Well, I’ve got five more classic video game enemies to showcase in today’s article. I’ve got more goons. More thugs. More troublesome cronies. Let’s get to it!

ROLLER

Sonic The Hedgehog, 1991

Roller is another one who’s just a dyed-in-the-wool total asshole. I’m not sure why his name is Roller and not something more sinister; he does roll, but “Roller” in my mind implies some sort of smoothness of motion. Roller’s presence in Sonic the Hedgehog is about as smooth as suffering a debilitating stroke or suddenly finding the corpse of a jogger on a greenway.

You first run into this unconscionable ball-breaker in the Spring Yard Zone, an environment that is a chore in and of itself. Roller comes zooming out of left field at bullet-speed, just as you being to relax and think… and only meticulous memorization of his favorite spots, coupled with lightning reflexes, will save you. So in my case, the little blue hedgehog is proper fucked.

Perhaps the eeriest thing about Roller is how, when in motion, he almost sort of looks like Sonic. Maybe it’s some form of foreshadowing since Sonic does eventually fight a robot version of himself (I forget if it’s in 1 or 2, go easy on me, I’m sleep deprived), or maybe it’s just a little nuance meant to psych you out. Well, I’m easy to psych out. I do it to myself daily. I’m lucky if I can even take a leak without panicking.

PHANTO

Mario 2/Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic, 1987

Everyone knows about this one, but here it is anyway. This nightmarish, ephemeral motherfucker absolutely HATES people messing with his keys. Actually, any keys. To whom the key belongs is no concern. Just don’t touch it. Don’t even fucking look at it. Phanto’s had it. He will eat your little pink guts out, Mario. He will swallow Toad whole and trip balls on his viscera. Even the Princess isn’t exempt; float all you want, bitch, he’ll find you.

I actually no-joke enjoy the challenge Phanto adds to the game. There ought to be at least a couple non-boss baddies in any game that make your gut clench and your pulse quicken. Phanto delivers. He scares the shit out of me. I will actually utter a thin cry of alarm when I seem him start to move. I’m hardly conscious of it. I’m far more conscious of Phanto. He looks like he knows how scary he is, and he gets off on it. Phanto’s worse the more you consider him as a thinking creature. Let’s stop. Eugh.

LIKE-LIKE

Legend of Zelda, 1987

Like-Likes not only have one of the stupidest names I’ve ever heard for a monster in a video game, but they also serve an incredibly specific purpose that doubles their absurdity factor. Neither their name nor their diet of large shields, however, make Like-Likes any less of a concern when you run into them. A Like-Like is essentially a super low-gauge Fleshlight given motive intelligence and an appetite.

I fucking hated saying that as much as you probably hated hearing it, folks… but I’ll never lie to you, even if it means force-feeding you absolutely godless ideas like this.

I won’t even post pics of what this thing looks like in later, more graphics-rich installments of the Zelda franchise. Words like “peristalsis” come to mind. It’s like a Lovecraftian Pokemon. Not as awesome as it may sound. Not by far.

Aside from the utter grossness of it, the Like-Like’s a day-ruiner because it will take your large shield away. The large shield is an essential item later in the game that costs a decent chunk of change to buy or replace, not to mention you’ll need to trek all the way out of the dungeon you’re in and back to a shop just to get another shield. They’re not so much lethal as they are a huge pain in the ass if you’re not careful.

THE SPACE INVADERS

Battletoads, 1991

The developers of Battletoads sat down and decided they were going to make a game of legendary difficulty. They did an absolutely fantastic job of it, that’s inarguable. Battletoads beats the living shit out of me without fail, even with cheats and two players and extensive foreknowledge of what awaits me.

What they didn’t need to do: dig up a 1978 arcade game and employ its tiny pixelated aliens to humiliate and insult me in my darkest hour.

These dicks just glide up and pluck the blocks from your life bar as if it were nothing. Then they fly away with it. It’s just gone. No injury, no battle. You can catch them, but they are often a bit too graceful. Not to mention they often show up while other things are going on. Your attention is divided and your life runs through your fingers like water.

I don’t know if it’s unfair or not, but it sure is demoralizing when some little beep-boop Atari motherfuckers snatch the vitality from your veins with the same workmanlike calmness as someone installing a refrigerator in your home.

