Old School Gamer: What inspired this game?

Zack Johnson: I’ve always felt like the Wild West genre was underrepresented in RPGs.  I think it’s very similar to medieval fantasy in a lot of ways: a comprehensible level of technology (guns instead of swords,) a dangerous environment (snakes and outlaws instead of dragons and brigands,) and a primal, hero-centric mythology (gunslingers instead of knights.)

Old School Gamer: What games did you play as a kid? How did they play a part in this?

Johnson: The game that was probably the most influential on West of Loathing was probably Hero’s Quest (later renamed to Quest for Glory.)  It’s an adventure game with significant RPG elements that change the way the gameplay and the story unfold.  I also played a lot of the Space Quest games, which I’m sure influenced the tone and humor of my games, and the early entries in the Might and Magic series, which were the beginning of a life-long fondness for RPGs.

Old School Gamer: What has the development process been like?

Johnson: We spent a few months working on our backend tools and data structures before we hired the engine programmer.  Developing content for this game is very data-driven, and therefore very quick and easy for the content team to do.  Likewise, we nailed down a really straightforward art pipeline early on.  At this point, we’re just busily making new content while adding new engine features as we need them.

Old School Gamer: How would you describe this game to someone who has never played it?

Johnson: It’s a hybrid adventure / role-playing game with stick figure art and a very silly tone.  It’s like Skyrim with beans and big hats.

Old School Gamer: What do you think makes this game special?

Johnson: Our writing team has been working together for 13+ years, and we’ve gotten really good at doing what we do.  If you like our sensibilities, our games are the only place you’re going to find them.

Old School Gamer: Bottom Line, why should someone play this when it’s released?

Johnson: Because it’s fun and it’s funny and in spite of its silliness and low-fi graphical style, its RPG gameplay is surprisingly deep.

Old School Gamer: What are your goals for this game?

Johnson: After more than a decade of working on the same very old MMORPG, I’m hoping to prove that our team can produce a smaller, standalone game in a more modern gameplay idiom.

Old School Gamer: What’s next?

Johnson: Well, assuming West of Loathing sells well enough to justify keeping the team together, we’d love to continue making games in the engine we’ve developed for this one.  A hypothetical second game would probably either be a Lovecraftian horror game set in the 1920s, or a Flash Gordon-like space opera.

The post Retro Interview: Zack Johnson Talks ‘West of Loathing’ appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Easy to describe, “Typoman” uses letters to forge its “Hero.” Literally, the character’s design is an H, E, R and O.  Even the enemies and obstacles are made up on consonants and vowels. In order to advance through each level, gamers have to create words to activate and traverse the terrain, creating words like “on” and “off” in easy situations and much complex verbiage in later levels. The end result is a platformer that works, it’s got a bit of “Mario” and “Pitfall” in it, but thanks to the puzzle elements, has that something “extra” to make it stand out of the crowd.

Much of the speciality has to do with the games’ look. Right from the start, “Typoman” creates a sense of wonder and fun that you’ll enjoy. Dark and gritty with an endearing aire, “Typoman” will instantly draw connections to another fantastic platformer, “Braid.” It’s here where much of the intrigue is created, jumping around, climbing and swinging. But at the same time, the dangers that await may be too much for the average gamer. Simply put, you will die quite a bit in “Typoman.” At times, you’ll have no idea how to remedy your situation. While there’s a much-needed hint system via the GamePad, you’ll have to think a lot more than you would in the average platformer.

And here lies the caveat. “Typoman” as a plaformer alone is fun- everything works the way it should and it’s fun in spite of its at times absurd difficulty. The puzzle elements too are a hit, but create another layer to the action that is sometimes a pain to manage. The end result is a unique blend of puzzle and platforming that isn’t as enthralling as it is at first glance. Although you’ll want to play through “Typoman” in its entirety, you may find yourself getting frustrated enough to put it down.

Thanks to the success of a handful of titles over the past few years, Nintendo has become somewhat of a home for nifty indie titles. “Typoman,” even with its lack of gameplay balance, is yet another another example of an innovative and fun game that separates the Wii U from other consoles.

The Good:

Atmosphere: Similar to “Braid,” “Typoman” immerses the gamer in its world and creates an adventure you won’t want to escape from.

Wii U Enhanced: This game could be great on another console, but it’s ultimately a perfect fit on the Wii U.

The Bad:

Difficult: You’re going to perish quite often in this game and that’s enough to turn off some casual gamers.

Final Thoughts:

It’s not a perfect puzzle game and the difficulty sometimes hampers that platform experience, but combining both in “Typoman” is a recipe for success.

The post Retro Review: Typoman: ‘Braid’ meets ‘Scrabble’ appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

About Ground Zero Hero:

Featuring a vibrant hand-drawn art style inspired by The Simpsons and Rick and Morty, Ground Zero Hero challenges players to explore a post-apocalyptic wasteland as they face off against massive hordes of marauding mutants. Pummel piñatas, crunch candy, and absorb the irradiated guts of monsters to unlock new mutations and become the ultimate mutant.

Old School Gamer Magazine: How was this game born?

Rowan Edmondson: I randomly came across Vampire Survivors before it blew up, and it struck me as something I could put a cool spin on (something about 30,000 other developers also decided).  The immediate things I didn’t like about VS like the lack of animation etc were informative to what I was imagining. 

At the time, VS didn’t actually have vampires in it, so some of the core design ideas were born from “What if Vampire Survivors had vampires and survival”, hence why GZH has a day/night cycle where vampires emerge at sundown, and light survival mechanics (candy meter).

Old School Gamer Magazine:What is your role in the game?

