TM

THE EVOLUTION OF THE EVOLUTION OF THE EVOLUTION OF THE EVOLUTION OF

THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO CLASSIC GAMES OLD!

MIKIE

STORM

AGGELOS

JAMES ROLFE

TERRA CRESTA

ROLLING THUNDER 2

ATTACK OF THE

MUTANT CAMELS

WINDJAMMERS 2

R-TYPE DELTA

CRASH

BANDICOOT

AND SPYRO

BEHIND THE SCENES

OF THE SSX SERIES

THE MAKING OF

ALIEN RESURRECTION

HOW TWO NINETIES MASCOTS

JOINED FORCES TO CREATE

THE GBA FUSION SERIES

DISCOVER THE MANY FORMS OF THIS

LATE PLAYSTATION RELEASE

THE MAKING

OF DARK SEED

THE ADVENTURE GAME THAT FUSED

DIFFICULT PUZZLES WITH HR GIGER

PLUS

INSIDE THE HIT PS2 FRANCHISE THAT

ALMOST STARTED OUT ON DREAMCAST

COLLECTING

WILL THE BLUE

BLUR COST YOU A

FORTUNE?

SONIC

GAMES

SONIC

GAMES

ANDREAS AXELSSON REVISITS

HIS FANTASTIC PINBALL SIM

ULTIMATE GUIDE:

PINBALL DREAMS

DAVID PERRY, NICK BRUTY AND

TOMMY TALLARICO ON THE

TRANSFORMATION OF SHINY’S

OUTRAGEOUSLYODD ANNELID

DAVID PERRY, NICK BRUTY AND

TOMMY TALLARICO ON THE

TRANSFORMATION OF SHINY’S

OUTRAGEOUSLYODD ANNELID

b0317180-1dbc-4fe7-b445-0fab5a6a6c7a LOAD 230

b0317180-1dbc-4fe7-b445-0fab5a6a6c7a

THE RETROBATES

DARRAN JONES

For me it’s the outrageously

slick animations and brilliant

character designs. It felt so

different to all the other Mega

Drive games I owned.

Expertise: Juggling a gorgeous

wife, two daughters and an

award-winning magazine all

under one roof!

Currently playing:

The GG Shinobi

Favourite game of all time:

Strider

LOADING...

WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE

EARTHWORM JIM MOMENT?

NICK THORPE

I love quiz shows, so when

Earthworm Jim 2 incorporated a

totally nonsensical one I was a

very happy chap.

Expertise: Owning five Master

Systems and a Mark III

Currently playing:

Detroit: Become Human

Favourite game of all time:

Sonic The Hedgehog

ANDY SALTER

Only thing I remember is the

theme song from the cartoon

series… groovy… never played

the games.

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

TIM EMPEY

“I must not fear. Fear is the

mind-killer. Fear is the little death

that brings total obliteration.”

Dunno why Peter Puppy was

always quoting Dune in the

cartoon, but it made me laugh.

Expertise: Finishing Game

Pass games before they leave

the service

Currently playing:

Far Cry 6

Favourite game of all time:

God Hand

RORY MILNE

I knew Earthworm Jim was

something special when I took

out my first crow with his blaster

in the original Mega Drive game.

He’s just the perfect vehicle

for cartoon violence and wellworked gameplay.

Expertise: The game that I’m

writing about at the time

of writing

Currently playing:

Project Gotham Racing

Favourite game of all time:

Tempest

PAUL ROSE

Launching a cow into space.

’Nuff said.

Expertise: Winging it

Currently playing:

Mini Motorways

Favourite game of all time:

Half-Life 2

PAUL DRURY

Watching my mate Oliver

Wilmot play the sequel on

his Twitch channel. I could

appreciate the level design and

humour with someone skilled on

the joypad, not an idiot like me

struggling through.

Expertise: Sharpie permanent

markers

Currently playing:

Dying Light 2, Stay Human

Favourite game of all time:

Sheep In Space

GRAEME MASON

COW LAUNCHED!

Expertise: Adjusting the tape

azimuth with a screwdriver

Currently playing:

The Outer Worlds

Favourite game of all time:

Resident Evil 4

ANDREW FISHER

While I’m not a big fan of the

games themselves, I did enjoy

the anarchic Earthworm Jim

cartoon series in the Nineties.

Expertise: Forty years of

gaming, from Commodore 64

to Switch

Currently playing:

Robot Jet Action

Favourite game of all time:

Paradroid

T

he Nineties were rife with

platform heroes, from Sonic

and Mario to James Pond and

Superfrog. By far one of my

favourites however was Earthworm Jim, the

zany creation of artist Doug TenNapel.

Just the idea of an earthworm in a

high-powered spacesuit is absurdly silly, so

when the team at the newly formed Shiny

Entertainment saw Doug’s drawings, they

knew they had found the star of the game

that would launch the studio’s name. That

story is told within this very issue, but we

also explore how Shiny’s inventive game

was expanded to the Mega-CD, its sequel

and several other non-Shiny releases. We’ve

even managed to get Tommy Tallarico to tell

us a little bit about Jim’s new adventure for

the incoming Intellivision Amico.

But worry not, if you’re not in the

mood for silly, spacesuit-wearing annelids

then we’ve got plenty of other fantastic

features for you to enjoy, from the story of

Mastertronic’s budget Gauntlet clone Storm

to Konami’s jaunty arcade game Mikie. We

also reveal some of the best Sonic games

to add to your collection, talk to a number

of chiptune maestros and rediscover the

brilliance of Digital Illusions’ Pinball Dreams.

This issue also marks the return of our

revamped Homebrew section which is now

being overseen by Andrew Fisher. We

hope you like the new look.

Stay safe and enjoy the magazine,

Darran

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06 Main News

Crazy news as Microsoft gets in a spending

mood and acquires Activision and Blizzard

for outrageous sums of cash

08 Iain Lee

We know Christmas is a dim and distant

memory for some, but for Iain, it’s all too

keen still

10Mr Biffo

This month Paul is wondering what’s

happened about computer game violence

12A Moment With

We chat to Remute, the acclaimed DJ who

has released his brand-new album on a

Nintendo 64 cartridge

14Back To The Noughties

It’s May 2005 and Nick has uncovered some

of Darran’s old reviews

16Terra Cresta

Darran has been spending his money on

Switch shmups and he’s uncovered this

classic he’d all but forgotten about

34Attack Of The

Mutant Camels

Nick enjoys the weird and wonderful so Jeff

Minter’s game is obviously in his collection

48Rolling Thunder 2

Do you like a good password system?

Darran does and this Namco one is a doozy

66R-Type Delta

Irem’s game may look new and shiny but

it’s also built solidly on the past

92 Sega Touring Car

Championship

Young Nick thought all Sega arcade racing

games were great. Young Nick was wrong

112Disaster: Day Of Crisis

Nick continues his ‘The Wii is retro’

campaign with this Namco gem

FEATURED

50 Ultimate Guide:

Pinball Dreams

Nick plays the hell out of Digital Illusions’ fantastic

debut and quizzes Andreas Axelsson about its creation

RETRO RADAR 36

REVIVALS

48

18

The Evolution Of:

Earthworm Jim

Dave Perry, Nick Bruty and Tommy Tallarico discuss the twisted journey of the iconic

Nineties hero, from his inventive first game to his incoming Amico adventure

CONTENTS

>> Load 230 Breathing new life into classic games

30 The Making Of: Storm

Martyn Carroll chats to the team who made

this rather impressive Gauntlet clone for the

Amstrad CPC and other 8-bit systems

36 Ultimate Guide: Mikie

Did you know there were three different

versions of Konami’s game? Graeme Mason

does and he’s played all of them

42 Classic Moments:

Paperboy

Nick recalls more peaceful times like

clearing an obstacle course or chucking

newspapers through someone’s windows

56 So You Want To Collect…

Sonic Games

If you thought collecting for the blue blur

would be nice and cheap you may need to

reconsider (and bring a bigger wallet)

60 Peripheral Vision:

Network Adaptor

We take a quick look at Sony’s add-on device

that allowed you to play certain PS2 games

online. Which game was essential, though?

68 The History Of: SSX

Adam Barnes revisits this classic PS2 series

with Scott Henshaw, the development

director who worked on the early games

74 The Making Of: Crash

Bandicoot Fusion &

Spyro Fusion

Discover why Vicarious Visions thought a

crossover minigame collection between two

Nineties mascots was a great idea

78 Retro Inspired: Aggelos

We chat to François Perez about coding,

designing and creating the music for this

charming action adventure

80 Chiptune Concerto

Meet the insanely talented chiptune artists

who are still making music on devices like

the Game Boy

84 Hardware Heaven:

PlayStation 3

We’re all getting older and so is Sony’s third

console, that’s why it’s in the mag

4 | RETRO GAMER

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The Making Of:

Alien Resurrection

62 ESSENTIALS

28 Subscriptions

Groovier than completing Earthworm Jim

on a single life

98 Homebrew

2021 was an exceptional year for homebrew

gaming and Andrew Fisher is here to

ensure 2022 will be even better

102 Hot Topic: First Loves

Nick, Tim and Darran remember their very

first systems and videogames

104 Collector’s Corner

Have you got as many consoles as Oliver

Hale? At a guess we’d probably say no

106My Retro Life

Paul Drury is immensely proud of his signed

collection of arcade flyers. We’re

actually rather jealous

108 Mailbag

Keep your letters flowing, we

really enjoy reading them

114 Endgame

Nick’s back to closing off the

mag. It’s a good one

In The Chair:

James Rolfe

The Angry Video Game Nerd on rubbish

videogames and reaching 200 videos

REVIEWS

94 Windjammers 2

96 Melkhior’s Mansion

96 SNK Vs Capcom: Card

Fighters’ Clash

96 Shadow Man:

Remastered

96 Breakout: Recharged

86

44

The Making Of:

Dark Seed

Michael Cranford and Joby Otero recall working

on this twisted Giger-infused adventure game

Don’t forget to follow us online for all your latest retro updates

[email protected]

RetroGamerUK @RetroGamer_Mag

Retro Gamer Magazine @RetroGamerMag

RETRO GAMER | 5

FREE

SU

GIFT

SEE

BSCRIPTION

PAGE 28

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by a group of investors led by presentday CEO Bobby Kotick. A massive

restructuring effort followed and by

1997 Activision started to acquire

companies – first Raven Software, then

over the following years the likes of

Neversoft, Treyarch and Toys For Bob

by 2005. In 2008, Activision merged

with Blizzard owner Vivendi Games to

create Activision Blizzard and overtake

Electronic Arts as gaming’s largest

third-party publisher.

It’s easy to see what Microsoft

stands to gain from this deal.

Activision Blizzard has not only major

game development capacity, but an

enormous library of active intellectual

properties that it could use to bolster

its content offering across Xbox and

PC. Call Of Duty, World Of Warcraft,

Crash Bandicoot, Spyro The Dragon,

Overwatch, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater,

Diablo and more. What’s more, it

gives Microsoft control over plenty of

dormant favourites such as Zork, Pitfall!,

Rock N Roll Racing, Starcraft, Soldier

Of Fortune and Guitar Hero. Any or

all of these could be made exclusive

to Xbox should Microsoft decide to

do so, or alternatively it could enjoy a

major slice of the software sales on

I

ndustry observers will

have taken keen interest

in Microsoft’s game studio

acquisitions over the last few

years – the company swallowed

up eight companies between

2018 and 2020, the largest of

which was Doom and Wolfenstein

owner ZeniMax Media. However,

the company’s latest deal looks set to

dwarf all of those combined as it has

announced plans to purchase Activision

Blizzard for $68.7 billion. If the

acquisition proceeds as planned, it will

be Microsoft’s largest ever, comfortably

surpassing the $26.2 billion it paid for

the business-oriented social network

LinkedIn in 2016.

Activision has been a constant

presence in the videogame market

since 1979, when it was founded

by ex-Atari programmers who were

frustrated with a lack of recognition

and royalties. The company initially

did well with Atari 2600 releases, but

struggled in the wake of the market

crash and by 1986, all of the original

founders had left the company. After

a period of decline and a brief name

change to Mediagenic, the company

was purchased in 1991 for $500,000

CONTENTS

6 ACTIVISION

ACQUISITION

Microsoft buys one of gaming’s biggest

and oldest publishers

8 IAIN LEE

This month our regular columnist

recalls his recent Christmas break

10 MR BIFFO

Paul wants to know why videogame

violence is hardly talked about today

12 A MOMENT WITH

We chat to the German DJ Remute

whose latest album is being released

on a Nintendo 64 cartridge

14 BACK TO THE

NOUGHTIES

Darran’s put his back out so Nick is once

again tasked with travelling back in time

to the mid-Noughties

Microsoft to absorb gaming’s original third-party developer

» [PC] Call Of Duty will become

just one of many iconic FPS series

Microsoft owns – others include

Halo, Doom and Perfect Dark.

ACTIVISION ACQUISITION

» [PC] Back catalogue titles like Starcraft 2 seem like

easy additions to the PC version of Game Pass.

» While Microsoft has said it will continue to

support other platforms, the benefits of enforcing

Xbox exclusivity must be incredibly enticing.

GIVE US TWO MINUTES AND WE'LL GIVE YOU THE RETRO WORLD

6 | RETRO GAMER

b0317180-1dbc-4fe7-b445-0fab5a6a6c7a

» [iOS] The deal also includes King, which

has major success in the mobile market with

games like Candy Crush Soda Saga.

party releases currently do. This could

also potentially remove some barriers

to past games being added to the

backwards compatibility list, although

Microsoft has claimed to be finished

with that project. More speculatively,

the potential for crossovers is intriguing

– you could well see Crash or Spyro

teaming up with Banjo and Kazooie,

or Master Chief appearing as a cameo

character in Overwatch 2.

One area that will be less attractive

for Microsoft is the company culture

that it is taking over. In July 2021,

the California Department Of Fair

Employment And Housing filed a

lawsuit against the company over

allegations of sexual harassment

and discrimination, complaining of a

“pervasive frat boy workplace culture”

and unequal pay between the men

and women in the company. Activision

Blizzard responded to the claims, calling

them “distorted, and in many cases

false” and saying that, “The picture

the DFEH paints is not the Blizzard

Sony and Nintendo platforms, just as it

does with Minecraft today. For its part,

Microsoft has stated that, “Activision

Blizzard games are enjoyed on a variety

of platforms and we plan to continue

to support those communities moving

forward,” suggesting that it leans

towards the latter approach.

For gamers, there are some truly

tantalising prospects resulting from

this deal. Microsoft has already

confirmed its intention to add “as many

Activision Blizzard games as we can”

to Game Pass on Xbox and PC, which

only makes those services a more

attractive proposition, particularly if

new releases go straight on the service

at launch as Microsoft’s major firstworkplace of today.” Employees

dissatisfied with their working

environment have recently staged

walkouts and begun efforts to unionise,

and have stated that those efforts will

continue regardless of the buyout.

Then there’s the CEO, Bobby

Kotick. He is the longest-serving CEO

of any publicly traded technology

company, and the company has

clearly grown enormously under his

leadership. However, he has long been

an unpopular figure with gamers – in

2009 he attracted negative attention

for comments made about wanting

to raise the prices of games further,

in the wake of the financial crisis,

and wanting to “take the fun out of

making games”. In recent months

some sections of the company’s staff

and shareholders have called for him

to resign over the company’s alleged

cultural problems, but Microsoft has

already stated that he will remain in

place as CEO, and upon the conclusion

of the deal will report to Microsoft

Gaming CEO Phil Spencer.

Such a large and complex merger is

of course subject to various hurdles,

including approval from government

regulators and Activision Blizzard’s

shareholders. That means that the deal

isn’t due to close until 2023 and the

two companies will continue to operate

independently for the time being, so

any changes resulting from the

acquisition won’t be made apparent for

some time. Until then, we’ll keep an

eye on this story and update you should

any major developments occur.

» This was the image used to announce the acquisition – interestingly, it focuses primarily on Blizzard games.

» [PlayStation] Crash Bandicoot, once

considered a PlayStation icon, may well

end up Xbox exclusive in the future.

» [Atari 2600] Could we see Pitfall!

revived as an Uncharted competitor?

Probably not, but it’s nice to dream.

U

nfortunately, this month

we bring you further

news of losses within

the game development

community. 22cans head of art

Paul McLaughlin passed away

at the age of 57 in December,

following a long struggle with

cancer. He began his career

with Emerald Software in

Ireland in the late-Eighties, but

soon moved to England to join

Bullfrog, where he worked on

games including Populous II,

Syndicate, Magic Carpet and

Dungeon Keeper. Paul also

joined Peter Molyneux at

Lionhead, working on games

including Black & White and

Fable, before arriving at his

most recent studio.

Stewart Gilray began his

career in the late-Eighties as a

freelance programmer, before

becoming a producer in the

Nineties, working on games

including Pinball Dreams

and In Cold Blood. In 2006

he founded the development

team Just Add Water, which

has created remakes of the

Oddworld games, a new

Micro Machines entry and the

isometric throwback Lumo.

Stewart passed away due to

COVID-19 on 6 January, at the

age of 51. He is survived by

two children and his wife Bec

Gilray, who has since revealed

that Stewart was unvaccinated

due to a severe phobia of

needles, and urged people to

get vaccinated.

Our thoughts are with

the families and friends

of both men.

THOSE

WE’VE LOST

» Stewart Gilray formed Just Add Water in 2006.

VISIT RETROGAMER.NET/FORUM TO HAVE YOUR SAY

RETRO GAMER | 7

RETRORADAR: ACTIVISION ACQUISITION

The deal isn’t due to close until

2023 and the two companies will

continue to operate independently

for the time being

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So that was Christmas

to grips with, well, how to get to grips with it.

I was a disaster and A and K told me at every

available opportunity. It really got me thinking.

I love your Call Of Duties and your Halos, but

there is something magic about playing really

simple games with low-res graphics and easy

concepts. That thrill of calling someone out for a

silly mistake or cheering them on when they’re

close to getting a personal best. Even though we

were miles away, I felt closer to my children than

if they had been here playing different games in

different rooms.

It’s something I’m going to carry into 2022.

If I am feeling lonely I know I can always set up

another gaming session and suddenly the world

isn’t so grey. I love my boys and I can be present

for them whether I’m in the same building or on

the other side of the world.

Right, that’s the last time I mention Christmas

and the other C word. I promise. How’s your

Easter looking?

Steam Deck, the new console which had been

postponed until February anyway. Everything was

running late unfortunately.

Thing is, we still had a lot of fun together

even though we were 30 miles apart. We spent

a good few hours of Christmas Eve on a Zoom

call playing some really dumb games. Ultimate

Chicken Horse is this ridiculous platformer where

you have to travel from A to B. Except you get

given all kinds of weird weapons and traps to

put in the way of your opponents. It’s really silly,

very funny and bloody frustrating. Both me and

the kids regularly screamed how much we hated

the thing. But there was also a lot of laughter

and congratulations when someone completed a

course that looked impossible.

Heave Ho is another dumb game where

you have to hold hands to help make it across

another course. [That sounds like it would

make for a good Fall Guys level - Ed] This one

I struggled with. My brain just could not get

I

t’s behind us now, so do you

mind if I bring up Christmas?

It probably seems weird talking

about it as we hurtle deeper into

2022, but there’s something I really

have to get off my chest.

My Christmas, like that of millions of others,

was not exactly how I planned it. A few days

before, I got COVID. I had it really bad for one

night and then got better pretty quickly. The

physical stuff wasn’t the problem. It was what

went with it, namely, I didn’t get to see my kids

over the ‘festive’ period. That was tough. Isolating

on my own for ten days not being able to hang

out with my two boys.

The first couple of days I was really miserable

and allowed myself to be consumed by selfpity. Then once I accepted it, it actually became

OK. So our gift giving was going to be a week

later? Does that really matter? It didn’t make

too much of a difference as their present was a

We still had a lot of fun

together even though we were

30 miles apart

FEATURING IAIN LEE

COLUMN Who is Iain Lee?

Iain Lee is a freelance broadcaster who loves gaming, particularly retro gaming.

Join him as he hosts a phone-in show and plays games at www.twitch.tv/iainlee

and also check out www.patreon.com/iainandKatherine

8 | RETRO GAMER

Do you agree with Iain’s thoughts? Contact us at:

RetroGamerUK @RetroGamer_Mag [email protected]

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A history

of violence

W

hatever happened to

videogame scare

stories? You know

what I’m talking about,

“Nintendo killed my son!”…

“Videogames brainwash

children!”… “Epidemic of youth violence!”

Every time there was a new Carmageddon,

Mortal Kombat or… I dunno… Endorfun, our

elders would clutch their pearls and shriek that

we were all doomed unless they banned this

sick filth. Or words to that effect. Heck, even

Pokémon got dragged into the general air that

gaming was causing society to crumble, when

an episode of the cartoon was alleged to have

caused seizures.

Spoilers: the world might not be in the best

place right now, but I doubt much of that has

anything remotely to do with Night Trap.

While the videogame nasties uproar may

have appeared as a concerted media and

political campaign to destroy an industry that

was still finding its feet, it’s arguable that these

sorts of stories made games more popular.

The Streisand Effect meant that the more the

media tried to tear down the latest beat-’em-up,

the more curious 12 year olds became. There’s

no fruit so enticing as the forbidden. Take it

from somebody who has been stealing his

neighbour’s apples for the past decade.

History has proven that the gaming-inspired

epidemic of youth violence never materialised.

I don’t know about any of you, but since first

playing Mortal Kombat on the Mega Drive, I’ve

barely done half-a-dozen murders.

Modern games aren’t without their

controversies, of course. These days they

tend to be less about the content of games,

and more about working practices at games

companies, rather than whether games will turn

our children into bloodthirsty maniacs, or cause

seizures. It’s interesting (read: depressing)

how the mainstream tabloids of the Nineties

gleefully pushed a sensationalist ‘videogame

nasties’ agenda, yet today seem less interested

in depressing accusations of institutionalised

sexual misconduct at big games companies.

Even though I’m an old man now, I sort

of miss that feeling of games being a bit

dangerous. Is that tragic? Is that a bit sad that

I, a man who looks and smells like he should

be collecting his pension, regrets one of

his hobbies being a bit less edgy, and more

acceptable, than it once was? As multimedia

corporate products, games are more pipe

and slippers now than something for the

establishment to fear. These days you’d have to

pay a paper to run a videogame scare story.

When did this happen? Grand Theft Auto V

came out in 2013, so is almost old enough now

to be considered retro. Yet, I don’t remember

many negative headlines surrounding its

violence, themes, or casual misogyny – at least,

not outside the need of games websites to feed

opinions into their content furnace.

Perhaps we grew up and took over the

toyshop. Whatever the case, it happened when

nobody noticed. It just sort of petered out. The

tabloids moved on, found new targets and we

just carried on playing our games, the same as

we’d always done.

There’s no fruit

so enticing as the

forbidden

FEATURING DIGITISER’S MR BIFFO

COLUMN Who is Paul Rose?

Paul is probably better known as Mr Biffo – the creator of legendary teletext games magazine

Digitiser. These days, he mostly writes his videogame ramblings over at Digitiser2000.com. If you want

more Biffo in your eyes, you can catch him as the host of Digitizer The Show at www.bit.ly/biffo2000.

10 | RETRO GAMER

Do you agree with Paul’s thoughts? Contact us at:

RetroGamerUK @RetroGamer_Mag [email protected]

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b0317180-1dbc-4fe7-b445-0fab5a6a6c7a

NEWS WALL A MOMENT WITH...

SHOWING OFF COOL RETRO-THEMED STUFF THAT’S GOING ON

12 | RETRO GAMER

sometimes fun and sometimes

crazy as hell as you have to be very

creative to work your way around

various limitations. But overall I think

that these challenges are very helpful

for the creative process and I love to

communicate with machines.

You previously released albums

on SNES, Mega Drive, PC Engine

and Game Boy. Which was the

trickiest to create?

When working on cartridge albums

for various consoles there’s always a

point when I get confronted with THE

limitation that drives me

nuts! I think the most

trickiest album so far has

been the SNES album

The Cult Of Remute.

How so?

Well the SNES audio

RAM is only 64 kilobytes

and so ALL elements of

a song have to fit into

this very tiny storage

space. That was very

challenging for me as I had

to strip down a lot of things. But in the

end it is also a kind of ‘test’ – if a song

survives the process of cutting down

everything that’s unnecessary and just

focuses on the essentials, then it’s a

good song.

Why release your new album on a

Nintendo 64 cartridge?

I wanted to create a ‘spiritual

successor’ to The Cult Of Remute.

I

f you have any interest in

chiptune music you’re probably

already aware of Remute. The

German DJ not only creates some

cracking tunes but has released

albums across a number of gaming

cartridges for systems like the SNES,

Mega Drive and Game Boy. His latest

project is R64, his brand-new album

for the Nintendo 64. Here he tells us

how the project came together.

Were you a big gamer

growing up?

I am a born geek! I’ve grown up

literally surrounded by

home computers and

game consoles and

received my first C64

when I was five years

old. Gaming made me.

When did you decide

to first create music?

I have been releasing

music as ‘Remute’ since

2002 – I was 19 years

old when I put out my

first vinyl record. I have

been making music since my earliest

teenage days, starting when I was

around 13 years old. Then slowly, step

by step, year after year, I transformed

into Remute full time.

How difficult have you found it to

squeeze your music albums onto

videogame cartridges?

Every cartridge album is an adventure

on its own. These adventures are

We chat to the DJ who is taking the N64’s

sound to a whole new level

» You can find a selection of Remute’s work at remute.bandcamp.com

» Remute is a successful DJ and

has released a number of albums

now on various game cartridges.

Remute

» Remute is such a fan of the Nintendo 64 that his next

album is being released on an N64 cartridge.

Rasky has a deep

understanding of the N64

hardware which is in many

ways definitely borderline

rocket science

REMUTE

» A special limited edition of Remute 64 will include a 7-inch record featuring two album tracks.

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what he’s up for next – he really likes

to push the N64 to the maximum.

What influenced the display that

plays when the N64 is on and

does it change for each new track?

There’s also a visual player GUI in

R64 as well. After the title screen

the user gets teleported to a strange,

real-time generated 3D place and

flies over some trippy objects

reminiscent of MTV Partyzone and

various demoscene experiments.

It will get you in a special hypnotic

mood and the direction, shapes

and speed change for every track

(it also reacts to certain track

elements) and even some slight

interaction will be possible.

Why use 8 megabytes of storage

space instead of compression?

Sure, we could have gone down the

‘lazy route’ and compressed some

audio files down to 32 or even 64

megabytes, but that would be totally

unadventurous and also sound quite

bad. We wanted to make something

that gets generated and played back

in real time – just as all my previous

albums before. This saves file storage

space, sounds decent and for this

project 8 megabytes is just enough.

What programs do you use

and what technical hurdles

do you face?

I’ve composed the album with the

multiformat tracker OpenMPT on a

Windows PC. I’ve used the XM file

format which first came out in the

mid-Nineties for Fast Tracker 2 on

MS-DOS. This file format allowed for

extensive usage of samples I recorded

during live sessions in my mostly oldschool synth-based studio. The tricky

hurdle was to edit these sessions

» A lot of Remute’s earlier cartridge albums have now

sold out so you’ll need to look online to find them.

The SNES album was actually based

on many samples and bits I recorded

on countless live jams in my studio

– tediously edited, compressed and

stripped down to fit into 64 kilobytes

of the SNES audio RAM.

Tell us a little about R64.

Well R64 is also based on many live

sessions I recorded with synths like

the Roland JD 990, Novation Peak

or the Korg Prophecy. The way the

N64 handles sound is quite similar to

the SNES – everything is based on

sequenced samples, but here I didn’t

have the harsh limitations like on the

SNES. I had a whopping 8 megabytes

for all songs and no further file size

limits. Compared to the 64 kilobytes

limit per song on the SNES this felt

like heaven. I feel that R64 is my most

diverse and fun album so far.

You are working on R64 with

Rasky, an acclaimed N64 coder.

How did that come about?

I’ve been following Rasky’s work in

the N64 homebrew scene for quite a

time and I was very impressed. So we

got in touch and it was a wonderful

cooperation. Rasky has a deep

understanding of the N64 hardware

which is in many ways definitely

borderline rocket science. I am curious

RETRO GAMER | 13

and choose ‘the essence’ which then

gets thrown into the tracker. When I

finished the songs, Rasky converted

them and integrated them into his

custom-coded XM player engine for

the N64 – this is the wizardry that

works beneath the surface of R64.

Tell us a little about the limited

edition version of R64.

The R64 Plus Edition comes with

an additional blue 7-inch vinyl which

features the two album songs

Superposition and Tradition Und

Moderne. The versions of these

songs are some upgraded mixes

exclusively made for vinyl.

What influences your music?

Electronics, life with electronics,

living electronics.

You clearly love Nintendo’s 64-bit

machine. What soundtracks from

the console do you enjoy?

I absolutely love the Extreme G

soundtrack! It’s a total mid-Nineties

rave techno blast! It perfectly

accentuates the action-packed

gameplay and is filled with energy!

Oh, and of course there’s also the

Tetrisphere soundtrack – fantastic

breakbeats! In general the Nintendo

64 had some great, almost CD-quality

like soundtracks, despite being a

cartridge-based console with very

limited file storage space compared to

CD ROM-based consoles of that era

like the Playstation.

