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Sighting the sudden news that Hideo Kojma was possible fired from Konami or more to the fact that his term there has expired without renewal, another bombshell has been dropped on the video gaming circuit. The latest been voice actor of the Japanese voice actor for snake has tweeted tha Kojma productions is no more, which I find incrediblely sad, their Fox engine is spectacular and was looking forward to what was going to be coming next, as I believed that Kojima productions would go out on their own.

But this is not the case. Read all about it here

Could today get any worse with the president of Nintendo passing away also? Very sad day for the video game culture.

very sad news today to hear that President Satoru Iwata of Nintendo has passed away on the 11th July from Bile Duck growth,

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2015/150713e.pdf
One of Nintendos higher ups goes under

After graduating from university, Iwata joined HAL Laboratory in a full-time capacity. He became the company's coordinator of software production in 1983. Some of the video games he worked on were Balloon Fight, EarthBound, and the Kirby games.[4][5] Iwata was eventually promoted to president of HAL in 1993. Iwata assisted in the founding of Creatures Inc., which was established in 1995 by Tsunekazu Ishihara. Although not part of Nintendo at the time, Iwata assisted in the development of Pokémon Gold and Silver, which were released for the Game Boy Color in November 1999. Simultaneously, he aided in the programming of Pokémon Stadium for the Nintendo 64 by reading the original coding in Pokémon Red and Green and reworking it for the new game. Iwata also created a set of compression tools utilized in Gold and Silver

R.I.P. Iwata, you changed the world, now your apart of its universe.

Xenia is an experimental emulator for the Xbox 360.

Pull requests are welcome but the code is in a very high churn state and may not be accepted, so ask in IRC before taking on anything big. Contributions are awesome but the focus of the developers is on writing new code, not teaching programming or answering questions. If you'd like to casually help out it may be better to wait a bit until things calm down and more of the code is documented.

The goal of this project is to experiment, research, and educate on the topic of emulation of modern devices and operating systems. It is not for enabling illegal activity. All information is obtained via reverse engineering of legally purchased devices and games and information made public on the internet (you'd be surprised what's indexed on Google...).

https://github.com/benvanik/xenia

Simply a stunning achievement what they've done so far, check out the videos, you could be natively playing the 360 n your PC within a year or two.

Just wanted to wish every a Happy Easter today, I'm sure if it is Easter in many countries around the world but it is here and to celebrate , I created this little retro Gaming Basket of fun for you.

Which one's your favorite egg?

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[Derek Slaton]

I'm delighted to announce that I have been commissioned to produce massive 400+ page book based on the Atari VCS games library which comes and I mean completely packed with VCS artifacts and cover over 105 games in its first volume, this is be the definitive guide go to for your Atari VCS fix. Includes lots of information about the games, the rarity of them etc. plus lots more. Thanks to RVG!!!!

Everything has been remastered to the highest standard, including box art, cartridge images, manuals, so they will look superb in the book and better than anything on the internet. The book is been written by author Derek Slaton whom also wrote the Encyclopedia for the Sega Master system and is also a member here on RVG

[align=center:3upyf6jh]The Book Cover[/align:3upyf6jh]
[align=center:3upyf6jh][/align:3upyf6jh]

[align=center:3upyf6jh]Preview of some of the content[/align:3upyf6jh]
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More coming soon <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smiley.gif" alt="" title="Smiley" />

Fell off my chair when I seen this pop up this evening, upon peering over the top of my desktop, watch this unravel and thought WoW! What show stopper and so unexpected for such a film to appear out of the blue considering they have only just released Bedroom to billions

 [align=center:3k5f498i]www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu_wD_0xzvA[/align:3k5f498i]

[desktop wallpapers]

