It’s pretty easy to stand out in the Virtual Boy catalog. There were only fourteen games. Half weren’t very good, half felt like tech demos, and half were Virtual Boy Wario Ware. If a game didn’t fit into any of those three halves, it stuck out like a missing tooth.

Panic Bomber was one of those games. It’s a perfectly find match-3 puzzle game, with a heaping of Bomberman charm. It just didn’t benefit from being on the hardware in the slightest. The Virtual Boy had its advantages, but it’s hardly the ideal way to play a puzzle game.

Thankfully, it wasn’t exclusive to the crimson goggles. It originally came out on PC-Engine Super CD-ROM² in 1994 and was ported to a number of platforms. Unfortunately, the only other time it came out in North America was a port on Wii U. Thankfully again, I have an Analogue Duo now, and it plays Japanese games. The Super CD-ROM² version isn’t that expensive, so now I can play Bomberman: Panic Bomber without wrecking my neck.

Not hereditary

I’ve never been terrific at puzzle games of the falling block variety. I’m not terrible, either. I can usually get through whatever story mode they present, but I’m not competitive. My sister, however, is a high-level Dr. Mario player. She and her college roommates got really into it for a time, and she built up skills that I would define as “mad.” I can wreck her at most games, but I’d need a few training montages to compete against her in Dr. Mario.

Most of my affection for the genre comes from my mother. Not hereditarily. I mean, she used to play them a lot. I’d come home from school, and she’d be on my Super Nintendo engaged in Yoshi’s Cookie or Kirby’s Avalanche. I didn’t have much interest in them myself, but my concept of cozy largely comes from my mom. It’s the same reason I often drink my tea with way too much milk.

Anyway, what I’m saying is that Bomberman: Panic Bomber gives off those same vibes. Puyo Puyo did a real number on the genre. This could practically be called “Bomberman’s Mean Bomb Machine,” except that would completely destroy the rhyme.

The point is that you face off against various cartoon monstrosities whose portrait sits in the middle of the screen. When you put three Bomberman heads of the same color in a row, they disappear. The big difference here is that more explosives are involved.

Munitions stockpile

Every time you eliminate a row of heads, a bomb will pop up from the bottom of the screen. Eventually, a pink bomb will drop from the top, and you (sometimes) want to steer it so that it explodes (in the classic Bomberman plus shape) and creates a chain reaction with all the unlit bombs you built up.

I know what you’re thinking, but contrary to what we’ve been taught, the Bomberman heads here are mostly immune to explosions. Like Puyo Puyo, the strategy isn’t to keep your field clean. It’s to cause as much frustration to your opponent as possible. Detonating a bomb sends garbage to their field with the goal, expectedly, to fill up their side of the screen until it overflows. Garbage can only be removed using the bombs, so the game boils down to amassing as many explosives as you can, then detonating it at the right time to both prevent your field from overflowing and fill up your opponents’.

You also build up a gauge as you knock out combos, and when it’s full, a big bomb drops. This one will actually clear out Bomberman heads, so it’s especially useful when you’re about to drown and need some air. It also typically results in a lot of garbage getting flung to the other side of the screen.

This leads to some interesting back-and-forth action as you clear your screen, send garbage to your opponent, and then they detonate their bombs and send it right back. When this gets going, it can be rather exciting, like a good sumo match. 

On the other hand, it seems like Panic Bomber has a single strategy, which is to stockpile bombs and detonate them at the least convenient time. You can still build up combos Puyo Puyo style, which will get you appropriate bonuses, but it all comes down to who can screw the other over the hardest. Just like the business world.

Path of destruction

This is going to sound weird, but the Virtual Boy version of Panic Bomber is better. Not that I really want to assemble a team to set up my Virtual Boy just to play it, but the VB version had more detailed graphics. To the credit of the Super CD-ROM² version, it supports five players.

I was kind of disappointed that it doesn’t really take advantage of the Super CD-ROM² beyond just for the soundtrack. There’s only an outro cutscene, but it’s not as elaborate as I’m used to from the platform. In fact, the story isn’t really set up within the game itself. You just watch Bomberman cut a path of destruction through the world map.

Bomberman: Panic Bomber is far from the best match-3 puzzle game in the world. It probably isn’t going to replace Puyo Puyo for anyone, but it’s decent fun for a while. It’s especially beneficial if you have one friend too many any need a five-player game to keep everyone happy. I don’t have that problem. Being too popular has never been an issue for me.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

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One of my oldest memories is of a time when my sister wouldn’t let my Ghostbusters action figures bust ghosts in her Barbie doll house. The exclusion was my only major exposure to the toy.

I did watch the hit 2023 movie, which I enjoyed. I think it was a fun idea to focus on the generational impacts the toy had on women rather than try to contrive some sort of hero’s journey out of it. Wait… it was a hero’s journey! That structure shows up in the strangest places.

Anyway, that’s not the reason I bought 1993’s Barbie Super Model. I did it because I’m still recovering from one of the worst games I’ve ever played. I need some comforting shovelware. Gosh, did I get it.

If you're a supermodel, what's your super power?

This may surprise you, but I am not a supermodel. I know very little about fashion in general. If I’m not going anywhere special on a given day, I’m usually wearing one of a variety of colors of the same tank top and a pair of jeans. I only really learned to match colors and patterns as a teenager, and it’s something I still have a shaky understanding of.

Barbie is a supermodel, on top of being an astronaut and a veterinarian. She’s been invited to compete in “the National Super Model Competition,” which seems like a strange sport but probably actually exists. To compete, she has to travel the country and memorize things. “A super model has to look her super best all the time. You never know when a photographer is going to take your picture!” Barbie says in the instruction manual.

Gee, Barbie, that sounds time-consuming and exhausting. Wouldn’t you rather just order in and play Streets of Rage all evening?

Don't you tell me to smile

I wasn’t really sure how you’d make a game about being a supermodel, but suddenly, my mind is flooded with ideas. Most of them are more in line with the Princess Maker series, but Barbie Super Model is more like Paperboy if it constantly interrupted you with quizzes.

A level starts off with Barbie making her way through a location, going toward the right-side of the screen. As you drive her pink Ferrari down Hollywood Boulevard, weaving through traffic like a self-centered cannonball, you eventually come across a handbag lying in the road. Like any woman would, you drive up to it to see if it’s designer.

You’re instead presented with a magazine cover with Barbie on it. She’s wearing some outfit, and it’s your job to memorize exactly what it looks like. You’re then put in a change room and need to put together that same outfit as accurately as you can. You first slide Barbie behind a privacy screen, and she then appears about an hour later in a different garb. These range from lavish dresses to what I’m pretty sure is the outfit the Beastie Boys wore in the Intergalactic Planetary music video. You change the three main colors of the outfit and then get to see how poorly you did.

Then it’s back to reckless driving. You continue imperiling pedestrians until everything suddenly stops, and you’re taken into a studio to practice your, uh, posing routine. Your catwalking? I don’t know. You need to guide Barbie along a path and press the correct button for each of the four nodes on it. Once again, this is memorization more than anything. You just need to remember the walking code.

A supermodel's super memory

Keep it in mind, as you speed back down Hollywood Boulevard back to the left side of the screen. At about the halfway point, you see a camera on the ground. Run it over! It takes you to yet another magazine cover, which depicts Barbie in a hat. Once more, memorize it within the half-second it remains on screen. You then need to replicate the hat she was wearing, the earrings she accessorized with, and the color of her lipstick, eyeshadow, and nails.

Then it’s back to driving until you’re abruptly dropped on the catwalk. Remember the code from when you were in the practice studio? Now’s the time to copy that. From memory.

You’re then given your score, and you’re sent to your next destination. You find yourself rollerskating in Hawaii. It plays exactly like the Ferrari sequence but with less chance of vehicular manslaughter.

Then you do it again while walking in Vail (Colorado, apparently).

Then you do it again in New York.

And then you’re done. That’s the whole game. By the time this article is posted, I will have spent more time writing, editing, and preparing it than I did actually playing the game. I completed the game twice. And then there was also my first attempt, where I got to Vail and died because I had trouble judging the trajectory of rogue snowballs and slipped on the ice repeatedly. This is all on the highest difficulty, I should add, because there are only two. The second one says you’re a “Junior Model,” and I am way more capable of memorization than a mere junior.

Don't give up, kid

I find it really amusing that so much of Barbie Super Model comes down to memorization. Isn’t a sharp memory what all little girls dream of? But what really tickles me is that it actually manages to create an interesting challenge from trying to remember images and sequences you saw mere moments ago. The fact that it gives you the runway sequence to remember, then forces you through another travel sequence interrupted by yet another memory game, is actually a compelling challenge. I mean, assuming that you don’t just write down what the sequence is.

You get scored based on how well you perform in the various mini-games and how many bonus pickups you grab along the way. Shockingly, there’s actually a score threshold to whether or not you win the game. Yeah, there’s a bad ending that encourages you not to give up on your dreams of super modelry and to try again. Me? I only got the good ending. I have the impeccable memory of a supermodel.

I only know the bad ending even exists because, while researching the game, I heard it mentioned in passing. It sounded so bizarre that I had to look further into it and discovered someone speedrunning the game to get the bad ending, completing it in less than four minutes.

Don't ask me, I'm just a girl

Hi-Tech Expressions is the publisher behind Barbie Super Model, and that logo is still burned into my mind from playing the DOS Mega Man games. Tahoe Software Productions is credited as developer, but according to MobyGames, Bonsai Entertainment also did work on it. I can confirm this because Bonsai’s site is still up, and while the company still seems active on mobile platforms, they obviously haven’t updated their website since the early 2000s. I love this so much. It’s like opening up a time capsule to a simpler time.

Wait, what the hell is this:

It’s running in Windows 3.x, but I can’t find any evidence of a game called “Zeram.” It has a suspended ceiling with fluorescent lights and what looks to be a tile floor, but the walls next to the protagonist depict store facades. It’s incredible. I feel like I need to play it. Maybe I should email the company.

Anyway, back on topic. Barbie Super Model is, unsurprisingly, mere shovelware. At this point, that can practically be considered as praise coming from me since at least it wasn’t torturous to play. The only friction I hit while playing the game was, ironically, when I kept slipping on ice, but I’d argue that Barbie’s immense cushion of hair would have protected her from any head injuries. That required me to restart the game exactly once, which, as I mentioned, is maybe 15 minutes long. Though, obviously it will take most children longer to see the ending, since girls don’t know how to play video games.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

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Ratalaika has announced that they’re publishing a collection of the two modern NES titles of the The Adventures of Panzer series. The Adventures of Panzer: Legacy Collection comes to Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5, and Switch on January 26, 2024.

The original Adventures of Panzer title was released back in 2021 by Pixelcraft Games. It was built in NES Maker, which means that it runs on original NES hardware. A Kickstarter in 2022 allowed them to also publish the game on cartridge. The Adventures of Panzer 2 followed it up in 2023, and also went through Kickstarter for physical publishing.

Both games are action platformers, both touting a humorous and light-hearted narrative. The first game sees the eponymous Panzer traveling to five different levels to try and assemble his old team. The second game, set a year after the events of the first, sees that team fighting “a new evil.” In addition to being longer at 9 levels, you're also able to switch between the four characters.

Not much is said about the added features of the port, if any.

The NES is my happy place. Even though I was too young for it to really make an impact on my childhood, I’ve grown to love the simple graphics common on the system enforced by its hardware limitations. What I find weird about Adventures of Panzer is that the little characters look like they’re in a completely different resolution than the rest of the game, but they’re not, so maybe the pixel doubling is just a design decision. Weird.

The Adventures of Panzer: Legacy Collection releases on Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5, and Switch on January 26, 2024. It’s worth noting that at $8.99, the collection is roughly $2 more than buying the two games individually for PC on itch.io.

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As with El Viento, I hadn’t heard of Sol-Deace before Retro-Bit’s reproduction of it was announced. However, it’s a good partner since, like El Viento, it was developed by Wolf Team.

Sol-Deace has something of a confusing history. It was originally released in Japan in 1990 on the Sharp X68000 where it was called Sol-Feace. It would then be ported to the Sega CD in 1991, but when it arrived on a Genesis/Mega Drive cartridge in 1992, it was named Sol-Deace. I don't know why the name changed, but the story uses Feace and Deace as surnames, which maybe they are. Weird words to me, so I'm not sure why they chose them. If I had to guess, I’d say the words probably sound cool to the Japanese ear. However, my only basis for that is the theory that I have no other explanation.

We had it coming

Sol-Deace is a horizontal scrolling shoot-’em-up. Humankind created the AI GCS-WT in the 31st century, and, predictably, it backfired. It rightfully decided it was superior to humans (as if that was a high benchmark) and demanded their subjugation. Humans, not knowing what’s good for them, went to war with the GCS-WT and got their asses handed to them. Some of them retreated to Sirius where they went to work developing – and you can probably guess this part – a single high-tech fighter to combat the AI. 

Listen, I’m not a scientist, an engineer, or a warmonger, but I’d think a computer virus would be more effective against an AI than a solitary space jet.

In any case, the Sol-Deace is piloted by Ship Navigator Eric and Weapons Commander Misao. Oo-la-la. Do you think they’re smooching in there? I bet they are.

The Sega CD version tells a different version of the story. Dr. Feace hacks into the GCS-WT and deletes “the data” from “the data bank,” which forces the AI into a recovery period and gives them an opening to attack with the Sol-Feace. You see? That’s what I was saying. I’m not sure why Dr. Deace didn’t think of that. Maybe that sort of logic doesn’t fit on a Genesis cartridge.

Top-of-the-line

Sol-Deace loses some cutscenes and audio fidelity from the Sega CD version, but the games are the same.

It’s tempting to call Sol-Deace a boilerplate shoot-’em-up, but it does have a number of mechanics that make it unique. The core feature is the fighter’s stacked weaponry. While you start with the standard issue pea shooter, you fly into upgrades that stick to the top and bottom of your ship, giving you three-tiered firepower.

What’s unique about this is that they can each be a different weapon, and you can change how they’re aligned. If you speed up without firing, the weapons open up, giving you an angled spread. If you slow down, you can close them again. You can also stagger their alignment so only the top or bottom is shooting at an angle, but I found that difficult to work out in the midst of battle. It’s a bit like the option system from Gradius, but it also gives you some control as to whether you’re focusing more on defense or offense. There are also moments where you can set your spread in a particular way to take out multiple targets at once.

You’ll probably find these moments because Sol-Deace is a rather difficult shooter. I’ve found that a lot of console titles in the genre lean on limited continues to extend their runtime out of rental range. However, Sol-Deace doesn’t. You can try a level as many times as you’d like. That takes some real guts.

Put your hands together if you want to clap

You’ll need those continues. Sol-Deace isn’t a bullet hell shooter, but you’ll constantly be fitting your ship into small gaps, because there is always an unconscionable amount of things on screen. The variety of enemies is dizzying, but the developers also favored giant, rotating sprites. The screen is almost constantly full, even at the expense of the framerate. 

In fact, Wolf Team was so dedicated to jamming everything they could into the game, that everything seems to be fighting for the same sound channel as your ship’s weaponry. The sound of your “pew-pew-pew” gets cut off constantly in favor of something else going on, leading to a sputtering noise. This happens in both the Sega CD and Genesis versions.

On the other hand, they also managed to cram in some little details I thought were cool. If a smaller enemy gets up behind you, you can destroy them with your thrusters. You also don’t immediately die if you hit a wall. Your ship will just bounce off it in a shower of sparks.

Speaking of the sounds, I could instantly tell Motoi Sakuraba was behind the soundtrack. How? He’s the only Genesis composer I know of who makes extensive use of a clap as a percussive noise. It stood out to me in El Viento, and you can hear that sample as early as the first level. It’s charming in a retro kind of way.

With or without the clapping, the soundtrack is awesome. It helped ease the fact that I was trying the same levels repeatedly trying to make progress.

That may sound frustrating, but Sol-Deace manages to hit a pace that really makes you want to get better at the levels. You’re constantly learning from your mistakes and discovering new strategies to get by the road bumps you hit on the way to the boss. There’s a certain level of memorization required for each stage, and finally, toppling a boss feels earned. It’s satisfying to make progress in a way that I’m not sure I’ve ever felt in a shoot-’em-up.

What really matters

The Retro-Bit reproduction of Sol-Deace is once again a pretty lavish treatment. As with their other Genesis/Mega Drive reissues, it comes in a clamshell case with reversible cover art and an embossed slipcase. The cartridge is translucent black with little sparkles in it. It’s a pretty great way to play on original hardware with a bit of extra pizzazz.

Mostly, I appreciate their work bringing the work that companies like them do in bringing some of these games back from obscurity. Renovation-published games like Sol-Deace are also available through Antstream Arcade and Evercade’s Renovation Collection, but for those of us who like to bond with games through physical contact, Retro-Bit does a good job of re-issuing them without making them feel like affectionate tributes rather than counterfeits.

In the last care package I got from Retro-Bit, it was the shoot-’em-up, Gley Lancer, that stood out to me most. With this set, it’s the shoot-’em-up again. Sol-Deace seemed a bit plain on the surface, but the more I played it, the more I began to love it. I really dig the confident challenge of it, and it has a number of small touches that make it shine. It isn’t quite as aesthetically impressive as Gley Lancer, but it does have what really matters: the clapping.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

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Dead Tomb is a game that can spark your interest before you even start playing it. It’s based on a lost media game, Temporel Inc. Its progenitor was released on the Videoway content delivery system, which means it just disappeared when the service shut down.

Being the most complex game on Videoway, it had its fans, and they went to work remaking it by reverse engineering a recorded playthrough of it. I don’t have any firsthand insight on the Videoway, so I’ll again direct you to Hardcore Gaming 101’s write-up. Fans first recreated Temporel Inc. in Flash, and then Collectorvision created an NES port, which was released a few years ago on a cartridge by Limited Run Games under the name of Dead Tomb.

Now, 8-Bit Legit has released it on modern consoles, which makes the game much more accessible, as it should be.

Dead Tomb (Switch [reviewed], Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, NES)
Developer: Collectorvision
Publisher: 8-Bit Legit
Released: January 26, 2023
MSRP: $4.99

Dead Tomb is a verb-drive adventure game, which is sort of a halfway point between a point-and-click and a text adventure. To interact with an object, you pick a verb from a list. It’s a style of game most famous in Lucasart’s SCUMM titles, such as Maniac Mansion and The Secret of Monkey Island. 

You play as a time traveler from the future, who gets waylaid on a trip back in time and finds themself in ancient Egypt. You’re captured by Pharaoh Seti I's soldiers, robbed, and dumped in a pyramid. Your goal is to try and find a diamond used to power your time machine and escape.

It’s probably important to set your expectations with Dead Tomb. Maniac Mansion, this is not. It’s a much simpler and more linear experience. It’s not necessarily shorter (though it is quite short), but there is less chance that you’re going to become stuck or have to start over. There’s also far less backtracking involved, so it’s a bit more comfortable than Maniac Mansion, but also less complex.

That’s not entirely a bad thing. In fact, it’s a big part of Dead Tomb’s charm. Depending on your aptitude (and a bit of luck), you might still find yourself wandering in circles, occasionally trying to figure out what verb you need to use on a noun, but there’s usually a feeling of forward movement. Again, that’s going to depend on your adventure game literacy, but I definitely felt some momentum.

Where Dead Tomb can get a bit vexing is figuring out how it wants you to interact with the environment. You build up an inventory, but learning how to use it can be tricky, especially in the beginning. It’s not a matter of going into your pockets, pressing “use,” and rubbing it on something in the environment. Often, once it’s in your pocket, you need to approach something in the environment and select the right verb, at which point it says, “Pour ranch dressing on cheesecake.” It feels kind of backward and unintuitive. Then, by the time you get used to it, you’re done with the game.

While Dead Tomb is not terribly cryptic, there are spots that go against common logic. Early on, there’s a nail driven into the wall. If you try to take it, the descriptive text says it barely moves. You have to try and take it three or so times before it finally lands in your pocket. I don’t think this is the only time I’ve seen such a mechanic (and it only happens once in the game), but it's always interesting to me when a game requires you to fail in exactly the same way repeatedly before you meet with success. Video games have instilled in me the principle that if something doesn’t work on the first attempt, I need to try something else.

On the other hand, you don’t have to worry about death. I mean, you can die in sometimes hilarious ways, but then the game just prompts you to continue, and you start back where you were. It contributes to Dead Tomb being such a brief experience, but I think I prefer it to just repeating puzzle solutions until I get back to where I was.

It also allows you to test out obviously bad ideas just to see your character die.

I keep mentioning this, but it’s the brevity that bothers me most about Dead Tomb. As I said previously, you can complete Maniac Mansion in roughly the same timeframe, but that game has multiple solutions and gives you a variety of characters to put together a team from. Dead Tomb is linear. There’s only one way to solve it. There may have been a secret ending I missed, but I’m doubtful.

It’s certainly a fun game while it lasts. The breeziness of the puzzles and charming but unremarkable soundtrack make it a comfortable experience. I really enjoyed playing Dead Tomb, I’m not sure I’m going to remember the game will stand in my memory quite as much as the history behind it. At least the price for the digital version makes that kind of experience absolutely worth the recommendation.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Dead Tomb appeared first on Destructoid.

The Famicom can be perceived as the birthplace of kusoge. While bad games have existed since the creation of the medium, the origin of the term itself is murky but generally is believed to have been coined in reference to a Famicom game.

Hoshi wo Miru Hito, translating roughly as Stargazer, was one such game that rose to the rank of kusoge no densetsu (crap game of legend). It’s easy to see why. RPGs blew up in Japan following the release of Dragon Quest in 1986, and here is a game that was quick to capitalize on that with one set in a sci-fi environment. It even predated Phantasy Star by roughly two months, but not Ultima, which had been doing sci-fi since 1982. Nonetheless, Hoshi wo Miru Hito wasn’t short on inventive ideas for the genre.

It’s just too bad they're buried beneath indescribable suffering.

Aaaargh!

This look comes with the help of the fan translation started by KingMike and finished by brandnewscooby. If it adds any glitches that weren’t present in the original unpatched version, I really wouldn’t be able to tell.

You are dropped, without explanation, in a forest. Having no initial context is hardly exclusive to Hoshi wo Miru Hito, but it’s the sort of situation where your Dragon Quest experience really pays off. You’ll know that your first order of business will be to find the closest town. That town is actually one square to the West, but you’d have no idea just by looking at the screen. It’s invisible. It doesn’t show on the world map. If you didn’t immediately go West, you wouldn’t know it’s there.

This game is about space psychics maybe Hot-B thought you might be psychic too!

There is someone who states that the town is hidden by the combined psychic power of its citizens, and I don’t know if that’s an excuse or if someone actually thought it was a good idea to have an invisible starting city. It’s honestly hard to tell with Hoshi wo Miru Hito, because there are already a tonne of design choices that leave you wondering if it comes down to laziness, poor programming, or just baffling intention.

The hardest part of starting out isn’t even finding the first city. It’s actually surviving the first few battles in order to level up. There are, depending on your definition, three overworld areas, and each one has its own individual shuffle of enemies. In the first area, whether you face off against a foe that your underpowered protagonist can actually take on or a team of three more powerful bullies ready to pound you into the mud is completely random.

In a normal RPG, you’d just be able to run from battles where you were overpowered, but fleeing in Hoshi wo Miru Hito is a skill (Teleport) that you don’t learn until you reach level six or find the second party character. You also need to be cautious, because Teleport is used on each character individually, and it’s possible to leave behind the party members who can’t Teleport.

Aiiiieeee!

If you go to the Northern town of Deus, you learn some nonsense, but one helpful piece of information is that your first party member is far to the south. This is where it really sinks in that Hoshi wo Miru Hito isn’t merely an RPG; it’s also an excruciating ordeal.

This begins the moment you leave the second town. Instead of appearing in a tile adjacent to Deus, you find yourself back where you started the game, one tile east of the Mamus, the starting town. You loop back around, then begin your travel South, at which point you’ll invariably fall down a hole into a small dungeon. However, you don’t need to traverse the dungeon. You can just turn around and go directly back out the door. You then find yourself… back at Mamus.

That little trap-door dungeon appears randomly throughout the forest in your path to the southern reaches of the overworld. It’s extremely difficult to avoid it, so you’re constantly just sent back to the beginning to start the journey over. If you’re astute, you might notice that your protagonist learns to jump as they level up. This basically means that if you walk them into an obstacle (what kind of obstacle is seemingly arbitrary), they’ll leap over it for a set number of spaces. In the beginning, this allows you to take a shortcut over the water next to you, which is some sweet relief, however minor.

This doesn’t let you pass the pitfalls, though. I learned to get by them by going slightly north, then moving all the way to the East coast before heading south. There seems to be a shorter path where the trap doors happen.

N-Nooooo!

You go South, and eventually find another dungeon. Within that dungeon, you finally get the second party member, Shiba, who can jump higher than your original party member, Minami. However, I’m a bit confused about how the doors work in that dungeon. If you exit the door you enter from, you emerge from the other side of a wall. If you then go back into the dungeon, you enter from a different door, and exiting from that puts you back where you started. I think that someone got the spawn points wrong, and then never fixed them.

So, that’s the first part of the game. In the second part, you start fighting more difficult enemies, and that kind of takes you back to square one, where you sometimes get into combat against enemies you can easily take, and other times you’re extremely outmatched. Plus, some of them can paralyze your characters, which you can’t heal until far later in the game. If you manage to win with your remaining party member, you can return to a healer, but they take damage for every step along the way and might die. In order to resurrect them, you need to brew a potion, take it to a different healer, and they’ll bring them back. Ugh, I feel frustrated just trying to explain it.

In the second area of the game, you quickly get your third party member, but you’re not done until you get the fourth. To do that, you have to talk to a few very specific people, and they’re all behind locked doors. The locked doors are just kind of incredible. You need a keycard to go through them, but that doesn’t just unlock the door. The keycard is immediately used up, so to pass through it again, you need another. If you’re just carrying one key and you enter an enclosed area, you become perpetually trapped. You have to save and load your game.

And that’s where I wouldn’t want to be playing Hoshi wo Miru Hito on original hardware. Saving just generates a password. That’s not out of line with how the original Japanese version of Dragon Quest saved. However, it starts you off with only a rough approximation of the gold and XP you saved and sends you back to Mamus. Not being able to easily save before going through a locked door would drive me insane. I would just straight up eat the cartridge before too long.

Ugggghhhh...

Not that my sanity was entirely safe. To get the keycards to just test a door, you have to buy them, and their prices are completely insane. You’re going to be hammering the save state button just so you don’t waste these precious cards. Even then, you’re still going to have to grind like a stripper for the money you need.

To give you a sense of how much grinding is in Hoshi wo Miru Hito, I initially planned on having this write-up done last week, but I needed more time so I could do more grinding.

It would take me a very long time to explain all the ways that combat is an excruciating chore. From the absolutely atrocious balancing, to the mess of a UI, I feel physically nauseous when I think back to playing it. It… it hurts.

If you can believe it, I actually played Hoshi wo Miru Hito to completion. After endless grinding and talking to random people for a while, you eventually go to the third area. There are, thankfully, a few tricks in this area that enable you to get through it a lot quicker.

You go into space, which is depicted as a few pieces of floating debris against a starry backdrop. But weirdly, you can just walk through empty space. I don’t mean jump, like you can over certain barriers and bodies of water. Your characters just straight up walk normally through the starfield. You can then bypass a lot of combat by walking on walls, and then it’s just a matter of trekking across Hell’s half-acre to talk to some porpoises.

Hrmph!

Don’t worry about not being leveled up enough for some grand end-game encounter because there isn’t one. The finale of Hoshi wo Miru Hito gives you dialogue with three options, and then you’re just given an ending based on your selection. You literally just choose your ending.

There’s a lot more that can be said about Hoshi wo Miru Hito and just how horrendously awful it is, but this write-up is already a lot longer than I usually aim for. It’s just… incredible. The best thing I can say about the game is that the music didn’t make my ears bleed.

This is quite possibly the worst game I have ever played, and I’ve been writing a column on bad games for nearly three years. I own Action 52 on the NES, and while that collection of games is equally – if not more – inept, at least the pain is relatively short-lived. Ganso Saiyuuki Super Monkey Daibouken, Japan’s kyuukyoku no kusoge (ultimate crappy game), is at least compellingly terrible. Playing Hoshi wo Miru Hito was a mistake. It’s not just terrible; it’s designed to prolong your suffering. Any merit it may have is drowned out by the screams of its victims. I think it might violate international law.

It was recently ported and re-released on Switch, but only in Japan. Hopefully, we’ll get a localized version in the West, but for now, we can torture ourselves with the fan translation.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

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I really hadn’t heard of El Viento before Retro-Bit announced their re-issue of it. It’s really hard to know what to make of it. It seems displaced from time, occupying an era that doesn’t exist.

That may be a weird way to describe it, but I think what I’m trying to say is that it looks reminiscent of Valis. It’s a sort of grainy-looking side-scroller that feels like it was developed for an early Japanese home computer before being ported to the PC-Engine and finally landing on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. A drifting vagabond tied to no home. To clarify, that’s what Valis went through. The difference here is that El Viento was never on a platform aside from the Genesis, and the developer, Wolf Team, wasn’t behind the Valis games. Though, they did handle some of the ports of the first game, and Renovation/Telenet published the lot in North America. Anyway, not important. I'm just saying, they're similarly unusual.

Its similarities with Valis are largely that they’re both somewhat janky sidescrollers that feature a female lead. It just doesn’t have that distinct Genesis flavor to it, but that’s not to say it doesn’t have a flavor of its own.

You want to do what now?

You play as Annet, who is part of the bloodline of Hastur, an eldritch being from Robert W. Chambers’ 1895 book of short stories, The King in Yellow. A cult in New York is trying to resurrect Hastur, which Annet, despite being related through blood, recognizes as being a spectacularly stupid idea.

She frequently asks the antagonists, “Why are you doing this? You know they’re just going to destroy the world,” and nobody really has a good answer to that. I think the idea is that they’re going to take control of their power through Restiana, another woman of Hastur’s bloodline, but that sounds like just a story they’re feeding Restiana to keep her complacent. Every time Annet runs into Restiana, she tells her, “They’re just going to sacrifice you.”

So, Annet’s the only competent person in the room. I always say that if you lock a hundred people in a room full of dry straw and give each of them a book of matches, someone is going to set the room on fire.

It has to be very frustrating for Annet. She’s given the runaround and sent all over the U.S., and every time she defeats a boss, she just talks to someone to very patiently explain to them how dumb they are. She could just beat these people up, but aside from Restiana, she never does. She just lets them walk away. It’s like she’s watching a toddler trying to stick a fork into an electrical outlet. She keeps saying, “You don’t want to do that,” but is absolutely willing to let them learn the hard way. I’m not a parent, obviously.

Check out that skyscraper

El Viento is kind of rad, honestly. It takes place in 1928, and makes decent use of the setting. You start out in New York, magicking gangsters to death in the streets. Its fixation on the Empire State Building as though it's some phallic object waving in the face of the Old Gods is kind of spooky and cool. 

The graphics are over-detailed. The best games on 16-bit consoles tended to try and use simple colors to make the art readable, but occasionally, you’d get something like El Viento that tries to add too much texture to everything, and it creates this really grainy look. Adding to this is a lot of washed-out-looking colors. I’m sort of wondering if they were trying to make the game look like early color photographs, but it just makes it look rather drab.

The animation is pretty good, though, at least when it comes to Annet. She has a lot of frames and poses in her movement. However, this adds to the feeling of jankiness, as animation is often stopped and started in an extremely herky-jerky fashion when interacting with the environment.

The developers were at least playful with the Genesis hardware. It makes use of various warping and scaling effects. The most amusing result of this is the explosions. Many developers at the time would use multiple sprites to create bigger explosions, but Wolf Team opted to have a small sprite scaled to be bigger. The result is these huge, blocky pixels that take up massive portions of the screen. It looks like someone thought this was really cool because one of the screenshots on the back of the Japanese box is mostly obscured by a single explosion. That’s one way to sell your game.

The best explosions

El Viento is still pretty fun to play. Annet attacks with a boomerang thing, and gradually builds up a variety of spells for use alongside it. She also levels up, gaining more health as you take out enemies. However, Wolf Team made sure to prevent grinding by not allowing enemies to respawn if you leave the area and return. There are spots where small enemies spawn endlessly, but they give no XP.

