Gaming the Pandemic

There’s a lot to be annoyed about in the world today - obviously - especially with the various types of mess we’re all living with in every country in the world.

But a particular, and specific annoyance in the retrogaming hobby/lifestyle/environment/zeitgeist, is the hive-mind attitude from an increasing number of the most vocal (and seemingly most affluent) participants that this is, or should be, an extremely expensive hobby/lifestyle/etc/etc.

It’s impossible not to notice an underlying, deeply unpleasant, atmosphere of elitism in many of the communities I visit. An attitude of ‘you’re not doing it right’ directed at anyone who doesn’t have their Neo Geo AES hooked up to a 20” PVM via OSSC. (I have no idea if that example makes sense, nor do I care.)

This is the kind of arms-race attitude that fought to keep PC gaming an exclusive club for decades, and it has gradually seeped into retro gaming's language and ecosystem almost undetected.

The simple joy of rekindling one's nostalgia for Super Mario World, or re-experiencing the simple fun of games lost with the arcades, is being obfuscated by a collective need to quantify, update, and monetise every aspect of vintage computer entertainment.

It’s the kind of environment where you might expect the gateway drug of emulation to be met with the utmost scorn, but instead the self appointed guardians of retro (You can have that for your quiz team/band name, BTW) have positioned emulation behind a paywall of Retron 5s, Mega SGs, and (only the latest and most expensive) Everdrives. Any excited newcomer asking about the best controller to play retro games on their laptop is quickly overwhelmed with talks of latency, resolutions, and refresh rates.

If it wasn’t bad enough that forced exclusivity exists, it actually appears to be having it’s desired effect.

You can see it both in the way questions are asked and in the tone of the responses. You can see it in the photos of someones latest, expensive, haul and the other even more expensive stuff in the background - almost, but not quite, out of focus.

People don’t ask where they can find a cheap CRT, they ask if their $100 Trinitron is ‘good enough’. A joyous celebration of a bargain buy, or a long lost attic discovery, will be met with derision and disbelief, the underlying accusation that unless you can afford the inflated eBay prices for a barely average Sega Saturn game, then you aren’t worthy to own it.

Which brings me neatly to the event that triggered this rambling blog entry.

There was someone on a Discord server I’ve been frequenting who stated, blankly, without malice, that “all the good Saturn games are 100+ dollars”.

Why would they think this? Simply because it’s what the gatekeepers want them, you, and everyone else to think.

These are the people who, when a collective question is asked, wouldn’t dream of recommending any of the dozens of fantastic, better even, Saturn games you could buy for the price of Burning Rangers.

It’s this sub-group who don’t want you enjoying Sonic the Hedgehog for free when they’ve invested $200 in a Mega SG. The only way their post-purchase rationalisation can cope is by attacking the perceived difference in quality, by claiming they seek a ‘purer’ experience, and by attempting to undermine the simple pleasure of just playing old games by insinuating that someone with a secondhand NES Mini isn’t doing it right.

Now I just want to be clear that I’m not claiming to be some kind of saint who never judges anyone else's choices, nor am I saying that there aren’t benefits to some modern retro products, but the weaponised affluence I’m seeing increasingly around retro gaming communities is something else entirely.

Admission 1: I strongly believe that by downloading a thousand roms and picking one to play for five minutes before switching to another, then another, then another... your assessment of them will lack a psychological bond of choice, expectation, and - yes - sometimes investment that adds to the whole experience of a game.

But this is no less true of a pack of illegal roms than it is of someone with thousands in disposable income spending a tenth of that on a game they’ll probably never play.

Cost, value, and investment are relative terms. The kind of ‘bond’ I’m trying to describe between a player and a game can be gained through the investment of time, the effort of research, and the expectation of finding out for oneself if that game from your childhood holds up 20 years later.

Admission 2: I think games from the previous century should be played on a CRT television whenever possible. Pixels look better with real scanlines - it’s an incontrovertible fact - and the colour depth offered by that massive, humming monstrosity wedged into the corner is really something lost to the ages.

But it’s not a prerequisite of fun. And it’s especially not necessary to find the most expensive, most instagrammable, most egregiously hyped PVM to enjoy a game of Super Mariokart with your kids.

When I say: "I think these games should be played on a CRT", I mean ANY CRT. I’m typing this in a room with 6 of the things, two of them were free, and the whole collection has been compiled for the total cash investment of £26.

As someone born over 4 decades ago I’ll let you into a secret: The geometry has always been rubbish, the hum has always been loud, the picture has always flickered and no one ever cared about resolution or refresh rate or input lag when playing Tornado Low Level on their ZX Spectrum in 1984.

It’s entirely possible to argue a convincing case that you’ll get a more enjoyable retro experience from a wonky Bush portable TV than from any professional quality display equipment. And beyond that, if you can’t find a tube telly or don’t have room for one, use an LCD - it’s better than nothing, and the filters some emulators have these days are great.

