Arc4nerd

Arc4nerd is a brand new game for the Commodore Amiga, released in 2026, and it is one of the most exciting homebrews to land on the platform in recent memory. We are playing it today on the MiSTer FPGA with full gameplay and commentary, so if you are new to the channel, welcome. This is what we do here.

The game was developed by Gerd Surey of HooGames2017 alongside Tino Menzer, published by APC and TCP, and created to coincide with the Amiga Ruhrpott Convention 4. It is an Arkanoid-style brick breaker built specifically for Commodore Amiga hardware, and it runs on an Amiga 500 or higher with Kickstart 1.3 or above and just 1MB of RAM. You control a movable reflector using either a mouse or joystick and bounce the iconic Amiga Boing Ball into tiles to clear each stage.

What sets Arc4nerd apart from a straight Arkanoid clone is the detail packed into it. The game features over 55 levels, and every single one of them is dedicated to a supporter of the Amiga Ruhrpott Convention. The levels are set in an industrial Ruhr area backdrop, giving the game a personality of its own. Drone-copters and obstacles get in your way, and randomly falling 3.5 inch floppy disks drop power-ups including a gun and a triple-boing ball. Pinball-style bumpers are built into the levels for high-score chasing, and there is a final boss waiting at the end of the run.

The physical edition of Arc4nerd comes in a collector's box that includes the game on floppy disk, a rulebook, a sticker sheet with in-game artwork, a pixel art poster, and a postcard of the ARC venue. A limited Special Edition was sold exclusively at the convention and is completely sold out. The standard boxed and digital versions are available through the Amiga Online Shop.

This is a genuine new Amiga game in 2026 running on real Amiga hardware via MiSTer FPGA, and it is exactly the kind of thing this channel loves to cover. If you want to see more Amiga gaming, retro deep dives, and honest commentary, hit subscribe and join the community. 

Available from https://hoogames2017.itch.io/arc4nerd.

Vampire Crawlers

Vampire Crawlers just dropped on April 21, 2026, and the gaming world was not ready for it. This is the first ever official spinoff of Vampire Survivors, co-developed by poncle and Nosebleed Interactive, and it takes everything that made Survivors a phenomenon and flips the genre completely on its head.

Instead of the hands-off auto-battling of the original, Vampire Crawlers is a turn-based, first-person dungeon crawler built around roguelike deck-building. You pick a Crawler, each of whom starts with a different base deck designed around specific weapons and abilities, then plunge into multi-floor dungeons exploring from a first-person viewpoint that feels like a nod to the early days of computer RPGs. Every encounter you win earns experience points. Level up and you draft a new card into your deck. Headbutt a chest and you might find power-ups, gold, gems, or healing items. Find the shovel and you dig down to the next floor.

The card system is built around playing cards in ascending mana order to chain devastating combos, where each card in the stack multiplies the impact of the next. Use Wild cards to push those chains out to 10, 20, or even 30 cards deep. Weapon evolutions from Vampire Survivors carry over here too, so if you know the original game, that knowledge transfers directly.

Crawlers hit one million players in its first week. On Steam, it currently sits at Overwhelmingly Positive with 95% of over 7,400 English reviews recommending it. Critics scored it between 82 and 89 on Metacritic depending on platform, and 93% of critics on OpenCritic recommend it. Destructoid gave it a 9 out of 10.

In today's video I am playing through Vampire Crawlers on PC with full gameplay commentary, breaking down how the dungeon crawling works, how the deck builds, and where the chaos really starts to kick in. If you are new to the channel, welcome, we play all kinds of games here with commentary and honest reactions. Hit subscribe so you do not miss what is coming next.

Sol Cresta

Sol Cresta is one of those games that deserved far more attention than it got, and that is exactly why it is on this channel. Released on 22nd February 2022 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Steam, Sol Cresta was developed and published by PlatinumGames and serves as the concluding chapter in a franchise that began with Moon Cresta in arcades in 1980 and continued with Terra Cresta in 1985.

The game was directed by Takanori Sato, who previously led The Wonderful 101: Remastered, with Hideki Kamiya serving as creative director and story writer. Kamiya is known for Devil May Cry, Okami, Viewtiful Joe, and Bayonetta, and Sol Cresta marks the first title in PlatinumGames' own Neo-Classic Arcade series, a brand built around reviving the spirit of classic gaming with modern development. The soundtrack was composed by Yuzo Koshiro, one of the most respected names in game music, known for Streets of Rage, Actraiser, and Etrian Odyssey. Koshiro blended his own sound with the FM and PSG conventions of the original Terra Cresta score to create something that sits between homage and original composition. The full soundtrack was released as a physical 2-disc CD through Sweep Record.

The story is set in Cosmic Year 101. A robotic army known as the Mandler has seized control of the solar system, and humanity's only hope is the Yamato, a docking fighter made up of three individual ships named Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi, and Susano. The way these three ships combine, split apart, and reform mid-fight is the entire foundation of how Sol Cresta plays. Different formations unlock different attacks, and choosing when to split and when to dock is the core of what keeps the game engaging from start to finish.

The rights to the Cresta IP were held by Hamster Corporation, and Hideki Kamiya personally approached Hamster president Satoshi Hamada to secure permission to develop Sol Cresta. Hamada agreed immediately, and the two companies worked together throughout development. A physical edition was produced in partnership with Limited Run Games, with pre-orders running from February to March 2022. A Dramatic DLC was also released, adding a fully voiced story scenario written by Kamiya himself.

In this video we play through Sol Cresta with full commentary, covering the action as it unfolds and pointing out what makes this game worth your time. This channel covers retro-inspired and classic gaming across multiple platforms, always with live commentary and genuine enthusiasm for games that earn it.

If you are visiting for the first time, this is the place for gaming content with a bit of depth behind it. Subscribe and explore, because there is a lot here that does not get covered anywhere else.

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.