Blimey. I’ve nearly done a hundred of these! Am I supposed to be planning something special? Anyway, 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…

We’re going to start with a bit of both, and a quick look at everything on the Piko Interactive Arcade 1 cartridge for Evercade, released last week and containing a wild mix of nine obscure and unusual (and sometimes downright odd) arcade games licensed by Piko in the mid to late 1990s. Usual top-notch Evercade presentation, game information, display options, save states and so on, as well as the wonderfully old-school manual, so with all of that confirmed, let’s have a play. I’ll try and limit myself to a sentence or two on each a game so we can cover all of them here, starting with Burglar X from 1997, a five stage maze game with a fart button to slow down your madcap pursuers as you look for dice to smash for coins before eventually doing a runner before a big boss fight. Totally bonkers but very clever, with a great cartoon style and really fun, addictive gameplay. Top start! I’ve really enjoyed Diver Boy too, very much an underwater Bomb Jack from 1992, where you’re diving for clams, ideally in the order they open for more points, and looking out for some cool power-ups like the barrel submarine. It’s not original or even that much to look at, and what it’s asking of you takes a while to master, but once you do this is another one that’s crazy addictive.

Speaking of master, Dragon Master is the first of two one-on-one 2D fighters here, and while it’s probably the better of the two, unless these are the only fighting games you own I’m not sure why you’d spend much time here. It’s from 1994, you’ve got a choice of eight fighters, there’s three bosses and lots of other stuff you’ve seen done elsewhere that’s all competent enough but just not very exciting. Fancy World: Earth of Crisis from 1996 is a single-screen platformer that takes you around the world chucking energy balls at various cute but deadly animals to stop some mad scientist and his evil plans. It’s Bubble Bobble but it’s really good Bubble Bobble, and I’ve been playing tons of this one despite it being totally derivative and not exactly a looker. You could mostly say the same of Magic Purple, also from 1996, but maybe a bit more Rod Land than Bubble Bobble, with a duck punching hordes of enemies across six fantasy worlds made up of slightly bigger than single screen platforms. I prefer the presentation here though, as well as the higher challenge, and it’s another winner! Less so that second fighting game, Master’s Fury from 1996, which is even more generic than the last one, doesn’t move great and really isn’t much fun at all. Dreadful music too!

Next is Steel Force, a top-down sci-fi run and gun from 1994, with the emphasis on run as you clear out a space pirate base against the clock, which means play quick and aggressive. There’s a variety of levels, enemies, traps and bosses, and it’s all nicely polished, a bit like a faster-paced Alien Breed. And it’s brilliant! The Legend of Silkroad is a 1999 side-scrolling beat ‘em up and I think is the only game on here I’ve ever played before! It uses pre-rendered graphics and fighting game specials to really good effect, and while it’s not the most fluid or memorable example of the genre, there’s loads to sink your teeth into and I reckon I’ll be spending a lot of time with this one. Finally we’ve got Ultimate Tennis, and we might even have a decent tennis game on Evercade after several absolute stinkers! This one’s from 1994 and is kind of bargain basement Virtua Tennis, taking a similarly accessible arcade approach but, like Silkroad just now, lacking in fluidity, especially in the camera department. It’s fun though, and another I want to spend some time with this one too because I do like a tennis game, when it actually works. And I really like this compilation! Incredible value, with almost all the games real hidden gems, and there’s two fighting games to discover as well, even if you’ll only play them once.

I’m always torn between my favourite out of Centipede and Millipede, and then which version, although as much as I enjoy the criminally unreleased Atari 5200 prototype finally included in Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration compilation, I think I’ve got to go with the arcade version of Millipede from 1982, also on there, and where (on Switch) I’ve become hopelessly addicted again this week! It’s a new story about an elf rather than the Bug Blaster from its predecessor, but the concept is the same – there’s a multi-segment millipede you need to shoot before it gets you, travelling horizontally from the top of the screen until it meets a mushroom, when it will go down a row towards you at the bottom, until it can go across again. This time though, there’s more other enemies like earwigs, bees and spiders to contend with, as well as DDT bombs to mix up the gameplay strategy a bit and bonus levels too. It’s all way more frantic as a result, but in a fair way, and I think that’s why I give it the nod. It’s very 1982 in its presentation, which still works fine four decades on, as does the Switch’s analog control in place of the original trackball. Timeless!

Over on the Mega Drive, I’m now most of the way through my 2D Sonic the Hedgehog journey, but I reckon Sandopolis Act 1 from Sonic & Knuckles is going to take some beating as my favourite level of them all! It won’t be from my favourite Sonic though, even if it’s mostly a good one… This is from 1994, and like the previous Sonics it’s a high-speed side-scrolling platformer, where Sonic is trying to put a stop to Dr Robotnik and his Death Egg orbital weapon while knuckles takes on his sidekick EggRobo, and both are selectable on the title screen. It was originally developed to be part of Sonic 3 but time and spiralling cartridge costs forced a split, although you did get an adaptor on the cartridge that let you insert its predecessor to create the combined Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Likewise, if you shoved in one of the first two games in there’d also be extra bonus content like being able to use Knuckles in Sonic 2 or the Blue Sphere mini game in the original. As a standalone game though, it’s mostly more of the same of everything, and it’s all very fine, albeit harder than previous games to the point of being frustrating several times for me at least. I got to the end though, and out of the sixteen 2D Sonics I’ve now played through, I reckon it’s top ten, so not bad at all.

Still on the Mega Drive, albeit more legitimately thanks to Switch Online, our last port of call for this week is Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master. I’m not a massive fan of the series but I like it well enough, and this entry from 1993 in particular, where your latest attempt to bring down that pesky Neo Zeed crime syndicate is faster-paced and more accessible (meaning mildly less difficult) than its predecessors. More to your martial arts arsenal too, with dash-kicks, running slashes, blocks and wall jumps, as well as limited-use ninja skills like fire dragon, shield, a big jump and a kind of smart bomb where you, unfortunately, are the bomb, so make sure it’s not your last life! All feels great once you’re in the zone too, and as well as some impressively detailed and atmospheric side-scrolling graphics, the same goes for the music, which is among my favourite on the system. Just not massively keen on the riding sections – horses and jet skis aren’t really what I want here! Good game all the same though.

In case you missed it last week, I tried a bit of an experiment with a pilot feature for what I hope will become a sporadic then monthly feature over the next few months to join the ranks of my regular weekly deep-dives of various kinds, albeit not based on a game at all but on a magazine! This time, though, we were thumbing through the August 1982 issue of Computer & Video Games in the new Retro Rewind, and I really enjoyed putting this genuine time capsule together so I hope you enjoy reading it! Then next Wednesday it’s another first in what I hope will be a new series of top tens, as I delve into my top ten favourite horizontally scrolling shoot ‘em ups. See you then!