Downwards Compatible - Video Games and Pop Culture

NES Replay: Athena

2013-05-20T09:00:00.000-05:00

Developer: Micronics
Publisher: SNK
Released: 1987
SNK: Oh, SNK.

Oh, SNK. I trusted you. I trusted you, and you let me down.

SNK's games mean quality. While they're mostly known today for their fighting games, throughout their storied history they made so much more than that. We already reviewed one SNK game, Alpha Mission, that demonstrated that they had a sturdy handle on shooters. They've made other games that were spectacular, like the Art of Fighting series, King of the Monsters, and a platformer that's a personal favorite of mine called Spinmaster, among many others.

Athena was an early effort, a game ported from the arcade to the NES. You play as Athena, a scantily clad warrior woman who fights with kicks and picks up weapons from fallen foes.

It's shockingly bad, far worse than I would expect from SNK.
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NES Replay: Astyanax

2013-05-13T09:00:00.000-05:00

Developer: Aicom
Publisher: Jaleco
Released: 1990
Astyanax: Back That Astyanax Up

There are a lot of NES games with positively awful names, but unfortunately, I can’t pick on Astyanax for that. Astyanax is a name from Greek mythology, the son of Hector who was thrown from a tower in Troy. Also most unfortunately, Astyanax (the game) isn’t so bad that I can make some joke about wanting to throw it from a tower.

Astyanax is an arcade port, but it’s completely different than the actual arcade game. The arcade game was about a warrior who receives a message from God and goes to fight demons. The NES game was about a 16-year-old boy who is summoned to a different dimension in order to rescue the ruler of Remlia with the help of a fairy named Cutie.

So let’s talk about Nintendo of America’s censorship policy in the US.

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Electric Spoilerland: Iron Man 3

2013-05-08T15:40:00.000-05:00

Spoilers for Iron Man 3 after the jump break.

I'm serious, this post is full of spoilers. Don't read this unless you've seen Iron Man 3.

3... 2... 1...

You've been warned.

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NES Replay Kickstarter

2013-05-07T22:02:00.002-05:00

So I'm starting my own Kickstarter for NES Replay. Take a look at it here. If you have any questions, let us know! Thanks!

NES Replay: Asterix

2013-05-06T09:00:00.000-05:00

Developer: Bit Managers
Publisher: Infogrames
Released: 1993
Aw haw haw: Oui oui!

Most Americans are not familiar with Asterix, and there's a very good reason for it: We're all a bunch of xenophobes.

Mind you, most Americans aren't doing it out of spite, and probably don't even know we're doing it. Most people aren't even trying to be xenophobic. It just sort of happens, and when it's pointed out to us we feel bad about it, then go right back to our American TV shows, music and movies.

America is kind of strange like that. While other countries around the world will gladly consume entertainment from other countries, America won't. We'll accept something from Great Britain, because we like our foreign entertainment foreign, but not too foreign. If there's something that's in a language other than English? Woah, woah, woah there, fella. We're from America and we speak American.

"But what about Gangnam Style?" Well, there's another corollary to our xenophobia: We like foreign things if we can laugh at them for being foreign. Gangnam Style was popular because Americans could watch the video and laugh at those crazy foreigners doing crazy foreigner things, and then once they were done laughing they had the song stuck in their head. If Gangnam Style didn't have that wacky video, it wouldn't have been nearly as popular.
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Review: Surgeon Simulator 2013

2013-05-04T20:14:00.000-05:00

There's a new genre of game that I'm calling the "Glorious Failure" genre. It includes games like QWOP, CLOP, and the demo of Surgeon Simulator 2013. In a Glorious Failure game, you could conceivably win with the tools you’re given, yet those tools are so difficult to use that only the insane would be able to succeed. Failure is a much more common (and hilarious) result.

In fact, failure is kind of the point of this genre. The sillier you look and the more ridiculous your attempts, the more fun you'll end up having.

So why do I include the demo of Surgeon Simulator and not the full game? Because the full game of Surgeon Simulator 2013 sort of forgets that the whole point of these games is failure.

