New Games Pickups for 2021!
GAMES SHOWN:
Hitman III (PS5)
Sackboy: A Big Adventure (PS5)
Ketsui Deathtiny (PS4)
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury (Switch)
Brawler 64 Wireless Controller for N64 by RetroFighters
Turok 1 & 2 (Switch) Limited Run by Night Dive Studios
Gundam Breaker 3 (Vita)
Battle Crust (Dreamcast)
Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning (Xbox One)
Project Warlock (Switch)
ITTA (Switch)
Flea! (Dreamcast / NES)
Outer Wilds Limited Run (PS4)
Downwell (PS4)
MiSTer FPGA by MiSTerAddOns
– Journey (arcade)
– DoDonPachi (arcade)
– Discs of Tron (arcade)
– Satan’s Hollow (arcade)
– Jazz Jackrabbit (PC)
– Lords of the Realm II (PC)
– Space Quest 4 (PC)
Nox Archaist (Apple II / PC)
Centipede (Atari Lynx)
Quadromania Redux (Atari Lynx)
Championship Rally (Atari Lynx)
SIMIS (Atari Lynx)

Metal Jesus:
Hey guys, Metal Jesus here. Now, it has been way too long since I’ve done a proper games pickups video, and so I’ve got a bunch of new stuff to show you, including some PlayStation 5 games, PlayStation 4, Xbox, Switch, NES, Dreamcast and even some surprises. Let’s take a look. I’m going to go ahead and start with Hitman 3. This is the PlayStation 5 version here. Now, I originally played this on, I think, the PlayStation 4 or maybe the Xbox One. I forget, but basically this is a long-running awesome stealth series that is getting a performance bump on the PS5. Specifically, what you’re getting here is 4K HDR running at 60 frames a second, as well as fast load times, and this game is definitely a lot of fun and looks beautiful on the PlayStation 5.

Metal Jesus:
If you haven’t played it before, it’s kind of just like an open world stealth sandbox game, where you have certain mission objectives, but how you actually complete those is up to you. You can poison people. You can take them out from afar. You can sometimes even just push them over railings. It’s really an interesting game. It has a lot of mechanics in there where you dress up as other characters, but then you’d have to avoid certain ones that may detect if you are in disguise or not, so yeah. I’m enjoying this a lot.

Metal Jesus:
And you guys recommended, and I picked up Sackboy: A Big Adventure on the PlayStation 5. Now, this one is a little bit different than the traditional little big planet game. I guess, it’s considered sort of like a side game or something like that, but basically it plays more like a 3D Mario Adventure or maybe like a throwback to those PlayStation 2 classics, like Jak and Daxter. And it does have some really good visuals and it runs really good on the PlayStation 5. It’s one of those games where there’s a lot of hidden things to discover. Yeah. I’m enjoying this a lot. I would say, it’s not much new as far as these games go. It feels a little bit like a throwback, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Yeah. I’m enjoying it.

Metal Jesus:
And then here’s a shooter I got for the PlayStation 4 and I’m going to butcher the name. I apologize. It’s Ketsui Deathtiny. I think that’s how you say it, but basically this is a Cave shooter from arcades back in 2003 that recently got a physical release on the PlayStation 4, so of course, I had to snag it. And I absolutely love Cave shooters. They’re a little bit different in their feel to some of the other developers who make these type of games, and it’s hard to describe other than they just throw waves and waves of enemies at you, waves and waves of bullets, but yet there’s just a sense of Zen to these games that… I don’t know. I just really dig them. It seems like that stuff blows up everywhere. You’re always in danger, but they’re super fun to play, and again, it’s awesome to get a physical PlayStation 4 version of it.

Metal Jesus:
And then here’s a game a lot of you are probably playing because it just came out on the Nintendo Switch. That, of course, is Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury. I originally played and beat this game on the Wii U and I absolutely loved it. I know I say this a lot about these 3D Mario games, but Nintendo continues to surprise and impress me with just how much fun they pack into these games, because I think from the outset they might look, oh, it’s just yet another 3D Mario game, but there’s always new mechanics included in here that it just boggles the mind. I mean, the creativity over at Nintendo is just seems boundless, and so it was a joy to pick this up. I’m about halfway through it again and loving it just as much. Now, I haven’t played Bowser’s Fury yet. I’ve heard interesting things about it. I guess it’s a little bit of a departure, but I have no problem with that. I’m looking forward to diving in as soon as possible.