Howdy everyone, as you all know I'm not one for taking a break from things and fit in when I can some goodies for everyone to enjoy and this one is no exception, so I was designing a few new techniques on imagery and thought to myself, this would be brilliant effect on a retro related items, and at the time I was doing some Commodore Amiga style work for my book project Video Game Artistry Compendium and decided to share these with the world as a desktop wallpapers, now these are abstract and wonderful all at the same time, so I hope you like them, now they are Commodore Amiga heavy, so if you don't like the Amiga, this is officiously something wrong with you??...ermm no, these may not be for you, but wait? I'll will be doing other systems and consoles and since these went down a storm, I'm adding them here for you Amiga petrol heads

I will return with more real soon, so enjoy these fella

[Hukka]

Is there anything the Amiga home computer can't do? An indie game developer by the name of Hukka has taken on the task of porting one of his favourite NES games, yes an Nintendo Entertainment System to the Amiga platform, Solmon's Key 2 ever only appeared on NES and by shear determination Hukka would not let that stop him from doing this for the Amiga.
[align=center:2r6fv4p1][/align:2r6fv4p1]
[align=center:2r6fv4p1]Actual Amiga screenshots[/align:2r6fv4p1]

Hukka has freely distributed this port for everyone who like himself loved this game and what a cracking game it is too!, at present he hasn't any further intentions to do anymore NES ports, but who knows, I think it is amazing that people like this are able to achieve near 100% perfect conversions like this and begs the thought, where were guys like this back in the day when the likes of ocean struggled at times to bring conversions to the Amiga platform this close?
[align=center:2r6fv4p1][/align:2r6fv4p1]
Missing from this Amiga conversion

'Castle' levels and other levels with lava floor/scrolling/moving enemies have been replaced with custom levels.
Final boss battle.
Some animations and sound effects from the original.

But a very small price to pay if you ask me for such a close conversion. available in both ADF format and LHA archive format for playing on a real Amiga

[[size=180]GRAB IT HERE!! AND SHARE AND ENJOY!![/size]]

Hello Everybody!!!!.

On behalf of the Moderators Team, Administrators, Reviewers Team here at Retro Video Gamer want to wish all our dedicated members and everybody that has visited us in the last year a fantastic Christmas and a wonderful Happy New Year.

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There has been a lot of changes since this time last year, with members who have left and members who have been growing steadily more active and have become a great part of RVG and we are quite sure that this is set to continue within 2015. We have lots of things planned and in the pipeline for 2015 and hope you'll join us during this time as part of the Retro Video Gamer family.
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As now looks like to becoming a tradition here at RVG as the resident Graphic Designer, I task myself with the job to creating a little pressie for all our dedicated members here at RVG every Christmas with a little show of appreciation for their support and dedication to the Forum and RVG as a whole. So for the fist time I will presenting the Present for everyone this year, as we normally only present these gifts in our Download Section (Members with 50 posts or more) only have access. But what the hell it's Christmas!!! and this year I've created a wonderful 2015 Calendar filled with plenty of Retro Goodness, covering the Arcades, all the famous Consoles and computers for your enjoy to hang on your wall and also speaks words of wisdom to you as well.

[align=center:3frmtgru][/align:3frmtgru]

The Calendar comes as a full A4 size with bleeds and is as simple as logging on to your favorite Digital printers site and uploading the PDF document to get made or better still if you can, print it out yourself on some of that unused Photographic Print paper you have that never gets used, now your chance too!. So on behalf of RVG , I hope you enjoy the Calendar and that 2015 will be a great year for all things Retro, Making new Friends and continuing on existing ones . Have a good one Guys'n'Gals.

[align=center:3frmtgru][size=180]GRAB IT HERE!! AND SHARE AND ENJOY!![/size][/align:3frmtgru]

[Gremlin Graphics]

2015 must be the years of retro and video game related books and documentaries and it seem there is another lurking in the shadows waiting to be unleashed on the retro reading public, this time anothe amazing company to be covered Gremlin Graphics a great British Games developer behind such titles as "Super Cars", "Lotus Series", "Switchblade" and many more great games from the Zx Spectrum to the Commodore Amiga and then some.

So if you remember these classics to which Ben Dalish and Matt Furniess wrote the music for some of the best Gremlin Graphic titles.

