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…

Messing around with Gauntlet on the Commodore 64 the other day, I was also reminded of Spore on there, which is in a vaguely similar top-down, mazey-combat vein but plays out on a single screen and has a bit more of a puzzle element to it as well. Pretty wonderful Commodore 16 version too, as well as the most garish thing you’ve ever seen on a ZX Spectrum, but having this remembered it existed, I couldn’t resist going back to that C64 budget title I remember from 1987 as well this week! It’s about a scientific experiment gone wrong, with hazardous spores running riot in the lab they were created in and now threatening everything outside it, meaning you need to go in armed with only a handgun to keep the spores at bay and collect the antidote canisters on each level. The graphics might be minimal but that doesn’t stop them being the most intimidating thing ever as you’re greeted by this insane number of spores spewing out of regeneration points between you and each canister, with various barriers and reflectors adding that puzzle element that sometimes help but more often than not are like a bomb you need to defuse because do the wrong thing first and you’ll open the floodgates rather than the little gap in the fence you were trying to squeeze through! It’s such chaotic fun as you somehow make progress against seemingly impossible odds, and was outrageously good value at £1.99, for which you were also getting a fantastic David Whittaker title tune and a level editor!

I’ve always been a fan of what Jeff Minter did with Tempest over the years, and Tempest 2000 on the Atari Jaguar in particular stands out as an all-time favourite, but this week I’ve had a really good time with the 1981 arcade original, which I’ve been playing on the marvellous Atari 50 compilation on Nintendo Switch. It’s a 3D vector-based shoot ‘em up played out over sixteen levels made up of different tubular geometric shapes, with aliens coming at you from the other end while you rotate left and right around the near end to shoot back down whatever section they’re in. A d-pad isn’t quite as nature intended for this but it soon feels responsive, and there’s always your Superzapper smart-bomb once per level if things get too hairy or too up close! And conversely, if the welcoming difficulty curve isn’t difficult enough, you can also choose your starting level, which I believe was a gaming first! Whatever, this thing isn’t just a pioneer in all sorts of ways but it’s absolutely timeless, is crazy addictive, and will always remain so, however long Jeff Minter hopefully keeps more coming!

The other day I was trying to remember the name of “that dreadful Taito dinosaur game”… Dinorex. Or Dino Rex. Either way, I decided to see if it really is as bad as I was sure I definitely did remember, and yes, I can confirm it’s one of the worst games you’ll ever play! “Set in a world where humans and dinosaurs coexist, this fighting game tells the story of the Amazons… In prehistoric South America, young men pit their tamed dinosaurs against each other in order to win the title of King “Dinorex”, rule the world and marry the very sought-after Queen of Amazonia.” It’s a one-on-one dino-fighter from 1992 that’s like a rubbish Primal Rage, which did come a couple of years later, with digitised sprites and sampled sounds that stink almost as much as the gameplay, with over-complicated controls (such as up then quickly down for jump), terrible collision detection and ridiculous difficulty. Truly awful!

I don’t know how many times I’ve started but not finished Another World over the years – actually, when I say not finished, I mean not got more than three screens in! Anyway, having recently fallen for the not totally dissimilar Ico on PS2, then noticed its baked-in icon on the Amiga A500 Mini games carousel last week, I thought I might be in the right frame of mind to give it a proper go. Which I did, and I finished it, and I’m a total convert! I know it’s already considered by many before me as one of the all-time greats but I’ll follow convention and quickly describe it anyway… It was originally released on the Amiga and Atari ST at the end of 1991, although there’s not much since it hasn’t been ported to, virtually to this day – in fact, it came out on Evercade with a bunch of other Delphine Software games I also don’t think I like just a few months ago. It’s a cinematic adventure, almost point-and-click in its essence, where you play a nuclear scientist whose latest experiment doesn’t go quite to plan, and ends up travelling through space and time to an alien planet that’s immediately inhospitable, leaving you with the simple goal of surviving… Over and over and over again, as you try to puzzle or fight your way through every single one of its surreal flip-screens that tell this incredible, minimal tale through minimal interactions with this fantastically atmospheric (and minimal) world! The controls are pretty minimal too, and, combined with zero energy bars, scores or anything else on-screen, results in total immersion and singular focus on whatever the immediate problem you need to solve to progress to the next one. And the next. And the odd terrifying monster to run away from too! Incredible game, and even more so now I finally get it!

I can’t top that so we’ll close proceedings there for this week! In case you missed it last Wednesday though, be sure to check out another journey back exactly forty years for everything going on this month in Retro Rewind: May 1984 in Computer & Videos Games, straight from the pages of the original magazine, which I’d be very happy to flick through with you! And then next Wednesday, join me for a pre-launch day review of Rainbow Cotton HD Remake on Nintendo Switch, hopefully breathing new life (or at least better controls!) into the spectacular 2000 Sega Dreamcast 3D cute ‘em up from one of my favourite game series! See you then!

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