We’re skating up against the edges of what could reasonably be considered “indie” this time out. On one hand, RetroRealms Arcade is another small-print retro revival, which does for Castlevania what Iron Meat did for Contra. On the other, it’s a two-pack of licensed adaptations that star some of the best-known characters in modern horror.
On the mutant third hand, however, the adaptations have a little in-name-only stank on ‘em. RetroRealms is a callback to the sort of mascot games that you used to see all the time in the ‘90s, like Wayne’s World or The Mask, which puts familiar characters into a somewhat generic 2D action-platformer. Here, however, that all-purpose gameplay is part of the point.
There are currently two available games for RetroRealms, available separately or as a package deal, which are presented as the last two functioning machines in an abandoned arcade. One, Ash vs. Evil Dead, is based upon the Starz series of the same name; the other, Halloween, stars the series’ killer Michael Myers and seems to have the most in common with the original film from 1978.
In both cases, the games begin with the introduction of a new antagonist, the Overlord, who plans to turn Earth into a nightmare dimension. In Ash vs. Evil Dead, he steals the Necronomicon from Ash and turns Ash’s trailer park into a Deadite mosh pit on his way out the door. Ash straps on his chainsaw and gives chase.
Meanwhile, in Halloween, the Overlord stops by Michael’s asylum with a recruitment pitch. He wants Michael as his right-hand man. Unfortunately, part of the Overlord’s interview process involves having to fight through the asylum and the surrounding neighborhoods, which are infested with both law enforcement and the Overlord’s demonic minions.
Both games play in much the same way. They’re 10 levels long and send you through a gauntlet of enemies, traps, and elaborate obstacles. Ash’s trailer park has a garden of spikes right outside it, and Michael’s escape from the asylum is punctuated by barrages of flaming propane tanks. That’s just life in faux-retro (“retraux”) platformer town, where every small-town superstore has a bunch of moving platforms, explosive traps, and spilled kerosene in Aisle 16.
As you make progress, you carve up enemies, collect cash, and can hunt up extra collectibles in each stage to influence your final score. Between stages, you can spend accumulated money to upgrade your character with more health and new moves, such as a flying uppercut or a big body splash.
Taken as a whole, RetroRealms is an extended love letter to 8- and 16-bit action platformers that isn’t shy about paying homage to its influences, primarily Mega Man X and the 16-bit Castlevanias. It’s also surprisingly difficult, occasionally in ways that remind me of modern “kaizo” platformers like Celeste, which makes it feel like a sort of greatest-hits tour of the genre.
Both games share a core gimmick, where you can flip between the normal world and the Overlord’s “nightmare realm,” a twisted version of the same environment that usually has a few key differences. You can use it to get around obstacles that would otherwise be impassable or reveal secret passageways.
The tradeoff is that the nightmare realm’s enemies are usually much more dangerous than the normal world’s, and you can’t see where or what they are without making the transition. Worse, they’re usually in ambush position, so any time you flip between realms, you’re probably about to take a hit before you can react.
It’s one of several ways in which RetroRealms seems to have brought back the “arcade feel.” Specifically, it’s a sort of post-Celeste quarter-muncher, where it’s often deliberately unfair on a blind run like it’s trying to milk you for all your spare change. My first run through both RetroRealms games was punctuated by cheap hits, unavoidable damage, and some surprisingly intense platforming challenges.
The bosses are comparatively simple, but the real problem is getting to them without being thrown into a burn pit by something that you couldn’t possibly have predicted. There’s a point a little over halfway through Ash where ordinary enemies start to explode on death, some with enough force to send you flying, and it made me have to go do something else for a while.
RetroRealms does look good, though. I touched upon this briefly a few weeks ago, but even when and if I have problems with their actual game, WayForward’s production design is always on point. The music is fair to good, the animation is top-notch, and the pixel art is some of the best in the modern business.
It does come off like this is the Saturday morning cartoon adaptation of the source material, which may or may not have been the desired effect. In context, it sort of works, even if it verges on self-parody. Halloween in particular plays like a 30-year-old background joke from The Simpsons, where a character who’s known for his stillness and silence is set loose to hop and bop his way through a maze of conveyor belts and hostile mechanics. Michael finds new subweapons by killing unarmed civilians, which is both appropriate to the source material and darkly hilarious.
RetroRealms is clearly set up as the first two installments in some kind of shared 16-bit platformer universe, as both games end with vague sequel hooks. It’s not a bad format, and WayForward’s made a couple of decent faux-retro action platformers here. I’d go so far as to say that this is one of the best Evil Dead games ever made, although that might be damning it with faint praise.
It’s often more frustrating than fun, however. It’s taken the wrong sort of inspiration from both its arcade roots and modern platformers, which brings down the whole. If you’re a big fan of deliberately punishing arcade games, RetroRealms might be for you, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I expected I would.
[Retro Realms Arcade, developed by WayForward and published by Boss Team Games, is now available for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4&5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC via Steam for $49.99. Each game can also be purchased individually for $24.99. This review was written using a PlayStation 5 code sent to Hard Drive by a Boss Team Games PR representative.]
