Retro Highway (Nintendo Switch)

Retro High way, as the name suggests is a classic arcade influenced racing game. It takes the timeless super scaler gameplay of games like Outrun and Hang-on and mixes in the mechanics of more modern challenged based endless runners such as Jetpack Joyride.

You start every run with 3 challenges to complete to unlock new tracks. The challenges range from collecting a target number of power ups in one run, to performing stunts or even just crashing between given markers. 

If you're struggling with any challenges you can use the collected coins to purchase new bikes or upgrade to your perks, or simply just race to see how far into each track you can get and register your score on the online leaderboards.

The controls feel tight with analog steering, auto acceleration, and optional boost, and the game play loop give you the “just one more go” addiction that keeps you playing for way longer than you intended every time. 

The game looks awesome for pixel art fans like myself with its bold and vibrant colour pallet and smooth 60fps frame rate.

Retro Highway was originally released as a mobile phone game. I don’t play phone games. I haven’t since one of my favourite games of all time Plants vs Zombies went from an honest £8 game to it’s free to play, micro transaction riddled, unbalanced mess of a sequel. So I can’t speak to how the Switch port compares to the mobile version, but I can tell you there are no micro transactions in the Switch version and the difficulty curve feels perfect fair. This is how I want my games!!

Obviously it’s not a super deep game, but it’s the perfect pallet cleanser to play along side whatever deeper story driven AAA game you currently playing. 

If you like retro arcade racers and don’t mind a spin on the genre replacing the check point timers for challenges, then you should certainly check out Retro Highway for the launch asking price of a fiver!! If you’re on the fence, maybe check out the mobile phone version and treat that as a demo