I first played Daniel Benmergui’s Storyteller (Free) through its Nintendo Switch and Steam releases. Read my original review of it here. Since then, a lot of friends who played the game enjoyed it, but thought it was overpriced given the short runtime. On Netflix, you don’t need to worry about that, but does Storyteller warrant a replay or is it worth revisiting with its first major update since launch? I think it is, and I’ve had a lot of fun revisiting it on iPhone and iPad over the last few days. If you’ve never played Storyteller, I’ll also compare the different versions to help you find which one you should get.

In the case of a lot of mobile ports, I’m curious to see how console and PC games transition over with their controls, but Storyteller is a puzzle game about putting together stories with already amazing touch controls on Switch.that already had great touch controls in its original Switch version. I knew it would feel good to play on mobile, but the Netflix release on iOS and Android arrives with the major first content update included from the get go, making it a more interesting release. The Switch and Steam versions were updated alongside the Netflix release so if you already own Storyteller, you can just update your game and play the new content there. If you are interested in the Netflix version and if it is worth your time, this is the right place.

In a lot of ways, Storyteller reminds me of Scribblenauts with its mechanics. Your aim is to put together stories in this puzzle game by completing panels in a book with objects, scenes, and people available for a specific solution. Some puzzles included have alternate paths or challenges, but there isn’t much replay value beyond that. This is where Storyteller might let some people down. The new update, which is what the iOS version ships with, has seen additions to prior chapters, new content, an interesting new character added, and more. I didn’t think Storyteller was too short or incomplete, so this new version feels like an enhanced version. The narrator is a lovely addition (that you can turn off) that elevates the experience, and the changes to some levels are very good. A lot of care has gone into this update, and I’m glad to see the game finally go above its potential thanks to this new version.

Storyteller’s actual narrative and writing are both very good. There’s humor, sorrow, and just a lot of fun as you mess around with possible outcomes here. I spent a lot of time trying to play it wrong or do the opposite just to see how things played out. In my original review, I mentioned how an expansion or update down the road would help Storyteller’s a lot. That’s exactly what happened here. Not only is it easier to recommend to those buying it on Steam or Switch, the game itself on mobile in its debut is really great now.

On mobile, Storyteller has no controller support that I could see, but you don’t need it. If it is included, I’ll update this, but I couldn’t get my DualSense detected on iPad, and the Kishi V2 didn’t work in-game on my iPhone 11. Visually, it seems to use the low quality preset on my iPhone 11 and is crisper on iPad Pro. The Steam version runs without issues at the high quality preset on Steam Deck. The Switch version handheld is similar to iPad, but not as crisp. None of these versions look bad because the aesthetic scales well, but it is worth mentioning for comparison. Load times are fine, and the game is responsive throughout. If I had to pick, I’d go with Netflix followed by Switch in handheld for the best experience. The PC version on Steam Deck does not have touch support and this game very much is best with touch controls.

With the Netflix release, the only caveat for recommending Storyteller is that you need an active Netflix subscription to play it, and can’t buy it outright. That isn’t an issue for most people with a subscription, but it is worth keeping in mind. If you do want to own it, it is discounted right now on Steam for a few days more. As someone with Xbox Game Pass, Apple Arcade, Netflix, and PlayStation Plus, I know a lot of games release on subscription services with time being the limiter these days, but if you do have a Netflix subscription, this is worth downloading to try.

Storyteller remains a short (well not as short as before this update), but great experience that I recommend to anyone looking to experience something only possible through the medium of games. The puzzles or trial and error in some situations may not be for everyone, but this is a great addition to Netflix’s growing games catalog on mobile. If you do own Storyteller on Switch or Steam, this update elevates it quite a bit, and you need to revisit it.

Let me make something clear before we even get started with this review, friends. I personally consider Punch-Out!! to be somewhere in the top ten NES games of all-time. Maybe top five, if you catch me on the right day. On paper, it should have been a relatively easy thing to replicate. In practice, the boxing ring of gaming history is filled with felled would-be contenders. Thunder Ray ($9.99) is the latest to try its luck at putting up a fight against the champ. No one should expect an indie to take down a top-tier Nintendo release, but if it can even pull a few rounds it would be doing better than most. Let’s weigh in on this one and see how our challenger measures up!

Thunder Ray comes from us by way of Purple Tree Studio, and if nothing else I will say that they’ve made a game that looks and sounds brilliant. It’s stylish, distinctive, and the designs for your opponents are fantastic. As well they should be, as this game borrows its theme (intentionally or not) from a would-be Punch-Out!! sequel that ended up making its way out on the NES under the title Power Punch II. It saw an expy of Mike Tyson named Mark Tyler taking on alien opponents across the galaxy after finding the competition on Earth insufficient. Thunder Ray uses an almost identical concept, and let’s give it some points for clearing the first admittedly low bar: it’s far better than Power Punch II.

The basic set-up of Thunder Ray will be familiar to Punch-Out!! fans, especially those who played the original arcade games or Super Punch-Out!! on the Super NES. You’ve got your boxer in the foreground, back to the camera and facing his opponent. Said opponent looms large in front of him and us, allowing them to be extremely expressive. That serves two purposes. First, it gives each opponent a lot of personality. You can see their facial expressions and body language change easily, and each of the eight opponents is different from the others in these regards. Second, it makes it easier to spot their tells. As in Punch-Out!!, it’s generally better to play reactively rather than proactively. Each fighter has their own patterns, and if you can learn how to avoid or block their attacks, you’ll be in a great position to reply in kind with your fists.

Since these opponents are (mostly) aliens, they’re not afraid to cheat in some creative ways. It’s humorous and makes every fight different, while also adding some character to the opposing fighters. In a bit of a change from the source of its inspiration, you’re not really aiming for knock-outs or to try to wear them down over the course of multiple rounds. These fights all go to three knock-downs. If you get knocked down three times, you’re done. If you can get them down three times, that’s your win. You can’t be saved by the bell here, so fight carefully. When you land your final blow, your opponents will often explode into a disgusting gory mess, so don’t play this one in front of the tots.

You’ve got a few moves of your own. Your normal punches come in four types, with high and low punches for your left and right arms. You can also charge up for some stronger punches, and if your meter is full you can attempt a ridiculously powerful super attack. As you play through the game this attack will be upgraded, allowing you to fill up more meters for more misery. Apart from your strikes, you can dodge in either direction, duck under attacks, and block. You’ll have to learn the attacks of each opponent to know which way to respond to their various attacks. On the easiest difficulty there’s a lot of room for error, but the medium and hard difficulties aren’t very forgiving.