Metal Jesus:
And then here’s something a little bit different. This is the Brawler64 wireless controllers for the Nintendo 64 by a company called Retro Fighters. Now, these were sent to the channel by Retro Fighters, but I haven’t had the chance to use them yet, but I like what I’m seeing here because well, I actually really liked their controllers, their standard plug controllers, a lot. I use them all the time, and so I assume that the wireless ones will be pretty good, too. And with these, they’re advertising 2.4 gigahertz wireless technology. It also has a built in rechargeable battery. That’s always really nice, and I guess they got some feedback on the triggers. And so these also feature upgraded Z triggers to feel a little bit more digital as opposed to analog, so I’m going to be really curious to check these out. It looks pretty cool.

Metal Jesus:
And then here’s something really cool. So this is Turok 1 and 2. This is for the Nintendo Switch and these are the limited run releases that were put out maybe last year or something like that. Basically, these were sent in by Nightdive Studios. They’re the developer. They’re the people who made the remastered versions of Turok 1 and 2 for the Switch, so they sent these into the channel and these physical versions are amazing. Check this out. So right off the bat, I love these N64 style boxes. That’s very cool. You also have it in there a big poster. Also, included there is the CD soundtrack, so you get it for both. And also check this out. This, this is the sweet stuff right here. So each one of these has a unique commemorative metal N64 cartridge, and they’re just slightly different from each other, but they look absolutely beautiful and they’re super heavy. Now I do have to say they’re non-functional. They’re hollow. They’re just for show. They’re just to put on your game shelf, but that’s a pretty cool little perk there.

Metal Jesus:
And Nightdive Studios has been putting out a lot of classic games remastered for modern systems, like Switch and PC and Xbox and PlayStation, and this is no exception here. So Turok has higher resolutions. It also supports widescreen. They made small tweaks to the gameplay. They also included some graphical tweaks and effects, including the ability to turn off that fog in the original game. Remember that? Yeah. You can toggle that if you wish, and they included motion controls on aiming on the Switch. That is a really cool option for Switch players playing first-person shooter, so if you haven’t tried that, definitely check it out. It’s awesome.

Metal Jesus:
Next up, I got a Vita game, a newer Vita game in my collection. This, of course, is Gundam Breaker 3. Now, this is a import game, but thankfully has full English support, so you can completely play it if you don’t know Japanese, which is great. And basically what this game is, is just a big robot brawler slash beat ’em up, but it also has a lot of RPG elements, as you can completely customize your mech, upgrade it for battle, stuff like that, and it looks pretty good on Vita. I mean the frame rate’s not super high. I think it’s because there’s a lot of stuff going on, but man, I was having fun with this. This is a really cool game, very brainless, but you can dig into it. There’s a lot to it. Plus, it also includes all of the DLC on the disc, or it’s not disc, but the Vita cartridge, which again is awesome.

Metal Jesus:
And then here’s a game that has a silly name. I think it’s silly. It is Battle Crust on the Dreamcast. So this is a new shoot ’em up in that classic arcade style, which we all know and love, or at least, I do. I’m a sucker for these kinds of games, and as you can see here, it’s got great graphics. It also has six levels to battle through. In this case here, it also includes the soundtrack, and again, it’s a new Dreamcast game. I mean, how awesome is that?

Metal Jesus:
Next up is a game I got really excited when I heard that they were remastering it for modern consoles. That is Kingdoms of Amalur, and this is the Re-Reckoning version for Xbox One. And so I originally played this RPG, I think, on the 360. It’s been a while, but basically it was originally released back in 2012 and it was a really cool RPG. Unfortunately though, it was plagued by bugs, and so I was never able to finish it. Probably got 90% of the way through the game originally and then ran into a game-breaking bug, and man, it sucked because I loved it. I thought it was so much fun.

Metal Jesus:
And if you’re not familiar with this game and kind of “What makes it special?” Well, R.A. Salvatore wrote the story, and he wrote some of my favorite fantasy novels of all time. He wrote the Drizzt series. Fantastic. We’ve re-read those many times in our house. And then also Todd McFarlane worked on the art in this game, so it’s got a really great pedigree. Unfortunately, I don’t think it did very well the first time it came out. Now, this is kind of a second life for this game with some updates and some tweaks to the gameplay, stuff like that, so I’m looking forward to jumping back in.

