A couple of weeks back, Retro Gamer 51 escaped from its confines (somewhere in Bournemouth), to be unleashed on the world. Inexcusably, I totally forgot to get the pimp-o-pointer out, hence this belated post.

This month, the magazine has one of those shiny gold covers, which collect fingerprints and blind small pets unlucky enough to glimpse the magazine in bright sunlight. The cover has a big Zelda image, but the game I wrote about didn’t make the cover this time, nor even the contents page. Instead, tucked away on page 84, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find The Making of Choplifter. Well, you would have been pleasantly surprised if you’d not read this blog post, obv.

Choplifter not getting on to the contents page didn’t irk, but it did throw up the question: what is a classic game that will grab readers? Dun Durach and Heroquest both made it on to the contents page this month, for example. What it confirmed to me is that classic games really are in the eye of the beholder (and also the editor), and that those titles you think are most loved and well remembered may not be. Still, I was happy to interview Danny Gorlin and spend a few hours testing out the surprisingly large number of Choplifter conversions. Well, apart from the Sega ones, which are horrible.

Seriously. No, really.

Truth is not only stranger than fiction, but considerably more messed up and generally f——ed in the head. News has begun circulating that Crystal Sky Pictures has signed a whopping $200 million deal that covers five movies, including videogame adaptations. One of the adaptations: Castlevania. The other: Pac-Man. Seriously. Check your calendar, because I’m pretty certain April the 1st was a good few weeks back.

I only hope Hollywood’s take on Namco’s classic about hallucinogenic drugs, repetitive maze-like urban environments, fruit, incessant noise and street crime (OK, I’m struggling here) matches Scott Gairdner’s effort. (“It looks like the hunters… became the hunted!”) And if Crystal Sky Pictures runs out of universally well-known titles, it could always trawl though the thousands of more obscure games on World of Spectrum and Gamebase 64. If any Hollywood execs are reading, I want first dibs on the Zolyx screenplay, OK?

Soon to be gathering dust

Namco hates you. That’s the only conclusion I can reasonably draw from the company’s decision to release Namco Museum DS in its current form. Although not quite as stingy as previous Namco collections for Nintendo hand-helds, you still only get eight games for your dosh, and one of those is The Tower of Druaga. Plus, most of the rest are the usual suspects that get churned out time and time again, including Pac-Man, Xevious and Galaga. Considering the recent Namco Museum: 50th Anniversary Arcade Collection featured well over a dozen titles, DS owners would be right in feeling short-changed.

As is typical of Namco compilations, the ports are pretty good, and the interface is one of the best I’ve seen on a DS-based compilation. The game screen can be rotated, to avoid squish-o-vision, and geeks can muck about with dip switches ad-nauseum. There’s also a surreal and unsettling ‘music box’, where characters from the featured titles dance like maniacs to tunes and sound effects from the compilation’s games.

This collection’s saving grace is undoubtedly Pac-Man VS., a four-player wireless effort that is roughly the videogame equivalent of tag crossed with Pac-Man. Three players become the ghosts, while the fourth controls Pac-Man. If a ghost is successful in grabbing the jaundiced pill-popper, the relevant player assumes that role, and the first person to amass a points target is crowned king of retroville.

Sadly, though, it’s not enough. Namco has a massive back catalogue to draw from, and against the 15-game feast that is Konami Arcade Classics, Namco’s effort feels comparatively pale and shallow, despite the polish and multiplayer Pac-Man shenanigans.

Namco Museum is available now for Nintendo DS for the princely sum of 25 quid. Wait a few months and it’ll inevitably end up in the bargain bins, whereupon it’ll actually be worth the money.

Or: The Penultimate Penultimate Ninja

Games these days often fall foul of the ‘gloss’ criticism—they’re very pretty, but peel away this superficial layer and they play about as well as a CD that’s been attacked by a knife-wielding maniac. But this isn’t new—in fact, even the odd 8-bit title suffered from this problem, and The Last Ninja is a case in point.

I remember the first time I played the isometric ninja ‘epic’, spurred on by reviewers falling over themselves to fawn over System 3 and heap awards and praise on the game itself. First impressions were good: the music was lovely, and the graphics were quite nice. However, as soon as I started playing, that creeping feeling set in, and I soon realised there was a slight problem: the game was rubbish. The environment was limited and the fights were borderline canned and extremely dull. Too many sections in the game demanded pixel-perfect jumps of the type Jet Set Willy had been slammed for a couple of years previously.

Two decades later and The Last Ninja has landed on Virtual Console with a splat, offering newcomers the chance to guide Armakuni (that’s the ninja) through a half-dozen or so tedious isometric levels, on his way to defeat the evil shogun, a process made even more hateful by the fact that the game’s even more fiddly to control on the Wii. The graphics aren’t that pretty these days either, but at least the music’s still good.

So: two stars for the excellent soundtrack, and minus fifty billion for the crappy controls and rubbish gameplay. Unfortunately, Revert to Saved’s rating system only goes down to 1/5, so that’ll have to do.

The Last Ninja is available now on Virtual Console for 500 Wii points (£3.50ish). Alternatively, hurl three pound coins and a 50-pence piece at a violent drunk and have him beat you up—you’ll have a much more satisfying experience.

The United Nations of sports simulations

Sometimes, you shouldn’t go back. Just as it’s painfully clear to older eyes that 1980s TV shows such as Knight Rider and Transformers were, in fact, rubbish, it’s a jolt when a much-revered old-time game stinks like a sewer in the cold, harsh light of the modern day. Sadly, that’s (almost) the case with World Games, an Epyx ‘classic’ originally released in 1986 for the Commodore 64 that’s recently stumbled on to Virtual Console.

Clearly running out of traditional sporting events after a slew of Olympic-inspired efforts, Epyx began culling sports from the bizarre end of the spectrum for World Games. Instead of running, jumping and swimming, there’s sumo wrestling, caber tossing and barrel jumping. Although variety is the spice of life, half of the eight events taste like soot, due to poor implementation (the barely playable slalom skiing), sluggish controls (log rolling, sumo wrestling), or just by virtue of being dull and unoriginal, even at the time (weightlifting).

It’s not all bad news—the game is peppered with cute animations and the barrel jumping, cliff diving and bull riding events offer some basic fun (and, fact fans, the bull-riding event is actually very easy if you can, say, hold a joystick and read instructions), although as standalone events for the single player, they’re still limited and throwaway. And so unless you have a copious number of friends and cans of beer to hand, World Games is unlikely to hold your interest for long.

World Games is available now on Virtual Console for 500 Wii points (£3.50ish), or for a fraction of that via eBay, if you fancy a copy of the original.