Retro

In the many, many (many) retro throwbacks that have appeared over the last decade, there have been a lot of things that have consistently worked toward a titles success, from the deliberate nostalgic touches, to the grueling difficulty curves, to the catchy music that has become such a staple of these type of games. Tembo the Badass Elephant does indeed bring these three standards to the forefront, as expected, but where it really shines is with the sense of joy and silliness that it uses to present itself.

An adventure 25 years in the making is fittingly getting the old-school treatment, as developer Joe Granato’s homage to the 8-bit games he grew up with, Mystic Searches, will release not only in digital form, but also as a physical cartridge in that eye-pleasing NES grey, playable on the system that inspired it and complete with the dust-blowing “mini-game” that accompanied those 1980s originals.

Released alongside the PlayStation 4, HouseMarque’s homage to classic shooters such as Defender and Datastorm was easily the best pick of the launch games (and in many ways is yet to be beaten). Casting you as a small ship on a large, curved cylinder, Resogun tasks you with moving left, right, up and down along the rotating background whilst shooting baddies, dodging projectiles and – most importantly – saving humans.