Retro Gamer 2018 Calendar
Retronator Photo Review
Not every article in Retronator Magazine is a behemoth of learning—sometimes I just have too many photos to fit in a Tumblr post. Today’s image overload comes thanks to the magazine for old video games: Retro Gamer.
Specifically, what landed on my doorstep was the Retro Gamer 2018 calendar. It’s bundled in the latest, December 2017 issue of Retro Gamer, and I had the privilige of contributing 3 artworks to the cause of tracking time on people’s walls.
Retro Gamer started in 2004 as the first magazine to focus specifically on old games. (It kind of makes sense, since prior to that these were simply called games.) As a person who has recently changed their internet handle from ‘Flamer’ to ‘Retro’, you can imagine I became an instant fan.
Questionable nickname and hairstyle choices aside, I was unfortunately also geographically challenged. Hailing from the mystical country of Slovenia, shipping costs from UK were just too much for my student budget. Thus my fandom urges had to be satisfied with a few odd issues I bought on random occasions.
Fast forward 10 years to October 2016 when Retro Gamer’s publisher Imagine got consolidated into Future plc. Nothing to worry about. Future is another British media company that I am fond of—they make the cult gaming magazine Edge. Besides Edge being Edge, they’re great because they put out special issues such as The Art of the Pixel.
Anyone creating a magazine about pixel art will be in good graces with me, so I was happy to write an intro up for The Art of the Pixel. Now that I was in cahoots with Future, they asked if they could also use my art for Retro Gamer’s 2018 calendar. Of course I said yes (they had no idea how happy that made me) and one month later the magazine is out.
Long story short, I finally have another physical, print issue of Retro Gamer on my hands, including the aforementioned timetable device.
The calendar is a real treat. Legendary pixel artist Gary ‘Army of Trolls’ Lucken adapted his image Retro Arcade for the cover.
His works also fill up 5 of the months.
Gary’s been a hero for many of us starting with (isometric) pixel art 10 years ago. To now have my art alongside his, still baffles me.
Four more artists are featured in the calendar.
Daniel ‘AbyssWolf’ Oliver a.ka. Ahruon a.k.a. Butler Wolf of Pixels (lol) shows off his incredible spriting skills with a massive piece that took him 8 months to complete back in 2007.
His style is pretty much unmistakable at this point and you’ve probably come across his smooth animation skills already.
Next up, Dave Grey is much loved for his minimalistic sprites. He really pushes how much you can do with so little. I dare say his work is iconic (pun intended).
Walter Newton has been on my radar since I’ve seen his series of old gaming hardware one day on Tumblr.
The calendar sees his Half Life 2 illustration that was one of the 20 alternative covers of Edge’s 20th anniversary release.
Finally, brothers Vic and Mike Nguyen are the artists/animators behind Capy’s Super Time Force (alongside Kelly Smith). The month of October is filled with their miniature sprites of Street Fighter characters.
The only thing missing in the calendar is (of all things) a hole to put this archaic date indicator on the wall. I guess they didn’t want to drill through the art for those who have a different hanging method in mind.
Now, since I have a Retro Gamer issue on hand, let’s quickly dive in there as well.
The biggest thing to get any issue of Retro Gamer for are interviews and other making-of articles. Especially if you’re a game developer yourself, you’ll appreciate seeing behind the scenes into the history of making games.
A long running section of the mag has been the Back to the Future-themed look at old news. These used to be called Back to the Eighties and Back to the Nineties, but it seems they already reached 2000s by now.
The page count of Retro Gamer goes slightly over 100 so there’s a lot of content to fill out the rest, from covering lesser-known games such as this month’s look at the BBC Micro catalog, to interviewing musicians and analyzing hardware (the current issue features Amiga’s audio capabilities).
You’ll find profiles of companies and game series, looks at modern homebrew scene—you might even get some ideas for Christmas presents.
If nothing else, a present can be the magazine itself.
You can order a December copy (with the calendar) in Future’s My Favorite Magazines store. It’ll set you back £6, €10, or $13. It’s not the cheapest gift, but at least shipping to UK, Europe, or the rest of the world respectively, is included in the price.
Subscribing is the better choice, knocking almost half of the price off (40%), but you have to do it for at least three months. Getting three issues to the US then is only $23, while a whole year is $93.
Finally, albeit without the calendar, you can subscribe digitally for even less: $4 for a single issue, $23 for six, or $40 annually. The back catalog is available at $5 a pop.
Now they just have to come up with a way to digitally distribute the calendar—preferablly in a way that doesn’t require nailing your iPad to the wall.
Holy smokes, I wrote an article that can be read in under 10 minutes! While this might be surprising if you’re a recent reader of Retronator Magazine articles, it’s actually how this whole show started: a few words, a shitton of pictures, in a small, short package. I need to embrace this more again, else I become the Wait But Why of video games. Although, if I look at Tim Urban’s Patreon page, that wouldn’t be that bad.
Happy Holidays!
—Retro
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Patreon, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, InstagramThis article was brought to you by patrons including Reuben Thiessen, Qinapses, Magnus Adamsson, Jeff Chang, … (dot dot dot), CarbonBond, Robert ‘Pande’ Kapfenberger, and Lou Bagel. Thank you all for giving me a Christmas gift every month!
