8-Bit Retrospective

Wow, another post! It takes a special game for me to really want to update this blog, and I've been just finishing one up lately. Before I delve into the 8-bit greatness as is this game, I should probably recap what I've done in the past few months. I feel like I'll talk about a game on here, but never finish the story.

I finished the main story of Fallout: New Vegas. Yeah. Well...it was extremely underwhelming. As much fun as the game was the whole time, that ending was really bad. I sided with the Legion after I killed Caesar (it was an accident, I swear), though that had no affect on the endgame content. I assassinated the President (sniping him from afar was quite satisfying, too bad I had to used VATS - or else I would have been known to be the spy). The Legion took over the Mojave, and basically killed everyone in their path. The Great Khans were merged into the Legion, but lost their name. The NCR, raiders, Powder Gangers, and remaining Brotherhood of Steel members were all hunted down and killed. Everyone else escaped West towards the Pacific. Oh, except the Boomers. Since they helped during the last attack, the Legion left them alone. As for me, the Legion leader gave me a gold coin with my face on it and said thanks. Both of which are useless to me. Then I was sent on my way and literally disappeared into the sunset. The 2nd saddest ending (but #1 most depressing) to a video game that I've ever seen, behind Conker's Bad Fur Day. I mean c'mon, nothing beats Conker's girlfriend dying at the end of the game, defeating half the purpose of the game. Maybe one day I'll play the NV dlc and finish the sidequests. Or start a new game and go on a melee weapon killing spree right from the get-go.

Since I've moved down here for grad school, I've barely played any console games. The house is so quiet, I feel bad having my TV on. So my DS is where I've been spending my game time. I should mention that I also recently finished Etrian Odyssey III, and started Etrian Odyssey. That deserves a separate post, with much more creativity and thought processing. It may still be coming, as I've been thinking about a good way to write it. Cross your fingers, if that post becomes a reality, I personally think it could turn out to be awesome.

So we come to Retro Game Challenge. If it weren't for Retro Game Master appearing on Kotaku, it is doubtful I would have picked this up. But I'm glad I did, and also happy that I played through Game Dev Story, as they feel similar, in the sense that fake game companies hype new games coming out soon, and have funny names for game rip-offs. I would like to discuss, however, each individual game found in RGC, and my feelings on them as well. Let me begin by saying that I have beaten all 32 (?) original challenges, with no cheats used. Even though many of the challenges are simple, I'm proud of that fact. I have beaten 5 of the 8 in story mode, with the only cheat used is continues, besides Rally King. I'll discuss the cheats more soon though.

Cosmic Gate was a wonderful first game. I believe it was based off of Galaga? I didn't take the time to look up what some of these games were ripped off from (though most seem pretty original). The game was not too difficult, yet made sure to amp up the difficulty in the later levels. The power-up was a neat idea, as it was not always easy to obtain, but extremely useful when used correctly. I did in fact use the super-secret warp to beat the game, to go from level 1 to 64 in one warp. I was disappointed that I had to use a continue when I only had 2 enemies left on the screen. Obviously once I continued, I had no problem defeating the two. Young Arino was programmed well for this game, and made the perfect noises and uttered the right phrases at perfect times, making me feel like I was doing really well. However, he becomes increasingly annoying in later games.

Robot Ninja Haggle Man was pretty frustrating in the beginning. At first I didn't quite understand the controls, combined with the mechanics of the doors. It took quite a few play-throughs to wrap my head around the ideas, but finally at one point it just clicked. Too bad once I beat the first (fake) boss, the challenge ended my spectacular run. Also, once again, when I beat the game, the only time I had to use a continue was during the 2nd and real final boss fight. And with no surprise, after I continued I didn't have much trouble defeating him. At this point I didn't realize RCG was comprised of sequels as well.

Rally King fits with what the developers were aiming for, however in my opinion, it is very poorly programmed. The concept is neat, and was happy to see them try to include an 8-bit type racing game. But with such a small screen, fast speeds, and a car that takes up an 8th of the screen, walls and objects come out of nowhere. It's very frustrating to be flying along in first place, when a wall appears from the top of the screen, when the tiny arrow showed that it's just a zig-zag in the track. And of course one bounces of the wall, comes to a complete stop after losing all momentum, and then gets rammed from behind by another racer. To me the game is almost unplayable. Personally, I wish they would have taken the arcade approach, with those monster truck racing games where the whole track is showed on the screen, and you can see every racer going around and over the obstacles. That would have greatly improved the overall RGC experience. But that's just what I want, and probably isn't 8-bit (though I don't think this is either, because it reminds me so much of MicroMachines, which I thought only came out on 32-bit systems?). To beat this game in story mode, I turned off all other vehicles, and took my time around the tracks. I would have turned off all damage as well, but couldn't get that cheat to work.

