QUByte has been bringing classics to modern systems recently, with games like The Humans and The Immortal, and while those are well-done collections of retro games, QUByte and Piko Interactive have also made some strange choices with Radical Rex. This collection includes the 16-bit console game Radical rex and the Game Boy game, and neither game was particularly amazing back in the day, making this an odd choice for a re-release.
These were side-scrolling platformers originally developed by Beam Software during the animal mascot with attitude era in the 90s and sadly, like many others in that genre, the games just are nothing special. The games are generic platformers and while The Immortal had a great re-release, Radical Rex was not so lucky, due to multiple emulation issues. The emulation on the Game Boy game in particular contains screen tearing, shimmering, horrific levels of input lag and slowdown. The game starts from a built-in save state past the title screen, and for some reason the game feels like some of the issues are tied to this, as if the emulation was haphazardly done, possibly to hide the original name of Baby T-Rex.
But that was just the Game Boy version, right? The console version must be better I hear you say. Well, yes it is better, but it is still not very good. There are serious issues with the audio, far too frequent hiccups in the gameplay, screen tearing again (thought admittedly not as bad) and of course, input lag. But is it all bad? Well no, there are some decent options for features like save states, screen filters, screen size options and so on. It is just that the overall product is still not good.
QUByte Interactive sadly struck out with Radical rex, but its earlier offerings like The Immortal show that the company can do much better than what was done with this package. A lacklustre collection of games that were already lacklustre, this is just one to avoid.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided