☆ Can You Remember EVERY Video Game You Have Ever Owned? ☆ #Retrogaming #GamersUnite

Now here's a memory test for you........

Can you name every single Video Game that you have ever owned?

☆ Door 12 - Christmas Retro Gaming Advent Calendar ☆ #Retrogaming #GamersUnite

Why I Love................

"Lemmings"

☆ Door 8 - Christmas Retro Gaming Advent Calendar ☆ #Retrogaming #GamersUnite

Why I Love............

"Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis"

☆ Amiga Cases For A New Generation ☆ #Retrogaming #GamersUnite #Kickstarter

Amiga 1200 Cases Make ME Go Weak At The Knees...

Amiga 1200 Cases Combined With A Kickstarter Make Me Explode With Joy!

Yes It's Another Cool Retrogaming Kickstarter That I Want To Tell You All About..

We Have 9 Days To Make It Happen So Let's DO THIS!

☆ I Was A Pirate In A Previous Life! (a video games one) ☆ #Retrogaming #GamersUnite

Back in 1993 I owned a beautiful Amiga 600 with 1 Meg of RAM.

It was my pride and joy.

I loved the way it looked and I loved my my beautiful disk box full of blue disks.

The only thing was that collection of blue disks I kept locked in my disk box were 95% copied games!

I WAS A PIRATE!

I am ashamed ..... but I had my reasons.

🎮🕹️ A Visual Treat For All Amiga Fans 🎮🕹️ #Retrogaming #GamersUnite @BitmapBooks

Last Weekend I Attended A Charity Auction In Aid Of My Best Friend's Daughter To ensure That She Received The Best Specialist Treatment Possible For Her Particular Conditions.

As part of that auction, the generous folks over at Funstock.Co.Uk donated the Commodore Amiga Visual Compendium to be auctioned off. How cool is that!?

☆ My All Time Favourite Ninja Video Games ☆ #Retrogaming #Gamersunite

Ninjas are cool - FACT
Every little boy growing up in the 80's wanted to be a Ninja - FACT
Ninja Video Games are awesome! - FACT

💾🕹️ Commodore Amiga Dreams 2015 💾🕹️ #Retrogaming #GamersUnite

"Commodore Amiga Dream Machine"

Last night I had a dream about an Amiga 500+ that had been left in a car park underneath my car with a massive box of disks!

I saw this as a sign to write about the amazing Amiga as I feel I have neglected it recently in the column inches department.

☆ Retrogaming Controllers That Make ALL the Difference ☆ #Retrogaming #GamersUnite

Retrogaming is best enjoyed using your favourite controller.

Whether that be a Joystick, Joypad or even a Gaming Mouse.

Over the years I have found that I can only play some games properly with one particular type of controller and if it isn't that controller I turn into a cack-handed jibbering idiot!

Read on to find out more about my favourite controllers and the games that they make me great at!

☆ Retrogaming Love: "Why I Love The Commodore Amiga" ☆ #Retrogaming #GamersUnite

Retrogaming for me is an ingrained love of many different computers and consoles.

Over the course of the next few months I will attempt to lay bare my love for all the individual computers and consoles that have touched my video gaming life.

Let me start the story with the Commodore Amiga.....

☆ Terrible Video Games That You Played Till The Bitter End! ☆ #GamersUnite #Retrogaming

☆ 

When I was young video games pup my video games collection was small and usually well researched so most of my games were quality games.

BUT every now and again I would be tempted by an untested unknown game that was going for a pocket money price. 

This usually resulted in the game being atrocious and me becoming ultimately disappointed. 

The thing is, once I owned a video game I felt compelled to play it to the end whether it was a terrible game or not. 

This led to me playing through some real awful games over the years that I really should have just walked away from on day one!

 

I've pulled together a list of Five Terrible Video Games That I Played Till The Bitter End! (sometimes the bitter end was me smashing up the cartridge / tape in disgust and frustration!)

☆

Have YOU Played Any Of These Shockingly Bad Games?

🕹️ 1992 - The Greatest Year In Video Games History? 🕹️ #GamersUnite #RetroGaming

After extensive thought and research (Google) 

I hereby declare that 1992 was...

"THE GREATEST YEAR IN VIDEO GAMES!"

Why!? I hear you yell….

Well if you sit down for a moment and listen to 

what I've got to say then I'll tell you exactly WHY….

