Nihilistic Entertainment System: Retro City Rampage

Currently getting owners of the PS Vitalite's expensive knickers in a right old twist, parody open-world carnage game Retro City Rampage will also be careening wildly towards PC with a bloodythirsty look in its pseudo-8-bit eye. Essentially it's GTA 1, if GTA 1 had happened five years earlier and was a mash-up of locales and abilities from assorted touchstones of the early console era.

See if you can name all the references in the video below! Or just impassively watch it and think 'yes those are some videogames I recognise.' It's not for me to tell you whether to be enthusiastic or not. Unless you think I'm some sort of hideous emotional dictator, the Idi Amin of smiles and tears. Frankly, I'm offended by the suggestion.

Retro City Rampage is due in May, on PC and assorted console-toys. It's been in the offing for a couple of years now, having attracted some excitable press back in 2010 but only now nailing down formats and a release date.

You can pre-order it now if you like, with the promise of assorted bonus goodies such as soundtracks and printable faux-cartridge boxes, for $14.99. That gets you a Steam copy and a DRM-free copy. Which seems an eminently sensible way of catering to the two loudest camps in PC gaming.

Of course, we've always got Super Mario Bros Crossover to indulge ourselves in copyright-bending retro gaming mash-ups in the meantime...