AVGNs Misaligned Retro Games

Recently The Angry Video Game Nerd released his latest video about DOOM and its various versions and before I get into the meat of this post, can we just take a moment to appriciate just how long James Rolfe has been going with this thing.  DOOM is his 205th episode and while you could argue there's been somewhat of a dip in quality compared to his older stuff, the show is still pretty entertaining to watch.  Hell, I remember being in highschool watching this shit on gametrailers.com when he was a member of that weird duo called Screwattack and his name was the Angry Nintendo Nerd, remember that shit?  Regardless of how you feel about his show, being able to run a web series for THIS long is quite the achievement.

I've noticed over the years from talking to people both in person and online that AVGN has at least had some hand in shaping general opinions on retro games.  There are a pretty significant number of people who will watch an episode of AVGN, see the footage that Rolfe has taken and his comments on the game and come away with a rather strong opinion of the game sucking despite never having played it themselves.  Then, when the topic of that game comes up, they will state very strongly and very confidently about its suckage because they've been totally convinced by the episode.  Having played most of the games that AVGN has covered and having beaten most of them, I'd say that most of the time if a game has appeared on the show, you're probably safe in assuming that it sucks shit.  No one is going to argue that Super Pitfall is some kind of hidden NES gem that has got a bad rap, just looking at it really is enough to just tell that it sucks

But there are a couple games that he has covered that have this awful reputation online that are actually pretty good and I want to talk about those a little bit

Simon's Quest was AVGNS very first episode.  It's an interesting episode too since it's basically got none of the production that we would come to see shortly after it being put out, it's just James talking over bits of game play footage.  There IS a lot of criticise in this game as well, to be fair such as kind of bland level design in the mansions, cryptic puzzles that I'm not sure how you're supposed to figure out and a stupid day/night transition but the game, overall, isn't THAT bad.  Traversing the overworld is generally pretty fun, upgrading your gear is cool and this game basically laid a bit of groundwork down for what modern Castlevania would end up turning into.  If you like the later entries in the series such as Symphony of the Night and Aria of Sorrow then it can be cool to come back to this one and see the beginning of the idea.  Sure, progress is a little hard to just intuit by yourself but play with a guide and a lot of the frustration sort of just goes away.  I've met a lot of people who have played and really love Castlevania 1 and 3 but have completely skipped over 2 because they "have heard it sucks" and that's a damn shame.

 

This is one that actually really grinds my gears because Silver Surfer for the NES is actually really fucking good but because of that, admittedly quite funny, episode of AVGN I feel like this game gets a lot of flak in retro gaming spaces for no reason.  The graphics are decent-ish, and soundtrack is amazing and the gameplay is tight but holy fucking shit is it HARD.  But that's the problem, bring up a conversation about Silver Surfer and people will go on about how much it sucks when really those "problems" are things that are true for a lot of other shmups.  The big example is how you can't touch any of the walls in a stage or you just die, which yes is sort of annoying but there are plenty of other games where that's true.  R-Type and Gradius do that shit too but you don't see anyone knocking those games for that.  The real issue with Silver Surfer is that your hitbox is MASSIVE which makes avoiding things pretty hard but its something you just adapt to.  With a little bit of memorization and enough skill to keep your power ups, the difficulty of Silver Surfer is no worse than literally any other shmup on the system.  

This was the game that inspired this post, fucking Countdown Vampires.  When I played this as part of my 31 game horror challenge I was also kind of guilty of just thinking it was shit because it was an AVGN feature.  I wanted one shitty game on the list that we could all laugh at but really it was just fine.  Nothing spectacular, not the kind of thing that will be remembered as a survival horror great or anything but functional.  Also we still got a laugh from the weird script and voice acting and overall the experience was pretty enjoyable.  That said though, anyone who even had a passing knowledge of this game all said the same thing of "oh god it's THAT game, that game SUCKS" despite most of them having never played it in their lives.  There's even a decent amount of effort on display with the amount of guns, monster variety and pre-renders.  Hell, there's even one bit near the end of the game where there are 3 different pre-renders for an area that has nothing in it aside from a single box of ammo.  Someone modelled, rendered and got that shit to work in the game just so we could run up and down it and barely pay attention to it while we get an item.  I see you Mr or Mrs 3D artist, good for you.