Edmondson: I’m a 100% solo developer – I did literally everything in the game from code to animation to music. (A couple of explosion VFX I paid for but were still heavily modified)

Old School Gamer Magazine:Love the visual identity of the game. What inspired it?

Edmondson: Thanks! It’s probably obvious there’s a huge Matt Groening/Simpsons  influence with a dose of Rick and Morty weird. I don’t really have a default art style – after 15 years as a full time indie, exploring different art styles is something that keeps the process fresh and interesting – but that combination felt
like a good fit for the themes of the game.

Old School Gamer Magazine:How can gamers get their “freak out” in this game? 

Edmondson: It’s all about crafting your ultimate hideous mutant!

Old School Gamer Magazine:What has development been like?

Edmondson: GZH was started almost four years ago, and represents a three year project of effectively working 7 days a week (it takes time when you’re a pedantic perfectionist doing everything yourself). Just about any project spanning that amount of time is going to be a rollercoaster, and this certainly was. 

The different incarnations of starting as RAD Surivor and releasing as an early demo that was totally ignored. The pivot to renaming it to Ground Zero Hero and completely redoing most of the visuals. Pausing development for a year after a second project found a publisher.

Returning to GZH development after that project was cancelled. Waking up to an email from Acclaim wanting to have a call after I’d totally forgotten even pitching to them 

(pretty sure it was late at night and I was hammered when I sent a demo link) and then the subsequent process of teaming up with Acclaim and being a part of the rebirth of the legendary publisher from my childhood. So yeah, quite the rollercoaster.

Old School Gamer Magazine:What makes this game special?

Edmondson: I think genuinely special games occupy their own creative space. Games like Bioshock come to mind – the intersection of visuals and direction and game feel creating something incomparable. I’d like to think the aesthetic, music and attitude of Ground Zero Hero combine to create something pretty singular in gaming,
despite the saturation of the genre.

Old School Gamer Magazine:What games influenced this one the most?

Edmondson: Vampire Survivors and Fallout are obvious influences. But for the creative direction, Sunset Overdrive was a major influence in terms of the whole “happy apocalypse” vibe: rainbows and candy and bullshit everywhere.

Old School Gamer Magazine:Any fun stories or wild moments during development?

Edmondson: Signing with Acclaim was the most unexpected part of the whole process. When I started development there was no hint of them coming back, so landing GZH with the home publisher of some of my all time favourite games as a kid (NBA Jam, Mortal Kombat, Turok) is still kinda crazy to me.

Old School Gamer Magazine:What were the major lessons learned?

Edmondson: I would probably do a hundred things differently regarding project management in Unity. Also, the nature of the genre meant I learned A LOT about optimisation at the back end.

Old School Gamer Magazine:Do you think preserving older gameplay mechanics in new games is important?

Edmondson: Frankly, no. Of course there are time proven mechanics that will always have their place in the medium, but I don’t view the preservation of older mechanics as something important within itself. 

Old School Gamer Magazine:The marketplace is crowded. How do you think you stand out?

Edmondson: Hopefully the combination of the aesthetic and attitude elevate GZH to be seen as something fresh and fun.

Old School Gamer Magazine:How have your previous experiences in industry helped this game?

Edmondson: This is my 15th year as a full time indie, so it’s hard to concentrate all of that experience into how it manifested through the development of GZH. I would say that in the early years of bootstrapping as indie developers, we could only afford to pay an artist to make a few key assets and I’d then make the rest based on their art style.

Over the years I became fairly profficient at riffing on an existing style, so it definitely equipped me to realise an aesthetic I imagined as a mix of The Simpsons and Rick & Morty. 

Old School Gamer Magazine:How do you want this game to ultimately be remembered?

Edmondson: Ideally it’s remembered as fun, amusing nonsense with a banging soundtrack that sold 10,000,000,000 copies.

Old School Gamer Magazine:What’s next?  

Edmondson: Buy one of them gold plated houses. 

Old School Gamer Magazine:Anything else you’d like to add?

Edmondson: Socks then shoes.

The post Old School Gamer Magazine Exclusive: Inside ‘Ground Zero Hero’ appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Although it does a solid job of recreating the cute and charming world of the original series, the gameplay is lather, rinse, repeat and does nothing to pull the gamer in and invest the real time needed in order to bring out the game’s finer qualities. Simply put, although there’s a bevy of creative tools at your disposal, it takes far too long and access them and as a result, you’ll find yourself giving up well before you get access to them.

The game’s strength is the interaction between characters. A new hire at Tom Nook’s interior and exterior home design company, you’re thrust into work from the get-go, working with a variety of customers, all with special needs and desires for their homes. Over time, you begin to build the town, creating, cafes, schools and hospitals, turning the small, cozy place into a much more vibrant community. While the investment has its moments (thanks especially to the fact that you can create custom designs) and it’s always cool to check out your finished product, there are several huge problems with the gameplay mechanics, making the game something much more childish than you’d expect.

While gamers can rate the designs of others using Nintendo’s Miiverse, there’s no real way your creations are graded in the single-player mode. All you really have to do is use the content given to you by the character at the start of every new level and you could call it a day. It makes all the time and energy fine-crafting each home a waste of time and eliminates any real reward.

In the end, there’s a ton of stuff to do in “Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer,” but it’s all too fetch and repetitive to be engaging. A huge misstep for the cult-favorite series, it’s not as happy an experience as you’d expect and is only for the most dedicated AC fans.

The Good:

Amiibo Cards: Seeing new characters get into your game via the amiibo card system is one of the coolest things in the game. Trade ‘em with your friends and all of a sudden the game gets a lot beefier in terms of content.

The Bad:

Easy to Advance: All you have to do is use the required pieces on each level and you can advance. There’s little skill involved.

