Retro

As a mile high wall of dust and moldering flame devours mountains behind me, frenzied stamped stumbling at my feet, meteors knocking out a stegosaurus, boulders crushing eggs and trees, I take the instant to thrash the neck of a small lizard, consuming it whole, and gallop toward the distant call of salvation. The meteor has hit. I have a window of seconds, no mistakes. I am a velociraptor, an agile predator. As I attempt to beat Dino Run on Insane difficulty I'm listening to footage from the latest World Economic Forum, discussing the role of private equity and hedge funds. The irony is not lost.

Take some 8-bit graphics, a generic placeholder of a plot, a few well sprinkled cameos, a dash of masochism and what do you get? I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game. Players are taken to the year 200x, thrust into the shoes of The Kid and given the immense task of becoming The Guy. This candid plot, however, serves as little more than a means by which Mike “Kayin” O'Reilly has designed a near impossible platform adventure game.

Take the protagonist, with related verbs, of every major 80s hit, along with the enemies, the art assets, and the midi signature. Put them on separate, concentric roulettes, and spin. Spin every few seconds. Try to win.

You'll find yourself meta-gaming, you know that as the Defender jet, you can merc those rainbow cascade things pretty well, but in the process of getting over there, there is a good chance they'll turn into goombas, and you'll get hit. Or maybe you'll hesitate, as Link, to walk up that hallway, because you could become the Space Invaders turret, unable to move vertically, and get caught by pursuing Gauntlet ghosts. It's clever, because this is no mere mash, but a full blooded remix, where added depth emerges from the recombinations.

In honor of Leap Day 2008, Anna Anthropy, editor of The Gamer's Quarter and hobbyist game developer, released Mighty Jill Off, a free, old-school, and delightfully subversive little PC game. Jill Off distills its gameplay down to a very simple and enjoyable level; press left and right to walk, press Z to jump, press Z mid-jump to stop your upward-momentum early, and mash Z repeatedly to hover. Jill Off also distills its theme and plot down to a very simple and enjoyable level; the titular chubby little dyke gimp (which I say in the nicest way possible) is climbing to the top of a tower simply because she's a submissive, and her greatest joy in life is when her dominatrix queen MAKES her climb to the top of the tower.

Largely a remake of the much-loved Amiga game Defender of the Crown (later released for just about every platform available in the late 80s, including the NES), Heroes Live Forever updates the game with better graphics, fully digitized music, and a new gameplay element ("tactics" cards that give you special benefits during battles).

In Defender of the Crown, you play one of several great lords in England, attempting to unify the realm under your own rule. Conquering provinces produces tax revenues that you can use to increase the size of your army (but you have only one "army" which follows you, milord, about, and can purchase new units only at your castle, meaning you become vulnerable over time unless you return home frequently). Battles are fought out on screen; and joust and archery minigames can increase your "fame" (which allows you to earn more taxes and move farther distances). Conquering enemy castles requires (expensive) catapults.

There are plenty of amazing platform shooters out there. Metroid. Gunstar. Contra. None of these games can quite compare to Cave Story, though.

Released in late 2004, Cave Story harkens back to a simpler time. The graphics are 8-bit, and yet they manage to be beautiful. The music consists entirely of chiptunes, and yet it's some of the best composed video game music I've ever listened to. And the gameplay? Fantastic.

...And quarters, rather than dollars, it would be; Gamma Bros feels very much like a game you'd encounter on an arcade machine in, say, 1985, probably one with two joysticks, like Robotron (actually, you use the arrow keys to move and WASD to shoot in the four cardinal directions). It's a space shoot-'em-up (shmup), but unlike the frenetic madness of most shmups, it has a laid-back, almost relaxing feel.

A fun little game--and a finalist at the 2007 Independent Games Festival.