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. Not a huge amount to report outside of gaming – enjoying the long Easter weekend so far, and looking forward to making myself ill from too much chocolate later!  We’ve seen a couple of potential new houses too but nothing‘s really jumping out so far, or at least doesn’t need way more work doing to it than I’m currently prepared to do. If you fancy buying a 17th century farmhouse though, just leave a comment!

As teased here last week, I did dig out the Paddle & Trackball Expansion Set for the Taito Egret II Mini, and I did play some Arkanoid! This brick-breaking classic from 1986 finds you lost in space in your little Vaus ship after its mothership, Arkanoid, was destroyed by a mysterious entity called DOH, leaving you bouncing an energy ball off its conveniently paddle-like surface onto dastardly formations of space blocks that stand between you and revenge about 33 levels later. None of that nonsense matters though – it’s a fancy update of Atari’s Breakout, and was the prime reason for picking up this add-on in the first place! And as such, you simply need to bounce the ball to clear all the bricks off the screen to move on to the next one, some of which will display different behaviour – such as multiple hits to break – as you progress, and you’ll also be on the lookout for power-ups, which might extend your bat, provide a laser cannon, multi-ball or all sorts, but no matter how much I’ve played this over the years, I still can’t remember which is which when it’s falling towards you in the heat of the action! Great look though, with a clean, Tron-inspired, neon-futuristic vibe, all in the best possible eighties way, and the soundtrack is top-notch too, even if some of the sound effects are polished to the point of being a bit on the cold and clinical side. But despite its own sense of place, not to mention its inspiration harking back to the very dawn of the video game history, that gameplay loop is forever timeless, however many new features are bundled on top, although after all those years playing with a joystick on the Spectrum, these “proper” controls will never feel quite right to me! 

I’ve now solved the majority of the mysteries of my early gaming history – mostly forgotten names of arcade games I’d briefly enjoyed many years before, such as Bagman and Hydra, but there was one game I had a demo for on an old work laptop that never did ring any bells… Then Retro Gamer magazine did a feature on some Warhammer stuff a few months back, and there was a familiar-looking screenshot, captured from a game called Warhammer: Blood Omen on the original PlayStation… Mystery solved! And although it wasn’t where I’d originally played it, a quick test on emulation confirmed my hopes, and a proper copy soon followed! This was originally released in 1998 – which also ties in perfectly with when and where I remembered first playing it (on the sofa in my now-wife and I’s first flat together in East London) – and is a real-time tactical war game, obviously based on Games Workshop’s medieval fantasy tabletop games of the same name, where you command a mercenary army against The Dread King and his undead horde. There’s a load of nerdy backstory if you want it on top too, but you’re effectively going from battle to battle across the expanse of the Old World, taking on orcs, goblins, zombies, evil wizards and the like with your own infantry, cavalry, artillery and magical forces. 

Oh yeah, obviously it was mandatory for everything to be 3D around this time too (although strangely not everything here is), but in this case, it did bring different terrains to life and line of sight into play with your archers and stuff, which I seem to remember was one of the innovations that kept me going back to that demo, albeit clearly not enough to actually buy the thing for thirty years… In my defence, we were very poor back then! Anyway, it’s atmospheric and authentic enough but hardly a visual or audio feast – which would have been another factor when so much was – but in retrospect, it does what it needs to, and the interface is pretty intuitive, and once you’ve got the hang of it, getting around it with a PS1 controller isn’t too offensive either… Just a bit fiddly! There might be a bit of rose-tinted when it comes to the gameplay though – it’s fun and all but I’m not entirely convinced about how much strategy is at play against the computer. Two player too though, in the unlikely event anyone into this has a friend to play with, and there’s plenty to keep you busy solo otherwise, with persistent losses and the Warhammer narrative (complete with some, er, lovely FMV) propping up deficiencies elsewhere once you eventually work out how to win! For me at least, it might have cost more than I’d normally pay for something like this, but I reckon I’ve had my money’s worth, and not wondering what it is anymore is priceless!

Sorry, my inner nerd got totally carried away there, so I’m going to call time on this week’s proceedings! I have started playing a stupidly addictive (and stupidly pointless) new game on Steam called Raccoin though, which is a roguelike coin-pusher thing, like you used to shove all your 2p coins into at the seaside, but without even the vaguest hope of monetary reward! It’s got its own rewards though, and hopefully I’ll have made enough progress by next Sunday to get into them then. In case you missed it last Wednesday, it was once again time for our monthly trip back exactly 40 years for the very latest in video gaming with Retro Rewind: April 1986 in Computer & Video Games, straight from the pages of the original magazine! Quite the issue too, as the 16-bit machines received their first proper bit of fanfare. Hope you enjoy that, and with that, I’ll wish you a Happy Easter if that’s you bag, and also a good week ahead! 

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