Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

Konami Antiques: MSX Collection Vol. 2 offers a remarkably varied gameplay experience by bundling nine distinct MSX titles. Athletic Land provides a colorful track-and-field challenge that pushes your reflexes as you jump, javelin throw, and hurdle with arcade-style precision. Gradius 2 ups the ante with its classic side‐scrolling shoot-’em-up mechanics, where power-up combinations and level memorization are essential to conquer waves of alien forces.

(HEY YOU!! We hope you enjoy! We try not to run ads. So basically, this is a very expensive hobby running this site. Please consider joining us for updates, forums, and more. Network w/ us to make some cash or friends while retro gaming, and you can win some free retro games for posting. Okay, carry on 👍)

Hyper Sports 3 channels the Olympic spirit in a series of mini-games that demand tight timing and button-mashing prowess. Knightmare delivers a top-down dungeon crawler where you guide soldier Popolon through neo-Gothic crypts—its deliberate pacing and methodical enemy patterns hark back to the early days of action RPG design. Konami’s Golf takes a more relaxed pace, offering an approachable swing meter and courses that reward subtle control over brute power.

Magical Tree challenges players to ascend a labyrinthine trunk filled with enemies and pitfalls, emphasizing careful platforming and item collection. Super Cobra revives the helicopter shooter subgenre with tricky cave segments and limited fuel management that keeps tension high. Twin Bee’s cute ’em-up style blends colorful visuals with bomb-dropping tactics, while Yie Ar Kung-Fu 2: The Emperor Yie-Gah introduces flashy special moves and one-on-one battles that feel surprisingly deep for an MSX fighting title.

Graphics

Visually, Volume 2 faithfully reproduces the MSX’s 8-bit charm, complete with blocky sprites and a limited but vibrant color palette. Athletic Land’s bright arenas and Hyper Sports 3’s clean event screens feel crisp and pop on the PS1’s hardware, though you’ll occasionally notice scanline artifacts reminiscent of CRT displays. Gradius 2 dazzles with its multi-layered starfields and detailed boss designs, proving that the MSX could handle impressive visual flair when pushed to its limits.

Knightmare and Magical Tree lean into darker, more atmospheric backdrops—stone corridors and twisting branches rendered in moody shades of brown and green. The detail in Konami’s Golf is deceptively simple: fairways are neatly drawn, and the UI remains unobtrusive, letting you focus on swing mechanics rather than flashy effects. Super Cobra’s crude cave walls and fuel gauge graphics may seem rudimentary by today’s standards, but they capture the essence of early home-computer shooters.

Twin Bee’s pastel hues and smiling clouds create an inviting stage for up to two players, while Yie Ar Kung-Fu 2’s character portraits and stage backgrounds showcase Konami’s flair for memorable silhouette art. Across all titles, the Playstation’s upscaling smooths jagged edges without compromising the original pixel integrity. Though there’s no optional filter to mimic CRT curvature, the static presentation feels authentic and serves nostalgia seekers well.

Story

Storytelling in this collection is minimal, reflecting the arcade roots of most entries. Athletic Land and Hyper Sports 3 dispense with narratives entirely, focusing squarely on event-based competition. Gradius 2 offers a loose sci-fi backdrop—you’re piloting the Vic Viper against the Bacterion Empire—but narrative moments are confined to text screens between levels rather than in-game cutscenes.

Knightmare brings the strongest story thread: you play as the valiant Popolon on a quest to rescue the imprisoned Princess Aphrodite from the sorcerer Dirth. Between levels, simple dialogue boxes set the stage for each new tower floor, giving the crawl a cohesive drive. Magical Tree’s premise—climbing a mystical tree to recover enchanted petals—adds whimsy to its platforming grind, though the plot never deepens beyond brief title cards.

Konami’s Golf, Twin Bee, and Super Cobra rely on implicit scenarios: tournament rounds, alien skirmishes, and jungle caverns respectively. Yie Ar Kung-Fu 2 throws in an Emperor Yie-Gah rivalry, but you’ll mainly enjoy its arcade-style fight setups and mid-round challenge screens. Overall, if you’re hoping for narrative depth, you’ll find it sparse; the appeal lies in gameplay variety and retro design rather than story complexity.

Overall Experience

Konami Antiques: MSX Collection Vol. 2 is a nostalgic treasure chest for retro enthusiasts and newcomers curious about early 8-bit game design. The sheer diversity of genres—from sports mini-games to dungeon crawlers, shoot-’em-ups to platformers—ensures that nearly every session feels fresh. Whether you’re chasing high scores or simply soaking up Konami’s foundational classics, this compilation delivers hours of bite-sized entertainment.

The Playstation emulation is solid, with responsive controls and near-authentic frame rates. Though there’s a lack of modern conveniences like save states or Rewind features, the built-in password systems in titles like Gradius 2 and Magical Tree ease progression. The menu interface is straightforward, letting you jump between games quickly and adjust basic options such as screen aspect ratio.

On the downside, some games—particularly Super Cobra and Athletic Land—can feel dated in their difficulty spikes, and new players may find the trial-and-error design frustrating. However, hardcore retro fans will appreciate the unfiltered challenge and historical significance of these MSX offerings. For anyone building a digital library of classic titles, Vol. 2 stands as an essential companion to the first collection, showcasing Konami at its creative peak on the MSX platform.

Retro Replay Score

null/10