GiantBomb Review
6 User Reviews
Reviewed on Feb. 13, 2009
Retro Game Challenge has some awesome concepts behind it, but it gets painfully repetitive in spots, which throws a wet blanket on an otherwise-charming game.
By Jeff Gerstmann
This review is for the
DS
release of Retro Game Challenge.
Retro Game Challenge has an awesome premise. Sent back in time and returned to your youth by an evil game master, you're forced to play a set of faux-eight-bit games to get back to the future. It's neat because the developers have created a bunch of new games that feel like old, lost NES-era releases. But rather than playing these games straight, you're basically forced to grind out achievements in each title to move from one to the next and, ideally, get one step closer to freeing yourself from the evil game master's grip.
So it's like a retro compilation of games that never existed, with enough structure to give it all some meaning. The game quality is decent, but the variety is where I started to lose interest. You're presented with one game at a time, and you must complete four challenges, in order, before moving on to the next. So you'll be seeing a lot of the same game over and over again as you complete one challenge, then have to start your game over to work on the next. I usually found myself bored after completing half the challenges in a game, but still had to drag my way through the rest. Most of the games have cheat codes that are revealed to you through an in-game magazine, which can make progressing through the challenges a bit easier. But since most of the games aren't good enough to play outside of the challenge system, cheating through the challenges sort of defeats the purpose of the entire product.
The games themselves are funny and clever enough to work on their own for a bit. Your first challenges come from a game called Cosmic Gate, which is essentially a Galaga clone. From there you move through character action platformers like Robot Ninja Haggle Man, and a drift-focused racing game called Rally King. Then it's back to another shooter, this time a scrolling, Star Soldier-like game called Star Prince. After that, the game seriously lets you down by serving up Rally King again in a special "SP" format and then you're given Robot Ninja Haggle Man 2, which is more of the same. Rehashing concepts within the context of the game manages to serve as a bit of sly commentary on the sameness and sequel-focused nature of game design, but it doesn't make actually playing Retro Game Challenge any better as a result. The game does pick up a bit later on with Guadia Quest, a Dragon Quest-like RPG with appropriately clunky menus and dialogue.
The wrapper that sits around the classic games is what you'll see on the bottom screen of the DS. It's two kids, huddled around an old game console. You can go to your shelf to view the games you've opened up, read their manuals, or read game magazines that sometimes have tips on the games you're playing, previews of upcoming games you'll unlock, and a host of weird references to real-life game writers like "Johnny England" and "Dave H." Even the magazine itself is called GameFan. If you didn't see enough game magazines throughout the 1990s, the references will probably be lost on you, but the text throughout is reasonably clever either way.
Retro Game Challenge is a great concept, but the execution makes things more tedious than they needed to be. If it were a bit more open-ended about which games you could play at any given time and didn't double-up on some of the games, it'd be a pretty cool little collection. But once I got finished playing a game I really didn't want to play anymore only to be faced with a "new" version of a game I had already unlocked, the spell was broken and the rest became simple, repetitive grinding.
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Game Center CX: Arino no Chousenjou (DS) review
(
DS
)
Game Center CX: Arino no Chousenjou is based on the popular Japanese video game show, Game Center CX. It stars comedian Shinya Arino who tries throughout an episode to complete a video game, typically from the Famicom (NES) and Super Famicom (SNES). Hilarious antics ensue when Arino reacts to his ...
Reviewed by Usagi on Aug. 6, 2008
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2 out of 2 found this review helpful. |
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Rewinding the gaming clock.
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DS
)
Being born in 1989, I never experienced the 8-bit era of gaming. While my collection consists of classics from Bionic Commando to Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out, I never had the pleasure of walking into a store and buying a brand-new NES game. I could preach about the Super Nintendo’s excellence all ...
Reviewed by Sleepy_Insomniac on April 12, 2009
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1 out of 1 found this review helpful. |
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Fun, but you'd better like retro gaming.
(
DS
)
If you like retro gaming, chances are that you got really excited when you heard about Retro Game Challenge and got even more excited when you started seeing the first media that slipped onto the 'net. The final product doesn't exactly disappoint, but it's not really that deep. There really ...
Reviewed by OldManLollipop on Feb. 22, 2009
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| Game Name | Retro Game Challenge |
| Platform(s) | |
| Publisher(s) | |
| Developer(s) | |
| Genres |
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| Themes |
Add a new theme
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| Original US Release |
Feb. 10, 2009
need a fuzzy date? |
| Original US Release |
Q4 2008 know the real date? |
| Aliases | GameCenter CX: Arino no Chousenjou |
| CERO |
CERO: A
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| ESRB |
ESRB: E
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Retro Game Challenge cheat codes
Cheat codes for each of the games within Retro Game Challenge.
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