Ask and ye shall receive. At least according to the Bible. In all seriousness, I eagerly read the November issue of Retrogaming Times Monthly (RTM) and noticed Scott's request for contributors. Ever since I had been introduced to RTM, I always thought I could contribute something. However, I had been lazy and never really got around to it. Besides Scott's request, I noticed Alan Hewston was taking a break as well. RTM has been such a good read, I figured it was time to put in my "two cents" on retrogaming and try to keep a good thing going. First a little background on myself and my experiences with Retrogaming. I was a child of the 80's and grew up a diet of Atari 5200 and Apple IIe games. Looking back to those games, while the Atari 5200 games were quite good, most of my best memories come from the Apple II side of things. When I created my "Apple II Game Museum" (http://www.angelfire.com/80s/apple2), I created a "Apple II Gaming Memories" section as well. Since the Apple II hasn't been too heavily discussed in RTM, I thought it would be appropriate to take some of my gaming memories and contribute it to the RTM. These first memories are edits of what I already had on my web site. I hope you enjoy my trip down memory lane.
Apple Panic - Broderbund Software When my parents first purchased our Apple IIe back around 1983, I remembered playing around with the "Apple Presents.....Apple IIe" disk as well as some games on disk like Brickout. However, I distinctly remember getting "Apple Panic" real early and it was my first game that I played with my IIe. I don't recall if I picked the game or if my parents picked it up. Regardless of who decided to buy this, this game kept me up for nights as I tried to whack evil apples into submission. I remember spending quite a bit time fiddling with my joystick or paddles for a long time before just playing the game on my keyboard. I don't recall if the game was meant to be strictly for the keyboard or not.
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar - Origin Software If I recall correctly, this was my first "adventure/RPG" type game I had played. It was also the first game in the Ultima series I had played. To this day, I still have yet to finish the game! There are a couple of reasons for that. One, after going through most of the game and getting to the Stygian Abyss, I battled to Level 6 where I promptly got lost in the criss-cross maze that is on that level. I eventually got a map from Origin to manuver through the maze and got to the end of the game at Level 8 of the Abyss. Alas, at the end of the game, I couldn't answer the questions and was sent back outside the Abyss! I think I tried several more times to get back to Level 8 but it was tough and I gave up. Perhaps one day I will try it again.
Computer Baseball - Strategic Simulations Inc. I recall I picked this game up at a Sears store that was across the street from my high school in San Francisco. That would put the time frame around 1988 to 1992 (probably earlier than later). Interestingly, Computer Baseball came out around 1981 so the game was fairly old when I got it. However, it was still great fun. I spent hours playing the 78 Yankees, taking on everyone from the 1927 Yankees to the 1978 LA Dodgers. Comparing Computer Baseball to other baseball games of the 80's is a little unfair. Computer Baseball harked back to the old days of a true baseball simulation rather than an arcade game. Compared to even the other baseball games of the 80's, Computer Baseball's graphics and sound were primative. There was no real animation as we know it and minimal sound. Even the game play was fairly primative. There were no balls and strikes. There was one only "pitch" and it was either a hit, strike out, walk, etc. The simulation was fairly realistic. You could pinch hit, warm up relivers and do most things most real baseball managers would do. I really had a great time being the manager of the 78 Yankees. However, there was one unrealistic thing that I found. I had relivers with great stats (i.e. Dennis Eckersly from the 80's) and I put them as starting pitchers. They would pitch 7 to 8 inning and they would dominate in reality probably wouldn't happen. However, it was fun to see! Given the limitations of the 8 bit machines, getting new teams and keeping track of real time stats was difficult. However, Computer Baseball did allow you to save stats and also create new teams on blank disks. I spent a lot of time creating new teams and that was quite fun as well. While I enjoy today's NBA games for the PS2 and other systems, I have yet to find a baseball simulation that was as fun as Computer Baseball was.

Nintendo Realm - Late December 1985 by Scott Jacobi

In the process of constructing last month's editorial, I forgot to supply one for Nintendo Realm.  That's OK though, there really wasn't a lot to say about last month's batch of games.  However, we have made it to the very end of 1985.  And the Famicom ends 1985 with a bang, as a number of unique and interesting games hit the market.  The Famicom is just about to hit it's stride in 1986, which will see the release of the Famicom Disk System, as well as the very first Legend of Zelda.  By this time, the Nintendo Entertainment System has officially launched in the United States.  While the inclusion of R.O.B. makes the overall package attractive, the NES really takes off when Super Mario Bros. was officially ported over in October of 1985, roughly one month after its release in Japan.  Now all Nintendo has to do is sit back and watch the system sell itself.  Let's dive in to this month's chronological selection, one of which spawned a series of games that is still being developed to this day!

Zunou Senkan Galg released by DB Soft on December 14th, 1985. Also known simply as Galg.
Galg is a shooter of the vertical scrolling variety.  It features a very smoothly scrolling background that takes you through areas that contain branching pathways.  It appears that in addition to your "blast everything in sight" objective, you must also collect 100 "parts" that can be found in each of the areas.  The parts, which appear as red triangles against a white background, scroll by and must be touched to be collected.  Enemies range from motionless obstacles to creatures which move about the screen and fire at you, all with predictable patterns.  The contols for the game are smooth, and the double shot offensive capabilities of your ship work effectively to eliminate two enemies at once.  The music is a little too high pitched, and nothing else remarkable stands out about Galg, but it's a decent game.

