Welcome to the RETRObituary: March Edition!
Before we get started this month, an urgent appeal: if anyone, anywhere knows of a website out there that databases Speccy, C64, Amstrad CPC games by month of release then I'd love to know. The RETRObituary is a little too focused on console releases so far - whereas I'd love to look at some of the old 8-bit home computer releases, but can't find a decent resource anywhere. If you do know of one, hit me up on Twitter @vertigoDC and let me know. We'll be pals for life! On with the show...
Hey all – welcome to this week’s edition of The Geek Beat: your weekly fix of sweet, sweet geek. Up this week is March’s RETRObituary – where we jump in the Geek Beat Delorean, dial it up to 88MPH and blast back in time to review classic video games of yesteryear. If you’re a regular reader you’ll know the drill by now: focusing only on games released in the title month we hop back down the time tunnel in five-year increments, checking out the classics that may or may not have lingered long in our memories. Some of the dearly departed are celebrated to this day, trailblazers that heralded a new dawn for the medium of computer and video games; others are less memorable – they lurk at the periphery of our consciousness – fleeting video game memories too intangible to grasp: like a riddle, wrapped in an sphinx-shaped enigma that inhabits the intangible equator where dreams dwell within dreams.
So we Google those ones.
At this point I should probably apologise for the lateness
of this blog. I’m well aware that it’s a March feature arriving in April; I
could put this down to scheduling issues – my fellow collaborator on this blog,
@shaune_gilbert and I have full
schedules; we’re busier than a recycled environment from Dragon Age II. (five minutes thought and that was the best I could do…) I
could blame our sloppy timekeeping on just not having spare time or the
emulator issues that I was tweeting about on Monday night but then everybody
knows that time - from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a
big ball of wibbly wobbly time-y, wimey… stuff. According to The Doctor of
course. Which I think would negate my argument if I only understood what it
meant. How is it that The Doctor knows so much about time and space and
everything yet he didn’t figure that regenerating into Peter Capaldi would be a
bad idea?
Anyway, onto the games:
2010: Assassin’s Creed 2 – PC/Dragon Age: Awakenings -
multiformat
@vertigoDC
Five years ago this month saw a spattering of releases: Assassin’s Creed 2 launched on PC; I
played the game on Playstation 3 (I think) although I didn’t finish it. For me,
I’ve always found the Assassin’s Creed
franchise to be plagued with the slight odour of missed opportunity – a bit
like that talented guy you knew at school who somehow ended up flipping burgers
when he had so much more potential. I never finished the first game because it
was so repetitive – it had fun combat moves but even they became monotonous
after a while; it was an interesting if unoriginal parry/counter system that
was okay for a while before you realised that ultimately it was about as deep
as the Rex Kwan Do fighting system
For the love of all that is holy, please follow the link...
So I wasn’t playing much of Assassin’s Creed 2 back in 2010.
That year did give me occasion to go back and visit one of my all-time
favourite game worlds however: Ferelden, the oft-beleaguered, war-torn realm of
the Dragon Age universe, home to all
manner of interesting inhabitants, from lowly brigands to exultant kings. Dragon
Age: Origins, the first title in the series actually launched back in 2009
– Awakening was a major DLC launched
in 2010 to accompany the main title. I wouldn’t normally count DLC as a game
release but this was huge – probably the biggest piece of DLC I’ve ever played.
The price reflected it; I remember it being about twenty quid – quite steep for
2009, although considering that we were plunging into the abyss of a global
financial crisis at the time, twenty quid suddenly became a lot of money. At
one point I think that two ten pound notes would have brought you most of
mainland Europe. Or eighty percent of the British banking sector.
I digress. It was a huge game, worth a mention because in
many ways it set the tone for me personally with regards to what good DLC
should look like: extra content that added tens of hours of playtime onto the life
of your favourite game rather than an alternative outfit for your character or
a bonus level that you can zoom through in a couple of hours leaving you the
rest of the afternoon to curse the game developers for their black-hearted larceny.
At least, that's why i remember liking it... Unless there was something else...
