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| The face that launched a lifelong longing. |
Just like Super
Mario Land, Balloon
Kid and Bugs
Bunny Crazy Castle, R-Type
belonged to the first wave of games released on the Game Boy. I remember
encountering some promotional material that featured a screen capture of the
first boss and becoming curiously enthralled by this image; so much so, in
fact, that staring at that tentacular creature created a deep longing to play R-Type
in my young soul. Alas, that was not meant to be: for some unfathomable reason,
R-Type was never available in the local game stores and I never
encountered anyone who owned it. And so was Irem's famous horizontal
shooter the first game to join the list of Games That Passed Me By, a list that
was soon to grow to epic proportions. But I digress.
Anyway, since my collecting endeavours are partially fuelled by a desire to
make up for lost time and (re)discover potential cult classics that I missed
out on or didn't get to play enough, it was perfectly natural that I would
purchase a copy of R-Type at some point. I wanted to play that game at
long last and see if it was the fascinating and riveting game young little me
thought it was at the time. The answer? Yes and no. While there's no doubt that
I would have lapped up R-Type in 1991 and would have played it over and
over again until I managed to eradicate the last boss, I simply can't bring
myself to try to reach said last boss nowadays. Heck, I can't even bring
myself to play the damn game at all, period.
As you may imagine, these conflicting perceptions can be solely blamed on the gameplay. R-Type is an arcadey game with an unreasonable difficulty level: four lives, two continues, no saving system and last but not least, a spacecraft that explodes at the slightest contact with foes, bullets, and even the ground or the ceiling. What is that ship made off, cardboard? And I'm supposed to obliterate the evil Bydo Empire single-handedly with such a crappy piece of kit? Not only is R-Type unreasonably difficult, but it is also a pure Die-and-Retry game that requires perfect knowledge of the level layouts to be navigated. Add to this a clunky and slow control scheme, and you get a game that's way too hard for its own good and bound to scare away any gamer who's not a complete masochist. Now, young me would have taken up the gauntlet without batting an eyelid; but older me knows that clearing that game is a lost cause and that there are more rewarding games out there. And that's precisely the core issue with R-Type: this game is not rewarding at all unless one pours countless hours of play into it. The punishing difficulty and unsatisfying controls rob the potential player of instant gratification, and the arcade, no-saving nature of the game prevents any sort of delayed gratification from occurring. The only way one can enjoy R-Type is by playing it until they know it like the back of their hand, after which they may derive some gratification from being able to navigate the game unhindered.
In a nutshell, R-Type comes 25 years too late into my gaming life. Its exacting and unforgiving gameplay would have been perfectly acceptable in 1991, both for me and for the gaming scene at large; however, both me and the gaming scene simply cannot accept such a grueling and punishing game in 2017. R-Type is interesting and relevant as a piece of gaming history; but as a game, it's better left in the depths of the Game Boy library and the early '90s where it belongs. Playing that game taught me one crucial thing: gaming fashions come and go and there's a time for every type of gameplay, and some games must rest undisturbed lest they give the unsuspecting played a massive culture shock. Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!
Yeesh, that looks like a doozy of a game from the screenshots alone! Following a few of your posts ago, I actually went back and playing that Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle game on my OG Gameboy.. let's just say it did not age gracefully. I've found it tough to go back and enjoy games from that NES/GB generation, honestly. Like you said in your article, sometimes the best place for these older games is in our memories, and "left in the depths of the Game Boy library and the early '90s where it belongs" !
I find the NES
to be an even harder sale than the Gameboy, to be honest. I was not exposed to
it growing up; and without nostalgia to make the heart grow fonder, I carefully
avoid anything released on the NES. The original Zelda may be a cult classic,
but it looks like shit and seems unbearably clunky (a special mention to
hitboxes, which are so broken it's not even funny) and thus I don't have the
slightest desire to touch it. If I want to play an 8-bit Zelda, I'll go with my
beloved Link's Awakening, which looks and feels ten times better than the
original Zelda ever could.
On the other hand, I can tolerate Master System games with surprising ease;
partly because they look better than NES games, and partly because I've been
exposed to the Master System as a kid through my cousins. Heck, the Master
System/Game Gear version of the original Sonic is still one of my favourite
entries of the series to this day.
I find that
there a few and rare exceptions. Kiwi Kraze (made by taito roughly the same
time as the original Bubble Bobble) is a game I enjoy very much despite the
fact that it feels like many other NES games. Extremely difficult with a lot of
BS platforming moments, stingy with lives and continues, 1 hit kills, the
jumping mechanics are a bit off and it's honestly as ugly as other NES tittles.
And yet I like it. I like the original Bubble Bobble as well even though
getting the good ending is torture. And I have nostalgia for either, I was born
a good couple of years after they were released and only played both about 3
years ago during a retro phase.
RPGs in general have aged a lot nicer IMO. Sure, they have a lot of grinding
and miss some very nice features like saving whenever you want, but I find that
the simple turn based systems have made them rather timeless (and less broken.
No jump mechanics or hit detection with them!). The original FF and DQ look
surprisingly good as well.
But in general, yeah, I agree with both of you. Most of the games in that era
are best left in the past for a reason. We can complain about how easy games
are nowadays and how patronizing tutorials are, but I'd rather have that than
the old days "you're on your own and we don't care if the game's so
frustrating you won't be able to have any fun at all".
I meant I have no nostalgia for either Kiwi Kraze or Bubble Bobble. Way to eat the most the most important word past me. I really wish blogspot let you edit comments.
