Retronauts 7: GBAwesome!
Remember how the GBA's fifth anniversary was a few days ago? Right. Since my job around here seems to be the guy who sticks up for the woefully unloved (see also: year-one DS appreciation), I'll dole out a little more love for Nintendo's 32-bit portable wonder. Sure, the screen initially sucked and the first batch of software hasn't really held up over time. But there's some fine, fine content to be eked from the machine's history... and chances are that you've overlooked some of the best stuff.
But I forgive you. There's still time to find copies of the following minor gems... and if you love videogames, you really should.
Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hands
[ Konami | 2003 ]
I swear, there's something about Konami games and vampires that I can't resist, as my incessant babbling about Castlevania should attest. The one exception would be Vamp from Metal Gear Solid 2, whom I utterly detest -- but aside from that one glitch, Kojima + Vampires = Awesome. Case in point: Boktai.
Like pretty much all the games in this little list, Boktai is deserving of its own entry... probably more so than any other, in fact. The game takes a lot of heat for its solar sensor element, and I'll freely admit that it's something of a gimmick that places annoying limitations on the gameplay (unless, of course, you cheat). But look beyond that feature and you have what is easily the single best original IP to come from the GBA.
Boktai mingles stealth gameplay straight out of MGS with a rather dark storyline and a very sensibly thought-out (and portable-friendly) world. A handful of huge, intricate dungeons are offset by a few dozen minor dungeons, and you're rated (but never penalized) for your performance along the way. The action is paced perfectly so that the isometric perspective doesn't needlessly complicate things, but it's also never boring.
Boktai 2 had some cool ideas, but it broke the gameplay in some critical ways. Boktai 3 fixed them, but Konami decided not to bring it west, apparently after suffering a painful attack of being lame-asses. All's well, though; Lunar Knights (the secret new name to trick people into buying Boktai DS) looks exceptional, although I'm a little worried that it's eschewing its stealth heritage along with the solar sensor. Anyway, Boktai can be had on the cheap -- so grab it.
Ninja Five-O
[ Hudson/Konami | 2003 ]
Again with the Konami. I swear I'm not wearing a moneyhat or nothin'... they just deliver the portable gaming goods better than pretty much anyone besides Nintendo. In this case, they (or rather, their newly-devoured subsidiary Hudson) delivered a deliriously old-school action game. Some critics have charged that Ninja Five-O would have been completely ignored if it had come out on a 16-bit system -- and maybe that's true. But in the current generation, this sort of completely straightforward and incredibly challenging game doesn't come around very often. If you people can get all wanky about the equally mundane/old-school New Super Mario Bros., I can be mushy about this one.
I first discovered Ninja Five-O under its European title, Ninja Cop, a name so so awesomely banal I had to check it out. And it was intensely worth the random acquisition, too. A little bit Shinobi, a little bit Bionic Commando, a little bit Elevator Action Returns (especially the airliner bit), Ninja Five-O is a classic platformer starring a hero with decent melee and ranged attacks, a grappling hook and the occasional bit of tricksy ninja magicks. Complicating the action: you're frequently required to rescue hostages, and as in the original Metal Gear wasting them equals bad news.
So its graphics are a little plain and the grappling hook controls are a little lacking. Big deal. Ninja Five-O is a fond reminder of the good old days -- and unlike a lot of those elderly games you remember fondly, it really is good. Kinda pricey, though, so proceed to eBay with caution.
Klonoa G2
[ Namco | 2005 ]
I love the Klonoa games -- and while none of them will ever come close to the bittersweet original, the GBA games do a fine job of striking out in a slightly new direction and doing their own thing. Namely, they took the occasional little stumper bits that showed up in the later stages of the console installments and blew them out into full-on puzzle platformers.
Like its predecessor, Empire of Dreams, Klonoa G2 starts out easy and slowly ramps up in difficulty as it goes. Unlike EoD, though, G2 is actually difficult from a "mad skeelz" perspective, and not just due to tricky puzzle design. The level designs do grow increasingly daunting over the course of the adventure, but some twitch skills are in order as well. The boss battles are staged as races rather than simple encounters, and they can get pretty nasty. Although the game is awfully generous with 1UPs, so there's little danger of a competent player running out -- but there's inevitably quite a bit of "try again."
