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…

I was fortunate enough to get the two new Duke Nukem collections on Evercade for Christmas, and I can honestly say I’ve not had as much fun with any game for a long time as I have with Duke Nukem Remastered on the first of them! This is a complete rebuild of the MS-DOS action-platformer from 1991, with the most welcome enhancement without doubt the super smooth scrolling versus the 8×8 block scrolling of the original, which a press of Select will revert back to in real-time if you need a reminder of quite how jarring it is! The action fills the screen now too, and Duke has had a pixel-art facelift, as well as a lot more animation, while a new soundtrack plays in the background, and there’s save states and loads of stats encouraging speed runs, although all of the modernisation is customisable so you can play however you want. And however you play, it’s a joy, as you try to foil the dastardly Dr. Proton across three episodes of ten levels each, beginning in a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, then a secret moonbase, and finally onwards through time into the future. This mostly involves exploring the danger-filled, enemy-filled, maze-like (but relatively straightforward) stages to find keys to unlock doors eventually leading to the exit to the next, although there’s loads of secrets to discover on top, similar to its better known 3D successors. I’m totally smitten with this and it’s super-slick 16-bit styled gameplay – it’s genuinely on its way to becoming an all-time favourite, and now I’m done (for now!) I can’t wait to try the sequel, which I’ve never played before either! By the way, credit to Blaze Entertainment for the screenshot – I just couldn’t do it justice with my iPhone! And speaking of which…

Duke Nukem 3D: Total Meltdown rounds out the three games in the first collection, but I’ve played through that again relatively recently on Switch, so for a but of first-person fun I’ve gone for Duke Nukem Advance over on the second collection instead, which is also my first time playing. This was the Game Boy Advance FPS from 2002 that might have toned down the adult content for its Nintendo handheld debut but didn’t lack in ambition, and it still holds up surprisingly well, particularly on the small screen of the Evercade EXP or my super new Super Pocket (see last week’s Spotlight for a mini-review)! We begin in Area 51, investigating reports of yet another alien species attempting to invade us, which soon takes us all over the world to try and discover the truth behind the latest threat to our very existence, which obviously mostly involves shooting everything in sight, while also looking for keys, ammo, health and hidden secrets, much as above! And as you’d expect on the GBA, Duke is simple to control, with just shoot and jump, strafe left and right on the shoulder buttons, and Select to switch weapons, of which there’s a decent variety, including some madcap sci-staples like freeze-rays, and they all feel nice and hefty. It all moves great too, and while it’s definitely stripped back compared to 3D, or Time to Kill and Land of the Babes – both also on this cartridge – the level designs are fun and varied, and their textures, as well as enemy sprites, look just fine to me! (By the way, my screenshot this time but from emulation). Authentic Duke sounds too, including his catchphrases! Once again, I love this so far, and once I’m done – which isn’t far off now – I’m looking forward to telling you about the rest of the games here very soon!

I cannot believe how many cutscenes I skipped and buttons I mashed in seemingly endless fights playing this Yakuza nonsense just to find a run-down Yokohama arcade with Fighting Vipers 2 and Daytona USA 2 in it! Like a Dragon Gaiden has got them and more besides though, and it’s on Xbox Game Pass so I guess it wasn’t such a high price to pay to finally get my hands on the first ever home “release” of Daytona USA 2, or Sega Racing Classic 2, as it’s called here, the 1998 sequel to the all-time classic arcade racer. This one plays a lot like the original, with Beginner, Advanced and Expert tracks (plus mirrors), but with a nice graphical overhaul thanks to Sega’s Model 3 hardware, as well as new car and driver options, and as such it’s worth the huge disk space taken up by the rest of the game, which I have zero interest in! Instead, what I now have is a save file located inside the swanky Club Sega arcade, a few more unnecessarily lengthy cutscenes and pointless fights on at the start of Chapter Two of this new series spin-off, where I can simply walk up to a cabinet and play to my heart’s content! As well as Daytona and Fighting Vipers 2 – in itself a bit of a rarity – there’s also Sega’s Motor Raid, Virtua Fighter 2.1 and Sonic the Fighters to play, and they’re all the original arcade versions, and I definitely recommend the forty- five minutes of pain to access them!

Right, change of gear because we’re going to finish this week with The Art of the Box, published by Bitmap Books a couple of months ago but something else I was lucky enough to receive for Christmas! Even by their standards, this thing is enormous, with 560 coffee table (and then some) hardback pages celebrating video game box art, right from the early Atari stuff of the late seventies to the present day, covering arcade machines, home computers and console stuff. Along the way, it takes in interviews with and features on 26 iconic box artists from around the world, including the likes of Bob Wakelin, Susumu Matsushita and the late, great Oliver Frey, and features over 350 artworks, each officially provided. It also chronicles the fascinating evolution of the media from pencil, paint and airbrush into the computer-based workflows introduced in the nineties then up to the current era of rendered 3D graphics combined in Photoshop. I got such a kick out of seeing all the eighties stuff in particular, and the original artwork that would go on to influence what I spent my pocket money on in the shops, as well as adorn my bedroom walls when it turned up on adverts I liked in Computer & Video Games magazine! A lot of it is presented in all its full-page glory too, although this thing is way to special to be cutting pages out of like I used to! As always with Bitmap Books, it’s a luxury item, but you certainly get what you pay for!

I have been playing more Sonic Superstars on Xbox Series X and also started Simon the Sorcerer on the Amiga A500 Mini, but I know we ran a bit long with everything else here so I’ll save them for next time! In case you missed either of these, last Tuesday we had On The Retro Radar, our regular start of the month look ahead to the upcoming retro-interest new releases for January, with trailers for everything and my own thoughts on each too. Then on Thursday, we had the last of our annual festive features when we looked at the Retro Arcadia Game of the Year 2024 Predictions, using a similar format of trailers and thoughts on everything on the way this year that I hope might make the cut next December. And there’s loads of them, so definitely have a look! Then next Wednesday, also join me as we head back exactly forty years to check out the latest in all things gaming, including a type-in by Jeff Minter… It’s time for Retro Rewind: January 1984 in Computer & Video Games, straight from the original magazine! See you then!