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…

The thing I hate the most about Konami’s Frogger arcade game from 1981 is how despicably fair it is! Every time you die is totally your fault, and it dwells on every death just long enough for you to be in no doubt, whether through impatience, bad timing or just being a fool! Fair it might be but there’s no room for error either, even if that ticking clock is there to tempt you otherwise, as you manoeuvre each frog through increasingly fast and dense traffic, then across the increasingly dangerous river before the ever-perilous final step into one of the five slots you need to get them into to complete the level. And it’s as wonderful now as it was over four decades ago, its timeless simplicity in all respects combining with one of the most compelling and addictive score-chasing loops to be found in any game ever since. I’ve mostly been playing the Arcade Archives release on Switch this week but I want to quickly mention the Atari 2600 port, which I don’t think I’d ever played before this week but while simplified again, simply couldn’t be better!

I’ve been playing some proper PS1 games on proper discs on proper hardware as well this week, and mostly Ridge Racer Type 4, all the way from 1998! Now, original PlayStation games don’t always age very gracefully but, while there are a few of the expected jagged edges, this still looks very impressive and incredibly lifelike – the cities are like real cities, packed and full of individuality and little details that make them look lived in; the countryside is organic and varied, with stuff as far as the eye can see; even nondescript things like tunnels have realistically mysterious little wall boxes and emergency lights and so on that make you feel like you’re in a tunnel, even if it doesn’t look as much like you are as it once did! The lighting is unexpectedly sublime in places too, and the whole thing moves great. The whims of the car’s drift mechanics take a bit of getting used to but once you do that feels great too (or just go for the new “grip” car type instead) and flying through some of the chicanes while you just feather the steering is still totally exhilarating! The only thing I’ve never been keen on is the jazzy muzak soundtrack but it doesn’t really detract – just doesn’t add anything either! Apart from that, good time all around, and by coincidence, I also just learnt it was 25-years old this week!

I’m still plugging away at Sonic Mania, and seem to have got over my slump with The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages, but not much else new to say about either, which fortunately isn’t the case for this week’s big Holiday Content Update for last year’s fantastic Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration compilation for Xbox, PlayStation, PC and Switch (where I’m playing)! It adds twelve new games that I’ve not left alone since they dropped on Wednesday, and will now try and do justice to with a sentence or two mini-review on each… It’s almost all Atari 2600 stuff, so I’ll just tell you later when it isn’t, but we’ll start with Adventure II, an official homebrew sequel from 2005 that follows on from the wildly influential fantasy maze game from 1980, with treasure to find across four kingdoms then return to the castle while dodging a relentless dragon! What it lacks in looks it makes up for in ambition and challenge, and it’s just amazing! Next is Aquaventure, a prototype that was completed but fell victim to the 1983 industry crash before release, which eventually came in 2022! You’re a scuba diver and must dive to the ocean floor to grab treasure then bring it back up before you run out of oxygen or get hit by an underwater nasty. Brutally cruel but so addictive! Bowling is a really simple but clever take on the 10-pin variety from 1979 that makes me wish I had a player two but I’ve really enjoyed all the same.

Now a game that’s hated you since 1980, Circus Atari, a twist on Breakout where you need to launch clowns off a seesaw to pop balloons. Possible better with a paddle but it’s crazy tough however you play! Double Dunk was one of the last of the original 2600 games, released in 1989 and offering a surprisingly sim-like game of two-on-two basketball. Real looker too, and something to properly sink your teeth into. Which unfortunately isn’t something my colourblindness is going to let me do with Maze Craze from 1980, a cops ‘n robbers escape the maze game with a crazy number of game variations but unfortunately none that change the complex bright green on bright orange random maze layouts, meaning I genuinely can’t see a thing that’s going on! I think 1979’s Miniature Golf might be the first (and almost the last) of these new games here I’ve actually played before! It’s incredibly simple, as you’d expect, but it’s accessible and there’s plenty of challenge for one or two players. Another of the platform’s final games next with MotoRodeo from 1990, which is a two-player split-screen Monster Truck Racer that’s the opposite of accessible in the best possible way, but give it a chance and there’s a sophisticated and varied precursor to Trials here, although admittedly Kickstart and more had already done it better by then.

Onto another homebrew sequel from 2005 now with Return to Haunted House, where you’re back for more of 1982’s pioneering grandaddy of survival horror, with minimal graphics providing maximum tension as you try to recover a skull from a ghost-filled mansion to put an end to a supernatural curse. And like its predecessor, it’s great! Save Mary is another prototype that only saw the light of day in 2005, and it’s a kind of action-puzzler at you lower blocks into a canyon that’s rapidly filling up with water so the titular Mary can climb high enough to grab onto your crane. Fiendishly difficult but it’s so much fun once you get going, even if Mary isn’t always the sharpest tool in the box! Super Football is a very impressive game of American Football from 1988, and a real showcase for what the system was capable of, with fantastic player animation and super smooth player’s perspective scrolling up and down the pitch. As the in-game blurb says, this provided real direction for sports games of the emerging 16-bit era to follow. And that brings us to the end of the Atari 2600 games from this update, meaning we’ll close with Warbirds, an Atari Lynx exclusive from 1991 that I’m pretty sure was on this compilation originally then got removed in a previous update! Anyway, it’s here now regardless, and it’s a first-person World War One aerial dogfighting game that’s more arcade than sim, although your biplane does feel very good to fly all the same! It’s far slower paced and more measured than the likes of Blue Lightning, the Lynx’s answer to Afterburner, but that cockpit view is such a treat, as is getting into a game of cat and mouse in the clouds with the Red Baron. Not quite 2600-simple but simple fun all the same!

I’ve been looking forward to this Atari 50 update since its cryptic announcement last week but I really wasn’t expecting to get quite so much out of it, so I hope you’ve also enjoyed my quick rundown here, even if it’s been at the expense of that much else this time! There was plenty more of this kind of stuff last Wednesday though, in case you missed the Retro Arcadia Gaming Pickups Autumn 2023 Recap, which was the second in a new regular series covering all the retro games, mags and even games listing books I shouldn’t have been spending money on over the last three months! Then next Wednesday, be sure to check in again as we get into the festive mood with my annual Christmas deep-dive and rediscover the incredible Die Hard Trilogy on the original PlayStation, as well as my top ten favourite Christmas movies! See you then!