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Mega Man Legacy Collection

This HD release is rediscovering the first 6 games of the series from the memorable 8bit era. If you have been looking to take a break from the 2 analog stick plus 8 button modern madness, this is a collection for you. It is a simple yet challenging and more than enjoyable experience.

Highly recommended and available on Nintendo 3DS, PS4, Xbox One and Steam (PC).

P.S. Wait! No ‘Switch’ release???????

P.S 2 That is the second best modern release of retro games this last couple of weeks. Guess which one is the first! ;)

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Timer Surfer Review by Kumobius

If you spend a lot of time in the Metro and are looking for the ultimate time killer game app with strong retro gaming influences then look no further. I was surprised to find out this has been out for quite some time as well. The gameplay is simple and awesome and its music is simply amazing. It is also practically free although Kumobius (the game’s creator)has many perks available for you to purchase.

No reason to wait no further! :D =P

Time Surfer Google Play Store Link: http://bit.ly/16rwvGE

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Waiting for the summer to finally come! =)

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SNES Mini to replace NES Mini console this year according to Eurogamer.net

Nintendo admitted that NES mini was never intended to be a permanent product. SNES mini has been confirmed by insider sources to hit the markets this year and most probably during christmas period, when consumer electronic sales traditionally reach an annual peak.

Are you getting one? :D

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Highly recommended!

Super Plumber Man Vs The Evil Elf King is a short, silly and witty little Mario parody that sees you battling an army of tiny elves to rescue your beloved Princess.

Read More & Play The Full Game, Free (Windows)

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Donkey Kong Country - Nintendo Snes (1994)

DKC was developed by Rare and published by Ninty for the SNES system. It was presented to the market as the answer to Sega’s 32X addon for the Mega Drive system. I still remember the negative advertisement against Sega’s “innovation”. Beyond the aggressive marketing tactics, Nintendo put out a game that had taken a classic character from the arcade days and revamped him into a great platform video game. 

At the beginning of the game, DK realises that King K. Rool and his Kremling followers have raided his banana hoard under his nose. After a moment of authentic primate dissapointment, he and his fellow Diddy Kong embark on a journey to reach the top of the island and give King Rool his fair share of beating while getting his precious bananas back.

The game was one of the first to use pre-rendered 3D graphics with fully 3D objects. Rare also developed a compression technology in house that allowed them to incorporate more detail and animation for each sprite named ACM.

The music is also atmospheric and percussive. Most of it was composed by David Wise with Eveline Fischer and Robin Beanland also contributing. The music varies according to each natural environment the characters find themselves in. Sound effects are also very precise and are carefully integrated with the surroundings.

The areas also vary from jungles to snowy mountains to caves to crystal filled underground complexes to waste dystopias to mine carts to tree top villages to...........well you get the point. Back in the day there was no other game with so many backgrounds. Secret puzzles and secret areas are also abundant in the game.

Last but not least you have a few animal friends that add up to Donkey and Diddy’s abilities. Oh yeah! About those...Donkey can beat some mobs due to his size and strength and also he can slam the ground revealing bananas and other secrest. However, Donkey relies on Diddy to reach some areas as he is faster and can jump higher. Your animal friends on the other hand have abilities that help you reach secret areas or overcome obstacles and stages faster. For example Rambi the Rhino can run fast and break down walls, Winky the Frog jump attacks enemies that even Donkey cannot defeat and Squawks the Parrot lights your path in dark caves.

Overall, Donkey Kong Country was mostly innovative for its time, it was a huge financial success and it prolonged the SNES console’s life cycle.

Final Verdict: 11/10. Why? Because I can. It was so much fun that you could have your family getting entertained while you felll in the mine undergrounds while riding your mine cart for the 123rd time. If you need a reason to buy a SNES console from the second hand market this is it. Enjoy it!

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Metroid II: Samus Returns (Nintendo Gameboy)

This science fiction action adventure from 1991 is one of my personal favourites and one of the first video games I have ever played. It is no surprise that people are still posting videos of complete runs of the game after 25 years.

