Tag Archives: Nintendo Switch

Essentials, Shmups

Assault Android Cactus: Shooting for the S+

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I remember coming across Assault Android Cactus for the first time: it was back in 2013, when I was still working on USgamer, and I was headed for EGX, or the Eurogamer Expo as it used to be known.

My boss Jaz Rignall suggested that I might want to check out this game he’d heard a bit about, and put me in contact with the developer. I wasn’t sure what to expect going into it; if I’m perfectly honest, I was expecting some sort of fairly forgettable indie fare, but I trusted Jaz’s judgement. He’d been around in the games industry even longer than me, after all, so he knew his stuff.

I was right to trust his judgement. Assault Android Cactus ended up being my favourite thing I saw at EGX that year, and it’s remained a consistent favourite of mine ever since.

Continue reading Assault Android Cactus: Shooting for the S+ →

One-Shots

Nintendo Switch: Modern Console, Gateway to Retro

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Retro gaming has been growing increasingly popular over the course of the last few years; as we move further and further away from gaming’s earliest days, it seems people are becoming more and more keen to know the medium’s roots.

This is absolutely great, as there are lots of different aspects you can explore the history of through retro gaming. You can see how storytelling has developed over the course of numerous generations of RPGs and adventure games. You can see the rise and fall of numerous mechanical genres. You can even see how now-famous creators got started!

There’s a growing problem, however; as retro gaming — and by this I mean “officially sanctioned” retro gaming, rather than the legal grey area that is emulation and ROM downloads — becomes more popular, it also becomes more difficult and more expensive to get involved with.

That is, unless you have a Nintendo Switch.

Continue reading Nintendo Switch: Modern Console, Gateway to Retro →

Videos

Atari A to Z Flashback: Atari Soccer

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Yes, yes, yes, I know the “A to Z” angle in this series is already questionable and this one following Tempest makes it even more so, but we only just managed to find time to have a two-player match!

Indeed, today’s game is Atari Soccer, an arcade title which can only be played with two or four people simultaneously, so bad luck if you have either no friends or two friends. As a follow-up to Atari Football, it again had a cocktail cabinet form factor and exhausting trackball controls to blister your palms with.

Thankfully, the port in Atari Flashback Classics can be enjoyed with nothing more than a couple of analogue controllers, and even for those who aren’t big soccer fans, the game makes for an entertaining, competitive pastime for a few minutes every so often.

Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.

One-Shots

Whip! Whip!: Smells Like Taito

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I have a major soft spot for single-screen “kill everything” platformers. Every day I mourn that Rod-Land isn’t more readily available to play on modern platforms… and it’s not just because I have a thing for Rit.

No, I’ve always been a fan of this kind of game, ever since Bubble Bobble, and if anyone was the absolute master of this subgenre, it was Taito. As such, the two Taito Legends collections on PlayStation 2 make frequent appearances in my game rotation, just so I can enjoy games like the aforementioned Bubble Bobble and its sequel Rainbow Islands at any time.

What if someone were to make a new game like this, though? How might that turn out? Well, wonder no longer!

Continue reading Whip! Whip!: Smells Like Taito →

Essentials, One-Shots, Racers

Table Top Racing World Tour Nitro Edition: Less is More

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One of the most commonly cited reasons for enjoying video games is allowing oneself to realise fantasies of various descriptions.

Frequently, these fantasies are heroic in nature, casting us into a world that is not our own and throwing us into conflict against a powerful foe that is nonetheless possible to overcome with enough determination. Sometimes they’re emotional, allowing us to engage with characters who are very different from people we encounter in reality. They might even be sexual, giving us the opportunity to explore a side of ourselves we find difficult to bring up even with people we know and love.

Or sometimes they might just be wondering what it would be like if your childhood toy cars could actually power themselves and race around an improvised circuit constructed of whatever happened to be on hand at the time. Enter the extravagantly titled Table Top Racing World Tour Nitro Edition, a game that can most certainly help with that last one, even if it won’t assist with your throbbing libido in the slightest. Unless you’re really into tiny cars.

