Retro Games Challenge
Apr. 2nd, 2013 09:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroDo you miss the games of your youth in the 80s? Do you wish you could still be back then, waiting desperately for new releases, pouring over gaming magazines, and grinding repetitive 8-bit games? Never fear, you can take the Retro Games Challenge!
The framing story is that a frustrated game master has sent you back in time to play the games of his youth with him as a kid, so you get the latest playground buzz about each game as you unlock it. The game also has "in-universe" manuals and GameFan magazines with tips and cheats for the games. There's also his anguish each time Guadia Quest (the token rpg) get "delayed" by the publisher. And, of course, mom yelling at him to do chores and homework rather than just playing games. It's a cute concept.
The fact that you have to play each game in turn, and pass all of the challenges before the next game unlocks, is problematic if you're not particularly hardcore. I am not particularly hardcore. (I handled a bunch of these challenges the same way I would the original games, given the opportunity--cheat codes and save states.) Also, I feel like owning discs like Namco Museum and Midway Arcade Classics makes me desire to play this less--this is faux-nostalgia, versus the real thing.
The first game, Cosmic Gate, is a Galaga/Galaxian clone; the more-evolved version of Space Invaders. It actually feels more forgiving than most of the original games did. Either that, or my actual reflexes from sinking too many quarters into Galaga have survived to this day.
The second game, Robot Ninja Haggle Man, is a puzzle-platformer in the vein of early NES games like Wrecking Crew or Bubble Bobble--you need to stomp enemies or hit them with swinging doors to destroy them and reveal a stage boss. The points don't matter but the timer does. It also has an excuse plot about rescuing a princess, because you always need to rescue a princess.
The third game, Rally King, is a top-down racing game. You need to win the race without crashing too much. (Your car actually has a life meter!) It seems, again, more sophisticated than an atual NES racing game would be, as it allows "drifting" to handle corners and build up speed, and there's never any slowdown. I found the in-universe cheat codes from GameFan useful here--I could avoid crashing or make a reasonable time, but not both.
The fourth game, Star Prince, is a bullet-hell space shooter, with the classic gun variety powerups, destructable stage elements, and millions of things to keep out of your hitbox. This actually has a shield that you can always activate (that will absorb 3 hits and counterattack) as a gimmick, and while I'm not up on the latest in this genre, I thought that was an interesting touch that added strategy besides memorizing and dodging.
The fifth game is Rally King SP...or in other words, Rally King again with parody cup o' noodles ads built in. Blah blah parody of gaming culture blah blah...this is still totally padding, and the additional challenges are annoying.
The sixth game is Robot Ninja Haggle Man 2, which keeps the mechanics from the first game but adds new levels and makes some of the systems more flexible. So, y'know, standard "sequel." It's also harder than the first, as you might guess.
The seventh game is Guadia Quest, the Dragon Quest clone rpg. This game finally lets you save your in-game progress, rather than having to replay from the beginning every time. And by "clone", I really mean it, as it uses the same font, similar graphics, the same style of menus, and the same battle layout as the NES Dragon Quest games. It's a grind-fest, befitting a NES-era rpg, and includes other nostalgic "features" like nonsensical spell names, "beef gate" battles, hidden statistics for equipment, and an unintuitive menu system.
The final game is Robot Ninja Haggle Man 3, but it's a completely different game from the first two. Somewhere between a Ninja Gaiden game and Metroid, it's a maze-platformer with stores and equipable items, and a save feature (though your progress gets annoyingly reset when you beat a challenge). It's significantly more playable than I ever found any of the Ninja Gaiden games to be, as the play control is good and the enemies aren't totally overwhelming.
When you finish all of the challenges for each game, Arino reveals the final challenge: Beat all eight games! In most cases, this takes significantly longer than the earlier challenges did, though there are various cheats available for most of the games (level select codes, infinite lifes, and a secret way of viewing the credits in Guardia Quest) that can take the sting out of it if you're completionist but dislike one or more of them.
Overall: I think this game is actually an elaborate prank played on gamers--they could have made a set of much better games, but they deliberately put in annoying features for the sake of nostalgia, and made the challenges annoying for the sake of proving the size of your gamerpenis. There's definitely some cleverness here, but I think they tried to be too clever--and too gamer-purist--to actually make it a really fun game.
