Thrown back in time to the 1980's, you are turned into a young boy and forced to play video games by an evil self-proclaimed "Game Master", Game Master Arino. Game Master Arino will test your gaming skills by throwing various challenges at you in a wide-variety of retro games including shooters, racing, action and even an epic role-playing game - your only way to return is to defeat him in every retro game challenge he throws at you. But you are not alone in your quest-armed with access to gaming magazines, cheat codes can be found to warp to later levels, receive unlimited continues or even become invincible! A young Arino is at your side to keep you company during your challenges, quite amused at the fact that he grows up to be so evil in the future to be the cause of your current predicament. Test your skills with the awesomeness of the 8-bit era and prevent the retro games from exacting their revenge! An original game based on the popular Japanese GAME CENTER CX TV series, Retro Game Challenge reinvents how classic games are played by having the player complete short challenges in a wide-variety of games to keep the game play fresh and rewarding. Specific challenges in shooters, racing, action and a role-playing game are integrated into the story, while the in-game magazines offer cheat codes as well as fake 80's news stories paying tribute to the rich history of the gaming industry. Whether it's 80's nostalgia for the seasoned gamer or experiencing classic 8-bit game play for the first time, Retro Game Challenge has something for everyone.
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cool way to make retro style games and work them intoa cohesive thingy
very cute little experience! not all the games are good (rally king and guadia quest are notably weak) but i don't think the games themselves are really the point. RGC is really mostly about replicating the feel of the famicom era and showing off the history, and it does that stuff very well. it's super fun being able to check magazines for cheat codes, or hearing arino's mom ask if you want snacks when you're paused. the challenge format also mostly keeps these games pretty fresh, with the exception of guadia quest, which definitely goes too long and has most of the pitfalls common in a famicom rpg. there's a real sense that actual time is progressing and developers are getting better with the console here, which i appreciate. definitely worth a look if you find game history interesting at all, or just like charming cute little ds games
This should be on everyone's DS Hidden Gems lists. I'll save you the Game Center CX Shinya Arino introduction that the other reviews have done and hop right into the game.
It definitely has the show's sense of humor, which is excellent. From the Brain Age head Arino (which was the style at the time) to the contrast between Game Master Arino's world and young Arino' would, the commentary through out the games, and some of the magazine bits (which I wasn't a fan of the localization making it all Xseed staff rather than the original team, very odd and egotistical decision. It clashes with the setting and Arino himself, I just don't get the decision to change the magazine's side content at all.). The loop is simple, Arino gives you a famicom game, then 4 challenges, then you move on.
Some games attempt to simulate lag but there are no sprite flickers or sprite limits, and the later games like the final game, Ninja Haggleman 3 especially, feel way too advanced for the system. But the games are (mostly) decent enough despite this.
MINI REVIEW MONTAGE
Cosmic Gate - It's a galaga clone. The missile firing every third shot is interesting.
Ninja Haggleman - Interesting door and jump gameplay mechanics, gears feel useless once the enemies stop getting stunned by them but it's still solid
Rally King - Kinda clunky with how its boost mechanic and bumping into enemy cars is, but still would have been one of the better racers on the NES.
Star Prince - This is a fairly solid shmup, even if the boss variety is lacking (a problem all games here with bosses have but regardless)
Rally King SP - A parody of an actual trend in Japan where you just make same game but marketing that you can get for cheaper, but still feels like padding. Should have been counted alongside the original game.
Haggleman 2 - It's Haggleman but with verticality and a better graphics
Gaurdia Quest - Imagine Dragon Quest on the famicom but the gameplay is even simpler. You'll spend most of your time here thanks to one of the challenges and it sure is a Famicom RPG, but it's a nice experience. Besides, can you really recreate the Famicom experience without at least one RPG?
Ninja Haggleman 3 - Super high quality title with a good story for this "timeperiod" even if it's a Ninja Gaiden clone I'm not complaining about a copy of a good thing.
And this packaging just makes the whole thing worthwhile. These are all worth playing, and the recreation of the old days of playing games and hearing rumors, opening magazines, and so on is faithfully recreated here.
"When you are struggling out there, thinking back to the time we shared together in this game...will not help you at all. But we had fun together, and I hope you can remember that experience." ~Arino
It definitely has the show's sense of humor, which is excellent. From the Brain Age head Arino (which was the style at the time) to the contrast between Game Master Arino's world and young Arino' would, the commentary through out the games, and some of the magazine bits (which I wasn't a fan of the localization making it all Xseed staff rather than the original team, very odd and egotistical decision. It clashes with the setting and Arino himself, I just don't get the decision to change the magazine's side content at all.). The loop is simple, Arino gives you a famicom game, then 4 challenges, then you move on.