[align=center:nb264e1r][/align:nb264e1r]
[align=center:nb264e1r][size=140]Read all about it here![/size][/align:nb264e1r]

[Atari ST , Amiga, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Sega Mega Drive, Super Nintendo]

Hello Everybody,

As some of you are aware that I'm producing a new book to be launched via a Kickstarter campaign late next year in 2015 called the "Video Game Artistry Compendium" and wanted to involve the community to contribute to the book, but without giving too much away at the moment, I'm offering members here FIRST!,  the opportunity to members to contribute and will be listed as an important contributor to the book with possible bonuses if all goes to plan. This book will be part of the RVG Retro Community Support brand on the back of the book.

At the presence I am hard at work producing the the pages and layout along with doing paintings of the games which takes a huge amount of time to produce and this is simply the last piece in the jigsaw puzzle so to speak.

The book will consist of 7 video game platforms ranging from the Atari ST , Amiga, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Sega Mega Drive, Super Nintendo and finally Coin-op Arcade, each game represented in the book will have their own 2 page spread before the painting and I'm looking for people to do a very small write up on the chosen game to the amount of about 100-200 words, it can be a min-review or your memoirs of the game. If you feel this is something you'd love to be apart off, then please contact me regarding it via Private message here at the forum and we'll take it from there . You can let me know what format your expertise is in and I will then be able to list the games within that chapter of the book.

I can tell you, that this is a first in the direction I wish to go in producing something very unique for the retro gaming communities and will have something for everyone, rather than simply sticking to single formats, this book will celebrate a lot of iconic moments that will instill nostalgia to the reader while presenting exclusive works of art at the same time.

So I hope I will have some of you join me on this journey and that you'll know your are apart of something special.

Thanks for reading

All the best

Darren.

[align=center:2awaj9jl][/align:2awaj9jl]You know here at RVG , we try to get the inside scoop on things, especially when they are free and it don't come any better than this

If it bleeds?, we can kill it!

48 hours People...move it!, Move it!...Hudson!?...get over here!!!

[align=center:2x7qjc1j][/align:2x7qjc1j]
Shortly after releasing a Game Boy flash cartridge Everdrive GB, Krikzz has gone and announced another SD card enabled device for a different Nintendo handheld and looks like we are getting the GBA Version form the image above. Although it is in the early stages, retro gamers can look forward to a Game Boy Advance Everdrive arriving in the near future.

SO start saving up for this bad boy, I personally loved the GBA held hand and had some amazing games on it, so in the mean time, what don't you all list of your top ten favorite GBA games in preparation for it's release .

News source thanks to Retro Collect

Jesus Christ!!! This looks so fu*king good, I near Shat myself with excitement, please bring this to consoles and PC please..please...

[align=center:250kw9ey]www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZgvcAzCesg[/align:250kw9ey]

Info on this epic game
[align=center:250kw9ey]http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/8/6947239/star-wars-arcade-machine-star-wars-battle-pod[/align:250kw9ey]

And here

[align=center:250kw9ey]http://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars-battle-pod-blasts-into-arcades[/align:250kw9ey]

[align=center:z536dl8e][/align:z536dl8e]

The man responsible for one of gaming's early hits has passed away.

Douglas E. Smith has departed, according to developer Tozai Games. Smith made a name for himself when he created the action title Lode Runner for the Apple II computer in 1983. The game had players controlling a stick figure that had to avoid enemies while collecting gold throughout various levels, and many players immediately fell in love with the title. Since its original debut, publishers Brøderbund Software and Ariolasoft have ported Lode Runner to dozens of different platforms including, most recently, Xbox Live Arcade and Windows Phone.

Tozai Games, which has worked with Smith over the years and produced the Xbox Live Arcade version of Lode Runner, posted the following message to its website:

It is with great sadness that we learned today of the passing of our friend and colleague, Douglas Smith, the creator of the iconic game, Lode Runner. Our hearts and prayers are with Doug's family during this difficult time. In Doug's honor, we call on the legions of Lode Runner fans everywhere to take a private moment to reflect on your own personal memories of Lode Runner. What a contribution Doug made to the video game industry.


