Retro Gamer issue 91

via http://retroactionmagazine.com/retro...amer-issue-91/

With all the Laser Squad excitement at the moment, we almost forgot about the latest issue of Retro Gamer. Rather than put up the usual news post about the thing, though, we thought we would write up a mini review of the more interesting features.

It’s a classic Crash/Zzap!64 style cover as Oli Frey supplies the superb artwork for this issue: King Kong munching on a Spectrum for the main feature, Game Over for 8-Bit. The hardware feature looked back at the rise and fall of the 8-bit computers, from the Spectrum to the Apple II. While the article is up to the usual standard that we’d expect from Retro Gamer, there isn’t much new here for the hardcore retro gamer. An article aimed at readers new to retrogaming perhaps?

The Back to the Eighties/Nineties articles are always a fascinating lookback to a certain month in time. This issue, RG looks back to October 1989 and March 1994 respectively.We do feel we have to correct the Nineties article which states, twice, on the same page that Impact Magazines went “bust” due to “financial difficulties”. If anyone has read the Roger Kean interview at Out-of-Print Archive, they will know that this was not the case. Following the resignation of all the Impact Magazines’ directors (Jonathan Rignall, Roger Kean and Oli Frey), the publisher’s parent company, Europress, bascially pulled the plug on Impact.

It’s always a pleasure to read an article from Damian McFerran, and the History Of Final Fight is no exception. Detailing the entire series from arcade to Game Boy Advance, it is a fantastic read full of superb design layout and box outs.

The Collector’s Guide makes it to the undervalued Amstrad CPC. This was the first computer that this very author overused during the 1980s and early 1990s, to the point that the cassette play button had to be taped down in order to load games. The article looks at some of the more rare games, magazines and peripherals available for the CPC range. There is also the Amstrad CPC games you need to own, which is basically a rarity colour coded list of games. The Collector Q&A even features our very own Richard Goulstone (aka TrickyNZ).

Other articles which are just as worthy include The Making of… Grim Fandango, The Ultimate Guide to U.N. Squadron, Bluffer’s Guide to Vector Games, Signature Series: Ninja Gaiden, In The Chair With… Steve Turner and Classic Game: GG Shinobi. Overall, another fine issue of the “award winning games magazine”.

Retro Gamer can be picked up at select stores across the UK and around the world (slightly later). The digital version can also be purchased from the Imagine eshop.