Author: Danny Neleman

QUByte has a knack for picking projects for its QUbyte Classics label that are so niche and specific you can’t help but wonder what the ROI is. Biomechanical Toy feels like a game aimed at an audience that grew up with Spain’s often underappreciated recreativos culture. Thousands of arcade cabinets populated the bars and cafés that were, and still are, an inherent part of Spanish social life, occupying the time of kids and young adults while parents and family indulged in the country’s vibrant nightlife. Spain’s Forgotten Arcade Gem Spain has always been a hotbed for bedroom developers, first making…

Blaze Entertainment has announced that it will increase the retail prices of Evercade cartridges and the Super Pocket handheld across the UK and Europe from July 2026. According to CEO Andrew Byatt, the decision comes after the company spent a prolonged period absorbing higher manufacturing and logistics costs. For European customers, the recommended retail price of standard Evercade cartridges will increase from €24.99 to €29.99, while the Super Pocket handheld will rise from €59.99 to €69.99. UK pricing will increase from £19.99 to £24.99 for cartridges and from £49.99 to £59.99 for Super Pocket. One notable change is that Blaze…

After River City Saga: Three Kingdoms, Arc System Works once again places the heroes of the Kunio-kun universe in the setting of Chinese cultural heritage, this time adapting the almost 500-year-old Journey to the West. Just like Three Kingdoms, all the familiar characters “play” a role in this epic tale as if it were a stage production. While the beat ’em up gameplay remains largely the same, the series has now succumbed to the plague that is the roguelite genre. That probably sounds rather biased, and admittedly it is. I simply don’t think every legacy franchise needs to become a…

After the release of Street Racer Collection, QUByte Interactive turns its attention to another niche license in collaboration with Piko Interactive: Soccer Kid. Many Amiga players from the nineties may have a soft spot for this platformer that dared to do something different. Even then, seeing Soccer Kid receive the compilation treatment feels like an extremely deep cut in video game history. A European platformer with personality Soccer Kid certainly earned its place in the European platforming canon. It embraces many of the genre’s trademarks: fast-paced action, huge amounts of collectibles and more than a few leaps of faith. Developer…

Fans of classic shoot-’em-ups can mark August 25, 2026 on their calendars. Publisher ININ Games has announced that Apidya’ Special will launch on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox and Nintendo Switch, with pre-orders now available across all platforms. Alongside the announcement, ININ Games released a new trailer offering a closer look at the game in action and revealing the physical editions that will accompany the digital release. Amiga cult classic Originally released on the Amiga in 1992, Apidya built a dedicated following thanks to its unusual insect-themed setting, challenging gameplay and soundtrack by Chris Hülsbeck. While most shoot-’em-ups of the era…

While Sega seems busier than ever, with major releases and projects such as Yakuza, Persona, Stranger than Heaven and the recently announced Alien: Isolation 2, the company has finally started to show tangible results from its Legacy Revival initiative. During The Game Awards 2023, Sega revealed that new entries in Shinobi, Golden Axe, Jet Set Radio, Streets of Rage and Crazy Taxi were all in development. At the time, the reveal trailer gave the impression that at least some of these projects might arrive as early as 2024. In reality, development appears to have taken longer than many expected. The…

Many times I postponed creating this review, to the point that it is now way overdue. Mainly because it never really managed to pull me in, while Haunted Lands, developed by Alevgor, appeals to me as a concept in more ways than one. I keep coming back to it because I always feel the tipping point, the moment where it finally clicks, is just within reach. Dangerous Dave homage First of all, Haunted Lands is a straight up homage to Carmack and Romero’s Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion. There are the EGA-style graphics, which fondly take me back to…

Amidst series like Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, Gradius or Truxton, R-Type surely held its own during the fourth generation of console gaming as a pure-bred arcade experience that didn’t back off for sake of the more casual home audience. Both Super R-Type and R-Type III: The Third Lightning were hard, relentless even, with limited continues to spend. Like Capcom, Irem never compromised on the coin-guzzling tactics of the arcade games these titles were derived from, even though the subject of todays review, R-Type III, was never released in arcades, it still carries the arcade pedigree fully. I really loved the highly…

Where many retro game enthusiasts hailed the newly announced Neo Geo AES+ as a liberation of the platform, some collectors deeply invested in the original AES ecosystem seem genuinely threatened by the idea of PLAION relaunching the platform as if it were a current-generation product. With only a handful of exceptions, original AES games circulate within the collector market for prices ranging from roughly €400 to well over €12,000. As a result, the niche has effectively become accessible only to a small group of collectors willing to make substantial investments and, in some cases, rely on the long-term value of…

As a 1989 PC Engine original based on the popular manga and anime series, City Hunter feels like one of the earliest console action-platformers to seriously experiment with narrative progression as part of the gameplay itself. At the time, storytelling mechanics of this kind were still mostly reserved for RPGs and adventure games. Games like Ninja Gaiden pushed cinematic storytelling through cutscenes, but City Hunter goes a step further by tying progression directly to clue gathering, NPC interaction and exploration. The 37-year-old City Hunter you are Ryo Saeba, better known as City Hunter, a detective tasked with solving three cases.…