Donkey Kong is credited as the first true “platformer,” and you bet your ass I double-checked in Google because you’d think some obscure forerunner of that game would hold the title, but no, it’s just plain old fuckin’ Donkey Kong. Running around like a ninny and performing very unsafe long jumps at great heights would go on to become the basis of countless titles, because it really was the best game in town.

Platform titles were so popular during the 80s and 90s, in fact, that almost every developer tried making one just to see if it would sell. Sometimes these games were predictably shitty, but once in a while there would be a diamond in the sand, waiting for us to discover it and rent it three consecutive times and then forget to return it for six months so that the video store just charges us for it and it’s ours now… despite that gold sticker the rental store put on it. Today I’ve picked out five from the NES game library for us to dissect. Let’s make the first incision…

Dragon Fighter

Natsume, 1990

Now, this is not called Dragon Fighter because you go out of your way to fight dragons, but neither is the title only a vague reference to the mythical beasts. When you’re not prancing around as a warrior with a fondness for ornate hats and what look like spandex onesies, you can dead ass transform into a fucking dragon and tear shit up just about as severely as you’d expect a dragon to tear shit up. All this awesome shit is limited (of course) by a gauge that fills up in human form and then ticks down while in epic-murder-monster-myth-mode.

The jump-and-slash formula is pretty well-represented here, at least when you’re not in dragon form; when you change shape the game takes on an R-Type/Gradius vibe as you begin to gently “rail” to the right and shoot down oncoming threats with your color-coded dragon breath. The compulsion exists to just hammer through the game haphazardly in dragon mode, but I found myself saving up my dragon-time for whatever waited at the end of each stage. Gameplay feels good either way.

Unashamed use of color and a ton of variety really help the graphics stand out; we’re not looking at anything groundbreaking for a 1990/91 release for the NES, but it’s a decent looking game. Dragon Fighter’s audio experience is acceptable, but nothing to write home about. Composer Kouichi Yamanishi keeps things basic with the music, but it’s far from boring or repetitive. My only hairs to split are that 1) the dragon form looks a bit gaudy all solid-color with such bright hues 2) is he dead serious with his unitard or whatever? Unitard + knee-high “fuck me” boots + long-billed feathered cap?

What does that equal? It equals 6 out of 10, because while it’s not necessarily a classic, Dragon Fighter has a neat gimmick and plays like more than minimal effort went into it.

Shatterhand

Jaleco/Natsume, 1991

Just the intro animation sells this one. Shatterhand is the heartwarming story of a man who lost both his arms, only to rise above adversity… by pummeling adversity into rubble with his new robot arms. You can even punch bullets! There are also different kinds of little helper-robots you can get, presumably when the automatons get a look at your chromed-out “guns” and recognize you as a fellow Skynet agent. No, wrong story. This one is mostly about you and your little hovering robot helpers beating the shit out of some cyber-soldiers to save the world and get revenge on them for taking your normal human meat-arms… but maybe you should be thanking them! After all, could you punch bullets before?

Let me answer that for you, nerd: no, you fucking couldn’t.

Shatterhand is a blast to play, but I could do without the elaborate pickup system. And don’t tell me I’m simple. I know I am. And that’s how you should keep your pickups in games like this. Don’t have me playing punch-Tetris on the fly trying to pick a Greek letter. It’s a cool way to have all the types of helper robots, but come on. You could have just had them, without all the fiddlin’ and diddlin’. Otherwise the game plays well and has a respectable challenge to it. The graphical style sits somewhere between the rich detail of a Sunsoft game and the effective simplicity of something like Contra. Composers Iku Mizutani and Hiroyuki Iwatsuki deliver a soundtrack every bit as hard-hitting as the game’s protagonist.

Shatterhand would be an 8 if not for the weird powerup system and the eventual repetitive nature of the gameplay. Instead it’s a solid 7 out of 10. I know a bunch of you think this game’s a total classic, and you’re not wrong, but maybe I give things lower ratings than they deserve because I suck at video games, okay?

Kick Master

KID, 1992

And so we go from arms to legs with Kick Master, one of the better-loved platformers of the late NES era, and for very good reason. Along with its fantasy theme, we see yet another decent melding of the action game essentials with some basic RPG elements (leveling up, etc.) as a continuation of a trend established in Legend of Zelda, Crystalis, etc. In Kick Master, your life has been royally fucked up by a powerful witch named Belzed, who has killed the king and queen and kidnapped the princess (natch). Your dumbass brother somehow gets killed by a skeleton (a circus-peanut-tier monster) even though your brother is wearing armor and wielding a sword when this happens. His dying words are so patently absurd that you are agape in shock:

The thing is, you do kind of have “great kicking skills.” You’ve got magic, too… but the kicking. The kicking is what’s great. Stay focused on that.

The graphics for Kick Master are superb for their time, with early examples of parallax scrolling visible and some dynamic (if laughably poorly written) cut scenes. You fly around the screen in a well-animated fury, raining hell (and feet) down upon your foes across eight stages filled with lush backgrounds. For all your kickmastery and wizarding bullshit, the controls aren’t cumbersome, either. I wish I could praise the sound, but it’s not great. In fact, the boss at the end of the swamps makes a horrible noise that sounds like a high-gain modem dial-up sound being recorded through too mics that are way too close together. Yo, why did you choose to put that sound in any game? It made me think my ROM was fucking up… no, it’s just Kick Master.

7 out of 10 for Kick Master. Terrible sound, mitigated by a fun and innovative RPG hybrid play style.

Bucky O’Hare

Konami, 1992

This intellectual property, which followed among others in the wake of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, is actually criminally undervalued. I remember the cartoon (and its theme song) to be well-written as if someone still loved what they had created… or at least had money to spend on it for a while.

The NES game is no exception, positively gleaming with Konami quality throughout. With a splash of color true to the source material, the game spans four worlds rendered in vivid, exaggerated terms. Not only does Bucky O’Hare look like a Konami Game, it sounds like one too; Tomoko Sumiyama’s soundtrack milks every bit of that distinctive Konami soundset we all know and love, producing laudable results worthy of any flagship title. Gameplay is a masterpiece, though many find Bucky O’Hare to be a bit difficult (including little old me). Characters can be played as they are rescued, and there are reasons to play each one, not unlike how certain parts of the Mega Man games are best done in sequence…

A firm 8 out of 10 despite it being so fucking hard I can barely finish the first level.

The Krion Conquest

Vic Tokai, 1990

Do you like Mega Man? Good, because you’re playing a reskinned Mega Man. Robots are still trying to take over the world, but these robots are from space and they’re vulnerable to magic, motherfucker. Krion Conquest is another one of those games that had a plot when it got on the airport in Japan but must have left it under the seat of the plane. The long and short of it: you’re a witch “from a place full of demons” and you’re the only one who can hurt all the robots.

Leave it to a knockoff to improve on the formula of what it rips off. You can aim upward and crouch in this game, two things that Mega Man, a futuristic android hero, simply cannot manage to do. So as strange as this may sound, I find Krion Conquest slightly more playable than any of the first three Mega Man games, just due to the added versatility of being able to look upward and point my wand-thingy up there too. Seriously, of all the things a state-of-the-art futuristic cyber-champion CAN’T do, it’s crane his neck and lift an arm above his head? There are men in their nineties who have Mega Man outclassed.

The graphics and sound are all over the place. Some of it is, well, just Mega Man sprites used as a tracing stencil. I won’t even itemize all of what’s ripped directly off; even the “GET READY” at each stage’s beginning and the life bar/weapons menu are barely given a new coat of paint. Most of the enemies look like if you paid the folks at LJN to redraw Mega Man baddies, but after buying those LJN folks a few shots of liquid hillbilly brain damage juice. The Krion Conquest has two composers, and two heads are… about the same as one in this case. Most of the music, regardless of its other points of quality, comes off as repetitive.

Krion Conquest can have 5 points out of 10 for at least cheating well. It’s a bag of blatant borrowing, but it’s at least playable.

