Alternatively: just stop. Right now

Sometimes, you just can’t go back. Games built solely around engrossing gameplay (Pac-Man) or a core of fantastic gameplay but with added fantastic visual effects (Defender) still engage today. But for some genres, notably racing, it’s all about thrills driven by visual excitement. And if there’s one thing lacking in early 1980s C64 racers, it’s visual excitement. And thrills. (OK, two things.)

Back in the day, Pitstop II wowed. Its split-screen enabled two players to battle it out head-to-head (well, tyre-to-tyre), or for Billy no-mates to take on computer opponents. As the name suggests, Epyx were rather excited about the pitstop component, which enabled you to refuel and change worn tyres.

On playing the game now, it’s almost impossible to see it as anything other than a relic. The graphics are dull, the sound mind-numbingly tedious, and the gameplay shockingly boring. The pitstop, supposedly a high-point, is absurd in its sluggishness and just gets in the way. When it boils down to it, Pitstop II is merely a split-screen Pole Position, with an unwanted extra ‘scene’. The thing is, Pole Position is actually more fun.

Pitstop II is available now on Virtual Console for 500 Wii points (£3.50ish). You’ll also need some rose-tinted glasses, however, and those cost extra.

This is the news! Rising fuel costs slash pit team personnel!

We’ve got an emergency here

Chase HQ is like injecting the 1980s into your eyeballs. Take one very 1980s sports car (a black Porsche), a duo of American cops (one black, one white, just like in Miami Vice), sprinkle on a dash of OutRun, and bake for 40 minutes. Er, and then inject, obv., otherwise the opening line doesn’t work.

The game is great and a still somewhat rare concept: drive fast, catch your adversary and then ram their car into submission. It makes you want to wear a pastel suit, hum Crockett’s Theme and Bruce Springsteen, and grow a mullet. OK, maybe not, but it is a lot of fun, even in these days of from-every-angle pile-ups in Burnout 947.

Unfortunately, Chase HQ on Virtual Console starkly illustrates one of the platform’s major shortcomings compared to XBLA: instead of using the still rather nifty arcade original, you’re lumbered with the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 conversion. To continue our needle theme, this version is rather like injecting battery acid into your eyeballs.

The graphics are dreadful, flickery and lack animation. The controls are all over the shop. And the gameplay is less fun than kissing a rabid weasel. Even the dire NES and Master System versions would have been a step up from this, and the CPC and Spectrum releases were (and still are) miles ahead of this shambles. Avoid.

Chase HQ is available now on Virtual Console for 500 Wii points (£3.50ish), if you fancy wasting your money.

‘Criminals here,’ it says by the arrow, but the real criminals are the ones charging for this garbage. Oh yes.

Hiiiiyaaaaaaaaaaa!

Once upon a time, all fighting games were about Eastern pyjama-wearing gents kicking each-other in the face. They were sedate affairs, based on tactics and cunning, epitomised by Melbourne House’s Way of the Exploding Fist. And then IK+ arrived, blowing everything else out of the water.

On the surface little had changed: there was an extra fighter and a prettier backdrop. But having that extra competitor on-screen transformed the fighting genre, turning the sedate into the frenetic, ensuring the player rarely got a chance to catch their breath.

In today’s market, IK+ looks blocky and dated. The C64’s graphics lack the charm of a Pac-Man or a Mario and the definition of a Spectrum title. But the animation is fluid, and the collision detection spot-on.

Importantly, though, the gameplay still shines through after over two decades. Moves are carefully assigned to logical control positions, making fights intuitive and instinctive, rather than a memory test. And with its combination of varied opponent styles (they change every level), frantic bonus game (deflect bouncing balls with a shield) and its lack of button-mashing, this classic from yesteryear genuinely manages to give most of its modern equivalents a thoroughly good kicking.

IK+ is available now on Virtual Console for 500 Wii points (£3.50ish). If you think that’s too much for a 21-year-old game, more fool you.

Old man speak wisely. Red player can’t even tie belt properly.

