Last Retro Game You Finished And Your Thoughts

Maybe it's called that so people didn't get confused with Elf: Ocarina of Time or Elf: Vice City.

~



I played through The Grinch on Game Boy Colour, a suitably festive and well-thought out maze game that draws inspiration from Metal Gear Solid. In a clever twist (by early 2000s 8-bit licensed game standards anyway), you control The Grinch himself and go about stealing everybody’s Christmas presents while Whos patrol the areas. You can creep past the Whos, stun them with weapons, hide underneath obstacles to avoid their detection and even trick them into running into one another. Oppositely, they can chase you, trap you and stun you too. It’s actually quite a smart little game of cat and mouse. With appealing visuals, a jaunty soundtrack, nice animation and a good sense of humour, The Grinch is one of those rare games that makes you wonder what else might be long-forgotten about on the Game Boy Colour. It’s a fantastic showcase for the system for sure.

What holds The Grinch back from being truly brilliant is how long, complex and tricky the levels become as you go through it. What starts off as being quite relaxing and endearing ends up being just a bit too stressful and annoying for its own good. Also, I felt that what starts off as being quite a bright idea ended up running its course well before the thirty-odd levels were done. There’s only so much a developer can do with The Grinch’s ‘stealth ‘em up’ premise on such limited hardware, and I feel that perhaps less would have been more. All the same, The Grinch is an entertaining Christmas game if you’re in the hunt for one of those. 7/10.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Maybe it's called that so people didn't get confused with Elf: Ocarina of Time

Obviously not, that's a GoaT contender.

The Grinch starring in a MGS-em-up is not a twist I expected.

The last of my festive retro playthroughs was Christmas NiGHTS Into Dreams, a fantastic present that was given away with the Official SEGA Saturn Magazine UK in December 1997. With just one playable level and one boss fight, it’s really just an abbreviated version of NiGHTS Into Dreams itself, with the exact same beguiling and genre-defying gameplay. Yet with that level all decked out with snow, fairy lights, baubles, tinsel and bells, it’s absolutely magical at this time of year. All the other cosmetic changes - like NiGHTS’s bright red suit, the game’s new Jingle Bells soundtrack and an additional set of cutscenes that illustrate ‘the true meaning of Christmas’ - really help Christmas NiGHTS stand out as something special. There’s even a wee bonus game where you get to open Christmas presents and unlock Sonic The Bastarding Hedgehog, just because. Sold for nothing and made from unbridled love, this is a unique game that makes you feel properly Christmassy. 

It’s why I always make a point of playing it on Christmas Eve. Like tradition, I boot this up on the original hardware, I go to the local church’s evening service (virtual this time, natch) and then I come home to open my forum Secret Santa present. It’s been that way for the last seven years, and I look forward to it every Christmas Eve too. 

Merry Christmas everybody! I’m away to see what Grackler Claus has brought me,  /10.

Aw, sounds like a truly festive experience.

The last retro game I finished was barely Christmassy at all! It does have that one tree though.

That was a really good review there. I loved it's premise, it's personality and it's originality. I should probably go back and finish it.

I would second both those points. Even though it's almost a *ulp* visual novel, I really really really really really liked it, and you should definitely complete it if you've started.

Balla's review was a bit better than that I accept

That's very kind Cappa, and yes you probably should!  Hope you enjoy it if you do.  Good to see Jim backing me up.

I found my copy of Ghost Trick, and the receipt was in it's box. What a night this must have been by the way...!

I love that you picked up pork pies for 17p, yet splashed out on the Pick N Mix.

Must've been swimming in sweets. Sounds like a great way to enjoy one of the seminal games!

Nah, that was my scran for when I went to my mates house to watch the Royal Rumble! Wikipedia says Ghost Trick had only been out for sixteen days by that point - I guess I must have clocked it was cheap and hoovered it up.

Happy 2021 boys! This year will be the 35th Anniversary of the original Zelda so it feels like it's about time for a good ol' series playthrough. (I also might do videos like I am for Mario.)

This game holds up way better than I'd heard people say. The sense of adventure and exploration is great and, apart from a few optional heart containers and that, nothing is too cryptic to figure out on your own. I stubbornly played through the whole game with no guide, just a map to wrap up a few things before the final dungeon. It's absolutely belting, not too hard and but a decent challenge in places, and a fun, colourful adventure with lots of character.

10/10

Looking forward to this and your thoughts on them all sort a back to back.

Like what will you think of Zelda II compared to the rest after, will you find not a hidden gem but a Zelda game we may be sleeping on as one of the best in the series.

Oh will you be looking at the core games or stuff like Tingle as well?

I thought about doing a Zelda series playthrough after listening through the Cane and Rinse pods for the series in the last few months but Zelda II sounds utterly horrible to play these days, if I had the means to make some kind of video content I'd probably do it but it ultimately doesn't feel worth putting myself through it.

Zelda II is the only one I'm worried I might not enjoy.
I think I'm gonna sit on the videos until the Mario ones are done so they can release somewhat regularly.

I don't think I'm gonna do Tingle or CDi or stuff like that; not initially at least. If people were watching them I might want to crank out content but I don't exactly get hella views on this shit

I’m not going to post reviews for every game I complete on the Antstream Arcade app, but this one deserves a write-up. Rod Land is a single-screen arcade platformer from all the way back in 1990, and a rare example of a game that I think every regular on here would get a lot of enjoyment from. The most well-known game that I’d compare this to is Bubble Bobble, except here you grab enemies with your rod and then slam them onto the floor until they turn into explosives, weapons, fruits and points. Also, you can’t jump – you build ladders to access the platforms above and below you. Like pretty much every arcade game, Rod Land is quite punishing and it’s obviously out to get your money, but with unlimited credits that’s no bother. Instead, you’re able to enjoy what is an really addictive, appealing and uncomplicated game at heart. 

