Retro Reviews
We’re proud ashamed to announce the arrival of a sequence of retro game video reviews here at Remakes Towers via the medium of YouTube.
Recently, we made the discovery that most video reviews with the honourable exception of Yahtzee over on the wonderous Zero Punctuation are in fact rubbish. Honestly, take a wander onto YouTube and see if you can last 2 minutes of some bloke waffling in an incredibly tedious manner over the top of the game footage. No, really - do so. Because if you do, you soon realise that the intertubes are filled with unintentional comedy genius. With this in mind, we decided that it was time to take matters into our own hands.
Of course, it’d be easy to do better - and also, not much fun. So we wondered whether we could possibly do worse. We think we’ve succeeded. The Retro Remakes Retro Reviews plumb depths that you can barely imagine - so much so, that we’re pretty confident that our Retro Reviews are the worst on the entirety of the internet. Our reviews are filled with swearing, microphone pops, inaccuracies, outright lies, faked accents and the sounds of keyboards being bashed senseless. We do so hope you enjoy them.
#1: Caverns Of Kontania
Oddbob approaches Caverns Of Kontania, an action adventure game for the ZX Spectrum. With a stick.
#2: Battle Of The Toothpaste Tubes
Every computer should have a game that involves toothpaste tubes battling it out under the title of Battle Of The Toothpaste Tubes. TCK reviews the game with gusto, enthusiasm and glee.
#3: Drunk Policeman
Examining the phenomena that’s taking over the nation. Policeman getting drunk and sticking small o’s in inverted o’s for fun.
#4: Gyruss
Caff disappears up… well, you know this joke already don’t you?
#5: Samantha Fox Strip Poker
Betpet stops hunting small children to throw into the canal and directs his attention to a pair of jugs. On his table. At least they’re not badly digitised.
#6: Stop Ball
A game about stopping balls.
#7: Killapede
Mushroom! Argh, it’s a snake… or is it just Betpet returning once more to his chair of reviewing brilliance!
#8: Sqij
Caff makes a squidgy sound with his head and a keyboard. Very messy.
#9: Auf Weidershein Pet
Sadly cut short by the arrival of the police at Remakes Towers to arrest everyone involved in this terrible crime against YouTube.
#10: The Ninja Master
Happy Monster dresses in black and manages to hurt his hand on blocks of wood whilst no-one is looking.
Retro Style Round Up
There’s been quite a few interesting projects over the past few weeks making it into the hallowed halls of our Retro Style Games forum (yup, we like those as well as remakes round these here parts) so I figured a front page post was quite in order to get the word (word up!) out there.
First off the block on this cool Sunday morning is the Pixel Joint forum project game thingy - tentatively titled “Pixel Joint: The Game” - it’s been bandied around now for around 3 years over on the PJ forums, but until now - hasn’t really got moving beyond a vague idea of who, what, where. Well, it looks like things are in motion - so you can roll your eyes over this link and find out what it’s all about, Alfie. Awooga, awooga : Forum Link Here.
Viridian has once again coloured our forum an interesting hue by dropping his little feet into the retro style forums to announce a game play video of his Populous inspired work, Planitia. Now, where would we go about trying to find a video link on the internet I wonder? Ah, that’s right - on YouTube!
You can of course, direct comments to our forum, the YouTube thread or indeed Viridian himself if you choose.
Robotix is a multidirectional 2d gunny vehicle thingy (technical terms galore here, chaps) from Teasy, who nipped in to tease us with pictures and a download of episode one for your edification. Go here to find out more.
Oh, and there’s more from the not-entirely-Family Guy-obsessed Karcreat on our forums of Space Zap, a Bluthian styled tribute to laser disc games of old. How about a work in progress video to moisten your eyelids with? Oh, alright - here it comes… it’s coming, honest… it’s here! Word on the street is, it’s juggtacular!
Will you look at the nipples on that monkey? They’re not wrong!
Lastly from our forum, Jonathanmcc (who you might recall Spraydough mentioning in our weekly round up) has dropped a promotional thingy he wrote for his band into the forum. It’s in the style of Defender and you can find it…ummm… *rummages in sock drawer* here.
To bring us to a close, and me one step closer to my cup of tea… Timmeh, the effervescent bubbly poster of non-stoppiness over at his new home on Indiegames.com reports on a couple of 3 Punge entries that make tickle your entry. Sorry, I meant fancy. Nekonikoban (don’t ask me to say that whilst drunk!) and Petit Strikers. We love Tim here at RR and we’re planning on finding a way to tap into his DNA, create many clone Tims so that we never have to post again. If one man can post so much, imagine what an entire army of Tims could do? Ooh, my eyes are going squizzy thinking about it.
Love Me Do
It would seem that our resident furball choker, Mr Rules, has managed to stop licking his bits at us long enough to introduce a brand new mini-competition for Retro Remakes readers and forumites to take part in. As per usual with the mini-comps there’s no prizes kids, it’s just for fun.
Here’s what the cantankerous old flea ridden goit has to say on the matter:
“Love Love me Do, You know I love you… and tuna of course, don’t make me choose. I hate Paul McCartney and Dobermans, just to balance the scales. Your mission should you choose to accept it is to create a game with the theme of love and romance, or brutal and hard fornication, which ever is your forté.
