I love Starflight. I have done ever since I was a kid — and having returned to it recently, I think I love it even more than I ever did before. And the reason for this is despite its relatively primitive technology, I am yet to play another game that quite captures the feeling of captaining a starship — not a starfighter — and exploring the great unknown in the same way. Oh sure, there have been other great space games in both the retro and modern scenes. Star Control II is rightly held up as a classic in the retro sphere, for example, and despite a dodgy start No Man’s Sky is still wowing peo ..read more

The shareware scene on MS-DOS PC in the ’90s was a vibrant and interesting place, filled with highly creative games that got the humble old beige box doing things that people never thought it was very good at — like running console-style platformers and shoot ’em ups. Games like Secret Agent. Playing a leading role in that push for console-style gaming on PC was Apogee, a developer-publisher who helped bring the world what would end up being some of the biggest names in retro PC gaming: Duke Nukem, Commander Keen and, of course, Wolfenstein 3D. Precision platformer Secret Agent came out the s ..read more

Dizzy the Adventurer, an NES remake of Dizzy’s sixth adventure Prince of the Yolkfolk, is a great way to get into Dizzy games. And, conveniently, you can nab it as part of the excellent Oliver Twins Collection cartridge for Evercade, among other sources. The Dizzy games from The Oliver Twins and CodeMasters are indisputable classics of the 8-bit era — particularly in Europe, where they formed a defining part of the home computer gaming scene on budget-friendly platforms such as the ZX Spectrum. But while Dizzy and friends had numerous outings on the 8-bit NES via a combination of CodeMasters a ..read more

I’m willing to bet that out of those of you who played Jill of the Jungle back in the day, most of you probably didn’t play its two follow-ups Jill Goes Underground and Jill Saves the Prince. The reason for this is simple: Jill of the Jungle was free, while Jill Goes underground and Jill Saves the Prince both cost money. And no-one likes spending money — particularly in an era before online shopping was widespread, and thus ordering things through the mail involved phoning people up or, perish the thought, sending a letter to them. I bet at least some of you were curious about what exactly was ..read more

These days, we’re pretty familiar with the idea of free software of various forms: freeware, open-source projects, free mobile apps (although nine times out of ten these days, those aren’t actually free) and all manner of other things. Back in the 8- and 16-bit home computer era, public domain software was the main means through which free software was distributed — and it’s from the world of public domain that today’s strictly unofficial, unlicensed version of Q*Bert hails. The game itself is fairly self-explanatory, so I’ll leave the video to speak for itself; however, it is worth talking a ..read more

There’s a dearth of good Intellivision writing on the Internet — so we’re doing our bit to put that right by working our way through the library of fascinating games for this unusual system! In total, the Intellivision system played host to three games that were originally intended to be licensed adaptations of the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop ruleset. Two of them, Cloudy Mountain and Treasures of Tarmin, were initially released under this branding — and subsequently again without it — but the third, Tower of Doom, ended up releasing too late to be part of the agreement. And thus it simply ..read more

We all love a list, so every Tuesday we’re posting one, on a variety of retro-themed topics! Feel free to share your own favourites down below — and let us know what other lists you’d like to see on future Tuesdays! Thanks to emulation, these days it’s easier than ever to play retro games with the controller of your choice. Even today’s retro gaming systems such as the Evercade support a wide variety of different controllers rather than restricting you to proprietary joypads. It’s a nice return to a situation that home computer fans were well familiar with back in the day: rather than there b ..read more

Ah, love, innit grand? You get to argue about whose turn it is to empty the dishwasher (inevitably mine), whose turn it is to go food shopping (also inevitably mine) and who it was that forgot to put the takeaway leftovers in the fridge before going to bed (definitely her). And along with all these fun daily challenges, you also have a live-in co-op partner who is almost certainly eager to while away an hour or two with you battling through some of the most challenging games out there. With that in mind, some of you are doubtless wondering the best co-op games to play with your partner this Va ..read more

Given Screamer’s 1995 release date, comparison’s to Namco’s Ridge Racer — which came out two years earlier — were inevitable. And I doubt developer Graffiti (today known as Milestone) were complaining, either; their game being regarded as the closest thing it was possible to get to Namco’s PlayStation (and arcade) exclusive on an MS-DOS PC was a sure sign that they had done something right. And yet, you shouldn’t simply write Screamer off as an attempt to make “Ridge Racer for PC”. Because while there is definitely more than a hint of that about its design, it boasts its own unique characteris ..read more

There’s a dearth of good Intellivision writing on the Internet — so we’re doing our bit to put that right by working our way through the library of fascinating games for this unusual system! Cloudy Mountain — known variously as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Cartridge (yes, the word “cartridge” was actually part of its title at one point), Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain, Adventure and simply Cloudy Mountain — is an excellent and somewhat noteworthy entry in the Intellivision’s library of games. Not only was it one of the earliest officially licensed Dungeons & Dragons g ..read more