Back again for our regular Sunday roundup of quick-fire reviews and impressions of everything under the spotlight at Retro Arcadia this week, old and new and a bit of both…

I’ll start with brand new, and a look at Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, which arrived on Xbox Game Pass a few days ago, and I’m blown away! I enjoyed the first game well enough but this is something else, taking you on the most stunning, most cinematic journey through brutal Viking landscapes and oppressive folklore, that’s emotionally-charged and almost physically draining from the outset. In fact, it’s so cinematic that there are times you won’t notice you’re not even in control anymore, and this is particularly effective during combat – which remains responsive while on the simple side – bringing a realism to its ebb and flow, on top of seeming even more violent, as you hack into real people rather than hellish representations of them, although it’s not always quite so grounded! That goes for the returning environmental puzzles and eerily clever hallucination sequences too, and while you’re occasionally encouraged off the wonderfully weather-beaten track, its mostly a methodically scripted – though sometimes truncated – seven or so hours as Senua and her relentless psychosis (best experienced with headphones!) refuse to break a promise despite immediate, unexpected and absolutely hopeless adversity. And it’s so good-looking (highlighted by the prominent photo-mode), with incredible lighting and weather effects, and those crashing waves on such realistic coastlines… It’s all intrinsic to the wider storytelling too, together with as-good-as-it-gets facial animation and general characterisation. Not sure about the bordered screen but no HUD or anything else to distract you anywhere either, not unlike something like Ico or Journey, which also goes for the overall package, and while it’s not on that level, nothing really is, and it’s a mostly great time while it lasts all the same.

With a few exceptions, such as Doom 64 and Ocarina of Time before it, my experience with the Nintendo 64 is mostly restricted to its Switch Online library, but that’s not to say I haven’t since put dozens of hours into the likes of Mario Tennis and Wave Race on there, with the latter being everything I ever hoped its follow-up was going to be. I got that with my GameCube back in the early 2000s, and I’ve tried so many times since to love it as much as it turns out I now do its predecessor but unfortunately it also turns out that simply having some of the best looking water in a game ever just doesn’t cut it! That’s not to say I’ve not had a good time playing it this week though, after I noticed the console staring back at me from under the TV and fancied yet another attempt… Wave Race: Blue Storm arrived in late 2001, delivering another bout of fashionably “extreme” jet-ski racing, involving a wild cast of characters and even wilder narration across championship, time attack and stunt modes, as well as multiplayer and free roam. And the water really is gorgeous, especially when some of the equally gorgeous dynamic weather hits mid-race and suddenly the waves are bigger and the whole environment changes for the more dramatic. Unfortunately, the rest is pretty much more of the same of the N64 game, even down to how everything that isn’t made of wet stuff looks, how it sounds (which is no bad thing), where you’re racing and occasionally how it plays too but there’s the problem – I just don’t find this game as consistently exciting as that is. All the drama ends with those weather effects, and while the racing is competent enough and plenty of fun, and the water maybe even behaves more realistically (at least with a longer draw distance for where the action is), I’m not getting that same physicality, and thrill of the evolving friction between board and water, and that’s exactly why its predecessor is the masterpiece this never quite was.

First it was big black borders and now it’s the opposite! I’ve been having a really nice time with a 1983 winter sports game called Olympic Skier on the Commodore 64, which got a slight tweak for its later Americana Software release (which I think was Mastertronic’s US budget label) and is how I came to it, thanks to my friend Nick Jenkin and his wonderful retro-gaming YouTube channel, where he recently did a review, so shoutout as always to him and these fantastic finds he keeps coming up with! It’s a mini-compendium that preceded my all-time favourite, Winter Games, although regular skiing was one area that was lacking, and while its rough-around-the-edges competitor, Winter Sports, had an avalanche of such events, they weren’t great either! These are obviously a bit more primitive than those though, and more along the lines of Taito’s Alpine Ski from a couple of years earlier – it even shares the same events, albeit working slightly differently… You begin with slalom, and you’re vertically (and a bit jerkily!) moving down a nicely laid-out course, passing between gates and avoiding rocks and trees as fast as you can. You’re awarded points for your time at the end and penalised for missing gates, or you’re out altogether if you miss three or crash. It’s a nice touch that you can continue all the same though, just with a nominal score to carry over depending on how far you got. Another nice touch is the little helicopter that comes out to rescue you, or the head-over-heels animation in the next event, ski jump! This is nowhere near as nuanced as the Winter Games version, with mashing fire to speed down the ramp, up to take off and fly, down to land, and just one attempt to see how far you can go for more points. As an aside, I did also have a go at the Americana Atari 8-bit release on The 400Mini, and there is a bit more to that version, but simple as this one is, it’s not offensive. Last up is downhill, similar to slalom but with wider courses and no gates encouraging more speed, plus a sometimes cruel choice of routes until you learn them! The final score out of a thousand is then totted up at the end, accompanied by an often-mocking ranking, from hilarious to rubbish to promising and so on. It looks and sounds of its time, there’s not much to the gameplay but there is enough for it to be fun, and that score and rank system makes it surprisingly addictive. Good find Nick!

Last up this week, I’m still dabbling with all sorts of other Atari 8-bit stuff (but mainly Star Raiders and yet more Hover Bovver!) on The 400 Mini but I wanted to particularly highlight an old graphical text adventure from 1982 called Transylvania, which I started but never finished a long time ago on the Commodore 64. With a USB keyboard duly attached to one of the four controller ports, we’re off to save a princess before the sun rises because according to the only in-game direction you come across, “Sabrina dies at dawn!” Despite the presence of werewolves, vampires and even a flying saucer on the loose to hinder your progress, the clock eventually becomes your biggest enemy as you “Go North” and “Read Note” and “Wave Ring” and so on! Really fun adventure though, with a manageable number of locations including spooky castles, haunted houses, maze-like forests and graveyards to explore and examine and go back and forth between, and with some trial and error, you’ll work out how to deal with the undead, and with a bit of additional thought you’ll puzzle out most of the rest of what’s going on, although I must admit to needing some help a couple of times when they got really obscure! That said, if I’d been everywhere and tried everything I’d have known… Clever bit of primitive inventory management as well. The accompanying graphics are fantastic too – so rustic, so atmospheric and so 1982! And that’s my first ever Atari 8-bit game finished!

In case you missed it last Wednesday, be sure to check out my latest deep-dive, where we talk censorship, Big D peanuts and totally bonkers arcade games… Discovering Glass on Gaelco Arcade 1 on Evercade / Arcade! Then next Wednesday, check back again because we’re going to be rediscovering F1 ROC: Race of Champions (also known as Exhaust Heat) on the SNES, with arcade-realism that’s totally at odds with itself but somehow pulls it off brilliantly!

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