As of December 10th, Montezuma’s Revenge – The 40th Anniversary Edition is now available for download on the Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S, as well as the Microsoft Store. The porting of Montezuma’s Revenge to these platforms follows up on the game’s Steam release back in January. Remade from the ground up in 3D while maintaining the original title’s 2D gameplay, Montezuma’s Revenge allows the player to choose between the brother/sister pair of Pedro and Rosita in order to collect treasures in over a hundred chambers.

The Montezuma’s Revenge remake comes courtesy of Mission Criticial Studios and Handcrafted Mystical Games, who worked together with the developer Robert Jaeger to revamp his original 8-bit 1984 classic. Purportedly, this version of the game is based on Jaeger’s original concept, completing many ideas that had to be abandoned before the game’s original release. The ports come courtesy of Eastasiasoft Limited, an independent publisher with a license to release titles for console games.

The retail price for all versions of the 40th Anniversary Edition is $12.99. This version of the game with modern graphics should not be confused with the original title, which is for sale on Steam for $9.99, or the Director’s Cut edition, also for sale on $9.99, which contains Robert Jaeger’s preferred layouts in the same art style as the original title. The Deluxe Edition of Montezuma’s Revenge – 40th Anniversary Edition, which includes the Director’s Cut, currently retails on Steam for $19.48.

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For whatever reason, my family didn’t get a Game Boy until 1995. We had a three-hour round-trip car ride planned to visit a family friend for Thanksgiving. Although my sister Natali and I could read in the car without getting carsick, that would only entertain us for so long. Mom decided to surprise us with a Game Boy to share on the trip, along with an eclectic selection….

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Atari 2600 Keystone Kapers from Activision | The Third Time REALLY IS the Charm!

Kitchen designed the game after working on Atari 2600 games Space Jockey and a port of Donkey Kong. He wanted to develop a game similar to the latter game, and began developing what would become Keystone Kapers. On the games release in 1982, it received positive critical attention for its graphics and gameplay. It was later ported to other consoles such as the ColecoVision and Atari 5200.

#atari #activision #atari2600 #genxgrownup

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Garry Kitchen Interview » youtu.be/Pm-mCaGM9pY
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Given the limitations of Coleco’s version of Donkey Kong, two homebrew programmers took it upon themselves to develop improved versions of the game for the 2600. The first homebrew port, D.K. VCS, was released by Joe Musashi in 2012. This port takes a unique approach by only having part of each screen show….

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Fan reaction to the recently-announced Yars Rising has been surprisingly divisive. It’s been accused of being too talky, too different, and “not Yars” at all. In this editorial, Jon shares his thoughts on Yars Rising and the negative fan feedback.

From the renowned development studio WayForward Technologies, Inc. (Shantae, River City Girls, Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp) comes Yars Rising, a 2D action adventure exploration of one of Atari’s richest, and best known classic titles.

#atari #yarsrevenge #yarsrising #genxgrownup

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On Switch » www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Games/Nintendo-Switch-games/Yars-Rising-2556901.html

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The post Atari’s Yars Rising: Where’s All the FAN HATE Coming From? appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Philadelphia, PA – Feb. 07, 2025 – Grab your blasters and your favorite knives as Retroware and Zenovia Interactive join forces to publish Neon Inferno, coming to all platforms in Q3 2025.

NYC 2055: a city beyond salvation. Blast your way through this dense urban jungle in Neon Inferno, an explosive fusion of 2D run-and-gun and gallery-shooter, and help the Family dominate its streets!

CLICK HERE FOR WEBSITE

Taking inspiration from classic titles like Contra and Wild Guns, Neon Inferno splits the action into the foreground and background with a variety of enemies and bosses in levels set in a dystopian New York City of 2055.

Developed by Zenovia Interactive and published by Retroware, Neon Inferno lets players take on the role of either Angelo or Mariana as they fight for a fledgling crime family striving for power against a corrupt NYPD and other crime syndicates in the war-torn metropolis.

With “Bullet Time,” players can deflect certain projectiles back at enemies they choose–regardless of whether they’re in the foreground or background! With multiple upgrades available to equip between missions, multiple difficulties, including an Arcade Mode, and two-player co-op available, players will be able to tackle their missions however they choose.

Key Features:

• Shoot close, aim far: a dynamic blend of side-scroller and gallery-shooter, where the action takes place in both foreground and background (like playing Contra and Wild Guns at the same time).
• Glorious 32-bit Style: A sci-fi cityscape rendered in beautiful pixel art and backed by an evocative soundtrack
• Two-Player Co-op: With danger lurking around every street corner, wouldn’t you be better off with a friend?
• Satisfying Arcade Challenge: Enjoy a playthrough on an easier mode…or put your skills and resilience to the test with 1-credit-clear arcade mode.

CLICK HERE FOR WEBSITE

Zenovia Interactive

Zenovia Interactive is a game studio based in the New York area, founded by Sri Kankanahalli in 2019. We currently specialize in classic 2D genres, namely sidescrollers. Our goal is to make games that are beautiful, vibrant, and detailed: games which the present can enjoy and which the past can be proud of.

