Welcome to another in a seasonal series of features I’ve got up my sleeve to complement the various forms of weekly deep-dives at Retro Arcadia, in part to keep things fresh but also to take a bit of the pressure off me trying to juggle writing them alongside juggling work and family… And not to mention actually playing the things! Don’t worry though, because that’s not to say they won’t still make up the vast majority of what’s here, together with the Weekly Spotlights, the Retro Rewinds, and likewise the reviews when I’m asked (or the mood takes me). Just like I said here three months ago, the plan is to simply mix in what you’re reading now as a seasonal flavour. The format is a paragraph or two on each of the games and related things I’ve got hold of since the last time, and as usual there seems to be loads, so let’s get on with it!

Not sure why it took me so long to get hold of these but at least the PlayStation 4 is still plugged in, even if it’s not connected to a TV that will properly do these lovely games justice anymore! I’m starting this month with not one but two PS4 compilations, namely Psikyo Shooting Library Vol. 1 and Psikyo Shooting Library Vol. 2, both of which I think originally came out in 2022, so in my defence I had already moved to Xbox Series X by the time they arrived… Nice and cheap now too! The first volume collects six of the legendary shoot ‘em up developer’s greatest hits, and I’ll be doing a deep-dive into this one very soon, so for now I’ll give a quick sentence on each, then do the same for the six more on the second one. Vol. 1 spans 1995 to 2001, starting with Strikers 1945, a dear old vertically-scrolling favourite of mine that sets the scene with trademark random opening levels, non-stop set pieces, a wild sense of scale and lots of bullets! Strikers II and III are literally more of the bonkers same, ramping up the flair and the exhilaration with it, and collectively, all three are simply a genre masterclass! Sol Divide is a high-fantasy RPG playing at horizontal shooter (or vice versa) that’s occasionally visually impressive and the mash-up works but honestly isn’t for me so far. Dragon Blaze is more like it, still fantasy themed but vertical again, and not unlike Strikers with a very cool, very organic art style. Last one on the first volume is Zero Gunner Two, also vertical, and is a real stunner with a unique directional firing mechanic that takes some getting used to but once it does, this thing is a beauty!

Worth mentioning that the games on both collections come with multiple difficulty levels as standard, and there’s definitely no shame in ramping it down as you learn to play them! There’s also all the usual sound and display settings (including TATE mode where appropriate), some fantastic wallpapers, dedicated PS4 in-game manuals, online rankings and best of all, a sticker sheet in both boxes! No mod-cons like save states or rewinds, which would have been handy for practicing boss fights, and nothing in the way of other bonus content either. The games do the talking, I guess, so let’s move on to the second batch, this time spanning 1993 to 2005. Samurai Aces shows its age more than most here but it knows how to throw out some bullets and the vertically-scrolling gameplay is forever sublime! Likewise Tengai’s, which is the best of Psikyo’s horizontal shooters for me, with some great Feudal Japan settings and thrilling level designs. I’m doing the newest game here next, Samurai Aces III, which also goes out of time order on the game menu, although I’m happy not to have to end on a downer… It’s horizontal, it’s Japanese fantasy, it’s got a story mode featuring lots of enormous boobs, it feels janky to control, and it’s big, weird 3D polygons would have looked retro even ten years earlier! Really annoying sound effects too, and it’s just not Psikyo. Gunbird is though, and even more so its sequel, Gunbird 2, both bullet-heavy vertical shooters, both effortlessly stylish and a bit mad, and both so much fun! Last game is Gunbarich, which is an oddity here in that it’s not a shoot ‘em up at all but a gorgeously bright and breezy version of Breakout! It is a Gunbird spin-off so we’ll forgive it, and we’ll also forgive one duffer and one I probably just need to spend more time with from of the twelve games we’ve just covered, making these collections a no-brainer for the genre fan!

