New Releases Category

• By Rich

  Tags

  8-bit rocket, arcade

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  New Releases

  3 comments

  Jack’s Beach Blitz

  31st Oct 2008

  3

  Jack’s Beach Blitz is a new game from the fine folks at 8-bit Rocket. They have been posting about the  development process for a few weeks now (you can read it all on their blog). Originally starting life as a Pacman styled game, it’s now much more of Gauntlet meets Wizard of Wor. You play Jack, a slightly cycedelic coloured orange who has to traverse each level, blasting the baddies, teleporting, picking up bonuses and ultimately trying to collect your girl before pegging it to the exit.

  Monster spawning generators can be shot (but take a lot of your limited ammo supply), you can also pick-up power-ups such as freeze or instant kill. But without taking out at least a few of the generators they just keep on coming! They also move pretty speedily (as do you), so you don’t really have time to run away from them. Thankfully they are pretty dumb, so more often that not you can evade them quickly, but if you don’t do something about the number of them you’ll soon get overwhelmed.

  Graphically it’s obvious the 8-bit Rocket team could do with a talented artist onboard (sorry guys!). The graphics are far from terrible, but do get cluttered on later levels and have that “grid like” look to them, which a skilled pixeller can avoid easily. In-game the animations are cute, and things move along at a very nippy pace. The main menu is a bit of a jumble though, with mixed visual cues. Some careful spacing here would do wonders. It was also really quite hard to visually differentiate between something that would do you damage, or do you good, so that was more trial and error.

  As for the audio – it’s great 🙂 Lots of big sounds and rolling effects. Glad to see you got to use that music too guys!

  Aesthetics aside it’s the gameplay that counts, and JBB has in this in spades. There’s a nice puzzle element (unlock things that block your girl), there’s the solid arcade element (shoot, and shoot fast + avoid) and there’s the whole time aspect too. Take too long and you’ll be swamped.

  It’s nice to see a real solid arcade blaster out there. Give it a play!

• By Rich

  Tags

  c+vg

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  New Releases

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  C+VG Magazine is back… sort of

  7th Apr 2008

  0

  I’m an avid classic gaming magazine collector. I have complete sets of most 80’s and early 90’s gaming mags (those with an Atari specific bent anyway), including the likes of Zero, The One, The Games Machine, etc.

  I am also really pleased to have a complete set of C+VG (Computer + Video Games) magazines. That is until I read this announcement today: “ The long-awaited return of CVG to newsstands across the country is only weeks away.” Apparently it will be a bi-monthly magazine that focuses on the “upcoming” games only, so won’t be a traditional review style format. Launch price will be a fiver (par for the course these days) and the front cover looks incredibly similar to the most recent issue of Edge magazine.

  I’ll buy it just to see how it goes, but while I bet they continue the issue numbering from where it left off I don’t consider this a true return to form just yet.

  Read the fully skinny here.