Balacera Brothers is a run-and-gun shooter from the maker of TMNT Rescue-Palooza!

Last year we told you about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Rescue-Palooza!, a radical, tubular, and generally gnarly fan game featuring 60 characters from the Ninja Turtles catalogue (plus Usagi Yojimbo). Its creator, Merso-X, has now taken the step into commercial development and released an original game called Balacera Brothers.

A retro run-and-gun in the Contra or Metal Slug mold, it features two members of a ska band who grab tommy guns and take to the streets to fight skeletons and a variety of deeply strange bosses with balacera (which means shooting). Balacera Brothers has two-player local co-op, stages inspired by real-world locations, power-ups, and a banging ska soundtrack.

You can buy Balacera Brothers from itch.io and GameJolt.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.