For a game from 1982, River Raid had a mechanical complexity and balance that I wasn't ready for--it blew me away when I first played it as part of Krome Studio's Game Room. It's likely the sole reason I actually have nostalgia for that failed 2010 experiment, and is a big part of why I have a very open curiosity for all of game history, not just the specific systems I grew up with, because I never know what I'm going to discover.
It looks really simple, and in the grand scheme of things obviously it is. You fly upwards shooting enemy craft and bridges, you can adjust your speed to effectively three different possibilities, and you fly over refueling stations so you don't run out of fuel. But it's the mix of these mechanics, and how they feel together, that elevates River Raid beyond a lot of action games in that era.
Some of the interactions may very well be incidental--like being able to shoot a refueling station for points while hovering over it--but it strikes a balance where choices are constantly being made for something that, on the surface, looks pretty chill. The majority of enemies are motionless when they initially appear on screen, and randomly start moving as you approach them. Do you hold back on your speed in the hopes that they'll trigger and you can shoot them safely so they don't run into you? Do you try to speed up to get past them before they're activated?
So many classic action games--even wonderful ones--rely on twitch skills for their thrills, but for such a stupidly old game I was immediately fascinated by the choices I was making on the fly, all the time. It's not a "mental" game really, but it still tickles that part of my brain more than other action titles I really like from the era like Time Pilot. For how slow a run in the game may look, I still come away from it feeling exhausted. And the interactions carry a good deal of weight and feel satisfying to pull off, the small things like shooting a bullet and then moving to redirect it into an enemy vessel in one of the modes [which, again, may be some programming coincidence at the time, to keep the bullet lined up with your craft, but it feels good regardless].
It's both a blessing and a curse because for every River Raid I find by digging through classic computer and console libraries I'm going to come across approximately a thousand "quaint" distractions [at best] that I'll forget five seconds after I stop playing. But I could find another River Raid, so it's still worth it.
It looks really simple, and in the grand scheme of things obviously it is. You fly upwards shooting enemy craft and bridges, you can adjust your speed to effectively three different possibilities, and you fly over refueling stations so you don't run out of fuel. But it's the mix of these mechanics, and how they feel together, that elevates River Raid beyond a lot of action games in that era.
Some of the interactions may very well be incidental--like being able to shoot a refueling station for points while hovering over it--but it strikes a balance where choices are constantly being made for something that, on the surface, looks pretty chill. The majority of enemies are motionless when they initially appear on screen, and randomly start moving as you approach them. Do you hold back on your speed in the hopes that they'll trigger and you can shoot them safely so they don't run into you? Do you try to speed up to get past them before they're activated?
So many classic action games--even wonderful ones--rely on twitch skills for their thrills, but for such a stupidly old game I was immediately fascinated by the choices I was making on the fly, all the time. It's not a "mental" game really, but it still tickles that part of my brain more than other action titles I really like from the era like Time Pilot. For how slow a run in the game may look, I still come away from it feeling exhausted. And the interactions carry a good deal of weight and feel satisfying to pull off, the small things like shooting a bullet and then moving to redirect it into an enemy vessel in one of the modes [which, again, may be some programming coincidence at the time, to keep the bullet lined up with your craft, but it feels good regardless].
It's both a blessing and a curse because for every River Raid I find by digging through classic computer and console libraries I'm going to come across approximately a thousand "quaint" distractions [at best] that I'll forget five seconds after I stop playing. But I could find another River Raid, so it's still worth it.