The T-60 Wearable Helmet Replica, is a full-scale recreation with an LED headlamp and voice changer.

If you’re looking for a weapon as well, the iconic Power Fist replica, features game-accurate sound effects.

If that wasn’t enough, Bethesda is running discounts through Friday, Oct. 30, including Security Keycard Replicas, the Fallout: The Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook and “other fan-favorite items,” according to Bethesda.

The post Celebrate the Fallout “Great War” Anniversary with a T-60 Wearable Helmet and Power Fist appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Functional simultaneous co-op is, or at least was, tricky business. Even the flagship Nintendo games of the Super Nintendo era, Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country, could not manage simultaneous co-op, instead forcing players to take turns. This weakness on the part of Nintendo was a boon for third party developers like Data East which came up with titles like Joe & Mac, also known as Caveman Ninja. With a new collection of the three Caveman Ninja coming out next week, I recently played through the title I remember best, Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics.

It’s easy to see how this colorful game could make a strong impression on me as a child. This isn’t the world of cavemen as seen through the dinosaurvision of fifties-era sitcoms like the Flintstones. No, Joe & Mac is the world of cavemen as seen through the dinosaurvision of children who love dinosaurs, with epic boss fights against screen-filling beasts and big oafish cavemen smacking each other with clubs. This doesn’t just go for the bad guys. The game is called Joe & Mac, and not just Joe, because you and your partner can engage in a little friendly fire. Just, preferably not in a room loaded with enemies.

The core mechanics of the game are quite solid. This being a later Super Nintendo title, there are attempts to move past simple side scrolling arcade style gameplay. These elements are…mostly pointless. No real power-ups, some food, and flowers to I guess try and marry a cavewoman? The “mostly” caveat is in there because if you think like a kid, not in terms of efficient gameplaying but just general roleplaying, these are all fun things to do. The Caveman Ninja world is more like a playground than it is a clear gameplay aesthetic.

I doubt very much I actually finished the game as a kid, as the final level is a boss rush that I wouldn’t quite describe as unfair, but it is rather tedious since all the dinosaur themed bosses have very simple patterns. And they have to be beaten largely flawlessly for the player to even have a shot at beating the caveman Gork, first in his normal form and then his final one. Gork was a tough enough boss the first time around the player was allowed to fight him without even having to go through a full platforming level first.

Fortunately, his final form isn’t as tough as it looks. Lots of hit points, to be sure, but he can almost always be attacked safely. Round 1 of Gork is a problem mainly because he sucker punches you if you time your attack wrong. Which I have to say, I have always found to be a far more satisfying means of upping difficulty than just arbitrarily granting bosses temporary invincibility!

Overall, Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics succeeds in being more-or-less exactly what I remember it being. A bright, colorful game about cavemen and dinosaurs. All things considered, I think it’s aged quite well.

The post Remembering Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Alien Breed 3D

By 1996, the PC gaming world was enamored with Doom. Unfortunately, because of the Amiga chipset’s architecture, games like Doom were not nearly as easy to make, and the ones that were required machines faster and more powerful than the stock models Commodore offered. Nevertheless, Team17 soldiered on and created a 3D engine for the next installment of the Alien Breed series, aptly titled Alien Breed 3D. Unfortunately, the team that had been tasked with this new title had little to no connection with the legacy titles in the series. As a result, the newest game had little to do, mechanically or visually, with the original 2D entries.

Unfortunately, the game itself suffered from a lackluster presentation. On a postage-stamp-sized screen on lower-end Amigas, and even on high-end machines, the game couldn’t run full-screen. The gameplay screen ran at a very low resolution, producing blocky textures and enemies that were hard to discern before you were attacked and killed.

Despite these deficiencies, Alien Breed 3D’s engine had some significant advantages over the Doom engine at the time. The engine supported more vertical variety, allowing areas to exist directly below floors. It also allowed for structures like ramps, stairwells, and raised platforms. It supported transparent water and flooded rooms, allowing players to explore submerged areas. It also supported dynamic textures, allowing lighting conditions to change.

