retro posts

While Bionic Commando (the reboot) may have been a minor disappointment, Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 is still on the way. It's shaping up to be a beauty of a game, especially if this trailer is any indication. Cheesy dialogue, excellent electronic music, and the hallmark Bionic Commando style are in full force here. The target is the Megacopter, a gigantic armor helicopter that looks quite nasty. The trailer shows most of the strategy for defeating it, although it leaves the actual destruction of the thing for the game proper. It may just be a gameplay video of a boss, but it sure does have us excited.

Download HD Bionic Commado Rearmed 2 'Megacopter' Trailer
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Sometimes you just need to sit down, slide a floppy into your A: drive, and enjoy gaming retro style. We know this all too well! That's why we have a list of the best and brightest from days long gone. These are some of our favorite games of all time, and we're sure that you'll love them as much as we do, if not more. Welcome to Boot Disk, and enjoy the retro ride!

We haven't covered many indie games on Boot Disk before. This is for two primary reasons. First, the definition of indie games has changed over the years. What was once common practice in the mainstream business two decades ago (very small development teams) is now the domain of hobbyists and visionaries. Second, the indies of yesteryear are folks like John Carmack and Cliff Blezsinski. The little guys that ended up making it big. Granted, there's plenty that started big, but more of the most famous names in gaming started out small, from Tim Schafer to Ken Levine. The modern indie movement has no room for these success stories, however. The internet was busy churning ahead to create a new darling studio: Introversion. While they are perhaps better known for Darwinia and DEFCON at this point, their first game was a small hacking "simulation" called Uplink. Thanks in part to its goofy interface and simple mechanics, it still endures as a beautiful, and altogether playable, game. One can't truly be engrossed in the new indie community without playing it at least once.

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

We've covered a few remakes here on Freeware Friday, and without a doubt all of them have been fantastic. However, we can't say that we've ever covered a remake of an Atari game. Thankfully, we can cross that checkmark off our to-do list with RobotzDX. A fantastic remake of a relatively (by today's standards, anyway) obscure Atari ST game called Robotz, it is a stressful and intelligent experience that easily inspires addiction. It also has procedural generation, which is always the way straight to our heart!

Sometimes you just need to sit down, slide a floppy into your A: drive, and enjoy gaming retro style. We know this all too well! That's why we have a list of the best and brightest from days long gone. These are some of our favorite games of all time, and we're sure that you'll love them as much as we do, if not more. Welcome to Boot Disk, and enjoy the retro ride!

This week is something different from the norm. It's a re-release of several classic games that never saw their way to PC. Why? Because they were released on the Genesis instead. SEGA has pulled these games from the GameTap service and offered them for purchase on the PC instead. We're all for it, too, as the games included are quite good. While there are a few bad ones (Sonic 3D Blast), they are classic and available on the PC for the very first time. We'd call that a definite win for PC users. Since the games come in a bundle, we're going to cover our favorites, rather than a single game or all of them.

Remakes of older games by the indie community are almost universally enjoyable, and even mainstream remakes (such as Bionic Commando Rearmed) tend to be quite fun as well. Along this same vein of Bionic Commando is the new freeware independent title Streemerz. A remake of a terrible game included in the now infamous Action 52 NES compilation, it is both extremely punishing and quite fulfilling. Naturally, if you are a fan of older, NES-styled games, this is exactly what you want, and Streemerz delivers.

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

Quite a long time ago, there was a small economic simulation by the name of MULE. One of the first commercial business simulations, it paved the way for later titles like Railroad Tycoon or Transport Tycoon. Thanks to a simplified model of supply-demand economics, just about anyone could pick up the game, play, and learn basic economic concepts while competing with their friends. However, the visuals have definitely not aged well over the years, making the game increasingly harder to get into for most players. There's been a number of remakes, but the best is a little freeware number by the name of Planet MULE. It's a faithful recreation of the original mechanics with a new coat of paint, so it's time to delve into a classic. For simplicity's sake, Planet MULE will simply be referred to as MULE throughout this article.

Sometimes you just need to sit down, slide a floppy into your A: drive, and enjoy gaming retro style. We know this all too well! That's why we have a list of the best and brightest from days long gone. These are some of our favorite games of all time, and we're sure that you'll love them as much as we do, if not more. Welcome to Boot Disk, and enjoy the retro ride!

Some strategy games are timeless, either due to the strength of their execution or the quality of gameplay contained within. Panzer General is one of those games, and despite being quite old, it's a classic of the genre. It launched the highly-regarded Generals series from SSI, was one of the first games to include a campaign that could be modified through player actions, and was a great game overall. Those that want to relax with a challenging and well-designed turn-based strategy game will find few games better than Panzer General, and it's still quite playable despite its old age. You just need DOSBox.

Sometimes you just need to sit down, slide a floppy into your A: drive, and enjoy gaming retro style. We know this all too well! That's why we have a list of the best and brightest from days long gone. These are some of our favorite games of all time, and we're sure that you'll love them as much as we do, if not more. Welcome to Boot Disk, and enjoy the retro ride!

id is well known for two series of games: Doom and Quake. While we've certainly covered Doom before, and Quake's multiplayer offering, we've never really gotten to the core of the Quake franchise. Therefore, we should take a look at one of the most revolutionary games of all time. While it certainly doesn't seem like it, Quake sent shockwaves through the first-person realm that are still felt today. It's even more important than Doom, although only slightly so, and thanks to wider availability of retro games, Quake is open to those that wish to play a classic first-person shooter with high-end systems.

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

Much like last week's Probability 0, this week's game is a procedurally-generated game that one would be unsurprised to find in an arcade, gamers huddled around with rolls of quarters in their hands. The game is Magic Planet Snack, and while it is short and a little difficult at first, it's a great way to relax for a few minutes at a time. Its sickeningly sweet pastel colors and simplistic gameplay make it easy for any player to jump into, while its randomized nature make it easily replayable for future sessions.

Sometimes you just need to sit down, slide a floppy into your A: drive, and enjoy gaming retro style. We know this all too well! That's why we have a list of the best and brightest from days long gone. These are some of our favorite games of all time, and we're sure that you'll love them as much as we do, if not more. Welcome to Boot Disk, and enjoy the retro ride!

X-COM is one of those classics that every older PC gamer remembers with fond nostalgia. Despite its age, incompatibility with newer operating systems, and somewhat clunky interface, it's still one of the best games ever made. It had a sequel that was little more than cranked up difficulty and a new environment, but the real innovation and continuation comes with the appearance of the third game. X-COM Apocalypse is the second game from the original developers, and it's an improvement upon the original in every way. It may be polarizing, but it's impossible to deny that Apocalypse has the X-COM spirit and design sense behind it.