Classic Replay

New games continually arriving for the Amstrad CPC...  I’ve been playing quite a lot of Amstrad CPC games of late, it's quite easy to forget about the commercial world of gaming if you allow retro gaming to take over. Recently there's been all sorts of 8-bit competitions and some seriously good games have come out the other end. The library of new games and projects in the pipeline is phenomenal, for example, I'm playing Magica and Doomsday Lost Echoes on the CPC at the moment, with the classic Amiga game Pinball Dreams arriving shortly. I haven't even mentioned the new games I'm playing on my other retro systems, but what a fantastic problem to have, seriously though I can't keep up.  I have  Uncharted 4 and the new Tomb Raider just sitting idle on the shelf gathering dust, nowhere near enough hours in the day to play 'em all.   My Amstrad CPC in 2016 has a wad of original titles, on par and exceeding in most cases the stuff I owned as a kid. I...

What's next for Nintendo? The NES Classic has sold out! More have been promised and I've already seen them selling on eBay for crazy prices. Here's the thing, I wager Nintendo are already considering a Super Nintendo classic console, with thirty maybe more great games. Here're fifteen of my own personal must-have games to be included with the system. Star Fox, Super Star Wars, Mario Kart, Mortal Kombat, Super Mario World, Axelay, Street Fighter II Turbo, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, Chrono Trigger, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest, Secret of Mana, Earthworm Jim 2 and Contra III: The Alien Wars. There's much more I'd like to see, but Nintendo can be a bit stingy when it comes to their back catalogue of games, especially the Super Nintendo, you can see this play out with their current availability and pricing structure within the WiiU and 3DS virtual console, so not holding ...

I first played HotShot in 1998, it was a demo that came bundled on cassette with the latest issue of Amstrad Action! I loved it so much, but I was never able to fully experience the game in its entirety. I looked everywhere, but nobody stocked the game, even tried to get it on mail order, but that attempt failed miserably, instead they sent me a copy of Karnov, and I never bothered with mail order again! Strangely, I never to played it under emulation, but now in 2016, I've finally tracked it down, thanks to eBay and it's every bit as challenging as I remember. This is Pinball, Arkanoid and Pong all mashed into one, it feels futuristic and there's a fantastic two player option. No time to spare, I need to get back to being a crack shot! What the press thought!

A brand new and original game for the SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive, to be released on cartridge in winter 2017! About this project  Tanglewood is a brand new and original game for the SEGA Mega Drive, to be released in physical cartridge form in winter 2017. Set in the realm of Tanglewood, the game follows a young creature, Nymn, separated from the pack after the sun sets. Unable to get back to the safety of the family's underground home, Nymn must find a way to survive the night terrors and get to morning. Tanglewood’s world is a dangerous one after dark; guiding Nymn you must use your skills of evasion, traps and trickery to defeat predators. Help back this project by clicking here!

I’m sitting here staring at a blank white Microsoft Word background. My head is swimming with random retro thoughts, however, I haven’t got a clue where I’m gonna go with this, but I'll give it a shot.  I've currently been thinking about all these new remakes i.e. The NES, Megadrive and five hundred other devices that are currently available or incoming. Initially, I was really excited by it all, but in essence, these are just more lumps of plastic that I’ve already collected. In 2016, shouldn't we be able to play all our favourite games on a single platform? For sure we have the PC and Raspberry Pie, but I’m thinking more along the lines of a SEGA console that plays all SEGA games, for example; SMS, Megadrive, Game Gear, 32X, Saturn, and Dreamcast all in one lovely lump of Japanese plastic. The same goes for Nintendo, Atari and any other console manufacturer, sick of the prospect of buying yet another lump of plastic and feeling restricted to only one genre of consol...

