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…

However much I’ve dabbled with various incarnations of Street Fighter II of late – and you can check out last week’s edition for the latest – all roads for me inevitably lead back to its Capcom stablemate Darkstalkers, and in this case, the second instalment, Night Warriors: Darkstalkers’ Revenge, or Vampire Hunter in Japan, both versions of which are on the Capcom Fighting Collection for Nintendo Switch. Originally released in the arcades in 1996, it’s a 2D fighter with a gothic meets folk-horror vibe and a wacky cast of characters to match, with four new ones on top of the original’s here, as well as chain combos, new and stackable specials, and an auto-block should you want it. Feels great too, with loads of individuality in the characters, loads of variety between move-sets, and such fluidity, perfectly reflected in some truly exquisite combat animation. For all that, it doesn’t quite reach the finessed and further expanded gameplay of its successor, not to mention its even more outrageously good character animation, but it’s the ideal place to come into (or back to) the series, and I don’t think the garish Hammer Horror environments ever looked better!

When I bought Sonic Mania a couple of months back in a Switch sale, it was supposed to complete a journey through all twenty or so 2D Sonic the Hedgehogs that’s now lasted well over a year… And then the new Sonic Superstars came along! I’m hoping Father Christmas might have that in store for me though, and in the meantime, I’ve finally started playing this one, which so far is absolutely marvellous! It’s been around since 2017 but is very much in the spirit of the original Sega Mega Drive or Genesis classics, and I think it was actually promoted as commemorating the 25th anniversary of the first one when it was first released. It even includes remixes of eight old levels among its total of thirteen, all with multiple acts, which I’m most of the way through now. Whether the levels are old or new though, their design so far have been consistently immaculate, offering both wildly fast-paced sections as well as opportunities for exploration among masses of complex but intuitive branching paths, with little cause for frustration anywhere. Some of the bosses took a bit of working out though, meaning several runs through the entire multi-stage level to get back to them for another go once you’re out of lives, but that’s nothing new, and no certainty no harm in multiple play-throughs if you want to see it all! Unquestionably the best looking Sonic to date too, modern but authentic, and so, so quick and smooth! I wasn’t massively into the soundtrack on couple of the levels but that’s only a taste thing, and unless anything dramatic happens between now and the end, this is going to be an unexpected entry into my top three 2D Sonics list. Which is something to look out for in a related feature here in 2024!

Getting Atari 2600 screenshots can be a nightmare, even from inside the Atari 50 compilation running on Switch! I tried on RetroArch too, but still the same – you’re only ever seeing some of the action in motion. Should have tried my phone camera I suppose but then that often looks even worse! Regardless, I’ve been playing a load of Missile Command on there all the same so just use your imagination! Actually, I think its down to a trick they used to make it look like there was more going on at once on the screen than the machine was technically capable of by making different objects flicker on and off in sync faster than you’d notice, giving the illusion of twice as much stuff there, so freeze-frame it and you’ll only ever see half the missile trails en route the cities you’re defending, for example. Anyway, this is the legendary 1981 arcade conversion Rob Fulop, who didn’t only come up with one of the best ports on the system but also added more backstory to the original game, dumping players into a conflict between alien planets named Zardon and Krytol. Sold over 2.5 million copies too so top bloke all round! The action is familiar, if simplified, with you firing your limited stock of missiles per stage from just one base at the bottom, rather than the original three. Same on-screen cursor to aim with though, which you want to let loose just in front of the descending streams of enemy missiles so the resulting explosion wipes them out before they start smashing up the city below. Even if you double the number of enemy missiles in the screenshot here, I think that number is well below the arcade game’s too, but it gets frantic fast enough all the same, and despite the limitations is a genuine Missile Command experience and as hard to put down as ever!

I think my friend Nick Jenkin has had similar problems in the past displaying video with a couple of Atari 2600 games on his marvellous retro gaming YouTube channel but no such problems with Zoom! which he covered on the Amiga a couple of weeks ago and led me to the 1991 Mega Drive port I’ve been playing for the last few days. It’s presented in a slightly different way to that version (and it’s Commodore 64 counterpart, which I also had a go at and wasn’t keen on) but still plays exactly the same, like pseudo-3D Amidar, which is another old arcade favourite of mine so that’s alright by me! And like that, what you’re doing here is skating around grids set up in all sorts of shapes across all sorts of stages, creating lines around all the individual tiles so they start flashing while avoiding the baddies and collecting goodies! Incredibly simple, fiendishly difficult very quickly, and almost as impossible to put down as Missile Command! Very cute too, with you playing some sort of bat-eared egg-thing with equally weird little critters chasing you around, and loads of fruit and sweets and other bright coloured stuff scattered about the place. There’s a soundtrack to match, as well as lots of increasingly annoying sampled quips, but they don’t really detract from the gameplay, which I really like! Not sure it’s what I’d have wanted out of a Mega Drive release at the time all the same, though if you’re playing anywhere then I reckon this is where you want to do it.

I went really long on a couple of those so I’m going to respect your time and leave it there for this week, but speaking of long, in case you missed it last Wednesday, be sure to check out what’s now become an annual feature, when we take another trip across the decades for Wonderful Sights in Gaming – Part 3! I really enjoyed writing that one and I’m already working on next year’s, so I hope you enjoy it too! And as well as that, it’s the start of the month, so on Friday there was also our regular look ahead to the mostly (but not exclusively) retro-interest new game releases for December, complete with trailers and a few of my own thoughts on everything On The Retro Radar. Then next Wednesday, be sure to check back again for the second instalment of a new seasonal feature, when I’m going to be looking back at way too many Retro Arcadia Gaming Pickups for the last three Autumn months. Just don’t tell my wife! See you then!