The Retrogaming Times No. 20: A Review of the May 2019 Issue
Originally published · Updated
The Retrogaming Times
Issue 20, Published May 2019
List of Articles
- More C64! - Game Testing
- Game Boy and Super Mario Land’s 30th Anniversary
- Raiders of the Lost Arcade
- Twenty-Five Years of Final Fantasy VI
- The Controller Chronicles - Sega Saturn
- Weekly Retrogaming Trivia Recap
Why Issue 20 is worth reading
There is an easy way to fill a retro-gaming magazine: revisit an old favourite, sprinkle on some nostalgia and remind readers how wonderful everything once was. What I like about Issue 20 is that it offers something more useful. Its More C64! column takes readers inside the process of making new games for old hardware. Elsewhere, the issue considers familiar consoles and games through the personal memories of its contributors.
This is the hobby at its best. We can enjoy the machines as historical artefacts while still treating them as working platforms for developers, writers and players. The publisher's 2019 back-issue archive confirms the contents of this May 2019 issue. Readers can follow the original issue through the publisher link above, rather than relying solely on this selective review.
More C64! – what game testing really involves
The standout piece for me is “More C64! – Game Testing.” We often encounter a newly released Commodore 64 game only after the programmers, artists and musicians have finished their work. Testing reveals the less glamorous labour needed to reach that point. A bug that occurs only after an unusual sequence of actions, a collision that behaves differently on real hardware, or an unbalanced enemy pattern can take repeated sessions to isolate.
The original review discusses playtesting projects including Exploding Fish, Sizzler, Space Moguls and Age of Heroes. More important than the individual titles is the method: test, describe what went wrong, reproduce it, communicate it to the developer, then test the correction. Testing is creative work as well as fault-finding, because observations can influence pacing, animation and the player's experience.
There is a particularly satisfying contrast here. The Commodore 64 launched in 1982, yet decades later people were still developing software for it and inviting others into the production process. The hardware has not changed, but our expectations and methods have. A modern emulator makes repeated tests convenient; original hardware can reveal the timing and compatibility problems that an emulator may overlook. For the wider scene, see the Commodore 64 journal.
1989–2019: thirty years of the Game Boy
“Game Boy and Super Mario Land's 30th Anniversary” is the historical centrepiece of the issue. The Game Boy and Super Mario Land both arrived in Japan in 1989, making the 2019 anniversary especially apt. The feature traces how a handheld with modest monochrome graphics could win affection through games, portability and a remarkably practical design.
One contributor recalls being sceptical about the display before discovering Super Mario Land on a family trip. I have never owned an original Game Boy, so I approach the story as an interested outsider. What catches my attention is the way a limitation—small screen, limited sound, constrained processing—became part of a cohesive experience rather than a barrier to enjoyment.
Final Fantasy VI and the power of remembered games
Issue 20 also marks twenty-five years of Final Fantasy VI, released in Japan in 1994 and originally sold as Final Fantasy III in North America. The retrospective approaches the game through personal encounters: watching another person play, discovering its world later, and remembering the emotional weight of its story and music.
Such recollections are a useful complement to technical retrospectives. A game can be measured in cartridges, pixels and megabits, but those numbers do not explain why a particular scene or soundtrack survives in someone's memory for decades. I find the contrast with the C64 testing feature revealing: one article shows how experiences are constructed, while the other shows how they endure.
The Controller Chronicles: Sega Saturn
Another welcome diversion is “The Controller Chronicles – Sega Saturn.” The Saturn occupies an awkward but interesting position in console history. Its distinctive library and control hardware deserve attention beyond the familiar story of its competition with Sony's PlayStation and Nintendo's later Nintendo 64.
Games such as Daytona USA, Virtua Fighter and Virtua Cop remind us how closely Sega's console ambitions were tied to the arcade. The controller itself becomes an illuminating design object: buttons, directional control and ergonomics all shape how a game feels, sometimes as much as the graphics. Not every home conversion matched its arcade original, but that does not diminish the pleasure of learning to play it on domestic hardware.
What else is in the issue?
Beyond these four highlights, the contents include Raiders of the Lost Arcade and the Weekly Retrogaming Trivia Recap. They give the issue a satisfying rhythm: development practice, personal history, arcade exploration and a little light-hearted recollection. The editorial range helps distinguish a community magazine from a narrowly focused hardware review.
Small publishers keeping old platforms alive
Reading the C64 feature naturally raises a further question: where does today's software come from? The following independent publishers offer useful starting points for exploring modern games built for classic systems. These are recommended external resources, not a claim that every publisher or its current catalogue was featured in Issue 20.
Editorial verdict: preserving the process, not just the products
My favourite aspect of The Retrogaming Times No. 20 is the space it gives to the people behind the games. A great many retrospectives tell us what a finished title was like. Far fewer explain the patient work of getting it to the point where someone could play it. The C64 testing feature makes this issue particularly valuable, while the Game Boy anniversary, Final Fantasy VI memories and Saturn controller discussion broaden its appeal.
For fellow magazine collectors, there is also a preservation argument here. Independent hobby publications record ongoing communities and technical knowledge that might never appear in a commercial history of video games. They deserve to be read, linked and kept accessible. Explore the retrocomputer magazine reading rack or continue with The Retrogaming Times Issue 22.
Sources and further reading
- The Retrogaming Times, Issue 20 (May 2019) — original publisher issue.
- Official 2019 back-issue archive — publisher's list of contents and publication month.
- Review of The Retrogaming Times Issue 22 — another instalment in the same series.
Editorial note: The magazine was published in May 2019. This article is a later retrospective, first published in January 2025; the two dates describe different publications.
