OMG Retro Games Challenge for the DS OMG

An absolute love letter to gamers who grew up in the mid-eighties. The attention to detail is superb and the insider jokes ('Dan Sock'! Engrish interstices in the faux games! The kid turning his nose up at you if you tell him you read the manual!) are evocative and spot on.

It attempts to be a Madeline for Nintenerds and it succeeds spectacularly.

so much attention to detail, i'm sure i've missed out on loads of in-jokes. this one i wouldn't have understood for example.

also, I ♥ Tomato

but are the games fun?

YES! Or at least the first two I played are. The first is a much easier galaga with an asteroid bonus stage. The second is a mario clone with an INTRIGUING concept of "door attacks" that took me a few plays to get the hang of but is really clever.
Besides which, regardless of how fun the games are, the ubergame renders that point sorta moot. The real goal of the game is to unlock certain achievements in each game, so it's unlikely you'll be playing any individual sub-game for any longer than an hour... I think? I need to play further.
My dog almost ate my cartridge last night and I was tremendously pleased to discover that it somehow still worked even though she seems to have bitten through to the circuit board. IT IS PIT BULL RESISTANT.

OMG at graveyard duck.
I love having to write down the cheat codes for each game! And there's a legal pad IN THE GAME that you write this stuff down on! META META META

This game is unlocking my inner Darramouss
SPINAL FUNCTION

i want to play this but i'm not sure i want to slog through a fake dragon warrior game for hours on end

The premise for each game is you have four or five achievements to unlock, once you unlock those, you move onto the next game and have a freeplay option for the one you beat. So I don't think you have to slog if you don't wanna. It's just an option.

It's so wonderful for anyone who lived through those times and read gaming mags. They replicated the most ridiculous details like absolutely useless instructional manual tips and the writing style and attitude of those magazines. Even I feel like I'm missing a bunch of references too!

All the stuff with young Arino is just really amusing... when he's all happy because you're good enough at these games that he doesn't have to break his own controllers in frustration anymore I just burst out laughing. I have to remember to check all the "Chat" stuff between games. This whole game is just filled and filled with smiles!

rly dig the presentation and charm on this but cosmic gate was a bit dull and don't understand how to progress in haggle : /

read the manual?

Rally King SE is kinda lame. Real life LOLs about Guadia Quest getting pushed back.
I think I may be rushing through the game too quickly.

That's what I was thinking too, since I just started Guadia Quest. Then I realized the rumors about it being 10-15 hours long seem to be true. It's at least a bit less punishing than Dragon Warrior was in terms of required grinding and I don't think you got a Warp spell at the beginning of the DQs so that's already way, way more forgiving. Still, they kept in the classic gameplay design of not telling you what your spells or items do and making your refer to the manual to figure it out! (for... most of them)

Have you looked at the Freeplay list yet? There seems to be an achievement metagame there, maybe (or it could just be a set of playtime counters...) I'm sure I'm going to go back and beat Haggle Man 2 and the others eventually.

This game is A+++

Somehow I kinda though you might dig this Abbott.

read the manual?
― zappi, Monday, February 16, 2009 12:27 AM (18 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

doesn't say in the manual u need to kill all the baddies to advance bt thx

The manuals are so great, and it's fun having this fake sibling-type as stupid commentator. The nice thing about him is unlike an IRL sibling, he can't throw controllers at you. (Those NES controllers had really sharp edges!)