It comes down this:

If you’re lucky enough, or have worked hard enough, to have the disposable income necessary to buy $400 RGB Scart cables and a professional monitor the size of a family car - and that’s genuinely what you want for your retro gaming experience - That’s cool. You don’t need anyone's approval or respect, you’re doing what you want to do the way you want to do it - and that’s a life lesson for everyone right there. But it’s your way, and nothing more than that.

This nonsense of idolising only the most expensive elements of this hobby has to change and we, the members of these communities, are the only people in a place to do that.

So the next time you see an excited new Dreamcast owner looking for game suggestions, mention the best ones first, not the most expensive.

When you come across a reddit picture of someone's game collection don’t immediately look for the over-priced ‘rare’ game they haven’t got, look for the ones you have in common and can have a conversation about.

And if you ever, ever, see someone being criticised for playing roms, or using composite cables, or playing on a flat screen TV, or any of that postering gibberish - step into that conversation and ask what games they love? What happy memories do they have? What is it about retro games brings them joy?

Because this is the real value of games.

They bring us experiences and memories to savour forever, they engage with us in a different way to that of films and music - and that difference should be cherished.

Games exist to bring us pleasure. Sometimes that pleasure is tinged with fear, and sometimes it’s truly dark and doesn’t feel like pleasure at all. Sometimes the pleasure comes from intellectual stimulation, sometimes from mindless entertainment.

But whatever form it takes, this pleasure, this… fun… cannot be tempered by technology, and it must never be attributed to any scale of monetary investment.

The simplicity of Retro Games is joyous, they are heartbreaking, they are brilliant and they must never be withheld from those who measure value in the size of their smile, by those who measure it in the size of their wallet.

Gaming the Pandemic

A two horse race here, with CT Special Forces just beating out idiosyncratic strategy RPG Carnage Heart for the honour of representing the letter C.

If Carnage Heart focused more on the strategy and less on the RPG we would probably have a different result here as it’s logic-gate programming of the mech-army is an absolute joy but it spends a little too long on other elements for my tastes.

CT Special Forces, on the other hand, doesn’t waste a moment at any point during your play time with it.

On appearances everything about the game screams cheap ‘Metal Slug’ knock-off, from the unknown developer to the obviously GBA port graphics. This is not a game that would leap from the shelf at anyone - nor, to be honest, does it fill one with inspiration when it first loads up.

Real world pictures of military vehicles and stock marching music clashes with the cartoon character art from the very beginning and, once you start playing, you’ll find slow moving sprites and aiming that is limited to left, right, and straight up.

As far the prerequisites for quality run and gun action goes, the first impressions are not exactly inspiring.

But as you ascend the first three level’s ‘Snowy Mountain’, the assumption that the straight upwards aiming is fairly limited is belied when it really comes into its own in the structure of the levels; as much you can progress in the usual style of this kind of game, it’s safer and more effective to clear a path from below before progressing upwards.

And more diversity from the run-and-gun norm is revealed the more you play. In the second level, for example, there is a great looking base-jump intermission whereby you must use the direction and altitude meters to know where and when to pull your chute.

There’s sniper sections, where you see only a small scope-view on a black screen and have to search for, and save, hostages. There’s even ‘Twin Cobra’ style vertical shooter levels in which you pilot a helicopter and attack air and ground targets.

Despite a direct sequel and many attempts over the years to create a ‘spiritual successor’, there has never been anything quite like the utter brilliance of Bushido Blade.

The developers, Light Weight, never made another game that even approached it’s quality, so Bushido Blade remains lightning in a bottle, a miraculous one-off who’s legacy has endured long after those of lesser polygon fighters has faded.

The game is most often celebrated for tense and brutal one-on-one battles that can be won with a single thrust or slice of your chosen weapon, and during which the tiniest mistake can leave you wounded, hobbled, or very very dead.

And it’s these weapons that add an extra dimension to the game that is often forgotten. Each of the 8 available has distinct characteristics and affects the combatants in various ways.

Often, pairing particular weapons and characters will open up new moves and combinations, but additionally, making an poor selection can have negative effects - I remember in particular that arming the young warrior Tatsumi with the enormous sledgehammer opened up a few moves particular to that combination - at least one of which ended with him falling and the weight of the weapon.

Another that sticks in my mind is the pairing of female fighter Mikado with the long Nodachi sword that resulted in an overhead swing that caused the character to stumble forward under the inertia.

The Ace Combat series has grown into a sprawling, quasi-futuristic, melodramatic behemoth since the first game, Air Combat in the west, was released 26 years ago. As you might imagine this first game is simpler and, while there is a plot, it is much more straightforward than those in the sequels, spin-offs, and it’s appearance in various other media.

There are fifteen or so real-world aircraft to choose from with performance more-or-less in line with what you’d expect from machines of their size and power but, fortunately, the attempts at realism end there.

Air Combat started out as Arcade game and, while the PlayStation version is not really a ‘port’ of that game, it very much keeps gameplay toward the fun and exciting end of the spectrum. I can’t remember if the missiles are infinite or so vast in number that they as well be, but that should be indication enough that this is arcade action from start - via to death-defying canyon runs, high speed interceptions, and love-em-or-hate-em escort missions - to finish.