Checkpoints

On the surface, Counterstrike and Ms. Pac-Man don’t have much in common.  One’s macho, realistic, and violent, and the other’s sweet, quiet, and mellow.  One demands communication and input from dozens of buttons and commands; the other needs only a solitary joystick and your commitment to play with pill-popping voraciousness.  But what Ms. Pac-Man and Counterstrike do have in common, as representatives of their genres’ finest, is their quality.  And, more importantly, they represent the rare occasions that the hackers and the unemployed have beaten the professionals at their own game.  To that homebrew hall of fame we can now add Streets of Rage Remake.

Remake feels familiar.  It’s a staunchly anachronistic beat-em-up, born from the graphics and sound banks of Streets of Rage 1 - 3 (originally released at the beginning, middle, and end of the Sega Genesis’s life).  Like Godard meets Miyamoto, Remake slices up the chronology of the stages, then pieces together an entirely new story.  One screen you’ll be fighting on the pier from SoR 3, the next screen you’ll be on a beach taken from the first game.  Thugs, renegades, and hookers that know kung-fu from the entire game chronology crop up constantly and in fearful numbers, retaining the claustrophobia that made the original series memorable.

But Remake is more than a simple 16-bit jumble.  What knocks this above the cute experiment level is Bomber Games’ (the Spain-based outfit behind the game) ambition to make it their own.  Characters, weapons, and whole stages have been added.  In addition, a character editor, volleyball minigame, and survival mode go beyond the duty of typical hacks.

Because a beat-em-up lives and dies on how fun its multiplayer is, and because there’s no net play, the option to clean up the streets with a CPU second player is most welcome.  You can even select your ally’s attitude (ranging from “aggressive” to “stupid"), though the difference is mostly negligible.  In the end, you get the equivalent of a canine: it’s dumb and clumsy, but it’s loyal, and you’re so happy to have the company at last. [Amazon, Amazon UK]

Pixel (a.k.a. Daisuke Amaya, a.k.a. the guy who created Ikachan and Cave Story) is a lucky man.  In a slightly different world, it would’ve been so easy for his games -– all heavy on story and equally liberal with quirkiness -– to have languished in obscurity in Japan.  Fortunately, in our cultivated world, skilled translators who understand Pixel’s work always find him, with receptive audiences at the ready for support.  All are eager for old-school graphics and gameplay, treated with the dignity they expect from the medium today.

Originally released in 2000 and translated this past November, Ikachan dips the player into the water, where earthquakes have sequestered an underwater community from the rest of the ocean.  As the titular squid among trapped fish and anemones, it’s left to the player to find escape. 

Ikachan‘s plot is surprisingly deft, much like 2005’s Cave Story.  So carefully written and thoroughly involving are both games, it’s easy to forget that cute robots and animals are delivering the lines.  Pixel treats his characters with near-awe and deference.  Never mocking, he avoids sickly irony and tongue-in-cheek trickery.  The way he sees it, why, even super-deformed anime characters have their troubles.

Ikachan is fluid as he slices through the water, but then sinks like a stone with tentacles.  He needs constant recalibration.  As such, fights with enemies are fun, challenging affairs, but the game is hampered overall by its non-existent enemy variety and one-hour length.  Had I reviewed this game when I played it in 2004 (stumbling through Japanese, yikes) I’d have sounded more disappointed because the gameplay isn’t explored like it should’ve been. 

In hindsight, making Ikachan better would’ve slowed future projects.  And when you’re fated to make something as sublime and spellbinding as Cave Story, why sweat over things that are merely excellent? [Amazon, Amazon UK]

Well, if anything, the addition of New Rally-X to Xbox Live Arcade (when we were hoping for the recently announced Worms) now validates the message on its high score screen.

“You did it!!” it declares, “The high score of the day.  Go for the world record now!!”

With new global leaderboards, what was once a poor English translation that forgot arcades got switched off at night is now a supportive, somewhat reasonable call to combat.

This Namco effort was originally released in 1981, continuing the company’s self-cribbing of the collect-junk-in-a-maze template.  But unlike Pac-Man‘s omnipresent view of the playfield, New Rally-X‘s screen is hyper-zoomed onto your car’s location.  A tiny box on the right side of the screen reveals the general location of the antagonizing red cars and the ten flags that need collecting to move to the next round.  One flag grants bonus points based on how much fuel you have, while another doubles the points of every flag collected thereafter on that round.  And if the red cars are really putting on the heat, a Speed Racer-esque smokescreen can be dumped out for elusion.

New Rally-X‘s nasty color scheme is a notable problem.  It’s aggressively ugly, especially when compared to the other cool kids of video games.  They knew how to use neon colors to eerie, haunting effect, justifying the ‘80s arcades’ reputations as psychedelic dens and caves.

It’s the audio that can make New Rally-X occasionally Zen: it’s easy to lose oneself in the mindless hum of engines and the game’s affable, upbeat music.  But I can only ride this elemental wave for so long before realizing I’m boring myself.  The game takes too long to get difficult, and even the bonus Challenging Stages are falsely advertised wastes of time.  Everything lacks nuance and strategy.  New Rally-X‘s sudden induction into Xbox Live Arcade was confusing for a reason: it’s simply not that compelling, world records be damned. [Amazon, Amazon UK]

Obliterated by its sequel in every way, Pac-Man hasn’t been worth playing since 1982.  And having enjoyed Galaga even during the Dreamcast era, I was extra crestfallen playing and realizing this year what a dull mess Galaga really is.  Dig Dug, Namco’s third and most recent release for Xbox Live Arcade, further cements Namco’s image as fortunate sons of context and circumstance.  The characters that raised the company name merely showed up at the right crux of history, way back during the golden age, when gaming was still sucking on the teat.  That was a time when we needed such caretakers, but today, not so much at all.