Reviewers at the time recognized the title’s technical achievements and were very generous with their scores, with review scores above 90%. The game proved successful enough to warrant a 3D sequel, titled The Killing Grounds. While the original chased Doom, the sequel targeted the newly released Quake. While the engine was much more advanced, it again required significant power to run effectively. This would prove to be the last entry in the Alien Breed series on the Amiga.

In 1997, Team17 released the full source code for The Killing Grounds and the original Alien Breed 3D on an Amiga Format magazine cover CD. They called it their final gift to the Amiga community, as Commodore and the Amiga declined, forcing them to focus on other platforms. This was a boon for Amiga enthusiasts, as it allowed them to develop improved versions of the games for the Amiga and ultimately port them to other platforms.

Alien Breed 3D HD Screenshot

Fast forward a few years, and a couple of days ago, developers Retro Foundry announced Alien Breed 3D HD, running in a browser on Windows, macOS, and Linux, as the series celebrates its 35th anniversary. The source code is available in their GitHub repository.

This project shows what the engine is capable of, using modern hardware to increase resolution, texture quality, and speed. The game looks gorgeous and runs smoothly. Retro Foundry ported the mouse-look code from The Killing Grounds, giving the game a feel that is much closer to Quake than Doom.

Everything is here: all the enemies, weapons, and levels. The fact that this is running in a browser is kind of crazy. What’s even crazier is that this full game comes to us for the low, low price of absolutely free.

There’s no reason not to try the game. It’s a peek at the evolution of one of the defining game series on the Commodore Amiga, and an amazing bit of preservation work.

Play Alient Breed 3D HD – https://retro-foundry.github.io/abhd/
Source – https://github.com/retro-foundry/Alien-Breed-HD

Screenshots:

Alien Breed 3D HD Screenshot

Alien Breed 3D HD Screenshot

The post New Release: Alien Breed 3D HD appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

“The new trailer serves up a heaping helping of coin-op-inspired action, plucked straight from the most beloved brawlers of the 1990s,” Retroware said in a release today. “Watch as the Toxic Crusaders Toxie, Nozone, Junkyard, Major Disaster, Headbanger, Yvonne, and Mrs. Junko scrub Dr. Killemoff’s Radiation Rangers off the streets of Tromaville in the footage below.”

According to Retroware, Toxic Crusaders is coming soon to the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

Wishlist your copy on Steam today.

Download the Toxic Crusaders demo. 

Watch the Trailer Below:

The post Retro Ware Releases New Toxic Crusaders Gameplay Trailer appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Reopen the toy chest and saddle up as Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and Jessie in Toy Story 3 Complete Edition, a 3D adventure based on the hit 2010 animated film, Toy Story 3. Now available for modern systems, the updated game features improved graphics and a few new surprises in store. Play through authentic moments from the movie in Story Mode, or drop into the wild west sandbox of Woody’s Roundup in Toy Box Mode.

In Story Mode, swap between Woody, Buzz, and Jessie as you play through iconic scenes from the film, including the train rescue, Operation Playtime, surviving the junkyard, and more. Harness each character’s unique abilities, whether you need to swing on Woody’s pull string or use Buzz’s strength to throw the other toys long distances. You can even play in two-player co-op.

Step out of Story Mode and into the sandbox in Toy Box Mode. This fan-favorite, customizable mode drops you into the wild west of Woody’s Roundup. Like Story Mode, you play as Woody, Buzz, or Jessie, but in Toy Box Mode you can play however you want! Characters around town give you quests to complete, so you can earn gold and spend it on personalizing the town your way. Build, decorate and customize the buildings, dress up the townsfolk, and more.

The post Toy Story 3 Complete Edition appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

On October 12th, the French video game company New Old Pixels announced via its website that it is currently developing three new ports of the classic arcade game Toki. One is for the Sega Mega Drive, also known as the Sega Genesis in North America, another for the SNK Neo Geo, and a third one for the Commodore Amiga AGA, or the Amiga Advanced Graphics Architecture. The licensing agreement New Old Pixels made with Microids, the current rightsholder for Toki, specifies that New Old Pixels is only permitted to release ports of Toki for “retro platforms” although it was not immediately clear how this phrase is defined between the two companies.

