Just in time for the spookiest time of year, a game that features not just ghouls, but also ghosts as well. And spooky haunted turtles.

Ghouls 'n Ghosts (Dai Makaimura in Japan) is a classic 1988 Capcom arcade game and sequel to the highly popular Ghosts 'n Goblins. Like its predecessor, you play Arthur, a knight who must save a princess by battling through six spook-filled levels. Along the way, you collect a variety of weapons (sometimes against your will!), beat bosses, avoid wizards in chests, and generally work your way from left to right. You get two hits per life, with your armour disappearing after the first. To help you out, you can collect a golden set of armour that has a charge attack, but you seldom get a chance to use it.

The arcade original is just gorgeous in every respect, with masterful pixel art graphics, music that is both spooky and catchy, and controls that feel fluid and responsive. Its

I'm not normally one for themed, seasonal gaming... but Halloween seems to lend itself particularly well to playing a particular type of game.

So what are you playing this spooky season?

This year, I'm playing through Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS version, via the Retroid Pocket 2S). It's not the spookiest entry in the series, but has enough creepy castle exploration to fit the bill.

(Saw this question asked on another popular link aggregation website and it got me thinking)

If you could play one game for the first time all over again, what would you choose? This might be because you want to do it all again, or because you don't think you got enough out of it the first time. It could be experiencing the game exactly as you were back then, or experiencing a game with what you know now.

For me, it's Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past, experienced exactly as I was back in 1991.

Nothing comes close to how jaw-droppingly amazed I was by that opening sequence. The epic orchestral score, the cinematic rainstorm, creeping around in the dark... it was a generational leap above anything I'd played on 8-bit computers and consoles, and even the Megadrive. I'd love to play it again without thirty plus years of Nintendo/Zelda knowledge, or without knowing about the dark world.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/4790038

I got the new Retroid Pocket 2S in clear black. It worked out about 105 quid delivered, and took just over a week to arrive.

It's a lovely little device, with some really nice sticks and triggers. But it really hammered home how easy it is to set up a Miyoo Mini Plus (which was largely just a case of copying over the ROMs). This one comes pretty much barebones, and it's up to you to install all the emus and a decent front end. So you end up with a weird combination of Retroarch and stand alone emus, and a confusing set of different configs. Retroarch alone is an absolute beast to understand and get right...it seems to have a slippery complexity that is very difficult to hold in your brain.

That said, once it's set up, it is lovely. I'm using Daijisho as a front end, and it pretty much hides all the underlying complications. 4:3 systems look great on the tiny screen, and it runs up to Dreamcast really well, with some GC ga

I got the new Retroid Pocket 2S in clear black. It worked out about 105 quid delivered, and took just over a week to arrive.

It's a lovely little device, with some really nice sticks and triggers. But it really hammered home how easy it is to set up a Miyoo Mini Plus (which was largely just a case of copying over the ROMs). This one comes pretty much barebones, and it's up to you to install all the emus and a decent front end. So you end up with a weird combination of Retroarch and stand alone emus, and a confusing set of different configs. Retroarch alone is an absolute beast to understand and get right...it seems to have a slippery complexity that is very difficult to hold in your brain.

That said, once it's set up, it is lovely. I'm using Daijisho as a front end, and it pretty much hides all the underlying complications. 4:3 systems look great on the tiny screen, and it runs up to Dreamcast really well, with some GC games running nicely. The only downside is that the PSP's 16:9 sc

Commando (released as Senjō no Ōkami in Japan, Wolf of the Battlefield) is a 1985 Capcom arcade shooter. Word to the wise: Commando isn't based on the Schwarzenegger movie of the same name - that's some false knowledge I've carried round with me for close to forty years... oh, how I've embarrassed myself at dinner parties...

Commando is a vertically scrolling run-and-gun shooter where you play "Super Joe", a one-man army pitted against the endless ravenous hordes of whatever country was the mid-80s enemy du jour at the time. You have a gun with unlimited ammo, and a finite supply of grenades with which to dispatch your foes. While the gun can fire in any direction, the grenades only launch upwards, which creates a need for careful positioning in order to use them effectively.

The game is split into levels, and each level ends with a heavily fortified building that spews out a huge number of enemies that must be defea

I feel as if I've been hanging out at the arse-end of the 80s a lot recently, comparing ports on computers that had no business running them. I've long suspected that if you want to see 8-bit micros at their best, you're better served hanging around in 1986 rather than 1989. Things were so much more achievable back then...

So, with a robust tailwind of realistic expectations at our backs, let's take a look at Tehkan's 1984 arcade hit, Bomb Jack.

Bomb Jack is one of those much-loved arcade classics that everyone knows but which never quite reached the same revered status as earlier hits like Donkey Kong or Pacman. It came at that inflection point in the arcades where single-screen, high score games were being replaced by more complex, sprawling coin-munchers. A kind of last-hurrah for wonderful simplicity.

And Bomb jack truly has simplicity. It is played over five backdrops, where you play "Jack", a caped superhero

Russ at Retro Game Corps seems to like the 2S, and I'm tempted myself. Is anyone planning to pick one up?

Everyone knows about Final Fight, right? This 1989 Capcom beat 'em up feels almost genre defining, even though it was not the first beat 'em up of its type. Nevertheless, it cast a long shadow over games that came after it, especially those released by Capcom.

