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### Welcome To RGCD Issue #04!

One of the first rules of magazine writing is to never leave the editorial until the last minute, yet here I am on Christmas Eve, mere hours from the self-imposed deadline, mentally exhausted after a hard last day at the office and with a blank page before me...

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!

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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 has in the past been involved in Retro Fusion Online and the late, lamented website Sega Master System World. 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 shiney new 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.

### Gnome

Gnome (aka Gnome), son of Gnome, is a gnome, or, to be more precise, a retro-gaming, adventure obsessed, Amiga loving and 8-bit micros cherishing gnome, with a sick passion for video games and blogging that usually comes in 10 minute bursts.

Already trying to figure out how cities work, maintaining the Gnome's Lair gaming blog (gnomeslair.blogspot.com), searching for Retro Treasures (retro-treasures.blogspot.com), wantonly pocket gaming (pocketgaming.blogspot.com) and wondering about life's wonders, Gnome has ambitions of becoming the first and only bearded RGCD cheerleader.

### Graham Humphrey

Graham Humphrey has been a die-hard Amiga fan for longer than he cares to remember and is very active in the Amiga scene. He's a moderator on the English Amiga Board, has programmed a few games with another one in development and has been writing reviews and articles for Amiga-related magazines since December 2005.

He owns several newer consoles and a PC but his souped-up Amiga 1200 still gets used on a regular basis. He doesn't like to think about how much money he must have spent on it...

### Mike Bevan

Mike Bevan first became aware of the strange world of home computer gaming with a rather random encounter with 'Manic Miner' at a local school fete. Enamoured by this not very educational but rather eye-opening application for Sinclair's rubber-keyed wonder he proceeded to nag his parents for his own machine which resulted in the surprising acquisition of a Commodore 64.

He has run 'Destroy all Monsters!'(www.stickycarpet.com/dam/), a website supposedly dedicated to 2D shoot'emups, on and off (mostly off) since 1999, which is very handy for keeping him off the streets. His current passion is attempting to electrocute himself with old arcade games.

### Mike Rawlings

Mike has recently finished his degree in BSc (Hons) Computer Games Technology gaining a 2:1 and hopes to one day (preferably soon) work in the computer games industry. He enjoys many different genres of games on a variety of platforms but mainly cares about the gameplay over graphics.

Aside from gaming he enjoys going to the cinema, the pub, and clubs. His various sport interests include Football and Snooker and he plays 9-Ball Pool in Pro/Am Tournaments.

Strongbow is probably his favourite alcoholic beverage, so buy him a pint or two and he might make something in 3D for you. Speaking of which you can see his work at www.digital-renegades.co.uk/michael.

### Neil E.

Neil's introduction to computers came via Deathchase on the Spectrum 48K (at the tender age of 4 years old), marking the start of a life long love affair with computer games. A huge fan of 80's computer magazines, such as Your Sinclair and CRASH, meant a largely misspent youth of endlessly typing in listings, only to return to fix said listings to get them to work!

The 90's saw acquisitions of the NES, Mega Drive and the Amiga A600 and A1200 respectively, an era he refers to as his 'Gaming Golden Age'.

Currently in his final year at University, studying a BA in Music Technology, retro-gaming remains a major past-time. He also allegedly updates his fledgling retro-gaming blog www.typingoutloud.com when he can find the time.

### 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.