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 week I’ve been snowboarding in Austria, so it might be a bit briefer than usual and will definitely all be handheld on Nintendo Switch!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection is a jam-packed compilation I really need to spend more time with, featuring no less than thirteen of Konami’s Turtles titles from between 1989 and 1994… Which is probably why I’ve not spent more time with it since I got it for Christmas 2022, because I never know quite where to start! I had previously played a bit of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist though, and remembered enjoying it, so I decided that was as good a place as any this time around! It’s a remix of sorts of the first two arcade games (also included here), released for the Sega Mega Drive or Genesis in 1992, and it’s a beauty! Everything is perfectly authentic and just crammed with vibrant detail and simply the best animation, as you beat ‘em up your way through five levels of bits of New York, ghost ships, caves, hideouts and more to stop Shredder and his Hyperstone from doing any more damage after he used it to shrink Manhattan. Really fluid combat too, and while there are a couple of levels just on the bland side, and the gameplay is maybe just on the easier side across the board, so might have lacked longevity as the standalone original release, it’s exactly what I wanted to get me working through everything on here! Oh yeah, love the music too, which I think is a take on the Turtles in Time arcade game’s, and I reckon is reason enough to go there next, so I’ll hopefully report back on that next time!

It’s never been what I’d call a favourite but there haven’t been many times over the past forty years or so when I haven’t had some version of Donkey Kong or the other on the go. This week it’s been the 1981 original though, on the Arcade Archives release from 2018, which includes “early” (maybe slightly easier) and “later” (bug-fixed) versions as well as the international one, with its possibly better-balanced stage order. Whichever you go for though (which is generally random for me), while it wasn’t quite the first platform game, it was the first to let you jump, which you do a lot over the game’s four stages as you guide pre-Mario Mario up a construction site of girders and ladders and rolling barrels, then (in whatever order) around a danger-filled multi-level conveyor belt, up and down elevators and over tricky gaps avoiding bouncing springs, and finally avoiding dancing flames to remove eight rivets holding the structure Donkey Kong is perched on top of to bring it crashing down so you can be reunited with your girlfriend Pauline before doing it all over again. It’s simple, it’s fiendish and it’s perfectly balanced, with timeless presentation to match its timelessly addictive scoring mechanics. And whacking a barrel with your wildly swinging hammer for the brief time it lasts will never get old!

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo on the Capcom Fighting Collection is a really special game to me. Which is why I did a whole deep-dive on it a while back! Anyway, long story short, I suffer from various shades of colourblindness, none of which are the end of the world but do generally prevent me from enjoying a lot of history’s great tile-matching puzzlers. Which was also the case with this until Capcom patched this compilation version with various colourblindness tweaks, totally out of the blue just after it released a couple of years back – pretty incredible considering it’s a 1996 arcade game! Pretty incredible arcade game too, inspired by the success of Puyo Puyo 2 and riffing on their own success with Super Street Fighter II Turbo, all with a dash of Darkstalkers on top. You’re competing against human or computer opponents to match pairs of falling gems which are then eliminated by a Crash Gem, giving scope for growing huge combined gems and insane chain reactions! This not only then throws all sorts of crap over to their side of the screen, filling it up towards the top where someone’s going to lose, but is also reflected in a super-cute, super-deformed fight going on in the middle of the screen between your choice of Street Fighter or Darkstalkers characters. It’s easy to pick up but with loads of depth and things to discover, with gameplay swinging back and forth – outrageously unfairly at times too – but the luck-factor makes it all the more crazy addictive, and it’s all so slick and beautifully presented. Above all though, I’m still just so thrilled to finally be able to play it!

“LONG LONG AGO, THERE WERE A MAN WHO TRY TO MAKE HIS SKILL ULTIMATE. BECAUSE OF HIS BLOODY LIFE, ITS NO ACCIDENT THAT HE WAS INVOLVED THE TROUBLES.” And apparently that’s how we find ourselves in SNK’s superb 1994 one-on-one weapon-based fighter, Samurai Shodown II, which I’m playing on the equally superb, bonus content-laden Samurai Shodown NeoGeo Collection. I’m a big fan of the original too but this sequel pretty much superseded it in every respect. Except maybe the English translation, although I wouldn’t have it any other way! Anyway, we’ve got eleven returning characters and six new ones involved in some nonsense globe-trotting fighting tournament, complete with bosses, across some frequently dramatic but consistently varied and good-looking dynamic backdrops – the decadent Palace of Versailles is a particular personal highlight! The combat system got a complete overhaul, feeling way more responsive than the first game (which was no slouch) and adding a bunch of defensive moves, including a parry, rolls, ducks and hops. Specials feel really great when you nail them too, although with my abilities they’re still a bit hit and miss so far! The character design and animation is peak SNK, as is the sheer density of some of the environmental animation, where you’ll also find plenty of cool camera effects. Sound effects and music are fine too, if not especially remarkable, but it’s so much fun I’m not sure I was paying that much attention to them anyway! I’ve never played a lot of the later games on here but this one is going to take some beating.

I have dabbled with some Cotton 100% and Elevator Action and a bunch of other stuff but having been very much otherwise engaged this week, I’m going to call it a day there! If you want a bit more though, and missed it last Wednesday, do join me as we go back to a brave new era of high-end budget titles from Mastertronic and rediscover Amaurote on the ZX Spectrum! Then in a slight change to our regular midweek meet-up, next Thursday (assuming it arrives on time and I somehow manage it on release day) we’ve got a review of the brand new The C64 Collection 3 on Evercade, and every single one of the thirteen games included. Hopefully see you then!

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