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’m really, really liking Diablo IV! I don’t have a huge amount to add to last week’s first impressions here – still killing monsters to get loot to kill bigger monsters to get better loot and it’s still quite the bizarrely addictive gameplay loop. Just like sifting through all that loot once you’ve got it and all those lovely stats! The branching story’s still great too, which it’s telling me I’m just short of twenty hours into now, as are the cast of characters and enemies, and especially the atmospheric high-fantasy environments you find yourself in. Enjoying side quests for once too! What I think I’m appreciating the most though is that it doesn’t have the “must be playing all the time” compulsion that Zelda did recently! I’m just dipping in and out while I play everything else you’re reading about here in-between, and having a grand old time with all sort again rather than one thing. Obsessively! Which makes my upcoming game of the year halfway hotlist in a couple of weeks nice and intriguing because I’ve no idea where this will land by then!

I’ve been on the lookout for something to pick up the slack from Tennis on the original Game Boy as my go-to tennis game for years and years. I think I’ve mentioned it here too, every time I’ve tried some new tennis game on the Mega Drive, SNES, Lynx, Amiga and so on but so far no good… Until the Nintendo 64 service came to Switch Online a few months ago and Ive since discovered Mario Tennis! Which is ironic, given it’s effectively where I started the search, and about the only one in the series I’ve either not discounted, like the Game Boy Color or Game Cube ones, or played to death, like the actual Switch one! Anyway, I got there in the end and it’s exactly what I wanted! The control scheme is just the right side of complex, with combinations of A and B buttons giving you top spin, slices, lobs, drop shots, flat shots and smashes, as well as holding them down for a charge shot. On top of that, the gameplay itself is frantic but also just forgiving enough, which is generally the downfall of most tennis games I’ve tried when you’re trying to get into them. There’s loads of modes, and loads more to unlock if you’ve got endless time to beat everything with all sixteen Mario favourites, though I’m still stuck on the middle difficulty tournament. Relatively slick presentation too but when it plays like this, who cares if it’s on an N64!

I’ve not talked shoot ‘em ups for a while, mainly because I’ve been playing a lot of DoDonPachi, which you’ll get more than your fill of when we have a Retro Arcadia deep-dive into it in a couple of weeks. That’s about done now though, so I turned my attention to Samurai Aces, or Sengoku Ace, or even Sengoku Ace: Tengai Episode I by Psikyo in 1993, and was, in fact, their first arcade game. It’s very Japanese science-fantasy, with you choosing from one of six pilots, each with their own shooting style, to take down an evil cult and rescue the Shogun’s kidnapped daughter, Moon Princess. Good name! Psikyo shooters tend to start accessible, with the first few levels randomly selected, then go nuts, and this is where that all came from, although it stays far more accessible for a lot longer than most. It’s close to bullet-hell but with those trademark high-speed sprays in-between too, and while it’s not the most spectacular or exhilarating, it’s a really fun time!

It’s funny how good some things seem when you don’t know any different! Fortunately, in the case of the Commodore 64 port of Atari and Midway’s 1985 arcade stunner Paperboy, that experience was brief and restricted to visits to a friend’s house before I had my own version on the Spectrum! Going back to it now, especially after a proper stint on the original version, the C64 port is really rough, playing as ropey as it looks, but a quick tour of a few others showed it wasn’t alone – in fact, despite the lack of colour, the Spectrum version is about the only one that still plays great! Megadrive looks good but doesn’t control well, then there’s further diminishing returns as you tour the NES, SMS, Game Boy, Atari ST and Amiga ports… The Lynx one is surprisingly good though, and I do admire the Commodore 16 one just for existing! Even delivering your newspapers while avoiding all kinds of madcap suburban (and wonderfully 1985) dangers on the original version isn’t great nowadays – analog stick just about cuts it, but who’d have known how vital a set of handlebars stuck on the cabinet could be!

I’m still playing loads of Sensible Soccer and Arcade Pool on Evercade VS (connected to TV, and I’ve just started playing The Movie Monster Game for the Commodore 64 on the Evercade EXP (handheld) but I’ll report back on that next week. The C64 Collection 1 that cartridge that features on is also where I was playing legendary puzzle and platform spy caper Impossible Mission when I was writing the deep-dive on it coming next Wednesday, so look out for that then! And in case you missed it last Wednesday, also check out the review of the brand new ZX Nightmares book by Graeme Mason and Retro Fusion Books, with 270 pages of the hopeless, hardest and most controversial Spectrum games we love to hate! And with that, I’ll see you next time!