Smith started his career as an architect before he began prototyping a game called Kong, which would eventually turn into Lode Runner. Throughout 1982, he worked on building the action game for Apple II before submitting it to publishers Sierra On-Line, Sirius Software, Synergistic Software, and Brøderbund. All four companies were so impressed with what he made that each of them offered him a deal.

[align=center:z536dl8e]www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWwyhymcDxI[/align:z536dl8e]

Source : VB BEAT

I myself have very fond memories of this game and even purchase the Lode Runner port on the android store, which I encourage you all to get, my memories of it were on the Atari 8-Bit version and it was so clever and brilliantly thought out.

R.I.P. Douglas, say hello to Bill Williams and Danielle Bunten Berry for us all up there

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This week Paul Davies and Dean Swain take a walk through the most controversial retro video games ever made. From the beginnings with Death Race through Friday 13th and Sam Fox Strip Poker all the way up to Thrill Kill we delve into the games whose content caused hysteria in thepublic consciousness.

In the middle section Paul Monaghan talks through his love for Dungeon Master and the memories the famous maze crawler offers.

In the final segment the Retro Hunter dusts off his fedora and takes us through his latest retro gaming pick-ups.

Be sure to check out their Official Retro Asylum YouTube Channel

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfCC9rIvCKoW3mdbuCsB7Ag

http://retroasylum.com/episode-94-video-game-nasties/

Instant listen:
http://retroasylum.podomatic.com/enclosure/2014-08-07T13_43_18-07_00.mp3

[[size=140]Video Game Artistry[/size]]

I'm very pleased to announce
[align=center:3oie89zv][size=140]Video Game Artistry[/size][/align:3oie89zv]
[align=center:3oie89zv]A collection of digital Paintings from iconic moments in video games[/align:3oie89zv]
[align=center:3oie89zv][/align:3oie89zv]

Thanks allot for all the top ten's guys ( see here http://www.retrovideogamer.co.uk/http://www.retrovideogamer.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4), I've been keeping it a secret to why I asked for your top tens and I'm going to go out on a limb here and exclusively announce my next big project in which I will be looking into a crowd fund raiser to help me produce this product and if successful with the help of everybody in the community this could be in your hand early next year.



The book I'm hoping to be hardback with consist of 200 pages of classic video gaming moments digitally re-painted by myself from actual video game screenshots and presented in a stylish hardback form or softback, the book with contain paintings from the Atari ST, Amiga, Arcade, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, PC Engine, Megadrive and Super Nintendo all in one book, this is of course a very ambitious project and and a big achievement by one person if successful, I can't show you any images from the book yet, but if you go here, you'll see that I created some already and really think they are a thing of beauty and why wouldn't they be?, they are classic video games

Greyfox™

[Presents]

[align=center:2gpm42d9][/align:2gpm42d9]
[align=center:2gpm42d9][size=380][font=times new roman:2gpm42d9]Presents[/font:2gpm42d9][/size][/align:2gpm42d9]
[align=center:2gpm42d9][size=300][font=times new roman:2gpm42d9]in association with English Amiga Boards[/font:2gpm42d9][/size][/align:2gpm42d9]


[align=center:2gpm42d9][/align:2gpm42d9]

A great ex-fairlight coder Galahad who resides over at English Amiga Board, set out many moons ago to port over the classic Atari ST isometric game "Where Time Stood Still" from Ocean Software which was due for an Amiga release but was either never completed or was simply canned back in 1988 is a mystery and most of the time Amiga ports were more or less simply ported from the Atari ST so very strange it didn't get released, until now

credits:
Coding : Galahad
Game Intro: Greyfox (RVG)
Music: ADR Design / Leatherld
Beta Tester : Codetapper

Enjoy.

