UFO 50

[Old_Hunter_77]

Warptank ,my GOTY?

People that love UFO 50 write about a game that they hit upon that they fall in love with and get stuck on. I was wondering if that would happen w/ me considering how impatient I am and how my interest was mostly to sample each one, move on, and be done with it.
Well, Warptank is an Old_Hunter_77-ass game. Sure, given that there are 50 games made with love at there is one that will connect with each type of gamer and this one cupid-arrowed its way straight into my heart.

You're a tank. Your moves are "warp" to the opposite side or shoot. So you traverse by d-padding along the ground but the "ground" can be any direction and warp is just the opposite of where you're facing. So it's figuring out how to use your warp and attack to move along. There are enemies and obstacles and checkpoints. It also saves your progress and since it's not "arcade" you can just keep trying.

These are levels within an overworld.

So.. it's puzzl-y, action-y, adentur-y.. and lets you play on your own time and terms. A little bit of everything that comes together to make the ultimate me-game.

It's only the 20th game out of 50.

Soon we will be talking about our GOTYs (yep, it's October already!) and I put anything other than UFO-50 as my #1 y'all have the right and duty to come at me.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Waldorf's Journey, 1-2p, arcade/platformer

You're a big doofy flying walrus, and the controls are to launch and control the flight, which is painfully frustrating for me. But it's cute as hell and has neat sleep/dream related narrative.

Porgy
Reminds me a lot of Dave the Diver because you have to dive to find things and avoid or fight enemies, but you have a strict time limit with a fuel tank. Nice controls and enemies but since I played like a hundred hours of Dave I'm not really excited to go diving again right now.

Onion Delivery
You're supposed to drive a little car and, I guess, deliver onions or whatever, but there's no direction control, just accelerate and brake, so I completely don't understand how to actually play this one.

Caramel Caramel, arcade shooter, 1-2p
Now this is a game that really feels like a bunch of stuff I played as a kid. The kind of game I didn't own but played at friends' houses. It's the kind you fly around and shoot things while the screen scrolls automatically to the side and you die after three lives and have to start over, so it's about memorizing the best route because no procedural generation here, pal.
There's also a picture taking mechanic but I haven't figured out what purpose it serves yet.
I'm gonna stick with this one until I at least beat the first level.

edit: oh taking pictures of certain things gives you buffs, and changed the state of a boss (?) enemy. That's neat.
I also am noticing re-used assets from earlier games, like flying ball enemies from Campanella, which is why I'm playing these in "chronological" order, for the cute meta thing.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

These next few are really interesting and tricky and I'd like to back to them and actually figure out how to progress. The mechanics are outpacing the minimalistic controls now.

Divers
The description of "RPG" means I'm guaranteed to never come back to this but I imagine this to be of serious interest to fans of the genre. Its the kind where you move around a map and when you bump into enemies you get turn-based combat thing (like Undertale). The hook here is you're really controlling three characters and you have to equip each hand of each character, so there would be a loop of trial, error, success, character(s) build, upgrade, etc. The reward for those patient and interested enough to dig into this one and I hope to read about others doing that.

Rail Heist
It's like a platformer strategy where you have to kind of Metal Gear Solid your way around a train car to steal treasure and escape. Once you get the cops' attention by firing your gun some such there is a 10 second timer where they respond so you have to position yourself and manipulate them so they don't get you.

Vainger
Metroid but hitting jump twice makes you flip to the ceiling, and then back to the floor, and clearing levels means working your way around to disable obstacles. Combined with having to learn the areas including some with a timer restriction it got real hard real fast. But there are checkpoints so I may revisit. Pretty clever.

Rock On! Island
Strategy + action where you're a caveman and you throw bones at waves of dinos. I guess you're supposed to position yourself and move along but after 2 waves I just did not understand how I'm supposed to stop like 30 dinos or whatever.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Pingolf, "1987"

Pinball + golf. More golf but with pinball obstacles. Though it being in 2D is feels more like one of those old Windows pool games. It's neat, and I like that you get to play a full game with lots of rounds now matter how much you suck.

Mortol 2
If you're into UFO 50 for the meta-love-of-video-game-design scholarly appreciation of the thing, this where you're gonna get all your jollies. Since it's the "sequel" to the earlier game about traversing across areas by sacrificing a set number of dudes, this game feels faster and more exciting with the improved mechanics. This time you get a lot more dudes to start with but no way to add more as you play, so it would reward dedication and planning. You also get to choose between different types of dudes with different abilities when you sacrifice them- but what really makes it tricky is that the player has to activate the sacrifice, if you just get killed you get no benefit. That was like the first game but with the increased speed and less forgiving progression it makes every death feel so impactful.

Fist Hell- classic brawler
Fightin' zombies. Nostalgia in high gear, as Double Dragon was certainly a mainstay of my youth. And the best part about quality nostalgia gaming is how deep the mechanics can get with the benefit of dev time and experience. So many moves with just two buttons!

