Originally only available to RGCD team members and magazine contributors, we are now offering CD copies of RGCD for sale (complete with colour laser-printed artwork). For the small sum of £2.00 (including 1st class postage), you too can own a professionally presented copy of the RGCD discmag in the format it was designed for. As with the rest of the items for sale in our online store, these CD's are sold at cost price (taking into account media, ink and thermal printing).

View more information on RGCD Issue #04

Originally only available to RGCD team members and magazine contributors, we are now offering CD copies of RGCD for sale (complete with colour laser-printed artwork). For the small sum of £2.00 (including 1st class postage), you too can own a professionally presented copy of the RGCD discmag in the format it was designed for. As with the rest of the items for sale in our online store, these CD's are sold at cost price (taking into account media, ink and thermal printing).

View more information on RGCD Issue #03

Originally only available to RGCD team members and magazine contributors, we are now offering CD copies of RGCD for sale (complete with colour laser-printed artwork). For the small sum of £2.00 (including 1st class postage), you too can own a professionally presented copy of the RGCD discmag in the format it was designed for. As with the rest of the items for sale in our online store, these CD's are sold at cost price (taking into account media, ink and thermal printing).

View more information on RGCD Issue #02

Originally only available to RGCD team members and magazine contributors, we are now offering CD copies of RGCD for sale (complete with colour laser-printed artwork). For the small sum of £2.00 (including 1st class postage), you too can own a professionally presented copy of the RGCD discmag in the format it was designed for. As with the rest of the items for sale in our online store, these CD's are sold at cost price (taking into account media, ink and thermal printing).

View more information on RGCD Issue #01

Originally only available to RGCD team members and magazine contributors, we are now offering CD copies of RGCD for sale (complete with colour laser-printed artwork). For the small sum of £5.00 (including 1st class postage), you too can own a professionally presented set of the first three issues of the RGCD discmag in the format it was designed for. As with the rest of the items for sale in our online store, these CD's are sold at cost price (taking into account media, ink and thermal printing).

View more information on RGCD Issue #01 / #02 / #03

With Grumpy Cat's assistance and authorisation, we at RGCD are proud to present to you the 'Thrust Advance' cartridge, ready for you to buy and plug into your GBA, SP, Micro or DS!

This faithful remake is based on Firebird's Atari ST port of the BBC classic and features all ten worlds from the 16-Bit release (as well as the later reverse gravity and invisible wall variations), so fans of the original will feel immediately at home. For the few people out there unfamiliar with the game - and there really is no excuse considering that Wiebo de Wit's excellent Thrust Xtreme was reviewed in RGCD #01 - Thrust is similar to the arcade classic Gravitar (although with significantly more complex game mechanics) and it is famous for being one of the first home video games to feature realistic physics - and not to forget Rob Hubbard's excellent soundtrack on the C64. As always, the player's goal is to steal Klystron pods from a series of progressively complex mine systems, destroying the Empire's defences in the process (and even whole planets if you're going for a high score).

Somewhat surprisingly, the game works really well on the GBA - even when you take the handheld's tiny screen into account. Everything has been redesigned around the console; the graphics have all been redrawn and anti-aliased so as to look as smooth and vector-like as possible and the controls have been thoughtfully configured so that the d-pad is only used for rotating and the A, B & right shoulder buttons act as fire, thrust and shield/tractor beam respectively. It's clear that Grumpy is a massive fan of the original - a lot of love has gone into getting every part of this GBA tribute just right; the mechanics all work the way they should and Thrust's high difficulty is matched only by its equally addictive game-play.

At the budget price of £5.50 and strictly limited to less than 100 carts, Thrust Advance is a must-buy.

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(Please note that there are two versions of the game available - normal and 'heavy gravity'. The latter is only recommended for Thrust veterans. Please advise us if you'd prefer to buy the heavy version on cart.)

It's been a long time in the making, but RGCD's third GBA homebrew cartridge is finally here! Cosine and RGCD are proud to present Reaxion GBA, as reviewed in RGCD#03 (where it received a huge 90% score). Strictly limited to less than 100 carts and on sale for the budget price of £5.50 I strongly recommend that you grab yourself a copy before they sell out. For of those unfamiliar with the game, an excerpt from the write up follows...

