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### Homebrew Retrospective [PC]

#### Reviewed By J. Monkman

By the time issue #04 is finished I will have been working on this pet project of mine for just over a year. It seems like only yesterday that I began drawing up the HTML template designs for the magazine; RGCD's hectic first year has been a working testament to how fast time passes.

On a related note, I thought it was about time that I made an effort to award our reader-base with something new in the magazine. Well, something 'old' actually, but let's not be pedantic. I've been a keen follower of homebrew coding since long before my days acting as editor for RGCD, and the fact that the magazine is solely dedicated to reviewing new releases is occasionally frustrating - it means that we're unable to review the back-catalogue of highly acclaimed games from years passed, many of which remain relatively unknown to the majority of players. Yes, I'm sure you've all heard of Cave Story, Alien Hominid and Mutant Storm, but it still amazes me at how many gamers have never experienced premium-quality freeware releases such as SpaceJack, GLTron, Warning Forever, Torus Trooper or Push Push Penguin. And that's only a selection of PC games - each and every platform with an active development scene has a library of fantastic titles that we'd otherwise be unable to review.

This is the first in a series of mini-reviews to address the problem. Starting with the PC platform, here are some of the RGCD favourites from yester-year...

### ChoRenSha 68K [PC]

#### http://www2.tky.3web.ne.jp/~yosshin/my_works/

Loosely translated as 'Super Running Fire', ChoRenSha 68K is actually a Windows port of a homebrew shoot 'em up released for the Japanese Sharp X68000 computer back in the late 1990's. Relatively unheard of outside of it's native country, the X68K was renown for it's arcade quality visuals and sound (due to the hardware sharing similar architecture with the coin-ups of the day), and this is very much reinforced upon loading up the windows version of the game; in fact you could easily be fooled into believing you were playing a lost IREM or Konami shooter from the golden age of gaming.

Commercial quality presentation aside, it's the turbo-paced speed of the game, multiple (and varied) boss encounters and innovative power-up system that really scores ChoRenSha a high place in the SEU hall of fame. Upon destroying certain enemies a rotating circle of three power-ups spawns from the wreckage, consisting of a weapon upgrade, shield and smart bomb - and when the player collects the upgrade module of their choosing the rest disappear. However, if the player is skilled enough to maintain a central position within the rotating circle for a few seconds then they are rewarded by receiving all three power-ups simultaneously (RGCD regulars will notice that this upgrade method was most recently 'borrowed' by last issue's Fraxy). Be warned though, with all the flak flying about the screen this kind of manoeuvre is far from easy...

Seriously, regardless of whether or not you're a fan of the shoot 'em up genre you really need a copy of this installed on your machine.

### Push Push Penguin [PC]

#### http://retrospec.sgn.net/games/penguins/

This mini review is bound to be slightly biased, as Push Push Penguin is my all-time favourite two-player homebrew game (irrespective of platform). Featuring vomit-inducingly cute pixel-work by Gary Lucken of the Army Of Trolls, this one or two-player Pengo update for the PC is without a doubt one of the highest quality freeware tributes I've played, and if you're a fan of the original arcade game then I really couldn't recommend this any higher.

The tried and tested Sno-bee squishing game-play from the Sega classic remains intact, but as is often the case in remakeland, Push Push Penguin expands upon the original by adding bonus power-ups, large scrolling levels and a far more varied enemy cast (which in this case is a very good thing, as the arcade original was a little uninspired in that respect). Everything about the game is polished to a commercial level, and the only criticism I can come up with is that the game's follow up (Pen-Pen Olympics) is taking forever to complete.

### SpaceJack [PC]

#### http://www.spacejack.org/games/spacejack/

Here's a blast from the past, and a fantastic little game that's relatively unknown throughout the indie community. Mike Linkovich's SpaceJack is a late 90's reworking of Cinematronics defend 'em up 'Rip Off' - a vector based underdog of the coin-up world. As with the original, the premise in SpaceJack is simple; it's essentially a souped-up Defender/Asteroids crossover in which you have to defend your cargo of energy crystals from being hijacked by waves of increasingly aggressive and heavily armed space pirates. Simple, yet chaotic arcade fun.

Although it is still compatible with modern systems due to it's use of DirectX, SpaceJack is starting to show it's age - the cut and paste hiphop audio still sounds fresh (in a suitably old-school way), but the limited colour depth and clunky pre-load interface hold this one back from achieving a higher score. However, don't let these personal gripes put you off - SpaceJack is still a blistering arcade shooter that you'll come back to time and time again.

### Super Mario Pac [PC]

#### http://www.hermitgames.com/mariopac.html

Probably one of the most enjoyable examples of bootleg retro-gaming available for the PC, Super Mario Pac is essentially a Jetpac remake with an (unofficial) Super Mario Brothers theme. Admittedly there's nothing original here; the Jetpac formula has been recreated faithfully (and around 90% of the game's graphics and audio have been directly ripped from Nintendo's 16-Bit classic), but Hermit Games' Matt has created his bastardised tribute with such finesse and attention to detail that the illusion you are playing an unreleased SNES mini-game is just about flawless.

Normally in RGCD we'd avoid titles like this for the same reason we usually ignore ROM hacks - we'd rather use our limited time to promote original releases over unauthorised rehashes of someone else's code and graphics. However, rules are made to be broken and as it's impossible not to play Super Mario Pac without a fat grin on your face it would be unfair not to re-introduce this gem to the gaming population - the winning combination of brazen cheekiness and classic game-play result in it being one of the PC's definitive retro mash-ups. Don't believe the hype? Well go and check out C&VG and Edge magazine's equally positive write-ups. Oh, and download Matt's other (more recent) stuff whilst you're at it.

### Warning Forever [PC]

#### http://www18.big.or.jp/~hikoza/Prod/

Last but by no means least is Hikoza T Ohkubo's highly acclaimed boss shooter Warning Forever, a game that some of you are probably already familiar with, but as we've featured a preview of the WF inspired 'Battleships Forever' in this issue I thought I'd give it a mention anyway.

As with last issue's Fraxy, Warning Forever presents the player with a constant stream of 'boss battles' to contend with; but unlike Fraxy's seemingly random encounters, in Warning Forever each successive boss actually evolves to counter your playing style. As an example, let's say that your strategy for obliterating the boss' internal power-core involves intensively attacking through the side modules of the craft, but whilst doing so you've been successfully shot down several times by homing rockets. The result of this is that after destroying the current enemy the following boss encounter will be more heavily defended on the sides, and is also likely to be armed with more missile launchers - thus requiring a different strategy to beat. Game-play is against the clock, starting at 180 seconds and increasing by 30 with each boss you destroy. Unlike a regular shoot 'em up there's no player lives counter - instead, every time your fighter craft is destroyed 20 valuable seconds of time are deducted. When the timer runs out, the game is over.

Warning Forever still fares well against the current generation of shooters thanks to its future-retro hybrid of vector and sprite graphics, explosive sound effects and intelligent game mechanics. In fact, it still surprises me today (in hindsight) that such a common-sense game concept wasn't implemented in a shoot 'em up before.