Gaming Hell

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Turbo Force (1991, Video System)

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A precursor of sorts to the Aero Fighters / Sonic Wings series, while that series' strange sense of humour isn't really present here, some of the style certainly is. Transported to another version of Earth in their car, up to three players (?) drive into fury as a strange mix of military vehicles, robots and alien lifeforms want them dead. Is your souped-up ride up to the task?

Beyond the unusual choice of a flying car as your vehicle, this one has a strange, permanently-decaying weapons system- as you fire your standard weapon (fortunately on auto-fire), it's gradually get weaker and needs to be topped up by grabbing power-ups which act a little different from other shumps- they fall like they're affected by gravity, and if you miss them, they're gone. There's no bombs either beyond a power-up that drops that has a few different effects but activates on pick-up. It's a weird little game but seems like a stepping stone to the more-popular Aero Fighters series. As a neat nod to its roots, the car from this game (named DIABLOON) appears in Aero Fighters 3 as a secret character, piloted either by a new character called Gore in co-op mode or... Captain Waffle from Spinal Breakers!

As for this Arcade Archives release, it's got a few different versions (New, Old and US) with differences between them, full three-player support and the option to control the P" or P3 car with P!'s controls in case you want a change of colour. It even faithfully recreates a wild graphics glitch from the original game! Now that's attention to detail.

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Sky Kid Deluxe (Namco, 1986)

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A slightly-upgraded version of 1985's Sky Kid, this runs on Namco System 86 hardware (the oirignal game runs on Pac-Land-based hardware and has redone music, new targets and stages as well as graphical upgrades like the colour of the sky changing and snow effects. That's all you get, though! Still, this version of the game hasn't been rereleased very often- the last time we saw it was Namco Museum: Virtual Arcade on the Xbox 360.

I will admit, I'm not a huge fan of Arcade Archives releases dividing games that are very, very similar to one another into separate releases- this also happened with Rally-X and New Rally-X, and will happen with Thunder Ceptor and 3D Thunder Ceptor II (although that one will get a post launch-update with PSVR support so that's something novel at least). It's possible that, as suggested to me on Twitter that Bandai Namco in particular consider these 'separate' games, and you can make that case for Sky Kid & Sky Kid Deluxe seeing as they're on different hardware, but it still doesn't sit well with me. Oh well.

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Don Doko Don (Taito, 1989)

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Bob and Jim, two lumberjacks living in Merry Land, set off on a quest to save the King and Princess of the land from a wicked dragon and his minions. This is another single-screen platformer in the style of Bubble Bobble or The Fairyland Story with the main weapon here being your hammer- bop an enemy on the head and you can grab them while they're stunned, letting you throw them into other enemies to take them out. You can also stack defeated enemies at the cost of movement speed, and you can increase your power to let you throw enemies through walls and other enemies.

Other changes to the formula include frequent boss fights and more environmental hazards to contend with such as walls that swallow enemies and items up to send them to the other side of the screen, conveyer belts and plants that drop spike-balls, so there's quite a bit of variety here. Admittedly, it's not my favourite Taito game in this style- I'm too much of a fan of The Fairyland Story for that- but this one certainly has its fans, plus the presentation is excellent, with lots of vibrant colours, cute character deisgns and great soundtrack. And even when you beat it, there's the second half of the game, but you'll have to find it first...!

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Grobda (Namco, 1984)

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A spin-off of the ultra-influential Xevious, Grobda has you manning one of the tanks from that game in a gauntlet of battles in the NBA (the National Battling Association), taking the form of single-screen skirmishes with a set amount of enemies to beat. Management of your energy meter is essential as you need it to shoot your laser and operate your shield which can absorb enemy shots... And since Grobda can only take one hit, you'll need that shield. Fight an ever-increasing roster of enemies to be the best!

While your movement is slow, the pace of Grobda is still absolutely breakneck- battles can last just seconds and enemy tanks have huge explosions when shot, Missile Command-style, so they can take out other hostiles... And that includes you! It's a pretty simple game but it's also one of those arcade games where you just want to try again straight after losing your credit to see if you can do better. I was introduced to the game via Namco Museum Vol. 2 and it's easily my favourite game on that set, so don't sleep on this one!