Last Retro Game You Finished And Your Thoughts

A 2001 hoverboard stunt game that takes pages from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater’s book, AirBlade was made by the folk who eventually went on to do the Burnout games. I’m not sure if AirBlade was part of the same series as the similar-ish TrickStyle on the Dreamcast, but regardless AirBlade had none of Burnout’s success. Either way, the series went no further and this was the end of the line. I’d suggest that’s because AirBlade is one of these games that’s more fun to watch than it is to play.

AirBlade’s unconventional premise lets it do things that you can’t in the likes of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. True, you can ollie, grind and carry out tricks and grabs on the ground and in the air, the standard extreme sports game stuff. Yet you can also use your forward momentum to swing round flagpoles and lampposts, hover above traffic and pedestrians, and use your AirBlade  hoverboard as a weapon. At least by 2001 standards, I think AirBlade has quite a smart and promising concept. And let it be known that AirBlade is the 2001-iest game that ever 2001’ed: the house music that plays, the clothes the characters wear and the stereotypes that they adhere to are very rigidly of all the pop culture trends that you can think of from the time. AirBlade was probably a pretty stylish and decent game for its time. These days though? It’s outdated for sure, and pretty bog-standard stuff all told.

The plot about political activism, computer hacking and the mistrust of multinational corporations isn’t interestingly told or inspiringly written, and the mission-based structure of AirBlade’s main Story Mode is unsatisfyingly linear. While the objectives don’t have to be achieved in a set order, failing just one of them ends your game. That means that you have to restart everything all over and watch as the corny dialogue and cutscenes play yet again. It’s so easy to mess these missions up as well – and ironically AirBlade’s floaty controls and twitchy movement aggravates that problem much further. Slippery and imprecise as well as floaty and twitchy, they just make the stunts very annoying to pull off. The room for exploration in each of the game’s (mere) six stages is pretty limited as well, and at least from what I could find there’s very few secrets to discover and very few surprises in store. Ultimately, there’s very little excitement to be had.

AirBlade irritated me, and I’m glad I’ve got that off my chest. 4/10.

Have you played Trick Style?

Yeah, had it on PC CD Rom. It was fine.

~



I’d never seen or heard of Reel Fishing Paradise 3D before I spotted it in my local CEX a few months ago. In the mood for something different, I decided to give it a try at £8. The Natsume logo on the cover made me confident that it would be money well spent, they’re a publisher with a reliably good pedigree. Yet it was actually a quick gander on Metacritic for Nintendo Gamer’s review that gave me the full assurance I was after: “A pleasant fishing sim, 65%”. Sold!

You know what? Nintendo Gamer was right, it is a pleasant fishing sim! It’s also a very sedate game that has an enjoyably chilled-out atmosphere and a pleasingly stress-free gameplay loop. Once you’ve picked your fishing spot, checked your current mission and chose your bait and tackle, all you need to do is quickly slide your stylus in the direction you want to cast. Once your line is in the water, you simply reel in to attract and catch fish by drawing circles at varying speeds on the touchscreen. Once caught, you can keep and care for the fish in a customisable aquarium.

That’s pretty much your whack with Reel Fishing Paradise 3D. Reviewed as a £35 release for the brand-new 3DS, Nintendo Gamer’s subdued 65% rating would have been understandable, possibly even a wee bit generous. Yet I think it’s worth higher praise nowadays. Ticking all the retro boxes, it’s a quick, moreish and undemanding game. We like the term ‘palate cleanser’ here on GNamer, and Reel Fishing Paradise 3D is absolutely one of those kind of games. It’s also permanently on sale for £1.79 on the UK eShop. That’s hee-haw! All in all, it definitely comes recommended if you’re curious and wanting a break from your gaming norm. 7/10.

I don't think I've ever had the desire to play a fishing game, aside from with a peripheral. It just seems a bit pot-luck rather than skill-based. I'm intrigued by the touchscreen implementation though.



Goldeneye 007

Smashed through this on Agent, and it still holds up as an absolute banger. The modern controls on Xbox definitely make it feel easier, but then Agent is pretty straightforward anyway. I can't believe I used to get stuck on Control all those years ago - did it the first time. Secret Agent is definitely more of a challenge and requires some actual stealth, and the additional objectives' difficulty structure still feels inspired today.