Cosine have been unusually busy this summer (probably due to the crappy weather we've been having) and their latest game has made my GameBoy Advance very happy indeed. Coded for the game development competition at this year's Buenzli 16 party, I'll be surprised if WiDDY and T.M.R's GBA conversion of Reaxion doesn't grab an award.

Cosine's Reaxion is officially the group's most ported game; it's simple premise has also been translated from the C64 to the C128, Commodore Plus/4 and Atari XE/XL (with Spectrum, NES and GameBoy Color versions in the pipeline). However, I reckon they'll be hard pushed to beat this incarnation of their popular puzzler.

So what's it all about? Well, the background story sees you playing the role of a nuclear power-plant operative deep in the bowels of the Wenley Moor power station. The plant's main CPU has become infected with a nasty computer virus, resulting in all the immediate shutdown of all safety system and complete randomisation of the reactor core settings. Clearly this is not good news. Your task is to reset all 99 dangerously unstable reactor cores before they go critical. Fail, and its goodbye planet Earth; Succeed, and the government will probably cover up the whole mess and have you permanently 'silenced' anyway - but hey, that's life!

Like all the best games, Reaxion's simple mechanics take a minute to learn but hours to master. Each unstable reactor is represented on screen as a grid of 56 core cells, and the 'live' cores (green) need to be reset (to red) before the timer runs out. You control a core monitor unit that you can move around the grid, with the 'A' button used to set the selected core's status. The catch is that changing the setting of one core has a chain reaction of similarly changing the setting the eight surrounding cells...

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The cold and frosty nights are drawing in, the high streets of Britain are festooned with gaudy lights and decorations and credit cards across the nation are maxed out. It can mean only one thing - Christmas is just around the corner!

For the last couple of years, Ian and the rest of the Paradise team have entered the Christmas game development competition hosted by www.drunkencoders.com, winning the competition in 2005, and being unfairly placed at a considerably lower position in 2006. After playing their games extensively I had a brainwave; perhaps Paradise Games would be interested in working with RGCD to create some sort of Christmas-themed compilation for our readers? A few emails later and the Paradise/RGCD Christmas Double Pack GBA cart was born.

So what do you get for the bargain £5.50 price tag? Limited to 50 copies, the double-pack (which is a deliberately erroneous title as the cart actually includes a third hidden game..!) contains both Santa's Chimney Challenge and Santa's Skidoo Scarper; arguably the best Christmas themed releases to grace the GBA platform. The latter title is particularly impressive, but we'll get to that in a moment.

To be fair, both of Paradise's Santa titles should really be considered as score-attack style mini-games; the player's goal being to ultimately complete both with a 100% score. The first of the two is 'Santa's Chimney Challenge', an ace little Blitz clone which sees you dropping presents down chimneys as a considerably more festive alternative to dropping bombs on skyscrapers. As with all Blitz style games, the challenge here is in getting the timing right; a task that is made considerably more difficult as you progress through the five stages due to your sledge's ever increasing velocity. Complete the tricky fifth screen and you are given a percentage score based on the time taken and number of presents wasted; it's simple stuff really.

'Santas's Skidoo Scarper' is a considerably more technically impressive game that most noticeably uses a very different perspective to the majority of other GBA releases as it requires the player to hold the console on it's side (effectively displaying the game in 'portrait' mode). Thankfully Paradise have catered for this conceptually awkward method of presentation by arranging the controls so that the game is equally playable on all GBA models (to the point where it makes you wonder why this wasn't used in some commercial GBA ports that traditionally suit the portrait format). As for the game itself, Skidoo Scarper puts the player in a race against the clock to successfully drive Santa's Skidoo through the icy wastes and back to his home, collecting a full set of presents (and avoiding collisions) on his way. There are multiple paths to take through the map, each facing the player with a variety of score-increasing collectables, hair-raising jumps, and brown-pants inducing turbo boosts. Surviving the course without losing all your lives is demanding enough in itself, but on completion you are scored against the time taken and presents collected - your target being to complete the race in less than 90 seconds with the full range of different coloured gifts...

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