Streemerz (NES)

Taking inspiration from the old arcade and NES classic Bionic Commando, Streemerz started life as a mock-NES game on Flash and the video game development tool, Multimedia Fusion, only to almost inevitably be reborn as the genuine NES article, one of a growing number of demakes spreading throughout the retro homebrew scene like Japanese knotweed.

Although the name might suggest otherwise, Streemerz is not a game where you run around throwing streamers into the air to enforce a children's party atmosphere wherever you go. In fact you are a member of the Super Strength Emergency Squad Zeta, (Streemerz, geddit?) who has just infiltrated one of the evil Master Y's (aka Derek Yu of TIGSource and Spelunky fame) flying fortresses and set a bomb to charge. With Master Y and his minions alerted to your presence, your mission is to ascend to the top of the fortress where a helicopter rescue awaits.

Driar (NES)

By it's very nature RGCD showcases games that are all in some way harking back to an earlier time of video-gaming, but Driar (by Stefan Adolfsson and David Eriksson) manages to distil old-school platform games into a NES package that makes absolutely no concessions to the modern era whatsoever. No score, no save points, no passwords, no timers, no plot, no hub-world, just a series of single screen levels for you to carefully complete, in order, from 1-38 or until your 10 lives are used up.

Zooming Secretary (NES)

Like most people of my generation I've done my fair share of temp work. Call centres, shelf stacking, data entry, administration and filing... all tedious and soul destroying jobs that I would never have imagined could result in an enjoyable and addictive game design. However, Shiru and PinWizz have somehow taken the combination of phone answering, filing and a variety of office stereotypes and lovingly moulded them in to an excellent arcade title for the NES/Famicom. Underpaid and overworked office minions of the world, Zooming Secretary is a game written for you.

Retro News Update

Unfortunately I haven't got time right now to make a load of individual and in-depth posts, so instead of letting this news become stale, here's a compilation of a few byte-sized snippets for you to digest, with more info to follow soon.

Developer Interview: Morphcat Games

  
(This interview was supposed to be uploaded last week, following the review of the excellent Super Bat Puncher demo for the NES - apologies for the delay!)
  
As a way of introduction, please could you give a brief paragraph or two about yourself?
  
Hello, I am Julius, the creator of Super Bat Puncher.
  
Even though my parents tried to keep me away from video games, most of my hobbies nowadays revolve around them in some way or another, e.g. programming and creating pixel art. Other hobbies include making music, running, biking or just lying in the grass and watching the clouds.

Super Bat Puncher (Demo) (NES)

  

Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you are sitting comfortably because this is a game that demands your attention.  It may only be a demo of a work-in-progress project, but even so, Morphcat's Super Bat Puncher is still one of the best retro titles I've played for a long, long time.
  
Being a weapon-based platformer that starts with the player being dropped into an alien world with little known about the protagonist (Roast) or his/her surroundings, it's easy to see similarities to Pixel's classic Cave Story from the outset.  This, however, should be considered a good thing - especially as Super Bat Puncher is one of the few games to not only ape the Cave Story formula with flair, but also to match the classic's charm, character and presentation as well as having the confidence to throw in some off-the-wall originality into the mix.  And of course, remember that this is a NES release we are talking about.

NES Virus Cleaner (NES)

Released quietly at the end of last month as both a download and a (now sold out) cartridge, Sly Dog Studio's NES Virus Cleaner is a great little arcade-puzzle hybrid that is based around the arguably implausible concept of cleaning your NES from a rather nasty virus infection. It may look and sound crude (especially now that Blade Buster has recently reset the bar for homebrew quality) but guiding the little virus-killing bot around the various components of the Nintendo Entertainment System proves to be equally fun and challenging.

Blade Buster (NES)

  
Homebrew games are somewhat of a rarity on the Nintendo Entertainment System (or Famicom, depending where you are reading this), so it's understandable that High Level Challenge's awesome Blade Buster caused quite a stir in the indie gaming and retro scenes when it was released earlier this year.  Hailed by many as 'the new Recca', fans of Nintendo's popular 8-Bit were bowled over by the amazing production values - and with it's winning combination of insane speed and a ludicrous number of sprites on screen at once, I had to remind myself over and over that I was playing a NES game whilst writing this review.

Owing a lot of it's inspiration to Hudson Soft's Star Soldier series (in particular the Japanese "Hudson All-Japan Caravan Festival" timed-competition editions), Blade Buster is a score attack shmup that comes with two game modes; two and five minutes, each ending a epic boss battle.  This short game-time may initially sound off-putting to classic shooter fans, but believe me, there are hours of fun to be had with this deceptively little game as you attempt to beat your high score over and over again.