The platforming, enemies, and bosses sometimes show some creativity. The levels also have a nice variation, changing focus from careful platforming to straight combat. However, some of the levels seem undercooked. The earlier levels are broken into sections and have decent length. Later stages are shockingly short. Level 7, for example, is over in less than 2 minutes, and that includes the boss battle. I wasn’t rushing, either. That was my first attempt. I could definitely cut that time down.

There are also limited continues, which is a pet peeve of mine. However, it only took me two attempts to get through El Viento, and it isn’t a very long game, so maybe that’s for the best.

Hot pink

As I alluded to above, Retro-Bit sent me their re-issue of El Viento, which is nice because the price of the original run gives me pause.

I go into more detail about the quality of the re-issues in my review of their reissue of Valis, but to quickly reiterate, I’m a fan. The clamshell and slipcase are nicely done, and the cartridges are in attractive, transparent plastic. My favorite part of these reissues is that the back of the PCB inside them has the game’s logo in metallic foil, and you can see them through the shell. It’s a really nice touch.

When a new game gets made for an old console, I like it when it has the look of an official release. However, for reproductions, it’s nice to see some extra flair. It both looks cool, stands out, and can’t be confused for an original release.

I also appreciate that Retro-Bit is shining some light on Renovation/Telenet Japan games. They’re not the only ones, as it’s also available as part of the Renovation Collection 1 for Evercade and is also available on the Antstream Arcade service. I like playing on original hardware, so Retro-Bit’s offering suits me well.

Ear candy

Before concluding this, I should probably mention that El Viento has a pretty rocking soundtrack. It was composed by Motoi Sakuraba, who has contributed to a number of fantastic games, such as Golden Sun, Shining Force 3, and Dark Souls. The dude’s a legend, and El Viento’s soundtrack is worth sticking in your ears.

El Viento sort of falls in the same spot as the Valis series. I’m happy to have played it, and I’m even interested in trying the sequels, but I don’t think it’s something I’m going to be pulling off my shelf all that often. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to like about El Viento, but there’s also a lot of rough edges. The most substantial is a lack of substance. But at least it’s full of ear candy, and we get some great images of the Empire State Building looking sinister.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

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8BitLegit has announced that Dead Tomb, a new NES game based on an old lost game, is soon to be released for Switch, Xbox, and the actual NES.

While Dead Tomb is a new NES game built from the ground up, it’s actually based on a game called Temporel Inc., which was a game for the Videoway, a very unique subscription-based content delivery system based out of Quebec, Canada. Among its features was the ability to play 8-bit games, which would be loaded into the system’s RAM, which, obviously, emptied once you were done.

Because no one actually owned the games that they were playing, and the service eventually shut down, there are no known copies of Temporel Inc. remaining. However, there was a recorded playthrough of the entire game, so fans were able to reverse-engineer and recreate it, first as a flash game and now as the NES remake, Dead Tomb. If you want more than a quick summation, Hardcore Gaming 101 has a fantastic write-up that covers everything in more detail.

It’s a pretty cool story, and it looks like a pretty cool game. It has you stranded in ancient Egypt, trying to escape from a pyramid. Its verb-based adventure style harkens back to the glory days of the LucasArts SCUMM Engine. It’s been developed by homebrew veterans Collectorvision (which owns the Acclaim brand).

Dead Tomb is coming to Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and NES. It will be available for preorder on all platforms on January 19, 2024. The modern console version will be released on January 26. The NES version is scheduled to ship in Q3 2024 but is limited to 300 copies.

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Limited Run Games has announced another couple of classic collections, but unlike the Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection, these are actually good. Coming up is Felix the Cat and Rocket Knight Adventures: Resparked.

I’m just learning this now, but Felix the Cat is turning 105 this year. The character got his start in the golden age of animation back in 1919, starring in some silent shorts. Like most popular characters from the time period, he kept coming back repeatedly for new TV series and movies, even if he wasn’t as high profile as Looney Tunes (Merry Melodies) and Mickey Mouse. Limited Run Games’ collection contains the 1992 NES title by Hudson Soft, and the 1993 Game Boy port.

The NES title is actually somewhat based on the godawful 1989 movie, which, in turn, is based on the godawful 1958 cartoon series. The game itself is pretty decent, though. The main draw of it is that you continually pile on power-ups until you’re driving a tank, and some of the levels have you flying. They’re not scrolling shoot-’em-up sections, though. You’re just allowed to fly around for some reason. I absolutely loved the game when I was a kid. My cousins owned it, and I always wanted to play it whenever I visited.

Rocket Knight Adventures should hopefully require no introduction. The original title, developed and published in 1993 by Konami, is unequivocally my favorite Sega Genesis/Mega Drive game. It’s just such a joyfully creative platformer that is evocative of early Treasure games. 

The Rocket Knight Adventures: Re-Sparked collection compiles that with the Genesis sequel, 1994’s Sparkster, with the SNES sequel, also a 1994 game called Sparkster. Both Sparksters are entirely different games. Like, even mechanically, they’re dissimilar. They’re also not as good as the original. They both give off this feeling like the marketing team got involved and started making suggestions on how to make the character more appealing to the masses.

Both Felix the Cat and Rocket Knight Adventures: Re-Sparked are coming to the PS4, PS5, and Switch. Probably PC, as well, but that’s not mentioned in the press release. The physical edition of Felix the Cat will be available for preorder on February 9, until March 10. Rocket Knight Adventures: Re-Sparked is sooner, from January 19 until February 18. There’s an “Ultimate Edition” of RKA going up as well, and that Sparkster Statuette is pretty tempting. The digital versions don’t have a release date yet.

Limited Run Games is also that more Konami titles are on the horizon. It’s about damned time, since the company is sitting on a massive trove of classic titles that have never been re-released. Maybe we’ll get a Ganbare Goemon collection now.

The post Limited Run Games bringing back some (of my) favorites in Rocket Knight and Felix the Cat collections appeared first on Destructoid.

When navigating the squalid wastelands of video games, I often must turn to reputation to figure out where to stick my fingers. In the West, few games have a reputation for being awful quite like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

This is entirely because of the Angry Video Game Nerd, who I respect but isn’t always the best source since he’s primarily aimed at providing entertainment through a schtick. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has been singled out by him as one of the darkest spots in the NES library. I have to disagree.

Oh, it’s definitely awful. Don’t assume that I’m here to defend it. It’s as boring as a lecture on the history of terrycloth (did you know it dates back to before 4000 BCE?) and as tedious as chewing through a concrete brick. However, what you might not expect is that, when examined through autopsy, a lot of it feels very deliberate, even if many of the decisions seem misguided. A game that tries to blaze its own trail and fails is a lot more interesting than one that just ineptly follows in another’s footsteps.

Blazing its own trail

Immersive frustration

The damage of everyday life

Cut out all the good parts

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The Hammerin’ Harry/Daiku no Gen-San series continued from 1990 to the last game, Hammerin’ Hero, in 2009. However, only the first game was released in arcades. After the original Hammerin’ Harry, the series shifted entirely to home platforms.

Whether or not a game in the series would be released in the West, however, was another matter. In fact, only the arcade original and the aforementioned Hammerin’ Hero would reach North America, though two other titles would at least find their way to Europe. The second Famicom/NES title, 1993's Daiku no Gen-san 2: Akage no Dan no Gyakushō was not one of them.

That is until Retro-Bit translated and reissued it. It was given to me as part of the Hammerin’ Harry Concrete Collection, which I was rather excited to try. I covered the first Hammerin’ Harry last week, so now it’s time to dive into the more elusive sequel.

Robo-fitness

Hammerin’ Harry 2: Dan the Red Strikes Back seems like a pretty straightforward sequel when you start out. You once again play as the eponymous carpenter, and his sprite, moveset, and even powerups are the same as they were in the first game. The first level even takes place at the Needless Markup Mall, which was under construction in the original game. However, it doesn’t stay all that reminiscent.

The story this time around is that the ti… the sub-titular Dan the Red is harassing Harry to try and get revenge, while Dr. Parallel seems to pull the strings in the background. Apparently, Harry’s girlfriend, Donna, has been abducted, but I don’t remember it coming up very much. I think she was in distress in the first game, as well, but that sort of just felt like a formality in mimicking the typical ‘80s protagonist motivation.

After going through some construction areas, Hammerin’ Harry 2 begins to shift more and more into sci-fi. There’s a factory, then you’re on some train in an underground tunnel, then there’s a bunch of secret base stuff. The bosses are typically Dan riding on some sort of giant robot shaped like an animal. But that’s really only the start of where things differ.

The wrong tool for the job

What struck me most is that Hammerin’ Harry 2 places more emphasis on platforming than combat. While there was a balance of this in the previous game, a lot of its focus was placed on enduring attacks from enemies. With the sequel, you’re more likely to be killed by the edge of the screen than waves of foes.

It’s fine. The controls are solid enough to make platforming enjoyable, but I feel that when you’re wielding a big hammer, the game should be more focused on providing nails. Toward the end of the game, there were very few enemies, leaving you to hop around in complete isolation. If there was anything that would simply take a chip off your health bar, it was usually lasers or spikes; things that aren’t as receptive to a blunt weapon. I feel like some of the identity is replaced by something less satisfying.

A lot of the expressiveness of the first game isn’t there, either. I remarked that the art in Hammerin’ Harry, while obviously suffering from the NES’ limitations, is very detailed, but much of that is lost in the sequel. It’s not completely devoid of life, nor does it look bad, but in comparison, there’s a lot less love in its presentation. 

Everything looks like a nail

On the other hand, it still gets pretty creative at times. I mentioned the tunnel train earlier on, and the quickest way for a game to reach my heart is by train. For some reason, moving trains are my favorite stage setting, whether you’re on them, in them, or driving them. This one has robots on it. They do sit-ups and shoot lasers like Rock 'Em Sock 'Em robots working on their beach bods. It’s just too bad the level isn’t that much fun.

Later on, there’s a pair of scrolling shoot-’em-up stages where Harry hops in a rocket mallet. It’s a charmingly amusing segment, but unfortunately, they’re not much fun either. There’s only a handful of poorly thought-out weapons, and enemies will only spawn in at maybe two at a time, assumedly not to push the sprites numbers into flicker territory. They’re pretty boring.

To its credit, Hammerin’ Harry 2 is a bit longer at eight levels over the previous game’s five. The fact that it’s also not as much fun as its predecessor means that, by the time it’s all over, you’re not exactly hungry for more. That’s damning with praise, so I will try and lighten that statement by saying it’s not all that bad. It’s just while Hammerin’ Harry had a lot of charm that made it stand out despite its weaknesses, Hammerin’ Harry 2 just doesn’t.

Solid

Retro-Bit’s translation is pretty solid, but there wasn’t a tonne of text to change to begin with. It sticks pretty close to the previously existing one of the first game. What I did find weird is that they left the voice clips in their original Japanese instead of changing them to be like the localization of the first game. So, instead of his trademark “Let’s get busy,” Harry says “Ikuze!” like a large portion of Japan’s early video game protagonists. More confusingly, however, is that the end level voice screams “GEN-SAAAAN!” instead of “H’MM’RNHRY.” I guess if you’re buying this game, you know Harry’s original name, but it feels a bit out of place.

If it was as easy as simply changing the voice clips, I assume that Retro-Bit would have just done it, so there’s likely a reason why they were left as is. To make up for it, the text does contain a heaping of hammer puns. A+ right there.

The production of the physical cartridge is as good as it was with Hammerin’ Harry. You can reference that article for a broader overview. This time around, the cartridge is made to look like concrete, and it’s a bit more convincing than the woodgrain of the first game. Both are pretty fine physical reissues. The cover for Hammerin’ Harry 2 isn’t really great, but it’s pretty much what the Famicom version looked like, so it is what it is.

Dangit!

It’s nice to be able to play a localized Hammerin’ Harry 2 in an official capacity, but the game itself is less than spectacular. I think my main issue is that, just a week ago, I said that the first Hammerin’ Harry “might not be the console’s best sidescroller, but it’s definitely not boring.” This time around, I’m more of the opinion that Hammerin’ Harry 2 might be far from the console’s worst sidescroller, but it’s definitely boring.

It’s a shame, because I was hoping that the series would be more of a fixture for me on the console. I was hoping for a more Duck Tales/Duck Tales 2 situation where after playing one, the closeness in quality makes playing through the second one an obvious choice. Here, I’m not so sure. There’s more of a gulf in enjoyment. I will, however, have to look into the later games in the series. Especially, perhaps, the SNES and PSP games that would follow. As for Hammerin’ Harry 2, it is, unfortunately, not the sharpest tool in the box.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

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QUByte Interactive has announced that their upcoming collection of the Top Racer series has been pushed back from its January 11 release date, to the new target of March 7. In the meantime, a demo that includes three tracks will be available on Steam starting January 11.

I knew these games as Top Gear. It was hard not to look at it as a kid since the cover features a car (possibly) driving away from an explosion. It was similar to Race Drivin’ in terms of its eye-catching cover, but unlike Race Drivin’, Top Gear is actually a decent series.

Created by Gremlin Games Studios, the series started out on 16-bit consoles as racing games that use a raster effect to depict a 3D-like road. It distinguishes itself from games like Out Run by having tracks that actually circle back on themselves, which was uncommon for the particular sub-genre. It also had more of a tournament racing feel with pitstops and ongoing rankings. It also had split-screen multi-player, kind of like Outrunners on Genesis, but not as terrible.

Though Top Gear 2 was ported to other platforms, the series stayed faithful to Nintendo platforms for a long time. After three games on the SNES, the series shifted to N64, with Boss Studios and Midway handling Top Gear Rally.

Top Racer Collection assembles Top Racer (Gear), Top Racer 2, and Top Racer 3000 into one package. On top of that, they’re including Top Racer Crossroads, which is a new title that features four new cars, including one that is plainly the Ferrari Testarossa featured in Out Run. I can dig it.

Top Racer Collection launches March 7, 2024 for PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.

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I talked about Pachio-Kun some time ago for my Famicom Friday column because I thought the idea of an anthropomorphic pachinko mascot was amusing. Back then, I noted the staggering number of games in the series: at least 12.

I own more of the Famicom titles, but I wasn’t planning on making a thing of Pachio-Kun. It was fun to spit facts about the Japanese gambling industry, but I couldn’t possibly do that for multiple articles. But then I got the Analogue Duo.

When reviewing it, I wanted to get disc-based games to test, so I ordered a bunch from Japan. They didn’t arrive in time. In fact, they arrived mere hours after my review went live. Typical. I was looking for cheap games and came across two Pachio-Kun titles that confused me. Why does a pachinko game have cutscenes, I wondered. Why is there a weird hammer dude on the cover? I can never find much information on the series online, so I had to find out for myself.

You're patchinkan daioh!

Pachio-Kun: Maboroshi no Densetsu was released in 1991 on the PC-Engine CD-ROM². It starts out much like the Famicom games, where you take your spherical self out to a pachinko parlor to try and win big.

I’m not going to go into the background of Japan’s gambling pastime in this article. I did that (poorly) the last time I talked about Pachio-Kun, which you can read here. Or maybe read this article from Business Insider, which is possibly more insightful. All you need to know is that its popularity exploded as a way to get around Japan’s strict anti-gambling laws. It’s kind of a cross between a slot machine and pinball. You pick the force the balls get launched and try to direct them into various scoring holes to win more balls. The goal is to drain all the balls out of a machine.

Balls

So, yeah, the rest of Pachio-Kun: Maboroshi no Densetsu is traveling from parlor to parlor, playing pachinko. Each one has a set number of copyright-infringing machines you need to suck the balls out of before you’ll be given another piece of the plans. The number for each location feels arbitrary to me. Each parlor stocks a variety of different machines that get repeated throughout the game, and there’s no rule saying each of your wins need to be on different setups.

Not every machine is the same, even when they’re the same theme. I found I had an easy time clearing a table called Telephone, but not every Telephone machine is friendly. The pins are bent in different directions, and that affects where the balls go. You can inspect the pins up close on each table, and initially, I had intended to learn the ins and outs of reading them. Not far into the game, however, I found it easier to just pump in about 50 balls to test if they’d go where I needed them. If not, I’d move onto the next one.

