A review of Tecmo Bowl and Tecmo Super Bowl, two sports games from the late 80s/early 90s that still have a following.

Here is the fall 2025 issue of Quarter Up, a free online magazine about pinball and retro arcade gaming.

In this issue, AT Gonzalez interviews Luke "Launch" Tran, a tourney organizer and a fixture of Houston's fighting game community.

Also, Andres Alcoser covers the rivalry between two arcade cabinets of the 2000s: the Taito Vewlix and the Namco Noir.

Later, Lee Tursi goes over Namco's ill-fated ShiftyLook, an attempt to popularize their more obscure titles.

Also in this issue, a preview of this month's Houston Arcade Expo, views from the road, and questions from readers.

Enjoy!

This article covers a rarely-seen but interesting arcade game: Wyvern F-0 by Taito. This game used a unique graphics system to produce a presudo-3D effect.

Has anyone else heard of this game?

I read a lot of Harlan Ellison (worked on The Outer Limits, 80's Twilight Zone, Babylon 5), and I was wondering what people thought of this quote from him:

[S]cience fiction is the only 100% hopeful fiction. That is to say, inherent in the form is, "There will be a tomorrow". If you read a science fiction story, it says, "This will happen tomorrow". Now that’s very positive, that’s very pragmatic, "We’ll be here tomorrow. We may be unhappy, we may be all living like maggots, but we’ll be here." So that means it’s 100% positive.

Ellison has even said that his short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is optimistic, because in the climax, there is still room for self-sacrifice and defiance to authority.

I guess it comes down to whether you think a bleak future is better than no future at all.

Shameless plug for my work if you like Ellison or want to learn more: https://ndhfilms.com/ellison

Hi @retrogaming,

Here's our Spring issue for 2024.

Retro Gaming articles in this issue:

• Coverage of ATG Expo 2024 in Waco, TX by AT Gonzalez. He saw an original Soviet-era Tetris computer.
• Grappling to New Heights: Roc’n Rope’s Unintentional Birth of the “Wire Action” Genre by Leland Tursi
• Views From the Road: Cricket's Draft House & Grill in Waco, TX
• Reader responses to last issue's article on the reverse-engineering of Sinistar.

Cover art by Chris Bordenca

The Chaos of Heat is a crime story as unrelenting as the heat wave described in its vivid prose. It follows a man who, wracked by heroin addiction, finds himself at the front of a dangerous robbery spree. Will Vince survive long enough to get his next fix, or is he little more than shark bait, out of his depth?