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 am still playing Starfield more than anything else but last time out I promised not to go on about it anymore until I’ve got something new to say, which I haven’t, but guess what? I finally stopped messing around with side quests and finished the Diablo IV campaign, which is something else I’ve tried to avoid boring you with for a while now! In the grand scheme of things I don’t think I actually spent that long getting my fill though – just shy of fifty hours but I really enjoyed dipping in and out of every minute of those without ever feeling pressured to prioritise it over anything else over the past couple of months. Just to recap, it’s a total nerd-out, isometric, hack and slash fantasy RPG with endless evil to slaughter, dungeons to explore, abilities to master and not least loot to pick up and pore over and organise and customise and upgrade in almost equally endless but surprisingly intuitive screens full of lovely numbers! Tons to do across a vast map filled with some hauntingly atmospheric settings and a decent story to back it all up too, progressed both in-engine and through some very slick cutscenes, and that’s before you get to the season pass stuff. Proper game of the year material…

Which probably wouldn’t have been the case for 750CC Grand Prix Special on the Spectrum had I been doing this stuff back in 1991, although I’m giving it a bit of a pass because it did only cost £2.99 and there wasn’t much else still being released on there by then… And just check out that cool overlay to disguise the tiny play window! There’s probably a good reason for that though, and it probably involves this not being any ordinary budget motorbike racer by Codemasters, but one where the whole landscape tilts when you tilt the bike. It’s a cool gimmick for the box even if in reality it’s all a bit jagged-edged, and it really doesn’t do a lot for the (possibly realistically) unwieldy controls either, as you try to turn a bend without getting stuck on the far kerb, then have to try and wrestle the bike back onto the track from the resulting complete standstill! There’s fun to be had here the more you get used to it though, with six real-life tracks, pit stops for tyres and fuel, and everything moving at a decent pace, even if your pace sometimes seems to be considerably slower than the opposition’s! Decent music and sampled speech too, so definitely £2.99 well spent!

When I picked up my new original Game Boy to replace my dead one, there were a handful of games I decided to look out for to add to my collection – we’ve looked at two of these, Pinball: Revenge of the ‘Gator and Qix, over the last couple of Weekly Spotlights, and I’m still on the lookout for Dr Mario, Baseball and Mario’s Picross at a decent price, which might take a while for the latter, it seems! Even so, none of it by itself is too extravagant, but the problem is all the other stuff you come across while you’re looking, such as Double Dragon! This 1990 port of the 1987 arcade beat ‘em up probably owes more to the NES version than the original, with a similar feel and cartoon style, but it’s also its own thing and very much built for the system. This does include some limitations, such as only two enemies on-screen at once, but given the amount of variety in the four levels, which is very much created by the amount of detail in the backgrounds, you probably wouldn’t want more on a screen this size. All that detail more than covers the lack of colour too. The first two levels are really built for fun, with not that much challenge but the combat feels great and everything moves really nicely, backed by some decent tunes. The difficulty does pick up for the second half of the game but it’s definitely beatable with a bit of boss-learning, and as a package is certainly worth a few quid even if I really shouldn’t have!

“Defeat the menacing gargoyles who swarm down in formation and attack. Battle the egg droppers who release flaming eggs of fire and bombers who seek to destroy unfinished bridge. Avoid the deadly flaming breath of Satan’s head, who grows larger each passing second.” It can only be 1982 single-screen shoot ‘em up Satan’s Hollow, and what all that nonsense is trying to explain is that in parallel to taking down tons of flying gargoyles, you have to collect bits of fallen bridge in their wake, then move them from one side of the screen to the other until there’s enough to let you cross into the valley to battle Satan himself. The attract mode actually alludes to multiple Satans too, from Lucifer to Beelzebub to, er, Big Satan or something! Doesn’t matter. None of it matters! It’s a fun, Galaga-style shooter with a bit of a twist that I first came across on Midway Arcade Treasures for PlayStation 2, and have sporadically returned to ever since. Very addictive (and quickly very hard), a cool cooldown shield mechanic, sound effects like every other similar game from the time and the looks of something on the Commodore 64, which might explain why that’s the only place it ever got a home conversion! “Beware him. He is darkness, he is the omnipotent demon Lucifer, he is SATAN OF THE HOLLOW.” Excellent!

I’m going to finish with another old budget title, and this time it’s Psycho Shopper for the Commodore VIC-20 by Mastertronic in 1984, which I’ve just bought for the second time in the space of almost forty years as part of a small bundle of games I couldn’t resist when I saw them, although in my defence it did work out at even less than the £1.99 I spent the first time around! Anyway, it’s absolutely classic budget-fodder, mixing up a lot of Frogger with a bit of Pac-Man (exactly the opposite to the masterful Alien on Atari 2600) across four screens of crossing roads and railways, collecting coins and avoiding cars and Gladys the Granny on the way, before grabbing a trolley and running around the supermarket collecting your shopping and avoiding a whole gang of rampaging grannies! The presentation is great for what it is, there’s plenty of variety and multiple skill levels, and it’s really addictive. Just like its inspirations! Absolute budget classic and worth every penny even two times over!

I’m going to leave it there for this week because Starfield and MLB Slugfest (also see last week) really have dominated my limited gaming time, but if you want a bit more and you missed it last Wednesday, be sure to check out my deep-dive into the spectacular, 3D aerial combat of the arcade version of Sega’s After Burner successor G-LOC: Air Battle! And it’s fast approaching the end of the month, which means next week we’ve got our regular double-header, starting with a look at R.B.I. Baseball on the NES, as well as how I got to my new sporting obsession in general! That’s on Wednesday, then on Friday it’s our regular Retro Arcadia look ahead to all the retro-interest (and more) new releases for October, complete with trailers, On The Retro Radar. Biggest one ever too – what a month for new games! See you then!