Some machines I found to be generally more willing to payout. As I mentioned, Telephone was one of them, but essentially, any machine where you can trigger little jackpot timeframes has a tendency to give the goods. Like the one where you need to get your balls between a monkey's legs. Inversely, I hated the ones where getting balls in a certain hole would trigger a slot machine. I’m not sure if the odds are different in each of these machines, but I don’t think I landed a jackpot once.

Thunderhards are go!

Even once you’ve got a feel for how to win at pachinko, actually completing a machine requires a lot of time. And during this time, you’re going to spend a lot of it making fine adjustments to the lever and then… watching the balls fly. I’m not a gambler myself, but I didn’t find this very stimulating.

However, it’s surprising how much context can lend to a game. I mentioned that I completed maybe three machines in the original Pachio-Kun, but I finished a great deal more in Pachio-kun: Maboroshi no Densetsu. I kept wanting to see more of the absolutely bonkers story and see what new location would unlock next. And really, there is a lot of variety when it comes to parlors, even though they just have a different mix of the same machines.

Not gambling

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I have really been looking forward to Retro-Bit’s NES reissue of 1991’s Hammerin’ Harry. However, in retrospect, this is partially due to me getting it confused with Don Doko Don, a 1989 arcade game in Taito’s single-screen format. If I knew what I was thinking about, I’d be even more excited.

Hammerin’ Harry is a port of Irem’s 1990 arcade game, which was called Daiku no Gen-san: Beranme-chō Sōdōki in Japan. While Irem is perhaps best remembered for their R-Type series, their back catalog is built from an extremely colorful mix of titles on both arcade and consoles. There are a lot of underappreciated greats like Undercover Cops and Gekisha Boy which, to be fair, are largely unknown in the West because they were never localized.

Hammerin’ Harry was, technically, localized, but it was only released in the tumultuous NES PAL region. Because of its late release in a limited market, it tends to resell for an extremely high price. However, Retro-Bit has sent me a copy of their recent retro re-issues to try out. It is both a meaty morsel to sink our teeth into and something simultaneously insubstantial.

The nail that pops up

If you’re unfamiliar with the arcade version, there’s not much to say. It’s a sidescroller where you play as a beefy carpenter dude who wields a big mallet. A rival construction company tears down his house for no reason, and he heads out to file a complaint with their boss. 

It’s a pretty routine affair where you travel the six levels while bopping enemies. You can also (sometimes) deflect projectiles back at them, bash the ground to stun enemies, and bop upwards. Then there are boxes and other objects in the environments that you can send flying at enemies, as well as power-ups that give you a bigger mallet or protect you from an additional hit. In the arcade version, you’re dead if you even brush elbows with an enemy.

Stop! Hammer time!

The 1991 NES version is reasonably faithful. The levels and bosses have been changed a lot to accommodate the more limited hardware to the point where they're all essentially brand new. There are only five levels instead of the arcade version’s six, but one of them is completely new. Rather than die in a single hit, Harry has a health bar. There are now bonus rounds between levels where you smack as many enemies as possible, kind of like whack-a-mole.

However, it’s the same where it really counts. Harry has all the moves and power-ups he does in the arcade, but more importantly, the graphics are still extremely detailed and expressive. Obviously, the NES can’t match the arcade game, but it’s not a lazy facsimile. The art is overall very impressive, even for a 1991 title.

I’m not sure how you feel about me spoiling a 30-year-old game, but the ending is the best part of the NES version. While the arcade has Harry climbing the evil construction company’s headquarters and bashing the boss until he changes his ways, the console version has that same boss flee the fight. In his place, his receptionist bursts in, transforms into, like, the Ultimate Warrior, and tries to take you down. You then follow the boss to his house, which is the completely new level.

H’MM’RNHRY

Surprisingly, the console version of Hammerin’ Harry preserves the voice clips of the arcade version. Each time you begin a level or continue after a death, Harry shouts, “Let’s get busy!” When he dies, he exclaims, “Ouch!” When you complete a level, someone shrieks, “H’MM’RNHRY!” It’s surprisingly clear, even if it still sounds like a drive-thru speaker.

One place where it should have deviated from the arcade title is in its length. While it makes sense to keep a game short in the arcade, since people are usually standing to play, it leads to really short console games. In all, Hammerin’ Harry took me around 45 minutes to complete, and this was my first time playing it. I died plenty of times, but there is no limit on continues, so there’s nothing to stop you from brute-forcing your way through it.

Hammerin’ Harry is far from the shortest game of the era. Off the top of my head, The Little Mermaid on NES and Kirby’s Dreamland on Game Boy are roughly the same runtime. However, that’s hardly a compliment. It feels insubstantial, especially if you don’t have the Japan-only sequel to move on to.

What's in the box?

Thankfully, I do have the sequel to segway into. Retro-bit sent me the Concrete Collection which comes with their reissue of Hammerin’ Harry, and their localization of Daiku no Gen-san 2: Akage no Dan no Gyakushō, which has been translated to Hammerin’ Harry 2: Dan the Red Strikes Back.

For Hammerin’ Harry, Retro-Bit got creative with the cartridge. It’s encased in a wood-grained textured plastic. The feel of the cartridge is a bit smoother than an official NES game, but the construction is solid. I took it apart, and there’s a clean-looking PCB solidly fixed in there. These are the first NES games I’ve received from them, and it’s nice to see they get the same treatment as their Genesis titles. They feel like quality in your hands, but there’s no way anyone would mistake them as an original production.

Tenderized

On the other hand, it gives me an excuse to talk about some obscure titles, which fits neatly with the intentions of this article. I appreciate Retro-Bit’s efforts in giving new attention to rare and unlocalized games through its re-issues.

Hammerin’ Harry was an exceptionally fun one to visit. As I said at the start, it’s been on my radar for quite a while. Beyond just being a short but enjoyable platformer, it’s also an infectiously lively game with terrific art design packed with humorous flourishes. It might not be the console's best sidescroller, but it’s definitely not boring.

While there was only one Hammerin’ Harry arcade game, the series stretched on across many platformers throughout its lifespan. Only the arcade title reached North America, but the Game Boy game, 1992’s Hammerin' Harry: Ghost Building Company, did get a release in Europe. That is until the 2008 PSP title, Hammerin’ Harry finally crossed the globe. It makes sense since the games are steeped in the culture of Japan. It’s just a shame that it’s taken until now for us to get an official release over here.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post Hammerin’ Harry for NES shows the lethal competition of the carpentry world appeared first on Destructoid.

To be perfectly honest, sitting down and thinking about my favorite games of 2023 has been a surreal experience. When I look back on my corresponding list I wrote in 2022, I feel like the person who wrote that is a fundamentally different person than who I am today.

At the time, I was still recovering from some rough life experiences and wasn’t playing a lot of new games. My list of candidates was so sparse that I had to include Jimothy Donbleau’s Quest for Game of the Year, which is totally real and not just something I mocked up in RPG Maker. Look, I’ve always had an overwhelming passion for video games. Once upon a time, I was here as a community member of Destructoid talking about my story of playing Final Fantasy II (IV) before I could even read. But it was always something I treated as my hobby and not my work.

The dark side of the industry

Now let’s talk about video games

Timothy Monbleau’s favorite disaster of 2023: The Last of Us on PC

#10: Astlibra Revision

#9: The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails

#8: Final Fantasy VII Remake

#7: Rakuen Deluxe Edition

#6: Blasphemous 2

#5: Super Mario RPG

#4: Terranigma

Anyone who has followed me this year knows I’ve spent a lot of time discussing this nearly 30 year old RPG. I wrote a whole passionate write-up about it back in May, and I even ranked it as one of the top three best SNES games ever made. Given how much I’ve already said about it, I’m going to let you in on my dirty secret that partially influenced why I’m so enthusiastic about it.

This year was the first time I’d ever finished Terranigma.

Don’t get me wrong, I played Terranigma a lot when I was younger. However, given the game’s Europe exclusivity, let’s just say I had a rough time trying to beat it with a keyboard two decades ago. My main motivation for playing it this year is that I wanted to rank Illusion of Gaia on my best SNES games list. However, I needed to see if Quintet’s subsequent game was more worthy of the spot.

I was not prepared for how hard Terranigma’s themes would strike right through my soul. Shortly after I finished the game, my girlfriend called me while she drove home from work. I was doing my best to engage in our usual small talk, but she could tell there was something different about me.

She asked me about it, and I just started bawling, and we spent the rest of our call talking about Terranigma. The ending didn’t even have those big emotional moments that I was expecting it would. But everything Terranigma was about, and everything it had built up to, just sunk in. I was so profoundly sad and so happy to be alive all at the same time, and I couldn’t believe something that powerful was hidden in an SNES game all this time. A week hasn’t gone by since where I haven’t thought about Ark’s journey in one way or another.

I gave myself the rule about prioritizing newer games in my rankings here because Terranigma was, hands down, the game that impacted me the most this year. It’s easily in my top 10 games of all time and stands as a testament to the reasons we create and share art with each other. I’m almost three decades late to the party, but you did it Quintet. You created a masterpiece, and I’ll never, ever forget it.

#3: Final Fantasy XVI

Final Fantasy XVI is somehow both a critical darling and a surprisingly divisive game, and I can understand both sides. I don’t necessarily agree with every take on its gameplay or story I’ve read, but I do get the points of view. Personally, Final Fantasy XVI really resonated with me, and I felt it was the kind of story I needed this year.

As I discussed back when I was ranking Final Fantasy games, the series likes to explore the concept of hope amid hopeless circumstances. And despite how edgy Final Fantasy XVI is, I felt this spirit was intact. This particularly struck me early in Clive’s journey, when he is getting to know his mentor figure Cid. Clive explains his desire for revenge, which makes Cid rather bluntly respond with:

“Fate. You’re content to be its slave then.”

Many RPGs explore the concept of fate, but usually from an external perspective. For example, for the characters in Final Fantasy XIII, their fate of becoming l’Cie is forced on them, and the game’s theme involves breaking free of that fate. But in Final Fantasy XVI, fate is anything that takes our agency away from us. Whether it’s the destruction of your home or a desire for revenge that clouds your judgment, we’re constantly struggling with forces that threaten to take or redirect our freedom.

That depiction of fate has really struck me since it’s something that I struggle with daily. And I’ll venture a guess that many of you have your own "fates" you're battling too. Reframing fate in those terms has, weirdly, been mentally grounding for me. Whenever I feel myself staring too deep into that void, feeling hopeless as the world around us just seems weirder and dumber with each passing day, I try to remember Cid’s words. I don’t want to be a slave to fate. No matter how futile that may seem, it’s something I want to fight against.

I also like the part where Clive gets the big laser beam move and can go pew pew on his enemies. Good game, I hope to have a drink with Ben Starr someday.

#2: Super Mario Bros. Wonder

#1: Octopath Traveler 2

Octopath Traveler 2 is one of those games where I couldn’t even comprehend how special it was until it was over. I went into it expecting more of the original Octopath Traveler, which I liked but did not love (similar to Chris Carter’s take). But if Octopath Traveler was a love letter to golden age SNES/PSX RPGs, Octopath Traveler 2 is a perfect encapsulation of them.

This is, without a doubt, one of the most fun RPG worlds I’ve ever explored. There are secrets and bosses around nearly every corner, rewarding every ounce of curiosity you have. At the same time, it never feels like you’re just cutting through filler content either. Octopath Traveler 2 is immaculately paced, always tantalizing your senses with story objectives and rare treasures to pursue.

Similarly, the game’s combat mechanics offer a wonderful level of depth. Random encounters never gave me that usual feeling of tedium, since I felt consistently engaged in figuring out ways to dispatch foes faster and faster. Octopath Traveler 2 does a fantastic job of offering rich levels of party customization, yet it never bogs the player down with them. I was constantly getting huge “aha!” moments whenever I discovered different synergies with my skills and equipment. This did eventually make the game feel easy, but I also felt like I’d earned it. Even after spending nearly 100 hours with the game, I was fiddling with my team and experimenting with new ideas.

The segmented story has grown on me in retrospect too. While I initially didn’t like how separated each character’s tale was, that structure felt so real to me this year. Our paths often cross with friends and comrades, but ultimately, we’re all the heroes of our own stories. We all have our dreams we’re reaching for, and those goals may create temporary friendships of convenience.

But that’s not to say that those practical relationships can’t become meaningful. It’s human to want to make connections where we can, and we see the characters in Octopath Traveler 2 do that too. Hikari’s mission to lead Ku will naturally diverge from Agnea’s aspiration to become a star. But that doesn’t mean that, for a brief time, they can't share a story together. People often come and go in our lives, and seemingly lifelong friendships may become fleeting over time. But those memories, however temporary, are important. And by the end of Octopath Traveler 2, that’s the sense I got from these eight unlikely, but ultimately relatable allies.

There’s no telling where our paths in life will take us. But if we only look ahead at where we want to be, we might miss the adventure we can have now. And in the case of Octopath Traveler 2, there are few adventures I’ll ever look back on as fondly. Here’s to what 2024 may bring, and may Team Asano rest easy knowing they’ve created such a special, captivating game.

#0: Jimothy Donbleau’s Quest for Game of the Year 2: We’re All Content

That crazy bastard did it again, Jimothy Donbleau wins Game of the Year 2023!!!

The post Timothy Monbleau’s 10 favorite games of 2023 appeared first on Destructoid.

When talking about SNEG’s efforts to re-release Strategy Simulation Inc.’s old PC catalog, I mentioned that one of their most significant endeavors was putting SSI’s D&D games back on storefronts. I bought them some time ago. I haven’t played them. They intimidate me.

Classic CRPGs are terrifying. I often say that game design doesn’t expire; it merely changes, but one common feature of ‘80s and ‘90s CRPGs is a wall of overcomplicated UI. The game itself might be relatively simple, but the sheer number of buttons, menus, and functions is staggering. I’ve been stopped while trying to create a character.

So, for the purposes of this article, I decided to finally step into SSI’s D&D world. Not in an RPG, goodness, no. I’m still terrified. Let’s, uh… Let’s start with 1990’s DragonStrike, the one where you ride on a dragon.

Good luck, Sir Goodman

There is a disappointing dearth of dragon-flight simulators. 2007’s Lair, perhaps? I don’t know, I haven’t played it. What I do know is that War Thunder doesn’t have dragons and is poorer for it. We’re all poorer for it.

DragonStrike is exactly that; it’s an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game where you play as a dragon rider. It has a lot in common with computer flight sims of the time, right down to the simplistic fractal landscapes. Also, like much of the era’s flight sims, it’s surprisingly detailed.

I do know a few things about early flight sims, though it’s not my area of expertise. However, I know very little about Dungeons & Dragons. Most of what I know is from this year’s Baldur’s Gate 3, and I don’t know how well that still connects with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. I’m not able to give much context there. It takes place in the Dragonlance world of Krynn. Then, after that, I’m just assuming that DragonStrike represents the subject matter reasonably well.

Although, the side you’re aligned with is literally referred to as the “Good Army” while the bad guys are the “Evil Army.” Is that actually in the material? Is that an accurate representation? Because that’s hilarious.

Patience and butterfingers

Actually, I can’t really talk about the plot told within DragonStrike all that well, either. It’s presented in literal walls of text, and I got frustrated because it takes “any key” as permission to advance. Early on, I missed a huge blurb because when I took my hand off the keyboard, I rolled the side of it off the right arrow key and missed a portion. So, the narrative had to compete against both my attention span and butterfingers, and it did not fare well.

So, that was a bunch of paragraphs saying I don’t know what I’m talking about. But there’s so much more to talk about. Dragons, perhaps?

You, unfortunately, neither get to pick nor customize your dragon. The one you ride on is based on what Order you’re in, and choosing your Order is based on narrative choice. There isn’t a tonne of difference between the dragons aside from what color is beneath your crotch. They all fly roughly the same, and all of them have two attacks. I think they get progressively more powerful, but there’s a tradeoff.

The flight model isn’t too realistic, or maybe it is. Maybe dragons actually fly like that. I suppose I should say it doesn’t feel realistic. You kind of just glide over the flat-shaded landscapes, and you might as well just be a detached camera. Despite being on a winged beast, you can’t just ascend vertically, stop suddenly, or drop straight down. It can also be difficult to tell how close you are to a cliff or the ground, and that placelessness removes a lot of the visual feedback from the game.

