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…

Downright ancient to begin with though, and another batch of Atari 2600 games for my not-so-fledgling-anymore collection! We’ll go with 1983’s Phoenix first, an arcade port that, according to my Top Ten Favourite Fixed / Single-Screen Shoot ‘Em Ups countdown, I prefer over the original! It’s as faithful as you could hope for, with multiple stages, the big boss at the end, fantastic visuals throughout, so much variety and so much action! Next is an action-adventure from 1982 by the name of E.T. The Extra Terrestrial that’s way better than the hype suggests, especially if you read the instructions! Yes, it’s over-egged and under-cooked in several respects, but you can’t fault its ambition, and I like how it looks and mostly how it plays across six screens (plus pits!), finding what you need to “phone home.” And no one can deny it’s a piece of gaming history! No one can deny that Ghostbusters from 1985 is a movie tie-in done totally right either. It’s an impressively not very scaled-back version of one of the Commodore 64’s finest, with you setting up your own ghost-busting franchise, patrolling the city catching ghosts and keeping the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man at bay, then going for Zuul if all’s gone well. It’s understandably barebones but the game I love is all there, and it’s even got the theme tune too! 

A couple more arcade conversions next, starting with another of the best of them, Popeye from 1983, and actually, everything I just said about Ghostbusters also applies here! It’s a single-screen platformer, with you going up and down and all around, catching a certain number of whatever Olive is chucking down to you from the top while avoiding Bluto, as well as Sea Hag’s projectiles. Grab it all and you move to the next of three levels, which are authentic if basic, and that goes for the presentation too, but not the gameplay, which is just about spot-on! The last of our arcade ports for now is 1982’s Joust, which probably couldn’t be much better and is fine but isn’t quite enough for me – I think if I had a player two it might make all the difference though. It’s recognisable but really cut-down, and while the flying knights knocking each other off their buzzards gameplay more or less feels right, there’s not a lot going on in this version, and it soon gets a bit tedious playing solo. 

Enter Midnight Magic to the rescue, where I’ve had exactly the opposite problem, and genuinely struggle to put it down! It’s a pinball game from 1985 that I’ve never really played before, with some impressive ball physics (for a square!) and plenty of features across the table, with drop targets, bonus multipliers and rollovers, and optional extra drains or blockers for a bit more or less challenge, as you desire. In fact, all it’s missing is nudge and tilt, which were in its wonderful predecessor, Video Pinball, all the way back in 1980, but are weirdly absent here. You soon don’t miss them though, and once you’ve got to grips with a few of its scoring mechanics, going for high scores is so much fun, to the point that this game is now playing havoc with an upcoming feature on my top ten favourite pinball games, which was all done and dusted but I can see me having to come back to it at some point in the future now this has come along! Anyway, nice problem to have, and another excellent batch of new old carts! 

A few weeks back, in my March 1985 Retro Rewind feature, I said I wanted to go back to Gift From The Gods on the ZX Spectrum, which was getting plenty of attention in the copy of Computer & Video Games magazine we were looking at. I did get it myself a couple of years later too, but as impressive as this sprawling, Ancient Greek action-adventure still was, it was also one of those games where I had no idea what was going on, and just wandered aimlessly to find cool new things to see instead. Which is why I thought it might be nice to go back to, which I’ve done, and I even read my original instructions this time too, although given its setting in an underground labyrinth, the dynamic maze structure (where locations move depending on where you enter them from) and my terrible sense of direction, it was still pretty aimless regardless! Whatever, you play as Orestes, who’s avenging the murder of his father, King Agamemnon, by collecting magical Euclidian shapes to restore his power, put a stop his evil mother, and generally please the gods. All very epic and totally nonsensical, and not helped by a load of these shapes being fakes, which you need to weed out by killing the monsters behind these illusions, or getting some help from your sister, who’s also been trapped down there. Now, keeping in mind I’ve just come out as an E.T. apologist, I don’t think I like this game! Yes, I was completely lost all the time, with all the doors and exits upwards and downwards, not to mention regular left and right, all becoming as one within mere seconds, but even so, beyond the big sprites and nice animation that could keep us happy for hours four decades ago, I just found the gameplay to be dull, the occasional combat clunky, and the almost-silence really annoying. As much as I always still try to see the best in any game, I think I saw the best in this one first time around after all. 

Well, at least I did what I said I would and had a look at it again! There was actually a competition in the magazine that involved making a map for the game, so maybe we can try again if they published the winner’s when we get to it in another Retro Rewind in a couple of months. Or maybe not! That’s going to do us for this week though, but in case you missed it last Wednesday, do check out a sporting countdown I might be uniquely unqualified to share, but as the MLB season is fast approaching, I thought we’d give it a go anyway… It’s my Top Ten Favourite Baseball Games! Then next Wednesday, a really special one for me, and one of those holy-grail retro-gaming moments when you find a new all-time favourite (and an old classic!), as we discover Ico on PlayStation 2. Hopefully see you then! 

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