Microids itself released a remake of Toki for the Nintendo Switch in 2018, later porting this version to the Playstation 4, Xbox One, Windows, and Amazon Luna platforms. Toki was also ported to retro platforms back when they were still contemporaneous, including a Mega Drive version, Toki Going Ape Spit. It was not immediately clear how the New Old Pixels version of Toki will differ from the previous ones. New Old Pixels appears to be prioritizing faithfulness to the original arcade game. Though there is a preexisting Amiga port as well, it does not use the third-generation AGA, and the superior hardware of the SNK Neo Geo will also allow for a closer arcade experience relative to the 1991 ports.

Toki stars the title character, a large, slow-moving, fragile ape, using powerful fire shots from his mouth to move through a jungle environment, rescue a princess, and undo the magic spell cursing him to this unusual form. It was originally developed by the TAD Corporation in Japan. There is no word yet on when these new versions will receive a physical release, but New Old Pixels appears to be working fast. The original announcement proclaiming their deal with Microids was announced on October 1st.

The post New Old Pixels Announces New Conversions for Toki appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

But the aesthetic perspective is the more interesting one to me, as I happen to have grown up in the age of gaming where transparency was all the rage. Back in 1995, Nintendo started the Play It Loud! campaign, that sought to market the Game Boy as cool by offering a wide variety of colorful shell options. The most distinctive of these was the transparent, or clear, shell, because it allows you to see the inner working of the hardware itself. Nintendo continued to offer clear shells for future Game Boy models as well as their Nintendo 64 hardware with the Funtastic line.

For whatever reason, by the time we get to the age of the Gamecube and the DS, Nintendo decided they didn’t like transparent consoles anymore. Certainly, by the 2000s, they were out of fashion. But I can’t help but wonder whether, with the increasing prevalence of modding and piracy, Nintendo didn’t really like the idea of people getting a good look at their machines anymore. Gaming by this point was already starting to transition to its modern form, where instead of owning the machines, gamers were treated more like they had only purchased a license that allowed use of the consoles.

It should go without saying, but Nintendo®, Nintendo 64®, Game Boy®, and the 2-dimensional shape of the Game Boy® console are registered trademarks owned by Nintendo of America, Inc. Nintendo is not affiliated with ModRetro, nor does Nintendo sponsor, approve of, or endorse ModRetro. And this is because ModRetro is doing what Nintendont do anymore. Transparent devices that we own, not subscription services that hinge on Internet access.

The new transparent model of the Chromatic also comes out alongside a smattering of new Chromatic titles which, to be clear, you could also play on original Game Boys, just without the benefit of that excellent backlight and extended battery life. These include reprints of Earthworm Jim and Rayman 2, alongside the modern indie titles Pineapple Kid DX and Fall From Space, which I will be reviewing here in the coming weeks. Come for the nostalgia, stay for the appreciation of the wild, innovative ways creators continue to push the limits of the Game Boy’s 8-bit hardware, their expressions of lateral thinking with withered technology being something that would no doubt make Gunpei Yokoi proud.

The post Transparency and the Chromatic appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

As a 1994 release, the original Earthworm Jim is a fairly sophisticated 16-bit title, complex enough that it really shouldn’t be possible to shrink its gameplay down to 8 bits. Yet somehow, that was exactly what Eurocom managed to do back in 1995. The controls are remarkably responsive. The titular invertebrate handles exactly as I would expect. While the awkward timing and sometimes obtuse mechanics are still here, they’re virtually identical to the 16-bit versions. If anything, the 8-bit version plays more intuitively, precisely because I know there are only so many ways to progress when I only have two buttons and such a simple interface.

The Game Boy version isn’t all sunshine and roses, though. I think 90s era critics who maligned this conversion were mostly on-point, they were just on-point for reasons that Eurocom couldn’t really control. Namely, the limitations of the Game Boy itself. As it existed in 1995 without a backlight, there just wasn’t any good way for the typical player to make out the game’s graphic details, which are pretty critical for trying to figure out what to do next. The Game Boy’s need for batteries was also at cross-purposes with just how complete this version of the game is. Thirteen levels is a bit much to get through in a single sitting even setting aside the fact that Earthworm Jim is a notoriously difficult game.