Metal Jesus:
Next up are some Switch games and here is Project Warlock. The physical version was released by Super Rare Games. And as you can see by this footage, this is an old school first-person shooter that is definitely inspired by Doom or Hexen, and this game is definitely old school difficulty. It is not for beginners to the shooter genre. It’s really cool, and it’s really fun, but man, it is tough. It will kick your butt.

Metal Jesus:
Now, one cool feature I found in this game in the options is retro shader, so check this out. So basically you can go in there and adjust the color palette to be a bunch of different retro systems, so you see Commodore 64 is there, Amstrad, Spectrum. Also, you have Game Boy, so you can choose the color palette from a Game Boy, but then you can go down and then adjust the pixelation, as well, so you can actually dial it in to be somewhat close to what it would look like if it was running on the Game Boy. Now, I don’t know how practical this is and I don’t know if anyone would want to do that, but I thought that was a pretty cool feature. So anyways, Project Warlock kicking my butt, having a ton of fun with it. Check it out.

Metal Jesus:
And then here’s another physical release on the Switch from Super Rare Games. I’m probably going to screw this name up. All right. It’s Itta or Itta, but this is game surprised me quite a bit. It’s not what you would initially think it would be, because it looks like a pixel art style adventure game that everyone’s done before, but actually this game is really a bullet hell, twin-stick shooter that then has kind of an adventure game tacked onto it. It’s a really weird mix.

Metal Jesus:
In this game, you play as a young girl who wakes up next to your dead parents and you have no idea what happened, but thankfully there’s this little spirit thing that kind of guides you through this world to hopefully discover what happened. And graphically, the world is a really weird mix of fantasy that’s beautiful, but also very disturbing, and so you’re very compelled to try to figure out just what the heck is going on. But from what I can tell, because I’m not very far into this game yet, you basically just take on boss after boss to either get new weapons or progress the story. It’s very strange. It’s often confusing, because I don’t know where to go, but I’m really compelled to play this game because I’ve never played anything quite like it.

Metal Jesus:
Here’s the new Homebrew game that got released on the original NES, as well as the Dreamcast. It’s called Flea. If you get the NES version, of course, it’s going to come on a proper cartridge, as well as the manual, but for this video, we’re going to check out the Dreamcast version because that’s the console that I had hooked up. So Flea is a very interesting platforming game. Now, I’ll be honest. It’s not a looker. It’s not the best-looking game by far, but that’s okay because this is all about old-school gameplay.

Metal Jesus:
So in this game you control a flea, and the whole gimmick here is that the flea is constantly bouncing. You have no control over that, whatsoever, and so essentially what you’re trying to do is time and control your jumps to avoid the different obstacles while you pick up these blood packets that are all throughout these levels, because a lot of stuff will kill you in this game and it gets really tough really quick. Now, there is a mechanic where you can shorten the amount of bounce that the flea has by mashing the button on the controller. It’s kind of weird. It doesn’t feel very natural to sit there and pound the button on the controller to control how high he jumps, but it works and I was able to get to Level 20 fairly quickly in this game. There are 80 levels in total, and I think the challenge is definitely there. If you like these kinds of games, you should probably check it out.

Metal Jesus:
Next up is a game that I pretty much pre-ordered the day it was announced from Limited Run. You see it here. It is Outer Wilds for the PlayStation 4. And I did that because the word of mouth and the buzz on this game was through the roof. Everyone seemed to love this game when it first came out, and so I knew I was going to want a physical copy of it. And I played a little bit of it so far. You’re seeing the gameplay footage here and it’s a really weird game where you’re stuck in this time loop, where the sun is about to go supernova. Now, the thing is that you will die and die and die, but each time you do, you retain the knowledge for the next loop, as you try to figure out why this is happening to your solar system and why everyone’s stuck in this loop, and hopefully, I mean, I guess to try to prevent it.

Metal Jesus:
And what’s cool about this game is it as you were traveling from planet to planet, you’ll discover and translate clues left behind from an ancient alien race, I guess, that preceded you. Again, I’m not entirely sure what’s going on yet, but that was a bit of a surprise. It was pretty cool. Now, I will say I am definitely struggling with the controls in the spacecraft because they’re kind of realistic. There’s a bit of inertia involved in this, and so I often am flying way past where I need to go or I’m trying to desperately navigate to a landing pad and I have no idea how to do it, so again, I’m very early in this game. If you have some tips for me, let me know down the comments.

