retro video games – NewRetroWave – Stay Retro! | Live The 80's Dream!

RETRO GAMING ROGUES’ GALLERY (Part 1)

bryan.eddy@newretrowave.com — Sat, 15 Feb 2020 22:32:02 +0000

The core of almost every decent video game’s story is conflict. Whether it’s the fierce hand-to-hand hoops of NBA Jam, the brutal martial arts murder of Mortal Kombat, or DOOM’s epic battle against Hell… you’re fighting. Fighting for something or someone (usually the whole world), against something or someone (who usually has a ton of friends who want to kill you too).

Video gaming is nothing without its heroes or villains, but what about those “friends” the Big Evil Bad Guy has filling up warehouse districts and mushroom kingdoms all across the multiverse? Without goons and henchmen, the Ganons and Bowsers of the world wouldn’t stand a chance. Dudes like Dr. Wiley would be issuing ultimatums at sunset and getting their shit pushed in by dawn. Let’s give a little love to the ubiquitous “baddie.” We’re going to have a look at some of the more colorful guys, gals, monsters and robots who decided that under-the-table cash from a cartoon psychopath sounded better than the drive-thru or the Merchant Marine. This will likely be a multi-part series, but I’ll do five at a time. Get out your autograph books!

I was kidding, you fucking nerd. Put that shit away and pay attention.

—

Special thanks today to the people on various websites who rip every sprite out of every game, thus making this an easy image hunt. Also thanks to Jakub Steiner for showing me that you can, in fact, make animated gifs in GIMP, and that it’s not that hard. My dumb ass just never knew it was there. Mind like a steel trap. Anyway…

—

BLARGG/LAVA MONSTER

Super Mario World, 1990

Blargg’s responsibility of swimming through molten rock isn’t difficult in terms of complexity or stress level. He’s just the only one on the crew who’s able to survive doing it. You can tell on his face that he doesn’t give a fuck. His job’s secure. His job is easy (for him). And you know what? It’s fun. At least he can make it fun.

I’ve always appreciated the look on this character’s face. To this day, when playing through SMW, I can’t suppress a laugh when I see his ol’ razzle-dazzlin’ ass lurch upward from the lake of fire. Blargg, you make lava a not so bad place to hang out… unless you’re killing me, in which case, you can go fuck yourself.

FLEAMAN/HUNCHBACK

Castlevania series, 1986 – present

I have played the Castlevania games for more than twenty years now, and this little bastard’s weird jumping behavior still gives me apoplexy about half the time. I don’t think “hunchback” is a terribly nice thing to say about someone who can’t help being shaped like an unspeakably ugly Fibonacci swirl, so we’ll call him Fleaman (his name in later titles in the series). Fleaman is a professional, fully bonded and accredited asshole. He is a state-registered, card-carrying, world-class piece of shit. I think Fleaman bites you to hurt you, but since all most enemies in Castlevania have to do is touch you, he could just be doing that. Gently pressing the palm of his hand on your chest while you scream in agony.

The best part about his little animations is that he’s very clearly laughing at you. Simon Belmont, you may think you’re a bad motherfucker, but this freaky little dude slightly larger than a house cat will just start bouncing around when you show up, giggling at you like you just told a joke. Stow the Vampire Killer whip for these guys and just get a good 12-gauge shotgun and some buckshot.

In later installments of the series (SotN for example), Fleaman even gets some gear upgrades. Dracula issues him a pint-sized suit of plate armor and an axe twice that must weigh more than three of him. He makes it work, trust me. Fleaman will never look a gift horse in the mouth. If you’re giving him something to murder with, his arms are wide open.

Fuck these guys, but they’re also a fantastic poster-child for the concept that Castlevania monsters take their employment with Dracula very seriously. Who the fuck wouldn’t? If your boss was a legendary ancient vampire with unspeakable magical powers, the combination of leadership morale and piss-dribble terror would be pretty motivating.

