Mariano the Dragon - Capers in Cityland sees cutesy titular dragon Mariano on a quest to save his imprisoned friends; they were all locked away for failing to complete a series of tasks that varied from painting storage drums and collecting stars to a bit of espionage and now our small, scaly friend has to take on those very same tasks in order to get the keys to release everybody else. Although they have previously released titles on one machine and subsequently converted them to others, Mariano the Dragon - Capers in Cityland is the first time that Computer EmuZone Games Studio have simultaneously released a title on both Spectrum and CPC.

  Web link:         Computer EmuZone Games Studio

Back in 1982, Commodore released a VIC 20 game on cartridge called Raid On Fort Knox. Some twenty three years later and, on a rainy afternoon in 2007 with nothing on the telly, Nino Porcino had the idea of taking the game he remembered from his childhood and disassembling it - as you do (or is that just me?) But things took an Oldschool Gaming style turn at this point because, once he had this disassembly, his next decision was to put it back together in a interesting new way and Return To Fort Knox was conceived. It's taken a while to get to the maternity ward because Nino knew exactly how he wanted the remixed game to be and put a lot of work into that vision; the number of active guards in the game was increased to fifteen, a new "freeze ray" feature added and eight shiny new levels were created from scratch, but after all that work father and child are doing well and receiving visitors.

  Web link:         Nino Porcino's website
  News source:    Denial

It's time for the Oldschool Gaming May update and for this one we have three new reviews to tease you with and for a starter there is some hardcore action in the form of an Atari 8-bit port of Jeff Minter's seminal shooter Metagalactic Llamas Battle at the Edge of Time. Of course, not everyone likes shoot 'em ups and for the more strategically minded amongst you it would be well worth taking a closer look at Advanced Space Battle for the C64 since it's a space-bound strategy game or perhaps some more mentally challenging puzzles, plenty of which can be had in Groops! for the Amstrad CPC.

And for those of you pondering the "pun" in the news posting title this month, May the 4th be with you!

Taking its name from a Finnish war movie called "Tuntematon Sotilas - The Unknown Soldier" (which is apparently the second most viewed Finnish film ever, i wonder what the most viewed is?) Tuntematon Sotilas is an entry into the 2008 minigame competition 2K category that was developed for the unexpanded VIC 20 by Aleksi Eeben. On his blog (which is linked below), Aleksi describes it as being a strategic war game that is based on a mainframe computer game called Empire that was popular in the 1970s.

  Web link:         Aleksi Eeben's blog
  News source:    Denial

Incoming is Atari 2600 developer Ben Larson's take on Xonox's long-range shoot 'em up Artillery Duel; two tanks facing off against each other amidst some rugged terrain, taking turns to duke it out with heavy artillery and having to allow for the changing speed and direction of the wind. If you've played Team 17's Worms you'll immediately know where this one is coming from.

  Web link:         Atari Age forum entry

Isn't it terrible when you forget something; where you left the television remote, your keys, to bend your knees on landing... but imagine losing all of it, having your entire memory wiped. That's exactly what has happened to Johnny, hero of new action adventure game Jinj from Computer EmuZone Game Studio for the Spectrum. His boss, professor Bel-Monte, has wiped Johnny's mental RAM with the plan being to download the skills to become a great explorer and then head off in search of a mystical artefact that can open the doors of hell. Johnny is having nothing of this however and his plan is, with the help of the player, to recover his memory and he'll do that by finding a series of objects, each of which gives a clue to the location of the next.

  Web link:         Computer EmuZone Games Studio
  News source:    World Of Spectrum

Another day, another new game - got to love it. This one is called Swapz, feels very at home within Atari 8-bits and it's a puzzle game based on the same concepts as Zookeeper and Bejewelled where the player has to manipulate a grid of objects in order to get rows or columns containing three of the same item. A simple concept, but one that needs thought and logic to do right and it's rather pretty to look at as well!

  Web link:         Atari.Fandal.cz (download available)
  News source:    Atari Age

Y'know, after getting all excited about the thing i'm somewhat surprised that i totally forgot to add the release news! Yes, Jonathan Cauldwell's much anticipated game creator, the Shoot 'Em Up Designer, is now available from Cronosoft for purchase, either on cassette for a paltry £4.99 or for those who use an emulator, a tape image with the instructions included as a text file is another option for just £3.50. We're looking forward to giving it a proper playing with for the Oldschool Gaming review and, if all goes well, having a little game or two produced with it by the writers for your delight and delectation in the near (well, near by our standards at least) future. For an example of what the tool can do, Jonathan's previously released Damage (which was originally titled Shooty Thing and has a news entry here) was created with SEUD and is available to download from his website.

  Web link:         Cronosoft
  News source:    World Of Spectrum

Just released for the unexpanded VIC 20, Mr. Pivot is a game of memory, a game of music and a game of movement. Lots of M words, in fact! The playfield is covered with arrows which guide a "note chaser" (or on later levels, multiple note chasers) around in search of concealed musical notes; the player is shown where everything is hidden at the start of a level and must highlight and rotate the arrows to create a path that passes through the notes whilst avoiding concealed hazards. A game for puzzle fanatics who like to plan ahead!

  Web link:         Denial

As a prelude to his forthcoming Shoot 'Em Up Designer and in order to clear the decks on his hard drive, Jonathan Cauldwell has just released another construction system called the Arcade Game Designer which... umm, lets people design arcade games; more specifically, it fills the gap between the highly anticipated SEUD and the already released and well received Platform Game Designer because it can be used to produce maze-based or ladders and platforms style games. The author himself has said that this isn't as friendly to use as his two other design tools and, instead of being all pointy and clicky, it uses something akin to a scripting language to define the game logic in pretty much the same way that adventure game creation tools such as The Quill do. But lets face it, this is a free tool and a fun thing to be playing about with of a quiet Sunday afternoon (and it can save stand-alone games as well, amuse your friends!) and tomorrow is Sunday so it's been released at just the right time!

