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…

Just arrived on Xbox Game Pass, Go Mecha Ball is a wild mix of isometric twin-stick shooter, roguelike progression and heavy metal pinball physics! You seem to be a cat in a mech-suit equipped with a huge arsenal of devastating weapons, or you can just turn into a Sonic-style ball and hurl yourself around the levels that almost seem like they were built with that in mind, ramming stuff to parry attacks, unlock ammo or just bash enemies into oblivion! Each level is full of increasingly devious enemy bots and increasingly huge bosses, earning you cash to spend on unlocking new weapon drops, abilities and power-ups. The twin-stick controls feel great, allowing for seamless weapon switching as well as ball-morphing, which is equally intuitive to control and offers plenty of scope for strategy or simply a quick regroup when things get rough over the far side of the level. And it oozes style everywhere you look, with environments like some sci-fi Lego set, full of rich neons and absolutely laden with flashing lights and special effects. Your cat thing looks pretty good if you look closely too! The music isn’t for me but is equally polished, as is the chaos of hefty sound effects. Not sure how long it will last but it’s loads of fun while it does, and is exactly what I love coming across out of nowhere on the service!

As mentioned here last time out, I’ve been dabbling my way through all forty SNK arcade games on the Neo Geo Mini since I got it for Christmas, but now that’s out of my system, I’ve been giving its little joystick a real workout with Shock Troopers, a multidirectional military run and gunner from 1997, eleven years after SNK released its not dissimilar but possibly better-known spiritual predecessor, Ikari Warriors. The story is the Bloody Scorpions Group have kidnapped a scientist and his granddaughter, gaining control of a super-drug he invented, Alpha-301. The game doesn’t go into what it does but it can’t be up to much good as you’re choosing any one of eight characters in “Lonly Wolf” mode (sorry, spellchecker!) or three you can switch between in Team Battle to go out and save the world as a result! You’ve also got a choice of Jungle, Mountain and Valley routes that really add variety and ramp-up the challenge depending on which you choose, which has been one after the other for me because they’re all a lot of fun! Gameplay-wise it’s familiar territory if youve played any of these from Commando onwards and it’s brilliantly familiar! I’m not sure it would have been my first choice in an arcade in 1997 but you’d struggle to name a more polished and refined example of the genre today (including its own sequel that’s also on here) – it’s got everything you want, looks and sounds great, and is a perfect way to show off this Mini, however much my crappy photos of it in action above might suggest otherwise!

Ever had a game you’ve been totally useless at for nearly forty years but still keep going back to? That’s me and Strider, Capcom’s 1989 hack and slash arcade platformer! I was actually inspired to go back and have another go after listening to the excellent Cane and Rinse podcast on the subject, which is still Patreon-only as I write but should be on the free feed any time now. Anyway, suitably pumped up by all the talk of levels I’d never seen before (meaning level two onwards!) I grabbed my Evercade EXP handheld, where it comes packed-in with a bunch of other Capcom stuff, and once more ditched my ninja hanglider over the spectacular rooftops of future St Petersburg and started cartwheeling and sliding and waving my plasma sword in search of the Earth’s latest tyrannical leader, across five wildly cinematic stages filled with his massed mecha-minions and crazy bosses! The presentation was outrageously ambitious for the time, with beautifully atmospheric environments, imaginative enemies, over the top character animation and sound design matching all of the above as you go! Not that I’ve gone much further this time around because it starts difficult and only gets harder but it’s clearly learnable if you’re just not fundamentally crap at this kind of game, and even if you are, the action is still incredible and relentless, and will always demand one more go regardless!

The Mario vs. Donkey Kong preview demo dropped on Nintendo Switch this week, offering four preview levels in advance of its release later this month, and if puzzle-platforming with the emphasis on puzzling is your thing then it seems like you couldn’t ask for more! It’s a remake of the 2004 Game Boy Advance game, with Donkey Kong too late to buy the hot new Mini-Mario toy before they all sold out, so he’s broken into the factory where they’re made and stolen the lot, meaning it’s up to Mario to give chase across eight worlds and a hundred stages to get them back. This is going to involve negotiating a condensed series of obstacle-ridden platforms with all the regular enemies wandering about, grabbing collectibles and picking up keys to unlock the next level, or guiding Mini-Marios around obstacles to complete other goals, but it’s a lot more than just precise jumping and fast reflexes! This selection of levels from the first world also hint at some proper brain-teasers to come, as you pick up items, carry and throw them into strategic positions and use them to enable further progress, as well as look out for some really inventive platform-switching mechanics. And you can do all of that either solo or two player (with Toad), and on casual difficulty or a bit more challenging, I didn’t play a lot of the GBA game but I liked the original Game Boy game it was based on a lot, and this one seems to have a lot more to it than just being a straight remake with all that modern Nintendo polish on top. The demo’s certainly done its job on me!

I’ve also finished fantasy action-platformer Sword of Ianna on MSX on Evercade, which turned out to be one of my favourite discoveries on there, and also point-and-click adventure Simon the Sorcerer on the Amiga A500 Mini, which looked fantastic throughout but I was well and truly done with the story by the end. You can read more about both in this Weekly Spotlight from a couple of weeks ago, which I think is a good place to close this week too but in case you missed it on Wednesday, do have a look at my deep-dive into SSX 3 on the PlayStation 2, which isn’t only a top-twenty all-time favourite game of mine, but part of a snowboarding series whose feel I don’t think has ever been surpassed. Then be sure to check back again next Wednesday, when it’s time for another trip back exactly forty years and the very latest in video gaming… It’s Retro Rewind: February 1984 in Computer & Video Games, straight from the original magazine! See you then!

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