Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for April 29th, 2024. It’s a new week! As usual, we’re starting with some reviews for you to enjoy. I take a good look at Lunar Lander Beyond from Atari, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants from GameMill, and Dadish 3D from Thomas K. Young. After that, we have some new releases to check out, including the curious Sunday drop of El Shaddai. We wrap things up in the usual fashion by listing the latest and expiring sales of the day. Let’s get to work!
Reviews & Mini-Views
Lunar Lander Beyond ($29.99)
I think Atari is in somewhat of a tricky position with its older IPs. A lot of time has passed between when they were at their peak relevance and now. Due to the tumultuous history of Atari, the gradual evolution that those games might have gone through over time was missed. That leaves the company trying to ride a fine line between making games new players who have never heard of any of these near-fifty year old brands will enjoy and keeping them faithful enough for there to be any real connection to the classics. While I have certainly enjoyed the Recharged line, I suspect they aren’t picking up many new fans. The upcoming Yars Rising has already caught flak for seeming to have little to do with the original games at all.
Lunar Lander Beyond falls somewhere in the middle. It is certainly of the same lineage as Lunar Lander, even if it feels more like the game’s grandchild Gravitar than the original. You’ll be thrusting your little ship around, performing various tasks, and trying to make any number of safe landings. Really, when I write it out this does seem more like Gravitar than Lunar Lander. Well, what can you do? There’s a mission-based structure here, and you’ll have multiple pilots and ships at your disposal, each with their own characteristics. The pilots in particular are randomly generated, and their innate traits can greatly influence how easy or difficult any given mission will be. You can’t just lean on one favorite though, as they will become exhausted if they don’t get ample rest. Pushing them too far can lead to hallucinations and total breakdowns.
As you play, you’ll earn new ships and ship parts that you can use, and these too tend to be better for some missions than others. Well, that’s the idea anyway. In reality, this whole system gets unbalanced in a hurry. It doesn’t matter that much, but it does make it feel like some of this stuff is extraneous. In almost every case time is the key factor, so once you find the set-up that works best towards that end, you can cruise on through. But you know, it’s not an unpleasant cruise by any means. It’s not as rough as Gravitar in terms of difficulty, but it’s challenging enough to keep you engaged. The presentation is decent, and if a person really wants to drain every last drop of entertainment from the game they’ll get a good amount of game here. Those just going for a one-and-done playthrough might find the experience a bit slight, though.
Lunar Lander Beyond is… fine. I wish I could say it’s more than that, or that it has the capacity to do more than preach to the Atari choir, but I don’t think it’s quite there. Some of its attempts to add some complexity to the concept don’t really click, and while the graphics and sound are pretty good, it feels like the core gameplay can’t fully live up to the level of ambition seen in other aspects. Still, if you have the requisite fondness for Atari and/or thrust-based spaceship games, you’ll likely enjoy your time with this well enough.
SwitchArcade Score: 3.5/5
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants ($29.99)
I’m not sure what to say about the fact that we apparently hit on the sole acceptable concept for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games more than thirty years ago, but it is what it is. And what this is is a rather well-done port of the Raw Thrills arcade Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game based on the 2012 CG animated series and released in 2017. Like most Raw Thrills games, it was well-suited to modern arcades. Flashy, easy to pick up, multiplayer-ready, and generally agreeable. Something to bash the buttons on while you wait for the movie to start, about as deep as a puddle, and not very memorable in the least.
In terms of basic gameplay, Wrath of the Mutants takes a lot of cues from Turtles in Time. Like, it even has that move where you throw the enemy into the screen. The controls aren’t quite as tight, the stages aren’t quite as varied, and there isn’t much strategy involved. But you know, it’s decent. For what it is and when it released, it