In 1998 Codemasters released Colin McRae Rally for the PSOne and i will be honest here, alongside Formula One, Rally driving was the ‘in’ sport at the time. As Colin McRae was the icon for Rally driving why not give him his own racing game?

When you first load the game up you are treated with a nice opening montage of the game, in 1998 it was safe to say that Colin McRae Rally had the great graphics that the PSOne had until Gran Tourismo had shown its face. On the Menu Screen, there are 4 types of event, these being Championship, Rally, Time Trial and Rally School. Most people would have gone straight into the action by choosing the Championship mode. I tried that and i struggled finishing 6th!

The Rally School is a great way to learn the trade of being a rally driver, from learning the drift style of the car to getting the right turning angle given to you by your co-driver shouting “3 left- tightens.”

Once that was out of the way, there is nothing better than to go straight into the Championship where you can choose one of the following 8 cars: Subaru Impreza, Mitsubishi Lancer, Ford Escort WRC, Toyota Corolla, Renault Maxi Megane, Seat Ibiza Evo2, VW Golf or the Skoda Felica. All of these are great cars but i struggled to find much to tell them apart performance wise.

Then we have the 8 different courses that range from New Zealand to Sweeden to United Kingdom. Graphically being honest as it is a retrospective look back to 1998 it serves the game well and the mechanics used for this truly give a great feel to the game! However, if gamers want to go and play this game be prepared for some old school textures! Come on people this was a great game back in the day!

The addition of variable weather to the game is a nice touch. You could be racing in complete sunshine or worse yet, snow! All this plus driving at different times in the day give you a tough drive through the game. Compared to Colin McRae Dirt, i personally think that this game is a arcade gamers heaven and you are rewarded well if you put the craft in learning the corners and techinques involved in each race.

For me the Multiplayer is one of the key selling points of this game. Compared to games now where you can play people over Live or the PSN you had your mates next to you going at it split screen fighting in either Time Trial or Rally getting the quickest times. Pure thrills all the way with this one.

In closing of this article Colin McRae Rally is a good investment as you can get this on ebay for around the £2 mark for a game that is fun and addictive to play providing a great multiplayer to boot.

Wipeout was one of the first official games at the launch of the PlayStation 1 back in 1995. The team behind this game Psygnosis had a big job on their hands to make this game a success as this was the first of its genre on the 32-bit era.

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To kick off our weekly segment that is in partnership with “Retro Games” we are looking at Defender, a great game that is on Entex, but also on the XBLA. To appreciate the classics, you can buy any of the games featured in this segment over at Retro Games.

 
The humble electronic tabletop game gets a pretty rough time from modern gamers. Early LED or VFD games use lights to make up the game display, and the problems of creating different graphics to appear in the same place at different times is very difficult if you are hardwiring each sprite in its place.

The results are mixed depending on what type of games you play, invaders with a ship at the base of the screen, and identical looking enemies moving above, are well suited to the technology. In contrast, Pac Man games are hamstrung by the need to put the ghosts and Pac Man in the same place in the maze at different times. Oversized ghosts are generally used, which the Pac Man sprite fits inside. To complete the layout, the dot or power pill sprite then fits inside of Pac Man. Cleverly placing these lights inside and around eachother must have been incredibly complicated, and something of a technical art form. Done properly, they really can create convincing game displays.

One of the most outstanding games to use this technology has to be Entex Defender. Defender in the arcade uses a lot of controls, its scrolling speed is fundemental to its gameplay, and graphics need to overlap a lot, with the ship, bullets, aliens and mountainous backdrop all needing to be displayed in the same places at different times. Most handheld manufacturers of the early 1980s would have never even attempted it, but Entex Defender maintains all the elements which made the coin-op such a classic.

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Seeing as today is the Launch of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, i thought id look back at the first Metal Gear Solid, the way i remembered it

I remember it well, back in March 1999 i had a great birthday, the only thing i was looking foward to was the one game that was hyped so much back then, Metal Gear Solid.

I knew that there were previous Metal Gear Solid games on the older consoles but they did not interest me as much as this one did.

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