Retro Game Challenge for Nintendo DS: Initial Impressions

Retro Game Challenge synopsis: My child character is challenged to complete stages in various game parodies of old Nintendo games from the 1980's. The game is based on a popular Japanese television show. The premise of the show is that a guy named Arino must play video games, despite his being a poor video game player (appropriate!). According to the game manual, Arino, “having been utterly defeated by his friends in every 'current-gen' multiplayer game, longed to become a gaming master. His obsessive desire for complete dominance in the gaming world spawned a digitalized version of himself in his Nintendo DS (huh?)...and he began to haunt gamers around the world with retro game challenges.” The premise is goofy, but eerily relevant to this blog and my Grand Master Ben's own game challenges for me! In the game, Arino becomes a 1980's era kid again to help my kid character play through the challenges. Each game comes complete with its own game manual and even Game Fan Magazines that you can read to get gameplay tips.

I remember my very first video game I ever played pretty well, though I can't remember the actual title of the game. It, too, was a handheld game, played on its own special device - the little console being what I remember most vividly. The console was yellow and black, sleek and shiny and aerodynamic, shaped like the little jet sprites that once jerked across its squarish screen. A silver toggle lever moved you, the little green triangle at the bottom of the screen, right and left. I think there was a button or two for shooting. Red and green jet-like figures fly at you and shoot little colored dash missiles at them while racking up as many points as possible. It was my Dad's toy, but I played it as much as he did. The reason I remember the game so vividly, though, is because of the accident.

My Mom was driving me somewhere – probably to dance class or the mall or something. I was playing this game as we drove and I was doing really well, probably the best I'd ever played, though I was having a hard time seeing the picture because it was sunny and I had to keep the screen shielded by a shadow. Then the shadow disappeared and I couldn't see any longer and I got shot down. Game Over. I was really mad at the sun and really wanted to know my score because I was pretty sure that, even though I'd died, I may have still beat my previous high score. Problem is, I couldn't see the number. I begged my mother to read me the score. She said, “I can't read the score right now. I'm driving.” But I wouldn't let it go. So I started whining and pleading until she gave in. She took the game from me and tried to shadow the screen with her hand to see my score and that's when we rear-ended the car in front of us. Everyone was fine. There's no real tragic ending to the story. I think it was just a little fender-bender. I just know that I felt really guilty for whining at my Mom to see my score and I remember that video game being the source of our car accident.

I have written and rewritten this first game review for Retro Game Challenge (RGC)and I can't seem to focus on any one theme for this post. Maybe the problem is just how completely different this game is from my last assignment. RGC is decades and oceans separated from the beach babes and beach boobs of Dead or Alive: Xtreme 2. That game was a very focused experience whereas RGC is about a lot of different things. This one game is really eight different games all based on eight other games, all of them being completely different types of games with several challenges I must complete within each game. Add to all that the time travel, the crazed Game Master Arino, the kids and the breaking of the fourth wall and I'm feeling as scattered writing about this game as this game is scattered. So far I have started writing about portable gaming, arcades, meta-fiction, early gaming, gaming magazines, top-down shooters, platformers, parodies, and Japanese television programming. No one topic feels right. So far nothing has really struck me as being more or less important than anything else in this game. Maybe the problem is simply that this game is really difficult. Unlike Dead or Alive, I can't fake my way through mini-games and then go shopping and buy sunglasses for my girlfriends. I actually have to beat each challenge or I can't continue. I can see why Ben is having me play 5 hours of RGC. I have spent 2 hours on it already and have just recently reached the second game. Ouch. How can you review something you can't play?

Or maybe the writer's block is the result of a guilt-ridden 1980's little-girl-gamer still hearing the car crunch sound in her ears after these two long decades since The Accident.

My initial experience with RGC was sort of a series of accidents. I was shocked at how well I did on the first few stages of the first game, Cosmic Gate, a Galaga clone. My first challenge was to clear five levels without getting a Game Over and I only had to try twice to clear the stage. This was what young Arino said to my character, Clover:



Who me? No way! I shut off the power switch proudly. I would end the evening's gaming session feeling good about myself. Then I remembered that I hadn't actually quit the game properly. Oh well. Shouldn't be a problem. I mean, surely the game saved my cleared stage. I had already moved past stage one and received my stage two challenge, so I'm sure I'll turn on the game tomorrow and it will let me begin my second challenge(successfully warp twice). Doubt about my save gnawed at me as I tried to sleep. My curiosity burned and I turned the DS back on. Sure enough, the game had not saved my cleared stage. My victory was so short-lived! Not only that, but to get back to that first stage I had to sit through a ton of blah-blah dialogue and push the A button fifty times before I could try to clear the stage again. I never know how to turn off a game. When I put the DS to sleep Ben yells at me. He always thinks I'll let the DS's battery die and lose my saves. Now, the one time I decide to turn off the DS as he repeatedly asks that I do, I lose my save.

I had no choice. I replayed the first stage and beat it handily and went into the next stage nervously. I didn't think I was understanding the whole warp concept. I read the game manual. I read the fan magazine content. Somehow I still wasn't sure I knew what I was doing. Turns out I didn't. I played stage two for an hour and fifteen minutes and got so frustrated I decided to go back and reread the warp tips. Turns out I was warping incorrectly!. I return to stage two, angry with myself for being such a careless reader. I went back and cleared it on my first try. Stage three was easy. I just had to shoot down a giant asteroid to get 15,000 bonus points which I managed to do on my second attempt. But then...already two hours into the RGC and only one game in, I am informed that my final challenge in Cosmic Gate would be to earn 200,000 points. I hadn't been paying close attention to my point totals so I had no idea if I had been getting anywhere close to 200,000 in my previous attempts. I played through as far as I possibly could. I took care to kill the boss guards before I killed the boss Insektor (the game's enemies) which I had learned from my Game Fan Magazine would earn me extra points. I tried to shoot down as many darn asteroids as I could. I played with as much focus and determination and care as possible. I got 44,000 points. I gave up, (although I was careful to quit and save properly this time). Again I wondered, how am I supposed to review a game I can't play? Even more to the point, by not having played difficult video games since my own 1980's childhood, is the learning curve too high? Can I muster the dexterity, master the timing, remember the controls and instructions long enough to get better at playing video games?

Not sure how to answer these questions, I went whining again. This time I whined to my own Grand Master and said, “Help! I don't think I can pass this stage yet.” And just like Young Arino, Ben was encouraging and patient and showed me how. In other words, we cheated. He played the fourth stage for me.

I have since moved on to the second game in the challenge: Robot Ninja Haggle Man, a parody of Mega Man. I have passed the first stage and am, again, a bit stuck on stage two, though thus far I have avoided any major accidents. Tomorrow I head off on a road trip to Atlanta – our first road trip since Jhonen was born. Again I will find myself playing a handheld video game in the car and will have to learn from my childhood mistake and try not to beg the driver (Ben) to look at my DS screen to help me figure out how to pass my next challenge (clear three stages without letting the Haggle Man fellow utilize his Chinese stars). For the sake of my husband, son, and mother's sanity, I will also try not to whine when I can't figure it out. Not whining for help may just turn out to be the biggest challenge of all.

Look for a focused and thoughtful review of this game in a few days. For now, I'm too dazed by the difficulty and confused by the instructions. I'm moving through this game in slow motion while bracing for an impact.

And when it makes an impact, I will be sure to write about it.