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… And not a Christmas game in sight!

I don’t think I’d ever even heard of The Rumble Fish until PlayStation 2 emulation became relatively easy a few years back, and I came across its 2005 port of the arcade game from the year before during my exploration of all those Japanese exclusives suddenly available to me! It’s a very stylish and pretty welcoming 2D fighter set in a tournament in the slums of a futuristic city that might not have the biggest cast of characters, or the deepest fighting mechanics, but does have a cool combo system, and unique offence and defence gauges, and is just so much fun to play! And even more so since it got The Rumble Fish + treatment on all the modern platforms in 2023, which I just picked up for an incredible £2.15 in the Nintendo Switch Christmas sale! This update to the original brings remastered visuals with far more fluid animation, arcade, versus and training modes, and a handful of gameplay balances and enhancements, with local and online multiplayer support. All that said, I’m not sure I could have told much of it apart from the PS2 game I know and quickly grew to love if I hadn’t read the storefront description first, with dramatic and dynamic dystopian cityscapes still providing a gorgeous backdrop to the fast-paced but surprisingly tactical action, while those separate power gauges promise the unstoppable, while wildly dynamic combos can quickly escalate and negate everything else… Except the ridiculously cheap asking price, of course! 

Speaking of which, something else I just picked up for a fiver over in the Xbox sale this time was Atari Flashback Classics Volume 3. I’ve had the first two on PlayStation 4 for years but this one was always expensive… Well, relatively speaking, even if fifty old Atari arcade, 2600 and 5200 games are your thing and you don’t already own most of them elsewhere, in particular the wonderful Atari 50 compilation! Anyway, I reckon what we have here is a bit of a treasure trove in its own right, with a load of classics across the various systems like Asteroids, Super Breakout, Centipede and Star Raiders, as well as some lesser-known stuff like Frog Pond, Saboteur, Maze Invaders (pictured above) and Yar’s Return, which I don’t think I actually own anywhere else so money well spent after all! As well as the games, you’ve got all the original manuals, loads of gameplay and display options, and there’s online leaderboards and multiplayer support, although good luck still finding a like-minded soul after a game of Real Sports Football or Sea Battle! Whack in a second controller and you can always play locally if you’re that desperate (and have a friend who’s even more so), but I’ve never been into any of that, and I’ve had a blast by myself as always with these things instead, with clever depth-charge shooter Destroyer, and scuba shooter Aquaventure, probably my standouts so far. It’s all good though, and I’m glad I finally got it at a more than decent price! 

Although I’m still dipping in and out of the Atari 8-bit version on Hardball (covered here a few weeks back), I’ve been after a copy of Baseball for the original Game Boy at the right price on eBay for about a year, and finally came up trumps so I’ve jumped across to that for a bit instead! I always liked the look of this, especially as it was one of the few titles actually available at launch back in 1989, but not having a clue about the sport at the time and even less money, no chance! It has got Mario and Luigi in it though, and a player called Yoshi if you pick Japan Mode rather than USA Mode at the start, although it predates that Yoshi by a few months so maybe not! Anyway player names, interface changes and musical differences aside, both offer a predictably simple, arcade take on the game, with two fictional teams to play with (two-player via a Game Link cable), albeit with plenty of stats behind each one to get into if you wish. It plays pretty much the same as the old 1983 NES Baseball, except you can control the fielders here, assuming you choose to, otherwise the computer will still do it for you. Graphically it’s full of Nintendo personality, with big sprites and a surprising amount of character, given the tiny monochrome screen, and the music is great! It can run a little slow and jerky in the field but gameplay is smooth and easy to handle, and for whatever else it lacks, it’s got more than enough fun to make up for it! 

I had a bunch of text adventures earmarked to play when The Spectrum arrived just over a month ago, and I finally saw the end of the first of them, so it’s about time I got into it here because it’s a good ‘un… Apart from a couple of sections that will have you tearing your hair out, The Hobbit is still a brilliant adaptation of Tolkien’s classic into a compact but authentic and immersive text adventure from 1982! And when you’re not being expected to type in “smash the trap door’ twenty times before it breaks (among other similar things), it’s also the perfect example of the genre to have been included on The Spectrum’s in-built games carousel. By the way, having now played through this, entered a few BASIC listings, and given it a proper workout over the two days’ events in Daley Thompson’s Decathlon, I can confirm the rubber keyboard on that thing feels responsive, delightfully spongy and how I remember it! Back with The Hobbit, the parser is intuitively natural and very advanced for the the time – as you’d expect, it’s got a limited library of words it understands but assuming it does, give it a sentence in plain English and it will do the business. The story progresses relatively intuitively too, same for most of its puzzles and your navigation through it, and while some random events (as well as some scripted ones) can be unfair, they can also add longevity and replay value, as evidenced by me happily struggling through it again, albeit for the first time in a very long time! Those crude but iconic graphics for key locations will never get old either, and the whole thing is still such a great tie-in and perfect fan service. Love it! 

I have started the next text adventure on my list but I think I’ll save that for next time, as well as a few other things I got for Christmas I’ve not really had a chance to get into yet. In the meantime, I know it’s not massively exciting but I was aware we all probably had better things to do over the past few days, so I went for something easy to skim through last Friday with The Big Retro Arcadia List of Games Completed 2024 in case you fancy a look at that. Then next Wednesday, we’ll be into the new year, and no doubt more than ready for the last of this year’s annual festive features, but it’s a good one, as we look ahead to all the games I reckon could make my end of year countdown in 2025, complete with trailers for everything… It’s the Retro Arcadia Game of the Year 2025 Predictions! Hopefully see you then… And happy New Year!

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