  Web link:         Jonathan Cauldwell's website
  News source:    World Of Spectrum

April fool! Well okay, it probably doesn't work on the day after the event itself and if we're being totally honest it wouldn't have have been even vaguely funny anyway but this really is an update... and to begin with we've got some colourful, pirate-based bubble matching action for the Spectrum with Cannon Bubble which is based, as the name may suggest, on Puzzle Bobble. Or if bubbles and pirates aren't your thing Redrunner for the C64 features some no-holds-barred blasting action on a single and very busy screen.

We also have a bumper crop of Atari 8-bit reviews as well and, speaking of crops the first title is the fragrant gardening-based shape matcher Flowers Mania and it's joined by more puzzling action in the form of Othello-inspired Klony and, since man cannot live on puzzles alone, we've also got some all-out ball bouncing action in the form of the excellent Yoomp!. But there aren't any plants in that.

Based on one of the skill games introduced to arcades (and indeed shopping centres for reasons that have never been properly explained) over the last few years, Stacker is a single-button game where the objective is to... well, neatly stack rows of blocks on top of each other in order to make a tower that covers the entire screen. The original machine drops prizes if you manage to get over a certain height but to date nothing has fallen out of my C64 whilst playing so there might be a bug!

  Web link:         CSDb entry for Stacker
  News source:    Oldschool Gaming Forums

Despite being one of the earlier Spectrum titles and wedged into the 16K, 3D Death Chase is consistently listed near the top of assorted charts of Spectrum favourites for it's fast, no-nonsense gameplay. And now Richard "Executioner" Wilson, author of the superb WinAPE emulator amongst other things, has delved into the original code with his binary toolbox and, after a bit of tinkering under the hood, has a working jet-propelled bike for the Amstrad CPC! So now the Speccy isn't the only machine that gamers can reenact the speeder bike chases on Endor from "Return of the Jedi" with...!

  Web link:         CPC Zone forum entry (download on page 2)
  News source:    Retro Gamer Forums

Completed about a week ago but only brought to our attention this very morning (before the caffeine had kicked in, even!), Shredz64 is a new game written by Toni Westbrook around his PSX64 controller interface that allows C64 gamers to play with a Guitar Hero guitar. In other words, C64 gamers can now look rather silly whilst strumming a plastic guitar in the comfort of their own homes in a way that was previously reserved for PS2 users! According to Westbrook's site, along with some already prepared tunes, players can import at least some SID files from the High Voltage SID Collection into Shredz64 and then add "notes" used within the game to make them useable.

The PSX64 interface can also adapt Playstation control pads for the C64, Atari 8-bits, Amstrad CPC and pretty much anything else that uses the 9 pin "standard" that Atari laid down with the 2600. There is a YouTube video to watch of the interface and game in action.

  Web link:         Toni Westbrook website
  News source:    PETSCII Forums

Yes, that format flag in the title is right, this is a brand new game released for the Commodore PET! Blok Copy is an action puzzler, developed by Oldschool Gaming staffers Jason and Doug under the Cosine banner and the objective is pretty simple; the player has to take the computer-shuffled playfield and restore order to it (rearranging the numbered cells into columns) within the time limit over ten levels of difficulty. Since there are lots of variations of PET hardware, this game supports only 40 column machines and requires 8K but after that it should work correctly on any variation of the hardware as long as it meets those specifications and even supports sound through an apparently popular hardware hack.

  Web link:         Cosine website

Christened with probably one of the longest names in computer gaming history, Jeff Minter's Metagalactic Llamas Battle At The Edge Of Time is also a fantastic shoot 'em up and particularly good on the unexpanded VIC 20. And now, following a lot of hard work, perspiration, llama spit and code jiggling performed by Karolj "Heaven" Nadj, that version of the game has been ported directly to the Atari 8-bit so, for those who were feeling the urge (and we all do from time to time... or is that just me?) playing the part of a llama that spits at spiders has become even more accessible than it ever was. So what are you waiting for, there are nasties that need to be splattered with llama sputum!

  Web link:         Atari.Fandal.cz (download available)
  News source:    Atari Age

Yes, the earthquake that surprised parts of the United Kingdom last Tuesday has... absolutely no bearing on the Oldschool Gaming March update in the slightest, except that it made our web server shudder around a little bit! But the abstract title probably means that it's time for that aforementioned update and, in order to entertain, amuse and possibly even educate you this time around, the Oldschool Gaming reviewers find that although they aren't startled by quakes, they do get all excited over a Castle Crisis for the Atari 8-bit, followed by a spot of training (get it?) with Loco Bingo for the Spectrum and, speaking of "getting" things, there is also Get It for the Plus/4 to be, umm, got as well.

And, since the domain renewal turned up recently, that means that Oldschool Gaming must be celebrating it's fourth birthday around now; since the new end-of-year round up feature at Christmas covered a lot of what would otherwise have been a look back over the site for the last two years, we're instead working on adding some new features at the next update - so don't forget to check in regularly, sign up with the forums to discuss new releases or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Twenty one years ago, programming legends Sensible Software released their Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit for the C64 (more commonly referred to as SEUCK) and everybody saw that it was good. SEUCK was able to give everybody the power to develop professional-looking flip screen or vertically scrolling shoot 'em ups and they promptly did, but one feature that was missing was the capacity to scroll horizontally. Winding forward in time a little and we bump into Jon Wells, who took it upon himself to rectify some of the issues with SEUCK and, along with a series of articles for Commodore Format explaining to owners how to enhance their games and add features like highscore tables, he set out to produce a modified version of SEUCK that could scroll horizontally, even getting as far as modifying the code directly to produce a preview of a shooter called Breakthrough.

