The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

So, Retro Game Challenge! The game that Parish and all of Talking Time is all crazy over! Guess what? There’s damn good reason.

If you grew up playing console games, there is no way this game will not put a smile on your face. The presentation starts off silly, and most of it is kind of silly. But it’s so true to how it was back then. They nail so many things. Having someone sitting there, watching you play on the bottom screen just… feels so right. The magazines and manuals are so spot on, and they just make me grin as I’m reading the horrible reader mail section and everything… this game attempts to be living through that era of video games in a sort of compressed, mini form, and damn, if it doesn’t nail it.

All that wouldn’t matter if the games suck, but they don’t. Much like the presentation, you’ve got a very compressed version of genres and games, and dammit, they all play so well. The trick is that they look retro, they feel retro, but there is obviously modern influence on them. You won’t notice at first that, say, the weapon system in Guadia Quest is way too advanced for RPGs of the time period. It’s not intrusive into the gameplay, but it makes a much, much better play experience than if it would have actually been modeled on RPGs from that era. The same goes for all the action games. The little tweaks, like having the ninja stars in Haggleman to the changing ship forms in Star Prince, don’t feel out of place, but when you really think about them, they wouldn’t have been included in a game from that era. Still, they make the games that much better to play.

To top it all off, the game flows extremely well. All the challenges Game Master Arino gives you aren’t very difficult. They’re basically a tutorial on how to play each game well. They have you learn the game, and then you can decide yourself if you want to keep playing at it. The best part is, they don’t take long. I’m never going to put a lot of time into Rally King, like most Talking Timers, but the game is well-made, and I finished the challenges long before I got bored with it, even though I don’t really like those kinds of racers. The only exception to this, I suppose, is if you don’t like RPGs. The last challenge in Guadia Quest does take a little, but if you’ve enjoyed any jRPG in the past, it will fly by, I assure you.

If you do get stuck, though, one final, perfect tweak makes this game hit it out of the park: the cheat codes. You can use these codes to beat challenges, and there are a lot of them, from making yourself invincible to just being able to continue in games without a save function. It’s basically a difficulty selector. Use all the codes if you really hate Rally King and just want to be done with it, or use none of them if you’re really digging it and want to challenge yourself. The fact that you have to look them up in the in-game magazines also helps to get away from the whole “oh, it’s there so I have to use it” kind of easy mode in these games. People complain, for instance, about being able to give yourself infinite lives in arcade games, because they say they always have to do it. Looking up these cheat codes takes time, and they take effort to input. It’s not just an option you toggle. As such, I found myself only using them when I was actually frustrated. The fact that they’re annoying to put in actually works in their favor, I think, to make it easy to challenge yourself exactly where you want the challenge to be without being tempted to make it all super-easy. On top of it all, entering such codes are extremely nostalgic, of course.

This game is seriously a must buy if you, in any way, enjoy retro gaming. I’ve had a lot of fun. I’m going to try to finish up the final challenges (Which is simply beating every game, unlocked after you complete each challenge on all the games) this week before Dragon Quest V and Street Fighter IV come in. I might not: Guadia Quest is actually decently sized. But I’m certainly going to have a whole lot of fun at it, either way.