With your host, Rob Remakes

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Watch: Beyond The Scan lines on JetPak DX

I reckon it was all downhill for Ultimate after Jetpac. Not a reflection of how poor any subsequent games were (post-US Gold aside, they were far, far from it) but how fantastic Jetpac is. Alongside Pssst and Cookie, it oozed an arcade sensibility that would largely disappear as Ultimate’s games got larger and more ambitious and it remains my favourite out of all their games.

There’s been a nice handful of remakes and tributes over the years (there’s a couple on Switch even), Rare took a punt at a remake of their own in the early days of XBLA and that turned out pretty alright for the most part. It’s part of Rare Replay so it’s not been lost to time like plenty of other games from around that era, which means you can still give it a punt fairly easily if you haven’t already given it a shot.

Anyway. My preferred remake is the excellent Rocket Smash EX, for my money it gets pretty close to besting the original and Saul’s graphics are wonderful, making good use of the C64 to really shine the thing up. However, Super Jetpak DX for the Gameboy is pretty fine too and it’s this that one of the other Robs reviews in their latest Beyond The Scanlines video. The game’s naturally a bit more cramped than your normal Jetpac given it’s got to work on a handheld but for the most part it’s a sterling job and Rob provides a great introduction to it.


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Mixolumia

A screenshot of the game Mixolumia. It has a minimalist pixel aesthetic against a black background. A series of small colourful diamonds sit at the bottom of the board. In the centre of the board, mid drop, is a larger diamond made up of 4 diamonds the size of the ones at the bottom of the board. Two are red, one is yellow, one is black with a white border.

Surrounding the board is a display showing time, level, blocks cleared and the current score.

Look, I’m not going to lie here, I absolutely bought Mixolumia because someone jokingly described it as “Lesbian Tetris” and I am genuinely that easily convinced.

Now, I’m severely underqualified to tell you how lesbian a Tetris it is but I can tell you that it’s a wonderful block dropping videogame with some fantastic music that had it been released on the GBA as part of the Bit Generations series, would be spoken of in revered tones. As it is, it’s somewhere around 2023 and the GBA is long gone so we’re just going to have to pretend it was, if only so it saves me on explanations.

So. It’s pretty good, right? I’ve been playing it for a half hour or so here or there since I grabbed it and I’m having a great time just trying to beat my previous best scores. 

Sometimes. 

The thing is, it feels so nice to play and the pretty damn fine visual effects, sound FX and music work so well that I kinda just enjoy matching colours up enough that I forget there’s any scoring at all. 

Luckily, the game has me covered there because nestled in amongst its handful of game modes is a chill endless mode that lets me just sit there happily matching stuff and making nice noises at myself as I go. It’s turning out to be one of the best fidget toys made videogame I have and yes, these days I’m so tired I go looking for that sort of thing.

Most of my time is spent on the opening mode that tasks me to clear 450 lines and get the best possible score as I do so. I’ve found Mixolumia takes just a little more concentration than the block droppers I usually go for (but not too much so as to exhaust my easily exhausted brain), as a result I’ve found myself more able to drift into the game and tune everything else out. Something I’ll admit a combination of age and easily distracted person living in a house where the distractions come thick and fast has made a lot more difficult to do these days. So that’s really nice!

It’s somewhere between ten and twenty quid on Switch depending on whether there’s a sale on or not, it’s really good and makes some lovely noises too. There’s a PC version on Itch and Steam if that’s more your thing. It’s gorgeous, loaded with tweaks you can make to shape the game around your own ability (again, handy for me these days!) and is pretty much in the spirit of Bit Generations. I can’t really offer a higher recommendation than that.

Well worth a buy.

Mixolumia – Home
Mixolumia is an entrancing musical puzzle game.
www.mixolumia.com


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New Rally X64

Absolutely love the look of this new homebrew conversion of New Rally X for the Commodore 64. The chonky C64 pixels and its distinctive palette are a really, really good fit for the game.

via Indie Retro News.

Indie Retro News: New Rally-X64 – An Arcade conversion of Rally X for the C64 gets its first release candidate
Jake79 with music by Merman and sound effects by NM156, has made available the first release candidate of their Arcade conversion of New Rally-X64
www.indieretronews.com


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Forget-Me-Not

I like a lot of things about Forget-Me-Not but the thing I like the most is that it’s the videogame as fishtank.

Pic from Arcade Life.

It’s the sort of thing that I could just stare at for hours as these boggle eyed creatures inside my monitor go about their business, entirely oblivious to my ingame existence for the most part.

Of course, we all know that it’s just a few simple systems and rules really but it somehow feels like peering into somewhere where there’s life. There’s few games that manage to pull this sort of videogame ecosystem thing off and due in no small part to being inspired by the old C64 game Crossroads, Forget-Me-Not manages it really quite skillfully.