Jump forward the rest of the distance to today and meet Sideways SEUCK and yes, it does exactly what it says on the tin; Jon Wells has gone back to his original project, redone the conversion to horizontal scrolling pretty much from scratch (there's a diary of the work involved on his website) and modified the SEUCK editor as well. At the moment, the version released (which comes in two flavours, either blank or pre-loaded with some of the Breakthrough graphics) is limited to editing games that scroll from left to right rather than the more common right to left, but another release that can go the opposite direction has already been promised by Wells for the hopefully near future.

  Web link:         Jon Wells' Sideways SEUCK website
  News source:    The SEUCK Vault

It's that time of year once more where a man's thoughts turn to... getting some game code as small as possible to compete in competition with it! Yes ladies and gents, the 2008 iteration of the Minigame is upon us and we can look forward to lots of teeny likkle games materialising... in fact, at the time of writing there are already five entries in the competition over two categories; four 1K versions of Sokoban, Freecell, Othello and a 3D Maze for the Spectrum, all produced by Johan "Dr. Beep" Koelman (who produced WorldBar last year, along with an enhanced version that featured AI outside of competition) and Chris Read's Virtual Dieter for the Atari 2600 is the first entry into the 2K category.

The categories are the same as 2007, being 1K, 2K and 4K and the closing dates are 31st July, 30th September and 30th November respectively and more information, the rules and frequently asked questions, entries from previous competitions and official Minigame forums can be found on the competition website, which is linked below.

  Web link:         Minigame website
  News source:    C64 Scene Portal

A second release from the prolific Jonathan Cauldwell in the space of a week, although strictly speaking this one isn't actually a game; Intro Maker allows owners of Platform Game Designer, the soon to be released Shoot 'Em Up Designer and indeed some other game creation tools that fit certain criteria to produce pre-game introduction sequences in order to spruce up their creations. All the options are easy to use and the program works out just about everything apart from inserting the intro into a TAP file for the user.

Think of it as being like a Powerpoint for the Spectrum, but far more useful and you don't need to be in an office...?

  Web link:         Jonathan Cauldwell's website

Shooty Thing by Jonathan Cauldwell is a role playing game, you must take control of your local town council and keep all of the services and subdivisions within budget for the fiscal year. Nope, that's a fib of course because this release is a small but nicely formed horizontal scrolling shoot 'em up which, although not a massive event in itself, is more interesting since it's something of a prelude to Cauldwell's forthcoming Shoot 'Em Up Designer (or SEUD for short). A lot of people are looking forward to seeing the release of Shooty Thing's creator (the tool, not Cauldwell) but this little offspring is an amusing diversion in the meantime.

  Web link:         Jonathan Cauldwell's website
  News source:    World Of Spectrum

Two spaceships, fighting for survival in a small sector of deep space, only one can be victorious... this is the Hyper Duel. Science fiction voiceover openings aside, this is a two player only affair where, in the tradition of the seminal Space War, both are issued a spaceship and have to maneuver their way around the play area, dealing out laser death to dwindle the precious shield energy of their opponent whilst avoiding the returned fire.

  Web link:         The New Dimension Website
  News source:    CSDb entry for Hyper Duel

We're a little bit late with this particular item of news, but the Atari Bit Byter User Club (or ABBUC to their mates) have launched their software competition for 2008; since the previous incarnation was responsible for some of the most interesting 8-bit games of 2007, including Yoomp! and Crownland, the results for this year will very likely be eagerly anticipated. The full rules are set out on the site (linked below), there are prizes for the top five places and further consolation prizes for runners up and the closing date is in August.

  Web link:         ABBUC 2008 competition rules
  News source:    Atari Age

Krzysztof "XXL" Dudek has been busy yet again and, following on from his previous Spectrum to Atari 8-bit ports last year comes another biggie; Ultimate Play The Game's renowned isometric 3D classic Knight Lore has been ported to the Atari 8-bit and is, possibly, the very first of it's kind because the source platform in this case wasn't the Spectrum, instead the code was taken from the BBC micro version of the game. We probably don't need to give any more hype than mentioning the name, the Ultimate iso 3D stuff is pretty close to legendary fare on the Spectrum and anyone who hasn't already tried Knight Lore already now has another reason to do so!

  Web link:         Atari.pl (link to download)
  News source:    Atari Age

Oo-ar, that farmer Bob has just given me this 'ere tape cassette thingy called Farmer Jack and the Hedge Monkeys - oi played it on the tape player in moi tractor an' it be all screeching noises; Bob, he tells me it be a computer game about us farmin' folk an' oi does either needs to be be getting one of them thar new-fangled Sinclair Spectrums to play it or download it from the web - well, the only web oi 'ave is in the corner of me barn and there bain't any games in that unless you be a spider. This do be looking good from the pictures, so lets be hoping it plays well loike and ain't full of appalling, stereotypical rural accent cliches... anyway, oi be arf to mickle moi muckle now, oi just need the keys to moi combine 'arvester and oil be orf!

  Web link:         Bob Smith's website
  News source:    World Of Spectrum

Kojote at PDROMS.de has just announced another coding competition; the start date is today and the deadline will be on the 2nd of March at 23:59 (regardless of timezone). As with previous PDROMS competitions, there is a topic set and this time the subject is to "create any kind of childproof game" that uses a maximum of four colours on screen at any one time and the rules go on to stipulate that black, white and grey all count as colours! Changing colours between screens, however, and by "childproof", they apparently mean that games shouldn't feature adult humour, pornography, extreme violence or racism.