Don't worry, I
understood you just fine. ^^
Aaah, RPGs sweet. If I ever play a NES game, that will probably an RPG. As a
matter of fact, I own the GBC remakes of the first three Dragon Quest
instalments; that's probably the closest I'll ever come to playing authentic
NES games. That, and the original Ghosts'n'Goblins featured on that PSP Capcom
compilation I bought a couple of years ago... If I ever dare to play it, that is. :p
Ghosts 'n
Goblins? Oh, no, be super careful with that game Isleif. It's not a bad game,
but it was made in the depths of hell. It's evil, pure evil I tell you. It's
one of the hardest games of that era, with a two hit kill "life
meter", limited lifes and continues, and a lot, and I mean a LOT of
"screw you moments".
And if that's not bad enough, Capcom throws a barbed wrench at you and forces
you to play the game again in order to get the good ending, with a horrible
weapon this time. If you lose all your continues, you gotta do it all over
again. In Super Gouls 'n Ghosts, the game I played, you can't even get hit once
during that second playthrough or else you lose an armor you need to beat the
final boss. Pure evil I tell you.
Again it's not a bad game, but if you're getting frustated with the BS
difficulty of the old days, I'd reccomend burying that game as far away from
you as possible. I managed to beat the original Castlevania trilogy, but I
don't even dare to look at the original Ghosts 'n Goblins after my experience
with Super Gouls 'n Ghosts.
If you must play a Ghosts 'n Goblins game, go for Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins on
the PSP. It adds three difficult modes, with the standard being way more
forgiving that the old games and the easy mode being even easier (which turns
it into a reasonable game). And if you're feeling super crazy and do want to
try the original sadistic game, there's the ultimate difficulty which restores
everything back to that it was in the original. And then you'll most likely break
your PSP.
I think I got traumatized...
Yes, someone
definitely got traumatized. ^^
I got acquainted with that game and its legendary difficulty when watching a
Let's Play of it on Youtube a couple of years ago. The poor player involved was
suffering like crazy, raging and fuming and spitting and cursing; and the whole
experience was so extreme that I couldn't help but get curious about the game.
Was it really THAT hardcore? How would I react when playing it? This was the
time when I only needed the slightest excuse to purchase games, and so I acquired
the aforementioned Capcom PSP compilation.
That being said, I admit I want to try that game mostly for curiosity's sake: I
don't think for a second that I will manage to reach the end of the first
level, let alone finish the whole thing. I mean, how could someone like me, who
has poor motor skills and hates platformers as a rule, manage to overcome such
a legendary hardcore arcadey platformer? That would be the feat of the
millenium, that really would be.
I don't have
any problem playing on the NES and GB, to be honest. Actually, I love going
back to the NES and GB and play some Megaman or some Warioland. And to this
day, we keep getting tons of quality rom hacks of older Final Fantasy games,
Megaman, Mario, etc. But then again, since I'm used to playing on them both
since I was a kid, so...
Anyway, Isleif, if you're in a classic GB streak, give a try at these games:
>Metal Walker
>Survival Kids
>Revelations: Demon Slayer (known as Megami Tensei: Last Bible in Japan)
>Trip World
>Final Fantasy X: Fantasy War (a bootleg chinese beat'em up based in the FF
series)
>and the Warioland games
Thanks for the
recommendations! ^^ Gee, I love how retro aficionados like you are eager to
suggest me old and overlooked gems. I'll look into these as soon as my
collecting instinct kicks in again! :p
"But then again, since I'm used to playing on them both since I was a
kid": yeah, doesn't it always boils down to early exposure mingled with
sweet, sweet nostalgia. I discovered the NES for the first time at a cousin's
house in the mid-90s; and while I had been eager to try that famed piece of kit
at long last, I was utterly dispirited when I finally got the (in)famous NES
D-pad in my hands. I mean, what I saw on screen looked and played worse than my
Game Gear games, at a time when the game Gear was already pronounced dead...
Colour me utterly unimpressed. But had I been exposed to the NES in the late
80s, around the time I got my Game Boy, I'm sure it would have become a cult
console as I grew older. Exposure, exposure is the key.
Survival kids
is really good! It's rare to find a fellow fan of it. There were some sequels
on the DS (Lost in Blue), but I honestly think the original has a certain charm
that wasn't replicated later on. That and the first game on the DS suuuccks.
But yeah, that's a good suggestion Isleif. Give it a try if you ever feel like
playing an old fashioned survival game. Warioland is also pretty good, it
hasn't aged badly at all, even if the other Mario Land games did like the one
you tried before.
The GB/GBC have
an enormous library if you look closely enough, Isleif. Thing is, most of the
better looking and polished games released way late into the GBC's life, which
then got overshadowed by the new shiny GBA. And some great games never got
release outside of Japan (like the second and third Last Bible games, that
Grandia spin-off or that crazy fishing RPG) or USA, for that matter (like Metal
Walker, for instance).
Kumiko: Well then, never expected to find a fellow Survival Kids fan! It's
almost as rare as winning something decent at the lottery.
Yeah, I remember trying out the first Lost in Blue and wasn't much fan of it,
so I never gave the sequels a try. Oh, and in case you don't know Kumiko,
there's a Survival Kids 2 on the GB as well. It got a unofficial partial
translation. It's a far cry from what the original was, but it's worth a shot
if you loved the first one.
I would like
nothing more than to explore the little-known depths of the GB/GBC library; the
bigger said library is, the better. I've always had that nagging feeling that I
didn't get to make the most of my Game Boy back in the days, due to the tiny
number of games that made it to Europe in general and to my collection in
particular. I'll be happy to repair that gaming unfairness now that I have both
the funds and the technical means necessary to invest in GB/GBC games.
I've been curious about this "Lost Blue" trilogy for the DS for quite
some time, veering between "mmh, that gameplay seems interesting" and
"forget it, it looks too much like the Sims for my taste". Cheap
copies are still relatively abundant, so maybe I'll give a try to the entry
that got the best reviews (seems to be the second one) and see how it goes. ^^
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