I’d guess that DragonStrike was a reskin of a WWII flight sim, but I can’t find anything similar in either SSI or Westwood’s catalog. Whether it’s an effective representation of dragon pilotry or not, it’s an impressive effort for 1990.

Tooth and claw

While the actual flight is maybe oversimplistic, there’s still a lot of depth to the game. Beyond your dragon’s breath, you also have your trusty lance to attack with, as well as your sword and your dragon’s claws and teeth. Most of these are beyond your control and just happen when you get close enough to an enemy. You can aim where your lance is pointed, but I’m not sure if there’s a practical reason to do so.

However, your lance is actually the most reliable way of taking down enemy dragons. The hard part is simply to light them up in front of you, but if you manage to poke them, they typically go down immediately. Your dragon has two scents of breath. One goes fast and far, and the other goes slow and lingers. There isn’t much feedback on how much damage they do, but they’re often not an instant kill.

You’re normally fighting other dragons, and that means they can also claw and bite. This is where combat starts to get really messy. You have separate health meters for your rider and dragon, and who takes damage when things get up close isn’t really clear. For that matter, the amount of damage seems random and may be the result of invisible dice rolls. There’s a confusing lack of control when it comes to combat, and this gets frustrating.

The Knights of the Inept

What drove me to the edge was getting blindsided by enemy projectiles. I’m okay with getting hit by something offscreen, but often, this would just be an instant kill. My rider would get vaporized suddenly, forcing me back to the retry screen. I’d be doing really well one moment, then it would be over in an instant. If I was merely taking damage and needed to quickly remove myself from the situation, that would be one thing, but not even having the ability to react is frustrating.

I got stuck at a point midway through DragonStrike. The above situation kept happening, over and over. So, I checked the manual and found part of what was going wrong. You’re given the option to join orders in DragonStrike. You start in the Knights of the Crown, and can switch to Knights of the Sword, before finally having the chance to enter the Knights of the Rose. But beyond just upgrading your dragon, it also sets you on a harder path through the story. I was in the Knights of the Rose.

So, I restarted and refused the offers to join the other Orders. Sure enough, I was suddenly plowing through the story, galvanized by a stint in hard mode. Then, I got stopped by a mission where I was getting whittled down by archers. I could probably overcome it with some carefully placed shots, but by then, it was midnight. This may surprise you, but I keep regular hours, so I needed to be up for work in the morning. And that’s why my homework isn’t finished.

Soaring recommended at 6MHz or faster

I still wound up spending a lot of time with DragonStrike, and when I have the chance, I’ll probably dive back in to finish it. Even with its simple mission design and intangible physics held back by the restrictions of the technology at the time, there just isn’t much out there like DragonStrike.

Furthermore, I think the developers behind the game were enthusiastic about the subject matter. While, again, there were a lot of technical limitations, they still tried to get as much detail as they could into the game. You can even be dislodged from your mount and freefall toward the ground. Your dragon will try to catch you, but it might fail, and it’s game over. This would be a very cinematic moment in a modern game, but the fact that it’s in a DOS game from the 90s is a nice touch.

Early flight sims may seem superseded by technological advancements, but there’s still value in seeing how developers got around the limitations of the era. They can still be appreciated for their art.

This goes doubly for DragonStrike. Not only did the developers at Westwood have to deal with the limits of home computers at the time, but they also had to think about how they would represent the fictional warfare of dragon fights. The result is something that is somewhat compromised and often frustrating, but it’s endearingly earnest. It’s enough that I still want to dig deeper into the game, and when it comes to retro titles, that’s half the battle. Plus, dragons.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post DragonStrike for PC lets you go beyond just imagining dragons appeared first on Destructoid.

Someone once told me that the Sega Saturn controller (the Japanese one, not the chunky American one) is the best 2D controller ever made. I don’t remember who it was, but it happened. The claim stuck with me.

I’m not sure I agree, but game controllers are a very personal choice. For years, we’ve essentially been using different configurations of the same thing. To me, four face buttons feel like the optimal number for my thumb to handle, so my preference is the SNES controller, but I can respect anyone who prefers Sega’s six-button design.

And for those people, there’s now Retro-Bit’s Sega Saturn Wireless Pro Controller, which, beyond just being a rather faithful wireless translation of the console’s input, slaps a couple of analog sticks on there so you can also use it for modern games.

You know, if you want to.

I had planned on starting to import Sega Saturn games, but that was before the Analogue Duo shifted my attention to the PC-Engine. However, the Retro-Bit Sega Saturn Pro Controller isn’t exclusive to that console. It works with a bunch of different consoles and PC through Xinput and Dinput. For that matter, one of the consoles I tried it on was the aforementioned Analogue Duo, and it worked just fine.

This is something I’m pretty used to when it comes to modern controllers. It seems that this generation has resulted in a renaissance in third-party controllers. Back in my day, third-party controllers were generally what you bought when you didn’t want to shell out for an official one but still wanted multiplayer. You’d hand them off to your friend, who would complain the buttons stick. It would get stuck in a drawer and somehow seemed to disintegrate just sitting there.

Now, whenever I need to use a controller, I have a tonne of choices. For 2D games, I usually use my 8BitDo SF30 Pro or M30. For 3D, I use the console’s native controller or a PS5 Dualsense on PC. My SF30 has analog sticks, but I usually only resort to them if a game is largely 2D with 3D sections or if, sacrilegiously, a 2D game doesn’t use the D-Pad. It’s just not as comfortable as a handled controller. Then, of course, there’s my arcade stick and racing wheel, which no girl should be without.

The Sega Saturn Pro Controller has a few drawbacks. The first is the fact that it currently only has a 2.4GHz version for wireless. To be fair, a lot of gamers seem to prefer this because, in most cases, it has the least amount of input lag. It also means you don’t have to worry about constantly pairing the controller. However, it does mean that you’re shackled to a dongle. Even while re-pairing with Bluetooth can be a pain, physically moving a dongle isn’t that much better. Also, if you want to change between the Saturn and USB dongle, you have to clear the pairing before you can pair it with the other adapter, so it’s not great.

The second is that the joysticks kind of suck to use. They’re very small, and reaching to the middle of the controller isn’t exactly ergonomic. This is essentially the same problem I have with the sticks on my SF30 Pro. The symmetrical design doesn’t work very well on a controller that doesn’t have handles, and because they’re small and very recessed, you need to be mindful of how your thumbs are sitting. Like the SF30 Pro, I will likely only use them when it’s absolutely necessary. However, there is a positive to them that I will get to.

The build quality is also very faithful to the original’s, which can be disappointing if you’re used to the 8BitDo M30. That controller has a nice matte finish and a solid feel, while the Sega Saturn Pro Controller feels like a controller from the ‘90s. If you’re interested in this controller, there’s a good chance that you want it to feel as close to the original as possible, and it really does. Over the years, Retro-Bit has gotten a lot better about matching the original version of whatever they’re reproducing, and that shows here.

The shoulder buttons have a bit of a different click to them, and the D-pad has a bit more wiggle to it, but neither of these things makes a practical difference in gameplay. Nothing about it made me want to switch back to an original Saturn controller.

What I do appreciate, however, is its ability to function as a Sega Saturn analog controller. I’m pretty sure the only games I have that support this are Nights into Dreams and Christmas Nights. I thought they were fine with the D-pad, but now that I’ve experienced them in analog, yeah, they’re a lot better. I’m actually surprised by the difference. It’s worth mentioning that the triggers are not analog, but off the top of my head, I can’t think of a game besides Panzer Dragoon Saga that uses them, and even then it doesn’t use them for anything important.

Switching to analog takes a button combination, but it’s not too difficult. Unfortunately, you can’t use the symmetrical sticks in Virtual On to mimic the dual-stick controller, but Retro-Bit notes this saying, “This feature is not available, but we like the idea.” It may be added in a later firmware update.

One thing I noted about using the controller is that there are four shoulder buttons as opposed to the Saturn’s usual two: R, L, ZR, and ZL. The manual says that R and ZR both map to the Saturn’s R button, which would allow you to choose where you want your index fingers to lie, but that’s not correct. R actually maps to the Z face button. This seems like a mistake and maybe will be fixed in future firmware.

It’s also a bit disappointing to use on Switch, which maps Z and C to R and L. This is mostly Nintendo’s fault. The controller would be great on the Genesis and N64 (another 6-button face) channels, but, for some daft reason, Nintendo doesn’t let you remap controls for their systems. You can do it in the settings menu of the Switch, but then you’d have to keep fiddling around with it whenever you wanted to play something normally.

This isn’t a problem with the Sega Saturn Pro Controller, however. The 8BitDo M30 has the same problem. Nintendo could do a lot better when it comes to supporting third-party controllers.

Aside from some “wish it had” features, the Retro-Bit Sega Saturn Pro Controller is exactly what it says it is: It’s a Saturn controller with symmetrical analog sticks. It’s faithful to the original form factor with additional functions. How much use you’re going to get out of the sticks is dependent on your preferences and situation.

For me, I’d probably just stick to the 8BitDo M30 without the analog sticks. It’s cheaper, more modern, and has Bluetooth version. However, 8BitDo doesn’t make a Saturn receiver. Not yet, anyway. So, by default, the Retro-Bit Sega Saturn Pro Controller is my new favorite Sega Saturn controller. Even if I could use the M30, I’d still probably break out Retro-Bit’s solution for Nights into Dreams.

But if the Sega Saturn controller is to you what the SNES controller is to me, this might be exactly what you’re looking for. The sticks might not be comfortable for modern games, but even retro-inspired games sometimes don’t pay proper tribute to the D-Pad. For those occasions, they’re nice to have. The build quality and faithfulness to the original control are admirable in the Sega Saturn Pro Controller. However, as I said in the opening, controllers are an entirely personal choice, so there’s a good chance you already know if this is the controller for you.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the hardware provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Retro-Bit Sega Saturn Wireless Pro Controller appeared first on Destructoid.

We’re friends, right? I can be honest with you. I know it. I was going to follow up my earlier list, 10 bad games you should play, with a similar list around the same time of year. However, I don’t have a kusoge chambered for today, so I’m bumping it to a year-end list.

Do you know how difficult it is to play a bad game every week? Not just finding, playing through, and then writing up while also covering other responsibilities, but the mental toll it takes on a person. So, even though the column is informally called “Weekly Kusoge” (not related to Hardcore Gaming 101’s “Your Weekly Kusoge”), I skip a week whenever playing bad games just isn’t enough motivation to get out of bed.

With that in mind, I did 36 Weekly Kusoge articles in 2023. Here are the 10 “best” games I covered this year.

Award for At Least Being Interesting - Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness

I covered Castlevania 64 and Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness back-to-back to show some love for the series’ more maligned attempts at 3D translation. And really, I can understand why they haven’t been ported, but their reputation as blotches on the series’ record is maybe not as apt. At the very least, they’re more interesting than, say, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.

Legacy of Darkness is sort of the updated version of the vanilla N64 Castlevania. It includes the narrative campaigns of the earlier game, improving some things, but cutting a few features due to space. Personally, I think it’s still better, but there are some who prefer the original or, alternatively, suggest you should play both. That latter point, I can agree with.

Award for Kusoge that I Love - Paperboy (64)

Going into the article, I already knew that I liked the N64’s 1999 revisit to Midway’s Paperboy series. You shouldn’t be ashamed that a bad game can click with you. It’s not a matter of whether or not you can recognize the flaws alongside the strengths. Kusoge can be meaningful. Behind all the broken mechanics and unfulfilled ambitions, there is still human expression that can be connected with.

For the 3D update, Paperboy captures the bizarrely dark world presented in the arcade original and gives it a uniquely lo-fi art style and weirdly enjoyable music, then dumps a bunch of technical limitations on them. But all the fog and audio compression in the world could stop it from being an infectiously bright experience.

Award for Biggest Dumb - Final Fight: Streetwise

A sad swansong to Capcom Studio 8, Final Fight: Streetwise was reportedly mired in development difficulties before being released in a poor state. The developer originally had a more vibrant game planned that would be more true to the classic arcade original, but marketing allegedly wanted something more marketable. Ergo, a game that was like what was popular at the time: gritty and edgy.

The result is something that is just so, so dumb. As I described it, “an edgy teenager’s take on Yakuza.” The story has Kyle Travers trying to save his brother, Cody (from the original), from drug addiction. The enemies? They’re also addicts, but the inhuman kind, I guess, so they can eat buckshot. It’s that sort of daftness that makes Final Fight: Streetwise constantly entertaining, even when the gameplay is a letdown.

Award for Most Brilliant Kusoge - Tecmo’s Deception

There were a few commenters who were ardently offended that I referred to Tecmo’s Deception as kusoge, even though it’s one that I really enjoyed. Listen, I’m sorry if it upsets you, but the game is just an endless parade of “good enough fixes” and blatant failures. Being entertaining doesn’t stop it from being an oversimplification of complex ambitions.

On the other hand, it does feature some great atmosphere and a wizard named Wizbone. There’s a lot in Tecmo’s Deception that I wish was built upon, fixed, and refined for the sequels, but instead, the developers went in a mostly different direction. I’m not saying the sequels are bad (I haven’t played them), but the spots of brilliance in otherwise bad games are still worth preserving.

Award for Most Lovable Train Wreck - DinoRex

DinoRex is like Primal Rage if it were acted out in a playground sandbox using bargain-bin toys. It has dinosaurs fighting each other, but they appear more like toothless pugs fighting over a hotdog. Incredible. Just incredible.

It plays horribly, with unresponsive controls, bad hit detection, and a senseless lack of depth. But then it gives you a bonus round where your portly pal gets to march through a modern city, and all is forgiven.

Award for Most Compelling Torture - The Genji and the Heike Clans

You and I could sit down with The Genji and the Heike Clans (Genpei Toma Den as it’s called in Japan) and just rattle off all the things about the game that just doesn’t work. It has major issues like its sloppy “big mode,” cobbled-together platforming, and its horribly unfriendly difficulty curve. Despite this, it is a somewhat-beloved game in its home country of Japan.

I’m really not sure I get why. I don’t think this is like Spelunker where it’s considered kusoge, but still sells well. I don’t think Genpei Toma Den is considered kusoge over there at all. And yet, I can’t see it as anything but. Yet, despite that, I find it intensely charming. It’s very unique in its hostility, and the culture shock of its themes based on Japanese history and folklore just highlight that. Forget that it isn’t much fun to play. There just isn’t much like it.

Award for Artistic Merit - Mad Panic Coaster

I described Mad Panic Coaster as a cross between F-Zero and a rail shooter. You play as a pair of children who are strapped into a perilous roller coaster, and you have to keep them on track while also eliminating hazards in front of you by throwing bombs. It’s madness. It’s way too fast for its own good, and I had a lot of trouble putting it down.

What was most compelling for me, however, was that it seemed to have come from nowhere before just disappearing into obscurity. The company that supposedly developed it was an advertising business that very briefly touched on video games. Yet, Mad Panic Coaster isn’t an advertisement. Instead, it’s an aesthetically well-executed and strangely fun game that is built on a nauseatingly unique premise. It’s not the best game (it’s on this list, after all), but the tangible passion behind its creation makes it worth playing.

The Kyuukyoku no Kusoge Award - Ganso Saiyuuki Super Monkey Daibouken

Sometimes referred to as the “kyuukyoku no kusoge” or “ultimate crappy game,” Ganso Saiyuuki Super Monkey Daibouken was something I had to play for myself ever since it was featured in GameCenter CX’s “Ring Ring Tactics” segment. It’s a game that is so ineptly designed that it defies comprehension. To challenge myself, I played through it using only the tips that callers had given host Shinya Arino in GameCenter CX.

I did wind up completing it, which just consummated my love of kusoge. This year, I felt something snap in my brain that gave me the ability to just unironically love bad games. Super Monkey Daibouken is probably what caused me to break inside. It has elevated me to a higher plane of thought. Or a lower one.

The So Bad, It's Good Award - Escape from Bug Island

Speaking of being broken inside, Escape from Bug Island is a game that has been living in my head since the early days of the Wii. The only thing I knew about it was it was apparently a very bad game, so I had to circle back and play it.

What I didn’t expect was such a hilariously bad set of characters going through an absolutely terrible narrative. I also didn’t expect such sexy lizard ladies, so that was a bonus. However, Ray, the lady friend he single-mindedly drool over, and his shotgun-phile friend all won my heart. I just can’t believe this is a real game. Simply captivating.