Amstrad once competed against the likes of Commodore and Sinclair Spectrum, and was a leading British tech star Before he became a finger pointing “you’re fired” character on a television series, Sir Alan Sugar was the founder of a company called Amstrad. Indeed, the Amstrad name is a contraction of Alan Michael Sugar Trading, and it is fair to say that the company has sold a wide range of tech products in its time. Golden Era Amstrad  was founded back in the 1960s (1968 to be exact with the name AMS Trading) by then plain old Alan Sugar, an  east end businessman and wheeler-dealer . Sugar made his name by marketing and sourcing tech goods cheaply from the Far East, packing them up into useful devices, and making them affordable to the European consumer market. image: http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Amstrad-CPC464.jpg The company began life selling cheap hi-fi systems, amplifiers, televisions and even car stereo cassette players ...

A good sense of speed in a driving game is one of the most vital ingredients, but is there such a thing as too fast? Not many driving games on the Amstrad CPC move at a fair old lick, but Twin Turbo from Codemasters threw out the rule book, breaking the Z80 speed barrier for Amstrad racers. This game is frantic, nerve-shredding almost, where driving dangerously seems to be the norm. Twin Turbo takes the traditional arcade concept where you race to the finish line over five stages. The car resembles a Ferrari, similar to the F40 seen in Turbo Outrun, only faster! The sense of speed is highly convincing, giving you the feeling that you are up against it, with other cars reacting to your movement. Every race feels dangerous, the pace is fast and weaving through traffic, negotiating corners and desperately trying to see over the brow of a hill requires massive concentration and good reflexes. Unfortunately, accidents will happen, in fact, lots of crashes will happen, this is ...

I've always wanted to own this game on the Amstrad CPC, I own it on the Amiga and it's a great game, but unfortunately I'm looking for a replacement disk, as it no longer works. Despite loving this game on the Amiga, I really like the Amstrad CPC version, obviously, it pales in comparison, but I found it highly enjoyable none the less. So a couple of days ago, I stumble across a copy of CC3 on disk for the CPC, manual, poster and all the gubbins included, with the box in almost perfect condition. I put three offers in before the seller finally settled on what I felt was a good deal for the both of us. Today the game arrived and it's in near perfect condition, I'm gobsmacked. It came bubble wrapped up to high heaven, so I carefully opened, slowly peeling back the layers and there it was, a thing of beauty that I'd been tracking down for almost twenty years, my Crazy cars collection is now complete. The game is actually rather cool, ahead of its time almost...

I'm not entirely convinced the first Gran Turismo was a great game. Phew! Glad I got that out of the way. It looked horrendous, cars were blocky as hell and the road and trackside objects would sometimes disappear, only to be replaced by clear blue sky. In fact, it was only during the super sharp replays that I thought "Wow! That's nay bad". Personally, I wasn't mightily impressed with this early form of 3D and I wonder if anyone else feel the same way? In my opinion it just wasn't kind to the eyes. I could see lots of clever things going on, but I couldn't get passed the 'Artex' like display. I didn't feel the horsepower either, it felt a bit 'pedestrian', I had a similar feeling with Porche Challenge, I guess I'm trying to say that I expected something zippier. I wasn't massively impressed with the car detail either, the car's you picked from the showroom look nothing like the actual car that lines up on the grid; to be...

I'm sure gaming enthusiasts everywhere at one point or another have experienced the arcade behemoth that is Power Drift! In my humble opinion, it is still a great racing game, especially when you consider that it was released way back in 1988? I also had the Amstrad CPC version which turned out to be one of the best arcade conversions for the CPC. It looks a bit messy these days, but back then it felt just as fresh and in y' face as the arcade original. Seriously, it was like a roller coaster ride on steroids. I'm now playing the new 3DS port, which was released by Sega on their Classics Collection compilation, but I'm really struggling. Even on the lowest difficulty, I can't make it past the fifth stage, across any of the twenty-five different circuits. Thrilling and exciting this game might be, but far more difficult than I remember. Lucky for SEGA fans, we now have a 3DS port, re-written and lovingly crafted in 3D. As with 'Outrun' released last ye...