Some games attempt to simulate lag but there are no sprite flickers or sprite limits, and the later games like the final game, Ninja Haggleman 3 especially, feel way too advanced for the system. But the games are (mostly) decent enough despite this.
MINI REVIEW MONTAGE
Cosmic Gate - It's a galaga clone. The missile firing every third shot is interesting.
Ninja Haggleman - Interesting door and jump gameplay mechanics, gears feel useless once the enemies stop getting stunned by them but it's still solid
Rally King - Kinda clunky with how its boost mechanic and bumping into enemy cars is, but still would have been one of the better racers on the NES.
Star Prince - This is a fairly solid shmup, even if the boss variety is lacking (a problem all games here with bosses have but regardless)
Rally King SP - A parody of an actual trend in Japan where you just make same game but marketing that you can get for cheaper, but still feels like padding. Should have been counted alongside the original game.
Haggleman 2 - It's Haggleman but with verticality and a better graphics
Gaurdia Quest - Imagine Dragon Quest on the famicom but the gameplay is even simpler. You'll spend most of your time here thanks to one of the challenges and it sure is a Famicom RPG, but it's a nice experience. Besides, can you really recreate the Famicom experience without at least one RPG?
Ninja Haggleman 3 - Super high quality title with a good story for this "timeperiod" even if it's a Ninja Gaiden clone I'm not complaining about a copy of a good thing.
And this packaging just makes the whole thing worthwhile. These are all worth playing, and the recreation of the old days of playing games and hearing rumors, opening magazines, and so on is faithfully recreated here.
"When you are struggling out there, thinking back to the time we shared together in this game...will not help you at all. But we had fun together, and I hope you can remember that experience." ~Arino
Pretty cool game! The challenges are piss easy for the most part, but the games here are really cool and fun! I love Haggleman and the development of that series as it goes along, it really feels like it’s own weird thing that would’ve come out back then rather than an imitation of something else. Most of these have their own personality that separates them from their NES inspirations, actually, apart from the Galaga clone that kicks the game off. The small-scale but still rather meaty RPG was a very pleasant surprise, even if it comes with all the QoL gripes that are typical of RPGs from the era it’s imitating.
While I like all the games here, and think the metagame surrounding them adds a lot of charm to the experience, I can’t help feeling like this format, the way it depicts playing a video game inside a video game had the potential to be something seriously amazing with a bit more narrative meat. I love the glimpses of world building you get, the peeks into the dev studios and culture surrounding this alternate history version of the 8 bit era, and I would’ve adored to see that fleshed out more, maybe through talks of studio rivalries or personal touches from the in universe developers to be found within the games themselves.
At that point, though, maybe I’m asking a bit much from a DS game based on a game show I’ve never watched! I think the fact that it got my imagination running like that is a sign that it’s a worthwhile time though, and one I had a lot of fun with.
While I like all the games here, and think the metagame surrounding them adds a lot of charm to the experience, I can’t help feeling like this format, the way it depicts playing a video game inside a video game had the potential to be something seriously amazing with a bit more narrative meat. I love the glimpses of world building you get, the peeks into the dev studios and culture surrounding this alternate history version of the 8 bit era, and I would’ve adored to see that fleshed out more, maybe through talks of studio rivalries or personal touches from the in universe developers to be found within the games themselves.
At that point, though, maybe I’m asking a bit much from a DS game based on a game show I’ve never watched! I think the fact that it got my imagination running like that is a sign that it’s a worthwhile time though, and one I had a lot of fun with.
This review contains spoilers
I had to let this one go. There's something in here, but it really fizzles out with some very obnoxious design decisions. This review will be long, and I will be breaking it down into eight parts, for each game, and then one longer post about the game as an aggregate sum.
1) Cosmic Gate - basically the walkthrough game for the metagame you're playing. The four challenges you have to do are all super easy and the things it asks are explained via the magazines that you unlock during this part. It's basically a reskin of Galaxian, with not much more to it other than warps. It's the first game, and for what the game asks you to do at the point you unlock it, it's inoffensive.
2) Robot Ninja Haggle Man - There seems to be no clear indication of whether the title is Haggleman or Haggle Man. Anyway, I actually liked this game a lot which is what got me to start really getting into Retro Game Challenge. It has a bit of NES funk to it (which is nontrivially The Point) but for what it is Haggle Man is actually fun? If this was a full game I would play it. It's a simple yet effective platformer.
3) Rally King - If this game's goal was to achieve accurate simulation of early racing games, it achieved it, I guess. Rally King sucks. The drifting mechanic is super awkward and hard to get used to, the courses are confusing with no map so you can't plan too far ahead short of memorizing the courses, and it's easy to spin out and lose all of your momentum. One of Retro Game Challenge's concepts in the metagame is that you do have access to in-game "cheat codes", which I admittedly used here (they're part of the game), but they basically completely remove the difficulty and make you the ONLY character on the track and completely invincible. A slog. Challenge 3 is very difficult if you don't use cheats.
