Game: Retro Game Challenge
Platform: Nintendo DS
Year: 2009

Who loves retro games? Everybody!

Who loves retro games enough to buy a compilation of fake retro games created as a big, fat, glorious homage to the 8-bit era of gaming? Me! And maybe one or two other guys! Well, in America, anyway. Retro Game Challenge has a sequel in Japan that will never see the light of day in America because nobody bought the first one. Well, I'm here to tell you that your neglectfulness has cost this country a treasure, because the first Retro Game Challenge is eight fake, lovingly crafted retro games on one cartridge, and they range from pretty good to brain-explodingly awesome. Even the worst game on this compilation is decent. There are a few issues here and there, but overall, Retro Game Challenge is a solid addition to any retro or 8-bit gamer's collection.

So what is Retro Game Challenge, anyway? Well, the Japanese version of the game is based on a Japanese television show called Game Center CX, in which a comedian named Shinya Arino plays difficult old video games nonstop until he beats them or meets a certain objective. It sounds boring, but for a video game fan, the show is pretty amusing--Arino is really terrible at the games he plays, and often ends up taking days at a time to beat them, and must frequently call in assistance from Japanese gamers who actually know what they're doing. The result is a show that actually has a lot of appeal--you pull for Arino because you want him to win, but the journey to get there is frustrating and full of amusing mistakes and observations as Arino gets squashed over and over again.

The Game Center CX/Retro Game Challenge video game, however, is a little different. Arino is no good at modern games, and his bitterness drives him to kidnap you--the player--and sends you back through time to play old games with his younger self. The only way to get back home is to play a series of games with the young Arino and complete certain challenges assigned to you by the older "Gamemaster" Arino. When you complete all the challenges for a game, a new game is "released" and the young Arino inevitably goes out and buys it so you can play it together. There are eight games in all, and I will cover each one briefly a little later.

In addition to the games themselves, they also each have an instruction manual that can be accessed from the game selection menu. While it's probably not essential to read the manuals, they do have some valuable information inside, usually pertaining to special attacks or techniques that aren't always obvious in the game. For me, this was a special part of the game--when I was a kid, I really appreciated it when games came with quality instruction manuals. A lot of manuals had colorful illustrations, great lists and descriptions of power-ups and items, maps, and more. I don't know why, but there was something very appealing about looking at pictures of items and how many points each one was worth. Today, you're lucky to get an instruction manual with five pages of dribble and instructions on how to turn on your XBox that you've probably already seen 50 times in other instruction manuals. Then you inevitably have to suffer through a tedious tutorial level that teaches you how to jump, shoot, and (God forbid) move, because that just isn't obvious enough, is it? But I digress.

Not only do you get instruction manuals, but young Arino also has a subscription to Gamefan, a fictional video game magazine that offers tips, tricks, rumors, and previews of upcoming games. If you grew up with Nintendo Power or some other late 80s-early 90s video game magazine like I did, reading through these fake magazines is also an absolute joy, reminiscient of my brother and me pouring over the same magazines over and over again, digesting every last bit of video game knowledge we could take in and drooling over screenshots of games we desperately wanted. Each issue of Gamefan offers hints and cheats that actually are helpful, and gives you some clues towards what games you'll likely be tackling next. The magazine even has a series of different editors to make it seem that much more authentic.

"Enough!" you say. "Just tell me about the stinkin' games!" All right, here they are:

Cosmic Gate - A Galaga clone that adds in asteroid-shooting bonus stages and the ability to open up warp gates that let you skip levels. A brief and relatively easy, but fun space shooter.

Robot Ninja Haggleman - A sidescrolling platformer in which Haggleman (a take on Mega Man, I guess, although the game isn't really like any Mega Man games) must rescue the princess by eliminating all of the enemies on each floor of the tower. Eliminating all enemies will summon a boss that must also be defeated. Each floor also has a series of doors that Haggleman can hide behind to avoid enemies. (Kind of like Rolling Thunder, if you've ever played that.) The doors can also hide powerups and kill enemies that pass by as it is opened or closed. If you're lucky, opening the right door might also flush out the boss before all of the enemies on the floor have been defeated. This game is pretty good, but I don't think I liked it as much as I was supposed to--Gamefan basically heralds it as the greatest game of all time upon its release.