It’s rare I’ll use the term for most videogames but Forget-Me-Not is fascinating. It’s fascinating to watch and it’s fascinating to see how a few simple but well considered rules make for something so special.

Forget-Me-Not is out on so many things now it’s likely you’ll have a device that can run it. If you’ve not ducked in before, well, get on that.

(First published in 2015, post updated April 2022)


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Cataloguing The New Arcade: Debris Infinity

Whilst the high bar for Asteroids reinventions remains a tie between Spheres Of Chaos (I prefer the older version over 2012’s rejig but YMMV, they’re both available for free now) and Echoes (Again. I prefer + to 3 but honestly. It’s so close in quality as to be unimportant), Debris Infinity (available on Steam too) is certainly worth a mention also.

After being mildly disappointed by the recent Asteroids Recharged (it’s not a bad game but it did very little to excite me, I wouldn’t not recommend it but I’d not enthuse over it in a hurry either) I’ve been on the look out for a fresh & decent new arcade take on Asteroids and stumbled onto Debris Infinity pretty much by accident whilst rummaging for something else I’d forgotten the name of.

It’s a game that fuses, surprisingly successfully, Echoes style arena based asteroid shooting and familiar Geometry Wars enemy wave patterns across a handful of modes. So twin stick asteroids with bolt ons, essentially. I doubt anyone going into this, even having not played either of the games it borrows from, would find many surprises here.

It’s definitely scrappy! The art is a bit all over the shop both in style and in coherence, the asteroids and smaller enemies are great, it’s sort of just the rest of it that doesn’t always come together.

Which is fine, you know? I’m not complaining so much as just stating something rather obvious. I can’t say it bothered me even for a moment because I was far too busy trying not to crash my spaceship into things but it does mean it doesn’t present quite so well in a single screenshot.

So, it all kind of adds up to a game I enjoyed a lot but also, don’t really have all that much to talk about with it. It’s a good, solid, enjoyable Asteroids variant where everything glows really nicely and has enough flashing lights to keep me quiet.

I’ve been dipping in and out of it on the Switch but the game’s available most other places, except for PlayStation for whatever reason. Definitely worth a punt.


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Cataloguing The New Arcade: Glitchangels

The character select screen from Glitchangels, it's glitchy! And purple. There's a distorted pixelised angel in the background, a green hued user interface with two big icons in white, one some arrows to indicate 'dodge', the other a skull to indicate 'rage'. It's very nineties cybergoth.

Sitting at the intersection of glitchgoth and cybergoth, Glitchangels is Berzerk reimagined as a Nuclear Throne-alike. Throw out the unending maze of the arcade classic, replace it with discreet rooms with tight corridors, clear the enemies to open the exits, paper it with Droid Assault inspired art – strip out the Paradroid elements, keep the store and upgrades.

Glitch everything, movement, firepower, everything. Play the videogame as VHS, make a mistake, rewind and forward your angel to safety. It’s weirdly now. It could really only collect all these things together and vibe like it does in the now but yes, it’s an EBM arcade dancefloor Robotron.

What a heady mix for a twin stick shooter all this makes. Instantly familiar to anyone who’s even mildly been paying attention in our post Geometry Wars world and it’s not like the game makes any effort to hide or obscure its influences anyway, quite the opposite. It’s there in the credits, it’s there the moment you spawn into the first screen. 40 years of twin sticking, goth’d up, glitched up.

Buy it on Switch, grab a cider and black and sit in a tree to play it, preferably in a graveyard. In Whitby if you need to. Maybe get the flourescent gear out, meet the game on its terms, you know? Sod it, chuck a glowstick or two in your bag whilst you’re at it. If you know anyone with a dry ice machine, I’m not saying it’d complete the vibe but it certainly wouldn’t hurt.

Or, y’know, grab it on the PC or Xbox. Whatever works. But really, do grab it. It’s good. I’ve been having an absolute ball with the thing.

Fight. Die. Glitch. Win. It totally does what it says on the tin.


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x_purrsonline_x

It's a mainly cyan faux chat client. In the top left, you have a magnifying glass, a gear and an I icon, below that a list of contacts with their avatars. To the right is the chat window itself which is filled with cat typing and a drawn picture of a cat. Everyone is a cat in the client.

I have got so much stuff on Itch I really need to get round to talking about, it’s embarrassing.

Rummaging through stuff earlier and remembered about x_purrsonline_x a toy chat client for talking to cats. My youngest absolutely fell in love with it when I showed it them and they had an absolute ball with it.

Originally made for the 2019 A Game By It’s Cover Jam, it’s name your own price and just one of those things that’s really sweet and I’m glad exists.


