RGCD is a new downloadable CD-ROM based magazine containing the very latest retro reviews, features and developer interviews, providing its readers with an essential one-stop resource for all their retro gaming needs. RGCD’s main focus is on the new releases for 8/16-Bit computer platforms, but we also dedicate a good percentage of our reviews and feature space to retro look-and-feel PC-based remakes and independent games, so if that’s what you’re into then you are in the right place.

Release notes:

I’d love to be able to say otherwise, but RGCD #04 has been the most difficult issue to compile so far; with one team member gone AWOL and several others tied-up with real-life issues, its development has been exceptionally labour intensive for the loyal few of us left (and I’d like to say a big thank you to all involved for their contributions). However, all this hard work has been worthwhile and I’m proud to say that the standard raised by the release of our previous issue has been upheld (even with a smaller number of dedicated staff writers this time round). With over 31,000 words, 24 full reviews, 10 extra features and a wide range of platforms covered, there’s enough content in RGCD #04 to keep you busy long after the festive season has run its course.

As with the equally productive summer holiday period, the long winter nights have bought about an explosion of retro homebrew coding activity – we’ve really tried our best, but to be honest there was no way that we could have covered all of the new 8/16-Bit and indie PC games released since the last issue. Notable titles that didn’t make the final cut include multiplayer releases M.U.L.E. Wars and Speed Up! Gold for the 8-Bit Atari, Wizard of Wor, Egghead 5 and Phantomasa 2 for the ZX Spectrum, Bag Man and Penguin Mind on the MSX, the English translation of Black Sect for the Atari ST and many others that I’m too tired to list – so expect some of these to overflow into the next issue!

However, the good news is that this over-fruitful period has resulted in only the best (and some of the worst) titles being cherry-picked for review in RGCD #04, with the featured game (Transcendence) and its covermount-competitor Battleships Forever being particularly exciting PC titles. And whilst on the subject of PC games, as well as the regular reviews of top titles such as Pen Pen Christmas Olympics, Iwanaga, Wizball and Varia there’s also a new addition to the magazine in the form of our ‘Homebrew Retrospective’, featuring mini-reviews of some of our favourite PC freeware releases from those dark days before RGCD. This is set to become a regular fixture in the mag and we’ll be taking a look back at our most-played homebrew releases for the wide variety of computers and consoles out there, with the focus being on a different machine in each issue.

As mentioned above, there have been an insane number of new releases for 8/16-Bit platforms recently – including the much anticipated full versions of Tongueman’s Logic (PC Engine) and Crownland (Atari XE/XL) (as originally previewed back in RGCD #01). Other highlights include reviews of horizontal shooter Star Sabre (Amstrad CPC), single-screen avoid ’em up Get It (Commodore Plus/4), Aleksi Eeeben’s Redrunner (C64) and the awesome Yoomp! (Atari XE/XL) complete with in-depth developer interview. In terms of the number of new games it’s almost as if we’ve gone back in time 20 years to Christmas 1987!

But RGCD isn’t just game reviews and previews; Issue #04 also contains the second half of Mike Bevan’s acclaimed Llamasoft article, and on the technical front, RGCD/Cosine’s T.M.R has contributed a detailed essay explaining some of the problems faced by programmers whom choose to develop software for the most challenging gaming platform of them all; the good old Atari 2600.

Well, that just about wraps it up. From all of the RGCD team, I sincerely wish you a happy Christmas and all the best for 2008!

http://www.rgcd.co.uk/

Retrogaming Times Monthly Issue 43 is out. It’s an online magazine about online gaming.

Content:

01. Attract Mode
02. The Many Faces of Miner 2049er
03. NES’Cade — Donkey Kong
04. Apple II Incider: Giving Thanks
05. Nintendo Realm
06. Mastering Sega – Bomber Raid
07. What if… Atari released the Famicom in the West (Part 1)
08. Game Over

Thanks to http://www.atariage.com for the news.

http://my.stratos.net/~hewston95/RTM/RTM_Home.htm

Dear visitors,

as some of you might have recognized PDRoms was offline for almost 20 hours. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Everything should be back to normal!

Regards
Kojote & Team

Dear visitors,

as PDRoms is a really expensive hobby, we have now support from gameyeeeah.com – They offer plenty of interesting things and I already have ordered there myself.

This will be the one and only banner added to PDRoms, hope no one minds – waiting for donations is pretty hopeless, so we made this step once again.

-koj

http://www.gameyeeeah.com

Dear visitors,

in the past few hours we had serious troubles with the backend – most of it, should be fixed now. Kudos to celeth for taking himself time to fix everything, tho he should have done something for university! Thanks mate!

The service should be back to normal now 😉

-koj

Seems not only myself had a bad expirience recently…

Here are a few lines from brakken of tehskeen.net:

Wraggster, for my knowledge hasn’t been giving proper credit to emulation authors who post their work exclusively on other websites from some time – well at least in cases of the SkeenDev emulators. At the time barely any “scene” sites were covering the emulators due to the fact that there were only a handful of these sites who actually reported on GameCube. To make matters worse two of these “scene” sites who actually did cover GameCube homebrew, MaxConsole and PS2NFO were on bad terms with me and didn’t want to send my site traffic due to various reasons including loss of revenue.