☆"Classic Amiga Version Of Defender Of The Crown Comes To Android"☆ @Cinemaware #Android #retrogaming #GamersUnite

We are big fans of the CinemaWare Video Games releases in the mid to late 80's.

Cinemaware brought atmospheric cinema-like video games to all manner of systems but the releases we remember most were those on the Commodore Amiga.

Such video games as IT Came From The Desert, King Of Chicago and todays featured video game Defender Of The Crown!

The Cinemaware games took their video games inspiration from the movies and Defender Of The Crown does so in the form of the classic swashbuckling movies such as Robin Hood (Good Old R.H Even Features In Game!)

Defender Of The Crown was the Elder Scrolls of it's time and set new standards in video games graphics and involving gameplay

So how have Cinemaware ported this beauty of a Video Game over to Android then?

★The "ARMIGA" Project★ @armigaproject #RetroGaming #GamersUnite #AMIGA

Within the bowels of The Games Freezer there is a disk box choc full of AMIGA video games disks.....consigned to The RetroGaming Deep Freeze .
Most of the disks are original AMIGA games (without their beautiful boxes) and some are not so original (probably from some dodgy dude at car boot sale in 1995....
Imagine we could delve back into this treasure trove without having to source the Amazing AMIGA....

In fact imagine an improved 1.3 version of The AMIGA...

One that looks and sounds just as cool as the original if not that bit better!

Well look what we have here then!

The Idea....

"Wouldn't it be great to be able to use all those aging Amiga disks again?
Maybe the original Amiga is a bit big and video quality not so good..."

The Project

"... A smaller version of The Amiga, with modern connections would be awesome, wouldn't it?. 

That's what the Armiga Project have done.... 

They have taken modern technology and made it work with good old AMIGA floppies!"

Read what the Armiga Project Team have to say 

about their amazing project......

"The Armiga Project is born from the feeling that something is missing in today's games. Lot's of people look back to the old consoles and computers and remember the feelings they had.

Some of this sensations can be taken back with emulators, but much of the experience is missing; it's not only the game, it's a whole. Inserting the cartridge in a 16-Bit console, the floppy disk load times..., the look and feel of the old stuff...

All this is specially true in some systems and the Commodore Amiga 500 is, with no doubt, one of them. It was a breaktrhough in its time and still now it fascinates engineers all around the world. One proof of the deep footprint it left on the users is that lots of them keep the original computer and most of them have a box full of games.

There are some big problems now with the system, though: they are too big by todays standards, suitable for just one thing and A/V quality is low and requires legacy connectors.

Wouldn't it be great, we thought, if we could take the whole experience back, but with improved A/V quality, using modern connectors, in a small form factor and adding versatility?. 

That's where it all began. Taking off-the-shell components and adding custom designed ones, we already have the first prototypes working!

In a nutshell, the Armiga Project is a mix of hardware and software that aims to take back the original Amiga experience..., even its look and feel!"

If Like us you are mega excited about this amazing project head on over to 

The ARMIGA Project Website to find out more about the cool machine that is being built and tested as we speak!

To Keep Up To Date On The Latest Occurrences For The ARMIGA Project Make Sure You Also Follow The Project On

TWITTER

&

FACEBOOK

Where you can find a video of the the testing of the first prototype!

We'll keep you updated on all the happenings from the ARMIGA Project and you'll be the first to know when the ARMIGA dudes begin their Crowd Funding Campaign!

Meanwhile.......Tell Us What Your Favourite AMIGA Game Of All Time Was...
Ours Was SYNDICATE

♥A Weekend In With Championship Manager 93/94♥ #RetroGaming #GamersUnite

Sitting here now on a Friday I cast my mind back to when Friday meant one thing………

CHAMPIONSHIP MANAGER 

Yes, Friday was the gateway to a whole weekend consumed by playing Championship Manager on my trusty Amiga 600

As you have no doubt heard from thousands of other CM addicts from around the world, CM could dominate your life like no other game possibly could.......

CM was a game that you had to set aside at least 4 hours of your life, there was no dabbling in CM or "casual play", it was an all or nothing kind of game.


Championship Manager as we know is essentially a massive spreadsheet of player stats and yet the illusion that you are somehow controlling these players actions was the draw.


You would spend hours of your life pulling together your very own elite dream team of players. 
 

The gameplay on the Amiga was simple compared to the ridiculously complex gameplay of todays version of CM. 
 

That was the key though, you could literally play a season in an evening because once you'd set your team up and bought who you wanted you could pretty much play match after match after match…….