[align=center:2gpm42d9]www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYdJr6LbC1E[/align:2gpm42d9]

Amiga configuration screen
--------------------------

When the WTSS Title screen appears (where it comes up with a language choice), you can press F8 at any time to bring up the Amiga configuration screen.

F3 - Screen Redraw type

Type 1 = CPU redraw
Type 2 = Blitter redraw

This basically selects between pure CPU redraw conversion of the ST to Amiga screen or the use of blitter. Anything 020+ should use type 1, anything less should use type 2

F4 - Music

Self explanatory. Unlike the other options, changing the music can only be done when this Amiga Configuration screen is onscreen, because of the loading and depacking to memory, the other options are instant and can be accessed without the Amiga Configuration screen being visible.

F5 - Spectrum Mode

Its called me being a twat! The Spectrum version didn't look quite that bad, but its not far off it

F6 - Speed Throttle

Basically press to select whatever works best for you. The faster the processor you have, the higher Speed throttle rating you should be using to scale the speed down, otherwise health and strength meters will dwindle very quickly!

M - Toggle music on or off

Space Bar - Toggle Character/object menu

F1 on title screen - Toggles German or English text. Default is English.

[align=center:2gpm42d9][size=380][font=times new roman:2gpm42d9]DOWNLOAD IT HERE![/font:2gpm42d9][/size][/align:2gpm42d9]

[Arcade designs reveal Gauntlet's secret life]

[align=center:3412jt2n][size=180]Arcade designs reveal Gauntlet's secret life[/size][/align:3412jt2n]

[align=center:3412jt2n][/align:3412jt2n]
A new museum exhibit featuring a trove of design documents is set to reveal insights into breakout arcade hits of the mid-1980s like Gauntlet, and the intense challenges faced by Atari and other big games outfits of that time.

Atari By Design opens at the National Museum of Play in Rochester, N.Y. on June 22. It will display a selection of 250 concept drawings and industrial design documents for Atari arcade games produced between 1974 and 1989.

The drawings offer a glimpse of the challenges facing arcade game makers and cabinet designers through this period. Few are as illuminating as the story of Gauntlet, a four-player role-playing, top-down dungeon-crawl, and an early attempt to create a multi-player cooperative game in arcades.
[align=center:3412jt2n][/align:3412jt2n]
Jeremy Saucier, assistant director of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games, which is producing the exhibit, told Polygon that Gauntlet faced serious design and conceptual problems. He said, "Gauntlet came into an industry that was dominated by player-versus machine experiences like Space Invaders. There was some two-player but the standard was one person playing for 25 cents per game."

Leading arcade companies like Atari were investing in more sophisticated and expensive machines, but research convinced them that consumers would not pay more than a quarter to play. The solution was to create games in which more players played and paid together.

"Gauntlet was the answer," said Saucier. "You had four people playing at once, which was a dollar for a couple of minutes instead of 25 cents."
[align=center:3412jt2n][/align:3412jt2n]

Gauntlet came with significant challenges. When Ed Logg, who had previously created Centipede and Asteroids, presented the game to Atari, the reception was muted. "The marketing department said that would never work," explained Saucier. "They questioned whether you would get four people, who did not know each other, to play together. But when Atari put this game out to test, it performed very well. It proved that people who did not know each other would play together."

Gary Whitta, a writer for The Walking Dead game and former editor-in-chief of PC Gamer, recalls Gauntlet as one of the best games of his youth.

He said, "My first encounter with Gauntlet is one of my most vivid and favorite memories from playing games as a kid. The machine catches your eye immediately because it's so big. I'd only seen standard machines and so I was, 'what the hell is that and why does it have four joysticks on it?'

"People didn't know what to make of it. When me and a group of other lads started playing it, the instinct was to start attacking each other. We couldn't understand why we weren't killing each other. But once we got the hang of it we clicked and the genius of the game became apparent. The idea of co-operative play was new then. You can trace a lot of the big swing we are seeing now towards co-operative play, back to Gauntlet."
[align=center:3412jt2n][/align:3412jt2n]
A new museum exhibit featuring a trove of design documents is set to reveal insights into breakout arcade hits of the mid-1980s like Gauntlet, and the intense challenges faced by Atari and other big games outfits of that time.

