I’ve really enjoyed putting together what seems to have become a bunch of annual features around this time of year! This time around, they began with Wonderful Sights in Gaming – Part Three around the start of December, then there was the regular Christmas deep-dive, Rediscovering Die Hard Trilogy on PS1, followed by my favourite of all, The Retro Arcadia Game of the Year Top Ten Countdown 2023, and we had the Retro Arcadia Weekly Spotlight Christmas Special, and then my Big Retro Arcadia Rundown of Games Completed 2023… And here we now are at the last of them! Following on from that game of the year countdown, there’s no better time to start thinking about the next one, so that’s what we’re doing today – checking out what’s on the way in 2024 and picking out the main contenders! Of course, half the fun is not having a clue about half the stuff that’s going to be released through the year, but that doesn’t stop us speculating and checking out the trailers for what we do know, so let’s dive in!

I mostly did alright on predictions this time last year, with a respectable proportion of what had taken my fancy there making my top ten (which you can read more about in that countdown), but not for the first time, my biggest hope once again failed to materialise, so I’m kicking off this year’s lineup with exactly the same game again… Surely 2024 is the year of Hollow Knight: Silksong! Apart from 15% pure hatred for it, the original combat-platforming metroidvania from 2017 is an all-time favourite of mine, and I’ve become more desperate for this sequel with every passing year it was supposed to be released in, which I think now numbers about five. There’s still no official release date but we know it’s loads bigger, just as darkly stylish, and even more sadistic, and that’s why I’m predicting Hollow Knight: Silksong as my game of the year. Again!

I don’t really apply rules to these things but there’s always a grey area about early access, which I don’t get involved in that much but I did for Vampire Survivors, for example, which ended up in my 2022 top ten. I didn’t for Xenotilt: Hostile Pinball Action though, which appeared on Steam Early Access last year and is the sequel to not only my favourite pinball game ever, Demon’s Tilt from 2019, but also one of my top twenty games of all time… Which is why I’ve avoided it so far because I want the real deal from the outset, and hopefully that outset is going to be very early in 2024, meaning it’s fair game for my game of the year! Decent shout too, especially if Hollow Knight stays missing in action! Where the first game was occult arcade pinball, heavily inspired by the old PC-Engine Alien Crush et al games, this goes for a sci-fi take on exactly the same, meaning face-melting graphics, a wild soundtrack, and hopefully the most fun you could ever expect out of video game pinball!

I think the first contender with an actual confirmed release date for 2024 is Tekken 8, which comes to PC, PlayStation and Xbox on 26th January. I also think this will go on forever if I write as much about each game as I did the first two, so now those two hottest shots are out of the way, I’ll try and be a bit more brief! I played the closed beta a couple of months back (where I grabbed the screenshot you can see at the top of the page here!) and the Xbox Series X demo more recently, and both were just fine and dandy, looking absolutely stunning, offering an impressive cast of thirty-two fighters and feeling great – familiar but focussed on aggressive tactics. I’ve loved these since the original on PS1 and I’m already counting down the days!

I hadn’t thought about how I was going to order this until right now, but maybe I’ll go in order of release while I still I can, then for anything else that’s still to be confirmed I’ll just go in the order I wrote them down over the last few weeks as I was thinking about this. Which I think makes Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster next, when it comes to everything on February 28th. This resurrects what was a very slick and pretty groundbreaking first-person shooter from 1995, adding all the fancy graphics and a more modern feel to the gameplay as you go behind Empire lines with lots of familiar faces. Can’t wait for this one!

I’m already going to have to jump to games with no confirmed release date now, and as I just said, I’m going to do it in the order I’ve written them down, meaning totally random! First up is Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, coming to PC and Xbox with new mission types, like mountain rescue and crop-dusting, new aircraft and loads of cool new environmental stuff, from tornadoes to animal migration, and there’s all kinds of physics updates, live flight tracking improvements and no doubt some lovely new views to take in too. The last game was incredible, even if you just fancied some frighteningly realistic sightseeing over your house, and thanks to Game Pass anyone who has it can have a go!

As my 2022 game of the year feature will attest, I really liked Citizen Sleeper, so I’ll be really disappointed if Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector doesn’t have a similar impact whenever it turns up on PC and Xbox Game Pass (at least) in 2024. It’s the same time versus action management simple RPG format as before, and the same backstory too, with you in the shell of another escaped android with no memories but this time you’re running a spaceship and building a new life in the stars. Seems like a lot more besides too and I can’t wait to find out exactly what!

Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP was supposed to be out last year, and it was also supposed to be a remake of the fantastic cartoon-horror hack and slash from 2012, but now it seems like its been delayed to Summer 2024 and will be a remaster instead. And I’m absolutely fine with that instead because Suda51 isn’t involved and I thought his original was great, and I really wish I hadn’t sold my PS3 copy when I was done with it at the time because it’s worth a lot more now you can’t play it anywhere else! Not clear what platforms it’s coming on yet but wherever it lands, I really hope they don’t go too politically correct on it! By the way, no trailer yet either, hence just a picture here, which will also be the case for the next one too…

As I write I don’t know a great deal about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem except it’s set six months after the recent movie of the same name and will draw inspiration from its very distinctive art style. The movie was pretty good and recent Turtles games have been great, so hopefully this will follow suit whenever it comes to PC and (currently unspecified) consoles. Credit to IGN and Outright Games for the pic.

More Star Wars next with Star Wars Outlaws, an open-world experience set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, with you playing a scoundrel seeking freedom and the means to start a new life, which involves getting into all sorts of mischief all over the galaxy! Sounds like everything you wanted Starfield to be before it turned out to be a glorified idle-clicker, with flying spaceships and missions on different planets, and while I wasn’t that fussed when it was first announced, I think I’ve just talked myself into really wanting it! No official release date yet but the word “late” was just removed from an official Disney blog post that now simply says a more general 2024, and it looks like it will be out on PC, PlayStation and Xbox whenever it does come.

This is as bit of a wildcard but surely they can’t screw up another one of these, can they? Contra: Operation Galuga seems to be on the right track though, reimagining the classic run and gun gameplay of the original games from the eighties but with modern sights and sounds, new stages, enemies and bosses, and up to four player co-op. As long as there’s still something there for the single player I’ll keep an eye on this one whenever it arrives on everything, which sounds like it might be sooner rather than later in 2024. That last one really did stink though so I’m not holding my breath!

I’m also not sure another hordes of zombies first-person shooter is top of my wishlist – especially a co-op one – but stick John Carpenter’s name on anything and you’ve got my attention, particularly when it seems to be very much inspired by trashy eighties horror and action movies! I’m not sure how involved he actually is in John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando but he’s a known gaming nerd, and his Halloween and The Thing movies weren’t bad either, so I’ll be keeping an eye on this when it comes to PC, Xbox and PlayStation sometime in 2024.

Saving the best until almost last because this will hopefully be a dead cert for my game of the year whenever I actually get to play it, and it’s Silent Hill 2 Remake! Actually, there’s another grey area because it’s got PS5 exclusivity for ages, so by the time it reaches my Xbox Series X will it still be allowed in the top ten for whatever year that is? Well, I suppose it’s a way off yet, and actually the game itself is only an outside chance for 2024… Which gives me plenty of time to convince the wife I need a PS5, then problem solved! Anyway, it’s the reincarnation of one of my top five games of all time, and while I’m not convinced by the developer they’ve got doing it yet, I really want to be convinced by the end product, which will hopefully sit very nicely next to my 2023 game of the year as the perfect modern homage to not only the best of the survival horror genre, but also one of the greatest games of all time!

If I’m buying a PS5 I might as well close with Truxton Extreme! Also known as Tatsujin Extreme in Japan, it’s coming exclusively to there sometime in 2024 but apart from that there’s not a huge amount to share. However, we do know it’s coming from the developer of the same name, Tatsujin, whose CEO was behind the Toaplan original in 1988, which is an undisputed masterpiece of the vertically scrolling shoot ‘em up genre, so as long as this shares just a bit of its DNA it should be great too!

I know there’s a few Nintendo games on the radar I’ve not covered here but I’m only mildly interested in Metroid Prime 4, should it ever materialise, having still never even loaded up the original that came with my GameCube several decades ago, and also Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, which is coming in the Summer, and which I’m also still sitting on the original version of! And we’ve gone way longer than I originally intended so I’m going to end proceedings for this year here! I do hope you’ve enjoyed this little tour, and if you did, be sure to check out a lot more of the same at the start of every month when I look ahead to (mostly) retro-interest releases for that upcoming month in a very similar format. That’s called On The Retro Radar, and you can already find the January 2024 edition right here!