Crunchbytes, Issue 1
I'm starting a new series wherein I review games I've beaten in the last month. Let's see how long this lasts, hahaha. I've become quite a fan of the emulation community and have joined a few different community events with RetroAchievents. I find playing older games to be a delightful trove of game design research.
Adventure
System: Atari 2600
Released: March 1980
Developer: Atari (Warren Robinett)
Publisher: Atari, Sears
My Playtime: ~15 Minutes
Box art by Susan Jaekel.
Your quest as a single block is simple. Find an enchanted chalice and return it to the gold castle. Move throughout a set of rooms to solve puzzles and avoid both bats and dargons as they chase you across the screen. While it may look simple now, it was a foundational game for the games industry.
Since its release in 1980, it has been heralded as one of the first action-adventure video games. Utilizing the mechanic of walking off screen to move to interconnected rooms was a revolutionary idea, something games continue to use to this day.
My playthrough was very short to beat the game on its base difficulty, but the game encourages player to replay it on a harder one. I took my single win and left, but if you continue to play and know where to look, there is an easter egg in the game where the screen says, "Created by Warren Robinett" Acknowledgement of developers was also something that wasn't very common then, and Atari even wanted to remove it but sided with it being too costly. Other games started to mimic the idea and here we are. There are a ton of fun facts about this game, its development, and its legacy. I'll leave you one.
To get everything to fit on an Atari 2600 cartridge, Warren credited his classes where Ken Thompson (incredible pioneer of CS) was his teacher and where he learned to write in C. If you're interested in more about this game and how it was made, watch the GDC 2015 Post Mortem about it by Warren Robinett. OK, one more fun fact. Warren Robinett was also one of the founders of The Learning Company, so we can also thank him for the Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? and Zoombini games.
Blob Attack
System: Arduboy
Released: September 6, 2021
Developer: TEAM a.r.g.
Publisher: Arduboy
My Playtime: ~30 Minutes
In-game image of Blob Attack.
The Arduboy is one of many handhelds to arrive on the retro scene. Before this game, I never heard of the Arduboy. It's much smaller than the Anbernic RG-35XX if you're familiar with them and even the Playdate. I myself have an Anbernic RG-35XX H, trying to recapture the PSP days.* I appreciate I can play the game without an Arduboy, and I think this is one of the games that ships default with the Arduboy when you purchase it.
Blob Attack's gameplay is similar to both Tetris and Puyo Puyo games. The left-side of the screen is space for blocks to fall, but as they fall, they rotate every X frames in rhythm. Since the Arduboy only uses black and white, it was a little disorienting at first to match sprites that looked the same with each other. After you train your eye a bit, it's not too bad and becomes pretty fun. I only played until I reached a score of 20,000 or so but can see how this is a nice game to pick up and play whenever. To boot, the music is great.
*My PSP is somewhere in my basement but I don't know where T_T
Summon Night: Swordcraft Story
System: Game Boy Advance
Released: July 26, 2006
Developer: Flight-Plan
Publisher: Atlus
My Playtime: 17 hours, 40 minutes
Box cover art for Summon Night: Swordcraft Story.
Seeing this game was published by Atlus and an Action RPG, I was curious. To be clear, I have not played any of the other Summon Night games, so I have no idea how this standalone compares to the others.
Summon Night: Swordcraft Story features a day cycle that moves the main story of the game along and with sidequests available during specific days. The world of Lyndbaum is bathed in a steampunk vibe with the entire town living in a mechanical tower. Small islands of houses are dotted aruond the tower where the player can ride a water scooter between houses. A tournament to determine the next Craft Knight is being held that the protagonist must participate in. Things go awry, forcing the player to train and level up by battling through floors of a labyrinth and seek out some specific items. A classic quest! Battles are real time hack and slash sidescrollers with moves to guard, attack, and cast magic.
I found myself charmed by this game though the length of it made getting to the end a smidge tedious. Had it been ever so slightly shorter, I would have enjoyed it more. However, clocking in at around ~17 hours to just beat the game, minimal side questes included, for a Game Boy Advance game is pretty solid for a handheld RPG.
Mappy
System: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released: April 1983
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco
My Playtime: 2 hours, 15 minutes
Arcade flyer for Mappy in North America.
When I first started playing this game, I thought it cute and easy. I couldn't be more wrong. Mappy is a classic that's been re-released by Namco over the years on multiple consoles. You play as Mappy a mouse police officer who is recovering stolen items from a bunch of cats. The cats have a leader, Goro, who sometimes gets trapped in the stolen items and can be counted for more points than usual. Every level of horizontal bars with trampolines and doors requires Mappy to collect all the stolen items and avoid contact with the cats.
Collecting the same type of item back to back affords more points but is more challenging as cats are chasing all throughout akin to Pac-Man. A significant divergence from Pac-Man is the usage of trampolines. A single line of pixels drawn on the screen that when bounced on change color. Each consecutive contact changes the color of the trampoline until it's red and snaps. Then, you fall through the floor and die, haha. There are doors you can whip open to knock cats out and specific more high powered doors can be opened that shove a gust of wind across the screen. All of this combines for a delightful bit of fun with an ever increasing degree of challenge as the level design requires careful pathing to avoid the enemy AI.