Too Much Investment, Not Enough Pay-Off: It takes hours to unlock the real creative versatility of “Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer” and most gamers won’t invest that much time in it.

Same Old Song: The gameplay doesn’t change much, even when you acquire new tools. As a result, you’ll get bored pretty fast.

Final Thoughts:

Although there are a fun mix of characters and the writing is what you’d expect from an “Animal Crossing” game, “Happy Home Designer” requires entirely too much work and not enough satisfaction for even the most dedicated fans of the franchise. If you’re starving for some of the series’ classic gameplay, you won’t find it here.

The post Retro Review: Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer Review: A Sorry Spin-Off appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

So while your love affair with Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Sonya Blade, and all the other characters in the game is just as intense as your feelings for characters in Tekken or Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat has always been different. It’s always hit harder. For that reason alone, it’s easily one of the most important games of all time and absolutely on the Mount Rush…

Read the rest of this article on page 50 by clicking here!

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The post Mortal Kombat – by Patrick Hickey Jr. appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Desert Strike: Fans have wanted a new game in this series for over 20 years. EA needs to make it happen or let someone get it done .

Hagane: This game was a blast on the Super Nintendo. Could be a really fun and different release on a console like the Switch 2.

Comix Zone: An underrated gem on the Sega Genesis, this deserves a similar redux as Streets of Rage 4.

Operation Wolf: The world needs a new light gun game and this was a fun one on several consoles.

X-Men: The Sega Genesis games were great, as were X-Men Legends. It’s time for a new X-Men game. It’s been entirely too long. While Cosmic Invasion features X-Mn characters, it’s not the same.

The post Five Retro Games We’d Love to See Modern Remakes Of appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

PGA Tour Golf: To think that the eventual EA Sports juggernaut was built on the backs of games in the baseball and golf genres is a hard message to convey to a young gamer that sees the Madden series as the cornerstone of the EA empire today. But way before the NBA 2K franchise beat on NBA Live and dominated the hardwood and before Knockout Kings disappeared in favor of UFC, Electronic Arts broke into the sports genre with games such as Earl Weaver Baseball on PC and, PGA Tour Golf, on the Sega Genesis.

The first Genesis game to have a PGA license, the game ironically had more of an arcade punch to it, channeling the careers of the team that designed it. Developed by Lee Actor and Dennis Koble, known for their work on such Atari ports such as Pit-Fighter and Hard Drivin’, PGA Tour was the type of pick up and play experience that much like the NHL and Lakers. vs. Celtics games that followed it from EA, invited players to the genre.

Over 30 years since it was released on the Sega Genesis, Traeger still remembers what was so enjoyable about the title and how it almost never happened.

“It was really successful and the license was cool. It took the thunder out a lot of other golf games that didn’t have the licensing. Golf games, even on early technology, used a lot of data,” Traeger said. “In the early days, we would just walk the courses with cameras and try to record the data as much as we could. Then we had, individual sessions with the golfers where we were just videotaping their swings. This was way before the motion capture stuff and all that. The license gave us access to all the PGA courses and all those players. They weren’t like big superstars, so they were all pretty accessible. A lot of them were pretty technology aware. The partnership worked really well. We had a lot of data and all those courses. But the thing about the core of the game, it had been around in EA for a while. It was just a golf simulator.”

Roger Clemens MVP Baseball:

Designed by Perry Rodgers, a former Twin Galaxies Gaming Champion, member of the US National Video Game Team, co-founder of the Amusement Players Association (APA) with Steve Harris and Jeff Peters, which published the Top Score Newsletter, a predecessor to Harris’ Electronic Gaming Monthly, as well as Senior Producer of some of the original PlayStation’s biggest titles including Parappa the Rapper, Final Fantasy VII and Gran Turismo, this was an opportunity early in his career to do more than produce. Behind the wheel for the entire development cycle, Rodgers had some clear objectives for his baseball game.

“I was working at Activision. That was my first job in gaming,” Rodgers said. “I was a Product Specialist and Associate Producer. I was there for about two, two and a half years. After a while, I got this- ‘I want to make my own game’ idea. That’s obviously very common in the industry. But being that Activision was more of a publisher than a developer at the time, that wasn’t going to probably happen there. So I can’t recall exactly how I got in talks with George Metos from Sculptured Software. I believe it was because of some work that I had been doing for Activision, but I just can’t recall the details on that. He flew me out there and we talked about doing my own games. I’ve always liked sports games in general. One of the games I wanted to do was a baseball game, but I wanted to do something different.”

NFL 98

NFL 98 is easily one of the most in-depth football simulations in the history of the Sega Genesis but sadly came at a time when most people were hungry for the games on the Sega Saturn and PlayStation. Featuring a full-season mode, player creation, trades, team relocation options and a variety of in-game tuning options, it boasts a set of gameplay tools many first-generation 32-bit games do not. However, with 16-bit visuals, even the best on the Genesis at the time wasn’t enough to entice players away from sexy new consoles. As a result, NFL 98, regardless of everything it did right, is seen as a lost gem on the Genesis console.

Developed by a Spectacular Games team led by Michael Brook, who also worked on NFL 95 and Deion Sanders Prime Time NFL 96, the group was ready to deliver their best edition yet. Fixing several gameplay bugs that hampered previous versions of the series, NFL 98 is the best edition of the series and a million seller on the console. According to Brook, that had a lot to do with the love affair he and the team had with the Genesis. The reason for that affection for the console is simple – Brook helped build the Genesis as a viable console as a producer at Electronic Arts. Helping take the publisher from the PC to the Genesis, Brook saw NFL 98 as the end of a special era. 

