Alpharay

Alpharay arrived in 2019 and immediately gave Commodore Plus 4 owners something to shout about. Developed by the Puls4r team, the same crew responsible for the acclaimed Pets Rescue on the same hardware, and published by Psytronik Software, this is a horizontal scrolling shoot em up that pushes the TED chip in the Plus 4 harder than most people thought was possible on an 8-bit machine from 1984.

The game was coded by Stefan Mader with additional code by Bubis. Graphics were handled by KiCHY and Nero, with additional art from Lu Isa and Noud, and the soundtrack was composed by 5tarbuck. Cover art came from Trevor Storey, whose work has become a familiar sight across the Psytronik catalogue.

The story places you in the cockpit of the Alpharay fighter in the Archeron sector. A robotic fleet is invading and you are the pilot selected to stop it. There are six levels to fight through, each with distinct visual design and enemy formations. As you progress you collect weapon power-ups that change what your ship can do, with options including stronger forward fire and multi-directional shots. The difficulty builds steadily, and the game has a lot to offer whether you are picking it up for the first time or coming back to push your score higher.

Alpharay was released in both a free download version and as a commercial physical release in three formats: a standard budget disk edition, a premium disk edition with full colour artwork, and a Collector's Edition box set that includes the game, a soundtrack CD, and additional extras. The soundtrack was also released separately by 5tarbuck on Bandcamp.

In this video we play through Alpharay with full commentary, sharing thoughts on what the game does and how it holds up as one of the standout releases in the Plus 4 library. This channel is built around retro and homebrew gaming with honest, real-time commentary, and Alpharay is exactly the kind of title this channel exists to cover.

If you are new here, welcome. There is a lot more content covering machines and games that deserve far more attention than the mainstream gives them. Hit subscribe and stay for the ride.

Available from https://psytronik.itch.io/alpharay.

Next Hexagon

Something genuinely exciting landed on the ZX Spectrum Next in May 2026, and this is it. Next Hexagon is a brand new game released this year by developer shrek128, also known as Miroslav Bursa, and it has already been turning heads in the Spectrum Next community for very good reason.

The concept is stripped back and precise. You are inside a rotating hexagonal maze, and wave-rings close in on you. You have one button. That is everything you have. The game is coded entirely in pure Z80 assembler using the sjasmplus assembler toolchain, which means it is running on the ZX Spectrum Next at a level very few homebrew releases manage to reach. The visuals use the Next's Layer 2 hardware to produce a rotating bitmap background that reacts in sync with PT3 chiptune music. This is not a visual gimmick. It is deliberate and it makes the experience noticeably harder to read as the speed climbs.

And it does climb. The speed ramps up sharply around the one-minute mark, which is where the leaderboard separations begin to happen. There is a built-in scoring system, and for those playing on real Spectrum Next hardware with Wi-Fi, high scores can be pushed online directly from the machine without any third-party software.

The game is described by its creator as strongly inspired by Micro Hexagon on the Commodore 64, re-imagined from the ground up for the Next with hardware-native features the original platform could never have supported.
In this video we play through Next Hexagon with full commentary, talking through what we are seeing as it happens. This channel covers retro and homebrew gaming with genuine enthusiasm and real-time reactions, and a game this sharp deserves exactly that treatment.

If you are new to the channel, welcome. This is the place for games that most people have never heard of but absolutely should have. Subscribe and stick around, because there is a lot more where this came from.

Available from https://shrek128.itch.io/next-hexagon.
 

Pets Rescue

Pets Rescue is one of those games that makes you stop and ask why more people aren't talking about it. Released on 25th February 2018 at the BCC#12 party in Germany, this is a full-blown platform adventure built for the Commodore Plus 4 and the expanded Commodore 16 with a 64K RAM upgrade. The game was developed by Plus/4 All Stars, with coding by Stefan Mader, graphics by KiCHY and Luca, and music composed by Luca, Degauss and 5tarbuck. It was published commercially by Psytronik Software and went on to win awards in the homebrew retro gaming scene.

