It’s going to be a good Switch week for me next week by the looks of things – really looking forward to getting my hands on Digital Eclipse’s Karateka Game/Documentary/Museum given Atari 50 was an incredibly special thing indeed, hadn’t noticed that Escape From Terror City was getting a Switch release as well.
It’s been available on Steam and Itch for a long while now but as huge a fan of Renegade Sector games as I am, see the usual “it’s the Switch for me these days because I can play it even on crappy health days, of which there are many”
I’ve been really grateful for Renegade Sector and EastAsiaSoft bringing some previous titles across, massively looking forward to adding Escape From Terror City to the pile too.
I know Playdate touching folks have had their grubby mits on a version of Hyper Meteor for a good while now but given my hand cramps up just looking at pictures of the thing*, it’s been a case of waiting it out for me.
Which is another way of saying “Yay, a Switch version” because I can use one of those comfortably and I get pretty colours and everyone knows by now how much I love pretty colours.
Long time readers of my nonsense will no doubt be aware that I’m a fan of Vertex Pop’s stuff, pretty much every single game they’ve released has been solid gold so far, from the twin stick brilliance of WE ARE DOOMED (I still stand by the quote on the game page there too) to the excessively, wonderfully, pink Super Crush KO, just a bunch of fantastic games and I absolutely adore them.
So, Hyper Meteor. It’s Asteroids. Kind of. Sort of. It isn’t really.
Ok. Let’s try that again, it has asteroids and at first glance looks like Asteroids but there’s no fire button (there’s a smartbomb, thassit) so to clear the asteroids off the screen you have to smash into them. So, it’s the bit in Asteroids where you would normally die except you don’t die and instead that’s how you get points.
Whilst throwing you into an arena and just letting you crash through asteroids to make a number go up would be entertaining enough for me, it probably wouldn’t make for the most challenging arcade game ever so enemies have areas you can hit safely and areas you can’t. The trick, obviously, is to collide with the safe bits so you don’t explode yourself. As you’d expect, this is easier said than done.
As the game progresses, more fiendish enemies find their way into the arena requiring a bit more cunning to take out, causing the arena to gradually flood with enemies and bullets. Combo up with the fragments from the asteroids you’re smashing up and oof, it certainly keeps you on your toes. Sure, it’s typical arcade stuff but it’s very deftly done leaving the game sitting somewhere between the quickfire restarts of something like Super Hexagon and your more traditional coin-huffing videogame.
As ever with Vertex Pop’s stuff, what could be a far more throwaway game in less practiced hands turns out pretty sweet and one I’ll definitely be keeping round to play fairly often. Oh, and the bloopy chip disco soundtrack is a stonker too.
Annalynn is a few years old now on the PC but I’ve only just got round to it now it’s got a Switch release.
This past year or so has seen a handful of really nice arcade homages make their way on to the Switch so I’ve been feeling a bit spoiled rotten of late, all of them – Annalynn included – have been absolutely gorgeous looking too.
I certainly don’t mind games looking as scrappy as all get out (in fact, I can’t get enough of scrappy or strange looking games!) but I’m certainly not going to complain about something looking too nice either, right? I like pretty games!
Annalynn isn’t the hardest game to pick up either, it’s pretty familiar stuff all told. Jump between platforms, don’t get caught by the nasties, collect all the gems to get to the next stage.
Having spent quite some time with it now, it plays a bit more like an earlier home computer game than the kind of game that started life in the arcade (there’s definitely a bit of the old “imagine if home computers could have matched the look of arcade games more” to it, and that’s kinda nice, really.), it doesn’t quite have the immediacy and flow of a coin gobbler, settling instead for a more sedate and measured pace.
Difficulty wise, it’s tough enough but not too taxing or brutal either. In the words of Goldilocks, “this one is just right”.
Which is a pretty good summary of how I feel about the entire package, I guess — Annalynn is just right. It looks great, sounds good, plays well. That’ll do me.