“I loved the Genesis,” Brook said. “My feelings (at the start of NFL 98’s development) were really, ‘Boy, I’d rather be doing Genesis development.’ I was very sad to see it go away. I was feeling as if, if this were another media, like a book or a movie, I’d have a chance to keep making my mark with great products on this system. It’s too bad because while the Genesis might’ve been replaced by 32-bit platforms, it, by no means, was no longer a viable system. That was kind of sad that there really was no room for it because it just didn’t look as good even though it played great and probably better than the 32-bit machines, certainly at the start. But because of the looks, it had no hope. The industry moved much more towards marketing the visual experience. Part of that was that the way you made your money at the time was to simply sell the game, in which the publisher made all its money up front on a one-time sale. It really didn’t matter how much somebody played it – it was whether you sold it. Now we’re in a completely different era where many games are free to play and you buy features or pieces of the game later on. Gameplay is everything. At the time of the Genesis, in the 90s, that wasn’t the case.”

Coach K Basketball: Mike “Coach K” Krzyzewski’s name will forever be with the college basketball gods as one of the greatest bench bosses in NCAA history. With five national championships under his belt (as of this writing), Coach K’s resume speaks for itself. Combine that with EA’s penchant for creating top-notch basketball experiences and it’s one of the best roundball games on the Sega Genesis.

However, unlike the long-time success other celebrity-endorsed games have had under the EA umbrella, Such as John Madden, Tiger Woods and evening Earl Weaver, Coach K only had one opportunity at the free-throw line, but managed to turn the experience into a three-point play. Originally released in 1995, it wasn’t until three years later that EA began its long-running March Madness franchise, which later morphed into NCAA Basketball. But regardless if it’s short tenure on the virtual court, Coach K’s Basketball left a nearly untarnished level of precision on the court during its time.

“Upon completion of NBA Live 95 we were all discussing the excitement of the NCAA Tournament and the incoming players that would be in NBA Live 96,” Dave Warfield, the game’s Assistant Producer and Designer said. “With Duke winning back to back tournaments and so many great players, it made sense for us to leverage the Live engine we had created with the Isometric view, and build on the interest of the yearly March Madness. As the team was looking at the next iteration of NBA Live, I split off to work with a small team to create a game that took the best of the NBA and created a different experience.”

Triple Play 96: It’s hard to believe, but at one point, EA Sports was extremely focused on producing quality baseball games. Way before MVP Baseball was a thing, Triple Play Baseball was a series that millions of gamers flocked to. At one point in the franchise’s history, it was a consistent million-seller on the Sony PlayStation and PlayStation 2. Before that dominance, however, EA was in a different type of ballgame on the Sega Genesis and was just trying to find its footing. At one point, the publisher had MLBPA Baseball, Tony LaRussa Baseball and even its classic PC series, Earl Weaver Baseball all trying to grab a piece of the virtual baseball pie. But somewhere between Earl Weaver’s rise on the PC and the end of the Sega Genesis lifespan, Triple Play came into existence and set the bar high enough to warrant a litany of sequels that took the series into the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, Nintendo 64, GameCube and PlayStation 2 cycles. 

But way before the game was repackaged as MVP Baseball, the Triple Play franchise was one of the last baseball games on the Sega Genesis and was put right in the middle of a dogfight for supremacy among a plethora of contenders including RBI Baseball ’94, Sega’s World Series Baseball ’96 and Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball. Just around the time when EA began to understand how important yearly updates were to their sports franchises and the adopting of that mentality with all of their other sports games, the brand knew it was time to get serious about baseball. Although they released Tony LaRussa, Super Baseball 2020 and MLBPA Baseball from 1992-1994, with no authentic MLB license, the games didn’t have the staying power as EA’s other games in the NBA and NHL. Although Triple Play 96 didn’t have an MLB license either, it was out to change the way baseball games on the Genesis felt by offering a slew of modes and features not found in their previous baseball games including hot and cold streaks, the ability to create minor leaguers and the best visuals of any of their prior 16-bit games based on America’s pastime.

The post Five Sports Games That Have Us Wish Again For Simpler Times appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Old School Gamer Magazine: How was GRIDbeat! born?

Dan Kingdom: GRIDbeat! grew out of a very simple idea I had early in the pandemic. At that point, the concept was little more than a nexus of identical nodes that the player moved between on the beat. When I discussed the idea with the team, one of the Engineers wanted to explore the idea with me and so we created a basic playable version and the game started growing from there.

Old School Gamer Magazine: How does it feel to be affiliated with Acclaim on this?

Kingdom: Having Acclaim as our publisher is a little surreal. The ‘Acclaim’ branding has a lot of heritage associated with it, of course, so seeing the logo whenever you boot up the game always makes me smile.

Old School Gamer Magazine: What was development like?

Kingdom: Developing during the pandemic was strange for everyone involved, but luckily most of us have been working in the industry for over 20 years, so we learned to adapt relatively quickly. Once we had the initial playable concept, we spent about a year just iterating on the core systems and discovering what levels looked and played like.

Luckily, we had a very clear vision of the game style and tone from the playable concept and that helped focus the game throughout development, even when it started incorporating elements we had never even considered, such as narrative elements and boss levels.

One of the things I am proud of is that the core gameplay mechanic never really changed all that much from that initial concept to the final product. It grew and evolved, but the core of it is still that simple idea of moving node-to-node on the beat.

Old School Gamer Magazine: What makes GRIDbeat! special?

Kingdom: I’m particularly proud of how well the music and gameplay work hand-in-hand. The music is the living beating heart of the gameplay experience, and it’s very rewarding to see how players react to the soundtrack and compliment how much a part of the gameplay it is. The hope during development was always to create something akin to a ‘flow state’ for players, and seeing that happen during early playtesting was immensely rewarding.

