Sometimes the best things in life start with a little mischief. That’s definitely the case with Bring Down IE6, a .net magazine microsite that I designed (using artwork from the wonderful people at ilovedust) and that launched on March 12.

Dan Oliver, the editor, was the culprit who lit the fuse. Knocking ideas around with me for features, he wondered if there was mileage in an article on the “growing trend to f—— IE”, meaning IE6, which even Facebook now hates. Being a web designer and also happening to know a lot of people who waste many hours dealing with IE6, I had a sneaking suspicion that, yes, this might just appeal to the mag’s readers.

The feature was duly commissioned, and I got to work, interviewing the likes of Jeff Zeldman and Bruce Lawson. I wrote the article, submitted it, and that was that. And then the mag hit the newsstands. Unusually, the article ended up online at the same time, rather than being delayed a few months, and there was one major addition: a badge.

Someone at .net had started a rallying cry, asking readers to download the ‘Bring Down IE6’ logo and link to the feature. But it didn’t seem loud enough. A spark went off in my head, and the microsite idea was born. It was then designed, built in suitably standards-compliant fashion, and IE6 was ignored bar an ‘upgrade’ notice that IE<7 users see. The finished site now sits at www.bringdownie6.com. Time will tell if it proves a success, but I’ve already seen the badge creeping out there and being attached to various designers’ blogs, which is heartening.

And despite the provocative and somewhat humorous tone of the site itself, the aim is deadly serious. It really is time for web designers to unite and finally get IE6 dealt with in some way. We need to move on, and together we will win.

Late last year, I had the good fortune to interview Ed Rotberg, creator, among other things, of the groundbreaking Battlezone. This vector graphics tank simulator was the first truly immersive 3D environment in videogames, and probably the first 3D update of a 2D classic, what with it being heavily based on Kee/Atari’s various overhead Tank games.

The current issue of Retro Gamer, 59, includes portions of the interview in ‘The Making of Battlezone’, and the game is featured on the cover as a beautifully rendered faux-vector scene.

This seems to have been good timing by Retro Gamer, since all kinds of Battlezone-related things seem to be cropping up right now. First, there’s Vector Tanks, a heavily Battlezone-inspired blaster for iPhone, written by the supremely talented Peter Hirschberg. Secondly, Wade Shooter’s video for Fujiya & Miyagi’s Sore Thumb dresses the band and instruments in vector ekoskeletons, occasionally cutting to scenes of vector tank warfare.

Not at all dreadful, but, er, ‘Dredd-full’. (Oh dear.)

I don’t usually review single issues of comics, but with the Judge Dredd Megazine seemingly having its 50th or so revamp in its (almost) 18-year history (next month, it’ll be old enough to drink beer), I figured I’d make an exception.

The Megazine now comes bagged—something I find a hateful proposition—and has had two quid added to its price tag, but bad feelings are tempered somewhat by the contents of said bag. First up, the Megazine itself, which is—for the time being—finally devoid of reprint. The most notable addition to the line-up is Tank Girl, by original scribe Alan Martin and relative newcomer Rufus Dayglo. This irreverent, punky tale feels right at home in a 2000 AD title: Martin’s fun, explosive script is a real blast, and Dayglo’s somewhat retro artwork evokes the best of classic 2000 AD art, while also channelling a little Jamie Hewlett.

Elsewhere, playfulness is also evident in most of the Dreddworld strips. Female PSI Judge Anderson rummages around virtual realities, aided by an AI that resembles a levitating blue ape, while Tales from the Black Museum offers a wickedly dark take on the pressures of coming up with new fads—something exacerbated by the gnat-like attention spans of Mega-City One’s population.

The issue’s sore thumb is, oddly, Judge Dredd, whose Wagner-scripted story, Ratfink, showcases a villain so downright nasty and an outlook so miserable (it’s set in the barren Cursed Earth desert, at night, in the pouring rain) that you can’t help feeling glad the other strips are there to cheer you up afterwards. That said, Dredd is the perfect antidote to too much ‘happy’, and proves that anthologies can pack punches from several directions, rather than banging the same old drum.

Elsewhere, the closure of Extreme Edition, 2000 AD’s reprint title, means reprint has shifted to what’s touted as a ‘graphic novel’ bagged with the Megazine. In reality, this is a 64-page comic, styled to resemble Rebellion’s line of 2000 AD trades, but with noticeably thinner paper. The first collection compiles a selection of Jock-illustrated Dredd strips, offering a fascinating insight into the evolution of one of the best artists in the business. Some of the tales aren’t exactly inspired, but the collection is nonetheless engaging, and The Shirley Temple of Doom—a story about undercover Judges aiming to bring down a cityblock mafia—is a minor classic.

Messing with formats is a dangerous business, not least when you then ramp the price up. This month, however, the Megazine stands true. It’s cover-to-cover goodness, although curious scheduling means it’s not great as a jumping-on issue. (The Dredd and Anderson tales are parts 3 and 4, respectively.) Whether the momentum can be maintained remains to be seen, though, and next month’s Snow/Tiger reprint is certainly a less enticing prospect than a Jock Judge Dredd collection.

