Retro Games Review Guide

[The Laird]

Some of you will already know that over the last few months I have been writing a console games review guide for my website and I thought the rest of you here might like to see it.

It is still a work in progress but I am at the stage where I thought it would be nice to share it. So far I have reviews up for the following systems:

Atari 2600 VCS
Atari 7800
Atari Lynx
Atari Jaguar
Atari Jaguar CD
Philips CD-i
NEC TurboGrafx

The Jaguar CD one is complete and now has every game and demo released for it. The others I am still updating and I plan to add Sega Saturn, Megadrive and Mega CD soon too as well as some computer game reviews.

Hope you like them!

[SexyWayne]

Why no NES reviews??

Seriously though.. very good, I know you said it's a WIP so just a little suggestion: the reviews pages could do with a next page button

[Antiriad2097]

The game list needs tweaking. As it is, the columns aren't wide enough so any title longer than two words wraps round to the next line.

This wouldn't be so bad if there were some delineation between one title and the next, but at the moment they all sort of run together.

Centre justifying the text doesn't help.

A lot of work to do all those reviews! I read the Power Drive Rally review in detail! Its fairly descriptive! But the use of exclamation marks is excessive!

You've probably enough room for a couple of screenshots next to the text. The single one looks a bit lonely.

[Negative Creep]

The game list needs tweaking. As it is, the columns aren't wide enough so any title longer than two words wraps round to the next line.

This wouldn't be so bad if there were some delineation between one title and the next, but at the moment they all sort of run together.

Centre justifying the text doesn't help.

A lot of work to do all those reviews! I read the Power Drive Rally review in detail! Its fairly descriptive! But the use of exclamation marks is excessive!

You've probably enough room for a couple of screenshots next to the text. The single one looks a bit lonely.

Agree with the above; the game titles somewhat blend into one. Great effort though

[zapiy]

Cheers for the feedback.. Will try and take some of that onboard and make some enhancements.

[The Laird]

Yes totally, thankyou everyone for your feedback. It's interesting you have also picked out a fair few things that I have noticed myself so now I know I wasn't just being picky!!!

The next page feature is a big one for me too, it will be added as soon as possible.

Glad you all liked what you saw and please pop back again to see what's been added and give more feedback.

I am not really sure I even want to know how much time I spent writing all those reviews

[retrojc]

Am I right in thinking that

Dig Dug - By Atari

I think it’s always been well established that Dig Dug contains one of the weirdest plots and concepts of any game in history. But I also think that its pure quirkiness is part of what made the original Namco arcade game such a massive hit. I mean you are a little man who runs around under ground with a giant air pump blowing up dragons and big bloopy things, dodging falling boulders and collecting the magic fruit that grows down there, makes perfect sense doesn't it? Well this strange mix of Boulderdash, Pacman and erm some game where you blow air is just as good on the 7800 as it was in the arcades. There are difficulty levels, a 2-player mode and all the original levels here which combined with the colourful graphics and decent sound make this one of my favourite 7800 games. For me Dig Dug still holds just as much nostalgia for me as games like Pacman, Space Invaders and Asteroids. It also still holds up just as well today too in the gameplay department and is tremendous fun. So what you waiting for? A new magic air pump to arrive?.

Is the entire review? Or am I meant to click to a new window to continue reading? The header is a link, but to nowhere for me aha

The images on left could be enhanced. A simple CSS rollover in each table would create more to see for the viewer, if they so wished. I would also make the images strict to align to top of cell, and not to middle. Hovering in center is a bit dirty (no offence) Try something like <td valign="top"> in your image table cell before the image.

In regards to site traffic, I'd make each review into a single page. This way Google will index them better, and searches will find them more easier, instead of being inbody text. However, if the reviews are the length they are, I'd think a little more in depth about that.

All the best

[retrojc]

If you visit

http://joshuacroft.co.uk/CSStable/

There is an example of something you could use, it's old, but strong. Just right click view source for code.

NOTE: this was a quick code thing. Images on right need to be resized etc

[The Laird]

I am not sure what is wrong with the screenshots really, always good to see what other people think though as I said.

