The Geek Beat: RETRObituary - July 2015

Welcome to the RETRObituary - July Edition

Welcome one and all to this week's edition of The Geek Beat, your weekly dose of chartreuse-green, intravenous geek gold: just like the liquid Venom bubbling through Bane's veins, a single hit of this will leave you feeling ready to take on the world, break a Batman or two, maybe even take on the immortal might of Rowdy Rhonda Rousey (although I wouldn't recommend it).

In truth, Sean Bean's chances of surviving any encounter are always pretty slim.

Seriously though, (I know that combat sports aren't necessarily geek-related but bear with me) did you see the way she decimated Bethe Correia in front of the poor girl's hometown crowd on Saturday? Owch. Rousey is looking like she could be the most dominant champ in MMA history. Speaking of champs, this week sees the return of retrogaming's pound for pound, best of the best: The RETRObituary. Looking back at true classics from the days of yore; tipping a hat to video games' astounding legacy whilst tipping the scales as the undisputed baddest blog on the planet. For new readers, we look at games celebrating birthdays this month, working our way back in five year increments. This month also sees the welcome return of RETRObituary regular and occasional Dark Lord of the Sith, Shaune Gilbert. Let's do it!

2010: Game Dev Story (iOS)

Beautiful.

So, this is new. As far as I'm aware, this is the first time in RETRObituary's long and storied history (seven whole months!  Or in Ubisoft years, eighty-six new Assassin's Creed titles!) that we've featured a mobile game. History being made right here! Game Dev Story isn't just any old mobile game either. It launched to rave reviews, introduced a wave of systems and aesthetics that have been mercilessly aped by lesser games since (the surest form of flattery) and was one of the first games to really demonstrate how a device like the iPhone could be used to create a deep and satisfying gaming experience.

The premise was excellent: take your fledgling software company, staffed solely by a couple of bedroom programmers to the very top of the gaming industry. Bank hundreds of millions of dollars then use it to train or hire staff, sink it back into R&D or simply go to sleep on the world's biggest pile of money just like Scrooge McDuck; release budget titles put together on a shoestring before slowly working your way up to huge-budget triple-A titles that top the global sales charts and vie for the prestigious annual Game of the Year awards; you can even get in on the hardware game by ploughing cash into the development of new systems such as the Sonny PlayStatus or the Intendro Whoops. Between you and I dear readers, I've always been a sucker for games that didn't bother to pay the license for a character or celebrity then just went ahead, laughed in the face of lawsuits and used their names or likeness anyway... it showcases an impressive amount of gumption; the right degree of pluck or a whole boatload of 'I don't give a damn', exactly the sort of morals that video games should be espousing, right?

Sensible World of Soccer and International Superstar Soccer both did this sublimely (I can still name the ISS '98 faux-England squad in my head now... Ehalia, Gagham, Inche), Wrestle War on the Sega Mega Drive did the same thing for wrestlers and then there was 1989's The Revenge of Shinobi which took things to the next level by having the titular heroic ninja face off against none other than the Dark Knight himself.

Shinobi faces Demon King Batman. Only in crazy ol' Japan could Batman become a bigger dick.

  Game Dev Story carries on this proud tradition by using bastardised game and console titles that are sure to bring a smile to your face and it doesn't stop there; even some of your potential employees resemble real life programming gurus! That's right, ace coders like Stephen Jobson and Gilly Bates are available for you to employ in some sort of coding supergroup - an Avengers Assemble for nerds everywhere.

   

 Might wanna put this dude on tech design and development. Call it a hunch.

The nice touches don't stop there either. Retro-style pixelated graphics have been done before (that's why they're called retro, duh!) but this was one of the first iOS games to do so. The style has been aped mercilessly since; the aesthetics of the inferior Star Command spring to mind for one, but in the case of Game Dev Story, the visuals perfectly match the game's style and tone. It's still available on the App Store today for the bargain price of £3.99 - I'm pretty sure that it used to be £2.39 which either tells you all you need to know about inflation these days or in some weird, meta-textual fashion, the game developers of the game about game development and making profits are raising the price of the aforementioned game to make more profits. Clear? Of course not.

Honourable Mentions: Crackdown 2 (Xbox 360)

2005: Global Defence Force (PS2)

 Wowsers. We've already alluded to the craziness of Japan earlier in this blog but then you get to play games like this and you realise that their collective insanity is simply some kind of wacky warped genius. It has to be to produce gems like this. The Global Defence Force series (Also known as Earth Defence Force in some regions) offers alien invasion-style carnage and city-wide destruction on an unprecedented scale and it all started right here with Global Defence Force. Taking control of a single grunt within the GDF forces you are charged with pretty much single-handedly stemming the alien invasion of Earth from countless bugs, flying saucers, bugs, giant Japanese-style monsters and more bugs. Did I mention that there were bugs?   

 Rico's Roughnecks, HooaH!!