In Surgeon Simulator 2013, you play as a surgeon who has to perform complex surgical procedures on poor, defenseless patients. You control your fingers with a few keys on the keyboard, and you move, lower and tilt your hand with the mouse. The general idea of Surgeon Simulator 2013 is that you're supposed to successfully complete a heart transplant, kidney transplant or brain transplant using one hand and a variety of surgical tools.

That's ostensibly the idea behind it, but it's so much more fun pawing at the tools like a drunken toddler and causing mayhem. Most of the videos online of Surgeon Simulator show the players giggling as they embed a scalpel into the patient’s lung, or accidentally dropping a bonesaw into the patient’s chest cavity and desperately trying to get it out. That’s when Surgeon Simulator is at its best: When everything goes wrong.

However, Surgeon Simulator 2013 breaks that feeling. Instead, they ask you to actually perform the surgeries from start to finish, and then you can unlock other surgeries. Now, this may not sound like a flaw to you. After all, isn't the point of a game that you need to improve so you can advance onward?

Yes, but Glorious Failure games aren't the same thing. Remember, in a Glorious Failure game, the controls are usually so needlessly complex that you can't be expected to succeed, and failure is encouraged. At some times, Surgeon Simulator 2013 gets this. For example, Surgeon Simulator 2013 gives you an achievement if you throw two hearts into the chest cavity, if you throw in something that doesn't belong or if you flip off the patient.

But then, they ask you to actually do the surgeries, and it's just frustrating.

For example, to do a heart transplant, what you're supposed to do is break the ribcage, rip out the lungs, cut out the heart and toss another heart in there. Unlike the demo version of Surgeon Simulator 2013, the ribcage splinters into a million little pieces. If you toss in the heart and there are too many ribcage pieces sitting in the chest cavity, you don't succeed with the surgery because the heart can’t land where it needs to. You have to pick out the tiny pieces of bone first, which can be a problem if you have the heart there..

The kidney transplant is even worse. You're presented with the large and small intestine and have to remove them in order to get to the kidneys. I swear, I've sat there for at least a half an hour with scalpels, saws, lasers and hammers trying to remove the organs and have gotten nowhere. Once, I nicked the corner of the small intestine and severed a tiny corner. That was as close as I've gotten to removing it. I’ve grabbed onto the large intestine and pulled. It didn’t budge.

This sort of behavior is funny when you're expected to fail. However, when you're trying to succeed and you can't because the controls get in the way, that's terrible.

Bossa Games needed to go one way or the other: Either tidy up the controls so that the player could succeed (which defeats the whole purpose of the game) or let the player fail and still proceed. They should have actually encouraged such failure, like allowing you to proceed if you've killed the patient in under two minutes or something like that.

Is that morbid? Well, this is a game where you're smashing open ribcages with a hammer and ingesting drugs accidentally. If you're going to go that route, take it all the way. Allow the player to plant a little flag inside the chest cavity. Accidentally start yourself on fire. Cause the patient to wake up momentarily. Throw a kidney into a paper shredder. Take it all the way. The more mayhem, the better. The more failure, the better.

Instead, taking a game that's built for failure and then expecting the player to succeed is just unfair. For example, on the title screen I spent twenty minutes trying to get my hand to pick up a floppy disc and insert it into a computer, and you expect me to remove a brain without killing the patient? Yeah, not happening.

When Surgeon Simulator 2013 works, it’s a thing of morbid beauty. When it doesn’t, it’s an exercise in frustration and ragequitting. A shame, too, because they really had something on their hands there, and I’m not referring to the kidneys on ice.

Final Grade: D+

NES Replay: Arkista's Ring

2013-04-29T09:00:00.000-05:00

Have you ever played a game where it feels like everything should fit together, but never quite does? As you're playing it, you say, "I should like this. Everything about it is objectively OK, but I don't like it at all and can't exactly put my finger on why."

That's how I felt while playing Arkista's Ring. The controls in Arkista's Ring are solid. The music is passable, and the graphics are clean. So why does it leave me so cold?

