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• The All New Retro: Bust-a-Groove and Low-Poly Love

  I won’t deny it. My gaming tastes are a little unusual. Take my emulation aversion. Does a normal person spend months and months tracking down a rare and expensive cheat device so they can play an imported SNES game when they could download a ROM and SNES emulator in about ten seconds? No. This is not how a normal person behaves. As I slowly morph into something approximating an adult, I’ve been noticing another strange predilection in my gaming brain: a love of low-polygon graphics. Some games do not age with grace. Their mechanics, and especially their graphics, develop the distinct taste of vinegar when they used to be wine just five years before. Yet the games of the 32- and 64-bit era, games that I thought were repulsive even at the time, are starting to take on a strange allure. Read More... Posted Mar 31 2009, 08:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, nintendo ds, mega man, katamari damacy, Playstation, square-enix, tomb raider, retro, final fantasy iv, sega saturn, Retro game challenge, nintendo 64, enix, tomb raider 3, bust-a-groove

• The Great Girlfriend Grab

  While doing research for yesterday's post about Alex Kidd, I noticed something interesting: the intro to Alex Kidd in Shinobi World features Alex's girlfriend being whisked away by a villain who literally appears out of nowhere. Of course, savvy (and old) gamers will remember this little vignette as one of old-school gaming's bigger stereotypes; similar scenes even appeared in the intros to the throwback Haggleman series on Retro Game Challenge. I chuckled when I first saw Haggleman's parody, but after seeing it portrayed sincerely in Shinobi World, I started wondering to myself how many games I could find that actually opened with a girlfriend-abducting scene. What follows are my results. Read More... Posted Mar 10 2009, 12:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 6 comment(s) Filed under: feminism, retro, girl gamers, bob mackey, Retro game challenge

• Question of the Day: Ogre Battle and How Much Tutorial is Too Much?

  Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen hit Wii’s Virtual Console today. This is good for a variety of reasons. Quality Virtual Console releases are a rarity here in the far flung future of 2009. Ogre Battle is rare itself; its two English releases tend to fetch a pretty penny on Ebay. I’ve never played Yasumi Matsuno’s first foray into dense fantasy opera, so I’m looking forward to checking it out on the cheap. My history with the Ogre series is confined to Ogre Battle 64. OB64 was one of the only N64 games I ever owned and I spent many, many hours playing it in the spring of 2001. I had almost no idea what I was doing. OB64 throws you into the deep end as soon you start, burying you under a mountain of circuitous cutscenes and leaving you to figure out its blend of TRPG and RTS play on your own. I was pretty proud of myself for getting thirty hours into OB64 without a guide. That is, until I read a FAQ and found out about the nearly endless number of stats you have to consider if you want to actually see the game’s ending. Nothing in the game tells you about party loyalty or how to measure a unit’s leadership potential. Nothing in the game even indicates that these are things you’re supposed to account for. I love it when a game trusts me to learn how to play. I think that’s why people have responded so well to Retro Game Challenge. Even beyond its Famicom devotionals, the games trust you to learn their rules through play. Nothing is more frustrating than turning on a game and having to sit through an hour of tutorials, forcing you to plod through poorly acted scenes of someone telling you to press X to jump. By the same token, games like Ogre Battle are so complex that you need to have an in-game guide to teach you their rules by example. Read More... Posted Mar 02 2009, 05:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, wii, snes, Playstation, n64, super nintendo, virtual console, Retro game challenge, question of the day, square enix, tactics ogre, nintedo 64, ogre battle 64, march of the black queen, ogre battle, yasumi matsuno

