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… And while that is the case as always, I have been away on holiday this week so it’s mostly handheld and maybe a bit briefer than usual too!

It’s also mostly stuff that wasn’t meant to be handheld in the first place, but I’m starting with something that was, and that’s Fire Emblem on the Game Boy Advance, which was recently added to the Switch Online service. Be nice if a few other titles were sometime too as the GBA hasn’t had much love so far, but I’m sure we’ll get there eventually! Anyway, back in 2003, this was the first in the series to be released outside of Japan after Advance Wars had done big numbers elsewhere, although was actually the sixth in the series and was also known as Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade. I’ve played quite a lot of these but not recently and never this one, although its tactical role-playing is very familiar, with turn-based battles playing out on a grid where you can move the distance your current unit’s character class can move then take whatever action it can take there, such as attack, call in support units and so on. It’s a great entry point to this type of game despite the permadeath that can occur to one of your caringly nurtured characters, with a decent story moving at a decent pace, and just the right amount of challenge and depth without being overwhelming. The battle animations are nice too!

As mentioned here last week, I’ve been on a real baseball kick of late, and idly flicking through the rest of the Switch Online library on Switch this week I noticed Baseball was there, which, in around eight-five hours of playing these NES games alone on here, I don’t think I’ve ever even loaded up before! This is from 1983 (although a bit later outside of Japan) and there’s not a lot to it relative to stuff like R.B.I. Baseball that followed a couple of years later, with letters for teams, identical anonymous players and some painful-to-watch automatic fielding, where you only take control once they’ve eventually got to the ball and are ready to throw. That said though, it’s an authentic game of baseball that doesn’t offend the eye or ear, and actually has some nice touches in its close up and overview field views, like the celebratory animations when you score a home run that might be primitive but feels great! Batting and pitching is fine, and there’s steals and double plays and stuff, and in the absence of my now-beloved Street Sports Baseball on Commodore 64 on Evercade (see here) this week, I’ve enjoyed this – even made a quick video of a cool home run!

Cotton 100% was always one of the best-looking games on the SNES in my opinion, and I’ve played through the Switch re-release a few times now since it came out a couple of years ago, so I reckon the gameplay can’t be bad either! It’s part of the long-running cute ‘em up series and, as usual, features the witch Cotton and her lovely, scantily-clad fairy sidekick Silk out to save the world by tracking down her favourite apocalyptic magical candy, Willow, which has once again been stolen by some new evil being causing all kinds of chaos with it! Behind the gorgeous cartoon-gothic visuals and mesmerising soundtrack is an accessible but increasingly challenging shooter, with upgradable standard fire and bombs and a pretty deep spell system, built around shooting and collecting crystals. It’s all bonkers, and even more so because none of the trademark Cotton crazy cut-scenes got translated for this, but it’s such a joy to play all the same.

I had a grand plan for a deep-dive on G-LOC: Air Battle, the 1990 Sega arcade spectacular that got the Sega Ages treatment on Switch a couple of years ago. The thing is, I’m not sure there’s really enough there to go that deep, or at least not enough for me to want to. But maybe it’s just the small screen talking while I’m playing handheld so I’ll reserve judgement. Anyway, this was an After Burner spin-off that came in an insane 360-degree two-axis rotating cabinet (as well as various less deluxe ones) with a whopping thirty-eight missions over three difficulty levels as you dogfight your way through air and ground targets in a variety of environments. It’s still spectacular, if you don’t look too close at the chaotic mix of polygons, very flat pre-rendered backdrops and digitised special effects, with tons of speech and cool sampled noise, but the 3D (more or less) rail-shooting action gets old quick, and you’ll have seen everything on offer within a few missions. Fun in short bursts I guess, just like it was originally made to be.

We’ll close this week in 1988, and while it wasn’t quite the dream of arcade-perfect at home yet, I’d argue the NES port of run and gun pioneer Contra was even better than that! It’s 2633, where science and nature were finally getting on together just fine, then along came a bunch of aliens to ruin the peace. From the beautiful, side-scrolling lush jungle of the opening stage to the stark, into-the-screen base incursions and brutal verticality of the waterfalls, this has a bit of everything, once you’ve worked out where to stand, as well as some cool bosses, although I’m still hitting a brick wall with the stage four one. One of the greats on the system and probably my favourite on the Contra Anniversary Collection where I’ve been playing.

Normal service on a few other platforms will hopefully resume here next week, but in case you missed it, be sure to check out last Wednesday’s deep-dive into Alien: Isolation on Xbox Series X, which totally blew me away when I finally got to it nearly ten years after the event! And next Wednesday, look our for another game that’s been even more special to me for a lot longer as we delve into my life with Cave’s legendary DoDonPachi, which also happens to be my all-time favourite vertical shoot ‘em up, so I’m really excited about this one. See you then!