Arkista's Ring is an overhead action-puzzle game in the same vein of Legend of Zelda. You play as a warrior woman who wields a bow and arrow. You must fight against hordes of monsters and make your way to pick up the titular ring of Arkista that you can use to save the world or something. Along the way you pick up different tools that can improve your armor and health and help you lay waste to your enemies.

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Review: Starseed Pilgrim

2013-04-25T20:39:00.003-05:00

Remember seeing a magic trick when you were a kid? The first time you saw a magician saw a lady in half, you were shocked. Then, when he put her back together, you were stunned. You wondered in amazement, “How did he do that?”

Then, someone showed you how the trick worked. They showed you that there are two boxes, and the lady bunches herself up in one box while another woman sticks her legs out of the other box to give the illusion of a woman sawed in half. There was probably a moment of excitement when you finally realized what had been happening the whole time. However, you no longer cared to see the trick afterwards. It no longer held your attention in the same way because you knew exactly what was happening.

Starseed Pilgrim reminded me of that. Starseed Pilgrim is a 2D platformer game with emergent gameplay, where you're expected to make your way around the world and explore for exploration's sake. The early instructions in the game are the equivalent of, "Here is how to move. Press the Space Bar to plant a seed. Go." You're dumped into an all-white world and that's it.
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DLC Quest Giveaway Winner!

2013-04-22T12:34:00.002-05:00

We've selected a winner in our DLC Quest Giveaway! It's Bernard H. with this response:

I'd like to see the consoles and hand helds give independent developers the ability to run and distribute their code without a gatekeeper.

Here are a couple other responses:

I would like to see the video game industry make games more cross platform. PC gamers would love to play the newer Halo games on PC for example, but are unwilling to buy an Xbox just for that. - Alex R.

Only thing i want to see from developers is that they change how they make their games and get suggestions from testers, consumers, etc. - M. Noku

Interesting ideas, folks. Thanks for responding, and thanks for playing!

NES Replay: Arkanoid

2013-04-22T09:00:00.000-05:00

Developer: Taito
Publisher: Taito
Released: 1987
Who Came Up With These Game Names:
Arkanoid? Amagon? Astyanax? Did they
just pick out of a bag of Scrabble letters?

The "Breakout clone" is one of the oldest game genres still in existence. Breakout was originally made in 1976, and it's basically single-player Pong. You control a paddle, and you bounce a ball off that paddle against a bunch of bricks. When the ball touches a brick, the brick disappears. The object is to get rid of all of the bricks in the level.

Since it's such an easy game to clone, other game companies rushed to copy it almost immediately after it launched. The most successful of these clones is Arkanoid, made by Taito. Arkanoid became so successful that it's almost eclipsed Breakout in popularity and notoriety.

Fun fact: The original arcade came used a trackball to control the paddle, which allowed for really great fine-grained control. It meant that if you were caught out of position, you could quickly scramble back to the right place if you needed to. I could never get the hang of the trackball myself, but my dad was awesome at it.

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Review: Gunman Clive

2013-04-19T11:22:00.004-05:00

Developer: Horberg Productions
Publisher: Horberg Productions

Gunman Clive is the best hand-drawn platformer featuring a cowboy who goes to space and fights robots that I've ever played on the 3DS.

All facetiousness aside, Gunman Clive is pretty great. It's a platform/shooter game where you play as the titular Clive and rescue a damsel in distress. Of, if you prefer, play as the damsel in distress and rescue Clive.

The first thing you'll notice when you start up Gunman Clive is the unique graphical style. Everything looks like a "Wanted" poster in the Old West, which gives it a look that's instantly distinguishable from any other game on the eShop. It uses a limited color palette of yellows and oranges that you would think it would get boring to look at, but it doesn't.

Clive does almost everything right for an action /platformer. The controls are really tight. I never ran into a situation where I missed a jump or got myself killed because of the controls. The levels are varied and interesting, with tons of little surprises along the way.

I only have two complaints. One, the music is a little bland in parts, but it's not awful. I played the whole game with the sound on and I didn't regret it. Two, Clive is awfully short. I finished the whole game in an hour. However, it's only $1.99, so you can't get too angry about the length.

