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. Away from gaming, I spent a staggeringly hot day in London with work, but it did provide a spectacular view over the Thames from the rooftop terrace at the Institute of Engineering and Technology in Savoy Place! I’ve now got a stupid cold in this stupid heatwave though, which serves me right for getting on trains and mixing with people and stuff! And I finally caved in to myself and sold my car – long story but a couple of trips to Tesco every week probably didn’t justify the finance payments anymore! I’m not into cars at all but it’s the first time I’ve not had one of my own in thirty-five years though, which is weird. Anyway, games, and for someone who’s just said they’re not into cars, I’ve been almost exclusively caning Forza Horizon 6, which I covered here last week so won’t do again, but I will give you a couple of retro oddities I also finally got to…

When I was putting together the May 1986 Retro Rewind feature a month or so ago (which you can now see here), I came across the original advert from Elite for their home conversions of Ghosts ’n Goblins in Computer & Video Games magazine, and while I’ve always been familiar with the usual suspects — the Spectrum one I grew up with, the glorious Commodore 64 version with its famously brutal difficulty, and even the Amstrad CPC port that sat somewhere between the two — I had absolutely no idea the Commodore 16 and BBC Micro / Electron versions even existed, let alone had been sitting there in black and white in front of me all this time! And of course that immediately sent me down a rabbit hole, because the idea of squeezing Capcom’s 1985 side‑scrolling, zombie‑slaying arcade masterpiece, and its sprawling levels and relentlessly unforgiving enemies onto machines that were already creaking under the strain of far simpler games by then is exactly the kind of madness that still makes that period so fascinating! The C16 version (technically a Plus/4 release but fully compatible with the base machine’s tiny 16K) is a real nice surprise, somehow managing to cram in recognisable chunks of the arcade original’s opening stages – including the giant first boss – even if everything’s been pared back to the bare essentials, and the scrolling drags itself along like one of its rotting corpses is still attached! It’s scrappy, compromised and constantly on the edge of falling apart, but it’s also wildly ambitious and really shouldn’t exist but absolutely does… Unlike the BBC / Electron version, it seems! Despite being proudly listed on that advert, I couldn’t track down any version of it anywhere, and eventually found a couple of references to it ending up cancelled. Which leaves the C16 effort standing alone then, as this strange, brave, slightly broken but undeniably impressive attempt to bring Ghosts ’n Goblins to terminal hardware that had no business running it!

I reckon the Amiga version of Dune is wonderful – an atmospheric blend of strategy, adventure and a nerd-filled tour of Arrakis, so spending proper time with the Mega‑CD (or Sega-CD) “enhancement” has been on my to-do list for ages, because while it’s still fundamentally Cryo’s 1992 take on Frank Herbert’s sci-fi masterpiece I love, this one from a year later goes big on CD‑era cinematics, which gives it a very different feel… And that’s before you get to the whole business of swapping a mouse for a controller! You’ve still got that hybrid loop of palace business and flying about the planet recruiting Fremen, spice‑mining and preparing for war, but now it’s wrapped in full‑screen FMV, lifted from the 1984 movie, with redrawn portraits (also based on the characters from there) and a richer, moodier take on an already iconic soundtrack. The real shift, though, is that feel of playing the thing I just alluded to. On the Amiga, you were gliding through menus and issuing orders almost subconsciously, but here you’re nursing a cursor around with a D‑pad and thinking about the act of selecting things rather than just doing it, which breaks the spell a bit, just as you’re settling into that compelling routine of exploring, negotiating, expanding, fighting, and then doing it all again until the nasty Harkonnen finally get what’s coming to them. CD though, innit! It is a far more theatrical game, which, in the Dune universe, does go a long way towards balancing out the slightly clunkier controls, but I think the next time I go back it will be to the original version again because immersion goes even further for me. 

Can’t wait for the next film in December! As said at the start, apart from those two when I wasn’t allowed on the TV my Xbox Series X is connected to, I’ve just been playing Forza Horizon 6, although I’m about ready for a break and really fancy going through Resident Evil 4 Remake again, so maybe we’ll have a look at how that’s standing-up next time. Oh yeah, returning to my Retro Rewind features from earlier too, all the way back last July, I also promised to look at a couple of ZX Spectrum games here that I’ve never played before, and I’ve never forgotten about but just haven’t got to yet, so before we reach another anniversary of those being released, I’ll see if I can get to at least one of them next Sunday too! And in the meantime, do check back on Wednesday when it will be time for yet another one of those journeys back exactly 40 years for the very latest in video gaming with Retro Rewind: June 1986 in Computer & Video Games, straight from the pages of the original magazine! Hopefully see you then!

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