Over the course of the past year and a bit, my new-found obsession with baseball has taken me through most of the entire history of baseball games, all the way from the primitive but impressively authentic Real Sports Baseball on the Atari 2600 to the just-like-TV looks of the recent MLB The Show 24. I think somewhere in the middle is what I like best though, with close to realistic gameplay and fully-featured presentation but still very much a video game. And that’s exactly where High Heat Major League Baseball 2003 on PlayStation 2 comes in! It’s perhaps not the most glamorous and might not have the most content but it’s fully licensed and it just plays a really well-paced and enjoyable game of baseball! The graphics are more accurate and functional than mind-blowing but they do the job well, with some really nice animation too, and similar for the audio, although the commentary is impressively ambitious and mostly spot-on! Pitching, fielding and batting controls are where this comes into its own though, familiar and intuitive but also with a bit of ambition of their own, and make for some really smooth plays from the outset. It’s not blockbuster but if you want a proper game of baseball without too much fuss then this is the one!

I was looking forward to Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster then totally forgot it existed until a couple of months after its February release, when I finally got it on PC. I think I’m right in saying was the first Star Wars first-person shooter when it first arrived in 1995, and had plenty to offer the emerging genre too, with a lot of freedom of movement, a lot to interact with – including some cool environmental puzzles – and loads of power-ups and items to find too. And now it’s had a makeover, with some lovely hi-res textures and all-new lighting, cel-shaded cutscenes, as well as support for plenty of mod-cons. You’re a mercenary working for the Rebels just after the Death Star incident (which the first mission covers your previous involvement in), and now you’re trying to take down the Empire’s new Dark Trooper program, which some familiar faces quickly reveal is being used for vengeance reasons. This all takes place over fourteen varied but very old-school levels, although being able to play with a regular controller and in a fairly modern way this time around did counter a bit of the contemporary jank still hanging around! It was always fun though, and you can’t remaster that, so going back to this has been a proper blast all round.

I read someone in the know saying somewhere recently they thought the April 1983 Computer & Video Games magazine cover was its worst ever but I beg to differ! I remember it standing out at the time, and now I finally own a copy, reckon it’s probably one of its most iconic, and definitely one of my favourites! (It’s in the picture at the top). If you’re a regular reader of my new and increasingly frequent (until its monthly in a few months) feature, Retro Rewind, I started with a collection of the magazine that spanned almost a decade from the start of 1985, and I’ve been working backwards from there. I’ve actually also picked up a few 1984 copies in the last few months too but you can read about those in way more detail in their respective Retro Rewinds, so we’ll have a way quicker flick through of the April 1983 issue here (and it can wait for its fiftieth anniversary for the full treatment). That cover features an ancient painting of the Battle of Trafalgar, which in turn relates to a type-in listing for a ZX81 naval war game, no less! There’s also listings for a Pac-Man clone on the BBC, an Asteroids one on the Spectrum, a Donkey Kong one on the VIC-20, a take on Blitz on the Dragon 32 and Simon, the tabletop electronic game, on the Sharp MZ-80K. Then there’s an original election game on the Commodore PET, complete with Spitting Image cartoons to accompany it, a dragon-fantasy thing involving a green square for said-dragon on the Atari 400/800, and a maze-blaster for the Atom. Something for everyone!

In the news, there’s a wild new all-in-one console on the way called the Vectrex, while in the arcades you want to be looking out for Pole Position, “the most exhilarating driving simulation on the market,” and some weird platform thing called Q*bert. Will never catch on! Top of the games reviews this month is Choplifter on the VIC-20, which is as good as an arcade port gets on there! Penetrator was about as good as Scramble clones got on the Spectrum too, but for style over substance on there you want 3D Tunnel! Galaxians is marked down on the Atari 400/800 for being old-hat by 1983, but apparently not so for Asteroids, which gets a decent impersonation of from Starship Command for the BBC. Finally for this feature, looking at some of the adverts here, Imagine are really splashing out on their Spectrum and VIC-20 stuff with two full double-page spreads for Arcadia, Wacky Waiters, Schizoids, Catcha Snatcha and Ah Diddums, then there’s a combined one across the back cover too! My favourite is for one of the all-time great, blatant arcade clones though, Donkey King on the Dragon 32, which you can pick up from Boots or John Menzies if you fancy a go!