The CM version that dominated my life was Championship Manager 93/94
 

The Disk for this game barely left my disk drive. The only time it left my drive was to put in my save disk.
 

Back then you were presented with a couple of questions when you loaded up the game and these were something like 

"What Is The 3rd Score On Page 21 of the manual"

This was put into place as an anti piracy measure for those naughty people who had copied their mates CM disks (not as complex as the Monkey Island 2 wheel but almost as effective.)


My team of choice back then was Nottingham Forest (even though I support Tottenham Hotspur) Forest were a strong team in the Premier League back then and I had always admired their passing style of play.


Once you started the game that was it, you'd launch into the main task of signing players. 
 

Back then it was all about signing Chris Bart Williams or Robbie Fowler as they were young, up and coming superstars of the time! 


There was a guy called Poddubski in my version who had the holy grail of CM Stats ….. ALL 20's! 
 

Championship Manager Stats were made up of the following categories:
 

My Forest team played together for 15 seasons and by the team I had rolled around to season 15 the team was full of player regens with unrecognisable names such as Johnny Hoddle and the like.


CM was the first game that really stole hours from me as one minute you'd check the clock and it was 8pm and then before you knew it, it was 2am and you'd utter the immortal phrase 

 "Just One More Match…….and then BED!"

Wedged between playing real football and CM my weekends were consumed with the game. 
 

Breaks came in the form of meals as my mum would shout up to me in my loft bedroom to tell me when dinner was ready.

This was well before the days of games asking you whether you have thought of taking a break from playing (like the good old Wii tends to do)


One of my favourite past times though, had to be the Championship Manager Hot Seat 2 player Game……..in other words a 2 player CM game where you take it in turns to manage your club.


The hotseat games would mean that you were competing for the same transfer deals more often than not and it made it even more realistic as you battle it out in the same league together. These were good times!


When Sunday came I had plenty of stories to tell my mates at school and sometimes I'd actually print out my Nottingham Forest Team to show off my average ratings and scores in Cup Finals.

These truly were the glory days of Championship Manager!

 

DID YOU KNOW?

"The Championship Manager '94 - End of Season Data Disk, which was available on the Amiga, contained 2 fictional players added by a couple of people who worked on the game. The players were Mark Collis and Ferah Orosco. They were a striker and a defender, respectively, for Cambridge United in Division 3 and are regarded as the first ever fictional super-players in the CM series"

The online community for the early versions of CM are still very much active so take a look at some of these cool sites for your CM fix…

Firstly There's The Story Of The Champ Man 01/02 Community HERE 

Then There's The Actual Champ Man 01/02 Community Forums HERE 

 

Then there's the legendary "The Dugout" site HERE 

 

Not only that, why don't you get on over to MY ABANDON WARE and download the original CM 93/94 game and get playing!

HERE 

With all this CM Goodness still about its made us want to go home tonight and get lost in CM world till Sunday night…….now where did I put my Amiga?

 

☆Website Of The Day - "Hall Of Light"☆ #RetroGaming #GamersUnite #Amiga

 

 

The Hall Of Light (HOL) 

The HOL Project's Mission is to catalogue all the official games that were released commercially for the Commodore Amiga

When you first visit the site the first thing that springs to mind is that it is minimalist in design as you are presented with a set of search parameters with little fuss made about the presentation of the site itself. 

But you soon learn that less IS more as the database stands at a HUGE 5590 games!

Once you undertake a search you are presented with a really smart and simple screen that shows a screen-shot from the game and then has various tabs to highlight key information about the game such as:

• General Information Tab - Giving Year Of Release, Number Of Disks, Publisher, Number Of Players, Genre etc
• Reviews - Listing the reviews and scores from those reviews with a link to those reviews
• Manual - Where possible, a link to an online manual is given
• Cheat Code - Where possible a Cheatcode is listed
• Web Link - A list of other sites such as Lemon Amiga etc that feature the game
• Screen-shot - Showcases additional screenshots for the game
• Box Scan - A scan of the original Box Art
• Disk Scan - A scan of the original disk
• Misc Shot - A scan of other materials that may be of interest from the original game
• Conversion - Screenshots from other system conversions of the same game
• Game Map - Where one exists a scan of the game map will be included

The website highlights the following re it's marvellous database:

"Most games in the database are of the boxed, commercial variety but there are exceptions:

• Licenceware games are considered commercial enough to be included.
• Shareware, freeware and general Public Domain games are generally not present but they may be added if they form a fuller picture of a commercial person or entity.
• A number of unreleased Amiga games are referenced. The status of these games varies; some exist in a near-complete or demo form while others never progressed beyond the announcement stage.
• Some Open Source conversions (e.g. Doom) and games playable through interpreters (e.g. ScummVM or Exult) are listed. These are considered 'native' Amiga games."

