Retro News, Retro Features - Page 10 of 48

Great artists steal?

Smartphone-based clones of popular games are everywhere these days, but this latest effort really is unashamedly blatant. Super Maria Land - which proudly proclaims itself as a 'Mario Clone' on its official Google Play store listing is a port of a web-based Flash title for Google's popular Android platform. It's clearly a...

Fresh from Japan

If you watched last week's Japanese Nintendo Direct presentation you'll know that at the end there was a special GameCenter CX segment featuring none other than Nintendo President Satoru Iwata. For those of you that don't know, GameCenter CX (known in the west as Retro Game Master) is a TV show starring Shinya Arino, who plays...

Now that he's pals with Mario

In the past months we've shared some videos from the Did You Know Gaming YouTube channel, which takes well-known and loved franchises and digs out some interesting facts and quirks for us to enjoy. These typically involve buried lines of code that reveal abandoned development ideas, or just snippets of information about...

Capcom gave a Halloween challenge

Capcom's Ghosts 'n Goblins hits the North American 3DS eShop this week, and it's sure to have many gamers throwing their consoles at walls in disgust - not because it's a bad game (far from it) but because it's harder than Arnold Schwarzenegger in a suit of titanium armour. So legendary is this game's toughness...

Creator Dave Marsh announces Kickstarter campaign

Dave Marsh, the creator of classic point-and-click adventure game Shadowgate, has announced that his company is currently working on a remake for PC, Mac and mobile devices. A Kickstarter campaign will launch tomorrow (Friday 26th October) in order to raise the funds needed to develop the game...

Who knew?

Square Enix's Hiroyuki Ito has revealed to 1UP the origin of the turn-based battle system in the original Final Fantasy - and it's somewhat unexpected, to say the least. Driven to create an efficient system for Hironobu Sakaguchi's seminal NES RPG, Ito turned to professional sports for his inspiration. 1UP: So did you create the battle...

Zelda and Castlevania, trance-style

Electronic recording artist The Electric Witch (real name Zac Bentz) has created a fitting aural tribute to the NES era in the form of NEScapism, a mini-album which spurns the traditional chiptune format and instead re-imagines classic 8-bit tunes as swirling ambient soundscapes. To quote the composer:...

Sad but brilliant

If there's one thing that video games very rarely do, if ever, it's to remind us of our everyday lives. While reading books, watching TV and more serve as a source of rest from our day-to-day existence, one of the game medium's strengths, that makes gamers love their hobby with such a passion, is the ability of some titles to truly...

A trip down memory lane

With the first UK showing of the Wii U TV commercial causing quite a stir online, we thought it would be fun to take a look back at Nintendo's history of launch commercials, right back to the days of the 8-bit NES — possibly an era when many of the readers of this site weren't even born. Sit back and soak up the ambiance...

Tainted bloodline

The odds were stacked against Castlevania Legends almost from the start. When it was released towards the end of the '90s, it had the near-impossible task of following Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - a game which had revitalised Konami's gothic series and won widespread critical acclaim. To add to the heady level of...

A Ride for all ages?

Kirby, everyone’s favourite pink puffball, has hopped on his Warpstar and blasted into the world of “kart” racing in Kirby Air Ride for the Nintendo GameCube. He’s brought with him a few of his brethren, a unique set of controls, and some recognizable scenery, which is packed into this multiplayer-centric package. While...

She also bagged the PAL Women's World title at just 13 years old

The original Super Mario Kart may be two decades old now, but it's still actively played on the competitive circuit, with yearly tournaments to establish who is the fastest SNES fan on four wheels. One of the world's most famous Mario Kart players is Sami Cetin, who is referred to by...

Build it and they will come

Following on from the awesome Lego Zelda shield we featured a while back, we've stumbled across some amazing Lego-themed Super Mario videos. Created using what appears to be a clever combination of computer editing and actual brick images, these videos replicate the look of Mario's early NES adventures via the medium of...

A beautiful day on the links

Released in 1999 to dovetail with the N64 game of the same name, the Game Boy Color version of Mario Golf is more than just a scaled-back, portable edition. In fact, it stands well enough on its own merits, and it's almost unfortunate that it shares a name with its console counterpart; it really does have an identity all...

Diminutive dungeon crawling

Recent hiccups relating to Diablo 3 aside, Blizzard's fantasy series has been a critical and commercial smash for years now - so much so that the company was at one point considering a money-spinning version for the Nintendo Game Boy Color. Named Diablo Junior, the game would have taken a leaf from Pokémon's book by...

A Ghost of the Past

Nintendo doesn’t have much of a history when it comes to publishing mature-rated games. In fact, they had never directly released an M-rated game before they published the critically acclaimed Eternal Darkness for the GameCube in 2002. So when it was announced that Nintendo was working closely with developer n-Space on Geist...

Kids will believe anything these days

We've something to give you a little giggle this weekend, with the sweet tale of a young boy who believed that the Gameboy Micro was the latest Nintendo handheld on the market. Gamer dad Andy Robertson and his son were walking past a second hand store when the youngster spotted a Gameboy Micro sitting in the...

Snap and Dream Radar change the perspective

Trading cards and anime episodes aside, the Pokémon series is known for a long-lasting line of handheld RPGs. You've almost certainly played one or two of them — and we suspect that quite a few of you are already getting into Pokémon Black & White 2 — most likely followed by an obsessed state of...

It's a stitch-up

Remember the music for the opening level on Donkey Kong Country? Do you recall how it moves from one musical style to another, almost as if it's three different songs that have been fused together? That because it is. In an interview with CVG, former Rare composer David Wise reveals the truth behind the track: I was on holiday in...