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…

After not only finishing Duke Nukem Remastered last week, on the first of two recent Duke collections for Evercade, but also being totally blown away by it, it’s probably no surprise that the equally remastered sequel on there that I couldn’t wait to dive into as soon as I was done hasn’t had quite the same impact. That’s not to say I’ve not had a brilliant time playing through the majority of its thirty-two levels so far, but I guess you can only pee the bed once to warm it up, or however the saying goes! Duke Nukem 2 Remastered appeared on MS-DOS in 1993, bringing with it the benefits of VGA PC technology, such as fancy cutscenes, a bigger colour palette, parallax scrolling and more complex special effects. Like its predecessor though, it was still fundamentally a very PC-platformer, chugging along in a constrained space, but while you can still play that way (on the fly with a press of a button) if you wish here, what we now have as standard is gorgeous modern pixel-art, with all-new animations, moving at a silky smooth 60fps across the whole width of the screen. It’s also full of new challenges, bonuses and all the quality of life stuff you could wish for, including some cool speed-running features. And, unlike the first game, you can crouch! Which, unfortunately, was a point of underwhelment for me because I thought that was about all the original was missing, but it turns out it wasn’t “missing” it at all, and would have just slowed the pace and reduced your ever-onward momentum, which I am missing a bit here. This one is still full of energy all the same, with sprawling but quickly navigable levels that encourage exploration, aided by new weapons and pick-ups, as you run, gun, jump and climb your way through hordes of enemies and all manner of hazards across some really good-looking sci-fi environments, typically finding the keys to find the exit to the next, before a final showdown with your alien kidnapper. It’s another really great game and it would be unfair to say otherwise because “another” is really its only fault! By the way, credit to Blaze Entertainment for the screenshot because the combination of my iPhone and a TV screen really didn’t do it justice. I always try though!

Flicking through a particularly ancient copy of Computer & Video Games magazine this week, I came across an advert for Tank Commander on the Commodore VIC-20 by Creative Sparks (part of Thorn EMI) in 1984, and while I never owned it myself at the time, I borrowed the hell out of it from my VIC-owning best friend, so it didn’t take much to want to get reacquainted! Interestingly, this was for VIC-20 with an 8K memory expansion, which, to my memory at least, was unusual – it was normally a whopping 16K or simply the standard unexpanded 3.5K of RAM. Anyway, it looks like a top-down wargame of the period but plays more like a strategic shooter, with you in control of a tank (complete with authentic tank controls!) on an impressively big and what I think is a partially procedurally-generated map, which you need to cross to get at the enemy fuel dump. Along the way you’ll have to negotiate roads, bridges, mountains, forests, buildings and more, each of which is going to have an effect on your progress, as well as provide food for thought on how you’ll get to where you’re going. You could just drive straight down the road, which the enemy will love, but while you can’t just trundle across a mountain range, they can’t shoot through one either! Equally, if you need to cross a river, you’ll need to find a bridge, and that usually means no choice but a shootout, but if you need to make a quick escape over the fields then make sure you keep an eye out for anti-tank mines and even the odd enemy tank-buster plane! Even with all that memory available to it, this is one impressive game, brilliantly mixing methodical traversal and tense action, and that randomised, genre-bending presentation sets the scene perfectly. Think I fancy a deep-dive on this one sometime!

Not sure how I ended up here, as it’s definitely not my usual thing, but this week I got properly hooked on Arabian Nights on the Amiga! I started with the original two-disk release from 1993 before I discovered the CD32 version, which loads quicker and has a button for jump (rather than pushing up), but otherwise seems pretty much the same. Anyway, you play as Sinbad Junior, a voyeuristic royal gardener who sees the princess being abducted by a dragon. He tries to save her, ends up unconscious then wakes up in prison accused of sorcery and being involved in the kidnap, which is where we pick up the tale. It’s a no holds barred platformer in the main, and once you’re out of the prison you’ll be working your way through another nine danger-filled levels, with enemies to fight and puzzles to solve, but as well as leaping about you’ll occasionally also end up flying magic carpets and racing mine carts! There’s loads of power-ups and secret places to find too, with these usually resulting in money you can use to buy stuff from the folk you’ll come across to aid your quest to clear your name and save the princess. I can’t think of many better platformers on the Amiga (where it was an exclusive), with the challenge becoming more balanced as you become more proficient, and it actually reminded me of Dizzy more than anything… Which is my thing, so might explain me sticking with this for so long! Fantastic cartoon graphics and a lovely soundtrack to boot. Top stuff!

As is often the case when I notice its icon in my Xbox games library, I was having a quick blast on NHL ‘94 the other day, so nothing unusual, but it was with that undisputed classic piece of video game ice hockey history in mind that I happened upon a picture of NHL FaceOff 2001 for the original PlayStation, and having never even heard of of it before, I thought I’d give it a go, and blimey, that was a good move! Absolute love at first sight, and while there’s also a PlayStation 2 version – given we were right at that crossroads when Sony Computer Entertainment first released it at the end of 2000 – and also potentially even higher-end offerings such as NHL 2001, this one is just right for me! It was actually the sixth in its own series, but from what I’ve seen of the others, the TV-style presentation, complete with an authentic two-man commentary team and motion-captured animation for the first time, is a whole new level. That said, by today’s standards it still looks like a video game, which is why I love this era of sports games so much – great quality and a decent level of realism but it’s not trying to replace watching it on TV and being all uncanny valley (not to mention overly complex) as a result. Gameplay itself is a joy, easy to get into and quickly becoming fluid and dynamic, with some very nice opposition AI offering a decent challenge across various game modes. All fully licensed too. I’m properly smitten with this and will be playing for some time to come!

I have gone back to Sword of Ianna, the MSX action-platformer on Home Computer Heroes Collection 1 for Evercade, which it turns out plays mostly great on the Super Pocket spin-off handheld too, but I’ve gone long (as usual) on some of the other stuff here so I’ll save that for next week, when I’m sure I’ll still be playing it anyway. In the meantime, in case you missed it last Wednesday, do join me as we head back exactly 40 years to check out the latest in all things gaming, including a type-in by Jeff Minter, in Retro Rewind: January 1984 in Computer & Video Games, straight from the original magazine! Then be sure to check back next Wednesday when we’ll be rediscovering Konami Arcade Classics on ZX Spectrum, and five all-time classic ports that couldn’t be more suited to it! See you then!