Tag: RETRO

If you used Windows XP for a long time (who didn't?), one of the biggest changes when moving to Windows 7 or Vista was the massively-altered Explorer. While the new Explorer introduces some useful new features, it also removed just as many -- which is where Classic Shell comes in! We've covered Classic Shell before, but here's the crib note: Classic Shell restores almost every Windows ...

N64oid, the Nintendo 64 emulator for Android, was released earlier today, and being absolute fans of the console, we figured a hands-on review would be the only fair and just thing to do. You don't want to know how many hours we've spent playing multiplayer GoldenEye here in the Download Squad bunker, and Lee can almost complete Ocarina of Time while blindfolded. Now -- before you get too ...

If you've started to notice your Twitter friends looking a little blocky lately, it's probably because they've got trendy 8-bit avatars from Eightbit.me. This site lets you create a full-body 8-bit avatar in your own image, from hair color, glasses and facial hair down to the outfit you're wearing. The plan is eventually to let all these personal avatars participate in some kind of game ...

In most games, dying is a bad thing. You have to start all over again, or at least revert to the last save point and lose some progress. Not so in Survival Lab: in this pixelated gem you play as a lone individual pitted against ruthless weapons in a sealed chamber. You have to run, jump and duck, collecting little yellow things (I have no idea what they're called). For each donut-like ...

You knew it was coming, and now it's here: NBA Jam is now available for purchase from the App Store. At $4.99, Jam is all the portable b-ball action you can handle on your iOS device -- with unlockable NBA legends including Dr. J and Dennis Rodman, a campaign mode, and play-by-play by Tom Kitzrow (who did the original NBA Jam voicing). As you can tell from the screenshot, even big head mode is ...

Let me start of by saying there's nothing NSFW about Balls in Space; I mean, not that playing any Flash game is very "safe for work", but Balls in Space isn't NSFW in that way, if you know what I mean (hint hint, nudge nudge, say no more!). Now that we've got that out of the way, let me tell you about the game: You're a ball. On your own, you can run and jump, and that's about it. But as with ...

Do you enjoy 8-bit music? How about retro classics, like Space Invaders and Tetris? If so, RetroMash is just the game for you. It's an interesting mash-up: Blocky-looking space invaders drop down from the top of the level; you have a cursor that looks like a Tetris block. You must place the cursor so space invaders "fill" all of the available spots in it, and then click to make the space ...

So, you're a zombie. And you're hungry, and you're all pixelated. You're going to stay pixelated and retro-looking, at least on this game. But you don't have to stay hungry: In Zombie Bites, you run around the level, finding humans. As soon as you touch a human and press SPACE, you attack. Your energy bar fills up a bit, but not so much. You must keep running and jumping in search of more humans ...

First off, let me preface this time waster by saying it requires a download. That's right – this is not a Flash game, and you have to run it from your own computer. But it is free and available for Windows, OS X and Linux, and this is Download Squad after all. Last week I wrote about a time waster called Flyde, saying it really reminded me of an old game I used to play as a kid, but ...

AOL used to be king of the dial-up hill. At its peak, over 26.7 million households accessed the Internet via AOL, a figure that no American ISP has ever surpassed. That success came at a cost, though: those CDs (and floppy disks!) that arrived in your letterbox, often on a weekly basis, cost AOL over $300 million. The data comes from Quora, a service that is fast becoming the go-to place for ...

For just $2, the Noise Entertainment System (or NoiseES) lets you play all of your favorite 8-bit Nintendo game sounds on your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. NoiseES will play both NSF and NSFE audio formats, which means you can listen to the music (and sound effects) from almost every NES game made. For NSF files, check Zophar's Domain; if you want NSFE files, the Slick Productions archive is ...

We've already told you about the retro, 80s-styled iPhone game The Incident, but the makers of the game are planning to take things to the next level with version 1.3. In a sneak peek posted on the Big Bucket Software blog, they've got The Incident running on a giant TV hooked up to an iPad, with an iPhone as the wireless controller. That's right, you can play The Incident the same way you played ...

The Register made a significant journalistic discovery this morning: Zork for Kindle! Yes, it's exactly what it sounds like, and I tested it on my own Kindle 3 (which you see pictured above). Zork is a text-based adventure which is ideally suited to this medium, but I'm afraid to say the experience is not perfect. The game itself is a classic, and the service offers the entire series (not just ...

The nicest thing about The Deeplight Expedition is the speed. For me, a large part of what makes a platformer fun is how the character reacts – does it run fast, does it jump high? And in The Deeplight Expedition, both are true; the protagonist is extremely responsive and zips all over the screen as you control it. Other than the fun dynamics, it's a fairly stock platformer. You don't have ...

Once upon a time, creating pixel art was a completely manual process. You drew your base shape, and then if you wanted to add highlights, shadows, or blur, you had to draw them in, pixel by pixel. Piq is a Flash-based pixel art editor that lets you enjoy fine-grained manual control, while making it a bit easier to add those extra touches to your image. You first draw the image pixel by pixel. ...