So how does this all work on mobile? Regrettably, virtual buttons. Four directional buttons laid out in a frankly asinine way that makes it really hard to hit the direction you want, and four punch buttons that are more sensibly arranged. When your super attack is ready to go, an extra button will appear. I found the game really hard to play this way, and changing to the other control type in the options didn’t help at all. If the directional buttons were just laid out in a normal way, it would have been a lot better. Those who have external controllers will find a better experience that way, which makes sense given this game was originally designed to be played on a controller.

But let’s suppose you have that controller, or perhaps you get along with the virtual directional buttons better than I did. How is Thunder Ray in that case? Here’s the thing about Punch-Out!!: it’s more of a rhythm game than a boxing game. Give it a think, and you’ll probably see what I mean. And in a rhythm game, response time is everything. It’s why Punch-Out!! is one of the benchmarks for latency, and why you don’t see ol’ Parappa and Lammy show up as classic rereleases too often. A little lag can destroy a rhythm game. Those stellar graphics I was praising Thunder Ray for earlier? They include some really dynamite animations for both Ray and his opponents. They look great. But they are so animated that they take a while to come out, and you can’t interrupt them until they’re finished.

This leads to a lot of situations where you can see what the opponent is going to do but Ray hasn’t finished the punch you just asked him to throw, so you have to eat the hit. It’s very frustrating, and it forces you to try to anticipate what your foe might do even before they throw out any tells. You simply can’t trust Ray to take the offensive, and you also can’t put faith in longer combos. Again, you can get away with a lot on the lowest Rookie difficulty. If you want to have the least frustrating time with Thunder Ray, that’s where you’ll want to play. But you’re not playing the real game that way, and you’ll be done with it in a flash. Eventually you have to move up the difficulty if you want to keep getting some fun out of this, and that’s where the lag from being unable to cancel animations lets you down.

I don’t mind that Thunder Ray is somewhat light on content. With how much goes into these fighters, there’s a reasonable amount here for an indie studio. But with that being the case, it’s vital that what is here is polished to a shine. I think in terms of presentation, it’s fair to say Thunder Ray manages that. But it feels like the gameplay had to settle for being second place on the priority list when it should have been first. When the animations aren’t getting in the way, this is a fun game to play. The punches have great weight to them, the opponents are interesting to look at and satisfying to learn, and the way the different difficulty levels ratchet things up is good.

Unfortunately, the animations get in the way often. You have to learn to work around them. You also have to learn to work around the touch controls if you’re not using an external device like the Backbone One. Frankly, that’s too many things to have to work around in a game like this. I think the developer could address both of these issues, of course. If we had a better layout for the virtual directional pad or the option to place the buttons as we prefer, that would be great. If we were able to interrupt animations, that would be even better. Thunder Ray could be excellent with a few fixes. At that point, only its brevity would be contentious, and I think it could weather that.

I can only review the game in front of me, though. And that game is one that gets a lot of things right and a few things wrong. The things it gets wrong happen to be some of the most important things for a game like this, however, and that spells bad news for Thunder Ray. There’s some fun to be had with this game, but a lot of frustration comes with it. Not that spicy frustration that comes from Mike laying you out for the hundredth time, either. No, it’s the frustration of playing a game that gets so close to being a contender instead of a bum. Here’s hoping some updates can turn this one around so it can become a comeback kid in the future.

The Top Hat Club ($0.99) is a nostalgic little game in some ways. It’s a platformer with (mostly) single-screen stages that have light puzzle elements. It’s adapted from a browser game. It gives you the whole game for an affordable, simple up-front price. It carries no grand message, and uses a clean but distinct visual style. Oh, and you have to use touch controls. It feels like something that we would have seen pop up ten years ago and taken for granted, but perhaps here and now it is something we can appreciate more.

So yes, The Top Hat Club. A fancy place. Too fancy for the likes of you and me. But our little protagonist has a dream, and that dream is to sidle up to that fancy bar and sip some fancy wine with some fancy gentlemen. The problem is that you can’t even set foot in the door without meeting the dress code, and that means you’ve got to have a top hat. It’s right in the name and everything. Fortunately, top hats seem to just be laying around. All you have to do is don the hat and head for the door. So long as you have the hat, they have to let you go inside… right?

Well, anyway. The goal in most of the game’s thirty-plus stages is to pick up the hat from wherever in the stage it’s located and then make your way to the door. It sounds easy, and sometimes it is. The trick is that if you hit your head or otherwise disturb the hat, it will fall off. And wouldn’t you know it, the stages often have obstacles that will knock that hat clean off your head if you don’t approach things carefully. So you need to make sure you’ve planned a route that will take you to the exit without dropping the hat. You really do have to plan too, as many of the stages include disappearing platforms or other temporary elements that make it so that you can only have one crack at it.

You have unlimited lives, of course. It would be gauche these days if you did not. Annoyingly, whenever you die, lose your hat, or fail the stage for any other reason, a Game Over menu will pop up. You’ll have to manually hit that restart option each time, which is a design choice that runs against the current grain in a way I don’t really care for. I haven’t mentioned it yet, but each stage also has five coins to try to collect. Getting to the exit in most of the stages is a relatively simple affair, but getting the coins requires a good eye for the route you should take and precise execution. You will probably fail a lot, and having to hammer that restart instead of instantly respawning gets agitating.

My other bones to pick with this game come from the controls. First of all, you have to use the touch controls. No controller support right now and I see no indications of it being planned. That isn’t the end of the world, but if you’re going to have a mobile platformer that uses touch controls with virtual buttons as the only means of input, you have to make dead certain those controls are spot-on. Regrettably, I found these ones to be a bit lacking. The game would sometimes miss inputs on the virtual buttons, and that proved to be lethal in some stages. The combination of this issue and the lack of an automatic restart had me crawling the walls at times.

I suppose it speaks to the quality of the game itself that I was willing to persevere through these issues no matter how furious I got. The level designs here are quite good, with a nice balance of puzzles and platforming challenges to keep you on your toes. It seeds in some new gimmicks along the way to freshen things up, and there are some unexpected twists in certain levels that force you to apply the skills you’ve learned in new ways. It’s not a terribly long game on the whole, but it doesn’t overstay its welcome by even a minute. Getting all the coins is a good game extender, and there are a few little secrets to round things out nicely. You get a good buck’s worth out of it, to be sure.

The Top Hat Club feels like it fell out of a different era of the App Store, for better or worse. Mostly better, but I sure do wish that “worse” wasn’t there. It’s a fun platformer with clever stage designs and a fair bit of charm, and while it won’t last a long time it will absorb your attention well until the end. Some touch control issues and minor UI scrapes kept it from knocking my socks off completely, but given the highly reasonable price and everything else it has going for it, I think I can recommend this to mobile platformer fans.

