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…

More in-roads into my PlayStation Portable shopping list for starters, with Colin McRae Rally 2005 Plus, which originally arrived all over the place (even N-Gage!) in 2004, and while PS2 or Xbox is probably where you’ll get the most out of it, I do love a rally game almost as much as I move my PSP, so here we are! As with its predecessors, we’re talking rally racing simulation, and this entry brought new levels of realism to the party, in part down to its new graphics engine but mostly its new damage engine, from messing up your paintwork to dynamic driving effects based on specific problems you’ve brought upon yourself by playing it like Sega Rally regardless! (Which is also on my shopping list so watch this space). Although the mass of multiplayer and content sharing options options are pretty much redundant now, there’s still a huge amount to keep you busy here, with a career mode spanning thirty cars to race across seventy stages in nine countries, plus standalone rallies, championships, time trials and ghost-car events. It’s going to make you work for getting anywhere in any of them though – even for a rally game, steering at speed is seriously twitchy and is going to take some taming, but the analog nub soon feels right even if winning anything is still something else entirely, especially when some excellent weather effects kick in! You are very reliant on your co-driver’s instructions too, which fortunately are also excellent, as is the rest of the in-race sound. Lots of nice scenery to enjoy too – this is a very good-looking game with pretty much PS2 levels of detail and lighting, which does mean performance occasionally takes a hit but it’s a small price to pay. Unfortunately, some hefty loading times are a bigger price, and I’d like a few more auto setup or repair options, but once you’re on your way, this is exactly the game I was hoping for.

A quick look at everything on Atari Arcade 2 for Evercade now, which came out a couple of weeks ago but I was saving for the my birthday the other day. It’s ten games from the early eighties that I think are mostly titles Atari picked up from Stern, a few of which will be familiar (meaning you probably own them several times over already) but it’s mostly a pretty fresh and intriguing mix. We’ll go into each in turn in a sec but as usual with these, it’s all on a cartridge in a real box with an excellent manual covering histories as well as instructions, plus some stickers, and you’re also getting slick, sortable on-screen menus, game info screens, quick saves, limited TATE mode handheld (because you need all the buttons you can’t reach this way round), and the recent addition of DIP-switch settings for exactly these kind of games, which we’ll have a sentence or two on each of now, starting with Berzerk. This is from 1980, and you’re trying to escape a vast, top-down electric maze full of killer robots you can try and get rid of entirely from each screen for extra points, but take too long and the legendary Evil Otto will be after you! Like most of what’s here, it’s very simple to look at but his madcap primitive speech will never get old, and likewise the relentlessly addictive gameplay.  Frenzy (pictured below) is its 1982 follow-up, offering similar maze-shooter gameplay but with loads more going on, more variety, and more Evil Otto! Not sure it’s quite as widespread today as its predecessor but it’s another good ‘un! Tazz-Mania doesn’t involve a Looney Tunes looney but is a kind of Robotron-type arena shooter with a twist, because as if that wasn’t frantic enough, the walls are closing in on you too! Although it’s been around since 1982, I’d never even heard of it before, so that’s an added bonus on top of a fun game. I do know Lost Tomb though, another 1982 overhead shooter of sorts, not unlike Frenzy, but twin-stick and with a hint of Indiana Jones, as you collect treasure along the way through this big, non-linear pyramid. Possibly my favourite thing on here! Maze Invaders isn’t far behind though – a fast, loose and very dynamic take on something like Lock ‘n Chase, with you collecting stuff and escaping each constantly shifting screen. Unfortunately, it never saw the light of day in 1981 after it failed field-testing, but I reckon it was the field-testers that failed because this is also fantastic! 

Unlike Moon War, which comes from 1981 and is something like Asteroids on a scrolling backdrop. It’s fine but not exactly welcoming, and might demand more of the modern player than they’re prepared to give it. Glad it’s here to be discovered though! Dark Planet is also going to take some effort, which the folks at Blaze have certainly gone to with this 1982 obscurity. It originally came overlaid on a modelled plastic backdrop, with a 3D effect created by reflecting different colours across the cabinet, and they’ve completely recreated it for inclusion here, and while it’s also not the most immediate of shoot ‘em ups, and it’s tough to see bullets (especially playing handheld), what you’re getting is pretty cool. 1982’s Rescue is a more straightforward prospect, with you in a rescue helicopter picking hapless paratroopers from the sea while fending off enemy aircraft, submarines and sharks. It’s bright and breezy with some nice early parallax effects, and is another nice discovery here. Which means Minefield is too… It came a year later in 1983, and is kind of a rebuild of Rescue, with the same look and feel but this time you’re in a tank crossing horizontal-scrolling enemy ground, a bit like Moon Patrol meets Breakthru, and it’s a lot of fun once you get into it. Last up is Fire Truck (pictured at the top in a fancy surround from elsewhere), all the way from 1979, with you controlling the titular vehicle from above, racing across the top-down, multidirectionally-scrolling town, although in reality, you’re nursing it around like a rally car on ice! It’s monochrome but impressively atmospheric, and while it’s always been better two-player as originally intended (with cab and trailer controlling separately), you soon get used to it solo plus computer, and I’ve always enjoyed it this way in its frequent appearances on other compilations. Glad to have it here too though, and same for Berzerk, but the real value in this compilation is in what you don’t often get elsewhere, as ancient and inaccessible as some of it might be, and I’m very pleased to have received it! 

Lots of stuff there so we’ll call it a day for now, but in case you missed it last Wednesday, do check out our regular monthly trip back exactly 40 years for the very latest in video gaming in Retro Rewind: May 1985 in Computer & Video Games, straight from pages of the original magazine! Then next Wednesday, be sure to look in again when we’ll be rediscovering World Games on Commodore 64… The black sheep in a fantastic series or just misunderstood? Hope to see you then to find out!

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