Future Publishing


Tecmo Classic Arcade

Author: Dan Geary
Publisher: Tecmo
Machine: Xbox (EU Version)

 
Published in Official Xbox Magazine #50

An exciting rummage around Tecma's attic - and not a ninja or a helicopter in sight!

Tecmo Classic Arcade (Tecmo)

The never-ending project to ruin your rose-tinted memories continues in this 11-strong showing of bleeping, flashing titles of the last century. This time it's the turn of Tecmo, with some typical offerings ranging from the surprisingly-still-quite-good, to the utterly forgettable, in that you forgot them first time round, to games so old they were probably invented by the Ancient Egyptian priests of the sun god Ra.

Stand-out moments are fiddly, likeable block-push platformer Solomon's Key, brainless but still quite fun left-to-right kill 'em up Rygar, and the nicely pitched Pac-Man-ish idiocy of Bomb Jack, still a joy to play. What with the ratio of good-to-awful-dross in most retro collections these days standing at about 1:4 Tecmo's done alright, with the only real stinkers being the incomprehensible (even if you 'get' US football) Tecmo Bowl, the pointless Pinball Action, and the just really, really ancient Swimmer and Pleiads, which are so old they defy classification. Filling out the middle are alright-ish 1990s shoot-'em-ups Star Force and Strato Fighter (basically an R-Type rip-off), clunky football game Tecmo Cup (which only Mark really enjoyed), and Senjyo, which looks a bit like Battlezone but is nowhere near as good. Ho hum.

As ever, it's a case of 20 minutes of quick-fire fun at best, another lesson in how games from the past should just stay there at worst. And with the similarly priced Taito Legends containing over 30 consistently better titles, this is a paltry collection, especially so given the notable absence of Ninja Gaiden and Silk Worm. You'll like it if you like this sort of thing, but then you probably already own them all in cabinet form if that's the case.

Verdict

A small, workmanlike collection that still includes one or two genuine classics. Okay, but there's better elsewhere.

Dan Geary

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