Yes it's easy, yes the dialogue is terrible but in a sort of endering way that I quite like and yes the game barely has any countdowns OR vampires but you know what, good game.

Countdown Vampires is fucking good

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There are some other examples outside of these 3 of games that he rages at but are really just fine.  Nightmare on Elm Street on NES comes to mind in this regard but you get the picture.  Usually he's pretty accurate about a game being shitty but every so often he does miss.

Die Hard Isn't That Bad

So usually when I come to near the end of a game or after I've finished it I'll do a blog post on it,  I've you've been watching the stream you'll have seen I'm doing a 100 game NES challenge and I've not really talked much any of the games I've finished on here so I want to talk about the game that was, so far, probably the most fun.

Die Hard came out in 1990 for the NES and basically follows the same plot of the movie.  You are tasked with stopping the crooks of which there are 40 in the building and you have to kill them all before the timer runs out and they get away with a bunch of money.  It's a simple game and it's easy to pick up and play in short bursts thanks to  the in game timer keeping a single attempt down to about 30 minutes.

Now the game ain't perfect by any stretch.  In fact, there's a hell of a lot wrong with it really.  The two big problems with it, for me, are the controls are sort of crap which makes aiming shots and killing crooks way more stressful than it should be and the foot power gauge mechanic.  I get that it was a thing in the movie and of course, if you walk over broken glass you're gonna fuck your feet up but in this game the gauge drops just from running.  Considering this is a game where time is very much of the essence, the fact that you are punished for running is BEYOND stupid.  This games lack of quality however has been well documented by our good friend, The Angry Video Game Nerd.  The episode he did on this game, while entertaining, I think gave it a bit of a reputation that it doesn't deserve.

If you can get used to the shit controls and stupid foot system it's actually quite clever.  For example if you kill a crook and steal his radio, you can listen in and find out where the other crooks are going.  The crooks will of course wise up to you though and stop radio chatter, but if you used the radio to call the police, they will contact you and tell you where crooks have been spotted throughout the building.  If you go into one of the lower floors and blow up a computer you can fuck with the hackers efforts to open the safe, thus giving you more time to kill crooks or if you spend too much time crawling in vents, the crooks will start attacking you through the vents.  It's nice to see the game react to the way your playing and there's even a way to cheese the game by getting all the crooks to fight you at once at the end but this is stupidly hard to achieve.  There's also a pretty decent number of endings for a game this old, most of them being "you lose" endings but my favorite is that it's entirely possible for you and the final boss to kill each other at the same time and the game will be like "You saved the day but you died as well, GAME OVER" and I can't think of that many games that give you an ending for a double KO.

So if you saw that AVGN video and wrote of Die Hard as just another shit movie tie in game, I implore you to give it a go.  If you have no idea what I'm on about then go give it a go anyway because despite all it's glaring flaws its a surprisingly fun game

Game Centre CX

OK! Recently I discovered a TV show that's been in airing in Japan for a long time but I've only recently discovered, and good lord is it AWESOME!

The show has a simple premise, there is this guy called Arino, a comedian from Osaka who puts himself into a small room with a filming crew and plays some super hard games.

The thing that makes the show so entertaining is this guy has the most tolerance for retro game bullshit I've EVER seen.  No matter how often he dies, no matter how often the game flat out fucks him over, he always remains calm, but his reactions are really funny.  Think AVGN but he's filled with joy and wonder rather than rage.

If you're like me and you live in Japan, he also covers some unusual game centres and does interviews with various well known people in the industry.  Not only is this show super entertaining but you can learn a lot about old games that you probably didn't know before.  For example that Shuwatch article I posted, I gained that bit of knowledge from this very show.

So check it out, you can pull them up on youtube, but I'm gonna be hunting down the DVDs from now on!