Back when NBA 2K16 released, I ended up having a ton of fun with it even as someone who didn’t really watch basketball much. After constantly hearing about mediocre sports games back then, NBA 2K16 felt great to play, and more-importantly was fun. Since then, I’ve been trying to play 2K’s NBA games each year. NBA 2K21 on PS5 was a highlight for me, but I was curious to see how the game scaled on other platforms. I started playing it on Switch and whatever newest console version was available. I had never actually played one of these games on PC before. With NBA 2K24, I wanted to cover it on both Steam Deck and on any current console for the “next-gen” experience. Since around launch, I’ve been playing NBA 2K24 on Steam Deck and Xbox Series X. This review will focus on the former, but it has been interesting and disappointing to see how different the game is across PC and Xbox Series X.

I rarely find a yearly sports game that justifies a full-priced purchase each year. NBA 2K24 is pretty similar in that regard, so you might be wondering why I am reviewing it? I wanted to see how it feels on Steam Deck since I never played these games on Valve’s handheld, and also wanted to see how that version compares to the Xbox Series X (and PS5 version. I also wanted to highlight who should buy it right now, and who should wait on a sale. In this NBA 2K24 Steam Deck review, I’m going to focus on the game on Valve’s handheld gaming system, but also cover the game and how I found it in the time I’ve played across platforms.

Since NBA 2K18, every game in the series has been Steam Deck Verified. Knowing that, I expected NBA 2K24 to work well, and it plays without issues on Steam Deck out of the box. I’m surprised it hasn’t gotten verified yet, and my only real complaint with this release barring it being based on the last-gen version (which I will get to), is the install size. NBA 2K24 currently occupies 146.33GB on Steam Deck. This is smaller than the 170 or so GB on Xbox Series X, but still massive. I wouldn’t even be able to fit this into the internal SSD on my 256GB Steam Deck because of shaders and other data installed on it.

I installed NBA 2K24 on my SD card, and it ran perfectly. I didn’t change any settings initially, but settled on tweaking most things to medium or high and I turned shadows down to see if I could make it look crisper on the Deck’s display by sacrificing shadows. You won’t need to bother with any of this, but the game scales very well. It even has shader preload options and 16:10 support for many parts. I don’t know if NBA 2K23 offered all this, but NBA 2K24 feels and looks great on Steam Deck. I also tried it with my DualSense controller.

When it comes to game modes outside the default play modes, the Mamba Moments challenge mode here is quite nice, but I’d have liked to see more of a focus on Kobe Bryant’s legendary career in this game. The content in this mode is very good, but I was hoping for more basically. One area where NBA 2K24 does feel like a step back, is its MyCareer mode. On PS5 and Xbox Series X, there’s a whole set of WNBA content that isn’t available on prior platforms including MyCareer content and more. Barring that, the missing feature I’m disappointed by the most is the Eras quick play options that replicate the TV viewing experience with filters on Xbox Series X. These optional filters add a lot to the experience and this seems to be absent on PC. Check out the screenshot from Xbox Series X below:

Comparing NBA 2K24 on Steam Deck (or PC) with the Xbox Series X version, outside of visuals, the big differences are with game modes, movement, and overall content. The highlight is definitely cross play, which is possible with the NBA 2K24 PS5 and Xbox Series X|S native versions. The others don’t have cross play which is a huge deal in a game like this. NBA 2K24 is the first time cross play has been added as well to an NBA 2K game as far as I’m aware. Other differences include the lack of ProPLAY on PC. ProPLAY uses NBA footage translated in-game. More information on that is here. Even the game menus feel just fine on PC while the Xbox Series X version is a lot nicer.

While menus aren’t a huge deal for the gameplay, it basically feels like a representation of the overall product available on both platforms. NBA 2K24 on PC is a very good basketball game that has issues and is lacking compared to the new consoles, but NBA 2K24 itself also has too much of a push towards virtual currency in its various modes. If you ignore all that and just want a game to play casually or with friends, NBA 2K24 on PC is great on Steam Deck, but that’s a big caveat.

Thinking about the possibilities of NBA 2K25 bringing the new features and visuals to PC also might end up being problematic on Steam Deck. If said potential version is based on new consoles, it might not run and look as well on Steam Deck. This is all speculation of course, but the potential of NBA 2K25 doing more on PC has me excited. If it is the same last-gen version though, I likely won’t be bothering playing it on Steam Deck and stick to just PS5 or Xbox Series X. Having not played an NBA 2K game on PC before, I enjoyed my time with NBA 2K24 on Steam Deck. This is definitely getting Steam Deck Verified soon with how good it looks and plays.

While NBA 2K24 does have online play, I wanted to see if it was playable via Steam’s Remote Play Together. I invited a friend who doesn’t own the game to play on my Steam Deck with me. It worked really well despite the distance between us. One thing to note is that I’d recommend sticking to 800p on Steam Deck because 1080p with high and medium seems to be a bit too much for Steam Deck to maintain a locked 60fps. If you want to play on a 1080p display through the dock or something, consider turning more effects down.

Right now, I’d only recommend NBA 2K24 on Steam Deck if you skipped the last year or two of games. If you haven’t played these games in a while, NBA 2K24 runs and looks great on Steam Deck, and is a fun basketball game to play. The push to virtual currency in specific game modes definitely holds this back, alongside the lack of new modes and features on PC. Hopefully NBA 2K25 on PC will see it finally get the full feature set. Right now, I’d recommend NBA 2K24 more on Xbox Series X (or PS5) than PC, but the PC version plays great on Steam Deck if you’re after a great portable experience.

NBA 2K24 Steam Deck review score: 3.5/5

Want more Steam Deck coverage? Check out our Steam Deck category for reviews, news, interviews, features, and more here. Want us to cover something specific on Steam Deck? Let us know in the comments.

When Niantic and Capcom announced their previously announced real world hunting action RPG Monster Hunter Now (Free) for iOS and Android, I was in two minds about the project. I didn’t care much for Pokemon GO and heard a lot of recent complaints about how that was handled from my friends who used to play it regularly. But, I adore Monster Hunter, and have put in thousands of hours into Monster Hunter World and Monster Hunter Rise while also loving Monster Hunter Stories and its sequel. I knew I would try Monster Hunter Now, but just wasn’t sure it would stick for me. Having played it daily since launch more or less as much as possible, I have a lot of good things to say about Monster Hunter Now, but also some ways I hope it improves.

