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…

We’ll begin with the third (and most intimidating!) in my series of one or two sentence reviews for every game on each of the Evercade compilations I got for my birthday last month (first here and second here), and this time it’s the turn of Codesmasters Collection 1. Seventeen of them on this beast, spanning the early nineties on either NES or Mega Drive (or Genesis), and many are classics so I’ll be as brief as I can, although once again, apart from Zelda this has dominated my week, so not much else to report on! Off we go then, and a gentle start with Bee 52, a cute and competent but not exactly exhilarating take on Choplifter for the NES, where you collect nectar from big flowers to take back to your hive to make honey while shooting other insects. Big Nose Freaks Out is a NES Stone Age platformer, with your caveman collecting bones on a skateboard thing that takes some getting used to but I grew to like its Zool meets Dizzy gameplay. I think I’m going alphabetical, which explains its predecessor, Big Nose the Caveman, coming next, and this is a similar concept but plays more like Wonder Boy (despite from no skateboard thing) and looks a bit rougher, but I like this too. Boomerang Kid is another NES platformer but it’s single screen at a time collecting boomerangs, playing a bit like Manic Miner, and while there’s not much to it I enjoyed it all the same. Next up, CJ’s Elephant Antics is a really colourful take on something like The New Zealand Story (though not that colourful!), and it’s really polished and feels good but these NES platformers are wearing thin!

Let’s go Mega Drive instead with Cannon Fodder, the iconic top-down military action-strategy game for non-nerds that’s still a joy to play! Now here’s a strange but strangely compelling mix of point-and-click adventure and platformer – Cosmic Spacehead, also for the Mega Drive, really shouldn’t work but it does! Back to the NES but only briefly because F-16 Renegade is a not great vertical shoot ‘em up that controls way too sluggishly. Makes me pine for a decent NES platformer… Unfortunately Linus Spacehead isn’t very decent – first level is Bubble Dizzy then it’s just traditional but equal parts boring and frustrating side-scrolling stuff. Next! This is the Mega Drive version of Mega-Lo-Mania, the huge playing-god strategy game that still really needs a mouse but isn’t my cup of tea anyway, classic or not! MIG-29 on the Amiga is one of my great gaming guilty pleasures, and while this is the NES version it’s the same wonderfully naff take on Afterburner that I’d genuinely buy this collection for alone! Not my favourite game of pinball on the Mega Drive (see Devil Crash MD!) but Psycho Pinball is much more like the Pinball Dreams games on the Amiga, with a similar set of four relatively sophisticated tables, similar physics and similar fast-paced gameplay, plus a few tricks of its own too – excellent stuff!

Kick Off on the Atari ST might be the game I’ve played way more than any other game ever but I’ve never even touched its rival and pretty much equal Sensible Soccer before now! I love it already though, and I don’t know if this Mega Drive version is definitive but it’s an accessible and incredible game of top-down football that I literally can’t stop playing now I’ve finally found it! Stunt Buggies is Rally X x Pac-Man for the NES, with you driving around a top-down maze collecting bombs and avoiding meanies – way more enjoyable than it is original! Super Skidmarks is a spruce up of the Amiga game and while it’s not the most accessible of top-down racers, give it some time and it’s a blast with loads of content and some fiendish courses! Tennis All Stars is an unreleased Mega Drive game that would eventually turn into Pete Sampras Tennis, but here it’s a decent tennis sim for up to four players that takes some getting used to, although not as much as the very creepy sampled speech commentary! Look out for Dizzy in its Crazy Tennis mode too! There once was a budget ZX Spectrum game by Codemasters called Super Stunt Man that this is very much a NES spiritual successor to, offering a cool mix of vehicular pursuits, run and gun street combat, bomb disposal and more, and it’s a suitably eclectic way to close out this very eclectic bunch of games! Overall, the classics definitely make up for the filler, and you’re getting MIG-29 too, so for £18 it’s a right bargain!

I’m sticking with Evercade for one more game, this time Summer Games for Commodore 64, included on The C64 Collection 1. This is a Summer Olympics-themed competitive sports game from 1984, featuring diving, 4 x 400m relay, 100 metre dash, skeet shooting, pole vault, gymnastics, freestyle relay and 100m freestyle (both of which are swimming events). Apart from the 100m, it’s all about timing rather than joystick-waggling, and apart from the freestyle relay, which just outstays its welcome a bit because it’s identical to the 100m freestyle but four times longer, that works great for me! You absolutely need to read the instructions though because every event works differently, and also in common with its various Games successors, while not massively complicated, it’s not always massively intuitive either! Lovely presentation throughout though, and in the unlikely event you can get an equally-schooled friend to compete against (or in my case even if not), still a real blast today!

As I’m past the fifty hour mark, a quick update on The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and I’ll do it with a description of exactly what I’m up to as I write because it pretty much reflects the previous fifty hours too… Also explains why I’m only as far as I am after all that time! Anyway, the most significant thing I’ve been up to of late is following the very meandering quest towards what is my penultimate big temple, and I actually got pretty close to entering it when a “one more thing” from one of the supporting cast hinted at a very handy piece of armour, so off I went looking for that instead. After then being distracted by a couple of the dozens of mostly puzzle-based shrines on the horizon that eventually reward you with more health or stamina, I found myself up in one of the new sky islands, and on the way down I spotted a colossal pattern on the ground which is part of another main quest. Which led to more shrines after a quick look over the top of the mountain it was on and then a whole new area of map, so I decided find the big tower to open that up from next, which revealed even more stuff, and on it goes. This really is a vast and wonderful time sink, though I am hoping my next update will be my last because Diablo IV is nearly here and that’s likely to be an even bigger one!

Speaking of which, in case you missed it on Tuesday, this and everything else of (mostly) retro-interest getting released in June was covered – completed with trailers – in our regular monthly feature, On The Retro Radar. And there was loads to cover this time! Then on Thursday we had a brand new game review when we looked at each and every Commodore Amiga game on the Team17 Collection 1 for Evercade. Certainly getting my money out of that thing! Then next week we’re back to our regular Wednesday slot when we’ll be having a deep-dive into my life with Eddie Kidd Jump Challenge on ZX Spectrum. And if you want to know about him, Evel Knievel and loads of old toys be sure to tune in! See you then!