Sasha's Retrobytes 🏳️‍⚧️

A photo of our DSI XL's screen with the isometric opening battle in a leafy forest against a giant rotund chicken-like creature that'll soon call allies, but not before someone gets portal fantasied in to aid them.

No aspirations of becoming chicken feed, but no chance of smoothing ruffled feathers, either.

To battle! ⚔️

Still some of the loveliest pixel artwork on DS 💜

📺: Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift, Square-Enix, 2007 (NDS)

"Don't look now, but there's something moving on your desk." A full-page ad with a beige horizontal PC and monitor on top surrounded by columns of text detailing its features and promoting it for creators and home users. A cheetah is running on the screen. "How're you going to do it? PS/2 it!"

The Original PS2 - PS/2! IBM's attempt in '87 to regain the initiative in the PC market with the Personal System 2. Priced at $2000, it pioneered VGA graphics as standard and the port that gave it its name.

Its greatest legacy is how those features filtered out to IBM clones and compatibles.

A full-page magazine ad for the SSI published and Westwood developed Hillstar, C64 and IBM PC version. It has a cool use of a gameplay screenie above rather than an illustration, showing the arena fighting section with the player battling against a minotaur.

📖 Bytes of Game Ads 📺

"No pain, No Gain."

Hillsfar was the first AD&D game from Westwood Associates, aka Westwood Studios. Though it reviewed poorly, it's an interesting chimera of a game, essentially a collection of arcade and puzzle mini-games with the veneer of being an RPG.

In the original Phantasy Star, there is, bizarrely, a cake shop located in the middle of the Naula Cave dungeon.

This cake shop is referenced in Phantasy Star Online 2, but is so ridiculously rare that it can take hundreds of hours for its event to ever occur.

As in PS1, the shop sells Shortcake.

You love to see it. 💜

All the writing and zine work I do has been and always will be GenAI/ChatGPT free. Seeing the casual use of it in some retro gaming/tech circles has only added to my dislike for it.

"Uncle Owen! Aunt Beru!"

"Luke? What's wrong?"

"I had a scary dream... I was holding this glowing stick and fighting someone dressed in black armour, and I hit him with it, and he turned into a sand scorpion!"

"Now, Luke, it's just a dream. Here, have some blue milk and go back to sleep."

Thank you so much for checking it out!

I'd never really noticed it was that same flagman until today, and then wondered if he'd do the same dance he does in O2/C2C if you watch him for a while, but nope xD

A photo of a Newtype USA ad for Gravitation on DVD, available on 29/0604 (Vol 1). It has two main characters, Shuichi and Eiri, the latter with his arm around the shorter Shuichi. "Shuichi Shindo always wanted to be a ROCKSTAR... it just required the right inspiration!"

From NewType USA, May 2004: one of the darlings of the Boys Love craze and one of the first BL series yaoi fans outside of Japan would have watched/read (including me!): Gravitation.

Ooh! I'm fond of Viewpoint on PS1, and recently picked up an N64, so this will be going on my Everdrive 64 later.

Yeah! I've seen early adopter ads for DVD players in 96/97 Newtypes, and yeah, it was considerable cheaper for me to import Escaflowne on Laser Disc then than it was to jump on anything on DVD that early.

Ahh, thank you for the correction!

;o; We can but hope one day

A photo of a page from our copy of the Newtype issue, with an illustration of Lina Inverse alongside promo text about Slayers Return on LD, alongside photos of two players, one a wider and more premium model with widescreen adjustment for 72,000 yen in '97 yen (about $450 in 1997 dollars, same buying power as approx $1000 now), and another more compact one with fewer features for 49,800 yen.

"The Ultimate Weapon is Back on LD!"

Slayers Return! Blazing a hot trail onto the futuristic format of the 80s to mid-90s: Laser Disc.

Handily, NewType has some recommended players if you wanted to shell out for one alongside Slayers Return.

📖: NewType, May 1997.

Given that you're having a rough day, I'm especially glad you did. 💜

Feel this pretty hard right now too.

Ski-bi-dibby-dib yo-da-dub-dub, yo-da-dub-dub
I'm the Flagman

Everybody's saying that the Flagman waves
But you don't ever go when he waves
But what you don't know, I'm gonna tell you right now
That the flag and the go is the same thing, yo
I'm the Flagman 🎶

Wait too long at the start line of arcade OutRun and Flagman will wave his flag expectantly for a while and then stop and just turn his back to you, waving it no more.

A screenshot of arcade OutRun with the flagman having turned his back sulkily and refusing to wave his flag any more if you hang around at the start line too long. A sprite of Sonic from the arcade version of Sonic the Hedgehog has been edited into the corner doing his idle animation of staring at you expectantly. "You gonna move or what? Flagman waved his damn flag for you; now he won't even look at you."

Inherit The Earth: Quest for the Orb

Ah, I'm not sure. I think I still have the lead dev's email addy though, so will see if it is.

Surreal French sci-fi and puppetry combined in 1994 into a mind-boggling experience through space and time.

The sequel to 1988's Captain Blood. A third game, Big Bug Bang: Le Retour de Commander Blood, was released only in French.

Rock on, Commander! 🎶

📺: Commander Blood, Cryo, 1994 (DOS PC)

Smyths Toys have The Spectrum on offer

In the UK? This is a total steal.

Heyas!

xD Whoops, not quite.

xD It is, yeah. Might genuinely be what they were going for with it.

Cheers!

Hey Becca! <3

You too, Alli!

A scan of the manual with the Wizardry dragon on it and Sorcellerie with a sword through it above it in fancy script.

On the table es materies, someone has written their name in red felt and a date. Souvannnavong Janvier 1885, The rest of the name above is only partly readable as it's half cut off at the top.

Wizardry? Non! Sorcellerie! 🐉

In the manual for the French localization of Sir-Tech's Wizardry, there's something I always love to see: previous owners writing their names or gameplay notes in them that now serve as little timepieces.