The post Neon Inferno By Zenovia Interactive appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

The Video Game History Foundation Library is the long-term home to our collections of video game history research materials: behind-the-scenes documents, press kits, game magazines, promo materials, artwork, and more. Ever since we started in 2017, the Video Game History Foundation has been building a digital library to help the study of video game history. We’ve been collecting development documents, behind-the-scenes content, rare video game publications and catalogs, magazines, memorabilia, ephemera, and more.

After years of cataloging, processing, and digitizing our collections, we’re ready to open our (virtual) doors to the public for the first time. VGHF works with the game development community to preserve design documents, artwork, video footage, correspondence, and other unique items from behind the scenes of game production. Now we’re opening these resources for you, and you can discover for yourself how games were made and sold.

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Our digital library system makes it easier than ever to explore video game history. We’ve spent years creating rich, extensive metadata for our collections and figuring out how to share our library materials with you. What we’ve built is more than just a bunch of files: This is a powerful tool for video game research with best-in-class discovery features.

Our library is powered by ArchivesSpace and Preservica, two archival management platforms that we use to catalog, preserve, and share our materials. Using the power of these professional-grade archive tools, you can search and filter our collections in deep detail and view digital items directly in-browser.

Our first wave of archival content

Early access to the VGHF Library includes digital access to some of our unique history research materials, including…

• Hundreds of behind-the-scenes documents from the career of game producer Mark Flitman.
• 100+ hours of footage from the making of the Myst series.
• A massive collection of FromSoftware promotional items.
• 1500+ full-text searchable out-of-print game magazines.
• Rare video game flyers and press kits.
• And more!

This is just the beginning. Follow the Video Game History Foundation for updates on new collections coming to our library platform in the future!

CLICK HERE TO DONATE 

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With the appearance of the role-playing game on video consoles, a genre less about actual role-playing and more about navigating enemy dungeons via numbers rather than reflexes, we also saw the appearance of grinding. How grinding works is simple enough. If your statistics aren’t good enough to defeat an enemy boss, just defeat enough weaker enemies that you gain enough experience to overwhelm the boss’s superior numbers. Grinding has long been a bane of many a gamer’s existence, and many consider the way modern games tend to dispense with the practice as an improvement. But does removing grinding actually improve a game, or just change it?

I advance this argument from a somewhat ironic position. I hate grinding, and never do it if it can all be avoided. But from a gameplay perspective, this choice still significantly alters my experience. Let’s use Chrono Trigger for the Super Nintendo as an example. In normal gameplay, you should finish the game around level fifty without too much trouble. In my style of grinding averse gameplay, I’m closer to around level forty. This makes the final boss Lavos much more challenging, a world ending abomination entirely deserving of its textual reputation.

Then of course, there’s going the other way entirely- avoiding quite literally every battle possible as to accomplish a low-level game, abusing various mechanics so badly that the Lavos fight becomes a war of numbers against the game itself. Despite the mostly linear nature of Chrono Trigger, and other sixteen-bit games like it, this particular style of console RPG gave players a lot of options in terms of the choices they had to make about questions so seemingly binary as to whether fight a lot of battles or not. It isn’t necessary, by any means, to get Chrono Trigger’s characters to level ninety-nine. But whether it’s for the ultimate Spekkio battle or just to get one character a weapon that automatically hits the damage cap on a critical, some players are motivated that way too.

Of course, not all console RPGs work quite so well within that framework. Fights that the player is scripted to lose may not seem as such to a player used to grinding their way out of any seemingly impossible battle. Skies of Arcadia for the Dreamcast features a fairly egregious example with a late boss only a couple dungeons stronger than the player who certainly seems beatable- and would be, except that he has hidden regeneration. But then Skies of Arcadia, like so many console RPGs, turned grinding into a chore by forcing people to do it with a high random encounter rate that can’t be lowered.

What about those who choose to grind? NeutralAgent is a notorious figure who has stubbornly persisted in playing a high-level World of Warcraft panda with no political allegiances, who simply crafts his way to the level cap. To what purpose? Well, I mean, let’s think this through all the way. What’s the purpose of any game? It’s to relax, and each of us does it in our own way. Despite the lack of options in older styles of games, and the obvious intentions of the developers, it’s gratifying to find a way to color outside of those lines in a limited canvas. Grinding is a tool to accomplish that.

And indeed, if we really want to get philosophical, it’s not like all grinding is created equal. Most games only allow grinding by fighting. But NeutralAgent grinds by crafting, because the World of Warcraft mechanics allow for it. Many games allow for absurd options like this. Final Fantasy VIII for the Playstation, as an example, has an elaborate minigame that makes it possible to get strong enough to easily wipe out the final boss of the first disc in a single round. Actually abusing this minigame in such a way takes about as much time as playing the game “normally” but I use quotation marks here for a reason. Normal gameplay is whatever works for the player, even if it might seen bizarre to someone else.