The reviews are meant to be mini-reviews because I wanted it to be like an a-z guide and it would have also taken me forever to write full page reviews for every single game. That said some of these reviews (like the one you quoted actually) are cut down versions of full page reviews I wrote for Atari User.

[The Laird]

Going to be adding a load of Vectrex reviews to the site this week that somebody else wrote!

[Spector]

I'm quite sympathetic to Double Dragon on the Atari 2600, but I choked on my maltesers when I read in the review: "the backgrounds probably look as good as the NES version." ??!!?? I wouldn't say that! A nice effort nonetheless. Strange that there are no NES reviews though

[StarshipUK]

The big problem I am facing at the moment is the fact that with multicarts which store every single game ever made, that gives people so much choice they do not know what to play at Events (well, now just a problem at RV now for me).

While people have their favourites, not all those games are suitable for events - so perhaps to make this a bit different and unique, perhaps marking games suitable for playing at events would be a good idea - and would help me out with creating lists or choosing games on systems - as well as perhaps finding some hidden gems that I never knew existed.

Perhaps also adding some categories such as "Puzzle", "Driving", "Shooter", "Platform", "2 Player" would be helpful to give a quick indication as to what kind of game it is.

Would also be cool (and add some interaction) if people could write their own comments for each review, or perhaps even own mini review as not everyone may have the same opinion as the person who originally reviewed the game.

[The Laird]

I'm quite sympathetic to Double Dragon on the Atari 2600, but I choked on my maltesers when I read in the review: "the backgrounds probably look as good as the NES version." ??!!?? I wouldn't say that! A nice effort nonetheless.

The NES version has REALLY blocky backgrounds. Honestly I compared them side by side and some of the 2600 ones are every bit as good. The sprites are a joke though in the VCS version, bobble hats! WTF!

The big problem I am facing at the moment is the fact that with multicarts which store every single game ever made, that gives people so much choice they do not know what to play at Events (well, now just a problem at RV now for me).

While people have their favourites, not all those games are suitable for events - so perhaps to make this a bit different and unique, perhaps marking games suitable for playing at events would be a good idea - and would help me out with creating lists or choosing games on systems - as well as perhaps finding some hidden gems that I never knew existed.

Perhaps also adding some categories such as "Puzzle", "Driving", "Shooter", "Platform", "2 Player" would be helpful to give a quick indication as to what kind of game it is.

Would also be cool (and add some interaction) if people could write their own comments for each review, or perhaps even own mini review as not everyone may have the same opinion as the person who originally reviewed the game.

I don't really agree with the multi-carts comment because out of my friends the only people I know with them are you and Matt. All my other friends who collect games like to buy the originals like me. Originally I did add genres but then removed them because some were hard to catagorise and if you read the review it explains what type of game it is anyway. There is actually a thread set up for people to comment and add their own scores and such like but nobody has bothered so far. All great feedback anyway and it wouldn't be hard to implement any of these features in the future.

[StarshipUK]

Whether multicarts or originals it would still be useful to know of games which are suitable for events - I sometimes look at your massive collection of Jag games and don't have a clue what to play. The same would happen if I took along a full set of originals for the systems I own.

The thing is I am not a collector and have no interest in collecting games. It is far easier to take a multicart along to an event containing everything than a massive box of games - and also makes homebrews which have not been released on cart easier to play on original hardware.

I think more people have multicarts than you realise, and expect not everyone advertises the fact they own them as it can still be a "Grey" area. I forever had people in the past asking me where I got the multicart from. I know at least two people own a master everdrive as a theiving bast3rd stole my original one at an RCM event.

Perhaps a direct link on the review pages to the thread to add comments and reviews would be helpful, rather than having to go to the forum and manually finding it.

[The Laird]

Whether multicarts or originals it would still be useful to know of games which are suitable for events - I sometimes look at your massive collection of Jag games and don't have a clue what to play. The same would happen if I took along a full set of originals for the systems I own..

I noticed you have done this in the Retrovision part of the forum, I can quite easily add a Jaguar thread along the same lines or do it as a seperate feature within the wiki.

Perhaps a direct link on the review pages to the thread to add comments and reviews would be helpful, rather than having to go to the forum and manually finding it.

Very easy to add, taken on board.