 

[BrawlMan]

Fist Hell- classic brawler
Fightin' zombies. Nostalgia in high gear, as Double Dragon was certainly a mainstay of my youth. And the best part about quality nostalgia gaming is how deep the mechanics can get with the benefit of dev time and experience

I wanted to like this, but this suffers from too much fake and artificial difficulty. You only get the one life and you die. You have to start the stage all over again and you lose whatever money you gained. Double Dragon II (NES) and IV are both better than this. Most of the 8 bit brawlers on NES are better than this game.

So many moves with just two buttons!

Impressive but, there are plenty of better brawlers that already did that with just two buttons.

• Double Dragon II NES
• Double Dragon III NES
• Violent Storm
• Crime Fighters 2/Vendetta
• Final Fight
• Mighty Final Fight
• Golden Axe
• The Punisher Capcom
• Battle Circuit - This and Violent Storm I highly recommend.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Sometimes when people talk about "Nintendo hard" I wonder if that is exaggerated but playing these games reminded me it is not.

Overbold, shooter
Run and gun shooting and bombing enemies. The hook here is you can set the difficulty in each round and get more money with more difficulty to buy more upgrades, and the rooms are procedurally generated. So, basically a roguelike. One hit death, at least early on, prevents me from sticking with it, which is too bad because I like the hook. As with many of these, I bet the 2 player mode is neat.

Campanella 2, platform adventure
The first one was the gravity ship thing where you gotta press a button to stay or go up. This "sequel" does remind me of sequels from back in the day where they made really major changes to games as the leaps in trends and tech in those days were more pronounced, and IP loyalty took a backseat to gameplay (ie, there was no internet yelling about story or gender or whatever).
In this one you get out of the ship and can enter rooms for a bit of metroid style gaming (feels like re-used assets and mechanics from other games which I think is the point).
Again, one-hit death and start over means I move on. But I do love feeling invested in the Campanella universe.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Hypercontender

Similar to Bushido Ball in that it's a 1v1 sport competition with different characters with unique abilities. This one is like the original Mario Brothers where you're platforming around bopping each other about and grabbing the prizes to win. The kicker here is that the unique abilities completely drive the game. Things like jump and dodge are unique to specific characters, while others launch themselves about with mines or zip lines. This means success really comes down to mastering the character you like.
Marked as a favorite and one I'll come back to.

Valbrace, "1988"
If you've seen any trailers for this game you've seen the dungeon crawler with the naked dude stabbing ghoulies with a dagger. A fun throwback that I suspect is way deeper than it looks but first person map-figuring-out ain't my jam so I'll leave it to those who are into it.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Rakshasa, platformer arcade
The opening and visuals reminded me of Ghouls and Goblins.
One of the appeals of UFO 50 is the addition of modern quality of life elements coexisting with 8-bit gaming and that really stuck out here. The gimmick is that when you "die," your ghost pops out and then you have to collect rings while avoiding special ghost enemies to get back into your body and continue, or else you for-real die. While controlling the human body version, movement is as deliberate/slow as any old game like with a d-pad, but when controlling the ghost you have free and fast movement because, you know, you're a ghost, and can therefore move in any direction with your joystick. So if this game existed in the 80s, when we didn't have joysticks, the experience of having such very different situations as you progress through a level wouldn't really be possible, not quite like this.

Star Waspir, arcade shooter
Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about in the nostalgia vibe- fly "up" and shoot waves of enemies. Just a no-b.s. quality love letter to that type of coin-eating arcade. Favorite.

Grimstone, RPG
A whole-ass RPG, Western themed, that starts with choosing a party then walking around, talking to NPC's, turn-based combat with a bit of real-time interaction... not my thing but it's pretty cool and crazy that this is in here even.

 

[BrawlMan]

Rakshasa, platformer arcade
The opening and visuals reminded me of Ghouls and Goblins.
One of the appeals of UFO 50 is the addition of modern quality of life elements coexisting with 8-bit gaming and that really stuck out here. The gimmick is that when you "die," your ghost pops out and then you have to collect rings while avoiding special ghost enemies to get back into your body and continue, or else you for-real die. While controlling the human body version, movement is as deliberate/slow as any old game like with a d-pad, but when controlling the ghost you have free and fast movement because, you know, you're a ghost, and can therefore move in any direction with your joystick. So if this game existed in the 80s, when we didn't have joysticks, the experience of having such very different situations as you progress through a level wouldn't really be possible, not quite like this.

This one I find too frustrating and cheap. There should have just been a regular live system and continues.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Lords of Diskonia, strategy (+ action, I guess)
First you gather types of disks via luck and choices, then you fight with the disks using a pinball style mechanics. A neat idea that got tedious to actually play because the match took long. I do like how the different types of disks offer different types of play like the knight lets you attack twice and is smaller while the ogre is large with a lot of health points but can only attack once.

Night Manor, point and click adventure horror
Even though adventure games were among the first I had access to on my Apple IIc, my nostalgia won't go so far as to actually have me want to play one of these. Point and things, look, futz with items to use where, toggle between "look" and "interact" and "walk" and all that nonsense.
It was neat and pleasantly surprising to see horror appear in some true form here, though. You're a woman trapped in some gross house that uses environmental story telling to promote puzzle/adventuring.

