Bringing Past To Present
GameFancier Blogs 2010
RetroBear articles previously posted at GameFancier.com
GameFancier.com was run by a former employee of the well known gamerzines magazine website. RetroBear was a regular contributor there from May 2010 onwards. His first few posts there were lost after a hardware failure and site rebuild.
Top Movie Games Part 2: The 90’s
Feb 25th
Were the 1990s responsible for the truism that there’s never been a decent game based on a movie (or film as us Brits prefer to say). There certainly wasn’t that many great examples, but the Retrobear has dug through them to pull out the best and the worst. Enjoy.
Originally Posted to GameFancier.com on July 23rd 2010
Hudson Hawk (Amiga Screen)
By the 1990′s film companies had begun to see the appeal in licensing their titles and making computer games based on them. They also saw the bottom line readies that could be made from it and thus we entered a period where most of the major film titles of that decade were turned into game equivalents. Matter not that most of them were total shit, think of the money! The computer industry had been whoring itself before, prior to the 1983 crash, now it was the film industry that was turning tricks to maximise profits. More >
Top Movie Games From The 80’s
Feb 25th
Do you remember a time before films had awful tie-in games? Those days didn’t exist for long and even in the 1980′s Sylvester Stallone was seen as a way to sell more copies. Were they all bad games though? Retrobear gives us the answer with his look at those titles.
Originally Posted to GameFancier.com on July 16th 2010
Rambo C64 Cover Art
This week sees the release of Inception here in the UK. The next big budget blockbuster starring Leonardo what’s-his-face (you know the one who was more wooden than the plank he was holding onto before he drowned in Titanic) is meant to be sort of like The Matrix but not. So this got me thinking – can we expect yet another game of the film that’s total rubbish? I mean let’s face it if we all had pound coins for every time we played a bad computer game adaptation of a great film there would be no economic crisis. Just a shortage of pound coins.
My thoughts progressed to previous games of films, good or bad, that have cluttered up our cupboards and game shelves over the years. For every Batman The Movie there is a Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I’ve played countless of these in my time but there are such a lot of them, including ones for films you’d never even think warranted a video game release. It’s no mean feat to whizz through this quickly, so this week I shall deal with the 1980′s, next week the 90′s and finally the 00′s. More >
Gamecube Retrospective
Feb 25th
This week retrobear brings back memories of when he got his launch day Gamecube. Other than lamenting about its overall commercial failure we are treated to an exhaustive list of the retrobear’s Gamecube collection. How many of these titles did you have?
Originally Posted to GameFancier.com on July 8th 2010
I’ve only ever purchased one console on launch day. It was time when Mrs Bear and I decided we needed a bit of fun in our lives (stop sniggering at the back, it’s not THAT sort of column), and seeing my PS1 had been stolen a few months before we felt it best to invest in a Gamecube. So we hastily pre-ordered one from Virgin Megastores and counted down the days. We felt best to take a holdall with us in case people were getting mugged leaving the store. I took the day off of work and when launch day arrived we went early to beat the rush.
We were the only people in the queue.
Footie Games
Feb 25th
Memories of playing International Soccer or Matchday, depending on your 8-bit of choice come flooding back this week as the retrobear looks at football games.
Originally Posted to GameFancier.com on July 1st 2010
Cover star..
With the World Cup in full swing and England coming home in shame like the bunch of overpaid, nancy boys that they are, it’s probably a good time to look back at some of the football games that have graced computers and consoles over the years. The back of the net winners, the nearly but faltering at the last hurdle promotion contenders and the pixelated equivalents of Hull City. More >
Top Ten N64 Games
Feb 25th
What were your favourite Nintendo64 games? The Retrobear gives his view on this list, which is based on the review score aggregation. Don’t expect him to agree mind.
Originally Posted to GameFancier.com on June 22nd 2010
64 Bit Curves..
I’ve had an email this week which is great. It didn’t start “Stop writing because you don’t know what you are talking about”, and that in my book is a bonus. It gave me some hints and pointers which I have taken on board. After all you don’t want to be sitting here reading something that doesn’t actually differ from the other zillions of columns and blogs like it on the web. A blog needs to have opinion, comment (agreeable or not agreeable) and should have a touch of controversy about it. So I thought this week I’d have a pop at a top ten N64 games list I was directed to on www.gamerankings.com (other ranking sites exist – please consult your web browser for further details). More >
Car Boot Gaming
Feb 25th
Practical advise for anyone wanting to pick up retro game bargains, as long as you don’t mind the great British tradition of the car boot sale. Retrobear explains how to survive.
Originally Posted to GameFancier.com on June 17th 2010
Theres alot to get through..
Firstly at the risk of sounding like I am blowing my own trumpet, I took my own advice this past weekend and picked up a whole load of C64 and Amiga games from the local car boot. So there you go there are riches to be found out there – you just got to look in the right places.
On to this week’s blog which comes to you from the nerve centre here at Bear Towers. Surrounded by games and systems; the good, the bad, the forgotten and the downright awful, I always say to people if you saw the collection of 700-800 games and about 20+ systems you might never want to leave. A lot of the time I am right, then we start talking rent and they quickly head for the door. More >