The Chromatic hardware solves the technical problems involved with the game being difficult to parse. But this ModRetro version also makes one critical alteration to the software that gives a solid argument to this version of Earthworm Jim being one of the best ones. There’s an unlockable level select. What I mean by this is, every time you make it to a new stage, the game’s save battery adds it to the level select. So, you can turn the game off, put it down, and start right at Pod Race without having to go through all the previous levels again.

The trouble with most portable versions of Earthworm Jim now is that it’s too easy to cheat. There’s a decent chance you’re just emulating it after all, so why not just use save states for the most difficult parts? This ModRetro version softens the difficulty curve without getting rid of it entirely. Indeed, there’s even a nasty surprise at the end, in that the final level, Buttville, won’t unlock on the level select unless you beat Elevator in the same sitting. And Elevator is an ugly mess of the level, the worst in this conversion because it is far, far too easy to get stuck on spikes.

But is it really the authentic Earthworm Jim experience if you don’t feel at least a little bit of frustration having to repeatedly guess at the exact way you need to input the buttons to get past a particularly frustrating level? This helps Buttville feel genuinely suspenseful too, since despite being one of the easier levels of the game, you really, really don’t want to get sent back to the title screen, forcing you to replay Elevator again. The experience is tough, yet not impossible, and is thus a genuinely satisfying joy to complete.

I feel that even though I did cheat a little bit, albeit not on purpose. During the Pod Race level, I somehow managed to turn my pod into a glitchy mess, most likely because I shattered the glass at the same time the timer ran out. I could still land safely though and was lucky enough to be able to beat Bob the Goldfish without having to figure out how to reproduce the glitch. At this time, I was testing the game on the Super Game Boy, if anyone else wants to try. Earthworm Jim does have a custom palette, which helps quite a bit in terms of making it easier to distinguish Jim from his environment, but no custom border unfortunately.

As a final note, the instruction manual looks pretty great! It is, so far as I can tell, mostly just the original manual but in color. Still, it has all the irreverent backstory and humor you need to get into just how genuinely weird this game is. The 8 bit demake aesthetic of this version just adds another lovable layer of strange to this title which for so many reasons, could only have been made in the nineties.

The post A review of Earthworm Jim for the Chromatic appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Fortunately, ingenious modern homebrew developers have taken up the mantle of the venerable retro console and have given us new versions of these classic ports, with some truly surprising results. Here are five homebrew upgrades to Atari 2600 arcade ports.

Pac Man Arcade Enhanced (Atari 2600)

Pac-Man Arcade Enhanced

Pac-Man Arcade Enhanced is an ambitious Atari 2600 reworking of Pac-Man that uses the much more capable Ms. Pac-Man conversion as its technical foundation rather than trying to repair Atari’s notorious 1982 Pac-Man. Building on earlier work by Rob Kudla and extensively enhanced by Nukey Shay, it provides a maze, character graphics, colors, sounds, ghost behavior, bonus items, and presentation that more closely resemble Namco’s arcade original. Later refinements even reproduce arcade-style intermissions. The result shows how much better Pac-Man could look and play on the 2600 with the stronger engine and larger ROM available to Ms. Pac-Man.

Space Rocks (Atari 2600)

Space Rocks

Space Rocks, developed by Darrell Spice Jr., is essentially a deluxe modern interpretation of Asteroids and Asteroids Deluxe for the Atari 2600. Rather than modifying Atari’s original cartridge, Spice created a new game with rotating asteroids, vector-like graphics, Magna-Mines inspired by Asteroids Deluxe, multiple difficulty levels, configurable special abilities, and extensive one- and two-player options. It uses 32 KB and DPC+ enhanced cartridge technology, so it benefits from hardware far more sophisticated than cartridges available when Atari released Asteroids. Consequently, Space Rocks is less an example of what Atari could realistically have produced in 1981 and more a demonstration of how spectacular an Asteroids-style game can become when modern cartridge technology meets genuine Atari 2600 hardware.