LET’S TALK ABOUT ABOBO AND THE FUCKING HAIR

Double Dragon and Double Dragon 2, 1987-88

Let’s lighten things up a bit to close this out. We don’t need to get into the details of Abobo; we all know who he is. He’s even a meme. Hell, what isn’t a meme at this point? Anyway, when we first see the brute in Double Dragon, he’s got a head smooth as a cue-ball. This had me thinking, “okay, this guy’s balding, or he’s got something going on, but he’s making this work for him. I can relate.”

Then in the second game, he’s going for the Danny Trejo look. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but Bobe, buddy… it’s a little bold. You look like a roadie for Santana got hooked on HGH.

Eh, who am I to tell you how to live, Abobo? At least you’re not gre….

Oh god damn it Abobo.

Thanks for tuning in again, folks. One more at the end of the month. Stay Retro!

I figured I’d be safe going to the well again with the NES games. We love to come back here. We love the thunder. The light. It’s just what we know. I’ll skip a lengthy introduction; I’m after my familiar methods today, bringing you three more games for the NES/Famicom.

BURAI FIGHTER

Taxan, 1990

Burai Fighter is another one of the great shmups for the NES. The plot is pretty formulaic (alien warfare, you’re the only one who can save us, yada yada), but playing this one is a ton of fun. You can move and fire in different directions, which allows for great control of the battlefield. And this shit does get rough. The bosses are particularly interesting in Burai Fighter, but there’s never a dull moment. Between the fighting and the goodies you can grab, it’s a thriller once you get the hang of it.

This is a moving Dio song right here. Poetry in motion.

The game looks great, nothing too fancy but crisp and clean. The soundtrack is one I can enjoy; some of it is squeaky high-end-heavy filler, but for the most part it keeps up. I give Burai Fighter 7 out of 10. An admitted bias for the genre and an appreciation for the cool bosses has me digging this one from Taxan.

DIRTY HARRY

Gray Matter, 1990

This shit is for real. You want a mean, wild game? Get in on my dude Harry here.

You are marching around kicking furniture, shooting men in the face, stomping on snakes, leaping over floor lasers. Just ducking makes you immune to ball bats. Oh, and you can swap your blue and white suits out. Suffice it to say this plays a little more like you’d expect an adaptation of Bad Lieutenant to play. It’s still a lot of fun. It’s ordered chaos in a manageable package. My only minor gripe is that it’s one of those games where so many of the scenes look the same that it can get mildly disorienting. Whatever. So would an actual city. Well done. Pretty fun active gameplay makes up for a lot though. I like kicking around in Dirty Harry. You can get pretty sick gun power ups, and it’s fun to just plow through.

He’s not even worried. He’s adjusting his collar. Fuck your gasoline in a bottle.

There’s nothing too spit-and-polish about the graphics but they get the job done. The music is kind of loud, but it’s pretty good, written by composers Steven Samler and Elliot Delman. This game, in fact, is the only NES title to credit the composers not only in the manual, but on the back of the game’s box.

Dirty Harry gets 7 out of 10 in my book. Only the eventual monotony counts against it; otherwise it’s an entertaining title with a lot of sit-and-play value to it.

TASAC

Thin Chen, 1992

Sometimes it’s important to draw attention to something because it embodies an idea, principle, or concept in action. An icon of its kind. Sometimes an object lesson.

Tasac is an object lesson in really not trying very hard.

This game was produced and released in 1992. Let’s have a look at it, item by item. Gameplay? An oversimplified, lazy version of a genre it’s hard to fuck up. The plot is kind of cool, according to a snippet I found from GameFAQs:

“In A.D. 20XX, humans are engaged in fierce warfare with TASAC – the alien bionic mutants. Landsy and Dagrel, commanders of Earth Defense Arms, are encountering the toughest enemies known to man. They must destroy TASAC to rescue the Earth, otherwise humans will be turned into slaves under the TASAC terrorism!”

The graphics? Are you kidding? Unforgivably lazy. Music and sound? 1986 sound while clumsy circus-like music meanders across the drab play space. It’s really the kind of soundtrack that belongs in a McDonald’s Playland.