Let’s jump to the Nintendo Wii now, which remains connected under my TV even though there’s probably better uses for whatever socket it’s taking up! Anyway, while it’s there I’ll keep occasionally buying stuff for it, like Mario Strikers Charged from 2007. I’m very fond of its GameCube predecessor but was left feeling a bit flat by the more recent Switch release, so when I spotted this one behind the dreaded “Seller’s Other Items” button on eBay, I thought I’d take a chance on it! It’s a very arcade take on football featuring all your Mario favourites, one of which you can pick as your team captain, and they come equipped with a Mega Strike shot that can be worth loads of goals if you score with one. I think that’s probably the main new gameplay feature but you’ve also got returning skill-shots for your regular players, familiar power-ups like bananas and red shells, and super abilities, such as Mario growing massive! Before we go on, apologies for any crap phone pics of my TV screen you might experience while reading this feature but it was really hard to get a shot with one hand, controller in the other, and the whole thing moving at ridiculous pace!

There are twelve captains in all, with Wario, Bowser, Princess Peach et al available from the start while a few, such as Diddy Kong, are unlockable, and as well as their unique specials, they’ll also have their own characteristics – more powerful, defensive and so on. That also applies to the rest of your team, so Shy Guy is balanced, Toad is a playmaker and there’s more to choose from. There’s also a bunch of game modes, with tournaments, multiplayer options and a load of challenges, and while it’s still going to work best with others, it does flesh out the solo experience that was a bit lacking in the original. Gameplay is more refined too, and while some of those specials might be worth six goals, they add to the excitement rather than feeling cheap! I’ve never been the biggest fan of the Wii’s controller setup and this didn’t change my mind, with movement fine on the Nunchuk’s analog stick but the button setup ain’t great. You get used to it though, and there’s depth once you do. All the Nintendo polish here too, and while some of the forced animations do outstay their welcome after a while, the cutscenes for everything are stunning, and there’s a ton of special effects to keep things lively while things are a bit more zoomed out in-game. Enjoying it more than I did the Switch game but I wish it let you use a GameCube controller!

Unlike the Wii, by the time we’re done here you’ll have noticed that the PS2 still gets plenty love, and my next pickup on there is Masters of the Universe – He-Man: Defender of Grayskull. This is something I came across on emulation a while back and was quite taken by, so as is often the case when that happens, I kept an eye out and picked up the original when the price was right. It’s a third-person hack and slash action-adventure from 2005, which were ten-a-penny on the PS2 at the time but there’s only one He-Man! Obviously, he’s out to put an end to Skeletor’s latest plan to take over Castle Grayskull and plunge Eternia into darkness, and that will take you under Snake Mountain, through the Evergreen Forest and on to Grayskull, fighting Skeletor’s minions, finding items and building your powers to keep you moving forwards. There are a few familiar faces along the way, like Man-at-Arms, Beast Man and The Sorceress, as well as bosses like Tri-Klops, and of course you’ll get to fight on Battle Cat too! None of it is especially sophisticated or spectacular, and the gameplay is of its time, but it’s well turned-out and authentic, and it moves just fine, and is nicely just above average, even if the subject matter is all that really pushes it there! I’ve still not finished it either but do check out my Weekly Spotlight features every Sunday, and I’ll cover it there sooner or later with some final thoughts! 

I’ve got a book for you now called ZX Spectrum Assembly – Let’s Make a Game? (question mark intended!) by Juan Antonio Rubio Garcia, which aims to take you through the fundamentals of Z80 assembly language in an approachable and enjoyable way, taking in a version of Pong, then a space shooter, then a version of tic-tac-toe as examples along the way. It’s a beast, with almost five hundred pages (supplemented by QR-code-linked source code downloads at every step) covering the basics of the Z80, then the Spectrum’s memory (whether you’re rocking 16K, 48K or 128K), as well as number formats, instructions and program flows, but you’re very quickly into making Pong, and from there it’s well thought out and explained, with non-stop commentary and illustrations, as well as a mass of assembly code! It’s not of the highest physical quality but the passion here makes up for it, and I reckon even if you only understand half of what’s gone on by the time you get to the end of the first game, you’ll have had a good time regardless. And at the very least you’ll have made Pong!

