As a self-professed lover of classic arcade games and even oddball titles of all sorts on the Switch, by name only this felt like it could be a hit. My hope was to find a variety of arcade-style challenges that would tap into some classic feels, but with some consistent flavor that would help distinguish them as being from this era. While at least some portion of my hopes were fulfilled by The Last Shot Arcades, unfortunately on the whole no matter how much you’d choose to emphasize that this is a budget title, there’s no denying that more often than not it feels like a waste of time.

What you’ll find here are a small collection of mini games that at least vary in their general styles in a few ways, which you’ll play by navigating through a needlessly tedious set of odd and dingy city scenes. I guess that opens the door to whoever did the title’s art a little more varied work aside from drawing all of the assets used in each of the mini games, but once you’ve seen any of it more than once it will only serve to slow you down. The fact that you can trigger small events hidden in each screen I suppose was intended to add to the fun, but honestly I’d have rather seen more effort put into better refining each of the mini games.

Clicking into each game also has a tendency to be very hit and miss, as somehow the developers have managed to pair relatively simple concepts with what can sometimes feel like the least intuitive controls possible. Given that no in-game instructions are included, you’ll either need to try to simply hit buttons until you work things out, or pause the game to see the very minimal directions for the controls. The problem is that in a few cases even when you mechanically understand which buttons to use, that still gives you zero helpful direction on how to play. Considering that pretty well none of the mini games I played managed to stand out at all when pitted against almost any other mini game collection I’ve reviewed over the years, I generally opted to save my time instead. Struggling through learning how to play a given mini game well, despite the developers’ best efforts to make that as unappealing a prospect as possible, simply feels like a waste. Considering not even my favorite mini games, which involved either making rocks ricochet off of walls or arching shots to hit another player, were great examples of play when compared to their peers, this unfortunately feels like another unfortunate dud in the eShop.