We’ll be seeing more of each other later in the merry month of May, RetroFans! Best Believe!

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!

In the 21st Century, when we think of “early video game consoles,” we think quaintly back our box-like gray NES or perhaps our handsome wood-paneled 2600, and we feel a sense of belonging – a sense of rooted nostalgia – in the sense that our childhoods were part of video game history. It’s only right that we do; these and other innovative machines broke new ground for their time and raised the bar for future development. We think of those names… Nintendo, Atari, Sega. Ancient and noble they sound.

The beginning of things was far more humble, but it was a beginning, and a beginning is all it takes.

Ralph Baer, seen here with his “Brown Box” prototype version of the Odyssey.

Born in 1922 in the southwest German town of Rodalben, Ralph H. Baer emigrated with his family to the United States just two months prior to Kristallnacht in 1938. A family of Jewish origin, the Baers feared persecution in Germany and sought a new life in New York. Starting his American dream in a factory at age 12, Ralph eventually graduated from the National Radio Institute in 1940. He went on to be drafted in 1943, assigned to military intelligence in England. GI Bill money enabled him to pursue his Bachelors degree upon returning home to America, which he received in 1949 from the American Television Institute of Technology in Chicago. By 1956, Baer was working at a New Hampshire defense contractor called Sanders Associates, where he oversaw a crew of some 500 engineers who developed electronics systems for military use.

As a side project, Baer began working on the idea of an electronic home game system in 1966. For three years, he and two associates Bill Harrison and Bill Rusch, developed a series of seven prototypes for the device. It was this seventh design, dubbed “The Brown Box,” that the trio successfully pitched to Magnavox in 1971. The California-based consumer electronics company (whose name means “great voice” in Latin) saw merit in the idea of a home arcade that a family could hook up to their own television set. Hands were shaken, paperwork was drafted, and the Age of the Console had begun to rise and shine its first rays over a quiet horizon.

Clockwise from upper left: The original Odyssey suite and packaging; the physical paraphernalia for various games; two pieces of promo/ad copy, one of which details the core game library, the other advertising the Shooting Gallery accessory (the first light gun for a home console).

A simple, unassuming white-and-black plastic box also featuring that ever-stylish 1970s wood-paneling texture in a few places, the original commercially-available Odyssey was a wondrous machine to the consumers of 1972’s America. While to modern eyes it may look more like something you’d see controlling a kitchen appliance or a sewing machine, this was a fully-functional electronic device! The Odyssey could be powered by an AC adapter or six C-cell batteries, at the owner’s option. It connected to one’s television by way of a switchbox, presenting itself to the TV as a channel. The arcane device bore with it two similarly-garbed controllers, each of these being slightly bigger than a Band-Aid box and bearing one button and three knobs. The button was used to reset certain display elements during play, while the knobs were used to control the movement of said elements.

Looking to the modern eye more like some baroque alchemical device than a gamepad, the Odyssey’s controller was a refrigerator-white and wood paneled panoply of dials within dials, its clunky shape meant to be rested on a coffee table or other flat surface during play. I would imagine it was quite heavy, and the imagination can easily conjure up a picture of one being used to bludgeon a sibling to devastating effect. Oh, the horror of the dark past.

These “elements,” before screen-mounted visual overlays and the users’ imaginations were applied, consisted of one large square of white and two smaller squares of white on a black background. That was literally the cast & props of every Odyssey game. These games were simply sets of parameters and behaviors, fed into the system’s motherboard by one or more printed circuit boards; All 28 games playable on the console were generated from a final set (as of 1973) consisting of 12 cards. The most complex game was Invasion, which require cards 4, 5, and 6 to play. The games came with the aforementioned color overlays, to be placed over the screen of the TV as both a visual aid and a sort of “game board.” You see, the system itself didn’t even adjudicate the games’ outcomes or scores; players had to to that themselves, too. As a matter of fact, the console and some games came packaged with “accessories,” such as playing cards and paper money, to further facilitate the actual playing of a structured game. In essence, this ancestor of the modern home video game console was little more than a tool… or perhaps more aptly, one of a set of tools, used to play games. Perhaps most age-indicative of the Odyssey’s traits was the now-obvious total lack of audio capability. There was no sound output whatsoever, presenting a 21st-century observer with a heavy and eerie silence as the Odyssey does its work.

This is what the Odyssey’s guts look like. I hope you didn’t just eat; this is gruesome. Imagine paying $100 for this. It’s almost as silly as what they charge for a PS4 now. Things change and stay the same. Only separate notes in an eternal and violent song.

Magnavox began retail sale of the Odyssey system in September of 1972, setting the MSRP at US $99.99 (or just $50.00 when bought with a Magnavox television set). During its inception, Ralph Baer had estimated an optimistic $20 price point for the console, but the addition of extra elements and the usual corporate desire for profit drove the price higher, something Baer is known to have seen as upsetting. While reports from various sources conflict with one another on the exact number of units produced that first year, it is known that somewhere between 120,000 and 140,000 were made. Similar conflicts exist regarding the units sold that year, with the sum ranging from 69,000 to 100,000. While the sales were low overall due to a fairly high price for the Odyssey (in 2017 dollars, the cost translates to almost $600) and a misleading notion that the system only worked with Magnavox TVs, there was enough continuing demand for production to continue through 1973’s holiday season as well. This coincided with a late 1973 ad campaign, resulting in an estimated sale of 125-150,000 units through ’74.

Lawsuits were rampant during this period, as copycats and lookalikes were spawned by various other electronics companies trying to duplicate or cash in on the phenomenon’s buzz. Most Notably, a 1974 suit by Magnavox against Atari, Bally Midway, and other major amusement companies over both the game design and the programming methods used to create them, constituted the emerging VG industry’s first major lawsuit due to copyright infringement. Similar court cases erupted in rapid staccato throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including defendants like Nintendo, Coleco, and Mattel. These court cases not only established the backbone of civil law regarding video games as a commodity, but also made Magnavox and Baer a lot of money (in the hundreds of millions).

Ralph Baer was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 2006, and his groundbreaking console is represented in both the Metropolitan Museum of Art (where the Odyssey is part of a permanent installation) and the Smithsonian (where Baer’s prototypes are kept in the American History part of the institute). In 2014, Baer died at age 92, having given birth to a new age of electronics and home entertainment through his innovative work in the development and commercialization of home video games.

Ralph Baer with President George W Bush (right, seen apparently trying to Judo-throw Baer while looking at a something out of frame) in 2006, as Baer was awarded his National Medal of Technology in Washington, DC. 

When it was eventually discontinued in 1975, conservative estimates place worldwide sales of the Magnavox Odyssey at about 350,000 units. While significant, this net result was not considered a smashing financial success. The “Odyssey” brand would continue through the 1970s with successive dedicated consoles (playing only built-in games) and eventually the iconic Odyssey2 in 1978. It is from this point onward that the “early history” of the video game console ends and the commercial video game industry truly begins.

Close up of the Brown Box prototype. Good thing they dialed it back with the wood paneling. We’re talking unsafe levels of style. 

Once again, thank you for reading… and NRW Gaming wishes you a Happy 2018, and so do I. I look forward to continuing our walk together through the future, as we keep the past alive. Stay Retro!

Everything worthwhile starts with an idea… a dream. May yours come true in 2018, RetroFans!

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to preface this article by telling you all how wonderful it’s been doing the NRW Gaming thing. I started out reviewing albums here at NewRetroWave, a duty I enjoyed well enough, trust me… as fate would have it, assorted conversations and brainstorming bouts (not to mention the calm, collected guidance of our fearless leader) launched me from synthwave reviews to the rambling, manic diatribes you now see me publish about 20-30 year old console titles. Ever since small times, I have loved the classics, so getting to hurl homages to them across the Web has been a true “busman’s holiday.” Now and again, though, I get taken aback by a modern title or two… an artful, elegant blend of today’s do-anything design and the 8-16 Bit Era’s timeless aesthetic. The phenomenon has grown steadily in popularity over the past decade, and venues like Steam have provided these games with something of a podium. I am pleased to finally discuss a few of these titles – the cream of 2016’s crop – in the form of a “top ten” list.

