Not much has been going on the last few days.

A dice tower I had ordered via Amazon turned up but broken. It wasn’t damaged in the post. It had to have been done when created. So wasn’t chuffed with that. But it got worse as the dice tower also wasn’t the clear plastic that I wanted but frosted. Naturally I asked and received a refund.

Continuing the refunds I had a refund for the issue 250 of Retro Gamer I had ordered direct from the publisher. That was a real saga. Allegedly the issue had been posted. But it was never delivered. So they sent a replacement which did turn up. However that was the wrong issue! They then once again allegedly sent another replacement. Which you guessed it never arrived. After a brief email exchange from a now unhelpful support I requested a refund via PayPal. Which I got. I’ve sworn never to buy Retro Gamer again after this awful experience.

I was really keen for issue 250 because of the mini magazine looking back at the legendary 8 bit power house software developer Rare/Ultimate.

Back in the day Ultimate as the majority of the UK knew them were creating amazing games that were pushing what the hardware could do.

Cookie, Jetpac, and Trans Am on the ZX Spectrum were my first encounters with Ultimate’s catalog.

There was definitely a distinctive art style to those games. They had great game play. Jetpac became one of my all time favourite games of all time. A game that I did get up to level 99 on.

Attic Atac was also a great game that influenced my all time favourite video game creator Jeff Minter on his C64 classic Ancipital.

I could go on title by title of their catalog. But it was their game Knight Lore, third title in the Sabre Man series that had everyone go wow! It was isometric. It looked amazing. Reviewers and players were like how is this even possible on a Spectrum? It was ground breaking and was copied by others. I don’t think it is unfair or incorrect to say it was genre defining.

Seeing the Ultimate name on the box was seen as a guarantee of quality back then.

That’s why I wanted this particular issue of Retro Gamer. I wanted to see if there were any new insights into this legendary British powerhouse. And maybe step through memory lane once more. Looking back on the good times I had playing those games.

So that’s my two stories of recent failed orders.

Catch you in the next post.