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Fallen London

Fallen London is a game that’s probably sucked more hours out of my life than, well, any other videogame ever. Yes, even No Man’s Sky or Left4Dead can’t hope to compete with it as we’re talking a game I’ve been playing most nights for yonks now.

Partly it’s because I am nothing if not an ageing goth and Fallen London’s the closest a videogame has ever gotten to fitting in perfectly alongside my music tastes (please videogames – less Tim Burton, more Bauhaus), partly it’s a comfort thing because I can log in from bed, have a little bit of an adventure, then nod off or crack open a book or whatever.

Mainly though, I keep coming back for the writing. It is so b____y good (which is lucky for a game that is entirely words really). For a few quid a month, I get one (extra) story each month to play through and I can count the ones which haven’t quite done it for me on one hand. An exceptional hit rate by any standards and one that speaks to the talent Failbetter have been able to rope in to contribute over the years.

(I have a sekrit mental wishlist of people I’d love to see have a pop at a story because, basically, I’m greedy and would have everyone whose writing I adore in games write me a Fallen London story if I could)

One of the things that I find remarkable is after all this time playing Fallen London I must have read some passages in the game an absurd amount of times (sometimes multiple times a night if I’m knackered and just doing a bit of lazy making a number go up), I still enjoy reading those passages. Nothing has me going “oh, not this” or glazing over and stuff that made me smile an age back, still makes me smile now.

There’s been times when I’m exhausted, my brain residing in some sort of chemical toilet or whatever and I can’t bring myself to even play something I enjoy this much. It doesn’t bother me so much because I know that when I get round to feeling better, I’ll have accumulated a bunch of new Fallen London tales to play through. Best kind of reward for being able to drag myself out of a crappy malaise.

Mind, I’m not the kind of person able to roleplay a character easily. I’ve never really been able to inhabit someone or something else in that way. Any games that ask me to make a choice are going to find me pressing ahead with whatever choice feels like the one I’d make.

I appreciate how much the writing, the multiple interweaving stories, of Fallen London accommodates that every bit as well as someone who has the ability to not be themselves for a while and with purpose. I don’t think I’ve even once felt like the game pulled the rug from under me, ever felt like a story cheated me from a choice I’d (like to imagine I’d) make in a particular situation.

It’s quite the balance to maintain! Especially over this many years, this many stories, and throughout that time I’ve changed a lot! Still the contributors to this videogame and Failbetter in general always seem one step ahead.

It’s a wonderful thing to exist and so many times over the past while I’ve been thankful it does.


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Hot Seagulls In Your Area

It's too roughly drawn seagulls, held by two hands, being made to kiss each other.

With a big thank you to autocorrect for trying to change “area” to “rear” whilst I wasn’t paying attention. Bad autocorrect, naughty. That’s something else entirely.

My dear old nan, bless her soul, used to say to me “Rob”, “Rob love, you haven’t lived a full life until you’ve popped two seagulls in a basket to see if they can truly love each other” and whilst she was absolutely correct, she forgot to mention just how difficult it is to put a seagull in a basket.

THEY KEEP FALLING OUT, NAN. THEY KEEP FALLING OUT.

I don’t really want to say too much about Hot Seagulls In Your Area for fear it might somehow take away some of the magic but it absolutely cracked me up.

As if the idea of having to get a bunch of seagulls to smooch each other wasn’t silly enough, everything about the game leans into that silly from the writing to the minigames to the art. I’d barely gotten as far as weighing the love compatibility of seagulls up for the first time before being reduced to giggling mess. And somehow, it managed to keep working on me the more time I put in.

It’s a little bit Foddy-core (though without the punishing element), a little bit point and click and all ridiculous. It’s great and just the tonic given this year and everything.

Grab it on Itch.


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Captain Forever Remix

There’s a lot of things I really enjoy in Captain Forever Remix. The way it transforms a curious retro styled sci-fi experience into a sister vs brother game is most definitely the biggest but ultimately, I’m also always going to be a sucker for really pretty things and Captain Forever Remix *is* really pretty.

It doesn’t really come off too well static but the spawn in sequence is a blink and you miss it nice touch, especially when you zoom the camera in. Then there’s who you fight. I got into a fight with a dog and lost. It’s not the first time but I think it’s the first time since Saboteur on the Speccy that it felt a bit like I’d just embarrassed myself. That’d never happen with cats, you always know you’re onto a losing streak with them.

It’s all done with a very playful This Is Make Believe On A Saturday Morning thing which lends the whole game a really joyous tone even whilst your carefully built modular craft is trashed by a goldfish. It’s probably worth mentioning that it has some great looking explosions too.

Captain Forever Remix is out now and is pretty much everything I’d hoped it would be. It paints a very human face on a previously cold and clinical videogame and in doing so makes it all the better.

Originally published March 2015. Captain Forever Remix is now on Itch too.


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