Back again for my 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. Thankfully no more building work to report this week though! House to ourselves again, now just have to finish painting it all… Which is why I’ve barely even touched Silent Hill 2 Remake yet, after it surprise-dropped on Xbox on Friday at 50% off, no less! All that waiting for it means another week to tell you what I think won’t hurt I suppose, and I do have some other stuff for you in the meantime, so let’s take a look!

Not for the first time in my life, I’m totally hooked on Galaxian! I covered the new Atari 50 Namco DLC here last Sunday, which I’ve got on Switch, and includes no less than three versions, although regrettably, none are the original from 1979, which may well be the first arcade game I ever played! Instead, there’s the Atari 2600 port, which is one of its best, and the near-identical Atari 5200 and Atari 800 home computer conversions – in fact, as far as I can tell, the only difference resulted from the console’s less precise analog controls versus the computer’s digital, but these are normalised on modern controllers, so it’s actually odd they’re both here. Anyway, I’ve gone for the console one, simply for one place to save my high scores, and I prefer its border in this collection! Either way though, it’s all you could want from a home version in 1982, with only the sound effects a bit less ominous than the original’s relentless rhythmic throb and high-pitched wail announcing the invading aliens, peeling off from the main attack formation to dive-bomb you! As seemingly simple as that may be, it’s amazing to think what a step-up in gameplay it provided over its inspiration, Space Invaders, too, introducing new demands on your shooting skills as well as making it a much more dynamic challenge overall. Apart from that, it’s left and right along the bottom of the screen business as usual – so elegant, so effortlessly playable, and still utterly addictive! Full of its own character too, with the arcade version’s pioneering use of sprite colouring and animation well replicated here, in turn replicating the unique personality of the more insect-like menagerie of enemies you’re shooting at. Which they’ve also nailed here! Just a very fine conversion(s)!

Despite never actually finishing either of them, I liked what I played of the two mainline Octopath Traveler games a lot, so I was right onboard when I came across the generous new three-hour demo of the upcoming prequel, Octopath Traveler 0, on Xbox the other day! It’s still the same absolutely gorgeous “HD-2D” JRPG format, mixing modern, old-school pixel art with high-definition polygonal environments and some fancy special effects, and the soundtrack is once again outstanding, while the gameplay itself is as slick as ever, but for better or worse, there’s more… Firstly, you’re starting from the titular “zero” and creating your own character, which is a first in this series, and honestly I could do without, but not as much as I could do without cooking and farming and stupid town-building, especially when I’ve been through exactly the same totally superfluous problem with otherwise game of the year contender, Ball x Pit (more later)! After a bit of a prologue getting everything ready for said town’s annual Day of Reverance (when you’ll also get to know the game’s systems), it gets attacked and burnt down mid-festivity, leaving you to decide if you’ll then follow the path of restoration or the path of revenge… Yeah, take a guess! Along the way, you’ll be hooking-up with a cast of thirty possible fellow “travelers” and forming a party of up to eight at once, which is probably pushing the limit of the always-elegant turn-based Break and Boost battle system, but does make for some thrilling strategic encounters. The narrative is fine too, complemented by an expansive and varied world to explore across what I understand is about a hundred hours of actual game, although I also understand a significant part of it has evolved from another prequel, 2020’s mobile-only, (very) free-to-play Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent, thankfully minus all the crap! I’ve certainly had a good time with what I’ve played so far, and while I won’t be rushing out to buy the full version at full price, I’m sure I’ll get my money’s worth out of it in a sale at some point in the future. 

I’ve also had The Spectrum on the go for the last few days – the more or less authentic rubber-keyed reincarnation of the original 8-bit machine that must have launched just about a year ago now. And my main motivation for doing so was Ocean’s 1985 movie tie-in, Rambo: First Blood Part II, having just returned from wandering around where the first one was filmed near Vancouver, which sadly didn’t get a game at the time… Probably for the best though, given that this one reaches its high point on the loading screen you can see at the top of the page here! Once you’re beyond that, things get equal parts boring and frustrating, capped off by an unnecessarily long piece of very-Spectrum chip-tune every time you die, that you just have to sit out before another sniff of any action! Not that there’s a huge amount of that either, with your not-very-Rambo sauntering around mostly black screens populated by the occasional green tree or white rock or red blob, with annoying enemy soldiers that like nothing better than moving in for the kill from an adjacent screen faster than it can chug into view, and then it’s time for that music again! To its credit, things do pick up once you’ve found a few weapons and get in the prison camp bit, where you’re trying to rescue your PoW friends, and you can fly a chopper, and you might even briefly stop pining for its similar but far superior very close contemporary Commando, but I mean “briefly” because you can finish Rambo in less than five minutes once you know which direction to go at this point! Not that Commando’s first loop takes much longer, but as I knew perfectly well when I embarked on this journey back into ‘Nam again, just play the Spectrum port of that instead!

And on that literal bombshell, we’ll call it quits for this week because, although I’ve also finished Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater again, and can’t be far off the credits of the aforementioned Ball x Pit by now, they were covered here and here respectively already if you’d like to know more. In case you missed it last Wednesday though, believe it or not, we made a start on a busy schedule of festive programming! Not that it’s festive in the slightest, but this series has become a tradition at this time of year to kick-off the season, and I’m talking about Wonderful Sights in Gaming Part 5, where we’re taking a look at another bunch of gaming scenes that have left an impression on me over the years. Then next Wednesday, do come back for another regular feature that isn’t festive at all, but it is the end of November, so it’s time for the Retro Arcadia Gaming Pickups Autumn 2025 Recap, covering all the retro games and related stuff I shouldn’t have been spending money on over the past three months! Hopefully see you then!

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