Elfazar's Hat, arcade shooter
It's like Star Waspir but walking around as a cute critter instead of wizzing about in a ship. The core similarity is that both use this mechanic where enemies can drop items and when you get three items, you get a power-up depending on which three items you got, kind of like a slot machine. Since this game is much slower and more deliberate one might be more likely to pay attention to which items to pick up.

 

[BrawlMan]

Elfazar's Hat, arcade shooter
It's like Star Waspir but walking around as a cute critter instead of wizzing about in a ship. The core similarity is that both use this mechanic where enemies can drop items and when you get three items, you get a power-up depending on which three items you got, kind of like a slot machine. Since this game is much slower and more deliberate one might be more likely to pay attention to which items to pick up.

This game is basically imitating Pockey and Rocky, but you're a witch, instead of a shrine maiden. This one is also one of my favorites.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Pilot Quest, farming sim, maybe?

This is the game that features the cute spaceman that appears in all the trailers. It is actually the pilot from Campanella, apparently, so it's like a side game, because it's also completely different. It's the kind you walk around gathering resources to gather more resources to unlock things and explore to get more resources. The initial barriers seemed too high to get me past such type of game that is not usually my thing anyway. Maybe I'll come back at some point out of curiosity.

Mini & Max, "1989", adventure platformer
Fantastic premise where you're a little girl stuck in her room and you shrink down to the size of a dust mite to enter a whole alternate world where you platform around to collect items to unlock paths, metroidvania/zelda style. I knew the game requires dedication when I found some old man who asked for a tea pitcher from some old lady I found god knows where, so that would mean going back and carrying it without it breaking, which ain't easy!
The description mentions it "pays homage" to earlier titles and I do recognize some of the graphical assets for sure (like vent grates that is the same one you have to open at the beginning of Night Manor.

Combatants, strategy
Combat-ants, you see, 'cause it's ants. It's slow-moving race against time and an opponent that is also ants to make more ants and walk painfully slowly back and forth to feed your big ant. Way too slow for me to give it a fair chance honestly.

Quibble Race, betting game? idle game?
You bet on silly creatures to race and you can pick various properties before each race to effect the outomce. This would seem like a great second screen game to mess with while watching sports on TV or something.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Seaside Drive, driving 'n' shoot arcade
Ok so it's a driving and shooting things in your path or in the sky. The trick here is that you get more powerful ammo when you "drift" which means going to the left (while the whole thing is scrolling right), but left/right also controls which way your sideways attacks go. So it's really tricky but also intuitive after a few minutes. This one is really impressive and maybe my favorite game here.

Campanella 3, arcade shooter
In my head canon, playing along with UFO 50's conceit, fan reaction to this game was split because the gravity flying controls of the previous Campanella games is gone and it's replaced with more like a fps style game and what the description called "3D scrolling." What that means I think is similar firing controls as Seaside Drive! Pretty crazy.

Cyber Owls, ???
Description tab->controls: "depending on the mission" lol. Because this last game of this 50 games game is 4 games! In one mission you're a punchy altered beast dude, in another a Metal Gear Solid 1 person, another a fps-ish, and yet another a driving shooting thing.

Well... whew, that's 50 games! From here on in I'll just be dipping into whatever with no rhyme or reason but even if I never open this thing up again ever it's one of the best gaming experiences I've had in a while. Sure, it's largely because of the SO MUCH of it but, why not, that is also fun.

 

[BrawlMan]

Seaside Drive, driving 'n' shoot arcade
Ok so it's a driving and shooting things in your path or in the sky. The trick here is that you get more powerful ammo when you "drift" which means going to the left (while the whole thing is scrolling right), but left/right also controls which way your sideways attacks go. So it's really tricky but also intuitive after a few minutes. This one is really impressive and maybe my favorite game here.

This is my favorite game of the collection. I almost beat it. You get two extra lives, by not dying in a level, and getting a coin the bonus stages.

 

[BrawlMan]

@Old_Hunter_77

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[Drathnoxis]

I just learned that the creator of Spelunky made this game. Suddenly I'm kind of interested in it.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

I just learned that the creator of Spelunky made this game. Suddenly I'm kind of interested in it.

Waitaminute…”one” developer made all 50 in this thing? Here I was thinking it was like Tom Petty’s Buried Treasure show but for games.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Waitaminute…”one” developer made all 50 in this thing? Here I was thinking it was like Tom Petty’s Buried Treasure show but for games.

Yeah, it looks like this is a single game developed by Mossmouth, Derek Yu's studio.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Ok, I'm playing now too. I was a little leery with Barbuta, since it was really slow, and there wasn't any music, but things picked up with the next games. Attactics might be my favorite so far, but I've only tried up to Divilition which is also pretty fun.

I also couldn't figure out to actually "drop off" a critter since the controls only list two buttons so I think you have to time the random blinking areas with walking over them, and I couldn't get it to happen one single time. Oh well.

You just need to push the drop off button while your guys are on the star panels, all the ones that are on the panels when you push the button will be saved.

 

[BrawlMan]

@Old_Hunter_77. Starts at 1pm.

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