What really sets G2 above its predecessor is its improved graphics -- yes, yes, gameplay is what counts, but anyone who says they don't like looking at pretty visuals is a complete liar. The tweaked visuals make a difference in the gameplay, too -- the auto-scroll stages resemble Axelay and have far fewer collectible doodads per level. Collecting 100 gems in EoD was incredibly tedious; collecting 30 in G2? No sweat.
Riviera: The Promised Land
[ Sting/Atlus | 2005 ]
Riviera is a weird game. It's kind of an RPG, except you're very limited in your direct control over characters, and it's almost completely linear. It's kind of like a dating sim, but not really. It's sort of an old-school graphical adventure, except without the aimless point-and-click. It is a very difficult game to describe.
But if you can get beyond its wacky design and the slightly uncomfortable taste of loli (including the obligatory secret "naked underaged girls" event), Riviera is weirdly enjoyable. The sleek visual design doesn't hurt; Sting gave the game a genuinely cool-looking interface that makes its slightly cheesy anime-land graphics feel much more sophisticated. Softcore kiddy porn and chin-strokey sophistication are strange, uh, bedfellows... but in this particular case they go together pretty well. And you only feel slightly unclean at the end of it all.
Wario Land 4
[ Nintendo | 2001 ]
Wario gets plenty of love for his GBA outings, but its mainly directed toward his innovative WarioWare titles. Fair enough; WarioWare is SUPER GOODNESS. However! It should also be noted that WarioLand 4 is also SUPER GOODNESS. In fact, it's one of the few early GBA games that still plays well today.
Some people will tell you that Wario Land 2 and 3 are much better than 4. I think it's pretty debatable. Well, 2 was awesome, but 3 was a poor example of Metroidvania-ism, with lots of tedious collecting and boring backtracking. The GBA game dropped the massive world design in favor of self-contained stages, which actually worked out quite nicely. While levels are grouped into somewhat similar themes, each individual stage has a completely different style from all the others; one is a jungle, while another is a toybox and a third is a pinball machine.
Wario Land 4's goals are a little different than the norm: each stage contains four pieces to be collected in order to create a plate that helps unlock a boss room. And you have to find the key to the next stage somewhere along the way. The hook: in most cases, you have to find the key while the stage is counting down to detonation. Each stage contains a bomb that has to be activated (and which changes the layout somewhat), so while you can muck around casually for most of the level there's always a mad rush to the end.
It's a quirky game, especially when you take into consideration Wario's "power-ups," which in any other game would be called "status ailments." Oh, and the bizarre sound design, with jazzy tunes and even vocal themes which warp and distort in tandem with Wario's physical status. And then there's the elderly explorer dude, the abuse of whom is a key component to finding certain hidden treasures. And the strange bosses... and the bewildering sound room... and so forth.
Kirby: The Amazing Mirror
[ HAL/Nintendo | 2004 ]
So apparently the Metroidvania thing isn't entirely new to the Kirby series (YES MIA I WILL PLAY THE GREAT CAVE OFFENSIVE SOON ALRIGHT THANKS) but it was news to me when The Amazing Mirror arrived a couple of years ago. While not the most perfect example of the form -- there are certain points of no return at different spots around the map, many of which are contingent on knowing which power-up you need to have collected and retain in advance -- it still does some pretty interesting things.
Most notably, it offers a faux-multiplayer experience by allowing three other Kirbies to run rampant throughout the gameworld, occasionally crossing your path with sometimes unpredictable results. While the other Kirbies don't seem to operate with malicious intent, they can still screw things up for you at odd times. On the other hand, they can be extraordinarily useful at certain points -- and they can be summoned by giving them a call on the cell phone. It's sort of silly, sure, but it's fun. And by golly, that's what gaming is all about.
Oh, and it's not out yet, but if you don't buy Scurge: Hive when it comes out I will come to your house and throw eggs at it.
Back to Retronauts >>