Without further ado… let’s bite into it!

#10 Halloween Forever

Definitely cute… but far from friendly!

Let’s start with this classic-style 8 bit platformer. In the game, you play as a dude with a jack o lantern head who can spit candy corn as his weapon. You jump and struggle your way though chainsaw maniacs, undead monsters, A LOT of bats, and even skeletal wizards. The effort is truly authentic to the original style, and you can even play with a game pad if you have one. The visuals are fantastic, with twinges of Castlevania here and there. The game also features a custom chiptune soundtrack that really delivers. Halloween Forever did very well on Steam, and has established Imaginary Monsters as a firm worth watching.

#9 Cursed Castilla

nudity->death.”/> You get a life meter instead of just armor->nudity->death.

Upon seeing this, my first thought was, “oh, another Ghosts & Goblins clone, they should put this developer in prison.” I was very wrong. It’s like someone took that dubious title from decades ago and forged it into precious steel. It’s almost entirely different; it’s just got the same basic theme. What I liked the most about Cursed Castilla is that you can customize how the screen looks, giving it scanlines like an old TV, etc. There’s tons of different monsters, lots of power ups, and even multiple endings. Definitely worth checking out if you like a challenge and were actually a fan of G&G.

#8 Stardew Valley

It’s a farm game, and people certainly seem to love it.

Okay, this is one of the titles I haven’t played, but I had the resource of both friends and online game footage to supplement what I already knew. Apparently it’s one of those survival/crafting games, with a heavy focus on agriculture. It also has a lot of RPG elements (I’m told you can even start a family in it). It’s very SNES-looking, and there *is* a lot of detail to the game play, so I’m not surprised this game did extremely well on Steam and elsewhere in 2016. This general style of game is certainly a trend these past few years, and Stardew Valley has really capitalized on it. Daily life includes not only farm work, but mail, interaction with other characters, and mercantile ventures. Reviews from most players were glowing.

#7 Owlboy

People ask you a lot of questions even though you can’t talk.

I gave this one a spin. For a game that was in development for so long, they really used that time to create and perfect a detailed world. Owlboy is an action-adventure type game, with very lush graphics and a lot of story. The controls are nice, I like the way combat works a lot, but my only major knock for this one is THERE IS A LOT OF TEXT AND DIALOG FOR A MAIN CHARACTER WHO IS BORN MUTE. Other than that, definitely worth checking out if you like a good tale interwoven with your gameplay. Parting thought: the background graphics remind me a lot of those Sierra point/click story games from the mid 90s… except nicer.

#6 Enter the Gungeon

KA-POW!!!

Ever wanted to get into a knock-down, drag-out, pixelated gunfight? Enter the Gungeon allows you to do just that, plus it satisfies your dungeon-crawling needs as well! Pick a character and guide them down into the depths to find the treasure they all seek: a gun that can kill the past. A staggering array of monsters await you, in case you though this would be easy. Some of them are kind of cute. Some of them are a little disturbing. All of them are dangerous enough to warrant blowing away. There is, of course, an in-game economy (like any good dungeon!) in the form of merchants who’ve made the dubious decision of setting up shop in the Gungeon, so you’re not without allies. They’ll hook you up with the best they’ve got… for a fee. There’s also good stuff laying around just waiting to be found, as well! The graphics are not only retro but adorable as well, and this one’s got a playability built into it that’ll keep you coming back. In fact, the coolest thing about Enter the Gungeon is how the difficulty reactively adjusts to your skill in addition to scaling as you progress. In other words, the better you’re doing, the more the game considers really kicking your ass. Lots of homages to fantasy in pop culture, including old school D&D. Definitely worth a look!

#5 Neon Drive

This “Future 80s” themed title isn’t so much a driving or racing game… it’s more like a dodging game. Not to say that this makes it any less addictive. The visuals are absolutely breathtaking, and the soundtrack fits perfectly into the whole thing like a puzzle piece. I won’t sully this one with too many words, I’ll let some video speak for me.

#4 Starbound

“But Bryan, Starbound has been out forever.”

Correction. Starbound was in open beta forever. 2016 has finally given us the final release! Now it’s implemented all the delicious changes they kept testing in the unstable build, and the game is actually a game. For those of you who got tired waiting for this, COME BACK! There’s actually a story (that you can pursue more or less at your leisure), certain craft/achievement trees have been restructured in a sane fashion, and the graphics and sound are still wonderful. Explore planet after planet in pixelated glory! One of the most popular titles in its class on Steam even before it was finalized, Starbound continues to get rave reviews. Consider me one of them.

#3 Bit Blaster XL

NUCLEAR CHAOS!!!

I’ve expressed before my love of shoot-em-ups. I don’t review many of them because they tend to be linear, heavily focused on gameplay instead of any plot, and hard to summon up words for. Not so for this title. Bit Blaster XL is a homage to the old school titans of the genre, with plenty to offer on its own. In its basic format, the game is Asteroids. You zoom around busting things up. That’s where the similarity ends. All kinds of power ups pop out to grab, way more stuff shows up, and it’s madness for as long as you can take it. The old school graphics are perfectly complemented by a nice hybrid of new and old-style sound. Definitely worth it if you like your little spaceship shooters, and it’s not expensive at all on any platform I’ve seen offering it.

#2 Devil Daggers

You’re a badass if you even get this far within the first couple weeks of playing.

Oh man… THIS GAME… I got this the week it was released, and I was hooked. It’s incredibly simple: the game plays like an extremely confined first-person shooter. You fire little magical “daggers” out of your hands at creatures who approach you from the darkness and gradually begin to overwhelm you. It’s not about beating the game… it’s about how long you can survive. Graphics are simple but beautiful, and really capture the desired atmosphere. I’d say they remind me of the early Quake-style games more than anything. The sound is minimalist, but that works well for the horror vibe. You can see how you stack up against other players in terms of score, or you can just enjoy the mayhem. One of the best concepts to see the stage this year: simple, enduring, entertaining, and addicting.

#1 Hyper Light Drifter

Firstly, this one easily generated the most buzz online, even being featured on media sites like Vice. It’s been overwhelmingly popular on Steam and elsewhere since its early pre-release phases, and there’s a lot of understandable reasons why. Alex Preston and his team at Heart Machine have crafted a real masterpiece, using pixel graphics and a color scheme reminiscent of old CGA computer games as the basis for a world with great depth and character. HLD is definitely an RPG, though it has action elements throughout; fans of the Zelda series will love this just as much if not more. You guide the Drifter around a seemingly ruined world, finding sources of power and defeating dangerous foes while unlocking bits of what may have happened in the past. There is no spoken dialogue; HLD tells an amazing story simply with its music and breathtaking visuals. The game truly is a work of art, and was worth waiting for.

—

We’ve seen a lot come and go in retro gaming these past few years, and needless to say 2016 has been a busy one. As it nears its end, we can only look forward and hope that 2017 holds as much for us… if not more. Happy holiday season, RetroFans.

Special thanks to D.J. and B.H. for comparing notes with me and sharing your knowledge. With your input, I was able to work more swiftly and thoroughly than I could have alone. 

When I was a kid in the late 80s and early 90s, I’d occasionally see a system advertised on TV and in magazines that wasn’t the SNES or the Genesis. It was a thin, matte-black affair that used archaic-looking cards instead of cartridges. Its graphics appeared to be right up there with its more popular rivals, and in fact it seemed to eclipse them in terms of capability. This incredible system was called the TurboGrafx 16, and I used to wonder why more people didn’t talk about it or have one. Eventually, it faded from the foreground of the gaming world, as the Sega CD, 32X, and eventually a whole new generation of consoles came to be. As I grew, and as time continued to pass, I’d always wonder… “what was the TurboGrafx 16 like?”

Two days ago, I got a chance to dive into not only its history, but its game library… a set of titles with surprising variety and amazing vibrancy. I have seen the 512 colors of the rainbow, and nothing looks the same now. I’ve seen wonderful, horrifying, and strange things.