Christmas candy choo choo train colors and big clunky crunchy -looking fuckery. Hudson had this kind of shit beat in 1987. This is out of some kind of mill. Some kind of terror-basement. I never.

This is two steps up from Galaga. Not to talk shit on Galaga, even. Galaga outshines this easily. It doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. Game FAQs rates it 2.5 out of 5. I’m giving Tasac a 2 out of 10. It is a game. I’m not willing to give it much else.

Thanks for tuning in again. We’ll do three more on Thursday. Stay Retro!

World War II. Europe is in turmoil. Germany is on the rampage, fueled by the poison doctrines of Nazism and the fire of hatred. The world stands in the shadow of one man… one despicable tyrant… Adolf Hitler.

I’ve met the man who took him out.

His name was B.J. Blazkowicz.

Portrait of an American hero. Bloodied but unbowed. And packing one hell of a shooting iron.

Wolfenstein 3D is the game that changed everything. It is the ancestor of the modern, true first-person shooter. Developed by id Software and released in May 1992, this groundbreaking MS-DOS adventure set a precedent for years to come. One of many games distributed using the shareware method, Wolfenstein 3D was distributed in truncated form (in this case, the first “episode” of six total). Interested parties could obtain it very cheaply on floppy disk, or they could download it using a BBS service (the Internet’s older, more conservative cousin). The shareware model was repeated with later games, notably id’s legendary follow-up, Doom.

Easily one of the baddest-ass pieces of cover art from the shareware era. Ripped and howling, B.J. exults in the bloody demise of yet another Gestapo goon. He fires his unthinkably massive chaingun in a physics-defying display of all-American fury. 

In 1991, John Carmack and id Software (yes, the “id” is all lowercase) had developed Catacomb 3-D, a well-received and innovative attempt at 3D gaming. While it wasn’t a true first person shooter, it achieved something that game developers had been stabbing at for years: a decent representation of 3D space. The engine used a rendering technique called ray casting to create a “pseudo-3D” point of view. To avoid giving you a colorless technical essay, what the engine does is translate a 2 dimensional (think “top-down” view) map into what looks like 3D. The engine had limitations, namely that the entire map had to be the same elevation (no stairs, platforms, etc), so it wasn’t really “true” 3D… id would get closer in 1993 with Doom. Nonetheless, it was still an incredible representation of 3D graphics, and the team decided to reuse the engine to make a more action-oriented title. Castle Wolfenstein, a 1981 software title by Muse Software, had let its trademark lapse, and id decided to rework it using Carmack’s engine. The engine rendered quickly and ran well on machines with average processing power, which freed up resources for other aspects of the game to shine. The sprite-based graphics weren’t revolutionary in themselves, but the way they were used certainly was; while static objects had only one sprite, the enemies had multiple angles from which you could see them, and had well-animated attacks and movement. The overall visual theme is purposefully lighthearted and cartoonish, to offset the serious tone of the story. The game’s audio made good use of the sound cards of the day (namely the Sound Blaster series), and you could enable sound effects through the PC speaker as well. The music is written by Robert Prince, who is mostly known for his work on the original Doom and Commander Keen games. While it isn’t quite as iconic as his scores for those games, Wolfenstein’s music is pulse-pounding and ominous.

an animation illustrating how raycasting translates 2 dimensions into 3. Public domain image, but credit and thanks to Wikipedia user “LucasVB.”

I was nine when this game fell into my lap. My father’s job for the airline involved a lot of computer work; for lack of a kinder way to say it, he worked with some straight-up nerds. We’re talking the good old fashioned kind of tech-geeks. Good people! One of his co-workers sent him home one day with a set of blue 3.5 inch floppy disks. They bore the cryptic, vague label “WOLF3D.” My first thought as a nine-year-old boy was, “oh wow, a werewolf game. And in 3D!” I enthusiastically thanked my dad and ran to our IBM 386 to install the mystery game. Needless to say, there were no werewolves, but I still wasn’t disappointed in the least. I played the entire first episode through in one day.

MS-DOS: the operating system you had to ask nicely before it would do anything for you.