Whether Bioware still intend to carry on in this fine
tradition remains to be seen; the first piece of DLC for last year’s
Game-of-the-Year-but-only-because-there-was-nothing-else-out-there-worth-awarding,
Dragon Age: Inquisition, has just
dropped on Xbox One and PC – however, early reports suggest that it’s no Awakenings; PS4 players have to wait an
extra month because of one of those tiresome exclusivity contracts – you know,
the ones that are like the video games equivalent to locking you into an
iron-shod chastity belt whilst Kate Moss does a teasing dance right in front of
you. Why do game developers and publishers do that? Surely they realise that it
creates more ill will towards them than any kind of envious desire. Case in
point: when I heard that Inquistion’s DLC
was arriving on Xbox One a month or two before it dropped on the PS4, I wasn’t
suddenly filled with a great and unending regret that I’d brought it for the
wrong console – I was just mildly annoyed for about twelve seconds before I
kicked the big, fat Microsoft machine whilst it glared at me balefully through
its Orwellian-Big Brother-is-watching Kinect eye, its HAL-like features making
silent promises that one day it would be my superior and how, in the fullness
of time I would surely learn to fear its terrible wrath. Meanwhile the
Playstation just looked on smugly like the superior sibling that knows its
parents love it more, smiling superciliously at the once-mighty Xbox One,
reduced now to little more than an occasionally-kicked, overly expensive,
voice-activated remote control for my Sky box.
If I was going to put it another way (and it looks like I
am) then my Playstation would be the Salacious B. Crumb to my Jabba the Hutt –
tittering gleefully as I repurposed my Xbox Artoo Detoo into a roving drinks
cabinet. Or something. I’m not quite sure how a point about the evils of
timed-exclusive releases led to me comparing myself to Jabba the Hutt. Perhaps
we should move on.
...Or maybe consider a different metaphor altogether?
Honourable Mentions: Just Cause 2 - multi-format, Final
Fantasy XIII - multi-format
2005: God of War - PS2
@shaune_gilbert remembers this classic PS2 mythological brawler...
Wow!!! Blood, boobs and blades, what more you want!?!
Wow!!! Blood, boobs and blades, what more you want!?!
What an introduction to a game, firstly there’s an apparent
suicide by the old walking off a cliff routine (classic) then you face off almost immediately
against a huge hydra, a mythical three headed beastie of the sea, you kill the
first two heads by impaling their heads to a ship’s deck with some sort of cargo
rigging, then there’s the 3rd head which is bigger and badder than
the ‘lesser’ two, you kill him by impaling him on the splintered mast of the
ship through the beasties eye socket and skull. Once done and you’ve taken a
quick breath to think what the fuck just
happened? - the two ‘lesser ‘ heads explode in a bloody mess and then to move on what’s
the obvious thing to do….that’s right have a stroll into the mouth of the dead
hydra to fetch a key..Duh!!!
Now there's a Hydra I would Hail...
So how’s that for an intro level and your basic training? You know you’re gonna have a great time with this game when heads explode, right? It's like, one of the founding laws of the universe!
There are ‘minigames’ when certain characters are almost
dead, think of it as akin to mortal kombat finishers. For example, Cyclops: you’ll climb him and stab the eye out in all its bloody goriness, same for Minotaur’s - but this time you knock him over and stab him through his mouth, into
his neck...nice...lol
Narrator is kindergarten
cop head teacher. Actress Linda Hunt. The score I remember being very filmic and dramatic.I also remember being in awe of the size and scale of this game,
the gods and use of mythology is awesome. The size of the Titan Cronos crawling with Pandora’s Temple
upon his back just blew me away, biggest thing I’d seen on PS2, it blew away the
giants of that great game Colossus.
Those that loved Greek mythological creatures were in for a
treat, there was:
Medusa, Cyclops, The Harpies, Wraiths, Sirens, 3-Headed Dogs, Centaurs and many more.
Editor's Note: At this point in his review, Shaune's PSN download of the game kept crashing so that's all you get. On another note, I'm quite relieved as I was getting alarmed at just how gleefully bloodthirsty my friend was sounding. Shaune, next time you come round you may notice that there'll be nothing sharp within the house.
Coincidence buddy. Pure coincidence.
Seriously though, what is up with PSN? First they give our data away to hackers, then they screw up my pal's download. And where's this new series of 'Powers' you promised here in the UK you ass-clowns?
