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…

Alone in the Dark Prologue is a playable teaser for the upcoming re-imagining of Alone in the Dark, the 1992 granddaddy of survival horror as we now know it. I’m not exactly an uber-fan, like I am a couple of the series it inspired, but have played (and finished) enough of them that I was all over this the second I noticed it on the Xbox store. It’s immediately very Southern Gothic, and even more so when you whack the old radio you find on, as you take control of 11-year old Grace in a spooky old mansion in the bayou as it quickly descends into full-on unnameable horror before your very eyes. Not that she cares – it’s like in Silent Hill where you go from normal creepy hospital to the hell version of it, but here she seems more mildly annoyed than terrified at the instant transformation of her home into Lovecraftian horror! Anyway, you need to interact with stuff and do quick-time things to make it through the demo, and it all felt very dated to me, especially when it blocked my way with a fallen coat stand or something – literally a couple of inches high of obstruction but you can’t go that way! I liked the bit at the end with the old car coming through the old gate that I assume announces the game proper but I won’t be buying it on the back of this.

Speaking of Lovecraft, playing that did remind me I was halfway through Call of Cthulhu on Xbox Game Pass before I got distracted by Zelda and Dialblo IV, so I’ve been back to finish that off. Good game! This is from 2018 and sat installed but unplayed in my library for as long as I’ve had an Xbox, until I noticed it was the same game that’s also sat on my Switch wishlist for even longer! It plays like a narrative-heavy, Lovecraftian first-person point-and-click-adventure, with a lot of cutscenes in-between being very observant and clicking on everything you can to try and puzzle out what’s going on. Luckily thats your job as a private detective, as is being a bit stealthy or a bit handy in a few more action-focussed encounters, and all your skills can be customised and enhanced with a light RPG system. Works great in the main too, except where it also decided to go full-on Silent Hill about two-thirds through and got a bit too clever for its own good. A couple of really cool puzzles on the home stretch did compensate though! It’s all very last-gen and maybe one more on top, meaning sometimes really atmospheric but uncomfortably uncanny valley too, and overall the quintessential seven out of ten game. Cthulhu though, innit, so bonus point for me just for that!

Over on Evercade, The Combatribes is a 1990 beat ‘em up on the Technos Arcade 1 collection, where we find up to three cyborg vigilantes cleaning up the streets of New York with their fists instead of mops! It’s regular Streets of Rage or Double Dragon stuff, with a bold and detailed cartoon presentation but unfortunately not a great deal else to recommend it – and I literally mean not a great deal else! It’s as straightforward as if gets with just punch, kick and run if you press them together; there is a throw but it seems like you can’t throw everyone all of the time so you’re going to die trying when your latest frantic combo decides it’s time regardless. I genuinely think most of my deaths were down to this! There are no jumps, no weapons to pick up and no health either – just feed it coins, as indicated by the really intrusive permanent message across the top of the play area. There are five or six by-numbers stages but the bosses are all the same to fight – stick and move, let them do their party trick, repeat. And who doesn’t love a boss rush at the end when you get to repeat all that repeating all over again! It might be better with two or three players, and there’s some fun to be had with contextual auto-moves like bashing two heads together, but it’s ultimately shallow and mindless, and won’t keep your attention for long. Shame.

I’m going to stick with Evercade next and the Interplay Collection 1 cartridge, where I actually beat the SNES version of the 1993 claymation-style Street Fighter parody ClayFighter! I don’t think this is as bad as its reputation suggests, although admittedly the extra buttons on the Evercade controller do already improve on the three button original. I’ve actually played a bit of this on the Mega Drive before, so after dabbling with a couple of the madcap characters like Blob and Elvis-inspired Blue Suede Goo, I reverted to my pumpkin-headed ghost old favourite, Ickybod Clay. For a fighter made with stop-motion photography, it’s surprisingly fluid, and while some characters work better than others, it’s always a pleasure to come up against a new one on its equally madcap backdrop! Maybe apart from the final boss once you’ve been through the rest, which isn’t just a bit underwhelming to look at despite its complexity, but is probably the easiest fight too. AI overall is good enough but I guess it’s another one meant for more than one player. All the same though, I’ve had a really good time reacquainting myself with this and I’m still playing! By the way, as always, apologies for the dodgy photos of my TV from my phone for these two!

I’m also still playing actual Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers on Mega Drive Mini II, Diablo IV on Xbox and Mario Tennis on Nintendo 64 but I don’t really have much to say I haven’t already in the last couple of Weekly Spotlights, so we’ll leave it there for this time. In case you missed our usual end of the month double-header, it was an extra special one because we’re halfway through the year, meaning it’s time for the annual Game of the Year Halfway Hotlist, where we counted down my top ten games of 2023 so far! That was on Wednesday, then on Friday there was our regular monthly look ahead to all the new mostly retro-interest new games releases for July, On The Retro Radar. Then next Wednesday, be sure to look out for a slightly belated book review of the almost brand new PC Engine: The Box Art Collection by Bitmap Books. See you then!