The framing story is that a frustrated game master has sent you back in time to play the games of his youth with him as a kid, so you get the latest playground buzz about each game as you unlock it. The game also has "in-universe" manuals and GameFan magazines with tips and cheats for the games. There's also his anguish each time Guadia Quest (the token rpg) get "delayed" by the publisher. And, of course, mom yelling at him to do chores and homework rather than just playing games. It's a cute concept.
The fact that you have to play each game in turn, and pass all of the challenges before the next game unlocks, is problematic if you're not particularly hardcore. I am not particularly hardcore. (I handled a bunch of these challenges the same way I would the original games, given the opportunity--cheat codes and save states.) Also, I feel like owning discs like Namco Museum and Midway Arcade Classics makes me desire to play this less--this is faux-nostalgia, versus the real thing.
The first game, Cosmic Gate, is a Galaga/Galaxian clone; the more-evolved version of Space Invaders. It actually feels more forgiving than most of the original games did. Either that, or my actual reflexes from sinking too many quarters into Galaga have survived to this day.
The second game, Robot Ninja Haggle Man, is a puzzle-platformer in the vein of early NES games like Wrecking Crew or Bubble Bobble--you need to stomp enemies or hit them with swinging doors to destroy them and reveal a stage boss. The points don't matter but the timer does. It also has an excuse plot about rescuing a princess, because you always need to rescue a princess.
The third game, Rally King, is a top-down racing game. You need to win the race without crashing too much. (Your car actually has a life meter!) It seems, again, more sophisticated than an atual NES racing game would be, as it allows "drifting" to handle corners and build up speed, and there's never any slowdown. I found the in-universe cheat codes from GameFan useful here--I could avoid crashing or make a reasonable time, but not both.
The fourth game, Star Prince, is a bullet-hell space shooter, with the classic gun variety powerups, destructable stage elements, and millions of things to keep out of your hitbox. This actually has a shield that you can always activate (that will absorb 3 hits and counterattack) as a gimmick, and while I'm not up on the latest in this genre, I thought that was an interesting touch that added strategy besides memorizing and dodging.
The fifth game is Rally King SP...or in other words, Rally King again with parody cup o' noodles ads built in. Blah blah parody of gaming culture blah blah...this is still totally padding, and the additional challenges are annoying.
The sixth game is Robot Ninja Haggle Man 2, which keeps the mechanics from the first game but adds new levels and makes some of the systems more flexible. So, y'know, standard "sequel." It's also harder than the first, as you might guess.
The seventh game is Guadia Quest, the Dragon Quest clone rpg. This game finally lets you save your in-game progress, rather than having to replay from the beginning every time. And by "clone", I really mean it, as it uses the same font, similar graphics, the same style of menus, and the same battle layout as the NES Dragon Quest games. It's a grind-fest, befitting a NES-era rpg, and includes other nostalgic "features" like nonsensical spell names, "beef gate" battles, hidden statistics for equipment, and an unintuitive menu system.
The final game is Robot Ninja Haggle Man 3, but it's a completely different game from the first two. Somewhere between a Ninja Gaiden game and Metroid, it's a maze-platformer with stores and equipable items, and a save feature (though your progress gets annoyingly reset when you beat a challenge). It's significantly more playable than I ever found any of the Ninja Gaiden games to be, as the play control is good and the enemies aren't totally overwhelming.
When you finish all of the challenges for each game, Arino reveals the final challenge: Beat all eight games! In most cases, this takes significantly longer than the earlier challenges did, though there are various cheats available for most of the games (level select codes, infinite lifes, and a secret way of viewing the credits in Guardia Quest) that can take the sting out of it if you're completionist but dislike one or more of them.
Overall: I think this game is actually an elaborate prank played on gamers--they could have made a set of much better games, but they deliberately put in annoying features for the sake of nostalgia, and made the challenges annoying for the sake of proving the size of your gamerpenis. There's definitely some cleverness here, but I think they tried to be too clever--and too gamer-purist--to actually make it a really fun game.
