Retro Weekly Roundup – 26th September

The Retro Weekly Roundup is coming to you a day late this week, as Rings & Coins has spent the last two days at EGX checking out all the new, and of course old gaming on offer.  However, that doesn’t mean that this week’s news is any less important, featuring everything from returning retro classics, to uncovering rare forgotten games.  So let’s get started with this week’s Retro Weekly Roundup.

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Up first and Rings & Coins would like to wish a very Happy Birthday to Nintendo.  As this week the iconic Kyoto company celebrated their 126th Birthday.  Nintendo’s history is long and rich, having ventured into a variety of different areas including a chain of love hotels, taxis, and Nintendo’s original purpose of creating Japanese Hanafuda playing cards.  Yet Nintendo being an early pioneer of video games, understandably found its greatest success within gaming as we see today.  So, Happy Birthday Nintendo, here’s to another 126 years of rich history, and to much more classic gaming experiences.

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Next up, and keeping on the themes of history and Nintendo, and the Donkey Kong world record has just been broken not once, but twice in six hours.  This Thursday the 2015 Donkey Kong Online Open, saw Wes Copeland register a high score of 1,170,500 on the classic Arcade title, beating the reigning champion Robert Lakemen.  However, the story didn’t end there as Lakemen was actually watching his record being broken and re-entered the fight 6 hours later.  This saw Lakemen register a high score of 1,172,100 and re-take his crown as best in the world, closing off an exciting day for one gaming’s classic titles.  Also at the same time proving that esports and competition in gaming isn’t reserved exclusively for the latest games.

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Moving from Nintendo onto SEGA, it was recently revealed that back in the 90s, SEGA had the opportunity to licence the technology that Nintendo used to create the ill-fated Virtual Boy.  This was recently revealed by the man who headed up SEGA of America back in the glory days of the early 90s, retro gaming legend Tom Kalinske.  Many know about SEGA’s planned VR platform, something that like the Dreamcast shows how SEGA was in many ways ahead of the curve.

However, what wasn’t known until recently, was that in the initial stages of planning this VR technology, SEGA looked into a possible partnership with Reflection Technologies.  Reflection Studios were building virtual reality technology that worked by reflecting light, with Nintendo licensing this technology and using it as the building blocks behind the Virtual Boy.  SEGA turned down this possible partnership and Kalinske summed this up by simply saying:

I think we were right in turning it down

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Staying with SEGA and this week saw the discovery of an extremely rare Sonic game that has long been lost and forgotten about.  This game is the Japanese kids Arcade game Waku Waku Sonic Patrol Car.  For anyone who wasn’t in Japan in the early 90s, and even those who were, you’d be forgiven front knowing much about the title.  The game features Sonic who, now as a Japanese police officer, has to drive a squad car around and protect his fellow animals from Dr. Eggman.

Even better, now that the long lost game has been discovered, gamers have been able to dump the original Arcade board.  This means that not only can the game be permanently preserved for the sake of history, but also with the upcoming MAME update, everyone can experience this rare title featuring everyone’s favourite hedgehog.  Nevertheless, it can’t give you the feeling of playing the game whilst sitting in Sonic’s patrol car.

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And finally, I’ve enjoyed the last few days playing the latest entry in one of the most legendary gaming series of all time, Street Fighter V.  However, Street Fighter is not the only retro fighting franchise returning soon, with SNK Playmore announcing the return of The King of Fighters.  Announced as part of the Tokyo Game Show, The King of Fighters XIV is in development for the PS4 and will not only boast 3D visuals for the first time in the series, but is planned for release next year.  Looks like 2016 will be a good year for returning retro fighters.

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So that’s it for another Retro Weekly Roundup, but make sure to check back next week for all the latest from the world of Retro gaming.  Not only that but check back in the next few days to read my roundup of EGX.  All of which will be of course looked at through the lens of retro gaming.