If you like the sound of R64, or

want to learn more about Remute,

visit remute.bandcamp.com

» R64 includes a cool visualiser so you’ve got something

to watch while the album is playing.

» There’s an excellent interview with Remute on RetroRGB. Watch it at https://bit.ly/rgbremute

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14 | RETRO GAMER

THE LATEST NEWS

FROM MAY 2005

O

n 12 May, Microsoft

officially unveiled

its next generation

successor to the

Xbox, via a live MTV show from

Hollywood hosted by Elijah Wood.

The cast of Pimp My Ride provided

a deeper look at the new hardware

and its features, and The Killers were

on hand for a musical performance.

As far as software support was

concerned, the offering was very

heavy on Western developers,

with no notable games from Japan.

Rare’s Perfect Dark Zero received

the lion’s share of attention, thanks

to a behind-the-scenes trip to Rare

and the first look at a networked

multiplayer game. The 22-minute

show also included short clips of

Kameo: Elements Of Power, Project

Gotham Racing 3, Gears Of War,

Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland,

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon 3, Tiger

Woods PGA Tour 06, Need For

Speed: Most Wanted, Madden NFL

06, Quake 4, Call Of Duty 2, The

Darkness and Saints Row.

More detail was provided by

Microsoft in an accompanying press

release. As well as offering the

usual kind of upgrade in computing

power and support for high-definition

TVs, the Xbox 360 promised a

revolution in online connectivity.

Xbox Live would now feature a

unified marketplace for downloadable

content including game demos and

trailers, expansion content and even

full games via the newly emphasised

Xbox Live Arcade service. The new

hardware also sported an easily

detachable hard disk, removable

face plates and support for wireless

controllers as standard, and would be

able to play back media from DVDs

and CDs as well as USB devices and

even via network sources. Microsoft

did not provide launch dates or prices

for the new system.

Of course, the Xbox 360 was the

future. In the present, the biggest

multiplatform game of the month

was Lego Star Wars, which broadly

received good reviews. Scores for

the game included 8/10 from Official

PlayStation 2 Magazine, 7.6/10 from

Official Xbox Magazine, 7/10 from

Edge and 6/10 from XBM. At the high

end of the scale, PC Gamer awarded

the game 87% with Kieron Gillen

commenting that it was “cute and

accessible, but with enough ironic

gags and buried challenge for the

grown ups”, and “as good a place as

any for a gamer to rediscover their

love of fun”. You might think that the

MAY 2005 – It’s not the

biggest gaming month unless

you’re a PC fan, but May 2005

is a big one as we get our first

glimpse at a major new piece

of hardware. Join Nick Thorpe

as he dons the tinfoil hat

and sunglasses he uses

to manage his timetravel allergies

Chinese computer manufacturer

Lenovo bought IBM’s personal

computer business on 1 May,

paying $1.25 billion and assuming

$500 million of IBM debt. Despite

having popular product lines

such as the ThinkPad laptops,

the original PC manufacturer had

wanted to transition away from

selling directly to consumers.

On 5 May, the UK held a general

election in which the Labour Party

won a third consecutive victory,

having campaigned on its record

of economic stability. Tony Blair

remained prime minister with a

majority of 66 MPs and a 35.2%

vote share, but these represented

a loss of 48 seats and a 5.5%

decline in share compared to the

2001 election. The Conservatives,

led by Michael Howard, gained

33 MPs on 32.4% of the vote (up

0.7%). Charles Kennedy’s Liberal

Democrats gained 10 MPs and

increased their vote share from

18.3% to 22%.

In football, Malcolm Glazer

gained control of Manchester

United on 12 May. Glazer had

owned the Tampa Bay Buccaneers

NFL franchise since 1995, and

had been building a stake in

Manchester United since 2003.

On 21 May, Manchester United

became the first team to lose an

FA Cup final via penalty shoot-out.

The Champions League final was

also decided on penalties, with

Liverpool coming back from a 3-0

half time deficit to defeat AC Milan

3-2 in the shoot-out.

NEWS

MAY 2005

[Xbox] With all that green going on, Pariah sure as heck

looks like an Xbox game. Good branding.

[Xbox 360] Joanna Dark emerged

from hiding having had a bit of a

makeover since her N64 days.

[PC] Darran’s low score in games™ proved to be wholly

uncontroversial, generating no online backlash at all.

It’s here! It’s the Xbox 360!

You can stand it on its side

like a PS2 now! Wow!

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RETRO GAMER | 15

MUSIC

1 – Lonely (Akon)

2 – Feel Good Inc (Gorillaz)

3 – (Is This The Way To) Amarillo

(Tony Christie featuring

Peter Kay)

4 – Hate It Or Love It

(Game featuring 50 Cent)

5 – Signs (Snoop Dogg/Charlie

Wilson/Justin Timberlake)

PLAYSTATION 2

1 – Gran Turismo 4 (Sony)

2 – FIFA Street (EA)

3 – Brothers In Arms: Road To

Hill 30 (Ubisoft)

4 – Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s

Awakening (Capcom)

5 – Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

(Konami)

XBOX

1 – Splinter Cell: Chaos

Theory (Ubisoft)

2 – Brothers In Arms: Road To

Hill 30 (Ubisoft)

3 – FIFA Street (EA)

4 – Timesplitters: Future Perfect

(EA)

5 – The Punisher (THQ)

GAMECUBE

1 – Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat

(Nintendo)

2 – The Legend Of Zelda:

Four Swords (Nintendo)

3 – Spongebob Squarepants: The

Movie (THQ)

4 – Donkey Konga (Nintendo)

5 – Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

(Nintendo)

MAY 2005

zz

Darran Jones gave the game 9/10 in

XBM, praising the game’s set pieces

and map editor and describing it as

“the best alternative to two of the

greatest Xbox games ever made”, in

reference to the Halo series. The only

domestic GameCube release worth

getting excited about was Namco’s

Baten Kaitos, which earned 83%

from NGC. The game’s combat was

considered “engaging, rewarding

and strategic enough to make the

inevitable repeated battles bearable”,

but the atmosphere was criticised.

But if anyone got the best format

exclusives this month, it was surely

PC owners. SWAT 4 from Irrational

Games was PC Gamer’s top scoring

game of the month, with the tactical

shooter earning 91% for being “a

game that rewards care and attention

by making you part of a brutally

efficient machine”. If that wasn’t

to your liking, you could opt for a

second helping of superhero realtime strategy in Freedom Force Vs

The Third Reich (88%), submarine

sim sequel Silent Hunter III (88%),

reviewer for games™ was similarly

impressed, having mentioned that

the miniature renditions of iconic

characters “caused a nostalgic tear

of joy to seep from our jaded eyes”.

However, the game scored 4/10 for

being “basic, generic platforming

that simply requires you to collect

lots of different items”, with

“ropey” teammate AI and combat

that consisted of “stodgy button

mashing”. Elsewhere, car modding

fans could enjoy Midnight Club 3:

Dub Edition (84% Play, 8/10 Official

PS2, 8/10 XBM, 6/10 games™)

When it came to exclusive games,

PS2 owners got the Micro Machinesalike Mashed: Fully Loaded (8/10,

Official PS2) and the gory first person

shooter Cold Winter, with Official

PlayStation 2 Magazine declaring it

“shallower than the kids’ end of the

swimming pool, but it’s undeniably

good fun”, in an 8/10 review. Firstperson shooter Pariah made its sole

console appearance on Xbox and

received strong reviews, earning 7/10

from games™ and 8.9/10 from OXM.

real-time strategy in Empire Earth II

(85%), the offbeat driving sequel

Trackmania Sunrise (82%) or the

indie shoot-’em-up Starscape (80%).

Edge awarded Freedom Force Vs The

Third Reich and Trackmania Sunrise

7/10 each, with games™ giving the

latter 8/10 and describing it as “the

most overblown, flashy and ridiculous

racer of the year”.

Handheld fans could at least enjoy

Meteos on the DS, assuming they

had access to import games. The

puzzler earned 5/5 from NGC and

8/10 from Edge, though the latter

cautioned that “it can be beaten, for

the most part, by scrubbing blindly

at the screen”. If you preferred a

different handheld, WipEout Pure

received its first import reviews,

gaining 8/10 from Edge and games™,

with the latter calling the futuristic

racer “another stunning must-have

PSP title”. That’s it for now – join

us next month for reactions to

Microsoft’s big reveal.

[PC] We’re pretty sure a modern SWAT would include a mission where you get a false report at a streamer’s house.

THIS MONTH IN…

Play

“Grand Theft Auto should be set in

other places than America,” says

reader Kevin Martin of Belfast. “An

idea that could work out is having it

set in Northern Ireland during The

Troubles and it could be like in San

Andreas with gangs.” Less than

ten years after the Good Friday

Agreement, we’re sure that couldn’t

possibly go down badly with anyone.

Official Xbox Mag

“It’s going to be a hell of a lot darker,

that’s for sure,” an unnamed Sega

representative tells the Official Xbox

Magazine. “I mean, this guy carries

a gun around. When was the last

time you saw Sonic packing?” Yes,

Sonic’s frenemy Shadow is getting a

spin-off game. “It’s like KOTOR with

hedgehogs,” says Sega’s source,

straining credibility.

Cube

Tim’s not impressed with Dragon

Ball Z: Budokai 2, which “isn’t really

a fighting game”. He gives it 6.2/10

and decides that it’s better left “for

the few remaining fans of a dying and

dull series”. We wonder if he played

Dragon Ball Fighter Z? Meanwhile,

Ryan King likes Trunks because “he’s

got grey hair like an old man but in

fact, he’s a little boy”.

BACK TO THE NOUGHTIES: MAY 2005

[DS] “No scrubs allowed” takes on a very different

meaning when playing multiplayer in Meteos.

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RETROREVIVAL »

» ARCADE » 1985 » NICHIBUTSU

I’m a huge fan of Hamster’s Arcade Archives range

and have been pestering the publisher so we can

write an article for ages. Hamster has released a huge

number of arcade and Neo Geo ports for the Switch and

PS4 and many of them are shmups. Needless to say, I

try to pick up its games whenever I get the opportunity.

One of my most recent purchases was Terra Cresta, which I grabbed

in the sales along with Terra Force (which is by the same developer, but

I’m not sure is part of the same series). I didn’t play it much in the arcades,

but my burning memory of the game was that you could transform into a

fiery phoenix which was reminiscent of the ship transformation in Battle Of

The Planets, a cartoon I absolutely loved as a kid.

The thing is though, I couldn’t work out how to actually make the ship

transform. I knew you had to shoot the fifth hangar (ship parts are locked

down until you free them) but the few times I was able to reach it, all I got

was a lousy single ship part. Of course, what I didn’t know then (due to

the cabinet in our local arcade being Japanese) was that you have to have

all five ship parts in order to turn into a phoenix and gain invulnerability for

eight precious seconds.

This is easier said than done, because Terra Cresta is a challenging game

that punishes careless play. Enemies come at you in clever waves and

sometimes configurations will change based on where your ship is positioned.

They’ll often change their velocity too, which can also catch you out and you’ll

often blunder into them as a result.

You’ll stick with it though, as Terra Cresta is a fantastic evolution of Moon

Cresta, keeping the multi-ship aspect but cleverly expanding it so that you can

now detach your ship parts and create different weapons based on what parts

you’ve collected. Hell, you can even see the DNA of Nichibutsu’s later game

Armed Formation F in it, which is also in Hamster’s range. It has taken me 37

long years but I’ve finally unlocked Terra Cresta’s phoenix while hammering the

online leaderboards. Needless to say I’m rather chuffed with myself.

Terra Cresta

DEFINITELY WORTH THE WAIT

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THE EVOLUTION OF THE EVOLUTION OF THE EVOLUTION OF THE EVOLUTION OF

Having made a

string of hits for

Virgin Interactive,

a number of its

developers left

to form Shiny

Entertainment. David

Perry, Nick Bruty

and Tommy Tallarico

discuss Earthworm

Jim, the series it

led to and their

new efforts to

continue the series

WORDS BY RORY MILNE

DAVID PERRY

» Programming was just

one of David’s roles on the

original Earthworm Jim.

NICK BRUTY

» Nick did graphics and

design work on the Sega

Earthworm Jim games.

TOMMY TALLARICO

» The crazy tunes that feature

in the first three games are

courtesy of Tommy.

18 | RETRO GAMER

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THE EVOLUTION OF: EARTHWORM JIM

N

o matter how much freedom the

creators of a licensed game are given,

their design must include certain

elements and avoid using others.

Virgin Interactive’s in-house development

team walked this line for several years during

the Nineties, producing hits like Global

Gladiators, Cool Spot and Disney’s Aladdin.

Virgin’s musician on these titles was Tommy

Tallarico, who remembers the experience as

a pleasure rather than a chore. “We worked

on a string of amazing games there,” Tommy

reviews. “I think it just goes to show how

gelled the team really was, and how important

the friendships we all had were. We were

pretty much all single guys at the time, in our

early to mid-20s, and we just wanted to make

great videogames. No one ever asked us to

work late or work on the weekends; we just

did. We were just so excited to be creating

something that we felt was so special – with

each one of those games.”

But however good things were at Virgin,

the massive success of Aladdin convinced

several of its in-house development team to

part ways with their employer and form Shiny

Entertainment. They hoped to work on another

big licence, but as artist/designer Nick Bruty

explains, things didn’t quite go to plan. “When

we left Virgin to start Shiny we were hoping

to convince Disney to give us The Lion King

licence to follow up Aladdin,” Nick remembers.

“But Disney stuck with Virgin, so that left us in

search of a new licence or an original property

for our first game. Doug TenNapel had joined

Virgin shortly before we left, and Mike Dietz –

our animation director – suggested we meet

with Doug, because he was working on his own

original character creations.”

A lack of licensed alternatives to The Lion

King soon led to Nick and Shiny founder

David Perry doing just that, as the former

coder recalls. “We just couldn’t find a licensed

project we were excited by,” David notes.

“But Doug was interviewing and we got to

see Earthworm Jim, and that’s what not only

got him hired but also pulled us away from

licensed games. He drew Professor MonkeyFor-A-Head, and I thought it was so funny,

probably the most insane character I’d ever

seen. If our game wasn’t starring Earthworm

Jim I’d have wanted to make a Professor

Monkey-For-A-Head game!”

The professor would still appear in Shiny’s

debut, however, as would many of Doug’s

other creations, including one that Nick

remembers the artist pitching at his interview.

“Dave and I had just been looking over

THE BRAVE ATTEMPT TO TAKE JIM

INTO THE THIRD DIMENSION

n To give credit where it’s due, the

developers of Earthworm Jim 3D tried

to retain everything they could from the

earlier games. Jim’s head whip and blaster

survive the transition from 2D, for example,

and the sequel’s new weapons are suitably

surreal – especially its Gnome Bazooka! The

majority of the platforming mechanics from

the original games are present too, but the

trouble is that their transition into 3D just

doesn’t work too well, and this is exacerbated

by the camera not always self-aligning itself

with the direction that Jim is facing.

Much more successful is the 3D sequel’s

approach to humour, and although this

doesn’t quite nail the wildly inventive

insanity of the games it tries to channel,

there are certainly moments in its narrative

that have you laughing out loud – Jim

playing an udder like the bagpipes and

riding around on an upside-down pig being

just two examples! But just the fact that

it has a narrative seems to go against the

grain. If the original titles had storylines

then they were really beside the point, and

they certainly didn’t put their gameplay on

hold so that non-player characters could

advance their plots.

Earthworm Jim 3D does look the part

in terms of its depictions of the returning

cast, however, and its new characters don’t

look out of place, but its focus on collecting

numerous marbles and killing off endless

foot soldiers isn’t nearly as much fun as

taking a trip through the crazy and eclectic

levels of the original games.

STAGES OF EVOLUTION:

» [Mega Drive] Doug TenNapel suggested Earthworm Jim’s hellish

What The Heck? level should be plagued by lawyers!

» [Mega Drive] Earthworm Jim was clearly influenced by Global

Gladiators’ open-world platforming and ranged weapons.

“TEX AVERY WAS A BIG

INSPIRATION TO THE

ANIMATION TEAM. THE

ANIMATORS HAD HIS

LASERDISCS PLAYING ALL

THE TIME WITH JOHNNY

CASH IN THE BACKGROUND”

DAVID PERRY

RETRO GAMER | 19

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n It’s far from a bad game, but Earthworm

Jim: Menace 2 The Galaxy could have

easily been based around any number of

franchises; there’s just nothing about it that’s

uniquely Earthworm Jim. That said, it does

have bosses from the original titles, and

battles with the likes of Bob The Goldfish are

by far the most original aspect of the Game

Boy Color sequel.

Otherwise, Menace 2 The Galaxy is a

collect-a-thon, with much of the time spent

bouncing between platforms in search of

what look like giant doughnuts. Occasionally

you use your blaster to dispatch level-themed

foes – little green men in its space level,

science experiments in its lab level and so on,

but otherwise your goal is to collect things.

In terms of interactive features, the

handheld sequel better reflects its

predecessors. There are zip lines straight out

of the first game, and ropes suspended over

steep falls that mirror the original’s hanging

chains. You can even blast your way along

some in reference to the mechanics of the

original, which is a nice touch.

The Game Boy Color title’s levels aren’t

the most imaginative, but there are nods to

the humour of the original games – such as

Jim warping between sections by jumping

down toilets, and bouncing on sheep to reach

higher areas. Although these sorts of surreal

diversions are few and far between.

In the main, Earthworm Jim: Menace 2

The Galaxy involves hopping from platform

to platform, which is a real shame given the

potential of the licence.

STAGES OF EVOLUTION:

THE HANDHELD SYSTEM

EXCLUSIVE THAT FELL SHORT

» [Mega Drive] Earthworm Jim’s submarine maze race is just one of the game’s seriously tricky challenges.

» [Mega Drive] Jumping between balloons in Cool Spot

led to swinging between hooks in Earthworm Jim.

» [Mega Drive] Where Aladdin has suspended vines, Earthworm

Jim has chains strung between platforms to negotiate.

» [SNES] Shiny’s SNES Earthworm

Jim features background art on levels

where the original didn’t have any.

20 | RETRO GAMER

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THE EVOLUTION OF: EARTHWORM JIM

licensed IPs from a Hollywood agent, and

they were all rather dreadful,” Nick sighs.

“Then Doug showed us a single image of Jim,

and we were sold instantly. Jim really was a

perfect videogame character. I think Doug had

about three or four other characters in place

by then too. I remember falling in love with

Evil The Cat, so I made sure his was the first

level I’d be working on.”

Of course, Doug’s character sketches

had to be animated for Shiny’s game, and

David remembers two very different artists

influencing his animators. “Tex Avery was a

big inspiration to the animation team,” David

acknowledges. “That style of animation was

really funny, like when someone got punched

and their whole head turned into a U shape!

Back then, the animators had his Laserdiscs

playing all the time with Johnny Cash music in

the background. That combo ended up making

them do crazy stuff!”

I

n keeping with Earthworm Jim’s

cartoon-inspired physical humour, Shiny’s

character was made to sound equally

amusing, thanks to the project’s musician

Tommy Tallarico. “We were all asking what sort

of voice Jim should have,” Tommy ponders,

“so I said I thought it would

be funny if he had this

Southern drawl, and make

him this back-town kind of

guy that went, ‘Gr-oo-vy!

Yeah! Woo-hoo!’ I said to

Doug that we ought to have

him as the voice, because

he’s quite the comedian.

One thing we thought would

be good was if Jim always

stated the obvious. Like he

got a manta power-up, and

just said, ‘Mant-a!’ Or he got a

gun and said, ‘Plas-ma!’”

Given the Shiny team’s track record, it’s

unsurprising that they broadly designed

Earthworm Jim as a platformer, although their

approach was decidedly ad hoc. “We had

just come off making Aladdin for Disney on

the Sega Genesis, so we were very interested

in making more platform games,” David

enthuses. “The challenge was that we didn’t

have a design document, so instead we used

the, ‘That feels good’, ‘That would be funny if…’

strategy, and it worked out nicely. It meant the

game didn’t get stale as it was impossible to

know what was coming next.”

After working with so many licences, Nick

viewed Earthworm Jim as a breath of fresh

air, although he saw an upside to his team’s

previous projects all being platformers. “With

Jim we were free to do what we wanted,” Nick

beams. “We had just made a series of licensed

titles, and as you might imagine there wasn’t

a whole lot of artistic freedom when working

with publishers like Disney. But having made

numerous platformers, Dave’s game engine

was very robust, so it was fun just trying to

push it in new directions. The smaller levels

were interesting to work on, as you could

use up all the memory on just one to two

screens worth of play.”

The design of Earthworm Jim’s opening

level certainly pushed David’s engine, but as

he points out, Shiny stopped short of making

its junkyard boss Chuck edible! “Over the

years, I had found a pretty cool way to make

games, where you had your own programming

language running inside the game engine. That

meant any object could do just about anything,

so you could have Chuck driving equipment,

or you could have a sandwich doing it! It was

insanely flexible, so it really just needed crazy

ideas, and we had plenty of those.”

The crazy ideas fuelling Earthworm Jim’s

design came out of the Shiny team joking

around, and as Tommy recollects, taking the

joke too far was all part of the process. “We

never had a game design. Where we started

was with the humour, and that dictated how

we made the game. So I remember somebody

saying it would be funny if we launched a

chicken up in the air! Then maybe it would

be funnier if it was something that didn’t fly.

So what if we had something heavy fall and

launch a cow up in the air? How about an old

refrigerator? What if we were in a junkyard?

Boom! So the gag came first,

and as we talked it through

the level came together.”

On bringing these

discussions to life on the

screen, Nick describes

the task as building

compelling environments

around the aesthetics of

Doug TenNapel’s character

designs. “Since Doug had

most of the characters

in place by the time we

met, what we added was

really the surrounding

world of the game. We were really just trying

to come up with what would be interesting

levels – something different for players to see.

We would discuss certain points within them,

where we were going to have end-bosses and

what characters we were going to have. So

the background artists were also the game

designers, it all went hand in hand back then.”

In the same way that Earthworm Jim’s levels

complemented Doug’s crazy characters, the

music Tommy selected for the stages reflected

their wacky objectives. “When you first saw

the Andy Asteroids level Jim was riding on his

rocket through space, and any normal person

would make it sound like Star Wars – or have

techno music or something. But what would be

funnier, because he was from the South, was

to play banjo music! For Heck – Evil The Cat, I

used Mussorgsky’s Night On Bald Mountain,

the joke being that when it got really serious I

did a record scratch, where Evil The Cat played

elevator music to torture you!”

As well as a gag soundtrack, Earthworm

Jim’s hellish second level ended up with

eclectic opponents, and thanks to Nick some

“WE NEVER HAD

A GAME DESIGN.

WHERE WE STARTED

WAS WITH THE

HUMOUR, AND THAT

DICTATED HOW WE

MADE THE GAME”

TOMMY TALLARICO

» The original Earthworm Jim team, many of

whom are working on the new Amico title.

» [Mega-CD] The extended New Junk City level in

Earthworm Jim Special Edition sees Jim stripped naked.

» [Mega Drive] The series of

eclectic levels in Earthworm Jim

includes one based around a

bungee-jumping battle!

» [Mega Drive] The Intestinal

Distress stage in Earthworm

Jim was designed just days

before the game’s release.

RETRO GAMER | 21

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new level, the design of which fell to Nick. “I

consider the Mega-CD version to be the best

version,” Nick beams. “Our publisher wanted to

strike while the iron was hot, and to release the

CD version with a whole new level. I was kind of

hoping that would fall to someone else, as I had

just come up with Intestinal Distress. I didn’t

have a start point or an idea in mind when I

started working on it. I just kind of mindlessly

drew some planks of wood, and it grew from

there like the ramshackle level it was.”

More a product of evolution than the end

result of team meetings, Nick’s exclusive

Mega-CD level was given a boss that its

animators named after the stage’s designer. “It

started to look like a crazy assault course, and

I thought it might be cool if you were chased. I

asked the animators for a slobbering monster

that you had to tease to come after you. I

think they were also short of ideas, and they

named the creature Big Bruty. I could say that

I was thinking of the game as a whole when

designing this, but looking back it feels quite

different, kind of creepy. And that’s OK.”

Given the urgency for Earthworm Jim Special

Edition, it’s no wonder that it just had one new

level. With more time, David imagines it would

have had various new stages.

really mad scramble at the end there. The last

level I did – Intestinal Distress – I made that in

a day and a half, and I played through it maybe

twice before it went off, so I was

a nervous wreck over that and

I’m just amazed that anyone

actually got through it.”

Players got their first

chance to play Intestinal

Distress when Earthworm Jim

debuted at a US trade show,

and thanks to a friend of Nick’s

this was a huge success.

“Playmates was showing Jim

for the first time, but it just

had a tiny little monitor – you

couldn’t even see it! But we

had a friend who had his own stand. We were

telling him how disappointed we were, and

he was like, ‘Do you want some of my space?’

So we went out and rented a rear-projection

TV and got hold of a Genesis, and hooked up

Earthworm Jim properly. That was the first time

we got a sense of how people responded to the

game, and that was a real buzz!”

Soon after, Playmates asked Shiny for a

Mega-CD version – Earthworm Jim Special

Edition, to include extended stages and a

quite unusual modes of transport. “The

animators would often come up with enemies

– I think it was Doug who wanted the lawyers

for Heck, but then I felt we needed something

flying around the open areas and came up

with the black smokey things with teeth. The

animators were busy, so I animated them

myself. At the time I was playing around

with 3D rendering, and I made the

spinning jewels, which eventually

turned into elevators. So a lot of things

just kind of got thrown in due to the

short development time.”

I

n addition to working to a tight deadline,

Shiny received word that Earthworm Jim

would be expected to support related

projects, which was enough to make Nick’s

head spin. “We didn’t know how successful Jim

was going to be, and it was all very, very quick.

We were working with a publisher – Playmates,

who was initially funding it, and this was its

first videogame. It was like, ‘Hey! We think we

can make this into a toy line!’ That was halfway

through Earthworm Jim. Then it was like, ‘And

we’re going to do a TV show, because that

will promote the toy line.’ So everything was

happening all at the same time, and we didn’t

get a chance to catch our breath.”

Although not the only level designer on

Earthworm Jim, Nick did create the lion’s

share, which included a last

minute effort that left him

exhausted and on-edge. “I

handled a lot of the levels,

especially at the end where

Sega asked for a new one

days before we were going

to publish. That made it a

» [Mega-CD] The Big Bruty stage was especially created

for Earthworm Jim Special Edition by Nick Bruty.

» [Mega Drive] Cows are Shiny’s mascot, so Jim carrying

them around in Earthworm Jim 2 makes perfect sense!

» [Mega-CD]

Earthworm Jim

Special Edition’s

What The Heck?

stage is bigger

than the original’s.

» [Mega Drive] Sidekick Peter

Puppy Hulks-out to lively

Italian music in a recurring

Earthworm Jim 2 level.

“OUR PUBLISHER

WANTED TO STRIKE

WHILE THE IRON

WAS HOT, AND TO

RELEASE THE CD

VERSION WITH A

WHOLE NEW LEVEL”

NICK BRUTY

22 | RETRO GAMER

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THE EVOLUTION OF: EARTHWORM JIM

n Rather than the dream sequel planned

by the creators of the original Earthworm

Jim game, the half-finished PSP iteration

was put together by an internal Shiny team,

long after its founders had left the formerly

prestigious firm.

The one fully completed level from the

reboot is a return to New Junk City, where

Jim is given a gem-collecting sidequest and

an upgradeable super suit. The new abilities

it offers him include being able to stick to the

sides of platforms by the soles of his boots,

run fast along conveyor belts against their

direction of travel and fly short distances

using jets built into his footwear. Jim’s

enhanced exoskeleton is also far stretchier

than before, which allows him to squeeze

through narrow spaces.

His trusty blaster is much like it was in

the original games, but the portable

PlayStation title boasts a new head whip

move, where Jim’s suit swings the hapless

worm around and around, battering

everything in his path as he goes!

The partially completed PSP title brings

the crows back from the original’s New Junk

City, although they have cybernetic cranial

implants for some reason. The junkyard dogs

from Jim’s debut also make a reappearance,

and they’ve been taught the new trick of

spinning around like mini tornados. Billy

The Bin makes his return in the PSP title

too, although the boss is less cartoony than

he was in the first Earthworm Jim game,

which is true of the general approach to the

unfinished and unreleased PSP outing.

STAGES OF EVOLUTION:

THE CANCELLED REBOOT WITH

SUPER SUIT UPGRADES

RETRO GAMER | 23

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“I liked a nice mix of

platform levels, and then

minigame levels. The

minigames were more

fun to develop – like

the underwater glass

submarines. It was also

fun to add memorable

moments – like riding the

giant hamster. So given more time I’d have

wanted to add a mix of all three of those.”

A

s things turned out, not only was

there no time to give Special Edition

more new stages, but Shiny also went

straight on from getting it shipped to

making Earthworm Jim 2. “It’s a shame we

didn’t have more time,” Nick reflects. “Not

necessarily for development itself, but just to

have a creative break for a while so we could

hit the sequel feeling fresh – especially as this

ended up being our last 16-bit title. So I’m

not sure why the push was there for a quick

turnaround on Earthworm Jim 2.”

