There's a new platformer for the Spectrum from Retroworks called Nelo and Quqo - The Last Butifarreison (the last what...?!) which has cartoon-styled graphics and a bizarre storyline involving Nelo's quest to rescue his friend Quqo from jail after a botched bank robbery and dodge the rozzers in the process... but first he needs to head down to the basement to locate a tool to repair the telly. Well that's fair enough I suppose, everybody loves telly!

  • External link:   Retroworks website

It's Oldschool Gaming update time once more and there are zombies and spaceships - sounds like a party! The zombies come in the form of the slightly long-winded Invasion of the Zombie Monsters by Relevo Videogames (the developers of British Bob for the MSX) and they're spread evenly over the Spectrum and MSX... but it's far less dubious than it might sound, it's just the same game on two machines really!

As for the spaceships, they're both horizontally scrolling and extremely indie; Ifrit is a quite literally small but nicely formed bit of Japanese blasting that'll be celebrating its seventh birthday soon, whilst 2010 release Hydorah is a Spanish behemoth that has been trying to trace its ancestry back to the coin-ops of the 1980's.

Thinking about it, the indie section could possibly do with some games that aren't shoot 'em ups!

Okay, so here's something I never expected to add to the news... those with long memories might remember the April Fools video on the interwebs where one of the developers of Duke Nukem Forever claimed to have a working 2600 cartridge version of the game, developer Ed Fries has taken things one step further with Halo 2600. And yes, it really is a functioning 2600 game! The link below will take you to a Java-based emulator but the news source is a thread at Atari Age where the ROM is available to download and Fries himself gives a little more insight into the project.

  • External link:   Halo 2600 official page
  • News source:  Atari Age forum post

We don't want no snakes on no plane... which is fine, because the titular reptile in Snake On A Plane hasn't actually got onto the plane, he just wants to catch his connecting flight and apparently needs to eat the luggage of already-boarded passengers to build up his energy reserves beforehand. Look, it's a variation on Snake with silly "movie tie-in" and Icelandic volcano references, okay?!

  • External link:   C64 Scene Database

The game Morph doesn't have anything to do with a certain Plasticine character; instead it's a C64 conversion of the Amiga public domain puzzle game Polymorph. The player guides a happy face around and must push together coloured balls into groups in order to make them disappear and it's of course a lot harder to play than it might sound with groups of three objects needing to be made just a couple of levels in and a tight time limit on each stage to boot.

  • External link:   C64 Scene Database

And we were getting worried because they were quiet... yes, there is another new Mojon Twins game girls and boys! Zombie Calavera Prologue might well be another platformer but it does at least have a different look for an 8-bit game, since everything has been rendered in moody art game silhouette with just a few spots of light here and there to prevent it all being black on blue. It looks striking but... well it might just be me, but is anyone else feeling distinctly "zombied out" at the moment?

  • External link:   Mojon Twins website

There's a new Mojon Twins game for the Spectrum (and thank goodness for that, we were all starting to get worried because they hadn't released anything recently!) and it probably won't come as a surprise that it's a platformer; Cheril Perils sees the titular lead character trapped in a town which, due to a failed experiment involving a virus that makes people beautiful and the previous contents of a tanker truck, infested with zombies.

Cheril's only chance for escape is going to do a Shaun of the Dead and wipe out the former townsfolk because killing sixty brain-eating creatures of the night will prompt the local authorities to move the boulders blocking the gate in the city walls. And stop staring at me like that, I don't make this stuff up y'know!

  • External link:   Mojon Twins website

Blimey, Jonathan Bristow (or Twilighte as he's known amongst Oric fans) has been quiet for some time... and then he goes and drops a nuclear bombshell like an Oric conversion of the Spectrum classic Stormlord on us from absolutely nowhere! It's not exactly the same as the other versions since it's flick screen rather than scrolling, but the graphics look rather gorgeous and colourful, the sound is impressive and Oldschool Gaming will just have to give it a serious looking at very soon - and that's absolutely nothing to do with the nekkid faeries, okay?!

  • External link:   Stormlord site
  • News source:  Retro Gamer forums