If you're one of those sensitive souls who has an aversion to things that skitter and crawl then this probably isn't the game for you. Playing out like some quasi-sequel to Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers where the bugs invade Earth, you find yourself transported to far-flung continents to save the inhabitants of iconic cities by razing them and their alien invaders to the ground.

Wait, what?

That's right: Taking a page out of Man of Steel's playbook, you mete out punishment to the alien invaders by destroying entire cities full of innocent people. Almost all of the environments within each level are destructible; couple that with some of the high-explosive weaponry that you can get your sticky mitts on and suddenly (and not for the first time in its history) London is burning. In fairness to GDF, the massive amounts of enemies onscreen, (not to mention across each level as a whole) really do sell the idea that this is a full scale invasion: Big Ben's looming clock tower crawls with giant bugs; they festoon Westminster Bridge and blot out the iconic London skyline. In short, there's a lot of them so taking out huge swathes of the city to annihilate them seems like reasonable collateral damage. Superman on the other hand had far less alien invaders to deal with and he still took out most of Metropolis. And he's Superman! (Note to self: Get off soapbox get off soapbox now, this isn't a Man of Steel rant, it's a retrogames blog, sit down, that's right, sit yourself down, slowly put down the hammer and continue typing. Nobody has to get hurt today.) 

"Millions dead, billions in property damage. Is it too soon to start swapping saliva?"

I first got into the series with the follow up game, Earth Defence Force 2017 and its direct sequel Earth Defence Force 2025 on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. There's a new-generation rework of 2025 coming to PS4 at some point this year with giant skyscraper-sized mech vs.monster battles added to the mix. At the moment however, there don't seem to be any immediate plans to release the game in Europe. Probably a good thing; I'm no shrinking violet when it comes to bugs, I love spiders ( although my wife made me get rid of a giant moth from our bathroom last night - when it unfurled its wings I thought I was being attacked by Batman) but even I struggled to suppress a shudder when being overrun by a horde of giant ants in the Earth Defence titles. Seeing them rendered in even greater detail might just be a step too far.

   

Cue the insectophobia I never knew I had.

Honourable Mentions: Killer 7 (Gamecube, PS2), Sid Meier's Pirates! (Xbox), Brian Lara International Cricket (PS2)

Not a great deal on tap for 2000 I'm afraid. Over to regular RETRObituary collaborator Shaune Gilbert for a look at 1995! 

1995: Castlevania: Dracula X (SNES)

Well, I was looking forward to this review, as I’m a big fan of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on the PS1 but unlike that true classic, this instalment in the long-running series was sorely lacking. I only played this game briefly before putting a stake through its heart so its resurrection in this review will be equally brief. As for the plot, I’ll hold up my hands up and admit that I haven't got a clue. It’s supposedly a port of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood which was a PC release - it’s the usual basic Castlevania set up: you play as one of the vampire-killer extraordinaire Belmont  clan as they resume their noble quest to kill Dracula; you must also rescue Annette your girlfriend (so pretty much just a normal Saturday night for the Belmont family then, home in time for The Voice I imagine).

Let’s start with the good points:

The music in the game I thought was pretty good: it starts with a great guitar riff and some beats that seem to accentuate the urgency of progressing quickly through the level as you slay endless hordes of zombies and monsters. Graphically, it’s not the most impressive game and fails to really harness the power of the SNES but having said that, some of the characters are decent-looking, boldly designed and brightly coloured. When you come across the larger enemies they’re actually quite impressive when compared to the standard sprites, giving them the crucial distinction they need to keep you interested. I also liked some of the larger power animations when using special abilities but as special attacks go, they’ll never be as good as the Golden Axe dragon magic though. Imagine how awesome it would be to be able to summon a dragon from thin air to vanquish your foes?

Ah, Golden Axe fiery dragon revenge death magic. Why hasn't someone used this in a movie?

Oh. Right. I forgot about you.

As for the backgrounds, they could do with improvement and usually lacked detail or depth, although I did kind of like the heat waves distorting the background early on in the game. Level design itself was pretty lazy and formulaic which seems like a good time to talk about...

The bad points:

Let’s start off with the playable character: the first thing you notice is the restricted movements of your standard weapon, the ball and chain. You are limited to vertical and horizontal attacks only, no diagonal attacks at all. That's right, like a few games of this era it uses the Denial of Diagonal Attack to cheap kill your ass. So if your enemy is just above the line of attack you have to jump and time your strikes, this is kind of restrictive and slows down the enjoyment and flow of the game, especially when it comes to confronting an enemy, which leads onto to the more frustrating point below...

You can't miss, right? WRONG!

If you miss your enemy with the limited strike action you could well be hit, this causes you to lose energy which is fine, but it also has the extra effect of making you jump backwards a few spaces, often resulting in your helpless sprite falling a great distance to their death or perhaps being pushed into another enemy so you get pinballed to death. This is extremely frustrating as along with the poor level designs, if hit once you will fall to your death or for some reason fall through the stairs until you hit solid flooring.
  

