Ghost Pilots (Arcade Classics Archives Neo Geo) NSWITCHDDL [REVIEW] | My Very Own 194X

I love the Neo Geo, as in, i was a wee child that did always light up when the arcade cabinets started up with that logo and name, letting me know i was in for a good time.

I never owned a Neo Geo cabinet or one of their home consoles, so aside from the odd port on PS1 or PS2 collections, for me Neo Geo was something you went to the arcades, which already tells you how ancient (in prospective) i am, given how that market/scene ended up in the following decades.

That said, i’m glad i never encounted a Ghost Pilots machine, and to be honest i never even heard of this one until i found it and bought its Arcade Classics Archives release on the Nintendo eshop.

As to why, it’s because its one of those early releases for the Neo Geo based hardware that are better forgotten, left in their own little burrow in the ground, their own little cubicle in videogame history.

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Cyber Lip (Arcade Archives Neo Geo) NSWITCHDDL | Insain In The Main Brain

Before SNK dedicated itself to make a LOT of fighting games (with a lot of classics, admittely), their output included also action platformers, and run n gun, even before hitting the jackpot with their beloved Metal Slug series, which i’m a really tempted to do a retrospective on… again, since clearly modern SNK it’s more interested in F2P titles that often reuse a lot of assets from the golden age of the series.

So to quench my thirst i searched my Arcade Archives library on the ol’ Switch for some similar Neo Geo run n gun goodness… and noticed i had but didn’t actually play Cyber Lip yet.

It’s referred to as a Metal Slug “clone”, which is incorrect but there’s some truth to it, since Metal Slug itself was fashioned after Contra, so it makes sense a SNK pre-Metal Slug game in that vein does play like Contra, down to the latching into poles on ceilings and stuff, with a boss being a shameless rip-off, but i guess its fine since Contra Shattered Soldier later had a “giant eyed boss” you fight by hanging on a pipe like the one you fight here.

Poetry, indeed.

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[EXPRESSO] Burning Fight (Arcade Classic Archives Neo Geo) NSWITCH DDL | Streets Of Mid

I’m a simple man, i see some Arcade Classics Archives games on sale on the Switch eShop, i usually buy them, especially if it’s early Neo Geo beat em up i’ve never even seen mentioned before.

With 3 bucks less to my wallet, i realized why exactly.

I mean, it was the age of the beat em up, and while it’s not often fair to just call them knock-offs…. Burning Fight really can’t be called anything else than a “knock-off” of Final Fight, Streets Of Rage, heck even Double Dragon, and one that embodies the definition of “one of those”, since it’s so predictable and derivative to have even the special health-draining moves feel like “legally distinct” imitations of Capcom’s other big series about punching people.

The only distinctive feature is that you can enter some of the shops/facilities and smash some furniture to find health and point pickups, but even these diversions last 4 seconds tops, though there’s some attempts at doing something new with some stages where you move on a conveyer belt while thugs throw explosive at you from the background, but it’s very small stuff.

This is as straightforward, simple and generic as a beat ‘em up could be in that era.

Originality aside, the problem with Burning Fight is that it’s indeed a cheap, brazen and almost sub-par knock off, not unplayable or anything, but the kind it inevitably just makes you wish you were playing the older titles on SNES and Genesis it’s clearly aping, since they’re better in every regard.

So ironically the only way i can justify bothering with this one it’s if you’re a beat em up buff that has already played all the popular ones and are searching for a fix, something that “will do”, and not really anything else.

[EXPRESSO] Blazing Chrome NSWDDL | Olympus Has Fallen

21XX A.D.

Capitalization of vaguely remembered decades run rampant in the dystopian future where a war against “ze machines” is unfolding. As humanity last stand, the last survivors of a suicide mission, with the main characters designs clearly – “just because we like it” – made to evoke Appleseed’s Dunen and Briareos, you’ll have to attack the enemy HQ in a desperate, last bout of run n gun action.

From the developers of Oniken and Odallus comes a surprisingly good retro 2D run n gun, one that not only evokes the 16 bits days of yore via the usual (but also quite crisp) retro aesthetic, but also because it’s basically Contra III (the weapons will make it even more obvious), with an evasive roll manouver and a Metal Slug-style close quarters knife attack added for good measure. But still, a very good recreation of Contra with enough in it to not just make it a “clone”, made by people that know what to keep from the classics, and where concede to modernity in order to avoid fidelity over quality.

It’s a 6 missions/level affair, but they’re well designed, quite packed and keep the tradition of changing things up with motorcycle sequences, mechsuits, faux-3D shooting sequences, etc. It’s the kind of game that is by design not particularly long, but it’s also very challenging, hard but never soulcrushing difficult, you always feel you can win if you try again, learn and improve. It also gets the arcade type of replayability perfectly, and you’re given various difficuly settings that add or remove “comodities” suck as saving or extra lives. Add in extra playable characters, boss rush mode, and even options for speedrun, and i really can’t recommend this enough.

Shoutout to my buddy Chaosknight69 on Backloggery for recommending this one.

Loved it!

[EXPRESSO] Zed Blade/Operation Ragnarok NSWDDL | Norsemech

Zed Blade NSWDDL.jpg

More Neo Geo titles on Switch? YES.

Like most offering in the Arcade Archives-ACA series by Hamster, the game has both the american/international release and the original japanese one, named Operation Ragnarok. Not that it matters, they took names from norse mythology, but you are still in the usual spaceships flying around, shooting mechs, insectoid robots n stuff, as one of three anime styled characters you can choose.

As for why, you’re up against the supercomputer-turned-rebellious spaceship Yggdrasil, not that you’re ever gonna find out if you don’t read the description in the store page or search wikia, because the game itself doesn’t tell you.

MHK’s game delivers a typical but satisfying 2D spaceship shooter, with an interesting feature, as you can (and must) customize the type of main shot, rear shot and missiles (all shot at the same time) at the start of the game, alongside one of the three characters, who determines the ship’s speed. There are power ups that improve each type of shot, alongisde the classic smart bombs, but you mostly gotta work with the loadout chosen at the beginning.

Graphics are nice, nothing impressive for the time, the music on the other hand definitely stands out, with EDM style tracks that i personally dig. Sadly, i don’t think it’s enough to overlook the generic nature and some balance issues, since your ship has a bigger sprite than it should, making it for some cheap deaths, but then again the smart bomb is a bit too powerful, and even without those, it’s an easier (and shoter) affair than usual for the genre.

Good game, still, definitely worth playing for fans of genre hungry for lesser known Neo Geo games, even if flawed and lacking distinguishing features in a sea of more popular (and often better) shmups.

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