A JOURNEY FOR THE AGES
Dear fellow Sega fanboys,
For me, Out Run was the game that couldn’t be beaten. You see, the other games at the arcade let you shove in extra quarters to see the rest of their content, but not Out Run. Even better players couldn’t show me the later stages of the game. The home conversions didn’t count: they didn’t look as rad and I swear they all had extended timers. By the time the faithful Saturn version was released, I had lost all interest. That was, until Yakuza 0 challenged me. It turned out that defeating the Japanese mafia with my knuckles was far easier than beating the five-minute drive in Out Run, which you can play in the arcade. Still humiliated, I got the Switch version. It took me about 70 tries, but now
I’ve finally completed all five courses. Congratulations! But in all fairness, the controls in the arcade are different, so to me, this was just a practice run. I happen to know of a sit-in cabinet in Amsterdam. Wish me luck! Sega!
Robert August de Meijer
PS: Is Magical Sound Shower the catchiest song ever?
Thanks for writing to us, Robert. Wow, so it has taken you around 35 years to beat Sega’s racer? That’s some real dedication and it deserves a reward, so have a book for your troubles.
PS: Don’t read pages 98 and 99, Darran’s opinions on Out Run may upset you!
POWER POCKETS
Dear Retro ‘the best mag on the shelf’ Gamer,
Many years ago, I used to play on my Atari ST and subscribed to an
Atari mag and they often used to put demo disks on the cover. One month I bought the magazine and on the front was a disk which included a fantastic
demo of the Bitmap Brothers’ game called Magic Pockets.
In the past I know you have interviewed the developers but you don’t seem to have covered this game. I played the demo over and over again, but at the time could not afford the final game, and now it’s quite hard to find. Did the Bitmap Brothers decide to cull this title, because I have noticed that it’s not on the new Evercade cartridge either? This seems quite strange as it was one of the developer’s first releases.
Keep up all the great work and keep safe and dandy!
Sean Watson
We’re glad you enjoy Magic Pockets, Sean. We’ve spoken to Blaze and it’s not on the new Evercade cart due to there being no home console port.
It’s certainly not in the same league as Speedball 2 or The Chaos Engine, but it does have a cracking intro. We’ll aim to get it featured in the magazine soon.
RETURN OF THE KING
Dear Retro Gamer,
Please, please, please can you run an article on the resurgence of the side-scrolling fighter? It’s my favourite genre and has been largely forgotten about, but it has come back with a bang in the last few years and I couldn’t be happier. I’ve enjoyed your coverage of games like River City Girls and Streets Of
Rage 4, so it would be great if you could visit the genre in more detail. Chris North
Great to find another sidescrolling fighter fan, Chris. We’ve been very happy too. With all the new games coming out (the new Turtles release looks great) your request is certainly something we can consider. Leave it with us.
TO THE SKIES
Dear Retro Gamer,
I recently dug out my old copy of a Playstation 2 game called Sky Odyssey. It’s an arcade-based flight simulator game and I had a blast completing it again. I actually think
it’s a bit of a hidden gem. I can’t find much information online about it so I thought it would make for an interesting feature. Is anyone on the team aware of it or a fan of it?
Matt Reynolds
Hi Matt, thanks for sharing with us. While Darran hasn’t played it, freelancer John Szczepaniak is a big fan and so is Nick. Darran has bought it for £3 on your recommendation, so maybe we’ll write an article and feature it in the magazine at a later date.
PC FOREVER
Dearest Retro Gamer,
I loved your article a few issues back about gaming in the Nineties. I agree it was a golden decade for gaming and I was surprised to see PC gaming covered in the feature as your magazine seems to favour consoles. PC gaming was massive before Windows 95 and Direct X, even with all the DOS SHELL and autoexec.bat joys.
Yes, piracy was a big problem for developers, but if you favoured games such as flight simulators, war games, strategy games and RPGS the PC was perfect.
Is it possible to include PC games in the Noughties charts?
Chris Barry
Glad you enjoyed the article,
Chris, it was great fun putting it all together – the memories! We’re covering plenty of PC stuff in the mag, so keep an eye out for it. We do feature the PC chart in Back To The Noughties, but we alternate it with other systems.