Two recent video games lean on the world’s constant need for nostalgia by refashioning the wistful into something new — sometimes brilliantly and sometimes with mixed results.
UFO 50
UFO 50 took more than seven years to create, an understandably long gestation for the 50 full games in this astounding compilation. Dozens of games spill from a static screen featuring computer disks bearing minimalist art. The mash-ups, imitations and paeans are all inspired by products of the ’80s, that more innocent time when games were smaller — and much harder to complete. Here, all can be played using a few strokes of the keyboard.
There’s a potent faux history that we’re looking back at the standouts from UFO Soft, a fictional game company that was “obscure but ahead of its time.” Packed in are so many completely different genres that choosing one is like opening a door to an ingenious Advent calendar.
The result is a head-spinning psychotropic experience. To save puffins, I played as a flying walrus in Waldorf’s Journey, which recalled the indie legend Jeff Minter’s faster-paced Llamatron. In Rakshasa, I was a bulky warrior who rises from the dead to battle fireball-spewing flowers with skull faces within a demon-filled Hindi setting. When I died by an enemy’s spear, I could procure an extra life by playing a nightmarish Asteroids of the dead, avoiding the green skulls, red eyes and pink bubbles trying to destroy me.
Each game features an enlivening description, brief instructions and developer notes. In Party House, which asks you to jam a space with revelers “without getting busted,” the makers write that the varied sprites were inspired by their friends.
UFO 50’s graphics are decidedly old school and the artists have done an admirable job with the meager 32 colors at their disposal. Using a “Miami Vice”-style pastel palette, Seaside Drive seems like a sightseeing excursion along the ocean until explosive barrages rain down and your car turns into a shooting machine. Even more remarkable is the variety of lo-fi music that the developer, Mossmouth, has packed in to orchestrate soundtracks of heavy metal, jazz, classic rock, funk and ragtime.
The difficulty throughout is high, and may prevent some from feeling a heroic sense of completion. I died constantly, even in Night Manor, a generally slow-paced, point-and-click adventure featuring an insane killer with a blood-spattered butcher knife.
Yars Rising
UFO 50 takes inspiration from the compilation Atari 50, and it may surprise some to realize that Atari, which crashed and burned because of hubris, is still making games decades after its heyday. Yars Rising, a remake of 1982’s Yars’ Revenge, proves the groundbreaking company is trying to change with the times.
Yars’ Revenge followed an insectlike humanoid who fought back against the Quotile, destroyer of the planets on which Yars existed. It’s kind of a minimalist David-and-Goliath story set in an 8-bit version of space.
The latest 10-hour effort features an intelligent but occasionally scattered young hacker called Emi. In a graphic-novel-oriented beginning, the blue-haired, red-eyed protagonist is almost late to work and speeds through her morning routine to catch a train. She’s energetic with a sense of humor as she jumps, flips and blasts her way through a standard issue Metroidvania to defeat QoTech, an evil mega corporation.
Few things here are innovative. A one-note character helps Emi move through the endless air-vent-filled morass that makes up the game’s levels. There’s a large young man who’s constantly hungry, a helpful, handsome one who has no visible personality and an H.R. person whose bouncing bosom is more appropriate for the ’70s magazine “National Lampoon.” There isn’t enough variety in the enemies encountered.
Beyond the one-dimensional secondary characters, Yars Rising is repetitive to the point of being banal. Robot enemies are stiff and generally dumber than “Star Wars” Stormtroopers. As if to distract from the mundane nature, Emi stops her journey to point out the fact that, through a window, she can see it’s raining outside. It’s fine to witness that animation, but it’s better discovered and admired by the gamer.
The most compelling part of Yars Rising is the hacking element that’s an embellishment of the Yars of yore. By recoding computers, Emi can open doors or receive augmentations like a higher jump. On the monitor, you can shoot a space cannon at the enemy and Yars can bite into any force fields.
These unadulterated screens eventually become engagingly complex by adding riffs on, say, Space Invaders. I realized that the patterns were so artful they could be part of MoMA’s interactive design collection, perhaps an addition to the original game, which is already there.
It’s a shame the rest of Yars Rising is so mediocre. As Atari tries to be a force once again, it needs to up its game.
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