We were lost in RetroGaming Heaven for hours searching out our favourite Amiga games over the years and drooling over the BIG BOX art and the screenshots.

For Any Amiga fan this should be your number one port of all call for all things Amiga, so get on over there now to unearth such gems as "The Bards Tale III" 

 

Tell us what you think of HOL assuming you can tear yourself away from the site! 

 

Games Freezer - Website Of The Day - "Reality Glitch" - @realityglitch #Retrogaming

Dream Commodore Amiga Setup....

 

We love the smell of Retro Gaming in the morning..........

That's exactly the smell we encountered when we discovered this gem of a website! www.realityglitch.com

Being massive Commodore Amiga fans here in The Freezer we just love the banner on this site. 

It's a picture of a Cool "Amiga 500" on a desk with Sensible Software's legendary Cannon Fodder loaded up ready to play.

That picture sets the tone for "Reality Glitch" with the opening line underneath that reads "Welcome To The World Of Yesterday!"

Now onto what this piece of website retro gaming goodness has to offer.........

A large chunk of Reality Glitches' articles are Amiga related, which we absolutely can't get enough of!

For example we got really excited in one of the articles where the talk is all about "Favourite Amiga Demo Disks" 

As we read on we found that one of our all time demo disc Amiga mashups is mentioned! "CANNON SOCCER"

Great Stuff! We Love it! 

Also within the Amiga articles, we found a really good piece on The Bitmap Brothers

Sifting through the site we also found some great articles on Arcade Gaming which included a review of one of our fave Arcade Games of all time "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"

4 PLAYER MENTALISM AT ITS BEST!

Overall, we spent a good couple of hours reading some of the cool articles on Reality Glitch and we cant wait for the next installement!

Reality Glitch - It's time for you to GET IN THE FREEZER as our WEBSITE OF THE DAY! 

Take a look at Reality Glitch today and let us know if it got your retro juices flowing?

(It Certainly got our ice melting!)

Richard from the melting ice of Londinium

Games Freezer - "What A Disappointment!" - #Retrogaming

Being a person who always does a lot of research before parting with hard earned cash for a game I can't say that I have ever been too dissappointed when opening the box of a new game and powering the game up for the first time.......

BUT 

There have been a few games that I anticipated with great expectation only to find out from a review that it was an absolute stinker of a game and a few that I maybe thought I would enjoy but no matter how good I knew the game was just couldn't enjoy it.

So my greatest disappointments of my gaming world over the last 20 years or so for me are as follows:

1."Super Kick Off" on the Super Nintendo

The Amstrad Box Art (lovely stuff!)

 

For years the SNES was crying out for a great footy game. 

It had to wait years for ISS to come out and blow everyone away, but before that came the news that KICK OFF was coming to SNES in all its 16bit glory. 

I read the pages of Super Play Magazine and Nintendo Magazine System with deep joy as I thought how great Kick Off would be on the SNES.......Months went by as the magazines previewed the game constantly teasing me with a few more screenshots. 

Then came the review......it turned out the game was a turkey!! My dreams of controlling Tottenham Hotspur on my shiny new SNES were blown apart....it was back to Nintendo's very own Super Soccer for me to get my footy thrills. No matter how tempted I was to buy Kick Off it never happened and will be forever disappointed.

2."Starwing / Starfox" on the Super Nintendo

 

This is probably a controversial inclusion for a game that included so much cutting edge technology such as the Super FX Chip. 

All the reviews were glowing with 90% scores and yet when I played it I was particularly underwhelmed. 

I just didn't get why everyone was raving about this game. The only thing I did like was how your team mates would radio into your cockpit with updates of what was going on. 

But unfortunately Starwing bit the dust early on for me and it was traded in pretty quickly.

3."Stunt Race FX" on the Super Nintendo

 

Looks like a recurring theme for me here with all the SNES games that didn't live up to their promise. 

Again with this one it had glowing reports, all the latest technology (the fabled Super FX Chip) and yet again, I just didn't get it. 