The game follows Dr Andrea Brown, a veterinary surgeon whose lab is torn apart when her assistant Dr Edward Vil conducts reckless DNA experiments. The explosion mutates every animal in the building, and now Dree has to chase them down across 24 massive scrolling levels to bring them home safely.

What makes Pets Rescue genuinely impressive is what it achieves on this hardware. The levels feature animated backgrounds and parallax-style scrolling. The gameplay gives you controllable mid-air jumps, which is a detail that many bigger productions on more powerful machines got wrong. There is a gigantic final boss, a full intro sequence, and a proper ending. The soundtrack across the levels is original and varied, and the game was compared favourably to Giana Sisters and Super Mario at launch.

In this video we play through the game with full commentary, sharing thoughts as the action unfolds, pointing out what the development team nailed and what surprises the levels throw at you. This channel is all about diving into real gameplay with honest reactions, and Pets Rescue absolutely earns that treatment.

If you are new here, welcome. This channel covers classic and retro gaming with commentary, exploring machines and software that deserve far more attention than they get. Pets Rescue on the Commodore Plus 4 is exactly the kind of game this channel was built for.

The game is available from Psytronik Software in digital form and in three physical editions including a full Collector's Box Set with a soundtrack CD, poster, badge, and more. Worth every penny.

Available from https://psytronik.itch.io/pets-rescue.
 

Air Gallet

Air Gallet is a 1996 vertical scrolling arcade shooter published by Banpresto and developed by Gazelle, a studio founded in 1994 by former Toaplan employees after Toaplan declared bankruptcy that same year. Gazelle was founded by Tatsuya Uemura, Junya Inoue, Mikio Yamaguchi, Kaneyo Ohira and Yoshitatsu Sakai, all veterans of one of Japan's most celebrated arcade shooter studios. That lineage matters, because it puts Air Gallet in a direct creative chain that runs from Toaplan straight through to CAVE.

Players control a fighter jet across six levels to take down a terrorist organisation that is destroying major cities around the world and brainwashing the global population with propaganda. The game features four distinct weapon types: a laser, a support drone, a tracing missile and a gatling spread shot. Each weapon requires four power-up tokens to reach the next level, with four upgrade levels available per weapon type. Two special bomb weapons can also be collected, with the green Energy Spark clearing all bullets from the screen and the blue Thunder Drive delivering a narrower, more focused blast that only clears bullets that make direct contact.

The development story behind Air Gallet is one of the most fascinating in arcade history. Junya Inoue confirmed in an interview that due to financial difficulties at Gazelle, the game's deadline was moved forward mid-development. At that point, over 50% of the stages still needed to be built and only two to three months remained. Inoue revealed that the company's financial situation meant the game had to be rushed and they were unable to properly adjust its balance. Despite that, the sprite layering and visual presentation drew genuine praise on release.

Air Gallet is the only original IP from Gazelle and was the second of only three games the studio ever developed. Junya Inoue, who worked on this game at Gazelle, went on to become one of CAVE's most celebrated staffers shortly afterwards. A remaster titled Airgallet EXA Label was released in March 2025 exclusively for the exA-Arcadia coin-op platform, with Junya Inoue and Keishi Yonao brought back to work on it. It includes the original game with bug fixes alongside a new EXA Mode with updated scoring and new voice overs.

The original 1996 release features voice work from Lenne Hardt and Jeff Manning. Today MAME preserves the full arcade version exactly as it appeared in cabinets, and that is what you are watching right here.

On this channel we play through arcade games and give you full commentary throughout, so you get the complete experience alongside the footage. If you are new here, welcome, there is plenty more to explore, so hit subscribe and stay for the ride. 

Blood Bros.

Blood Bros. is a 1990 arcade shooter from TAD Corporation, the Japanese developer responsible for Cabal back in 1988. This one is a spiritual follow-up to that game, set in a Wild West world and built around the same over-the-shoulder shooting style that made Cabal such a hit in arcades two years earlier.