Visually, it's clearly dated more than Di Caprio, but it looks worse on these big TVs and should have really had the full remaster treatment. The eyes do adjust, much like with any retro game, but it's the strong sound design coupled with the iconic levels that keep me coming back. Levels almost feel like race tracks that you glide around, as you try to improve your time and inevitably unlock cheats. I was never good enough to get the best cheats back in the day and was thankful for the code inputs that came about years later, but unfortunately, they have been removed from the Xbox version. I figured this was because of Achievements, but Goldeneye already treats missions and multiplayer differently with cheats activated so it just feels like a missed opportunity. These levels are like playgrounds that have you teasing and torturing its enemies, and much like GTA3, cheats actually enhanced an already strong experience. The counterpoint to this is that I am actually enjoying the missions enough to try and improve my times - instead of all these new shiny games on Game Pass, I'm sat here trying to shave seconds from a 1997 FPS. It's glorious, and while I do miss the strafing, I'm happy a version exists that isn't reliant on finding an N64 controller, and the discourse surrounding it not holding up has largely disappeared. The fundamentals are all still top-tier.

10/10

Dropped off playing my secret agent play through of this due to Metal Hellsinger & now Metroid Prime remastered but I will return to it because as you mention those extra objectives still make it really fun to play.

I could go back to GoldenEye and find out if younger me was just awful at games.  I could do that.




This is the first time I've ever played the original WarioWare!  It was perfect for what it was, a free-given-the-NSO-subscription one-to-two-hour palate cleanser (tick that one off yer bingo card) after A Space for the Unbound made me an emotional mess and before I got back into Metroid Prime.  I don't think it's the best WarioWare like many say (Touched just has that QoL edge on it and more ways of interacting, plus Ashley), but this was good simple fun with some truly charming gaming references and a healthy dollop of utter weirdness.  I only played through the main campaign, I'm not here for high-score chasing so I didn't get the many hours that Baby Balla would have got out of it back in the day - but it was free, so that's fine!  Good simple fun, that I'm not even going to try to score because it's so different depending on whether you've already played it and whether you're on Jay's family plan already.  You probably shouldn't shell out for the top tier of NSO for this, but if you have it already and for some reason haven't touched it like me?  It's a must-play.  WAAAAAAAH/10

gjones' write-up really reflects my own feelings about GoldenEye, although to be honest I've bounced off of it's Switch re-release for loads of other stuff instead.

~

I was looking for something else from my redownloadable software on the 3DS eShop but saw that I own a fair number of long-forgotten DSiWare games. These must have been ones I bought out of total boredom, back in that strange time when Nintendo launched the eShop with practically hee-haw on it. I’ve not thought about any of these games in over ten years, and ahead of the eShop’s closure next month are even worth remembering at all?



At least one of them is: Birds & Bombs on DSiWare deserves a second look. You control a bomb-wielding chicken called Spotto, who adventures through fifty stages of a haunted house to save the president’s daughter. You don’t move Spotto – all you do here is control the trajectory of how you lob Spotto’s bombs. You do this with the stylus on the touchscreen, where you’ve got a little dial that lets you angle your throw. You only carry a limited number of bombs though, and there’s different types of ghost and obstacles for you to either kill off or to use to your advantage. All in all, it’s quite good fun. Birds & Bombs has an easy-to-learn way of playing, a pleasant appearance and a natural control scheme. It’s extremely basic nowadays but it’s nonetheless definitely one of the best DSiWare games I’ve played. 7/10.



A week ago, Primrose could have walked up to me in the street and smacked me in the face, and I’d still have no idea what it was if I described it to the police. I’d forgotten about its existence entirely. Anyway it’s a tile-flipping puzzle game, where you’ve got to flank different coloured boxes on a 7X7 grid and make surrounded tiles disappear. It’s an ambient game that imposes no time limits and causes no stress, but creating so little excitement works against it. Just like the first time I (presumably) played it, I don’t think it’ll leave much of an impression and I think I’ll forget about it all over again. 4/10.



Does anybody remember Pop Island Paperfield? This was top of the best-sellers list for ages, presumably down to its very low cost, eye-popping graphics, expansive multiplayer options and lack of alternatives/competition. In a world where there’s literally thousands of other 3DS games to choose from, these factors of course no longer stand out. All the same, it’s still a very decent capture-the-flag racing game. With plenty of big, open maps, a smooth framerate and very responsive controls, I can see why folk liked it back in the day. It’s not a terribly good single player game though and it lacks compelling reasons to carry on after a couple of short rounds. 5/10.



I recall that Maestro! Green Groove was the first game I downloaded when the eShop went live nearly twelve years ago. It’s a small chunk of a retail title that saw plenty of critical acclaim – including an 81% review from NGamer - yet no measurable commercial success.