I didn't know what to expect from Gunman Clive, but I'm glad I played it, and you'll like it too.

Final Grade: A-

NES Replay: Archon

2013-04-15T09:00:00.000-05:00

Developer: Bulletproof Software
Publisher: Activision
Released: 1989
Yes: I'm really that bad at chess

I am legendarily bad at chess. It's not that I don't know the rules. I know the rules about as good as anyone else. It's not that I don't know that you're supposed to plan ahead, either. I read about chess and look up information about the best strategies, and yet, for some reason I just can't play chess no matter what I do.

Quick story: A friend of mind wanted to play chess against me. I warned him that I was really bad at chess, and his response was, "That's OK, I'm bad at it too." As the game dragged on, it got so bad that he actually said, with some annoyance, "Do you even know how to play this game?" I explained that, yes, I've been playing chess since fifth grade, and no, I have not improved in the intervening twenty years. He quit in disgust.

So that makes me uniquely unqualified to review Archon, a chess variant that was published by Electronic Arts for the PC in 1983 and then ported over the NES. It's clear that Archon was supposed to combine the best of chess and the best of video games into one package. Did it succeed?
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Read This: Football's Worst Nightmare

2013-04-12T14:32:00.000-05:00

Here's an article about the last professional football player to die on the field. Sobering stuff.

NES Replay: Arch Rivals

2013-04-08T09:00:00.001-05:00

Developer: Midway
Publisher: Acclaim
Released: 1990
Detroit Melee Joke: On its way

Remember our discussion on sports games that accompanied All-Pro Basketball? If not, here's a recap: In the NES years, you had two choices when making a sports game: You could either try and make an exact replica of the sport (which usually wouldn't work because of the NES' limitations) or make something that felt like the sport but wasn't quite the same thing (which also didn't always work).

All-Pro Basketball tried to make an exact replica of basketball and didn't turn out very well. Arch Rivals tried to just have fun with the concept of basketball, and it was all right. Not perfect, but all right.

Arch Rivals is a two-on-two basketball game where you can steal the ball easily, knock down other players and shatter the backboard with thunderous dunks. If that idea sounds familiar, it's because Arch Rivals was made by Midway, who eventually turned out NBA Jam. Yes, Arch Rivals was NBA Jam before NBA Jam was NBA Jam.

However, there's a little bit more going on than that. The joke in Arch Rivals is that the referee is near-blind and really short, so he has no control over the game. Because of that, the players have resorted to violence and throw punches at each other. It's pretty hilarious to run across the court toward an opponent with your fist cocked and knock them out cold right before they take a shot. It's like a continual Detroit Melee, except without Ron Artest climbing into the stands. It's almost the best idea anyone has had for a basketball video game ever, but Arch Rivals doesn't quite do it right.
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Review: Dungeon Hearts

2013-04-05T15:07:00.002-05:00

Developer: Cube Roots
Publisher: Devolver Digital

Dungeon Hearts has a really cool idea at its core: What if battles in RPGs took place entirely via a fast-paced match-three puzzle interface instead of the old menu-based way? It's an exceptional idea, but Dungeon Hearts can't quite pull it off.

In Dungeon Hearts, you play through a series of battles, one right after the other. At the bottom of the screen, there's a constantly-scrolling stream of tiles called the FateStream. The tiles have different colors which correspond to the colors of your four units, and mixed in to the FateStream are tiles that can damage your units or cause various status effects to affect them. When a tile gets to the end of the FateStream, it's gone, so in order to defeat your enemies, you have to quickly match tiles.

Your enemies also get tiles that appear at random in the FateStream, and if the tiles reach your characters, then they apply that effect, whether it's a straight attack, freezing, weakening, or some other debuff. Each unit has its own allotment of hit points, and when they run out, your game ends.

After each battle is complete, you're given another pile of gems to sort through, except that matching the gems in this area enables your characters to gain levels. Gaining levels strengthens your characters and unlocks special skills which can be used during combat.

Got all that? Good. The system itself is great and fairly easy to master, but the way the system is implemented is problematic.