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Wonderboy: The Dragon’s Trap 

A classic title for Sega Master System released in 1989. The game has just been re-released for modern hardware and plays exactly like the original with revised graphics and sound. It also gives you the chance to play an 8bit version of the game at the press of a single button anytime during gameplay!!!. 

You can start off as a Wonder Boy or a Wonder Girl. Just like the original game, you are cursed by the very dragon you went off to defeat and are tranformed into a ............lizard. The only way to break the curse is to find an item called “The Salamander Cross”. This "horrible curse” gives you access to various forms as the game progresses, namely the lizard, the mouseman, the fishman, the hawkman and the lionman. Each form has unique abilities e.g. the mouseman form enables you to walk on walls. Essentially with each form you gain you are able to access areas that you could not with your previous form.

Apart from your basic attacks you also have access to secondary weapons. However the most powerful of all is clearly the boomerang as it passes through walls and obstacles (???) to defeat enemies and makes some parts of the game a lot easier to defeat. Speaking of difficulty there are different difficulty modes to enable players who are not accustomed to the totally unforgiving gameplay of the original to experience the game without having to visit their local psychotherapist. Also, the absence of a map may alienate modern gamers.

Compared to the original, the graphical and sound updates of the game are welcome. Graphics have a hand drawn feeling and are filled with details instead of the generic backgrounds of the 1989 version. Enemy animations are also very detailed and look as if inspired by a children’s comic book (adding up to the nostalgia factor of the title). Also the ability to switch secondary weapons on the fly compared to the original pause-change-resume is also an excellent addition enabling a non-stop action experience.

Score: 7/10. A faithful recreation of the original with graphics, sound and functional updates. Despite some frustrating moments its an old school platformer still fun to play after all these years.

P.S. No PC version? :’(

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Blizzard Entertainment is giving away the Starcraft Anthology (base game + brood war expansion) for FREE as a promotion for the Starcraft: Remastered Edition.

Starcraft is a military science fiction real time strategy (RTS) game released in 1998. It sold 1.5 million copies and another 9.5 million copies in the next 10 years (4.5 sold in South Korea). It still remains one of the most popular online games in the world and its impact on the cultural establishment of video gaming is still felt to this day.

Click here to get your FREE copy of the game (Windows/Mac).

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Just announced!

Shortly after discontinuing the production of the classic NES mini console ,Nintendo is planning to release an edition of its landmark console SNES most probably during this Christmas.

Nintendo has sold 1.5 million NES Classic systems worldwide up to now according to IGN.

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Did you know gaming? is an awesome YouTube channel with a lot of retro gaming content. The amount of research that these guys put into their videos is just over the top!

Here is a documentary about the history of Doom featuring Markiplier. Enjoy!

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Did you know?

Masaya Nakamura, the founder of NAMCO, said in a 1983 interview that though he did expect for Pac-Man to be successful, he never expected its massive commercial success.

Pac-Man generated 2.5 billion dollars in quarters by the late 1990s. It is one of the highest grossing video games of all times.

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RETRO TALES FROM THE VAULT: EPISODE 1

The worse game in the history of the galaxy?

According to BBC, even Spielberg was so unimpressed that he asked Howard Scott Warshaw, the one and only developer of the game: “Couldn’t you make something more like Pac-Man?”. Definately not the kind of answer you wanna hear after sinking in 21 million dollars in order to get the exclusive rights for the film....

The game developer company responsible was Atari. Atari defined and formulated the arcade game and generally video game industry as we know it today. However, by 1982 it faced intense competition, a variety of internal company problems ranging from management misinformation to “weird human resource practices” as well as a string of failed video game releases: a version of Pac Man and.................E.T. The company simply could not sell its inventory and prices were dropping like flies. 

This situation resulted in the famous “Atari Video Game Burial”, in 1983 Atari buried unsold cartridges (guess which ones), consoles and computers. The new Mexico burial has since been developed into an urban legend with various contradicting reports about the size and exact contents of this “strategic decision” made by Atari. Soon after Atari was sold off by its parent company “Warner Communications”.