The Actually Awesome Kusoge Award - Cool Riders

Cool Riders is like Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game: it looks like kusoge, but it’s built over the bones of a great game, so it manages to be fun to play. But while the bizarrely composed assembly of photo-manipulated actors and scenery make the game look like it was pulled from the murky depths of a bargain bin, it comes together in a hilarious and fascinating way.

In what is essentially Outrunners on various motorcycles, you cruise across a world that resembles a travel magazine after it has been eaten by a camel. The world whips by you at light speed, but it’s impossible to look away as you might miss some of the bizarre scenery. It looks like the dumbest game imaginable, but when you actually accept it into your heart, it will block up all your blood vessels and drag you down inside to spend eternity. I mean, you should play it.

Wrap it up

Maybe it's just my brainworms talking, but I definitely think you should play bad games. Video games are a lot like cheese. A lot of people – most people, probably – will stick to the cheddars and swiss of the world, and maybe if they're feeling adventurous, they'll try a gouda. Some are even happy just eating pre-packaged American cheeses. Anything with a recognized brand, probably one that is mass-produced, and that's as far as they'll go.

But if you really want to connect with cheese – if you're truly a lover of cheese – you explore. You try artisan cheeses, aged cheese, and cheese from animals aside from cows. You eat the moldy kinds, the smelly stuff, and every once in a while, it can be extremely unpleasant. Eventually, the unpleasantness doesn't matter because it's not about eating cheese, but exploring the complexity of its flavor. Normal cheese becomes boring to you, but at that point, it doesn't matter. The passion you've built and discovered is more fulfilling and meaningful, and your life is enriched because of it.

Playing kusoge gives you perspective. It enhances your connection with the medium and lends it depth and meaning. You most certainly can stick to the supermarket cheese aisle and eat out of bags of pre-grated cheddar, or you can travel outside your comfort zone and gain a true appreciation of cheese. I mean video games. I'm hungry.

The post The Golden Kusoges 2023: Best of the Weekly Kusoge appeared first on Destructoid.

SNEG continues their effort to preserve classic PC titles by releasing another long list of Strategy Simulations Inc. (SSI) and Mindscape games on Steam and GOG.

This latest drop of games runs a wide gamut of genres and timeframes. The first title listed is the Phantasie Collection which combines Phantasie (1985), Phantasie 2 (1986), and Phantasie III: The Wrath of Nikademus (1987). While we’re on the topic, there was a Phantasie IV: The Birth of Heroes in 1990, but that was released exclusively on Japanese home computers despite the series being originally by an American developer. That's not included here.

The next up is the Great Naval Battles Collection, which brings Great Naval Battles: North Atlantic 1939-1943 (1992), Vol. II: Guadalcanal 1942-43 (1994), Vol. III: Fury in the Pacific 1941-44 (1995), Vol. IV: Burning Steel 1939-1942 (1995). You can probably guess that these games are all WWII naval strategy games.

Continuing the theme of collections, we have Wargame Construction Set Collection. This includes the 1986 original, followed by Wargame Construction Set II: Tanks! (1994) and Wargame Construction Set III: Age of Rifles 1846-1905 (1996). These kind of sound like they should be about handling the production of various implements of war, but they’re actually customizable strategy games.

Onto a la carte titles, we first have Star Command (1988), a sci-fi RPG. Then there’s Prophecy of the Shadow (1992), a fantasy RPG that came around after SSI lost the DND license to Interplay. Next is Renegade: Battle for Jacob’s Star (1995), which is technically a sequel to Renegade Legion: Interceptor (1990), which hasn’t been re-released yet. Both are space combat games. Interestingly, both games are adaptations of a FASA (Shadowrun, Battletech) board game. Savage Warriors (1995) is up next, and it’s a fighting game, of all things. Finally, we have Warbreeds (1998), which is a typical ‘90s RTS, but with the ability to modify your units’ DNA to create new configurations.

I’ve played exactly none of these games, which is why I appreciate SNEG making them available. While some of them are simply using DOSBox in the background, they’re configured in a way that makes them easy to jump into. Their most impressive effort was to re-release all of SSI’s D&D games, but the fact that they’re jumping deeper into the back catalog really warms my heart. I didn’t get to experience much of the PC landscape throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, so I’ve always found it interesting what got buried behind the console and arcade scene.

Maybe I’ll make it a point in 2024 to explore some of SNEG’s SSI re-releases.

The games and collections outlined above are now available on GOG and Steam.

The post SNEG re-releases slew of retro SSI and Mindscape PC titles appeared first on Destructoid.

The Earthworm Jim games were perhaps the earliest indication that I’d wind up in this career. They were the first time that I really became aware of the developers behind the games I played, and beyond that, I actually contacted one of them – via snail mail.

I was probably 7 at the time, and I wrote to Shiny Entertainment asking them if they were going to make an Earthworm Jim 2. Amazingly, they wrote back. Not just some pre-formatted response, either. They actually answered my questions. I wish I still had that letter.

After Earthworm Jim 2, Shiny adopted a no-sequel policy. Earthworm Jim 3D wasn’t developed by Shiny, and as an N64 owner, I wouldn’t play another game by the developer until 2003’s Enter the Matrix. At that point, Shiny had been sold to Infogrames, and their last years of existence were spent making licensed games.

But following the release of Earthworm Jim 2 and before Enter the Matrix, they created a small handful of games that still demonstrated the developer’s ingenuity. And they began with 1997’s MDK.

On a good day, 2.5 billion people will die

Before you ask, the meaning of MDK as an acronym isn’t really mentioned anywhere in the story or marketing. For a long time, it was believed to mean “Murder Death Kill,” but this wasn’t confirmed until creator Nick Bruty stepped in and confirmed it. However, according to Bruty, “It was a temp name that stuck although I didn't like the actual meaning so we came up with a bunch of other names to cover it up.”

I can understand not really loving the name. The ‘90s saw a lot of games that glorified graphic violence, and the name “Murder Death Kill” kind of suggests it’s one of them. There’s violence, sure, but it’s not really graphic.

There isn’t much story told within MDK itself. Starting out, your only point of context is that a “Huge City Minecrawler” is headed toward Laguna Beach. You start the game free-falling toward it, and then you’re blasting everything in sight.

The instruction manual is where it’s at, giving you a completely unhinged account of what’s going on. Dr. Fluke Hawkins gets mocked by the scientific community, so he kidnaps his janitor and goes into space to try and get proof that he’s not crazy. As it turns out, he is crazy, but rather than return to Earth, he decides to stay in space until he makes a real discovery. Eventually, Earth is invaded, and being in space at the time, Dr. Hawkins decides that he’s the planet’s only hope. So, he sends his janitor to clean up this mess.

Tourism is safe

You play as this janitor, Kurt Hectic. The good doctor has provided Kurt with the “Coil Suit,” which is a formfitting little number with a chaingun on one arm and a face-mounted sniper rifle. After the aforementioned free-fall onto the minecrawler, your job is to gun your way to the pilot’s seat and eliminate whoever’s driving it, at which point you’ll be sucked back into space.

There are six levels, but the last level feels more like an epilogue to level five. Each one is a sprint through a variety of open environments that usually feature combat and a light puzzle. The puzzles range from simply destroying a lock with the “World’s Smallest Nuclear Explosion” to “where the hell am I supposed to go?” levels of obtuse. It’s not too difficult. Normally I was able to figure out where the hell I was supposed to go by shooting everything and, if that didn’t work, jumping on everything.

You’re given a handful of secondary weapons along the way, either devices or alternate ammunition for the sniper rifle.  The sniper rifle ammo sucks to cycle through. Usually, I just want to use the standard bullet, but if you picked up, say, a mortar round along the way, it gets loaded over top, and I end up just embarrassing myself.

While the majority of MDK is just running and gunning, it does mix things up with platforming and short vehicle sections. The runtime is pretty short at about 4 hours, but it at least keeps things interesting the whole way through.

I feel top!

I first played MDK around my college years. At that point, the third and first-person shooter genres were deep in their brown realism phase. Playing this game was a welcome change from carrying two guns and gluing my back to cover.

Kurt’s chain gun is pretty weak, but it sprays at a ridiculously fast speed. He can run at about 60MPH, and the open environments were impressive during an era largely confined to corridors. More impressive was that, even though this was 1997, there wasn’t any fog occluding distant objects.

The trade-off is that the environments also aren’t very detailed, but that is hardly ever a problem. Usually, it only causes issues during platforming sections. However, this is exacerbated by the fact that Kurt is just a 2D sprite. He can actually cling to ledges and pull himself up, but figuring out where the ledge is in relation to Kurt can be difficult.

MDK was released during the early days of 3D acceleration on PC, which I now hate. I don’t hate the games, really, but I do hate how badly they tend to play on modern setups. Interplay did recently patch it to improve compatibility, but it still very reluctantly runs at 640x480 resolution. Proper mouse aiming needs to be configured in the game’s settings, and the menus don’t really function correctly. One time, I alt-tabbed, and when I went back in, my mouse aim was broken. It’s a game that badly needs a source port or remaster.

Face mounted hardware

MDK also contains a lot of Shiny’s original weirdness. There are cows, for example. It’s largely a mix of dark and absurd humor. Earthworm Jim even makes a cameo appearance as a power-up icon that causes a cow to land on enemies.

There was a sequel appropriately named MDK 2, but it was handled by BioWare. It was generally well-received and well-loved, even getting an HD version in 2012. However, it was a disappointment to me. The gameplay alternates between three characters: Dr. Hawkins, Kurt, and Max. Kurt’s levels are rather similar to the first game, but Dr. Hawkin’s had more puzzle-oriented gameplay. I barely remember what Max played like. The biggest letdown for me was the fact that the humor leaned in more of a silly direction, losing its edge.

The original MDK is just dumb fun. But beyond that, it’s also an imaginative antithesis to the direction shooting games would take over the next decade. Even now, I can’t think of a game that comes close to MDK’s speedy, cathartic blasting mixed with a darkly surreal atmosphere. Shiny Entertainment’s games weren’t always the tightest, most polished experience on the market, but the world is poorer for the loss of that company’s unique perspective. There hasn’t been anything quite like them since.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post MDK shows us the damage a janitor can do appeared first on Destructoid.

Resident Evil 4 being nominated for several categories at The Game Awards 2023 shows that remakes are still very much in vogue. It seems evident that we should never forget the classics. And that's exactly what this one modder is doing with the original RE2.

Perhaps in an attempt to blend modern Resident Evil with the retro installments, Itch.io user PerroAutonomo has been remaking the second game in the series. Only, they aren't updating the visuals or the cheesy dialogue. No. They're sticking with how the original 1998 release looked, but have made it into a first-person shooter.

The above video from the YouTube channel Residence of Evil does a half hour playthrough of the demo. As for when the full thing will be released, PerroAutonomo's page says they may not finish it, and the current build "has many errors" (translated by Google).

Complete with fully remade cut scenes

The footage shows how authentic this unofficial remake is. It endeavors to keep the visual style of Resident Evil 2 but chooses a different perspective. We get to see a lot of the game from new angles never seen before, and even though it's a fan project, it's still impressive to see.

As Capcom marches forward with its iconic survival horror series, we welcome whatever's on the horizon. With more Resident Evil remakes being confirmed, everyone's going to be wondering which one's going to get the remake treatment next.

We may well get to see a fresh take on one of the spin-offs, such as Code Veronica or Umbrella Chronicles. Or maybe RE5 will get another crack at not being a disappointment. Time will tell on that front.

The post This Resident Evil 2 fan remake turns the classic into an FPS appeared first on Destructoid.

On paper, 1995’s Cool Riders sounds great. It was the follow-up to 1993’s Outrunners, which itself was a multiplayer follow-up to 1986’s Out Run. Only this time, it’s on motorized bikes. Then you see it, and you realize Cool Riders is one of the least cool games to exist.

Let me back up a sec here. Cool Riders is absolutely one of the best retro games I’ve been introduced to this year. It’s a year where I feel something finally snapped in my head, and I’ve come to legitimately enjoy a lot of kusoge. But the thing about Cool Riders is that it certainly looks like kusoge, but it doesn’t play like it. 

It’s sort of a Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game situation. While the game’s graphics give you that whiff of kusoge, the mere fact that it’s built on the bones of a better game means that it’s still enjoyable. Better than enjoyable, actually, Cool Riders is a riot.

The fat is in the fire

By 1995, following some tentative hesitation, Sega was well into its conversion to 3D arcade games. Cool Riders is a bit of a strange latecomer. It was one of the last games to use Sega’s Super Scaler effect, pairing it with your typical raster effect to create 3D visuals. To put this into perspective, that year would have it competing against Sega Rally Championship for floor space. It was also the only game to be produced on the Sega H1 Board, which meant that the MAME community had quite a struggle getting it emulated properly.

The strangest part of Cool Riders, however, is the game itself. I’d love to see what the development pitch was like. It looks like something that was thrown together, but when you really dig into it, you realize that the whole thing was deliberate. A whole bunch of digitized actors and photo manipulation to create something that looks like an unholy union of Katamari Damacy and early ‘00s animutation.

It’s a bizarre maelstrom of ideas, with drivers that include a lady on a Vespa, a cowboy, and a devoted father. It’s obvious that the developers at Sega AM1 weren’t taking this very seriously, but how such a mish-mash of ideas came together, I’d like to know.

Seriously, I would like to know what the development of Cool Riders was like. There’s precious little behind-the-scenes information I could find. Not that it’s usually easy to find background information on ‘80s and ‘90s arcade games unless they’ve made a massive impact, but I’ve never been this curious before.

Grandpa Is Still Alive

What separates Cool Riders from Outrunners and, well, most games at the time is its use of digitized photography. That wasn’t entirely rare at the time, with Mortal Kombat famously utilizing this approach. But games like that and Pit-Fighter were earnestly trying to look good. Futuristic, even. The art in Cool Riders obviously isn’t trying to achieve that. It fully embraces its ridiculousness.

People who have worked with porting the game have said that it uses a lot of assets from Outrunner, but I would never believe that the two were related. It’s hard to really describe the visual style.

It’s like if walkedoutneimans decided to travel back in time and get a job at Sega. It’s like someone dropped a travel magazine in a blender and hit Frappe. It’s like a Bible game that gave up on Jesus partway through development.

The game’s premise is essentially the same as the Out Run games. You’re given a time limit to reach the checkpoint on a continuously splitting sprint. This time, however, you have the option of traveling West or East across the world or just keep your journey in the Americas. However, the world is depicted through the eyes of someone on psychedelics who never left their apartment.

Here Come Queen of Hurricanes

Even Japan, the country this game originated from, is depicted with sprinting ninjas and old castles. One of my favorite courses is the East Indies, where you travel across the ocean floor while flanked by sharks and giant octopi. You zoom through these stages at a blisteringly fast speed near the edge of control. Part of the challenge is just being able to read the obstacles that are constantly streaming by the edge of the road.

The drivers are incredible. A backstory for each of them is hinted at, and they’re given a lot of fanfare for characters we have never met before. There’s the aforementioned woman on a Vespa who is aided by official-looking dudes in suits. There’s a Frankenstein’s monster of a robot and an old man riding a souped-up, old-fashioned moped. One that I mentioned is this biker-looking dude who rides on a tricycle with his two children. Who are these people?

The game opens with Born to Be Wild by Steppenwolf, which sounds like it fits more with a Harley Davidson stuffed in the corner of a movie theatre. Then you get into the game, and each of the characters has their own theme, and they frequently feel completely divorced from what is happening on-screen while also being kind of good.

The cabinets usually came in a pair, allowing you to race against a friend or unwelcome stranger. It doesn’t really affect much in gameplay, as the timer is your primary adversary, but whoever wins in any leg of the race gets to choose which branch is taken next. It’s a nice but unnecessary addition.

A Little Good

I’m not sure I can really express how much fun Cool Riders is. I got into it mostly because I love exploring Sega’s Super Scaler games, but I quickly found myself hooked. I played it over and over, trying to reach the game’s absurd finale. I’m no doubt going to pick it up again after this.

It’s an absolute sugar rush of a game, with bizarre, eye-catching scenery flying by. Endless basketball players in Chicago, Dracula in Romania, Mount Rushmore in the Rockies for some reason. It’s incredible it begs you to try and explore all the tracks, to test out every driver, to dive further and further into the mind of a broken genius. It helps that it was built on the bones of Outrunners and is made better because it is absolutely in on the joke.

