Retro Gamer No. 223

DARRAN JONES I’d have to go for KOTOR. It has some great characters, a strong story and plenty of lightsaber-based shenanigans to enjoy Expertise: Juggling a gorgeous wife, two beautiful girls, a SNES-loving cousin and an award-winning magazine, all under one roof! Currently playing: Magic: The Gathering Arena Favourite game of all time: Strider ANDY SALTER The only official Star Wars game I put any real time into was Star Wars Arcade on the 32X. However for unofficial games it would be the Star Wars mod for Escape Velocity on Mac. Expertise: Modding games, no ‘vanilla’ versions for me, thanks! Currently playing: M&B2: Bannerlord… Modded of course Favourite game of all time: Rome: Total War GRAEME MASON Toss up between Jedi Knight and the original Battlefront. The latter really put you into the movies, especially the brilliant Hoth section. Expertise: Adjusting the…

love how much Star Wars videogames have changed over the years. In the early days of gaming many titles that were released were content to focus on recapturing the highs of the original trilogy. After all, who wouldn’t want to blow up the Death Star while speeding down a trench in an X-wing, or bring down a mighty AT-AT with just a snowspeeder? As gaming progressed though, simply replaying the same battles wasn’t enough for me and I hungered for new experiences in the Star Wars universe and while I enjoyed a few books, it was videogames like Dark Forces and the subsequent Jedi Knight series that expanded on the galaxy I enjoyed so much. For our latest feature we’ve spoken to developers from not only those games, but also titles…

Last issue, just as we were going to press, we received the news that our resident homebrew expert Jason Kelk had passed away due to COVID-19. Jason began contributing to the Homebrew section in early 2008 and he continued to contribute every month until he was admitted to hospital with COVID-19 in late March 2020. Darren Nevell has known Jason since school and recalls a particular time when he had his first experience of Jason’s passion for coding. “I was in a local computer shop called The Computer Centre and in walked Jason and a couple of his mates and he said, ‘Hey Darren, great timing as I’m about to show my mates what I’ve been working on.’ He loaded up a scroller that just said The Fifth Protocol flashing in…

If you’re a fan of geek culture you’ll be well aware of De Agostini, a magazine publisher that releases partworks for a number of subjects, including Star Wars, Back To The Future and Iron Man. One of its latest projects is part of its Fanhome range and includes figures dedicated to Capcom’s long-running Street Fighter series and editor Pierre Antoine Mateo was happy to tell us how the collaboration came about. “We met with them at a licensing fair in London,” he tells us. “We explained to them our project and how our collections work and they were very enthusiastic. They helped us a lot in every aspect of the collection.” De Agostini had been planning to create a videogame-based collection for some time and as Pierre explains, Capcom’s long-running series…

If you’ve ever read our Bargain Hunt section you’ll know that the prices of videogames are rising at an alarming rate and it doesn’t seem to be stopping. The Youtube channel GoodwillNCT recently shared a video explaining how one of its members of staff found the rare Atari 2600 game Air Raid while they were checking new stock that had been sent to one of its local stores. Alex Juarez, an e-commerce item processor then made the decision to place the game on Goodwill’s online auction site with a $2,601 reserve and it completely smashed the target, eventually selling for $10,590.79. “It’s kind of surreal,” Alex said in the video. “It’s more of a piece of history rather than just an expensive game to me. It’s weird, knowing that this…

While we’re on the subject of Nintendo there’s a lot of cool titles to look forward to as 2021 winds down. While some will no doubt be excited about the release of an OLED-based Switch, there’s a number of new games on the way that we can’t wait to play. Metroid Dread is a direct sequel to Metroid Fusion and is due to drop 8 October (the same day as the new Switch). It’s a collaboration with MercurySteam and the studio is no stranger to the series having released Metroid: Samus Returns in 2017. Other Nintendo highlights include a remaster of Advance Wars 1 and 2, a brand-new game in the popular WarioWare series and a new Game & Watch which is being released to celebrate Zelda’s 35th anniversary. No doubt…