the '80s, and despite some notable attempts to replicate this on consoles — such as X-Band and Nintendo's own Satellaview service — there was never any...

  • News The Nebula of NES Games Is An Infographic Done Right

    A galaxy of classics

    Despite the best intentions of the designer, infographics can often be monumentally dull affairs. Thankfully that isn't true with Pop Chart Lab's The Nebula of NES Games, a visual representation of more than 700 Nintendo Entertainment System titles, all neatly arranged in a swirling formation. The spiral advances...

  • Review Breath of Fire II (Wii U eShop / SNES)

    Understandably lacking in freshness

    The Super NES was home to what are still considered by many to be a some of the finest RPG experiences ever produced. It's a predictable lineup of big names, and Breath of Fire II doesn't often get a mention. If it was overshadowed in the past it perhaps has an early opportunity to earn new fans on the young Wii U...

  • Weirdness Watch Nearly 1000 Mario Players All At Once

    Super Mario Boy

    For those that have played Super Meat Boy, which unfortunately never made it to a Nintendo system, a highlight can be the replay that follows every completed level — all of your attempts are shown at once. If you can imagine that with a Super Mario Bros. level, but with 974 players on display, then you can imagine what's coming...

  • News Former Nintendo Composer Dedicates Retro Remixes to Hiroshi Yamauchi

    Super Mario Land and Metroid both given special new tracks

    Earlier this week former Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi passed away at 85 years of age. He'd led the company from 1949 to 2002, overseeing a revolution as Nintendo became the world's leading video game console manufacturer. By leading Nintendo to such success in the industry,...

  • Hardware This Custom Tron N64 Makes Us Want To Return To The Grid

    Greetings, programs!

    Zoki64 is famous for his hardware modifications, and his latest project is a real masterpiece. He's painted an N64 straight out of Tron, complete with elements which glow in the dark. You can see the system in the video below, accompanied by Daft Punk's excellent music for the recent sequel, Tron: Legacy.

  • Review Tales to Enjoy! Little Red Riding Hood (DSiWare)

    You should probably stay out of the woods.

    Tales to Enjoy! Little Red Riding Hood is a collection of activities and games designed to be accessible to young children, ages 3-6 year old. With eight modes in all – which consist of puzzles, games of memory, a digital colouring book, and of course a re-telling of the classic fairy tale – there’s...

  • Video Teenage Mutant Koopa Troopas is a Delightfully Bonkers Mashup

    Spot the references

    YouTube user James Farr is rapidly developing his reputation as a top-notch animator, while his wacky style has earned him some fans here at Nintendo Life. He's previously given us Super Mario Busters and The New Super Mario Busters 2, and returns with an all-new video — Teenage

  • News Surprise! Aonuma Doesn't Consider The CD-i Zelda Games To Be Canon, Either

    Glad we're all on the same page

    Many moons ago, when CD-ROM was still a new and exciting storage medium, several companies released CD-based systems in the hope of catching a ride on the interactive entertainment roller-coaster. One of those firms was Phillips, which created the CD-i (the "i" stands for "interactive", in case you were wondering)...

  • Review Tecmo Bowl (3DS eShop / NES)

    Watch that 3DS hinge on the snap

    Before video game football became just as complex as real-life football, there was Tecmo Bowl. There weren't hundreds of plays with varying formations or special spin moves to worry about, in fact you didn't actually have to know much about the game of football to enjoy and play it. It was this simplicity that made...

  • News Capcom Collaborates with Musicians on Mega Man Tribute Albums

    A remix album and and all new rock tracks

    This Mega Man anniversary year may have lacked a new title in the franchise — aside from a sanctioned PC fan-game — but has included plenty of memorabilia and soundtrack releases. Some examples have been rather good, such as neat little figurines, while others — such as this Rush tissue pouch in Japan...

  • Weirdness If Only The Dark Knight Was a Retro Game

    "Wanna know how I got these scanlines?"

    Just yesterday we shared the fact that there's a retro-styled Game of Thrones game, which draws inspiration from the TV show. To continue that theme we now have a video that recreates The Dark Knight as it would be in a retro game; this is a rather fun recreation of key events as they could work in a game of...

  • Review Pinball: Revenge of the 'Gator (3DS eShop / GB)

    A snappy pinball title

    HAL's Pinball: Revenge of the 'Gator is a game which really needs to be approached with context in mind; back when it launched in 1990, real pinball games were still popular in arcades and digital representations were only just starting to offer the same level of enjoyment. Naxat's seminal Crush series — which includes Alien...

  • Weirdness There's a Game of Thrones 8-Bit Game

    Watch out, HBO

    For those that aren't actually aware, Game of Thrones was around long before it arrived as a big-budget behemoth on TV; the original book was called A Game of Thrones and was book one in the series titled A Song of Ice and Fire, which is still going — hats off to you, George R. R. Martin. There's no doubt that the TV series has...

  • Weirdness Robots Play Classic Nintendo Music and Sound Effects

    The wonders of 8-bit games and the greatest low-cost PC in the world

    Sometimes clever people take a creative idea and then lovingly wrap it in gaming nostalgia, often posting the results on YouTube. A fine thing it is too, as it all adds to gaming culture and, ultimately, the best examples can be hugely entertaining. YouTube user roboband produced...