Vote for game of the month, April 2012

The vote is up for the game of April 2014! The topic of this month is "runners-up" - we have been running this gaming club for some time now, and every month one game gets picked and four others are just left behind never to be played again :) That seems like a waste of good games, and Trantor therefore suggested that we held a vote between the runners-up of the last couple of months. What these games have in common is that they all ended on a 2nd place in an earlier month's vote.

The games are
1) Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega Mega Drive / Genesis). Released in 1991 this is the first installment in the Sonic series where we meet the edgy hedgehog for the very first time. This game is a favourite of many Mega Drive owners. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_%281991_video_game%29

2) Marble Madness (NES). Created for the arcade in 1984 and released in a NES version in 1989, this game is the oldest one we are looking at this time. It remains a favourite among many of us "older" gamers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_Madness

3) Gunstar Heroes (Sega Mega Drive / Genesis). Released in 1993 this run and gun platformer looks like an excellent choice in this months vote. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunstar_Heroes

4) Super Turrican (SNES). Turrican is probably best known on the C64 and Amiga platforms, but Turrican games have been released on a plethora of platforms. The SNES version called Super Turrican was released in 1993. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turrican#Super_Turrican_and_Super_Turrican_2_.28Super_NES.29

5) The Adventures of Batman & Robin (Sega CD). In this 1994 Sega CD release, you get to drive the Batmobile and pilot the Batplane while hunting down the well known villains. This version contains many animated scenes that were created specifically for the game. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Batman_%26_Robin_%28video_game%29

If you want to vote on which game we should play - or even better, if you want to play along with us - go to http://www.retrogamesquad.com/community/, create an account, and cast your vote in the "RGS: Retro Gaming Club"-forum. You can also vote by leaving a comment to this post. 

Game of March 2014: Dune on the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis

The votes have been counted and it ended up being a tie between Dune II: Battle for Arrakis (Sega Mega Drive / Genesis) and The Adventures of Batman & Robin (Sega CD). In such cases the one who is championing the RGC for the month gets to decide, and Trantor selected Dune. 

I'll will be excited to see how an RTS game fares on a console, as I have only ever played such games on a computer with a mouse. If you are interested in joining in, please head over to the forums and join the conversation. We are a very welcoming bunch of people, so don't be shy ;-)

To whet you appetites, I have recorded a small video of the intro and the first Atreides mission on the DOS version (I don't own the Mega Drive version yet, but it is in the mail!).

Vote is up for March 2014

We have just begun voting for the game to play in March of 2014. The candidates are:

Looney Tunes Collector: Alert! (GameBoy Color) - WikiPedia
Elite (NES version) - WikiPedia
The Adventures of Batman & Robin (Sega CD version) - WikiPedia
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (PS1 version) - WikiPedia
Dune II: Battle for Arrakis (Sega Mega Drive / Genesis version) - WikiPedia

Which game would you like us to play? Want to join in on the fun? Head on over to the forums and vote for your favourite!

Welcome to the RGC

Welcome to the blog of the Retro Gaming Club, or the RGC as we like to call it! This is the first post in what will hopefully be a long list of blogposts about our club happenings.

The RGC is a collection of friendly gamers who hang out in the forums of the excellent Retro Game Squad podcast. There we each month decide on a game, that we will be playing together and discussing on the forum for the entire month. The friendly folks at Retro Game Squad play along and then dedicate a section of their podcast to discuss the "community pick of the month".

We try to constrict the games we play the following platforms: NES, SNES, N64, Sega Master System, Sega Mega Drive / Genesis, Sega Saturn, PSX, TG-16, Gameboy, and Gameboy Advance.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, head on over to the forums and join us!

PS: If you are confused about this being the "first" blog posts while there are posts below it on the page, that is because I am in the process of adding a single post for each game that we have already played in the RGC, so that you can see what we have been up to so far ;-)

Zombies Ate My Neighbors (SNES), Feb. 2014

This month we are playing the SNES game called "Zombies Ate My Neighbors". It was developed by LucasArts and published by Konami in 1993. It is a top-down run-and-gun game that has you saving your neighbours while escaping raving hordes of zombies, clones, martians, and whatever 1950s horror movie monster you could think of.

For more information about the game check out the WikiPedia page.

I haven't recorded any gameplay video myself so far, so instead I link to one I just found on YouTube (if this is your video and you don't want me to link to it, please just say so).

The Lost Vikings (SNES), Jan. 2014

Moving on to an entirely new console, the Super Nintendo (SNES), we will be playing the excellent puzzle-platformer The Lost Vikings in January. This game was developed by Silicon & Synapse who later turned into Blizzard Entertainment.

For more information about the game visit the WikiPedia page.

As per usual, I have recorded some glameplay using the original hardware. Note: I did have a serious sound problem while recording from my SNES, so turn the sound waaay down on this one :-)

I later made a recording of the DOS version instead (no sound problem there) to show off one or the more challenging puzzles.

Altered Beast (Sega Mega Drive / Genesis), Dec. 2013

Returning to the Sega Mega Drive in time for Christmas, we have decided to play Altered Beast in December. Altered Beast started off as an arcade game, but as so many other arcade classics from that time, it was soon ported to Sega's machines. While not quite as good as its arcade counterpart, the Mega Drive version is still a pretty good beat-em-up.

For more details on Altered Beast visit the WikiPedia page. Fun fact: the designer on Altered Beast, Makoto Uchida, also designed Golden Axe (in fact we spotted at least one enemy design that is used in both games).

Check out this small recording of Altered Beast played on a real Sega Mega Drive.

And if you are interested in comparing it to the arcade version, I have made this small video where both versions are played side-by-side.