THIS STUPID WITCH OR LEPER OR LIZARD PERSON OR WHATEVER

Ninja Gaiden (NES version), 1988

Projectile attacks from enemies in video games are capable of devastating fuckery, especially when one is trying to jump, dispatch more immediate threats, and generally not die. The Hammer Brothers are well-known pros, but whatever this thing from Ninja Gaiden is supposed to be, it’s got them handily outclassed in two ways:

• Placement/Position

• Adding insult to injury by knocking me backward mid-jump with what looks like a wooden toy sword so that I fall off-screen

My mind sees this thing and immediately assumes it’s female, not even because of the pink robe or because the green skin screams “Halloween witch.” I can’t find the names of any Ninja Gaiden NES enemies besides the bosses. Here’s my head-canon/theory for a 32-year-old NES game:

—

Sewer Bitch was born with the green skin of a mythological hag, but sadly she had no talent for black magic, nor for the morally ambiguous soup recipes. She couldn’t even use a cauldron without burning her knees while she stirred it. Seething with dysphoric wanderlust, Sewer Bitch left the bright lights and chrome lining of hag society, taking up residence in a sewer (hence the name). To further divorce herself from her peers, she discarded the designer leopard-skin-print leotard worn by all modern hags. A soiled old white bedsheet, tinged pink from probably having been washed with someone’s color load, would serve her purposes much better.

To arm herself against the omnipresent rats, the outcast spent years of her idle hours gathering property stakes and packing twine in order to fashion some weapons. Not being terribly bright, and having seen someone play Legend of Zelda once on a rainy night through their bedroom window, Sewer Bitch handmade hundreds of crude, ungainly wooden “swords.” At first, opponents and onlookers would mock. Oh, how they would mock… but Sewer Bitch knew something they didn’t and couldn’t know. She’d alley-oop that chunk of wood upward as if granny-shooting a basketball, and the dumb bastards would inevitably walk right into it.

Eventually, the strange talents of the filthy monster-woman came to the attention of Jacquio, who hired her on the spot.

“Just stay here on this one impossibly tall pillar,” the demonic sorcerer told her. “Move back and forth a little bit, sure, but there’s not much point. Just keep dropping your shitty wooden knives into the space between this one and the one to your left. Ryu Hyabusa won’t even know what to do. He’ll just turn around and go home.”

—

SMILING TRAMPOLINE (I KNOW IT’S NOT AN ENEMY, IT HELPS YOU, SHUT UP, I’M STILL PICKING IT)

Felix the Cat (NES), 1992

I really can’t help but admire, even envy this fella. He’s a little springboard Felix can jump on to get some extra height, usually so Felix can find giant bags in the sky and crawl into them. Trampy (his name for the purpose of this article) doesn’t worry too much about that. He doesn’t need to know what the cat does inside the giant floating bag. He’s happy right where he is. Joyous, even.

This sentient, sapient being’s sole function in life is to literally wait for Felix (or God forbid, someone else) to jump on him. The poor bastard exists to be stepped on. There’s no better way to phrase it.

And he’s fucking smiling.

Trampy, I hope you’re still doing well, wherever you are. I hope you’re still smiling out there, giving cheerfully of yourself without any expectations of compensation, living a life of friendly altruism in some pleasant 8-bit meadow. You always helped me when I needed you, and when Felix needed more tiny round pictures of himself so that he could finally transform his weird little car into an even weirder tank. I ain’t even tryin’ to talk shit on you, my man. Stay golden. I just wanted everyone to see you shine. You’re beautiful.

BUBBLE (YES, IT’S CALLED BUBBLE, YOUR GUESS IS AS GOOD AS MINE)

Legend of Zelda II: the Adventure of Link, 1987

Zelda II is a fucking abusive game. If Zelda II were a human father, he’d never wear a belt, because it’d never leave his raw-knuckled fist. Zelda II is swinging the buckle end because it’s had too much to drink again. The two types of Bubble behavior exemplify the game’s needless cruelty perfectly. Normally, Bubbles move in a fairly slow diagonal pattern in the Palace areas, bouncing from floor to ceiling. They can be a pain in the ass when the ceiling is low, but otherwise they’re manageable. Bubbles can even be killed for 50 XP, as opposed to their antecedents in the first game, who cannot.

So first of all, let’s clear this up right now: while you can kill them, choosing to do so is both time-consuming and risky. They drain life and magic, so they aren’t really to be fucked with unless your Zelda II skills are tight as a drum or you have some ready means of recovery handy that being drained of magic won’t fuck up for you. You have to get pretty close to them even with Link’s fully-charged sword, and every split fucking second a Bubble isn’t being hit, it’s moving… toward you.