This DSiWare snippet is just as I remembered it. It’s an autorunning musical platformer where you twang guitar strings on the touchscreen to control a little pink bird to jump and fall off of the strings in line with the tempo of classical music. This is what frees the sounds from enchanted stars and the enemies you encounter. Memorising patterns and perfecting your timing when you’re hitting the notes is what plays the music and lets you progress onto the next level.

It’s all right. The music is a bit butchered by the DS’s tinny speaker and the gameplay doesn’t have a lot of finesse. I’m not sure if it’s interested me enough to go unseal that copy that’s sitting on my shelf for all these years, but you might want to give it a second look. 6/10.



Aura-Aura Climber is the game that I most often see called the best DSiWare exclusive. It’s an arcade score-attack game where you help a fallen star climb back into the sky. That’s done by jumping up and using your grappling arm to cling onto grapple points that bop around the screen. Items help you reach those further away grapple points and collectables help you boost your score tally, while enemies are to be avoided and obstacles are to be circumnavigated too.  Managing your speed and the trajectory of your grappling arm introduces the physics of Aura-Aura Climber, letting you swing back to gain further momentum and reach even higher where it’s needed.

The chat was that this was developed by newer members of Nintendo’s staff, on a sort-of work experience project. It’s a small game that’s just ten levels long, but it’s very finely made and absolutely worth the £1.79 they’re charging. I wonder if the people involved with Aura-Aura Climber went on to have any success in Nintendo or in games development, because I think this would have been a really positive start for their emerging careers. 8/10.

Would it be bad to say that DSiWare feels like where you'd send a game if you didn't want anyone to play it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSbyk0VReyo. Old wrestling games for the rest of March folks




Twenty years after first “Daring to Dream” and staying up until 4am on a Sunday morning to watch the event live, I thought I’d revisit the WWE WrestleMania XIX GameCube game for a playthrough.

This was the second WWE game for the GameCube, and a sequel to what I felt was one of the most underwhelming and lacklustre games of all time. In the whole of gaming I can’t remember a bigger drop-off in quality than the one between 2000’s WWF No Mercy on the N64 and its immediate Nintendo console follow-up, 2002’s GameCube-exclusive WWF WrestleMania X8. Yukes really let themselves down with it; every non-visual aspect of WrestleMania X8 was so, so much worse than WWF No Mercy. My mate bought it on the Friday launch day and together we expected to make many fun-filled memories of Create-A-Wrester, Create-A-Belt and it’s new stipulation matches. But we absolutely hated it, it was plainly so much worse than the 70%-odd review that NGC Magazine gave it. He papped his copy back to Woolworths after telling them it was broken and we’d gone back to playing WWF No Mercy before the end of the Sunday.

WWE WrestleMania XIX doesn’t really sort its predecessors issues out. It’s controls lack refinement, the counter system still feels like a game of luck, the animation looks and feels as stiff as it did before, and once again the gameplay mechanics don’t allow for anything that mimics a well-assembled wrestling match. But there’s signs that the game engine was getting there. There was certainly more promise here than there was with WWE WrestleMania X8, and there’s some semblance of what the game engine would eventually evolve into (namely the fantastic Day of Reckoning games).

To see its potential is not the reason you’d go back to WWE WrestleMania XIX in 2023 though. In all honesty there’s only really two things about it that truly appeal nowadays. The first is that absolutely amazing roster that captures the lightning-in-a-bottle of 2003 RAW and SmackDown!. You can match them up in whatever way you like too. Have you ever dreamed of Stone Cold Steve Austin and Hulk Hogan tag-teaming to face Dawn Marie and Torrie Wilson in a Hell In A Cell? Dream no more. How about a triple-threat ladder match between Brock Lesnar, Shawn Michaels and Christopher Nowinski? You can do that! Ever wanted to know who would win a sixty-minute Iron Man match between Scott Steiner and Stephanie McMahon? You can’t do that in WWE 2K23 but here? Batter in.

The second is the game’s story mode, which completely disregards the conventional scheme of things in a wrestling game and instead better resembles Fighting Force on the PSone. The storyline is that Vince McMahon has sacked your wrestler from the WWE and you spitefully take your revenge by smashing up the building that they’ll be using for the WrestleMania 19 PPV. That’s so you can financially ruin the event and pave the way for Stephanie McMahon to take over the company and re-instate you. Many of the objectives revolve around breaking things, but much of the time you’ll also leather security guards until they’re knocked out and launch construction workers off the side of buildings, and it’s hilariously bollocks. Just typing about it makes me smile, it needs to be seen to be believed. That’s not a recommendation to play it though; it’s as unintentionally funny as it is boring, tedious and monotonous.

