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### Welcome To RGCD Issue #02!

Issue #02 of RGCD is here at last, complete with a larger development team, more features and reviews than before and compiled in half the time of our debut release! The stats speak for themselves; 27,000 words, 27 reviews, 6 extra features and over 170MB of game files included on disc!

Compiling Issue #02 has involved a lot of work - even though the html templates were all in place following the launch of RGCD, it still took considerable effort to get started after the mammoth amount of labour, sweat and tears that went into the first release. However, the feedback we've received has been amazing, and I have to admit that I am personally astonished by how popular RGCD has become since its conception (with well over 150GB downloaded to date and thousands of unique site visits/sessions). It was this feedback combined with the enthusiasm of the new RGCD team members that really motivated me to get Issue #02 underway, and I'd like to sincerely thank Dudley, Ruari O'Toole, SirClive, T.M.R and Travis Fahs for all their hard work.

So what's in the mag then? Well, a far more balanced selection of featured platforms for a start - with reviews of new releases for the Amstrad CPC, Atari 8-Bit, Commodore 64, GBA, PC/Mac, Sega Master System *and* Sinclair Spectrum. We've also managed to arrange developer interviews with Weekend Gamer TV's Opa-Opa, Richard Bayliss of The New Dimension and the undisputed saviour of the commercial 8-Bit gaming world, Simon Ullyatt from Cronosoft. Then of course there's the featured review of Motocross Challenge GBA, complete with an exclusive interview with the development team behind the game!

Aside from the above, highlights of Issue #02 include previews of top work-in-progress projects Force Majeure and Brickout 95% (from Monokey and Prollcoder respectively) as well as reviews of accolade-worthy PC titles such as the awesome Streets Of Rage Remake from Bomber Games (RGCD's highest scoring game to date), Smayd's eye-popping Veck SE and formerly-shareware Defender homage Alien Abduction. Add to this already impressive line-up the dozen or so new releases for a variety of retro-platforms (including write-ups of several Cronosoft releases) and it's hard to argue the fact that RGCD #02 is a massive improvement over our debut release.

With the next issue planned for release at Retro North in late August (see www.retronorth.co.uk for details), work has already started on compiling RGCD #03. We've confirmed attendance at the event and will be hosting a RGCD stall complete with a variety of gaming platforms - so if you can make it, feel free to come over and have a chat with myself and some of the other team members on the day.

Hopefully we'll see you there...

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### James Monkman

Founder of RGCD and currently the magazines main contributor, James has a near obsessive passion for retro gaming, especially with regard to collecting and playing new games for old and unsupported machines.

Officially a 'hater' of next-gen consoles, James likes to pretend that it's still 1992 and prefers his computers to have 16-Bits (or less).

If you feel so obliged, you can become one of his 'friends' by clicking here: www.myspace.com/heavystylus.

### Dudley

British videogame and motorsport expert Dudley is well respected by at least three people for his honest and occasionally completely fictional writing. He runs the combined sarcasm and blog site Ask Duds and is a contributor to Retro Fusion where he runs the regular audience participation feature 'Let's All Play'. By day he works in development for a medium size software company where he attempts to change the universe through innovative accountancy solutions.

Dudley lives in London with a flatmate, about 50 games machines and several broken pieces of electronics which "might come in handy". While he is the Walrus, he has not spoken to the Egg man in several years.

### Ruari O'Toole

Ruari O'Toole is an avid gamer who found himself caught between both sides of the Amiga vs Atari wars of the eighties and nineties. He is an obsessive scourer of car boot sales and junk shops, and misses the days when chunky polygons and parallax scrolling blew peoples' minds.

### SirClive

SirClive is a retro gaming collector with a particular fondness for the Commodore 16, VIC-20 and the ZX Spectrum. He can be found regularly at the Retro Gamer forum and also runs the Weekend Gamer VIC-20 Archive.

He is a support member of Team Weekend Gamer, contributing to WGTV - a downloadable gaming TV show.

Both the VIC-20 archive and WGTV show can be found at www.weekend-gamer.co.uk.

### T.M.R

T.M.R (aka Jason Kelk) has been playing, designing and programming games for 8 and 16-Bit hardware for over twenty two years, almost all for his own entertainment, and writing about them for the last eleven. In short, he's a bit of a show-off, really.

When he finds time in his busy schedule (mostly filled with self-aware sarcasm) he pretends to manage and edit Oldschool-Gaming.com (a reviews site dedicated to recent games released on classic hardware) and is a member of multi-platform 8-bit game and demo development team Cosine.

### Travis Fahs

Travis hails from the US, presently residing in the New York area. This means he never knew the joy of arguing over a dozen different home computer standards with his friends, but he made up for it by bickering about everything else gaming-related.

Travis may not live in the past, but he at least keeps a summer home there. A lover of losers, he can't help but gravitate to the systems time has forgotten. As a freelance gaming journalist, he feels a sense of obligation to know his gaming history as well as he can. Plus he's just a sucker for all things 2D.

### Elliot Taylor

Without Elliot, none of this would have been possible. Elliot Taylor is the technical wiz behind the mechanics of RGCD and is solely responsible for all the ASP/XHTML code and design of both the RGCD website and the discmag itself.

Although originally a hardcore Atarian, Elliot now spends the majority of his time creating bespoke business software and web-based solutions. More details can be found on his website at www.ejtstudios.com.

### Ethan Worley

Ethan has been creating digital art for about 8 years and drawing since before he was even conceived. He is currently trying to teach himself animation, guitar, and actionscript but is quite an unfocused pupil. He is also in a volunteer fire brigade and plays basketball poorly. In his free time he enjoys sleeping and looking for food to eat. He thinks typing in third person is strange.