Atari By Design opens at the National Museum of Play in Rochester, N.Y. on June 22. It will display a selection of 250 concept drawings and industrial design documents for Atari arcade games produced between 1974 and 1989.

The drawings offer a glimpse of the challenges facing arcade game makers and cabinet designers through this period. Few are as illuminating as the story of Gauntlet, a four-player role-playing, top-down dungeon-crawl, and an early attempt to create a multi-player cooperative game in arcades.



Jeremy Saucier, assistant director of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games, which is producing the exhibit, told Polygon that Gauntlet faced serious design and conceptual problems. He said, "Gauntlet came into an industry that was dominated by player-versus machine experiences like Space Invaders. There was some two-player but the standard was one person playing for 25 cents per game."

Leading arcade companies like Atari were investing in more sophisticated and expensive machines, but research convinced them that consumers would not pay more than a quarter to play. The solution was to create games in which more players played and paid together.

"Gauntlet was the answer," said Saucier. "You had four people playing at once, which was a dollar for a couple of minutes instead of 25 cents."



Gauntlet came with significant challenges. When Ed Logg, who had previously created Centipede and Asteroids, presented the game to Atari, the reception was muted. "The marketing department said that would never work," explained Saucier. "They questioned whether you would get four people, who did not know each other, to play together. But when Atari put this game out to test, it performed very well. It proved that people who did not know each other would play together."

Gary Whitta, a writer for The Walking Dead game and former editor-in-chief of PC Gamer, recalls Gauntlet as one of the best games of his youth.

He said, "My first encounter with Gauntlet is one of my most vivid and favorite memories from playing games as a kid. The machine catches your eye immediately because it's so big. I'd only seen standard machines and so I was, 'what the hell is that and why does it have four joysticks on it?'

"People didn't know what to make of it. When me and a group of other lads started playing it, the instinct was to start attacking each other. We couldn't understand why we weren't killing each other. But once we got the hang of it we clicked and the genius of the game became apparent. The idea of co-operative play was new then. You can trace a lot of the big swing we are seeing now towards co-operative play, back to Gauntlet."



Following an examination of the papers, Saucier said it's clear that the game's four-player mode posed problems for the cabinet-designers.

"When you look at some of the documents, you'll see problems like how you get four people together at a machine and actually be able to see everything. Problems like shades and glare, angles of view. You are dealing with design issues where if you fix one thing it creates another problem. This collection illustrates how much went into these designs and how creative this process really was at that time."

NO-ONE HAD ATTEMPTED TO GET FOUR PEOPLE AROUND ONE CABINET

Mike Mika is head of development at game developer Other Ocean, and an avid collector of games arcades. He said, "The control panel was unlike anything else. No-one had attempted to get four people around one cabinet. They had other challenges, like just keeping it at a size that could get through a standard doorway, and allow everyone to play comfortably.

"Two people were actually at the side of the cabinet, and that gave the machine space, so it stood on its own away from the other machines in arcades. That was genius."

Saucier said that the documents had been bought from a collector, who had owned the papers for many years and kept them in good condition. He explained, "The collector had basically saved these things from being thrown away. He rescued them from being destroyed. You don't get to see a lot of these things."

Article written by Colin Campbell on Jun 06, 2013

Hope you all enjoyed that

"The arcade industry is dead in the United States—everyone knows it—done in by a combination of rapidly advancing home consoles and rapidly expanding suburbanization in the late '80s and early '90s. The only people not in on this bit of conventional wisdom are the ones who happen to be opening a surprising number of successful new arcades around the country in the U.S.A."

[align=center:2y4yt7yv][/align:2y4yt7yv]

Read the full article Here., this trend seems to be taking hold in the UK with the fabulous new arcade on the horizon "Timewarp Arcade" which I had the exquisite pleasure of designing their Logo