Make it arty, make it gritty, but make it about men and/or women. About the interaction of the genders or even same gender if that’s your thing. (I’m not here to judge I’m here to lick my own genitals.) About love and sex and all that other fun stuff.
There are no restrictions on genre. Back when I was a small kitten I used to enjoy editing the sprites in a game creator to make things like Cock Invaders, such highbrow things as that, so knock yourself out and show us what you are made of.
I’m sure you can get your creative juices flowing nicely and come up with a game concept that is easy to swallow.
Deadline is 11:59pm on 13th of February, so you have a little under three weeks. This should be fine. In fact it is fine because I say so, and I am Mr Rules. Purrrrrrrrr.”
You can follow the kitty litter trail over onto our forum if you’re inclined to take part. Hope to see you all over there!
Winter Games
Doc Frank-N has just buzzed into town on his snow mobile to inform us he has started work on his version of Winter Games. How apt with it being winter and all. You’d think we planned this!
News of a Winter Games remake however, would seem to be enough to make several of our forum members have a pant accident. With updated graphics and teasings of a 2 player Biathlon, this could certainly turn out to be one to keep your eye on.
Your eye mind, not your tongue as that would stick to the frost and cause quite an embarrassing situation.
Blockman
With a passion for retro and a desire to use year and a half old Pacman sprites, Jayenkai has offered us a colourful glimpse into his psyche with his Flicky(ish) game Blockman. The game has evolved through a few different themes, standard Pacman, side on Pacman, Mrs Pacman Does Dallas - oops, getting carried away - he finally settled on the game we have now.
It’s as simple a concept as it gets, guide Blockman through a side on multi level maze and rescue all the little Blockbabies (probably not an official title, to be fair) whilst avoiding the ghosts, spikes, ice and other nasty things.
In an interesting move, Jayenkai has also asked for levels to be designed and posted to be added to future releases so if you feel like you want to help make a game but don’t have the 1337 coding sk1llz, why not have a look? What’s the worst that can happen?
It’s a cracking little play and deserves a thorough seeing to from each and every one of you!
Get it now HERE and drop your maps off on the forum HERE
Weekly Update - 25/01/08
Another REALLY busy week for WIPs this week. Looking at the forums I see no fewer than 6 new projects in varying stages of completion. It puts the most of us to shame, it really does! In no particular order then, and only pausing for breath when absolutely necessary, let’s start with…
Core Runner. ZibboFlorenzano has entered the ring with an almost completed game to kick off the round up this week. For those of you who like nice, pretty vector graphics - and I know you’re out there - this game is gonna knock off your socks. It’s a fly around and collect game that is easy to pick up and play and it just looks stunning! There’s been quite a few vector games remade recently, let’s hope the trend continues.
And so to Frank’n'Stein. Musti, the man to whom sleep is an optional extra when compared to remaking classic platformers, has come up with an early screen shot of his latest challenge. It’s a remake of the Speccy / Amstrad game of the same name. That’s about all I know, he’s being quite secretive about this one…. Get onto his thread and force him to spill the beans!
And from Frank’n'Stein, to a remake by Doc Frank’n. Who said that there was no cohesion in these round ups eh? And it’s a remake that’s already causing a bit of interest, the much requested, and now nicely progressing, Winter Games. You can find a full write up of it elsewhere in the news section so I’ll not look too closely, but keep em peeled for it, as Shaw Taylor would undoubtedly say.
And so onto what could possibly be a first for Retro Remakes, a remake of a game created by one of our very own hands. The game I speak of is Dark Light Battles. Created originally by Happymonster and now a completed remake / port project for Deps. There are binaries for Windows and GP2X with source also available from HERE and you can see a lil screeny below.
And they keep on coming. We don’t get many pure, unadulterated IF games remade around these parts, so when one does come along you would expect it to be one at least some of us would have heard of. Oh no! Jonathanmcc has decided to do little known Melbourne House adventure The Hobbit. Apparently based on a novel by a guy called Tolkien, the original only sold 3 copies and was given the world’s first ‘CRASH SPLASH’. Of course I lie! What can one say about someone who undertakes a project like this apart from. “You’re a brave man Jonathanmcc, now get out of that barrel and give Bard something useful to do!”
And Finally… A man from Cleveland has discovered that his dog is growing an extra paw… Oh, no, hold on, that’s not right… Oh, here goes..
And Finally… If I mentioned the words ‘Smila’, ‘Stu’ and ’something quick’, not only would I get a punch in the face for starting rumours, but you wouldn’t be too surprised to hear me finish the sentence with ‘Yet another remake’. Hunter’s Moon is another of those ‘whilst we were waiting’ games that just makes you feel inadequate that you’ve been coding YOUR game for the last 6 months (not that this is anything personal lads)(GITS). With the lions share of the engine in place I’m expecting a record turn around for this one and don’t believe I’ll be disappointed. Have a screeny too…
Well, I’ve got to go get the skin grafted back on my fingers, would it be petty to ask you lot NOT to be quite so forthcoming next week? Oh, to hell with it - Code on MacDuff!