Prizes on offer include a brand new GBA Micro and a copy of Mindcandy 1 or 2 on DVD for the winner, the same choice of DVD and a cartridge of Superfighter Team's Beggar Prince for the Megadrive for second place and assorted DVD prizes for third to fifth place runners up. As a disclaimer, all potential entrants are advised not to take the OSG news posting on this competition as lore and should check out the news item on the site itself for the official rules and list of allowed platforms.

  Web link:         PDROMS

The Fall Guy of Manic Mailman Designs has recently released not one, not two but five C64 games; all of these titles are dated prior to 2008 but, as far as we're aware, never previously been released to the public. Block Soccer and Hellball are both one or two player sports games, one being football (with some very chunky movement) and the other a "future sport" where the player gets a grumpy face to bash the ball around with and a laser cannon at the base of the screen to fire at their opponent with. Continuing the sports theme is Downhill, a skiing game where the player must follow the course, hop over logs and get laughed at (literally) when they impale themselves on a tree.

Finally, there are two shoot 'em ups; Star Trek takes it's cues from (yes, you've guessed it) the television series of the same name and features captain Kirk and his crew aboard the starship Enterprise, photon torpedoes at the ready, wading through hostile space. Far more Earth-bound is Jihad, which is based on the Steve Lee C64 classic Falcon Patrol and, presumably, the recent Gulf war which puts the player in the cockpit of an F-16 and into the skies against enemy fighters. The disk image, containing all five games, can be downloaded here

  News source:    C64 Scene Portal

Two Atari 2600 games in three days! This time the game is the full 8K cartridge version of Simone Serra's Lead; the original 1K version was the winner of the 1K category of the 2007 Minigame competition. The aim of Lead remains the same, a horde of aliens make their way through the play area from top to bottom and the player's ship sits below then and must destroy everything in order to prevent being overrun. So it's another dose of simple, enjoyable alien arse-kicking, really!

  Web link:         Atari Age forum entry
  News source:    PDROMS

Developed by Steve "Kweepa" McCrea, Blue Star takes the player on a journey into a hostile base, searching for equipment and, ultimately, destroying the computer core at the heart of the structure. Blue Star appears to have a very large play area, moves very smoothly indeed, sounds reasonable (although the small musical loop might get annoying pretty quickly) and somehow it's all been wedged rather tightly into an unexpanded VIC 20. According to the thread on Denial, there may be a future revision that adds a joystick control cherry to an already appealing cake, but until then it can be grabbed from here.

Updated 20/01/2008 - a new version of Blue Star has just been released that that adds NTSC support, optional joystick control and, as if that wasn't enough, a cute likkle title logo to boot! The download link in this article has been updated to point to the revised release.

  Web link:         Kweepa's website
  News source:    Denial

In a world where enemies are grown... it's time for some serious deforestation! Omicron was inspired by a thread on the Atari Age forums where the discussion turned to the idea of "hostile playfields" where the background graphics are out to get the player. The result bears a little resemblance to games like Denton Designs' Mutants where the level "grows" around the player and blasting it away is the only way to survive.

  Web link:         Atari Age forum entry
  News source:    PDROMS

Xonox's tank battling classic Artillery Duel (which would lend some of it's genetic make-up to Team 17's Worms over ten years down the line) saw two sweaty players hunched over a hot 8-bit, taking turns to launch shells at each other and allow for environmental conditions. And now, courtesy of Leif "Schema" Bloomquist, C64 gamers with RR-Net, FB-net or ETH64 hardware can relive the whole hunching over a computer business, except that they no longer have to worry about how sweaty they get because the game can be played over a LAN or the internet so the other person doesn't even have to be on the same continent!

Yes, Artillery Duel Network is almost certainly the first ever C64 game with internet support (and it may possibly be the first for any 8-bit computer from the same era) but that sadly means it won't currently work under emulation, since none of the popular C64 emulators currently support the RR-Net hardware fully - that is bound to be rectified at some point and we look forward to seeing if an emulator and a C64 can connect in order to play together.

  Web link:         Artillery Duel Network website
  News source:    CSDb entry for Artillery Duel Network

Another year, another chance for Spectrum fans to write some absolutely dire games for the sheer hell of it or as an appalling pun, slap on a terrible converted loading picture for good measure and release it to rapturous applause, the adulation of their peers and abuse from the various judges. Well okay, the bit about applause and adulation might've been a bit of hyperbole on my part, but they will be abused if previous years are anything to go by. This year the baton for the Comp.Sys.Sinclair Crap Game Competition (for those of you wondering what CSSCGC was a contraction of) has been passed over to Digital Prawn, possibly because he did something very naughty at some point in his life and deserves to be punished for it.

The competition runs for the entire year and all of the information and rules that would-be crap game authors will need and the current list of entries can be found on the site, with further discussion taking place on the forum.

  Web link:         CSSCGC 2008 website
  News source:    World Of Spectrum

Ever fancied yourself as Rocky Balboa? Now is your chance, with Italian Stallion, the final release for the MSXdev competition, the idea is to punch and block your way through the the ranks of wannabe champs and take on the current holder of the belt in order to hold it aloft and yell for your beloved. And if all this testosterone-fueled action feels just a little familiar, that might well be because it's a conversion to the MSX of the arcade game Super Punch Out with everything including the see-through boxer present and correct!