Naturally, there was commercial pressure

to release the follow-up, but David offers

an additional reason for rolling on from one

Earthworm Jim game to the next. “When you

had a team of people that were used to making

games fast, they couldn’t just sit around. They

were bubbling with ideas, and just needed to

keep going. It didn’t feel like work, we were

happy to experiment with ideas, and when it

felt right we just kept moving forward.”

Earthworm Jim had certainly been full of

experimental ideas, but the stages being

imagined for its follow-up upped the ante, with

one being based around carrying cows! “We

liked the game to be a roller-coaster,” David

n There’s not a lot to say about the HD

Earthworm Jim’s take on the original’s levels.

They’re rendered in a higher resolution,

obviously, and then whether they look nicer

or not is in the eye of the beholder. They

play exactly the same, aside from giving

you pre-level hints and in-game arrows

that point you in the direction you should

be going. Other than that, the bosses in the

HD remake’s versions of the original game’s

stages have on-screen health meters, which

the original lacked.

More interesting are the new levels in the

HD adaptation, the more successful of which

are the multiplayer ones. Each one is set in

one of the environments from the original

game, but with entirely different layouts

and fresh challenges designed to encourage

co-op play. They’re best described as chaotic

fun, and this is at least partly because they

borrow mechanics from the original game’s

levels. But the clever way that the camera

in the two-to-four player challenges pans in

and out depending on how close or far away

players are from each other definitely helps.

The new single-player stages in the HD

game are set inside a games console, and

these feature both fresh mechanics and some

from the original game. New opponents

include a keyboard-playing cat, a jetpackwearing granny and a swarm of locusts!

Purists may prefer the original game’s

visuals, but the HD update’s new solo levels

and multiplayer mode make it a must-play

title – if only it hadn’t been taken offline.

STAGES OF EVOLUTION:

THE HD REMAKE WITH EXTRA CONTENT

AND A MULTIPLAYER MODE

» [Mega Drive]

As with many of

Earthworm Jim 2’s

stages, the sequel’s

finale involves very

little shooting.

“EARTHWORM JIM 2 WAS

MUCH MORE RANDOM

AND LOOSE. IT WAS

INTERESTING IN ITS

OWN RIGHT, BUT IT

DIDN’T FEEL LIKE A

SINGULAR VISION”

NICK BRUTY

24 | RETRO GAMER

b0317180-1dbc-4fe7-b445-0fab5a6a6c7a

THE EVOLUTION OF: EARTHWORM JIM

considers, “so there was running,

shooting, new control systems,

weapons, and of course you ended

up as a defenceless naked worm

at times. The goal was to keep the

gamer on their toes. Cows were the

mascot of Shiny, so they could be

included anywhere and that would

be just fine. Moo!”

The soundtrack for Earthworm Jim 2 was

Tommy’s attempt to outdo its predecessor, in

that he wanted to have even funnier music in

the sequel than he had in the original. “You

know what the Earthworm Jim games were?

It was ten guys in a room trying to make each

other laugh every day. So I’d use polka music or

carnival music. Or we’d be in a dark cave, and

I’d use Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata! Italian

music is kind of funny – you wouldn’t expect

that! So La Tarantella, Funiculì Funiculà, I did

a kind of combination of those two. I started

thinking, ‘Oh Peter Puppy’s doing this, so let’s

put that tune in for that.’”

But while bouncing Peter Puppy around

to Italian music brought fun to the follow-up,

spanning multiple genres meant having

fewer run-and-gun stages than the original.

“There wasn’t a conscious effort to have less

shooting,” Nick clarifies. “I just think everyone

felt we needed to keep pushing boundaries,

and keep things interesting for ourselves.

Looking back, I wish we had more run-and-gun

platform levels. It would have required more

effort to make them feel fresh and creative, but

I feel they’re Jim’s bread and butter levels.”

P

layers’ reactions reflected Nick’s

concerns on the sequel’s release; it was

a great game that fell short of Jim’s

first outing. Nick puts this down to its

episodic nature. “The biggest problem I felt with

Earthworm Jim 2, and all of its many gameplay

styles, was that it felt less cohesive than the first

one. The first game was kind of random, but it

was held together by the characters: Heck was

built around Evil The Cat, The Lab was built

around the Professor – and so on. Earthworm

Jim 2 was much more random and loose. It was

interesting in its own right, but it didn’t feel like

a singular vision like the first one did.”

Although the Shiny team moved onto other

projects after Earthworm Jim 2 came out,

the hero’s animated TV show aired around

this time, and he also appeared in print. “The

cartoon was such an exciting step; we had a

videogame, a toy line and now a TV show,”

David enthuses. “Doug worked closely on the

creative side, and the result was funny! Then

Marvel ended up doing an Earthworm Jim

comic book series, which is now pretty rare – I

saw a mint copy on eBay for $999.”

In the following years, Earthworm Jim had

cameos in Clay Fighter 63 1/3 and the DOS

version of Battle Arena Toshinden, then in 1999

he starred in two non-Shiny titles: Earthworm

Jim 3D and Earthworm Jim: Menace 2 The

Galaxy. “Interplay wanted Earthworm Jim to

have cameo appearances in those games, and I

had no issues there. It was just for fun!” David

grins. “We had no problem with other people

making Earthworm Jim games either; we just

weren’t involved in them.”

Although he left 2D design behind for

polygon-based development after finishing

work on Earthworm Jim 2, Nick felt that

» [SNES] Unlike Shiny’s

Mega Drive Earthworm

Jim 2, the firm’s SNES

version begins at night.

RETRO GAMER | 25

» [PC] It’s worth beating the

PC Battle Arena Toshinden in

order to unlock Earthworm

Jim as a fighter.

» The Nineties Earthworm

Jim cartoon was in the

works long before the

original game came out.

b0317180-1dbc-4fe7-b445-0fab5a6a6c7a

speaker and microphone, and having multiple

players – are you kidding me?! You know, it is

really funny! So we’re designing something

unique just for the Amico, and that really

enhances the joke aspect of it.”

Reviewing the gameplay in place so far for

the in-development Amico Earthworm Jim,

Tommy highlights its accessibility, multiplayer

mode and returning characters. “One of the

things with the first two games was that

they were difficult, so in that regard the new

game will be more accessible and a little less

frustrating. But the characters will be making a

return, and because of the multiplayer aspect

wouldn’t it be cool if you could play as some of

them? So you’ll get an opportunity to play as

Professor Monkey-For-A-Head!”

T

he long wait for the original Earthworm

Jim team to continue their hero’s

adventures is nearly over, although a

cautious Tommy doesn’t want to overpromise. “Because of the whole COVID crisis

I would say that we’re probably looking at

2023. We don’t even really have the name of

the new Jim game exactly. The working title is

Earthworm Jim 4, but I always thought it would

be funny to call it Earthworm Jim 3 – For Real

This Time! Just for a little controversy, and a

little humour. But it really is the third game that

the original team has worked on.”

As an investor in the Amico, David is

obviously fully behind the new Earthworm

Jim title for the system, but he’s also keen to

see the character’s new TV show. “Intellivision

has managed to get the rights to make an

Earthworm Jim game, and the support of

the original team, so it technically stands

the best chance of being authentic. I’m also

really excited that Interplay is bringing back

Earthworm Jim as a TV show. I’m not currently

Shiny should have given its hero a trilogy.

“I always had a feel about those games, not

that I should compare them to Indiana Jones,

but I felt like Jim was our Raiders and Jim 2, to

me, felt like Temple Of Doom – so not as much

fun but still good. But we never got a chance

to make our Last Crusade, where everything

would have normalised a bit and we could have

attacked it with some fresh energy, so that was

a little bit of unfinished business.”

In 2006, that unfinished business was

almost addressed, when an Earthworm Jim

game for Sony’s PSP was approved, with

David and his former team on board. “I was

trying to get the original Earthworm Jim

team back together, funded by Atari. It was a

thumbs-up from the key people, and so we

started thinking of ideas. The problem was

that Atari then told me that it couldn’t fund

the game. I ended up leaving Shiny, but I

believe its internal staff continued to work on

Earthworm Jim PSP for a while longer.”

In light of his purely business role at Shiny

before he left, it follows that David wouldn’t

have much to do with Earthworm Jim PSP,

and as Tommy notes, the original team had no

input at all. “We were trying to work on that,

and we had meetings, and then it just kind of

fell through with Infogrames and Atari. We

gave an offer to do it for next to nothing, and

they just passed on it. Then they started to do it

internally, but it never came out. I think I played

one level of it, and it just didn’t look like Jim.”

Following the disappointment of the PSP title,

a new Earthworm Jim game was announced

by Tommy in 2019 for his firm’s Intellivision

Amico console, with many of the original team

signed on. “When we started designing it we

thought, ‘What are some of the funny situations

we could do?’” Tommy muses. “Then using

the touchscreen, the gyroscope, accelerometer,

involved, so I’m just crossing my fingers and

hoping that I like it when I see the final thing.”

When asked how he feels about the original

game now, David reveals the effort that went

into coding it, which explains why it still plays

so well and feels so responsive. “It’s become

a bit of a cult hit at this point, but being the

programmer, there’s always stuff I wish I did

differently. I care passionately about the feel

of games, and you could pour thousands of

hours into trying to get the perfect feel when

controlling them.”

Earthworm Jim’s background artist and main

level designer Nick Bruty has just as personal a

view of the game, and he clearly values his time

working on it. “I’m proud of all the Earthworm

Jim stuff I did at Shiny. Earthworm Jim was

fantastic, you know, being free from a major

corporation, having our own independent

studio, doing everything completely crazy and

having people responding in a really positive

way. It was an amazing experience, with one of

the best teams I’ve ever worked with.”

» [N64] Interplay Productions saw fit to include

Earthworm Jim in its N64 brawler Clay Fighter 63 1/3.

IT’S A WORM’S LIFE

n If you take the shortcut in the Just For

Laughs tip you meet less foes, but take

out those you do meet quickly. Watch for

crows attacking from above, as they attach

themselves to Jim’s head. The dogs are

deadliest when Jim’s hanging from a chain, as

they tend to go for his groin!

TAKING OUT THE TRASH

n Mini-boss Billy The Bin is an animated trash

monster that likes to dance, so when he does

light him up with ammo while avoiding falling

trombones. When he turns into a trashcan

on wheels alternate between blasting and

jumping over him to avoid contact, and you’ll

soon put him down.

JUST FOR LAUGHS

n Head-whip the safe near the start to launch

the cow! Then jump up the tower of tyres and

leap left to get to the zip line. Jump off the

end and head-whip left to hook the moose,

then jump up the zip lines and warp down

the toilet, where you’ll find plasma blasters

and a handy extra life.

GROOVY GUIDE TO NEW JUNK CITY GROOVY GUIDE TO NEW JUNK CITY ROOVY GUIDE TO NEW JUNK CITY

HERE’S HOW TO BEAT THE CRAZY FIRST

LEVEL OF EARTHWORM JIM

26 | RETRO GAMER

b0317180-1dbc-4fe7-b445-0fab5a6a6c7a

THE EVOLUTION OF: EARTHWORM JIM

WHAT’S UP CHUCK?

n Junkyard boss Chuck is well-named – if

you shoot or head-whip him he throws-up

deadly fish! He operates a crane that drops

crates, and you need to whip each one to the

right and knock it onto a spring as he passes

overhead. He’ll vomit fish, but the crates will

run down his energy.

CROSSING THE LINE

n New Junk City is full of unlikely ways to

get around. As well as chains hung

horizontally above hazards that Jim crosses

hand-over-head, there are zip lines to slide

down or blast your way along. There’s even

a conveyor belt that you have to clamber up

while avoiding the junk on it.

“WE’RE DESIGNING

SOMETHING UNIQUE

JUST FOR THE AMICO,

AND THAT REALLY

ENHANCES THE JOKE

ASPECT OF IT”

TOMMY TALLARICO

RETRO GAMER | 27

» The new Earthworm Jim TV show

combines slapstick with knowing,

wry humour to great effect.

» [Amico] The Earthworm Jim Amico title begins with its

hapless hero crash landing his rocket on a beach.

b0317180-1dbc-4fe7-b445-0fab5a6a6c7a

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30 | RETRO GAMER

» Kevin Shrapnell is currently CEO of

Magic Fuel Games.

STORM WASN’T JUST

ANOTHER GAUNTLET CLONE

– IT WAS THE FIRST

TO ARRIVE ON HOME

COMPUTERS, AND IT WAS

A BUDGET GAME TO BOOT.

RETRO GAMER DISCOVERS

HOW THE GAME’S CREATORS

THREW DOWN THE GAUNTLET

AND WHIPPED UP A STORM

THE MAKING OF

Word By Martyn Carroll

» PUBLISHER:

MASTERTRONIC

» DEVELOPER:

THE FIRM

» RELEASED:

1986

» PLATFORM:

AMSTRAD CPC,

VARIOUS

» GENRE:

MAZE GAME

IN THE

KNOW

BRIDGE TO THE EAST

SYSTEM: BBC MICRO

YEAR: 1984

BALL CRAZY (PICTURED)

SYSTEM: AMSTRAD CPC,

C64, ZX SPECTRUM

YEAR: 1987

BIGFOOT

SYSTEM: AMSTRAD CPC,

C64, ZX SPECTRUM

YEAR: 1990

DEVELOPER

HIGHLIGHTS

b0317180-1dbc-4fe7-b445-0fab5a6a6c7a

THE MAKING OF: STORM

RETRO GAMER | 31

G

od bless Mastertronic, purveyors of

bargain-budget gems. In the Eighties,

when the cost of 8-bit games was

creeping towards (and sometimes

beyond) the £10 mark, Mastertronic

came along with a catalogue of titles

costing just £1.99. The pocket-money price

meant that the games secured floor space in

the smaller retailers that the main wholesalers

ignored, such as newsagents, convenience

stores, video shops and petrol stations. It

was a classic disruption strategy and it saw

Mastertronic sell more

than 2.1 million units

between its launch in

April 1984 and July 1985.

The business model

meant that Mastertronic

was also incredibly agile

and was often able to beat

the bigger publishers to

the punch. A textbook

example was Storm, a

two-player clone of Atari’s Gauntlet which

went on sale several months before US Gold’s

official conversion. The effect of this was

perfectly illustrated in the September 1986

issue of Computer And Video Games magazine,

where it was revealed in the news that US

Gold had commissioned Gremlin Graphics to

develop the 8-bit conversions of Gauntlet, while

in the same issue Storm received a glowing

review. “Storm is by

far and away the best

budget game I’ve ever

seen on any micro,”

commented editor Tim

Metcalfe. “As good as many full-price offerings

around right now… a budget game that thinks

it’s worth nine quid!” The game scored a ‘Rave’

award in Amstrad Action, with Andrew Wilton

singling out the co-op gameplay, saying, “If this

was a one-player game it would be pretty good

– it earns its Rave with the two-player option.”

Computer Gamer magazine also praised Storm

in a review that casually

dropped truth bombs at

US Gold’s door. “That this

game should appear before

Gauntlet is surprising, that

it should be at a budget

price is truly amazing.”

Storm was created

by The Firm, a small

Somerset-based developer

which initially comprised three friends: Mike

Talbot, Kevin Shrapnell and Seán Martin. Seán

says, “The Firm was Mike and Kev doing the

programming, with me providing ideas, but my

time was curtailed by being away at university

– I remember always working on games when

I came back home. The Firm came into being

after the demise of our earlier company Ixion

Software. Ixion’s most successful game was

Bridge To The East, which was released in

1983. This was a combination of arcade-style

and text-based gameplay. There were various

shoot-’em-up levels to get through, and then

you’d have a text-based level, which usually

involved solving a puzzle. The game is, at least

on a conceptual level, a precursor to Storm,

because both games were based on epic

fantasy poems of mine. Yes, that’s the sort of

thing teenage poets write!”

The Ixion games were all written for the BBC

Micro, but this would change following the

launch of the Amstrad CPC. “In 1985 Ixion did a

text adventure for the Amstrad CPC called The

Avaunting. When The Firm got going, Mike

Kevin Shrapnell

“WE SPENT A FAIR

AMOUNT OF TIME IN THE

ARCADES AND GAUNTLET

WAS A TOTAL GAMECHANGING INFLUENCE”

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT

IT WAS SAFE TO GO BACK

IN THE DUNGEON

» Seán Martin is a published

author, poet and filmmaker.

» [BBC Micro] Before Storm there was Bridge To The East, an arcade adventure game based on another of Seán’s fantasy poems.

» [Amstrad CPC] The game could be played solo, but it

was much easier, and far more fun, when played co-op.

» [Amstrad CPC] The superior sequel was released

on Mastertronic’s MAD label in 1987 and came with a

premium price tag of £2.99.

n Storm was such a sizeable hit,

particularly on the Amstrad CPC, that The

Firm returned the following year to produce

a sequel. In The Fear: Storm II, the evil

wizard has finally acquired the Fear, the

box-shaped artefact that he was searching

for during the events of the first game. It’s

now up to Agravain’s daughter Silver and

her man Prince Frost to find the Fear and

return it to its rightful place in the crypt of

a creepy old monastery (that’s overrun by

demons, obviously).

The sequel is another dungeon-crawler,

yet there are a couple of key differences.

Firstly, the viewpoint is skewed down

slightly, which brings perspective into

play and gives many screens a maze-like

quality. Secondly, and significantly, the tank

controls from the first game have been

replaced by a standard up, down, left, right

system. This makes movement much faster,

although bizarrely the characters can only

fire their weapons to the left and right. That

aside, the sequel is a step up from the first

game in almost every way. It’s a shame

then that The Fear is largely unknown

compared to the original – no doubt

because Mastertronic only published it on

the CPC and not multiple other platforms.

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32 | RETRO GAMER

game ideas. Mike was the technical

brains behind everything we did.

Seán was at university through

some of the early days, but we

worked together on design, art,

sound and anything else that was

needed. Everything that happened

involved all of us, and we shared

creative duties.”

Storm was The Firm’s first published title,

but it wasn’t the developer’s first game. “Storm

was actually our second project together,”

reveals Kevin. “Our first game was based

on procedurally creating a world to explore

and everything in the world was generated

randomly. Unfortunately we hadn’t really

considered the realities of publishing the game

and kept developing ideas until the disk was

full. The game was never published but we

learnt a few things in that process. When we

started Storm we were much more focused

and had a more reasonable plan for releasing

the game on cassette. We spent three-to-four

part-time months working on the game, fitting

work around game development.”

The inspiration for Storm will not shock

you. “Gauntlet was absolutely our main

inspiration,” says Kevin. “We lived in WestonSuper-Mare and spent a fair amount of time in

the arcades, and Gauntlet was a total gamechanging influence.”

U

nlike Gauntlet, Storm features a rather

detailed backstory which introduces

the main characters and explains their

motivations. It transpires that an evil wizard,

the questionably named Una Cum, is searching

for an all-powerful MacGuffin called the Fear.

As a distraction, he has kidnapped Prince

Storm’s wife Corrine and hidden her in an

underground maze filled with monsters and

traps. It’s up to Storm and his friend, the good

wizard Agravain, to raid the lair and find three

special keys which will unlock the door to the

room holding Corrine.

The story was provided by Seán. “The world

of Storm, like Bridge To The East, was based on

one of my epic poems,” he says. “I only wrote

three of them, which formed a trilogy. Storm

was based on the first poem, Window On The

West. The title is a steal from The Lord Of The

Rings, but was equally inspired by the cover of

the album Trespass by Genesis, which shows

a lord and lady looking out of a window across

a mythical landscape. I can’t remember much

about the story – it was the usual light versus

darkness, sword and sorcery stuff – but it was

fairly detailed and Mike and Kev took what they

needed for Storm.”

In a nod to Ixion’s text adventures, each of

the game’s 100 rooms features a brief text

description which scrolls across the top of the

screen, revealing such delightful details as,

“The floor of this once impressive room is now

drenched in a seething slime,” and, “The sweet

smell of rotting flesh washes down from the

north, violating the air.”

Storm was developed directly on an

Amstrad 6128 and once the game was

finished, The Firm quickly found a publisher

in Mastertronic. “We just reached out to them

based on a magazine ad, sent them a demo

and then made the connection,” remembers

Kevin. “It was all pretty straightforward, we

didn’t experience any of the horror stories you

hear about the UK game scene of the Eighties.

We wrote Storm for the CPC and Mastertronic

provided all of the other versions. The game

was released on a crazy-long list of platforms.”

Storm was converted to six formats including

AMSTRAD CPC

According to Kevin, this is the ‘true’

version. “Storm had a simple but effective

difficulty mechanism,” he says. “Each

room you cleared added one to the spawn

rate for generators. In the other versions

this feature was removed, so only Amstrad

players had to master the true experience.”

ZX SPECTRUM

The graphics were ported from the original

CPC version, which gives the game quite an

unusual look on the Spectrum. At least a lot

of lovely colour has been retained. Sound is

limited to the occasional effect (there’s no

128K version, so no AY soundtrack). This is

a very decent conversion.

MSX

Both this and the Spectrum version were

converted by Simon Freeman and in

almost all respects they’re identical. The

only real difference is the audio. While the

Speccy version features a few blips and

beeps, on the MSX there’s a full in-game

tune playing alongside various effects.

COMMODORE 64

Converted by Jim Baguley (note the spelling,

it’s not the person you might be thinking of),

the C64 version features a wider display

which means some screens have altered

layouts (nothing major). It also features a

heroic title tune by David Whittaker which

sadly does not play in-game.

» [Amstrad CPC] Enemies and enemy generators are

often hidden from view beneath the wooden floorboards.

» [Amstrad CPC] Some screens feature few enemies,

allowing you to take a breather and stock up on supplies.

and Kev decided that the Amstrad market

had more potential than the BBC, and so we

decided to focus on writing for that.”

Kevin was not involved with Mike and Seán

at Ixion, but being local and like-minded, their

paths were always destined to cross. “At the

time I was running a hobby game shop called

The Dragon’s Lair,” recalls Kevin. “We met at

the shop and they were interested to know

more about tabletop RPGs, and I was looking

for a way to take my hobby game design into

something more, dare I say, professional. We

played some Call Of Cthulhu together and

started to hangout and talk about computer

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THE MAKING OF: STORM

RETRO GAMER | 33

the ZX Spectrum, MSX and Commodore 64.

Across all the different platforms reviews

for the game were mixed (Crash and Zzap!

both went in hard, awarding it 44% and 32%

respectively), but many reviewers agreed that

Storm was a bit of a bargain. In hindsight,

should The Firm have considered courting a

full-price publisher? “We were happy,” says

Kevin. “Maybe it would have been better at full

price, but I don’t think the game had full-price

production values! It sold very well at a budget

price, and we received a regular supply of

royalty cheques.”

The game did sell well. According to data

shared by Mastertronic’s former financial

controller Anthony Guter, the game shifted

197,782 copies across all seven formats,

making it Mastertronic’s 18th best-selling title

of all time. Interestingly, around a quarter of

the total sales were on the lead CPC format,

with the Spectrum version taking the second

largest chunk. Mastertronic paid a royalty rate

on every copy sold, including the conversions

that were outsourced (once the conversion

programmer’s flat rate had been covered).

“We were paid a £1,500 advance on Storm and

I think we received 10p per unit sold, so total

earnings of £15-25k sounds feasible,” says

Kevin. “Nobody retired on the profits, but it

paid the rent and bills for some time.”

T

he proceeds allowed The Firm to expand,

as Seán explains. “Previously most of

the work was done at Mike’s house. We

eventually got an office in town, and moved

in around December 1986. I remember

decorating the place was a team effort. The

Firm also grew in size. Four or five others

joined the team by the end of 1987.” More staff

meant more games and several budget titles

followed including Ball Crazy for Mastertronic,

Combat Zone for Alternative, and Bigfoot

for Codemasters. The Firm also developed a

sequel – The Fear: Storm II – which continued

the story and introduced some welcome

refinements. Sadly, none of these titles would

repeat the success of Storm. “We all thought

The Fear was a better game than the original,”

says Seán, “but it didn’t receive as much notice

when it came out in the spring of 1987.”

The Firm soon fizzled out and the team

went their separate ways during 1988. Kevin

says, “Seán was off at university, Mike moved

to Paris for a couple of years to work for a

French game publisher, and I moved to London

and joined EA. My first boss at EA was the

producer on Druid, another Gauntlet clone,

and it was nice to remind him that Storm

beat Gauntlet to market.” Looking back, both

Seán and Kevin have fond memories of The

Firm’s early days, when they created Storm

at Mike’s house in Weston-Super-Mare. “It

was a very happy time”, says Seán. “We lived

and breathed the spirit of Monty Python. We

all worked well together, and there were days

when all we seemed to do was laugh – but

this helped the work. There was a vaguely

gangster-ish look to The Firm. We liked to

wear overcoats and hats, and smoke cigars. I

remember we took some photos early on at

Ebbor Gorge, a nearby beauty spot.”

“We did photo shoots with long coats, hats

and cigars, and spent time hanging out at

Glastonbury,” confirms Kevin. “For Storm in

particular, I remember we regularly went to the

local library to borrow records for inspiration,

mostly jazz, folk and the occasional native tribal

chant. I am not sure that any of those things

contributed to the development of Storm, but

they were part of the indie life. Overall it was a

really good time, plenty of highs and lows but

a great start to working in the industry.”

COMMODORE 16

This looks very similar to the C64 version,

but some (OK, a few) compromises

have been made to squeeze it into 16K.

There’s no music, no scene-setting text

messages, and crucially, there’s only 40

rooms compared to the full 100 featured

in every other version of the game.

ATARI 8-BIT

Another Jim Baguley conversion, so you’ll

be unsurprised to read that this is almost

identical to the C64 version. It also features

the same David Whittaker title screen

music and effects. The only change is the

reduced number of on-screen colours, but

this doesn’t detract from the game.

PC

Mastertronic released around 75 games for

the PC and Storm was one of its bestsellers

on the format. Converted by Randall Don

Masteller, the game is based on the C64

version, and when running on EGA mode, it

looks very similar to it. One difference: you

can select the speed of the game.

HOW THE VARIOUS VERSIONS OF STORM STACKED UP

Seán Martin

“WE LIVED AND

BREATHED THE SPIRIT

OF MONTY PYTHON.

THERE WERE DAYS

WHEN ALL WE SEEMED

TO DO WAS LAUGH”

» [Amstrad CPC] That’s one of the special snake keys

located. Just two more to find and the game is won.

» [C16] Although it was noticeably pared back, the C16

version actually sold more copies than the C64 release.

» [ZX Spectrum] Mastertronic converted the game to

multiple formats, and it became a solid hit on all of them.

» The boys from The Firm, pictured

at Ebbor Gorge in Somerset, giving

off strong Bugsy Malone vibes.

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CAUGHT IN ITS CAMEL CLUTCHES

» COMMODORE 64 » 1983 » LLAMASOFT

One of the benefits of growing up with older

cousins was the hand-me-downs that you’d

get, and the first time I benefitted from that

in a gaming sense was when I was given

a Commodore 64 in 1994. My cousins were

teenagers, and they’d made the switch up to the Mega Drive

and SNES, so the trusty breadbin went to me. For the most

part, the games they gave me were exactly what you’d expect

– lots of sports stuff, TV and film licences like Ghostbusters and

Knightmare, and of course arcade conversions like Space Harrier,

Double Dragon and Paperboy. But like me, one or the other had an

eye for silly concepts, though this didn’t always work out as the

presence of Bionic Granny proves.

One of the other things I got a lot of was Commodore Format

Power Pack tapes, and I like to imagine that my cousin saw Sheep

In Space and Attack Of The Mutant Camels on the cover one

month and decided it was an instant purchase. It was certainly an

eye opener for me. I didn’t know that it was a lot like The Empire

Strikes Back as a kid, but then I’d also never seen a Star Wars film

at that point anyway. The silly name drew me in, and the simple

shoot-’em-up gameplay kept me going when a lot of the stuff I got

for the computer was just a bit over my head.

I won’t pretend that I was a Jeff Minter devotee from there on –

I was seven, after all – but it was my first encounter with a formula

that has kept me coming back to his work for decades since. Good

shooting and some references to ungulates, that’s all I need. I

played the free Java trial of Gridrunner++ to death as a teenager,

and hoped that Unity would be a GameCube exclusive I’d be

recommending to all my friends. I even broke my own rules about

not buying digital-only releases to pick up Space Giraffe and TxK.

So today, I look back at that tape with a great deal of fondness.

» RETROREVIVAL

Attack Of The

Mutant Camels

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b0317180-1dbc-4fe7-b445-0fab5a6a6c7a

classroom is the teacher – he is supposed

to be studying, after all – and should he

catch up with the tearaway then a life is lost.

Fortunately, depending on which version of the

game you are playing (we’ll get to that later),

Mikie can temporarily incapacitate his teacher

by either head-butting or shouting at him.

Once the hearts in the first class have

been harvested, Mikie takes to the school

hallways which are no less hazardous for the

errant lad. Pursued by not only the teacher,

but a jobsworth janitor, Mikie must make

his way to the locker room and collect more

hearts, this time by bashing open the lockers.

Next up is the restaurant and its trio of cooks,

angry that this heart-collecting student has

interrupted their dubious culinary efforts.