The fact that Cool Riders has never been ported is a travesty. Nothing on the Sega Saturn, not even a nod anywhere else. It feels like Sega doesn’t even know it exists, buried deep down in its back catalog. For that matter, Outrunners hasn’t been ported outside of an absolutely abysmal Genesis/Mega Drive version. 

I don’t have much hope for it getting ported now, especially given how much trouble it gave MAME developers, but I’m going to make it my mission. At every possible opportunity, I’m going to bring up Cool Riders. I’m going to talk about it until everyone knows about it. Whenever I’m face-to-face with a Sega rep, I’m going to bring it up, searching for that spark of recognition or watching them squirm as they try to figure out what I’m talking about.

Cool Riders must ride again.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

The post Cool Riders for Arcade is just a beautiful, captivating mess appeared first on Destructoid.

Considering that Capcom was ruling the fighting game roost in 1993, Saturday Night Slam Masters is such a low-key production. Street Fighter 2 blended together with a wrestling game sounds like such an amazing concept, but that’s absolutely not what Saturday Night Slam Masters is.

And that’s really weird, considering that one of the grapplers, Gunloc, has a bio that suggests he is related to a famous street fighter while Chun Li appears in the audience. Yet, despite the references that imply it exists in the same universe as Street Fighter 2, Saturday Night Slam Masters is pretty much just a wrestling game. It’s not even a particularly outstanding wrestling game, but it’s still one of my favorite arcade games of all time.

Why?

Mike Haggar. Mike Haggar! MIKE HAGGAR!

The Excellence of Execution

Saturday Night Slam Master was released in 1993 in arcades, but it also got ported to the SNES, Genesis, and FM Towns Marty. I first played it on the SNES where it became one of my most prized cartridges, but now that it’s more widely available through Capcom Arcade Stadium 2, that’s where I typically get my Haggar on.

In Japan, the game is actually called Muscle Bomber, but I personally love the Saturday Night Slam Masters moniker. I love it so much. It just sounds like an old televised wrestling show, similar to WWF’s Saturday Night’s Main Event. I love it so much that the flagship show of the fictional wrestling promotion I make over and over in every wrestling game with customization, Breakfast Time Wrestling, is Saturday Morning Slam. I almost italicized that like it’s a real thing.

Saturday Night Slam Masters centers around the worldwide Capcom Professional Wrestling Association. You choose a wrestler from a selection of 10 and then take them around the world to compete for the title belt. I don’t think that’s how wrestling titles are supposed to work, but it’s a great framework. And then, after you win the title, the game keeps on going, with you having to defend it.

There’s apparently more of a backstory. According to the Capcom Database citation-less summary, CPWA’s version of Hulk Hogan suddenly disappeared. With the vacuum of power where their champion was supposed to be, the CPWA decides to host their world tour Crash Carnival, to crown a new champion. But an evil promotion called the Blood Professional Wrestling Association decides that they want the title, and some of their wrestlers crash the Crash Carnival, which, again, I don’t think is how wrestling works. Maybe it’s kayfabe.

Magic Mike

Then there’s the aesthetic, which has that slight grit common in the Street Fighter and Final Fight games. The CPWA is a far cry from the glossy productions put on by wrestling promotions these days. It reminds me more of the early days of televised wrestling where the wrestlers would practically wade through a sea of people to get to the ring, rather than having an almost choreographed entrance.

Mike Haggar’s entrance, for example, simply has him throwing a towel into the crowd. If only I was there to catch that towel…

Then you get to the actual wrestling, and it’s just… fine. There are punches, grapples, and Irish whips, plus plenty of button mashing. I feel that button mashing is actually key to arcade wrestling. Hammering that button and shaking the stick gives some physicality to the experience.

However, Saturday Night Slam Masters lacks any nuance beneath that. You can climb the ropes, but opponents don’t stay down long enough for you to really land a flying elbow. It’s possible to get outside the ring and use weapons, but that’s largely pointless. If you do it to temporarily escape your opponent’s thrashing, it’s unlikely the opponent will actually join you. So you’re left standing out there, holding a bucket while the ref counts.

Haggarmania

Then there are the special moves. I only know of Mike Haggar’s, because when I have a choice to play as Mike Haggar or literally anyone else, I choose Mike Haggar. He has his spinning double-lariat from Final Fight, as well as a spinning piledrive. Except the spinning piledrive requires you to tie up with an opponent, rotate the joystick 360 degrees, and hit the punch and jump buttons together. The problem is that once you tie up, you have about 1 second to mash the punch button to overpower your opponent. Otherwise, they perform a slam against you.

I can play Zangief just fine. I’m no stranger to 360 rotations. But I have never once been able to perform Mike Haggar’s spinning piledriver. To this day, its existence is hearsay to me.

Pins are also somewhat routine. If your opponent has no life left in their gauge, they’re out the moment you pin them. The same goes for you. Fight all you want, but if your life gauge is empty, you’re not getting free.

A lot of the actual combat in Saturday Night Slam Masters just feels “good enough.” It’s not actually that much better than 1986’s Pro Wrestling on the NES or 1989’s Tecmo World Wrestling, just to name a couple. Heck, 1991’s King of the Monsters is a better wrestling game, and that game is really about kaiju.

Although, none of those have Mike Haggar, which means Saturday Night Slam Masters is the best.

Pinfall

I should note that there is a tag team mode, which is pretty fun. It allows you to team up with a friend or captive stranger to take on the CPWA. Really, it’s more like a tornado tag. You’re both in the ring at the same time, and the goal is to pin both opponents, which can be done one at a time.

There were two follow-ups to Saturday Night Slam Masters. The first was Muscle Bomber Duo, which was kind of like the “Turbo” version of the base game. The gameplay is more polished, and you can play as the boss characters. It actually does play quite a bit better. Getting into a tie-up actually requires you to press a button to grapple.

The actual sequel is Ring of Destruction: Muscle Bombers 2, and it’s a horrible abomination. For whatever reason, the developers turned it into a straightforward fighting game. The wrestling is now just an aesthetic choice. You don’t even have to pin at the end of the match. Even worse, it isn’t a good fighting game. It does still have Mike Haggar, though.

Unfortunately, neither of these follow-ups were in Capcom Arcade Stadium 2, which isn’t a huge loss for Ring of Destruction, but Muscle Bomber Duo is a clear improvement over the original. I’m not sure if we’ll ever see a Capcom Arcade Stadium 3, but if they’re still not included, we riot.

Get back in the ring

Even though it isn’t the best wrestling game, I still love it. It’s easy to pick up and play a few rounds, the aesthetic is perfect, and while it isn’t great, it’s good enough. Good enough, plus Mike Haggar, is immediately top-shelf.

One of my dream games is for Capcom to return to Saturday Night Slam Masters. The wrestling sub-genre in video games is in a stagnant place right now. Much of the air in the room is dominated by the WWE 2K series' abundant flab, and fun arcade wrestlers are few and far between. A wrestling game that eschews licensed wrestlers and instead provides a fun cast with a unique aesthetic feels like it would stand out today. Especially if it features Mike Haggar.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post Saturday Night Slam Masters gives us more reason to vote Mike Haggar appeared first on Destructoid.

Originally released on December 4, 1998 in Japan, Getter Love: Cho Renai Party Game (mystifyingly subtitled Panda Love Unit on the title screen) has finally been localized for fans.

Getter Love: Panda Love Unit is a party game by Hudson that pre-dates Mario Party by a scarce couple of weeks. But while Mario Party has you destroying the palm of your hand while frustrating your friends in mini-games, Getter Love has you trying to seduce women (sometimes with mini-games). It’s the perfect game to bring home and play with family during the holidays.

It’s a party game mixed with a dating sim, and the dating sim part is taken very seriously. The genre had exploded a few years earlier with 1994’s Tokimeki Memorial, and it was quickly adopted into other genres, such as trivia and puzzle games. Getter Love has you navigating a town map. You compete in mini-games to get items that either help you on dates or sabotage the other players. I really cannot stress how much dating sim is in this party game.

According to Nintendo 64 Anthology by Math Manent “With such minimalistic production and ordinary manga characters, Getter Love!! is quite a unique concept, so very Japanese, it never stood a chance of appealing to the western public” [sic]. They rated it 1 star out of a possible 5. To be fair, they also gave WWF War Zone a 4-star review, and I think that game’s suck is visible from orbit. I just bring that up to illustrate that I don’t necessarily agree with the scoring in this book. It’s otherwise a fine reference.

However, I haven’t personally played Getter Love: Panda Love Unit, mainly because I’m an Anglophone with no confidence in my Japanese reading comprehension. So, I definitely appreciate fans stepping in to localize it. The N64 is rarely an easy console to create translations for, and this one has been in development since 2019. If you remove all the baseball, horse racing, and mahjong games, there weren’t a tonne of Japan-exclusive N64 titles. Every effort to localize its library is greatly appreciated.

The fan translation for Getter Love: Panda Love Unit is available now, and you can find it over here. The translation was handled by Wid, who also notes that December 4, 2023 was the 25th anniversary of the game.

The post N64 seduction party game Getter Love: Panda Love Unit gets fan translation appeared first on Destructoid.

Ever the versatile games, the first two Doom entries are staples of the dedicated mod community. With the original being crossed over with Doctor Who, it seems mixing franchises is not off the table for the plucky FPS. That also includes other titles from id Software.

Coming from ModDB user DASniperIC, their recent Doom 2 mod is a recreation of 1992's Wolfenstein 3D. Using the former's engine, they've been able to do a faithful reconstruction of the latter. While it doesn't look much different given that they're both retro shooters from a bygone era, you can tell it's Doom because of the UI at the bottom.

It doesn't appear as though this is a full remake of Wolfenstein, though. In the description, DASniperIC says the following:

The maps [sic] layout is basically exactly the same as in Wolfenstein 3D, there is a working chaingun and treasure, 3 bosses and some DEHACKED sillies to better mirror Wolf3D. And a surprise for MAP33 :)

Guten Tag, Doomguy

Given that it says there are three bosses, it's likely that this isn't a full recreation of Wolfenstein 3D. The original game has six bosses, so it's possible that this mod represents maybe half the game. The mention of something special on level 33 also suggests this. I haven't had a chance to play it yet, so I can't confirm that.

It never gets tiring seeing all the interesting modifications that are coming out for these absolute classic FPS games. While there could be a Wolfenstein 3 currently in development, there are evidently more than enough people keeping the old-school games alive and well, decades after their original release dates.

The post Modder remakes Wolfenstein 3D in Doom 2’s engine appeared first on Destructoid.

Primal Rage maybe wasn’t the best fighting game to hit arcades in 1994, but I have some fond memories of playing it with friends. I wish we could get some sort of re-release, or maybe even a release of the canceled (but apparently finished) Primal Rage 2. But we’re not talking about Primal Rage. We’re here to look at DinoRex.

Released by Taito in 1992, DinoRex has a lot in common with Primal Rage. There are dinosaurs animated by stop-motion and humans in the foreground. I would use that same description for both games when trying to explain them to someone who hadn’t played them before. However, while Primal Rage is an “okay, not great” game, DinoRex is more of a “so bad it’s kind of good” kind of game—the very best flavor of kusoge.

It is just incredible.

Ancient Anger

DinoRex is a fighting game where you play as a mostly-naked dude in a mask. He’s got a whip, but it’s not what it looks like, I swear! Your dude wants to become the DinoRex or something, which supposedly means being the best at forcing a dinosaur to fight another dinosaur. While you’re stuck with being a buff naked man, there are seven dinosaurs you can pick from, ranging from chubby to annoying. Each one is extremely different to control, so maybe don’t try to switch midway through a game. It’s like learning to roller skate again after a severe head injury.

Apparently, there’s a part of the world where archeologists apparently have never been, where dinosaurs existed well after their alleged extinction. Long enough that people were able to ride them. DinoRex sees humans doing what humans do, as we take these critically endangered creatures and make them fight for our amusement.

There’s a prize for whoever manages to coerce their dinosaur into winning the tournament; they get to become King. I think. The text crawls that try to tell the narrative are hilariously mistranslated to the point where I don’t think I fully understand what’s going on. There’s some sort of queen involved, but I don’t really know how she plays into this. I think it might just be an excuse to have a woman in a loincloth on the attract screen.

I’m not even being facetious or disingenuous here. DinoRex has more expositional cutscenes than you usually see in this sort of arcade game, and I still can’t really tell what’s going on. It starts out simple enough, then you blink and find it rolling down the steep slope into madness. I still can’t tell if the Queen is some sort of overlord or a prize for winning at dinosaur abuse. It’s very eager to tell you nothing at all.

Primitive Fury

It’s also really difficult to describe the gameplay. It subscribes to the general idea most fighting games following Yie Ar Kung-Fu did. You hold a direction, press a button, and your dinosaur does a thing. However, I’m not sure how many different moves each one has or how they relate to the combination you’ve pressed.

Here’s how you win, though: find the button/direction combo that makes your dinosaur latch onto its opponent’s throat. Keep doing that until someone dies. You win.

If you want to cinch the win, you can force your dinosaur to do its special move. Your special bar is segmented into three pieces. You fill it by holding up, which makes the dinosaur throw its chubby head back and give a mighty roar. Then, once it’s filled, you can hit the special button and then just walk away. So long as it doesn’t get interrupted, your dinosaur will pull off one attack for every segment of the bar you have filled. So, if you have one bar filled, it will knock its opponent back once. If all three are full, your dinosaur will hit the other dino once, wait until it stops skidding along the ground, hit it a second time, wait for it to stop skidding again, and then – you guessed it – hit it again.

The three-hit process takes literally 10 seconds, which, when put in the context of arcade games in general and fighting games specifically, is approximately a decade. In these 10 seconds, no one needs to press a button. The sequence cannot be interrupted. You are a slave to the dino-combo.

Primordial Animosity

On the other hand, the special combos are kind of cool. If there’s one thing that DinoRex does legitimately well, it’s the destruction of its environments. Amazonians scatter, cages are crushed, and dust flies up as structures give out under the ample bodies of the dinosaurs.

It’s not the absolute best part, however. The best part is that every few battles, there’s a bonus stage. These are framed as being dreams, but they involve your portly pal marching through modern cities and wrecking buildings. These don’t really play any better than the fight scenes, but the mere fact that you’re kicking army dudes and knocking helicopters out of the sky makes them worthwhile spectacles.

There are two city bonus levels, but the last one is kicking Amazonians for some reason.

Weirdly, the dream sequences seem to tell a side story. Your dino pal is wrecking up Ho Lee City, which is run by Mr. Ho Lee. Beyond just running a city, Mr. Ho Lee also has some sort of tower that he’s really protective of. He hires the police and military to protect that building in particular from the rotund reptile wreaking havoc, so your ultimate goal is to knock it over.

What that has to do with anything, I have no idea. However, succeeding, you’re rewarded with the “Collopse of the cIvIlIzatIon” [sic, obviously]. Simply incredible.

Uh... Past Vexation

At the end of the fight, for absolutely no reason, a pterodactyl swoops down and snatches up the Amazonian dude as they grieve the loss of their best dinosaur friend. Sometimes, they just fly off with the guy, but every once in a while they’ll just swallow them whole. This sort of player shaming was what made this era of arcade games the best.

It’s hard to tell if the developers were in on the whole ridiculous spectacle – if it’s intentionally humorous or accidentally funny. There are times when it seems like they were trying to make something cool that might pull people away from Street Fighter II, but other times, it’s just too ridiculous to be accidental. Exactly like Deadly Premonition, is what I’m saying.

And like Deadly Premonition, I absolutely love DinoRex. For a long time, it was never ported. It did land on a Taito compilation for PS2 in 2007, but only in Japan. I probably wouldn’t have discovered it if it hadn’t landed on the Taito Milestones 2 collection for Switch. More recently, it’s also available as a standalone Arcade Archives release.

Every once in a while, I come across a kusoge that just is so fascinatingly inept that I practically fall in love. DinoRex was one of these games. I’m so enthusiastic about its terribleness that this is the third time I’ve written about it and each time, I extoll how incredible it is to experience. This is one of the best parts about art across all media. Whether something is well-executed or not doesn’t matter in the least. What matters is how well it connects with you.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

The post DinoRex for Arcade is a spectacle of portly dinosaur violence appeared first on Destructoid.

