One of my personal favourite gaming heroes makes their grand return this week, as Universal's madcap platformer Mr. Do!'s Castle welcomes guests, new and old, to Hamster's Arcade Archives.

Released to arcades in 1983, emblazoned with one of the most punctuated titles of all time, Mr. Do!'s Castle is the first sequel to Universal's original Mr. Do!, which hit the coin-op scene just a year earlier. Whereas our Clown Prince's first escapade was more of a "dig 'n' crush" affair, Mr. Do!'s Castle is a single-screen platformer - in the vein of similar titles such as Kangaroo (1982) and BurgerTime (1982).

Players guide Mr. Do as they navigate the many floors of their palatial estate, avoiding a bevvy of unicorn-like monsters (The Japanese release is actually titled Mr. Do! vs. Unicorns), while knocking as many Cherry Blocks as possible out of the tiled flooring. Strange way to renovate, but they're an 8-bit, ball-tossing clown and I'm some hack writer, so who am I to doubt them?

In typical Mr Do fashion, you can complete each stage in multiple ways: collect all the cherries, trap all the monsters, or collect the "EXTRA" bonus letters. It's simple, colourful, classic arcade action. Why the medieval setting? Well, Universal originally designed the game under the banner of "Knights and Unicorns", before the success of the original Mr. Do! led the studio to swap out the "knights" element for our anachronistic anarchist.

Mr. Do!'s Castle was ported to a variety of home formats, including Atari 2600, MSX, ColecoVision, and Commodore 64. The success of the arcade release led to two further arcade sequels in the form of Mr. Do!'s Wild Ride (1984) and the excellent Do! Run! Run! (1984). Let's get these games compiled and remade in Unreal 5. Our world needs Mr. Do!'s wacky antics now more than ever.

Mr. Do!'s Castle arrives September 17 on PlayStation, Xbox Series, and Nintendo Switch.