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’ve really got into baseball of late, and although I’ve got a deep-dive into R.B.I. Baseball on the NES planned in a few weeks (and to find out why, you can read my recent feature on Namco Gallery Vol. 2 on Game Boy), I wanted to go back to a couple of games I already own first. I’ll let you know my thoughts on Neo Geo Baseball Stars 2 when I’ve given it a decent go in the next week or two, which I’ve had on an SNK compilation for PSP since 2008 but never even loaded! First though, it’s having to wait because this week I’ve been totally hooked on Street Sports Baseball for the Commodore 64, which has been hanging around for a lot less time on The C64 Collection 1 for Evercade. This is from 1987 and was part of the Street Sports series by Epyx, where you took the regular game out of the stadium and onto the streets, with gangs of teenagers using dustbin lids for home plates, jumpers for goal posts and so on. It’s very C64 in its presentation but full of character and atmosphere, with plenty of depth to team selection from the local oiks if you want it and just the right amount of automation to support the one-button plus direction controls. It does take a bit of getting used to all the same, but once it clicks it’s a great time for one player and I’m sure really comes alive with two! Thank goodness for the Evercade’s save states though – a game can go on for ages!

I’ve been jumping between the Evercade EXP (handheld) and VS (on TV) with that one but I’ve also had The C64 Collection 2 on the go on the handheld, where I’ve really got into Insects in Space. The menu screen explains that this is by Sensible Software in 1989, and never got a standalone release but appeared on Hewson’s 4th Dimension compilation, which showcased a bunch of smaller scale new projects rather than the usual collection of old stuff. That said, it’s a blatant Defender rip-off, and a very good one at that! You play Saint Helen, strangely naked and flying back and forth protecting babies from kidnap by space insects with her laser eyes! It’s very fast and frantic, controlling fluidly as you change direction and moving smoothly as you force the scrolling different ways. The top and bottom of the play area where the babies are supposed to be are far more interesting than the plain star-field where most of the the action takes place, but that action does make up for it and is helped out by non-stop particle and strobe effects, together with some nicely chaotic sound effects. Great theme tune too! Tough to play but tougher to put down. Really like this!

When my Evercade EXP arrived a few months ago, I mentioned here a few times I’d played a load of Speedball on there, eventually beating it despite it being the decidedly imperfect Master System version. I’ve dabbled with the sequel on there too since, but since my Atari ST came back from the dead a couple of weeks ago (more on that here) I’ve been messing around with all sorts on there, including Speedball, which actually put an end to messing around with all sorts because once that disk was in it was staying put! Can’t believe I wasted all that time on the Master System version either – I was happy enough having not played this version for a very long time but you really shouldn’t be playing that if you’ve got the option! This was one of the first games I got for my ST and is still a masterpiece, with its violent take on five-a-side football meets ice hockey meets handball from 1988 feeling great on a Quickshot joystick, and the gameplay is so fluid (not to mention bug free!) compared to the console version. Wonderful time, and better than the crappy phone pic of my TV suggests. Sorry!

Devil’s Crush might have the flair, but if we’re talking PC-Engine pinball, then Alien Crush will always be my first love, and when I went looking for a game on my PC-Engine Mini this week that turned out not to be on there, some Giger-inspired, Alien-infused sci-fi pinball – also from 1988 – was an inevitability! It’s got two screens, with a pair of flippers at the bottom of each and all kinds of horror to whack balls at for points and a bunch of hidden rooms with bigger stuff to dispatch too. Obviously, ball physics have been refined since but it still feels decent and was a step-up from stuff like Pinball Dreams around at the time, and there’s loads of interest to keep you coming back to the table. On top of the cool look, the music is great, mixing high-energy, multi-layered chiptune rock with more reflective backing in the bonus rooms. All adds up to another game that’s really hard to put down once you’re in the zone, and will always be a go-to whenever I remember that Mini is under the TV!

The maze of converging suns in the arcade original Gradius II or Vulcan Venture (which I’ve just realised is another one from 1988!) is one of my favourite sights in gaming, but while stuff like that didn’t have quite the same impact when 2004 came along, they really were the sight to behold by then! The same can definitely be said of 2D horizontal shoot ‘em ups as a whole too – who wanted that old crap on their fancy new PlayStation 2? Of course, in retrospect we all did, because this thing is stunning in so many other ways! And I’m not just talking about these raging cosmic infernos, now convulsing as well as converging, creating a whole new gameplay dynamic, but mod-cons like smaller hit-boxes, resuming where you die and even being able to hang on to some of your power-ups if you know how! I’m not sure there’s ever been a better-looking shoot ‘em up, and the synth orchestral soundtrack supports the gameplay admirably, but behind the meticulous level-designs and screen-filling bosses you’ve still got the classic power-up collecting, panic-inducing Gradius gameplay. Never played this before and I’m not sure I’m good enough to ever see more than half of it, but I’ll gladly see what I can because above all it’s really beautiful!

As always of late, there’s also been Diablo IV on the go, but that’s going to do us for this week. In case you missed it last week, I finally got to reviewing Bitmap Books’ gargantuan PC Engine: The Box Art Collection, which, as well as more Alien Crush, includes loads of excuses that don’t involve the dog eating it for why it took me a while to get to doing! Then next week, something I also took a while to get to but when I did… Wow! Discovering Alien: Isolation on Xbox Series X is our regular deep-dive and that’s coming on Wednesday, so I’ll see you then!