6 February: Steel Empire (Mega Drive) 8 February: Commando (Arcade) 14 February: Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master! (Xbox Series X) 26 February: Batsugun Special Version (Arcade) Another beginner-friendly schmup down, although a couple of weeks on Steel Empire was more educational than inspiring. T...

Still completely obsessed with early arcade bullet-hell shoot ‘em up Batsugun, and I’m doing alright at it now! Elsewhere on MAME I also became more briefly obsessed with Ninja Commando, a 1992 Neo-Geo vertical run and gun shooter that has you time travelling to what I think is three randomly ordere...

I'm surprised no one has done an HD remaster of Silent Hill 2. Was the beautiful HD Collection not good enough? They even made it sound better!!! Seriously though, have you seen the Enhanced Edition fan project? Not what we’re both looking for, but interesting all the same. http://www.enhanced.town...

I’ve become obsessed with early arcade bullet-hell schmup Batsugun. Last week I dabbled but this week I got serious, and it’s beautiful! I’ve spent hours and hours on it, and I’m literally doing the first three levels in my sleep now! Not sure I’ll be good enough to see the end in one credit, but I’...

I’m mostly happy with playing old games on old systems, but Nightmare Creatures on PS1 is hard to endure now, and a spruce-up of some old arcade shooters - DoDonPachi, Progear, 19XX: The War Against Destiny and Batsugun in particular - would be nice.

I bought Mario Smash Football / Strikers on GameCube, had a quick go then never played it again. I did the same on Wii but have never even fired that one up. Like both of those at the time, I really like the look of the new one, but I can’t do it again! Can I…?

I’ve spent a load of time with Toaplan’s top-down vertically scrolling Rally Bike arcade racer from 1988 this week. I’d never heard of it before, but it’s great! Simple, polished, addictive as hell and a rare instant classic, albeit decades after the event! My shoot ‘em up for idiots journey continu...

Not sure what this talk of 2002 is about - 1985 is still 20 years ago in my eyes! Anyway, 2002 was the year I got married, so money for games was a bit scarce, but there were some highlights… SSX Tricky on PS2 was undoubtedly what I was still playing most for the first part of the year, probably unt...

All new stuff on Game Pass this week! Windjammers 2’s depth is really starting to reveal itself, but not at the expense of any of its immediate disc-tennis fun. That said, I have now beaten the arcade mode, and while I’ll no doubt still be going back to it for a long time for the rest of its charact...

Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master! arrived on Game Pass this week, though if you’re on PC you’ll have to make do with the title screen until they fix it!

1 January: Star Wars Squadrons (Xbox Series X) 3 January: Dizzy the Adventurer (NES on Evercade VS) 5 January: Gates of Zendocon (Atari Lynx on Evercade VS) 19 January: Star Parodier (PC-Engine Mini) 23 January: Windjammers 2 (Xbox Series X) 24 January: Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (Arcade) 28 January: B...

This is the most unwelcoming game I’ve ever played, but I really wanted to experience the sights and sounds of Castlevania on arcade hardware and stuck with it for way longer than it deserved! Then the Konami Arcade Anniversary Collection came along with its Japanese version update and suddenly it w...

I loved Windjammers and have been waiting for its sequel for years, and so far it hasn’t disappointed, although (quite predictably) the same can’t really be said of my performance in its online modes! Don’t really care about those though, and I’ve had a great time with Windjammers 2’s frantic Tron-P...

I’ve not been as hyped about a game as much as this one since the mid-eighties, and while it’s not perfect and it’s definitely not Resident Evil 4, it was easily my game of 2021. Castle Dimitrescu is just jaw-dropping to me, and while I could happily stay there forever, the rest is well-paced, occas...

I 90% adore Hollow Knight, and I’m talking favourite games of all time “adore,” but the rest is pure, undiluted hatred! It’s beautiful, and exploration and progression are brilliantly realised, as is everything about controlling him. And then there’s some of the bosses, and some of the checkpoints j...

I played this for a few hours when it arrived on Game Pass but really don’t get the fuss. It’s alright and that’s about it. I must be missing something in the glare of all that polish!

I think I’d have got way more out of this if it had been the only thing I’d had to play as a kid, but that wasn’t the case when I eventually got to it a few years ago and I’m afraid I just didn’t have the patience to properly get to grips with the weird Mode 7 stage two! I’ll still play the first st...

This thread set me off on a journey that is still resulting in my retroarcadia.blog site, so I’m always happy to provide a latest update! 1. Feud (Spectrum) 2. Kick Off (Atari ST) 3. Resident Evil 4 (GameCube) 4. Renegade (Spectrum) 5. Silent Hill 2 (PS2) 6. Shao-lin's Road (Arcade / Spectrum) 7. Ol...

I played a bit of the Dead Cells demo on Switch a couple of years ago, and I stopped because I thought it was great and I’d play it properly one day, and that day finally came this week! It was actually one of the first games I downloaded from Game Pass when I got my Xbox Series X last year, but it’...

If I want an 8-bit boxing game it will always be Frank Bruno on the Spectrum, but what I soon realised when I became totally obsessed with Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream on the NES Classic Mini is that it’s not really about boxing at all. It’s about rhythms and patterns, and while I had fun becomin...