NEW GAMES NEEDED Our new email address is waiting for all your homebrew news, previews and more: retrogamer@futurenet.com
<intro> Jonathan Thomas is developing Faster – a 50fps racing game for the Atari STE </intro>
<!--- [Mega Drive] Level 1’s fire effect is neat, with skeletons and dangerous spirit enemies to fight off. --->
<!--- [Mega Drive] In-game dialogue moves the plot along as you face the first boss. --->
HAYATO’S JOURNEY <info Format: Mega Drive Credits: Master Linkuei (developer), Edmo Caldas (music) Price: Name your own price (digital download) Web: bit.ly/hayato-megadrive />
<body> The first Mega Drive game developed with the Scorpion Engine is an unofficial follow-up to the Master System’s Kenseiden. Hayato, holder of the Sword Of The Dragon King, must use his powers to defeat the evil warlock Senensai who has kidnapped Hayato’s beloved, Sakura. Shinobi fans will be right at home with the mix of platforming and swordplay, with hostages to rescue and extra weapons to pick up. Graphically there are some clever effects including fog/mist, along with impressively large bosses to defeat. There are graphical assets reused from famous Sega games, however. The soundtrack and presentation are excellent throughout, adding to the atmosphere, although tricky enemy placement makes some levels a challenge. Still, this is a good fanmade tribute to earlier games. </body>
Score:
<!--- [Atari 2600] The dungeon map is a clever feature to include. --->
80%
<!--- [Atari 2600] The Eagle Sword has a longer reach than the basic dagger you start with. --->
ULTAR’S LAIR
<body> A simple question started Jonathan Thomas’ new project. “I was working as a commercial software developer. I’d created a fully 3D version of Pole Position for PC but found myself wondering whether the reverseengineered code I’d written could run on the humbler ST. Masteries (the author of the Metal Slug remake for STE) felt the machine should be capable of a 2.5D racing game running at 50,” explains Jonathan. From the screenshots we’ve seen on X/Twitter (@RetroRacing) development is going very well. The minimum requirement will be an STE with 1MB of memory. “STFM models will unfortunately not be supported, as the game heavily uses additional hardware in the STE,” Jonathan says. “I develop on a MacBook and use a variety of open-source tools, including the Beyond Brown C cross-compiler, the VASM assembler, PHP (for graphics conversion, compiled sprite generation and lookup table generation) and GIMP (for graphics manipulation). I hope to release an initial version around December 2024 as a free download. Further updates may follow with incremental improvements, bugfixes and new features.” Expect a review in a later issue. </body>
<!--- [Atari STE] With strong echoes of Konami’s WEC Le Mans, Faster uses changing light conditions to portray different times of the day. --->
<info Format: Atari 2600 (NTSC optimised) Credits: Oniric Factor Price: €8 digital/physical TBC Web: bit.ly/ultar-2600 />
<body> Jorge Romero’s maze game was inspired by Nintendo’s The Legend Of Zelda. A lone hero must seek out the wizard Ultar by finding the key to the next dungeon and using items like magic boots, a protection ring and various swords to fend off enemies. Cleverly, pressing the Select switch displays a map of the current dungeon, although technical limits mean only one enemy is in each room. Still, with new enemy types added and increasingly complex mazes to explore, this is a fun 2600 game to play and one that will hopefully get a physical cartridge in the future. </body>
Score:
81%
RETRO GAMER | 101