♪ like a fool / I fell in love with you / you turned my whole world upside down ♪ seriously, I’ve gotten very little sleep since gaining access to this thing.

Needless to say, I’m a huge fan now. I want to tell you all I can. Let’s do this!

A Challenger Appears

In 1987, Hudson Soft partnered with NEC to spring a new system on the domestic market. They called it the PC Engine, and it was arguably the first of its kind: a 16 bit home console with graphics and sound rivaling the arcade. The beast’s CPU was still 8-bit, but that’s splitting hairs. The PC Engine boasted 16 bit processors for both its sound and its graphics. In its original Japanese form, the console was around 5 inches square and a little over an inch and a half thick… meaning, at the time, it held the record for the smallest home console ever. That’s a lot of power in such a tiny package. Keep in mind that this is in 1987. The NES had been released only two years prior, and the Mega Drive wouldn’t be around until October of ’88. Sunsoft and NEC had achieved alchemy. To add a final uppercut to the battle in the Japanese market, they released a CD ROM attachment two months after the Mega Drive was released… the first one ever on a home gaming console.

It’s so f**king cute.

Wait, guys… I lied. One last ball buster. Guess who also released the first fully portable console that used the same media as its plug-in-the-wall progenitor?

That’s right… five whole years before the Sega Nomad.

In the summer of 1989, the PC Engine was given a slight makeover and dropped on the US like a bomb… that bomb’s name was TurboGrafx 16. The system and its games were initially a huge hit, especially on the West coast, and among the hardcore gamers of the time; the true cultists and curators, the devoted.

Let’s talk about the games… There are so many worth mentioning, but I’ll touch on the brightest and best.

Lunatic Weird-Ass Pinball Games I Can’t Stop Playing

It gets worse. And better.

Alien Crush and Devil’s Crush are pretty legendary entries in the PC Engine game library. With minor changes, they made it to US Shores and fascinated players. They feature bizarre, phantasmagorical graphics as well as eerie music that seems absolutely appropriate.

A woman’s face gradually morphs into that of a hideous reptile. Bonus stages include space worms and a trio of bug-eyed undead faces. You get points for smashing little demons with the silver ball and firing it into the mouths of nightmarish beasts. The entire experience is enthralling, and I’ve already poured hours into both games.

About Twenty Million Shooters

Gradius was released for the PC Engine, and that version is considered one of the better ones. Its sequels saw release for the system as well, and were similarly beautiful games. In addition, about one metric ton of shoot em up games were produced for the console if you count both international and Japan-only titles. Hyper Dyne Side Arms is a pretty innovative one, and the infamous Zero Wing was also a hit in Japan. The genre is one of my favorites (and one of few types of game I’m actually decent at), so I was thrilled to see the huge library of shooters. I’m still picking through them, and will be for a while.

Gradius 2, Image Fight, R-Type, and Hyper Dyne Side Arms, four of roughly a billion shooters for the PC Engine/TurboGrafx 16.

The Only Easily Available Version of Splatterhouse We Had for a Long Time

I’ve written about Splatterhouse before. It’s amazing, gory, violent, scary, and it’s a masterpiece. It was ported to this system early after its arcade release, with very minor changes. The USA didn’t get a ton of Splatterhouse arcade cabinets, but we did get the TG-16 port and all the mayhem that came with it. Sure, his mask is red. Sure, some of the upside-down crosses and other stuff are removed. It’s still the same game, and it still came with a warning that excited you and scared your parents. It wasn’t until the “modern” era of gaming that a lot of us were exposed to the original article, well after we’d seen the entertaining but visually watered-down sequels on Genesis.

Lower left hand corner. It’s a cleverly phrased version of “I dare you, kid.”

I Am Not Kidding About the Game Called Toilet Kids

A Japanese title, Toilet Kids involves a magical journey through a land filled with (made of?) poop.

The Adventure Begins!!!

I’m going to let some pictures speak for themselves, and I’m going to let you plumb further (pun intended) if you’re curious. It’s a shoot em up, you fly on a toilet I think, and you dogfight with all kinds of crazy dook monsters. The graphics and sound are incredible… I’ve never witnessed cartoon turds so vividly, nor have I wanted to.

From the Japanese manual.

I’d hang out on a cloud too if I lived in an entire kingdom made of shit.

So Why Didn’t It Make the Grade?

Initially, it did! The original console sold well in Japan, as did the handful of peripherals and add-ons. The American market had a few complaints, though: Firstly, while the games were awesome, there weren’t many of them by well-known third parties like Konami, Capcom, etc. and a lot of popular titles got passed over for a TG-16 port. On a related note,the first-party games that made it across the Pacific to us often seemed… weird to the mainstream video gamer. They were ultimately better suited to the Japanese market. Another common gripe was the controller. It seemed outdated with its 2 buttons when compared to its contemporary rivals in the USA. All in all, while critics praised the game library in objective terms, the whole affair just seemed out of phase.

eh, okay. I see what you mean about the whole controller thing… but then, my thumbs get lost on an xbox pad. give me this any day.

Why You Should Still Have a Look if You Get a Chance

This system, this revolutionary little machine, broke the door down and hardly gets credit for it today. It fired the first round in what became one of the most amazing market battles in gaming history… the classic console wars we all remember from that era. The PC Engine deserves its place in retro gaming history, and any true student of the subject will take a good look.

To quote a certain bowler-wearing hoodlum, viddy well.

Dengeki PC Engine, August 1994 issue.

Oh… and stay retro. 😉

]]> https://newretrowave.com/2016/07/28/pc-engineturbografx-16-greatness-weirdness-in-the-fourth-generation/feed/ 0 https://newretrowave.com/2016/07/16/editorial-what-is-retro-gaming/ https://newretrowave.com/2016/07/16/editorial-what-is-retro-gaming/#respond Sat, 16 Jul 2016 14:28:14 +0000 http://new-retro-wave.com/2016/07/16/2016716editorial-what-is-retro-gaming/ As part of this prestigious position, as well as out of deep personal interest, I try to keep abreast of what’s going on in retro gaming. I follow topics with Google Alerts, I read Twitter (where a surprising amount of chatter on the topic takes place), I’m a member of several lovely Facebook groups, and most of all I try to talk to other hobbyists as often as possible. My home region, the Raleigh NC metro area, hosts two arcades and a slew of resale shops for old-school gear. It seems that retro gaming is only growing in popularity. The question echoes through the back halls of many minds, though: When does “retro” start and end?

Look in the other photo captions for fun little links to relevant videos! 

Thankfully, the first part of that question is fairly easy to nail down. While the first true video games were developed in the 1950s and were simply electronic versions of popular board games, most gamers agree that the 1970s heralded the beginning of gaming’s golden age. In 1971, the first true coin-op arcade video game was finalized at Stanford. It was called Galaxy Game, and used vector displays along with a processor called the PDP-11. Once the floodgates opened, arcades became like roller rinks or discos; everyone wanted to go and there was plenty of fun to be had. Pong came just a year after Galaxy Game, and was released as a dedicated console soon afterward. The basis was already laid for a burgeoning new industry. Japan, whose electronics were quickly becoming near-magical in terms of innovation, took note. The world was falling in love with video games.

This is Galaxy Game, folks. She looks like something you’d throw your empties into, but she was state of the art back in ’71.

The second half of our quandary is a real head-scratcher, and is often a topic of spirited debate among the faithful. One popular theory is that “retro” ends around 1995. During this year, Sony’s first PlayStation console began to deflate from its peak while other fifth-generation consoles flopped in what became a mini-version of 1983’s flooded market. 1995-96 was the era of the Saturn, the Virtual Boy, the 3DO, and the Jaguar. This miniature singularity represents a symbolic death for the era as far as many gamers are concerned.

I still have mine, and I still play it. I’m particularly fond of a cheerful little bastard who goes by the name of Mr. Driller, but I also love Bushido Blade and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. And yes, in my eyes, the PS1 is retro as hell.