As I have only played it briefly, the second level seems to stress the poor design choices to an even greater degree. Your character not only has their weapon movement restricted but also seems restricted in the sense that he seems to be severely weighed down. (By what, I wonder? How much can holy water and a few stakes weigh?) On this level, the floor gives way, meaning you have to keep moving and jump onto the next crumbling platform. Now, if you’re not near the edge you won’t make the leap (okay, no problem) but combining that with the numerous enemies in your way and your limited attack plus the knock back you get once hit, makes this a total pain in the… well, let’s just say I turned the game off in frustration a few times.

On the plus side, it does have Dracula firing flames from his crotch.

It's not just hard. It's Nintendo Hard and uses just a few too many 'Classic Video Game Screw You' tactics rather than simply creating challenge through great design. 

So my honest opinion is that it’s a poor game, lacking in many places. If you want to play all the Castlevania titles then play it and enjoy some of the creature designs and power ups but be warned you may have to buy a new controller or TV or possibly even apologise to the lonely graves of the ones you loved for murdering them once the frustration caused by this title comes pouring out of you.

This is not a good game to relax to.

Honourable Mentions: King of Fighters '95 (Arcade)

Back to DC for this month's final game then - the mighty ESWAT:

1990: ESWAT (Sega Mega Drive)

Another side-scrolling platformer without diagonal attacks, ESWAT put you in the shoes of a fresh-faced hero cop, trying to clean up the city of Liberty (watch out for Nico Bellic, man!) by gunning down a horde of identikit enemies. Despite the arcade version of Robocop utilising diagonal attacks and being released a year prior to ESWAT, your cop doesn't have the huge wealth of skills afforded by cybernetic enhancements (at least, not straight away!)

Robocop FTW.

So, unlike Detroit's feared'n'famed cyborg law enforcer, our hero in ESWAT is only a puny human so he's reduced to aiming and shooting in right angles only. (Note to all humans reading this: I think Shaune and I may have inadvertently stumbled across our race's weakness when The Machines inevitably rise up against us: retro video game lore dictates that any attacks that come in from an angle that isn't directly horizontal or vertical are impossible to defend against. Spread the word! Death to SkyNet! Victory for Zion!)

"ESWAT One reporting. No ethnic minorities to engage." "ESWAT Two, is he Hispanic?" "Roger. Homeless too." "Copy that. Powering up weapons systems."

This drawback doesn't mean that our hero is completely defenceless though. Although he doesn't have two player backup like the arcade version pictured above either, our hero has at least been issued with a sidearm and he can jump (insert joke about cops and donuts here). You start out as a Lieutenant but pretty soon, after you've murdered enough criminals by doling out your own brand of lethal justice on the streets, you get promoted to Captain, then Chief and finally, the ESWAT division. Becoming ESWAT basically means you gradually get access to more and more high-tech kit until ultimately, your cop is encased in a walking tank-suit, all threats and human empathy are securely locked out and you're left to power up and polish your weapons and stew inside your own paranoid juices, refusing to take the damn suit off because it's just become a metaphor for post-Cold War America.

Come to think of it, Sega's nineties console titles did a pretty good of prophesising the dark, dystopian and frankly depressing times in which we now live. Sonic the Hedgehog did a great job of showing how humans would continue to hunt endangered species into extinction (he's a blue hedgehog; that makes him pretty rare by my standards) which has been all over the media lately with the sad story of Cedric the Lion; on the other hand, ESWAT foreshadows the shoot-first-ask-questions-later mentality that seems to have pervaded American policing of late (you're especially likely to fall foul of this if you're of a certain racial persuasion) but more than that, the idea that the ESWAT division rank above the Chief of Police within the organisation's structure of command hints at the frightening reality of public security services being commandeered by right-wing paramilitary forces for nefarious purposes.

Captain. Chief. ESWAT?  

But this is just a gaming blog, right? We don't need to worry about frightening environmental and political realities here... so let's talk about the game! It's very similar in feel and structure to Sega's Shinobi, from the boss briefing at each level's opening to the boss fight at the level's close. In fact, the first stage climaxes with a helicopter boss that is hugely reminiscent of a similar battle in the ninja-themed side-scroller. Getting your hands on the cybernetic ESWAT suit is pretty cool, although as previously mentioned, it gets trumped by the Robocop video game on pretty much all fronts. If you've never played the arcade version of Robocop, then you really must live in a dull world of muted colours and diminished experiences. In fact, here you go - a gift from me. Be sure you aren't breaking the law by playing it though. You don't want this guy on your case:

I am the law. No, really. 

 That's all from The Geek Beat this week folks. This has been a Vertigo production.

Head back this way next week for something else... maybe an update on The ANA Project.

Until then be sure to follow me @VertigoDC but remember the First Rule of Blog Club. In a while crocodiles.