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…

While I’m sure at some point I’ll be less wowed by minimal updates and new modes I’ll never play, as I’m only a year or so into my new-found passion (or borderline obsession!) for baseball then I reckon MLB The Show 24 is a good place to start this time out! And what the hell, I’ve had a great time with it since it launched straight onto Game Pass the other day! As with last year’s edition, it’s like playing a game you’re watching on telly, as long as you don’t look too close because there’s still details, including fundamental things like grass and some of the facial likenesses, that seem a bit last-gen, but they’ve added some wonderful old stadiums that are apparently spot-on, and the players have never moved better. The ball hasn’t either, with a more authentic flow to the game, and what is now exquisitely refined pitching and fielding on a par with the familiarly top-drawer batting mechanics. And in addition to a load of new period and narrative-based game modes, there’s all the regular ones, plus tons of gameplay and presentation options, live rosters and stats, and dynamic difficulty, making it as deep as you want it to be, which isn’t very for me but I love it all the same so far!

I’m still working my way through more of The Cowabunga Collection on Nintendo Switch, and this time went back to the beginning with the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game from 1989. Unfortunately though, despite it being the only thing on here I’ve got anything like nostalgia for, having also played a lot of its sequel recently, it’s a bit of a tough ask, especially playing solo, which it very obviously wasn’t built for! That’s not to say it doesn’t have its moments though, and I know perfectly well what a hit it was at the time, capturing the feel of cartoon with perfect characterisation and superb animation, and right at peak Turtle power! Four players at once too, which was wild for the time and so much fun with what were very competent side-scrolling beat ‘em up mechanics; they just feel a bit barebones and unrefined today though. I guess that’s a bit unfair, and I did have a really good time ploughing in enough credits to experience it’s seven levels – mostly set in New York with hundreds of Foot Soldiers and all your favourite bosses – but with no real inclination to return to it again anytime soon like I have Turtles in Time. I did also try its NES port, where it’s known as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game, and while it’s impressively authentic, and I’m sure it was wonderful to have at home in 1990, it flickers like mad, and it jerks along, and it’s really not much fun anymore. First time playing though, so I was glad to get through the first couple of levels at least!

I was never thrilled about Wonder Boy becoming an RPG after the first game but in 1988 it went off on another tangent with Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair, a strange mix of auto-scrolling action-platformer and horizontally-scrolling shoot ‘em up! I think it was the series’ last arcade outing too, though I’m playing on the Wonder Boy Anniversary Collection for Nintendo Switch, where it came back to life more recently. Wherever you play though, it’s for one or two-players (at the same time), with a bonkers story about a pair of young heroes hearing an old story about a boy called Book, and being inspired to continue his fight, although I’m still not entirely clear what that fight actually was! Each level comes in two halves, starting with the automatic side-scrolling platforming and shooting stuff with various collectible projectiles, then it switches to a pretty decent – if very straightforward and repetitive – horizontal shooter, before you then take on some crazy boss or another at the end. It’s got a gorgeous, in-your face comic art style, a jaunty soundtrack and some fantastic sound effects, and while the fun does run out of steam long before the original game’s did, and it could sometimes do with auto-scrolling just a bit faster, it’s still better than a load of stats!

I’ve been lucky there haven’t been many times when life has got in the way of gaming but when Ico finally arrived on PlayStation 2 in Europe around now in 2002, we were right in the middle of selling our first house and buying our second, we were six months away from getting married, I was about to start the job I’m still in, and it kind of passed me by! Not really my thing anyway, as confirmed by its spiritual successor Shadow of the Colossus a few years later, which I still find tedious to this day. Then, a couple of months ago, I saw a screenshot of a witchy woman with a little girl at her feet in Retro Gamer magazine, and I thought it looked interesting, and before long I found myself about ten minutes on from the opening cutscene, totally surprised by the sudden realisation that I’d stumbled upon one of those holy grail moments all of us gamers live for – this wasn’t just something special but was about to disrupt that sacred space at the very peak of my all-time favourites! A minimal 3D action-platforming adventure with maximum scale and immersion as “different” boy (called Ico) meets princess girl while they’re both locked up in a castle, which they then try to escape together, in the face of vertigo-inducing obstacles, puzzles and her evil mother’s terrifying magical minions. The gameplay is as sublime as the art style, simple and logical but – in combination with the deceptively intense narrative – emotionally draining, frequently exhausting and utterly wonderful all at once! Seriously atmospheric sound design too! I don’t know where this will land in my top ten, twenty, whatever yet; I need another play-through, and the dust needs to settle, and there’s the PS3 remaster too… But there’ll be a deep-dive here before long so I’ll definitely let you know!

And on that bombshell, I think I’m going to call time on this week’s recap. In case you missed it last Wednesday though, do take a look at my deep-dive into the none-more-PS1 Nightmare Creatures, together with some strangely-related ZX Spectrum colour clash side-chat! Then next Wednesday, it’s a really special game for me, not only lending its name to the page you’re now reading, but also the first one I ever bought, as we delve into my life with Arcadia on the Commodore VIC-20… One of the original brutal shoot ‘em ups too! See you then!

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