It took me 2 hours to beat, because Mappy only starts with 2 lives and must beat 16 levels. You only earn an extra life at fairly high point values ilke 40,000 and 70,000, making you work even harder to keep your lives for as many stages as you can. Absolute delight discovery and am curious to play the later remakes on the DS and Wii.
Rock Band: Unplugged
System: PlayStation Portable
Released: June 9, 2009
Developer: Backbone Entertainment, Harmonix Music Systems
Publisher: Elextronic Arts, MTV Games
My Playtime: 11 hours, 36 minutes
First of all, I had no idea MTV Games was even a thing until I started digging more into this game. I was a big, big, big fan of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games. One summer all I did was play Guitar Hero, mastering every song I could on Expert on the stupid plastic guitar. One of my family members once said offhandedly I could have learned the REAL guitar with the time I spent on these games.
So when I discovered a Rock Band game for a handheld, I had to try it out. The songs on here have some great Millennial Classics* like Mr. Brightside by the Killers, Float On by Modest Mouse, and Move Along by All American Rejects among others. The way you play notes is by playing the first notes on the left and up directional buttons, while the triangle and circle buttons are used for playing the last two notes across the screen. It was quite an adjustment.
Pressing X unleashes the star power, accumulating more points and bonuses. The other thing that made this game harder than regular Guitar Hero/Rock Band versions is that you play the tracks for drums, bass, guitar, and vocals so you have to use the left and right bumper buttons to toggle between them. Ignoring one for too long nets a failure X on the screen that can only be restored by using star power. After 3 X's, you fail the song. I cannot beat this game on Expert. I can barely do the Hard difficulty for some songs. The muscle memory I have for that silly plastic guitar is too strong, haha.
*Sorry, fam.
God of War
System: Playstation 2
Released: March 22, 2005
Developer: Santa Monica Studios
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
My Playtime: 13 hours, 56 minutes
Even though I had a PS2, I never played this game. My mom probably thought it was so graphic and felt my playing Kingdom Hearts was a much more desirable outcome. But now, two decades later, I've not only played it but beaten it!* The platforming and environmental puzzles in this game feel fair and refreshing. I'm not led around with UI and yellow paint to my next destination and only have so many options for moving forward in the space. I actually had to look up a puzzle in one area (kept forgetting to utilize my charged push) which was really fun. A couple other areas I forced myself to try and solve the puzzles with no help and a delightful sense of satisfication overcame me. Honestly, it has been a long time since environmental puzzling evoked wonder within me.
While the story isn't incredibly inventive, the level design and combat more than make it up for it. The grab button might not always work when near an enemy, but throwing the chaos blades around in a swarm of enemies did. There are many secret chests and hidden nooks throughout each level in the game. I'm sure I didn't find them all, but the ones I did find were rewarding and validating. I can see why this game was a big hit and still lauded by players even now. I've not played the second one or the recent remakes. I endeavor to check them all out eventually.
Perhaps my favorite thing in the game are all the additional behind the scenes information awarded the player after beating the game. There is a graveyard with unused character and enemy models with commentary from the game director about why they chose not to use them. There's also video footage of how they made the game. I wish more games would do this. Pull back the curtain just a little to share the decisions the team made and why. This, like game manuals, have sadly gone the way of the dodo bird.
*I still need to beat the Challenge of the Gods. Booo.
Pokemon Blue Version
System: Gane Boy
Released: September 28, 1998
Developer: Game Freak
Publisher: Nintendo
My Playtime: 20 hours, 25 minutes
Over the summer, I started playing Pokemon Fire Red, got distracted, and went back to the originals. There are a bunch of nice quality of life changes made to Fire Red and Leaf Green like automatically changing the box you store Pokemon in when one is full. The moment when you get a 1% encounter in the wild but see this image when throwing a poke ball is devastating.
Anyway, the game still holds up and was so fun. I've forgotten more of it than I remembered but as I encountered more mechanics, it all came back. I remember the confusion about not being able to see inside Rock Tunnel and not knowing which boulders to shove through floors to get to Articuno. It was wonderful to rediscover it all again, and I plan to do a more thorough playthrough, collecting and evoling all the pokemon to complete my pokedex. As a kid, I had the electronic toy version of a pokedex and carried with me everywhere.
I never played past Gen 3, so there's a lot more to learn and play, though I did have the trading card game for the Game Boy Color. My youngest sister who is 16 is obsessed with this series and its been fun to share a game like this across generations and talk about which Pokemon are our favorite and which gym we always struggled against.
The Baker Tax
As I wrote about in my previous blog, I've instated a Baker Tax upon myself. For this one, I'm sharing a little something I add when making brownies, and it's coffee. Just a couple teaspoons added to the dry ingredients give the brownies the tiniest kick but add a lot to the flavor. If you try it, let me know. Enjoy!