After another jaunt through the school

corridors, the final class is the dance studio

where a group of young ladies follow their

instructor’s energetic workout. There’s just

the teacher to watch out for here – boy, he’s

persistent – but bumping into one of the

gyrating girls sends Mikie temporarily loopy,

making him vulnerable to the chasing tutor.

Once the hearts in all these locations have

been collected, Mikie escapes outside to the

school garden. At the top of the screen

T

here’s no doubt that there is a decent

amount of overlap in cinema and

videogame demographics. In the Eighties,

with the popularity of movies such as

The Outsiders, Fast Times At Ridgemont High,

Fame and The Breakfast Club, the commonality

was even more pronounced. Mix in the lateSeventies hits Grease and Animal House and

it’s no surprise that eventually, someone would

attempt a videogame based around the concept

of a cheeky high-school student, disobeying the

teachers and generally behaving badly, all in the

name of love. The company was Konami and the

game, at least to Western audiences, was Mikie.

And it’s a funny old tale.

First, the story inside the game itself.

Eschewed of the standard alien invasion

backdrop, Mikie is a simple love story,

strangely mixed in with some wanton and

entirely unreasonable violence. Mikie has

decided to take a message to his girlfriend,

who is waiting patiently for him by the school

gates. In order to achieve this, our eponymous

youngster collects the hearts that are dotted

around the school. Some of these are hidden

underneath his fellow students’ chairs and

Mikie collects these by bumping the poor

saps off their seats. Chasing him around the

Buoyed by the success of Track & Field, the following year Konami

tried its hand at a totally different type of arcade game. Inspired

by the Fifties nostalgia of films such as Grease and American

high-school flicks, this is the story of the amorous Mikie and his

quest to deliver a heartfelt message to his girlfriend

WORDS BY GRAEME MASON

MIKIE

SPEAKER

36 | RETRO GAMER

ULTIMATE LTIMATE

GUIDE

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ULTIMATE GUIDE: MIKIE

RETRO GAMER | 37

» [Arcade] Causing chaos in the restaurant. The chef at the top doesn’t move, choosing to hurl food at Mikie instead.

» [Arcade] The locker room has three more hearts to grab. Mikie has just head-butted the cook and his teacher.

» The Ocean/Imagine

home ports of Mikie

were very well-received.

b0317180-1dbc-4fe7-b445-0fab5a6a6c7a

his girlfriend waits; between Mikie and his

love are three yellow-jacketed jocks, ready to

knock his block off should he get too close.

Make it past them and to the school gate

and Mikie delivers the heart-laden message,

his girlfriend planting a loving kiss on his

cheek. Thus reunited both physically and

emotionally, the pair drive off, seemingly

unconcerned about missing out on vital

education. Ferris Bueller would be proud.

P

oint scoring in Mikie is achieved in

several ways. Firstly, by collecting the

hearts, with each small heart yielding

200 points, while the special flashing one

nets Mikie a cool 1,000 points. Secondly, points

are awarded for assaulting school employees

and fellow students. Bumping one of the latter

off their chair scores 400 to 800 depending on

which row they’re sitting. Stunning a teacher,

janitor or cook scores 400 points if performed

horizontally with double that score for a

vertical takedown. In addition to this, there are

significant points awarded for simply leaving

a room, collecting certain items such as the

lunchbox and hamburger and acquiring all the

hearts in flashing order. There are also several

hidden bonuses. Open an unmarked door in the

school’s hallway and it’s likely you’ll get a boot

or boxing glove in the face. If it’s Mikie’s lucky

day, however, he’ll reveal a scantily clad lady and

gain an impressive 5,000 points for his trouble.

By 1984, the golden era of arcade gaming

was coming to an end, especially in the United

States where the videogames crash of 1983

was felt more keenly than in other territories.

Licensed by Centuri Inc for arcades in North

America, Mikie was part of a desperate last

gamble to save the coin-op machine company.

Saddled with expensive Laserdisc flops such

as Badlands, Centuri badly needed a hit,

and pinned much of its hopes on this odd

teen drama from its regular partner Konami.

Unfortunately, while a moderate success

thanks to its novel theme, Mikie failed to

38 | RETRO GAMER

CONVERSION Capers WHICH VERSIONS OF MIKIE ARE WORTH

BUNKING OFF SCHOOL TO PLAY?

BBC MICRO

Peter Johnson turned in a technically excellent

port of Mikie on the BBC Micro and Electron that

unfortunately inherits the original’s stodgy controls.

Nevertheless, there’s a delightfully languid rendition

of A Hard Day’s Night and it’s entertaining enough to

be one of the better BBC Micro arcade conversions

– it’s just a shame about those controls.

SG-1000

It’s a trip to the office for this Sega home conversion

of the Japanese game Shinnyushain Toru-Kun. The

game’s precious positioning makes the bumping,

sitting down and even negotiating around tables

tricky, but once you get used to this, it’s a decently

enjoyable and colourful game of unwarranted office

violence where you get to head-butt your boss.

COMMODORE 64

While some of the fussiness of the arcade game’s

controls are retained, the brilliant use of colour

and stunning Martin Galway music ensure that this

Commodore 64 game by Tony Pomfret and Steve

Wahid is another wonderful effort. Our particular

highlight: the teacher’s teeth zinging across the

classroom before amusingly embedding in the wall.

ZX SPECTRUM

The dearly-missed Jonathan Smith was on coding

duties for Spectrum Mikie and he predictably

produced another brilliant arcade conversion.

Based on Mikie: High School Graffiti, the fussiness

of the game’s controls is gone, replaced with a

smooth and supremely fun style. Notably easier to

play, and with a nice tune, this is one of the finest

Spectrum arcade conversions on the system.

AMSTRAD CPC

On the opposite end of the BBC Micro’s relaxed

tune, Amstrad owners get a jaunty interpretation of

the famous Beatles song, A Hard Day’s Night. Alas,

despite looking pretty, the rest of the game is a

little too frustrating to be anywhere near top of the

class. A disappointment, especially considering its

fantastic fellow Z80 version.

» [Arcade] In the dance studio, Mikie dodges

dancers and the teacher as he collects hearts.

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ULTIMATE GUIDE: MIKIE

RETRO GAMER | 39

GREENBOARD MIKIES

Multiple

THE THREE ARCADE

VERSIONS OF KONAMI’S

CHEEKY CAPER

SHINNYŪSHAIN TŌRU-KUN

The version that Japanese fans played, now

set in an office rather than a high school.

MIKIE: HIGH SCHOOL GRAFFITI

The cleaned up Western game with no

head-butting and Failure Teaches Success.

MIKIE

The original game for Western audiences,

complete with head butt and E=mc2.

» [Arcade] Descending to the ground floor.

Don’t forget to pick up that lunchbox, Mikie!

» [Arcade] Mikie doesn’t let up, and this final screen, the

garden, contains three fast-moving football players.

» [Arcade] Mikie finally makes it to his love and delivers his heartfelt message

before speeding away, nonplussed by his education, or lack of.

MIKIE’S

GIRLFRIEND

TEACHER

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do serious business for Centuri,

possibly due to its reputation as an

awkward game to play. The head butt move

is slow and cumbersome to use and with the

rapid teacher constantly harassing Mikie as

soon as he gets up from his seat, the game

soon becomes frustrating. Worse still is the

‘bumping’ mechanic where Mikie unseats

students so he can claim their heart. Stodgy

and unresponsive, performing this trick can be

difficult to perform initially, and it’s certainly

not made any easier by the incessant pursuit

from Mikie’s teacher.

And the trouble with Mikie didn’t end with its

gameplay issues. Stateside, controversy over

the game’s school-based violence impaired

its popularity with arcade owners. Apart from

Mikie’s penchant for hurling basketballs and

food at staff, his vicious head butt was a step

too far for many. The result was Mikie: High

School Graffiti, the titular teenager’s assault

now changed to an overpowering bellow, an

adjustment that makes the game less violent

yet much trickier to play. Meanwhile, back in

Japan, Konami had already met considerable

resistance to the overall premise of Mikie and

its school-based setting.

T

he early Eighties were a tumultuous time

for Japanese schools. Motorcycle gangs,

known as bosozoku, were dominating

youth culture and violence in schools

was a hot topic. An arcade videogame, replete

with unashamed acts of insurrection, not to

mention its reckless violence, was destined to

become notorious for all the wrong reasons.

Subsequently, the worried suits at Konami

ordered a change of scenario and Mikie

40 | RETRO GAMER

HEAD-BUTT WITH CARE

While the head butt move is a useful,

if rather violent, method of temporarily

dissuading Mikie’s pursuers, it’s

something of a double-edged sword.

Why? Because every time you connect

with an enemy, they get angrier, more

aggressive and faster. Can’t say we blame

them, and it means you should use it only

when absolutely necessary.

RESTAURANT RUCKUS

Don’t dally here because as with the

locker room, the teacher is soon barging

through the door looking for Mikie. Of

the three cooks, one remains stationary

at the top, chucking random slabs of

meat at Mikie. Otherwise you can use

similar tactics, with roast joints replacing

basketballs and one heart inside a glass

jar which must be smashed to release.

LOCKER ROOM TIPS

Mikie’s second room houses the student

lockers, cook and janitor. Don’t linger by

the door for too long because the teacher

will soon be joining the others in hunting

Mikie down. Here there are three bins

full of basketballs which can be picked up

and hurled at Mikie’s shadows. Beware

though: like the head butt, this angers and

speeds them up.

NAVIGATING THE HALLWAY

The school janitor haunts the corridors

and while he doesn’t specifically

chase Mikie, he has a habit of hurling

his bucket in the wayward student’s

direction. The teacher will soon be out

of the classroom and back to stalking

him again, so don’t spend too long

opening those doors and looking for the

points bonuses.

Detention

MIKIE IS A NOTORIOUSLY TOUGH GAME – BUT HAVE NO FEAR OF THAT RAMPAGING TEACHER, RETRO GAMER IS HERE TO HELP

HOW TO AVOID

HEART IN

LOCKER

STUNNED

TEACHER

JOCK

LUNCHBOX

» [Arcade] Mikie’s reward for his efforts: a kiss on the cheek. » [Arcade] Better get back to your seat, Mikie!

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became Shinnyushain Toru-Kun, taking place

in a stereotypical city office. Now, instead of

head-butting a teacher, the hero assaults his

boss and knocks fellow employees from their

workstations, an aesthetic difference that in

truth alters very little except the age of the

game’s characters. Throughout these changes,

one thing that remains consistent is its music.

Whether The Beatles’ tunes A Hard Day’s Night

and Twist And Shout were officially licensed is

highly doubtful, at least outside of Japan. But

endorsed or not, the catchy riffs are a suitable

aural enhancement to the high-school antics

of Mikie and the office-based pandemonium of

Shinnyushain Toru-Kun.

With Shinnyushain Toru-Kun converted

to Sega’s SG-1000 by Konami itself, the UK’s

Ocean Software published the only other

home versions of Mikie and released them

solely in Europe under its Imagine imprint.

Presented with a marvellous cover courtesy

of Ocean regular Bob Wakelin, the BBC Micro,

Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum versions

were all well-received, with the Amstrad CPC

game lagging a little behind. While in Japan

and America, Mikie remains a curio at best,

in the UK these excellent home ports of Mikie

endeared the game to a new audience, ensuring

that in this region, at least, there’s some love for

the cheeky, head-butting scamp.

ULTIMATE GUIDE: MIKIE

RETRO GAMER | 41

RETRO GAMER TALKS TO PETER JOHNSON ABOUT HIS WORK ON THE BBC MICRO/ELECTRON PORT OF MIKIE

How did you get to

work on Mikie?

Imagine was being used as a label

for Ocean’s arcade conversions at

the time and for me, Mikie probably

followed Yie Ar King Fu, also a

Konami conversion for the BBC

Micro and Electron. As I finished one

conversion for Ocean, they would

show me the other games they

currently had in development, most

of which were in their arcade room

in the basement. I would choose one

that I felt would suit my platform.

Were you familiar with the arcade game?

I’d never seen Mikie in an arcade, although I

used to visit the arcades at nearby Whitley Bay

quite often, to see what was new.

Did you code from scratch or convert

another version?

It was all written from scratch for this version,

both code and graphics, by studying the real

arcade machine. I had one of Ocean’s special

suitcases containing a joystick and buttons

and a Jamma interface which the circuit board

from the real arcade machine

connected to. I then viewed it on

an RGB monitor from my Amstrad

CPC 6128. I also had a VHS tape of

someone at Ocean completing the

game, so I could study the level

layouts and see how the difficulty

changed and so on.

Did you have much experience

at this point of coding on the

BBC/Electron?

Yes, at least three years of

commercial development for it,

a full-time job working from my home in

Newcastle. I stayed a coder for a further

four years or so, working on Atari ST,

Amiga, Sega Mega Drive, then Atari Jaguar,

before being asked to manage the Newcastle

studio for Rage Games.

What did you think of the original arcade

game? It must have felt quite novel, a

change from all that shooting!

Thinking about it, most of my games haven’t

been particularly ‘shooty’. I’m always attracted

to something that is different and interesting.

How did you work around the

comparatively limited resources of

the BBC Micro?

To display a decent screen resolution in

very little memory, I would use a four-colour

screen with vertical colour interrupts, allowing

different sets of four colours to be used in

different areas of the screen to create the

illusion of more colour (there were only eight

possible colours on the BBC Micro, anyway).

Mikie is renowned as an excellent

conversion on the BBC – what’s your own

opinion of how you did?

Thanks, I am happy with it. The game uses

an unusual semi-top-down view, and its

screens are littered with obstacles, such as

desks and lockers. I developed an unusual

sprite method, where it could simply EOR

the character sprites as they were printed,

masking behind the back part of objects onscreen without needing any clever code, or

the overhead of reprinting the foreground. I

was quite proud of that solution at the time,

but it’s the only game I needed it for.

Our thanks to Peter for his time.

DEVELOPERQ&A

BRING ON THE DANCING GIRLS

This loving homage to Fame is another

tricky level in Mikie. While only one

enemy will chase you – that teacher,

again! – touching any of the dancers

stuns Mikie for a few seconds. Pick

your way around them carefully,

discouraging the teacher whenever you

are able to. Collect the hearts and enjoy

Twist And Shout!

GARDEN CAPERS

We are outside the school now

and Mikie is within touching distance

of his beau. In his way patrol three

jocks, each moving at a different

speed, and all faster than the regular

enemies. Cautiously navigate around

each one, collecting the hearts as

you go in order to reach your patient

girlfriend. Mwah!

COOK

HEART

DANCER

JANITOR

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Paperboy

D

elivering newspapers is not a fun job –

you have to endure dodgy blocks of

flats, dangerous dogs and all for pennies

per paper. What’s worse is that it’s just as

rough an occupation in videogames. The titular star of

Paperboy gets a bike, but does have to deal with radiocontrolled cars, street brawls, bees and even the most

dangerous drivers this side of Barnard Castle.

That’s why it’s so much fun to finish your delivery

duties and tackle the training course. No more

reversing hearses, just plenty of targets to chuck

papers at with no penalty for missing, as well as

ramps to send you flying over streams. Even though

this is a relatively relaxed part of the game, there are

plenty of ways to mess up – you can run into a target

or the water, or even just run out of time. So when you

get to the end of the course to stands full of cheering

fans, you know you’ve earned their adulation.

» PLATFORM: ARCADE » RELEASED: 1985 » DEVELOPER: ATARI GAMES

The best game concepts are often

those that are easy to understand,

and the idea of cycling up the

street and delivering newspapers is

certainly one that can be understood

in seconds. The game was

successful in arcades thanks to its

bizarre humour, novel bike-handlebar

controls and high average play time,

and that success saw it converted to

just about every home format of its

era. A home console and computer

sequel and a 3D reboot on the N64

both failed to replicate that success

in the Nineties, but the original game

is still very fondly remembered today.

BIO

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MORE CLASSIC

PAPERBOY

MOMENTS

We imagine British

postal workers quite

envy their American

counterparts, given

that they deal with

mailboxes that don’t

require them to walk all the way to the house.

Land a newspaper in this postal receptacle

rather than the vague vicinity of the doormat

and you’ll earn yourself 250 points rather than

100, as well as a sense of smug satisfaction.

Shot In The Box

Give a character

a voice, and you

give them a new

layer of personality.

Play that voice too

often and you end

up with a furball named Bubsy. That’s the

key with Atari’s hero. If he gets wrecked by a

speeding driver, he might say something like,

“Sometimes, I hate this job,” but he might

not – and the next time he does, it’ll be a

different phrase.

Get Smashed

What should be

done with someone

who doesn’t

subscribe to the

local newspaper?

Why, they deserve

a free sample to convince them to subscribe.

It’s not your fault that the publisher stipulates

that such copies must only be delivered

through closed windows. Fair warning, we’re

implementing this protection racke- erm,

marketing campaign soon.

Petty Vandalism

Miss a delivery,

lose a subscriber.

It’s a harsh world

out there, isn’t it?

It’s easier to miss

a house than you’d

think too, as landing slightly to the left or right

of the doorstep doesn’t count as a successful

delivery. That’s why scoring a perfect day of

deliveries is so satisfying – you really feel like

you’ve done something special.

Paper Perfection

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ark Seed is a game as infamous

for its difficulty as it is famous

for its licensed use of the art

of HR Giger. At the same time

as stumbling over just about every

pitfall of Nineties adventure game design,

it’s memorable for its dark story, atmosphere

and that intro which shows the protagonist

having his forehead pulled open before an alien

embryo gets planted inside.

Founded in 1990, game developer

Cyberdreams would become renowned for

attracting big-name talent, but often struggling

to coagulate it into cohesive final products.

Its games were deeply flawed but always

fascinating, and nowhere is that tension more

palpable than in its first game, Dark Seed.

Designer Michael Cranford, the creator of the

first two Bard’s Tale games, was a big name

in the fledgling PC games industry at the turn

of the Nineties, but was taking some time off

to focus on his PhD in social ethics. He was

brought on as a designer for Dark Seed before

it had any kind of structure. “All I knew was that

it was going to revolve around Giger’s artwork

and star this guy Mike Dawson [the game’s

Cyberdreams’ take on psychological horror was

infamous for its dark subject matter, crushing

difficulty and involvement of esteemed artist

HR Giger. Michael Cranford and Joby Otero

reveal how real-time puzzles and a Stephen

King novel shaped this distinctive game

» PUBLISHER:

CYBERDREAMS

» DEVELOPER:

CYBERDREAMS

» RELEASED:

1992

» PLATFORM:

PC, VARIOUS

» GENRE:

POINT-AND-CLICK

ADVENTURE

IN THE

KNOW

The Making of

W ords by Robert Zak ords by Robert Zak

44 | RETRO GAMER

» [PC] Giger’s 1974 painting Li II was used to represent the mysterious The Keeper Of The Scrolls in the game.

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co-designer who would later take over from

Cranford] as the protagonist,” Michael tells us.

“It was really bizarre.”

The reality behind Mike’s star turn as the

bewildered, alien-impregnated hero was

somewhere between an in-joke and a financial

decision. Mike used his name as a placeholder

in a concept document and it ended up sticking,

with Mike ultimately being digitised and used

for the game proper. It also saved the studio

money on having to hire an actor.

Michael worked remotely on Dark Seed.

While this suited his circumstances at the

time, it was also a challenge. “It was very

much just me sitting at my kitchen table

with graph paper, writing out pages of

content and doing sketches,” he says. “I’d

always worked with a group of guys around

me, where I could say, ‘Hey, come over and

look at what I’ve got. What do you think?’ It

was a very unusual experience.”

At his kitchen table, Michael mapped

out the game structure, which would be

comprised of two mirrored worlds: a Light

World set in the sleepy town of Woodland

Hills, and a Dark World, which is where

Giger’s art came in – a cold nether realm

where flesh doesn’t exist without the intrusion

of metal, spinal towers loom over barren

dreamscapes and hostile alien beings with no

regard for humanity patrol the land.

Michael wasn’t a huge horror fan, having

only watched Ridley Scott’s Alien after being

pressured into it by friends. Nevertheless, he

knew how to make the player feel ill at ease.

“Shortly before starting on Dark Seed, I’d read

Stephen King’s book The Tommyknockers,

and you’ll definitely see some overlap with the

game,” he reveals. King’s book is about an alien

ship buried in the woods near a small town,

which begins to telepathically control the local

population. In Dark Seed, the latter portions see

the alien ‘Ancients’ take control of the town’s

police force in their bid to stop Mike from

destroying their power source. Both the book

and the game end with the hostile craft being

forced to depart back into space.

Michael also came to Dark Seed with

a fascination for real-time puzzles. He

was inspired by the Eighties Infocom text

adventure Deadline, which gave you a time

limit in which to solve a murder. He later

incorporated some time-based puzzles into

» [PC] The game’s Light World settings still look great thanks to

the tastefully dithered 16-colour palette.

RETRO GAMER | 45

THE MAKING OF: DARK SEED

POINT AND TIPS

GUN SHY

■ Whatever you do, do

not take the gun from the

police station before you get

arrested. If you do decide

to do so, don’t say that we

didn’t warn you.

FRIENDS FOREVER

■ The shop sells sardines,

soy sauce and scotch. Just

think about which one of

these is the best way to

make friends in a town

populated by lonely men…

LOOK AGAIN

■ Interactive objects are

often ineligible against the

background, especially a

particularly important one

you should grab early on in

the library.

STASH TIME

■ One of the game’s more

interesting mechanics is the

ability to stash items in one

world then pick them up in

the other. Bear this in mind

when in the police cell.

USEFUL HINTS TO START YOU OFF

Dark Seed is an obscure and unforgiving game, even

by the standards of the time. Certain story-progressing

events won’t trigger if you do or don’t do certain things

(even if they’re seemingly unrelated), and you can lock

yourself off from completing the game very early on

without knowing it. Here are some hints on how to

overcome some of the junctures at which you’re most

likely to walk yourself into an irreversible dead end.

» Michael Cranford is a pioneer

videogame designer, programmer,

ethicist and software architect.

» After Dark Seed, Joby Otero went

on to help run studios like

Neversoft and Shiny Entertainment.

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his 1990 RPG Centauri

Alliance. With Dark Seed,

however, he would go even

further: he would turn the

whole game into a single

real-time puzzle.

“I thought it would be a

great vehicle for the horror

element, kind of like you’re

watching a horror movie,”

he tells us. “You can’t just

pause the movie if you’re a

character in the movie, right?

It offers that sense of stress and immersion, that

sense of, ‘I gotta make it through to daybreak.’”

The idea was accepted, and soon programmer

Lennard Feddersen had updated the game engine

to support a persistent in-game timer.

F

or artist Joby Otero, Cyberdreams

marked his big break into the

games industry when he joined

in 1991. Describing himself as

a “nerdy kid with weird clothing and a furry

pimp hat”, his art style was inspired by the

biomechanical and the psychedelic. “On my

first day, I just brought in this loose bag of crazy

artwork that looked like Hieronymus Bosch

meets Dali meets MC Escher,” he tells us. “I was

a huge Giger fan, and didn’t initially know they

were working on something involving him.”

Joby’s idiosyncratic fashion sense was a fine

fit for the office environment of Cyberdreams.

Art director Bernd Brummbaer (who worked out

of a tiny office that Joby affectionately called

‘The Brumm Closet’) was one of the first people

he met. “He emerged from his shadowy office

dressed all in this very casual white linen suit

with a white wide-brim hat and this very thick

German accent,” Joby recalls. “He looked like

something from an Indiana Jones movie, but we

hit it off right away.”

The internal Cyberdreams team was small,

and the office was quiet and unusually dark. “I

later learned this was partly because artists like

to work in the dark so that the pixels jump off

the screen,” Joby tells us. “It actually means

that you tend to make artwork that’s too dark

though, which was particularly problematic

on a game like Dark Seed, where the whole

vibe is very dark. We had to tweak the art a

lot later on because of that.”

Joby began working on Dark Seed when it had

been in development for at least six months, and

immediately faced a unique challenge. At a time

when most VGA games utilised 256 colours and

a 320x200 pixel resolution, Giger’s one major

intervention in the game’s development saw him

demand that it be rendered at 640x350. Dark

Seed became one of the first ever games to use

such a high resolution, but the technical strain

of this meant that the colour palette had to be

reeled back to 16 colours.

This made sense for the Dark World, which,

true to Giger, was monochromatic, but it was

tougher for the Light World. The team used

a tried-and-tested technique called dithering

to imbue the game’s Light World scenes with

an impressive amount of texture and depth.

“Dithering was pretty common at the time for

8-bit games. It’s basically this technique where

each adjacent pixel you would use a different

colour from your palette,” Joby says. “We’d do

these almost stippling patterns that would let

you do gradients if they needed to span a lot

of the screen, creating an impression of much

more than 16 colours.”

Creating the game’s Dark World scenes based

around Giger’s art was a rewarding experience

for Joby, but it wasn’t just a case of slapping

Giger’s works in the background. “We would

find Giger artwork with pieces that could be

conducive to the kind of composition that we

needed for any given screen, then we would

take those bits and pieces of those scans and

use different tricks and Deluxe Paint to create a

composition,” Joby says. “We’d rarely use the

scans as is. More often we’d use these organic

shapes into which we would fill the scan then

build up some kind of object then copy-paste

that object to create our rooms.”

The result was a fascinating fusion of Giger’s

art with that of the game artists’. Many Dark

World scenes were made from the ground up,

heavily sticking to the Giger style but not directly

using his work. Other scenes, like the cave in the

Dark World and the nightmare Mike has on the

third day when his head changes into a skull, use

Giger’s work more directly.

Your main ally in the game meanwhile, The

Keeper Of The Scrolls, is an almost unaltered

take on Giger’s 1974 painting Li II, which

depicts the artist’s former lover as a serpentine

biomechanical demon.

It would be natural for an artist to be

precious about their work being modified and

merged into a videogame, but Joby says that

Giger rarely intervened and was delighted with

how it turned out. While Joby didn’t get to

meet Giger in person, he shared an anecdote

» [PC] You’ll meet all manner of dark and twisted characters in

Dark Seed, so be on your best behaviour.

CYBERRACE

SYSTEM: PC

YEAR: 1993

I HAVE NO MOUTH

AND I MUST SCREAM

(PICTURED)

SYSTEM: PC, MAC

YEAR: 1995

DARK SEED II

SYSTEM: PC, VARIOUS

YEAR: 1995

DEVELOPER

HIGHLIGHTS

46 | RETRO GAMER

All I knew was that it was going to

revolve around Giger’s artwork and

star this guy Mike Dawson

Michael Cranford

» [PC] There are some truly upsetting visuals in Dark Seed and

they’re enhanced by HR Giger’s insistence on a high resolution.

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that revealed a little bit of the man behind

the nightmarish art. “For someone’s birthday,

Giger faxed over a little birthday card he drew,

covered in bunnies and birthday cake – nothing

like his usual stuff,” Joby reminisces. “It just

really touched me because it resonated with me

that he had this dark side but was also a very

childlike character in other ways.”

While the art department embraced their

unique mission, the game’s design was far more

problematic. Michael’s structure and time limit

remained in the game, but his contract was not

renewed to see out the development and refine

it. “I think they just felt like ‘we got this’

at the end, and I wasn’t there for the

tuning phase of the game.”

T

he result is the

unforgiving

beast we

know today.

Interactive items blend with

the scenery (a tiny 11-pixel

bobby pin, for example, or

a watch with the exact same

colour as the floor), interesting

mechanics – like the ability to stash

certain items in one world and pick them up

in another – go unexplained, and there are

multiple points where you can lock yourself off

from completing the game without triggering

a fail state, leaving you lingering in limbo

without realising you’ve lost. Michael rues

not getting the chance to refine the game he

designed. “I would’ve implemented some kind

of positive payoff if you hit a dead end or didn’t

do something in the right time frame,” he says.

“Your failure should be a learning experience.

I would’ve put in clues – maybe a dream

sequence or something.” Despite not being

there for the final part of development, with the

game’s star Mike Dawson finishing the process,

Michael takes responsibility for its notorious

obscurity, while finding a fitting analogy for his

dissatisfaction with the development process,

“It was like you stepped through a mirror to a

different world and everything and everybody

was a little off,” he concludes.

Back at Cyberdreams HQ, Joby’s experience

was arguably even stranger than Michael’s. Once

the game went gold his role on Dark Seed took

an unexpected turn. “The game boxes shipped in

flat so we had to unpack them, unfold them into

full 3D boxes and stuff the disks that we

just duplicated in there then shrinkwrap them ourselves,” he laughs.

“We were also doing customer

service calls. At one point,

someone’s grandmother bought

the game for her grandson,

and she says, ‘I’m stuck during

installation. It says ‘put in disk

two,’” he recalls. “It turned out

she hadn’t taken disk one out.”

Once Otero and his fellow

developers had done everything

from hand-painting the in-game art to

hand-packing the boxes for distribution, Dark

Seed shipped. For all its flaws, the game was

a resounding success and would later become

a cult hit. Even though Joby didn’t get to work

with Giger directly, by modifying, morphing

and drawing directly on his work, he got to

experience an intimate artistic connection

with one of his idols.

“To try to create stuff that was representative

of him, and knowing that he’s going to see it

and approve it ultimately was just gigantic,” he

concludes. “I couldn’t have hoped for more in

my first game gig.”