In Wolfenstein, you play as B.J. Blazkowicz, a US Army Ranger sergeant captured by the Nazis while investigating something called “Operation Eisenfaust.” At the start of the first episode, you’ve disarmed a guard and set yourself free from your prison cell in Castle Wolfenstein. The first episode chronicles your escape from the castle. This effort culminates in a showdown with the massive Hans Grosse. In the second, you discover that Eisenfaust is real and set out to stop it. You fight your way through hordes of undead “mutant” soldiers to face down Dr. Schabbs, the crazed, syringe-wielding doctor behind the project. In the third episode, “Die, Fuhrer, Die!” your mission is nothing less than to kill Hitler. This not only involves making your way through his private stronghold, but also defeating his many floating clones and destroying his battle-mech armor.

Yes. Battle-mech armor.

The final three episodes form a series of prequels to the first three, revolving around the Giftkrieg, or “Poison War.” Your first target is another mad scientist, one who dresses a bit more like a military man: Otto Giftmacher. In the fifth episode, “Trail of the Madman,” you’re after secret plans that just happen to be safeguarded by Hans’ sister, Gretel Grosse. Finally, B.J. confronts General Fettgesicht, the man behind the entire poison plot.

The game is playable using the keyboard and the mouse, though the mouse’s functionality is crude compared to later FPS games. You move through a complex set of dungeons and other complexes, collecting plundered treasure and capturing weapons to use against your vile Nazi foes. Brown-shirted soldiers, beefy Schutzstaffel officers, and even zombies with torso-mounted rifles are scattered throughout the game waiting to finish you off for the glory of the Reich. You start with a simple pistol, 8 bullets, and a knife. Not to worry; dead Nazi scum are very generous with their kit. The SS guy drops a submachine gun, and if you’re thorough, you can find a massive machine gun that tears through enemy soldiers (and ammunition as well). With a max capacity of 99 bullets, resource management plays a significant role in both surviving and winning. Many of the levels feature puzzle elements, as well as secrets that only a canny and attentive player will find (including a secret level in each episode, one of which is full of Pac-Man ghosts). Both your health percentage and B.J.’s animated mug shot on the status bar show you your current condition; to regain health, you can use anything from med kits to dog food. The bosses present a significant threat, and Hitler himself is particularly daunting. However, if you’re quick and patient, you can bring even the Fuhrer down once you’ve figured out his behavior.

Wolfenstein’s Nazi imagery caused notable disquiet in Germany, where the game was initially banned due to laws prohibiting such symbols in media. When ported to the SNES, the game had the Nazi imagery (but not the Nazis themselves) removed. Elsewhere in the world, Wolfenstein received lukewarm criticism for its modest (by modern standards) levels of violence, but no controversy adversely affected its sales or popularity. It’s hard to keep down an innovative, revolutionary 3D game… especially when it’s a game that involves killing Hitler and ending the Reich.

In the direct sequel, Spear of Destiny, B.J. returns to reclaim a powerful relic from the Nazis: the spear that pierced the side of Christ on the cross. Few if any changes were made to the game engine itself; a handful of new sprites were added, and Spear of Destiny plays as one long episode instead of six smaller ones. It is considered slightly more difficult than its predecessor, and builds on the Nazi/occult theme established therein.

As I mentioned earlier in the article, Wolfenstein 3D is often hailed as the first big step toward the now-familiar first person shooter format. It established a standard in both form and quality; id Software and other companies would compete afterwards, releasing a slew of titles that gradually added improvement after improvement to the original concept. Notably, id’s Doom broke even further ground for FPS games in 1993, and their dominance of the genre continued with 1996’s Quake. The Wolfenstein franchise itself saw new life in 2001, when Grey Matter Interactive released a technologically updated reboot that launched a new series of titles.

No matter who (or what) you are, it’s important to remember your roots… your origins. Games like Call of Duty and Borderlands, while certainly works of wonder in their own right, can’t help but look up at granddaddy Wolfenstein, smile, and nod respectfully.