That brings me to my second observation… some of the little floating skully bois move with an alacrity that would make a hummingbird pack up its shit, forfeit, and go home to cry. They travel in the same 45° bumper-path, just much faster. That’s really all the Bubble requires in order to be to be scary in Zelda II. Catching one of these in a low-ceiling walkway is more stressful than being audited by the IRS while your house is on fire and you’re trapped inside it. Best of luck. When multiple slow and fast Bubbles occupy an area, you’re in for a real Kentucky-fried shitfest. Just spread ’em and think of Hyrule, Link.

Thank you for tuning in once again, boils and ghouls.

And if you ever wonder what kind of shit I get up to when I’m not here, you know where to find me.

(there’s a hyperlink in the text, please don’t come to my house you animals)

Stay Retro!

Retro Gaming – Mega Man

Joey Edsall — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 16:00:00 +0000

Old games used to get overly serious and realistic art.

Arcade games and console games are fundamentally different
in a lot of ways. While the hardware, game mechanics, and depth of narrative
might be the most obvious, there is something at the core of the two that keeps
them separated. Before going in depth with my retrospective review on Mega Man (1987), I’d like to
first analyze the intention behind the design of an arcade game and a console
game.

We’ve written about arcades before. The period from
the late 70’s to the mid-80’s is known as the Golden Age of Arcade Video Games. As the popularity of arcade games decreased by the end of the decade,
console games were experiencing a boom thanks in part to the Nintendo
Entertainment System. Because of this shift, many old NES games feel more like
arcade games. The fundamental purpose of
a console game is to provide you with satisfaction to justify your purchase of
the game. Games are usually not very cheap, so designers try to make their
product the most worthwhile for your money (ideally, at least). Arcade games,
on the other hand, are all about taking your money in small sums (quarters),
giving you a brief, enjoyable, and difficult experience, and then encouraging
you to play again to go further and get a higher score.

Mega Man feels
like an arcade game. It is so hard that it feels punishing at times and so
addictive that you can’t stop coming back to it. The amount of trial and error
inherent in the classic platformer makes the experience feel like learning a
song. Through your failures and deaths you wind up developing something
resembling a rhythm. You know which
screen is coming next or which flying penguin is going to dive on you. I wasn’t
able to beat any levels on the first try, but on the attempt where I did beat them, it looked like I was an
absolute professional.

Though the level design was difficult at times, there were
several gems hidden throughout. As an avid player of the Mega Man X series, I knew that each boss gives you a new weapon to
your arsenal. And I also knew that each boss weapon was super effective against
another boss. They usually make sense, barring a few mix-ups (Ice > Fire? I
guess that means… thunder on the ice guy? Okay.) For example, Elecman’s
weakness is the weapon you receive from the truly epic Custman (my only
reasoning is that scissors cut wires?). Elecman’s level is full of these small
platforms with enemies on top that make avoiding them difficult. If you switch
over to the Rolling Cutter weapon, you’ll notice that the odd trajectory of the
attack fits the level design perfectly. The level becomes much easier if you
use the Cutsman’s weapon to get through it. Ideally, by the time you reach the
end of the level you will be pretty comfortable with using it.

I stand by what I said about completing each level being
similar to learning a song. That said, Iceman’s level is like learning a song
and then being expected to flawlessly improvise with someone else who is also
improvising. Everything is typical Mega Man gameplay, and then this happens…

Those platforms shoot sideways. Okay, okay, annoying, but
whatever it’s a challenge. Oh, but they also move in a completely random and
erratic pattern. Well that just doesn’t sound fair. Oh, and one more thing,
we’re going to throw some robot penguins at you for the last half of this part
of the level. But wait, that might be too difficult. Let’s make sure the player
has a platform to rest on halfway through. Good point, but we shouldn’t make it
too easy for them. This is a video
game after all, this is serious business, not Soviet Russia Handout Land. Let’s
cover that platform in ice. Video game
ice. Which science has proven is twice as slippery as regular old boring ice.

Seriously.