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Giveaway Time! Free Copy of DLC Quest!

2013-04-02T22:19:00.004-05:00

Hey everybody, I'm giving away a free Steam key to the pretty decent satire/platformer DLC Quest! Here's how to enter:
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NES Replay: Anticipation

2013-04-01T17:00:00.000-05:00


Developer: Rare Publisher: Nintendo Released: 1988 That Title Screen: What is going ON

When Nintendo gets an idea, they stick with it.

A lot of recent Nintendo products have come from previous devices that had good ideas but poor execution. Nintendo sat on some of those ideas in hopes that some day the technology would get better and they could do them the right way. For example, the Game & Watch games turned into the DS. The Power Glove turned into the Wii Remote. The Power Pad turned into Wii Fit. The Game Boy Advance/Gamecube link turned into the Wii U.

One of Nintendo's early ideas was that gaming shouldn't be the sole province of children. Everyone should be able to find something to like in gaming, and they felt that the best way to do that is by making a game for adults with no cartoon characters or goofy mascots. Maybe if they just made a game that wouldn't make your mom or dad embarrassed to play it, they could open up a whole new market.

We all know that it turned out pretty well for them with games like Brain Age and Wii Sports, but where did the idea really come from?
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Review: Fire Emblem: Awakening

2013-03-30T15:14:00.003-05:00

Developer: Intelligent Systems
Publisher: Nintendo

Fire Emblem: Awakening is reason enough to own a 3DS.

I don't throw that phrase out lightly, especially because it's hard to convince someone to plunk down $150+ just to play one game. However, when the game in question is as deep and engaging as Fire Emblem: Awakening, it's absolutely true.

Awakening is the latest in Nintendo's long-running series of turn-based tactical RPGs. In Fire Emblem games, you move your characters around a grid-based map, select which enemies they're going to attack, and then watch the battle play out. There are three types of weapons: Swords, axes and lances. Swords are better than axes, axes are better than lances, and lances are better than swords. There are also magic powers, some which are more useful against certain types of enemies than others. Characters that fight alongside each other will also build up friendships. The stronger the friendship, the higher the combat bonus that they generate.
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Review: Super Hexagon

2013-03-28T22:03:00.001-05:00

Developer: Terry Cavanaugh

Terry Cavanaugh is a mad genius. I'm convinced of this, and you can't talk me out of it.

First came VVVVVV, his love letter to the Commodore 64, with an awesome gravity-shifting mechanic, amped-up difficulty level and tremendous music. Now, we have Super Hexagon, his vertigo-inducing, mezmerizing, insanely difficult and insanely simple action game.
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Review: DLC Quest

2013-03-25T21:20:00.002-05:00

Developer: Going Loud Studios

DLC Quest is commentary disguised as a game. The basic concept of the game is that DLC (downloadable content) is wrecking games. It's getting to the point that you practically need to pay the game company extra money in order to use a pause screen, or even to jump. That's the direction the industry is going, amirite? You may or may not agree with that assessment, but it's a pretty good hook for a game.

In DLC Quest, the only way to progress is by picking up coins in the game that you can use to "buy" the sections in the game that are missing from a shopkeeper who's all too eager to nickel-and-dime you to death. You can increase your health, get "game-breaking" weapons, and unlock "uncompleted" areas of the game.
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NES Replay: American Gladiators

2013-03-25T09:00:00.000-05:00


Developer: Incredible Technologies Publisher: GameTek Released: 1991 Spandex Budget: Off the charts

I was a pretty sheltered kid, so I didn't watch much TV when I was little. I got to watch Family Ties, Growing Pains and the TGIF lineup, which I thought was amazing. Aside from those few shows, my knowledge of TV was extremely limited.

However, even a weird, sheltered kid like me was aware of the syndicated TV show American Gladiators. For a brief, shining moment in the late 80's and early 90's, American Gladiators was pretty popular, especially in my grade school. Kids would talk about who their favorite gladiator was (they almost always picked "Nitro" just because he had a cool name) and play miniature versions of the games on the playground, which usually resulted in someone going to the nurse's and/or principal's office.