Causing lactic acid build-up since 1983

Konami understands retro gamers. Unlike certain other companies, Konami isn’t content shovelling the same old garbage out to consumers time and time again. Instead—and particularly with handheld games—its retro content appears full of thought and devotion.

This was definitely the case with Arcade Classics for the GBA and last year’s similarly titled DS compilation, but New International Track & Field shows that the same magic still flows through Konami’s veins when it comes to more focussed titles.

As its name might suggest, New International Track & Field is the latest in Konami’s long-running sports series. In practice, it’s essentially 1983’s Track & Field and 1984’s Hyper Sports mashed together, doubled in size, and redecorated, with the ’80s pixelated athletes replaced by a cast of super-deformed Anime-inspired characters.

Gameplay, however, remains firmly retro, with the button-bashing of the original titles replicated by smacking seven shades out of your DS buttons. And for users who grew up with joystick-waggling home conversions, the alternate control method of frantically scrubbing the stylus back and forth evokes fond memories of severe arm-cramping to shave a tenth of a second off of your best 100 metre dash time.

Although some of the events are needlessly fiddly (mostly regarding timing—something not helped by the intermittently inept instructions provided), most are actually a lot of fun. Double-trap shooting is perhaps the best, practically identical to the skeet-shooting event in Hyper Sports and similarly addictive. Springboard, javelin and archery also provide a decent mix of physical endurance and precision timing that ensures this compilation isn’t all about repetitive scrubbing or bashing.

As is seemingly law these days, New International Track & Field begins with most of its content locked, and while most unlockables are trite (such as new character outfits), some achievements unlock new characters that have their own challenges. These are typically based on events elsewhere in the game. Standouts include Evil Rose’s hammer variation, where competitors are thrown from a wrestling ring on to a scoreboard, and Simon Belmont’s skeet-shooting-inspired-vampire-bat-massacre, set in a spooky castle.

A few irksome difficulty spikes, a couple of really awkward events, and the hateful way in which you can enhance your athlete’s performance by yelling into the microphone (quick tip, DS developers: using the mic like this makes gamers hate you) stop New International Track & Field from reaching the dizzy heights enjoyed by retro remake Space Invaders Extreme, but Konami’s game isn’t too far off the pace and wins a well-deserved silver medal.

New International Track & Field is out now, and although it’s not worth the 30 quid RRP, it’s well worth tracking down for a wee bit less.

Repetitive? Sure. Painful? Definitely. Fun? Too right. God knows why, though.

It pongs. You won’t want to break it out at a party. Etc.

“It may seem familiar, but it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before!” boasts Taito about Arkanoid DS. However, this isn’t entirely true—I’ve seen plenty of half-baked Breakout games over the years.

The fact remains that Arkanoid was never that good in the first place. Stripped of its shiny graphics, it was just another in a long line of bat-and-ball games, albeit one with a few power-ups and some nice level design. Converted to home systems, it was soon bettered by a slew of contemporaries, including Krakout and Traz, with only the most devout of Arkanoid followers continuing to fly its flag.

Arkanoid DS, however, manages to stamp on even on the rose-tinted glasses of those deluded souls. Vapid layouts combine with graphics that would embarrass a Commodore 64 to make a game that appears more dated than the mid-1980s arcade original. And if you’re waiting for me to say “but at least the gameplay remains intact”, you’re going to be disappointed: of all the Breakout-oriented games I’ve played, this is one of the worst. It’s too easy, far too dull, and you tend to get stuck for ages on the ‘last brick’, something hardly helped by the play area stretching across both DS screens and yet also being extremely narrow.

If Arkanoid DS was a homebrew effort, I wouldn’t be so scornful, but this is a commercial product. And when you compare it against Space Invaders Extreme, you see just how far Arkanoid DS is from being an exciting and essential update.

Arkanoid DS is out now, if you’re interested (read: if you’re a masochist). The Japanese version also comes with a little detachable DS paddle, but the game’s still rubbish.

This is one of the best levels in Arkanoid DS. Seriously.