Tag: retro

Switching audio output between jack and HDMI on RetroPie

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RetroPie is a great multi-emulator project for the Raspberry Pi, but I noticed that its auto-detect for which audio device to use seems a bit erratic. I’ve speakers plugged into the 3.5mm jack, as the HDMI cable runs to a speaker-less monitor, and usually (but not always) RetroPie defaulted to squirting sound out the HDMI port. There’s two ways of fixing this. Firstly, you can change the audio output for the current session (i.e. until you reboot it) by issuing …

Finally! The version of RSG you’ve been waiting for!

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Many, many, many years ago, I wrote a terrible text based roleplaying game called RSG. I initially made a version for the Sinclair Spectrum, but lost the code soon afterwards. Then I wrote a version for the Acorn A4000 in BBC Basic instead of doing my A level computing project. Then a version for the Casio programmable calculator when I’d finished a physics exam. At some point I also made a version in AMOS on the Amiga, and eventually rewrote …

Next gen gaming is nearly here!

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Well, it’s the next console I’ll be buying, anyway. I’ve literally zero interest in the PS4 and Xbox One. I’m slightly surprised at myself actually, as I secretly thought I might be by now. Anyway, the Retron 5 is coming Real Soon Now, with the current release date set as April. Sadly, there have already been a few delays (it was originally supposed to be last October), but lets hope it meets this one, yes?

Games I’ve Been Playing Recently

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Yes! Another lazy round-up post 🙂 Skylanders (360) With my daughter. We’re up to world/level/mission/event/chapter 9-ish now. Whichever is the one just after the cyclopseseses. It’s a fun game, but play is disrupted when your co-pilot wants to change characters every 45 seconds. Art of Balance: Touch! (3DS) This was never really on my radar, but a demo was released last week which I really enjoyed. Then it was deal of the week on the eShop so I couldn’t resist. …

Let’s Play! Light Cycle

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It’s been an age since I had a Friday Let’s Play! Before I’d even heard of Tron, or seen another one of the 8962398146238 game clones of the Tron Light Cycle sequence, I had this – Light Cycle (Light Cycles on the title screen, for some reason) by PSS. It was awesome. Looking back now, it looks basic even by Spectrum standards, but the gameplay is still there. I also don’t remember any other variant having the little “blips” around …

Mega-lo-Mania (MD): COMPLETED!

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Back in the day, I must have completed this a billion times. It’s not a hard game, but there’s something very satisfying about nuking the enemy before they’ve even had a chance to build any catapults. WE’VE NUKED THEM! So that’s what I’ve done a lot this week. That, and cornering the enemy in a useless sector of the map, with nought to defend themselves and no resources to create anything, before slaying them horribly with four pikemen, a cannon, …

Behold – the NESurrection

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Dug out the NES the other week to record some more stuff for Game Over, Yeah!! but it wasn’t working. The PSU was shot, so I bought a new one from consolegoods.co.uk. I was sceptical because the NES needs a 9V AC adapter at 1.3A, and this was a 9V DC at 400mA. I read up a bit about it and it turns out that much of the current is needed to actually convert to DC internally, and in fact, theres …

Let’s Play! Daley Thompson’s Decathlon

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Remember Daley Thompson? He was that guy in the 80s who was always in the Olympics. Who was reasonably good. And had AWESOME facial hair. Like a brush, it was. Well, in gaming circles, he was known for his ability to break joysticks. Many a Quickshot 2 was destroyed in the playing of his waggle-tastic sports games. And this, was the original – Daley Thompson’s Decathlon. It’s possibly worth noting that Ocean were a bit colour blind when they made …

Let’s Play! Hunchy

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In the 80s, whenever a new, popular, game came out twenty million other white rappe…uh games that were the same appeared. Also, back in the 80s, it was quite common for us kids to think the real game was actually a clone of the clone we’d known first. For example, I had a game called Road Toad, which Frogger blatantly copied. It didn’t, of course – Road Toad was the “fake”, but that didn’t matter. See also Orbiter/Defender, Maze Chase/Painter, …

Games I Hate: Donkey Kong 64

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Until the release of the technically fantastic, utterly huge, and gloriously lovely to look at Donkey Kong 64 for the Nintendo 64, I was a big fan of Rare’s stuff. Or at least, I thought I was. I mean, I did really, really, enjoy Banjo Kazooie. So much so that I almost completed it many times (the end boss proving too much), and even got the XBLA remake – finally 100%ing it. But looking back at their other titles, I’m not …

Let’s Play! The Steelyard Blues

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That Harry S Price was a card, wasn’t he? Ripping off loads of Spectrum games, altering their graphics, selling the game on as his own. Nawty. One of these game was The Steelyard Blues. Which I loved, until only a few years ago when I found out it was a shameless clone of “Cheekah’s Exploits” by Julian Wood – a game published as a type-in in Your Computer. Tch. Still, it’s a competent and difficult collect-em-up platformer, complete with level …