If you’re after a GameCube wrestling game for a pure gameplay experience just skip straight onto either Day of Reckoning 1 or 2. But if you’ve got nostalgia for early 2000s WWE then I’d say it’s worth pissing about with for a couple of hours. 5/10.

From what I gather from "Old wrestling games for the rest of March folks" you'll get to DoR, but I feel the Cube and OG Xbox the Wrestling games were a second thought compared to the PS2 ones from THQ.

I don't know about that mas, as DoR was a fun mix of the speed of the smackdown games with the block/counter system of the aki games & they general done enough to make them stand out from the other THQ/Yukes wrestling games.

I really liked the WWE games on those systems, not knocking them.

I’ve wanted to talk about ECW Hardcore Revolution for a while. That’s not because it’s anything particularly remarkable or especially good, but it’s because of its box art.

I mean, just look at it...



...and then think about it. Never seen on the cover of a game before or since, it’s a guy in a gymnastics leotard doing a twirl and booting a folding chair into a topless man’s face. I know that reflects Extreme Championship Wrestling’s style but those ECW initials do the heavy lifting here; before you’ve seen any screenshots or read any reviews, you know if you’re interested in this game because of its cult branding alone. If you’re just a regular punter sauntering through the games aisle at Beatties, what are you supposed to make of that cover? ‘Aw, Jean-Claude Van Damme’s stunt double is doing aerobics in front of a half-full audience at the civic centre, that looks class, I’ll buy that’?

The PlayStation, Dreamcast and N64 versions of Hardcore Revolution aren’t remembered fondly. That’s because they’re essentially quickie reskins of the similarly ill-regarded WWF Attitude, only with a weaker character roster, dingier settings, a smaller budget and an inferior license. I’m glad WWF Attitude is looked back at as being rubbish by the way – remove the World Wrestling Federation branding and you’re left with a dodgy combo-heavy game that didn’t deserve it’s high review scores whatsoever. ECW Hardcore Revolution on console is that exact dodgy combo-heavy game, just with low review scores.

On the Game Boy Color is a different proposition, and a game I got with my Game Boy Color in 2000 because it was £4.99 when everything else was at least four times that. Of course, appearing on a console that’s a more suitable home for the likes of Noddy & The Birthday Party and Tonka Raceway understandably strips Hardcore Revolution of all of its profanity, violence and sex. Don’t expect any Pantera or Alice In Chains renditions channelling through that Game Boy Colour speaker either – nobody was licensing those for this, no chance. And, appearing on a console with a two-button set-up ensures that the dodgy combo-heaviness that shackled the other versions of the game is away. In its place is a scheme that’s much more alike WWF Smackdown on the PS1, but it’s with a much smaller pool of moves that are generically shared between all ten wrestlers. Due to this, the gameplay becomes immensely dull in just a couple of minutes. That’s not helped by a nondescript soundtrack of two whole songs, a tedious ‘career’ mode where you just fight the other nine wrestlers one after the other, and animation that screams ‘we couldn’t be arsed’.

I’ve typed more words that it deserves. Hardcore Revolution is a boring and forgettable wrestling game, one where it doesn’t seem like the developers watched ECW in their life, and one with a really, really stupid front cover if you actually think about it. 3/10.

This is the only place you'd get such an in-depth analysis of the Game Boy version of Hardcore ECW Revolution...'s cover. Superb.

Balladeer wrote:

This is the only place you'd get such an in-depth analysis of the Game Boy version of Hardcore ECW Revolution...'s cover.  Superb.

It's the edgy content that Pod of War, The Game Game Show and Monster Mash are too scared to record and Gintendo is too frightened to publish.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Balladeer wrote:

This is the only place you'd get such an in-depth analysis of the Game Boy version of Hardcore ECW Revolution...'s cover.  Superb.

It's the edgy content that Pod of War, The Game Game Show and Monster Mash are too scared to record and Gintendo is too frightened to publish.

We should set up a paywall

Cappatreon sorry not sorry

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

It's the edgy content that Pod of War, The Game Game Show and Monster Mash are too scared to record and Gintendo is too frightened to publish.

Mate, hop on Discord some evening, we will gladly do an episode all about wrestling game boxart!

Balladeer wrote:

Cappatreon sorry not sorry

“Subscribe to Cappatreon to find out which 1997 N64-exclusive 3D action-platformer was 'a minor letdown'"

Buskalilly wrote:

Mate, hop on Discord some evening, we will gladly do an episode all about wrestling game boxart!

Still waiting for my invite for the GNamer Podcast. Sat here in disbelief that I wasn't asked what my top five personal games of the year 2016 were.