RETRO GAMER | 47

THE MAKING OF: DARK SEED

A DARK LEGACY

DARK SEED’S PORTS AND SEQUELS

In an unusually prolific streak for a PC point-andclick game, Dark Seed spread across the home

computer platforms (Amiga, Macintosh) the Amiga

CD32, and even came to Sega and Sony’s shiny

new consoles in 1994, over two years after its

original launch. The Amiga version had a superior

soundtrack to the PC version, albeit without

voiced dialogue, while the Amiga CD32 version

had voiced dialogue and a richer music track.

The PlayStation and Saturn versions only came

out in Japan, with the former having the highestquality sound across all versions of the game.

Interestingly, both console versions, however,

were lower-resolution than the PC original,

therefore deviating from Giger’s demand that the

game use a higher resolution.

Visually, Dark Seed was an advanced game for its

time, and an 8-bit Nintendo version probably wasn’t

a priority for a studio that had its eyes on launching

the game for upcoming 32-bit consoles. But thanks

to Chinese studio Mars Production (best known for

pirate-porting Pokémon Gold to the NES in 1999),

a heavily diluted version of the game came to

Nintendo’s seminal Eighties console as well.

The unlicensed game had a maddening

15-second loop of classical composer Carl

Czerny’s Op 821 No 61 (whose music was also

used in Pokémon Gold), a brown colour palette

and graphics simplified from the Amiga version.

A terrible game by any objective measure, but

nonetheless fascinating. On the bright side, the

sparse environments made key items more visible

and some of the awkward puzzles easier to solve.

The mid-Nineties was the golden age of

uncanny-valley digitisation and FMV, which was a

natural fit for Dark Seed. The sequel, Dark Seed II,

sees Mike Dawson make a return, this time in

his hometown of Crowley, Texas, following the

murder of his childhood sweetheart.

The game is bigger, stranger and had even

more involvement from Giger, who again

provided his existing art for integration but

this time wanted to also include imagery that,

according to the manual “had recently been

haunting him”. This included the image of a

sled carrying a vat down a seemingly endless

staircase, inspired by his Shaft series.

» The creepy, unsettling imagery continued in Dark Seed II.

» [PC] This background merges parts of Giger’s Hommage à Böcklin painting into a scene created by the game’s artists

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» MEGA DRIVE » 1991 » NAMCO

Although I rarely got to play Rolling Thunder 2

in arcades, I have lots of fond memories of

the rather excellent Mega Drive conversion. I

remember the way enemies would peek their heads

out of pipes, making them a nightmare to hit, I

remember the stylish cutscenes that looked like they were out of a

James Bond flick and I also have great memories of gingerly hiding

in archways to avoid pouncing black panthers on the game’s second

stage. Other highlights I remember were the silly animations agents

made as they leapt to higher platforms, the irritating sound of a

certain enemy that was surrounded by an annoying energy field and

the overall gaudy look of the visuals.

By far the biggest thing I remember about Namco’s game though,

was the ridiculously silly password system that the game uses

because it’s so delightfully absurd. Complete a stage and you’ll be

given a bizarre password sentence like A Rolling Program Smashed

The Genius, A Private Leopard Punched The Neuron, or my personal

favourite, A Magical Thunder Learned The Secret. I’ve no idea why

Namco decided to go with English passwords on a Japanese game,

but I’m bloody glad it did, because it made it a lot easier to play.

If you headed to the password section you were shown

numerous words that were presented in four columns consisting

of eight words each, which allowed you to create all manner of silly

sentences. My friend Paul and I would make all sorts of ludicrous

combinations like A Digital Leopard Desired The Genius and some

of the nonsense we inputted very occasionally got us to later levels

in the game. (A Natural Program Desired The Neutron gets you to

the final stage on hard difficulty for example.)

Needless to say, messing around with Rolling Thunder 2’s

password system was almost as much of a laugh as the game itself

and it’s a shame I don’t own more games that do this. Although

that’s probably a good thing as I’d never get them finished.

» RETROREVIVAL

MAGICAL THUNDER INDEED

Rolling Thunder 2

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b0317180-1dbc-4fe7-b445-0fab5a6a6c7a

trick – the ability to travel through a variety of

interconnected tables. Although both games

had received reasonable reviews, neither of

them had quite nailed the ball physics in the

way that the greatest pinball videogames do,

and both struggled to convey the length of a

pinball table. Time Scanner would

pause to scroll as the ball moved

between upper and lower sections

of the table, while Pinball Magic

crammed everything into a single

screen. It’s fair to say that there

was a gap in the market for a more

authentic pinball experience.

The situation changed

drastically when a group of demo

scene coders that had been part of

the group The Silents decided that

they wanted to move into game development.

Digital Illusions was the new company

set up for this purpose, based in Sweden.

Andreas Axelsson was the programmer,

Markus Nyström handled the graphics, Olof

Gustafsson was the musician and resident

pinball expert of the group, and Ulf Mandorff

worked on the ball physics. The team was

coordinated by Fredrik Liliegren, and Barry

Simpson served as the producer from the

game’s publisher, 21st Century Entertainment.

Digital Illusions created Pinball Dreams as

its very first game. It was a more traditional

pinball game than its Amiga contemporaries,

with the most realistic ball physics of any

game on the platform at the time. The game

offered four tables, all of which are original

creations for the game, rather than being

licensed from major pinball manufacturers

as is common today. As well as carrying

very distinct visual identities, each of the

four tables – Ignition, Steel Wheel, Beat Box

and Nightmare – offered a different type of

pinball experience. You could opt for the

P

inball and videogames have

always enjoyed a fairly close

relationship, owing to their shared

historical status as coin-operated

amusements – and to some, social menace.

In fact, if you think politicians and the media

are taking a long time to accept

videogames, it’s worth noting

that the city of Kokomo in Indiana,

USA, only officially lifted its ban

on pinball machines in 2016, 40

years after New York and Chicago

did the same. Pinball videogames

first arrived soon after the lifting

of those bans in the Seventies,

and by the early Nineties we’d

received some true classics

including Pinball Construction

Set and Devil Crash.

Up to this point, Amiga pinball games had

been OK. Time Scanner and Pinball Magic

were the best available, but neither of them

were pinball simulations as such because

both games used video pinball’s greatest

There’s nothing like a great pinball game – and

before Pinball Dreams, Amiga owners had nothing

like a great pinball game. We look back at the

game that set Digital Illusions up for future

success and made pinball wizards of us all

WORDS BY NICK THORPE

50 | RETRO GAMER

» [Amiga] The scoreboard at the top of the screen will

regularly inform you of features like the ‘Bonus Booster’.

ULTIMATE GUIDE ULTIMATE GUIDE LLTTIIMMAATTEE G GUUIIDDEE

“WE WANTED TO

MOVE ON FROM

JUST MAKING

DEMOS, AND A

GAME SEEMED

LIKE THE ONLY

REASONABLE

NEXT STEP”

ANDREAS

AXELSSON

» [Amiga] Nightmare’s an easy table to trip up on, as the

ball is launched straight into the middle of the table.

» [Amiga] Steel Wheel’s bonus features focus on things

associated with trains, like tickets and carriages.

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ULTIMATE GUIDE: PINBALL DREAMS

RETRO GAMER | 51

IGNITION

Ignition is a table themed

around space exploration

that is arguably the simplest

of the lot, which is probably

for the best since it’s at

the top of the list of tables

and therefore the first that

most players will try. There

are no ramps at all on this

table, but there are plenty

of stationary targets though,

as well as a tricky hole on

the left of the table that can

award an extra ball if hit.

BEAT BOX

Beat Box will test your

ability to accurately shoot

for ramps and lanes. It has

the most complex ramp

setup of the four tables,

as one ramp has two exit

points and the other has

two entry ways. You’re

really going to rely on

them, as getting up into the

bumpers can be tricky and

there aren’t too many other

targets to be aiming for.

STEEL WHEEL

The golden age of steam

locomotion provides the

theme for this decidedly

brown table. With practice,

you should be able to

repeatedly run the ramp

on the left of the table,

whereas the central one is

a little trickier. The bonus

lane on the right is relatively

easy to hit, but the more

lucrative one in the top left

will require some real skill

to hit consistently.

NIGHTMARE/

GRAVEYARD

The name of this one will

depend on your version of

the game. Thankfully the

layout doesn’t change, as

this is a fast-paced table

that sets you up to run

the left and right ramps

consecutively, or loop the

top of the table via the right

lane. This is the only table

in the game with a short

launch path that puts you in

the middle of the playfield,

so watch out for that.

HERE ARE EACH OF THE FOUR TABLES YOU’LL ENCOUNTER IN PINBALL DREAMS, AND THEIR UN

RUN THE TABLES

IQUE FEATURES

» [Amiga] Drat, that’s a ball gone. The blow is softened only slightly

by the promise of bonus points to be calculated afterwards.

» [Amiga] Accessing this upper section is quite

tricky since it’s so easy to struggle with ramps.

» [Amiga] With so many targets positioned in strategic places, the

left lane is really the best way to access the top of Nightmare.

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52 | RETRO GAMER

PC

Year 1993

The PC version is faithful to the Amiga

original in the graphical department, and

it includes all four tables. You do lose

some vertical visibility due to the 320x200

resolution which isn’t ideal, and though the

soundtrack is well represented across sound

cards, the Amiga’s music is still preferable.

GAME GEAR

Year 1994

A US-only release, this is much like the

Game Boy version of the game. The

addition of colour graphics is obviously nice,

but the music doesn’t come across quite as

well. Since your options for pinball games

on the Game Gear are pretty limited, this is

the pick of the bunch.

GAME BOY

Year 1993

This handheld version is respectable,

but never feels as good as the original –

movement is less smooth. It’s missing the

Beat Box table of the original game and

obviously takes a good graphical hit, too.

It’s not among the premier pinball games on

Nintendo’s green-screened wonder.

SNES

Year 1994

A really nice conversion, with good graphics,

satisfying ball movement and all four tables

intact. For some reason, many of the console

versions renamed the Nightmare table to

Graveyard and that’s the case here, with a

couple of slight graphical edits needed to

comply with Nintendo’s content guidelines.

CONVERSION CAPERS

» [Amiga] We’ve just managed to save the ball from dropping

out of play here – a tense moment indeed.

» [Amiga] Beat Box is themed around scoring hits and going

on tour – a European one, according to the score board.

» [Amiga] The rocket blasting off gives you all the information you need to work out this table’s theme.

b0317180-1dbc-4fe7-b445-0fab5a6a6c7a

simplicity of Ignition or the more technically

challenging Beat Box, and everyone has

their favourite. Most importantly, all of them

adhere to the limitations of real pinball tables,

and mimic the long table layouts too.

P

inball Dreams could have succeeded

simply by playing a decent game

of pinball, given the lack of games

that were trying to provide such an

experience, but what made it so memorable

was that every aspect of the game was so

highly polished. Markus Nyström brought

the table themes to life with art that makes

excellent use of the Amiga’s graphical

capabilities, while ensuring that none of

them ended up being so visually busy that

the action became hard to discern. Olof

Gustaffson’s music was brilliant too, and

remains one of the key appealing aspects

of the game for fans today. What’s more,

the tables all had sound effects that really

captured the feeling of playing a real pinball

table. In fact, sound was

often one of the more heavily

downgraded aspects of the game

when Pinball Dreams was ported

to other formats.

When Pinball Dreams launched

in March 1992, it received a very

warm welcome from the Amiga

press. Despite claiming to have “never liked

pinball”, The One’s reviewer Paul Presley gave

the game 89%, praising it for “the superb

musical scores that play throughout the game

to the sheer speed with which everything

moves”. In Amiga Power, Stuart Campbell

awarded the game 87%, saying that it was

“closer to the real thing than any other

attempt I’ve seen on any machine”.

Amiga Action also gave it 87%, noting

the realism of the ball movement and

ULTIMATE GUIDE: PINBALL DREAMS

RETRO GAMER | 53

GAME BOY ADVANCE

Year 2002

This Europe-only release was titled Pinball

Challenge Deluxe, and features great

graphics and music as well as all of the

tables, plus the four Pinball Fantasies tables.

It sounds ideal, but unfortunately the view

of the table is zoomed in way too close and

there’s no option to change it.

IOS

Year 2009

This version by Cowboy Rodeo is titled

Pinball Dreaming: Pinball Dreams. It’s a

remake with 3D versions of the four original

tables, and like its PSP counterpart features

plenty of options. Despite being an older

iPhone and iPad release, it was updated

until 2016 and is still available to buy today.

PSP

Year 2009

Cowboy Rodeo’s digital-only release is a

faithful conversion of the Amiga original,

with all four tables and the graphics and

sound intact. There lots of options here,

including the ability to rotate the screen. The

PSP digital store has closed, so you’ll need

an alternative system to buy it today.

AMSTRAD CPC

Year 2019

This homebrew conversion by Batman

Group shows just how capable Lord Sugar’s

computer really is. All four tables are

included, graphical detail is excellent and it

plays very well indeed. The only downer is

that it requires a 128K machine with a floppy

disk drive, so won’t run on a standard 464.

PLENTY OF FORMATS GOT SOME PINBALL LOVE, BUT

WAS EVERY VERSION AS DREAMY AS THE ORIGINAL?

MORE

VERSIONS

A faithful Atari Falcon conversion

was created by the late Stewart Gilray

in 1995, and scored 80% in ST Format.

The PSP version is a Minis game and

compatible with the PS3 and PS Vita –

in fact, if you do want to play it on

your PSP you’ll need to download

it via PS3 and transfer

it across.

» [Amiga] Working out how to do these ramps was one of the trickier tasks Andreas tackled.

“ARCADE MACHINES

IN GENERAL WERE

VERY RESTRICTED IN

SWEDEN, SO IT WAS

HARD TO FIND ANY”

ANDREAS AXELSSON

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“fast and extremely smooth” vertical scrolling.

Daniel Whitehead voiced a common

complaint in his review in Amiga Computing,

noting that “for nearly £26 you don’t get

enough variety”, though he still liked the game

enough to give it 86%. Other scores include

86% from Zero, 84% from Amiga Format and

83% from CU Amiga.

T

hat acclaim was a sign of success

to come, as Pinball Dreams sold

extremely well for Digital Illusions and

21st Century Entertainment. Digital

Illusions quickly got to work on

the next game in the series, and

with Pinball Fantasies achieving

a similar level of success upon its

release in October 1992, Pinball

Illusions followed for the Amiga

1200 in 1995. However, Digital

Illusions wasn’t the only team

working on the series. Spidersoft

produced ports of the first two

games to a variety of formats,

and was then tasked with producing its own

pinball games for 21st Century Entertainment.

This partnership resulted in Pinball Dreams II,

Pinball Mania and its update Total Pinball 3D,

Pinball Builder and Pinball World.

Digital Illusions moved on from pinball and

by the end of the Nineties, it had established

itself as a racing game specialist with games

like S40 Racing, Motorhead and the Swedish

Touring Car Championship series.

The studio reached a turning point in

2002 upon the release of Battlefield 1942, a

first-person shooter that became a big hit

based on its excellent multiplayer gameplay.

That success resulted in the studio’s gradual

acquisition by EA from 2004-2006. Today,

the studio is commonly known as DICE and

the founding members have moved on. It

mostly works on its most famous series, but

is also known for the likes of Mirror’s Edge

and Star Wars Battlefront.

Though Digital Illusions hasn’t been

developing pinball games for many years

now and 21st Century Entertainment is long

defunct, the widespread love for Pinball

Dreams has endured. That popularity has

ensured that it remains relatively easy to

buy today, as the original releases can

still be purchased on PC via

GOG or on older PlayStation

consoles. If you prefer a more

modern experience, the Finnish

developer Cowboy Rodeo

released a 3D remake on Apple

devices in 2009, which thankfully

survived the great 32-bit app

purge of iOS 11 and remains

available via the App Store.

In an age where players have

easy access to dozens of licensed tables via

Pinball FX 3, the idea of a game with just four

tables can seem a bit quaint. But it’s worth

remembering that even offering four tables

was a pretty great deal in the early Nineties

– after all, games like the Pro Pinball series

and Worms Pinball gave players just a single

table to enjoy well into the late-Nineties. By

offering players real value as well as a focus

on authentic pinball action that couldn’t be

found elsewhere, Digital Illusions really earned

its success with Pinball Dreams. We’d suggest

you put it on and have a quick bash on

Nightmare too, because even after 30 years, it

still plays like a dream.

54 | RETRO GAMER

BEYOND

YOUR

DREAMS DREAMS

PINBALL FANTASIES

Year 1992

This sequel took only months to develop, and is substantially

similar to Pinball Dreams but features four new tables – Party

Land, Speed Devils, Billion Dollar Game Show and Stones

‘N Bones. Much like the first game, it was very popular and

widely ported to other consoles and computers.

PINBALL ILLUSIONS

Year 1995

The third game in the series was designed for the Amiga

1200 and consisted of three tables: Law ‘N Justice, Extreme

Sports and Babewatch. This swan song for the series on the

Amiga featured multiball functions for the first time. The PC

version gained an extra table, Vikings.

TRUE PINBALL

Year 1996

Ocean published this version of Pinball Illusions for the

PlayStation and Saturn. It contains 3D rendered versions of all

four of the game’s tables, with a tilted perspective allowing you

to see more of the table at any time, but unfortunately lacks

the brilliant intro music from the Amiga version.

“WE DIDN’T

ACTUALLY START

WORKING ON

ANYTHING ELSE

UNTIL AFTER

THE PHYSICS

FELT GOOD”

ANDREAS

AXELSSON

THE PINBALL DELIGHTS THAT DIGITAL

ILLUSIONS WENT ON TO OFFER

» [Amiga] Shooting the loop around the top of Nightmare will trigger bonus features like ‘Run For Your Life’.

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ULTIMATE GUIDE: PINBALL DREAMS

RETRO GAMER | 55

Why did the team decide to

create a pinball game?

We wanted to move on from

just making demos, and a game

seemed like the only reasonable

next step. We all loved pinball

games, and it seemed rather easy

to do, just get the ball moving right,

add some sound and graphics! In

addition the few pinball games that

were available at the time were

lacking the feel of real machines,

and had all been modified to fit the

screen, if you like.

Were there any pinball tables that

were popular with the team when

making the game?

I think we played everything we came across.

At the time arcade machines in general were

very restricted in Sweden, so it was hard to

find any. I don’t even remember which ones I

had access to, to be honest – only that I had to

walk down to the basement behind the tobacco

shop in the alley to find them. The first time

I had really good access to real games was

when we went to Seattle and Los Angeles after

releasing Pinball Dreams. There I played The

Addams Family and Terminator 2 any chance

I had. Two amazing games. Olof had much

better access as he knew people working with

distribution and service of pinball games,

but we didn’t live in the same town, so it was

mostly to his benefit.

Were there any aspects of

Pinball Dreams that were

difficult to implement from a

programming perspective?

There were all sorts of things we

had to figure out. The ball physics

was the main thing. From the start

we said that if we can’t get that

right there’s no point in making

the rest of the game. So we didn’t

actually start working on anything

else until after the physics felt

good on a black and white mini

section of a table. It looked like a

bowl with a flipper and a couple of

round bits in the middle, and one could get a

feel for it without sound, score, or art. Using

the half-bright mode for lights seemed quite

obvious, but it took a while to come up with

a model for doing ramps and multiple layers

that didn’t use too much memory. I recall the

copy protection was a bit too good, the disk

duplication equipment couldn’t make copies,

so I had to simplify it a bit.

Pinball Dreams was the start of a

successful series – did it feel like a

special game while you were making it?

We had a lot of fun while we were making

the game, so it always felt like we had a

good thing going, but there was one specific

moment when we knew we had something

big. Fredrik shared an apartment with a

friend at the university, and he was going

away over the weekend. He asked

the friend to try the game, but the

friend declined as he had an exam

coming up. Nevertheless, when

Fredrik came back a few days later

he found the friend in front of

the computer with dark eyes,

pizza boxes on the floor, and

not a single minute spent on

studying for the exam. He

looked up and said, “I hate

you,” then kept playing.

Which table did you find to

be your favourite?

I had a fierce competition for

first place with the producer Barry

Simpson on Ignition, so in a way I keep

coming back to that table the most.

Did the team end up with a pinball

wizard who dominated the high score

tables, or did you all find yourselves

closely matched?

People played to a varying degree, but Olof

was the de facto pinball master when it

came to real tables, so he just had a knack

for racking up points that were hard to beat,

regardless of the table. I did get over a billion

points on Beat Box at one point though. I

recall that caused some stir. I think I played

the most hours of all of us, since everything I

was doing basically meant I was playing and

testing the game every day for years.

THE DIGITAL ILLUSIONS COFOUNDER AND PROGRAMMER OF PINBALL DREAMS LOOKS BACK AT HIS EARLY HIT

ANDREAS AXELSSON Q&A

» [Amiga] We’ve successfully hit the hole here to earn a nice big 250,000 point bonus. » [Amiga] The middle of the Steel Wheel table has a good number of targets for you to aim at.

b0317180-1dbc-4fe7-b445-0fab5a6a6c7a

56 | RETRO GAMER

SONIC GAMES

For when you need nostalgia on the go

GENERATIONS

APART

DEVELOPER: SONIC TEAM

RELEASE: 2011

CHEAP THRILLS

SO YOU

WANT TO

COLLECT…

Sega’s mascot has starred in plenty of games, from quality outings to questionable

releases – and as always, the price doesn’t always match the pleasure. Here are

some of the most interesting items in the speedy little chap’s repertoire

Words by Nick Thorpe

» [Xbox 360] Stages like Chemical Plant Zone look pretty

amazing given a lick of modern 3D paint.

» [Xbox 360] The new stage designs incorporate fan

favourite moments like City Escape’s boarding.

» [Xbox 360] Old enemies return, but

not always as you remember them –

Chopper was never this big before!

n Sonic Generations

was also released for

the 3DS, and it’s a

completely different

game to its home

console counterpart.

Both classic and modern

Sonic explore 2.5D

stages this time, and

a largely different selection of stages and

bosses are represented, including Casino

Night Zone, Emerald Coast and even Water

Palace from Sonic Rush. That last inclusion

is down to the fact that this game was

developed by Dimps, the team behind the

Sonic Advance and Sonic Rush series on

the GBA and DS, and it’s similar in quality to

those games. While the handheld version of

Sonic Generations isn’t quite as cheap as the

others, it’s still priced low – you can pick up

a complete copy from as little as £6. Since

the 3DS is region locked, you may also wish

to know that Japanese copies are similarly

priced, while a US copy is a little more at

about £11+ complete.

SONIC GENERATIONS

£2+

EXPECT TO PAY

360, EUROPE

n When Sonic had to team up with another hero

for a time-travel anniversary adventure, there was

only one choice – the shorter and considerably

quieter Sonic of the Mega Drive era. Together they

visit classic stages from across the series including

Green Hill Zone, Speed Highway and Crisis City,

each spectacularly remade with brand-new 2.5D

and 3D designs. It’s an absolute treat for fans of

the series, and arguably the best Sonic game since

the Dreamcast era. Sonic Generations sold well and

isn’t too expensive on any platform.

The Xbox 360 version was

reissued in a dual-branded Xbox

360/Xbox One variant, and gains

big improvements on modern

hardware – Xbox One X gives it a resolution boost,

and Xbox Series X adds 60fps gameplay to that,

making it the console version of choice. Big fans

may wish to seek out the collector’s edition box

set, which includes a figure, documentary DVD,

soundtrack CD, art book and gold ring, and goes for

£120 and up on Xbox 360 and PS3.

£8+

EXPECT TO PAY

PC

£3+ EXPECT TO PAY

PS3, EUROPE

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RETRO GAMER | 57

SO YOU WANT TO COLLECT… SONIC GAMES

DEVELOPER: SEGA

RELEASE: 1995

DEVELOPER: ASPECT/SEGA

RELEASE: 1995

32XPENSIVE

CASH COMPILATION

» [32X] Knuckles throws Vector, in a desperate

bid to rid himself of the annoying crocodile.

» [32X] Polygonal bonus stages mark a rare

display of the 32X’s power within Chaotix.

KNUCKLES’ CHAOTIX

SONIC 2-IN-1

£350+

EXPECT TO PAY

EUROPE

n When Sega sent the 32X into the world, it didn’t send the big guns –

nope, Sonic stayed at home and Knuckles was teamed up with a bunch

of misfit heroes including the forgotten sidekick Mighty and the conceptart relic Vector. We feel that says a lot about Sega’s confidence in the

32X, as well as the oddball gameplay twist that had pairs of characters attached by bungee

cord. Even without that, the levels aren’t the strongest in the series. However, demand is

high as this game has never been ported to any other platform, and supply is low because it

was a 32X exclusive. While NTSC copies will work on NTSC hardware regardless of region,

PAL copies won’t run on NTSC systems and vice versa. All regions got cardboard boxes, so

you can potentially strike a deal if you don’t mind owning a tatty copy.

n This one’s a strange one, as it’s the form rather than the function

determining the price tag here. It’s a compilation of Sonic The Hedgehog 2

and Sonic Spinball for the Game Gear, and it’s so incredibly simple that

there’s no menu – the system simply boots up one of the games each

time, and the other the next time. Loose carts are going for £30+ alone, as it’s a late release

released in limited quantities, and only in Europe. Finding a complete copy is very hard, so while

we’ve provided a baseline, you should expect values to be volatile when one does eventually

surface as people try to complete their Sonic or Game Gear collections. Since neither game is

hard to obtain elsewhere, this one is really strictly for the collectors these days.

£100+

EXPECT TO PAY

JAPAN

£120+

EXPECT TO PAY

USA

» [Game Gear] Sonic Spinball

is a pretty tricky game on

the Mega Drive, and remains

so in portable form.

DEVELOPER: SEGA

RELEASE: 1995

SONIC DRIFT

RACING

DRIFT KING

n This is actually the second Sonic Drift

game, and in other regions it goes by the

title Sonic Drift 2. The original Sonic Drift

never left Japan, but to be honest that’s for the better as

this one is miles better. Three new racers have joined the

roster for a total of seven, there are new items to pick up,

and the game has eighteen tracks – three times as many

as the first game. They’re pretty ambitious too, with

features like bridges, tunnels, banked curves and gaps

that you rarely see in 8-bit racers. The AI improvements

also mean that you’ll really need to fight for first place.

Pricing is all over the place for European copies but other

regions seem a bit more stable, and as always, loose

cartridges are much cheaper.

£100+

EXPECT TO PAY

EUROPE

STARTING GRID

Our favourite racers and their special abilities

Sonic

Our hero is nice and

fast, but his handling

isn’t great. His unique

special ability is a

speed dash.

Amy

Amy’s quick off the

mark but has a low

top speed. She throws

hearts which slow

down other racers.

Knuckles

The guardian of Angel

Island can also jump,

but if he’s close enough

to a rival he’ll punch

them instead.

Metal Sonic

Sonic’s robotic foe is all

speed, no handling. His

super-speed dash costs

three rings instead

of two.

Tails

Sonic’s pal drives a

vehicle with decent

all-round capabilities.

Jumping is his personal

special move.

Eggman

Nobody corners better

than the good Doctor

Robotnik. He can drop

mines to damage his

opponents too.

£45+

EXPECT TO PAY

EUROPE

£12+

EXPECT TO PAY

JAPAN

£32+

EXPECT TO PAY

USA

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58 | RETRO GAMER

Think Global

n Whenever you’re collecting a series across multiple

platforms, it’s smart to pay extra attention to each

system’s region locking status ahead of buying anything.

COLLECTING TIPS!

Look Around

n Sonic games are popular enough that you’ll find

them in the wild, so it’s always best to scout the

market before resorting to a Buy It Now listing on eBay.

Variant Of Concern

n Cover variants aren’t usually a huge factor, but can

affect price – we saw a couple of copies of Sonic Lost

World go a little cheap because of their German covers.

Life Choices

n Do you really need that copy of Sonic 06? Who’s going to

give you a medal for having Sonic Boom: Rise Of Lyric on your

shelf? These are good questions to ask. [Nick has them - Ed]

SONIC THE

HEDGEHOG

DEVELOPER: SEGA

RELEASED: 1991

EXPECT TO PAY:

EUROPE £5+ , USA £7.50+ , JAPAN £7.50+

SONIC TRIPLE

TROUBLE

DEVELOPER: ASPECT

RELEASED: 1994

EXPECT TO PAY:

EUROPE £80+ , USA £40+ , JAPAN £10+

SONIC CD

DEVELOPER: SEGA

RELEASED: 1993

EXPECT TO PAY:

EUROPE £45+, USA £32+, JAPAN £12+

SONIC R

DEVELOPER: TRAVELLER’S TALES

RELEASED: 1997

EXPECT TO PAY:

EUROPE £20+ , USA £75+ , JAPAN £6+

SONIC

ADVENTURE

DEVELOPER: SONIC TEAM

RELEASED: 1998

EXPECT TO PAY:

EUROPE £5+ , USA £15+ , JAPAN £2+

MORE GAMES TO CONSIDER

DEVELOPER: SONIC TEAM

RELEASE: 1997

SONIC JAM

PUMP UP THE…

n It’s crazy to think that this

compilation of Mega Drive games was

the only Saturn Sonic release developed in whole by

Sonic Team. The collection comprises Sonics 1-3 and

Sonic & Knuckles, and while later Sonic compilations

have surpassed the quantity of games here, few

videogame compilations of any kind can match it

for the care and attention shown. The games are

natively ported to the Saturn and, bar some quirks

arising from the use of CD audio, run exactly as you’d

expect. However, what really makes the compilation

so good is its plentiful extras, which improve the play

experience and provide historical context. As usual

with Saturn games, Japanese and European prices

are reasonable but American prices are very high.

