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…

Most of what I’ve been playing this week is on Toaplan Arcade 3 for Evercade, which arrived just a couple of days ago and contains six and a half more games from the legendary Japanese developer, and as always with these things, we’re talking top-notch presentation, with game info, controls, load states and stats behind an attractive and sort-able set of game icons on the title menu, and a lot of that stuff is also included in more detail in a real-life manual (with some very cool developer histories for every game on top), and there’s a sheet of stickers in the box too! In-game you then have save states, controller mapping and all the usual display options at the touch of a button, and while they all play fine on the VS console and newer Super Pocket handhelds, spinning into TATE mode on the EXP handheld is a great way to play all of these. Let’s get into the games then, and first up is 1993’s Batsugun, such an important game, not only laying the foundations for bullet-hell, paving the way for Cave to emerge, and pretty much defining the modern vertically-scrolling shoot ‘em up, but it’s also unadulterated fun, spectacle and exhilaration! The 1994 “Special Version” turned out to be the last of Toaplan’s output but its slightly remixed, padded-out and more accessible gameplay makes it an all-time genre favourite for me, second only to the aforementioned Cave’s DoDonPachi, and worth the price of entry here alone! Next up is Out Zone, a top-down run and gun shooter from 1990 not unlike Mercs but heavy on the sci-fi and way more frantic! Great piece of pixel-art too, with high-energy music and a neat twin-weapon system that you collect icons to both power-up and switch between, offering straight ahead and directional fire and a bit of strategy to boot. A few familiar faces from Toaplan’s Flying Shark and Truxton too!

And speaking of Truxton too, or Truxton II to be precise, we might as well go there next! Once again, gorgeous game with great sounds, and I reckon this 1992 sequel might be slightly more welcoming than the first game too, but as much as it’s a superb vertically-scrolling shoot ‘em up in its own right, it hardly moved the genre forward. Glad it’s here all the same though! I should really have gone to FixEight next because it’s kind of the successor to Out Zone but I couldn’t resist! Anyway, it’s a similar vibe but from 1992, with you and up to two friends picking from eight futuristic (and sometimes alien) mercenaries on an invader massacre, full of explosions and chaotic sound effects and even more really nice music, and it plays so fast and slick, but I don’t like how it looks – it’s all a bit washed-out for my liking. Total departure from anything else we’ve seen on any of these Toaplan collections for Evercade so far with 1991’s Ghox next, which is a souped-up, brick-busting fantasy bat and ball game that starts with two balls and ends up with a screenful! It’s an old formula all the same, but it’s never not been fun, and this is loads of it, with power-ups and treasure chests and enemies and all-sorts all over the place, and exotic music and very-Toaplan visuals despite the simple subject matter. Really pleased to have discovered this one on here! Last up is Vimana from 1991, and we’re back in familiar vertically-scrolling shooter territory, albeit uniquely inspired by Indian mythology. It’s also pretty unique in not being brutally difficult for one of these from Toaplan! It’s alright too but little more, with very uninspired looks and sounds and gameplay to match, and it does make me wonder how the fourth of these collections is going to stack up whenever it arrives (any time now) because apart from Batsugun and its spin-off, I do get the feeling we’ve now seen the best of Toaplan with these things. Not to say I’m unhappy with this one at all though, and for £17.99 it’s a total bargain regardless. Oh yeah, secret game if you whack this cart into an Evercade VS with Toaplan Arcade 2 but not for me to spoil what it is!

Elsewhere, having recently finished Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater on PlayStation 2, I couldn’t resist starting something else I treated myself to this week, which is what I think was the next game released in the series, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops from 2006 on the PlayStation Portable. It picks up six years after the events of MGS3, with Naked Snake finding himself in a 1970 Columbian prison cell having been captured by his former FOX unit, who’ve gone rogue and are in the process of setting up their own military nation, which you need to put a stop to. More or less! As you’d expect, in reality it’s way more convoluted than that, and I’m not done yet, so I’m sure there’s more overwrought twists, turns and wild philosophies still to come! It’s familiar territory having just finished its predecessor though, with some of the game mechanics scaled-back or replaced by physical necessity but it mostly feels similar to play, although it does bring a couple of significant new features of its own, with a new sound-indicator radar system to identify nearby threats, and also the Comrade System, where you can recruit allies – often enemies coerced by an impressive variety of nefarious means – then sort them into a specialist squad as different missions demand. I’m not massively keen on this, though it does make you think about who you’re planning on killing, and how you approach missions. Visuals are impressive, lifted from the PS2 engine with a bit of forgivable screen-tear and slowdown, while cutscenes are now voiced, stylishly hand-drawn sequences, and the soundtrack is typically superb! And I think I’m enjoying it enough so far to want to keep going but it’s by no means likely to end up a series favourite.

I should probably stop there before I remind myself I got The Spectrum last week as well, and with Christmas on the way! In case you want to find out more about that and everything else I shouldn’t have been spending my money on over the last three months though, do have a look at last Wednesday’s regular seasonal feature, the Retro Arcadia Gaming Pickups Autumn 2024 Recap! And while there was a disturbing amount to cover, that wasn’t all this week, because on Friday there was also an exclusive review of the brand new Taito Milestones 3 xxxx on Nintendo Switch, which is out next week and includes ten all-time arcade classics and, er, more besides! And once you’re done with those, be sure to check back again next Wednesday, when we’ll once again be picking up another regular feature, and heading back exactly forty years for the very latest in video gaming, including a very first glimpse at a game called Elite… It’s Retro Rewind: December 1984 in Computer & Video Games, straight from the original magazine! Hope to see you then!

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