Retro Game Challenge Review

Shinya Arino–one of the two members of Japanese comedy duo Yoiko–hosts a late-night TV show in Japan called GameCenter CX. GCCX is a celebration of video gaming, but more specifically, it is a celebration of the days gone by of video gaming. Arino himself is a huge game fan, and every episode–at least, for every episode I myself have personally seen–he helps bring us a look back at gaming’s golden days, from what titles were released by a particular company back in the 80’s, to interviewing folks like Yuu Suzuki about his start at Sega, to meeting a man living somewhere in Tokyo who proudly owns every Famicom (Japan’s version of the NES) game ever released.

What could be considered GameCenter CX‘s main segment, and the part of the show that has made Arino so beloved among the Japanese gaming community, is Arino’s Challenge, a segment every episode where Arino must accomplish a particular feat of skill in a chosen game. These challenges can be as simply as having to clear the first Galaga bonus stage with a perfect score (something not so easy for Arino, who is notoriously bad at shooting games), or having to fully complete Ghosts n’ Goblins (which Arino refused to do upon finding out that he would have to play through the entire game twice, after struggling for two days to get through even once).

These challenges serve as the basis for Retro Game Challenge, a title inspired by and created to be a companion to GameCenter CX. (Which, by the way, will be titled Retro Game Master when, or maybe I should say if, best-of DVDs of the show do indeed end up hitting North America as is hoped.)

After picking your character name and sex, Retro Game Challenge stars off with an encounter with Game Master Arino–real life Arino’s demented digital self–who it seems isn’t too happy about always being on the losing end of game challenges. To take out his frustration, he transforms you into a child, and sends you hurling through time back to 1984. There, you run into Arino’s younger (and not quite as sinister) self; who, quite humorously, is way more excited to have somebody to play games together with than he is perplexed by how a strange person has suddenly appeared in his room. Game Master Arino announces that you can’t go back to your own time until you complete all of the challenges he presented to you, so with young Arino in tow, you set off on an adventure through eight different classic 8-bit adventures.

Except, that’s the catch; these aren’t actual games that were produced back during the era of the NES, but instead brand new creations crafted to look and feel like titles we might have seen on store shelves 20+ years ago. Your first set of challenges will come via Cosmic Gate–a play on Namco’s Galaga–and though in many ways it is a Galaga clone, it also contains within itself some interesting ideas that keep it from feeling like a retread. Completing the challenges for one game unlocks the next of Retro Game Challenge‘s “revivals”, such as the DragonQuest-inspired Guadia Quest, or the absolutely fantastic top-down shooter Star Prince. This is the first element of RGC that makes it work as fantastically as it does: there was real effort and thought put into all of these homages to gaming’s 8-bit heritage. While the games themselves are not always what one might consider “full length”, these are in no way dumbed-down mini-games that quickly lose their charm. Long after you’ve completely a game’s challenges in the storyline and gained the ability to move on to other titles, there isn’t a game in RGC that isn’t worth going back to via the game’s freeplay mode; yes, even including the sadly unloved Rally King, no matter what some may have you believe.

That storyline mode is the second element that makes Retro Game Challenge so great, as it is obvious that a lot of thought (not to mention a little love) went into its creation. Your life with young Arino provides the background for gameplay, and it is full of elements that play on the nostalgia many of us feel for the early days of gaming. RGC’sincluded games don’t just become unlocked; a new game is presented to you via young Arino coming home from the game store, freshly-purchased cartridge in hand. Start up a game, and the bottom DS screen will show you and Arino sitting on the floor, fixated on the television as you do your thing. The games themselves all have visible Famicom-styled cartridges (complete with artwork), and digital instruction manuals can be viewed and read through at any time, even during gameplay. Also available for perusing is GameFan, a “magazine” that Arino picks up from time to time that will give you tips and tricks for the games you’re trying to beat, previews of the games you have yet to unlock, and a host of other amusing bits of information that give RGC even more personality. For those of us who remember the days, back before the internet, when one would crack open a new issue of the real-world GameFan or other publications, and read about all the amazing new games that would be coming our way in the future, this little element of RGC really adds to the atmosphere.

Anybody who has an appreciation for the simpler days of gaming will love Retro Game Challenge, as it is a fabulous product with a whole lot of gaming goodness to offer. Those of you who think of the “classic days of gaming” as time spent with Cloud and Sephiroth, however, may not get as much out of what RGC has to give as those of us who became gamers with an Atari 2600 joystick or Master System controller in hand will. This is a game that, unashamedly, was made for those of us to whom the woes of “sprite flicker” are instantly explainable, those of us who remember the technique of blowing into a cartridge (or even understand what that means in the first place), and those of us who fondly remember the days when dimensions, not to mention buttons, came in twos.

For those people, people like me, much like your virtual in-game self, Retro Game Challenge will send you back in time and have you feeling like a kid again.

A Great

Anybody who has an appreciation for the simpler days of gaming will love Retro Game Challenge, as it is a fabulous product with a whole lot of gaming goodness to offer. This is a game that, unashamedly, was made for those of us to whom the woes of “sprite flicker” are instantly explainable, those of us who remember the technique of blowing into a cartridge (or even understand what that means in the first place), and those of us who fondly remember the days when dimensions, not to mention buttons, came in twos.

Retro Game Challenge was reviewed using review code, physical copies, or hardware provided by XSEED Games. Scores are graded on a scale of E (Bad) to S (Special) in homage to Japanese video game grading scales, with the understanding that an S still does not denote a "perfect" score. Scores may have been adjusted from the original source to better fit my personal scale.