If you’ve not followed it, Monster Hunter Now is a free to play game akin to Pokemon GO using Niantic’s AR technology, but it brings the world of Monster Hunter to the real world. Having now played it, Monster Hunter Now feels like it is trying to appeal to Monster Hunter World players more than classic Monster Hunter game fans with its monster selection, weapons, and more. If Capcom and Niantic’s aim with Monster Hunter Now is to bring the essence of Monster Hunter or the brand to more players, it will likely succeed, but how is Monster Hunter Now for a huge fan of the series and someone who plays the games daily? That’s what I’m going to address in this launch week review.

Monster Hunter Now begins with a pretty decent story by franchise standards. I was interested in Qualily’s (new character) dialogue and also learning the ropes of how Monster Hunter Now flows through the Palico who helps you out. You begin only with access to the Sword and Shield weapon, and eventually unlock more like the Great Sword (my favorite weapon in Monster Hunter) at Hunter Rank 14. You then unlock more of the weapon types at the next Hunter Rank. That’s basically the main progression alongside monsters becoming more difficult and the upgrade system.

So how does Monster Hunter Now translate the core gameplay loop of the console games to mobile with Niantic’s AR technology? In Monster Hunter Now, your location decides what is available to you. It encourages you to move around as you’d expect from a game like this, and does things quite nicely early on. You can tap around to collect resources like ore or bones, and have access to small monsters and large monsters. The opening chapters and tutorials force you into a pretty-fixed path to move ahead, and while a lot of this was boring for me, it will help newcomers learn the basics of combat, weapons, items, and more. There are daily quests that unlock early on called Special Quests to earn more Hunter Rank points as well. You also end up having to face “Urgent” monsters that are harder than the ones you’ve faced so far, just like in the console games.

Combat initially is just you tapping the screen to attack a monster and swiping to dodge when it glows red indicating it is planning an attack. I never cared for the Sword and Shield, so I tried getting through these bits quickly. Each weapon also has a separate skill that you can use by tapping and holding the screen. You soon unlock a special ability which charges up as you take down more monsters, and also unlock armor skills and weapon skills. As you hunt more monsters, you need to forge and upgrade armor with the game conveniently notifying you when your equipped gear can be upgraded. This upgrade system is similar to the main console games, but quite a bit simpler early on. Elemental damage and affinities seem to play a larger part here right from the start. You can also enable motion controls for aiming and targeting by tapping the symbol on the top right during battles.

Visually, Monster Hunter Now looks really good. The interface is nice, and the animations all feel faithful to Monster Hunter. Weapon designs, a good resolution even on older iPhone models like the 11, and a 60fps hunting option all add up to make for a pleasant and polished technical experience in Monster Hunter Now.

On the audio side, I’ve been impressed with the new arrangements of classic Monster Hunter tunes, and the remaining sounds from the games that have been perfectly implemented into Monster Hunter Now. This truly feels like the team understood how to make a game feel and sound like Monster Hunter, despite the simplistic nature. Niantic also added haptic feedback which is a nice touch in a game like this. I liked the HD Rumble while playing Monster Hunter Rise on Switch a lot, and it is nice to see some of that make its way here even as simple haptics.

What does Monster Hunter Now include at launch?

Monster Hunter Now only includes six weapon types at launch. You begin with Sword and Shield, then unlock Great Sword, and soon after unlock the other four including Light Bowgun, Bow, Hammer, and Longsword. In terms of monsters, Monster Hunter Now also has a lot of the Monster Hunter World monsters, but not all of them. I imagine major updates will start adding monsters from that game and hopefully from Monster Hunter Rise as well.

Multiplayer is available, and it also supports the adventure sync option for tracking location when the app is closed for paintballs and gathering by your Palico. I can’t even remember how Pokemon GO launched, but Monster Hunter Now feels like it has the potential to do great assuming Niantic supports it properly. Since the developers clearly used a lot from Monster Hunter World, I hope the support it gets post launch is also as good as that and Iceborne rather than Rise.

If you try playing Monster Hunter Now while in a car, it gives you a warning to click to confirm that you aren’t the driver, and then still doesn’t let you play if you move too fast. You need to wait a few seconds in place before it lets you interact with points of interest or hunt again.

In terms of monetization, I didn’t feel the need to spend so far, but we are still about a week into launch only. The in app purchases range from a one time starter pack with consumables and gems to a release celebration pass that gives you gems daily for a month. There are also direct purchases for an item box expansion and a few gem pack options. The big point of contention is in how health potions and first aid meds are handled here. You get the latter daily, but you will need to wait till you have enough health before you can hunt so you might think paying gets over the time barrier for that to replenish. The way I look at this game, if I ran out of health, I’d just wait till the next day and come back. I wouldn’t consider paying for health potions. This could change with updates or when I run into later monsters, but as of today, nothing has felt essential from the in app purchases.

In terms of what I’d like to see come in updates, I don’t really have a frame of reference to other Niantic games right now, but I want Niantic to add more of what makes you actually learn monster patterns, explore, and hopefully bring in large-scale raids sooner than later. Combat is fine for newcomers, but it can be repetitive for veteran players. It is going to be interesting to see the pace of new content and features for Monster Hunter Now.

I definitely recommend checking out Monster Hunter Now if you’ve enjoyed the recent entries in the series or are a newcomer looking to see what Monster Hunter is all about with the lowest barrier of entry. In its current state, it isn’t as deep as proper console and PC Monster Hunter games, but it does its job at giving you bite-sized hunting action on the go when you’re out and about with a lot of love put in for Monster Hunter. I hope the combat gets more depth through updates, but I’m pleased with the launch state of Monster Hunter Now and will be playing it regularly and checking out updates whenever new content is added.

I’ve been informed by the shadowy consortium that occupies the penthouse floor of TouchArcade Towers that I am not allowed to talk about any video rental shops for the next few reviews. Fine. Fine. I wasn’t going to talk about any of them today anyway. Frankly, by the time Zupapa! ($3.99) showed up in any arcades, video rental shops were about to begin their descent anyway. This is a game with an interesting history, and it’s really fun to play on top of that. Wins all around. Let’s talk about both of those things, shall we?

Let’s start by talking about Face. Face was a Japanese developer and publisher that first popped up around 1988, and it was around for a relatively long time as those things go. None of its games were especially big hits, and only a few of them ever saw release outside of Japan. That said, there was a certain flavor to many of its efforts. Face made some very unusual games that had a lot of character to them, with Hany in the Sky on the PC-Engine (the Japanese Turbografx-16) being a great example of that. Its best game was probably Money Puzzle Exchanger, a charming variant on Data East’s Magical Drop that still has a cult following to this day. It was a company whose output always felt like it was one or two small changes away from being great, and in light of that it wasn’t terribly surprising when it shuttered its doors somewhere around the year 2000.