4) Star Prince - It's another space shooter, but far more complicated than Cosmic Gate/Galaxian this time. Not much to say about this one. It seems well designed, even it it's crazy difficult, I did have fun with it.
5) Rally King SP - this is the first time where the game gets outright offensive. Rally King SP is a complete clone of Rally King. The courses, the controls, the cheat codes, everything is identical other than the colors and a couple of graphics. I get it's supposed to be some sort of snide commentary on special editions being not different, but the fact that this game also has four challenges, with one of them being an insanely difficult time trial, is just offensive as hell. Rally King already sucked, we didn't have to do it again.
6) Robot Ninja Haggle Man 2 - I really liked Haggle Man 1, Haggle Man 2 is that but better. You can pull out the bosses early, the stages are wider, you can now use your special power (once you get it) on command rather than automatically when you pick up your third scroll. Much like the first one, I would unironically play this game in standalone.
7) Guadia Quest - I know that RPGs are a classic staple of the era that Retro Game Challenge is meant to embody. The problem is it doesn't really adapt to the meta-challenge format that the game asks you to play. So you get this RPG which is really short and content-devoid from an RPG perspective, but really long and drawn out from Retro Game Challenge's perspective, which just leads to it being a huge slog and not being fun. Which sucks! I like RPGs! The Guadia concept is barely used, it's basically a bonus party member you can pick up who sometimes attacks if you're in a pinch but largely just Vibes. The first dungeon is an enormous sprawling 4 level dungeon, with very dangerous enemies, no reliable healing items (there's a full heal tile bear the start), and worst: no in-game map at all. And sure, it's the 80's, they wouldn't have one, but part of Retro Game Challenge is that you can pause and look at game magazines/guides any time - and there's no map there either! And once you get to the end of the dungeon the boss there is super hard too - grinding is completely non-optional in this game and it drags Retro Game Challenge to a grinding halt with no payoff because the actual RPG content isn't good enough to warrant playing outside of this scope. This one is just offensively bad. The music is banger, at least, but I got very sick of the dungeon theme after spending hours in there.
8) Robot Ninja Haggle Man 3 - To end things off after Guadia Quest, you get Robot Ninja Haggle Man 3, which has gotten a complete facelift and is nothing like 1 or 2. It's fine. Not as fun as the first 2, but I didn't hate it. It was a little annoying though that the game force turned off after completing challenge 1 and 2, and challenge 4 is just "kill 100 enemies in zone 2" which is more grinding (which is brutal after Gaudia Quest, frankly).
If the game ended here I'd be a bit happier, but then after completing the 4 challenges for each, you get a "final challenge", which is to complete all 8 games all the way through. I liked Haggle Man 1 & 2 (and 3 is fine I guess), Cosmic Gate has a "skip the game" shortcut, and I could use invincibility for Star Prince, but playing Rally King twice (even with invincibility), and finishing Gaudia Quest sounds like absolute torture and I cannot bring myself to finish this game.
It's frustrating, this game squanders its creativity because it seems to be so wrapped up in the challenges and the idea of "play all these retro-inspired hits" that it failed to make some of them good, because it both had to fit the challenges and the idea that they had to be retro. If this was just a collection of retro-inspired games I think it would've been way better (if they fine-tuned Guadia Quest and removed Rally King SP entirely), but what we have just burns its goodwill away and misses the mark by the end. Still Haggle Man 1 & 2 are a hell of a lot of fun by themselves at least.
1) Cosmic Gate - basically the walkthrough game for the metagame you're playing. The four challenges you have to do are all super easy and the things it asks are explained via the magazines that you unlock during this part. It's basically a reskin of Galaxian, with not much more to it other than warps. It's the first game, and for what the game asks you to do at the point you unlock it, it's inoffensive.
2) Robot Ninja Haggle Man - There seems to be no clear indication of whether the title is Haggleman or Haggle Man. Anyway, I actually liked this game a lot which is what got me to start really getting into Retro Game Challenge. It has a bit of NES funk to it (which is nontrivially The Point) but for what it is Haggle Man is actually fun? If this was a full game I would play it. It's a simple yet effective platformer.
3) Rally King - If this game's goal was to achieve accurate simulation of early racing games, it achieved it, I guess. Rally King sucks. The drifting mechanic is super awkward and hard to get used to, the courses are confusing with no map so you can't plan too far ahead short of memorizing the courses, and it's easy to spin out and lose all of your momentum. One of Retro Game Challenge's concepts in the metagame is that you do have access to in-game "cheat codes", which I admittedly used here (they're part of the game), but they basically completely remove the difficulty and make you the ONLY character on the track and completely invincible. A slog. Challenge 3 is very difficult if you don't use cheats.