» [Saturn] It looks like the Saturn could have

hosted a very decent 3D platformer, given a

team that understood it.

» [Saturn] You can’t normally do the spin

dash in Sonic 1. All hail Sonic Jam!

£22+

EXPECT TO PAY

JAPAN JAM-PACKED!

The bonuses that are worth seeking Sonic Jam for

GAME

TWEAKS

Revised versions of

every game are available

in Sonic Jam – as well

as the Original mode,

normal and easy options

have been created

with fewer hazards and

sometimes even fewer

stages. The first game

also includes the extra

graphical effects of the

revised Mega Drive

version, and the spin

dash move from Sonic 2

can be enabled.

MUSEUM

EXHIBITS

Games are represented

with authentic 3D

cartridges, and digital

versions of the original

manuals are included.

The various buildings

in Sonic World grant

access to all sorts of

goodies – a timeline of

Sonic’s history, various

clips of adverts and

cutscenes from past

games, a wealth of

character art and of

course a sound test.

SONIC

WORLD

This graphically

impressive playground

is the closest thing we

got to a proper 3D Sonic

game on the Saturn. The

missions you undertake

are actually very simple

– collect rings, find

secrets, pop balloons –

but they’re fun to mess

around with, and give

a tantalising glimpse at

what could have been

achieved with Sega’s

32-bit machine.

£95+

EXPECT TO PAY

USA

£20+

EXPECT TO PAY

EUROPE

DEVELOPER: HUDSON SOFT/SONIC TEAM

RELEASE: 2000

DEVELOPER: SONIC TEAM

RELEASE: 2001

BOARD SILLY

SONIC SHUFFLE

UNCONTESTED

SONIC ADVENTURE 2:

BATTLE

n When we think of Sonic Shuffle, an

imaginary scenario plays out in our heads.

“There’s a Mario Party, and we’re not

invited,” says a dejected chap at Sonic

Team. “Why don’t we do that, but with

Sonic? It’ll be great,” a colleague responds.

“We’ll get Hudson Soft involved, and

it’ll even have that

cel-shading all the

kids loved in Jet

Set Radio! What could go wrong?” Back

here in reality, plenty did go wrong – even

if you eliminated the party-pooping AI,

the obnoxious loading times between

confusing minigames could

easily ruin the fun. It’s a

shame, because it does

look nice. There’s a big

regional discrepancy here

as the Japanese game is

cheap as heck, American

copies are reasonable, and

PAL copies are more than

we’d consider for a game of

such dubious merits.

n This wasn’t Sonic’s first appearance on

a Nintendo console – that honour went

to Sonic Advance – but this GameCube

release was a formative experience for

many new fans,

and younger fans in

particular regard it as a

favourite in the series.

It’s an enhanced version

of the Dreamcast

original (£45+ in

Europe), and tasks

you with controlling

both Sonic’s crew and

Robotnik’s new mates

Shadow and Rouge

in a battle for the fate

of the planet, across

platform, shooting and

treasure hunting stages. As well as general

gameplay tweaks, this version justifies its

subtitle with expanded

two-player and Chao

Garden modes. While

the GameCube can be

expensive to collect

for, this game was so

popular that it’s now dirt

cheap by the standards

of the platform in

Europe and Japan. US

copies are a little higher

in price as there’s a bit

more demand there.

£10+

EXPECT TO PAY

JAPAN

» [Dreamcast] Running around Sonic

Shuffle’s boards can be pretty tedious,

especially against the CPU.

» [GameCube] Blowing stuff up with Robotnik’s

laser tank thing feels pretty cool because evil is fun.

» [Dreamcast] Some minigames are OK

– this one where you have to survive a

tilting maze is rather decent.

£90+

EXPECT TO PAY

EUROPE

£7+

EXPECT TO PAY

EUROPE

£30+ EXPECT TO PAY

USA

£7+

EXPECT TO PAY

JAPAN

£22+

EXPECT TO PAY

USA

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RETRO GAMER | 59

SONIC MEGA

COLLECTION

DEVELOPER: SONIC TEAM

RELEASED: 2002

EXPECT TO PAY:

EUROPE £7+ , USA £4.50+ , JAPAN £7.50+

SONIC

RIVALS

DEVELOPER: BACKBONE ENTERTAINMENT

RELEASED: 2006

EXPECT TO PAY:

EUROPE £3+ , USA £5+

MARIO & SONIC

AT THE OLYMPIC GAMES

DEVELOPER: SEGA SPORTS R&D

RELEASED: 2007

EXPECT TO PAY:

EUROPE £2.50+ , USA £1.50+ , JAPAN £1+

SONIC CHRONICLES:

THE DARK BROTHERHOOD

DEVELOPER: BIOWARE

RELEASED: 2008

EXPECT TO PAY:

EUROPE £4+ , USA £18+ , JAPAN £20+

SONIC

COLOURS

DEVELOPER: SONIC TEAM

RELEASED: 2010

EXPECT TO PAY:

EUROPE £4+ , USA £5+ , JAPAN £3.50+

» [Mega Drive] Everyone loves Ice Cap Zone,

even if it can give you some hard times.

» [Wii U] Takashi Iizuka has claimed

Jack And The Beanstalk was more of an

influence than Super Mario Galaxy.

SO YOU WANT TO COLLECT… SONIC GAMES

KART ATTACK

DEVELOPER: SUMO DIGITAL

RELEASE: 2013

SONIC & ALLSTARS RACING

TRANSFORMED

n Sonic has done his share of bandwagon

jumping in the past, but you’d be a fool

to overlook this amazing racing game.

Rather than racing exclusively on the

road, Sonic and guests from games such as Jet Set

Radio and Shinobi have vehicles that can transform

into planes and boats. Sumo Digital put together

some fantastic tracks that change from lap to lap,

and any Sega maniac will be delighted with the fan

service on offer here. There are a multitude of versions

available but they all strive to provide the same

game experience, with

necessary concessions on

handhelds. Xbox Series X

owners will benefit from

an improved framerate

on the 360 version, but

the PC version also rocks

60fps and has extra DLC

characters to buy.

THREE’S COMPANY

Here are Sumo Digital’s other Sonic racing games

SONIC & SEGA

ALL-STARS RACING

This first outing in the series was

released on Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, DS

and PC in 2010. It keeps Sonic and

his Sega chums strictly on the road,

with the main gimmick being that

each character has a unique ‘All-Star

Move’ for times of desperate need.

Beyond that it’s just a very good take

on Mario Kart, with some nice driving

missions to keep you busy.

TEAM SONIC

RACING

This arrived in 2019 on the PS4, Xbox

One, Switch and PC, and ditches the

Sega characters and transforming

vehicles. Instead you get an unusual

co-op twist on kart racing, which lets

you boost and donate items to your

friends. It’s great for less adversarial

types but recycles plenty of tracks

from past games, and it’s not quite as

much fun as Transformed.

DEVELOPER: SEGA TECHNICAL INSTITUTE

RELEASE: 1994

DEVELOPER: SONIC TEAM

RELEASE: 2013

THIRD TIME LUCKY

LOST TO TIME?

SONIC 3

SONIC LOST WORLD

n Sonic’s third adventure may be

essentially only half of what it’s

supposed to be, with the other

half being Sonic & Knuckles, but

it’s still a very high-quality outing

for Sega’s mascot and his yet-tobe-playable rival. It sold well, but

it isn’t as common as the first

two games in the series and hasn’t been reissued since

2010, so demand has pushed the price up a bit. It’s also

the only one of Sonic’s major Mega Drive outings to be

region locked, though you can get around that by locking

on to Sonic & Knuckles. The US version comes in two

forms – the original 1994 release in the usual plastic

case, and a 1997 Mega Hit Series version in a cardboard

box. Both of them seem to fetch similar prices, although

the cardboard version will naturally be more prone to

wear and tear.

n After experiencing success

with Sonic Colours and

Sonic Generations, Sonic

Team decided to take a

different approach for the spiky mascot’s next

appearance. The cylindrical stages reminded

many of Super Mario Galaxy’s awesome globes,

but this experiment was too uneven to match

those glorious heights. This game formed part of

an exclusivity deal between Sega and Nintendo,

so the Wii U has the only home console

version of the game – it did also appear on PC,

and there is a 3DS game of the same name

with different stage designs. The Wii U was

infamously unpopular to begin with and Nintendo

platforms often attract a price premium amongst

collectors, so this could be one to watch in the

future as the platform transitions from being

merely old to being regarded as retro.

£22+

EXPECT TO PAY

EUROPE

£25+

EXPECT TO PAY

USA

£14+

EXPECT TO PAY

USA

£20+

EXPECT TO PAY

JAPAN

£8+ EXPECT TO PAY

JAPAN £13+

EXPECT TO PAY

EUROPE

£10+

EXPECT TO PAY

EUROPE PC

£10+

EXPECT TO PAY

EUROPE VITA

» [PS3] Everybody’s favourite character

Shadow jets around the After Burner

aircraft-carrier stage.

b0317180-1dbc-4fe7-b445-0fab5a6a6c7a

Network

Adaptor

» PLATFORM: PlayStation 2 » RELEASED: 2001

» COST: £24.99 (launch), £20+ (today, boxed) £10+ (today, unboxed)

W

here Microsoft was enthusiastic about online

gaming with the Xbox and Nintendo was basically

uninterested with the GameCube, Sony’s online

plans for the PS2 were somewhere in between.

The company did throw development resources at online

games, but stopped short of including network hardware in the

console. Instead, players were required to purchase an additional

accessory, which connected to the expansion bay on the rear of

the console. As well as enabling online gaming, this device was

used to facilitate local network play, which had previously been

provided by the iLink port that was present on early PS2 models.

The Network Adaptor also allowed players to connect an IDE

hard disk for storing game patches, and some games used this

function to improve gameplay, for example by installing data

to reduce loading times. The redesigned slim PS2 introduced

in 2004 featured integrated network hardware, eliminating

the need for this accessory, and all official online support was

terminated in 2016. However, the Network Adaptor can still be

used for online gaming thanks to unofficial servers run by fans,

as well as offline multiplayer via LAN, and naturally any games

that used hard disk functions in offline play also still use it.

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RETRO GAMER | 61

PERIPHERAL VISION: NETWORK ADAPTOR

SUPPLIED BY

EVAN

AMOS

Despite being one of the best arcade racers

of all time, OutRun 2006 does have a couple

of flaws and one of them is the lack of a splitscreen mode. While you can’t play it online

these days, you can still enjoy a multiplayer

race as OutRun 2006 supports LAN play for up

to six players. The experience is a bit hardware

intensive, as each player will need a PS2, a

copy of the game, the necessary networking

hardware and of course a TV. Is it worth getting

the kit together? Well, it’s certainly cheaper than

linking multiple arcade cabinets.

ESSENTIAL GAME

OUTRUN 2006:

COAST 2 COAST

■ North American models of the

Network Adaptor features ports for

both dial-up and broadband internet

connections, whereas international

models only support

broadband via Ethernet.

Network

Adaptor fact

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» PUBLISHER:

FOX INTERACTIVE

» DEVELOPER:

ARGONAUT

SOFTWARE

» RELEASED:

2000

» PLATFORM:

PLAYSTATION

» GENRE:

SURVIVAL HORROR

IN THE

KNOW

The sci-fi movie Alien Resurrection was released in 1997.

The videogame for Sony’s PlayStation, published by Fox Interactive and

developed by Argonaut Software in the UK, started development in

1996 but was not published until 2000. What happened?

Words by Richard Hewison

DEVELOPER

HIGHLIGHTS

STARGLIDER II

SYSTEM: ATARI ST,

AMIGA, PC, MACINTOSH

YEAR: 1988

STAR FOX

SYSTEM: SNES

YEAR: 1993

CROC: LEGEND OF

THE GOBBOS (PICTURED)

SYSTEM: PLAYSTATION,

VARIOUS

YEAR: 1997

62 | RETRO GAMER

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» [PlayStation] Everyone knows that standing close to an alien egg as it opens is a really bad idea.

T

he fourth movie

in the Alien

sci-fi horror

series appeared

in cinemas five and

a half years after the

melancholic Alien 3, and

by the late-Nineties,

several Hollywood film

studios were having a go

at videogame publishing,

rather than licensing their

IP to others. 20th Century

Fox set up Fox Interactive

in 1994, founded by former Time

Warner Interactive executive Ted

Hoff. Over the next nine years, Fox

published nearly 50 titles including

original games as well as TV and

film properties based on Die Hard,

The X-Files and Alien Resurrection.

Working at Fox Interactive in Los

Angeles in the mid-Nineties was

experienced games producer Gary

Sheinwald, who was a close friend

of Jez San, founder of Argonaut

Software in the UK. Started in the

early Eighties from his bedroom,

Jez had developed Argonaut into

a multimillion-pound plc by the

late-Nineties, creating globally

successful games like two Starglider

titles, flight simulator Birds Of Prey

and helping Nintendo to develop

the Super FX GPU for

the SNES console, as

well as the phenomenally

successful Star Fox game

that first used it.

When the idea of a

game based on Alien

Resurrection was first

proposed at Fox, Gary

knew who to recommend.

Argonaut already had

a working relationship

with Fox, thanks to its

multi-platform 3D title

Croc: Legend Of The Gobbos. Most

of the development team that had

recently completed the unrelated

game Alien Odyssey for Philips

Media Inc were moved onto the

official Alien Resurrection game.

At that early stage the team had

little information on the plot, and

so Argonaut used the time to

develop a game engine, employing

a top-down 3D view, similar to the

recent PlayStation release Loaded.

As it happens, that approach

fitted in with early versions of the

screenplay, as Gary recalls. “The

game was initially developed as a

top-down parallax scroller because

the original movie idea was for the

main spacecraft to be like a tower

block in space, on many levels.”

the film’s tone, a major change in

approach was also requested for

Argonaut’s game.

“When Tomb Raider became

a huge hit, the Alien Resurrection

game was changed to a thirdperson action adventure,” Gary

explains pragmatically. That was

all well and good, but the mixed

messages were not helping

Argonaut get a clear vision for

what the publisher wanted, as Jez

elaborates. “What they originally

asked us to do, we did, and then

we all decided to throw it away and

start again from scratch. Originally

it was a top-down Gauntlet meets

Alien Breed game, but then we

went for the third-person shooter.”

The team was not starting

entirely from scratch though.

The 3D engine developed for

Argonaut’s completed Croc:

Legend Of The Gobbos platform

game was used as the launching

point. Building a rudimentary

representation of Sigourney

Weaver as Ripley 8, the main figure

went through various iterations

as development progressed, until

Argonaut had a main character that

was satisfactory. The team then had

to design representations of other

main characters from the movie,

including Christie, Distephano and

Call, for specific levels. The game

continued evolving, with changes

to the inventory system, level

designs and graphics happening

on a regular basis.

» [PlayStation] This early build shows the inventory

system in use. Ripley 8 is certainly well-armed.

» [PlayStation] Another early build image. It shows

Ripley 8, one of several characters you could play.

Near the start of the movie, the audience is introduced to

the crew of the Betty with a glimpse of an arcade videogame

called Atom Zone. Argonaut got to design and write that game,

so it could be used during filming.

“There wasn’t a deal for the game that appeared in the

movie. I’m sure we signed a release, but there wasn’t a

contract, and we didn’t get paid for it,” reveals Jez San. “Gary

Sheinwald insisted we got a screen credit though, which was

all we got. We did quite a bit of work on it, effectively for

free. Originally, we had the whole Atom Zone game playable,

but the director needed a very specific set of occurrences

in the game, and for it to be reproducible on demand. In

the end we captured a demo, so that it wasn’t playable but

was exactly what the director

required.” The fictitious arcade

machine Atom Zone appeared

on-screen for barely ten seconds

in the theatrical version, and the

only in-game footage shown was of a spacecraft exploding in

a ball of fire. However, there was a chance the playable game

might have lived on. “At one point there was talk of bundling

Atom Zone free with the Alien Resurrection game, but that fell

by the wayside due to the enormous effort of creating the main

game,” admits Jez, and whilst the Atom Zone cabinet can be

tantalisingly seen on the Betty level in the finished PlayStation

game, it remains unplayable.

Work began on

the game levels

as a research

and development

exercise, and a

robust top-down

system complete

with a level editor

was in place early on. Argonaut

also got to work on a game

that was to briefly appear in the

film, and that work initially took

precedence over the licensed game

that was to follow. By early 1997,

film production was well underway

in Hollywood, making it the first

Alien movie in the series not to be

made in England.

Back in the UK, armed with

a huge collection of reference

material including 35mm stills, the

top-secret screenplay, production

art, and even some rough VHS

footage, Argonaut could shape its

game more accurately to fit the

movie. However, mirroring the

stylistic changes being made by

the director Jean-Pierre Jeunet to

THE MAKING OF: ALIEN RESURRECTION

Two games for the price of one?

The game was initially

developed as a top-down

parallax scroller…

Gary Sheinwald

» Jez San founded Argonaut

Software in the Eighties and

received an OBE in 2002.

RETRO GAMER | 63

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Unfortunately, all these

changes meant that development

continued throughout 1997 and

1998, long after the film had

departed cinemas, and various

developers came and went at

different stages of the project. The

general feeling of disappointment

over the film dampened

enthusiasm, but Argonaut

remained committed to doing as

professional a job as it could.

E

arly versions of the Tomb

Raider-style version

included the ability to

switch to a first-person

view by pressing and holding

a shoulder button on the

PlayStation controller. The player

could look around by moving the

person was so you could have

stuff jump out at you, which felt

more, well, Alien-like.” Indeed,

the 3D world employed for the

third-person view was the same

as what the player saw from

that first-person perspective in

the finally released game.

Unfortunately, the change

to first-person led to some

levels from earlier drafts of

the screenplay, including the

hydroponics and hospital sections,

being removed. Initially, if the player

was impregnated by a Facehugger,

the idea was to speedrun to the

nearest medical bay to get the

embryonic alien removed before it

was too late. That idea was ditched

in favour of the portable autodoc

unit, which did the surgery in situ.

Development sailed through 1999

and despite PR from Fox Interactive

that promised a release in Fall 1999

for PlayStation and Windows 95/98,

Alien Resurrection managed to miss

the domestic DVD and home video

releases as well as the promised

Fall 1999 release date.

Argonaut’s Alien Resurrection

PlayStation game was finally

completed in summer 2000 and

was published in the run up to

Christmas that year. However,

neither the Windows 95/98 PC

version nor the intended Sega

Saturn version were ever finished,

let alone released.

The final version featured

ten expansive levels and four

characters to switch between as

the player made progress. Levels

were mission-based, involving

releasing overheating escape pods,

killing all the previous failed Ripley

clones, battling Facehuggers, alien

warriors, military soldiers, an alien

queen, the albino Newborn and

ultimately escaping the USM Auriga

in the Betty and blowing everything

up in the process. One level

included swimming, simulating the

underwater scenes from the movie,

and echoing the swimming sections

of the first Tomb Raider game.

Specially recorded speech from

actor Steven Gilborn, who voiced

the main computer system called

Father in the movie, was included.

Short snatches of speech were

recorded by other soundalike

actors, but whilst they were

included in development versions,

most of the speech was removed

from the final release, other than

their grunts and groans in reaction

to injury during the game.

Inevitably, the length of time

taken by Argonaut to get the game

finished took its toll. The severely

extended development period, and

the poor box office performance of

the movie had a knock-on effect on

people’s appetite to play the official

MASTER THE CONTROLS

■ Getting familiar with the control system

is essential. Choose between one or two

controllers, with the option to use a PlayStation

mouse in one hand and a DualShock controller

in the other. With just one controller, use the left

stick to move and the right stick to look around.

FACING THE HUGGERS

■ You hear the scuttling and the whiplashing

tails as the Facehuggers approach before you

see them. Sometimes the best way to defeat

them before they latch onto your face is to

switch to crouching mode, so you are nearer the

ground, then shoot them down at their own level.

CLIMBING DOWN WALLS

■ Fully grown aliens love nothing more than

climbing walls and ceilings and then dropping

down behind you just before they start their

attack. If you hear an alien and you start taking

damage, run forward and swing around to face

your attacker, firing as you go.

NOWHERE TO GO

■ If you think you’ve explored an entire level, but

you can’t find anywhere else to go, remember

that you can crouch low and crawl through open

vents, assuming there is one. Vents usually give

you access to unreachable areas you might have

glimpsed earlier in the level.

» [PlayStation] Many locations from the movie, including the Betty spacecraft, were rendered in 3D for the player to explore.

How to survive Argonaut’s game

left stick at the same time, but

they could not move the current

character in that view. Later, a

section where the player had

to crawl through air vents was

added, temporarily switching to

a first-person perspective that

did allow for movement, and the

effectiveness of that approach

became instantly apparent. The

claustrophobic environment, and

the anticipation of not seeing what

was around the corner resulted in

the entire game being switched to

that view permanently.

“Technically the new perspective

wasn’t a huge change as we had a

very general-purpose 3D engine,

so the changes were mostly in the

level designs,” explains Jez. “I think

the main decision to move it to first64 | RETRO GAMER

b0317180-1dbc-4fe7-b445-0fab5a6a6c7a

game. Also, the original PlayStation

console’s popularity was starting to

fade, due in part to the emergence

of the brand-new PlayStation 2

console, which debuted at the

same time as the Alien Resurrection

game was published.

You could argue that the odds

were already stacked against the

project. Alien Resurrection was not

the first licensed Alien game, and

it was not the first Alien game to

employ that first-person viewpoint

either. Back in 1986, Activision

UK’s 8-bit game based on Aliens

was from the rudimentary

viewpoint of the player being in

the locations. In 1994, Rebellion

employed that view for its Alien

Vs Predator game for the Atari

Jaguar and its later Aliens Vs

Predator game for the IBM PC

released in 1999 to great acclaim,

which somewhat stole Alien

Resurrection’s thunder. That

game had much more variety,

a multiplayer mode and was

closer in feel to the more popular

Aliens movie that was released

in the mid-Eighties. Even earlier,

Probe Software unleashed Alien

Trilogy for the Sega Saturn, Sony

PlayStation and IBM PC in 1996.

That game also employed the firstperson viewpoint that Argonaut’s

game eventually employed.

H

owever, the game that

Argonaut finally produced

was technically superb.

Looking at it cold,

most people would assume the

game was running on the new

PlayStation 2. Alien Resurrection

utilised the SCPH 1200 DualShock

controller to great effect, allowing

the player to move with the left

stick and look around the 3D

environment using the right stick.

Pun definitely intended, that control

system was alien to most people,

and they initially struggled with

it. The game was also one of the

few to support the PlayStation

mouse controller, which gave the

player a much finer method for

looking around in the first-person

perspective, aiming and shooting

their weapons and using items they

encounter throughout the game,

like interacting with security panels,

buttons, wheels and so on.

Looking back at the experience

over two decades later, Alien

Resurrection is not a project Jez

recalls with much fondness. His

personal involvement might

have been at arm’s length, but

the game’s elongated gestation

period was part of a chain reaction

that had dire consequences for

Argonaut. “The whole Alien game

turned out to be a horrendous

abortion. The changes we made

were for the betterment of the

game, but it caused huge delays

that cost us a fortune that we

never earned back.”

“Alien Resurrection was just

one of a few film licence games

we had in development at Fox,”

Technically the new perspective

wasn’t a huge change as we had a

very general-purpose 3D engine…

Jez San

SHORT BURSTS

■ Weapons and ammo are not in bountiful

supply in the game, so when you get some, make

sure you use them sparingly. Short, controlled

bursts for rapid fire weapons like the pulse rifle

will ensure you don’t run out too quickly. Look

out for dropped ammo near dead bodies.

» [PlayStation] In one of the missions you have to swim to escape the marauding aliens, just like in the movie.

THE MAKING OF: ALIEN RESURRECTION

» [PlayStation] Being attacked by a Facehugger gave the

player limited time to find and activate an autodoc unit.

» [PlayStation] As in the film, the concluding level of the

game pitched Ripley 8 against the albino Newborn.

admits Gary. “It was problematic

and very late due to being

rebooted twice. The result though

was a decent first-person shooter

on the PlayStation, which I feel

paved the way for other similar

games on consoles using the

DualShock sticks.”

Alien Resurrection on the

PlayStation is a good example of

developers squeezing every last

ounce out of the hardware, at a

point where many developers were

already shifting their focus onto the

PlayStation 2 and other next-gen

consoles. The game looked and

sounded great, offered plenty of

challenging levels to explore, and

had tons of atmosphere, which is

really all you could want from an

Alien game. It is true that some

people found the control system

difficult, and that it could have

done with a multiplayer mode,

but it is an under-appreciated

PlayStation first-person survival

horror game that deserved more

success than it got.

RETRO GAMER | 65

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» PLAYSTATION » 1998 » IREM

While I’ll always maintain that the

Saturn was pretty much untouchable

when it came to great shoot-’emups, that statement is doing Sony’s

PlayStation something of a disservice.

Granted, Sega’s console has some incredible exclusives,

but the PlayStation’s list isn’t that shabby either and I

picked up a fair few of them during the 2020 lockdown.

One of my purchases from that period was R-Type

Delta and I remember putting quite a lot of time into it

along with the equally brilliant G-Darius. I think one of

the strengths of Irem’s game is that it doesn’t attempt

to break the mould and it offers you an experience that’s

largely similar to what you would have played before.

Granted, you’ve now got a selection of different

ships to choose from which feature new funky Force

configurations and there’s a new Dose mechanic which

lets you absorb bullets to unleash a powerful Delta

Attack, but otherwise this is very much the R-Type you

played in the arcades back in 1987 (or on Sony’s console

if you had picked up R-Types which had been released

earlier in the same year as R-Type Delta).

While it had interesting combat mechanics and

distinctive new polygon designs, it was still easy to

instantly see it was R-Type and it became even more

obvious as you got deeper into the game, as the

developers revisited earlier triumphs from the 1987

original, including the gargantuan mother ship that went

on to influence countless other shoot-’em-ups.

My favourite call back to the original R-Type however

is when you encounter Subkeratom on the penultimate

stage of the game. The level itself is a tough slog through

the Space Corps’ headquarters which has now been

overrun by the Bydo. In addition to negotiating tight

passageways and a general cramped playing area you

also have to deal with some deadly enemies and your

own infected teammates.

The level culminates in a showdown with Subkeratom,

a new deadly form of the Dobkeratops you first met

in R-Type. It’s a terrifying, but somehow comforting

encounter and an interesting juxtaposition between

R-Type’s past and future. Needless to say the two R-Type

Final games that followed many years later walked a

similar tightrope between newness and nostalgia, but

Delta did it first and it did a damn fine job as well.

» RETROREVIVAL

DIFFERENT, BUT FAMILIAR

R-Type Delta

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THE HISTORY OF

WORDS BY

ADAM BARNES

THE PS2 HAD HUNDREDS OF

EXTREME OR ZANY SPORTS

TITLES TO CHOOSE FROM,

BUT ONLY A FEW MANAGED

TO ACHIEVE THE SAME LEVEL

OF RECOGNITION AS SSX.

WE EXPLORE THE ‘PEAK’ OF

SSX’S CAREER AND HOW THE

GAME TOOK THE WORLD BY

(SNOW) STORM…

» [PS2] Even the original game knew that big jumps, scary drops

and a chance to score huge trick points was a selling point.

68 | RETRO GAMER

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THE HISTORY OF: SSX

E

ver since Horace booked his allinclusive trip to a mountainous

resort in the Alps, videogames

have had a constant relationship

with winter sports. From skiing

and hockey to figure skating and snowmobile

races, gaming has done it all. But no winter

sport has been more represented virtually than

snowboarding, which has consistently beaten out

the otherwise more popular sport of skiing as the

number one winter sport for gaming. And when it

comes to snowboard games, few names have the

same reputation and adoration as SSX, which first

landed into stardom alongside the North American

launch of the PS2 in October 2000.

“It was actually the reason I was at EA,” says

Scott Henshaw, “I hadn’t been working in games

at all.” Scott was about to be a father of twins at

the time, so it became apparent that his current

job – which had him spending alternating weeks

in Silicon Valley – wasn’t going to be suitable for

helping to raise his two kids back in Vancouver.

“Distinctive Software had just been bought by

Electronic Arts,” he recalls, “they were about

250 people and growing.” Through a friend of

a friend, Scott managed to find himself at the

newly renamed EA Canada and offered a position

without any details except to say it was a new

IP. “There were a couple of guys there, and the

producer Larry LaPierre was there, and we just

started on a recruiting rampage, and we ramped

up the first 20-odd people. It was a startup

mentality back then, we had space that we were

renting in a building. There was no big EA Campus

or anything, it was a bunch of guys who put

together a bunch of games and just got bought out

by EA and so there was money to do things but

nothing fancy. We’d expand into a space and we’d

have a contractor come in and saw a door opening

from one area to another, and we were laying

network cables on the weekend ourselves.”

The game that would go on to be called SSX

had already been sold as a concept, however, but it

just needed someone to get it off the ground. “The

idea really came from the exec producer, Steve

Rechtschaffner,” continues Scott. “He had done

this boardercross event thing from his background,

he was an ex-US ski team guy, he was a marketing

guy through and through and he had sold it to the

company – it was a big pitch he did. So he was

committed at that point, but didn’t know how to do

it. So he got Larry and I involved.”