• Whatcha Playing: Guadia Quest

  “But Nadia! 'Guadia Quest' is just one part of the magnificent whole that is Retro Game Challenge!” You're right, you little mathematician! But as fans of Retro Game Challenge are already well-aware, this DS title isn't merely a half-hearted mini game collection. That goes double for its RPG "parody." Both my husband and I intended to play through Retro Game Challenge, but there is only one save file. We decided we'd split up the experience. I've been letting my husband to the lion's share of the work while I sit by and witness the outcome. I want to see what comes of Game Master Arino, the lonely Wizard of a digital Oz who went as far as to outfit himself with a paper crown from Burger King. But I cannot chicken out by the sidelines for the entirety of the game. Someone needs to take up the sword and hack away at Guadia Quest. My husband doesn't know a hilt from a blade, whereas I was weaned on unicorn milk (and cocaine). Read More... Posted Feb 26 2009, 08:29 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: nintendo ds, dragon quest, retro, nostalgia, nadia oxford, dragon quest iv, Retro game challenge, dragon quest ii, guadia quest

• Rite of Spring: Flower and What’s Lacking in the Romantic Games Movement

  Last week was full of everything you want out of a vacation: a change of setting from urban sprawl to glorious mountain range, rancid air exchanged for clean winter wind, great food, better scotch, and the best company. Of course, there was also a smorgasbord of great portable games. Retro Game Challenge, Atlus’ under-the-radar curiosity My World, My Way, and Kirby Super Star Ultra made for marvelous palette cleansers, washing away the last traces of Epic Holiday Gaming morsels still stuck between my gaming teeth. It was restful, brief, and rejuvenating. When I returned, I knew that it was going to be time for 2009 hardcore gaming to go into high gear what with Street Fighter IV and a Killzone 2 demo waiting, but the first thing I had to spend some time with was Flower. As soon as it had finished installing, well, it felt like my vacation had just gotten an extension. The game is exhilarating. Having grown up in rural upstate New York, the contrast of Flower’s city-bound preludes and its soaring bucolic playgrounds pulls at very specific heartstrings in me. The game is brief but I’m no less taken with it. Jenova Chen and ThatGameCompany are damn good at eliciting just this sort of emotional response with their games. Their debut Cloud was rich with the same bittersweet catharsis that characterizes Flower. Both are something like the game equivalent of a symphonic poem, their fluid flight-based gameplay replacing music as the visceral informant of a visual/audio narrative. They’re games unified in subject too; Cloud and Flower chronicle escapes to a pure, natural world from metropolitan confinement. They are concerned with beauty and simplicity. I wouldn’t say that Chen and TGC started it, but they’re certainly poster children for what appears to be a burgeoning romantic movement in game design. Read More... Posted Feb 19 2009, 09:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, playstation 3, nintendo ds, xbox 360, psn, xbox live, atlus, braid, Retro game challenge, cloud, façade, procedural arts, jon blow, my world my way, flower, thatgamecompany, jenova chen, flow, Kirby super star ultra, rite of spring, that game company, Stravinsky, scotch is awesome, windows

• Retro Game Achievements: An Awesome Idea

  So, most of us are knee-deep in Retro Game Challenge at this point--and if you're not, I think it's time to seriously step back and reexamine your life. That being said, had RCG simply been a showcase of eight retro-style games, it would merely be great; the games within are solid genre homages worth playing in their own right. But the framing device and window-dressing of the whole package amps it up way past awesome. And what I've come to appreciate most about RGC's games are the "achievements" established by Arino himself throughout, since they've given me more of an incentive than normal to play the majority of relatively-simple games featured in RGC. Without some sort of achievements or leaderboards, games where I'm getting a high score for the sake of getting a high score usually leave me completely unmotivated and a bit sleepy, which is why I think the goals enforced upon the player in RCG could easily be added to older (or retro-style) games to give them new life. Read More... Posted Feb 18 2009, 06:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: wii, retro, bob mackey, virtual console, Retro game challenge, nintendo 64

