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…

A quick update from a few weeks back to begin with, and I hate to say this but while I am still playing The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages on Game Boy Color on Switch Online, it’s starting to drag a bit, and unless the second half of all the stuff you need to collect takes considerably less time than the first, I’m not even halfway yet, and I must have put at least ten hours into it over the past couple of weeks. Which doesn’t seem that much in retrospect but on current form I think I saw most of everything it’s got to offer in the first five of those, and as enjoyable as it’s been, and as much as I love the art style and all the familiar little Zelda sounds, I’m not entirely sure I can face so much more of the same again. Which I’ve never had with a Zelda before, and especially one I was so engrossed in over the course of the first couple of dungeons. We’ll see though… I’m a stubborn bugger so don’t be surprised if it’s not the last you’ve heard of it!

I’m about to embark upon a deep-dive into SSX 3 on PlayStation 2 for early next year, which, in a roundabout way, is how I ended up spending so much time on its immediate precedecessor, SSX Tricky, this week! This was the 2001 second in the arcade-snowboarding series that had launched the console generation with its stunning scale and huge mountain peaks full of exhilarating high-speed slopes, hosting white-knuckle races and wild tricks over stomach-churning jumps. Tricky did the same again but with more “extreme” characters, more tracks, more tunes and crazy gauged Uber tricks, and it’s all still an absolute stunner and a joy to play, in no small part thanks to something else it inherited from its predecessor and would become the series’ trademark – its incredible physicality, and the friction between you and your board and the snow, which I don’t think any likeminded game series has ever captured since. In fact, in terms of feel, I think only Wave Race on the Nintendo 64 has ever come close with your interaction with the water there. Now my only problem is tearing myself away because I really need to get back into the next one!

For another upcoming feature, I’ve been adding the finishing touches to the second in a planned series of top ten shoot ‘em ups, this time for the vertical variety, which you’ll see in January, but you the horizontal countdown is here if you’re interested. Anyway, I’ve been presented with a potential future conundrum as far as that’s concerned because while the list pretty much wrote itself when I did it, this week I’ve played Cave’s 2007 arcade bullet-hell shooter Muchi Muchi Pork! and it’s absolutely incredible, to the point I think I might have to rewrite that list one day! Not sure how I’ve never played much of this before, given my fondness for all things Cave, but once the lard-based scoring mechanics (built around collecting medals and jumping between shot types once you’ve collected enough pigs) kind of clicked, the game itself really clicked! As complex as that all is, involving constantly switching gauged weapons and back again at just the right time, you can also just ignore all of that and enjoy the insanely frenetic action for survival alone because its some way into its five stages before it gets too bullet-heavy, and you’ll almost instantly be into Cave’s trademark exhilaration and just absolutely on-screen chaos! The visuals really are something else, with so much going on, and speaking of something else, in case you’re wondering, you’re one of three scantily clad pig-girls on flying motorbikes fighting General Porkfillet! It’s all totally bonkers and absolutely wonderful so far!

Last week here I did a mini-review of the new Home Computer Heroes Collection 1 for Evercade, featuring seven modern homebrew games for retro systems, including Farming Simulator: C64 Edition, a demake of the curiously popular sim series! I believe this was originally included as a bonus in the Farming Simulator 19 Collector’s Edition for PC but has since been made available as a standalone digital download, then was added in a C64 Mini update (where I first played it) and now it’s here as well, and I suddenly can’t get enough of it! That’s a very odd thing too, considering you can see everything it’s got to offer in about ten minutes, which includes learning how to play, although there’s not a lot to that either – this thing is even more idle than Starfield! The idea is you plough your field with one tractor, switch to another to sow your seeds, then you wait for them to grow before you bring out the combine harvester, before loading it all into another tractor with a trailer and taking it to the local silo to sell. You need to keep an eye on the fuel in each vehicle and make sure you’ve got enough seeds, and if either is running low then you need to head over to near the silo in the farmhouse area to fill up, assuming you’ve made enough cash. If not it’s game over, otherwise off you go all over again! It doesn’t look great and sounds even less so, and the vehicle controls are crap, and there’s virtually nothing to do – just get whatever you’re in close to where it needs to be and the rest is automatic. And it’s wonderful! Like a cathartic little zen garden set in a gloriously brown C64 landscape that my game clock is telling me I’ve now played for four hours and counting. Very weird!

Something a little more glamorous to finish with, and I’m going with Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, originally released in the arcades in 1992 by Capcom as the first of many revisions to the original sequel. In this one, the biggest revision was making the four single-player mode bosses, Balrog, Vega, Sagat and M. Bison, playable characters on top of the eight from its predecessor. They also got a few tweaks to balance the fighting, as well as new character select drawings; I think a few of them got new ending drawings too. Apart from that, there was a bit of new music and a few colour changes, but it’s essentially just more, slightly better Street Fighter II, as was generally the case with these things! I’ve never really played much of this particular flavour before but I have been messing around with all kinds of versions of the game of late – possibly also for an upcoming feature I’m mulling over – so I thought I should give it a go, and while it was certainly superseded, if this was the only Street Fighter II I could ever play again I think I’d be pretty happy with my lot! I’m no expert but I think you need some kind of connection with a character if you want to get good with them and I suppose my only disappointment here is that I didn’t immediately click with any of the boss characters – M. Bison was probably the one I had most fun with, and it’s also fun to be a bit overpowered in general compared to the regular ones, but I did find myself quickly reverting back to Chun Li! Doesn’t matter though, it’s all there to be enjoyed however you want, and I definitely did!

That’s more than enough for this week but in case you missed it last Wednesday, be sure to have a look at my deep-dive into SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1 on PlayStation Portable, and every one of its sixteen classic NeoGeo games… Best compilation ever? Next week brings the start of December, so as well our regular On The Retro Radar feature on the 1st, looking at all the new (mostly) retro-interest releases for the month, complete with trailers for everything, we’re also going to be kicking-off the first of a few special features in the run-up to Christmas! Maybe I’ll cover the rest of the plan this time next week but in the meantime, on Wednesday please join me for what’s become an annual tour across the decades for some more Wonderful Sights in Gaming – Part 3! Part 1 and Part 2 actually both happened last year because there were more to see than originally planned when I first came up with the idea but obviously there were more I totally forgot about too and there will no doubt be more again so here we are and I’ll see you then!