Obake no Q-Tarou: Wan Wan Panic released by Bandai on December 16th, 1985.  Released in the U.S. as Chubby Cherub in 1986
As an American gamer, you may only be familiar with the game "Chubby Cherub," in which you play a fat naked cupid who seemingly flies over several neighborhood in search of fruit, lollipops, and rice balls, all the while avoiding dogs.  The game made very little sense to me as a child, and after seeing the original Japanese counterpart, I understand why.  Obake no Q-Tarou was an anime produced in Japan in 1985, based on a manga about a ghost (obake).  It was designed by the same man who created Doraemon, anime's famous blue cat.  Q-Tarou is a silly ghost who freeloads in the household of some children, and they have some adventures together.  In the Famicom game, it seems like Q-Tarou's objective was to collect all of the food he could find and avoid the neighborhood dogs.  Q-Tarou (and consequently, our American version cherub), has a power meter that constantly drains, and food refuels the bar.  By pressing jump twice, or pressing and holding jump, you can make your character fly, which makes avoiding dogs and their dangerous barking much easier, but it doubles the consumption of the power bar.  Regardless of which version you play, both are somewhat fun to try, although they get a little repetitive as the game advances.  I suppose the Japanese version makes slightly more sense, but only marginally so.

Galg	Obake no Q-Tarou

Thexder released by Square Co. on December 19th, 1985.
I'm going to start out by saying: Thexder is an awesome game.  And no, I'm not saying that just because it happens to be the first game ever released by Square (later Squaresoft, later Square-Enix) on a Nintendo system.  Square was only licensed to port the game to the Famicom by Game Arts, Thexder's original developer.  If you were a child of the 80s who loved the Transformers, you couldn't help but fall in love with Thexder, which put you in command of your very own "Jetfire" or "Starscream."  That is, you were in control of a robot who can transform in to a jet plane and back.  Each mode had similar, yet slightly different capabilities.  As a robot, you could jump very high, and fire a target lock-on laser.  As a plane you could move in eight directions non-stop, and fire your laser straight on.  The goal was to make it through each area, but the levels were like mazes that were heavily patrolled by enemies.  Some of these enemies were passive while others were very aggressive.  As a robot, you could stand in one place and fire your laser, and it would automatically target any of the enemies within range.  But it constantly cycled through those enemies, so it wouldn't necessarily fix on one enemy and destroy it before moving on.  This meant that you couldn't safely stay in one area for too long.  You also had an energy meter that drained the more you fired.  Enemy contact wore it down substantially.  You could also erect an energy shield around yourself at the cost of some energy.  Destroying certain enemies released energy back in to your meter.  My first experience with Thexder was on an IBM PC with an EGA card, which was very accurate to the original MSX version.  Having played the Famicom version more recently, I was disappointed with some of the sacrifices that Square had to make with the game.  These sacrifices had less to do with Square and more to do with the limitations of the Famicom.  The most glaring change was the switch from a point-to-point laser, to a bullet system.  Other changes include slightly less than smooth scrolling, and reduced sprite sizes.  If this is the only version you can try, it's well worth the play, but I would recommend trying to find the MSX, PC, or even Amiga versions as well.

Binary Land released by Hudson on December 19th, 1985.
In this age of penguin popularity, this is one of two games reviewed this month that would have benefited from the media boost (the other being, of course, Penguin-Kun Wars.)  Binary Land is an interesting puzzle/action game featuring an aqua penguin and a pink penguin-ette who begin each stage at the bottom of opposite halves of the screen.  Before you start the game, you are asked to choose one of the penguins.  The penguin of your choice is the one that you will be in direct control over.  The other penguin will still appear, but your control over this penguin is mirrored in the left and right directions.  Your goal is to direct both penguins from their starting location to the caged heart beneath the goal.  Most of the time, you will be in control of both penguins at the same time.  The only time this changes is if you get one penguin trapped in a spider web, in which case you must direct the remaining penguin to free the other before a monster gets to it first.  The penguins are not helpless.  They are armed with some kind of conic wave that takes down spider webs and enemies easily.  Destroying an enemy sometimes has the added benefit of a bonus item or power up being deposited in the maze.  Hudson recently made this game available again as part of a Famicom compilation on the Game Boy Advance (it was not part of the Famicom Mini series.)  It's a cute game, and it's definitely original.

