Via a dark alchemy involving sprites, chiptunes, and slaughtering 16-bit game cartridges with a sacrificial dagger, some games are able to induce a state in which you’re either transported back to your gaming youth or tricked into thinking your virtual adolescence was formed of pixels and not polygons. You need only glance at the image above to know you’re dealing with just such a game.
There’s already a lot of fanfare for Shovel Knight based on its magnificent versions on PC and (looks around shiftily) other platforms, but Yacht Club Games wants to make PlayStation the definitive place to play it. How? Number one: Kratos is in it. The Kratos, chiselled murderer of close relatives and platform legend. He’ll appear as a boss, based on the dev’s early teaser. Number two: it’s available across PS4 and PS Vita with Cross-Save enabled and bespoke rear touchpad controls for the latter (we wouldn’t rule out touchpad functions for the DualShock 4, either).
Prepare to relive the very best bits of your early gaming days – or at least pretend you were around for the 8-bit golden age. We won’t tell.
