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Have a ball with Football Manager 2023 on iPhone and Mac

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Have a ball with Football Manager 2023 on iPhone and Mac
Show you have the chops to manage a world-class football club.
Photo: Sega

With the FIFA World Cup a week away, the latest version of the Sega’s hugely popular sports management game Football Manager 2023 launched for a range of Apple devices. Play to find out if you have what it takes to take a club to the top.

It’s available as a stand-alone app or as part of Apple Arcade.

Employees put Apple Arcade subscription gaming service through its paces

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Apple Arcade is something of a loot box for Apple.
Coming this fall.
Photo: Apple

Apple has kicked off internal testing of Apple Arcade, putting the upcoming subscription gaming service through its paces before it launches to the public.

For the preview, Apple employees can pay 49 cents for a one-month trial. That includes access to early builds of games including Way of the Turtle, Down in Bermuda and Hot Lava.

Classic Sega platformer Ristar is reborn on iOS

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Ristar game
Do you remember this stretchy-armed guy?
Photo: Sega

What better way to close out the week than by reliving the glory days of 1995 with Ristar, a newly released iOS port of the classic Sega Genesis game?

Released as part of the retro Sega Forever collection, the free-to-download game is a classic side-scrolling platformer in the Sonic the Hedgehog mold — only with less focus on speed, and more on utilizing the hero’s stretchy arms in a variety of ways.

How to play retro arcade games on your Apple TV

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Play classic arcade games right on your Apple TV.
Play classic arcade games right on your Apple TV.
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

Want to play your Mega Man 2 ROM on your new fourth-generation Apple TV? How about Super Mario Bros. 3?

It’s a ton of fun to play classic console arcade games, especially if you have a few ROMs lying around on your hard drive and would like to play them on the big screen.

Here’s how to get your new Apple TV all set up to rock some retro games.

Take a quick time machine trip through video game history

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FULLSCREEN
I'm old enough to have had a Magnavox Odyssey video game system when I was a kid. My brother owned one of those mini arcade cabinets from Coleco (Pac Man), and we'd take turns running the map, swallowing dots and chasing ghosts to beat each others' high score for hours.

I never had an Atari like my friend down the block, or a Commodore 64 (but my cousin did).

That's why spending time at the Video Game History Museum, plopped down smack in the middle of the show floor at the Electronic Entertainment Expo last week in Los Angeles felt like coming home.

Enjoy these photos of some of video games' long history (sorry, Apple fans, there wasn't a Pippin on display), and I'll try not to feel too old.

All Photos: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac except #1 image courtesy Video Game History Museum

Game history and dates via Wikipedia.
This is one of the first arcade games I can remember playing. It was released in 1980 by Atari, and later licensed to Sega for European countries. The controls consist of a round ball that you spin with your palm to move a crosshair across the screen, and a button to fire laser beams at the missiles coming to destroy your city. It gets frantic as the missiles come in from all directions.
My very first exposure to video games came from my dad, who came home with a new TV in the early 1970s. This Magnavox television had a video game built right in — you’d plug the weird controllers with the one button and a radial dial on top into the set, and get to play one of three Pong variants, each with a slow or fast speed. It was crazy fun, at least until my neighbor got an Atari.
The Atari Mindlink was never released, though it was supposed to come out in 1984 for the Atari 2600. It was developed to read your head muscles (not actually your mind) and move stuff in the games developed for it, Bionic Breakthrough and Mind Maze. The games never even came out, either. Test players got headaches, apparently, moving their eyebrows around to play these uninteresting games.
I never had one of these pretty things, but I wish I had; it looks like it’s right out of a sci-fi movie. Bambino’s Superstar Football is way cooler than the one I had. I mean, just look at that thing: I want to play it in an egg chair.
My brother had the PacMan version of this amazing little Mini Arcade game and boy did we play the crap out of it. I still have sense memories of lying flat on my stomach and gripping the tiny little joystick in my hand as I anticipated every twist and turn of the never-changing map. The ghosts were my nemesis, the dots, my salvation. Apparently, Coleco sold 3 million units of these bad boys in 1982.
The kids playing this game last week at E3 all looked up and cheered when another old dude walked by and said, “That’s the best game, ever!” Put out for the arcade by Sega in 1989, it’s loosely based on the film of the same name and endorsed by MJ himself. This is still a pretty cool game.
Here’s the original wearable game controller, the Nintendo Power Glove. Made by Mattel and released for the Nintendo entertainment system in 1989, it was supposed to be the future of video gaming, much like 3D and VR are today. Nintendo pushed the peripheral in its 1989 film, The Wizard, giving us the best line ever: “I love the Power Glove. It's so bad!”
I didn’t even know this thing existed for real until last week, but given my own name, I sure wish I had. Released in 1985 as a novelty toy to save Nintendo from the video game crash of 1983, it only worked with two games and never really took off. It's still cute as all heck, though.
Sega’s answer to the super successful Nintendo Entertainment System, the Master System came out in 1986. Even though it’s generally considered a better technical system than the NES, the Sega Master System didn’t quite overthrown Nintendo’s juggernaut, most likely due to mascots like Mario and Link. It did, however, become the basis for the handheld Game Gear, and saw the first release of Sega’s own popular mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog, in 1991.
These fine young gentlemen are engaging in a round of Virtua Cop 2, a light-gun arcade game that moves the player’s characters through a predetermined route, asking you to shoot the bad guys as they appear, like a moving shooting gallery. There are still games in arcades to this day that play almost identically, just with better graphics and sound. These guys were having a blast, though.

Greed is good in coin-pusher RPG Dragon Coins

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dragoncoins2feat

Have you ever experienced that giddy feeling of good fortune when a slot machine starts pouring out quarters, or a winning poker hand lets you put your arms around a big pile of chips and pull them towards your side of the table? Dragon Coins, a combination arcade “coin-pusher” and casual RPG, recreates that feeling every time you play.

Dragon Coins by Sega
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone and iPad
Price: Free

It’s a dangerous precedent. Dragon Coins literally piles on the treasure when you’re on a roll, emulating the psychological appeal of casinos. As long as you are able to put the game down from time to time, or grind out low-level battles to earn extra experience, you probably won’t end up mortgaging your home or draining your kid’s college fund to pay for this game.

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 Remastered Available Now On Android & iOS

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Sonic The Hedgehog 2 was undoubtedly a reason to buy a Sega Genesis back in 1992, but if you thought it was decent then, you should check it out the new remastered version for Android and iOS.

The title has been completely rebuilt for mobile devices, and it boasts exclusive new content including access to the mysterious Hidden Palace Zone and an all-new “Boss Attack mode,” plus improved graphics and audio.