retro?

Continuing the onslaught of rebooted gems from the past, Nintendo's one-two holiday season punch began with Kirby's Epic Yarn and finishes with Donkey Kong Country Returns for the Wii.

Even though we found Epic Yarn to be a bit simplistic, it was still engaging enough to justify a playthrough. Does Donkey Kong Country offer the same amount of appeal? Or is this one franchise that should have stayed dormant?

Jeff: Lately it seems Nintendo has released more of a time machine than a game console, with its recent titles taking us back 15 years or so, reliving our childhoods spent playing Super Nintendo and the like. The latest of this bunch is Donkey Kong Country Returns, the re-imagined follow-up to one of the Super Nintendo's most successful and iconic franchises.

If you didn't feel challenged in Kirby's Epic Yarn, Donkey Kong Country Returns will immediately fill that void. While we praised Epic Yarn for its success in conventional 2D platforming, DKC Returns innovates within the genre, giving us new ways to play. We really can't stress the difficulty enough here; the game is definitely not for the easily frustrated.

There are plenty of familiar details fans of the series will identify with: collecting K-O-N-G letters, hidden areas, bonus levels, and more. Also, Diddy Kong is around again for the adventure, and he'll take a vital role in your banana-recovery quest.… Read more

I grew up with my Sega Genesis, and Sonic was my Mario. I played all the games in high school, and the 2D games still represent the real Sonic to me. Those 3D versions? Not so much.

Sega's newest initiative, Sonic 4, has boldly named itself as the true successor to those old 16-bit gems. Available as a downloadable game for the Xbox 360 and PS3 (check out preGame's coverage here), it has also come to the iPhone, available today on the App Store for $9.99.

Thankfully, Sonic 4 plays pretty wonderfully from the starting gun; right … Read more

Sometimes, old can be better than new, especially when old is cheap. Retro games have flooded the Nintendo Wii via the Virtual Console, and the Nintendo 3DS will receive similar treatment via its recently announced Game Boy Virtual Console.

Considering the Game Boy's history dating all the way back to 1989, that adds up to a heck of a lot of games that could come back into circulation. Not all of them should, of course, but there are plenty of gems well worth a price point that we sincerely hope wouldn't hover above $5.

In fact, a retro … Read more

Do you love 8-bit style graphics and simple, addictive gameplay? Me too. And that's why The Incident is sure to be one of the go-to time-wasting apps on your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad.

You play as Frank Solway--your everyday suit-wearing dude just trying to catch a cab. Except today, everything (and I do mean every thing) is falling from the sky trying to squash you.

It's up to you, iPhone/iPad user, to maneuver Frank from side to side, dodging everything from traffic signs to statues to cars, climbing over the rubble to untold heights, attempting to … Read more

As a teenager I just about lived in the video arcade (Abbey Road in Farmington Hills, Mich.--anyone remember it?). I owned an Atari 2600, an Apple IIe, an Amiga, a Sega Dreamcast, and just about anything else that was good for games.

You'd think, then, that I'd go ape over something like C64 for iPhone 1.7, a newly updated Commodore 64 emulator that revives such classics as "Boulder Dash II," "Jupiter Lander," and "International Karate."

And you'd be wrong. While I have nothing but fondness for the videogames of … Read more

Jasmine picks up the slack on Donald's sick day and gets fab producer Jason Howell and "huge" CNET Labs editor Eric Franklin to co-host the latest Crave podcast. We scoured Crave to bring you only the best gems, and this week, we came up with a luxurious $15K speaker from Bowers & Wilkes, some Twitter-friendly dairy cows, a gadget porn crackdown, and the latest Japanese auto innovation. Also, no Crave podcast would be complete without a little something gross to cap it off. Tune in to find out what.

Remember the Novophone, that nifty retro handset that plugs into your iPhone for old-school, crook-of-the-neck gab-fests? It was cool, but it was only half the picture.

The iRetrofone completes it, combining a similar corded handset with a big, black, 50s-style base. It looks like something right out of a Humphrey Bogart movie, one with private eyes, dangerous dames, and a big old office desk.

As you can no doubt guess from the photo, the iRetrofone is essentially an iPhone dock. You plug an included cord into the audio jack, connect your existing sync cable to the dock connector (too bad … Read more

I'm always jealous when I see that a friend's laundry room has a sink in addition to a washer and dryer. But getting a sink into the laundry room that doesn't already have the necessary plumbing is an expensive hassle. Which is why this retro-style washing machine with an integrated sink from Smeg is so brilliant. Also, it's pink, and super cute.

With an 11-pound capacity, this machine is smaller than we're used to seeing here in the States, but it's a standard size in Europe.

And by the way, don't let the '… Read more

The year: 1983. I was headed to sleepaway camp at Camp Na-Sho-Pa in upstate New York. "Return of the Jedi" and "Krull" were the big movies that summer. As I got my books and toys packed for weeks in the humid isolation of cabins in the middle of the woods near Bloomingburg, I made sure to take the one portable game system I had at my disposal. Or, rather, two. I packed my Game & Watch collection delicately--they used to cost a whole $20 each--and made sure the watch batteries they took were fresh.

Before the PSP, the Nintendo DS, the TurboExpress, Game Gear, Atari Lynx, or even the Game Boy, there was Game & Watch, Nintendo's first handheld game franchise. The portable LCD games were compact, took watch batteries, told the time--hence "Game & Watch"--and only played one game per unit. This was an age when an LCD game was made by cutting out a series of silhouettes across an LCD screen, which would ping on and off to create animation of a crude sort. Nintendo wasn't the only company to make these types of handheld games, but it was the one that made the very best.

It's fascinating how closely the Nintendo DS design matches the look of those old Game & Watch dual-screen models. It's no accident: the classic Nintendo crosspad was born on these units, and the DS is really the latest step in the Game & Watch evolution.

Pinball was a cherished classic of mine. Dual screens created a long pinball table, and though the ball leaped from spot to spot with bleeps and blips, the overall feel was convincing and better than anything else that existed. Other arcade games, like Donkey Kong Jr., actually created levels out of little moving LCD-block platforms that Donkey Kong could hop over. Some parts of the screen, such as vines to climb on, were actually painted on parts of the background, adding bits of color to what was otherwise a black-and-silver affair.

I remember sinking untold hours into these simple games, which couldn't even be saved or paused. Each game also came with an "A" or "B" mode, which ratcheted up difficulty and tended to throw an additional challenge in the mix.

Nintendo revisited Game & Watch with several collections on the Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance, as well as two collectors' edition DS games available to members of Club Nintendo. In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, one of the hardest characters to unlock is "Mr. Game & Watch," an LCD stick-man who jerkily moves through an arena that's a montage of the old LCD games. On the iPhone, a few well-made Game & Watch rip-offs were released and promptly removed.… Read more