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…

And this time I’ve mostly been really enjoying making my way through Sonic Superstars on Xbox Series X, which I got last Christmas after it released a few weeks prior towards the end of 2023, and have now picked up the pace a bit after weeks of dipping in and out! Without going over too much old ground from the previous Weekly Spotlight I first covered it in, what I’ve come to realise – deep as I now am into its eleven zones – is that it not only wants you to succeed, but cleverly wants you to do so as you wish and at your own level, whether finding a way to a Chaos Emerald, learning a boss (without having to do a whole level again because your lives ran out), racking up points, beating a time or simply seeing the next stage. Which gives you plenty of reason to keep coming back too! That’s not to say it doesn’t get tough either, especially if you want the biggest rewards, but hints at old-school frustration soon dissipate when you come across them, in no small part thanks to superb old-school controls! I’m not massively fussed by the special powers you unlock when you find a new Chaos Emerald, except to cheese the odd troublesome boss, and the same for the soundtrack, and the same for playing with three other people, which I still think is where the best of the game probably lies, but it’s fantastic regardless, which reminds me, so are some of the visual effects; this thing can be a real spectacle!

Over the course of researching an upcoming deep-dive into the wonderful (in my opinion!) Sewer Shark for Sega’s Mega-CD (or Sega-CD) expansion for the Mega Drive (or Genesis), I’ve seen an awful lot of full-motion video. And most of it is awful! I can’t deny that’s also the case for NFL’s Greatest: San Francisco vs. Dallas 1978-1993, where even squeezing it into the tiniest possible window does nothing to disguise quite how grainy it is! But however impressive it might have been back in 1993 (which is also open for debate!), I definitely can’t disguise it being a very niche game, even in the USA, let alone here in the UK! Come to think of it, the word “game” is a bit of a stretch too, but for all of that, I really get what it does! Now, I often say I like my sports games to be PS1 or PS2 or GameCube era because I enjoy that balance of developing authenticity with it still being very much a video game, rather than you playing a game like you’re watching it on TV. However, NFL’s Greatest does exactly the opposite in all respects, with a barebones and barely 16-bit “game” using decades’ worth of actual archive TV footage (and you can imagine how that can go!) to play out what you’ve just called from your little offence or defence playbook… Something happens in the tiny little FMV area, the marker moves up or down the stadium display accordingly, then you choose another play. Normal NFL rules apply, for what that’s worth, and I assume it’s all fully-licensed, for what that’s also worth, but there’s almost nothing to it. Little more than an idle clicker in an American football skin, which is just fine by me, and while it was totally unintentional, perfectly timed for the Super Bowl too!

Next up is the ZX Spectrum version of my old VIC-20 favourite Jetpac, which I’ve been playing on the wonderful Xbox Rare Replay compilation from 2015. It’s a frantic, single-screen shoot ’em up from 1983 that not only stood out at the time for its unique, cartoon visuals, but has also stood the test of time, in no small part thanks to how it looks but mostly how it plays. It’s one of those genuinely timeless games, which is unusual for much on the Spectrum in 1983, although less so for something by Ultimate Play The Game! Anyway, you are Jetman, who needs to fly around with his jet-pack, rebuild the three parts of his rocket, then fill it up with fuel that randomly drops from the sky onto the brilliantly minimal wraparound play area, while gadding about with some great inertia, shooting the local aliens and collecting bonus items for points. Once it’s full, you get in and it flies you to the next planet, with new aliens and more fuel to collect, then every few screens you’ll also have a new ship to build. There’s so much character in Jetman, his ship(s) and the different aliens, with colour-clash to match and the chaos completed by some very squelchy sound effects, but all of that is a small price to pay for so much joy!

I still don’t believe for a second the full game will ever come out at this point but the Skull and Bones beta did appear the other day, and I played it on Xbox Series X, and can confirm it’s the most Ubisoft thing I’ve seen in a long time! I shouldn’t really start on a downer though, so I will say I got straight in on the first day, with no waiting and no performance problems. From there, the initial character creation was very limited but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt because it’s not the finished product. I do expect my pirate person to have the hair colour I lovingly gave her once the game begins though! That said, hair colour is the least of your worries once you’re off your little starter-boat for the first time because the on-foot bits control like something from two generations ago, which also applies to the mission structure once you start picking them up. And the endlessly looping NPC activity and repeating dialogue. And the interaction with other human players. The big scripted sea battle that serves as an opening is pretty epic though, at least until any immersion is instantly extinguished as a big red line suddenly appears across the endless expanse of ocean and you’re told you’ve gone out of bounds and need to turn straight back, right in the midst of what was a frantic, immersive and generally spectacular losing battle against the insurmountable British fleet up to that point! It did feel like an arcade game though, throwing the ship around and hammering shoulder buttons to fire as soon as the cannons were ready, which is fine, I guess, if that’s what they’re going for. That said, Black Flag was the last Assassin’s Creed game I put any real time into and I was sort of expecting this to be like the sea bits of that but expanded upon and about eleven years better. I don’t think it is though – I’m not sure it even looks much better! And the parts where you’re running around certainly aren’t better, and just feel like an afterthought. I really don’t know what this game is but from what I’ve seen of Sea of Thieves, if you want to play a big multiplayer pirate experience then that might be a safer bet! A bit like a straight remake of Black Flag might have been…

That’s me done for this week, but in case you missed it last Wednesday, you can still join me as we once again head back precisely forty years for the very latest in video gaming in Retro Rewind: February 1984 in Computer & Video Games, straight from the original magazine! And then next Wednesday, be sure to check back again as we discover Battle Chess on the Commodore Amiga, and find out if it can really make chess as cool as that game in Star Wars made out! See you then!

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