The split between aesthetic pleasure and unforgiving gameplay will be what drives the spear between whether this game is a worthwhile buy or not. There are a few things which the developers get absolutely right, and as a product of a small-team it’s fun to simply celebrate the sheer joy with which Lichtspeer was made. There’s value in the art, the style, the writing and the magic when it all comes together. As much as I enjoyed all that, however, I can’t say that this is a game which plays well.

Photo Finder is easily the weakest entry in the Chibi-Robo series and lacks the same vision and atmosphere of its forerunners, but it still has the love Skip always pours into its quirky adventures.

Ethan: Meteor Hunter is an interesting little game and a decent platformer with interesting concepts, however sometimes the unrefined controls can get in the way of being truly enjoyable.

Most tellingly, though, the frustration of trying to find a green cursor highlight amongst dozens of balls of the same colour is quite possibly the most insane thing to overlook that I've ever seen done in a puzzle game.

There have been a lot of retro games over the last few years, but I have found the ones that tend to be the most successful are the ones that blend in some sort of modern convention. In this case, the resource system that allows for ship improvement is easily the best part of what is otherwise a solid if unspectacular shooting game. If you enjoy a good retro shooter, Zotrix should be pretty appealing.

It does seem as though Arc System Works were relying entirely on the nostalgia to sell Double Dragon IV. And while it captures the essence of those original games it falls short of being a good game today simply because the original hasn’t aged well. It would have been pretty rockin' back in the 80s though.

Theatre of Sorrows isn't worth your time. It's dressed up nicely with some good art and the occasional sinister moment to dwell on, but underneath that is little more than a basic resource management experience, with such egregious repetition through its "roguelike" elements that it becomes rote well before you've even finished the game for the first time. As a carefully-planned, linear and focused experience, Theatre of Sorrows could have been something creepy and evocative. Instead, it's like reading the same snippets of Lovecraft over and over again. Do that, and it doesn't take long at all for them to lose all meaning and value.

Yes, it's had far more effort that's been put into its presentation than any other example of the genre I can think of, however by its very nature this is a very limited genre, and Infinity Runner just doesn't do enough to prove its merits beyond an iPhone time waster.

Far too shallow to stand up to the crop of other tactics JRPGs released this year, in what has been a really good year for the genre.

Actraiser Renaissance, however, is a remake that should have simply stuck to the basics that made Actraiser great. Instead, what you get are moments of greatness broken up by far too many moments of mediocrity.

Looney Tunes Galactic Sports isn't bad. It does what it set out to achieve. The problem is that it lacks any ambition to do anything more than a cash-in, and this game really isn't going to be remembered as the finest project Sony backed on its PlayStation Vita platform.

Cocoro is a difficult line defence title that might turn a lot of people away from it because the sheer difficulty doesn't gel with the art style.

Sadly, apart from being really, really ridiculously good-looking, Fashion Dreamer just hasn’t got much going for it. With no real reward mechanism to encourage you to think about fashion, and nothing stopping you from building up an extensive wardrobe of clothes simply by jumping online for a couple of minutes here and there, there’s so small of an incentive to actually play. Especially once you’ve found an outfit for your character that’s so cute that you don’t feel the need to mess around with it any further.

Stikbold lacks any kind of narrative or gameplay substance to be a compelling single player game. Sadly, it’s all too simple to be an effective multiplayer title, either. It’s passingly fun.

I wouldn't spend money on it because it's a shallow grind hiding under some very pretty character design. In other words, it's great, but only at a cost of nothing.

Monopoly on the Switch works, much as it did on PlayStation 4. There are some nice little elements, like themed boards, which don’t change the gameplay in any way, but are fun to see. All the popular Monopoly house rules are in there too, so however you like to play the game you’re covered. Loading times are a bit long, and the AI takes its sweet time to take each turn, but otherwise it’s a very clean, visually appealing take on the board game.

