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…

Unusually, I’m starting this week with a good news story rather than a game! My Atari ST, which I bought aged 16 back in 1988, has had a temperamental power supply for a while, but with a bit of minor repositioning it would usually come on in the end. A couple of weeks ago it didn’t come on anymore though, so I found a new big kettle lead thing, assuming it was that, but no good. Dead! Now, the big capacitors on the ST’s internal power board are known to dry out over the course of decades, so without having any means of testing it, I then made this assumption as the next cheapest thing to try out. I also had no intention of messing around with capacitors either, so I chanced a whole replacement board on eBay for £20, on the basis I’d just splash out on a refurbished ST if not. But it worked, as you can see above, with Castle Master running (in preparation for an upcoming deep-dive) behind the old board in the photo. And I couldn’t be happier!!!

Apart from Diablo IV, which I’m not going to mention again until I’ve beaten the campaign to avoid being a bore, this week I’ve mostly been getting to know Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers on the Sega Mega Drive Mini II, complete with its six-button controller that’s really perfect for the job here! I think I’m right in saying this was the fourth version of Street Fighter II to hit the arcades, a year before this port first hit in 1994. This one went a bit further than before though, with new arcade hardware meaning a graphical and audio boost, so this version had a go at doing the same with a souped-up, bigger memory cartridge housing completely rebuilt assets. And it didn’t do a bad job at all! It’s missing some detail and the audio quality takes a hit, but you’ve got all sixteen characters (especially the lovely Cammy!) and I’m no expert but I reckon the speed, the moves and the feel are just about right! Love this one!

As well as my fighting boots, I’ve had my, er, shooting boots on again this week too, and I’ve been playing the pretty wonderful vertically scrolling, close to bullet-hell arcade shoot ‘em up Vasara by Visco in the year 2000. This all takes place in a sci-fi take on Feudal Japan, meaning giant medieval robots and samurais on jet bikes, that kind of thing! You could say it plays like a slower-paced and more methodical take on a Cave shooter like DoDonPachi or Mushihimesama, but then it’s got some very cool gameplay mechanics of its own on top, such as a powerful melee attack and bullet-stopper that’s charged by collecting crystal hearts left by dead enemies, and also not dying if you run into an enemy but getting knocked back instead, with some of the bosses actively taking advantage of this to pile you into their bullets! You’ve got a choice of three unique characters and styles, each of which starts on a different level, and what seems to be a deep scoring system too, where I think bullet-grazing is encouraged but use of that melee – your Vasara attack, in fact – definitely is, not only cancelling bullets and causing big damage but rewarding you with big points, multipliers, and flags that tally up at the end of the stage. Bosses are fair but require some learning, and graphics and audio are very pleasant if not especially groundbreaking. Hell of a game though, and I’m very tempted by the collection, together with the sequel, I’m seeing on Switch for £8!

(Sorry for the reflections in the pic – nightmare getting a decent shot of these things)! I mentioned last week I’d started out on The Movie Monster Game for Commodore 64, which is on The C64 Collection 1 for Evercade, where I’ve been playing handheld. Actually, I’ll quickly mention here I’ve had problems with this cartridge, where both Summer Games and Winter Games have stopped loading. They replaced it immediately but same again with the second cart – play for a while then just stops working. Turns out it’s a current firmware bug so I hope that gets sorted soon because I’ve played those two especially loads since it came out! Anyway, Movie Monster! You choose your monster of choice from a big cast of not-quite-Godzilla, not-quite-The Blob, not-quite-Megatron, and so on, then the iconic isometric city they’re going to flatten, then the scenario to complete, such as escape the city, destroy its famous landmarks, eat all you can or just cause loads of damage. Each monster has its own mechanics and attacks, and everything is presented like a movie, in a cinema, so you’re effectively the director with an all combinations of the three variables to try out. It’s really ambitious for 1986, and while there’s not quite as much variety when it comes to actually playing, I’ve had a great time trying out the different monsters because that’s where the real variety is, and it doesn’t hurt that I’m a huge monster movie nerd either! I am quite tempted to do one of our deep-dives into this so watch this space!

Last up with week, I’ve also been having a great time getting to grips with the new Mario Bros Game & Watch for ZX Spectrum! This was a pretty challenging feat of ambi-dexterity when it came out as an actual Game & Watch handheld back in 1983, with Mario and Luigi working together to load up a delivery truck at the bottling plant they’re working at. Not exactly the same as the setup for the arcade game of the same name you might know better, but this actually came out a few months before that did, making it the very first appearance by Luigi too! This new Spectrum version seems to have been a real passion project for Sergio Morales, aka Menyiques on itch.io, and faithfully captures the frantic single-screen gameplay of the original, as you send bottles left and right across conveyor belts at different heights, all the way up to the top where they’re loaded into the truck. Controlling both of them is a real juggling act when you’re trying to catch multiple bottles at both ends of the belts at the same time too! This is really cool, and you need to grab it right here: menyiques.itch.io/mariogw

I am still playing Mario Tennis on Nintendo 64 via Switch Online too but I think we’ll leave it there for this week. In case you missed it last Wednesday, do check out my big feature on rediscovering Impossible Mission for Commodore 64 on Evercade VS, where I finally learnt there’s more to it than pretty somersaults after all! Then next week we’re heading for the end of the month, so we’ll have our regular double-header, but this time it’s a special one because we’re also heading for halfway through the year, so time for the annual Game of the Year Halfway Hotlist, where we’ll be counting down the top ten games of 2023 so far! That’s in our usual Wednesday slot, then on Friday it’s time for our monthly look ahead to all the new (mostly) retro-interest new games releases for July. Look forward to seeing you then!