FUN STUFF/TRIVIA:

• To honor its 20th anniversary in 2012, Bethesda released a browser-based version, playable for free. There is also this weird “demake” of the game.
• General Fettgesicht’s last name means “fat-face” in German. 
• The starting pistol is supposed to be a Luger P08, a German pistol that saw extensive use in both World Wars. The submachine gun is loosely based on the WWII-era German MP-40.
• One of the secret levels is a sliding-panel maze; enterprising players can find not only goodies, but a sign that says, “Call Apogee, say Aardwolf.” This was for a contest that never fully came to fruition; user-developed hacks and editors made it impossible to verify whether a caller had legitimately reached the sign without cheating. This quick dismantling of the game’s source code led id to make Doom easily user-editable in response.
• The title theme music is an actual, honest-to-God Nazi anthem, “Horst-Wessel-Lied.” It is also removed from the German SNES version. 
• The German SNES release also featured mutant rats instead of dogs, green blood, and an altered Hitler boss called “Staatmeister.”
• The 1994 SNES game Super 3D Noah’s Ark is essentially Wolfenstein 3D with a total sprite-swap.
• The theme of the Nazis pursuing occult means of power isn’t endemic to Wolfenstein 3D; it not only shows up in the Indiana Jones movies, but actually sort of happened in real life.
• B.J.’s birthday is given in source material as August 15th, 1911. I would hazard a guess that this is in reference to the famous M1911 pistol, the standard US military sidearm during WWII and beyond. It is also stated that he is of Polish-Jewish ancestry.
• This is hardly trivia, but the blue-suited SS men show up again in the secret levels of Doom 2, both of which are homages to Wolfenstein.
• In 1994, a Sega MegaDrive/Genesis verion was announced, but never released. The game was, however, ported to the Jaguar, 3DO, SNES, PC-98, Macintosh, Acorn Archimedes, and Game Boy Advance. Many unlicensed ports exist as well.

Until next time, RetroManiacs! I had a blast writing this one up, and I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I have.

If you had an NES as a kid, and you lived near a video rental store that also dealt in games, Contra was probably one you tried. The difficulty curve may have thrown a lot of kids off, but Contra was (and still is) nonetheless a popular game, one that spawned a franchise. The intense action and challenging gameplay enthralled NES players when it came out in 1988, but the game has a much richer history than many know.

Contra was originally released as an arcade game in 1987. The game was known as Gryzor in Europe and Australia. The arcade version’s gameplay is slightly different from what you may be familiar with, and it has (obviously) superior graphics and sound. Otherwise, it is recognizable as Contra. The NES version was produced in-house by Konami, during the late 80s when there was a rush to produce titles for the NES system. In fact, Konami started a branch company, Ultra Games, to circumvent licensing limits set by Nintendo and truly dominate the market. However, Contra was among those produced under the Konami name. In addition, a licensed port was made by Ocean Software for various home computers (such as the C64 and ZX Spectrum) and Konami also released a PAL region version called Probotector.

One of the more memorable aspects of Contra’s gameplay is the switching up of viewpoints and angles. In most of its levels, your commando moves through the environment in a familiar side-scrolling fashion. However, in the two “bases,” this is switched for a pseudo-3D view over the backs of the heroes as they rush forward into the base. During the boss fights within the bases, the view returns to something similar to normal, save that the default direction your gun points is upward.

Contra’s original storyline involves two Marines, who are sent to investigate the Red Falcon organization. The arcade story places them in “the Galuga Archipelago near New Zealand,” but in the NES version this is simply “The Amazon.” Wherever it takes place, the goal is to infiltrate the island and discover the source of the Red Falcon organization’s true power. This leads to confrontations with enemy soldiers, automated guns, mutants, alien spawn, and more. Powerups come in the form of pylons or floating balloon-like objects that can be shot, releasing the goodies within. Players will find different types of guns, including a laser beam, a corkscrew-trajectory fireball, and the ever-popular spread gun. There is also a powerup that simply makes your fired projectiles move faster, as well as a rare powerup that makes you (very briefly) invulnerable to harm.

