Retrogaming Review of The Year 2018

Retrogaming Review of The Year 2018

A year where I tried to be more circumspect in my choices and ended up playing far fewer games: mainly just four, as you can see! The games just took a long time to get through, not least 'Zelda' since I had a slight hiccup: my trusty GameCube, after sixteen years of use, finally stopped reading discs. It was a shock as I always felt Nintendo products would go on forever (I still have an original Game Boy that runs, not to mention those old cartridge games), but I suspect that as technology has become more intricate, it's also become more prone to wear - how else can I explain that my N64 (which was secondhand in 1999 when I got it), still works, with only the power lead ever needing to be replaced? The good side of it was that it forced me to get the Wii I'd been musing on for a good couple of years, since I might as well 'upgrade' to that and open up a new vista of games, as get another 'Cube. At the moment it's purely for use as a substitute 'Cube, but there are a few games I'd like to play on the system which was where I abandoned Nintendo to their more gimmicky approach back in 2006. Coincidentally, that was also when I saw the end of the last 'Star Trek' series, 'Enterprise,' and I've just now got around to seeing the latest, 'Discovery,' so there's some nice symmetry there.

[Ratings reflect total, historical experience, not just the enjoyment level I got out of them this time.]


January - February: Beyond Good & Evil (2004, GameCube) - A game I had hopes for, but which turned out not to be such fun after all. **

January - December: UFO: Enemy Unknown (1993, Amiga 1200) - Still going strong, this old classic will probably never be beaten, tied up as it is with countless gaming hours over many, many years. I can't remember passing any milestones within it this year, but its beauty and simplicity/complexity is perfectly judged. *****

March - August: Need For Speed Most Wanted (2005, GameCube) - Most of my game time was spent on the 'Cube this year (perhaps why it finally gave up the ghost in the laser lens department), but I'd have to say, perhaps surprisingly, that this game was my favourite experience of the year. I've always enjoyed racing games, but this gave me an actual new experience, something which is very rare these days. The whole conceit, being that you have to escape from pursuing coppers, causing damage, and racking up a high score, was terrific, the AI impressive, and the size of the continuous game world's city immense and beautifully varied, with traffic-laden inner city roads and more rural settings towards the outskirts of town. It's one of those games like 'Spider-Man 2' or '1080' where I could see myself popping back on it just to experience the unique mix of racing and police chases. Best of all, I still have one more of these 'Need For Speed' games to play on the 'Cube, so I can only hope that 'Carbon' lives up to this high point in the series (and I hope it brings back the Drift courses, the only real omission of note). ****

September - December: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2003, GameCube) - Planning for over a decade to replay this, I finally did, and it took out my 'Cube as its parting gift, just before completion. It forced me to get a Wii at last, and the game itself has its moments, but I would say it is one of the weaker entries in a fairly dependable series that just went off the boil after the original Game Boy, SNES and N64 entries. I have happy memories of specific evenings, like spending a few hours battering the sword-master until I got the maximum hits in his training challenge, but it was one of those that I tried to dash through and it didn't flow as evenly as hoped, sometimes, on getting stuck I had to return to my more common methodical and time-consuming approach, examining each square of map rather than zipping around trying to blast through the game at speed. It looks nice, but the lack of land hurt it, in a different way to the problems with its followup, 'Twilight Princess,' but I'm glad to have ticked another Must Play Again off my list. ***

December: Age of Empires II: The Conquerors campaigns (2001, MacBook Pro) - Specifically the Age of Conquerors expansion, and even more specifically, the Montezuma campaign, as I still had the final two campaigns to complete at the Hardest difficulty, so that seemed like an ideal thing for the Christmas holidays. I came to it a little later than planned as I was originally going to play it over the summer, like last year, but with 'Need For Speed' overrunning by a good few months, I didn't get to it. Still, with the final collection of disparate one-off battles to do, perhaps this summer will be the time for it. I'm tempted to knock off a star as Montezuma isn't one of the better campaigns, and the collection of battles is a little bit of a cop-out, but then my rating is for the game as a whole, not specifics, so the five stars stay. *****

Honourable (or dishonourable) mentions:

February: Harvest Moon - A Wonderful Life (2004, GameCube) - Or as I think of it, 'Hardest Bore: A Terrible Waste of Life.' It was the last full-priced game I ever bought as I had such high hopes based on NGC Magazine's love for it, but for myself found it so restrictive and a chore rather than a fun farming sim. I can't remember why I had the urge to go back to it, but it only lasted one day, just to check up on my old farm and animals. That was enough. *

September: Super Star Wars Return of The Jedi (1995, Game Boy) - I bought this for £19.99 in 1997 (from Woolworths, sniff!), one of most youngsters that buy licensed games not realising they're generally poor quality, relying on the name to sell. I thought it was quite good then, certainly the most accessible of the three 'Star Wars' games (there were still only three films then, too!), which had to be completed in one trench run. I succeeded with the first, but 'Empire' always eluded me, so at least 'Jedi' was a smoother experience with better animation and control of the character. But coming back to it now it looks very poor, and I don't mean the obvious lack of graphical flair, that's to be expected in a title this old. No, it's the boring gameplay of running from one side of the screen to the other, waving a lightsaber around (or firing Chewie's crossbow), when you can just as well jump over most of the repetitive adversaries. I made it as far as Jabba The Hutt before my patience wore thin, and I'm just glad I hadn't committed to completing the game again, it was a mere play-through. I was playing on the hardest difficulty, Jedi, as I'd completed it before and didn't expect a challenge. It was certainly the easiest of the three 'Wars,' but I wasn't going to repeat levels again and again until I'd achieved victory. Disappointingly, I found the passwords were the same as for lower difficulty settings so there wasn't even that incentive to collect those. Little touches such as the attractive cutscenes or your character doing things if you left them standing still (Leia as Boushh takes off her helmet, for example), something common in later platform games, were nice, but levels were boring and simplistic. Maybe if I'd played through to the Speeder Bike or Falcon levels it might've been more fun. But I doubt it. The Force was weak with this one. *

December: WWF No Mercy (2000) - Playing the multiplayer a little over Christmas, reminding me of the ridiculousness and amusement. ***


Next Year - The obvious thing to do now is to get onto the Wii bandwagon and get going on some of that machine's best games. I'll be coming to the end of my re-reading of NGC Magazine soon, so it'll be onto the NGamer straight after, although I don't remember that fondly and stopped buying it not long into its run. I may have taken the plunge with a Wii, but I still haven't got to playing Game Boy stuff, apart from the disaster of revisiting 'Return of The Jedi,' which didn't encourage me to go back to the Boy. I never got around to DOSBox, so in 2019 I'd like to:

- Play at least one epic DOSBox game.

- Get started on Wii software, preferably 'Mario Kart,' 'Super Mario Galaxy,' and, um… there weren't that many great games for the system, were there...

- Rip into my remaining 'Cube titles now that I can play them again, but with so many to choose from, should I go for 'The Lord of The Rings: The Third Age,' 'Freedom Fighters,' 'XIII,' 'Second Sight,' 'Splinter Cell,' or replay some old games?

- 'Need For Speed: Carbon' is a necessity.

- The pull of the Nintendo Switch continues and if I saw a good deal on a bundle with, say, 'The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild,' or 'Super Mario Odyssey' I could see myself splashing the cash.

- It would be nice to find another Amiga game to complete, one that I never finished back in the day, but I can't think of one off the top of my head.

Happy New Year!