Last year, we brought you the news that the lost port of Airball for the NES was getting ready for release and now John Roo, of The Retro Room, explains all the details.
John has brought Airball to the NES and GBA and it’s set for release later this year. The game has some history and in the late 80s was set to be published on the NES but was suddenly cancelled by publisher Tengen for unspecified reasons. It’s now getting that release thanks to John’s publishing company The Retro Room. “My goal is to get the game released, as a developer it makes me sad that people worked hard on a project just for it to get cancelled,” he explains.
The chance to get the rights to publish the game came during another project John was working on. “Luckily I was already working on Elland: The Crystal Wars,” he says “and that brought attention to me releasing these lost games, this in turn gave me access to more games like Airball.”
In the game, you control the titular character around perilous rooms filled with stairs and traps with “the main difference between the versions being the graphics,” John says when asked about what’s new in these ports. “The graphics greatly differ from the NES version to the GBA version. There are other small differences between each version such as the NES version having a life bar that gives you more advantages, whereas it’s instant death in the other versions.”
Publishing new games on retro consoles is a tough business and John feels “the largest challenge is the manufacturing process. It’s tedious, putting together art in a way where all parties agree. It isn’t something that anyone can have full control of as you jump through hoops to get places. Luckily I have gotten some good feedback and continue to grow and get better.”
The physical release will include a box with a manual and John explains that “it’s important that we can recreate the experiences we all loved when opening a game in the 90s and 2000s. That’s something I always want to capture, my audience can continue to feel sweet nostalgia.” Lastly, John explains he “doesn’t do limited stuff, so my games will always be continuously available, I just want to bring people fun.” he continues this thought by saying “If my customers are anything like me, they love retro gaming. There’s something about old consoles that we love. These games get right to the point and continue to entertain generation after generation!” We couldn’t agree more John
I respect a lot everybody that keeps releasing new games on old, discontinued game consoles / computers, and I thank you for this article which made me get to know The Retro Room which seems to be pretty much a one man’s show (John), but that releases a lot of new games to a lot of different game consoles, with some of those games being abandoned games which is just amazing. Because of this I would like to order some games to be shipped to Europe and because of that I have some questions to him. But I find no way to contact John https://theretroroomgames.com/. Can you help me out?
Hi Paulo, not sure if you use Twitter but I know I speak to John on there often https://twitter.com/TheRetroRoomRoo. If you have no luck, send me a message to contact@retrofaith.net and I’ll see what I can do to get you to speak with him. Thanks, Faith