What’s wrong with Dig Dug is that the obvious, easiest way to play the game is actually the worst way.  As a little man named Dig Dug, you’re tasked with eliminating the monsters on each stage.  Equipped with an air pump, the most apparent means is to fill them with oxygen until they explode.  Doing this, however, gives you only a paltry 200-400 points.  What you’re really supposed to do is lead the enemies underneath a rock.  Crushing them will net around 1,000 points, and with 1-UPs only at every 10,000, you need every chunk of sandstone, clay, and shale you can use.

Luring packs of baddies and then turning the tables on them isn’t unique to Dig Dug.  However, the goal in something like Pac-Man is to eat the dots, not kill the ghosts.  If you don’t dispose of the ghosts when you eat the power pellet, no harm is done; the ghosts avoid you and you have respite to eat more dots.  In Dig Dug, if the boulder doesn’t kill the intendeds, you’re doomed: the torpid Dig Dug is surrounded by monsters, all of whom can move diagonally through dirt (whereas it’s difficult to get Dig Dug to even turn when you want him to).  You’ll die and have made no points and progress at all.  Strike three, Namco.  How about porting a few Katamari stages instead? [Amazon, Amazon UK]

Counterclockwise is the sort of game so virtually perfect you almost wish you hadn’t downloaded it.  It encompasses the giddy experience of finding that diamond in the digital rough, but afterwards you feel guilty if you don’t work hard enough to spread the word of its existence.

Part of the 2006 Retro Remakes competition, Counterclockwise is a remake of a ZX Spectrum title, Knot in 3D.  In turn, Ki3D was inspired by the light cycle sequences in Tron.  Remember those?  You must have, they’re the things people remember most vividly from Tron, frequently with the fortunate side-effect of forgetting the remaining dreadful 90 minutes.  In Counterclockwise, you’re still in control of futuristic vehicles that leave solid walls in their wakes.  But in addition to forward, left, and right, you can now travel up and down.  Each stage can host up to ten CPU opponents, and after very little playing time, it’s like navigating around a network of rainbow pipes compressed into a tight cube. 

Every challenge you can think of for a no-budget project emulating an old obscure game inspired by a lame Jeff Bridges movie is overcome.  You can collect power ups, gain points to advance to the next level, and shoot at the CPUs and blow openings through the walls.  Though you travel in five directions, there’s a “freelook” that truly allows you to shoot and observe in 3D.  There’s a robust stunt construct: you get points and items for performing dangerous moves against the walls, like loops around them or charging at one and changing at the last possible second.  Combo these tricks together and your reward is even greater.  And the overall presentation comes together nicely: the Internet high score upload, the menus, the graphics, the sound effects, and even the voiceovers excel beyond what you expect from an independent.

The only fault to be found in Counterclockwise is that the game can drag on too long.  Though the enemies engage in evasive maneuvers, they don’t shoot back.  And you gain points every second, so a conservative player who doesn’t go for stunts will eventually make it to the next stage.  A skilled player can play for half an hour, repeating for 29 minutes the same things she did in the first.  So when you play Counterclockwise, you have to want to gleam the cube.  You have to want to create dangerous wall formations, and then loop around and do tricks on them, like your own instant skate park.  Still, it shouldn’t be hard to find volunteers.  Counterclockwise brings out something we never knew we had, the primitive urge to play chicken with neon walls. [Amazon, Amazon UK]

I contend that I have not been corrupted.  Reviews that complain of “inadequate” graphics, short game length, and lack of extras and secrets gets every prudent, sensible bone in my body to ache.  Creature comforts are not rights.

But I’m frustrated with Starlit Zone Fighter, over little things that are ostensibly trivial.  In the game, the player is a disembodied head, flying just above the rooftop of the clouds.  The usual assortment of monsters block the head’s linear path, some bullet-armed, some in formations, and some just floating by though direct contact is nonetheless deadly.  On its own, the head has no means of offense or defense.  The player can steer it around danger and wait until he catches up to the boss.

Fruit and vegetables, however, continually shoot up from off-screen.  Touch a fruit and press C to eat it, fortifying the head with weapons that have cute monikers like Banana-Rang or Cruising Carrot.  The constant fusillade of food spices up the screen (as a “retro” game, what has stronger retro connotations than pixilated fruit?), and weapon juggling keeps the action varied.

The frustration comes from the fruits and vegetables bearing barely any ammunition: only three bullets per food item.  Every shot must now count.  The majority of Starlit Zone Fighter is spent trying to snatch the fast-flying fruits and veggies, with a head that has very loose controls.  It’s practically an anti-shooter—most of the time is spent dodging enemies, rather than shooting them.  Yes, all that means is that Starlit Zone Fighter is a different kind of shooter.  That doesn’t mean it can’t be fun.  It’s just not as much fun as it ought to be.

Because what’s a horror move that doesn’t thrill?  What’s a political cartoon that promotes neutrality?  It’s something like a shooter that doesn’t let me slack my brain and zone out. [Amazon, Amazon UK]