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’ll start with something new, and Cocoon, which came to Xbox Game Pass and everywhere else (I think) last week. It’s a top-tier indie puzzle-adventure from the brains behind Limbo and Inside that has you travelling across worlds within worlds, with each manifested as orbs you can carry around with you to provide unique abilities, but also swap and rearrange and manipulate to overcome imcreasingly intricate but punishingly logical puzzles, gradually unravelling the cosmic mystery connecting these diverse insect biomes and some lost but strangely futuristic civilisation. It sounds complicated because it is, but it’s also all as organic and gradually natural as it is super-slick and polished, oozing mind-bending, head-scratching creativity. Reckon this one is going to be talked about for some time, although I’m now done with it, at least until game of the year time in a couple of months – took me about eight and a half hours to see the end, but while I’m still not entirely sure what it was all about (which I guess is the idea), I’d definitely recommend seeing it through and then starting again for a while at least, just to properly appreciate what you didn’t quite understand for a while first time around.

I actually went back to the PlayStation 4 with the intention of diving into my next big game, Dragon’s Crown Pro, but got totally distracted by Wipeout 2048 from the Wipeout Omega Collection on there, so you’ll have to wait until next time for that pervy nerd-fest! In the meantime, this was originally a PS Vita launch game back in 2012, where it was a hell of a showcase for what the ill-fated (or sadly unsupported) handheld could do, despite some big loading times! It would then get a remaster in 2017 as part of the collection I’m currently playing on PS4, which I bought when it first arrived but for some reason have never played much of this one on there, focussing more on Wipeout HD and its Fury expansion, which I’d never played before. I believe Wipeout 2048 was the ninth in the series, and served as a prequel to the original game, which isn’t so much about story but with the settings preceding the dedicated tracks of the later games, so you’re getting your futuristic anti-gravity combat racing kicks on the city streets this time. Apart from that, though, its all familiar – choice of four ships, boosts and weapon pickups, and loads of race modes, which at the time included cross-platform multiplayer with that PlayStation 3 Fury DLC I just mentioned. Techno isn’t really my thing and I think I prefer the full-on far-distant future feel of the earlier (later!) games but with this remaster it’s never looked better, and it plays just like Wipeout should, so while not exactly immediately accessible, once you’ve got a feel for the courses and throwing your ship around them it’s a proper good time!

I did include a mini-review of every game on the Piko Interactive Arcade 1 cartridge for Evercade back in the pilot episode of a new feature, Retro Arcadia Gaming Pickups – Summer 2023 Edition, and this week I’ve gone back to one of those, The Legend of Silkroad, this time on the Evercade EXP handheld version of the console, where it plays really well! Well, as well as a remarkably average, Korean-developed, side-scrolling beat ‘em up from 1999 can be expected to play anywhere! You (and a friend if you’re not playing handheld) get to choose from Son of Wind Munmoo, Wild Warrior Jamuka or Rose Killer Sochun, then battle your way along the Silk Road (or Silkroad, apparently) against twenty-five enemy types over nine regular stages and four hidden challenges. It’s all good fun too, and while it’s not the most dynamic or polished example of the genre, the pre-rendered graphics make a nice change from pixel art and have plenty of variety, and the bosses are a decent level of challenge, and there’s a ton of high-impact magic to collect and use sparingly. All the characters have fighting game-style specials too, which also work well once you’ve got the button presses (which the attract mode helps out with). Not the best but I like it!

Still on Evercade, but the VS variant connected to my big TV this time (hence the dodgy phone pic above), where I’ve been playing Blockout on the Technos Arcade 1 collection, which, it turns out, I may have been doing a disservice… For many years! You see, I’ve dismissed this (and several similar games) as a totally unnecessary 3D spin on the gaming perfection that is Tetris, from a time when everything apparently needed one, but while it still is that, a proper go at it at last over the last few nights has given me a new-found appreciation too! You’re looking down a square-shaped pit with a 3D grid for walls, down which is dropping a series of Tetris-inspired polycubes that you need to rotate and flip and manipulate in three axes until they hit the floor, using said grid as a guide for what starts as a wireframe shape but will become a solid colour when it lands, merging with any other shapes surrounding it at the same height. This multicoloured vertical playfield becomes very significant as you progress to higher levels, dictating a second layer of strategy for block placement on top of the regular Tetris one. Add to this the demands on your spatial awareness and suddenly you’ve got way more than a mere clone – a literal whole new dimension, in fact – and something I’ve been looked forward to getting back to after work every day! There’s a bit of quirky sci-fi to add interest to the basic but very polished presentation but this one’s all about the gameplay, just like it’s flatter predecessor, and while few things will ever reach those heights, it had a good go!

The Game Boy Advance library included in the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pass has been a bit underwhelming since its equally underwhelming launch a few months back – a lot of what’s there is fantastic but there’s really not a lot there, and I think only Fire Emblem and last week’s Kirby & The Amazing Mirror have been added since. That’s where we’ll finish this week though, and while I’m not exactly the born-again fan I am for the likes of Sonic, I have developed more of an appreciation for Kirby too of late, so was keen to give this one a go! It first came out in 2004, and sees Kirby out to save the day after The Mirror World, which exists in the skies over Dream Land, was invaded by an evil shadow. He’s not alone though because he’s been split into four Kirbys of different colours that you can summon to help solve puzzles, distract enemies or team-up against bosses. Usual Kirby sub-games too, but not the usual Kirby format because this is a kind of metroidvania, with a maze of branching paths that you can have a go at in any order, assuming you’ve found the right power beforehand. That’s where it falls down for me too – terrible sense of direction and I soon didn’t know where to go next, often because I also couldn’t remember where I’d been already! I had some fun with it before that got too frustrating though, with Kirby never feeling better to control, plenty of tricks up his sleeve, and some of what could be hand-painted backgrounds that are absolutely stunning! All the rest is as polished as you’d expect too, but I think I’d have liked something a bit more mindless!

I’m still enjoying my first season in MLB Slugfest 2003 on GameCube, and I’ve also spent several more happy hours in the Starfield post-game but I think I’m about done there now so we can call it a day here without going into all that again! Before we part, in case you missed it last Wednesday, do check out my deep-dive into Castle Master on the Atari ST, including its spectacular 3D engine, giant poems for instructions and a world before frame-rates existed! Then next Wednesday, we’re heading back exactly forty years and checking out the latest in all things gaming in the second of a new (increasingly) regular feature, Retro Rewind: October 1983 in Computer & Video Games magazine. And check out those 3D glasses that came with it! See you then to find out why!