2020s Archives - Old School Gamer Magazine

Pokémon Red/Blue – by John Michonski

John Michonski — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 15:08:01 +0000

Their frustrations are often built on the backs of nostalgia, an aching for a bygone era when they first saw Nidorino and Gengar do battle on their Game Boy.

That yearning for a youth long gone is what inspired Satoshi Tajiri, Pokémon’s originator, to come up
with the idea. According to the oft-repeated legend, Tajiri was known by his neighbors as a collector of insects and was playfully christened the moniker “Dr. Bug” by them. As his…

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Super Metroid – by Brian Lesyk

Brian Lesyk — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 12:07:13 +0000

As one-half of the aforementioned moniker, the Metroid and Castlevania franchises served as the bedrock upon which all other non-linear, multi-scrolling 2D platformer video games were built. When you play other Metroidvania titles like Guacamelee! (DrinkBox Studios, 2013) or Axiom Verge (Thomas Happ Games, 2016), you’ll notice the obvious nods to Super Metroid.

Super Metroid finds our hero bounty hunter, Samus Aran, once again on the hunt to recover a potentially threatening biological sample that was safely quarantined until just recently when space pirates abducted it from a space…

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Time Crisis – by Ryan Burger

Ryan Burger — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 12:09:53 +0000

It was all about Time Crisis and The House of the Dead. Time Crisis hit me harder overall. This rail shooter takes you through different missions across the series. Each mission typically has three stages, and each stage has four areas you fight through. I have never finished any of the games, but I still love playing them anytime I visit a retro arcade.

In each game, you play a secret agent reminiscent of 007, basically taking on an entire army of bad guys. The game guides you through each mission on rails, moving you from encounter to encounter until you reach the boss fights, which are usually….

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Old School Gamer Magazine Exclusive: Inside ‘Ground Zero Hero’

Patrick Hickey Jr. — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 17:00:27 +0000

Old School Gamer Magazine chats with “Ground Zero Hero” developer Rowan Edmondson, who details the creative journey behind the upcoming game.

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.

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PinkSweets and Muchi Muchi Pork! Ports Confirmed for Modern Systems

William Schwartz — Sat, 30 May 2026 19:00:21 +0000

On Friday May 29th, Clear River Games confirmed that they would be rereleasing the classic CAVE shooters Pink Sweets: Ibara Sorekara and Muchi Muchi Pork! on modern consoles. The developer City Connection is responsible for bringing the games to the PlayStation 5 and the Nintendo Switch. The shooters originally came out in 2006 and 2007 respectively. They were two of eighteen vertical shooters that CAVE produced in collaboration with AMI for Japanese arcades from 2002-2011.

Why these two specific titles were singled out for this rerelease wasn’t entirely clear. Pink Sweets is the third title in the Ibara series of shooters, but with a much more colorful food inspired palette. Muchi Muchi Pork! is themed around pigs and makes extensive use of a lard system as a core gameplay mechanic. The only apparent commonality between these two titles, as opposed to other CAVE shooters from this time period, is that they were licensed for an Xbox 360 release back in 2011.

The original arcade game modes will be included in this release, although there will also be multiple new arrangements that will make these shooters more accessible to casual fans as well as more difficult for hardcore players seeking a greater challenge. The compilation is set to see a digital release on October 1st on the online Playstation 5 and Nintendo Switch stores. A physical version of the game will be available for purchase starting on October 26th.

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The Disney Afternoon Collection Physical Editions Now Available on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2

Todd Friedman — Fri, 29 May 2026 14:15:12 +0000

Atari and Digital Eclipse are excited to announce that physical editions for The Disney Afternoon Collection are now available for Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 for $29.99 USD. Fans can purchase physical copies – featuring game cartridge, sticker sheets, postcards, milk caps and a reversible cover – on Atari.com and the Nintendo Store today.

The updated collection, exclusive to Switch and Switch 2, adds two new titles, Bonkers and Goof Troop, bringing a total of eight Disney-themed classic games to Nintendo consoles for the first time since their original NES and SNES releases in the 80s and 90s.

Additionally, in celebration of the physical release and the game’s strong reception, a brand-new accolades trailer has been released. You can check out the trailer here.

Digital editions of the The Disney Afternoon Collection will be 20% off on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 from June 1 until June 22.

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Doom – by Matthew Owen

Matthew Owen — Fri, 29 May 2026 12:04:47 +0000

Doom dominated unlike any other PC game before it. Developed by id Software, this seminal first-person shooter defined the genre from that point forward, and any competitors to come in the years after were simply labeled as “Doom clones”. A technical marvel and true feat of game design, Doom tasked you with dashing through a military facility on the Mars moon of Phobos, overrun with demons that will only stop once you fill them with lead. On the surface, it’s pretty straightforward, but the nuance behind the game’s mechanics, along with forward- thinking development philosophy, all but ensured that Doom would persist for decades to…

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Wolfenstein 3D – by Michael Thomasson

Michael Thomasson — Wed, 27 May 2026 12:01:12 +0000

Before John Carmack, Tom Hall, and John Romero unleashed the blistering corridors of Wolfenstein, they cut their teeth on smaller 3-D experiments: Hovertank 3-D for DOS and the Apple II’s Catacomb 3-D, the latter running on an embryonic version of the engine that would become Carmack’s signature. Those initial outings were the scaffolding for something bolder.

The trio also crafted the family-friendly Commander Keen games, but by the early nineties, id Software sensed its audience shifting and wanted to swap pogo sticks for something with more bite. Ideas ricocheted across the studio:

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TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: THE ARCADE GAME – by Mat Bradley-Tschirgi

Old School Gamer — Mon, 25 May 2026 23:02:34 +0000

Beat-em-ups, also known as belt scroll action games in Japan, were all the rage in the 1980s and 1990s in arcades. Players controlled beefy characters who pummeled their way through thugs of a dubious nature with their fists, or a special weapon if they were lucky, through 2.5-D urban environments. Most of the time, they were multiplayer and pretty challenging. Good luck getting past a cheap boss in a single quarter!

Out of all the beat-em-ups, one that really got things right while featuring licensed characters was Kona….

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Mortal Kombat – by Patrick Hickey Jr.

Patrick Hickey Jr. — Sat, 23 May 2026 12:18:56 +0000

Those two epic words helped launch the work of Ed Boon, John Tobias, and the rest of the team behind Mortal Kombat in pop culture lore forever. It’s also made it a video game series that essentially always comes back refreshed and inviting, after over 30 years of entries.

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…

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