Squidlit

Nintendo Switch (5) 2020

Developer & Publisher: Squidlit Ink LLC

Well here’s another Game Boy inspired game for Switch that cost very little in the eshop. It’s not that there are an especially large number of throwback games, but you put one up on the shop for less than a dollar and I’ll buy it almost every time. They must know that there are a lot of thirtysomethings out there that will buy a game just because it looks funny. Squidlit gets the look and feel of an old Game Boy game just about right. It has that weird green gray look and the sprites look appropriately primitive. They ruin it a bit though by having the border look like some strange alien console that never existed on this planet. If you’re going for Game Boy than go all the way. Don’t spoil it by putting it in some Martian gizmo that looks like what an artist in the 90s would draw if they had never actually seen a video game before. The fact that I spent so much time thinking about the border should tell you something about the game itself.

(Look at that crazy Martian border!)

Squidlit is a game with potential that makes two fatal errors. It is too easy and too short. It’s a shame because there are some things to like. It’s a somewhat free roaming platform game with a bit of exploring thrown in for good measure. It mostly follows a linear path, but there are a few quests that involve killing a certain amount of monsters. I enjoyed roaming around the levels and thought they were well designed. The attack is probably the most unusual part of the game as it involves jumping and shooting a blob of ink straight down. It’s weird because much of the time you can’t even tell if your hit landed until you come down from your jump. This does lead to some cheap hits, but the world is littered with health power ups so it’s not that big of a deal. There are other squid to talk to along the way and the dialogue is one of the best parts of the game. Some of the responses are legitimately funny and I wish they would’ve pursued this part of the game even more. If they had turned this game into a dialogue heavy Metroidvania than I think they would’ve been onto something.

Unfortunately it’s a tiny platform game instead. It’s telling that I am taking longer to write about this game than I spent playing it. It’s never a good sign when there are no saves in a game. I suppose that is another thing it has in common with vintage Game Boy titles. I don’t care how bad of a player you are it’s not going to take much more than a half hour to play the whole game. If it’s so short than it should at least be challenging, but Squidlit fails at this too. I died once and didn’t even suffer much from it. I just had to fight the boss again. I have no idea why this game has an option to restart the current level because it’s not like there’s anywhere to get stuck. It’s not a puzzle game it’s just a goofy platformer. Hopefully the developers take the money they made from this one and make a better game in the future. I think they have a good game in them, but it’s certainly not this one.

I had some trouble ranking this one as I almost always do. I really tried to talk myself into putting it in the blue section, but I had to consider how much fun I got out of it. Looney Tunes Racing is a bad game, but I liked the backgrounds and characters and got to play it for a bit longer. Squidlit was even shorter and easier so I had to put it lower making it my first Switch game to appear in the red section. It stands at 2/2/1 now but don’t worry I have a lot of eshop throwbacks to write about. I hope you’re as excited about it as I am.

1. Super Mario Odyssey

2. Galaga

3. Donkey Kong

4. Exodus: Ultima III

5. Pac-Mania

6. Pac-Man

7. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

8. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

9. Metro-Cross

10. Gaplus

11. Dragon Spirit

12. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)

13. Red Sea Crossing

14. Baraduke

15. Gamma-Attack

16. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

17. Galaxian

18. Evoland

19. Defunct

20. Gyruss (2600)

21. Looney Tunes Racing

22. Squidlit

23. Birthday Mania

24. Bad Street Brawler

Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

Nintendo Switch (4) 2018

Genre: RPG

Developer: bluffman games

Publisher: Playism

It’s always a good idea to start a review off with a complaint. Who doesn’t thrive on negativity? For whatever reason I don’t like the name Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX very much. It’s always hard for me to remember, and I kept hitting the home button just to remind myself. I can’t stand playing a game if I don’t know what it’s called. Maybe that’s just a personal problem, but I don’t have a ton of complaints about this game so I have to make due with what I got. 

(Obligatory town shot. The other party members are mostly for show)

Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX is a retro-styled RPG that is supposed to harken back to the original Game Boy. It’s supposed to scream Final Fantasy Legend but instead it reminds me of Zelda 2. This is definitely a good thing because Zelda 2 is a much better game than Final Fantasy Legend. It has the same setup of flat overworld and side-scrolling battles. It also has darkened monster icons of various strength that roam the map and prompt the battles. It’s weirder than Zelda 2, but mostly it’s the interesting kind of weird and not the “what were they thinking” kind of weird.

