Now that my keyboard is smoking slightly less profusely, it’s time for a quick recap of stuff I missed out on posting about during the fine, if short, month of February. There was a whole lot of cool stuff to mention and these are some of the juicier items – thanks as usual to the IndieGames blog and TIGSource. My recommended picks:

• Mystic Mine [link, pictured left] by Koonsolo is a frantic and really rather jolly shareware collect ‘em up where up to six players can fight over a single keyboard.
• Crazy Japanese idea ahoy! The name says it all, really: Pac-Man Physics [link], by imwill. Utterly nutterly, I tell thee…
• One to look forward to: it was announced that Jonathan Blow‘s Braid [link] will be available through Steam for a paltry £9.99 from March the 31st.
• Get those brain cells moving with City Rain [link, pictured middle], another shareware title. Think SimCity mixed with Wetrix and you’ll be on the right track.
• To test your keyboard-wielding powers and have some fun at the same time, try Typomagia! [link], a smartly-done freeware type ‘em up from Sol Games.
• Rock Boshers [link, pictured right] by Dugan is an awesome Spectrum-like steampunk demake of Red Faction. Comes complete with scones and zombies!

It doesn’t take much to convince me that mixing things together is good. After all, I know this from experience: mixing toast and marmite together, for example, gives possibly the tastiest snack in the entire history of the world. Ever. Delicious foodstuffs weren’t on Markus Persson‘s mind, however. Instead, he thought what a tremendous laugh it’d be to do a “mashup” of two classic 8-bit games, Bomberman and Gauntlet. The result? A brilliantly outlandish creation called Blast Passage which desperately needs the obvious tagline “Bomberman needs food badly!”

The mix goes like this: basically, the gameplay is identical to Gauntlet; run around a selection of levels collecting keys and dodging monsters as you make your way to the exit. Collect treasure to boost your score, food to increase your energy and see if you can get in the hall of fame at the end of it all. Here, replacing the Wizard, Elf, Warrior and Valkyrie are… Bombermen. Don’t ask why, but somehow it just works – dashing around dropping bombs to kill the generators off seems perfectly natural after a minute or so.

Everything in the game was created from scratch and is authentic to certain 8-bit limitations, such as using a Sega Megadrive colour palette and a sound system similar to the SID chip from the Commodore 64. It’s undeniably retro, and what’s more, you can play it online in your browser without having to download a single thing! Well, as long as you have Java installed on your computer, I guess. If you don’t – you’re missing out on all the fun!

Interestingly there’s also a 4-way online multiplayer facility included, but for whatever reason it didn’t work when I tried it just now. Shame, really; I can imagine that’d be quite fun. Still, the single player is more than enough to keep you amused for a long time. Another strong contender for some RRC prizes!

Links: Markus Persson’s homepage :: Blast Passage homepage
Download: from its homepage :: from the Retro Remakes competition listing

EDIT: No, I don’t know why I categorised this as Commercial, either. I blame the evil WordPress gnome.

Hmm. Despite a lot of people saying that Saboteur! and its sequel were brilliant games for their time, they kinda passed me by. Playing Mini-Saboteur gave me a chance to see what I missed… or not, as the case may be

FatSeagal has become quite well known for his miniaturised remakes and he’s executed the idea well. As you may be able to tell from the screenshots [below], the layout of the secret base you must infiltrate has stayed pretty much the same except that everything is in small-o-vision and, subsequently, you have a much wider view of your surroundings. The graphics are small but perfectly formed, and the sound effects are unremarkable.

A selection of difficulty levels allows everyone to jump in and the improved guard AI will probably give even seasoned veterans a run for their money. However, their intelligence isn’t flawless: at one point I ended up with about four or five guards trying to take down my ninja (who was minding his own business on some stairs at the time), and for all their kicking, punching and grunting, they didn’t make a single scratch on my black-suited hero – they seemed to be just outside melee attack range. Perhaps this particular ninja saboteur has enemy-deflecting forcefields?