Star Prince is easily my favorite game on the cartridge, bar none. I'm not the biggest fan of shoot-em-ups, but when they aren't excessively difficult and include power-ups, I like to give them a shot. And this is exactly the type of schmups I enjoy. The first four challenges were no problem, though beating the game gave me quite some trouble. I had to use one continue on the first (and fake! I loved that!) final boss, and probably about 10 continues on the second (and real) final boss. The final bosses weren't that much different, but I feel like the real one was a tad faster, shot more projectiles which moved faster as well, and came further down the screen (reducing flying space) than the fake. I loved that game though, I hope to one day beat it without using any continues, which I could see myself doing here soon. Maybe what really stood out to me was the shield which absorbs enemy bullets, and after every 3, released a large charged shot. The shield made the game easier, but also gave the player a chance to try to speed up the game, and demolish enemies at a faster rate. This is the game which made me hate young Arino. There is so much going on during the final boss, that Arino never shuts up. Whenever the player has the shield up, and gets hit by a powerful shot, the shield disappears, and Arino makes a comment. Well the player is continuously putting the shield back up to either absorb the many bullets, or deflect those large shots, all of which are coming towards the ship at an alarming rate. So it leaves Arino making a noise or comment literally every 2 seconds, and that is not an exaggeration. Whoa! Dude! Aww! Wow! Whoa! It rivals Navi, it's that bad.

Rally King SP was completely unnecessary. Did the developers believe that the first Rally King was that good, that they felt the need to include a "sequel"? And it's the least bit of a sequel compared to all of the other sequels in the game. They changed a couple things on the track, but the courses are still exactly the same. Had to use the "no other racers" cheat again to finish this game. Nothing more needs to be said about this game, except that the developers added more garbage.

Robot Ninja Haggle Man 2 was a much better sequel. Not much was changed, besides larger levels (with thankfully much more time on the clock) and a few new items. But even many of the enemies are rehashed. But it's not really a bad thing. I don't have much to comment on about this game, because it really is just a sequel to an already pretty good game. Had to use a couple continues to beat this game, but not many. Definitely possible to beat both without continues.

Guardia Quest is the oddball of the group. As neat as it sounds to have a retro rpg included on this cartridge, it doesn't really fit it with these games in the long run. Each of these games can be beaten in a short amount of time, and definitely in one sitting, even the final game. But being an rpg, one needs to take hours to beat this game. As neat as it would be to legitimately beat this game without cheats, I feel like my time could be better spent elsewhere. Not that this is a bad rpg, it really is pretty good. Kinda grindy, but it's doable. Each of my characters are level 15, and have pretty good weapons, but I really don't feel like spending more time beating this game, especially when there is a cheat to view the credits. I think I'm just going to use the cheat to view the credits. I'm not wasting my time.

I will however, spend a great deal of time focusing on Robot Ninja Haggle Man 3. This game seems amazing. It's like Ninja Gaiden, except with rpg elements. And with me being someone who loves games where you collect trinkets and money, Haggle Man 3 is awesome. I plan on beating this game without any cheats or continues used. Though yes, I have seen how unfair many of the levels can be, with brutal platforming with enemies knocking the player back into the pits. But just like Arino on RGM, the player just needs to try again and again to figure out how to beat the game.

So there are my thoughts on RGC, and I hope I didn't miss any games. I recently purchased the Humble Indie Bundle 3, and while most games are crap (okay, not crap, but just not very good indie games, compared to what I'm used to), a few are very fun. So I hope to post again soon, to discuss some of the games that came in the bundle. I also received the Humble Indie Bundle 2, since I payed more than the average donator. $7.50 for 11 games is tough to beat. Unfortunately I started researching another cheap game that I've seen here and there online, and realized how much I want it. So if I do end up getting it, I'll for sure blog about it.