Zupapa! makes for a great excuse to talk about Face. It was first shown by Face at a Japanese arcade exhibition in early 1994, which would have likely seen it come out alongside some of the company’s other arcade games around that time. It disappeared after that, which was odd but not completely unprecedented for Face. It buried an entire Time Cruise game, after all. No, the really curious thing about Zupapa! isn’t its disappearance. It’s that it showed up again after the death of Face, published by SNK in 2001. Presumably when the company closed down, SNK decided to pick it up and use it to bolster the release schedule of the aging NEOGEO system. But this was during the brief span of time that Aruze owned the company, just before the bankruptcy of the original incarnation of SNK. Why was it picking up long-dead games? Was Zupapa! finished by Face, or did SNK have to bring it to the finish line? Questions we’ll probably never have the answers to, friends.

Still, knowing that Zupapa! was originally meant to arrive in 1994 does help us understand how such a modest game arrived so late in the console’s life. Zupapa! is a fixed-screen platformer, a genre that had its heyday in the mid-to-late 1980s with games like Bubble Bobble, Snow Bros., and Rod Land. They were fairly scarce after Street Fighter II made its impact in the arcades, but you still saw the occasional release here and there for a couple of years after. By 2001, it was practically as dead a sub-genre as the fixed-screen shoot-em-up. A very odd release in what was otherwise a sea of fighters and Metal Slug sequels on the platform. But hey, we’re looking back more than twenty years later. The whole library is vintage at this point. Still, that genre’s place in time relative to the NEOGEO itself means there aren’t too many games like Zupapa! on it, something that helps this game shine even brighter.

Zupapa! shares a lot of traits with the best games in this genre. The graphics are colorful, detailed, and well-animated. The levels have a lot of variety to them, and you’ve got a rather large number of them, with forty-five in total spread across nine worlds. The bosses are huge and really creative, and the different enemies are fun to deal with. The goal on each stage is to clear out all of the enemies, all while getting as many points as you can. You can’t take too long to do it, either. Beat them all and you’ll be whisked to the next stage. You can play with another person, but that’s obviously a bit of a pain in this mobile release. It’s too bad, because as fun as it is solo it’s even better with a friend.

Games like these always have some kind of gimmick for how you attack the enemies. Bubbles, snowballs, vacuums, slamming them back and forth into the ground with your rod, and so on. In Zupapa!, you have two ways to tackle your foes. First, you can punch them. It has limited reach, though you can get a power-up to extend it. Smack them and then touch them to finish them off. It’s reliable but it won’t earn you many points. No, if you want to get those big scores, you’ll have to engage with the game’s main gimmick.

There are little creatures named Zooks populating each stage. If you touch them, they’ll follow you around. You can throw them at enemies and they will start pounding on them, immobilizing them. Up to four can be attached to an enemy at once, though even one will stop the enemy in their tracks. Touch the enemy and not only will they be taken out, an explosion will trigger, taking out any other enemies it touches. Its size is based on how many Zooks were on them. Enemies that are defeated by an explosion will leave behind foods you can collect for points, and the more you take out at once the higher the point values of those foods. It’s in your interest to try to set things up for those big scores. I mean, unless you just want to play through the game and don’t care about scores. Even then, exploding a bunch of enemies in one go is sometimes easier than knocking them out individually.

Each stage layout presents its own challenge. Sometimes the Zooks are easy to get at, while other times you’ll have to go past the enemies to get them. Sometimes you have a lot of room to maneuver while other times you’ll have to squeeze in with the baddies to get at them. There are special gimmicks like springs and breakable walls, and some interesting hazards too. I’ve always found that the best games in this sub-genre have a strong focus on varied level designs, and Zupapa! carries itself quite well in this regard. None of the themes overstays its welcome, and you’re always facing something new. The bosses are genuine highlights, but make sure you grab a speed boost power-up before facing them if you can. This is an arcade game, after all. It wants your coins, not your forgiveness.

As you can probably tell, I like Zupapa! a lot. I’ve always been fond of this particular kind of arcade game, and if you’re like me then I think you’ll have a good time here as well. It’s a little trickier to play with touch controls than it is with a controller, but it only uses two buttons so it isn’t particularly egregious so long as you’re not completely turned off by virtual buttons. If you play with an external controller, then you really have no worries at all here. Sadly, you can only play multiplayer if you have enough controllers and a display you can share, but that’s nothing new for the ACA NEOGEO line. I’m going to save us the usual paragraph here and say you get all the usual options and extra modes here, and those Score Attack and timed Caravan modes work pretty well with this game. Hamster’s done a good job here.

Zupapa! is one of those games that is really hard to hate. It looks nice, plays well, and has plenty of game to offer for your buck. Provided you’re okay with the control options you have access to and aren’t repelled by fixed-screen platformers, I think this is one of the easier ACA NEOGEO games to recommend. It’s just good, simple fun, and that’s something that has always translated fairly well to mobile play.

Oh gosh, it’s Cyber-Lip ($3.99). I was wondering when this game would arrive to SNK and Hamster’s mobile ACA NEOGEO line, and it was tucked in behind last week’s drop of Ninja Master’s and Zupapa. I have some history with this game that I’m sure you’ll all be very fascinated to hear. Don’t worry, I’ll also properly review it along the way. That’s what we do. This is an interesting game in the NEOGEO console’s history, both for what it tried to do and what it failed to do. Ultimately its legacy might just be as a herald of greatness to come. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves.

I still remember the first time I saw Cyber-Lip, because it was also the first time I saw a NEOGEO MVS cabinet. It was 1990, I was eleven years old, and I was over at my friend’s house for the weekend as I tended to be in those days. He lived over on the other side of town, the side of the town that frankly didn’t have a whole lot around besides houses. I’ll tell you what it did have, though: R & S Video. Run by a couple named Rod and Sheila, this place was one of the coolest locations in my boring-butt hometown. That was down to Rod being an absolute man-child and Sheila putting up with him as long as the money came in. Rod was a barely functioning alcoholic, a complete burn-out, and one of the more unique fellows I’ve ever known. He’s not with us anymore, and hasn’t been for a very long time. He tried to drink himself to death and he ended up being successful. But he was a very important part of my life, so cheers to him wherever he may be.

