It’s February, which means it’s too late to wish you a Happy New Year, and also too late to make a comment about not knowing when it’s too late to wish someone a Happy New Year. So we’ll just call this a mid-Q1 check-in instead, shall we? [No, that sounds simply dreadful – a reader].

As you may have noticed, 2024 was the first year for quite some time in which we failed to hit our KPIs and SLAs, modest as they are. From my point of view, a steady trickle of content has somehow endured through numerous ups and downs over the years, including some fairly major life events, but in the second half of last year it almost dried up completely.

On the more self-inflicted end of the available excuses, I have to admit that my refusal to upgrade my old desktop PC crossed over from territory that could be described as cheerful eccentricity into an area clearly marked on the map as ‘full-on madness’.

As the amount of time between turning the machine on and actually being able to use it increased on a daily basis, I continued to use it to play through Dragon Age: Origins – a long process in itself, made longer by the extra hour or so required for an ancient HD to stop spinning before I dared to click on anything.

When I eventually replaced it, the new machine didn’t work at all and I had to send it back. Then, with replacement #2 in place, something Quite Bad happened in real life and I found myself abandoning all plans to do anything productive, electing to process events by purchasing and downloading a modern-ish tennis game, creating a female player with an approximation of my own name, and hammering through the early training modes and low-level tournaments with a vacant expression on my face.

As it turns out, guiding a female alter-ego through some clay court tournament in the arse-end of nowhere was just what I needed, but plans for #retro #content were kind of derailed slightly.

(I didn’t really make it far enough through the career grind to vouch for the qualities of Tennis World Tour: it had some fairly smelly reviews, and though I quite enjoyed the generic player and tournament names and mid-level production vibes of an earlier and more innocent age, on court the lower-tier AI opponents seemed rather prone to throwing matches away through an inexplicable number of unforced errors).

And so, with nothing in the pipeline for the end of the year and the usual dilemma about whether to accept our hosts’ latest pricing hike approaching, we took the decision to move and reserve our energies for getting the site back up and running again. Which it (hopefully) now is – thanks mainly, of course, to Stoo.

So, we go again for 2025, and hope for better. I just wanted to pop a note up to say hello, in case anyone thought that playing through Daikatana had sapped all my retro gaming enthusiasm and made me too depressed to continue.

Thanks, as always, for reading!

Hi all. This humble site has now been transferred to the new host. There were of course more problems than I had expected, mostly relating to this janky customised theme I put together when we first moved to WordPress. Still, we should be 95% back to normal, there’s just a chance of broken images in old blog post.

Hi all, we’re currently in the process of moving to new hosting. The site is partially navigable, but not all the menu structures work and some of the formatting is kind of screwy. Hope to have everything back to normal in the next few days!

Some exciting news: the semi-regular discussion series, Discussion: [indie game] (spoilers!) has moved to a podcast format!

This does mean that future instalments won’t be appearing on FFG in written form. Thanks to everyone who read them, and to Stoo for extending the remit of the site to allow them to be hosted here. 

While Jo and I don’t plan to revisit any games covered in our previous discussions, we’ve started off in fairly familiar territory by choosing The Blackwell Legacy for our first episode: a game we’ve both played, but not discussed, previously. 

In addition to that discussion, we’ve also put up a couple of bonus episodes, in which we introduce the format and chat about various things from our gaming pasts.

Instead of the slightly ad-hoc nature of the written pieces, new podcasts will be released weekly, on a Friday, but with breaks in between each run of episodes.

Any and all support is welcome, whether it’s by listening to the podcast itself, which is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music (as well as a few other places), or by following us on Instagram.

(For anyone baffled by or indifferent to this news: this is my one and only plug for the podcast on FFG, and the next time you’ll hear from me, it’ll be back to the typical diet of oldies reviews, delivered at the usual rate).

Thank you!

Today in “news you’ve already read somewhere else”. The Warcraft series has reached its 30th Anniversary and as part of the celebrations, Blizzard have released remastered versions of the first two games.

You get the option of either original graphics, or ” lovingly updated hand-painted artwork”. You might recall the first game was pixelly VGA, the second moved to higher-res SVGA and established the series bold and colourful look. Now they share a similar style, more or less what I’d expect if you took the second game and re-drew it today.

So they look great… although it’s disappointing that the animation isn’t any smoother. This seems to be an occasional issue with remastering old-school 2D games. Just in my opinion, if you create hidef graphics but only have three frames for an “attack” motion, it gives the impression of a cheap mobile game.

Anyway we also get “UI and UX” improvements which I expect will, again, have more of an impact on the first game. For example, you can now move a unit by selecting and clicking instead of select, hotkey (or menu option), then clicking. Also you can select a larger number of units simultaneously. These details matter when you’re in a rush; I always found the clunky interface in WC1 to be a little offputting.