  News source:    MSXdev '07 website

Night Driver... not a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man... who does not exist, instead this is a port of the seminal Atari 2600 driving game of the same name by MSX stalwarts Karoshi Corp. Since it was such a visually simplistic game to begin with, Karoshi's conversion, along with a traditional play mode, also offers an enhanced version of the game that throws a bit more colour and graphical detail around the screen as well.

  Web link:         Karoshi Corp website
  News source:    MSXdev '07 website

The MSX titles are coming thick and fast, and none faster than Lotus F3 since it's got erm... racing cars and stuff and they're fast. Okay, crap intro but what Daniel Vik and Vincent Van Dam are presenting is pretty impressive, it's a top down scrolling racer akin to Rally Speedway which manages to be very smooth moving and easy on the eye, looks nice and offers a reasonable selection of tracks and play modes to race the computer-controlled cars around. One nice touch is that highscores generate codes that can then be fed to the official website and entered into the online highscore table for each track!

  Web link:         Lotus F3 website
  News source:    MSXdev '07 website

Another completed game from the MSXdev competition. Computer EmuZone Game Studio have just finished beavering away on the conversion of their Spectrum game BeTiled to the MSX, so it's a no-nonsense puzzler based on the Bejeweled format; swap groups of objects around to make sets in order to remove them from the play field. As with the Spectrum version, BeTiled really looks the business and even offers different sets of tiles to play with. As always, it's available from the CEZ GS website or from MSXdev.

  Web link:         Computer EmuZone Games Studio website
  News source:    MSXdev '07 website

Hikaru Games have released a new action platformer called Caos Begins for the MSXdev. The player takes on the role of King Zineus, a great tactician who is in the middle of a war when his fellow commander Aleena is kidnapped; the task is to explore first your own castle (which is presently under attack by forces belonging to Ares, the villain of the piece) and then onwards to an inexplicably cute version of mythological Greece in order to find first Aleena and then recover Zeus. Like you do.

  News source:    MSXdev '07 website

There were not one but two game upgrades released for the Spectrum over the Chrimble period! First up is an extension to Rafal Miazga's Pamela The Zombie Hunter. The original release is from 2005 and we've already reviewed it here at Oldschool Gaming, but this Christmas present update tweaks everything a little and adds a final boss so we're probably going to have to revisit it at some point!

The second upgrade is to the Toposoft title Viaje la Centro de la Tierra; the original game was released in 1989 was well-received but only contained three levels whilst the 16-bit versions had five, this new release adds those extra levels to complete the experience. Pamela is already in the World Of Spectrum archive to download and play, Viaje la Centro de la Tierra can be grabbed here - the game, as with the website, is in Spanish (go for the first of the four blue links for the tape image) but since it's an action game that shouldn't be a problem.

  News source:    World Of Spectrum

It's not often we can say that a game is a load of bull without being just a teeny bit insulting... but for once we can because there are a load of bulls here, plural and Imanok's Txupinazo is what the MSXdev site describes as a "San Fermin simulator" because it's a game that simulates the running of the bulls in which the player has to keep ahead of a bovine wall whilst avoiding the slower, less fortunate and very likely about-to-be-splattered runners.

  Web link:         Imanok website
  News source:    MSXdev '07 website

Well kiddies, what a bagfull of goodies we've got for you this time! Atari 8-bit fans are well served with reviews of platformer Joe's Adventure and two ports, Jetboy (based on Jetpac) and Jet Set Willy 2007. Our new Amstrad CPC section has also gone online with this update and is christened with reviews of three action games; the conversion of Atari 2600 classic H.E.R.O., horizontal scrolling shooter Star Sabre and the port of zBlast from the Spectrum.

Action puzzler Zoo Mania and there's adventures to be had with The Castle Of Madness, both of which are representing for the C64 and, to finally go full circle back to our bag theme, there is the MSX platformer Bag Man, the ninth review in a bumper update. Oh, and lets not forget that, along with the Oldschool Gaming Review Of 2007, the Oldschool Gaming Forums officially go online today too, so now you can bug us about how slow we are.

Blimey! With all this new stuff on the site, anyone'd think it was Christmas or something?!

Yes indeed, time for some bunting and frolics (and the odd change that someone might get drunk enough to mispronounce those two) with the release of the fourth installment of downloadable CD magazine RGCD, containing lots and lots of 8-bit reviewing goodness, previews of what is to come, the continuation of the Llamasoft history that started in issue 3 and some wazzock ranting on about the Atari 2600...! Anyway, barring that it's available to download as an ISO right now so off you go to the RGCD website, you good little girls and boys!

  Web link:         RGCD website

In the fine tradition of releasing special, short versions of games for Christmas, Jonanthan Cauldwell and Eurogamer have just released Cracker and, despite the name, no it's not an in-depth simulation of Robbie Coltrane' psychologist and instead they've gone for a Christmas-themed outing for Egghead, where he has to resuce the various Eurogamer staffers who have been snowed in at work! Weighing in at ten screens (and therefore one fourteenth the size of the latest full Egghead), this isn't a huge game but should be good for a Christmas giggle or two. Have you seen what they have lined up for the telly this year, there's the Doctor Who special and not much else!!

  Web link:         Eurogamer talk to Jonathan Cauldwell
  News source:    World Of Spectrum

Charles "Iceout" Grey has released the complete version of his game Diagonal Ball, a sort of Breakout where, rather than using a bat, the player has a more direct control over the movement of the ball. The preview was released in September of this year, but the complete version includes an in-game pause mode, fifteen levels, selectable speed and, according to Grey himself, improved gameplay.

