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. Apart from ending up battered and bruised from demolishing an old pig-sty (long story but I should have left it to bigger boys!), about all that’s gone on outside of gaming is finally pulling the plug on Sky Sports and Sky Cinema after twenty-three years, which I’ve been threatening to do for way too long, mainly down to my increasing disinterest in Formula One and an ongoing dearth of new movies I’m interested in, and is going to save me almost £100 a month for what’s left, which I’d also get rid of if it wasn’t for the wife! Anyway, something else I also threatened to do last time out here was abandon Death Stranding, but after finding out the episodes making up the last third of the game were way shorter than the preceding ones, I did plough on through the final ten hours or so, and now I’m all done with it! It really was good too, and I enjoyed it far more than I’d have ever believed before I was a few hours in, even if it ended up being more demanding on my time than I needed it to be. In retrospect, not a moment wasted though. You can check out my earlier impressions here, or otherwise, let’s get on to what else I’ve been playing… 

I’m still totally smitten with the NeoGeo Limited Edition Super Pocket handheld console, which I covered – together with all the games that come with it – a few weeks back right here. However, as alluded to last week, what I’ve mostly been playing of late on there is definitely NeoGeo-related but was actually the headline act on the separate (and fully-compatible) Windjammers, Karnov & Friends cartridge for Evercade from a couple of months back… Which also happens to be one of my favourite games ever! Originally from 1994, Windjammers is like tennis with a frisbee, or a souped-up, powered-up version of Pong. It plays best multiplayer too but no choice except solo here (like I have a choice anyway!), which is still full of variety, depth and strategy all the same, and when you get properly in tune (and used to playing it on what’s effectively an Evercade d-pad on this), it’s an absolute joy, and everything about it still oozes quality, even on a small screen! Battery charging breaks aside, I’ve barely put it down while sat watching telly of an evening all week again, but even so, it’s still battering me way before I get even halfway through all the international opponents and increasingly chaotic arenas! I’m sure it used to be easier than this… Was never more fun though, with each game playing at a wild and unpredictable pace, and each playable or opposing character having their own way of playing and a unique move-set to get to grips with. The sights and sounds are super-polished and peak-nineties too, but unlike certain other things also at their peak back then, this will never get old! 

Another relatively recent pickup now, and another compilation – the Atari RealSports Collection. Although the majority of a this series weren’t firsts on the Atari 2600 console – and in some cases were little more than updates to existing titles – they were a sign of Atari upping their multiplayer sports game in direct response to Mattel pulling no punches with theirs on the Intellivision. Between 1982 and 1987, there were six titles released altogether, and back in 2024 they were bundled on a single cart for the updated Atari 2600+ console, although it also works on the 7800+, as well being backwards-compatible with the respective original hardware. It’s got the unreleased at the time RealSports Basketball on there too, so seven games in total, which are all accessible through variations of the four DIP-switches on the back, and it comes in a nice authentic box with an authentically weighty manual too! I’m going to quickly run through each of the games in turn now, starting with the first in the series, 1982’s RealSports Baseball, which is also the perfect showcase for the depth found in all of these games despite everything happening on a joystick with a single button! It’s a fully-featured nine-innings game with directional at-bat, runner control (including stealing bases, multiple pitch-types and intuitive fielding. Not exactly a looker but it’s all there, and as fun as it is impressive once you know the ropes. RealSports Basketball was developed in 1983 but, as said, was pulled before release for what I assume was video games crash reasons, but I don’t think it’s that great either. It’s two-on-two for one or two players (also the case for all these games) and most have loads of game variations too, which is one thing I can’t fault this one for – there are loads, covering everything from foul detection to intensity of defense! Presentation is understandably simple but thoughtful and atmospheric, and it’s easy to pick-up, but it’s also very finicky and there’s no flow to the game as a result. I’m following the order of the manual and just realised it’s alphabetical, so RealSports Boxing next, which was the last of the series in 1987, and is very much reflected in the very impressive visuals and equally impressive depth to the gameplay, which is a strategic back and forth against a variety of unique characters. I’m not much into boxing but this is good!