I’ll quickly run through The C64 Collection 3 on Evercade but there’s a full review of it here, where I also went into way more detail on each of the thirteen vintage Commodore 64 games included, so I’m going to limit myself to a sentence on each now but, having since played a ton more of these games, put them in sort of favourites order. The two headliners – and the ones I’ve been playing the most – are undoubtedly Paradroid and Boulder Dash, both action-puzzlers in their own way, both absolutely timeless, and deservedly considered among the best on the system. Hang-On-alike Super Cycle would be next on my list, up their with Buggy Boy as my top C64 racer, closely followed by multi-event sports classic Summer Games II, with outstanding presentation and variety, even if a couple of the events are a slog! I’d never played Anarchy before but I definitely have now, spending hours with its thoughtful and sometimes frantic top-down, future tank puzzling and shooting. That probably rounds out what I’d consider the top tier of games on the cartridge, which I’ve mostly been playing on the go, both on the Evercade EXP and also on the recent Super Pocket Evercade handheld spin-off, but let’s have a look at the rest too because they’ve all got something going for them!

Proper old-school single-screen platformer Jumpman Junior comes close to top tier too but it is just more of the same of its excellent predecessor. Cybernoid II: The Revenge probably deserves to be up there as well but I’ve really not spent enough time with its tough as nails shoot ‘em up with a platforming vibe gameplay yet – proper looker and sounder though! I have played a lot of Deliverance: Stormlord II, on the other hand, and way more than it probably deserves because it’s just too hard but I still really want to like it! I nearly really like Netherworld too, a clever horizontal shoot ‘em up meets puzzler where you have to collect diamonds (often by finding specific power-ups) to get off an alien world, and it’s fast and vibrant and comes so close but you’re (unnecessarily) against the clock and the time is just too short! Exolon is a fine sci-fi run (plod!) and gun but I’d rather play the Spectrum original. Streets Sports Soccer is kind of fun but mega-simplistic, and even more so Breakdance, which I do have nostalgia for but it’s another take on that electronic game Simon from earlier and little more. And lastly, Cyberdyne Warrior is a huge and ridiculously tough platformer that is clearly impressive but I’ve still not hugely clicked with. Overall, while it doesn’t have the all-time favourites of mine like Winter Games and Impossible Mission found in the first two C64 Evercade carts, for sheer volume of games I’ll be playing for a long time, it might just be the best of them all the same!

It seems like we’ve been as heavy on the compilations this time around as we have the PlayStation 2, but I’m going to look at the last of both now with Sonic Mega Collection Plus! I’ve been on quite the journey with Sonic the Hedgehog over the past eighteen months, playing right through all of his twenty or so 2D outings, and when I saw this reasonably priced I thought it would be nice to properly own some of the games I’d only emulated so far… You know what I mean! It’s a really nice package, with Mega Drive or Genesis emulation handled by Team Sonic themselves, and off the bat you’ve got Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic 3D Blast, Sonic Spinball and Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, which is still sadly lost on me for colourblind reasons! Anyway, also included in this “Plus” version are a bunch of Game Gear games too, including Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic Chaos, Sonic Drift, Sonic Labyrinth, Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine and Sonic Blast. And on top of those, as you can see in the menu picture above, there’s even more you can unlock through playing the others – Blue Sphere, Knuckles in Sonic 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, the wonderful, vaguely related platformer Flicky (albeit the console port), and unrelated (as far as I know!) Ristar, The Ooze and Comix Zone. Loads of bonus content to unlock too, with scans of all the manuals plus comics, illustrations and videos. In reality I do own a lot of these on other compilations or consoles, often several times over, but this is a great package and an incentive to keep playing somewhere new!

I’ll finish this episode with a quick mention of Retro Gamer magazine, partly because I’ve just subscribed again for the first time in a good few years so it kind of fits the bill here, but mainly because they’ve just passed their twenty year anniversary, making them more than retro themselves now! Before I think too many post-modern thoughts about that then bore you to death with them, I’ll just say congratulations and thanks for all the nostalgia, the discovery, the insights and the enjoyment! And with that, I reckon we can close this little look at all the stuff I shouldn’t have been spending money on over the past three months, but I’ll definitely see you with more after the Summer. Just don’t tell the wife!

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