Old School Gamer Magazine: How would you explain this game to someone who just sees it online and may be interested?

Kingdom: GRIDbeat! at its heart is a dungeon-crawler with a very simple mandate: move and act on the beat. If you enjoy exploration and puzzle-solving, all set to an incredible, pumping soundtrack then this is the game for you. If you also love music games, then this will also be something you want to check out, as the music and gameplay are incredibly interconnected.

Old School Gamer Magazine: What games influenced GRIDbeat! the most?

Kingdom: Honestly, the games that most influenced GRIDbeat! were the simple vector arcade games of the 80s, such as Battlezone and Asteroids. While the gameplay is of course different, the vision of searing hot neon vector lines and a booming electronic soundtrack were the elements that existed right from the start of development. Later vector-inspired games such as Rez were also a big inspiration, and of course a variety of music games, but the ‘flow’state’ inducing effect of Tetris was also a big source of inspiration.

Old School Gamer Magazine: Any fun stories or wild moments during development?

Kingdom: I do clearly remember when we added the Mino.Tor opponent for the first time to a test level. The Mino.Tor is a simple, 2D sprite that just moves on the beat and chases after you, but for some reason its presence in the level scared the hell out of everyone when we playtested the level. Maybe it was something to do with the way it snarls and growls at you as it chases you down, or maybe it’s just the relentless element of pursuit, but it was exciting to see how something so simple, without animation or visual effects, could evoke terror in the playtesters. Our lead engineer even had to stop playing for a while because he started getting palpitations whenever the Mino-Tor showed up.

Old School Gamer Magazine: What were the major lessons learned?

Kingdom: I think the biggest lesson we learned early on was to try everything and test often. It’s very easy to get locked into your own view of a game during development, so getting feedback early on from outside the team is critical. Are the controls intuitive? Does the gameplay make sense? Is the core mechanic satisfying? Being able to respond to this feedback is also incredibly important.

Old School Gamer Magazine: Do you think preserving older gameplay mechanics in new games is important?

Kingdom: Fun never really goes out of style or gets ‘old’. Game mechanics that younger players might not have experienced can still be just as exciting, but the focus should always be on creating something that is ‘fun’ to play, regardless of where the inspiration comes from.

Old School Gamer Magazine: The marketplace is crowded. How do you think you stand out?

Kingdom: Visually, I think GRIDbeat! is very distinct, so hopefully the game catches people’s attention and then once they start playing they’ll find the core systems and music engaging. The game is also quite challenging, so players that are looking for something that is simple to play but hard to master should get a lot out of the game.

Old School Gamer Magazine: How have your previous experiences in industry helped this game?

Kingdom: Having been in the industry for over 20 years now, I’ve worked on pretty much every genre of game and every hardware platform imaginable, so that definitely helps focus the vision of a game as a designer. Trying to stay focused on the core concept and maintaining ‘fun’ at every step is critical, from menus to gameplay.

Old School Gamer Magazine: How do you want this game to ultimately be remembered?

Kingdom: As a huge Rhythm Action fan, I’d love for GRIDbeat! to be remembered as a worthy entry in the music game pantheon.

Old School Gamer Magazine: What’s next?  

Kingdom: We’re currently working on the first major update for GRIDbeat!, which will include new levels and some quality-of-life tweaks, and beyond that… Well, Ridiculous Games is always working on at least a few high-concept and slightly crazy games at any one time, so there’s always something to look forward to.

Old School Gamer Magazine: Anything else you’d like to add?

Kingdom: Thanks for the questions. It’s always fun to talk about a game you’ve sunk your heart and soul into 🙂

The post Old School Gamer Magazine Exclusive: Dan Kingdom Talks GRIDbeat! appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Zyll (IBM): A single or two-player cooperative or competitive, non-linear adventure game with role-playing elements, customization options and real-time dungeon exploration and combat, Zyll sounds like a game you’d want to play right now, right? Before you get too excited though, understand that Zyll was released 35 years ago and is largely text-based. But even so, with its arcane visuals by today’s standards, Zyll remains an influential computer game because of the sheer innovation that made it completely ahead of its time.

Zyll’s ability to draw multiple players into the experience was just as influential, years before the technology of network gaming was available. Truth be told, Zyll is probably the first ever couch-co-op PC game. Making players share a keyboard while playing, it foreshadowed the machine’s ability to be more than an educational device. Following the game industry crash of 1983, Zyll proved that even though home consoles couldn’t be financially successful enough to stay in stores, game developers could continue their work in other ways and advance the art form. Years before games the likes of Wizardry, Ultima and Wasteland made the computer role-playing genre a household name, Zyll was one of the early, inspirational titles that proved the imagination and hunger for games had just begun.

Hunter: The Reckoning (Xbox and Gamecube)

Games that blend gameplay genres can be tricky ones for consumers to grasp, but the ones that do it well are remembered forever. Although not a monumental seller, clocking just over 480K units in its release on the Xbox and Gamecube in 2002, High Voltage Software’s Hunter: The Reckoning blended the Hack-and-Slash, Beat-Em-Up and RPG genres seamlessly together, all the while creating an experience that played the best with four players. Certainly different from other titles released at the time, especially considering the rise of online gaming at the time, Hunter the Reckoning is a couch-co-op cult classic and a throwback title that any fan of games such as Gauntlet and Loaded will instantly be attracted to.