Back to 1982 for RealSports Football next, which might not have the looks of the latter-day last game but definitely has the moves! It’s a simplified take on American football but not so simple that you won’t need the instructions to hand for your first few goes, with both offensive and defensive play calls spread out across all the joystick directions, and that’s before you start trying to get the patterns and timings down! Like its subject matter, it’s not the most instantly accessible but might be the most rewarding… Unlike RealSports Soccer, which is a ridiculously dumbed-down and generally crap three-on-three take on the game from 1983, with possibly the laziest set of instructions ever, by someone whose knowledge of the game is about as deep as their spell-checker! That said, there’s still worse old footy games out there! Right, RealSports Tennis next, and it’s a very good game of tennis from 1983 that’s quite the pioneer too, with stuff like a 3D court (and a proper net), multicoloured sprites, decent ball physics, and you can even put your own initials on the scoreboard, which I think was a first for the system! Good flow to the game too, with proper scoring, three different shot types and decent AI if you’re playing solo, with more or less skilful difficulty levels too. But it’s still not the best thing on here! That would be 1982’s RealSports Volleyball, which is also one of my top-ten favourite games on the Atari 2600, offering an effortlessly playable and very atmospheric two-on-two game of beach volleyball. The beach is the star too, with rolling waves and a day-night cycle that eventually takes away the crutch of being able to see the ball’s shadow, while the players’ animations more than make up for their relative simplicity, and the sound is all you could hope for. Serving, setting, hitting and spiking the ball is so easy, as is controlling your side of the net, and it’s such a good time, and the perfect way to end our look at what’s on here. Which might include a couple of duds but there’s more than enough to keep you busy and very happy for a very long time regardless! 

Like many others at the time, I’d long since moved on from the ZX Spectrum when Extreme arrived in 1991, but to this day I’ve never stopped being impressed by any game that breaks all the rules on there, and there are few that breaks them like this! And yes, predictably I am talking about the impossible number of colours over-filling every inch of the screen with barely a hint of colour-clash, although I will also note it’s a 48K-only game, despite the equally remarkable tune playing on the title screen… Which I believe was lifted from the almost as miraculous at the time Trantor from a few years earlier. And the rest of the game was built using the Dan Dare 3 engine, which will also jump out at you almost as much as the wonderfully garish palette if you’ve ever played it! Unfortunately, the game itself is a bit of a mess – not terrible but let’s just say the presentation clearly came first, resulting in little more than a pretty short-lived (and relatively pricey) tech-demo. It’s a multi-directional space shoot ‘em up of sorts, where you’re trying to stop an alien computer’s self-destruct sequence taking out Earth with it, involving three levels that see you retrieving an energy crystal on a little space hover-thing, then swimming through a hazardous fuel tank in a hydronaut suit, before finally strapping on a screen-spanning exo-skeleton for the final showdown. Every single level is a contender for as good as the Spectrum ever looked, and not just for all the colours and the huge sprites, but the density of what’s going on and all the special effects and animations too, and the sound isn’t far off either – it’s very easy to forget we’re not on a 128K machine! There’s also a really lovely intro sequence (pictured at the top of the page) that has always been a wonder to me, and far more so than playing the thing, which, unfortunately, is average at best, but as a showcase for the recent The Spectrum, where I’ve been having another go at it this week, you couldn’t ask for more!

I have also played the first few chapters of Resident Evil Revelations, which I picked up for next to nothing in a PlayStation 4 sale a couple of months back, as well as dabbled with the rather wonderful surprise that was the Heretic + Hexen remastered collection, which launched straight to Xbox Game Pass on Friday, although there’s so much on there I didn’t know where to begin, so we’ll get into that next time! In case you missed it last Wednesday though, as always at the start of the month, we headed back exactly 40 years for the very latest in video gaming in Retro Rewind: August 1985 in Computer & Video Games, straight from the pages the original magazine, so do check that out! Then my next big feature will be coming a week on Wednesday, when we’ll have another instalment in an ongoing genre-spanning series that I’ve had so much fun putting together over the course of the past couple of years, and this time we’ll be counting down my Top Ten Favourite Multidirectional Shoot ‘Em Ups! And of course, I’ll see you before then next Sunday for more of this nonsense, but hopefully with a different set of games. See you then! 

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