The other issue I have with this game is about rationing out
lives. There is a checkpoint immediately before each end of the level boss
fight. Should you die in the boss fight, you will respawn there with full
health and one less life. The game is so difficult that many times I would reach
the boss, look to see if I had an extra life lying around, and just let the
boss kill me so I could tackle him with full health. That is just poor design.
Also, your health replenishes with each respawn, but your ammo does not. This
means a particular difficult stretch of a level will become progressively more
difficult. The general difficulty of this game is also distributed oddly. It is
very difficult in the beginning when you don’t have any special boss weapons,
and especially difficult in the end (cough, Boss Rush). The middle portion of the game
is by far the easiest. This uneven difficulty may be annoying for some players.

You can tell the designers were on to something when you
play Mega Man. It has vibrant colors,
an excellent soundtrack, and surprisingly rich and deep gameplay, with little
secrets here and there. The game is pretty easy to find. I played the PS2 port
from the Anniversary Collection, but you can also find it on the virtual
console. Though Mega Man 2 is widely
considered better than this game, this is the game that has lent its design to
Mega Man’s character in the new Smash
Bros., as well as the fact that one of the bosses from this game appears in
the new Smash Bros.

Final Thoughts:

Favorite Song: Elecman Stage

Favorite Boss: Cutsman, I actually have a shirt with him on
it!

Favorite Weapon: Magnet Beam, of course.

Fun Facts: It’s Mega
Man, not Megaman. I’ve been
making that mistake for over a decade.

– Joey Edsall

(@JoeyEdsall)

NewRetroGaming Interview – Crossing Souls Promises Nostalgia

Joey Edsall — Thu, 27 Nov 2014 14:51:00 +0000

Crossing Souls is an independent and retro-inspired video game currently looking for funding on Kickstarter. You can check out the trailer for the game on the Kickstarter page or on YouTube. Does the song in the trailer sound familiar? Yep, that’s Timecop1983! He is going to be contributing the soundtrack to the game. I had the chance to interview the Crossing Souls team.

We should probably start with the most basic question. What is Crossing Souls: An Adventure Between Life and Death?

Crossing Souls is an Action Adventure with an orthogonal 2D view with an 80s looking style, slightly similar to classics like The Legend of Zelda or the most recent indie game Hyper Light Drifter.

We’ll be able to control five different characters, each one has different abilities and weapons, which will have to be mixed in order to overcome all the challenges that are waiting for them: exploration, hundreds of NPC from different epochs, solving puzzles, looking for treasures and fighting against enemies.

The game will have plenty of references to films, TV shows and video games that marked an epoch in our childhood. We will look for an emotive touch that make the player remember those titles. Because it’s mainly based in the 80s, the “easter-eggs” will be related with audiovisual content of the decade, but we will also find references to more recent pieces.

How did the Crossing Souls team come together?

We were three friends who wanted to make something different. There are not too many jobs in Spain right now so we talked about starting up our own company. That was more than two years ago and since then, we have completed all kinds of jobs like websites, mobile apps and games but a year ago we decided we just wanted to make games so… here we are!

Which old-school video games served as inspiration for Crossing Souls?

Our main inspiration are Zelda games, mostly A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time. We LOVE that games and we would like to make an adventure similar to them.

We also are taking some inspiration from a French game that we love, a classic gem that unfortunately, many people don’t know: Little Big Adventure 2. If you haven’t played it yet, you’ll find it on GOG so run and buy it!!

Which modern video games inspired Crossing Souls?

We love indie games and they were the reason why we are making games, so we should say: Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery (although we love every game that come from Capy Games 😀 ), Paradise Lost: First Contact, Gods Will Be Watching and Hyper Light Drifter!!

We love Timecop1983. How did teaming up with him come about?

Hahah we love him too!! We think it just was our destiny! We love synthpop music and we listen to a lot of Soundcloud playlists while we’re working. One day, “Childhood Memories” came up and we fell in love with it.

Instantly, we sent him an email asking him to collaborate with us as we need some tracks in our Kickstarter video. He agreed and made “Mercury” which is one of the awesome tracks we use in our video. We knew people would love his music so we asked him to create the entire OST of the game. We’re really lucky for having him with us. Crossing Souls wouldn’t be the same without his wonderful music!

