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…

Who’d have thought shoving a seed in a pot and watching it grow could be quite so exhilarating?!?! First up this week is Botany Manor, which arrived day one on Xbox Game Pass a couple of weeks back, and is a super laid-back, English country garden walking simulator that’s just a joy to play, putting you first-person into the shoes of a retired 19th century botanist, exploring the house and gardens of an idyllic stately home that’s filled with botanical research, which you need to piece together by finding clues and using them to puzzle out how to create the ideal environment to grow various types of forgotten flora, also learning more about your character as you go. New plants appear by chapter, naturally expanding your immediate surroundings, and once you’ve worked out what to do from what you’ve seen and read in this new, self-contained area, you then plant the seed and set up everything you’ve learnt to get it to germinate and reveal itself. I don’t want to spoil too much but maybe a certain plant thrives in a thunderstorm, so you need to try and recreate one, which then involves putting certain equipment together and finding missing parts to make it work, which then need to be assembled from specific components you’ll also need to learn how to create. It gets very clever, and a real thrill as you piece things together, and doing so is so intuitive, even as the clues start to mount up! To look at, it veers between painterly realism and vibrantly colour-splashed minimalism, like one of those old rail travel posters from the 1920s, and the realistically chirping bird and walking around an old house sounds, interspersed with occasional, gentle, folky music, couldn’t be more atmospheric. Just a lovely, leisurely few hours, and I think it might just be my favourite thing I’ve played this year so far!

I miss LoveFilm, especially when you got lucky and a brand new game turned up, rather than some obscure eighties ninja thing that was padding out your film rental list! And there was no compulsion to keep going either, once you’d have enough of, say, janky 2010 quick-time platforming sections that could often be the ruin of an otherwise decent 3D hack and slash game like Dante’s Inferno on PlayStation 3! Not that dissimilar to Xbox Game Pass, I suppose, where I’m trying it again now, albeit with much lower expectations this time around! It’s effectively God of War (original, not stupid kid sidekick reboot) but based on Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century epic poem, The Divine Comedy, with you travelling through the nine Circles of Hell to rescue your beloved from eternal damnation and the advances of Lucifer himself, all brought about by your own sins while out fighting in The Crusades. On the way down you’ll be brutally fighting your way through the demonic horde, as well as the huge bosses representing each of the Deadly Sins defining each layer (or level). There are upgrades to collect and collectibles to find, which combine with decisions about punishing or absolving that dictate your increasing powers, and do provide a reason to go back, although one and a half times is good enough for me! That platforming I mentioned earlier can be as frustrating as your current situation, and there’s no place in 2024 for nasty old quick-time events making it even worse, and everything does go on a bit too. I’ll always take random button-mashing as a valid tactic for enjoying a game though, and it still looks great, both in scale and it’s gruesome level design, with some proper nasty body-horror on top! It’s all well-acted enough too, and the sound adds to the overall atmosphere without being especially prominent or memorable. And I got through it this time, so all that mindless horror obviously still has something going for it!

The Atari 8-bit original is usually my first port of call when I fancy a bit of Miner 2049er action but messing around with the Atari 50 compilation on Nintendo Switch the other day, I thought I’d give the Atari 2600 version a quick run out, which has ended up being a nightly run out ever since! No great surprise there though, as I’d also count it among my top ten favourite games on the system, where it couldn’t be more at home. It’s a single-screen platform game, originally from Big Five Software in 1982 but this port came a year later, and I believe it originally had two separate releases, three levels on each! You play as Bounty Bob, who finds himself in a uranium mine he needs to survey by walking over every single piece of floor on each level while avoiding various mutated meanies (unless he’s grabbed a tool from somewhere that acts like a power-pill in Pac-Man) and negotiating ladders, gaps, slides down to lower floors and other hazards. Change the colour of everywhere and it’s onto the next level. And good luck with doing that on one level, let alone three or six because it’s absolutely brutal, and that’s before the elongated jump that takes quite a bit of getting used to! You need to get used to it though because Bob’s a fragile type for a burly old miner, and there’s no time for patience either because a just about fair timer also demands you clear the level efficiently. And it’s wonderful! Okay, its presentation is primitive but there’s character there all the same, which is further enhanced by some great use of bold colours across each element of its devious level layouts, which are what Miner 2049er is really all about – great gameplay stands on its own, and it doesn’t get much better than this! So addictive wherever you play but it really feels just right here, best version or not!

Now, I’ve never been any good at Sunset Riders but it’s never stopped me having a good time with it! And how can you not? The relentless action, the slapstick humour, the spectacle, the pure, undiluted fun…Best-looking Wild West game this side of Kane on the Commodore 64 too! Konami’s run and ride and gun arcade classic from 1991 also has a mean set of SNES and Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis) ports too but this week I’ve been rocking the Nintendo Switch Arcade archives release, which includes both the Japanese and North American versions of both the two-player and four-player variants, all of which are unfortunately wasted on lonely old me but fortunately it’s a total blast solo as well! You play as one of four unique bounty hunters, each with their own eight-way weapon types to suit your preferred play style, from revolvers to rifles to regular or double-barrelled shotguns, and in each stage you’re after the reward for one of Old America’s most wanted, hiding out at the end once you’ve dispatched all their goons, ridden along the side of steam trains, powered yourself up in places of ill-repute and run the gauntlet across a stampede! And a lot more besides, although as said, I’m so bad at this that’s about all I’ve got for you from the first few of what I think are eight villains in total to catch! Despite my shortcomings though, it feels great to play, and the amount of stuff going on, and the variety of it, and the outrageous levels of animation and colour and sheer polish all make this absolutely top tier Konami. And not forgetting the gorgeous title screen, and the pure nineties cartoon cutscenes, and the authentic (or stereotypical, as you wish) music and the cacophony of wild Wild Western sounds… And that’s before you chuck in three other players! And not totally sucking at it!

I have also been playing a load of this week’s new Rainbow Cotton HD Remake on Switch too but in case you missed it last Wednesday, I did a big review of that already so won’t go into it again here. Do check it out though, and see if they’ve managed to breathe new life (or at least better controls!) into the spectacular 2000 Sega Dreamcast 3D cute ‘em up from one of my favourite game series! Then next Wednesday, we’ll be rediscovering the chaotically fun fighting-racer Road Rash II on Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis), which also turns out to be a lovely bit of gaming comfort food! Hopefully see you then!

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