R & S Video was in the main a video rental shop, back when such things were a license to print money. They sold snacks, they rented VHS tapes and NES games, and they even sold saucy magazines. One of the few locations for that in my town, I’ll hasten to add. Slowly but surely, however, Rod’s other interests seeped in. Music, especially metal. Stereo equipment. Import game machines; I first played the Super Famicom via R & S Video, renting it for $27 for one night. But best of all, arcade games. Up until R & S Video opened, there were very few choices for arcade games in my town. There was The Pool Hall, where good kids were not allowed. The bad kids who smoked went there, you see. You could also find a few machines here and there in laundromats, the shopping mall, and such.

But man, R & S. Rod knew what was cool and hot and he wanted it in his place. He always had a fine selection of the best games, and when you saw a cabinet in a game magazine with some effusive praise attached to it, you could be sure it would soon arrive at R & S. It’s where I first played Street Fighter II, busting out a Hadouken. It’s where I saw Sub-Zero first rip out a spine, the bass booming throughout the shop as parents shuddered at the screams. And it is where I first encountered the NEOGEO, its own sound system being no slouch. Four games in one cabinet, and being a good Contra-loving lad my eyes were drawn to one in particular: Cyber-Lip.

I have to admit that at the time, and for a while after until an issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly corrected, I thought the game’s name was Cyber-Up. That’s how it looked in the logo on the title screen, and Lip? Why Lip? It turns out, the big bad is a giant mouth. Yeah, that’s a thing. But wow, it was so colorful and detailed. The characters talked! Look out below! Ha. When you shot enemies, they broke apart into pieces. The bosses were big! You could grab onto overhanging bars and shoot at enemies below you! When you died, your guy came back on some kind of wicked rocket sled! Wow, what a game! I’d feed my meager quarters into it when I had the chance to, not make much progress, and then think about it until the next time I got to play it. Cyber-Up! Lip! Whatever! Now this is the power of the NEOGEO!

Cyber-Lip isn’t very good. It’s a very plain run-and-gun action game that has a decent but not spectacular presentation. It’s a far stiffer game than any of the good Contra games, and it’s a lot less inspired. It feels like half of the game involves popping out of an elevator and going through a slight remix of the same gunky sewer. The boss patterns are bland, but when the game decides to kill you it probably will. Some of the power-ups are enjoyable to use, but some of them like the grenade will put you in mortal danger if you’re flying solo. It has its moments to be sure, but even comparing it to Contra III: The Alien Wars on the Super NES lays bare its numerous failings.

The team that made Cyber-Lip would soon get up to much more important things. The key members went on to make Fatal Fury, and that went over somewhat better. The director of the game, after a solid tenure at SNK, left and joined DIMPS, where he worked on things like The Rumble Fish. None of the people involved with this game had anything to do with Metal Slug, which is a natural comparison given it is the other Contra-style run-and-gun on the system. Sure, five years separate the two and perhaps it isn’t fair to put them against each other as a result. But one can’t help but look at Metal Slug and think that it does what Cyber-Lip wanted to do, only infinitely better. We can shoot diagonally. We have the technology. If you’re going to play a NEOGEO run-and-gun action game, Metal Slug has five games you should play through before you even think of touching Cyber-Lip.

But right here, right now, in this mobile ACA NEOGEO context, I think I can give Cyber-Lip a light recommendation. Its lack of diagonal shooting makes it a bit easier to play with touch controls, assuming you aren’t using an external controller. If you get bored you can always make a save state and come back later. You probably won’t be able to play with a second player, but you can still have a decent time on your own. And I think the ending alone might be worth the price of admission here. Sixteen quarters for that kind of bonkers closing, one that was never followed up on at all? That seems pretty fair to me.

Cyber-Lip was sometimes used on good ol’ Nick Arcade for one of the game challenges. Kids would have to try to get the best score they could within a certain amount of time. You know, it’s not a bad score attack game. As usual, ACA NEOGEO has modes and leaderboards to support that. There are online leaderboards for the main mode, and you’ve also got a Score Attack and timed Caravan mode in case you really want to live out your fantasy of being called down by Phil Moore. There are better genres for this kind of thing, but it works better here than it does in, say, fighting games.

The usual ACA NEOGEO stuff. You get all the usual options and extras, include gameplay settings, video and audio options, and control customizations. You can play with an external controller if you like, or you can use touch controls. They’re not perfect, but you’ve got endless coins. Multiplayer requires enough controllers for all and a display to huddle around. The emulation is spot-on, but Cyber-Lip never taxed the NEOGEO much to begin with anyway.

If you enjoy run-and-gun action games and have tapped out the Metal Slug series on mobile, I think Cyber-Lip is worth the asking price. It’s not a great game and if I had paid a couple hundred bucks for a NEOGEO cartridge back in the day I don’t think I would have been very impressed, but for four bucks on mobile it offers more than enough thrills and weird things to shoot to make it worth your while. Just keep in mind this was a very early game on the system, and that the designers really couldn’t think of any better way to link stages other than an elevator. Also, never pick up the grenades, unless you want to be a goner. Cyber-Lip: it’s great, it’s bad, it’s fine. Evolution, friends.

Last week, SNK released its 2019-released reboot of the Samurai Shodown series on iOS and Android through Netflix Games. Samurai Shodown (Free) is a game I’ve enjoyed through its releases on PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Steam quite a bit. I did buy it on Nintendo Switch, but don’t really play that version much because of its tech issues. The fighting game was the first one in the series I spent a lot of time with, and I’m glad I did. I love the focus on weapons, duels, high risk gameplay, and more it brings to the table. Samurai Shodown also excels in its aesthetic and sound design. I was obviously excited to see how the mobile conversion was. In my Samurai Shodown (2019) mobile review, I’m going to cover the game itself, how it compares to other platforms, and what needs to be fixed for it to be worth playing.

If you’ve not played Samurai Shodown, it plays quite differently compared to mainstream fighting games. Having seen the series history through the Samurai Shodown NeoGeo Collection, I’m glad this Samurai Shodown reboot stuck to its guns and didn’t try and change things up to lose its own character. The weapons, footsies, unique characters, striking aesthetic, and more come together brilliantly, but this Samurai Shodown game has always been lacking in its online and story mode. The core gameplay is great, and I was hoping to see at least that translated to mobile well alongside all the in-game content.

Samurai Shodown on mobile initially feels like the complete game with touch controls, but it has some cutbacks. The first one is visuals. I expected it to look and run better on modern iOS devices given my experience with it on consoles. Visuals aren’t as bad as the Switch version though, and Samurai Shodown on newer iOS devices doesn’t feel sluggish like the Switch version. I also feel like some characters will feel very different here given the on-screen buttons being the only way to play including specials. This just is a very weird decision in what should’ve been a slam dunk port with how much effort went into translating the visuals and everything else over.