Another popular idea places the cutoff point around the late nineties. This pivots around two things: the huge amount of love many console fans have for the Dreamcast despite its summary commercial failure (myself included), and the popular idea that the late 90s were an overall cultural “changing of the guard.” The “real” 90s were over, and the 80s aesthetic was pretty dead; Everything was focused on the modern and the new for quite some time right around the beginning of ’99.

Seriously though. Chu-Chu Rocket! and Ikaruga changed my world. Yes, the controller was weird. Yes, the games took a bit to load sometimes. But I’m telling you… this was really something. No wonder the vaporwave crowd is so obsessed with it.

A third opinion, held by a growing minority, is that retro is entirely relative to the individual. While this may be a less widely held belief, it may well be the most realistic. After all, isn’t individual experience subjective? I never saw 1982; I wasn’t born yet. 1996 was part of someone else’s modern era, but to me, it was the apex of my childhood. It’s food for thought, but it often fails to satisfy the hard-and-fast VG fans out there who like to fit things into neat rows. And nothing against them… my D&D bookshelf as well as my ROM library are testament to my appreciation for order.

If you’d like to weigh in on this and other topics, please join us over at NRW Gaming’s Facebook page. We welcome discussion, comment, and even friendly debate in the comments sections of our posts. Tell us what you think “retro” means when it comes to cartridges and discs. Is there a cutoff point, or is it all in the eye of the beholder? Time, after all, doesn’t stop… and for the time being, neither do gamers!

]]> https://newretrowave.com/2016/07/16/editorial-what-is-retro-gaming/feed/ 0 https://newretrowave.com/2016/06/28/video-game-history-101-the-1983-crash/ https://newretrowave.com/2016/06/28/video-game-history-101-the-1983-crash/#respond Tue, 28 Jun 2016 20:32:43 +0000 http://new-retro-wave.com/2016/06/28/2016628video-game-history-101-the-1983-crash/

Alternate Title: “Why I’m Glad They Buried E.T. Out In the Desert”

If you asked a ton of people when console gaming really started, they’d reflexively tell you, “When the Nintendo (NES) came out.” While they’d be wrong, they’re less wrong than we’d like to admit. The NES didn’t start console gaming, but what it did do was swoop into Hades on white-feathered wings and pluck it from damnation.

What this article will attempt to do is illustrate a sequence of events that nearly caved in the concept of video games forever in North America. It’s a tawdry tale featuring cutthroat economics, desperation, stagnation, and E.T. The Extraterrestrial.

Too Much of a Good Thing

In 1982-1983, the Atari 2600 was the done thing in console gaming. Homes across the United States were playing Atari. Some weren’t, but they had something… a ColecoVision, a Commodore 64, a Vectrex, or maybe the Odyssey 2 (which was pretty good for its time). In fact, You could say that there were so many choices, the market was flooded.

Since most of us attended school back when they still taught basic economics, we know that if you flood a market with supply, the demand goes down and so does the price point. Well, there were no less than (and probably more than) twelve (12) consoles on the market by 1983, with more planned for ’84 by many of the same companies.

The Magnavox Odyssey2 (that 2 is supposed to be superscript), a pretty good little game machine, but part of a flooded swamp of a market.

Overabundance can lead to rot and stagnation. Guess what? It did.

Home Computers Muscle In

One of the gaming systems I mentioned up there was the Commodore 64. Now, the C64 wasn’t designed just for gaming. It was meant as a home computer. If you were one of many up-and-coming go-getters in the 1980s, you could use this thing to write business reports, organize your finances, send a letter to your mom, or even play a game.

And you could buy all this functionality for about $499, plus a modest investment in some software.

Out Run for the C64. The graphics alone blow the Atari 2600 out of the water. Not to mention that you can use this very same machine to do your taxes or write the great American novel.

Since the first gaming consoles did very little (if any) third-party licensing to start with, the independents of the day would often work with computer platforms. This led to many of them having more diverse game libraries than some consoles did. You know what else these rogue programmers loved about working with platforms like the C64? The graphics capability was miles above anything in console gaming, not to mention overall processing capability.

So why buy a system you can only play games on, that no one else is allowed to write programs for, and doesn’t want to anyway?

Inflation Craps All Over the Dollar

Signs of inflation had started not long after the Bicentennial, with the value of a dollar slowly dropping. While it can be said that the economy improved in some areas in the early 80s, Many amusement and arcade interests lobbied for a smaller dollar coin in 1979 since the spending power of a quarter was a joke by this point. The end result was the Susan B Anthony coin, worth $1 but around the size of a quarter (and thus more manageable for things like vending machines or arcade cabinets). It was this very similarity to the US quarter that made it a flop; some machines would reject the coin, others would simply treat it as a quarter. Neither result was desirable for arcade owners. This hurt video gaming in the States along with everything else happening.

Even Susan looks pissed. “HOW COULD YOU SCREW THIS UP?” Despite failing to solve any of the problems it was meant to solve, the coin was minted again in 1999, when those problems were long gone for various reasons.

Activision Leads the Way to Freedom

We’re going to take a detour for a moment, into the history of Activision. You know that company now as one of the biggest media companies, let alone video game companies, in the world. It’s a well-known name. Activision has its roots in the time period we’re exploring; in 1979, it was founded by programmers who’d left Atari over a lack of credit given – a lack of true meritocracy. You see, programmers of Atari games were never credited, as there WERE no credits in those games. To boot, there was no kickback if a game you developed sold well. You got no cut, just a (rather modest) salary. Activision was the first third-party development firm in video game history, and it DID credit its developers. Atari attempted to sue and do all kinds of other things to block sales, but eventually even they had to eat humble pie and knuckle to the third party wave. Mattel, maker of the Intellivision, stubbornly held out… and never did much in video gaming after the Intellivision.

When Activision made games like Pitfall, Atari pretty much had to bend over and take it. Activision rubbed Atari’s face in it to the tune of 4 million copies worldwide.

My point here is that, because of how they ran their ships, these captains had regular, quiet mutinies as Activision and other new developers soaked up their talent and directed it elsewhere.

E.T. Phones it In / The Mass Grave in Alamogordo

E.T. The Extraterrestrial is frequently cited as the absolute worst game ever created for a console. It was developed in five and a half weeks, left approximately 3 million copies unsold, and was universally panned by video game critics of the era (as well as modern ones who’ve bravely re-examined it). At the exact moment Atari filled trucks with the E.T. Game cartridge, slapped the backs of them, and shut the gate, they had officially shit the bed with the lights on. They just didn’t know it yet. 

The game was so bad that Atari found itself woefully below their bottom line, with three and a half million unsold cartridges out of four million produced. Not only was Atari in serious financial trouble, but flubbing a sure-ticket licensed game like E.T. Made them look like a draft horse with a shattered leg; anyone they did business with was now considering putting them down out of sheer mercy. Atari also had, well, a metric shit-ton of cartridges to offload somehow. They also had no help doing this; Warner Communications had sold them off. Mommy wasn’t around to clean this mess up.

Alamogordo is a very pretty little town in the Chihuahuan Desert in New Mexico. The scenic Sacramento Mountains border the town to its west, and to its east can be found the White Sands National Monument. Its features include a nearby Air Force base, an amazing zoo, and the corpses of some 700,000 Atari cartridges.

The overwhelming majority are copies of E.T. The Extraterrestrial.

Both he and Elliot look suitably sad. Even remorseful.

Throughout September of 1983, Atari dumped approximately 700,000 cartridges into the dump on the town’s south side. On the 29th of that year, to counter scavenging that had been taking place despite an ordinance banning such, the dump poured a layer of concrete over the buried and crushed games.

They were trying really hard to bury the industry’s biggest turd. But that’s not how the world works. A 2014 documentary, Atari: Game Over, shows the excavation of the long-buried games.