Metal Jesus:
And here’s a physical version of a game I’ve been playing for a while now. As you see here, it’s called Downwell. This is put out by Special Reserve. Downwell is an arcade game that has a little bit more going on than maybe it looks like. So the premise here is that you are a guy who jumps into a well, and you are basically just trying to fall as far as you possibly can, but in the well, there are a bunch of enemy types that will try to kill you. Now, some of these, you can land on top of, Mario style, and take them out, but others, you can’t touch it all.

Metal Jesus:
And then initially, you have a weapon that shoots down and it will reload every time you land on a platform. And then every once in a while, you’ll see these time bubbles that will appear on the left or the right. You’re going to want to go in there because that’s where you find money. You can also find a store to upgrade weapons, health, do special power-ups, things like that, and this entire game is rogue-like and randomize every time you play it, so it’s very addictive, very fun. You can play it for just a couple of minutes or you might get addicted like I am and keep going back time and time again, so yeah. Definitely check out Downwell.

Metal Jesus:
All right. Next is something I’m very excited and curious to check out. This is the MiSTer, and this was sent to me by Colin who runs a website, MisterAddons.com. Now, I probably have been talking to Colin for maybe a year, year and a half, about this, something like that, because there is a lot to learn and know about this really impressive and flexible technology that’s packed into these MiSTers. Now, if you’re not familiar with MiSTer FPGA project, the first thing I want to say is that it is not the same as a Raspberry Pi. It’s something actually much different and, in many ways, a lot cooler. Now, what’s cool about an FPGA is that it can technically reconfigure itself at boot up to often perfectly emulate or recreate old hardware and usually with zero latency.

Metal Jesus:
Now, I believe this project got to start with people who are trying to perfectly recreate classic arcade hardware. That’s where a lot of this came from, but over time, the project has just grown and grown and grown, because again, it’s so flexible. It’s also open source and constantly improving, and so for this device here, I’m actually really curious to check out what they’re doing with the 386 and the 486 cores, and also how well games run on that, but for now, I’ve just opened the box. I haven’t really played with this thing very much yet, but I know there’s a huge community of people out there who are just deep into the MiSTer. I’d love to know what you think down in the comments below. Maybe you can give me some pointers or tips.

Speaker 2:
You have no idea how special this moment is for me.

Metal Jesus:
Next up is something very curious here. This is Nox Archaist. I think that’s how you pronounce that. This is a brand new old-school RPG for the Apple II, Windows and Mac. Check this out. So you guys know that I love my big box PC games, and this one here is obviously a labor of love. This is so cool. So just a amazing amount of feelies included this box. As you can see here, we’ve got a proper cloth map, very similar to what would come normally with those old school ultimate games. You also have this jewel here. I assume it’s part of the game. I’m not entirely sure, but I’m sure I’ll find out.

Metal Jesus:
You have this coin. Check this out, a sealed letter here. I’m going to have to break that open. Proper printed manuals, which probably are needed for the game. These old school RPGs, you definitely needed the manuals to even get started, as well as the game on a USB drive. Now, to be honest, I haven’t played the game yet, but I’m looking forward to it, because one of my all-time favorite games is Ultima IV, and yes, these games look ancient by today’s standards, but there is a lot of gameplay in stuff like this, so this is going to be very cool to check out.

And then check this out, four new Atari Lynx games from publisher Songbird. I originally met Carl, who runs Songbird, at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo probably… Well, it’s been definitely over a year now. He had a table set up and I was blown away to go there and just see all of these new Atari games. It was awesome to see. Here’s a port of Centipede, and this one’s really new. This is only finished back in January of this year. Quadromania is a puzzle game that was released back in October of 2020. Here’s a top-down arcade racing game called Championship Rally, and then S.I.M.I.S. is a multicart with a bunch of games on it. Probably the best game on there is the Space Invaders clone, and I guess this was originally released back in 1998, but Songbird was able to license it and manufacture these for 2021.

All right, guys. That’s a quick look at some pickups over the last couple months or so. Now, if you see something interesting in this video and you’d like to learn more about it, maybe have more coverage on my YouTube channel, please let me know down in the comments. Also, a big thank you to the developers and the publishers who have sent me stuff to check out. I really appreciate that. That’s always really interesting and cool. And as always guys, I want to thank you for watching my channel. Thank you for subscribing and take care.