Retro Gaming Australia

From the heyday of Dynamix’s simulation efforts comes A-10 Tank Killer, which has players piloting the titular jet in missions based around the Gulf War and a fictionary European war scenario.

After Burner is one of Sega’s most popular arcade games, mostly owing to its fantastic cabinet rather than the game itself. The X68000 version is probably the best of the home ports prior to the Saturn one.

4×4 Evolution is an off-road racing game for the Dreamcast, and it’s not actually as bad as you’d expect. The cars control brilliantly and the tracks are pretty damn huge for the time.

Before wunderkind Tiger Woods showed up on the scene, EA Sports’ golf series put the PGA branding front and center. PGA Tour Golf introduced the revolutionary three click swing system, which was imitated by pretty much every golf game up to Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003, which introduced analogue stick-based swinging.

Triple Play 96 is the first game in EA’s Triple Play Baseball series, which lasted until the release of Triple Play 2002, after which it was replaced by the MVP Baseball series. Prior to Triple Play, EA had flopped around on baseball, first licensing the Tony La Russa Baseball game from Stormfront Studios, trying to develop their own game with MLBPA Baseball, before going back to Stormfront for La Russa 95. Triple Play 96 boasted all kinds of things that hadn’t been done well in baseball games before – most notably huge sprites in the batting screen and competent fielding controls.

Bebe’s Kids is the poster child of weird licensed video games. It’s based on the animated film released in 1992, which was in turn based on a stand up comedy routine from Robin Harris. The film wasn’t particularly successful, failing with critics and the box office, and noted for being completely watered down from the original Bebe’s Kids stand up routine. The game is a beat ’em up romp through a theme park, and not a particularly good one. What makes it weirder is the Bebe’s Kids game was released some two years after the film failed to find an audience.

Super Metroid is arguably one of the finest games of the 16-bit era, if not all time. It’s a massive, beautiful game with an excellent structure and superb gameplay. What sticks with me after playing it, however, is the fact it could tell a good story without getting in your face about it.

Skitchin’ is a kind-of reminagining of the Road Rash formula, replacing the bikes with in-line skates, just around the time in-line skating’s popularity was at its peak. Players compete in races across North America, and need to grab the backs of cars to propel themselves towards the finish line, while exchanging blows with other skaters and doing stunts.

Is there such thing as a gaiden game in the sports genre? Because that’s exactly what Team USA Basketball is to the NBA Playoffs series. Released in between Bulls vs. Lakers and Bulls vs. Blazers, Team USA Basketball is technically the “1992” entry in the NBA Playoffs series, but features no NBA teams. Instead it focuses on the exploits of the “Dream Team”, the team which represented the United States at the Games of the XXV Olympiad in Barcelona, Spain. The 1992 Olympics marked the first time NBA players were allowed to represent their country, and Team USA was comprised of players such as Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Larry Bird, David Robinson, Patrick Ewing, Scottie Pippen, Karl Malone, John Stockton and Earvin “Magic” Johnson. The team absolutely demolished all opposition – the average margin was 43 points and they were the first team to score more than 100 points in each game at the Olympics.

John Madden Football ’92 is Madden’s second outing on home consoles and boasts a laundry list of improvements including EASN presentation, weather effects including rain and snow, new playbooks, instant replays and player injuries. The last one is a particularly amusing one – John Madden Football ’92 came at a time when EA didn’t have any official licenses and didn’t take itself seriously – when a player gets injured, an ambulance speeds onto the field, ploughing down any players unfortunate enough to get in its way. It’s really quite amusing.