Although the game features an original story, Hunter: The Reckoning is loosely-based off the popular White Wolf tabletop RPGs of the same time and is set in their World of Darkness universe. The game’s story begins after the execution of convicted serial killer Nathaniel Arkady at Ashcroft Penitentiary. Of course, this is anything but a “normal” death by electrocution. As Arkady’s life fades to black, four bystanders, Spencer “Deuce” Wyatt, Samantha Alexander, Kassandra Cheyung and Father Esteban Cortez witness the souls of the prison’s damned escape in an attempt to exact revenge against the prison’s Warden. The quartet then received a spiritual calling to stop the attack and protect the Asylum’s residents. That gives the heroes the courage and power to stop the onslaught and put an end to the supernatural uprising. Eventually, the prison is abandoned, but on the anniversary of the closing, teenagers (of course) decide to have a party on penitentiary grounds, causing the evil to return. With most of the teenagers dead and the town now in danger, Wyatt, Alexander, Cheyung and Cortez return to save the day once again.

While the story sounds cool, the gameplay elements encompassed within Hunter: The Reckoning compliment it perfectly. All four of our heroes play different from one another and all have their own unique “edge” maneuvers that help clear the hordes of the damned off the screen forever. As a result, you’ll have to think and not just run into enemies. Perhaps taking a page from the tabletop RPG world White Wolf was thriving in at the time, the upgradable weapons and stats in Hunter: The Reckoning add another layer of depth to the experience. Because of that, the game ends up conforming to the experience the player wants and can be markedly different depending on who’s controlling what character.

Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday (Sega Genesis): Sometimes, a game is just a game- and a port is just that, a port. Although video games are often seen as art, they are also a way that people earn a living. Sometimes, there’s no magic at play. Sometimes it’s a job. Although a game beloved in cult circles for its connection to the Dungeons and Dragons ruleset, nifty box art and its importance as an early PC to Sega Genesis port, Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday, developed by Strategic Simulations and published by Electronic Arts, is essentially a game that was watered-down immensely for its console release. While many gamers on Sega’s 16-bit console had no experience with the other feature-laden versions and appreciated the sci-fi story and fun on the Genesis, the what-ifs around the game’s development leave questions as to how much more a legacy the game could have had if a few things went in other directions during the development cycle.

For the Genesis port’s lead programmer, Michael McNally, who would later go on to work as a Director of Software Engineering, in charge of Ad Traffic and Publisher quality at Google and a Director of Engineering at Facebook, his work on the game was important to him for a variety of reasons but was never as creative as it could have been. Nevertheless, that never stopped him from trying to make the best game he could.

“I came on late to Buck Rogers and was the sole developer porting it to the Sega Genesis. It was also my very first and my only, console game,” McNally said. “Since the game had to be massively modified to fit on a very different device, I took liberties to improve it at my sole discretion. If I recall correctly, this was somewhat scandalous and exasperating to project management (who usually kept developers on a tight leash) and my fellow engineers greeted by modifications (which I would surprise people with as completely coded) with some humor and glee.”

Haunting: Starring Polterguy (Sega Genesis): Electronic Arts are known for their massive collection of Sports titles and a growing catalog of first-person shooters, but once upon a time, they actually had a team of developers put together for the sake of being creative. Known collectively as the Electronic Arts Creative Development Group, this team put together one of the most innovative and unique games of the Sega Genesis library- Haunting: Starring Polterguy. While the game was never a massive hit, its fun gameplay and the cool isometric camera made it a cog in many video rental stores during the early ‘90s.

Controlling the Polterguy, it’s the player’s objective to use over 400 items around four different homes to scare the Sardini family outside. Designed by the legendary team of Jon Salwitz and Dave Ralston, known for their work on such iconic arcade romps as Paperboy, Cyberball and Rampart, Haunting: Starring Polterguy represents a time in EA history where they were willing to take a chance on something different. The man they put in charge of this production, Don Traeger, made a name for himself being a part of both unique and successful titles. In addition to being the man that helped build the EA Sports dynasty, he was also someone who had achieved a level of success at the Atari Coin-Op Division, a part of the company that continued to pump out quality games in the arcade well after the North American video game crash of 1983. If anyone knew what was cool and what gamers could get into, it was Traeger.

“Polterguy was a pretty big departure and that happened because of all the success we were having,” Traeger said of the rise of Electronic Arts at the time. “Electronic Arts wanted me to start a new group that was all internal developers but doing more risky stuff. So we called it a Creative Development. We went over to our own space, we had our own lab. There were a lot of my friends from the arcade days- engineers that I’d worked with. And our charter was just kind of creating and designing projects that were new ideas. We didn’t want to get caught in the sequel stuff. One of the early ones that came out of our creative development group was a game called Sketchin’ that was rollerbladers, grabbing onto cars and racing. So we developed that one a bit and sent the initial design to CSI, which became EA Canada.”

Powerslave (PlayStation): First-person shooters were all the rage in the ‘90s, mainly because they were different. They weren’t arcade shooters, light-gun shooters, or platformers, genres that had all been done to death by that time. Thanks to games the likes of Doom and Wolfenstein 3D, there was a ton of developers that saw the genre an opportunity to jump on the bandwagon of success. While there were a plethora of weak copycat FPS games out there (Even cereal companies the likes of Capt’n Crunch designed their own FPS games to try and cash in.), Lobotomy Software’s Powerslave was a unique, fast-paced shooter with a cool storyline that is undeniably different from the ton of other FPS available at the same time. Although there was never a sequel in the series and low-sales (thanks to poor marketing and a limited number of copies available) on the PlayStation hindered its legacy, it remains anything but a Doom clone. Add in a design team that consisted of Ezra Dreisbach (Champions of Norrath), Dominick Meissner (Days Gone and Assassin’s Creed: Rebellion) and Brian McNeely (Quake and Duke Nukem 3D) and it’s easy to see how influential the game is to the genre.