Rally King - An overhead racing game in which you try to finish in first place without wrecking your vehicle by running into walls or other vehicles. Aside from various installments of Super Mario Kart, I'm not a big racing game fan, but this one is not too bad. It's simple, mindless fun.

Star Prince - Now we're talking! This is a vertical space shooter reminiscient of Star Soldier or any number of vertical space shooters. It has pretty much everything a space shooter should have: a number of different and useful weapon upgrades, large enemy variety, screen-filling bosses, destructible turrets and buildings, and the best music on the entire Retro Game Challenge compilation. Lots of fun, decent challenge, and (for the non-hardcore among us) a rapid-fire button. The only downside is that there are only four stages.

Robot Ninja Haggleman 2 - Pretty much just like the first Haggleman game, except the levels are bigger and more aesthetically pleasing, and the game overall is much more difficult. I was stuck on this game the longest out of any game in the collection. It's fun, but the difficulty is just slightly over the top, to the point of being the bad kind of frustrating.

Rally King SP - This is a re-release of the original Rally King with a different color palette and some kind of noodle sponsorship. I guess this type of re-release was common in Japan. I get the joke, but it's nothing more than a re-hash of Rally King, and just feels kind of lazy.

Guadia Quest - Ah, the role-playing game of the collection. I would say this most closely resembles a Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior game, based on my limited experience with that series. It's an old-school RPG, complete with the clunky menus; vast, labyrinth-like dungeons; limited direction on where to go next; and grinding--spending lots of time killing bad guys to earn gold and experience so the next boss doesn't pulverize your paltry pixels. I always much preferred Final Fantasy's menus over Dragon Warrior's menus, which means I didn't much care for the menus in this game, either. However, that was just how a lot of games were back then, so I'm willing to deal with it to get an accurate portrayal of an old RPG like this. It's a surprisingly deep and well developed game for being part of a compilation, and while it's not the longest RPG you'll ever play, I probably ended up putting 10 or 12 hours into it. I don't think I ever quite had a firm grasp on how the combat worked, but I still enjoyed this one. It made me want to learn more about the Dragon Quest series--I feel like I might be missing something there.

Robot Ninja Haggleman 3 - Hands down, the best game of the collection. Haggleman 3 is drastically different from the previous two Haggleman games. The graphics are overhauled, making Haggleman look more humanoid and proportional as opposed to his big-eyed, cartoonish sprite from the previous games. The backgrounds are colorful and beautifully detailed, as well. Haggleman 3 combines the action and platforming of Ninja Gaiden (one of my favorite series ever) with the exploration and upgrade-to-advance mechanics of Metroid (one of my other favorite series ever), and probably would have been my favorite game if it had been released on the NES when I was seven or eight years old. There are lots of intuitive upgrades to be discovered and swapped between (damage multipliers, high-jump, throwing star range increases, and more) to help Haggleman through various scenarios, and the level designs and enemy variety are thorough and outstanding. Different enemies require different strategies to overcome, and the level designs force you to use your upgrades wisely to advance. The only problems here are that the game, like Star Prince, is just too short (just three areas total), and each of the three areas has the same boss at the end. The boss is huge and terriyingly grotesque and awesome, which makes me wish I could have seen what other terrible monstrosities the designers might have come up with.

I really enjoyed my time with Retro Game Challenge, and could easily drop it back into my DS any time I want some quick platforming or arcade-style action. While there are some issues with game length (Star Prince and Haggleman 3) and repetition (especially with Haggleman 2 and Rally King SP, each of which is not much different than its predecessor), it's a solid collection of games that really does summon that warm, tingling sense of nostalgia. It was easy to lose myself and believe I had a box of Nintendo cartridges at my feet and a stack of my brother's old issues of Nintendo Power waiting to help me out of a jam. You can still get this game for a reasonable price, and if you like old games, I highly recommend it, despite its shortcomings.

Brian's Rating: 8.5/10

[Game images courtesy of GameFAQs.]