The Aftermath and Epilogue

1983 through 1985 were hard times for video gaming in the US, but the market in Japan was still a fertile ground for ideas. Looking west, companies like Nintendo and Sega had seen what too much “MORE” and not enough “NEW” could do. When Nintendo released the American-market version of their popular Famicom system, the NES… they went gently at first. When soft-launches in NYC and other major markets looked good, the NES (and its contemporaries) waded across the sea to change American gaming forever.

Oh, mighty Saviour!

An era was over, and an era had begun.

]]> https://newretrowave.com/2016/06/28/video-game-history-101-the-1983-crash/feed/ 0 https://newretrowave.com/2016/06/15/console-graveyard-the-sega-sg-1000/ https://newretrowave.com/2016/06/15/console-graveyard-the-sega-sg-1000/#respond Wed, 15 Jun 2016 18:26:12 +0000 http://new-retro-wave.com/2016/06/15/2016615console-graveyard-the-sega-sg-1000/

Tonight, we’ll be visiting the grave of a daring hero form far-off Japan. It never really made it all the way west, but it had ambitious beginnings and deserves a place in video gaming history. It was Sega’s first earnest attempt to go head-to-head with the mighty Nintendo, and despite its fall, it paved the way for future success by whetting the teeth of those involved. This entry into the Console Graveyard is… the Sega SG-1000.

A bright and sunny little thing, all too blissfully unaware of its imminent fate.

The “third generation” of console video games began a bit earlier than a casual observer may think. When Nintendo broke its champagne bottle over the Famicom and let it set sail, times were actually fairly lean in the console market. Launching a new video game system, no matter how innovative, could have been seen as a rather bold move. However, Nintendo had faith in their device, and it proved to be well warranted; by 1987, Nintendo dominated around 65% of worldwide video game console hardware sales.

Little do many know that Sega made a valiant attempt to compete with the growing monolith. When the arcade market that had been such a comfortable home for them took a downturn in ’82, Sega began developing the SG-1000. The company had recently sold off some licensing, and was split in to a North American R&D arm and its Japanese corporate branch. The president of the Japanese company, Hayao Nakayama, lobbied hard for Sega to apply its proven clout in the arcade realm to a home console. The end result was the stout little SG-1000, a strange creature that sort of bridged the gap between the Atari 2600 and Nintendo’s Famicom system.

A strange but colorful ad for the SG-1000. I say “strange,” but stranger has come and gone, to be fair.

The first iteration of the SG-1000 was a squat, bright white affair, very simple in its presentation but almost cheerful looking. The controller looked a lot like Atari’s, taking the form of a compact little joystick with broad orange buttons on either side. The graphics gently outperformed the 2600, but couldn’t quite compare to those of the Famicom system, with a modest 256×192 resolution and a 16 color palette. Part of the falling-short could be blamed on hardware component choices; the Zilog z80 CPU and Texas Instruments video and sound chips were the same ones used in the ColecoVision… a then-outdated system. In fact, an unlicensed system called the Telegames Personal Arcade was produced later on that could play both SG-1000 and ColecoVision games.

Screens from Flicky and Girl’s Garden, two of the more memorable titles for the SG-1000.

Despite these shortcomings, the system fared decently at very first, at least in domestic Japanese sales. It was also marketed in Spain with some initial success, but the American market never saw the SG-1000. However, a damning set of circumstances brought about the slow demise of Sega’s new baby. First off, much like some later consoles I’ve covered in this series of articles, Sega attempted to address flaws by simply redesigning and re-marketing the console in new forms. In July of 1984, another corporate buyout was followed by the release of the SG-1000 II. This new packaging included slightly improved controls and the ability to play Sega Card games as well as cartridges, but the console sold poorly out of the gate. An additional computer-keyboard style attachment did little to buoy sales, and the SG-1000 series was discontinued by October of 1985. The series was also badly hit by the crash of 1983, not to mention competition outside of Nintendo in its native Japan. While Sega had lost this battle with Nintendo, they learned a lot, and doubled down on their development of console hardware. The Sega Mark III was released that same year, and it evolved into the well-known Master System, a console that was finally able to compete well in the now-growing market. By 1988, the Genesis was emerging on the scene, and the wars of the fourth generation were in full swing.

Left to right: the Mark II, the 1100 keyboard attachment, and the SC-3000 (a last ditch effort to repackage the system as a personal computer).

While researching this article, I was able to find very little information of much detail on the SG-1000, which leads me to believe it is often overlooked out of hand. However, as we pay our respects at this dusty crypt, we see upon closer examination that we stand at the grave of an unsung hero. I hope at least a handful of our readers discovered something they hadn’t seen or known here today. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and may we never forget the little consoles that fell into the spaces between.

Thanks for reading!

]]> https://newretrowave.com/2016/06/15/console-graveyard-the-sega-sg-1000/feed/ 0 https://newretrowave.com/2016/05/06/console-graveyard-the-philips-cd-i/ https://newretrowave.com/2016/05/06/console-graveyard-the-philips-cd-i/#respond Fri, 06 May 2016 19:38:28 +0000 http://new-retro-wave.com/2016/05/06/201656console-graveyard-the-philips-cd-i/

Once again we strap on our work boots, sling our spades over our shoulders, and shamble on over to the Console Graveyard. This time we’ll take a look at a system that never truly knew who it was. One that had the best of intentions, but just never committed itself. In a different time or place, it could have been a true legend. Sadly, its tale ended in slow death, and it came to rest with us here in the digital mausoleums of the Console Graveyard. Allow me to introduce today’s embalmed console corpse…

Typically, Japanese companies have dominated the console market. Names like Nintendo, Sony, and Sega have brought us the platforms we’re so intimately familiar with now, and only in recent years has the American giant Microsoft waded into this battle from the neighboring PC field. The CD-i, however, is a rarity; it was designed by the Dutch company Koninklijke Philips N.V. Founded in 1891, the company began by manufacturing carbon filament lamps and soon moved on to radios and engines. As electronics became the mainstay of the later 20th Century, Philips held its own in that market with a solid line of consumer devices primarily focused on media and home use. The company, along with Sony, helped standardize the format of Compact Discs. They even pioneered an early LaserDisc device, but held it back in fear that their tape device sales would suffer as a result. You know Norelco razors? That’s them; the name is just branding.

Their first factory is now a museum. That’s how long they’ve been around.

Philips had become a respectably successful company during the 20th Century, and it felt comfortable taking a shot at multimedia. They began work on the CD-i in 1984, and it first hit retail shelves in December of 1991. That’s seven (7) years of R&D. The CD-i was intended to be more than a gaming console. It was meant for use in a wide variety of applications, from education to music to the old standby of media playing. This is fitting, as the first model available to the general consumer market looked very much like a VCR with a gamepad plugged into the front.

This was the first of many forms the console would take as they tried and tried (and tried and f**king tried) to re-market it.

The CD-i was also one of the first home media electronics with the capability of accessing networks. By partnering with fellow Dutch firm CDMATICS, Philips was able to connect CD-i players to the Internet (in its early form). This concept went over better in the Netherlands than anywhere else; a native grocery chain even implemented it for home shopping and delivery.

Despite all this innovation, there were enough problems with the ambitious CD-i that it died a slow death worldwide. One major complaint was the price point; initially released in the USA for a retail price of $700, the Philips CD-i wasn’t seen as a toy, nor was it perceived as a casual purchase by any but the wealthiest (or most foolish) consumer. The system also got panned for its lack of true games and those games’ inconsistent quality. You see, Nintendo licensed the production of some Zelda and Mario titles for the CD-i, but refused to develop said games. The results are famous among gamers on today’s Internet, and while it’s funny now, no one was laughing in the 90s when they played Hotel Mario (or one of three separate Zelda games) on their 700 dollar CD-i and saw this kind of crap:

That’s it. Other than some cutscenes that look like they were made in MSPaint, that’s Hotel Mario.

These games were so goofy that later on, the Internet would use them to spawn creations like this (one of my favorites, and there are a lot of these):

Needless to say, dedicated game consoles were outperforming the CD-i, and they were doing it for less money at the retail counter. The CD-i’s controllers also caught major flak, often cited as “confusing” and “unresponsive.” There was a lot of variation in controller types across the different models, and none of them were well-liked.