What step in designing a video game would you say is the most difficult?

As a good and rich plot is one of the most important steps for us while designing a video game, we believe that the process of looking for a set of fun mechanics and fit them with the plot in order to create what we call a “game” can be the most difficult and frustrating part of all.

Related tasks with development itself like pixelating, animating or programming can be a little tough sometimes but we really love that part as we’re creating what we really want 🙂

What aspects of gameplay are you most excited for players to experience?

The use of the DUAT stone of course! This is a mysterious stone that players will find earlier in the game and will be able to connect to the death plane and the thousands of souls that exist there, awaiting their trial to be able to finally rest in peace.

You will have to use it wisely to collect clues or solve some puzzles. Thanks to it, you will be able to interact with NPC from different times who can help you in your adventure. The character holding the Duat Stone will be the one we’ll be controlling in the dead zone and it’s the only one who can see the ghosts.

Besides, we really like the idea of controlling five different characters because it makes the game varied and players will have to mix the group abilities with the DUAT stone to overcome all the obstacles they will find along the adventure.

As the medium of video games matures, narrative becomes a focus as much as mechanics. How did the narrative of Crossing Souls come about?

The idea of Crossing Souls is born from the desperation of working in what you can, not in the things you want and it’s, undoubtedly, one of the best creative moments we ever had as indies. We sat down and thought what plot fascinated us more. Decide which gender it was going to be, the story and the background of your first game’s style is not an easy task. So it was time to look inside us, see what our concerns were and our strongest influences and pulling the thread out.

We basically found out that we missed being kids. In a moment that you’re planning your near future and your possible adult life you always look behind you and you remember what you were and you realize how things change over time. We missed those kind of adventures you used to see in films, where everything was possible and where any kid could become a hero living an unique adventure without stepping out from his town.

We think that epicness is somehow lost. We live more stressed and we don’t enjoy that “magic” anymore, as we call it. In current films more of the same happens. How many people think that Prometheus is not like Alien or that Super8 is far from the magic that E.T. or The Goonies had?

Is there any inspiration for Crossing Souls that isn’t a video game, such as films or music?

The game is very influenced by our entire childhood so we take inspiration from a lot of sources. Movies like E.T., The Goonies, Stand By Me, or Explorers are very important for us and we have very lovely memories from them so you can expect finding a lot of “easter eggs” in the game coming from them 🙂

We also want the players to remember their childhood while they are playing so we have included some cut scenes which are based on the 80s cartoon shows like TMNT, He-Man, Dungeons & Dragons, or Visionaries. We hope people enjoy watching them!

Gaming, and in particular indie gaming, has seemed to draw heavily from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras over the last five years. Why do you think that is?

Well, we believe that many people still miss the old classic video games. Those pixels had a special charm thats why many indie developers opt for that style. But it is also true that working with pixel is easier and simplifies the development of the game so it’s good for small studios that have few resources. You know, if you decide to make a 3D game you will need to know modeling, rigging, animation, illumination, etc… so the development will take ages! (or it would be really expensive)

If somebody was on the fence about contributing to the Crossing Souls Kickstarter, what would you tell them to convince them to support you?

Do you remember what you felt when you saw Michael J. Fox turning into the coolest werewolf ever? Or when Gary and Wyatt created the perfect woman with parts of a scanned magazine? When Elliot and his band of friends took off with their bikes? Or when you saw a DeLorean with a flux capacitor could travel in time? That was PURE MAGIC. The way the stories were told made you believe in them and you could step into the shoes of any character in a special manner.

With Crossing Souls the team wants to revive those childhood feelings. Those adventures that could happen to anyone. We want to develop a funny and profound game, with a great plot that can make the player remember those times with a bit of nostalgia: more than one has used a towel as a cape, a broomstick as a sword or have had a hidden cabin.

Help us to make this dream come true and we can make sure that you won’t regret it. You will live a great adventure filled with nostalgia that you will remember all your life!

You can support the release of Crossing Souls by contributing to the Kickstarter campaign.