Thanks mainly to its sense of speed, a banging score, cool assortment of weapons and abilities, sometimes brutal difficulty and fun story, Powerslave felt different from other games in the genre, but had enough already cemented FPS sensibilities to be recognizable to those already addicted to the style of gameplay. Fighting off aliens and mummies in the Egyptian city of Karnak, you’ll have to jump, swim and run through caves and temples. And do it all through narration by legendary voice actor Don LaFontaine. With items to collect through the gun-slinging journey and a pair of endings, Powerslave was an under-appreciated title that proved more could be done within the constraints of the first-person view. It’s safe to say that, in its own way, Powerslave laid the groundwork for games such as Fallout 3 and Metroid Prime.

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About Astro Burn:

Beyond The Pixels®, a London based transmedia media studio dedicated to bringing modern retro to today’s generation, announced today that they are partnering with 33 Games to launch the collectors edition of their debut title, Astro Burn.  Oozing retro nostalgia on the outside, developed for modern gamers on the inside, the collectors edition will include the Astro Burn USB Cartridge for PC and Mac, and will mirror the game’s release on Steam, GOG and Epic Game Store!

No mere shooter, this modern day cute ‘em up is an outer space adventure that’s out of this world, and guaranteed to put a smile on the face of any retro shooter fans! Astro Burn is a love letter to a gone but not forgotten era of video games, taking inspiration from icons such as Parodius and Pop’n Twin Bee,  and providing a much needed power up for retro fans looking to scratch that itch. Astro the space cat and her quirky companion AL are on a mission to return home, but to do so they need to reign bullet hell over the cute and chaotic critters in their path.

Old School Gamer Magazine: How was this game born?

HaZ Dulull: The concept really began with one simple moment: I was looking at my retro game collection, those chunky cartridges, old consoles, the beautiful SNES box art, and I felt that familiar spark of nostalgia. I missed the days where you could just pick up a game, dive straight in, put it down whenever you wanted, and still feel that magic. No over-complicated systems, no 20-button combos, just pure fun. And pixel art… it’s timeless. Unlike 3D, it doesn’t really age.

So I started sketching ideas that combined my love for space sci-fi (which runs through all my films) with the classic shoot-em-up games I grew up on: R-Type, UN Squadron, Axelay, and of course Star Fox. One morning, as I was staring at that row of SNES cartridges with a coffee in hand, my cat Mia tapped my arm for food. I looked at her, then back at the cartridges, and it hit me.

What if the pilot of the game was a space cat?

And just like that, Astro Burn was born. (And yes, Mia absolutely got an extra treat.)

Balancing nostalgia with modern polish was the real challenge. Adults crave that 16-bit magic again, while younger players (Gen Z especially) are discovering retro for the first time thanks to things like Stranger Things, Atari’s relaunch, and the explosion of pixel-art indies.

To make it work for both audiences, I focused on simplicity, clarity, and personality, while ensuring gameplay feels smooth, modern, and satisfying. The key was early and constant playtesting. I took rough builds to small game events, handed people a controller, and just watched. Their reactions told me everything: what was instantly fun, what felt dated, what needed tightening.

The game really found its identity in that process, sitting between classic nostalgia and modern accessibility, wrapped in a playful, chaotic, cat-powered universe.

Old School Gamer Magazine: What is your role in the game?

Dulull: Well as an indie developer, I wear lots of hats, so its Game Dev, Game Designer, Game Producer.  

Old School Gamer Magazine: What has development been like?

Dulull: Game development is a rollercoaster, full of highs (“This is incredible!”), lows (“What on Earth am I doing?”), and constant twists and turns where you pivot creatively or technically to make the game better than you first imagined.

I started Astro Burn completely on my own back in March 2025. But as the vision grew, I knew where my limits were. By August, I began bringing in freelance help for the more complex systems, like local leaderboards, datastore logic, and variable structures. By September, I pulled in pixel artists to replace my placeholder art with something beautiful and polished and that included collaborating with the awesome Canadian based Japanese artist Q-Yoneda!

I also imposed a 12-month deadline. I didn’t want to fall into the classic indie trap of building an overly ambitious game that drifts into a five-year production cycle while scrambling for funding. I gave myself a clear financial runway and adopted a game-jam mindset: weekly milestones, iterative builds, fast decision-making. That structure let me evolve the game while still staying on schedule.

Being an indie dev, especially one self-financing, comes with pressure. But I had to make sure that pressure never overshadowed the passion that drove me to make this game in the first place.

Old School Gamer Magazine: What makes this game special?

Dulull: Well firstly this game is unapologetically delightfully bonkers!!!  It’s a game that will constantly make you smile (I’ve noticed some of the most hardcore serious players at game conventions we showcase the game at, they would approach all hard faced, but then when they play it you can see them cracking a smile – that’s the special factor this game has, it makes you feel joy!.

The controls are simple, and its only two buttons of action (fire weapon, and trigger Special power moves!). It’s a game anyone can pick up and play without any intense onboarding, and most importantly it’s so insane that it doesn’t take itself seriously, and nor should you as the player too!

Old School Gamer Magazine: What games influenced this one the most?

Dulull: This game is a love letter to the classic cute-em-ups in the mid 90s such as Parodius and Pop N’Twin Bee.  But also other cute-em-ups like Cotton for example.  

Old School Gamer Magazine: What was behind the decision to do a physical edition for PC and Mac?

Dulull: Honestly, it was a pretty natural decision, and not really a market or technical one.

A lot of my network comes from film and TV, and most of them are on MacBooks, it’s just the norm in that world. I rarely knew anyone in Hollywood using a PC laptop. So, if I wanted those people to actually play the game, Mac support just made sense.