It just came out as an Arcade Archive on PS4 and Switch – if you’re curious, it’s a well-made game that’s well worth a go. Alternatively, Antstream have just announced that they're adopting a "Spotify model" where everything's free with ads. Either way, Rod Land deserves your attenion. 8/10.

Rod Land is definitely one of those things (like Pengo) where I feel like imagined it and everyone else talks about Dig Dug/Flicky instead. So I take your 8/10 as confirming I'm a real person.

Do you ever root about your collection, find something that you’ve not thought about in years and just think ‘aww, what a game that was’? Burnout Legends on the PSP is one of those games I’ve got fond and distant memories of. I recall sitting in my secondary school’s common room with my pals on one of our many free periods in S6, enviously watching as they played against each other wirelessly on their brand-new PSPs while I was trying to convince myself that I done the right thing by plonking £150 on a DS Phat with Project Rub. Burnout Legends was the game that made me the most jealous.

I was late to that party, not getting a PSP until they were on clearance years later. I made sure to get Burnout Legends as one of my first games, but my save file showed that I stopped playing it in early 2011. It was no hassle to put that right though, as Burnout Legends remains an immense PSP game that holds up very well.

Admittedly, you can see where Criterion Games had to strip back as there’s not that many tracks and there’s not that much traffic on the roads. Yet to their credit, all the majorly important stuff from Burnout 3: Takedown was mostly left intact. As well as the World Tour, there’s the Crash, Road Rage, Face Off, Eliminator, Pursuit and the multiplayer modes, spanning over 175 different events. That’s an exhaustive list of stuff to do for a handheld game in 2005. Even more admirable is the excellent controls and physics, the thrilling sense of the speed and the unfaltering framerate. Even the graphics are still quite nice – I don’t know how they did it.

The only real disappointment came from when I started to realise that Legends is basically just a ‘Best of Burnout’. Most of its content is lifted straight from the first three Burnout games in the early 2000s. Thankfully, there’s not much from the first Burnout game – which was utterly rubbish, even when it came out – and instead Legends takes most of the cars, tracks and design choices from the superior sequels.

These days, it’s really only the portability that makes Burnout Legends stand above Burnout 3: Takedown. Still, it’s a cracking game, an hugely impressive technological feat and absolutely one of the best things on the PSP. 8/10.

I was always curious about Legends, but never had a PSP and to be honest, couldn't find a game on the system to justify getting one. 175 events is insanely generous - that's Gran Turismo-like as far as hours go. Glad you called Burnout 1 rubbish because it is and never understood the amount of praise it got at the time although it's a good job it sold enough to get sequels! Didn't this game turn up on the DS anyway? Imagine it looked like the backend of a bus, although that is kinda what the game is going for...

PSP is such such a underrated system as it has a very good library, still sort of cheap (well I just bought a new PSP and not cheap) compared to other retro system's but doesn't really get much love.

Burnout Legends on the DS is absolutely tragic, surely one of the worst and most unflattering ports of all time. Look at the state of it.



I don't think Burnout 1 is much better either. I got it on the day it came out and it bored me to death. It's got 79 on Metacritic, I think 29 is fair. Burnout 2 was okayish, but it's really from Burnout 3 onwards that the series took off.

PSP is possibly my second favourite console of all time after the Switch. It has an incredibly good library!

My earliest memory of 1990’s Balloon Kid on the Game Boy was from N64 Magazine, who many years later bummed it up as being some kind of forgotten classic. The game was out of print well before I’d read their comments and it was on an unfashionable console, so I could never find it new or used in the shops. I don’t think I got this until about twenty years after it came out, and it’s only now that I’ve played through the whole thing.

On reflection, I think N64 Magazine were wrong about this one. I think calling it a ‘forgotten classic’ overstretches it…but it’s still a decent game by the standards of the time. Floating from left to right, weaving between enemies and staying away from the water, Balloon Kid’s Single Play mode is essentially the Balloon Trip mode from the Balloon Fight game on the NES. There’s some light platforming chucked in as well as four boss battles, and it’s a swift, breezy game with its eight stages and thirty minute runtime.

Otherwise, it’s really just a slow-moving and clunkier version of NES Balloon Trip. 6/10.

Grumpy Monochrome Wolf is my new fursona.

I wish lightgun games didn’t go out of fashion. Even the most mediocre ones still provide good arcade fun. Back in the heyday of arcades it was Namco that were the undisputed kings of the genre, and arguably Time Crisis the most well-known game series of it’s type. The one I used to see in every amusements was Time Crisis II. It’s PS2 port is yet another one of those games that I bought for pennies in a charity shop years ago but have only sat down to play just now.

There’s no point in talking about the plot, the graphics or even the longevity – Time Crisis II is all about the action. Happily, it’s a superbly well-playing port that sounds and feels really satisfying. I can see me going back to this in the same way I do with Ghost Squad on the Wii, as it’s got that same sort of addictiveness.

My GunCon lightgun didn’t work with my modern TV, so I slummed it with a bog-standard Dual Shock 2 controller. I think it’s a perfectly acceptable way to play something that moves as quickly and responsively as Time Crisis II, but there’s no question that it’s more fun when you’re using a gun. Never mind though, it’s still really good without it. 7/10.