Retro is "In", and Hollywood knows it! As those of us who grew up in the '70s and '80s are now all grown up and having rug rats of our own, we long for all that pop culture entertainment from our past. While we are still coming to terms with the movies, TV shows and video game we grew up with now being considered "classics" (I ask you, when did WKRP in Cincinnati become an old show?!), for the most part kids today have no idea what they're missing. This is one of the big reasons flicks like Transformers, Alvin & The Chipmunks and TMNT are such big hits. There one of the few opportunities to share a piece of our youth with our kids.

Now that big-budget film adoptions of cartoons, toys and comic books from the '60s, '70s and '80s have all had huge success, it looks like it's time for classic arcade games to get their shot, as Universal Pictures has just inked a deal with Atari to bring their historic '70s video arcade hit Asteroids to the big screen.

Released to video arcades in 1979, Asteroids quickly became one of the most popular games of all time. Presented in vector graphics, players control a triangular ship that rotates and flies around an asteroid field, shooting the big rocks apart and destroying the small ones, all while trying to avoid not getting hit or shot down by enemy flying saucers.

While making a big movie out of this early historic game might sound a bit odd at first, it's not such a bad idea. As the original game didn't have a storyline, with the exception of a ship, outer space and floating rocks most everything else is fair game for writer Matthew Lopez (Escpae to Witch Mountain, Bedtime Stories) and Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra), who've already been taped for the project.

Besides, who doesn't like movies about asteroids? Remember Meteor and Armageddon? I'm just trying to figure out how they're going to get the flying saucer in there.

For the last few years I considered Windows Vista's lack of compatibility with nearly all of my pre-Vista PC games (and just about everything else) to be my personal nightmare. Then Good Old Games, one of the best websites for snagging classic PC rarities that can run on both XP and Vista, reminded me that I have a better Personal Nightmare, one that I absolutely love!

Personal Nightmare is just one of four new retro PC rereleases that GOG.com has launched special for us old-school PC gamers. The others include the full-motion video sci-fi detective adventure, Pandora Directive: A Text Murphy Interactive Movie, and the remaining two titles in the Ishar series of first-person RPGs, Crystals of Arborea and Ishar 3.

• Personal Nightmare: The first game ever title from Horrorsoft, who went on to craft the classic Waxworks, unleashed this early PC horror thriller to DOS based systems in 1989. This first-person account of a man returning to his hometown to find everything is strangely off, leading him deeper into a horrific, not safe for the kiddies, mystery.

• Pandora Directive: A Text Murphy Interactive Movie: Remember that brief period of time where we all thought that live-action full-motion games would be the future? Well, they might not have lasted past the '90s, but the Tex Murphy series was certainly the most popular. This is the fourth game in the futuristic gumshoe detective series, but one of the very first adventure games to offer up multiple paths that dramatically change the game and story.

• Crystals of Arborea and Ishar 3: The prelude to the Ishar RPG series (Crystals) and the final game (Ishar 3) have just been added to GOG's slate, and bundled with Ishar 1 and 2 to make the Ishar Compilation, all for the same price of a single game. Now you can journey back to the land of first person fantasy and magic for about a $1.25 per game.

Think of a Mario-Style platformer, then take away the platforms and you'll get an idea of what this week's new Wii Virtual Console retro rerelease is all about. Originally released in 1987 for the SEGA Master System, Fantasy Zone II: The Tears of Opa-Opa, quickly became one of the Master System's most popular titles, even spawning a coin-op arcade port and a version for SEGA's biggest competition, the Nintendo Famicom (the Japanese NES).

The world of Fantasy Zone is populated by living space ships of all kind, with the player controlling Opa-Opa, the hero from the original. Taking place 10 years after the first Fantasy Zone, the innocent planets are once again under attack by alien invaders, so it's up to Opa-Opa to single handedly shoot through multiple levels of enemies, all uniquely designed and addictive to play. Each level is split up into three zones and to clear out all the invader's bases within each area. Once all the bases in each level are destroyed you proceed to a boss battle, which consists of giant, wacky and weird space ship baddies. In the final stage you have to face each boss from the previous levels before hitting their leader, and a twist ending you never would have expected.

This latest release on Virtual Console is part of SEGA's big retro rerelease push on all Next-Gen platforms, and the first time Fantasy Zone II has been seen in North America in nearly 22 years. The original Fantasy Zone is also available on Virtual Console (Master System version) and as part of Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection (aka SEGA Mega Drive Ultimate Collection).

Packshot © SEGA

The supernatural horror novelist Alan Wake (A. Wake...get it?) is having the worst bout of writer's block ever, and is willing to go to some pretty major extremes to get past it. First he and his wife travel to a small (and spooky) town in hopes that a little trip will spark some inspiration, but soon after they arrive his wife is kidnapped by a supernatural entity. Now Alan has to battle the forces of darkness to save his spouse and himself, while it all seems to follow the chapters of his newest manuscript, which he has no memory of ever writing.

At the 2009 E3 Expo Microsoft held a behind closed doors look at their upcoming Xbox 360/PC exclusive survival-horror game (which they are calling a thriller) scheduled for release in early 2010. While I'm already a big fan of horror games, this was a special treat as the highly-anticipated game has had little info or images revealed until now.

The big news behind Alan Wake is that it's the very first open-world horror game. Similar to Grand Theft Auto, players will have the freedom to roam around and explore the environments, not being forced to follow a specific path. When watching the gameplay demonstration it's hard to not compare the game to Silent Hill as it not only follows the same goals of finding a missing loved-one who has been captured by supernatural baddies, but the look, feel and mechanics of the gameplay are quite similar, from your primary tool being a flashlight to enemies hating the light.

Alan's Flashlight is more than just a way to see around in the dark, but a powerful weapon against enemies. These ghouls don't just hate light, it laterally destroys them and any object they control. We watched as Alan swung his flashlight across a group of spectral fiends that creepily recoiled, with some even dissipating away, he also had to use the light against possessed vehicles and objects that were coming right for him. The longer he held the light on some construction equipment attacking him while under enemy control, the more it would sparkle and pop, until finally it is destroyed.

While the demo didn't show more than the tone, basic movement and using light as a weapon, it was certainly was engaging, with strong atmosphere, high quality Next-Gen graphics and I must admit, the flashlight weapon was really impressive. How they plan to approach the challenges of open-world gameplay, especially designing it to work in a horror-thriller. They have confirmed that the game will transition from night to day, time passes naturally and dynamic weather will play a part.

Screenshot courtesy of Microsoft