Since Steam supports both PC and Mac, and GDevelop lets me build for both pretty easily, it felt like a no-brainer, just making the game accessible to the people around me 😊

Old School Gamer Magazine: Any fun stories or wild moments during development?

Dulull: Honestly, Astro Burn has been a bit of a rollercoaster, in the best way. It’s full of those weird little moments that ended up shaping what the game actually became.

It all started pretty simply. I was sitting there with a coffee, staring at my SNES cartridges, when my cat Mia tapped me for food. I looked at her… then back at the games… and it just clicked, what if the pilot was a space cat? Gave her a treat, and that was the spark.

The biggest turning point came halfway through development. I’d been showing the game at events, and people loved the cat, but the gameplay felt too serious. That Sunday morning, I went back and played stuff like Parodius and TwinBee, and realised I was playing it too safe. So I did something a bit mad, I mocked up a panda riding a giant mech and threw it online. The reaction was instant. That was the moment I knew… lean into the chaos.

Another big shift came when I met Q Yoneda in Canada / Winnipeg. After I got back to London, he sent over some fan art based on the demo, and I remember thinking, this is it. I couldn’t unsee it. That 90s Konami vibe just clicked into place.

Then there were all the smaller, but equally important moments. Watching players instinctively press A to shoot while I’d mapped it to X, that got changed the same night. Or when people said, “I want to read the story… just faster,” which led to replacing the skip button with a fast-forward.

And then there’s the Meow-doken… which basically came from us asking, how far can we push this? That idea of turning Astro into this giant burst of feline fury just felt right, and it quickly became part of the game’s DNA.

Looking back, all these moments, big and small, are what shaped Astro Burn into what it is now. It wasn’t one big decision… it was a series of instincts, experiments, and just listening to what felt fun.

Old School Gamer Magazine: What were the major lessons learned?

Dulull: The players are always right!! No matter what you think is in your head as a game developer, when the players feedback, take that seriously because they are the players the ones that will be buying your game! It’s like the classic saying “the customer is always right”

Old School Gamer Magazine: Do you think preserving older gameplay mechanics in new games is important?

Dulull: 100% if anything, it’s those early mechanics that paved the way for games today, but throughout the decades we have seen games get technologically much more advanced with graphics and immersion but at the same time they have gotten bigger and more complex, and often forgetting that less is more, and working with restrictions (graphically memory etc) leads to out of the box thinking with game design. Yet mobile games rely on simpler mechanics often referencing those retro games, which is why I think mobile gaming is so much bigger than PC and Console gaming combined! (yes, controversial statement but just look at the Matthew Ball Report that was published recently!).

Old School Gamer Magazine: The marketplace is crowded. How do you think you stand out?

Dulull: Astro Burn got signed to Publisher – Pixel Doors in Mid-March, and I remember asking them what made the game stand out for them to sign it, and they said it was the most bonkers game they have ever seen, yet it had so much heart and soul in there with the space cat character layered with the retro fun vibe. So far, the trailer has been very popular because of the vibe, perhaps it’s the vibe of the game which makes it stand out. 

I am very fortunate to have found a wonderful and experienced publishing partner with Pixel Doors, we are currently hard at work together getting the game ready for Early Access.

Old School Gamer Magazine: How have your previous experiences in industry helped this game?

Dulull: Having worked on PS1 (omg, that’s now considered as retro too!) games (such as Motocross mania) back in the day, I appreciate the restrictions of creating art work on a 256×256 texture map to fit every component of a character or vehicle and then use UV unwrap to texture onto low poly geometry, but also fast forward decades later working on massive games like DUNE: Awakening, both scales and times have taught me a lot about game development and how to navigate it, and it’s not easy! It’s not for the faint hearted!

The key thing when making games of any scale or genre, is team communication, if you have that (if anything) in a good place, then the process of making games will be fun and creative led and in turn gets the best ideas and results.

Old School Gamer Magazine: How do you want this game to ultimately be remembered?

Dulull: FUN, FUN, FUN!

Old School Gamer Magazine: What’s next?  

Dulull: We are currently working on some licensed IP projects which we can’t talk about (yet), and also doing some early concepts for the next original title coming out of Beyond The Pixels, although it’s early to announce anything, what I can say is, it will be in the cute-em-up genre and will be even more delightfully bonkers! ☺

Old School Gamer Magazine: Anything else you’d like to add?

Dulull: Please play the demo and Wishlist the game if you like it, we need more support for indies to survive this insane business that we all love.

Follow the Kickstarter project here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/beyondthepixels/astro-burn-limited-edition-physical-indie-game

Join the Discord:  https://discord.com/invite/qV9u6krj4c

Play the Demo on these platforms:

Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3810660/Astro_Burn/

GOG:  https://www.gog.com/en/game/astro_burn

Epic Games Store:  https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/astro-burn-fdb205

About Beyond The Pixels®:

Founded by HaZ Dulull with a mission to create games in a smarter, more agile way—capturing the same thrill and wonder he felt playing arcade and 16-bit console games as a kid. We use the latest tools and technology to design and produce games that reflect the simple plot and mechanics of the games we loved when growing up on consoles like SNES and the Coin-op Arcades. The simple run and gun / shoot-em-up button-bashing games that require speed, coordination and skills, layered with an engaging story that isn’t complex. Our games are that but delivered with the slick visual design flair, high speed frame rates and graphics fidelity on next gen PC + consoles for today’s generation of gamers, whilst staying in lean and smart game development approaches to keeping costs and schedule as tight as possible. We leverage smart social media and brand partnership strategy to create community for our games from day one.

The post Old School Gamer Magazine Exclusive: HaZ Dulull Talks Astro Burn appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.