Regular person by day, super video game player by night, Gonçalo lives in eager anticipation that the prophecy of a new F-Zero will soon be fulfilled. When not messing about making weird music he can be found with a Super Nintendo pad in hand, replaying a Japanese wrestling game no one has ever heard of.
Review Iro Hero (Switch eShop)
The tale of the ultimate charging docks
The Nyagu are an alien species enlightened with good intentions, rainbows and sunshine. Upon meeting mankind for the first time, they grant each and every human the power to conjure electricity from their bodies. Think of the possibilities: no more hassle with power outlets or wires if you needed to charge up...
Review One Strike (Switch eShop)
Live By The Pixel Sword, Die By The Pixel Sword
With such distinct historical richness it's no shock popular culture has embraced Japanese samurai mythos over the years, including, of course, video games. Samurai Shodown wasn't the first game to take on the subject, but it certainly was the most successful at bringing samurai duelling to the tip of...
News Mutant Football League Will Chainsaw Upfield For A Touchdown On The Switch
Defensive line too strong? Breach them with a shotgun
Things weren't looking bright for football of the American variety on the Switch, so this news comes with incredibly good timing. Digital Dreams Entertainment is preparing to bring the brutal insanity of Mutant Football League to the Switch. This Unity-driven spiritual sequel to...
News Hamster Continues Switch Neo Geo Streak With Five More Titles
Football, blades, idols, spies and bowling
Hamster recently revealed its next batch of Neo Geo re-releases on the Switch eShop and it most certainly is a varied lot. Timely World Cup fever strikes next week with the third installment of the popular Super Side Kicks series, followed immediately by one of the finest one-on-one weapon combat games that...
Review Shaq-Fu: A Legend Reborn (Switch)
Big Trouble In Shaq’s China
Back in 1994 Shaq-Fu made quite a splash when it landed on 16-bit home and 8-bit portable consoles. On paper it seemed like a great plan: use Shaquille O'Neal’s star power to get a slice of the booming one-on-one fighting market. When the game made it to market, the 16-bit version wasn't that bad, but it didn't stack...
News Taito's Chuka Taisen Flying Onto Switch This Summer
Cloud nine
You might be unfamiliar with the name Chuka Taisen, although there's a chance you stumbled upon the Sega Master System port re-branded Cloud Master. This charming Taito developed shmup is making its way to Nintendo Switch this summer via Retroism, a division of Tommo. The game will, once again, be re-branded as Monkey King: Master of the...
Review Samurai Defender: Ninja Warfare (Switch eShop)
1,000 arrows for 1,000 knees
When you use both ‘Samurai’ and ‘Ninja’ in your game title, certain epic expectations come along with it. If the name sounds at all familiar, you might have stumbled upon the previous release of this game back on 3DS. Now having lost one screen while making the jump to the Switch, can Link Kit’s charming feudal...
Review BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle (Switch)
Ragna the Bloodedge, Yu Narukami and Hyde Kido walk into a pub…
It is hard to believe that Arc System Works’ Blazblue franchise is already turning a decade old. Even more baffling, it took those ten years for one of the series main entries to arrive on Nintendo hardware. Yet as you can probably gander from the title BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle is...
Review Shift Quantum (Switch eShop)
Do androids dream of black and white puzzle rooms?
The quest for happiness is no easy feat. It means so many different things for every single individual on this Earth. But what if you could bottle it? Would you blissfully ‘buy happiness’ from someone, or is it the quest itself rather the destination that will bring you an eternal smile to your...
SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?
Go up to any of your tech-savvy friends and whisper, “STUXNET!” in their ear and don’t be surprised if they break out in cold sweats. This nasty little number was first discovered back in 2010 and it used no less than four zero-day exploits on Windows operating systems to spread and lay dormant in thousands of systems,...
Review Die for Valhalla! (Switch eShop)
I live. I die. I live again
In 1991, Jaleco published Avenging Spirit for arcades and one year later for the humble Game Boy. What set this cute platformer apart from the rest of the bunch was the ability to possess enemies, thus offering up a varied roster of characters with different abilities to navigate each level. So it's a pleasant surprise to...
News Johnny Turbo Does The Dinosaur With Caveman Ninja
Joe & Mac are back!
The fifth serving of Johnny Turbo's arcade ports is already on the horizon and this one will bring back a couple of very familiar faces to Nintendo owners. The 1991 Data East Caveman Ninja classic marks the debut of the whole Joe & Mac series with this well-received title making its way to pretty much every home format at the...