Oh and also, the remastered WC2 will still connect to Battle.net for multiplayer, as it has since 1999. Which is kind of astonishing.

I’d say both games are worth owning, being fine examples of early realtime strategy. Build up forces, fend off enemy attacks, try and co-ordinate your own successful strike on the enemy. Chaotic disaster when you get it wrong, immensely satisfying when you’re victorious. They’re also of interest to World of Warcraft fans, since they show events about 20 years before the point where WoW begins. If you’ve ever walked around the ruins of Alterac, here’s your chance to go and see the battle where it was destroyed.

The first game is going on Battle.net for £8.99 while Warcraft 2 will set you back £12.59. Alternatively you can get them both in the Battle Chest bundle with the remastered version of Warcraft 3 from a years back.

The changes haven’t (yet) reached GoG, who are still selling the versions of WC1 and 2 released about four years ago. (they don’t have WC3). These are more or less in their original state, with a few small tweaks to WC2 like widescreen support. They’re also a few quid cheaper, if you really don’t care about the upgrades or want a DRM-free version. Since I already own the gog versions I’m not in a hurry here, but will probably wait and see if the Battle Chest ever goes on sale. Then maybe one day I’ll finally give WC1 a proper try.

[update]  – sadly WC1 and 2 will be leaving the gog store on December the 13th. If you’ve already bought the games there, gog will at least keep them available and updated for modern windows according to their new Gog Preservation Program.

Hi there.

Nice to be back with you again. Sorry it’s been a while.

Today’s game is Mafia, a 1930s organised crime caper from Illusion Softworks.

I recently finished Horizon Chase Turbo. Short review: it’s really good!

A number of retro-themed arcade racers have caught my attention in recent years, and it seems (albeit from a position of almost total ignorance of modern gaming trends) as if the increasing focus of mainstream racers on a serious, simulation-focused experience has opened up some space for smaller developers at the more arcadey end of the market.

It’s one thing to say that you’re attempting to recapture the spirit of 80s or 90s racers in a new game, but quite another to actually achieve it successfully. Eagerly presenting a trailer showcasing sprite-based or stripped-back polygon graphics and chiptune soundtrack is arguably the easy bit.

Horizon Chase Turbo not only ticks those two boxes – it looks and sounds great – but has plenty going on under the bonnet too. Its career mode, the World Tour, offers refreshingly gimmick-free gameplay and uncomplicated structures of progression, particularly for single-minded gamers (such as yours truly) who refuse to move onto the next races until perfection has been achieved in those already available.

Start at the back, do laps, finish first and collect all the coins: that’s how you get top billing on each track. As you do so, you’ll unlock more vehicles, which can be upgraded through a top-3 finish (or first, and only first, if you’re an obsessive – see above) in a special race in each territory. Consideration of your vehicles’ attributes – again, kept relatively simple, just like in the old days – then becomes a matter for some consideration prior to each race.

The length of the World Tour and number of races is one of the few concessions to the expectations of the modern gamer, and possibly leads to occasional autopiloting through stages without necessarily mastering them. However, dotted throughout are some truly nefarious tracks that simply will not be beaten without you getting everything – vehicle selection, the location of on-track pickups, not crashing, using nitro at exactly the right time – absolutely spot on.

These are the moments that, in my opinion, make for a great arcade racer. And while there may be a few too many filler races overall, things do build to a crescendo, difficulty-wise, and the finale is appropriately climactic. It’s a game that pretty much achieves everything it sets out to do, which is a rare thing indeed.

For those, like me, with fond memories of the original Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge (or the Top Gear games that followed on the SNES), this is the perfect modern successor. Having been hooked on achieving World Tour perfection for quite a few months, I’m not sure if I’ll dive into the various other modes available straight away, or at all, but even if I don’t, Horizon Chase Turbo has provided more than its fair share of thrilling moments already.

Hi there.

Depending on how generous you want to be, we’re either a week or a month late with this one.

If you’re English, the post-Euros hangover will be over by now, at least.

Personally, I made my headache slightly worse by returning to Actua Soccer and playing its first sequel: Euro 96.

And, don’t forget, if you like your coverage of mainly terrible old football games in some kind of list-based format, you can find this here.

Hello!

Right… how to make this update vaguely topical…?

As you know, we’ve just had an election here in the UK.

[Leans into microphone] I tell you what, I’ve not seen such a unanimously negative verdict since Daikatana was released!

Will that do? Does that, er, you know, work? Hello?

Hi there.

Today’s game is our first Tomb Raider review.

(Not a review of the first Tomb Raider, though: that would be far too logical).

Here’s a look at Tomb Raider: Legend, from Crystal Dynamics.