Well, I guess after 4 months of hard slog on behalf of the RR administration team and the vast generosity of the sponsors it’s time to unleash the rules and say “The Competition Is Go”.

It’s been a long haul all told for us, the team, but it’s time to hand over the baton to you, the good people of the internet to see what you can come up with.

We’ve got six categories for you to choose to enter. You can only enter one game per category, amended or edited versions of the same game will see your entry be disqualified so please, please, please, make sure you choose carefully and correctly – it’d be a shame to see any hard work go to waste over such a silly mistake. If you want to enter more than one category, then you’ve got to create more than one game. It’s that simple really. Of course, there’s prizes for every single category. But that’s not all…

Naturally, every single entry goes into the Grand Prize Competition where you have the chance to win yourself the gaming laptop of the gods amongst many other prizes.

We’re really hoping that with a mixture of fine prizes and lots of scope for different entries this year will see the biggest and best haul of games for a competition ever.

Now, we don’t do these things for random reasons. One of the biggest reasons we opted to do this whole competition thing again was only if we could actually do some good in the world. To this end, with the fine assistance of the wonderful Barrie Ellis of One Switch we’re trying to raise some games for a fantastic cause, this year it’s for Special Effect and their Games For Helen project. You can read more about Special Effect and Games For Helen over on their homepage. And yes, we have very deliberately punted the Pandora into this category to bribe folks into making games for it. We’re that shallow.

That’s not to say we want you to neglect the other categories, far from it. We’ve tried to balance out each category prize with roughly the same value of prizes, from excellent game development kits to cold hard cash, whichever you choose to run for a punt in you can be assured of coming out with something nice as a winner. And yes, you can win more than once…

Oh, and the judges prizes are back. Each judge has a bunch of prizes that they can offer up at the end of the competition for anything that impresses them during a game so there’s always a chance to shine. Oh yeah, that and anyone coming in with a score over the 50% mark gets a free game too.

I guess at this point you’ll be needing some links to help you get around. So here we go:

The Categories. I’d start here so you’ve got an idea of what we’re expecting and to see if there’s something that lights your spark and makes you think “yeah, I could do that”

The Rules. Because you don’t want to be caught out by not complying with the rules.

The Judges. As well as listing a few of the individual judges likes and dislikes, you can also find out the system specs and systems owned by the judges.

The Prizes. Because we all want to know what we can win.

And finally, the competition forum. Feel free to nip on over to announce your game, discuss what’s going on with the competition, see what other people are up to.

Although with the forum comes great responsibility. If you’ve got a question, please check that the answer isn’t clarified in the categories or the rules. We’ve tried to cover as much as possible, but I have no doubt there’ll be something we’ve missed. There always is. One small note though, if you’re going to have a whinge or a moan about something being unfair, well, tough really. You don’t have to enter if you don’t like the rules and it is very much “our competition, our rules” and no amount of moaning or complaining at the judges and organisers will change their minds. I really shouldn’t even need to point this out, but there’s always someone who can’t help themselves year in or year out. Putting it bluntly, the rules are set in stone, the organisers opinions are set in stone, shouting, swearing or cursing won’t change a damn thing so don’t waste your breath and make things more uncomfortable or stressful than they already are for people during competition times. In short: play nicely please folks.

With that said, may I wish all the entrants the very best of luck and let’s rip! Let’s make this the best competition ever.

No, really, we do. We like it Retro. Muchly.

Whilst our previous competitions have seen the emphasis very much placed on the Remakes half of our name, this time round we figured lets shift some of the focus onto the Retro part too. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we ended up with Category 6. We Like It Retro.

Yes folks, for this category we’re asking you to come up with your very own authentic looking and playing retro style game. And by authentic looking, that’s not a license just to do some really crap artwork and try to pass it off as retro because y’know, it’s a competition and we’ll frown severely in your direction if you do that. Obviously, we don’t want it so authentic that it plays like a slug in treacle either – it’s still got to be a good game. And we reckon you folks could possibly meet that challenge without blinking an eye. We’re not asking for an exact recreation of the system specs of the machine… it’s the spirit that counts!

Want to make a game that looks like it was put together on a Speccy? Now is your chance! Want to make a game that looks like it was put together on a C64? Don’t. Now’s your chance.

And that I believe, is the last of the categories we’ve got to announce… I wonder what’s up next?

We’re a bit disturbed that perhaps this category might just cause some sort of serious break in the time space continuum resulting in the loss of civilization as we know it. Given that we’re currently not convinced that this would be a bad thing, we’re going to attempt it all the same and cross our fingers that everyone is still left alive at the end of it.

For the 5th of the 6 categories at Remakes Towers for the Retro Remakes Competition 2008 we’re going to ask you to imagine what would happen if 2 (or more) 8 bit games collided and birthed out one game. Show us your mutants please! Yes, we’re asking for hybrid games for the 5th category.

Perhaps if Jetpac met Avalon met Armalyte met The Hobbit? If Football Manager met Creatures? If Daley Thompsons Decathlon met Jet Set Willy*? What would the resulting game look like? We don’t know, but we’re dying to see what sort of completely and utterly insane madness you can concoct.