It reminded me of a badly made set of Lego vehicles with poor handling and a really annoying surround on the screen where the action took place, again this was consigned to the trade pile pretty quickly!

4."Premier Manager" on the Amiga

 

When I was younger with no responsibilities I played a lot of Championship Manager, days were eaten up by taking my Nottingham Forest team through 12 seasons of glory until all the "regen" players took over from the real world players and I was left with a load of unknowns.

I felt that after such over exposure to Championship Manager it was time to get my management kicks elsewhere, hence why I went for Premier Manager. 

It had received good reviews and was seen as an alternative to Champ Manager. The game looked impressive and I have to admit, initially it was good to play a management sim other than Champ. 

But the problem was ..... it wasn't Champ Manager and I always compared it to Champ Manager (which wasn't really fair). Eventually I had to concede that it was a disappointing game compared to Champ (oh yeah, and the fact you always had to start in the Conference didn't help!!)

5. Gran Turismo 5 on the PS3

So there I was with a shiny new PS3 for christmas! 

Inside was one game......it was GT5. My last encounter of GT was on PS1 , the original GT and I loved it at the time, it was so novel to have a driving game that you could invest hours of time just tweaking and collecting and building.

Fast forward 5 reiterations later and you have the all singing all dancing version of GT!

The problem with it though, is that it's lost it's soul, it's almost too realistic and maybe there's too much on offer, too many things to do.

For that reason ..... I’m OUT! (GT5 was quickly traded for a lovely copy of Heavy Rain!)

Have you got any disappointments that you would like to tell The Freezer about?

Consign them to the Freezer's deep freeze forever by letting us know and we will dispose of them carefully! 

*Richard From The Disappointment Department Of Freezer Town*

☆ If Only I Had The Room ...... ☆ #Retrogaming #GamersUnite

I often think, if only we had the room........

If only we had the room to buy all the consoles and computers we have owned over the years and maybe some of the ones we didn't own!

So that got me thinking, would I be able to remember the machines I had bought?

If only I had the room and the plug sockets to buy them all again!

Games Freezer - Top 5 Video Games Of All Time

Everybody knows that this is an impossible task and one task that takes full concentration in order to distill 25 years worth of games playing into 5 all time great titles!

You may call us crazy but we have only gone and attempted it!

Having looked at all the machines we have played since 1979 we have pulled out the 5 games that have immersed us and pulled us into their grasp which has meant countless hours of gameplay have been poured into these 5 amazing games. 

Of course with only 5 Video Games spots to fill there are countless great games that didn't make the Games Freezer Top 5!

So here goes.......... 

5. NBA Jam Tournament Edition (Arcade) 

The game that made me into an Arcade junkie! I remember once taking a train with mates all the way to Brighton just to go and find the NBA Jam Tournament Edition Arcade box and play the 4 Player mode.......what a game....so much fun with your mates. Bought it recently on the PS3 still loads of fun!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_Jam_Tournament_Edition#NBA_Jam_Tournament_Edition

4. Metal Gear Solid (PS1)

A game that took my breath away. This was miles ahead of its time and like nothing else i'd seen before. The storyline and presentation was like a movie and the gameplay was ingenius! It really felt like you were an undercover operative sneaking about and disposing of enemy security guards with sneak attacks. I still own a copy of this as I can't bear to part with it!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Gear_Solid

3. Super Mario Kart (SNES) 

This game remained firmly lodged in my SNES until the time I sold it. Battle Mode was amazing and me and my friends actually created our own Battle Mode league complete with balloon difference points for the amount of balloons left on your Kart at the end of the match.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Kart

2. Fallout 3 (X360)

From the moment you step out of the Post Apocalyptic Vault and into the Wasteland, you are consumed by this game, over 100 hours of game time and I enjoyed every minute of it. A truly epic game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_3

1. Sensible Soccer (Amiga)

Over the years I have played many many football games and it was always the aim to play games that realistically simulated the beautiful game however, Sensible Soccer was a different breed , it's goal was to create a fun experience that could be played again and again and again and again and again. My personal favourite was scoring a diving header from the edge of the area with my microscopic player. A game that made me smile and still does. (closely followed by Sensible World Of Soccer)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensible_Soccer_(series)

So......Over to you.....

Are you up to the challenge of creating your own Top 5 All Time Video Games List?

It's a tough task and the GAMES FREEZER wants to know how you get on with compiling your Video Games List!

Richard - From The Games Freezer Basement in Essex