Name the three best things in the world. I’ll give you a minute.
Finished? If your answer is “Video games, the 80s and Japan” then congratulations! Go play Game Center CX Arino’s Challenge right now. It was released in the states as “Retro Game Challenge.” Last year saw the release of the sequel, which has unfortunately not gotten a localization just yet. But the sequel is just as awesome as the original, rest assured.
Game Center CX is a Japanese television program about various video game related thingamabobs, but the most interesting segments are the challenges performed by the host Shinya Arino. These challenges are generally to complete older video games. Since Arino isn’t the best gamer ever, rather than watching someone completely dominate a game, we are presented with an average gamer trying his best to complete games. The results are often hilarious and always entertaining. The show coupled up with Bandai-Namco to produce these two games based on this premise, and they are awesome.
You, the main character of these games, are transported back in time and are forced to play old video games to free yourself. You’re helped along the way by magazine hints and tips and the occasional wise-crack from a young Arino. Unlike the show, the challenges aren’t to beat the games1 but rather perform certain tasks or get to a certain point in the game. While not the most elaborate challenges, why the game really shines is because of how amazing the games made for these games are.
Although the show features classics, the games feature games made specifically for them. GCCX2 starts off with a Pac-Man clone, and then features a wide variety of games including a Kung-Fu clone, Tetris-clone, text adventure, RPG, platformer and more. The best part is that these games do not simply replicate the experience, but often add new ideas that make them fantastic games in their own right, games that I would have likely bought on their own were they released back in the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. To have these games all together in one place is quite a marvelous thing.
That said, it’s not without some problems. You have to the challenges in order and complete all challenges in one game before you can play the next. Were they to give you a few games at once with challenges that could be done in any order I believe they would have captured the feeling they were going for in a much more efficient way. It’s easy to get stuck in one game and loose a bit of motivation to keep playing the game since there is only one way to proceed. This ended up being less of an issue for me in the GCCX2 as it felt like the first one, although I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps it was being used to the pattern from the first game.
All in all that ends up being a minor issue because the games are so fun that I didn’t really mind pushing through to complete the challenges. Were we to get a third game in the series, I would hope they opened it up a little more like I suggested, but were it to be similar to its predecessors, as long as it had quality games in it, I would be pleased.
- Although such a challenge does exist at the end. [↩]
I think it would be cool if they added some lite story elements to it. Have them get out of the house sometimes, you know?
Like, going to the game store to check out (or purchase) the latest game. Or maybe going to a game tournament (like the ones Hudson used to have in Japan all the time).
Oh, add some stealth to it, too! Like, Arino’s mom doesn’t want you playing games so you have to see if she’s coming down the hall so you can pause and turn the TV off.
There’s more to being a kid who loves video games than just playing video games. I think they know this already, as evidenced by the detailed game magazines, but it’d be awesome to see them take it even further.