Actually the game was not all that bad. Howard had to deliver the game in 5 weeks................ E.T. was a ground breaking movie for its time and his original intention was to make a breakthrough game to match the innovation of the movie.........in 5 weeks. Basically, he was aiming for nothing short of a miracle. What is surprising is how on earth a respectable company sinks in 21 million dollars for the rights to a project and then assigns one person with one computer and............5 weeks to deliver. For the time the developer had in his hands he delivered a pretty good game. However, the key decision makers i.e. the gamers themselves had a different opinion at the time.......... =P

This pretty much marked the end of the industry until some japanese company named “N........o” came along a few years later...............

Wanna know more?

Video Game Years History

E.T. the Extraterrestrial: Game walkthrough

Sincere thoughts about E.T. the Extraterrestrial

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Cadillacs and Dinosaurs!

THE REVIEW!

Originally released in 1993 in Japan as Cadillacs Kyouryuu Shinseiki, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs was a fighting game released by Capcom, the popular publisher responsible for Street Fighter II. Following the trend at that point in time that spawned hundreds of variants all based on the same content, C&D was a typical side scrolling beat ‘em up that attempted to differentiate with the competition by adding a few extra unique features.

It was based on a popular comic book series of that time called Xenozoic Tales. Featuring the setting of a post - apocalyptic future, humans in the 20th century were forced to live in underground facilities for 500 years after the pollution and natural disasters rendered the surface uninhabitable. They finally emerged only to find that the world they left behind was reclaimed by animals they thought were extinct i.e. dinosaurs. There is limited technology left in this new reality and people who possess it are treated with the highest respect.

The game details the adventures of the comic’s characters (Jack, Hannah, Mustafa and Mess) as they attempt to fight their way through a large variety of enemies. Hordes of gangsters, killers, motorcycle gangs, dinosaurs, petty thieves, bigger dinosaurs, bodybuilders, even bigger dinosaurs, crazy scientists, even more massive dinosaurs and.........you guessed it...GIGANTIC dinosaurs stand in their way and fail miserably to stop them as our heroes use various techniques to counter enemy attacks. At the end of each stage a big boss awaits to stop you for good and needless to say most of them are pretty effective at doing just that. Extra care and avoiding solo play is the key to enjoyment! A total of 15 stages with an equal number of bosses await to test your skills, patience and cooperative play.

Each character has unique strengths and weaknesses e.g. Jack is a good all-rounder, Mustafa is more speed based, Hannah has deadly skills and Mess is more powerful. The key to success is using a variety of characters (up to 3 players can play at the same time) to balance out each other’s weaknesses and cover each other as one may need to step back and get those power-ups to replenish their health as the others beat the poor mobs to a senseless state of mizery. The game also features a number of weapons ranging from sticks and stones to pistols and bazookas (extremely useful for the last boss) that can help our heroes maintain their health or just take out enemies faster.......only to find out there are more coming their way anyway....

Unfortunately the game is not available anymore through official channels. Hopefully Capcom will re-release it as part of a nice collection at some point in the future (yes? no? please? omg I beg you please just do it!). If you are lucky to have access to an original arcade.........well.........good for you =P

Similar games: Captain Commando (1991), The Punisher (1993), Warriors of Fate (1992), Knights of the Round (1991), The King of Dragons (1991)

Final Verdict: 9/10

It’s non-stop action, balanced out characters that reward coop play and a great story to support the meaningless beating up of poor fellas and animals make this one of the best (if not the best) representative of the Capcom series.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillacs_and_Dinosaurs_(video_game)#Gameplay

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenozoic_Tales

http://capcom.wikia.com/wiki/Cadillacs_and_Dinosaurshttp://rq87.flyingomelette.com/RQ/CAD/main.html

http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7255

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Welcome to GOMK!

This is my personal blog about old school games.

The mission: To present retro games, gaming culture and the stories behind the gaming industry up to the late 1990s through a series of:

Retro game reviews

Story telling episodes

Retro gaming community news

Enjoy the content and thank you for visiting GOMK!