So our console looks less like a VCR, but now we’ve got… How do I hold that? How do I play games with it? It looks like the Wii chuck, but the Wii can actually do stuff.

Philips even let Sony and Magnavox take shots at revamping the CD-i, to no avail. The combination of an exorbitant price, small selection of titles, and cumbersome controls took the device down. It would continue to pop back up throughout the mid 90s with some new attachment or another, but it remained unpopular as Sega and Nintendo continued to outperform it in gaming markets.

PCWorld, GamePro, and GameTrailers all ranked the Philips CD-i as the fourth worst console of all time. It was in this judgment that the benighted little high-dollar console finally found its consistency. While it had been flagging since 1993, and Philips planned a discontinuation in 1996, the CD-i persisted limply until 1998, when it was finally given a shot in the head and laid to rest. Philips remains a strong contender in the consumer electronics market, but it has never ventured into gaming or multimedia again. While the idea behind the CD-i was ambitious and even admirable, the execution once again fouled the whole deal. Lesson learned: if you’re going to pitch a console for $700, it had better be something world-shattering. It also better have a good game library and a controller that doesn’t look like a soup spoon.

I can’t get over it. Here we see that the tiny buttons are labeled, leaving you to guess wildly at the purpose of the big ones. We also see the word “interactive.” Thanks for the clue, because this doesn’t look like it’s used to interact with anything.

Thank you for joining me again in the Graveyard. There’ll be more to come; we’ve just recently cleared some space for a new set of digital catacombs. I’ll see you then, creeps.

]]> https://newretrowave.com/2016/05/06/console-graveyard-the-philips-cd-i/feed/ 0 https://newretrowave.com/2016/03/30/console-graveyard-the-nintendo-virtual-boy/ https://newretrowave.com/2016/03/30/console-graveyard-the-nintendo-virtual-boy/#comments Wed, 30 Mar 2016 18:47:30 +0000 http://new-retro-wave.com/2016/03/30/2016330console-graveyard-the-nintendo-virtual-boy/ In this installment of Console Graveyard, we'll take a look at a piece of hardware that was just a little ahead of its time. 

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In this installment of Console Graveyard, we’ll take a look at a piece of hardware that was just a little ahead of its time. In fact, it was so ahead of its time that it completely sucked. It has since been eclipsed by modern attempts at VR, but it was a brave shot at the concept of virtual reality. However, those familiar with world mythology know that courage and foolishness are separated by the finest of lines. Today we discuss…

It all started with a company called Reflection Technology, Inc. in 1985 they had developed a sort of proto-virtual reality, a red-colored 3D lens technology they called Scanned Linear Array technology. It was decent for its time, but caused motion sickness in most users. Sega, perhaps wisely, had passed on purchasing the use of this technology, as had Mattel and Hasbro. However, Nintendo got wind of it and was thrilled to try it out. They saw it as a way to be more innovative, and thought that the technology would be difficult for competitors to imitate should it catch on. Nintendo made the deal, code named the project “VR32,” and got to work. The project was given to R&D1, as R&D3 was busy during this time developing the N64.

It’s a good thing Nintendo had their eggs in multiple baskets.

I’m not fluent in Japanese, but I sure hope none of that translates to “portable,” “lightweight,” “user-friendly,” “affordable,” or “good idea.”

For reasons of cost effectiveness, Nintendo R&D1 stuck with the original red LED color scheme. They also did away with a part of the initial package from RTI, the head-tracking aspect. This was a major contributor to the motion sickness problem, as well as (it was thought) lazy-eye syndrome. Japan had also passed a law in 1995 holding developers and manufacturers under more liability if their products caused harm to people, so Nintendo had to be especially careful. They decided that the entire setup would be stationary, resembling over-sized goggles on a stand. A familiar style of controller would be connected by cable to the headset. In fact, it was very similar to what we’d see on the N64.

All of this would be powered by either an AC adapter or six AA batteries.

Yep! It’s like a little proton pack for your controller!  Not even that can make it sound cool.

So imagine, if you will, hunching over your dining room table, pressing buttons on a controller you can’t see, to play blurry “3D” games, only to have six more AA batteries burn out on you. Now, you could slide a big AC adapter onto the controller instead, but then you’ve got to be careful not to pull the whole thing out of the wall… while your eyes are plugged into a massive set of goggles that look like someone tried to make binoculars out of a lunchbox.

It shouldn’t be hard to believe the rest of the Virtual Boy’s story.

A familiar chapter in the story of so many failed gaming ideas, not even heavy price cuts could wash the bitter taste from consumers’ palates when it came to the Virtual Boy. Credit to www.vintagecomputing.com for the high quality scan. Every other one was tiny!

When initially released in North America in August 1995, the Virtual Boy sold for $179.95. This, coupled with the unavoidable discomfort of using it, made it a hard sell. So hard, in fact, that it was an astounding commercial failure. It is on record as Nintendo’s biggest flop to date, next to the ill-fated 64DD peripheral for the N64. To rephrase that, it’s the biggest mistake of Nintendo’s that most people have actually heard of. The Virtual Boy was discontinued worldwide in March of 1996, having sold only 770,000 units. Critics trashed it for the aforementioned reasons, as well as its narrow game library (only 22 published games) and what is universally seen as a sub-par marketing campaign for the console. Nintendo has placed the blame on project leader Gunpei Yokoi, and it has been cited as one of the reasons for his early withdrawal from the company… but Yokoi also worked on the successful Game Boy pocket before leaving. No matter whose fault it is or was, the Virtual Boy belongs under the rug where it was swept.

Two animated scenes from one memorable game, Innsmouth no Yakata. And this one didn’t even make it Stateside!

Wasteland seems oddly appropriate, in hindsight… but not the reaction to finding a Virtual Boy. I’d think it was a trap.

Thanks for visiting the Graveyard with me again. Tread lightly on your way out, lest ye disturb the dead consoles.

]]> https://newretrowave.com/2016/03/30/console-graveyard-the-nintendo-virtual-boy/feed/ 1 https://newretrowave.com/2016/03/16/ljph454ovaoyrkcyl6gvru2tbo7k91/ https://newretrowave.com/2016/03/16/ljph454ovaoyrkcyl6gvru2tbo7k91/#respond Wed, 16 Mar 2016 06:57:36 +0000 http://new-retro-wave.com/2016/03/16/2016316ljph454ovaoyrkcyl6gvru2tbo7k91/

Believe it or not, at the time of this writing, we are seeing the eighth generation of home video game consoles. It has been that long.

We’ve seen and experienced a plethora of amazing concepts, innovative ideas, and ultimately spent millions (maybe billions?) of dollars as a civilization on this particular hobby, video gaming. From the early days of the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision, to the glory days of the 8 and 16 bit hit parade, to the transition from cartridge to disc to download… one could say that video games represent their own wonderland for the human spirit.

Even wonderlands have graveyards.

Some of these ideas just didn’t catch on. Be it a glutted market, poor execution of a concept, or even an idea too far ahead of its time, a few consoles have fallen by the wayside, trampled underfoot in the war-march of the gaming industry. The real heartbreak lies in the fact that some of these concepts were even good. However, it can be argued, they were simply not good enough. After all, the market is brutal, and not every idea sticks. Today I will talk about one of the notable losers, one of the ideas that you probably saw… but not for long. Today I bring you…

Generation: 5th

Year Released: 1993

Discontinued: 1996

In the early 90s, things were changing significantly in the home video game world. Companies like Sega and Sony were developing consoles that ran games from a CD-ROM interface, instead of clunky and easily-dirtied cartridges that had limited data storage potential. Sony’s future powerhouse, the Playstation, hadn’t been released yet, but the buzz was everywhere. What had been released was Sega’s CD attachment for its existing Genesis console, and it had gone over very well despite a high price point and an initially limited game library (which quickly grew).