I do think the Castlevania retro collection that Konami has coming soon will do a better job. Focused as it is on a single, more mainstream franchise should help elevate it in the same way the Street Fighter collection was elevated by the sheer quality and consistency of the brand. Haunted Castle would have been more fitting in that collection, though. Konami really does make some odd choices at times.

Of course there are a lot of top down shooters on the Switch now. Some, such as Jydge or Mr Shifty, actually do some interesting things with the structure. Crimsonland is the polar opposite. It’s the safest, most generic example of the dual stick shooter in years. There’s no denying there’s a visceral thrill in the action that it offers, but let’s just say it’s just as well the game’s priced to be a cheap bit of throwaway fun.

I like my retro gaming to be bathed more in rosy nostalgia and details about what made a game great or a company significant, not drenched in cynicism. Super Technos World: River City & Technos Arcade Classics isn’t awful by any stretch, but it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that it is something of a cynical cash grab first and foremost. Do better, Arc System Works!

Do this game again, but shift the focus so that everyone can enjoy it without relying on others being online, and then we'll talk.

Lovecraft fans will get a kick out of the references to the horror maestro's body of work that are scattered throughout the mansion as well. From Deep One through Necronomicon it's all there. As primitive as the game is by modern standards, Alone in the Dark is a true classic, and for a dollar or so on the iOS it's well worth playing, either for nostalgia value or to experience the very formation of the horror genre.

I’ll never get sick of NewZealand Story. Most of the other titles are interesting as a curio, too. The quality of the ports for all of these titles great thanks to Hamster’s technology. However, as a package, this is a woeful excuse for a compilation, and that’s particularly surprising given that it came from the same publisher that gave us the Space Invaders Invincible Collection. That was one of the very best retro collections on the Switch. One I play almost weekly to date. “Disappointing” that Taito Milestones 2 lacks the same effort doesn’t begin to describe what I feel it.

It is disappointing to see a game like Metrico take so many wrong turns and squander so much promise. It becomes yet another example of a game burdened by creep, one that started with a simple premise that becomes buried by complexity.

On the Game Cube app, there is Mario Strikers. That is an excellent example of a time where Nintendo and its party sports developers had a handle over the balance between capturing the basics of the sport and making it arcade fun. Now, though, they’ve lost the plot entirely. I genuinely don’t understand who this is for, but it isn’t me. Or anyone that I know who loved what Mario Tennis once was.

The misfortune here for Nintendo EAD is that party games need to be accessible and appealing to a mass audience, but 1-2-Switch settles for a very specific demographic and all but alienates the rest. For that reason, it’s not a purchase I would recommend; it would have been better as a "free" pack in so that people would get the chance to try it for themselves before deciding on whether it had any long-term longevity for them.

If for no other reason, NinNinDays is worth a spin because the asking price is cheap, and the art is just that good. As pervy pin-up goes, there just aren't crotch shots and taut midriffs of the same quality on the Switch as what Sumire's story offers. However, outside of the art, a limp localisation of what is only a standard and uninspiring narrative are big red flags that would hang over any visual novel, and NinNinDays doesn't get a free pass for those issues just because its fan service is particularly appealing.

Yu-Gi-Oh! has come a long way in the years since these titles, both as a card game to play (many might argue that it’s too complex now) and as something to adapt to video games. This collection is a lot of nostalgic fun to remember the simpler times, but is also important to understand just how limited these games are. It would be like if EA put together a retro compilation of its FIFA football games. Sure, you’d have a rush of nostalgic delight loading up the GBA game that you spent months playing back in the day, but it would only take one or two matches to realise that nostalgia has a habit of warping memories and not all classic video games are timeless. Some are. Konami’s Castlevania collections show that. I fully expect the impending Suikoden collection to be a similar story. These, however, are not.

Plasma Puncher is a gorgeous, difficult and sometimes frustrating game. The excellent production values are overshadowed by some minor technical inconsistencies, but while I could spend all day complaining about the small stuff, the real weakness is a lack of gameplay depth.