  Web link:         Iceout website
  News source:    CSDb entry for Diagonal Ball

This doesn't strictly come under the auspices of Oldschool Gaming because it isn't a completed game as such, but certainly worthy of comment; Skyway was, originally, being developed as a new Wally Week game by freelancer Chris Smith and then converted into a space-bound action game when Mikrogen folded and the Wally character rights were no longer available. In this spacey form it bears quite a resemblance to Raffaele Cecco's Exolon and was offered to Hewson who were interested, but would have required changes so that it looked different to their existing title.

There are two levels based on the Earth and then the moon, some very appealing graphics and a series of reaction-based sub-games in there and, although it's not clear from what Chris says on his website as to how complete a package it is, Skyway still warrants some attention.

  Web link:         Skyway page of Chris Smith's website
  News source:    World Of Spectrum

Lee Tonks has just released On Reflection, a labour of love that takes the form of a text adventure for the 128K Spectrum. Lee's site describes the game as a "mild sci-fi thing (with naught a goblin or a wizard in sight) pitched at the average/bi/curious adventure player who likes to enjoy his adventures rather than fight them. That means it understands a small(ish) vocabulary, has a map which makes sense, doesn't feature 'mazes', has very few 'death' situations, and is populated with logical puzzles which are perfectly possible to figure out with the information given". All in all, On Reflection sounds very well-rounded and all of that that attention to detail will hopefully make taking a more detailed look worthwhile.

  Web link:         On Reflection page of Lee Tonks' website
  News source:    World Of Spectrum

Midway's arcade classic from 1980 comes to the Spectrum, Weird Science Software have converted Wizard Of War and are claiming that they've retained the original gameplay and, considering their previous conversions we've no reason to doubt that claim; it certainly looks the part, being very close to the original game graphically. And as with previous Weird Science Software titles, there is a free download to be grabbed from their site and a full cassette-based release with colour inlay can be pre-ordered from them; so no chance of the order turning up for a Chrimble prezzie, but you can at least enjoy the game itself whilst waiting for the parcel to arrive!

  Web link:         Weird Science Software website
  News source:    Speccy Live (translated by Google)

A new release for the MSXdev '07 competition is Bag Man by Andrea Gasparrini, a platform-based romp for the MSX1 series of computers. Help the little convict... well, he might not be a convict but, since there isn't a storyline given on the site we're going to make our own plot up here at Oldschool Gaming and it's going to involve this convict breaking out of jail and digging up the proceeds of the heist he was sent to the Big House for. He doesn't have very long before the rozzers manage to follow his trail, so all of the bags of swag have to be hauled up from the depths and dumped into a wheelbarrow before the timer runs out. Well okay, that's a terrible plot but it does sum the gameplay up!

  News source:    MSXdev '07 website

Another day, another 128K Spectrum game! This time the developers are Octocom and Isotopia itself is a fairly complex-looking puzzler with an atomic theme. The official page for the game on Octocom's website is boasting of AY music, 90K of code and data and a hundred levels and, judging by the screenshots, it's pretty good looking too! The in-game text is Spanish as is the website, but a quick translation of the latter courtesy of Google explains how to play the game.

  Web link:         Official Isotopia website
  News source:    World Of Spectrum

Following on from his port and modification of Jetpac in September, Krzysztof "XXL" Dudek has just released Jet Set Willy 2007. As the name may suggest, this is a conversion of Matthew Smith's influential Spectrum platformer and Dudek has again taken the original code and translated it for the Atari and then combined with the Rob Hubbard soundtrack that was the only saving grace in the otherwise terrible official Atari 8-bit conversion done by Tynesoft. So the Atari now has a decent port of JSW.

Updated 05/12/2007 - there is a slight revision that adds far more colour during play, each room now has a different overall hue and there are spot colours to highlight collectable objects.

  Web link:         Atari Online (link to download)
  News source:    Atari Age

The prolific Jonathan Cauldwell has just released the fifth (count 'em!) in his ongoing Egghead saga, this time entitled Egghead Round the Med, released to coincide with the rotund one's eighteenth birthday (Egghead that is, not Cauldwell). Once again the ellipsoidal adventurer (do you know how difficult it is to think of new ways to describe an egg-shaped character?!) embarks on a platforming adventure, this time because his friends have got rat-arsed during a Mediterranean cruise and need to be found within the massive 140 screens and returned to the yacht. And since it's such a whopper, Egghead Round the Med needs a 128K Spectrum to run!

  Web link:         Jonathan Cauldwell's website
  News source:    World Of Spectrum

Originally dated 2004 but only just released, X-Melody is a "Name That Tune" style music game with a gameshow look to the graphics for TR-DOS-enabled Spectrums and emulators supporting TRD files. Whilst it looks and sounds very impressive, because the majority of in-game text is Russian and most of the tunes are localised as well, it's somewhat difficult to play!

  News source:    Speccy Live (translated by Google)

Goodness, the CPC really is doing well for new games right now! Yes indeed, here's another new title for everyone with a CPC to add to their collections; Magical Drop is a conversion of the Data East character-driven puzzler series of the same name, which means that CPC owners can enjoy having their screens filled with bubbles, reorganising them to make sets with matching colours or creating chains out of those sets to make them disappear faster whilst having the whole package bundled up neatly within some Anime cuteness. Sounds delightful, doesn't it!

  News source:    CPC Mania

Ever since the one level preview was released a little while ago, most of the Oldschool Gaming team has, along with a lot of the CPC community, been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Paul Kooistra's rather snazzy-looking Star Sabre. It's been lined up for tape release through Cronosoft, but the author has just made the full game available as a disk image as well so that everyone can download and play this piece of splendid-looking shooty action right now and we're gearing up to do some space-bound damage here at OSG Towers in the very near future. The news source link is directly into the forums at CPC Zone where the download can be found.

