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 in the interests of total transparency, while I’ve jumped on the bandwagon and called it a Halloween Special, in reality – being a horror nerd where every day is Halloween – all I’ve actually done is save a Sonic the Hedgehog game for next week instead!

And on that bombshell, we’ll start with Super Castlevania IV from 1991 on the SNES, and while it’s always a toss-up between this and Symphony of the Night as my favourite game in a favourite series, this is the one I’ve made a habit of playing through every year around now so I’m giving it the nod for now! I absolutely adore the unique gothic art-style, with its sumptuous colours and so much imagination as you whip and jump your way through Transylvania circa 1691 to defeat Dracula. The new-found power of the 16-bit generation is on full display with all kinds of psychedelic Mode-7 madness, and the soundtrack is to die for too… Which you will, because the eleven levels here, complete with both new and more familiar bosses, are no walk in the park, although there are lots of other opportunities to take in the spectacular local surroundings! And despite the challenge, it’s mostly fair and achievable, and the controls are also way more “next-gen” than previous games, feeling more dynamic and with more precision. Masterpiece all around!

Speaking of which, here’s another game I play regularly – in fact, there aren’t many occasions when I don’t have a game of Resident Evil 4 on the go on one platform or the other! This week, with thoughts turning towards writing game of the year features, I’ve been playing Resident Evil 4 Remake again though. The GameCube original from 2005 wouldn’t just have been my game of the year at the time, but remains my number three favourite game period, and everything that made it so great is lovingly present and correct here, and it doesn’t stop there! Even third (or hundredth) time around, its meandering story remains compelling, the pacing relentless, the tension flawless, and the characters never more tolerable, and on top of all that it looks more stunning than ever before and the sound design is truly terrifying! It even plays like a modern survival horror – running and shooting at the same time, crouching and sneaking… What a time to be alive! And what a remake this is, not only taking the original and running with it 2023-style but somehow also reinforcing why it was and still is one of the finest, most influential games of all time.

Its sequel might be my favourite Christmas game ever, but Deathsmiles is my all-time favourite shoot ‘em up and it wears Halloween like a badge… Although in reality it’s written on a big banner! This one is a side-scrolling shoot ‘em up from Cave in 2007, where you take the role of a choice of thematically questionable “Angels” defending the magical land of Gilverado from an invasion by actual hell across eight nightmarish (but in an almost-cute, gothic anime kind of way) stages. Each of these stages has three levels of difficulty, and in the original game you can only choose each level twice before it’s locked out, so as accessible as this initially makes it, you quickly have some decisions to make about where it gets harder, or, indeed, where you’ll score biggest. Console rereleases over the years loosened things up though, letting you choose whatever level you want, when you want, and once I got hold of the 2021 Switch version and could play legitimately for the first time, I must admit I do like to play it casual like this. Not that it’s ever especially casual, but for a bullet-hell shooter there’s no better entry point into the genre, with or without the difficulty gates. And while it might be (relatively) accessible, that’s not to say Cave’s trademark exhilaration isn’t also here in spades, with those majestic, breathless sweeps across the screen in the face of a wall of bullets and enemies and some truly insane bosses! Visually it’s everything great about Cave shooters in terms of detail, animation and creativity too, but here that’s all running wild through a haunted house, and the soundtrack is equally Hammer Horror, and that all adds up to why it’s the best!

I did have a go at some of the new tables on the Xbox version of Pinball FX, where you can get what’s essentially a free one-day trial of most of them, but nothing new really grabbed me, although the South Park table might be the most colourful “game” I’ve ever seen! The Monster Bash table from Williams in 1998 doesn’t do a bad job on that front either, especially considering it’s based on the classic black and white Universal Monsters like Dracula and The Creature From The Black Lagoon, whose instruments you’re trying to collect here so they can form their Monsters of Rock band! I’ve always loved this table, and I’ve had it on Switch (on Pinball FX3, confusingly this game’s predecessor) for a few years now, so probably no need to splash out again here, but I’ll never pass up the chance to spend time with it! Each of the six monsters featured have their own mode to unlock and complete to get at their instrument, accompanied by what were originally little mechanical figures coming (back) to life as you progressed, and you’ve also got three multiball modes and loads of other bells and whistles to discover. It’s total fan service, it’s got loads of variety, and both visuals and sound are superb, with non-stop speech and suitably creepy sampled music. And as always with Zen Studios’ pinball games, the ball physics, flipper controls and tilt mechanisms are as spot-on as they can be. I’m just not so keen on the sparse and premium in-game currency-heavy presentation of the overarching new game on Xbox though, so while I’m happy to try out what it has to offer, I’ll probably be sticking with Switch and its more outright table ownership model. By the way, that’s where I captured the rare video here too!

Finally for this time, Grim Fandango, a LucasArts “modern” point-and-click adventure game from 1998 that I I’d admired from afar ever since but only first played when it got a PlayStation 4 remaster back in 2015, then, while browsing Xbox Game Pass this week, spotted it and fancied another go! It’s set in the afterlife, with your grim reaper – or effectively a travel agent for the dead – uncovering corruption, espionage and general intrigue as you try to move a virtuous soul on to where she should be over the course of four separate underworld years, or acts in different locations. The original translates to console perfectly, with no traditional user interface but just hints at places to interact as your character, Manny, looks around, plus intuitive conversation trees and a simple inventory system… Neither of which can really be said of the gameplay, with traditionally obscure cryptic puzzles that demand a lot of wandering about to your wit’s end and trying everything with everything just to progress a tiny bit further. Which is wonderful! As is the Day of the Dead meets film-noir aesthetic, with 3D characters on pre-rendered backgrounds that can be switched between remastered and original versions whenever you fancy. It’s not quite the same second time around, as is always the case with anything like this, but remembering what to do still took a lot of backtracking and head-scratching, and it’s still one of the all-time greats!

I might have cheated a bit but looking back at that lot I reckon it was justified – some serious big-hitters have been enjoyed whatever the occasion! The Halloween fun doesn’t end there though because on Tuesday next week it’s Retro Arcadia’s proper Halloween main feature, and this time it’s another point-and-click creepy classic as we discover Scooby Doo Mystery on the Sega Genesis (but not Mega Drive)! It’s also the end of the month, which means it’s our regular double-header as we look ahead to all the new upcoming retro-interest releases for November, On The Retro Radar, which will be on Thursday. And in case you missed it last week, be sure to check out my deep-dive into a spectacular and truly iconic 16-bit flight simulator, Falcon on the Atari ST, which, going back to after all this time, was also one of the most exhilarating gaming experiences I’ve had for a very long time! Hope you enjoy all of that and see you next time!