It was inevitable that a show that featured people that looked like superheroes in real life and inspired such devotion would get their own licensed videogame for the NES, but the developers could have chosen one of two options with the Gladiators. One, they could have made a game with the Gladiators as superhumans, and make the player just a normal person trying to beat them. Two, they could have made you play as the Gladiators themselves, given them superpowers and just amped everything up.
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NES Replay: Amagon

2013-03-18T09:00:00.000-05:00

Developer: Aicom
Publisher: American Sammy
Released: 1989
Does that letter 'o' have fangs?: Yes.
Yes it does.

I think we can all agree that Japanese culture has its quirks.

Japan isn't as weird as we think it is, of course. A lot of it gets overblown because it's just more fun thinking of Japan as some wacky land of insanity where used panty vending machines are EVERYWHERE and totally legal (they're not) than what it is: Just another place where people are people, albeit with a different culture.

Now that we've made that disclaimer, though, I think we can all think of at least "Japan is weird" story. It's an odd place, but being on an island all by yourself for a thousand years or so will do that to you.

For most of us, our first exposure to the Japanese culture was through the medium of video games. During the 80's and 90's, most of us didn't have access to videos of Japanese game shows or anime where characters grunt at each other for 20 episodes, use their special attack, find out it didn't work, then grunt at each other for another 20 episodes. (That one's for you, DragonBallZ fans.) However, since the vast majority of console video games came from the Land of the Rising Sun, we at least got a taste of how completely different Japanese culture was from our own.

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NES Replay: Alpha Mission

2013-03-11T09:00:00.001-05:00

Developer: SNK
Publisher: SNK
Released: 1987
Difficult?: Yes, but fair.

In NES Replay, we go through each NES game from A-Z to see if they're any good. Today: Alpha Mission.

I've had some mean things to say about games with excessive difficulty levels, but I want to make it clear: A hard game isn't necessarily a bad game.

See, there are two ways to make a game more difficult. The cheap way is by making the player character underpowered, weak and slow and surrounding them with things that can kill them at a moment's notice, then making the player run through the gauntlet again and again. The other, more thoughtful way is by giving the player character a very difficult job to do, but providing them with the tools to do it.

Leave it to SNK to show how it's done with Alpha Mission.

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NES Replay: All-Pro Basketball

2013-03-04T09:00:00.001-06:00

Developer: Aicom
Publisher: Vic Tokai
Released: 1989
There's a "watch" setting: That sounds
somewhat creepy.

In NES Replay, we go through each NES game from A-Z to see if they're any good. Today: All-Pro Basketball.

Sports games were really hard to make in the NES years due to the NES' myriad limitations. Developers resorted to all sorts of behind-the-scenes trickery in order to make them work, and when they could pull them off, like they did with Tecmo Bowl, they were great. When they failed, like with most other sports games, the results were painful.

A lot of times, the choice came down to fun or realism. When a developer aimed for realism, the results weren't pretty. For example, 10-Yard Fight could have been great if they would have gone with a more up-tempo feel and given up any pretenses toward representing real football. For example, maybe the could have cut out two linemen per side and added one more wide receiver to give the player more options to throw to. That would have made the game play faster, since there would have been fewer players for the computer to manage, and opened the game a little more, making big plays happen more frequently. Alas, they assumed that people would rather play a gimped version of football, and it stunk.

All-Pro Basketball aimed for realism. The developers tried to make a basketball game with five players per side, fouls for traveling, charging and back passes, and a season mode of sorts. Could they pull all of that off on the NES?

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"Sony Didn't Reveal the PS4 Console!"

2013-02-27T09:00:00.000-06:00

It seems that the gaming press has their knives out for Sony after the PS4 announcement. One of the big complaints is, "Sony didn't show us the PS4 console! Sure, they showed us what it can do, but we still don't know what the system itself looks like! Therefore, Sony didn't reveal the PS4, Microsoft is going to win the next generation automatically, and Sarah Palin is automatically the president." I'm really annoyed by this complaint for several reasons.
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