![]() ![]() Guadia Quest mercifully condenses the level grind of the games that inspired it into a considerably faster process, but in every other regard it looks and feels like a very authentic late-'80s console RPG. ![]() Guadia Quest, a surprisingly involved role-playing game in the vein of Dragon Warrior, is the game whose challenges will take the most time to complete. Thankfully, Retro Game Challenge saves the two most elaborate games for last. And then there's Robot Ninja Haggle Man 2, which tosses you into bigger rooms with more enemies but does nothing else to advance the gameplay. There's Rally King SP, a special edition of Rally King that has some different track layouts but is otherwise identical to the original. Unfortunately, the variety of gameplay styles that kept the action compelling until this point goes out the window here for a bit, as your next two games are rehashes of earlier games and do little to differentiate themselves from their predecessors. Conveniently, a controller with a built-in rapid-fire function (no doubt inspired by the NES Advantage joystick) is made available in-game not long after the release of Star Prince, so you can use that to spare your thumb if you're not hardcore enough to pound the button yourself.īehold the awesome graphical detail of Robot Ninja Haggle Man! This is followed by Star Prince, an exciting, frenetic thumb-buster of a vertical-scrolling space shooter. Then comes Rally King, a speedy top-down racing game with a fun drifting mechanic. From there you'll move on to Robot Ninja Haggle Man, a charming side-scrolling action game in which you must defeat rooms full of swarming enemies with ninja stars, swinging doors, and, of course, head stomps, on a valiant quest to rescue a kidnapped princess. Its straightforward insect-zapping gameplay is engaging despite its age, at least in the short bursts you'll spend with the game to conquer Arino's challenges. You'll start off with Cosmic Gate, a space shooter modeled closely on Galaga. They're crammed with all kinds of tips and tricks, such as high score strategies, secret codes you can input for extra lives, stage select options, invincibility cheats, and other benefits you can exploit to help you conquer Arino's challenges. Additionally, in a really great touch, young Arino is constantly buying game magazines that you can peruse at your leisure. By constantly changing up your goals, the challenges alter how you approach the games and help to keep things interesting. The challenges range from standard stuff like achieving a certain score or passing a certain level, to more unusual tasks, like getting through a specific level without using any ninja stars, or completing two laps around a track without drifting (which isn't as easy as it sounds). For each game, you're given a sequence of four challenges that typically start out very simple and get progressively more difficult, though they never approach the staggering difficulty of many actual 8-bit games. The games you'll play on young Arino's unnamed console aren't licensed but rather originals meant to capture the look and feel of games of the mid to late '80s, and they succeed very well. ![]() It's a wonderfully bizarre setup that lends itself to many great moments as the young, innocent Arino cheers you on in your quest to defeat his older, nastier self. You quickly meet the young Arino, who only needs to know that you love games to immediately consider you a close friend with whom he can spend hours in front of the TV. To get the best of you, he sends you back in time to his own living room in the 1980s and challenges you to complete a series of 8-bit game contests. When you start the game, you're confronted by the bitter Game Master Arino, whose desire to dominate others in video games is matched only by his ineptitude at modern games. Retro Game Challenge bears the license of a Japanese TV show called Retro Game Master, but you don't need any familiarity with the program to appreciate the game. Game Master Arino can't hack it in the games of today, and he takes his failure out on you. It's an unusual concept that succeeds at feeling fresh and delightfully dated at the same time, and if you're old enough to remember the games of those bygone days, or you just have an appreciation for games from a simpler time you'll find a lot to like in this compilation of 8-bit games. Video game nostalgia has been packaged and sold in a myriad of forms, but you've never played a throwback to the 8-bit era quite like Retro Game Challenge. ![]()
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