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Essentials, Racers, Sega Ages

Sega Ages: OutRun – Chasing the Horizon

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Trivia of the day: the shiny red car in the original OutRun is not, as many people assume (and as both numerous sites on the Internet and some incarnations of the game’s original manual claim), a Ferrari Testarossa; it’s just a car designed to look uncannily like a Ferrari Testarossa — in other words, it’s a thoroughly unlicensed knockoff.

The fact that the car in OutRun is almost-but-not-quite a Ferrari is probably why this first game in the series has been so widely ported and still remains relevant today, while the officially Ferrari-branded OutRun 2 and its expanded quasi-sequel OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast remain tragically trapped in licensing limbo.

The original OutRun has been ported to enough platforms to make the original Final Fantasy and Ys games blush over the years, as well as putting in occasional guest appearances in games such as Shenmue 2 and Yakuza 0. The latest direct port at the time of writing is for Nintendo Switch as part of the Sega Ages collection and is the work of emulation maestros M2, so let’s once again put our foot to the floor and get driving.

Continue reading Sega Ages: OutRun – Chasing the Horizon →

The Zelda Diaries

The Zelda Diaries: Part 4 – Peace and Quiet

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I’m not an especially active or outdoorsy type… but I’ve always enjoyed the atmosphere of being out in nature. You know, so long as it isn’t trying to bite, sting, cut, burn, poison crush or otherwise bring me to harm in one way or another.

Some of my fondest memories are from childhood, when I had the good fortune to be able to go camping with both my class at school and my Cub Scout pack. My most longstanding, happiest recollections of those trips do not involve the many activities we participated in — but rather simple things, such as gradually drifting off to sleep to the soothing sound of rain on canvas (occasionally punctuated by class clown Christopher Smith farting) or feeling a quiet sense of awe at the almost complete silence around us, save for the leaves on the forest’s trees rustling in the wind.

Breath of the Wild is making me extremely nostalgic for all this sort of thing. And, best of all, I don’t have to go out in the blazing hot British summer sunshine and/or torrential British rain to enjoy it.

Continue reading The Zelda Diaries: Part 4 – Peace and Quiet →

The Zelda Diaries

The Zelda Diaries: Part 3 – I Wonder What’s Over There

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“I wonder what’s over there” has been an aspect of game design that creators of open world games have been grappling with for some time now.

Ideally, when playing an open world game, the player should be able to find a definitive answer to “I wonder what’s over there” simply by… well, going there. “You see those mountains in the distance? You can actually go there” and all that.

Not every open world game gets this quite right, but Breath of the Wild presents an excellent example of how to do it very well indeed.

Continue reading The Zelda Diaries: Part 3 – I Wonder What’s Over There →

Essentials, Racers, Sega Ages

Sega Ages: Virtua Racing – Arcade Perfect Plus

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The Nintendo Switch has seen a real renaissance for classic-era Sega.

The launch of the Sega Ages collection on the platform has brought a host of the company’s most beloved titles to a whole new audience. Even better, these releases have brought these titles up to date with modern conveniences without sacrificing what made the originals great in the first place; a true example of “enhanced retro” at work.

The latest title from Sega’s golden age to get this treatment is Virtua Racing, so let’s take a look at where this influential title came from… and how the Nintendo Switch incarnation honours its legacy.

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The Zelda Diaries

The Zelda Diaries: Part 2 – Toys of the Trade

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One key way in which Breath of the Wild differs from its predecessors in the Legend of Zelda series is in how it handles protagonist Link’s core abilities.

In past Zelda games, Link would typically (though not always) gradually acquire a selection of useful items over the course of his adventure, and in most cases these would correspond to the challenges in the dungeon or situation in which he found them.

In Breath of the Wild, meanwhile, you get given all of your abilities almost from the very beginning of your adventure, and then it’s up to you to spend the rest of the game figuring out all the different ways in which you can use them.

Continue reading The Zelda Diaries: Part 2 – Toys of the Trade →