Can't wait to get to the fake Dragon Warrior game!

xpost
...you don't? just the boss. which can hide behind doors. as explained in manual. k?

you need to kill the baddies to get the boss k

NERD FIGHT
http://dpkgi.free.fr/files/fight.jpg
http://www.slapyo.com/wp-content/NintendoNerdLord.jpg

(Those NES controllers had really sharp edges!)

parenthetically, i put a chip in my tv screen one time playing castlevania ii after i threw the nes controller at the screen. tbf i was seven

different perspective: not feeling this at all. the actual games that ive played are kind of not fun versions of old games i guess thats the point okay i see but then its not really clever-clever in the best way???? its just kind of gross nostalgia im such a hypocrite i know but its pretty vapid this is worse than paying $100 for ar tonelico on the game as fetish-object scale, right???

goddamnit this plus a bunch of stuff on the countdown is making me want a DS.

xpost: well maybe not

it's all love, sorry zappi : D

lol i r nerd, soz

Scratch what I said about Guadia Quest - didn't beat it yet but I'm a moron and thought the first challenge was "beat this dungeon" as opposed to just "walk 5 minutes south". Still love it, though.

gaudia quest is maybe the only one of the mini-games that has value the ninja one in particular was terrible imo

Lamp, I thought the games have been fun! Maybe not play through to the end fun, but definitely fun to at least get the necessary achievements.
http://www.ymmv.co.uk/ymmv.gif

lol .jpg shoulder shrugs lose there impact a little when u see them as linx :D

im srsly tryna to figure out why this game bugs i guess that okay and this is maybe b_s but the DS is basically a delivery-system for dope repackagings of old games like galaga, dragon quest, star solider &c and those can stand on their own, as games, separate from the lame "oooh i loved that when i was a kid" hazy narcissism. this game lessens the actual mechanics of those games - making galaga a short and sloppy ping-ping game to e.g and ramps up the repackaged remember the time LOL CHILDHOOD stuff. which, who needs some commercialized validation of their lived experiences ???

It's certainly a thin line between that and my Proust reference; I just see this as landing on the good foot. I'm plenty jaded with "GAWD Y'ALL REMEMBER SAVED BY THE BELL?!?!?!?" consumer nostalgia myself, but RGC's attention to detail and generally clean design really rang my bell. I'm happy I bought it.

Lamp, I feel you may have an overly cynical take on it. RGC is a love letter to those games, those times! I don't think by making the games a little more friendly and modernizing them a little it's taking anything away from the originals. Nor is really hazy narcissism, it's calling on a shared experience that tons of us had. In particular the NES since it didn't have any real competition for ages, when everyone played not video games, but Nintendo. And even without the nostalgia, the games are still pretty solid. But to each his own...

Man, thank god for those continue codes. Also: Haggle Man 2 Floor 07 -_-

Haggle Man 3 is pretty fascinating. AND incredibly frustrating - I'm really glad they put in those Rygar homages (the Dr. Light shop guy rooms) so I KNOW that's exactly the vibe they were going for. So many cheap deaths, but you have to keep on grinding away and exploring - but the room designs are classic Castlevania as opposed to Symphony, true to the platforming era.

These open world games don't really need the super hard, often unfair difficulty of games like Ninja Gaiden (eagles!) and Mega Man, on top of the grinding necessary to level your guy up (in this case to buy the Gear upgrades). The Metroidvanias are a lot easier for a reason, this game totally highlights it. Even with the 99 life code I'm having a hard time getting through the second stage!

But as a retro experiment, it's so accurately reminiscent of games from the era that tried these crazy genre action/adventure combinations (like the above-mentioned games, plus stuff like River City Ransom, Clash at Demonhead, Blaster Master, Willow, Guardian Legend, etc.) and really interesting - like a lot of the games, there's just a little bit of modernization to make it just a tad more advanced than a real game of the era - but it's still remarkable how well it captures the spirit and design of those games.

this is :D :D :D

$20 on Amazon right now. Buy it, punks!

weird how some games never appear on amazon.ca . happened with DQ4 DS too.

I got bored on that second game that was a bit Bonanza Bros-y but shit and I haven't played it since.

http://www.toastyfrog.com/verbalspew/archives/entry_1465.php

http://kotaku.com/5814017/this-thursday-sees-the-us-premiere-of-japans-cult+hit-retro-game-master

Kotaku, doing good??

awesome; thanks for the heads up

It's up:
http://kotaku.com/5814938/episode-1-ninja-gaiden

What will the Kacho do?? Have to admit I loved this because I'm such a diehard NG fan