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…

Something else to tick-off on my PlayStation Portable shopping list to start with, and Everybody’s Golf, which I think was a European launch title when I first got that wonderful handheld back in 2005, but was actually the fifth in the series. It was on my shopping list because of a much later entry with the same name though… I’m a big fan of Everybody’s Golf from 2017 on PS4, and while messing around with it again on there recently, I thought it must be a really good fit on the PSP too, where I’ve always had a good time with the similarly approachable but totally different vibe of Neo Turf Masters on the SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1 compilation. And here we are! It’s equal parts cute and gorgeous, with some truly spectacular courses to gradually unlock and get to grips with across a bunch of game modes, and the better you rank, the more other stuff you’ll unlock as well, with all sorts of different playable characters, costumes and other prizes. As usual though, the mass of customisation here is totally lost on me, just like the various multiplayer options, although given the PSP’s inability to connect to virtually anything anymore, no choice regardless. There’s plenty to keep the solo player busy though, with single game stroke play taking you all over the world, a big Challenge Mode, a Putt Golf mode and training too. Gameplay is the standard three-press system for power and impact, with the latter also subject to spin if you wish, and reading the conditions and also the lie of the green is visually intuitive, and it all just combines perfectly for as good a game of golf as you could ever hope for in a video game! The different courses really are stunning too, with detailed, sweeping (and daunting!) landscapes successfully contrasting with bold anime characters, and the special effects and excellent camera work giving the game far more life than the reality of the sport might suggest, just like the cartoon sound-board and easy-going soundtrack. And it’s all exactly what I wanted from it! 

I’ve been toying with an upcoming pinball game top ten countdown for a few weeks now, but digging out my old original PlayStation copy of Pro Pinball: Timeshock! for a bit of a refresh for it has slowed my pondering right down! This is fascinating to me because around the time it first came out was when I was playing more proper pinball than I ever have at any other time, and I distinctly remember thinking this was as close as a video game would ever get to the real thing! Nowadays though, while it still plays a very fine game of pinball, more than anything it takes me back to the pub in 1997, which I’m sure might also influence its inclusion in any future countdown! It was the second in the Pro Pinball series from Empire Interactive, and had a single table that looked so realistic it was like you were standing in front on it – you can virtually feel the thickness of the glass on the top! Those colours and the lights too, and you’ve got four camera angles and several gameplay modes, and while it does take a few video game liberties with things like dynamic graphical overlays, they’re more in the interests of keeping everything on the table in front of you than adding bells and whistles, and still look the part regardless. Which reminds me, it sounds the part too, and those flipper noises are the best you’ll ever hear! The game itself revolves around time travel, completing themed objectives across different periods of time for big points, and there’s a crazy amount of variety in there for something so tightly packed on a single screen! And I mentioned the thickness of the glass before but everything has a real weight here – you can almost feel doing a real-life nudge every time! Perhaps it’s not the most sophisticated pinballer nowadays but I reckon it’s still as proper as it gets!

Over the past eighteen months or so, I’ve been lucky enough to have two of those Holy Grail retro-gaming moments, where you discover a new all-time favourite for the first time, and I think Dune on the Commodore Amiga is about to join Metal Gear Solid and Ico as another! This is a part point-and-click(-ish) adventure and part real-time strategy game developed by Cryo Interactive and published by Virgin in 1992, after the Dune-obsessed founder of Mastertronic (later Virgin Interactive) finally got hold of the rights and it evolved from there. When I inevitably get to a deep-dive on this I’ll fill in the huge gaps I just left! I’m going to skip the incredibly convoluted plot for now too, based on Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi novel but maybe influenced more by David Lynch’s 1985 film adaptation; in fact the CD-based versions of this that followed do feature video and dialog from that. Anyway, it’s Star Wars for nerds, and you play the role of the son of the duke of one of a handful of families that run the galaxy for the big (bad?) emperor, recently arrived on the desert planet of Arrakis, or Dune, the sole source of Spice Melange, the mysterious all-powerful drug used for everything, and the real source of control in the galaxy, which you need to get at and make sure your arch-enemy family doesn’t. Oh yeah, it turns out you might also be the messiah the locals have been waiting for! 

The adventure bit of the game moves all parts of that story along in a pretty linear way, with you moving between areas and locations, using mouse icons, dialogue trees and various maps to interact with the people you find, getting things done and working out where to go next. Which often involves switching to the kind of top-down, real-time strategy bit, where you need to maintain an increasingly fine balance between mining Spice and developing military and ecological power, mixed with a bit of politics, and all done through similarly simple text-based command and icon-driven system. I’ve gone way too long already here but it’s intuitive and relatively light, as long as you pay attention to the emerging story, which adds more depth than is really there and is all so seamlessly interwoven that it never seems like you’re switching between two distinct game types. Some very atmospheric pixel art on offer too, and as 16-bit as can be, with bold use of limited colours sucking you right in, and cartoonish cutscenes and big-sized face models adding all the character you need. The top-down maps are pretty simplistic but set in some lovely surrounds, especially when you’re in an ornithopter, or maybe even a worm, where you’ll also get cool 3D view between locations. And the exotic soundtrack is just sublime! I’ve now gone twice as long as I intended but I love it and I’ve still barely scratched the surface here! I still want to play through it again too because I think l might be able to focus less on the military side of things and more on others during the second half of the game. And then there’s the Sega-CD version with all the FMV… Okay, I’m a born-again Dune fanboy, but I haven’t been this engrossed in any game for a long time! 

Sorry if you’re not into Dune but quite the groundbreaking game for the time I think, so hopefully not too boring, and we’ll definitely call it a day there anyway! In case you missed it last Wednesday though, do still join me to count down my Top Ten Favourite Commodore Amiga Fighting Games, where we might not agree about what’s there and in what order but at the very least we can still marvel at what you can do with a joystick and one button! Then next Wednesday, it’s going to be almost March, so it’s time for the Retro Arcadia Gaming Pickups Winter 2024-25 Recap, a seasonal feature covering all the retro games and related stuff I shouldn’t have been spending money on over the last three months… And there’s tons this time so hopefully see you then for that! 

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