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…

Really quick one to start with because this has probably been around for ages, no one who’s not into Dune wants to hear about Dune, and I’ve got loads to cover this week! Away from retro gaming, I’m working on a book that I’m not ready to get into here yet but has used Microsoft Flight Simulator 40th Anniversary Edition on Xbox Series X from a few years back to complement some of my other research. I was more or less done with that until a new tangent led to me briefly reinstalling it, and there was the Dune Expansion from when the second movie arrived earlier this year, taking you to the desert planet Arrakis for a bunch of touch-and-go (takeoff and land repeatedly) time trials plus a rescue mission, all in a Royal Atreides Ornithopter. This is a kind of dragonfly-inspired helicopter thing that definitely demands you do the quick tutorials, but although it takes a while to get the hang of them, it never stops being loads of fun while you do! A bit of desert doesn’t demand that much graphically but the overall presentation is very authentic, and the sandstorm in that really demanding rescue mission is terrifying, and while there’s not a huge amount to the rest, it’s free and worth every penny!

Right, today I want to spend a bit of time with all the games on Intellivision Collection 2 for Evercade, which came out a couple of years ago but I wanted to get my money’s worth out of the first one before I added twelve more creaking old titles to the pile! Doesn’t stop there being a few good ones in there too though, including a couple of big-hitting fantasy titles as well as something new to me that I’ve properly fallen for, so let me give you a sentence or two on everything included as a quick taster… Auto Racing is a 1980 top-down racer around five courses that probably works best against someone else rather than the clock. There’s very little to it but it’s attractive enough and fun too once you’ve got to grips with the sluggish controls. Cloudy Mountain is an impressively deep but accessible top-down, exploration-focussed dungeon-crawler from 1982 that has loads to keep you coming back and is surprisingly atmospheric too. Top tier Intellivision, as is Hover Force from 1986, a strategic top-down shooter this time, where you’re flying a helicopter over a huge city, switching between views to track down enemies and also keep the fires they’re causing under control. It’s as polished as could be, and I love the opening cutscene in particular but honestly, I love it all! Always be suspicious when you’ve got a choice of two control schemes in a racing game because it probably means neither is great, and that’s the case with Motocross, an isometric dirt-biker for one or two players with three courses and a course designer too! Not bad for 1983 but it’s very primitive, not much fun solo and not much to look at either, plus rubbish controls whichever way!

Mountain Madness: Super Pro Skiing came in 1988 with a slope designer plus thirty-two regular ones and a randomly generated one on top. There’s also downhill, slalom and freestyle events, and they all feel good to ski on, and while it was hardly cutting edge for the time, it’s really good! Reversi is a 1982 take on the board game where you have to capture your opponents pieces but I’ve never understood, and this barebones effort is unlikely to motivate me otherwise! Sharp Shot is a strange thing from the same year, featuring four equally barebones single-button shooting mini-games – Football, Space Gunner, Submarine and Maze Shoot. There’s not a lot to any of them but string them together for score and there’s some addictive fun to be had here! Stadium Mud Buggies from 1989 is an isometric monster truck racer for one or two players over nine diverse events, including hill climb, tug-o-war, drag race, donuts and so on. It’s another one with terrible controls but if two of you can get your head around them then it’s a nicely presented and full-featured good time. Star Strike next, which is a nearly really good 3D shooter from 1981 based on the Star Wars Death Star trench run, where you need to avoid enemy ships for long enough to drop bombs down five exhaust ports. It looks great and moves fast but it’s just too hard (even on easy), with a single life that could be gone in a couple of seconds, which triggers a drawn out game over sequence that I can’t find any way out of without resetting, which is a real shame.

Similar for 1988’s Super Pro Decathlon, although through no fault of its own – joystick- (or wheel- in this case) wagglers just don’t work on any flavour of Evercade d-pad which means this won’t work unless you’re on an Evercade VS (under the TV console variant) with an arcade stick or something connected. Ten events to master, up to four players and decent presentation if you can do that though. Tower of Doom is undoubtedly the headline act in this collection, a deep action RPG from 1987 with no less than six pages of the always enjoyable manual included in the box dedicated to it! It’s worth getting your head around though, with a bunch of characters to choose from over seven monster and treasure filled quests, some of which also feature randomised maps, using a forward-thinking item interaction and management system. More top tier Intellivision! Less so our last game, Vectron from 1982, which is a weird combination of strategic shooter and base builder all at once, as you fire at a cursor to lay down energy blocks to build said base while simultaneously fending off enemies trying to pull it down before you can finish. It’s all a bit garish and takes a while to fathom but there’s fun to be had if you do. And that’s it! A couple of duffers but there always are, and I should also mention it does the best possible job of virtually representing the console’s weird number pad, and overall it’s another instalment I’ll certainly get my money’s worth out of too!

Last up this week, I’ve been meaning to go back to Loom for ages, then did twice, starting on the Atari ST then jumping to the Amiga version on The A500 Mini, just because I’ve never played it on there before. Either way, it’s a Lucasfilm point-and-click adventure from 1990 that, unlike their previous SCUMM engine games, sees your character, Bobbin Threadbare, using his magical musical staff to solve the game’s puzzles, get off the island of Loom and save the universe, rather than the traditional verb-based and inventory interactions you’d get in something like Monkey Island. This does make Loom more approachable too, in turn leading to its comparatively short length, although no complaints on either front from me, and you’re still getting the familiar go everywhere and try everything with everything experience all the same, although having played a fair bit (but not all) of it a very long time ago, that choice of interactions felt mostly pretty well signposted this time around. Still no escaping having to write down the different combinations of musical notes you gradually gather to cast spells on things, such as open, heal, confuse, transform, twist and so on, because a lot of them are specific to your current game! You can ramp up the game’s difficulty here too by having to learn and interpret them by ear but that’s way beyond me! Apart from your own spell-casting tunes, sound on this original release is noticeably sparse but I wouldn’t have its timeles pixel art any other way, and it really is still a magical few hours, objectively best-in-class or not.

I did also finish Kona, the breathlessly snow-swept, supernatural sleuth walking simulator on Xbox Series X (via Game Pass) and I thought it was great but did cover enough of it here the other week to avoid repeating… I’m also still very much enjoying the brand new but deliciously old-school Ultima-inspired RPG, Skald: Against The Black Priory, which I covered here just last week too, so will leave it there for this time as I’ve gone long elsewhere. If you want a bit more and missed it last Wednesday though, we’re now well into June, so it’s time for the Retro Arcadia Gaming Pickups Spring 2024 Recap, the latest in a seasonal series covering all the retro games and related stuff I shouldn’t have been spending money on over the last three months! Then next Wednesday, be sure to check back again for a really special one for me, as we delve into an absolute icon, his movies, his legacy and the martial arts platformer he inspired… It’s My Life With Bruce Lee on the Commodore 64! See you then!

As always, I’ll never expect anything for what I do here but if you’d like to buy me a Ko-fi and help towards increasingly expensive hosting and storage costs then it will always be really appreciated! And be sure to follow me on Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) or Threads for my latest retro-gaming nonsense!