The major issues are with the cuts to DLC. Not only are the DLC characters not included in the game right now, but the collaboration characters are completely cut out. As an example, Baiken from Guilty Gear or Warden from For Honor are completely absent here. Not having DLC right from the start isn’t the biggest problem, but the current character selection screen mentions some of the DLC characters arriving as late as July 2024. I get that you want people to remain subscribed to Netflix so you don’t want to release everything in one go, but this is a bit much.

If you’ve never played Samurai Shodown on other platforms or don’t even care about those versions, Samurai Shodown on Netflix isn’t a complete waste. The touch controls aren’t as good as traditional controls on a controller or stick, but the developers did a good job with them here. I just don’t understand why it didn’t include controller support as an option for those who prefer using traditional controls in a fighting game.

For the online, I tested against someone locally over wifi and with Shaun who is in Japan. The netcode held up alright, but it isn’t as good as playing something like Street Fighter 6 or Guilty Gear Strive. For casual matches, it is worth trying, and also has a decent custom lobby implementation. There are also leaderboards for some modes included in the Netflix version of Samurai Shodown.

When it comes to platform differences, the best versions of Samurai Shodown right now for me are the Xbox Series X version for playing on TV and the Steam Deck version for playing on the go. The Xbox Series X version supports 120hz which even the PC version doesn’t have. The PS4 version never got any PS5 enhancements so I stopped playing that version to move to the Xbox version for offline play. On the portable side, I would only recommend the Switch version if you have no other way to play Samurai Shodown and don’t care about online play.

So where does the Netflix version fit into this picture? It isn’t really the same experience with forced touch controls, but it does a better job than the Switch port for sure. I would absolutely recommend downloading it to see how you find the touch controls, but I really hope SNK can add controller support and improve the DLC situation. I don’t expect online to work too well considering the console and PC versions still don’t have decent online netcode. That is coming this month. But in the testing I did, it is serviceable. I played a few games against Shaun who is in Japan and it wasn’t unplayable like certain Switch fighting games we’ve played.

Samurai Shodown, even as the base game with touch controls only, is a great addition to Netflix’s gaming catalog, but it should’ve been better. The lack of controller support and baffling DLC release schedule hold it back in its current state. I’m going to keep it installed in the hope we get updates to address those issues, but right now Samurai Shodown is a great fighting game that deserved better for its mobile release. This is a competent and commendable conversion in many ways, but a very disappointing one in others. Hopefully we won’t need to wait too long to embrace controller support.

That apostrophe still bothers me. It has always bothered me. I’m getting that off my chest now. Ninja Master’s ($3.99) what? Sigh. Alright, I promise I won’t bring that up again for the rest of the review. There’s plenty to talk about here beyond that, after all. What we’ve got here is the final fighting game from World Heroes creators ADK, now available for you to play on your mobile device. But hey, there’s nothing unusual about a NEOGEO fighting game in your pocket anymore. So does this do anything special to merit notice? I mean, beyond the ninja thing. We all love ninjas.

What I will say is that this is, without question, the best fighting game ADK made. It’s almost frustrating, seeing how far the developer had come from the likes of the first World Heroes. Where could it have gone from here? We’ll never know. All we have is Ninja Master’s. It’s a game that shows ADK had been doing its homework, but it’s also a game that struggles from the company it was in. This game arrived in 1996, and by then SNK had a lot of irons in the fighting game fire. Between King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown, and Fatal Fury all flying high, it was at a point where the company’s new fighting game IPs were getting devoured by their own older siblings. Ninja Master’s is unfortunately no different.

The chief gimmick of this game, beyond the all-ninja cast, is that you can whip out a weapon at any time during the fight by pressing B + C at the same time. This changes the moves available to you along with various other factors, but not in such a way that your unarmed actions are rendered useless. Indeed, I would say that fighting unarmed is just as effective as using your weapon on the whole. It all comes down to how you like to play, and the situation. This blend of armed and unarmed fighting action makes it seem like ADK was trying to have its Fatal Fury and Samurai Shodown it too. In addition to this mechanic, you have the usual SNK desperation moves, super moves, super desperation moves, and so on. You can also use your meter to put yourself in a hyper state that can be pretty helpful at times.

Ninja Master’s has another somewhat unique element among SNK fighting games, though one that wasn’t unusual at the time: dial-a-combos. If you’re not familiar with that term, it refers to a combo where you can just hit all the buttons in sequence without concern for timing and the whole combo will just roll out. Some people like them, some people don’t. Tekken uses them, and it certainly has no shortage of fans. Around the time this was being made, Killer Instinct would have been doing fairly good business and it is probably one of the more well-known dial-a-combo fighters. But you didn’t see a lot of SNK games use them, so seeing them here is interesting.

Otherwise, this is just another NEOGEO fighting game, and that’s not a bad thing. You have a solid cast of varied fighters, and they’re all detailed and well-animated. The backgrounds are terrific, with lots of interesting elements to catch your eye if you have a second to look around. The medieval Japanese setting and ninja focus tie everything together so that it doesn’t feel as scattershot in a thematic sense as some other SNK fighters. The bosses here are quite wild and toppling them is certainly a challenge, but the game gives you enough leeway early on so that you can enjoy batting the CPU around a bit without too much resistance. Which, as we all know, is pretty important for these mobile releases.

I think Ninja Master’s is a pretty good one-on-one fighter, and if it had been in any other camp than SNK’s (apart from Capcom), it would probably be among the very best of that publisher’s offerings in the genre. In the SNK line-up, it has to settle for the upper mid-tier. If you enjoy the theme, you can add some extra points to the bottom line. I like the weapon gimmick, though it probably isn’t used to its maximum effectiveness. Again I can only wonder what a sequel might have brought us when the first attempt was as solid as this is. If you’re tired of spinning the usual hits, give this one a play.

Of course, when we’re talking about these mobile versions, it’s not enough to simply consider the game itself. We also have to think about how well it adapts to mobile, because that’s a different question. As usual for ACA NEOGEO releases, the only multiplayer option requires external controllers and huddling around one display. Most are probably not going to be able to make much use of that, so you’ve got a fighter you can only play in single-player. This one isn’t too shabby in that regard because the CPU isn’t a total jerk until you get near the end, but there’s no doubt something is missing by not being able to play against another human player.

The other consideration comes in the controls. If you’re sporting an external controller like a Backbone One or Kishi, you have nothing to worry about. You’ll be playing it just like anyone on other platforms can. The touch control option is a bit mixed. Some of the special moves can be tricky to pull off, and the desperation attacks are a real pain. Interestingly, that dial-a-combo system is a boon here. At least for me, it’s easier to punch in those combos via touch controls than it is to deal with a standard combo system using such means. It’s no worse off than most other SNK fighters when it comes to special move commands, but in terms of whipping out combos on those virtual buttons, I think Ninja Master’s is more manageable.

