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…

I know Gun.Smoke very well as a 1985 Wild West multidirectional run and gun arcade game but I don’t think I’ve ever played the NES version before now, which is the same concept but has its own storyline and a few devious ways of adding a bit of longevity to what is essentially a very simple game when you’ve stripped out some of its equally devious arcade toughness. You’re still a bounty hunter called Billie Bob though, brought in to clear the town of Hicksville of a gang called the Wingates who’ve killed the sheriff and taken it over. It’s set it in 1849 and you’ve got all the Western tropes as you auto-scroll upwards through ramshackle towns, deserts, Native American villages and so on, each one hosting a certain bandit you need to take down, but here’s the twist… First you need to need to find their wanted poster, and it’s hidden and will only appear if you happen to shoot exactly where it’s hidden! Now, that never changes, but it does means you’re shooting a lot of thin air as the level loops over and over until you work out where it is, usually by complete chance. Alternatively, you can trade a lot of your score (once you’ve got a big enough score) at one of the local traders you’ll come across and buy it instead, and likewise better guns and other power-ups, although most of what you need you come across through playing, and I don’t want to trade points for stuff in a high score game anyway! The graphics are full of character and stereotypically atmospheric, the NES brings it own music to the party, and it all plays really nicely, with a decent learning curve for the bosses on top of finding secret stuff. The original’s slightly weird, slightly directional control scheme struggles a bit with only having two buttons available but once that clicks it’s a really nice port and a bit, that successfully does its own thing and is definitely a bit more approachable than the coin-guzzling arcade game was!

“Control the cyborg-ninjas, Ninja and Kunoichi, as you take down the Demon King, Banglar.” A cyborg-ninja called Ninja… Brilliant! We’re talking The Ninja Warriors, a side-scrolling beat ‘em up from 1987, which I’m playing in it’s original pseudo triple-widescreen arcade aspect ratio on the first Taito Milestones compilation from a couple of years ago on Nintendo Switch, which I fancied again after I came across an old advert for the SNES follow-up, confusingly also called The Ninja Warriors! And which I’ll now no doubt be getting to here this time next week too because, from what I remember, it’s really good… Anyway, this game’s madness is set in the far-flung future of A.D. 1993, pitting you against endless waves of goons and more, coming at you from all directions, and eventually topped-off by some huge bosses. It’s all pretty mindless, which is just how you want it, and not that dissimilar to something like Shinobi, albeit less punishing less quickly. Love the soundtrack too – pure eighties action movie, which also goes for the gritty art style and exaggerated violence of the gameplay too. Just not great handheld with the crazy narrow play area in this version!

Bit of a change of pace now with A Little to the Left, which appeared on Xbox Game Pass out of the blue (to me at least) a couple of months back, and not only seemed like a playful bit of absent-minded indie puzzling, but immediately appealed to my sense of tidiness too! It’s a hundred-plus levels (and an ongoing daily challenge) of sorting, stacking and organising various household items, and even in spite of the occasional interruption by a mischievous cat, it couldn’t be more relaxing! There’s no direction as you start each diverse new level but working out the puzzle is part of the puzzle, whether it’s putting different sized detergent bottles into a neat arrangement, finding a coherent pattern in the wavy lines scribbled on a pile of Post-it notes, or simply moving cooking ingredients into a pleasing order on a shelf. The sound effects are lovely, the music soothing and the graphics varied and stylish, tied together with a shared pastel simplicity. All very pleasant, and while it took me a while to get to – as this kind of stuff on Game Pass often does – I’ve really been zipping through the levels now I have!

I know it’s not NBA Jam (which I really need to give its own deep-dive here sometime) but every time I notice the superb Midway Arcade Original compilation on my Xbox or PlayStation 3, I can’t help but fire up its 1989 forerunner, Arch Rivals, then not leave it alone for days! It was the original basket-brawl (not to be confused with Atari’s Basketbrawl, which has had its own deep-dive here), giving you madcap and fast-paced arcade two-on-two basketball where the short-sighted referee on the rubbish-strewn sidelines might as well not be there! You can choose from eight fictional teams, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, then it’s more or less regular basketball rules – except for the excessive on-court violence – set over four periods, where you’re in control of one player but can also get your teammate (if you’re solo like me) to pass or shoot when they’re in possession. When the other team has the ball, you can punch them, hurl yourself at them to try and steal the ball, and even pull their shorts down, but for all the non-stop, super-textured, animated mayhem, and players tripping over drinks cans and rolling around on the floor, it’s fundamentally a really fun game of basketball too! The music playing throughout works well, even if with today’s ears we might prefer some nonsense commentary instead, but all the sampled sounds keep things moving, as does the brilliantly-balanced back and forth of the gameplay itself.

Just writing about that makes me want to play it all over again, and you know what? That’s exactly what I’m going to do, so I’ll call it a day right there for this week! In case you missed it last Wednesday though, do join me as we head back exactly forty years for the very latest in video gaming in Retro Rewind: April 1984 in Computer & Video Games, straight from the pages of the original magazine! Then be sure to tune in again next Wednesday, as we discover interactive FMV pioneer Sewer Shark on Sega Mega-CD / Sega-CD, as well as the, er, best of the rest on there! See you then!

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