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Finally - a year later than originally planned - RGCD is back with Issue #05!

It's difficult to make a come-back after leaving a project like this to lie dormant for so long; although there were some periods of activity during 2008, the more time passed on, the harder it became to motivate myself and the rest of the team. Several early articles and reviews typed during the initial development phase had to be scrapped as they became embarrassingly old news and even a few of our previews had to be later re-written as full reviews (which is why Issue #05's Extras section is so small) - both of which were serious morale dampers for our staff writers. Even our regular readers began lose hope, as throughout the year emails from our friends and associates slowly changed from encouraging "Love the mag, when's the next one out?" messages to sad-sounding enquiries as to whether RGCD was officially "dead".

To set the record straight, as long as I'm around, RGCD will exist. I invest many hours of my time working on this discmag project because ultimately it's something I really enjoy - my enthusiasm for retro and indie-gaming is genuine and RGCD is a way for me to share my passion and give something back to the scene. The reason for our hiatus is simple; due to a major job change, a temporary increase in working hours, family commitments and other real-life issues I had practically no free time last year, and RGCD suffered as a consequence.

The good news is that my previously chaotic life has now settled down to a manageable state, so hopefully 2009 will see a return to our former quarterly-release schedule for the magazine. We also have a number of new RGCD associated projects that'll be announced over the next few months, as well as several new team members and contributors (special thanks go out to Uglifriut, Chris Allcock, Ptoing and Tomchi for their help).

With 45 articles and over 47,000 words, RGCD #05 is undoubtedly our biggest issue yet. 2008 was a great year for both the retro and indie-gaming scenes and we've done our best to cover as many high-quality releases as humanly possible; personal indie favourites being the awesome ThrustBurst, Jamie Woodhouse's PC conversion of Qwak, Dugan's steampunk'd Red Faction demake Rock Boshers, the Paradroid inspired Droid Assault, procedural shoot 'em up Self Destruct, the epic arcade platformer Noitu Love 2 and of course Bob Fearon's mighty War Twat and it's equally marmite sequel SY!NSO.

On the retro front, Issue #05 has an strong emphasis on 16-Bit Atari content (mainly inspired my recent acquisition of a 4160 STE). There's our regular 'Homebrew Retrospective' feature that covers the best of the machine's back catalogue of independent releases, complimented by reviews of Manical Drop, The Pairs Are Gone, Spy4K and Bob Fossil's Sudokuniverse as well as an interview with D-Bug/Automation about their continued work with Falcon compatibility patches and their innovative ULS project. However, that's not to say that other platforms have been missed; RGCD #05 also includes high-scoring reviews of Bob Smith's Splattr (ZX Spectrum), Sub Hunter (C64), World Reborn (GBA), Lead (Atari 2600), Follia NBA (Amiga) and Plutos/Sirius (Atari 7800) amongst many other new releases for vintage hardware.

Right - that just about wraps it up. See you in Issue #06, hopefully before March 2010!

ThrustBurst [PC]

http://umlautgames.net/

Reviewed By J. Monkman

Picking a featured game for our comeback issue after such a long break was never going to be easy. With several superb releases to choose from, I was really struggling to select a worthy game to highlight - and then out of the blue I received a message from acclaimed pixel-pusher Ptoing announcing the launch of ThrustBurst; the debut PC title from new independent development group Umlautgames.

Now I'm probably going to be flamed by the rest of the RGCD team for saying this, but despite the competition, ThrustBurst is undoubtedly the best game I've played so far this year. I'm well aware that the cave-flier/Scramble concept is far from original, but nonetheless ThrustBurst really shines and it's obvious from the stunning attention to detail and rich atmosphere that it has been lovingly crafted by a team of established indie-scene veterans.

From the outset, ThrustBurst epitomises all things retro. Helm and Ptoing's artistic influence in the design is particularly evident; the limited pastel palette and stylish visuals are reminiscent of their recent high-resolution C64 productions and the game features a mix of perfectly pixelled animated sprites working in harmony with a minimal angular backdrop. Likewise, the SID soundtrack and lo-fi effects by Ghormak and Darkstalkey add to the vintage atmosphere - and happily the top-notch presentation is matched by the quality of Fuzzpilz's code - Thurstburst is a well-constructed, fast little game that runs smoothly and packs enough features into the minimal file size to keep you occupied for many hours of game time...

Read the full review »