News Two-Wheel Insanity Simulator Road Redemption Is Switch Bound
Polish those old steel pipes
If you happen to be missing a certain rash on the road and happen to be a Switch owner, this news will certainly make you grin. The once Wii U bound Road Redemption is making the natural jump the Nintendo Switch, according to a recent Twitter reply by developer Pixel Dash Studios. The game has been under active...
“Even though the ideal is high, I never give in”
Upon first release on Sega NAOMI-powered arcades back in 2001, Ikaruga polarised audiences. While it most certainly was a vertical scrolling shmup like one would expect from the spiritual sequel to Radiant Silvergun, it played nothing like it. In fact, it played like no shmup before it and even...
News Super Famicom Exclusive Super Robot Wars Gaiden Deploys English Fan Translation
Hollow Earth
With the recent release of five Super Famicom Great Battle games still fresh in our minds, Aeon Genesis and his group are back again with a complete English translation patch for one of the most iconic games in the whole Super Robot Wars saga: Super Robot Wars Gaiden: - Masōkishin – The Lord Of Elemental. However, according to the...
Review Fairune Collection (Switch eShop)
Fairuno, Fairdue, Fairtre
Skipmore’s charming Legend of Zelda/Ys retro mash-up did some good service for 3DS owners in the past and it's once again being brought to the spotlight thanks to a compilation of both titles (and a couple of extra ones) in this new Fairune Collection. Are these brain-teasing adventures worth taking once again? Let's give...
News Johnny Turbo Heads For The Kitchen With Super Burger Time
"Let's go out for a burger..."
The fourth serving of Johnny Turbo Data East classics will be released today in North America (next week in Europe) and it's strangely related with President Ronnie's favourite take-out food. Johnny Turbo's Arcade: Super Burger Time was the first proper sequel to the classic 1982 original, and along with a welcome...
Review Ice Cream Surfer (Switch eShop)
Vanilla flavoured
Stephen Hausdorff's zany comic returns once more to Nintendo platforms after leaving a bit of a sour taste on Wii U. No small feat considering Dolores Entertainment still completed this game’s production despite a failed Kickstarter campaign. But has the flavour (or lack thereof) improved since the previous serving? The sugar...
Put your back into it
The King is dead. Long live the King! His ghost, however... a bit of a loud mouth braggart. He will not be shutting up until his final request is granted: bury his coffin in a suitable catacomb filled with riches. After some wheels get attached to his coffin, it is up the Princess to push and pull the titular 'chariot' along...
Review Stakes Winner (Switch eShop / Neo Geo)
A horse with no name
Unlike most home versions of horse racing games, Stakes Winner doesn't weigh you down with horse breeding or gambling, which makes sense considering this is first and foremost an arcade game. Unsurprisingly, you play as a jockey, choosing your horse from a varied lot with three different skills (speed, strength and...
Review Arcade Archives 10-Yard Fight (Switch eShop)
8-16-Nintendo 64. Set… Hut-Hut-FUMBLE!?
American Football! We don’t ‘get it’ on this side of the pond, but that’s okay because we do know that the sport translates to excellent video games. However, translating the action of gridiron to the hardware available in 1983 was no easy feat. Irem took on this task and the end result was the very...
Review Cast Of The Seven Godsends (Switch eShop)
Hellspawned
Raven Travel Studios clearly has a lot of love for classic 16-bit platform games, but can its old school platform homage to Super Ghouls’n’Ghosts possibly live up to the source material or even stand up to the best among the current Switch library? Gods be with us. The Kingdom of Dareca is about to fall to Emperor Zaraaima. Prince...
Review Hyper Sentinel (Switch eShop)
Get hype
If you happen to remember a time when video games came in audio tapes, the name 'Hewson Consultants' will surely ring an 8-bit bell. Exercise your memory a bit longer and you might even be familiar with Uridium, a 1986 scrolling shmup designed by Andrew Braybrook that sent both reviewers and gamers into a frenzy. After a successful...
News Super Sidekicks 2 And Terra Cresta To Continue Switch Arcade Action Next Week
HAMSTER down with some World Cup fever and vintage shmuping action
HAMSTER returns to double releases next week with a football sequel for Neo Geo and one of the most revered TATE shmups of yore from Nichibutsu. With World Cup fever already rising on the horizon, this upcoming release of Super Sidekicks 2: The World Championship could not come at a...