– Joey Edsall

(@JoeyEdsall)

RETRO GAMING – Splatterhouse (Arcade, 1988)

bryan.eddy@newretrowave.com — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 15:00:00 +0000

I know Halloween’s come and gone, but the horror continues!
Once we started doing game reviews, Splatterhouse stood out in my sick little
mind as one that needed to grace this website’s pages. Released internationally
by Namco in November 1988, the arcade cult classic got attention (both positive
and negative, though some say there is no bad press) for its over-the top
themes of horror and gore. Some arcades (back when there were arcades) banned
it altogether by request of parent groups. In fact, when it was ported to the
Turbo Grafx 16 home system in 1990, the box came with a warning:

“The horrifying theme of this game may be
inappropriate for young children… and cowards.”

Without further ado,
let us jump in to one of the 1980s’ most shocking and controversial bits of
gaming gibbitude.

PLOT/THEME

In Splatterhouse, the player takes the role of Rick, a
parapsychology student who came to West Mansion seeking the great Dr. West.
Upon arriving, Rick and his lovely girlfriend Jennifer are waylaid by West
Mansion’s current inhabitants. Jennifer is of course carried off in what seems
like a predictable plot hinge; Rick awakens later to find that he has been
possessed by a mystical Terror Mask, which apparently provides him with the
power to fight the monsters inhabiting the mansion. Your mission as Rick is to
fight through the game to find Jennifer… or what has become of her, at the
least.

GAMEPLAY

As Rick, you wander through a mostly linear side-scrolling
environment, using punches and kicks as your basic attacks. It is clear that
Rick is barefoot; No sane man would walk barefoot in West Mansion. This is
because in addition to the malformed zombies and mutants, many hazards, from
acid vomit to spinning blades, grace the floors and walls of the mansion.
Weapons can be found and used along the way, everything from boards to
cleavers, axes and even shotguns in one stage. Most levels have a boss monster
of some kind, with a challenging but learnable pattern of behavior. Memorable
bosses include the poltergeist that hurls silverware at you and Biggy Man (that
is his actual name in all official documentation for the game), a meaty-thewed
baghead monstrosity with chainsaws for hands.

Biggy Man.

Splatterhouse is fun to play, but has a pretty high
difficulty curve; as with most side scrollers of the era, it pays to memorize
sequences and recognize patterns in order to avoid hazards. While most monsters
can be beaten to a pulp, some (like the chained up vomiting skeleton men)
simply function as traps and can’t be defeated, only bypassed.

If you are interested in seeing the gameplay in action for yourself, this is the best playthrough I’ve been able to find.

GRAPHICS

The visual aspect is what drew Splatterhouse most of its
positive and negative attention. Walls of melted flesh, vomiting mutants,
bloated corpses on nooses, and other horrors abound in pretty gruesome detail.
While thrilling to your average teen horror hound, parents and advocacy groups
took a dim view of the gore and horror themes. The game even pushed some other
boundaries; one of the bosses is an inverted cross surrounded by severed heads.

“Evil Cross,” one of the game’s more controversial elements.

Controversy aside, the game is graphically advanced for its
time and looks great. Animations are smooth and the detail on everything is as
it should be in a horror themed visual: nauseatingly real.

SOUND/MUSIC

While it’s rare to actually hear much of the music when
playing an arcade game in an actual arcade, the music is really good. The sound
comes out in 8 channel stereo, crisp and clear. Many of the sound effects
themselves are a bit cartoonish, but hey, it’s an arcade game. The sound still
adds, overall, to the spooky and lethal feel of the game. A rip of the soundtrack can be found here.

—

While it’s unlikely that you’ll find a working cabinet of
Splatterhouse anywhere but in private hands, the game was released for the
Wii’s Virtual Console in 2007. It was also ported to various home gaming
systems throughout 1989-1990, and spawned two notable sequels (for the
Genesis/Mega Drive) and a remake (for the Xbox 360). All are great games in
their own rights, but none made the impact the original did. The 80s was an era
that weighed morality against freedom constantly; this game is but one
interesting footnote of the era.

A dungeon full of chained-up, vomiting skeletons. Don’t step in the puke!

SPLAT! Hence the name, and all the fuss.

The first boss is just a bunch of these flesh-eating worms, chewing through rotten meat to get to your living flesh.

Special thanks to West Mansion Splatterhouse fanpage for reference material and some artwork.