These facts actually hurt the GameCube scene as the very talented authors works were not being spread around the scene. The end result of these other sites greedy tactics turned against them as TehSkeen quickly became a premier site for GameCube related developments and in the end these so called scene sites lost more traffic (income) then they would of if they would of covered the news themselves. Although, TehSkeen.com gained more popularity I was still not pleased as the homebrew authors weren’t getting they attention they deserved.

During this period in time Wraggster was one of the only English language “scene” sites posting constant updates about the emulators, but he was also not citing the source. This happened on numerous occasions. I however ignored for two reasons: (1) The emulators were getting coverage on a major site. (2) Lots of sites don’t link to respective sources so it’s pointless to post about them unless they are up to a lot of no good like MaxConsole and PS2NFO. Although, I ignored his disrespect for my site and the GameCube coders I did not forget…

Click the link for the full article!

Update: 05:06 @ 21. 11. 20007
While trying to use my dcemu.co.uk account I got this:

You have been banned for the following reason: Nice, Very Nice newspost – Date the ban will be lifted: Never

First STEALING news and then beeing pissed, when someone moans about it in the public… I call this “Very Nice” too and pretty professional 😉 – It probably just proofs that what has been written here tells nothing, but the truth! 😉

http://www.brakken.net/comments.php?mid=4d68f48572a742534773c4df3

As I am not too happy with Wraggsters explanation, here:

Update of sorts
Thanks to Kojote for the Idea, i posted this at 3am after an 21 hour day and forgot to credit the original idea, also by quickly linking to our GBA site people can browse and go to any coders site who makes the emu. A pm if offended would have been preferable.

At least he got his sitting-organ up and said, where the idea was comming from, but I am missing a link to the page where the idea was comming from. Anyway… giving (loveless half) credits after almost one full day… the train has already left the building, as his main page is filled up with other things and almost no one will read whatever he wrote.

http://dcemu.co.uk/play-snes-colecovision-and-more-on-your-iphone-79824.html

Just few hours ago myself, Kojote/PDRoms, wrote an article about how to extend the iPhones gaming function using gpSPhone. Now Wraggster shameless steals this idea, without giving credits where due. The original article is here: http://www.pdroms.de/news/7352/

Here is his post as you can find it per 05:05 20.11.2007 on dcemu.co.uk:

November 20th, 2007, 04:12 Posted By: wraggster

ZodTTDs excellent GBA Emulator for the Apple iPhone/itouch has opened the door to GBA Homebrew and more importantly in this newspost emulators of other systems

The following emulators for the Gameboy Advance should all be playable on the GBA Emulator for the iPhone, from arcade games to Atari2600 and even Snes games will work via these emulators.

Amstrad CPC
Asteroids
Black Tiger
Centipede
Greenboy Attack
Murdoc
Pacman
Punchout GBA RGBArcade
Remuadvance
Space Invadors
Atari 2600
BBC Micro
Chip 8
Colecovision
Game Gear
Gameboy
MSX
Nes
PCE Engine
Sega Master System
Sharp X1
Snes
Spectrum
Texas Instruments 83
Watara Supervision
Wonderswan

All can be found for download at GBA Emulation

To mention that GBA Emulation is a part of Wraggsters own Network, at least my article gave the homepages of the developers in first line… oh, to mention: PDRoms is fully non-commercial and hombrew developer friendly (we don’t link around in our own network to generate lots of pageviews and display a shitload of commercial ads…).

Wraggster how deep have you fallen? SHAME ON YOU!

He’s also pushing SNES emulation, tho it really doesn’t work that pretty… but well… you have your attention now! Congrats!

Spread the word and make him show who is the community! Teach him a lesson, so he will finally respect and proper link things of others! It’s not only about PDRoms, it’s also about every single homebrewer out there… I bet you prefer getting links to your own page, than having your product added up in his forum without mentioning a source? Right?

http://www.dcemu.co.uk/play-snes-colecovision-and-more-on-your-iphone-79824.html

Retrogaming Times Monthly is a online magazine caring about nostalgia/retro stuff.

Content:

Many Faces of Tutankham
Nintendo Realm – Sep 1986
Lost Titles of Tengen Xybots
TI99 Modded RGB Video
Apple ][ Incider – Shanghai’ed
Mastering Sega – F-16 Fighting Falcon

http://my.stratos.net/~hewston95/RTM42/RTM42.html

Dear visitors,

please keep in mind that the CORRECT URL is pdroms.de NOT .org. The .org domain was used to TEST certain issues, before going officially online at the old .de domain.

There are currently issues with the RSS feeds, as they still point at the .org domain, please fix this manually while we are at it. The .org domain will stop working soon!

Thanks for your attention!
-Kojote