zelda 2 – 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.

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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…

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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:

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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.”

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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!

Grab Bag: 1987 Video Games

bryan.eddy@newretrowave.com — Sat, 31 Mar 2018 15:11:22 +0000

I’ll start this off the way I like to start as many conversations as possible these days: I have a ton of emulators now, not to mention a handful of working consoles. Every moment I don’t spend writing, doing other work, playing D&D, sleeping, reading, or doing gangster shit (read: more sleeping), I tend to spend screwing around with games no newer than the year 1998 or so.

It occurred to me that hadn’t done a “grab bag” style write-up for a while, so I looked over my breadth of selection and got an idea. I could just use a particular year as my theme. Any platform, and genre, any style. Here’s what I’m thinking. Let’s do it up right and have a look at some games that are turning 30 this year. That’s right… get in the DeLorean, because we’re going back to ’87, and we don’t need roads because your ass can sit right there and enjoy the show.

R-Type | Irem | July 1, 1987

The shoot-em-up remains one of my favorite styles of game, and the 1980s were its formative era. We saw the genre that began with games like Galaga begin to transform, yielding high-octane excitement that progressively offered more and more challenges along with the advancement in gaming technology. R-Type is notable in the history of the shmup not only for being one of Irem’s most successful games, but also for its considerable difficulty and innovative gameplay elements.

Yo… this is vaginas. You’re not even trying to hide it, Irem. You straight up made a boss monster by stacking up lady-parts.

For real though, this game is fucking HARD. Like a lot of shooters, the focus is on the game itself, not the plot; you’re responsible for saving humanity from an alien menace hellbent on destroying it. This life form is called “the Bydo,” and apparently its preferred method of war is the relentless bullet hell. At least they gave you a badass little ship!

Well, okay… it doesn’t start out badass, but powerups let you improve your main gun, and you can also get a little “pod” that can float near your ship or detach from it. This little guy provides more firepower, not to mention versatility. You’re gonna need all the extra guns you can call in, too. I would say that we’ve seen harder shmups since; that’s not hard to say with confidence since I’ve played Ikaruga and also seen some of the insane shit people have home-cooked on the Internet. Don’t let that take away from the challenge of R-Type, though. It is not, in any way, fucking around.

The visuals are pretty rich for 1987, most notably the environmental art and the huge (sometimes gross) bosses. Lots of attention to detail, rich color depth, and surprising complexity for 384×256. There is a giant spaceship, as well as several aliens of varied forms, and all of them are rendered in surprising detail. The music is pretty ponderous, and the sound effects get annoying quickly, but that’s really the only department in which R-Type suffers.

NetHack | Mike Stephenson/NetHack Dev Team | July 28, 1987

I’ve waited for a long while to bring up the roguelike genre in one of these articles. If we were to go just by logged hours, by sheer time spent playing, I’d say this genre of game would rank in the top 3 for me personally. I will define the format in the briefest way possible: the player chooses from a couple of sets of parameters (usually a race and character class, like most RPG fans are familiar with), then is placed at the beginning of a randomly-generated dungeon or other environment with the idea of achieving a particular goal. Play is turn-based instead of realtime, allowing for careful thought and planning. You will usually die a horrible death before achieving your goal, but the fun is seeing how far you can make it.

NetHack is only two generations removed from Rogue, the 1980 Unix-based game that started the genre. I’ll go ahead and mention now that the graphics for these early games were not the focal point. NetHack is also not known for its breakneck action, although it can get really exciting if you’re into it and have an imagination. And for those of you who don’t, well, there are tilesets for the modern iteration of it that offer a richer visual experience. In fact, the game has continued to see maintenance and updates, last releasing a new version in 2015.

In NetHack, you choose your race, role (class), gender, and alignment (lawful, neutral, or chaotic) and head down into the dungeon to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor. The amulet is said to grant immortality if offered to the gods. Why the hell anyone would want to live forever is beyond me, but maybe I’m just a downer. There are, of course, sub-quests, one of which is specific to whatever class you chose. The dungeon is about 50 floors, and the journey is never the same twice. Needless to say, the dungeon is chock-full of all kinds of monsters (and I mean all kinds; the variety is staggering), most of whom want to murder the shit out of you and eat your body. There are also a lot of leftover bits of gear lying around from the chumps who tried this before you, and some of them (potions, scrolls, etc) give no outward indication as to their purpose or effect. You can always go in blind, but that’s as risky as it sounds. Drinking something when you don’t know what it is? Sounds like the way several of my early D&D characters fucking died. Let’s do it!

Oh, and when you die… you’re dead. No retry, no saved game. Start again. Make a new character. Therein lies most of the challenge and enjoyment of the game.

Like many truly oldschool roguelikes, NetHack is entirely and truly free. I also recommend DCSS, which is a more frequently-maintained and sometimes more approachable oldschool roguelike.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link | Nintendo | January 14, 1987

Usually I take a giant shit on at least one of the games I write up in these articles. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect me to do that to Zelda II. It received positive critical reception in 1987, and even some modern gaming sites consider it to be pretty solid. However, if you ask many individual players – real folks like you and me – they’ll tell you that Zelda II is clumsy, needlessly elaborate, tedious, and unapproachable without a guide or walkthrough.

This. This, right here, is gaming at its finest. Please put a flathead screwdriver in my brain.

I fall somewhere in between. I’m not crazy about the game’s tacked-on RPG elements; I think that, at the very least, they could have made leveling up go faster. It’s also incredibly annoying to have little figures chase you on the world map. More significantly, the game relies on a lot of hints and instructions from people in the towns, and a little clarity seems lost in translation. The plot is also utter bullshit. In fact, it angers me. It’s Zelda, but not the Zelda from the first game? How many Zeldas am I gonna have to fuck with, here? There was no need. No need.

It’s not a terrible game, though. Zelda II has a lot to offer the modern player.

Sneering, it mocks you in your weakness.

Get yourself a walkthrough, preferably one that focuses on clarity. Walkthroughs can suck the fun out of most RPGs, but this one actually benefits from a little help on deck. That way, you can focus on not getting your ass constantly kicked in stupid ways. Don’t forget to pick up the stupid little goddamn bags that appear when some monsters die. That’s part of leveling up.

When you are able to separate from these elements, it can actually be a fun challenge to navigate through Zelda II. Progress involves fighting carefully, calculating risks, and learning the weaknesses of the monsters (particularly the rowdy crew of assholes inside the palaces).

The graphics are standard for NES in 1987: not great, not bad. The music, though… let’s put it this way. The overworld/map screen music would make terrific music to pipe into a room you were confining someone in for aggressive psychological torture. It’s this violently cheery, over-wrought, bizarrely jaunty tune that belongs nowhere except maybe on a level of Hell that is made out of grandma-candy. The rest of the soundtrack is fairly good. If you pay close attention to the intro music, at one point it sounds like the melody to a Nickleback song. Don’t ask me which one, because the only times I’ve willingly listened to Nickleback were out of tolerance or sheer circumstance. I just have an ear for music.