.hack//INFECTION and the beginning of a phenomenon

October 6, 2024 Pete Davison Leave a comment

I’ve always been fascinated by the .hack games, one of the first truly ambitious transmedia projects that involved video games, and yet I’ve never gotten around to finishing the original series. I decided it was high time I corrected that.

For the unfamiliar, .hack (pronounced “dothack”) is a Japanese franchise that encompasses video games, animation, manga and light novels. It began in 2002 with two distinct pieces of media: the video game .hack//INFECTION, which is what we’ll be talking about today, and .hack//SIGN, an anime series that, at the time of writing, I haven’t yet seen.

The project involved something of an all-star cast of Japanese talent, including anime director Kouichi Mashimo from studio Bee Train, Ghost in the Shell writer Kazunori Itou, and Gainax co-founder and Neon Genesis Evangelion character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. Definitely quite the pedigree, then — so let’s take a closer look at the first interactive episode in this saga after the jump.

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Racers

Victory Heat Rally: the return of the Super Scaler

October 4, 2024 Pete Davison 2 Comments

I love a classic “Super Scaler” game, so when Victory Heat Rally by Skydevilpalm, published by Playtonic Friends, claimed to offer a “turbocharged neo Super Scaler arcade racing experience”, I was immediately interested. And that interest solidified when I played the game’s demo during a recent Steam Next Fest.

Now, the full game is finally here, and it’s a wonderful thing. Offering easy to pick up but hard to master arcade racing action, Victory Heat Rally is a beautiful example of a “modern retro” game: unmistakably inspired by classics of years gone by, but also incorporating features made possible by today’s gaming hardware.

If you’ve ever enjoyed games like Sega’s Power Drift or the ever-reliable Mario Kart series, Victory Heat Rally is a game that should definitely be on your radar. So let’s take a closer look after the jump.

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UFO 50

UFO 50: Paint the town blue with Paint Chase

September 28, 2024 Pete Davison Leave a comment

So far in UFO 50 we’ve seen two very different takes on the platformer, including a classic microcomputer-style “arcade adventure” and an auto-scrolling arcade game, plus a surprisingly deep but simple to understand deckbuilding strategy game. What’s next?

Well, it’s time to tackle that mainstay of early ’80s video games, the maze chase game! Paint Chase blends ideas from Namco’s Pac-Man and Rally-X with a touch of underappreciated Atari 8-bit classic Preppie! II to create something fun and challenging that, like everything else in the compilation, puts an original twist on an established formula.

Just four games into UFO 50 and we’ve already seen an incredibly diverse array of different gaming experiences… and there’s plenty more where that came from. But for now, let’s take a closer look at Paint Chase after the jump.

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UFO 50

UFO 50: Ninpek’s epic quest for a sandwich

September 22, 2024 Pete Davison Leave a comment

You know sometimes how after a hard day’s ninjing you really want a sandwich? And when you sit down to enjoy it, and you’re anticipating that first amazing bite… a giant octopus comes along and steals your sandwich? That’s Ninpek, the third game in UFO 50.

Released in 1983 and once again developed by the dynamic trio of Benedikt Chun, Gerry Smolski and Thorson Petter, according to the history of the fictional LX console, Ninpek was a game put out to coincide with the wave of “Ninjamania” that was sweeping the world at the time. This was very much a real thing; popular entertainment — not just video games — was absolutely riddled with ninjas throughout the 1980s, and the obsession lasted quite some time.

Ninpek would have fit right in to that trend. Drawing strong influences from auto-scrolling platform shooters such as Capcom’s SonSon (released in 1984 in the real world) and SNK’s Psycho Soldier from 1987, it’s a challenging, arcade-style affair that will enthral and infuriate in roughly equal measure. Let’s take a closer look after the jump.

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UFO 50

UFO 50: Strategy meets deckbuilding in Bug Hunter

September 21, 2024 Pete Davison 1 Comment

After the challenging opening that is the classic-style arcade adventure Barbuta, things don’t get any easier in UFO 50’s second game, Bug Hunter.

Bug Hunter is a markedly different sort of game though, and one that arguably has a lot more replay value than Barbuta. After all, once you beat Barbuta and uncover all its secrets, that’s it: there’s nothing else to do with it other than to replay it just for fun, or perhaps work on your speedrunning.