Again, it might sound strange to try and level every single Runescape skill to 99, but for some people, the tedium is relaxing. Gratifying even. Sure, all that’s happening is that a number’s going up. But all of modern life at this point is just about numbers going up, usually through highly abstract methods. Many an aspiring YouTuber has been perplexed as to why one video, and only one video, went viral and they can’t seem to get a decent number of viewers interested in the rest of their content. Grinding in retro styled video games is enjoyable because improvement is consistent

The post Grinding: Mindless Filler, or A Different Kind of Fun? appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Thunder Castle is a 1986 maze video game for the Intellivision. The player controls a knight navigating three mazes, defeating enemies to progress. To defeat the enemies, the knight must interact with objects throughout the maze before interacting with them.

The game was designed by David Warhol. It was initially going to be shipped by Mattel Electronics but the company closed its electronics division in 1984. It was released in 1986 initially by mail order by INTV who specialized in releasing Intellivision games following Mattel Electronics closure.

The game received praise from publications like Computer Entertainer and Allgame, with Dave Beuscher calling it one of the best games for the Intellivision.

In Thunder Castle, the player controls the knight via the Intellivision direction disc, moving the night up, down left and right in the maze. The knight continues in that direction pushed until a turn is possible. The game can be played single-player or two-players alternating. The player guides their knight through a series of mazes slaying three dragons in the forest maze, six sorcerers in the castle maze, and nine demons in the dungeon maze. Magical objects are scattered through the maze to energize the knight to slay the monsters. The game is set in three dungeons: a forest, a castle and a dungeon. After completing the final maze, the game restarts with enemies moving faster. The player can energize their knight for a few seconds by interacting with a bat in the forest, a mouse in the castle or a red skull in the dungeon. Being energized lets the knight slay a monster in its maze. Each dungeon has gates in its maze, magical creatures can move through the gates, while knights can not. Scattered through the mazes are various magic item power-ups which are activated by using any of the action buttons on the Intellivision controller. These items are very in their ability to energize the knight, increase its speed, let him move through a gate, or move to a random location in the maze. Collecting a comb item will cut the player’s score in half.

The goal is to complete a high score by slaying the monsters in the maze until you run out of lives by interacting with a monster when not energized.

#atari #intellivision #imagic #genxgrownup

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NEW YORK, Jan. 17, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Atari® — one of the world’s most iconic consumer brands and interactive entertainment producers — has today announced that its first full calendar year executing upon the company’s retro-focused strategy has culminated in successful console and PC releases of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind and The Thing: Remastered, as well as the Nintendo Switch release of RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic. The three titles exemplify Atari’s belief that games based on high-quality, highly recognizable IPs can succeed in the crowded market for new video games.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind reached the number three spot among the best-selling digital titles on the Nintendo eShop, with RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic breaking into the top 15. The Thing: Remastered was well-received by critics and players alike and became Nightdive Studios’ fastest-selling title at launch across all digital PC and console storefronts.

In addition, the company began shipping the Atari 7800+ retro console on November 29, fulfilling preorders and hitting the peak holiday shopping window. The 7800+, which uses HDMI and wireless controllers to marry retro aesthetics with modern living rooms, follows the company’s very successful release of the 2600+ console, which re-introduced cartridge-based gaming.

In 2023, Atari committed to a strategic decision to refocus the game and hardware lines of business on the company’s core strength in classic gaming. The 2023 acquisitions of game development studios Digital Eclipse and Nightdive Studios significantly deepened the company’s expertise in bringing retro games from the 1970s through the early 2000s to modern PCs and consoles and expanded the company’s skill and reputation for acquiring the rights to and developing content around some of the world’s most beloved IPs.

In 2024, Nightdive Studios had major releases with Star Wars™: Dark Forces Remaster and The Thing: Remastered; it also brought the 2023 PC hit System Shock to PlayStation and Xbox consoles. Digital Eclipse added two new installments to the studio’s Gold Master series: Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story and Tetris Forever. The November release of Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration Extended Edition to digital and physical storefronts extended the Digital Eclipse’s success with playable documentaries, and the December release of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind solidified the studio’s reputation for doing justice to revered IP.

More than a half-dozen titles were also released under the Atari brand, including Yars Rising, a title developed by studio Wayforward based on one of Atari’s most well-known 2600 games. Major distribution developments at Atari included the launch of a dedicated version of RollerCoaster Tycoon Touch for Netflix Mobile Games and the company’s Recharged series of games for Netflix’s new cloud gaming service. During the year, Atari also acquired the Intellivision brand and a large portfolio of Intellivision games, as well as RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, a perennial performer on PC and console.

Atari expanded its publishing footprint in April 2024 when it announced it was re-establishing a publishing label under the Infogrames brand. Infogrames has already acquired the publishing rights to a number of game franchises, including Bread and Fred, Totally Reliable Distribution Service, and Surgeon Simulator.

Wade Rosen, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, commented: “It was critical that Atari execute against our retro-focused strategy in 2024, and I am extremely pleased with the company’s performance across all of our business lines,” said Wade Rosen, Chairman and CEO of Atari. “Ending the year with such a strong reception to our fourth-quarter game releases — Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind and The Thing: Remastered, as well as the Nintendo Switch release of RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic — gives me confidence that our strategy will lead to even more success in the coming year.”

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