We have now reached the part of the review where I talk about the usual features for ACA NEOGEO games on mobile. You can access a variety of gameplay, video, audio, and control options. The Japanese and International versions of the game are available for standard play, plus you get Score Attack and timed Caravan modes to play. There are online leaderboards for all of these ways to play, and they do extend the entertainment value of playing a fighting game alone somewhat. The emulation quality is great, and you would expect it to be given Hamster’s extensive experience in this area by now.

Ninja Master’s suffers from most of the usual problems with the fighting games in the ACA NEOGEO line. You’re highly likely to be playing solo unless you can meet some tough requirements, and fighting games on this platform don’t exactly shine when you’re stuck fighting the CPU. Still, the unique weapon system and dial-a-combo mechanic mean that there is at least something worth noting here, and I can’t argue that the theme and cast aren’t cool and well-implemented. If you’ve been able to enjoy any of the other fighters from SNK on mobile, you might want to give this one a shot. It’s not the best of the bunch, but it’s quite good.

Samba de Amigo finally got its first proper sequel on consoles with the release of Samba de Amigo: Party Central. To go along with it, there is also this Apple Arcade game, titled Samba de Amigo: Party-To-Go (). Given the heavy online and multiplayer focus of many of the modes in the console version, Party-To-Go can’t easily follow in the dance steps of its fellow. For better or worse, this is a different sort of beast despite sharing the look, user interface, unlockables, and most of the soundtrack with its console counterpart. Wait, “for better or worse”? This is a review! Let’s determine which of the two it is!

What is Samba de Amigo? Well, it’s a rhythm game that was originally released in arcades in 1999 and on the Dreamcast in the year 2000. This puts it relatively early in the whole rhythm game boom, especially when looking at ones that used plastic instruments. SEGA is always a few years too early to the party, and it’s never a good thing for them. In this case, the plastic instruments were maracas, and they were a lot of fun. You had to hold them at one of three heights and shake along to the beat. Sometimes you would have to make poses, too. Great fun in the arcade and at home, especially if you have spectators there to laugh at you. The soundtrack leaned Latin, but had plenty of classic SEGA tunes and pop hits to round things out. It even had a cover of A-Ha’s Take On Me by ska band Reel Big Fish! Ska! It’s like punk, but with horns and happy!

While the game had a cult following, that was really all it was able to manage. Part of that came down to its home version being on the Dreamcast, part of that came from the cost of the maracas, and part of that was just rudeness. It’s a good game, people. It got a Wii port several years later, but the Wii remotes just couldn’t sub for the maracas. Also, it had Mambo Number 5 on the soundtrack. In 2008. That’s flying too close to the sun, SEGA. This port was developed by Gearbox, the makers of Duke Nukem Forever and Brothers in Arms DS. I get the impression it didn’t do very well, so Amigo went into the vault only to be allowed out to play in SEGA All-Star games.

The monkey has been freed, however. Not just one game, but two. Sort of. Since this is a review of Party-To-Go, I’m going to be focusing on it. I reviewed the Switch version of the other game, Party Central, in the SwitchArcade Round-Up if you want to read about that. In Party-To-Go, you’re given just two modes to play. First is the Rhythm Game mode, where you just pick a song to play and the difficulty you’d like to play it at, then have at it. The other mode is exclusive to this Apple Arcade game. Story Mode takes you through a weird tale of Amigo and the Legendary Maraca trying to bring music back to the Earth. It takes the form of a series of missions that you’ll have to complete. Finish one and you’ll get some story and unlock the next. You’ll also earn coins and levels the same you will in Rhythm Game mode, and can use them to unlock cosmetic items for Amigo.

I like this Story Mode a lot better than the StreamiGo mode in Party Central. There’s less song repetition, and it’s less vague about what you need to do to succeed. The story itself is pretty… banal, to be kind. It makes use of some decent FMV cutscenes now and then, but for the most part it seems to be going for the vibe of an instant message conversation. Which is fine, except the characters are usually face to face. It’s filled with the kind of dialogue you just want to skip through, peppered with the occasional really good line. Well, at least we now have irrefutable evidence the monkey is in a romantic relationship with the puberty-gifted fairy. It’s a fun mode to play through, and I suppose that’s the bottom line.

The soundtrack is mostly similar to Party Central, with a nice mix of classics and contemporary music across a variety of genres. Not many songs from the original return, and it doesn’t seem like the DLC songs from the other game are in the list here. But you do get a few exclusive songs including tracks from PSY and Lady Gaga, and that’s cool. The tunes are definitely more general in their appeal than the first game’s soundtrack, but that’s fine. It means most people should be able to find at least a few songs they know, and will be able to learn some new ones, too. Win-win.

Samba de Amigo: Party-To-Go does not have maracas controllers. It does not attempt to replicate them, and even warns you not to shake or move your device. No, this game is entirely touch-based. The screen is divided into left and right and three different height levels. When the ball enters the circle, tap that side and height. When it tells you to pose, put your fingers in the right place. When it tells you to swing the maracas back and forth, slide your fingers back and forth. It’s certainly more accurate than the maracas or any motion controls would be, but it isn’t as fun. I also find some of the sliding motions and commands to be a bit unintuitive to pull off with touch controls. It feels like SEGA just tried to cram in everything Party Central does gameplay-wise into Party-To-Go, but not all of it works due to the differing input method.

Still, setting aside what it isn’t, Samba de Amigo: Party-To-Go is a decent enough rhythm game with really strong production values for the most part. It’s not quite as good as Apple Arcade stablemate Taiko no Tatsujin, but the music is good, the gameplay mechanics are fairly easy to grasp, and between the Story Mode and unlockables you certainly have a lot to do. At times it feels like something cobbled together with bits of another game, which it probably has been, but it sometimes feels like it’s doing its own thing too. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, there is controller support here. It works like the button controls in Party Central, mapping the positions to the sticks and buttons. I wouldn’t advise it.

I think the Story Mode and extra tunes in Samba de Amigo: Party-To-Go make it worth trying out for fans of the series even if they’ve already grabbed Party Central, but there’s no question this game loses something the further it moves away from the grace of the maracas controllers. If you don’t care about that, and there’s a very good chance you don’t, the only thing you really need to worry about here is that the demands of the note charts seem more tuned for console play than touch. You’ll have to really twist your fingers at times. Otherwise, it’s a decent game for its genre with a solid list of tracks to tap along to. Nothing remarkable, but good enough.