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…

Totally unintentional but I seem to have developed a bit of a walking simulator habit of late! First it was Return to Grace, which would have in with a shout for my game of the year last December had it not still been languishing in PC-only obscurity, then last week it was Botany Manor, which is definitely in the running for this year! With Kona II then piquing my interest when it recently arrived on Game Pass (same as the others I just mentioned), I thought I’d better have a go at its 2022 predecessor first too, which hasn’t been on there for long either, complete with a Series X/S upgrade. It’s a bit more freeform and a bit more survival-focussed than most walking sims, set as it is in the snowy, early seventies Canadian middle of nowhere, with you playing a very film noir detective investigating a very Twin Peaks murder-mystery. From the outset, the harsh environment is as hostile and intimidating as it is atmospheric and immersive, with an immediate lesson in your predicament setting the scene, which gets so tense that once you eventually find respite, it’s such a relief that you might not want to head out and face it again! And this is before you even get started on all the death and weirdness you’ll need to get to the bottom of! You’re left to do that in your own way too, exploring locations, finding clues and solving a few light puzzles, as well not freezing to death, although the threat does evolve through the five or six hours it takes to beat the game, as an unsettling air of menace and isolation gradually becomes your main concern. Taking your time and taking everything in will see you through though, as will some really enjoyable narration of a decent story, and while it’s not exactly cutting-edge to look at, the weather effects are superb, and, combined with its elemental sound design, it’s more than good enough to draw you in. And I’ll definitely be back here with the sequel very soon!

I’ve been messing around with a Commodore 64 arcade conversions feature this week that’s in turn involved a lot of messing around with a lot of ports on there, and some more than others… Spy Hunter wasn’t quite the first C64 game I ever played but wasn’t far off, and it’s one of a select few from that period (including the likes of Impossible Mission and Winter Games) that have stuck with me ever since! That said, it dates from way before my time with the C64, right back to 1983 in North America, just after the Bally Midway’s arcade release, although it took a couple of years for U.S. Gold to get it out here in Europe. From how it looks to the all-important car physics, it does a great job of replicating this very James Bond-inspired, score-chasing, top-down combat racer, complete with machine guns, oil slicks, missiles and smoke screens, although nothing beats the side-on bashing of enemy cars! All those impressive little flourishes from the original too, like the power-up truck that drops its ramps in front of you so you can manoeuvre inside, or the side roads leading to the river where your sports car will enter a boathouse on one side and you’ll come out in a boat on the other, so you can continue the chase on the water! The graphics are a little less detailed and vibrant but not far off at all, and same for the bursts of the Peter Gunn theme, and actually, about all it’s missing from the arcade game is the gear-shift, which was little more than busywork in the first place, so you can concentrate on the proper action instead… And you can even connect a second joystick for the rear-mounted guns! The Spectrum version I owned was great for what it was but on this rare occasion, the C64 one totally leaves it for dead!

Over on the Atari ST, I’ve been playing my old copy (but not copy!) of Pac-Mania, the isometric arcade spin on Pac-Man by Namco in 1987, then ported everywhere the following year. I don’t think there’s a bad version between them either, although there was a bit of variance in presentation, with the ST one in particular being fine standalone until you have a go on the far superior Amiga conversion! It’s regular Pac-Man in essence, with you clearing all the dots while avoiding ghosts, but across a series of themes, sprawling, scrolling mazes, and you can jump too! Things in this port are a bit different from the outset, with no choice of which round you start in, then after the opening cutscene of sorts, we’re into a small (albeit reasonably authentic) play area, with almost half the screen taken up by a very nice score and status display but one that seems to be there to mask the multidirectional scrolling being a bit too much to ask more than anything! I think it plays a bit faster than the “bigger” Amiga version though, albeit at the cost of seeing what’s coming when things get a bit hairy later on. The graphics are nowhere near as polished here either, which there’s not really any excuse for, and again, the sound effects and music are fine in isolation but don’t really bear comparison with the Amiga. For all that though, I didn’t have an Amiga, and without that looming over you, this is a really good port of a really fun update of one of the greats!

Sticking with Atari, I finally got my hands on The A400 Mini! While I was pretty well versed on their other machines at the time, Atari’s 8-bit computers have always been a bit of a mystery to me, so I’m really over the moon with this, and have had a blast discovering the 25 games baked-in here, as well as a few classics of my own and a bunch of Atari 5200 titles that are (mostly) supported too. Getting these running on a USB stick is a bit finicky until you’ve done it a few times but in the main, the rest of the user interfaces, plus functions like save states and the games carousel are exactly the same as the Amiga A500 Mini, and if you stick with the games it comes with, it’s all no fuss, plug-and-play stuff. The authentic but surprisingly souped-up classic joystick included is mostly alright but there seems to be some weird mapping if you push “hard” left and right in some games, such as Hover Bovver, like it suddenly becomes left or right plus down or something, and things grind to a halt, right when you’re trying to do the exact opposite and give it some welly instead… Which ain’t great when you’d buy the system for that game alone! You can plug in your own USB controller though, and there’s four ports for these so you can plug one in plus the joystick for easier navigation of the menus if you like, or a keyboard if you’ve got an old text adventure like Zork on the go, or fancy a proper game of Star Raiders…

That’s another system seller right there but while you’ll have to provide your own copy of that, the sequel is included, and that’s another strategic space combat masterpiece with incredible scope and depth that you’ll see echoes of in later games like Elite and Wing Commander! Some very clever button mapping has been done for that too so you’ve got everything you really need on the joystick here, which has a load of discreetly placed buttons all over the place, although it could really have done with a proper set of instructions built-in too. Most of the other games included are fine without though – there’s a decent smattering of some very decent Atari arcade ports like Asteroids, Missile Command, Millipede, BattleZone and Berzerk; there’s all-time classics like (Bruce) Lee and Boulder Dash; cult favourites like M.U.L.E. and Seven Cities of Gold; and even the very impressive 2007 homebrew, Yoomp! Loads more to discover on there too, with less high-profile stuff like Capture the Flag, Elektraglide and Henry’s House, which is one of the most brutal platform games you will ever play! I’ve had a great time having a go at all of them, and have even torn myself away from mowing Jeff Minter’s grass in Hover Bovver to try out some other old favourites from other computers like Feud and Ghostbusters. Lovely time and a lovely system that I’m sure we’ll be diving into many more times here in the near future!

That’s probably more than enough for this week but in case you missed it last Wednesday, do still join me as we rediscover the chaotically fun fighting-racer Road Rash II on the Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis), as well as cook up a lovely bit of gaming comfort food! Then next Wednesday, be sure to check back in as we talk censorship, Big D peanuts and totally bonkers arcade game features as we discover Glass on Gaelco Arcade 1 for Evercade! See you then!

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