Usual rules apply, of course. Try and think outside the box, the whackier (and more importantly most fun) efforts will be rewarded with the loving of the judges. Oh yeah, and prizes of course.

*we’d like to think this would result in Daley Thompson’s Willy Decathlon, but that’s just us…

Retro Remakes ”A Game for Helen” competition links up with the Special Effect project of the same name to bring an inclusive arcade experience to kids and young adults in the hospices Helen and Douglas House. This is especially aimed at bringing games to those who cannot play arcade type games using conventional controls due to disability.

This sector of the Retro Remakes competition will be looking for entrants to create accessible updated counterparts of real or imagined arcade games from the 1920’s to date. These can include mechanical, electro-mechanical and video games. Basically – anything at all you might find in an amusement arcade through the ages.

Hopes? Eye Tracker and One Switch compatible games for PCs with some good additional accessibility features/options (more on that later). Genres? Pinball, Fortune Telling Machines, Crane Machines, Fruit Machines, Bowling games, Shooting Gallery, Horse Racing games, Whack-a-mole, Shove-a-penny, Pool, Air Hockey, Pachinko, Table Football, Atari SteepleChase for one or more players, something with big explosions in, humour… Anything!

For every Mario who got a million and one shots at success, there were a number of poor lowly game characters who never got the same treatment. I don’t know about you, but we at Retro Remakes think that’s pretty darned unfair. Just think of the fun they could have had given half a chance…

Perhaps now, you could give them the chance.

If there was a game character who deserved a sequel or his/her very own game as they were sat in the sidelines wondering why nobody loved them quite as much as the megastar of the game, we’re giving you the opportunity to make that game for them.

Perhaps you’d have liked to have seen Percy The Potty Pigeon have further adventures, did Dr Blitzen warrant a game of his own? Perhaps the notorious housekeeper Maria from Jet Set Willy did other things in her life other than pointing aimlessly at a drunken top hatted idiot?

Obviously, it’s pretty clear cut that if they ever starred in a game of their own more than once, then this is not the category for them, but more than anything we’re asking you to avoid the obvious wherever possible and surprise us. Make a game about the cat from Frankie Goes To Hollywood, the dog from Jack The Nipper, the fountain from Everyones A Wally or even one of the customers from Grumpy Gumphrey. There’s a whole wealth of game characters out there (and inanimate objects) who just never got the breaks. Be unpredictable, be wild, daring and imaginative. Don’t be dull and obvious* because, well, that’s really dull and obvious and won’t impress the judges unless you pull something really special out of the bag.

Work that magic, make a long lost game characters dreams come true. Give them some love, why don’t you? Surely they deserve their name in lights just this once…

*You know, like Bowsers Revenge or something soft like that. Yawn.

Category 2: Games That Weren’t.

For many a reason during the eighties, a number of promised games failed to appear. In some cases, we may have got a teaser at the end of a game, in other cases we may have got little more than a vague promise in a magazine editorial. In some cases something existed, in others little to nothing. Many a year has passed with the staff at Remakes Towers wondering just what might have been had these games appeared. Now is your opportunity to let your imagination run riot and create/recreate one of the great lost games for category number 2 – Games That Weren’t.

Please note, we’re not asking you to make something entirely fictional up here. Whilst you can argue till you’re blue in the face that “My Game Number 8” never existed in the first place, it’s not what we mean by “Games That Weren’t” – it has to be something with at the very least a vague promise in a 1980’s computer magazine from either the publishers or the authors. We’re talking the Mire Mare’s, the Eye Of The Moon’s, the Willy Meets The Taxman and so on…

For those wondering which games never appeared, we recommend no finer a resource than the awesome Games That Weren’t Portal, a comprehensive overview of missing games for some of the prime home computers, evidence, files and what might have been – all available thanks to the good folks tireless work in tracing these things. Speccy fans can find a useful list over at World Of Spectrum.

This year, to give more people an opportunity to enter and to win prizes, we’re dividing competition entries up into six seperate categories. In the run up to the competition we’ll be announcing each of these categories before the rules go live and the competition begins proper.

Lets get this thing started with Category 1.

Category 1: Retro Remakes

As you’d anticipate from a competition being ran by Retro Remakes, our first category is The Retro Remakes Category. In order to enter into the Retro Remakes Category you need to pick a game and remake it. Who’d have thunk it, eh? Naturally, we have a few things we’d like you to bear in mind. The whole point of a retro remake is to bring a classic game up to speed on modern hardware. Whilst we’re not going to say “no” to anyone who turns in a more “classic” looking game, we’d at least prefer it if you could improve on the original, fix any flaws if need be and make it worthwhile playing as a game in itself.

However, we will say no to anyone who attempts to enter any of the following titles into this category. Seriously, they’ve been done to death and we’re asking folks not to enter any of the titles below (I mean, really, so don’t do what some people did last time and not actually read this bit where we said don’t)

• Arkanoid/Breakout
• Asteroids
• Jet-Set Willy
• Pac Man
• Pong ( In ANY dimension )
• Snake
• Sokoban
• Space invaders
• Tetris
• Time Pilot