Sega Master System Masterclass
...with a C64 prod not far behind, plus we try to find out what "good nostalgia" means
[News / Sega Master System] A few items below, I write about a new
game demo for SMS called Razing Core. Apart from being fun to play, it also reminded me that some weeks/months ago (time flies, eh) I purchased an SMS game which looked impressive, but somehow I never got around to playing it.
So now, being primed by Raizing, sorry, Razing Core, I gave it a whirl, and it transpired that a) it’s from the same dev, Badcomputer, and b) it’s absolutely amazing. I mean it - I was really astonished by the quality of both gameplay and visuals. I never knew Little Sega is capable of such technical feats (NES looks positively drab by comparison). Well, you live, you learn. And, oh, the game is called Frontier Force and you can grab it here (5$, worth every rupee)
As for gameplay, it’s another very simple concept utilized very cleverly by the developer (similar as with C64’s Randoom Ancient Stones below). The game is a stationary shoot’em up, in the vein of Space Invaders / Galaxian, with the twist where you have to defend a base too. It’s humanity’s last outpost, by the way, so don’t mess up. But, if you don’t care for narratives then at its heart the game is a pure score-attack, adrenaline-rush, coffee-break time-killer.
Its ingenuity lies in masterful design of the attack waves, which are never boring and quite hypnotic, sprinkled with some bonuses and power ups. It’s a real pleasure to experience such a hugely entertaining game when you realize how simple its ingredients really are. That’s aside from the gfx, which is nothing but “simple” - it’s a true extravaganza, starting with the amazing title screen and ending on huge bosses. Certainly worth shelling out the 5$ entry price.
[News / ZX Spectrum] There are still a few hours left until the final
deadline for submissions to YRGB kicks in. Yes, the Yandex Retro Games Battle is back this year, after being on hiatus since 2022. This might or might not have something to do with political reasons, but previous years always yielded a strong crop of quality games, so it’ll be interesting to see how they fare in 2025. The Zosya team is sadly retired, so perhaps there is breathing space for newcomers to shine?
The audience vote is scheduled for August 7th, and the Awards Ceremony for August 30th, so we will find out soon and certainly report on the best entries here.
[Retro / Nintendo] David L. Farquhar @ The Silicon Underground often
publishes some fascinating articles, and in the latest one he writes about the ancient “Nintendo vs Blockbuster” lawsuit. Apparently, being litigious is not a freshly acquired quality for the good ol’ Ninty, and back then they wanted to stop this major video rental chain from also renting out their video games. While Blockbuster initially won in court regarding the main issue, Nintendo found a loophole and claimed that copying instruction booklets infringes on their copyrights too.
This claim was upheld and lead to an absurd situation where Blockbuster had to write their own manuals for games. But they had resources to do it, while smaller, independent shops didn’t, and so they mostly either ignored it, or rented games without manuals.
All this is rather amusing, and got me thinking about the “good” kind of nostalgia, harking back to the “rental” days and having manuals in games. Being a computer kid from Eastern Europe, I (and ~95% of my peers) never had a Nintendo, or any other console from this era, and so this problem didn’t exist for us. But we did have a video rental stores, and many good memories connected with trips to our local ones remain.
As for the lack of manuals, now that was a big issue, though more connected to the fact that all the software was pirated (we had no copyright laws), and so it came in the “as-is” format, meaning “just the data”. In later years, when I finally ascended to the disk-based Amiga-level, sometimes cracking groups would include docs on the disks, but most of the time it would be down to yourself to figure stuff out.
[News / Sega Master System] I must admit, SMS is a console
I probably have had the least experience with. So, reading about a free demo for an incoming shoot’em up sounded like a good idea for catch’ing up. And it was well worth it, since Razing Core, despite being only in alpha stage, is already a fairly accomplished game. It showcases Sega’s 8-bit baby’s technical prowess rather well, with an impressive colour palette, and plethora of enemies and bullets whizzing around the screen.
There are some slowdowns, but I suppose such kinks will be ironed out - the developer behind it, Badcomputer, is known for high-quality productions (see Item #1 in this edition). The “Razing” is not far off “Raizing”, perhaps on purpose, and the gameplay brings to mind Blazing Lazers and other Compile’s classics. It’s certainly worth checking out, or at least keeping an eye out for the completed game.
[News / C64] A new C64 game called Randoom Ancient Stones
appeared last week and, boy, it’s a real blast! I didn’t think much of it at the first sight, but once I started playing, I was hooked fast. The gameplay is reminiscent of Bubble Bobble, as it’s a similarly laid-out arcade puzzler, in which you are a cute blob who has to bump into blobby baddies matching your colour. Once you hit and eliminate one, your colour changes, and then you can hunt another blob. Do it fast, and you will get combo bonuses. There are also floating power ups which can have real impact on gameplay. The action takes place on single-screen platforms, and you can fall down through holes in the bottom and emerge on top in a true Bobble-like fashion.
It’s a truly simple-but-clever premise, and it works extremely well in practice. This is in no small part thanks to very fluid movement and tight controls, as well as the fact your blob is rather charming. The background graphics (depicting some real and fantasy mystery sites) are okay-ish, but that’s “in my opinion” since others praise it quite high. There are some great tunes too, for example the gfx in first stage depicts the obelisk from Space Odyssey 2001, and so the music is a riff on the movie’s soundtrack too. Overall, this production is a must-try, especially seeing as it comes at the grand price of Name Your Own (and I think the outfit responsible, Picaro Games, well deserves naming more than “0”).
[Retro / Mags] The esteemed text-adventure* blog Renga in Blue
always publishes top-quality content, in fact they have been doing so for 20 years now - oh, my, the two-week-old Beyond Nostalgia sure is envious. And so, this entry has been triggered not by their particular current topic - take your pick, they’re always worth reading - but the accompanying image. They poached it from Games Magazine, November 1984, and since seeing this kind of old-timey sci-fi images makes my head swim, I poached it from them. Here it is…
I guess that feeling comes from the fact that back then, space was still relatively unknown and mysterious, despite the fact we already had radio telescopes. And who could predict that the Space Race will fizzle out in so badly? Sure, being a ~ 10-year-old definitely added to the mix, but I really do miss these anything’s-possible vibes. They’re still there, of course, to some extent, but the stuff from CETI, Hubble, Webb, & the like, dispelled the mystery a little, and the fact that nothing much is going on in regard to “reaching for the stars” is sobering.
*I know the aficionados prefer the term “interactive fiction” but I stubbornly insist on “text adventure”, probably because I grew up with this term
[News / GBC] The preservation heroes at Games That Weren’t
put out an endless stream of updates - honestly, how do they manage to do that, given their modus operandi? - but this one particularly caught my eye. It’s a port of that old classic micro-racer, Re-Volt to BGC, and the interesting thing is that they managed to get hold of 33 different builds of the work in progress. Such wealth of subsequent versions can give excellent insights into the development process and will be priceless for the future historians (I mean, they will study retro game dev in 3025, right?) and perhaps current retro-programmers as well.
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