Atari knew it had to cash in! Atari felt it COULD cash in. After all, hadn’t they been the arcade dynamos of the early 80s? Surely there was a place for them among the new stars of this bright era. There had to be. They began R&D on two systems: the never-to-be 32 bit “Panther,” and the 64-bit Jaguar. Both of these projects were farmed out to a company called Flare, which had originally worked on a home arcade system called the Konix Multisystem. Flare had bailed on the Multisystem due to what could be called an overreach; they were shooting to replicate the arcade experience at home… in the early 90s… with an eye on price. Needless to say, with a floppy-disk system and limited RAM, the Multisystem did not take off.

Why Atari saw Flare as a sure winner despite this baffles me.

Sleek. Stylish. Sophisticated. An utter flop.

In their first brilliant move, Flare and Atari decided to go with cartridges. Knowing that their competitors were moving to CDs and doing quite well at it, they decided to try and pack more into a ROM-style cartridge. The controller design is also questionable; I liken it more to a TI-83 calculator than a joystick.

Does this mean I can use it to call Atari’s complaints department?

The system was released in November ’93, and had sold only around 100,000 units by the end of 1994. With only 67 total games in its library, the Jaguar’s selection of games was tiny throughout its first (and formative) years. Flaws in the CPU and UART components of the console contributed to this, as well as third-party developers’ unwillingness to take a risk on making games for a system already doing so poorly on the market.

The system’s belated CD attachment was kind of like putting a truck cap on an El Camino. It also did little to expand the Jaguar’s piss-poor game library.

Despite later attempts to save its flagging sales, which included a CD attachment and even an earnest try at VR technology, the Jaguar never really caught up with the emerging competition. Once the PS1 was released in 1995, sales took an even greater nose dive. In late 1995, Atari even tried infomercials to boost sales. In mid 1996, the Jaguar was laid to rest… and Atari was on the skids too.

It did have a killer BIOS screen though. I like to imagine that Tony Montana would see just this part alone and buy like 20 of them. One for every room in his coke mansion.

There were (and are) some high notes to the console’s ill fated tale. Firstly, its most successful title, Alien vs. Predator, was a notable success. A memorable and underrated entry to the FPS genre, it was an early example of diversity in that category, offering multiple characters for play. It also boasted an incredibly atmospheric setting, both audio- and video-wise.

Another high point would be Tempest 2000, a remake of the 1981 arcade title. This game was originally exclusive to the Jaguar, but was ported once sales began to truly dip. It is widely praised for its soundtrack, and is exhilarating to play even now.

It should also be noted that the Jaguar received ports of two of my favorite games: Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. Both received good reviews on the Jaguar.

The system still maintains a cult following. Hasbro bought Atari in the late 90s, and released the rights to the Jaguar. It is officially an open platform, and interested third parties can develop whatever they like for it. Some of the results can be seen (and grabbed) here.

I’m going to cover this one back up and let it rest in peace, but I’ll see you soon for another edition of Console Graveyard. Thanks for reading!

Arrogance? Wishful thinking? I’d say six of one, half a dozen of the other. Until next time, RetroManiacs!

]]> https://newretrowave.com/2016/03/16/ljph454ovaoyrkcyl6gvru2tbo7k91/feed/ 0 https://newretrowave.com/2016/02/16/eternal-champions-sega-1993/ https://newretrowave.com/2016/02/16/eternal-champions-sega-1993/#respond Tue, 16 Feb 2016 22:00:43 +0000 http://new-retro-wave.com/2016/02/16/2016216eternal-champions-sega-1993/

The early and mid 1990s saw a lot of fighting games. In fact, let me rephrase that: the early and mid 1990s saw an overwhelming, almighty heap of fighting games. A majority of these games were direct-to-console releases, and most of them were clumsy clones of the era’s two big titles: Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II. Roughly a third of them were good enough to be playable, and very few of them stood out. Eternal Champions was one that drew attention for being very fun, if not a bit weird.

Eternal Champions was released by Sega in 1993, and was exclusive to their console, the Genesis/Mega Drive. I owned a Genesis for many years before I had any prolonged exposure to the SNES, so I ended up playing a lot of the console’s exclusive titles. I also had a taste for fighting games, namely the SFII and MK ports, so I had my six-button controller already. And believe me, this game was a pain in the ass without one. If you used the regular 3 button controller, you had to use Start to switch between punches and kicks. The game was originally developed to work with the ill fated Activator, a sort of floor pad you’d stand on and move your body to execute different moves. I have never played with an Activator, and I’ve only ever seen one of them in person (in the collection of someone with way too much money). By all accounts, it was highly inaccurate, and it also cost quite a bit for something so dicey. Thankfully, Eternal Champions played just fine with a handheld controller… if you had the six-button deal.

Now you’re playing with pow… oh, sorry, that’s another company’s tag line.

While the game’s plot is barely more complex than usual for fighting titles, it’s a bit more creative than usual. Gifted fighters from different eras – past, present, and future – have been brought back to life for a tournament in a sort of time vacuum by an entity known as the Eternal Champion. Each fighter died just before achieving a goal or making a choice that would have altered the course of human destiny. The prize: a chance to go back and try again. Each character is from a different time and place (some fictional), and is a master of a different style of fighting. Characters range from cyborg kickboxers and Atlantean Capoeria fighters to ninja assassins and Depression-era gangsters who inexplicably know mantis kung-fu. There is even a wizard character, Xavier, who melds hapkido cane-fighting with powerful magic. One of my personal favorites is Midknight, a genetic vampire from the Vietnam War era who uses Bruce Lee’s style, Jeet Kune Do.

Top Row: Jetta, the Russian acrobat; Larcen, the kung fu Chicago gangster; RAX the cyborg muay-thai champ; Midknight, the vampire who mastered JKD during the Vietnam Era; Slash, a caveman who practiced a style known only as Pain; Trident, the Atlantean who coupled his hand-fork with Capoeria; Blade, the Kenpo-using bounty hunter from the future. Bottom: Shadow, the ninja assassin from the 1990s; Xavier, the 17th Century warlock who also got around enough to learn some hapkido. Quite a roster. A lot of diversity.

some sprite rips from spriters-resource.com

The fighters face off in a variety of different staged locales, each reminiscent of a character’s native time/place. Each fighter has a unique array of normal punches and kicks, and a handful of special moves. These moves usually involve pressing two buttons at once or “charging” backward or down like Guile’s specials in SFII. A power meter, resembling a yin/yang symbol, depleted when specials were used and was meant to keep players from spamming their special moves. During casual play, this could be turned off, allowing infinite use of these moves by either player. Here’s the thing: whether it was intentional or not, the CPU fighters during the regular single player mode could keep using specials even after their meters had depleted. The game had fatalities of a sort, as well; if you defeated your foe so that they landed in just the right spot, depending on the stage you were in, they’d die a special death. Observe the video below:

The game also had a plethora of customizable options for 2 player combat. There was even a setting that allowed you to enter a customized “danger room” sort of area to fight in, with a hand-chosen set of built-in hazards to avoid while simultaneously pummeling your opponent.

Eternal Champions received mixed reviews, obviously being more popular among Genesis purists than among generalist gamers. Its graphics were very good, and all the characters are depicted in great detail. As with most Sega Genesis titles, the soundtrack is incredible, with a lot of emotion and a rich instrumentation that adds plenty of character to the game.

A sequel for the Sega CD was made shortly afterward, with a couple extra characters and slightly better graphics. A third entry was planned for the Saturn console, but it was canceled so as not to compete too heavily with Sega’s more commercially successful Virtua Fighter, which was also planned for release on the Saturn. Two spin-offs were released as well; Chicago Syndicate for the Game Gear (starring the kung fu gangster character Larcen) and X-Perts for the Genesis (starring the ninja assassin Shadow).

The Champ Himself.

I give Eternal Champions an 8/10. It’s an excellent entry into its genre, incredibly colorful, and it came during an otherwise cluttered time in 90s gaming history. It’s easy to overlook, but if you’re able, I encourage you to give it a spin.

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