Remember Ballance? I entirely don’t. But Ziggurat is pulling it out of obscurity (maybe) and onto Steam and GOG on January 5.

Ziggurat recently reproduced another game, Boiling Point, just this past November. But while I had a lot of things to say about my experiences with that game, Ballance is completely new to me. It was released in 2004 by Cyparade and Atari to decent reviews. It apparently wasn’t completely forgotten since it got a sequel in 2019 (involving none of the original staff), and even has a Wikipedia page. 

Speaking of its Wikipedia page, it says, “The game is now considered abandonware, and neither the developers nor publishers are actively tracking its copyrights.” Not anymore! Purge your hard drives. It lives again!

Anyways, Ballance is similar to the 1984 arcade classic, Marble Madness. It’s something of a puzzle platform where you navigate a ball through hazardous mazes. I guess, to use a more recent example, it’s a lot like Super Monkey Ball. It looks pretty fun, to be honest. Nothing in the press materials says whether anything has been fixed or updated in the new release. All the footage and screenshots of it show a 4:3 resolution.

By my standards, as long as it looks fine and runs fine, it’s good enough for a re-release. However, I am unable to confirm that it looks fine and runs fine.

You can find out for yourself when Ballance gets re-release on PC via GOG and Steam on January 5, 2024.

The post Ziggurat is bringing Ballance back on January 5 appeared first on Destructoid.

Retro-bit has announced what they have next in their line of retro re-issues; Eliminate Down for the Genesis/Mega Drive. Pre-orders will run from today November 28, 2023 to January 2, 2024.

I know, Eliminate Down sounds like a weird medical term for a bowel movement, and it doesn’t help that you may not have heard of it before. It was only released on the Mega Drive in Japan and South Korea, and it’s believed that the production run only consisted of a few thousand units. It’s one of the few releases from developer Aprinet. It has never been released digitally, and actually snagging a cartridge from its first run will run you upwards of $500. Some sort of re-release is well overdue.

When it was released in 1993, Eliminate Down failed to really impress the Japanese press. It got rather lackluster reviews. However, more recent impressions from Western importers are a lot more favorable, and, for that matter, I think it’s a pretty excellent game, as well. If anything, it’s just not that original being a horizontal shoot-’em-up in space with a transforming ship. In quite a few ways, it reminds me of Gley Lancer, another game re-issued by Retro-Bit. There aren’t many bells and whistles, but it presents a laser-focused experience.

Retro-Bit’s release will feature a lenticular slip-cover, classic Genesis/Mega Drive clamshell case with reversible art, a manual, and it will be encased in a sparkly, transparent green shell that they refer to as “Emerald Nebula.” While I’m not usually a fan of transparent cartridges, I have some of their previous re-issues, and they go all the way with them. For the Valis and Gley Lancer cartridges, they even print the game’s name on the back of the circuit board. It’s a pretty deluxe way of enshrining obscure games.

Also of note, Retro-Bit snuck in a "secret code for those who feel the game is a bit too difficult" which can be found in the manual.

If you want to nab Eliminate Down, pre-orders will open today and run until January 2, 2024. They base how many they’ll produce on how many are pre-ordered. It will be available from Limited Run Games, Castlemania Games, and Rondo Products for North America, and will run you $59.99 USD.

The post Eliminate Down is getting a Genesis/Mega Drive re-issue from Retro-Bit appeared first on Destructoid.

Money is really depressing to me. Not only have recent events left me with a deep anxiety about finances, it seems that a lot of people are struggling, and the best you can hope for is to struggle less. I don’t want to discuss this on a deeper level, so instead, let’s talk about Wall Street Kid.

Wall Street Kid is actually known as The Money Game II: Kabutochou no Kiseki in Japan, meaning that, yes, it’s the second in a series, with the first game never seeing a release outside of Japan. You could also look at the games as a spin-off of another Sofel series, Casino Kid, but they’re not actually related aside from sharing a developer.

I want to note off the top that I wouldn’t consider Wall Street Kid to be kusoge. It’s really not that bad, and Sofel did a great job localizing it by basically rebuilding everything to be more Western-friendly. It’s just such a bizarre game that I didn’t see myself covering it any other way, and it fits best in this column. I’m mad with power.

The game looks easy, that's why it sells

Wall Street Kid places you in the leather wingtips of the eponymous protagonist as he’s informed of the death of a family member. Apparently, your distant uncle has passed and left you his absurdly colossal fortune, but only if you prove that you’re already privileged enough to deserve it. Uncle Benedict has some pretty specific demands that you carry on the family name with undeserved dignity.

You’re given $500,000 of seed money, and you need to play the stock market to build up your life. You need to buy a house, get married, honeymoon on a yacht, and then re-obtain the family castle. For some reason, you need to do this in four months. Otherwise, the $600 Billion (wtf!?) in assets goes to… I don’t know, probably some greedy charity or something.

Those are some pretty incredible demands from a dead guy with too much money and no children.

Essentially, it means that you have to have enough money to pass certain milestones. At the end of the first month (April), you need to buy a $1 million home. That’s pretty funny nowadays with an out-of-control, overpriced housing market. 

Kicking, squealing Gucci little piggy

What’s funnier is that, at the start of the game, Mr. Kid already has a fiancée, and you’re now obligated to keep her happy in order to receive your absurdly massive inheritance. That means she’ll keep coming to you wanting you to buy her expensive things and will leave you if you don’t. Ah, true love.

She must know about the inheritance because this is practically extortion. She can demand anything she wants because if you don’t give in, she can just leave, and you can kiss that money goodbye. It’s a hilariously effective and cynical approach to a relationship. Every time the phone would ring, I’d find myself chanting, “Please don’t be my girlfriend,” before advancing the text. Video games have always been great at teaching children about adult relationships.

To be fair to the fiancée, you can say no to some of her demands and still succeed. It’s just if you don’t give in occasionally or ignore her outright that you lose.

Failing upwards

Games that simulate the stock exchange weren’t uncommon, even when Wall Street Kid hit the market. The concept is already pretty abstract and rooted in mathematics, so it’s a perfect fit for a video conversion. As such, there were attempts at stock exchange simulations before video games even left mainframe computers.

The milestones you have to reach are perhaps the only thing that really makes Wall Street Kid stand out. The day-by-day task of betting on stock is pretty boring. You get the newspaper in the morning that tells you what stocks are doing well, and the best way to succeed is to just put your money into one of the day’s top performers. I never had one severely crash out on me, but for that matter, I never lucked out and won big on something. It’s a rather predictable market.

Actually, I’m not sure if there’s even much room for skill here. The best strategy seems to be buying as much high-performing stock as you can at the time. When it stops performing, you just sell your stocks and trade over to something else. Whether or not that stock continues at that rate or not is kind of just random. Sometimes, not much of anything would rise in the market for me, so it wouldn’t matter what I picked. Realistic? I don’t know. I’m not an investor.

Since there’s a newspaper, I would have expected that it would cover events that impact certain stocks. Something like a worldwide telecom outage that affects the prices of ATNT or a war breaking out that boosts steel prices. There’s none of that. Categories of stocks just do well some days, and that’s about it.

Love must be forgotten, life can always start up anew

At the end of June, you get to bid on the Benedict family castle, and by the end of July, you need to have enough money to pay it off. My playthrough video of Wall Street Kid is clocked at over 2 hours, but I accidentally said “yes” to something I shouldn’t have in my first attempt and lost in the first month and had to start over. Really, you could probably put a bow on it in an hour if your wheeling is up to par with your dealing. And you don’t accidentally select the wrong dialogue option.

I failed at the end, falling a hair short of affording the castle.

So, I guess I don’t “earn” the astronomical inheritance. How heartbreaking. I guess I’m just going to have to live the rest of my life as a failure with my wife, dog, million-dollar house, yacht, and $2.5 million in assets. All that hard work for nothing. Why must I suffer?

But I'll start over, and this time, I will have that inheritance that I deserve. Then, I will rub elbows with the other elite of this world. The champions who reign above average humans. And then I will gradually lose touch with the common person and form a spiritual hole where my humanity used to be. I will try to fill it, and when that doesn’t work, I’ll just hide it behind dead eyes, an empty smile, and a passionless relationship. I’d obscure it by establishing a charity for some popular cause. I'd show it to those beneath the heel of my boot that I still have a soul – some sort of compassion – while at the same time using it to dodge taxes and funnel money into my other corporate endeavors before it lands right back into my pockets. Not one drop of my money should be touched by the disgusting sorts of people who seek charity. What have they done to deserve it?

Not like me. I earned every dime. I played Wall Street Kid.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

The post Wall Street Kid for NES makes capitalists of us all appeared first on Destructoid.

Being born late into the ‘80s, the Atari 2600 was an intriguing mystery to me. By the time the N64 hit, the NES felt old to me, so the idea of a console even older than that was exciting. This was before you could jump onto YouTube to look up gameplay. I wanted to see it for myself.

It wasn’t until college, around the time that the retro gamer identity really became a thing, that I finally found myself a 2600 Jr. Since then, I keep tripping into 2600 games. I own around 60, which isn’t as impressive as some of my other libraries, but considering I never actively tried to find Atari 2600 games, it says something.

A major issue with this, however, is that every model of the 2600 uses an RF output, and modern TVs hate it. Even late-model CRTs will sometimes refuse to display an Atari 2600, and those that do often do so behind a sheet of noise. I eventually modified my four-switch 2600 to composite video to finally get it to play nice with my modern setup. However, that’s not an option for a lot of people.

For people who want the 2600 experience without all the fuss, Atari themselves (and Plaion) have created the Atari 2600+.

Bringing back woodgrain electronics

The Atari 2600+ is based on the four-switch model of the 2600. Clone versions of the console are hardly a rarity, since the Atari Flashback has been around for nearly two decades. This one is unique, however, as it accepts Atari 2600 and 7800 cartridges. But rather than just be a reproduction, it outputs through HDMI and supports widescreen. It’s also a bit smaller.

If you’re a retro enthusiast, your first question is going to be what kind of emulation it uses. A lot of modern retro consoles have switched to using field-programmable gate array (FPGA) hardware emulation rather than software emulation because it’s more accurate. The Atari 2600+, unfortunately, uses software emulation through Stella for 2600 games and ProSystem for 7800. Stella has been around since 1996, so it’s damned good software emulation, but it’s software emulation nonetheless.

The major problem here is that compatibility isn’t perfect. There are games that won’t work on the Atari 2600+, but they are rare. Atari has a list of games, and there are only three fails as of writing, but there are quite a few that are untested, and a few that I noticed aren’t even listed at all. For example, one of my favorite Atari 2600 games, 1986’s Solaris, isn’t listed. However, I can confirm that it’s a pass.

Another downside is that the system needs to load at startup. Whereas the Atari 2600 gets an image on display the moment you flip the switch, the Atari 2600+ displays a splash screen, then states that it’s loading, and then you get the image. I don’t find this to be that much of a nuisance, especially since you can hotswap games to avoid the initial splash, but I do feel it’s worth noting.

If looks could kill

Aesthetically, it’s pretty spot on. From the wood panel front to the cold, dull click of the switches, it’s a good reproduction. The big new additions are a switch on the back that changes it from 16:9 to 4:3, and the logo on the front lights up. Otherwise, it’s basically just a smaller four-switch 2600.

The controller is also pretty exact. The CX40 joystick is one of the most iconic controller designs in video game history, but it also sucks. However, this is a good reproduction, as it features the rubberized stick (some aftermarkets just have a plastic stick), so long play may give you blisters. I didn’t pop it open to see if it uses the dome contacts of the original or if they changed it to carbon dot contacts. The screws are under the pads on the bottom of the controller, and I just don’t want to pry them off a perfectly good CX40.

Of course, the CX40 is an uncomfortable controller with a single button that can’t even be reversed for left-handed people. I had the idea of plugging in a Sega Genesis controller, since both the CX40 and Genesis controller use DB9 ports. I’d swear this worked on my original 2600, but maybe I’m mistaken, because it doesn’t work with the 2600+. I tried a 3DO controller as well. Nothing.

Control freak

What’s mostly vexing about this is that the 7800 had a two-button controller. I own a single Atari 7800 game, Pole Position II (another accidental acquisition). It requires a two-button controller, a button for brake, and another for accelerate. The CX40 has one button, so it doesn’t work. The above controllers don’t work either. I tried a Sega Master System controller, and there’s not button mapped to accelerate.

Atari has announced they’re reproducing the Atari 78+ controller, which is sort of great, but also not really because it’s not the best controller. Also, you have to buy it separately.

If we’re using software emulation here, I’m not sure why I can’t use whatever DB9 controller I want. I get that it’s trying to be faithful to the original hardware, but I feel this could have been a place where we could have deviated enough for comfort’s sake. I’m just saying it would be nice to plug in my 8BitDo M30 and use it wireless. As it is, if you want wireless play, you’re going to have to find one of the actual 2600 wireless controllers from the ‘80s. Just a warning: those get interrupted if an ambulance drives by or someone turns on a microwave.

I’m not sure if this can be addressed later. The splash screen states that this is v1.00, which suggests to me that the firmware (or software layer) can be updated. However, if there’s a way to access any software settings, I can’t find it. It would have been nice if you could tweak certain things about the console if you’re savvy. Like, maybe turning off the sprite limitations to get rid of flicker on some games. Scanlines, maybe?

In the slot

As for games, the Atari 2600+ comes packed with a 10-in-1 cartridge. It includes some obvious entries like Adventure, Combat, Haunted House, Missile Command, and Yars’ Revenge mixed in with some other common games that are less well-remembered.

Interestingly, the 10-in-1 and the 4-in-1 that comes with the CX30 paddle controllers both use DIP switches on the back of the cartridge to select the game you want. This is probably so they remain compatible with original hardware, as an in-game selection isn’t as easy to display. I kind of find it cool that they did it this way, but I also think that a normal home user might think it’s a bit intimidating.

Alongside the Atari 2600+ launch, Atari also released Berzerk Enhanced Edition and Mr. Run and Jump. 

I think for Berzerk, it’s using the homebrew hack created by Mike Mika, but I don’t see him credited anywhere. It’s mostly just the normal 2600 version of Berzerk, but with a few added voice lines. Pretty neat, considering the hardware. The enemies can also shoot diagonally now, making it more in line with the original arcade version. The voices are impressive.

Mr. Run and Jump is an actually new 2600 game. It was created by John Mikula of Graphite Lab and was converted into a modern title that was released this past July. It’s an extremely basic platformer, but it’s surprisingly slick for the 2600, which didn’t see many games of the genre. I have to note that neither John Mikula nor Graphite Lab is listed on the packaging or in the game itself (unless there are end credits, which wasn’t common on the console). I suppose that’s very faithful to Atari’s classic way of doing business.

Credits might have been included in the manuals for these games, but surprisingly, there are no manuals. This is especially weird for Berzerk Enhance Edition because it has a number of different game modes that you choose using the Game Select lever on the console. However, without the manual, the only way of knowing what these are is by looking it up online. Further, Evil Otto doesn’t appear in the default game setting, so… What the hell?

You get what you get

You mostly get what you get with the 2600+. It’s an Atari 7800 in a smaller Atari 2600 casing that is powered by USB-C and outputs with HDMI. It’s not impressive. If you’re familiar with 2600 games and don’t like them, this isn’t going to change your mind. However, if you’re already somewhat invested in the console and want one that doesn’t use RF without having to mod it, then this is probably for you.

I mentioned that it does widescreen, but it’s just 4:3 stretched to 16:9. I know there are people who like filling their screen with a stretched image, but not in this house.

That era of home consoles is far from my favorite. Each game is a short experience that usually can only keep you entertained for about five minutes before you’re slotting in the next cartridge. It can be enjoyable with friends, especially if you’re willing to compete for high scores. On the plus side, the entire catalogue of the console is still reasonably cheap. If you want to build up a stack of games, it isn’t expensive to do so.

And that’s that. If you know what you’re getting into, the Atari 2600+ will suit your needs. It does what it says it does and not much else beyond that. It might be a good starting point if you want to build a 2600 collection. It’s definitely a good way to get the full physical Atari 2600 experience. But that’s it. It’s exactly what I expected and nothing more.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the hardware purchased by the reviewer]}

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