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 I think I’m going to start with the Atari 2600+ console I got for Christmas! This is the fully backwards-compatible, as good as totally authentic, modern replica of the 1980 marvel; it’s slightly smaller, USB-powered, and plugs into a TV with HDMI but otherwise it’s got the original cartridge slot, old-school controller ports and all the big weird switches from the real thing! Of course, that also means you need a cartridge to play anything on it, and while I have been busy on eBay for the past week, it does also come with a surprisingly well-rounded 10-in-1 compilation, with some real big-hitters from Atari like Yar’s Revenge, Missile Command, Adventure and Haunted House, as well as some other old favourites of mine like Video Pinball and Realsports Volleyball, and they’re all selectable using combinations of the four DIP-switches on the back. As said, wonderfully authentic, as is the CX40+ joystick included, which has been recreated to the same size and layout as the one that originally shipped with the console, and playing stuff like Combat feels exactly how I remember it at the time! It’s just a shame the paddle controller pack and the four games that come with it is out of stock at Amazon, the only place to get it in the UK) with little sign of more on the way, but I could always pick up an original one while I’m hunting out more old carts, I suppose! Oh yeah, it also takes Atari 7800 carts too, although not all of them and ideally ones with single-button controls. I’ll see what I can pick up cheap on that front too, although it’s not a priority – I wanted this for the 2600 experience, and so far I couldn’t have asked for more! 

I have already got hold of Centipede and Galaxian and they also play great on there but I’ll save those for next time, and jump instead to something else I got for Christmas, The Unofficial GBA Pixel Book from Bitmap Books. This one was put together in partnership with original German publisher Elektrospieler, which is evident from occasional stiff translation, but is generally the usual very high quality we’ve come to expect from these guys, covering over 240 games from the Game Boy Advance’s impressive library, including the likes of Fire Emblem, The Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap, Advance Wars, Final Fantasy Tactics, Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, Metroid Fusion, Metal Slug Advance, Gunstar Future Heroes and Mother 3. They’re all brought to life by almost 4,000 screenshots, presented across 300-pages, along with pixel art cut-outs, sprite work, vast montages and immense level maps, translating to this fantastic sense of discovery as you read, as well as an element of delightful chaos, supported by its contents being grouped by genre, tracing  the GBA’s role in evolving gaming as well as embracing pixel art, in a time when 3D Hollywood spectacle was seemingly everything! Being a bit Germanic aside, the easily digestible mass of accompanying text is full of insight and stacks of information, and it’s all beautifully presented, and printed on heavy gloss paper in a mid-sized hardback format, with a sturdy protective slipcase to keep it pristine! Lovely book, and as always, you get what you pay for with Bitmap Books! I’ll further demonstrate that next week with another of their books I received, as well as some new Evercade carts and, no doubt, more Atari stuff I’ll have bought by then, but for now, I’ll finish with something on another modern replica of an old classic… 

Before The Spectrum arrived at the end of November, I put together a list of a few games to play first – mostly old favourites I’d played on the old rubber keyboard at the time, and wanted to experience again on its new one, like Daley Thompson’s Decathlon and Chequered Flag, as well as inevitable all-time favourites like Feud and Olli and Lissa, plus a handful of text adventures I’d always wanted to play but never got around to… Once I was done with The Hobbit that came built-in (covered here),  of course! Anyway, top of the list after that was Dracula, which I remember causing quite the stir back in 1986 when it became the first game to get rated by BBFC, although I’m sure CRL would have preferred an 18-certificate to the 15-certificate it got for even more notoriety. It’s laughable to think that the “gory images” behind these ratings could also lead to it being banned from sale by some retailers, especially when they’re so few and far between, with most of the game played out in pure text, that could really have done with being more readable over spooky-looking! It all plays out across three standalone chapters, which I think came on three separate cassettes, making it more expensive than my pocket money would allow for, hence never playing it at the time. “First Night” has our young solicitor, Jonathan Harker, arriving in Carpathia, en-route to Castle Dracula, and having a very strange time in a hotel. “The Arrival” then has us ending up in a bit of an undead fix we then need escape, while “The Hunt” has us playing Dr Seward, investigating the weird ramblings of an insane asylum patient and an even weirder letter from a friend abroad on business… It’s all faithful to the original novel but adapted for the purpose, and it’s well-written and very atmospheric, flowing in a reasonably logical way (although some knowledge of the book doesn’t hurt) that will make you think but without tearing your hair out when it comes to puzzles, and using a basic but intuitive and equally logical parser. And yes, those occasional “digitised” scenes are a real treat too! Good game, and while I’m only just starting the third chapter, I’m really looking forward to getting into Jack the Ripper (which was rated 18!) if and when I’m done.

Right, that’s going to do us for this week, but in case you missed it last Wednesday, the brand new year brought with it the perfect opportunity for some Retro Arcadia Game of the Year 2025 Predictions, with loads to look forward to and trailers for everything! Then check back again next Wednesday, when normal service finally resumes after the festive period, and we head back exactly forty years for the very latest in video gaming, including some real all-time greats reviewed… It’s Retro Rewind: January 1985 in Computer & Video Games, straight from the pages of the original magazine. By the way, I’m now covered for one of these every month without any gaps for the next eight years! Hopefully see you for this one first though!

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