In between recruiting, setting up desks

and buying office necessities with the new

EA-funded credit card, Scott and Larry’s work

was to set up the design of what the game

was going to be. This essentially came down

to one question: is it going to be a racing game

or a trick game? “We had a couple of influences

that we were playing from, you know, you do

your research so you go and find as many things

that are close or similar. We went and grabbed

1080º Snowboarding, we were looking at anything

at all that’s similar and trying to identify the

SSX Blur

Since it was released on the Nintendo Wii at a time when

everyone was still trying to crack Nintendo’s motion controlbased console, you can probably assume how SSX Blur turned

out. The game itself features a lot of copy-and-paste content

from previous games, all affixed to slightly awkward motion

controls. The gimmick here was the use of the Wiimote to

draw a specific shape on the screen to activate an Uber

Trick, though the option to fling snowballs at opponents

was a humorous little addition. The problem wasn’t that

it was necessarily a bad game, just that its developers hadn’t

yet learnt what worked on Wii, and in that sense it couldn’t

really offer anything new or novel that the series hadn’t

already done better previously.

SSX (2012)

Controversially, the 2012 reboot of SSX was originally

announced as SSX: Deadly Descents alongside a very dramatic

CG trailer that fans likened to Call Of Duty. The team needed

to do some backtracking somewhat to maintain the hype, and

that’s likely why Tricky mode returned. However, the ghost of

that darker vision lived on in the game, with stages that weren’t

about racing or tricking but rather surviving avalanches,

darkness or freezing temperatures. Overall it was a solid

experience even if it did lose a lot of the tone that players loved

about the series. The always-online world of gaming was better

suited to the time trial and score attack-based stages, though,

since it meant there was a constant stream of new challenges

from friends and online leaderboards.

SSX BEYOND PS2

WHAT HAPPENED TO SSX NEXT?

» [PS2] Much like Mario Kart’s boosted start, SSX

came with its own way of starting each race ahead

of the pack that added some early drama.

RETRO GAMER | 69

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thing that was going to make us feel a little bit

unique.” But the game that had the biggest impact

on the direction for SSX was in fact the arcade

racing game San Francisco Rush: Extreme Racing.

“Larry and I both loved the game, and Steve

Rechtschaffner was pretty impulsive with this stuff

and he went and found a couple of cabinets linked

and put them in the basement,” explains Scott.

“So Larry and I spent a significant amount of time

just playing, dissecting and going through SF: Rush

in every aspect.” This led to SSX leaning more

towards the racing side of snowboarding with

more exaggerated race courses. The prototype

was created with that initial team of 20-25

staff members, and interest in the game

began to grow internally. “Normally games

would take about a year to make, we took

significantly longer,” admits Scott. “Part

of that was attributed to the fact that

once we started to build the prototype,

the company guys were starting to

think, ‘Well, we want to launch this as a

launch title somewhere.’”

E

A’s position around the turn

of the millennium was already

significant, not in the least

thanks to new non-sports

hits like Need For Speed and

Medal Of Honor. “Don Mattrick and

company were constantly talking to game

companies about how they could help

support and grow,” says Scott, suggesting

that with a new generation of consoles on the

horizon, EA was ready to start preparing for

a new console launch. “Long-story short, the

Dreamcast guys were making a good push and

Microsoft got involved to build their operating

system, and we thought, ‘OK, this is going to

make a good splash, we’ll do a better job with

the game because it’ll be a launch title.’ And

then Microsoft pulled their bait and switch,

so basically Microsoft built the operating

system and then about three months

before they launched the Dreamcast,

Microsoft pulled out completely.” With

the potential of the Dreamcast now

1080º

SNOWBOARDING

Like Cool Boarders, this is the granddaddy

of modern snowboarding games. It

released on N64 in 1998 and practically

every snowboarding or skiing game since

has looked to this classic for reference,

and understandably so. Even now 1080º is

looked back on fondly, arguably even more

so than SSX Tricky.

AMPED: FREESTYLE

SNOWBOARDING

Launching exclusively on Xbox a year

after the original SSX and running through

to Amped 3 in 2006, this series was

Microsoft’s attempt to tap into the extreme

sports genre that was all the rage thanks

to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Its focus was

more on tricks instead of racing and it gave

you various tasks as you tackled the huge

mountains. Sadly, it never garnered the

recognition it deserved. [It’s great - Ed]

SHAUN WHITE

SNOWBOARDING

Activision had previously tried to leverage

a popular snowboarder for its own attempt

at a snowboarding title, but it was Ubisoft

that snapped up superstar boarder Shaun

White for this 2008 release. It had nothing

on SSX, however, and ultimately was more

known for its silly Wii Balance Board

controls than for its core gameplay.

EVOLUTION

SNOWBOARDING

Every major publisher tried its hand at

breaking SSX, including Konami who used

its previous Evolution Skateboarding brand

with a snowy rendition. The difference

here was more Road Rage-style combat as

you hurtle down the mountain, which could

have been fun if not for the fact that it was

just a bad game.

TONY HAWK’S

PRO SKATER

OK, so the board might be different but

there’s no denying that Tony Hawk’s really

set something rolling after the release of

Pro Skater. While the two weren’t directly

similar, they were competing for the same

audience at a time where more and more

innovation was needed to maintain steady

consecutive success.

PISTE

LEAVING THE

COMPETITION

THE RIVALS SSX WAS UP AGAINST

» [PS2] Random fireworks and glorious, mountainous vistas

might not be necessary, but they add to the thrill that is SSX.

70 | RETRO GAMER

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THE HISTORY OF: SSX

hanging in the balance, Don Mattrick decided to

speak with Sony – only to learn that the PS2 was

on the way. “They said, ‘Why don’t we get you

one?’ And they did, I had a hand-soldered PS2

sitting on my desk that took three months to get

through customs because they thought it was a

missile guidance system.”

Initially the project was planned for the

Japanese launch of the PS2 in March 2000, and

this meant the team needed to work exhaustive

hours to reach the expected deadline. This wasn’t

helped, of course, by the technical challenges

that would be faced. Despite being on a new

generation of hardware, there were still restrictions

that were in place if SSX was going to truly sell

its fast-paced, extreme winter sports experience.

“Part of the problem is that ski hills are generally

no more than 45 degrees in slope, and at 45

degrees no amount of tuning is going to make

things feel fast and exciting,” explains Scott. “And

the team next to us was the Need For Speed

team, and with them we had a few conversations

and they showed us myriad camera tricks to play.

Things like when you accelerate, the camera gets

closer to the player and falls behind.” But there

were still hard limits to the hardware, too, ones

that severely restricted the game’s design.

The main problem was that the game just

didn’t feel fast enough, but luckily the solution

was surprisingly simpler than anything the Need

For Speed guys could have offered. “One artist

stayed late one day, took the whole world and

tipped it up,” says Scott. “We had kept insisting

on having to be close to realism because we’re

doing everything based on physics, but we played

it the next day and it felt great. He said, ‘I took the

world and tipped it up at 70 degrees and I tipped

the trees out so it only looks like 45 degrees.’ It’s

just simple art, creative-brain thinking.”

» [PS2] “It’s tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that’s right on time. It’s tricky… it’s tricky.” There you go, now you can’t get it out of your head either

Just as the team were ready to ship, however,

EA decided that the Japanese launch perhaps

wasn’t going to cut it after all, and so the deadline

was moved to October meaning another six

months of gruelling crunch. With the internal

politics of EA pushing against SSX, it was an

opportunity for the new EA Canada to raise the

bar for its quality – even if it did mean ultimately

leading to burnout among team members. They

were passionate about doing something new

and exciting, and were willing to do it – but it

had big effects on morale. The reward, then,

was its release, which was met with unanimous

praise for its smooth, slick gameplay, the equal

reliance on both tricking and racing and the unique

dynamic audio functionality – which had the

music’s intensity scale up or down depending on

the player’s performance. “So when the first one

launched and seemed to be relatively successful,

they asked us if we would like to do another,” says

Scott. “We had a really burned-out team, but we

had a little bit of success to build on and so we

had to make some choices. So we said, ‘Yeah

we’ll do it, but we’ll do it in a shorter time

frame, with more people and here’s some

conditions under what we want to work.’”

C

omparatively, the sequel

was much easier. From

a design standpoint, Larry

and Steve had kept note

of all the features that they

had to cut, even despite the additional six

months of development. “We were working

from a position where we already knew what

we were gonna build,” recalls Scott, “because

it was all the stuff that we’d already left off the

end.” Now the team had an opportunity to build

the true edition of the game that they had

» [PS2] Despite being the exact

same engine as the original,

Tricky still managed to up its

game in terms of visual fidelity.

» [PS2] All but two of the stages were copied over from the original game, though Tricky

remixed them to add in new shortcuts or level design elements.

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TOKYO MEGAPLEX

n Arguably the most iconic level of the series, Tokyo Megaplex

is a crazy, quirky design that shuns most of SSX’s previous

level design in favour of something quite outrageous. Based on

a pinball-machine design, this level starts by flinging you high

into the air and then tasks you with evading flippers, blockers

and bumpers all while tricking and boosting.

MERCURY CITY MELTDOWN

n Riding through a neon-lit city is automatically a novel

experience, but the design of this stage made it immediately

popular with a good range of shortcuts to look for and routes

to practice. This stage would later get incorporated into

something very familiar in SSX3, as well, proving it was a

solid idea to include.

ALOHA ICE JAM

n With the warm Hawaiian climate, it’s perhaps no surprise

that Aloha Ice Jam features prominent water pipes and

flowing streams (which slightly boost your speed) as course

features. It’s a particularly good level because it’s more open

than most, meaning there’s a lot to explore – especially with

the number of shortcuts you can find.

LEVELLING UP VELLING UPA LOOK AT THE BEST SSX LEVELS

wanted to make, with the added benefit of

hindsight and player feedback. “I would say the

biggest feedback we got was the mix of tricks

versus racing,” says Scott. “We had stumbled

across that in the first game, but not elaborated

on it. But more people enjoyed the tricks than we

had anticipated.” As a result, for the second game

tricking was “going to be the upsell”, and thus

SSX Tricky was born.

This time around the development was not

so convoluted. The engine had already been

built with the previous game, the team mostly

knew what it needed to make and now the

pressure of fitting into a launch window was

gone. The team had ballooned in size, too, from

its original 25 to a new 60-odd team, with the

former developers acting as the experts to

those new juniors. As a result, the entire thing

was complete in only eight months – versus the

original’s two years. “The attitude on the team

was very much more – I wouldn’t say relaxed

– but there wasn’t the pressure of having to

prove yourself. We had a little bit of time and

space to do the things we wanted to do, we’re

not going to reinvent everything.” The goal was

instead to refine the overall experience, improve

what needed work, add what the team had to

remove during development of the first game

was abundantly clear that open-world gaming was

where the PS2 was taking gaming, and SSX had

to follow suit. “We tore SSX Tricky apart,” says

Scott, “What are all the things that are painful?

Broken? Not fun? Restrictive? We were starting

to recognise that we were being very old school

and restrictive in what we let players do and when

we let them do it. And so we wanted to open that

world up a little bit, and it wasn’t just the world but

also in terms of the way the characters worked,

and the animations and the physics needed to feel

smoother and more natural.”

The development was a little longer this time

around, with SSX3 releasing in October 2003

across a number of platforms. The move to

an open world was significant, but other areas

were improved too. The Uber Trick system was

enhanced to allow for multiple stages – rewarding

those who could maintain a steady flow of tricks

– while the visuals were also given an upgrade.

“I think Tricky was the one that hit the nerve of

the feedback loop between tricking to go faster,”

says Scott. “SSX3 delivered better on it – it was

smoother and a better technological system.” The

PS2 version even came with a fairly robust online

multiplayer mode, though like so many online

console games of the era it didn’t really get the

attention that EA might have wanted.

and ultimately create a game that could cement

SSX as a franchise to build on, rather than a onehit wonder. Released in November 2001, SSX

Tricky was more of a remix of the original game

(there were only two completely new levels),

but came with a much higher level of production.

The graphics were improved, an all-star cast was

brought in to voice the different characters and

of course the iconic addition of Run DMC’s It’s

Tricky just helped to add to the vibe of barrelling

down a mountain tricking all the way. The latter

was especially important for the big new feature:

Uber Tricks, which could be executed once a

meter was filled and if they were landed would

result in a short burst of unlimited speed boosts.

T

o this day Tricky is considered to

be the best in the series, despite

the improvements that came

afterwards. However, this isn’t a

sentiment that Scott shares. “I would

say to go back and play it again. There is this

perception that old was better and good, but it’s

not until you get your hands on it that you go,

‘Well, there are issues… and we can do better.’”

The same happened with the third game in the

series, which this time was a bit more of an

overhaul than Tricky had been. For one thing, it

» [PS2] Tricking in SSX 3 was considerably enhanced, not

only making it easier to do but also making it feel a lot more

rewarding and impactful.

» [PS2] SSX 3 was the debut for DJ Atomica, the fictional

radio host that was present in a number of EA games –

including Burnout Paradise.

» [PS2] Weather effects in SSX 3 accompanied specific

parts of the map, and were a precursor to the ‘Deadly

Descents’ stuff in the 2012 game.

» [PS2] Riding a full peak in SSX 3 meant starting at the

dangerous mountainous areas at the top, down to the

pistes and the groomed trick parks at the bottom.

LEVELLING UP

72 | RETRO GAMER

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THE HISTORY OF: SSX

D

espite the reputation that has

since followed SSX Tricky,

SSX3 was the series’ biggest

success commercially and

critically. It lost some of the

colourful style of Tricky, but overall it was a way

more modern and slick approach to the core

gameplay that had been set in the preceding two

games. During this time, however, a new general

manager came into EA Canada, and through that

there was a good deal of shifts within teams as

they repositioned staff based on where their skills

lay. With EA Canada now a significant branch of

the Electronic Arts machine, a number of projects

needed help getting off the ground. Scott was

called on to handle these, to repeat his successes

in building new IPs, and he explains that the

veteran core team behind SSX was ultimately

moved away from the franchise. “You get a trust

with a certain group and that just drives it,” says

Scott of how he ended up bringing the team

away from SSX and over onto other projects,

including the innovative Skate.

There was still an opportunity for one more

SSX game on PS2, however, and without the

passion of that veteran team, it lost some of

that magic. SSX On Tour introduced custom

characters for the first time and focused on

giving the player agency over who they

played as. There was no online mode in

favour of a stronger single-player, as well as a

controversial sketch book-esque art style that

did not sit well with fans. Like so many sports

games of the time, On Tour was about building

up the player character’s fame to become the

number one snowboarding (or skiing, which was

a new addition) legend. Though SSX On Tour

was received well when it released in October

2005, it was not nearly as popular as the previous

two games, ultimately making the final release

on PS2 more wet snow than powder day. Even

so, the series as a whole may well have peaked

on PS2, likely in part due to the determination

of that dedicated team, “It was just a matter of

passionate people dumping hours into it,” says

Scott of the original team. “It did gel that group

together. So much so that Steve Rechtschaffner

held a reunion in 2020, 20 years later, and 23 or

the original 25 people showed up, we’re all still

working games, we’re all still in the same city.”

UNTRACKED

n By the standards of what makes a ‘good’ SSX level,

Untracked fails to meet any expectation. However, this is a

completely track-free stage without goals or direction and is

unlocked when completing SSX or SSX Tricky, making it the

only time those games offered the feeling of freedom when

riding out powder-covered back country.

ALASKA

n The dramatic scenery of this stage – which was one of

the two all-new levels added in SSX Tricky – really makes

this memorable as you careen between tall rocky valleys,

giant ice spikes and through ice-covered caves, and do

some incredible jumps too. It’s another interesting course

that is open to plenty of deep exploration.

» [PS2] On Tour came with a much greater variety to its levels with more specific challenges and tasks

beyond just racing to first place.

» [PS2] Uber Tricks were replaced with Monster Tricks in SSX:

On Tour. They functioned exactly the same way, however.

» [PS2] On Tour introduced additional boarders who

populated the slopes as a way to score easy bonus

points not unlike Burnout‘s own ‘Close Call’ feature.

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74 | RETRO GAMER

W

hile a certain

moustachioed

plumber may have

established the basic

tenets of platforming in 3D, it

was the handful of plucky heroes

that followed who helped solidify

the new genre’s staying power.

Sony’s need to compete against

Nintendo (and offer PlayStation

owners an appropriate rival to Super

Mario 64) spurred much invention and

development ingenuity, until eventually

Naughty Dog’s Crash Bandicoot and

Insomniac’s Spyro The Dragon were born out of

a joint publishing deal with Universal Interactive.

Both characters seemed purposely engineered

to engage younger audiences, quickly garnering

the status of PlayStation ‘mascot’ by offering up

their own brand of colourful worlds to explore

and jump through. They differed significantly from

Mario, though, by touting a lot more attitude than

what Nintendo would ever dare attempt.

Fast forward to the early Noughties, and the

jump to a totally new console generation was

seen by Universal as a good excuse to have

Crash and Spyro go multi-platform. After all, both

icons received celebrated trilogies on the original

PlayStation. Surely they would be able to do it

again elsewhere? In reality, the two unfortunately

struggled to rouse quite the same level of

excitement as they did before.

The likes of Traveller’s Tales and Digital Eclipse

released decent enough series entries, true, but

nothing ever came close to the quality of, say,

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back or Spyro:

Year Of The Dragon. Thus a plan was hatched to

try and make both franchises jump for critical and

commercial joy once more.

“We had already done two handheld sidescrolling Crash Bandicoot titles at that point, so

having us work on a third game seemed a safe

bet,” recalls Jonathan (Jonny) Russell, one of

the lead programmers at Vicarious Visions circa

AFTER BOTH DOMINATING THE LATE-NINETIES WITH TRILOGIES ON SONY’S PLAYSTATION,

TWO ICONS CAME TOGETHER FOR THE ULTIMATE CROSSOVER. ALMOST TWO DECADES ON,

HERE’S HOW CRASH AND SPYRO’S HANDHELD TEAM-UP ADVENTURE CAME TO BE

WORDS BY AARON POTTER

2003. Having just finished up work

on Crash: Nitro Kart, recently renamed

publisher Vivendi Universal, floated the

idea of potentially crossing over the

orange bandicoot and purple dragon’s

two worlds to the team. Initially, the

plan was for Jonny and co to just

make another standard Crash sequel,

following up Crash Bandicoot: The

Huge Adventure or N-Tranced to cap off

its trilogy on the Game Boy Advance.

Vivendi, however, had other plans.

“It was Vivendi’s idea for us to

also do a Spyro game, that could be

a companion SKU [Stock Keeping Unit],” Jonny

explains. Spyro had previously been in isometric

games on handheld at a different studio, so the

idea of having the two meet on the still flourishing

GBA didn’t seem out of the question. Having it

occur on a handheld instead of a home console,

Jonny reveals, would also “be cheaper to produce

because one studio could handle both duties”.

However, it was another high-flying Nintendo

» PUBLISHER:

VIVENDI

UNIVERSAL

» DEVELOPER:

VICARIOUS

VISIONS

» RELEASED:

2004

» PLATFORM:

GBA

» GENRE:

PLATFORMER/

MINIGAMES

IN THE

KNOW

CRASH BANDICOOT:

THE HUGE ADVENTURE

SYSTEM: GBA

YEAR: 2002

CRASH NITRO KART

(PICTURED)

SYSTEM: GBA, VARIOUS

YEAR: 2003

SKYLANDERS:

SPYRO’S ADVENTURE

SYSTEM: 3DS

YEAR: 2011

DEVELOPER

HIGHLIGHTS

» [GBA] Neo Cortex and

Ripto’s dastardly plan involves

disguising minions as versions

of Crash and Spyro, turning

them against one another.

» [GBA] Vicarious Visions was able to leverage existing art assets from

its previous GBA games to inform Crash’s hub world exploration.

» Jonny Russell is credited as coprogrammer on both games, but

mostly oversaw Crash Fusion.

THE MAKING OF

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THE MAKING OF: CRASH BANDICOOT FUSION & SPYRO FUSION

RETRO GAMER | 75

franchise that also served as inspiration behind

the decision. “I know that they were probably

hoping to duplicate the dual SKU success of

Pokémon,” he says. In some ways, the project

started out life even more ambitiously because

“unlike Pokémon the two games we made were

mostly unique and did not share many assets”.

B

efore you knew it, Vicarious Visions

split into separate teams and

development was started on two

platforming-inspired minigame

collections that would later become known

as Crash Bandicoot Fusion and Spyro Orange.

A basic story was penned for Crash Bandicoot

Purple: Ripto’s Rampage and Spyro Orange: The

Cortex Conspiracy, as they were known in the

US, which saw the titular enemies from both

respective franchises team up in the effort to

finally defeat our much beloved heroes for good.

And true, while any proper narrative complexity

would largely be hampered

by the strict hardware

limitations, the basic plot

– in which portals from

the two universes begin to

bleed on into one another –

did well to make each game

genuinely feel like individual halves of the same

whole. Only by playing both stories would players

understand all that was happening.

Spyro and Crash were known for their

platforming prowess, so why go the minigame

collection route for such an ambitious crossover?

Vicarious Visions and Vivendi thought it an

ideal approach when wanting to create a strong

sense of connectivity between the two games,

in a way that wouldn’t lose the essence of

either. Especially since, while both franchises

had already successfully made the transition to

handheld, Spyro in particular required a drastically

different design approach to what had come

before. Vicarious Visions, therefore, pulled from

its most recent experience developing handheld

Crash games to try and make up for the time

needed to make the purple dragon work.

Speaking to the previous Crash Bandicoot titles

on Game Boy Advance, “It helped a lot because

we had those established games to work off of

to hit the ground running”,

recalls Jonny. No such

access existed for the other

lead character, however.

“Spyro had to start from

scratch, as it was the first

time he had been in a

side-scrolling game, so we had to work out the

size of the character, handling, etc without a lot

of previously done work to fall back on.” Nailing

what Spyro would feel like on a 2D plane was

a crucial element to get right because, when

not engaging in the likes of racing, dodging and

platforming challenges that make up the bulk of

both titles, Spyro and Crash both needed to move

around their unique hub worlds naturally.

Vicarious Visions ultimately managed to find

the perfect middle ground. Crash Bandicoot, as

mentioned, remained largely unchanged when

moving from minigame to minigame, collecting

» [GBA] Crash’s closest bodybuilding confidant, Crunch Bandicoot, turns

up in a weightlifting minigame. How fast can you tap that A button?

» [GBA] Both games see Crash and Spyro’s cast of ancillary

characters pop up every now and then to impart useful advice.

JONNY RUSSELL

“IT WAS VIVENDI’S

IDEA FOR US TO ALSO

DO A SPYRO GAME”

TRADING

PLACES

GATHER CARDS IN A ‘COLLECT THEM

ALL’ CROSSOVER ADVENTURE

n Since Crash Fusion and Spyro Fusion

were highly inspired by Pokémon‘s dual

release strategy, it made sense to Vivendi

and Vicarious Visions to also capitalise

on the idea of trading. This came in the

form of collectible character cards littered

throughout both adventures, with certain

cards remaining exclusive to each game.

Cards were given a specific rarity depending

on the calibre of character they presented.

Crash and Spyro, for instance, were given

the highest value, while simple grunt

enemies were made the most common.

The main way you collect cards in-game is

by completing minigames naturally, though

certain ones were also sprinkled in award

positions in each hub world.

Aside from that, you could also visit

one of Moneybags’ shops to either buy a

random card outright using any gathered

gems or Wumpa Fruit, or try your luck on

his wheel spin minigame. The trading cards

were a good idea to promote crossplay

between characters, yet they don’t really

serve a higher function outside of their

core collectible aspect. Unless you were

a die-hard Crash/Spyro fan or devout

completionist, therefore, the trading cards

had only limited use. They weren’t quite as

addictive as pocket creatures you can battle.

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76 | RETRO GAMER

the Wumpa Fruits

needed to unlock more

levels while spinning and

jumping to defeat enemies.

“Because our characters

were sprites,” Jonny

remembers, “we could reuse a lot of the sprite

animations. On the art side, I know our artists

pushed for greater fidelity in backgrounds from

the previous games.” Spyro eventually handled

much the same as the manic marsupial outside of

minigames. He was now controllable from a side

view though still equipped with recognisable skills

like fire breathing and his trademark air glide.

T

he next major challenge was to make

the dozens of minigames featured in

Crash Bandicoot Fusion and Spyro

Fusion fun and engaging. Again, Crash

Bandicoot had a bit of a leg up in this department,

largely because those early PlayStation games

of his offered a good mix of gameplay styles.

For instance, one

level might see him

barrelling down a

track on a motorcycle,

while another may

task players to guide

him underwater in

scuba gear while avoiding

bombs. Spyro The Dragon,

meanwhile, needed the

most retooling out of the

two once more.

“On Crash [Fusion], we

used previous Crash games to mine for ideas

and tried to mash that up with Spyro characters

to get inspiration,” says Jonny. “We had a series

of forced-scrolling levels where we tried to use

familiar previous Crash elements such as polar

bear riding or using a jetpack.” Forced-scrolling

levels, Jonny tells us, had been a particular

favourite style of his since Battletoads. “Other

minigames were based on games from Crash

Bash, such as Ballistix, and a tank minigame that

was also inspired by Atari’s Combat. The Sheep

Stampede minigames were inspired by Tapper,

but instead of serving drinks, Crash was shooting

his Fruit Bazooka at sheep.”

Vicarious Visions soon realised that, as well

as paying tribute to the world and characters of

each eponymous mascot, the minigame collection

format was also just a good excuse to celebrate

wider gaming history. Contemporary players might

not be aware that they were playing a warped

version of Breakout whenever Crash or Spyro

bounce metal balls back at their enemies in the

likes of Blizzard Ball, but it didn’t matter. Providing

Crash still collected fruit

and Spyro hoovered up

gems while surrounded by

familiar friends, everything

in between just needed to

be fun within a bite-sized

format, as each selfcontained minigame was

constructed to offer short

bursts of play suited to the

handheld format.

All told, outside of the

initial design challenges

with Spyro, it wasn’t

CRASHIN’ DOWN THE RIVER

n Highly inspired by the river levels found in the original

Crash Bandicoot trilogy on PlayStation, Crashin’ Down

The River is an excellent translation of the marsupial’s

water-boosting exploits. You must make your way down

a river on a dingy, dodging whirlpools and mines while

knowing when to boost.

TANKS FOR THE MEMORIES

n Both Fusion games have Crash and Spyro enter a

tank to shoot up a storm. Crash’s version, however,

is the more valiant attempt, as players have full

360-degree control over the vehicle. Beating the

minigame involves navigating ill-placed canons and

collecting crates before making it to the end portal.

POLAR EXPRESS

n After making it to the Arctic Cliffs hub world, Crash

Fusion sees the return of Crash’s trusty bear pal Polar.

This time, though, hopping from platform to platform

requires you to master jumping and boosting on a 2D

plane. Collecting all the crates in one attempt will see

you gifted a bonus gem!

JONNY RUSSELL

“MULTIPLAYER HAD A

MUCH LARGER BARRIER

TO ENTRY BACK THEN”

MINIGAME MADNESS THERE ARE DOZENS OF

CREATIVE CHALLENGES

TO KEEP THINGS FRESH

» [GBA] Jonny and his team were inspired by a web-based helicopter game for Crash’s jetpack flying sequences.

» [GBA] Never mind counting sheep, Crash has a hard time to

tame them. But it’s nothing a giant bazooka can’t fix!

» [GBA] Vicarious Visions looked to some of the most classic arcade titles

for inspiration with its minigames, such as this Breakout throwback.

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THE MAKING OF: CRASH BANDICOOT FUSION & SPYRO FUSION

RETRO GAMER | 77

RUMBLE IN THE RAMPARTS

n This type of minigame pops up more than once

across both games, pitting you against an opponent

at the top of your screen who you must knock off by

destroying the platforms beneath them using molotovs.

Initially you face a rival dragon, before defeating Crash

in the first boss fight.

CASTLE CRUISIN’

n Spyro gets behind the wheels of several vehicles during

this crossover journey. One of the most interesting comes

early on in Castle Cruisin’, where you must manoeuvre

a cannon-equipped buggy through spikes, gaps and

dragon foes. From knowing when to jump and fire to the

constantly rolling screen, a lot is asked of you at once.

ALTITUDE ADJUSTMENT

n It wouldn’t be a Spyro The Dragon game without a

fair amount of flying. Thankfully, you get to do plenty of

this from a top-down view, first in a minigame called

Altitude Adjustment. Reaching the end means dodging

sky mines and several electrified gates, using your

flame breath to blast through.

too tricky for Jonny and his team to incorporate

key franchise elements into each minigame or

the handful of hub worlds. “We did our best to

combine familiar characters and settings from both

games,” he says. “In some cases, it was natural,

like adding the sheep (a familiar Spyro element) as

characters that could be fodder. Since crossovers

always have a misunderstanding between the

heroes, we had the cheesy idea of the enemies

wearing masks of our heroes to help facilitate this

miscommunication. We also used characters from

each game franchise in the same way to help link

the two worlds, such as Moneybags from Spyro,

who ran a shop in both games.”

