Tag Archives: Retro

If you were a PSP owner in 2010, there’s a chance you might remember Nippon Ichi Software’s Cladun: This is an RPG. Although screenshots might have conveyed the sentiment that the game was little more ...

The ubiquity of game remakes is hardly surprising. After all, it’s cost-effective for publishers to either emulate yesteryear’s titles (see the release of this week’s The Disney Afternoon Collection) or port over existing code over ...

In the grand pantheon of arcade shooters, few are more prestigious than 1981’s Defender. While the William Electronics-developed coin-op wasn’t an immediate success (creator Eugene Jarvis has blamed the groundbreaking five-button control method), the game proved ...

Rogue’s gameplay mechanics were far more influential that anyone would have expected.  When the Unix based diversion was loaded onto the servers at UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley, a constituency of students became captivated, ...

Like most mainstream media, the primary goal of interactive entertainment is escapism. When the collective weight of work, bills, and relationships congeals into a burdensome load, we have the ability to retreat into meticulously detailed, ...

One of the great dialectics in gaming is the tension between pattern-driven and free-form play. Classic shooters like Gradius and R-Type are textbook examples of the former, goading gamers into improvement as they face the ...

America’s arcades have lost almost all their luster. Restrained to the recesses of bowling alleys and multiplexes, these recreational spaces have becoming a dumping ground for rigged redemption machines and the light-gun shooter with only ...

Being an indie developer often means working with a skeleton crew under a tight, sometimes non-existent budget. Of course, this results in small versatile teams capable of rapidly adapting to any challenge that comes their ...

Not long ago, the shmup (alternatively referred to as STG) was a thriving genre, with publishers like Capcom, Konami, and Treasure releasing quintessential titles such as 1943, Gradius, and Radiant Silvergun.  But over time, the ...

It’s interesting to think how ten years ago Megaman fans were suffering from franchise fatigue as Capcom kept releasing title after title starring the famous blue bomber. Yet, today this mascot is relegated to little ...