Resident Evil 4 VR (Meta Quest, 2022)

We’ve only begun to nibble at the corners of what’s possible in a VR game. The last ten years have seen developers making baby steps into the medium and it’s exciting to think about what’ll be possible a decade from now.

That VR’s creative limits are so vast should make something like Resident Evil 4 VR a bit retrograde. This is a 17-year-old game that’s been ported to everything under the sun already, here with a VR upgrade that’s bolted onto the existing design without any consideration for balance, enemy AI, or difficulty.

But it rocks so so hard.

Outrunners (Arcade, 1993)

Out Run is one of the finest arcade games of the 1980s. The blue skies, toe-tapping synth soundtrack, and silky-smooth super scaler visuals helped cement Sega’s brand identity, delivering a laid-back eighties cool as you and your girlfriend zip through Europe on a race against the clock.

But where the first game captured a quintessentially 80s dream, OutRunners is a creature of the early 90s. Rather than a single Ferrari Testarossa you get a selection of neon-colored cars that’d look at home on a Hot Wheels course, populated by a cast of characters that play homage to stuff like Smooth Criminal-era Michael Jackson or Thelma and Louise.

The minimalist original will always be my favorite, but at least OutRunners forges ahead with its own identity. And, more importantly, it looks incredible doing it.

Sailor Zombie: AKB48 Arcade (Arcade, 2014)

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at the pitch meeting for Sailor Zombie.

– “Hi Bandai-Namco, we can’t wait to hear what you’ve cooked up as an arcade game for our super popular girl group AKB48! We figured they’d be a perfect match for a rhythm action or dance cabinet!”

– “Ah, well, we thought that was too obvious, so in our game you SHOOT THE AKB48 GIRLS IN THE FACE WITH A BIG GUN”.

Jurassic Park (Arcade, 1994)

There’s something ironic about Jurassic Park the movie showcasing cutting-edge rendering technology while Jurassic Park the arcade game has graphics on the verge of being extinct.

It’s summer 1994. Arcadegoers have already had two years to enjoy the slick untextured polygons of Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter birthed the 3D fighting genre a year later, and the hot new thing as of March is the stunning Daytona USA. Those texture-mapped 60fps polygons made jaws drop around the world and teased a graphical standard that wouldn’t be matched at home until at least the millennium (arguably longer).

Castlevania: The Arcade (Arcade, 2009)

There’s nothing like the thrill of tracking down an obscure arcade cabinet. Over the years I’ve headed to New York to play House of the Dead: Scarlet Dawn, Tokyo to find Loving Deads: House of the Dead EX, and to, uh, Bury for Metal Gear Arcade (though that last one proved a bust, the cabinet had been shoved back in the warehouse as “nobody ever played it”).

Over the past few years, I’ve been working my way through the Castlevania series, though the ultra-obscure 2009 release Castlevania: The Arcade has been an itch apparently impossible to reach. Well, consider it now well and truly scratched.

No More Heroes (Wii, 2007 / Switch 2020)

I skipped out on the Wii at the height of its popularity. Sure, I borrowed my friends’ for the occasional Zelda or Mario release, but on the whole I was happy with my PlayStation 3. But there was the odd game that tickled my fancy that I never got around to, like PlatinumGames’ MadWorld, Sega’s NiGHTS: Journey into Dreams, and, yup, Grasshopper Manufacture’s No More Heroes.

I’d loved Suda51’s Killer7 on GameCube and as far as I could see No More Heroes continued that aesthetic while adding great heaping dollops of gore, swearing, and snatches of Tarantino. Now, fifteen years on I’ve finally gotten my hands on the game and… where has No More Heroes been all my life?!