And with good reason. Final Fight is awesome, even today. It's a simple enough concept - gang kidnaps ex-Street Fighter and new Mayor Mike Haggar's daughter, so Mike and his pals Cody and Guy undertake a mission to save her. Said mission involves beating up fools, swinging various weapons, taking part in a wrestling match at one point, and eating lots of food out of trashcans. You can play as either of the three pals, and even bring a pal of your own along as a second player.

It's a lot of fun, and well worth a look today. It hurls hordes of bad guys at you that you slice through with kicks and punches and special moves. Nothing quite beats the feeling of y

Miyoo Mini Plus here, where I’m currently playing through GBA Advance Wars, which I’ve somehow never played before. It’s absolutely perfect for a half-hour pickup.

So, what are you playing? Let me see those handhelds!

Vigilante was a 1988 Irem coin-op, a kind of spiritual successor to 1984's Kung Fu Master/Spartan X. Like the 1984 title, Vigilante had a simple premise - you walk to the right and beat up fools in front of you and behind you. There's no pseudo-third-dimension, no in and out, it's just straight up single plane brawling, taking on ruffians before they get the jump on you. At the end of every stage, you fight a boss, then those self-same ruffians drive a van away containing your girlfriend... Madonna.

It's never made clear if it's the real Madonna you're trying to rescue, or just a Madonna. But rescue her you must. And to help you do so, you can find a wide array of weaponry that can be used to dispatch fools faster. Weapons such as nunchuks and... actually, just nunchuks.

Vigilante isn't a terrible game, but it's not a great game either. It certainly has a distinctive look, with characteristic late-80s chunky sprit

If fur loincloths and large axes are your thing, then the eighties was a hell of a time to be alive. It seemed like barbarians were everywhere. In movies, there was Conan the Barbarian, Red Sonja and Beastmaster; on TV we had He-man and the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon (Bobby was technically a barbarian!); and in videogames you could live out your wildest horn-helmed fantasies while playing the likes of Rygar, Barbarian 1 & 2, Legendary Axe and, of course, Rastan Saga...

Rastan Saga (just Rastan in the US) is a 1987 Taito coin-op in which you play Rastan, a mighty king who is reliving his past adventures as a lowly barbarian. The gameplay takes the form of side-scrolling hack and slash, in which you move left to right and dispatch an endless horde of soldiers, monsters and bosses. Along the way, you pick up various items that boost your stats temporarily and various weapon upgrades, the best of which is a fireball

What videogame jumps into your mind when you think of couch multiplayer?

Halo? Goldeneye? Overcooked?

For me, couch multiplayer gaming will always be California Games. It was a game that my friends and I played endlessly back in 1989. Couldn't get enough of it... To this day, it remains one of my favourite Sega Master System games.

It also got a ton of ports... but were are any of them any good?

Join the hack and find out, my dude...

California Games was originally developed by Epyx for the C64 and Apple IIe. It's an event-based sport sim, of the kind that was popular in the late 80s. Think Hyper Sports, but with more 'tude.

Events included: half-pipe, foot bag (hacky sack), surfing, skating, BMX and flying disk (frisbee). Each involves various combinations of skilful control and button mashing.

Overall, it's colourful and moreish, with just the right mix of DudeBro

Some games arrive right on time, while some games arrive later than they should... but some, a rare few, arrive way too early. Like Micronaut One.

You've probably never heard of Micronaut One, and with good reason. It was a single platform, 1987 title that was released with little fanfare and to modest acclaim, on a platform largely only popular in Europe. It wasn't a sequel itself, nor did it generate a sequel or a franchise. It simply arrived, enjoyed a moment in the sun, then disappeared...

To my mind, this is a great shame. Not because Micronaut One was an amazing game (it was more technically intriguing, in my opinion, than amazingly playable), but because Micronaut One was so far ahead of its time that it deserves to be more widely known.

Even without digging into the finer details, Micronaut One sounds surface-level impressive. It is a first-person, solid 3D science fiction g

In the UK, we have a peculiar turn of phrase: "to make a good fist of" something. It means to put up a good show, to make the best of what you have, to succeed despite your challenges. And if you ever need to demonstrate to a non-English speaker what this means in practice, you can show them the 8-bit micro ports of Golden Axe!

Neither the Amstrad, C64 or Spectrum should be capable of running this game well. Yet, somehow, they all make a really good fist of it.

But which fist is best?

Arcade Golden Axe is a Sega classic. A two player fantasy hack 'em up, with three playable characters, some incredibly detailed and imaginative locations and enemies, a great soundtrack and plenty of goblin kicking.

It also came pretty late in the lifespan of the 8-bit micros, around 1990, a time when arcade conve

Ivan 'Ironman' Stewart's Super Off Road is a 1989 arcade release that plays kind of like a fancy Super Sprint. It's a single screen game where three players race their trucks over a number of courses, picking up nitro and money, and upgrading their vehicles between races. It's fast, goofy, chaotic and a lot of fun. The orginal arcade, notably, featured a three steering wheel cabinet.

On the face of it, this simple game looks ideal for home ports... but can they capture the mayhem of the original?

The Amstrad CPC port is, unsurprisingly, based on the Spectrum version. But in this case, they've at least attempted to include some colour. Sadly, this amounts to changing the track to orange-brown and adding colour to two of the cars, meaning that the other two remain resolutely orange-brown. It's a