And trust me, harm is waiting for you everywhere in Contra. The game is notorious for its difficulty; it is playable, and not impossible to beat without cheating, but doing so is definitely something to brag about. Most players of the NES version would enter the “Konami Code” (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B button, A button, start) to gain 30 “lives” instead of the standard three. It is remarkably easy to die in Contra; you have no life bar, rarely any protection from harm (except for the rare powerup mentioned above), and touching any part of any enemy soldier or object instantly spells your doom. Even with the thirty lives granted by the cheat code, the game is no joke. Staying alive requires very quick reflexes and a good sense of what’s going on around you. Focusing on that while also blowing away your foes… well, therein lies the challenge.

I make no complaint by pointing out the difficulty. Some NES games were difficult and also boring to play; Contra is difficult but keeps calling you back because of the inherent thrill involved in playing it. Dyed-in-the-wool retro gamers will back me up when I say that there are very few “easy” games for the NES that were any good. Contra is a good example of an arcade-style port to the system that both translated well and had broad replay value. It spawned several sequels across decades of gaming systems; there is, in fact, a game in the franchise for the DS, the Wii, and the PS3. All three are quite good. Notable among earlier sequels is the Genesis game Contra Hard Corps, which expanded gameplay options and featured four selectable characters with unique sets of weapon powerups.

It goes without saying that Contra belongs in line with Konami’s other home-run franchises. One measure of success is longevity, and the series has shown that. The original arcade/NES game stands out even today as a challenging, entertaining classic.

Keep an eye out next month, Retro Fans! We’ll be kicking off May with another classic: River City Ransom.

A lucky few of you may have grabbed the vinyl when it debuted for limited release, but now Blood Music has released GosT’s “Behemoth” album for digital download. It’s “name your price,” but I’ll save you the thought involved: go ahead and give a little, because this album is priceless.

As many of you know, I am a rabid fan of GosT, ever since his early work in 2013. I still remember finding the EPs “Radio Macabre” and “The Night Prowler” and being impressed… then being astounded at “Nocturnal Shift” and quite honestly blown out of the water by “Skull.” In 2014, GosT followed up with “S/T,” a further refinement of a style that is not only unique but extremely powerful. GosT’s music invokes both dark menace and semi-religious rapture; I have been a devoted follower ever since I discovered this artist and his work. It is definitely on the edge (fringe, even) of retrowave, but it is incredibly significant to the genre, and in many ways, undeniably groundbreaking.

“Beyond” starts off this album with a nice, atmospheric intro. It is kept brief before exploding angrily into “Genesee Avenue,” a blistering track with a drum set that hits like a hail of stones. Next comes a retooling of the track “Night Crawler,” with superior instrumentation and embellishment. “Master” is another brutal track, and it’s here that we find the signature distorted and rough tones we’ve come to associate with GosT. This track does not let up. It refuses to let you go. “Reign In Hell” is a short but effective track with some cool bendy tones evocative of a broken, possessed machine. Frantic piano arpeggios lead us into “Tongue,” a brilliantly arranged piece of music that builds on itself in a classical-music way and would be at home on any decent horror film’s soundtrack. “Without A Trace” features haunting, beautiful vocals by Hayley Stewart and carries an almost romantic undertone. It is definitely slow and soft for GosT, but it is great and definitely belongs here. “Ripper” begins to build the listener up again, and is both sinister and uplifting. GosT has a sort of gift for mixing those emotions together in his music; it is always so evocative! Things continue to pick up with “Bathory Bitch,” a track as dark and sensual as the vampire countess herself. Uptempo and busy, it still pulls visions of dark red velvet to mind. “Sacrament” is another short interlude track, drumless and fairly minimalist, but it makes a good lead-in to the title track. Speaking of the title track, it is a spectacle in itself. It needs to be heard to be believed; in the span of two years, GosT has gone nuclear and it has resulted in something of a ghastly masterstroke. “Behemoth” the track is a wonderful pin on which to hang “Behemoth” the album; richly dripping with both murder and glory, brutal and beautiful to behold. The album includes two remixes by Dance With The Dead and Perturbator, two of GosT’s peers in the dark cave on the outskirts of retrowave. They are both wonderful remixes that both alter and add to their parent tracks.

All in all, I was blown to Hell the moment I pressed “play.” I grant “Behemoth” nine out of ten. I would give it a ten, but I’ll wait for a darkwave album by The Devil Himself before handing out that laurel. My guess is, GosT would give His Dark Majesty a run for his money.

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