  News source:    CPC Zone forum

WorldBar was originally released for the Minigame competition, but an enhanced version featuring AI that adds a computer opponent to a title that was previously only for multiple players has just been completed and released by author Johan "Dr. Beep" Koelman. Based on the board game Cafe International, the players have to seat patrons of the titular cafe together by nationality whilst maintaining a balance of male and female customers... and yes, a dry description like that probably doesn't do it even the slightest justice, but essentially it's a puzzler for multiple players, human or rubber-keyed.

  Web link:         WOS Archive entry

We've previously posted news of the entries that took the honours for this years' ABBUC programming competition, but there are now downloads for everything released available courtesy of Atari Online; so you can all indulge in some platforming in the form of Game Harry, drive your friends to distraction playing the improved Gold Edition of Speed Up together or, courtesy of Eckn, a load of puzzle action can be had as well

Of particular note is the game that took the third place; surrounded by a pack of very respectable-looking action games was MULE Wars, an ambitious attempt to create a sequel for Danielle Berry's seminal multi-player commerce simulator MULE, with improved graphics and sound, up to seven players competing against each other and extra features that build on an already well thought of game. So this should be very interesting when the Oldschool Gaming team get hold of it!

  News source:    Atari Online

Nerlaska Studio, the winners of the 2006 MSX'dev competition with their RPG Monster Hunter, have returned to the grindstone for the 2007 installment with something very different; although the screenshots make it look like an action puzzler, Mr. Mole is in fact a Breakout-style game that replaces the bat with the aforementioned, titular mammal with a propensity towards tunneling. There's a link for download on the status page for the current competition.

  News source:    MSX'dev 2007 competition

Just a likkle update this month, we've only got the one review for you all, as Tanks 3000 on the C64 is driven out onto the wasteland behind Oldschool Gaming Towers and put through it's paces by our trained professionals. We won't say what our professionals are trained at though, because that would spoil the illusion somewhat.

Please note that there won't be an update to Oldschool Gaming at the start of December or January, instead the two are being wrapped up together to make the OSG Christmas Special, with the update appearing at some point during December 24th; there should be more reviews than usual and, time allowing, a few new additions to the site itself as well. Don't worry though, the OSG news will continue to update as and when we get information about new releases so keep popping by for news or following our RSS feed!

Good grief! How many games will we be seeing for 8-bits during the run up to the festive season? This latest addition to the rapidly growing list is for the Spectrum, Astro 2008 by Canadul is a space-bound bit of platforming and not a little puzzle action newly arrived from Spain. Yes, that does mean that all of the in-game messages are in Spanish, but lets face it we're all used to that from the various Dinamic titles of old so everybody knows that "juego" means start the game and "teclado" is keyboard control because it's usually next to the joystick option - so off you go, then!

  Web link:         WOS Archive entry
  News source:    Speccy Live (translated by Google)

More gaming goodness for the Atari 8-bit, it's done incredibly well for releases of late hasn't it! And this time the release is something that Atari fans have been getting excited about for quite a while, the release of Crownland, a platformer that has been around in demo form for quite a while and quite rightly generated a stir due to the very high standard of the visuals - this version wedges everything into a single 128K load and tunes the control system to make it, at least at first glance, feel pretty decent to play too.

At the time of writing, the game hasn't been addded to the LaResistance website but there is a direct download available from here so you can all get on with playing the thing.

  News source:    Atari Age

Released to ABBUC subscribers as part of their 2007 programming competition, Yoomp! is apparently also a firm favourite to take the gold. It's essentially a version of Shaun Southern's classic Trailblazer, except that rather than have the playfield as the ground the Atari boffins behind Yoomp! have wrapped it around the inside of a tube! The player controls a ball which bounces up and down (which are, of course, relative as it's rotated around the tube) and the objective is to stay on the plain checkerboard areas since the other squares have different effects and the holes... well, they're holes so you fall out!

  Web link:         Yoomp! website
  News source:    Atari Age

Less than a month on from the release of Phantomasa 2, Computer EmuZone Game Studio have just finished beavering away on another Spectrum release! This time it's BeTiled, a no-nonsense puzzler based on the Bejeweled format; swap groups of objects around to make sets in order to remove them from the play field. Where this looks to score well is the graphics though, it really looks the business and even offers different sets of tiles to play with. As always, it's available from the CEZ GS website (along with a storyline with an... erm, interesting English translation) and that has been linked to below.

  Web link:         Computer EmuZone Games Studio
  News source:    World Of Spectrum

Well, it's certainly something we never expected to be adding to the news at Oldschool Gaming but... this is a hentai game for the Spectrum! From the translation that Google provides of the Russian site Speccy Live (see the news source link below), this is based on the Princess Maker series of bishoujo games by Japanese developers Gainax; what that basically means is that the game is pretty much like a choose your own adventure book but with strong erotic overtones.

In fact, those unfamiliar with H games in general (even a casual acquaintance through sites like Something Awful) should probably be aware that the content is invariably at the darker end of the adult spectrum and gamers of a more sensitive disposition are probably best advised to steer clear of Slavemaker. For the braver (or possibly more foolhardy) gamers who are interested, have a look at Speccy Live's news and you should be able to find a download; it's in Russian and needs a TR-DOS equipped virtual Spectrum to play by the way.

  News source:    Speccy Live (translated by Google)

Developed and released in time for Halloween in the U.S.A. (which was a surprise in itself since I didn't realise there were different dates for it), Ghost by Jeff20 (of Denial website, forum and wiki fame) is the sequel to his Zombie Yard from 2006 and a simple arena-based action game; every night a horde of zombies that haunt the local graveyard rise from their graves and feed on the living. You're sworn to protecting your village and it's people and, to this end, must run around, avoiding the zombies and only attacking when they are at their most weakened... this being when they're using psychic attacks to feed on your life force.