Thexdar	Binary Land

Bomberman released by Hudson on December 19th, 1985. Released in the U.S. on January 1987.
Bomberman probably needs no introduction to modern gamers and retro gamers alike.  Still very much a viable franchise in this day and age, Bomberman's early fame can be attributed to his Famicom and NES release.  But this was not his very first appearance.  Bomberman first arrived on the MSX computer systems with a very different look.  In Europe, the MSX version, as well as a port to the ZX Spectrum was known as Eric and the Floaters.  But it was the Famicom version that served as the origin for his now famous look as an anime inspired white robot, complete with antenna.  Whether it was intentional or not is unknown, but the sprite used for the Famicom version of Bomberman was the same as the enemy sprite found in Hudson's version of Lode Runner.  The gameplay in this version is a lot more formulaic than the subsequent Bomberman releases, which tended to vary up the playfield from one stage to the next.  In this version, it's the same horizontally scrolling stage in every level with bricks laid out at random.  The only thing that changes from one level to the next is the assortment of enemies that must be defeated before locating and leaving through the exit, and the single power up that can be found in each level.  A player had to complete 50 stages before being treated to a very short ending, with a bonus stage occuring every five stages.  This version is obviously eclipsed by the over 20 different releases that have occurred since, but it's very interesting to see the roots of the series.

Exed Exes released by Tokuma Shoten on December 21th, 1985.
Based on one of Capcom's earliest arcade games, Exed Exes was also known as Savage Bees outside of Japan.  Exed Exes can best be described by starting with 1942, replacing the World War theme with a Sci-Fi theme, and replacing the enemy planes with bee-like insects.  But Exed Exes has more of an organized feel than 1942.  Enemies come out in packs in difficult but predictable patterns.  Larger enemies appear periodically, and power-ups are provided for extra fire power.  The usual shooting sections are broken up with bonus areas, where POW symbols can convert difficult to destroy skulls in to easily captured bonus fruit.  At the end of each level, a floating platform containing multiple cannon targets appears as the stage boss.  The game is fun, but otherwise unremarkable except for one bit of history.  When the game was released, a contest was held, and players who reached a score of over 1 million points were provided with a special password.  Players who photographed this password and mailed it in to Tokuma, which was also a magazine publisher, you were given a special silver label to apply over the original.  The label, and cartridges that still contain one, are extremely rare.

Bomberman	Exed Exes

Lot Lot released by Tokuma Shoten on December 21th, 1985.
Lot Lot is an incredibly original puzzle game.  The game is played on what can best be described as a four by four grid.  Above the grid are a number of balls (think pachinko), and occassionally the barriers between the grids desolve, making it possible for the balls to drop down or move laterally from one box to another.  You control an arrow, or rather, two arrows.  You are in direct control of one arrow, while the other arrow trails behind, moving in step with the first arrow, but delayed by three seconds.  When you push the button, the contents of the grid that each arrow is point to are swapped.  The goal is to safely deliver the balls in to one of the point locations, either on the right side of the screen, or in all of the bottom locations but the left.  If any balls fall in to the bottom left most grid, a crap begins to rise, eager to cut the cord that keeps the balls from falling in to the "OUT" deposit.  If any ball falls through "OUT" you lose one chance.  To complete each stage, you must cleanly release a set number of balls, regardless of points.  This game won't be for everyone, but it's definitely worth checking out to see if it's for you.  I'm not positive, but I believe this is one case where the Famicom game preceded the arcade game, and not the other way around.

Penguin-Kun Wars released by ASCII on December 25th, 1985.
We end 1985 with a very unique and fun game.  Penguin-Kun Wars is an unlikely title for a game involving healthy competition between cute animals with... balls.  This war is all about who can get the most balls on their opponent's side of the table before 60 seconds runs out.  Each player starts with 5 balls on their side.  They can throw one ball at a time and if a rolling ball makes contact with a player, that player is knocked out briefly, giving the other player precious moments to send balls over uncontested.  The game is played in best two-out-of-three rounds, in an elimination style tournament.  If either player manages to get all 10 balls on their opponent's side, they automatically win the round.  After 30 seconds, each player is given small control over the lateral movement of the balls, and when only 20 seconds remain, a partial barrier appears to reflect the balls back when they hit it.  Upon winning two rounds, you (the penguin) are transported to a bonus round with various objectives, including bombing a whack-a-mole like arena.  Your ultimate goal is to get the penguin to the top of the elimination chart against the evil empire of koala's, mice, beavers, and pandas.

Lot Lot	Penguin-Kun Wars

Space Invaders Papercraft by James Catalano

Greeting RTM readers! Besides gaming, and classic gaming at that, one of my other hobbies is building papercraft models. Mainly of sci-fi stuff such as robots, spaceships, and the like.
As for gaming, I've seen some video game related papercraft models such as arcade machines, popular Nintendo characters like Mario, and even paper versions of game systems like the Game Cube and the original model Game Boy Advance. While these were cool, I noticed there weren't any papercraft models done on the really classic stuff before the Nintendo age.

So with that in mind, I thought I'd try my hand at creating my own papercraft models based on a classic game before the Nintendo era. Being my first try at designing a papercraft model, I wanted something that was both simple to build, yet would make for a cool 3-D model.

Then I thought of the perfect classic game that had characters that would be easy to turn into neat paper models. And that game is Space Invaders! So for classic gaming fans, and anyone interested in trying their hand at papercraft model making, I present to you my 3-D papercraft renderings of the aliens from Space Invaders.
 

Behind the Pixels: Pac-Man
by Erik Lampi