~



Thought I’d review something that you can, you know, actually play these days. Saturday Night Slam Masters was mysteriously un-ported from its early 90’s roots until last year’s Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium. On any modern system you’d choose it’s available for a couple of quid digitally. I think it might have even dropped to less than a pound recently, I hope some folk got on that.

This was Capcom’s one and only wrestling game, and a logical next step for them to take after the wild successes of Final Fight and Street Fighter II. It’s a distinguishably Capcom-ey sort of game right enough, with the gameplay mechanics, three-button combinations and timings, and chunky sprites of Street Fighter II, just dressed in Damien Demento’s spandex. The fictional characters of the made-up Capcom Wrestling Association are sometimes loosely connected with characters from Capcom’s other fighters. For examples, one is Guile’s cousin, one is mates with Zangief, and even the mayor of Metro City himself - big Mike Haggar! - is a playable wrestler.

The game seemed to achieve legendary status in the retro gaming community as time distanced itself from Slam Masters’ last appearance on the SNES and Mega Drive. I don’t think it merits that level of acclaim to be honest, as it’s all a bit simplistic, the music and sound design are nowhere near Capcom’s best and the move pool is a bit shallow. Yet it looks very good and plays really well, and I’m confident in saying that most people reading would get some enjoyment out of it. 7/10.

Again, I'm not sure whether I put this in retro or GG, since I played it in the Konami GBA Castlevania collection.  Erring on the side of caution, then: I finished Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance today, and it's the first proper Castlevania I've finished!  I don't count the mediocre, needlessly grim Lords of Shadow Mirror of Fate, and I didn't finish Circle of the Moon since it felt too old.  This though, this I made it through... with barely any walkthrough help.

It's amazing that this was less than 1.5 years after Circle of the Moon though - it feels and looks so much more elegant.  Dashing on the shoulder buttons is inspired, meaning that your hero, Juste Belmont, never feels less than immensely agile.  Otherwise, well, it's Castlevania.  You have a whip and a sub-weapon, you go through a gothic castle, sometimes you backtrack through the gothic castle with aid of a new weapon, and you fight Death and Dracula at some point.  

It's an old Castlevania, and I'm not a big retro bloke, so some of the elements don't gel with me.  It doesn't look the greatest these days, although for the most part bold chunky spritework can overcome the age (brighter spritework than CotM as well).  Less well treated is the music, butchered by the GBA, and not feeling like it reaches the series' heights regardless.  I needed a walkthrough to progress at one point, as is traditional.  And then there's the game's gimmick, that one castle is now two, only the castles have exactly the same layout and the colour palette isn't radically different everywhere, so it feels like there's a tad too much busywork filling them both out.

And it's a bit easy, but you know what?  I'm here for that.  I'm here for an easy Metroidvania, to offset all the teeth-grittingly hard ones out there.  An easy camp vamp-slaying time, with a lithe shoulder-sprinting hero, that hasn't aged tremendously but was still mostly fun.  A soft recommendation, then, with one game to go in the trilogy.  6/10

Balla wrote:

It's an old Castlevania, and I'm not a big retro bloke, so some of the elements don't gel with me. It doesn't look the greatest these days, although for the most part bold chunky spritework can overcome the age (brighter spritework than CotM as well).

Does it not have any filter/aspect ratio settings? As GBA games in particular can look really horrible when blown up too much. (see the default settings on the Nintendo GBA app)

Balla wrote:

And it's a bit easy, but you know what? I'm here for that. I'm here for an easy Metroidvania, to offset all the teeth-grittingly hard ones out there.

That's a good point, even though I'm all for variation in the genre I love the standard balance of easy exploration & then the bosses are usually where the difficulty spikes come in.

Hm, not really (re. the visuals). You can have it at its original size with black borders, blown up to fill the screen vertically with borders down the sides, or stretched across the whole screen. I went for filling the screen vertically. Maybe it would've been nicer at original size?

Even the bosses aren't very hard here. It really is quite a chill time for the genre.

Yeah, Harmony of Dissonance is one of the easiest Castlevania games, but it's a lot of fun. The music is low quality because they focused the GBA's processing power on the graphics, with its dazzling effects. The next game, Aria of Sorrow, has much higher quality music and a more refined graphical style despite them paring back the effects a bit.

Kriken wrote:

The next game, Aria of Sorrow, has much higher quality music and a more refined graphical style despite them paring back the effects a bit.

Yeah, agreed! Balla, if you feel like HOD was sort of there but could've been better, definitely give AOS a go.

I definitely will since I already own it as part of the trilogy! I'm taking a break between 'Vanias for now since I don't want to overload on more of the same, but it's good to know that AoS will be a lot more aesthetic at least.