Wondering what the Paste Games team has been playing lately? Don’t have time to read new game reviews, and prefer something quick and direct? Just looking for 1000 words to eat up a couple of minutes of your wait at the doctor’s office or airport lobby? Our new column Bytes ‘n’ Blurts offers a quick look at what games editor Garrett Martin and assistant games editor Elijah Gonzalez have been playing over the last week—from the latest releases to whatever classic or forgotten obscurity is taking up our free time. This week we look at new/old DLC for the first of Digital Eclipse’s excellent videogame history comps, a fighter that’s greatly inspired by Super Smash Bros., and a new game that mixes and matches elements from some of the earliest arcade games.
Atari 50: The Wider World of Atari DLC
Year: 2024
Platforms: PC, Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Atari VCS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Digital Eclipse’s Gold Master Series is about to release a comprehensive look at the history of Tetris, but until then it tides us over with a new DLC pack for its groundbreaking Atari 50 release. The Wider World of Atari adds 19 more games to the original package, along with a slew of period ads and photos and eight more videos that dive deep into Atari history. A lengthy video about the graphic designer Evelyn Soto is particularly fascinating; she played a crucial role in crafting Atari’s visual identity, creating its iconic Fuji logo as well as the trade dressing for the company’s home systems. The game lineup includes one true early ’80s classic that wasn’t already in the compilation, Berzerk (appearing here in its 2600, 5200, and arcade versions), and a handful of obscure arcade and 2600 games that hadn’t already made the cut. Berzerk is a must-play, of course, and Off the Wall and Desert Falcon are a couple of latter day 2600 games that could’ve been hits if they were released in 1982. And Red Baron, a dogfighting vector graphics arcade game, was one of the most glaring omissions so far. If you own Atari 50 and haven’t made it through the 100+ games already playable in it, you can probably hold off on exploring The Wider World of Atari for a while; if you’re into these comps as historical records, though, and not just a bunch of old games to play, the new videos and other archival material make this a mandatory expansion. And good news: a second new DLC bundle is out in early November, this time focusing on the Atari 2600’s main console rival, Mattel’s Intellivision.—Garrett Martin
Rivals of Aether II
Year: 2024
Platform: PC
Plenty of platform fighting games have unsuccessfully aimed to steal Super Smash Bros.’ crown, but of these many challengers, Rivals of Aether II seems to be one of the best at emulating the entry in the series that draws the most controller-shredding sickos: Melee. Rivals II is deeply inspired by the many bits of emergent gameplay that came out of Super Smash Bros. Melee’s long-running competitive scene, such as wavedashing and dash dancing, which allow for expressive, freeform movement. Much like the first Rivals, this sequel does a great job at repurposing these concepts that originated in Melee while mixing them with new characters, stages, and ideas, which helps keep things fresh. And arguably most importantly for a platform fighter riding on Melee‘s coattails, movement feels responsive and buttery smooth, which when combined with the many advanced techniques that let you get around even quicker, seems to offer a very high skill ceiling.
So far, I’m enjoying playing as Zetterburn, a fleet-footed lion deeply inspired by Fox and Falco’s movesets. Much like his space animal counterparts, he’s fast, hits hard, has a shine attack, and dies from a stiff breeze; such is the life of a glass cannon. Compared to the first Rivals, this sequel’s visuals have been completely overhauled from pixel art to an appealing new 3D style, but the biggest upgrade from its predecessor is that it features smooth rollback netcode—my handful of online matches were virtually indistinguishable from running sets in person, which was excellent to see. I don’t know if Rivals of Aether II will be able to match Melee’s near-peerless longevity or cavernous depth, but so far, I’m quite impressed. —Elijah Gonzalez
Utopia Must Fall
Year: 2024
Platform: PC
The best retro games don’t merely regurgitate something that was done better 40 years ago. The devs at Pixeljam understand this; their recent game Utopia Must Fall is immediately recognizable as a tribute to the early ’80s, but instead of riffing on a single old arcade game it mashes together some of the best to ever do it. It borrows the fortress defense core of Missile Command, the dual-joystick shooting of Robotron 2084, the threatening spaceships of Space Invaders and Galaga, the sleek visual style of vector scan games, and the fragmenting asteroids of, uh, Asteroids to build something new and exciting. You’ll use the two sticks on your PC controller (I’m playing on Steam Deck) to aim and fire a high-speed cannon at the alien invaders trying to conquer your city; a shield helps protect your buildings at first, and a limited stash of nukes can be used to take out big groups or major enemies deeper in space. Aliens only attack for a set period each day, and between waves you can pick from a number of upgrades to your weapons and shield, increase your nuke production, develop new weapons, or even try to reach out to the aliens to make piece. (Maybe don’t pick that last option too much…) Like any self-respecting arcade classic, the difficulty of Utopia Must Fall ramps up quickly from wave to wave, and you’ll need to be more than just a quick shot to survive. You’ll have to choose your updates wisely, master the increasingly complex patterns of enemies that come your way, and also just hope for a little bit of luck. Utopia Must Fall is yet one more example of an excellent new game using four decades of hindsight and advancements in game design to fabricate something startling out of the most basic and familiar building blocks of videogames. I can’t recommend it enough.—Garrett Martin