Most people associate gaming with kids' classics like Outrun, Space Harrier and Streets of Rage are games that have lived on and continue to live on through adults. Nowadays, it feels as if SEGA has tapped into this and is on a mission to re-release most of their prized possessions, such as PowerDrift, a perfect racer in which you race across all sorts of weird and wonderful structures, or the legendary Outrun, it took me years to properly master this Yu Suzuki classic, it was like no other racer in the world. But it's the imminent arrival of Turbo Outrun that has me real excited, it's not quite "Outrun" I mean you can't really compare the two, for example, the sequel is more of an atmospheric hi-octane race, that transports the player through nearly every road-like extremity. Gone are the branching paths and selectable soundtracks, but it does have better graphics and more features, including upgrading your car between stages, and more importantly, you can...

The SEGA Mega-CD was supposed to be the future of electronic entertainment, but what went wrong? I don't recall that much excitement around the Mega-CD in the UK. However; I do recall being rightly pissed off with Sega for launching the Mega-CD a whole two years after it's initial launch in Japan. By the time I got mine, it was late October 1993... the UK launch price was way more expensive than originally anticipated, and the wait continued until I eventually raised the extra funds. I ended up with a Mega-CD MKII model, but happily handed over my hard earned cash, safe in the knowledge that SEGA couldn't possibly screw things up, in fact thinking about it now, "How did they?". SEGA had brand power, marketing might, and Megadrive established living room space "Surely failure was inconceivable?" I completely forget how many months had flown by, all merges into one after a while, but I do recall being quietly convinced that sales were looking good. The ...

"Crook?" "Inventor?" "Innovator?" or "Bully?"...    For those who don't have Linkedin, I've spared you the pain of signing up in the hope that you will read this damning article of Tim Cook. Completely unjustified in my opinion, I mean didn't Steve Jobs rip off Xerox, doesn't sound very innovative to me? In fact, if it wasn't for George Lucas and the divorce from his wife, he would never have sold Pixar to Jobs for five million dollars. People have short memories. I believe Jobs wrote the book on marketing and sales and was a visionary in regards to product placement in the world, but let's not talk as though he invented it.    This article was written by QuHarrison Terry. You can follow the below link for more detail: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/steve-jobs-knew-tim-cook-would-kill-apples-innovation-terry When we lose a great innovator or leader, there’s a big void that forms in all of us. This longing fo...

It's been a while since I've played the original Sonic CD game on an actual MegaCD, setting the console up can be a messy affair at best, spaghetti quickly comes to mind. For me it was a great console, that never fully realised its true potential, but Sonic CD gave us a glimpse of what might have been. I read an article somewhere last week, that mentioned Sonic CD would be released as a 'Free App of the Week', I got really excited about this announcement, as I've been looking for a good excuse and the right time to play this game on iOS. For me, this is not only the greatest Sonic game ever made, but it featured some of the best locations, level design and music I've ever heard on a Sega console. Everything appears to have survived the transition, from Mega-CD to iOS, only this time they've ditched the 90s 4:3 in favour of a 16:9 aspect ratio, it's not stretched either, as seen with so many other games in the App store, it's as if they've reb...

In a surprising turn of events, Sega has authorised TecToy to bring back their classic Sega Megadrive console in limited edition form. Brazil is the first place the console will be launched, and TecToy are already taking orders. It looks exactly like the classic design of the 90s original, only this time includes an SD Card slot and 22 (allegedly) unforgettable games. TecToy are calling it an 'historic moment' "...but what do you think? Is Sega simply cashing in? Or is this great news for Sega fans?".   Personally, I will probably end up buying one given the chance. I know there's lots of other more affordable alternatives, such as the 'EverDrive', 'Raspberry Pie' and the 'PC' for emulation, but for me you can't beat an original lump of plastic, and that is exactly what this is, with an SD Card bolted on.   For more information... See below link or watch launch trailer http://www.tectoy.com.br/pre-venda-mega-drive-e...