Wanted: More hours in the day
Hello people and readers of Retro Remakes. As you might have noticed of late, RR is a little shy on the staffing front.
That little thing called life has its wicked way with us occasionally, and before you know it - we’re wondering when someone is going to instate 25 hour days.
We’ve got an absolutely brilliant team of chaps putting in their spare time keeping this place up and running, but due to the fact that y’know, we’re all getting on a bit these days - what with babies, and houses and kids scuttling about the place (not stolen, honest), work, wives and things like that - we could do with a bit of a hand on the news posting front so that the news gets out to our readers reasonably promptly and with a bit of verve and spark, as it truly deserves.
Right now, there’s 3 of us posting the news when we can - myself (*waves*), Caff who’s been your fine host for a number of glorious entries (king of the captions and ruler of all puns) and the ever talented Mr Codex. And I’m sure the other chaps won’t mind me saying that they do an absolutely fantastic job. RR has grown though, and the amount of newsworthy stuff that passes through our doors could do with a couple more pairs of hands on deck to get it out there.
So, I’m putting out a request for anyone who fancies posting about remakes on our hallowed pages to get in touch via the medium of our forum and let us know that you’d fancy chucking in. Obviously, there’s no money in this just the respect of your peers and the chance to be publically enthusiastic about remakes and retro style games and help other people share the love.
Before you jump in waving your hands in the air and rushing at my legs, there’s a few things I’d ask up front of you.
Please don’t put yourself forward unless you can seriously see yourself still doing this after one or two posts. We do ask that everyone plays the games wherever possible (providing there’s a game available), nicks their own screengrabs unless someone has kindly provided one for you to use etc… and this can be reasonably time consuming.
You understand that the job of the front page is primarily to report the news, a bit of wit, sparkle or sarcasm is always welcome but above everything else, it’s the job of the news posters to get the word out about the games. You will, I promise, occasionally hit upon a game or genre you don’t like and have to post about it. That’s life though, and you’ll just have to grit your teeth and get the news out there.
The two most important things though, above all else, are having enthusiasm for this and some hefty knowledge of games throughout the years, not just some vague info picked up from Wikipedia. All the guys who keep this place running around me have a great love for the subject and a scarily big vat of knowledge that can be dipped into. We don’t expect you to know everything, but a lot would be really helpful.
So aye, if you think you’d like to bring something fresh to the table of roast remakes then nip into the forum and either introduce yourself (if we don’t already know who you are) and tell us why you’d like to help out.
I guess you’ll be needing a forum topic to do this, then… righty-ho, that’s over here.
Cauldron 1
Halloween comes a month early this year, and you have Devilmarkus to blame. Many updated and fixes during the last week or two means that hopefully everyone will now be able to play this new remake - well anyone with a Windows PC, that is.
Commando is the only way to fly…
Cackle, cackle. Cauldron 1 v2.5 is ready to download my lovelies. Come into my gingerbread house and you can have a go. You know you want to it would be ever so exciting, and I promise not to throw you in the pot and cook you for my tea. Cackle, cackle, etc…
With German, French and English versions it seems that most of Europe should be able to enjoy this game in their own personal lingo.
Karate Champ
Wax on, wax off. DavidVaz is here again with his Karate game, I Kid you not.
Don’t dither about, kick him in the nuts already.
Taking inspiration from classics such as IK+ and filled with eastern promise, Karate Champ v0.4beta is here for you all. Having a very distinctive graphics style and featuring netplay, you can now break the bones (and splinter the pancreases) of your friends from the comfort of your own computer chair.
Lionheart Remake - Evolved
Not one to rest on his laurels, DJ.Thunder of B3DGS is still beavering away with updates to his Lionheart Remake, adding more and more to it and making it even bigger than the original.
Hahaha, and they said I was mad to buy those magic beans!
No release of the Evolved version as yet, but here is some tasty information on what you have to look forward to:-
New player animations, better parallax (more lines), better background, loading is faster, new levels, new monsters, new elements (water, moon enhanced..), statistics menu removed (swords have to be found during the game), one more life if you find 99 Talismans, HUD completed (Amulet & Swords statistics), new quest (you have to find the Amulet if you want to have the happy-end), collision enhanced, intro & outro reviewed (extended intro & outro, with better graphics) and much more too, I imagine.
If you want to keep abreast of developments keep an eye on out our forum and the author’s webpage. I have a feline you will.
HyperDrive 2
Nah, it’s not when you get in your car while on a sugar-rush, it’s an old and relatively unknown Acorn Electron game remake.
The city architect was in his “blue period”.
LamptonWorm, one of our forum members, is taking this game into the third dimension and although he only began recently has already shared a very early demo of the game in this forum thread.
Go check it out, what is the worst that can happen?
Planitia
Taking Populous II as a starting point and drifting its way into its own little world, Viridian Games Planitia is a fine offering for those strategy starved readers of Retro Remakes desperate to put their brain cells to some use.
I could write a whole load about the game, but when Viridian has been exhaustively documenting the dev process on his blog - it seems a little pointless to try and summarise everything when the man himself could keep you entertained with tales from the coders chair for a fair while.
In the immortal words of Ministry :- “LAVA!”
You’ll be glad to know that this post also contains a link to the latest beta of the game, yes, we’re not just teases around these here parts. Obviously, when developing this sort of game you can never have too much feedback, so go on - feed him back!