Bug Hunter, meanwhile, is a game that will take time to master — but it’s a rewarding, enjoyable experience whenever you play it, and regardless of if you win or lose. Let’s take a closer look after the jump.

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UFO 50

UFO 50: Kicking things off with Barbuta

September 20, 2024 Pete Davison 3 Comments

UFO 50 is a remarkable release: a compilation of 50 “fake retro” games for an imaginary games console, developed by Derek “Spelunky” Yu, Ojiro “Downwell” Fumoto and several others.

The concept behind it is that a hitherto-unknown ’80s gaming system, known as the UFO Soft LX, has been discovered, and you are now rummaging through a pile of 50 disks for it, each containing a game. The LX is similar in capabilities to the Famicom Disk System, with a distinctive 32-colour palette available to it — though Yu and company have made some concessions to modern players by eliminating elements such as slowdown or sprite flicker, as well as allowing each game to be presented in widescreen.

The interesting thing about UFO 50 is that each of its component games has been fully developed and fleshed out rather than just being a minigame. So I thought it might be a worthwhile experience to explore each of them in turn. Let’s begin with the very first game in the collection, Barbuta, which supposedly dates back to 1982. Hit the jump to find out more.

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One-Shots

Past meets present in Yars Rising

September 14, 2024 Pete Davison 1 Comment

It’s fair to say that Atari, as an entity, has been through the absolute wringer over the years.

With each new iteration of a company branding itself “Atari”, more and more people make jokes about them reanimating a zombie corpse and not really being anything to do with old-school Atari aside from occasionally shitting out a no-frills compilation or two of emulated 2600 games for the current generation of systems.

But in more recent years, under the leadership of CEO Wade Rosen, the company has been making great strides in not only honouring the Atari name’s legacy, but also in pushing it forward in a sensible direction for the future. Yars Rising, a brand new game created in collaboration with Shantae developers WayForward, is an absolutely prime example of that. Let’s take a closer look after the jump.

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Famicom Detective Club

Emio – The Smiling Man and the return of Famicom Detective Club

September 3, 2024 Pete Davison 1 Comment

I was wrong. I am very happy to be proven wrong in this instance, but there’s no getting away from the fact I was wrong.

Back when I covered the excellent 2021 remakes of the two original Famicom Detective Club titles for Nintendo Switch earlier this year, my conclusion was that “I was left wanting more… [but] I suspect that’s never going to happen.” Imagine my surprise, then, when six months later, Nintendo surprised everyone by revealing that there was a brand new Famicom Detective Club on the way.

Yes, that’s right; the latest entry in the Famicom Detective Club series, known as Emio – The Smiling Man, is a brand new game in a series that, aside from the aforementioned remakes (and a Japan-only port of one of its entries to Super Famicom), has lain dormant since 1989. And y’know what? It’s great. Join me after the jump for a closer look. I have done my best to minimise spoilers!

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PS4

Old-School Doom Fan Tries Doom 2016

August 25, 2024 Pete Davison 5 Comments

I finally got around to trying Doom 2016. I’m a huge fan of OG Doom, so I’ve always been curious to give it a go, but for one reason or another I’ve only just got around to trying it.

And… I… didn’t love it. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate it or anything, either, but I think I was just expecting something a little different. Something less annoying. Something a bit more like classic Doom.

Instead, what I got was a speedy, fluid first-person shooter that admittedly stands out from other examples of the genre these days by virtue of its pacing, but which had me gnashing my teeth in frustration more than going “wow, cool!” Join me after the jump and let’s explore why I ended up feeling this way.

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Rance

Sengoku Rance: deep yet accessible empire-building

August 18, 2024 Pete Davison 1 Comment

I absolutely love the Rance series — see my coverage of Rance 5D and VI here on MoeGamer, and my articles on 01 and 02 on Rice Digital — but I’d been putting off playing Sengoku Rance, the seventh game in the series, for a while.

The reason for this is that I knew it was a strategy game on a grand scale, and frankly I’ve always found that kind of game rather daunting, to such a degree that I simply haven’t enjoyed previous attempts to explore the genre. I love the idea of Crusader Kings, for example, but absolutely cannot get into playing it.

But a little while back, I decided I was in the mood to play something new and, encouraged by the arrival of my Rance IX physical copy from MangaGamer, I decided it was time to start catching up on the series. Hit the jump and read on to find out more about what many people consider the very best Rance game.

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The best of overlooked and underappreciated computer and video games, from yesterday and today.