4) Star Prince - It's another space shooter, but far more complicated than Cosmic Gate/Galaxian this time. Not much to say about this one. It seems well designed, even it it's crazy difficult, I did have fun with it.
5) Rally King SP - this is the first time where the game gets outright offensive. Rally King SP is a complete clone of Rally King. The courses, the controls, the cheat codes, everything is identical other than the colors and a couple of graphics. I get it's supposed to be some sort of snide commentary on special editions being not different, but the fact that this game also has four challenges, with one of them being an insanely difficult time trial, is just offensive as hell. Rally King already sucked, we didn't have to do it again.
6) Robot Ninja Haggle Man 2 - I really liked Haggle Man 1, Haggle Man 2 is that but better. You can pull out the bosses early, the stages are wider, you can now use your special power (once you get it) on command rather than automatically when you pick up your third scroll. Much like the first one, I would unironically play this game in standalone.
7) Guadia Quest - I know that RPGs are a classic staple of the era that Retro Game Challenge is meant to embody. The problem is it doesn't really adapt to the meta-challenge format that the game asks you to play. So you get this RPG which is really short and content-devoid from an RPG perspective, but really long and drawn out from Retro Game Challenge's perspective, which just leads to it being a huge slog and not being fun. Which sucks! I like RPGs! The Guadia concept is barely used, it's basically a bonus party member you can pick up who sometimes attacks if you're in a pinch but largely just Vibes. The first dungeon is an enormous sprawling 4 level dungeon, with very dangerous enemies, no reliable healing items (there's a full heal tile bear the start), and worst: no in-game map at all. And sure, it's the 80's, they wouldn't have one, but part of Retro Game Challenge is that you can pause and look at game magazines/guides any time - and there's no map there either! And once you get to the end of the dungeon the boss there is super hard too - grinding is completely non-optional in this game and it drags Retro Game Challenge to a grinding halt with no payoff because the actual RPG content isn't good enough to warrant playing outside of this scope. This one is just offensively bad. The music is banger, at least, but I got very sick of the dungeon theme after spending hours in there.
8) Robot Ninja Haggle Man 3 - To end things off after Guadia Quest, you get Robot Ninja Haggle Man 3, which has gotten a complete facelift and is nothing like 1 or 2. It's fine. Not as fun as the first 2, but I didn't hate it. It was a little annoying though that the game force turned off after completing challenge 1 and 2, and challenge 4 is just "kill 100 enemies in zone 2" which is more grinding (which is brutal after Gaudia Quest, frankly).
If the game ended here I'd be a bit happier, but then after completing the 4 challenges for each, you get a "final challenge", which is to complete all 8 games all the way through. I liked Haggle Man 1 & 2 (and 3 is fine I guess), Cosmic Gate has a "skip the game" shortcut, and I could use invincibility for Star Prince, but playing Rally King twice (even with invincibility), and finishing Gaudia Quest sounds like absolute torture and I cannot bring myself to finish this game.
It's frustrating, this game squanders its creativity because it seems to be so wrapped up in the challenges and the idea of "play all these retro-inspired hits" that it failed to make some of them good, because it both had to fit the challenges and the idea that they had to be retro. If this was just a collection of retro-inspired games I think it would've been way better (if they fine-tuned Guadia Quest and removed Rally King SP entirely), but what we have just burns its goodwill away and misses the mark by the end. Still Haggle Man 1 & 2 are a hell of a lot of fun by themselves at least.
A quite unique and memorable little mini-game collection. The star of the show here isn't necessarily the games themselves, which are for the most part quite fun and well designed, but the framing device behind it all is what's truly brilliant.
The idea is that you've been taken back in time and forced to complete challenges in fictional (but fairly authentic feeling) NES-styled games. It sounds basic, but it's a concept that's really fleshed out, with fictional backstories and development stories written about all the games, you can read gaming magazines with cheat codes and reviews, and the games get more advanced and sophisticated over time as the in-universe technology evolves.
Haggleman 2 and Rally King SP feel a bit like padding and Guadia Quest being a whole ass JRPG you have to go through a good chunk of feels like way too much, but overall it's a really shining example of what presentation and some clever attention to detail can do for a game.
The idea is that you've been taken back in time and forced to complete challenges in fictional (but fairly authentic feeling) NES-styled games. It sounds basic, but it's a concept that's really fleshed out, with fictional backstories and development stories written about all the games, you can read gaming magazines with cheat codes and reviews, and the games get more advanced and sophisticated over time as the in-universe technology evolves.
Haggleman 2 and Rally King SP feel a bit like padding and Guadia Quest being a whole ass JRPG you have to go through a good chunk of feels like way too much, but overall it's a really shining example of what presentation and some clever attention to detail can do for a game.