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. Actually, I think it’s all a bit of both this time! I’m going to start covering what was a flurry of new releases for Evercade this week… Or at least was supposed to be, because stupid Amazon have delayed delivery on two of them! Not the end of the world for our purposes here though because I think I’m going to have a proper look at all five of them in turn for the next few weeks, starting with Activision Collection 1 today. Before we get to that though, something I promised to get into here last week!

There have been several occasions over the past year or so that I’ve very seriously considered buying a PlayStation 5, just so I could get my hands on Silent Hill 2 Remake. The 2001 original means the world to me, not only being a top five favourite game of all time, but I reckon I now know the place almost as well as the town I grew up in, although admittedly there are a lot of similarities! Anyway, I held off and my patience finally paid off when the Xbox Series X version (and I assume Series S too) not only appeared out of nowhere last week, but was 50% off the regular price as well! And it’s a beautiful thing, reverently familiar but elegantly new and exquisitely modernised, and like all good remakes, probably exactly how you’d remember the original in your mind, assuming you didn’t still have a game on the go on one console or the other at any given moment! The groundbreaking psychological horror-filled narrative is relatively untouched though, as you once again take on the role of James Sunderland, who’s returned to he and his dead wife’s special place after he received a mysterious letter from her summoning him back there. The most beautiful fog you’ve seen anywhere since the first time around is obviously there too, as well as the disturbing cast of monsters, seemingly human or otherwise, which of course also includes the iconic (and most disturbing of all) Pyramid Head! The town itself is stunning – as detailed as it is horrific, and the sound design is a whole new level of atmospheric, exactly as you’d expect, and the same for the soundtrack… And believe it or not, even the voice-acting isn’t terrible! The combat is still comfortably unsophisticated though, but is perfectly adequate, while the refreshed puzzles remain varied, challenging and well-crafted, often directing the narrative and dictating the pace, and always complementing the relentless tension and sense of dread. And without spoiling anything, there are moments where both are suddenly turned up to eleven, and the panic sets in, and you realise you’re having the absolute best time, even if it can never quite be the first time again! 

Right, onto the first of those Evercade compilations I mentioned earlier, Activision Collection 1, which marks what I hope is just the beginning of a very welcome series for me at least! It’s a collection of fifteen Atari 2600 titles from the early eighties, most of which came from what I think was the very first third-party video game developer, although there’s at least one here they picked-up from acquisitions along the way. I’ll quickly run through the games in a sec, but as usual with these, they’re all on a cartridge that comes in a box with a really nice manual – originally, these things often came with War and Peace despite their general simplicity, and the folks at Blaze have done a great job making the instructions digestible! Firing it up will then give you the regular Evercade (sortable) menu experience, with various display and other options on offer, and a button press taking you to an attractive title screen with an overview of each game, controls, stats and direct access to your last save-state. You also get a handy list of different game modes, which was typical of 2600 games, and will save you a lot of messing around in-game! Moving onto the games, I’ll try and give you a sentence on each in turn, starting with Beamrider, which is a fantastic vector-style 3D shoot ‘em up that borrows heavily from the Juno First arcade game but is an absolute highlight on the system in its own right. Crackpots is probably the only game here I’m not that familiar with, and has you dropping plant pots on insects invading your garden, and while it’s very simple, it’s addictive as heck! I covered Demon Attack in a deep-dive here a while back, and although it’s missing the greatest box art of any game ever here, everything else is as wonderful as ever – increasingly frantic single-screen shooter, originally from Imagic, that’s as beloved as it is for very good reason! 

Which also goes for Enduro, the pioneering chase-view 3D racer with days, nights and all sorts of weather in-between, and is probably my overall highlight in this collection, and I could literally keep playing forever once I get going! I’m also very fond of our next two games but they really need to be played two-player to get the most out of them, with Fishing Derby a simple competition to get the biggest fish against the clock (and a giant shark!), while Freeway is like a simplified Frogger where you want to get your chicken across the road as many times as possible before time runs out; loads of game modes on this one too. Grand Prix is a simple but fun side-on racer where you’re avoiding other racers and various hazards to get the best times over four courses, but as primitive as it might seem now, those big cars were something else at the time! Megamania is another excellent single-screen shoot ‘em up that’s a bit Arcadia meets Galaxian, with loads of variety of enemies and it’s just so well executed, and once again, really hard to put down. Pitfall is another of the collection’s big-hitters, and another real pioneer, not to mention a near-miracle on the system, as you take the legendary Pitfall Harry treasure hunting across 255 deadly jungle-based platforming screens. Private Eye reminds me a lot of the much-maligned ET, where you’re driving your detective around a similarly constructed town, looking for clues, evidence and stolen items to return while avoiding Henri Le Fiend’s dastardly henchmen. More depth than most here, full of character and definitely worth getting to grips with!

River Raid might well be the biggest-hitter here, and is probably worth the price of entry alone as it rarely appears on 2600 compilations – vertically-scrolling shooter with you blasting boats, helicopters, fighter jets and bridges through branching paths while desperately trying to keep your fuel topped-up. It’s gorgeous, it moves great, and it’s an undisputed masterpiece!  Less so Sky Jinks but I’ve always loved this one, with you guiding a plane around pylons, avoiding trees and hot air balloons, over several courses (including a procedurally generated one) against the clock, and it turns out that can be a very compelling proposition! Space Shuttle is undoubtedly one of the most ambitious games ever created for the 2600, and is also where that lovely manual from earlier is really going to come into play! It’s a full-on space shuttle simulation that genuinely took you into space at the time, even if that’s hard to believe now; will also do everything for you if you don’t fancy all those instructions! Starmaster adds a bit more combat to your space flight, playing like a watered-down (in a good way!) take on Star Raiders or its successor Solaris (my favourite game on the system), with you warping about, taking down alien threats and managing your ship’s energy, and it’s a really great time! Last game is Tennis, another pretty pioneering game that did a very good impression of the sport for the time, with a bit of nuance and a competitive back and forth despite being decidedly primitive by today’s standards. I guess that goes for most of the stuff in this collection though, but, assuming it is the first of a series (because there are some big omissions), I wouldn’t change a thing. Nostalgia no doubt helps its cause but great gameplay is timeless and there’s loads of that on offer here too!

There you go Evercade, stick that on the box! Right, that’s all I’ve got for you this week, but in case you missed it last Wednesday, the approaching end of November meant it was time for the Retro Arcadia Gaming Pickups Autumn 2025 Recap, a regular seasonal feature covering all the retro games and related stuff I shouldn’t have been spending money on over the past three months! Then next Wednesday, it’s a regular monthly feature this time, when the incoming start of December will mean we’re heading back exactly 40 years for the very latest in video gaming with Retro Rewind: December 1985 in Computer & Video Games, straight from the pages of the original magazine! And as said earlier, next Sunday I’ll get to the next of those new Evercade carts here too, when I think I’ll get into NEOGEO Arcade 2. In the meantime, have a good one!

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