Ash Williams is sitting in his little pixelated trailer, drinking 16-bit beer and living out his retro mid-life crisis, when all of a sudden the demonic Overlord bursts in and interrupts his lazy Tuesday evening. “Mwahaha, evil shenanigans”, he says (I’m paraphrasing, but you get the gist), before stealing the Necronomicon so he can become an even more devilish devil. Chainsaw revved, beer gut sucked in, it’s time to spill some sprite guts and get groovy.
RetroRealmsis an unashamed callback to simpler times when you’d boot up an arcade game and mindlessly carve up a conveyor belt of enemies. But the game itself is a foundation that presents itself as an aging empty plaza, with a museum in the back ready to house all of your favourite movie memorabilia. It’s the DLC packs, likeHalloweenand Ash vs. Evil Dead, that pulls back the tarp and revealsnever before seen horror tie-inslike these ones.
These are new games, not lost media, but the retro dressing makes it feel like you’re hoarding forgotten classics.
If you’ve ever played an old-school platformer, you know what the deal is. The story is pretty barebones, a bad guy is being bad, so off you go to complete level after level, grabbing collectibles and racing against the clock for a high score. You find health items in crates, ranged weapons like Castlevania’s Molotov, and currency to spend on upgrades, all while murdering a village’s worth of people. Sprinkle in some boss fights and it’s pretty standard arcade fare.
But there are a couple of unique hooks. The first of which is the hellish realm of the Overlord. Much likeTitanfall 2’s iconic Effect and Cause mission, you may jump between two different versions of each level. The nightmare realm is expectedly harder, but the trade-off is that it opens up hidden paths that lead to secret items. It’s a novel idea, but never adds that much complexity to the levels, even by the end of each cabinet.
Switching to the other dimension in each level means fighting enemies that get back up again and gank you in frustrating numbers. And reaching it to begin with means activating a power-up which never comes close to the fluidity ofTitanfall 2, as you’re frozen in place, stuck watching a finicky animation play out until the transition completes. Once you’ve switched, there’s a slight delay before you can use it again, so combining platforming with the item seamlessly is impossible, only furthering the sluggish feel of the game’s movement.
The other unique hook is that you can bring characters from one arcade to the other. So, if you have both packs at launch, you can try out the Halloween levels as Ash Williams. This isn’t just cosmetic, either, as the Overlord’s dialogue will change to reflect that you are not the unstoppable knife-wielding murderer in overalls. Enemies will likewise transform into Deadites, and the loot pool even switches as it’s character-specific.
It’s an incredible touch that adds a lot of replay value to each cabinet, something that will no doubt continue to grow as more packs are released. Right now, it’s fairly limited given that there are only two cabinets to choose from, but it’s exciting to imagine Ghostface trapped in Hellraisers’ Labyrinth, or Freddy Krueger tormenting camp counselors at Crystal Lake.
The moment-to-moment combat is where RetroRealms really shines. Developer WayForward has made each characterfeeltrue to their live-action counterparts. Michael Myers is a slow-moving bruiser, capturing that unnerving, inhuman presence he has when chasing down his victims. He never runs, he just walks at his own leisurely place until you’re trapped, with the only way out waiting at the end of his knife. Ash Williams on the other hand is faster, with his chainsaw dispatching enemies far quicker, but he’s clumsy. He rolls like a middle-aged man.
Even though both are bulky characters lacking the agility of other horror icons like the Xenomorph, the combos and basic attacks feel incredibly smooth and kinetic. It’s satisfying to carve up Deadites and… nurses. I’m sorry to all the 16-bit hospital staff hurt in the making of this game, but slashing you up with Michael Myers’ signature knife feltso good.
Ranged weapons also offer a variety of ways to dispatch foes from afar. Some are direct, like the pitchfork, firing in a straight line and instantly killing whoever gets caught in the crossfire. Others stun multiple enemiesaboveyou, which flows with the platforming incredibly well, allowing you to reach higher ledges and take care of them without taking damage. And some bounce so that you can catch an enemy as they close in on you.
It’s a testament to WayForward’s care and attention towards each property they’re adapting, fitting distinct characters to their arcade formula while ensuring that they remain unique, so much so that I wanted to bring Ash Williams to the Halloween cabinet just because I loved the franticness of his chainsaw abilities.
Where RetroRealms suffers most is its platforming. It never grows in complexity to a notable degree, sticking with fairly basic ideas like slow-moving barriers thumping up and down, or platforms gliding left and right over fire. I never felt like I was put to the test, and the only times I struggled were because of clunky movement. On the whole, I breezed through most levels without much issue, which for a platformer, was fairly disappointing.
RetroRealms Arcade is a solid foundation, and offers a unique opportunity to give classic horror icons like Halloween a chance at the movie tie-ins they never got, but definitely deserved. I hope WayForward builds an entire gallery for series which have yet to truly shine in the medium, from Hellraiser and Scream to the more obscure gems like Driller Killer and Alice, Sweet Alice.
But I also hope that it experiments more with its ideas, because the Overlord’s realm and the platforming stagnate pretty early on, never reaching the heights they could. That being said, the game does a brilliant job at making you feel like each character, all while stepping foot into lovingly hand-crafted worlds brought to life with stunning pixel art that perfectly encapsulates what makes these worlds so iconic all these years later.