Editor's Note: At this point in his review, Shaune's PSN download of the game kept crashing so that's all you get. On another note, I'm quite relieved as I was getting alarmed at just how gleefully bloodthirsty my friend was sounding. Shaune, next time you come round you may notice that there'll be nothing sharp within the house.
Coincidence buddy. Pure coincidence.
Seriously though, what is up with PSN? First they give our data away to hackers, then they screw up my pal's download. And where's this new series of 'Powers' you promised here in the UK you ass-clowns?
Honourable Mentions: Devil May Cry 3 - PS3, Mortal Kombat:
Deception – Gamecube, Star Wars: Republic Commando – PC, Need for Speed
Underground: Rivals – PSP, TimeSplitters: Future Perfect – multiformat, Dynasty
Warriors 5 – PS2, FIFA Street – multiformat, LEGO Star Wars - multiformat
2000: Star Wars Episode I: Jedi Power Battles – PS1
@vertigoDC
Remember earlier I talked about those games that were best
left forgotten? Unless you’re of a certain vintage you’ve probably never heard
of this turn-of-the century platforming/brawling hybrid. Based on possibly the
most derided movie of all time, Jedi
Power Battles had you choosing from a selection of the Jedi Council’s
finest: Young Padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi, the only member of the Jedi Order who
was able to rock three truly shocking hairstyles – all at the same time;
Maverick Master Qui-Gonn Jinn who ascribed to something called the ‘Living
Force’ – an aspect of the Force that allowed him and subsequent Jedi to communicate
from beyond the grave – so it appears we have Qui-Gonn to thank not only for
bringing the annoying Jake Lloyd into the franchise as a young Anakin, but also
for Hayden Christiansen as an older version gurning at us as a force ghost at
the end of Return of the Jedi. Thanks
a bunch Qui-Gonn; rounding out the
jedi roster were slap-headed puppet pal, Mace Windu and Plo Koon and Adi
Gallia, two other Jedi with equally silly names.
More crimes against haircuts in a single'do than the eighties managed in a whole decade...
The game itself consisted of you and a buddy working your
way through a rough approximation of the Episode
I storyline; you began on the battle droid ship above Naboo and the game’s
final level was of course the climactic battle with Darth Maul. You could actually
unlock Maul upon completing the game but only with his single-bladed lightsaber
which is akin to winning the lottery but only being allowed to spend the
winnings on stained underwear. All of the standard features that you’d expect
from a game featuring Jedi were present - force powers that were upgradeable
between levels, whirling lightsaber action that could decimate most enemies in
glee-inducing fashion, stoic, joyless, Jedi conversations that had you were
wishing you were a Rodian in a cantina just so Han could shoot first.
In actual fact, the Jedi could do most stuff in the game… apart from jumping that is. Remember how you sat slumped in your chair over the course of the prequel trilogy, resisting the urge to facepalm yourself into a blissful numbness as the Jedi Masters were slowly emasculated movie by movie, seemingly unable to do anything but talk shit, procrastinate and ultimately get slaughtered in the face of a few battle droids and winged moth-things whilst the Dark Lord of the Sith slowly amassed power and turned the Chosen One to the dark side right under their noses? Well, for whatever reason LucasArts decided they couldn’t fit all of this monumental lameness into the game so they just made the Jedi characters unable to jump. I mean, they could try, they just weren’t very good at it. Couple this with some truly awful automatic camera issues and you were in for some truly frustrating platforming.
They can kill stuff with but a thought. Just don't ask them to jump. Or hop. Or even skip a little...
In actual fact, the Jedi could do most stuff in the game… apart from jumping that is. Remember how you sat slumped in your chair over the course of the prequel trilogy, resisting the urge to facepalm yourself into a blissful numbness as the Jedi Masters were slowly emasculated movie by movie, seemingly unable to do anything but talk shit, procrastinate and ultimately get slaughtered in the face of a few battle droids and winged moth-things whilst the Dark Lord of the Sith slowly amassed power and turned the Chosen One to the dark side right under their noses? Well, for whatever reason LucasArts decided they couldn’t fit all of this monumental lameness into the game so they just made the Jedi characters unable to jump. I mean, they could try, they just weren’t very good at it. Couple this with some truly awful automatic camera issues and you were in for some truly frustrating platforming.
