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… We seem to have hit a milestone too – thanks so much for sticking with me!

Having started with a book here last week, and having literally just finished reading it, I thought what the hell, I’ll do the same with a magazine I just got hold of this time too! My Computer & Video Games magazine collection spans 1984-1992 without any interruptions but I’m still always on the lookout for a few remaining gaps to fill further back, as well as pretty much anything from then onwards. Neither direction is getting any cheaper though, so I was chuffed to pick up this May 1994 issue for about what it cost at the time! Such a wonderful time capsule too, with Virtua Racing for the Mega Drive headlining a load of reviews this month that also include Star Trek: 25th Anniversary on PC, NHL Hockey and Jurassic Park on Mega-CD, Pac Attack and Kick Off 3 on the SNES, Jungle Book and Kirby’s Pinball on the Game Boy, Battletoads on Game Gear, John Madden’s Football on 3DO, and the incredible Lotus Trilogy on Amiga CD-32! It’s the previews that really caught my eye though, with big work in progress reports on Daytona USA, The 7th Guest, Streets of Rage 3, Another World II: Heart of the Alien and Spiderman / Venom: Max Carnage, although they probably went on to regret the five page spread they dedicated to the dreadful fighting game Rise of the Robots! There’s also news of the upcoming “Mega Drive 32” add-on, which no doubt plenty of others would also go on to regret, and the Super Game Boy colour converter for the SNES, which, on the other hand is a must-have to this day! Lots more CD-based stuff on the way for your PC, 3DO, CD-32 or Mega-CD, and I think I’ll go with the spectacular and surprisingly playable FMV spin on Top Gun for the latter system, Tomcat Alley, as my pick of the bunch from those. NBA Jam is heading-up the all-formats chart this month, followed by Sonic 3 and Sim City 2000, and there’s also a big feature on the best racing game ever, which is apparently Indy Car on PC, although Micro Machines scores almost the same, and across the board on loads of platforms, so take your pick. No Chequered Flag on the Spectrum though? Rubbish list but a fantastic read all the same!

I did include Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty on PlayStation 2 in my recent Summer Pickups feature but it only arrived a couple of days beforehand, so now I think I’m near the end (and it’s what I’ve mostly been playing this week), I thought I should revisit it here… To recap, I’ve never liked stealth games so I’ve never been the slightest bit interested in Metal Gear Solid but a recent Retro Gamer article got me intrigued enough to finally fire it up on the PlayStation Classic, and before I knew it, I had a new all-time favourite on my hands, as well as a whole new series to sink my teeth into, which brings us to this 2001 sequel, although it was actually the seventh in the series (and fourth by Hideo Kojima), and once again has you skulking around, this time trying to take down a new terrorist threat that leads you to an offshore environmental clean-up facility… Well, as I’m already learning with these games, it’s something like that – in reality, the bonkers narrative takes you to the point that a degree in philosophy wouldn’t hurt at times! There’s a lot more to the gameplay now too, with a better sneak ability, first-person aiming, enhanced cover mechanics, new tactical mechanics for messing with both environments and the far more intelligent enemies, which doesn’t help with what I think is generally clunky combat, even by PS2 standards. It all adds up to a far more expansive and freeform experience though, and the presentation is incredible, taking the original’s groundbreaking cinematography to a new level, supported by some really blockbuster cutscenes and the most atmospheric and dramatic visuals this side of Silent Hill 2, and we’ve got another killer soundtrack to boot, especially that understated title screen track! It turns out that like its predecessor, this game was the absolute masterpiece I’ve been reading about for decades all along. That said, I’m not sure it’s quite engaged me to the extremes the first one did (possibly due to a whiny character you spend a lot of time with and his beyond-annoying girlfriend) but it was still great fun from start to finish, and I’ll definitely be back with the next instalment very soon! 

It’s the start of the American football season so a quick mention of the new Madden NFL 25 next, which, as usual, I’m happy to take my ten hour trial of via Xbox Game Pass then wait until it appears for real on there in a few months for a bit more as and when I want it! And as is the case pretty much every year, initial impressions are that not much has changed from last time – the same mass of modes I’ll never touch, all the Ultimate Team crap, new off-field presentation and obviously all the latest kits, players, stats and so on. On-field, once again it’s also more like controlling a real game you’re watching on telly than ever before, and outrageously so, but beyond aesthetics, there have been some noticeable player physics upgrades thanks to the new BOOM-Tech. This translates to how tackles (and subsequent branching-animations) play out, where physics determine a variety of dynamic outcomes based on the weight, speed, momentum, squareness of the hit, as well as player ratings, while also keeping you in full control. Okay, that might sound niche, but it all adds to the fun as much as it does the realism, and it really is so much fun – accessible but as deep as you want to take it, whichever your preferred gameplay mode, with quality of life features everywhere you want to see them, and superb AI making for some thrilling plays, and while perfectly slick, perfectly authentic TV-style presentation isn’t necessarily my thing when I’m playing a video game, it doesn’t get better than this… At least for another twelve months! 

We’ll finish this week on the ZX Spectrum, where Fairlight was the quintessential isometric action adventure, filled with ambition and created with love, with weird keyboard (only) controls, and was beatable in under fifteen minutes if you had any idea what was going on! In reality though, you didn’t have a clue, and have now spent a lifetime wandering around looking for somewhere you haven’t been before, and like most such games, it was all the better for it! It was first released by The Edge in 1985, and has you exploring a castle to find a magic book to free a wizard, if my understanding of the the longest, most convoluted piece of fantasy nonsense ever seen in a game at that point is correct! Doesn’t really make any difference either way though, as you move between some impressively realistic rooms, moving and picking up objects to solve puzzles while avoiding getting killed by the local trolls and the like. There’s a forward-thinking inventory management system too, where you can carry five items maximum but that will depend on their weight, so you could, for example, fill your pockets with three bits of food and a big stick but if you want to grab a barrel for later then you’ll have to ditch everything else first. So much attention to detail, and a stunner too, from the personality-filled character sprites to the lavishly designed, vividly monochrome 3D castle and cave environments they’re moving around in, but once the equally impressive bit of 48K Spectrum title screen music ends, you’re playing in total silence, and that’s as awkward as the controls, and that’s why I quickly jumped to the 128K version from a year later this week, which couldn’t do much about the controls but did add in-game music and sound effects, making all the difference, as well as some nice (if a little out of context) static cutscenes. Beautiful way to finish here either way though! 

I am also well into Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow on the new Dominus Collection on Switch, and it’s really special, but I shared some initial thoughts here last week, so I’ll get that a bit closer to done before going into any more detail. I did finish Ico on PS2 again too, this time the surprisingly enhanced European version on original hardware, but again, I covered the US version not so long back here (before I was aware of any of that stuff), and there’s a deep-dive on the way soon, so we can skip that as well! In case you missed it last Wednesday though, don’t skip my extended, in-depth review of the belatedly brand new Thalamus Collection 1 (on Commodore 64) for Evercade, and every one of the eleven games on it! Then next Wednesday, be sure to check back again for more start of the NFL season celebrations as we discover TV Sports: Football on the Atari ST, where it turns out the 16-bit grass isn’t always greener on the other side…

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