Tag Archives: Retro

Do Over: Gauntlet.

  By Lisa McInerney | August 25, 2011 - 12:00 pm | Do Over, Games, The Culch
1 Comment

When I were a lass, there used to be one of those multi-choice consoles in the local Supermacs (yes, Supermacs. I’m a proper culchie Culch.ie), to which you could theoretically feed your pocket-money in return for a cheerful selection of the games of the time. I say theoretically because, as one of the games was Super Mario 3, chances of the player exercising their right to choose were slimmer than a hipster Luigi. You’d slot your 50p in, tease a level of Mario out of it, get cocky, fall down a hole, add another 50p, and before you knew it, puberty had taken hold and you’d missed the entire summer season of Knight Rider. But I was never one for respecting theory. I didn’t even turn up for my Leaving Cert chemistry exam. So, while I played far, far more than my fair share of Super Mario 3, I frequently … There’s more →

Do Over: Paperboy

  By Lisa McInerney | August 2, 2011 - 9:00 am | Do Over, Games, The Culch
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Video games are not just for children. One might expect that every lost nunky knows that, these days, but there’s a surprising amount of supercilious arses that won’t admit it. Firstly, games have become very rapidly more sophisticated – imagine Pong aficionados, back in the ‘70s, getting an eyeful of something like Red Dead Redemption – and grown-ups appreciate the finer things in life. And secondly, of course, the kids who jumped on mutant mushrooms with Mario, and beat competitors off their bikes with cattle prods in Road Rash, are now twenty and thirtysomethings with their own mortgage arrears. There weren’t a huge amount of parents playing video games in the early ‘90s, but there bloody well are now (especially considering that you can have virtual affairs in Fable III and get virtual lapdances in GTA). Fable III. Romantic. I say this because the notion that one plays video games … There’s more →

Review: Perfect Dark

  By Will | May 7, 2010 - 2:14 am | Games, The Culch
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If you played Perfect Dark on a Nintendo 64 back in 2000, then you’re going to love this game. If you were overjoyed by Rare’s earlier game “Goldeneye 007″ on any format, then you are going to love it. Otherwise, this is going to be an interesting history lesson in gaming. Actually, the Xbox 360 seems to be mining the past quite a bit at the moment between “Game Room” and its “Time Warp” events. Perfect Dark on the Xbox Live Arcade is the game updated for high definition screens and on hardware that can actually manage the frame rate lacking back in 2000. At the time it was the best, most advanced first person shooter (FPS) on the market. It even had an in-built “easy mode”, namely the “auto lock-on” feature of the weapons used to take out the security guards encountered in the game. The storyline of interstellar … There’s more →

Microsoft Game Room, stepping away from the Xbox

  By Will | March 26, 2010 - 2:29 am | Gadgets, Games
3 Comments

Microsoft released their Game Room yesterday as part of their “House Party” (or “Block Party” if you live in the USA) event. Apart from some intriguing teething problems its been an interesting experiment. Essentially Game Room is a MAME type emulator of arcade games (currently limited to Atari and Konami cabinets from the late 70s and early 80s) as well as the Atari 2600 and Intellivision consoles. And these seem to be the original ROMs based on the ROM boot sequence some of the games show. The emulation is wrapped up in a customisable virtual arcade for your avatar and friends avatars to roam through. The games are OK, but the brilliance is in the execution. When you first start (provided it can connect to the game room server, that’s where the teething problems lay), you can demo the games, usually for about 10 minutes (or less if you leave … There’s more →

Gaming News: Sonic the Hedgehog 4

  By Ronan | February 5, 2010 - 10:51 am | Games
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That’s right ladies and gentlemen, a new Sonic the Hedgehog game is on the way. And none of this Rush, Adventure, Rivals, Olympics, or Black Knight/Secret Rings nonsense either. It’s the proper sequel to the Mega Drive (Genesis) series. It’s an old-school 2D side-scrolling platformer, just like Sonic 1-3 and the criminally underrated Sonic & Knuckles. Sega has had a game in development for a few months now under the name Project Needlemouse, and leaked a teaser trailer to go with it. Fans quickly suspected that this was a new Sonic title, but yesterday they announced the game’s real title to the world: Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1. They also announced that the game will be available on all three major consoles, as a downloadable title from the Playstation Store, XBox Live Arcade, as well as via WiiWare. That gives the indication that it’ll probably cost less than €20. … There’s more →