• The 61FPS Review: Big Bang Mini

  Big Bang Mini? More like Big Bang Awesome, you know what I'm sayin'? No? You don't know what I'm sayin'? Ah, well then, let me explain... Big Bang Mini is a very unique DS arcade shooter from French studio Arkedo and it's the kind of beautifully unique game that screams "I was made by a small team of devoted and creative people!" (Other recent examples, Flower, World of Goo, LOL, Everyday Shooter) While most arcade shooters allow you to fire and move simultaneously via dual analogue control, Big Bang Mini is entirely touch-screen controlled, so you can only do one at a time. Drag your ship around to avoid bullets, let go somewhere safe, flick up towards the top screen to fire on your enemy targets. Oh yeah, and your ammunition is fireworks. BOOM-KRACKLE-shizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz... Read More... Posted Feb 18 2009, 12:30 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with no comments Filed under: derrick sanskrit, portal, 61fps review, ds, Retro game challenge, big bang mini, south peak, arkedo

• Old Man, Take a Look At My Life

  Somewhere over the American Midwest, on February 7th, I was playing through Retro Game Challenge. Five hours on a sold-out airplane, stale air, more screaming kids than tranq-ed adults, and surly Delta Airlines employees shoving headphones and stale bagels in your face every ten minutes makes for the perfect gaming atmosphere. You put on the best headphones you’ve got, jack up the volume, and play until the power runs out. The flight allowed me to access almost all of Retro’s faux-NES games. It wasn’t until I was plodding about its Dragon Quest homage, Guardia Quest, that I noticed my audience. Aaron was about five or six years old, a quiet kid peculiarly calm for such a long trip. “I have a DS too.” Read More... Posted Feb 17 2009, 06:30 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, nintendo ds, legend of zelda, nes, dragon quest, wii sports, famicom, Retro game challenge, phantom hourglass, guardia quest

• The 61FPS Review: Retro Game Challenge

  I have a confession: every night, the part of my soul that is all id and desire has taken a spirit journey to Japan, where it developed Retro Game Challenge. Of course that’s not actually true. But with an excellently executed premise that is laser-focused on the childhood dreams of the 20-something game player, it certainly feels true. It’s probably impossible to even review the game properly, as RGC is specifically designed to take the sort of person that would review a game and completely disarm them. I will try, but I wanted you to know going in that in this case, I don’t have any arms. Read More... Posted Feb 13 2009, 10:15 AM by Joe Keiser with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: review, nintendo ds, 61fps review, xseed, Retro game challenge, joe keiser

• Retro Game Challenge is Out Today. You Will Buy It.

  It seems that, outside of a few very specific outlets, we retro game fans don't get nearly enough love. Sure, most modern franchises will occasionally throw us a bone or a little steaming nugget of fan service, but we're mostly left to our own outdated devices. This is why we should thank our lucky stars (yes, all of them) that companies like XSEED (who I respect for bringing over interesting B-Grade RPGs like Wild Arms 4 and Shadow Hearts: From the New World) recognize our need for attention and seek to remedy this problem with the release of games like Retro Game Challenge--which, if you couldn't tell from the title of this post, is out today. And I would like you to buy it. Please. The interesting thing about Retro Game Challenge is that shows no guilt about tapping into the purest roots of nostalgia; through the framing device of the game, you're basically re-living a childhood narrative of electronic entertainment. Read More... Posted Feb 10 2009, 02:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: ds, retro, game center cx, nostalgia, bob mackey, Retro game challenge

• Trailer Review: Retro Game Master

  You know, not to be glib, but this is some meta shit right here. Follow me down the rabbit hole of abstraction, won’t you? Game Center CX is a show about a comedian pretending to be Japanese middle-manager who plays NES games in marathon sessions, with typically hilarious results. The show’s Americanized name is Retro Game Master, though the show currently has no distribution in the United States. XSEED games, a fairly new US game publisher that specializes in Japanese quirk, is publishing Retro Game Challenge, an English localization of GameCenter CX: Arino no Chōsenjō, a videogame made up of pretend NES games based on a show about a pretend man who plays real NES games. It boggles the mind! Read More... Posted Sep 29 2008, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, trailer review, game center cx, xseed, Retro game challenge