For more information and a download of the game itself for the unexpanded VIC, have a look at the Denial forum and the "Games" area in particular.

  News source:    Denial

Well, the winter months are approaching and the early nights are drawing in... and people are starting to look to their computers for entertainment. And, after all the fun that can be had juggling their peripherals (as it were), they might even look at the new games released too! So we've got another four reviews added, so these theoretical people can make an even more informed decision as to which new titles they want to play!

So without further ado, Oldschool Gaming present their C64 reviews of both Kikstart C16 and Racked Off, as well as Existenz and zBlast SD+ added for the Spectrum!

Released yesterday for the Atari 8-bit series, XXL's Jetboy is an enhanced port of Ultimate's classic shoot 'em up Jetpac from the Spectrum based on the original code. The changes that were made during conversion include the introduction of various new graphical details, a very nice soundtrack by Miker with some nice in-game sound effects, and, more importantly, a couple of modifications to the Jetpac game mechanic, in particular the addition of laser power and air gauges. Would-be jet propelled heroes can grab it here and start assembling rockets.

  News source:    Atari Age

Aleksi Eeben's Redrunner is, like it's forerunner Greenrunner, an all-out arena shooter with more than a few overtones of Jeff Minter and Eugene Jarvis to the design; all in all, these influences are Good Things and certainly not something we'd ever complain about here at OSG. And, along with improvements to the game engine itself from the original, the in-game speech samples this time are courtesy of Antti Hukkanen, no less than the voice-over artist behind the trailer to the sci-fi parody Star Wreck! Well, we were quite impressed...

  Web link:         Aleksi Eeben's website

Yet another new Spectrum game has been released by the rather prolific Computer EmuZone Games Studio; Phantomasa 2 in the Land of the Grunge Wizards is the slightly verbosely-titled new installment in their Phantomasa series. Flick screen platform lovers will be well catered for since, although comes in two flavours for 48K and 128K Spectrums and these versions are different, they will both run on either machine with the 128K version merely losing the soundtrack when working on a 48K Spectrum!

  Web link:         Computer EmuZone Games Studio

It's time for a bumper Oldschool Gaming update for September! We've got no less than six reviews this time; Atari 8-bit owning Bomberman fans can get blown to smithereens with Dynablaster, Frogger '07 for the expanded VIC 20 offers any would-be aquatic creatures a chance to find out why frogs are terrible pedestrians and anyone who fancies stepping into the shoes of a courageous, Fedora-clad explorer with a fear of snakes can go tomb raiding [ahem...] with a C64 and Joe Gunn. Spectrum gamers can either be molested by the living dead in Pamela The Zombie Hunter or killer GM sausages courtesy of Big Baps and on the remakes front it's time to blast off for Jupiter and it's moon in Io - The Remake.

The site itself has also had a make-over on the features front; regular visitors will hopefully have noticed that we now have an "All" option in the formats menu which gives a complete list of everything reviewed on OSG, but we also have sorting options to view the review lists in the order they were added to the site (with the latest additions first) or alphabetically and everything is now divided into pages with ten items apiece to make them easier to read and, continuing the ease of use theme, OSG's news is now available via an RSS feed. To paraphrase London Tipton, "yay us!"

Finally, we were all surprised and saddened to hear of the death of our friend Robert Witvoet (Sir Kidd) on the 12th of August 2007. Robert was a long-time supporter of the site and a regular fixture of our IRC channel and we felt it only fitting that this update be dedicated to his memory. Rest in peace, Robert.

The third issue of the excellent CD-based retro magazine RGCD was officially released at the weekend during the Retro North event in Glossop and now that poor James has recovered from the weekend (and a good time seems to have been had by all!) it's possible to download the ISO from the official website to read it for yourselves! With over twenty five reviews of games for a myriad of formats (along with the files themselves and any emulators required included in the "full fat" version), several previews and the first part of a series called "Llamasoft: The Dromedary Years" to boot, it'll be well worth the download!

  Web link:         RGCD website

C64-owning fans of Shaun Southern's Kikstart series are probably aware that there were two versions of the game that the C64 didn't receive; Kikstart 128,which was converted to run in 2003, and Kikstart C16. And now a direct port of the Commodore 16 code that has then been modified to play on the machine's older brother.

Kikstart C16 was released today at Retro North (courtesy of the RGCD team). We'll be giving it the once over for review pretty soon of course, but in the meantime it can be downloaded from the Cosine website and RGCD's review will appear when issue three is released onto the web in the next couple of days.

  Web link:         Cosine Systems website
  News source:    RGCD website

Although the release of a Gameboy Advance title would't usually warrant a mention on Oldschool Gaming, this one is a little different since it's a remake of an 8-bit game and was produced by a couple of the OSG team; Reaxion GBA does exactly what it says on the tin, it's a conversion of the C64 game to the GBA. All of the programming was done by Christian and the graphics are by myself and it's still the same frustrating but fun game but has some cool new features like a level selection system that allows you to begin play at the last level reached and highscore saving to the cartridge.

The full release version (as opposed to the party release, which competed at Buenzli 16 over the weekend and got second place) will also be available soon as a free download and via the RGCD Shop as an actual cartridge too!

  Web link:         Cosine Systems website

Crumbs, yet another game released during the summer months, what is the world coming to? Anyway, Get It is a quite simple but nicely presented single-screen action game from Assassins and The Legion Of Doom. You have to guide your slightly bizarrely disembodied face around a nicely-drawn dungeon in order to collect the key to the exit whilst all the time avoiding the roaming skulls and other dungeon-based nasties such a