It’s a game with plenty of quests, but it’s mostly about the character building and exploring. The unusual battles are action based with the little character constantly in attack mode. There’s not sword swinging involved. You can just run into the monsters and either they die or you do. Of course there are the artifacts of the title which will give you a whole bunch of other abilities to use which is where the real meat of the battle system comes into play. I did my usual thing and just picked the first three good ones I found and used them forever, but I am sure that mixing and matching is fun to. I also enjoy the pacing of character progression. It’s easy to tell when you have stumbled into the wrong area because the monsters will destroy you, but I never felt like I was too far away from getting stronger. Levels are gained fairly quickly and there is money to be found everywhere for upgrades and it’s all very fun. I didn’t have to grind too much either because there was always a new quest or unexplored cave. I actually like grinding, but I also have 2200 games in my backlog so it’s nice when I don’t have to.

(Combat picture. Hey I'm a writer not a photographer)

My one other complaint is the silly decision making mechanic. Every quest has an important decision you have to make which will effect its outcome. It’s obviously influenced by Bioware games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age. In those games, however, you can usually see where the outcomes are going to lead. It’s more about deciding between two paths which will have both positive and negative consequences depending on how you want your character to progress. In Artifact Adventure the outcomes seem completely random. With many of them I felt like I made the right decision only for it to turn out to be wrong for no logical reason. It doesn’t help that at the end of the game it slowly recaps all your decisions even though the outcomes are already known by revisiting the towns after a time jump. I don’t need to be reminded again that I was stupid and made the wrong choice. You’re really not helping my self-esteem, game.

This is still a small complaint, however, as the quests themselves were fun and I still got plenty of goodies for completing them even if I did some of them wrong. Isn’t it all about the goodies anyway? So this is a very good retro RPG that is especially good for one that takes less than 10 hours. It was short but still felt like a complete game. It’s very comfortably going into the seventh slot for now because it’s not quite Pac-Man but it’s definitely worth checking out. We’re starting to see a lot of green on the list which means that I need to stop being so easy on myself. I need to start playing some bad games again. Maybe I should dust off the ol’ Jaguar. That would certainly keep Metro-Cross in the top 10. Also after my forth Switch review it has still managed to stay out of the bad column with a record of 2/2/0. I know you can’t really prove much with four games, but I’ve got a good feeling about it overall.

1. Super Mario Odyssey

2. Galaga

3. Donkey Kong

4. Exodus: Ultima III

5. Pac-Mania

6. Pac-Man

7. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

8. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

9. Metro-Cross

10. Gaplus

11. Dragon Spirit

12. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)

13. Red Sea Crossing

14. Baraduke

15. Gamma-Attack

16. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

17. Galaxian

18. Evoland

19. Defunct

20. Gyruss (2600)

21. Looney Tunes Racing

22. Birthday Mania

23. Bad Street Brawler

Bad Street Brawler

NES (1) 1989

Developer: Beam Software

Publisher: Mattel

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that this is a bad game because it’s right there in the title. They didn’t call it High Quality Pugilist. They called it Bad Street Brawler. They really weren’t trying to fool anyone with this one. It doesn’t help that Beam Software decided at this very moment in their history to start making awful NES games. They had some successes in their future, but from 1987 to about 1992 they had a tough go of things. Among other things they made some of the bad LJN games. Bad Street Brawler is possibly their nadir however. The fact that Mattel picked it out as the second and final showcase for their Power Glove is one of the most baffling moves in gaming history.

(It's dog kicking time!)

As you can probably tell from the title, in this game you are a cool 80s dude who brawls on the streets. Now I know that it is an early example of the genre, but this game fails at everything that makes a brawler playable. A good brawler needs to have good moves that are repeatable. However this games gives you a different set of moves for every new level. Now that’s fine if it’s sensible things like jump kicks and strong punches. But what do you do with a move called a stooge hit which involves hitting your own fist in a circle that then hits the enemy like Moe from The Three Stooges? Well you try to avoid it that’s what. You better hope the other move is something that doesn’t take five seconds to execute. The strength of the attacks don’t make sense either. I expected that the trip move would be weak and the jump kick would be strong but it’s actually the other way around. Doesn’t it seem like being kicked in the face would hurt worse than being gently sat down on your butt? I know the pavement is hard but it’s not lava. A brawler should have set moves with the quick easy ones being weak and the harder to execute moves being stronger. Everybody knows that.

(Ear twisting time!)

It also quickly becomes a game of running and spamming because it has a very fast timer that kills you if it runs out. That means that the best strategy is to run past as many enemies as possible and constantly spam whatever is the fastest of the three moves just to try to outrun the timer. I’ve never played a game where so many enemies just wandered off the screen. Even the characters are embarrassed to be seen in this one. Of course when you do stop and fight the rogues gallery is more shameful than intimidating. I hope you like kicking dogs and punching gorillas. Is there another game where you can kick dogs? Could you do that in fable? You can also get in cheap hits on women with mohawks who walk by and never react in any way. You should be asking them for their phone numbers. That’s the proper response when you meet a girl with a mohawk.  