Scene setting aside, publisher Vivendi knew

that it needed another major hook to help inspire

players to link up with friends who had got the

opposite game. Crash Fusion and Spyro Fusion

may have never intended to replicate the creature

collection madness found in Pokémon, but both

games did play into the idea of trading by way

of including collectible cards exclusive to either

game. These cards were earned either through

scoring well in challenges or buying them from

the in-game shop, ranging in rarity from low to

high depending on the character they depicted.

Players could trade back and forth with one

another via the GBA link cable, which Vicarious

Visions implemented to try and achieve that same

‘collect them all’ mentality.

O

utside of each game’s main story

mode, also encouraging players to

link up was the suite of reformatted

Party Mode minigames. “For

multiplayer, we based games on mechanics and

modes in the minigames, such as the bridge

fight and Ballistix, which had a variety of different

modes and could be four players,” says Jonny. He

admits, though, that a lot was asked of players to

set up this joint fun. “Multiplayer had a much larger

barrier to entry back then, since not only did you

need a friend with a GBA and two carts, you had

to have a link cable in order to play. I believe we

did have a stripped-down version of multiplayer

where you only needed one cart though.”

Ultimately, Crash Bandicoot Fusion and Spyro

Fusion received mixed reviews upon release, with

select critics noticing the slightly higher attention

to detail paid towards the former – unsurprising

considering that the ambitious crossover project

originally started out as another Crash Bandicoot

game. Nevertheless, it was hard to deny the thrill

» [GBA] One of the most unique vehicles Spyro gets to drive is a magnet

robot that sees him flip from the top and bottom of the screen.

» [GBA] Before Spyro Fusion, the titular purple dragon had

never been presented from a 2D side-scrolling perspective.

of seeing these two Nineties icons rub shoulders

for the first, and pretty much only time in a full

capacity (although both characters also have

cameos in each other’s games).

If nothing else, both titles proved that Vicarious

Visions had the chops to adopt multiple play

styles and implant them into a single game, no

doubt influencing its work on the wildly successful

Skylanders series of toys-to-life games just under

a decade later. Today, Crash and Spyro now

find themselves under Activision’s stewardship,

but does Jonny think they’ll ever cross paths

again? “The two characters are still around and

remembered today,” he says, “and I’m sure fans

would welcome another crossover.”

» [GBA] Moving from one hub world to another usually involves its

own style of minigame, like flaming some ice within a time limit.

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New games that wish they were old

W

ith so many games

being made today

by huge teams,

it’s easy to forget

there are many great releases

out there that are lovingly

crafted by just a handful of

individuals. Aggelos is one such

game, a delightfully constructed

action adventure that’s largely

the work of just one person – the

rather talented François Perez,

who not only programmed Aggelos

but was also behind its design, music and

graphics. Although as he tells us, he can’t take

complete credit for his entertaining adventure.

“Chris [Carson] did the porting [to consoles and

Steam]” François says. “ He actually did a great

job with the bad material that he had to work

with [laughs].”

If you couldn’t have guessed by looking at

the distinctive cartoony visuals, meticulously

designed denizens and cute-looking characters,

Aggelos has much in common with the Wonder

Boy adventures that were crafted by Westone.

“Wonder Boy is my favourite series,” François

confirms. “In fact, my first amateur creation was

also a Wonder Boy fan game [Wonder Boy The

Prophecy]. Initially, Aggelos was supposed to be

inspired by Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link, but

it ended up being between both games.” While

WHILE THE NAME AGGELOS MAY NOT BE FAMILIAR TO YOU, ITS

STUNNING PIXEL ART AND BRIGHT AND CHEERFUL DESIGN SHOULD

BE INSTANTLY RECOGNISABLE IF YOU GREW UP PLAYING CLASSIC

CONSOLE GAMES. FRANÇOIS PEREZ EXPLAINS HOW THE PAST

INSPIRED HIS ENTERTAINING ACTION ADVENTURE GAME

WORDS BY DARRAN JONES

it certainly leans on the likes of

Zelda II and Wonder Boy, Aggelos

is very much its own thing and

certainly doesn’t feel like a cheap

copycat. Things start off traditionally

enough with you rescuing a damsel

in distress, but you soon discover

that there is much more at stake.

Said damsel is actually a missing

princess and when you reach

Lumen Castle its king begs you to

defeat a dark evil that threatens to

overpower the peaceful kingdom.

It’s an admittedly basic premise, but it’s

one that simply allows you to get on with your

adventure and while most seasoned gamers will

discover many of Aggelos’ secrets within ten

hours of play that doesn’t diminish its enjoyment

or its variety. You’ll explore the dark Lumen

Woods, traverse the volcanic wastes of Fira

Volcano and search the watery depths of The

Abyss as you seek out the hearts and relics that

will give you a fighting chance in the game’s

dramatic finale. Like many similar games Aggelos

is a speedrunner’s dream once you know where

you’re going, but that first playthrough will take

you a decent amount of time to complete.

The game itself however had a relatively

straightforward development period, albeit a

disjointed one with François admitting that without

its frequent pauses Aggelos was completed

» PUBLISHER:

PQUBE LTD

» DEVELOPER:

STORYBIRD GAMES

» RELEASE:

OUT NOW

» PLATFORM:

PC, PS4, SWITCH,

XBOX ONE

» GENRE:

ACTION ADVENTURE

IN THE KNOW

» [Switch] There are four elemental rings found in Lumen’s temples

that allow your hero to deal with enemies more effectively.

» [Switch] If you complete some obtuse tasks and beat this fearsome

opponent you’ll receive the best sword and armour in the game.

78 | RETRO GAMER

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RETRO INSPIRED: AGGELOS

in roughly a year. Interestingly, François is

surprisingly frank about his own coding abilities,

explaining why Chris Carson proved crucial in

getting Aggelos over the finishing line. “Coding

was the worst,” he admits. “I’m a very bad

coder and the Aggelos code is a total mess. The

button mapping was almost impossible to fix for

consoles, but Chris helped me there. I am getting

better with each game but I believe I won’t code

anymore for any of my next important projects.”

François may admit to not being much of a

coder, but there’s no denying he’s a terrifically

proficient pixel artist and rather great at character

and monster design. Many of the villagers

and denizens you interact with look wonderful

and have an instant Wonder Boy vibe while

distinctive animation fills them with personality.

While François did draw on Westone’s series for

inspiration he also looked at franchises like Ys,

Zelda and Mega Man, as well as other sources.

“Sometimes I would also look at different

bestiaries, not necessarily a game bestiary, or

longplays of games to find inspiration,” he says.

A

s well as imaginative pixel work,

Aggelos is also notable for its

chirpy chiptunes and they’re also

created by François. There’s a range

of compositions that perfectly suit the on-screen

action and they again draw heavily on the likes of

Wonder Boy and other classic arcade adventures.

“I used a NES VST with fruity loops,” he

explains. “I don’t really ask myself what the

melody will be. When I design a level the music

comes into my head. Other times I hear a song

and it will inspire me, then I find a place where

it will fit into the game. The last boss theme is

inspired by Final Fantasy Legend 2 on the Game

Boy for example.”

While we’re on the subject of Aggelos’ boss

fights, it’s worth mentioning how challenging they

are. Many initially feel quite daunting but constant

play will soon reveal holes in their attacks that

can be exploited. It’s an area that François was

quite keen to hone. “I try to not just repeat what

I see in other games,” he admits. “I know what

I like as well. For example, I don’t like when you

have to wait for the boss to open his weak point.”

Some of Aggelos’ boss encounters almost feel

like a shoot-’em-up at times, particularly with the

final boss, as the screen can be peppered with

bullets, but this too is intentional. “It’s hard, but

fair because the player has all the information they

need to ensure they theoretically never get hit,”

explains François. “Oh, and I pay big attention to

the impact [sound] to give the player satisfaction

when hitting the boss. The sound itself is inspired

by Rygar on NES. I always found this FX so juicy!”

So as we wrap up our time with François we

were keen to know why he created Aggelos as an

action adventure like so many other independent

developers. “Well Metroidvania is a style that

doesn’t really require big financial resources,” he

concludes. “You can make deep, fun games all on

your own. It’s easily my favourite style and I have

two other Metroidvania projects in the works.”

n If there’s one complaint we had with our

ten-hour playthrough of Aggelos it’s that it

does suffer from the odd difficulty spike that

can lead to frustration in certain areas of

the game. Navigation throughout the world

of Lumen is generally excellent because

whenever you’re unsure where to go next

you can simply visit a kindly old seer who

will give you very obvious clues that should

hopefully jog your memory. François does

admit that there were issues with Aggelos

when he first started work on it, though.

“Everything was too hard at the beginning,”

he says. “It’s a mistake every creator makes

and here it was because the enemy patterns

were too obvious to us.”

Needless to say François has been

doing plenty to ensure that gamers can

still get through his adventure with a little

bit of practice. “We have been testing

the game from start to finish hundreds

of times,” he admits. “The hard part is to

make the game finishable for low-skilled

players but still fun and not too easy for

strong players. We’ve also included a hard

mode for the most determined players.”

One aspect of Aggelos that some will

find a sticking point however is the bosses

that reside in the temples you’ll visit

during your quest. While there are liberal

save points throughout Aggelos they’re

not always near bosses, which can make

reaching them at high health quite difficult.

As frustrating as this can be, it’s quite

intentional. “Sorry about boss retries, but

I’m old school on this,” laughs François.

“I like games where there is a penalty

for loss, otherwise there is no tension.

The player must learn to play well, so the

satisfaction of beating a hard boss is even

stronger. I really liked this no pity approach

in Hollow Knight, for example.”

LOWERING

THE CURVE

Making a game everyone can enjoy

» [Xbox One] Scrolls not only give you new special moves to use against bosses but will also allow you to access new areas.

» [Switch] You can increase the amount of hearts you have by either defeating

bosses, completing various tasks for villagers or simply finding them in chests.

» [Switch] Some hearts are not only wellhidden, but will also have to be purchased.

» [Xbox One] This area is normally clad in darkness

so you must light torches to find your way.

RETRO GAMER | 79

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80 | RETRO GAMER

T

here’s something wonderfully

transportive about chiptune. No

matter the context, hearing a few bars

of a square wave melody instantly brings

you to a better time and place, evoking images of

countless hours spent in front of classic consoles.

Think of the Super Mario Bros theme; with just

a few repeating melody lines and minimalistic

percussion, Koji Kondo created something truly

timeless. “I wanted to create something that had

never been heard before, where you’d think, ‘This

isn’t like game music at all, isn’t it?,’” Kondo said

about his soundtrack in a 2007 Wired interview. “It

had to fit the game the best, enhance the gameplay

and make it more enjoyable. Not just sit there and be

something that plays while you play the game.”

However, its history can be traced back decades

earlier. Broadly defined as making music using sounds

generated by retro computer sound chips, composer

and enterprise fellow at The

University Of Melbourne Kenneth

B McAlpine traces chiptune’s

origins back to the Fifties, when

researchers used computers like

the TX-0 and PDP-1 to make music.

“The music of the PDP-1 was raspy

and coarse, but it was a new and

compelling voice,” Kenneth writes in his book Bits

And Pieces: A History Of Chiptunes. “Although it

would be a few more years before this voice echoed

in the virtual space of videogames, it hinted at how

those games might sound.”

In the intervening decades, chiptune has endured

as a cultural force. Kenneth credits sequencers like

Little Sound DJ (LSDJ) and Nanoloop with helping to

bring about a modern wave of chiptune musicians in

the Nineties, alongside the incorporation of virtualised

recording studio hardware into desktop sequencers.

“Chipmusic was reborn with a new, harder sound,

less influenced by videogaming than by other

contemporary musical sounds: dubstep, house, glitch

and reggae,” Kenneth says.

Chiptune soundtracks have also risen in

popularity in tandem with the wave of retro-inspired

independent videogames in the Tens, as well as

CHIPTUNE REMAINS A DISTINCTIVE PART OF MODERN MUSIC, BOTH IN THE GAMING

COMMUNITY THAT POPULARISED IT AND IN WIDER CULTURE. WE SPEAK TO MODERN

COMPOSERS TO FIND OUT HOW THEY CREATE CHIPTUNE AND HOW THE MEDIUM IS EVOLVING

existing as a distinct musical voice utilised in nongaming contexts by musical acts like rock band

Anamanaguchi (who did, admittedly, compose

the soundtrack for cult classic 2010 beat-’em-up

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World: The Game). Festivals

like Square Sounds bring together varied artists

under a shared chiptune banner, incorporating

everything from “trashy pop” to “full hard dance

music” and “progressive SEGA soundtrack-type

stuff,” organiser Alex Yabsley said in an interview

with Sifter in February 2020. “It doesn’t sound like

your soundtrack to your videogame, it sounds like

dance music,” fellow organiser Kristy Dossor added.

“If people were a little bit more open-minded, you

would be hearing it on the radio.”

Dan Behrens first encountered modern chiptune

musicians in 2009, via buskers performing using a

Game Boy outside Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle,

their amplifier hot-wired to a car battery. “I found

out that people were making new

music and playing live shows with

real hardware,” he recalls. “It was

really raw and punk rock. They

were writing music that was way

different than the way Japanese

composers were doing it in the

Eighties and Nineties. The new

stuff that people were making was much more

influenced by glitchy, modern electronic music.”

Composing and performing as ‘Danimal Cannon’,

with soundtrack credits on games like RetroMania

Wrestling and Just Shapes & Beats, he first dove

into the inner-workings of chipmusic in the midNoughties, dissecting NES soundtracks via the

Winamp plug-in NotSo Fatso to create arrangements

for his VGM cover bands like Armcannon. “I really

fell in love with the quirkiness of the way that these

tracks were arranged,” he says. “I would almost

describe them as being hyper-melodic: melodies on

melodies on melodies. And no chords, because you

can’t really do a chord on a NES without using up all

of your sound channels.”

Dan uses trackers to compose chiptune in Game

Boy emulator BGB, a process he finds “lends itself to

adding tons of expressive detail very quickly”.

WORDS BY NIALL O’DONOGHUE

» Eric ‘Rainbowdragoneyes’ W Brown comes

from a musical family, learning trumpet and

piano as a kid before focusing on drums.

» Eric’s stage persona lets him cut loose, saying

“Rainbowdragoneyes could get away with

being kind-of an asshole, a little bit abrasive.”

CHIPTUNE

CONCERTO

"I'VE TRAVELLED WITH BANDS

AND IT'S COMPLICATED, HARD

AND EXPENSIVE: TRAVELLING

WITH GAME BOYS IS NOT"

DAN BEHRENS

© Infected Monkey

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RETRO GAMER | 81

CHIPTUNE CONCERTO

FIVE OF THE BEST ESSENTIAL CHIPTUNES CLASSIC GAMING TRACKS

OPENING THEME

FINAL FANTASY

NES • 1987

n The Final Fantasy series has

sprawled into a gigantic franchise

branching across decades, a far cry

from its humble NES origins, but

Nobuo Uematsu’s work remains

its beating heart. This triumphant

theme is a rousing reminder of

just why that is the case, a true

ode to adventure.

GREEN HILL ZONE

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG

MEGA DRIVE • 1991

n Composer Masato Nakamura

coaxed a gorgeous, utterly

joyful track out of the Sega

Mega Drive sound chip,

perfectly accompanying the

hyper-colourful scenery. With

covers such as a funk version by

insaneintherainmusic this song has

truly proven itself to be evergreen.

DR WILY'S CASTLE

MEGA MAN 2

NES • 1988

n Arguably one of the most

exciting songs in the entire NES

catalogue, this fast-paced track

impressed director Akira Kitamura

so much that he requested

composer Takashi Tateishi to

make “more songs just like that”,

according to a 2015 Brave Wave

interview. Thank goodness for that.

VAMPIRE KILLER

CASTLEVANIA

NES • 1987

n Composer Kinuyo Yamashita

focused on the platformer’s

gothic imagery for this legendary

soundtrack. “The scenario,

gameplay, characters and

everything else were so good and

the score fitted in nicely,” she said

in a 2010 interview with Square

Enix Music Online.

WORLD 1-1

SUPER MARIO BROS

FAMICOM • 1983

n Koji Kondo’s wonderfully catchy

tune accompanies perhaps the

most famous level in videogame

history, it’s harmonised melody in

counterpoint to a bouncy bassline.

Shigeru Miyamoto’s platformer

may have revolutionised level

design, but Kondo’s theme set the

bar for an entire generation.

» Enrique ‘Pentadrangle’ Martin

has played piano since childhood,

alongside experimenting with MIDI

software Cakewalk in his early teens.

» Dan ‘Danimal

Cannon’ Behrens grew

up as a “heavy metal

kid who was also a big

gamer”, both of which

would prove useful for

his musical career.

» [PC] Games like Celeste don’t just look retro, they sound retro too thanks to beautifully constructed chiptune soundtracks.

» Dan has painful memories of forgetting to change out batteries before gigs.

“I’ve literally had one of my bandmates die in the middle of a song,” he laughs.

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82 | RETRO GAMER

JAKE KAUFMAN

n Jake’s recent work on Shovel

Knight brought with it deserved

acclaim, but the veteran

composer’s track record stretches

back to the early Noughties,

including soundtracks for classic

series like Shantae, Contra and

Double Dragon. He’s even done

music for some movies.

LENA RAINE

n Lena Raine’s music encompasses

a broad range of sounds and styles,

both for her soundtrack work on

titles like Minecraft and her solo

music. However, both with her

Chip Collection and soundtrack for

Celeste, Lena incorporates retro

elements into forward-thinking

music to thrilling results.

DISASTERPEACE

n Perhaps best known for his

work on indie darlings Fez and

Hyper Light Drifter, Rich Vreeland’s

chiptune magnum opus is arguably

the concept album Rise Of The

Obsidian Interstellar, which

blends progressive rock and

electronic music elements into an

instrumental odyssey.

CHIPZEL

n Niamh Houston is one of the

most well-known members of

the chipmusic scene, coming to

prominence after scoring rhythm

game Super Hexagon. Instantly

recognisable for her energetic and

uptempo compositions, her work can

also be heard in games like River City

Girls and Cadence of Hyrule.

ANAMANAGUCHI

n Founded in 2004, this longrunning band mixes pop and rock

with chiptune, creating uplifting and

high-intensity music. Alongside their

originals, the band also created

the soundtrack for Scott Pilgrim Vs

The World: The Game, while retro

gaming aesthetics are peppered

throughout their imagery.

» Dan practises his

song transitions

just as much as his

technique, tweaking

laptop settings while

altering Game Boy

files and tuning.

All while keeping a

crowd engaged.

©Chiptography

» The Messenger was Eric’s first

game soundtrack. “The hard

part was composing something

that I liked and that fit the vibe

of the level,” he says.

» PUNKCAKE Délicieux releases one

game every month, such as sidescrolling shoot-’em-up Spectrum Forces.

» Enrique’s goal is to make

music that “sticks with you,

that makes you remember

it [and] whistle to it when

you’re taking a shower”.

MODERN MUSICIANS PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES OF CHIPTUNE

CHIPTUNE MAESTROS

» Enrique Martin got into chiptune music after being impressed with the excellent Shovel Knight soundtrack.

» Jake Kaufman was originally going to produce Cyber Shadow’s soundtrack, but was

impressed enough by Enrique’s music that his involvement was limited to the game’s trailer.

» The Messenger’s levels shift between 8-bit and

16-bit styles, requiring Eric to write both NES

and Sega Mega Drive versions of his tracks.

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RETRO GAMER | 83

CHIPTUNE CONCERTO

“I will borrow a lot of things from the way I interact

with my traditional instrument, the guitar, and apply

them,” he says, jokingly noting that a standard square

wave “sounds like a microwave going off”. Take the

iconic sound of a string bend. To represent this, Dan

takes two notes placed around one-sixteenth of a bar

apart and uses a command to create a ‘portamento’

pitch-sliding effect, the speed of which is determined

by an adjustable hexadecimal value.

“It’s those little expressions that will make even the

simplest sound, like a square wave, come alive,” he

elaborates, saying that text-based trackers allow him to

experiment and implement ideas quicker than modern

audio production software. “Chiptune software, just in

the very nature of the way that trackers work, just lend

themselves to this hyper-detailed music – that was

something that I was very drawn to.”

Live chiptune performances often showcase artists

DJing on a stage. Visualists also play an integral role,

sharing the stage to produce kaleidoscopic imagery

generated using retro or retro-inspired hardware.

However, Dan takes the stage with an electric guitar,

playing blistering leads to staccato backing tracks.

“I’ve travelled with bands and it’s complicated, hard

and expensive: travelling with Game Boys is not,”

Dan says. “It’s allowed me a lot of

opportunities to go across the entire

world that would have been, probably,

financially impossible to do if I had a full

band with me.”

D

an is far from the only

chiptune performer adding

variety to their live shows, however. Eric

W Brown takes the stage as “legendary

chiptune warlock” Rainbowdragoneyes, wearing

black metal-inspired ‘corpse paint’ makeup while

singing and screaming along to a Game Boy backing

track. “I wanted the delivery of a metal performance,

but with this very obviously upbeat and melodic

chiptune music,” he tells us. A veteran drummer for

metal bands like Nekrogoblicon, Eric is best-known

in gaming circles for his work on Sabotage Studio’s

2018 debut The Messenger, composing both 8-bit and

16-bit versions of every song for the time-travelling

platformer. However, he traces his chiptune roots back

to the mid-Noughties, when he discovered composers

like Bit Shifter via Myspace.

“I sent him a message just asking him how he

did this, not really thinking anything of it, and maybe

a day or two later he responded with a page and

a half just explaining the whole thing,” Eric recalls.

“Falling into the rabbit hole of figuring out how it all

works, that was really exciting to me, how people

use the limitations of the medium to make really

amazing music.” Eric produced his first album using

LSDJ, blending eurobeat and death metal using just

his vocals and four sound channels, and says much

of the appeal of composing chiptune goes back to

the old adage: limitation breeds creativity. “You’re

trying to make the most epic banger ever with just

those four channels, whereas you’d use a laptop with

Ableton or Logic and, essentially, the possibilities

are endless,” he says. “You have to start with one

channel and then build from there. You’ve got a

ceiling as far as the amount of polyphony you can

have in a song and just how far you can stretch that.”

However, this ‘purist’ mentality has lessened in Eric

over the years, particularly as his own production

techniques have developed. Modern music software

allows composers to leave hardware restrictions

behind to create layered, multifaceted compositions

that maintain the tone and aesthetic of chiptune.

Indeed, The Messenger’s soundtrack was created

using both Famitracker and DefleMask to emulate

the sound chips of a NES and Sega Mega Drive

respectively, with mastering done in the DAW Logic.

“You’re free to call it chiptune if it’s made with those

[hardware] limitations in mind, it doesn’t matter how

you did it,” he says. “In layman’s terms, it’s 8-bit

music and then that’s fine.”

For example, take Lena Raine’s renowned

soundtrack for 2018 indie platformer Celeste. While

Lena does have a back-catalogue of ‘pure’ chiptune

compositions, she explains that her soundtrack

goes far beyond just chiptune in a 2018 Medium

blog. Lena used synthesisers, layering heaps of

effects like reverb and noise filtering onto base

sounds generated by oscillators. This process,

rather than the “pure, clean sound” of less heavily

effected chiptune music, is what Lena describes

as “the main distinction between calling something

chiptune music, and identifying it as using electronic

instruments in some way that may or

may not originate from chips”.

Enrique ‘Pentadrangle’ Martin,

composer on Cyber Shadow and

resident musician with game studio

PUNKCAKE Délicieux, describes the

work of composers like Lena Raine

and Chipzel paradoxically, “Definitely

chiptune but not chiptune.” Enrique started playing

in bands in his late teens, like heavy metal band

In.Verno, and was inspired to write chiptune after

hearing Jake Kaurman’s Shovel Knight soundtrack for

the first time during a 2015 scuba diving trip. “When

I saw, in a modern [context], what chiptune music

could sound like when done properly with modern

resources, I told myself, ‘I could do something like

this – definitely not as good as what this guy does,

because he is the chiptune God, but I could do

something similar to this,’” he recalls.

Enrique started off using a Game Boy as a drum

machine for live performances around this time, but

uses plug-ins with the DAW Reaper to compose

soundtracks like Cyber Shadow. As a composer,

Enrique finds it highly rewarding to be free from the

necessities of collaborating with bandmates. “When

I had a song, I needed to negotiate with the rest of

the members of the band to change that part or that

order,” he says. “When I started composing music just

for myself, it was super rewarding: everything that I

did was mine.” For him, mixing retro chiptune sounds

with modern instrumentation allows for a much richer

approach to composition. “Blending those sounds

allows you to evoke retro games in a modern way,” he

explains. “I want to sound like those chips, but I don’t

want to be limited by their restrictions.”

As a medium, chiptune continues to evolve and

branch out further from its gaming roots. However, even

four decades on, there’s something about chiptune that

remains indelibly linked to the work of composers like

Kondo, Manami Matsumae or Kinuyo Yamashita, what

Eric describes as an “instant nostalgia”. He concludes,

“It’s that sound and those square waves that are just

bringing you back to better times.”

"BLENDING THOSE

SOUNDS ALLOWS YOU

TO EVOKE RETRO GAMES

IN A MODERN WAY"

ENRIQUE MARTIN

» Dirtywave’s portable tracker and synthesiser

M8 is an example of modern chiptune-compatible

hardware, taking inspiration from LSDJ.

» Dan takes inspirations from experimental

NES composers like Tim Follin, singling out his

Pictionary soundtrack in particular.

» The action of Just Shapes & Beats syncs up to

the music, an intense audio-visual experience in

the vein of Super Hexagon.

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PROCESSOR: STI CELL 64-BIT CPU (3.2 GHZ)

MEMORY: 256 MB XDR DRAM MAIN, 256MB GDDR3 RAM VIDEO

GRAPHICS: SONY/NVIDIA RSX REALITY SYNTHESIZER (500 MHZ)

MEDIA: BLU-RAY DISC, DVD, CD-ROM

STORAGE: USER REPLACEABLE HARD DISK

(20GB – 160GB DEPENDING ON MODEL)

OPERATING SYSTEM: CUSTOM PS3 SYSTEM

SOFTWARE (OPTIONAL ‘OTHEROS’

INSTALLATIONS POSSIBLE PRIOR

TO SYSTEM SOFTWARE 3.21)

■ If you want one of the early models with PS2

compatibility, you should expect to pay a hefty

premium – in working condition, you’re looking at

£70+ unboxed and £90+ boxed.

PlayStation 3

fact

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PlayStation 3

Sony’s third home console was a formidable piece of hardware, with its custom Cell CPU and Reality Synthesizer GPU that could deliver amazing gaming performance, if developers could master it. But there was plenty more underneath its

bulky black shell, which was frequently compared to a George Foreman

grill. The system was a multimedia beast, with a bank of flash memory

card slots and support for optical media including Blu-Ray, DVD and even

Super Audio CD. The console also included a hard disk and wireless

internet capabilities as standard, and even a chip containing the PS2’s

Emotion Engine and Graphics Synthesizer for backwards compatibility.

Sony seemed to be trying to invent a console that could do everything,

but the result was a bulky, expensive piece of hardware. Cost-cutting

measures began almost immediately, with the PAL consoles using

partially software-based PS2 emulation, rather than the hardware-based

PS2 compatibility of NTSC models. By the time the system was a

year old, it had lost all PS2 compatibility, Super Audio CD playback, the

memory card readers and two USB ports. This model would cease

production following the introduction of the redesigned ‘slim’ console in

2009. Today, these original units are considered to be rather unreliable.

» MANUFACTURER: Sony » YEAR: 2006

» COST: £425 (launch), £40+ (today, boxed), £20+ (today, unboxed)

ESSENTIAL GAME

Uncharted 2:

Among Thieves

This probably feels like it was released

a lot more recently than it actually

was, and with good reason – it set the

template that many modern action

adventures still follow, most notably

influencing the Tomb Raider series.

Naughty Dog is a developer that

understands how to blend cinematic

elements into videogames to near

perfection, and this was really the

first time it nailed it. Nathan Drake is

a likeable protagonist in the game’s

high-quality cutscenes, and the perfect

action hero during the crazy set pieces,

which range from the opening escape

from a derailed train to being chased

by a persistent attack helicopter.

Image by Evan Amos Image by Evan Amos

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86 | RETRO GAMER

What’s it like making your 200th episode? We

assume it’s a mix of pride and hard work or is

one feeling bigger than the other right now?

It’s been extremely time consuming since I’m trying

to cover every LJN published game (67 to the best

of my research). About roughly one-third of them I

already reviewed in past episodes of the show, so

I’ve incorporated the milestone episode trope of

using flashbacks. But still with the massive amount

of new reviews, it’s been a lot to write. I try to keep

it light and funny with keeping each review brief and

humorous with the Nerd being as cynical as always.

There’s also a little story thread in there too about

the Nerd realising it’s actually harder to make games

than he thinks it is. I think it’s an appropriate ‘season

finale’, especially since LJN has sort of been the

Nerd’s arch nemesis. This year, many fans have told

me they’re looking forward to seeing what I have

in mind for episode 200, so I knew that it had to be

something special.

What is it about the series that’s helped it

last so long even through the rise and fall of

websites that hosted the show like ScrewAttack