The story is exactly the kind of setup arcade games of this era did so well. Two blood brothers, one a cowboy and one a Native American, join forces to track down Big Bad John, described in the game as the most wanted outlaw in Dodge City. Up to two players can take on the game together, with player one controlling the cowboy and player two taking the Native American role.
What sets this apart from a lot of shooters of the time is how destructible the world around you is. Barrels, glass bottles, bridges, buildings, mountains and entire landscapes can all be levelled as the action unfolds. When every enemy on a stage is taken out, the remaining structures collapse on their own, the screen clears, and the brothers do a comical victory dance as they walk off into the distance. That detail alone tells you a lot about the personality TAD put into this one.

Players carry unlimited ammunition for their primary gun alongside a limited supply of dynamite sticks, which work in a similar way to grenades and deliver far more damage than standard fire. The working title for the game, found buried in dead code inside another TAD release called Sky Smasher, was "Cabal II In West." A pirate version of Blood Bros. also circulated under the name West Story.

Despite the title screen displaying 1990, the game was not released in Japan until January 1991. In North America the game was published by Fabtek rather than TAD Corporation directly. The game ran on Cabal-related hardware, directed by Hiro Kakiuchi with music composed by Yuji Tezuka and Yusaku Aoki.

Today MAME preserves the full arcade experience exactly as it appeared in cabinets, and that is exactly what you are watching here.

On this channel we play through games and give you full commentary along the way, so you get the whole picture, not just the footage. If you are new here, welcome, hit subscribe and come back anytime for more arcade
gaming done properly.

Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters

Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters is one of those arcade games that deserved a far bigger crowd than it ever got. Released in July 1989 by Atari Games, this is a full-on isometric multidirectional shooter with co-op support, and it plays today with the same frantic energy it had when it first showed up in arcades over 35 years ago.

The setup is pure 1950s sci-fi B-movie gold. Planet X, a synthetic industrial planetoid, has been seized by an alien race called the Reptilons. They've captured the research facility's lead scientist, Dr. Sarah Bellum, and are forcing the enslaved human population to churn out a robot army aimed at conquering Earth. You step in as Jake or Duke, part of an interplanetary SWAT team, armed with a ray gun and a very short patience for robot nonsense.

What makes this one stand out is the detail Atari packed into it. The arcade original used Hall effect joysticks offering 16-directional control, a genuinely advanced setup for 1989. You work through isometric maze levels hunting levers to activate escalators, collecting gems to power up your ray gun, and breaking into food lockers to recover health along the way. Every hostage rescued adds to your score, and the pressure never lets up.
Only 371 dedicated cabinet units were ever produced for the US market, with an original selling price of $2,245. A further 1,000 conversion kits were made at $1,015 each. That rarity alone tells you why so few people got a proper run at it back in the day. The game was designed by Mark Stephen Pierce, the same creative mind behind Atari bangers like RoadBlasters and Klax. The code even contains a hidden message reading: HI LISA, ROBIN, MOM and DAD.

The game received home ports to the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, SAM Coupe and MS-DOS, published by Domark. Today MAME gives it back in full arcade form, exactly as Atari intended.
On this channel we play through games and share proper commentary along the way, giving you the full experience alongside the gameplay. If you're new here, welcome, this is exactly what we do, and there's plenty more where this came from. Hit subscribe and come along for the ride.

Galacticon

Galacticon is a retro inspired arcade shooter developed by Radin Games and published by Flynn’s Arcade, originally released in 2022 for PC. Inspired by legendary arcade classics like Defender, Joust and Jetpac, the game delivers fast paced action, pixel art visuals and score chasing gameplay built around classic early 80s arcade design.

In this gameplay and commentary video, we jump into Galacticon on PC to experience its frantic arcade action, smooth controls, secret bonuses, progressive difficulty and worldwide leaderboard system. The game features infinite levels, hidden secrets on each stage and authentic retro arcade presentation designed to feel like a genuine lost arcade cabinet release.

If you love retro gaming, arcade shooters, indie games, pixel graphics, classic PC action games and modern retro inspired releases, this is a must watch. Subscribe for more gameplay, commentary, hidden retro gems, arcade classics, indie retro games and PC gaming videos every week.

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Available from  https://store.steampowered.com/app/1737980/Galacticon/