Back again with 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. Before I get into all that though, on a vaguely related note, I’ve been reading the official movie novelisation of Return to Silent Hill. And I know I read some crap but this is something else! Not that it’s particularly badly written. It’s well-paced and descriptive and relatively “Silent Hill” but unlike its dreadful source material – which admittedly veers into so bad its good territory for an apologist of such things like me – this is just like someone writing down what’s happening while someone plays some kind of Silent Hill 2 remix next to them, then going back and compensating for obviously absent gameplay mechanics, as well as adding a lot of far less excusable padding. Again, in its defence, that’s exactly what the film version from earlier this year did, but I’m still recommending neither, so enough of that! Last week here, I certainly recommended the new NEOGEO Arcade 4 collection for Evercade though, and as also promised then, this week I’ve got a review of the other new one that arrived at the same time…

Although you could probably have made one great compilation out of the two of them, I loved both Activision Collections 1 and 2 for Evercade when they both arrived over the past seven months or so. And despite there being a few titles still missing, I thought they’d already covered the key ones, and really wasn’t expecting a third batch, but here it is – Activision Collection 3! It includes another thirteen Atari 2600 titles that I think are mostly from the early eighties, and mostly from the very first third-party video game developer, but as before, there’s at least one title here they picked-up from acquisitions along the way, and some that didn’t make it at all. I’ll briefly run through all the games in a minute, but as usual with these, they’re all on a cartridge in a box with a manual that does the usual great job making originally verbose instructions more accessible! Firing it up will then give you the regular sortable Evercade menu experience, with various display and other options on offer, and a button press taking you to an attractive information 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! Which sounds like a good place to look at the games themselves…

I have to say that none of these are the big-hitters like River Raid and Pitfall or the all-timers like Seaquest and Moonsweeper in the previous collections, but there are a couple of favourites of mine here that I reckon are worth the price of entry for me at least, and plenty of quality and variety elsewhere too. Going alphabetically then, Barnstorming is a side-scrolling stunt plane game where you have to fly through a specified number of barns as fast as you dare against the clock while dodging radio masts and pesky birds. Looks nice but there’s really not much game here. Not sure Bridge is going to get your pulse racing after that either, but it is a competent solo take on the classic card game, with the computer handling your partner and opponents. It’s functional and faithful enough, but easily the most niche and least intuitive title in the collection! Thankfully, Chopper Command to the rescue, a slick Defender‑style desert‑patrol shooter that’s fast, polished and instantly playable, and easily one of the highlights here. It’s not often I come across a game on the 2600 I’ve never played before, but we’ve got one with Dolphin, a clever sound‑reading undersea dodger where you weave through seahorses, chase magic seagulls and stay ahead of a chasing squid. Simple once you get it, and I reckon the hidden gem among this lot.

Next is Dragonfire and it’s still great fun – a dash‑and‑grab fantasy game where you sprint, duck and jump across deadly castle battlements on the first screen, then loot treasure while a dragon tries to stop you on the second, which was some serious variety for the time, and the rest holds up brilliantly today in what’s another standout. Maybe not a standout but also a bit of a pioneer too, and I like Ice Hockey a lot! You’re getting a fast-paced two‑on‑two early take on the game, with nice momentum, scrappy tackles and quick rebounds that will keep you going for a while as a single player but does properly come alive with two. I’m not really sure how to describe Kabobber – which may explain why it ended unreleased at the time! It’s a weird chase-type thing where you guide a group of situationally-regenerating creatures while trying to tag enemies in the right form. It does get less confusing than it sounds then gets pretty fun for a while, but it won’t keep you interested for long. Kaboom! is much easier to get to grips with, offering pure twitch‑reflex mayhem as you race to catch falling bombs from the Mad Bomber before they hit the ground. It works a bit like Breakout in reverse, and as such could use a paddle controller, but it’s fine once you get a fix on the slight stickiness to the controls, and then it’s still totally addictive all the same. Easily one of Activision’s most polished 2600 games now, Keystone Kapers, a slick cops‑and‑robbers chase around a multi‑level department store, dodging obstacles and strategically using elevators and escalators as you sprint after the escaping crook. It’s fast, smooth, ambitious and still hugely entertaining!

Less so Laser Blast, a minimal flying saucer shooter where you move across the screen, picking off ground targets before they get you, but the stiff movement and awkward firing mechanic make it hard to get into a groove with this one. Last few now, and Pressure Cooker, where you’re a chef in a frantic kitchen and have to grab ingredients to build burgers to exact orders while juggling a conveyor belt full of incoming chaos! It’s vibrant, clever and surprisingly demanding, with a pace that ramps up fast, though it can feel overwhelming until the controls click. Well, assuming there’s any controls left because our penultimate game is The Activision Decathlon (or Decathlon as I’ve known it for well over four decades), a brutal joystick‑wrecker featuring ten athletic events of pure endurance where the real challenge today is wrestling a d-pad instead! It’s impressive in scope but even if you do somehow get to grips (literally!) with the controls, any enjoyment will only last as long as you’re happy not being competitive on a modern controller. Or destroying your stick of choice! Last up is Thwocker, an unreleased prototype of a springy, musical maze‑bouncer where you ricochet around tight rooms collecting notes while trying to keep your momentum under control. It’s interesting but clearly unfinished, with no real structure to the levels, and you are unlikely to ever fire it up more than once. Which unfortunately is the case for a few games in this collection! It’s certainly the weakest of the lot so far for me, and once again, I’ll maintain that you could now get one great compilation out of all three of them. That said, I’ll get my money’s worth out of Chopper Command, Dragonfire and Keystone Kapers alone, so it’s more or less fine by me. 

Right, I think that’s more than enough for this week! I have been playing Baseball Stars 2 on that new NEOGEO collection for Evercade to excess as well, and I’m still jumping in and out of Devil May Cry 3 on PlayStation 4 (more here), and I’m also pretty deep now into Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 on Xbox Game Pass, so we’ll try and get into that next time. And before then, do check back on Wednesday, because it’s time for our regular journey back exactly 40 years for the very latest in video gaming with Retro Rewind: July 1986 in Computer & Video Games, straight from the pages of the original magazine! Hopefully see you then!

As always, I’ll never expect anything for what I do here but if you’d like to buy me a Ko-fi and help towards increasingly expensive hosting and storage costs then it will always be really appreciated! And be sure to follow me on Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) or Threads for my latest retro-gaming nonsense, and also on Bluesky, which is under my regular name but most of it ends up there too if you prefer!