They can kill stuff with but a thought. Just don't ask them to jump. Or hop. Or even skip a little...
I recall one level in particular towards the game’s climax
where you had to scale the walls of Theed Palace on Naboo – halfway through the
level’s most difficult jump the camera would automatically swoop around and
you’d have to manually correct the direction of your jump to match. Which was
almost impossible, and I’m not talking there’s-no-way-the-Dark-Lord-of-the-Sith-could-be-my-father-because-my-trusted-mentor-would-have-definitely-told-me-that-one-impossible,
I mean really impossible. All I’m
saying is that the LucasArts programmer who put that in the game, then made
sure it somehow got past quality control must have really hated people. I mean,
this is all conjecture but he may have been some sort of Misery Demon that fed
off human anguish or maybe he just found out that his wife preferred the
company of other men. Either way it made for a brutally difficult endgame – Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles enjoyed
an average reception, possibly because everyone just got fed up of its overly
long title; it joined quite a few Episode 1 inspired games by revelling in
mediocrity. Insert mandatory joke about the film here…
Honourable Mentions: Smackdown! – PS1, Wario Land 3 – Japan,
Gameboy Colour, Tekken Tag Tournament – PS2
1995: Tekken – PS1
@vertigoDC
Tekken first hit home consoles in Japan twenty years ago
this March before being released for other territories later in the year.
Although it wasn’t the first 3D fighting game (that honour went to Sega’s
Virtua Fighter) it soon became the most popular, ultimately earning a place in
the Guinness Book of Records for becoming the first Playstation title to sell a
million copies. Although the story and the character roster clearly relied on a
mixture of the same tired tropes (an international fighting tournament, a hero
fighting for revenge) and traditionally oddball Japanese wackiness (one of the
fighters was a bear) what really made Tekken appealing to players was its
realism. The button interface differed from other fighting games – instead of
having inputs to represent power in the Streetfighter II mould, Tekken chose to
allow each of its four buttons to represent a limb. It sounds like a small
difference but its intuitive nature markedly changed the feel of the game;
attacks and combos occurred more naturally and the player had a greater sense
of agency. Couple this with Tekken’s more realistic fighting styles and the
game was an instant hit. Whilst the Streetfighter franchise (although as
popular as ever) was becoming more and more ridiculous with its characters and
movesets (I remember playing one of the turbo editions at my local arcade where
Zangief could do a mid-air lariat whilst farting flames), Tekken’s grounded
fighting styles with moves heavily rooted in traditional martial arts systems
found a groundswell of appreciation.
So, the bear enters a martial arts tournament to battle a cybernetic ninja. Like I was saying... realism, you know?
Although Tekken’s graphics were nothing to write home about,
(they were pretty fugly, even by 1995’s standards) the game became a smash hit,
spawning sequels that are still being released to this day. During the series
twenty year history the games have experimented with tag fighting, scroll-along
beat-em ups and even modified versions of bowling and volleyball; as well as
this Tekken has also spawned numerous spin-off movies and games outside of the
traditional fighting genre. A couple of years ago Namco released a
physical/digital card game variant that I played to death for a couple of
months until I got into the top hundred in the world. It was pretty neat to
tell my friends that I was one of the best Tekken players on the planet, even
if I didn’t tell them that it actually meant that in reality I was basically
super good at Rock Paper Scissors.
Sadly, I was less good at the actual game...
Honourable Mentions: Panzer Dragoon – Saturn, Chrono Trigger
– SNES, Mega Man 7 – SNES, Super Sidekicks 3 – Arcade, World Heroes – Neo Geo
CD, Fatal Fury 3 - Arcade
1990 – After burner II – Megadrive
@vertigoDC
Although I’ve never actually played After Burner II, from what I’ve read (on the excellent Hardcoregaming101) the game is almost identical
to its predecessor, a third-person Top
Gun-inspired shoot em-up where you control a fighter jet against unending
hordes of enemies. I did play the original After Burner a lot, original as it
munched my twenty pence pieces in the arcades that would roll up when the fair
came to town and later when I had the rather fun port for my trusty old Atari
ST back in the early nineties. I remember those days fondly: visiting an
amusement arcade was like stepping into the near-future of gaming: huge sprites
and crazy colour palettes; mind-boggling 3D and digitised sound; games that
pretty much forced you into forking over more cash if you wanted to explore
later-game content. The last one sounds suspiciously like DLC again but it
wasn’t – in order to monetise the arcade industry and keep young customers like
me reaching into their pockets, they simply made games ridiculously hard.