(They're like a dollar dude)

The game goes on for fifteen levels of running, kicking dogs, reading funny inspirational quotes, and missing out on potential girlfriends. Anyone who played this game for a minute could tell that it was a weak game made by a company not used to working on consoles. It was ported to a couple of home computers and then a couple years later Mattel saw it and decided that it was just what the Power Glove needed. I guess in a way they were right because they both reek of late 80s ephemera. It was the perfect coda for one of my generation’s favorite failed peripherals.

What is fun about this blog is it lets me do a deep dive into the quality of a console’s game library. This is my first NES review, and I am really curious to see just how many of its game are actually good. It’s pretty famous for being a console with lost of junk. Perhaps Bad Street Brawler wasn’t the best place to start for profiling my favorite console. I just had to pick one of the games that sink below all others. Hey at least Birthday Mania had a fun concept and a specific audience. This is a game that makes no one happy, and for that it goes all the way to the bottom. Welcome to the bottom Bad Street Brawler. The NES is now 0/1.

1. Super Mario Odyssey

2. Galaga

3. Donkey Kong

4. Exodus: Ultima III

5. Pac-Mania

6. Pac-Man

7. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

8. Metro-Cross

9. Gaplus

10. Dragon Spirit

11. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)

12. Red Sea Crossing

13. Baraduke

14. Gamma-Attack

15. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

16. Galaxian

17. Evoland

18. Defunct

19. Gyruss (2600)

20. Looney Tunes Racing

21. Birthday Mania

22. Bad Street Brawler

Donkey Kong

Arcade 1981, Nintendo Switch 2018
Publisher and Developer: Nintendo

It took almost forty years to get a proper standalone version of Donkey Kong on a home console. Donkey Kong is a very famous game that has been released dozens of times over the years, but they have never gotten it quite right on console. It is supposed to have four screens, but almost every home version has only two or three. The poor cement factory always gets left out. Nintendo has had plenty of chances over the years to release a complete version, but they have always saddled us with the fun but inferior NES version. Probably the most familiar four screen version is the one hidden in Donkey Kong 64 which is an extra in a game that not everybody played to begin with. Thankfully Hamster Corporation finally righted the ship and gave us arcade Donkey Kong on Nintendo Switch in 2018. It’s been a long wait, but the modern release does a great job of showing off what makes the game great.

(The cement factory!)

What really surprises me playing the game in 2020 is just how action packed it is. There is hardly a second to rest. The game’s most famous level, the barrel stage, is one of the most difficult single screens in all of classic gaming. There are just so many barrels and they don’t all move in the same patterns. It’s not like the same ones go down the same ladders every time. It requires the player to pay attention to the whole screen at once. There are hazards everywhere in the other three screens as well from the moving platforms of the cement factory to the springs in the elevator level to those deadly moving flames in the girder level. It’s a game that requires fast reflexes and some good luck. It’s also a game where speed is a must because the bonus counter is constantly depleting. I still don’t know if getting the hammers is a good idea or not. I guess it depends on how many enemies are on the screen versus how much time is left. I usually try to maximize points early because I am not good enough to get through too many rounds. It really is something that I think about a lot.

This game is so much fun that I haven’t even mentioned Mario yet. In this version he reverts back to being called Jumpman, but it is still our favorite Italian handyman making his first video game appearance. Donkey Kong has about as much personality as a simple arcade game can have, and after it came out every game tried to have distinct characters and more interesting settings. Its simple story laid the groundwork for narrative gaming. There were of course games with complex stories before Donkey Kong, but in the realm of arcade games it was a novel concept. After Donkey Kong every game had to have a story of some kind. It’s the reason even some of the cheapest mobile games will have some sort of plot. It’s always nice to play a game that is both fun and important.

So you can probably already tell but I am ranking this game very high. It easily goes past Pac-Man because of its variety and even past Exodus because it’s simply too much fun to no be ranked higher. I still think I am going to keep Galaga at #2 because I think it’s more fun to play for a long period of time. So that means there are now two Mario games in the top five of the 21 games I have ranked. I have a feeling as I rank more games this number will continue to grow. I hope you don’t get tired of hearing me gush about Mario games. That’s what happens when you write about games. It’s a responsibility that I take very seriously.

1. Super Mario Odyssey

2. Galaga

3. Donkey Kong

4. Exodus: Ultima III

5. Pac-Mania

6. Pac-Man

7. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

8. Metro-Cross

9. Gaplus

10. Dragon Spirit

11. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)

12. Red Sea Crossing

13. Baraduke

14. Gamma-Attack

15. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

16. Galaxian

17. Evoland

18. Defunct

19. Gyruss (2600)

20. Looney Tunes Racing

21. Birthday Mania