Center CX – New Retro Gaming

Like everything these days the latest trend is to contradict the original idea.  New clothes are retro, Indie bands are signed to Major, not Indie labels.  Now Nintendo are out to prove that retro games don’t need to be old.  Here’s a piece that will explain a little more:

Grabbed from Wired – Written by Chris Kohler

I’m very impressed with Game Center CX: Arino’s Challenge. Not only have the designers managed to come up with a clever assortment of retro-games-that-weren’t, they’ve wrapped them all in an addictive umbrella game. You can load up and play in any game you like at any time, but there’s always a certain challenge that you have to complete before you can move on and get more games.

It’s a unique sort of gameplay progression, and so I wanted to give you guys a rundown of what it’s been like so far so you can have a better idea. So I’m going to list the games that I’ve experienced thus far below, as well as the four challenges for each one. If you’re trying to avoid Game Center CX spoilers, be aware that the below is one gigantic spoiler.

Cosmic Gate

Premise: An outer space shooter reminiscent of Galaga. Your ship can only move on the bottom of the screen, and enemies swoop in in waves, then settle at the top of the screen in a pattern.

1: Clear Stage 5. Pretty straightforward; you just need to finish the fifth stage.
2: Warp twice using warp gates. This is where it gets a bit more difficult: you have to read the game magazines to find out how the warp gates work, then pull off the trick twice (kill the flashing enemies first, then shoot the gate when it appears).
3: Shoot down one of the giant asteroids in the Asteroid Zone. The first chance you get to do this is in level 3, so you have to work your way back there.
4: Score 200,000 points. You’ll have to shoot a lot of giant asteroids.

Thoughts: Fun, but not nearly as much as Star Prince, which comes later.

Karakuri Ninja Huggleman

Premise: A platform action game in which you play a ninja that can jump on enemies’ heads, but also injure them by opening doors and shutting them while the enemy is standing there — or near a like-colored door, which will open and close when you open other doors on the screen.

1: Kill two enemies in a row by jumping on them without touching the ground. Easy.
2: Clear Floor 3 without using your shurikens. This gets you used to jumping and using the doors to attack.
3: Clear Floor 4 without losing a single life. A bit difficult.
4: Clear Floor 8 and watch the ending. You’ll probably need the secret Continue command in one of the magazines.

Thoughts: Has some hilarious parody moments of every NES save-the-princess game ever made. Wonderful Engrish, only intentional this time.

Rally King

Premise: A top-down racing game. Difficult to grasp the mechanics at first, but you can get a speed boost by drifting, much like in Mario Kart. Very tough to play without the secret code that lets your car take zero damage, but you learn this early on.

1: Do a drift-boost, twice. Not difficult; it just requires letting go of A during a turn, then holding it again.
2: Clear Course 1. You don’t have to win, just don’t die. After this, you get the invincibility code.
3: Clear Course 2 in 5th place or higher. Just to get to Course 2 you have to clear course 1 in 5th place or higher, so this is not easy.
4: Score 15,000 points. You’ll need to find a secret item in the first race, which is shown in one of the magazines.

Thoughts: I hate Rally King and wish it would die. Then again, I really hated all NES racing games, so it really does capture the awful feel of them.

Star Prince

Premise: A more evolved shooter, more reminiscent of Life Force or R-Type. You can move your ship anywhere you want, bullet hell is in full effect, and there are tons of hidden power-ups and giant bosses.

1: Defeat Area 1’s mid-boss. Not hard, but awesome, because it’s this giant multi-part contraption.
2: Get a 1up. The hidden location is in a magazine.
3: Beat Area 2’s boss. Hilariously, your pal Arino gives you a turbo-fire controller before this challenge, so you can now hold down the Y button for auto-fire. Nostalgic.
4: Score 250,000 points. Way more fun than it is difficult.

Thoughts: Historical believability is briefly sacrificed for awesome gameplay. Star Prince rules so hard and would never, ever have happened in 1986 no matter what.

Rally King SP

Premise: In an attempt to choke more life out of Rally King, a parody of those promotional games that fetch so much money on the Japanese collector’s market. A cross-promotion with a fictional cup ramen company. Identical to Rally King but with slightly different graphics.

1: Finish Course 1 without drifting. At least all the same cheat codes still work.
2: Finish Course 2 in under 2:28. Argh.
3: Get a “start boost” by holding the gas with the right timing at the beginning of the race. Timing is described in one of the magazines.
4: Beat Course 3. Exceptionally easy because you have a stage select cheat and a no-enemies cheat by this point.

Thoughts: I nearly cried when I saw I had to keep playing this.

Karakuri Ninja Huggleman 2

Premise: Like the first Huggleman, but more so. Bigger stages and boss characters that can appear from behind doors if you hold them open too long.

1: Kill two enemies at once with a door attack.
2: Collect three magic scrolls by opening doors, then call your friend to do a special attack.
3: Find a boss who appears behind a door and defeat it.
4: Clear floor 4. Tricky, as it’s full of enemies and there’s nowhere to run. But you have the Continue cheat.

Thoughts: Would have so paid fifty bucks for this in 1987.

Guadia Quest

Premise: “Announced” in a game magazine very early on in the game, then delayed over and over again in a hilarious parody of the 80’s game industry (and actually today’s game industry, too), this is an RPG made by three “famous creators.” Sound familiar? It’s pretty much Dragon Quest.

Interestingly enough, this is the first game in which you can actually save your progress. In fact, you have to save your game in order to clear the challenges, and they actually stack on top of each other as you progress through the adventure. Here’s where things force you to slow down — instead of just barreling through the challenges of the little action games one by one, you now have to actually sit and play an RPG. Interesting, although I’ve only scratched the surface thus far…

1: Find the second town. It’s just south of the castle where you begin, but it takes a bit of searching.
2: Get all your characters to Level 7. Uh, this is where I just stopped playing. They’re all at Level 1 right now, so I think I’m going to be doing a lot of leveling up before I’m done with this challenge.

[UPDATE:

3: Get 1000 gold. Once you’re at Level 7, this isn’t hard, just takes a little time. I went into the Demons’ Dungeon to rack up some more cash per fight.

4: Fight the final boss at the B4F of the Demons’ Dungeon. Haven’t done this yet!]

Thoughts: I wonder how long it’ll make me sit and play this RPG? Maybe I’m overestimating the amount of time it’ll take to level up; maybe it’s all just a big joke. Or maybe it’s now going to make me sit here and blow a couple of hours on this RPG before I get to move on to Huggleman 3 or whatever.