Unfortunately I can’t say that I found Mini-Saboteur to be much fun, but I think that’s purely because of my apathy of the original game. There’s too much running about and getting lost and wondering where the hell you’re supposed to go for my taste. If you’re a fan of the original, give this a whirl; you’ll probably enjoy it. Otherwise… well, “meh” just about says it for me, I think

Links: No homepage available
Download: from the Retro Remakes competition listing

Perfect! Just in time for all of us to have a nice, comfy playthrough before Christmas, the 2008 Retro Remakes competition entries are now available to download! A big congratulatory slap on the back must go to everyone who got something together during the three months of coding time, and special thanks to the RR staff for braving the piles of paperwork and getting it all organised.

A quick note, though. Keep in mind that RR‘s bandwidth is limited and goes through the roof at times like this, so try to avoid hitting refresh every couple of seconds if the page isn’t loading for you. Go have a nice cup of tea, perhaps with some digestive biscuits (or even ginger nuts if you’re so inclined), then try again

Over the next couple of weeks, I hope to make time to have a proper hands-on with a few of the entries. Blast Passage, Mini Saboteur, The Kiwi’s Tale and Revenge of the Punched Tape immediately catch my eye – Retroman and Cosmic Prison Commando might get a look too. Bonus points for the most bizarre combination of two 8-bit games has to go to Tetroid, however… it’s Metroid, with Tetris blocks in it! What on earth is going on there?!

On a closing note, this is the second time that (for various reasons) I didn’t have chance to put an entry in for the compo myself so I’m a little sad, but come hell or high water it will be third time lucky when – indeed, if – the competition rolls around again!

Until next time… let’s retro!

2D Boy announced yesterday that the Windows version of World of Goo has gone gold! Yippee! There’s no word on an exact release date, but with this news it surely can’t be too far away. Mac, Linux and Wii versions are also on the ever-approaching horizon.

It’d be cool if there were a demo version, but perhaps that will appear at some point in the future. Meantime, should you feel like spending your hard-earned dosh in support of a clearly quite talented indie developer duo, there’s still the option to pre-order and get immediate access to an introductory chapter of the game.

Hmm… I wonder what would happen if any of that goo got into CERN’s new particle accelerator? Something even worse than a black hole, I reckon!

Tomorrow should be an interesting day. It may well be looked back on as the start of something amazing.

It’s a long story that’s led us to this point, but tomorrow, Nvidia should hopefully be releasing a new graphics driver package that will enable “Nvidia PhysX” support on any 8-series or newer video card. The effect? An awful lot of people will be upgrading to SLI…

The effects may not be instantaneous as there are still very few games which use PhysX, but this will surely change now that a leading name is pushing the concept forwards. Developers are also far more likely to sit up and take notice now that a significant percentage of gamers are PhysX-ready.

For a bit more background on how it all works and some early benchmark results, check out Guru3D’s review.

Yes, that’s “stickish” not “sticky”. Because frankly I don’t even want to know what “sticky justice” is.

Fans of stickmen, Java and RPGs will be over the moon to hear that DAN-BALL‘s Stick Ranger has hit version 1.2 and is out of its alpha phase. Play it now, and enjoy the ability to save your progress! Though don’t get too attached to your band of liney heroes as save data might get reset over the course of further development.

During my daily browse of TIGSource I stumbled across this mention of an altogether quite fabtastic game – Teeworlds! It’s a funky 2D multiplayer game in the style of Soldat, and I’d never heard of it before today. Check out the gameplay:

There are plenty of net-games running all the time – you can choose from racing, capture the flag or just plain deathmatch. As with pretty much any game of this style, though, you need some ridiculously fast reflexes to be any good at it. The cuteness immediately put me in mind of a multiplayer version of Fury of the Furries, the old Amiga classic, which can only be a good thing. Yes, grappling hooks are included!

Hardcore players might be put off by the lack of gore. Personally I find it refreshing – there’s too much blood and guts around these days, and Teeworlds‘ cartoony variation fits really well. The visuals are smooth and don’t require a super-modern PC, and on the audio side, the oddball characters make suitably squeaky cheers of joy and sighs of disappointment as they scurry around blasting anything that moves with lasers, shotguns and grenade launchers. Or just hitting them on the head with a bloody great hammer…

Definitely worth checking out if you’re a fan of platform jump-run-shoot stuff!