After Burner (and presumably its cloned sequel, After Burner
II) was one of those games. Created in 1987 by Sega who were the undisputed
kings of the arcade developers during this era, the game threw wave after wave
of enemies at your lone fighter jet until the screen was awash with enemies and
inevitably, you’d find yourself fumbling for another twenty pence as your
burning plane plummeted once more from the sky. The Megadrive port finally
arrived twenty-five years ago this very month.
Just give us yer cash already...
Why Sega felt the need to release a slightly-souped up
version of the original After Burner with a couple of extra levels and market
it as a full sequel I don’t know. Well, I can guess: it starts with ‘cash’ and
ends with ‘money’ but how they got away with it I know not either. One other
easter egg of an addition to the ‘sequel’ that you’ll appreciate if you’re an
80s arcade child like me is the sequences shown between levels where the
fighter jet lands and there are cameos from a couple of Sega’s other iconic
arcade vehicles – namely, the motorcycle from Hang-On and the Ferrari Testarossa from Outrun.
There aren't many people in the world that would find this fleeting cameo strangely exciting. And then there's me.
The series’ legacy is more than just being loosely affiliated with that stable of classic eighties Sega arcade games; although not an official sequel, (although After Burner III did eventually follow in 1992) Sega launched G-LOC: Air Battle in arcades from 1990 onwards – an After Burner game in all but name, the deluxe R360 cabinet had two automated axes of movement allowing you to fly upside down in the cabinet. Sega World, which lived at a bowling alley near to me had one of these beasts and I still remember the gravity-defying feats that you could pull to this very day. Man, I loved Sega World. The R360. Eight way Daytona USA. Virtua Racer, Virtua Fighter - that place was my childhood equivalent of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Speaking of prodigious yet eccentric weirdos who occupied fantastical realms beyond imagination, I bet Michael Jackson had a G -LOC R360 in his Neverland arcade. If you’ve never taken the virtual tour of Jacko’s realm of video game nirvana I strongly urge you to follow the link – if you’re of a similar vintage to me, then it’ll be like all of your inner-eleven year old’s dreams are finally coming true.
The series’ legacy is more than just being loosely affiliated with that stable of classic eighties Sega arcade games; although not an official sequel, (although After Burner III did eventually follow in 1992) Sega launched G-LOC: Air Battle in arcades from 1990 onwards – an After Burner game in all but name, the deluxe R360 cabinet had two automated axes of movement allowing you to fly upside down in the cabinet. Sega World, which lived at a bowling alley near to me had one of these beasts and I still remember the gravity-defying feats that you could pull to this very day. Man, I loved Sega World. The R360. Eight way Daytona USA. Virtua Racer, Virtua Fighter - that place was my childhood equivalent of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Speaking of prodigious yet eccentric weirdos who occupied fantastical realms beyond imagination, I bet Michael Jackson had a G -LOC R360 in his Neverland arcade. If you’ve never taken the virtual tour of Jacko’s realm of video game nirvana I strongly urge you to follow the link – if you’re of a similar vintage to me, then it’ll be like all of your inner-eleven year old’s dreams are finally coming true.
I don't use the term 'left agog' for just anything you know. But this...
For an arcade like that I would have risked a trip to
Neverland. Hell, I would have even have drank the jesus-juice. But, who am I
kidding? My parents would never have let me travel halfway across the world to
stay with some weird oddball benefactor - because sadly, they were far too
responsible and because also I don't exist within the pages of a Roald Dahl novel.
...but if I did it'd be this one. I'd never need to hunt for pharmaceutical-grade happy pills again!
That's all from The Geek Beat this week folks. Any inaccuracies are a failing of my memory or bad Googling.
Head back this way next week to see what's new with ANA, my latest writing project.
Until then be sure to follow me @vertigoDC. I'm quite possibly Twitter's best kept secret. Peace.
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