You know the moment. A game is sitting at its title screen, nobody has touched the controller for a while, and somehow the music has become the main event. The next level can wait. This bit deserves another loop. We have given that habit a much bigger home. Retro Replay's Video Game Music Library is live, with 95,901 tracks across 60 systems at the time of this announcement. Pick a system, findā¦ Read more
When Ken Silverman was tuning Build, a failed experiment could disappear with the contents of a RAM drive. He would copy his working directory there before trying small optimizations. If the code crashed, he figured the changes probably were not worth keeping anyway. That is the sort of detail Silverman brings to this interview about the engine behind Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, and Shadow Warrior. We get into the maps that brokeā¦ Read more
Interview by David, Retro Replay. A little train following a track was enough to suggest a whole game. For Chris Sawyer, the pleasure of watching a system work came before the business figures surrounding it: the acceleration of a locomotive, the movement of a vehicle through an isometric landscape, or a park guest deciding which ride to try next. Those small interactions grew into worlds that players could build, manage, and happilyā¦ Read more
Interview by David, Retro Replay. A wheat field had to move inside a tiny tile. A Roman city had to feel alive without burying the player in detail. An aqueduct had to look convincing while being assembled from just a handful of graphics. For Chris Beatrice, the art of those early strategy games was inseparable from finding practical solutions that made a world readable, appealing, and enjoyable to inhabit. Beatrice joined Impressionsā¦ Read more
In the 1990s, Joe Rogan got so hooked on Quake that a computer upgrade wasnāt enough. He had a T1 line installed at home to improve his connection. Recalling it with Kevin Rose in April 2016, Rogan said it had been worth the expense. Rose remembered those lines costing around $10,000 a month. Thatās a lot of money to put between yourself and a bad ping. But if you played online backā¦ Read more
The harvester is miles from home. Your money is almost gone. Somewhere beyond the black edge of the map, an army is getting ready to ruin your evening. Then a voice announces āUnit ready,ā the music kicks in, and you decide you can probably afford one more tank. Command & Conquer understood that particular kind of optimism. It let you build a little military empire, made you feel clever for keeping itā¦ Read more
Some consoles leave behind a favorite game, a battered controller and an argument about which version was better. The Phantom and Indrema left behind something stranger: people who still remember waiting for them. You could picture the empty spot beneath the television. Perhaps you had already decided which games would go there. Indrema offered a silver machine that would welcome small developers into the console business. The Phantom offered a white boxā¦ Read more
Edia is bringing the CD-ROMĀ² versions of Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes I and II to modern systems worldwide in 2027. The Trails series did not spring into existence as a fully formed encyclopedia of nations, political factions and recurring heroes. Its roots stretch backward through The Legend of Heroes, and those roots stretch into Nihon Falcomās even older Dragon Slayer family. In 2027, players outside Japan will receive an unusuallyā¦ Read more
Flight simulator. CD-ROM spectacle. First-person shooter. Fighting game. Desktop adventure. In the 1990s, nobody seemed entirely sure what a Star Wars game was supposed to be. That was half the fun. There was a wonderful period when asking āWhat kind of game is Star Wars?ā did not produce a sensible answer. It produced another question. Which year? In 1993, Star Wars became a demanding space-combat simulator that expected players to manage shields,ā¦ Read more
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