NEW OLD GAMES: Retro Game Challenge

Way before the release and success of MegaMan 9, a game made in 2008 that looked like something from the 1980s, Bandai Namco presented a title for the Nintendo DS based on the obscure Japanese game show Retro Game Master. Game Center CX, as the game was known in Japan, featured a compilation of classic 8-Bit games where the player had to beat various challenges following the spirit of the TV show. But these were not really classic games from the eighties... they were all brand new!

After an ardous process of localization the game was finally released in 2009 in the Americas and Europe. XSEED Games did a terrific job getting rid of the numerous TV show references and setting the vibe of playing video games as a kid with things like talking about rumours heard at school, listening to the mother complaining about their excessive gaming habits, looking in videogame magazines for cheat codes and news about upcoming games and... well, lots of little details that people growing up in that decade will definitely appreciate.

You start with only one game, Cosmic Gate, but once you beat the Game Master's four challenges you get a new one and so on.  There are a total of nine games divided in four genres:

COSMIC GATE/ STAR PRINCE

The first one is almost exactly like Space Invaders but with warp zones as asteroid fields, a good introduction for what Retro Game Challenge is all about. The second one is a really fun shooter with cool power ups and bosses.

ROBOT NINJA HAGGLEMAN 1-3

Haggle Man 1 is a basic sidescroller where you have to use doors and ninja stars to kill all the enemies on a stage and  the sequel is just the sa

me but with bigger stages. Haggle Man 3, on the other side, is the best game of all, changing radically from its predecessors and presenting a more action oriented gameplay more similar to games like Ninja Gaiden.

RALLY KING/RALLY KING SP

This one is basically your average top view racer but with a "boost drift" that is common in today's racers but not so much in those of two decades ago. Rally King SP is just the same but with chicken noodle advertisements and different track colours, a parody of those "special edition" games that did just that.

GUADIA QUEST

Following the spirit of classic RPGs like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, this game tells the usual story of three brave warriors fighting against dark forces in a medieval kingdom. The only new thing is  that you can actually pact with some of the monsters and make them your allies and you can fight your battles in automatic. Although I'm really a fan of post 90s RPGs this was my least favorite game of all, the battle scene graphics were unnecesarily ugly and the menu user interface is horrible, even for an eighties game.

VERDICT:  Back in my NES gaming days I had a friend who used to have this crazy Famicom (the Japanese NES) cartridges with over 100 games on them. Most of them were crap, some were copies of Joust, and others were actually fun but seemed a little bit rushed. Playing these retro games made me relive the same feeling I had playing the fun games with my friend.  This game is a must for anyone who grew up playing in the eighties.

SEQUEL: Game Center CX 2 has just been released in Japan featuring Game Boy and Super NES games as well as the normal NES ones. Lets hope they can localise in less than two years like the first one did!