The Judge Dredd Megazine is available now from all the usual stockists for £4.99. More information on 2000 AD products can be found at 2000 AD online.

This time, Britney couldn’t decide between shaving it all off or keeping it long. (Image credit: the wonderful Rufus Dayglo.)

Retro Gamer 53 yomped on in a couple of weeks back, containing my six-page feature on Marble Madness (including an utterly gorgeous two-page spread showcasing the game’s six levels). Despite being a slight game (seasoned players can speed through the entire thing in about four minutes), it’s one of the prettiest arcade games ever released, and it no doubt influenced a slew of modern titles, such as the likes of Super Monkey Ball.

Designer Mark Cerny, who now largely works as a consultant in the industry, mostly on console titles, provided a great overview of how the game came to be. However, one of his insights that didn’t see print was the fact that Marble Madness, to his knowledge, has never before received the kind of feature found in this month’s Retro Gamer.

This got me thinking. Most other publications that dare to acknowledge retro gaming do so in a somewhat cursory manner, perhaps grudgingly giving over a couple of pages each month to a single classic title. And even when the results are worth reading (Edge’s coverage of retro titles has been of a typically high standard), you’re still only looking at 13 titles a year. With so many great games out there, created by people who, judging my those I’ve spoken to, are fast forgetting how the games ended up like they did, this just shows how important to gaming a title like Retro Gamer is.

For more on Retro Gamer, check out the brand-new Retro Gamer website. And for more on Marble Madness, check out Bernhard Kirsch’s excellent site.

If you’re a writer for magazines covering new-fangled games systems, your biggest worry regarding interviews is whether your potential interviewees will talk to you. With retro-gaming publications, things aren’t so simple. Before you can get to the all-important ‘will they or won’t they?’, detective work is often in order, to track down people who worked on classic games.

In my experience, potential interviewees fall into four camps. The most common is the ‘enthusiastic yes’, often from those still working in the industry, but sometimes from people who just have great memories of it. Guys like Jon Hare (Sensible Software), Alexey Pajitnov (Tetris) and Alan McNeil (Berzerk!) particularly stand out from my work for Retro Gamer as people willing to go above and beyond to talk about their old games.

The second group is the ‘bewilderment’ one. You track someone down, ask them to do an interview, and they act like several kinds of excitingly exotic fruit have simultaneously started growing out of your ears. “Are you serious?” is a question I’ve been asked more than once, although the people who ask that usually end up joining the first group, happy to wax lyrical about their classic creations.

The third group contains those games creators (or ex-games creators) who simply have no interest in reliving the old days, for whatever reason. It’s pretty clear some guys got totally screwed back in the day, and many simply don’t want to dredge up bad memories. Others simply haven’t got the time nor the inclination to talk to some strange British guy with an obsession for games titles a third of their way to a bus pass. Thus, sadly, the chances of making-of features on Paradroid, Hunter’s Moon and River Raid bounded majestically into the distance, never to return, along with the time it had taken to track down the relevant parties.

The fourth group, however, is perhaps even more frustrating. Often, a quick Google can provide contact details of the people I want to talk with. If not, contacts of contacts or cunning use of various social networking websites often does the job. Sometimes, though, every avenue is exhausted, and you just have to give up. Unless, of course, you have a blog, which might be read by people who might just know the whereabouts of people you’d like to talk to.

And so here’s a quick list of the top-three people I’ve been trying to track down for a number of hours that’s now grown so large that it’s just not funny any more.

1. Mervyn J. Estcourt. This is the big one for me. This guy wrote the utterly fantastic 3D Deathchase (merely ‘Deathchase’ to its friends) on the Speccy, which, to sane people, is also known as the Best Spectrum Game Ever. It finds you hurtling through a digital forest, Return of the Jedi style, hunting down bad guys. Sadly, I’ve never quite been able to catch Mervyn himself.

2. Pete Harrap. My calling Pete a sadist in issue 28 of Retro Gamer actually irked a couple of people, but it was meant in the nicest possible way. And let’s face it, there can’t be too many people who’d create a game (Monty on the Run) that forced you to select an ‘escape kit’ from a fairly large list of somewhat random items, and then have an indestructible and stationary deadly monster right at the very end of the game if you happened to pick the wrong item. Gah! However, Pete’s a genius, and I always preferred Monty to Miner Willy.

3. John Van Ryzin. Ex-Activision guru John Van Ryzin created the utterly amazing H.E.R.O., my favourite game. This classic title tasks you with exploring caverns to rescue trapped miners, all the while blasting paths through lava walls and avoiding the various beasties that pepper the levels.

So, if you know any of these people, please point them towards this blog, and maybe—just maybe—they’ll be interested in talking to me. (Please note: under no circumstances should any private contact details be sent to me, although I guess work ones would be OK.)