Donkey Kong VCS (Atari 2600)

Donkey Kong VCS

Donkey Kong VCS, developed by Andreas Dietrich, attempts to create a much more complete Atari 2600 interpretation of Nintendo’s arcade Donkey Kong than Coleco’s heavily abbreviated 1982 cartridge. While the commercial 2600 game included only the barrel and rivet stages, Dietrich’s 32 KB, SARA RAM-assisted version recreates all four arcade stages, including the missing conveyor and elevator screens, plus cutscenes, animations, music, and numerous details omitted from the original conversion. The stages use vertical scrolling to accommodate their more elaborate designs within the 2600’s display limitations. Donkey Kong VCS is particularly interesting because it shows the console could represent substantially more of the arcade game than the famous two-screen Coleco release suggested.

INV+ (Atari 2600)

INV+

INV+, created by Erik Mooney and Piero Cavina, is a modern reinterpretation of Space Invaders that is remarkable for accomplishing its improvements within a 4 KB ROM. Among its most impressive achievements is displaying the arcade game’s full formation of 55 invaders arranged in five rows of eleven, something Atari’s official 2600 conversion did not reproduce in the same manner. INV+ also incorporates more arcade-like scoring, improved animation, additional gameplay modes, an Easter egg, PAL support, and simultaneous two-player play. Because it does this without a modern coprocessor or enormous ROM, INV+ offers a particularly revealing demonstration of how decades of accumulated Atari 2600 programming knowledge let homebrew developers extract capabilities from the hardware that weren’t fully exploited during its early commercial years.

Defender Arcade (Atari 2600)

Defender Arcade

Defender Arcade, created by Bob “PacManPlus” DeCrescenzo, takes an ingenious approach to improving Atari’s compromised 2600 conversion of Williams’ Defender: instead of rewriting the original cartridge, it uses Atari’s technically superior Stargate (Defender II) as its foundation and transforms it back into the original Defender. This eliminates or reduces some of the earlier game’s notorious compromises, including its crude graphics and the player’s ship disappearing whenever it fires, while improving enemies, animation, sound, and overall presentation. Although it still cannot perfectly reproduce the arcade machine’s complex controls, graphics, and enemy behavior, Defender Arcade demonstrates that techniques developed later in the 2600’s life could have produced a considerably more convincing version of Defender than Atari’s original release.

The post Atari 2600 Homebrew Upgrades appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

So why does the Chromatic still use AA batteries? It’s not a technological issue. The FPGA’s main competitor for Game Boy Color cartridge play, the Analogue Pocket, uses a built-in rechargeable battery just like nearly any other modern portable electronic device. Rather, I suspect the issue is a philosophical one. The Chromatic hearkens back to a late 1990s aesthetic, back when we owned games, instead of purchasing a license to play them.

But we also owned the devices we used to play them on. A rechargeable battery, while nice, had hidden hazards. Locked away in a device behind casing the consumer isn’t supposed to access, such batteries can go bad and even explode. This is a trivial problem for older model Game Boys, with forgotten AA batteries that might leak at worst and are easily removed. Other devices, however, be they SPs or PSPs or Wii U controllers are safety hazards. I would recommend checking for bulging batteries in such devices if you haven’t looked at them lately, incidentally.

The Chromatic power core, by contrast, is a choice. The Chromatic itself is still perfectly usable without it, and indeed, gets such great battery life off of AAs that had batteries thirty years ago been this efficient, a rechargeable battery might not have seemed like such a necessity for our portable gaming devices. It certainly doesn’t help that in addition to a rechargeable battery, the SP had a backlight, an innovation that much more unambiguously improved the gaming experience without needing to consider long-term philosophical questions like whether we as consumers should have the right to modify our own batteries. Or perhaps, more relevantly, whether a cheaper product is worth having to take on that right which sounds in practice more like a responsibility.

I won’t pretend to be able to resolve that question for us today. But I do think it’s worth noting that even buying the power core separately, the Chromatic is still cheaper than the Analogue Pocket, and comes with an exceptional version of Tetris to boot. It’s also still in stock, and comes in a much funner variety of colors. Still can’t play Game Boy Advance games though, or play rom files, which I should note, is not sanctioned by Analogue itself. All of which is to say, these are philosophical differences, and which ones you think are more important, are just as motivated by your own gaming philosophy as it is the ambiguous technical trade-offs.

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