Table of Contents
Yo I’m posting this issue of Pushing Buttons late, because I’ve become obsessed with a 1985 strategy game about warring dinosaur armies. It’s called Avianos and is part of an anthology of 50 games created in the 1980s by a little-known but influential developer, UFO Soft.
A quick note: UFO Soft is fictional. All the games in this collection were created by a small group of modern developers. This anthology, UFO 50 (out today), is also a tribute to the imaginary history of 1980s gaming. and A true story of 1980s gaming. It flawlessly mimics the look, feel, and experimental creativity of the era, without the technical limitations.
These games aren’t minigames, they’re substantial. I’ve played a Metroid-style space adventure for over an hour now, and I don’t think I’m anywhere near completing it. did Completing the dinosaur war game, and it took me an entire morning. I’m currently stuck halfway through a game in which you have to guide a tiny chameleon through levels swarming with predators. Many are multiplayer; there are sports, strategy, side-scrolling shooters, puzzles, and a GTA-style top-down racing game Crazy Taxi, in which you have to deliver onions. They’re inspired by the gaming history of the 80s, but they’re not limited to it: there are genres here that didn’t exist back then, and none of them go so far as to simulate loading a game from a floppy disk – although the first game in the collection, Barbuta (1982), does make that lovely whirring sound every time you enter a new screen.
The sheer devotion that goes into this game is astonishing. Every time you load a new game, a simple animation shows dust coming off the disk. You could really believe you were exploring a collection of unusual games from 40 years ago, with their strange colours and two-frame animations, even the movement patterns of enemies and those jumps from early platformers that seem to be weighed down by extra gravity. I wasn’t alive at that time in gaming history, so I asked my partner, who was, to do an authenticity check: besides the fact that some of these games are “too good for the 80s”, he says they remind him more of the Amiga style. From 1983 to 1989, they get more and more sophisticated: it’s like you’re watching the evolution of games at a fascinating time in their history, except it’s all made up.
I’ve played maybe 20 of them so far. As anyone who’s ever played arcade emulation knows, when you have so many games available, the temptation is to play each one for about 90 seconds before forgetting about it. But that would be a tragedy here, because most of these are deeper than a two-minute arcade caper. If there’s one thing that unites all of them, it’s that you have to learn them by trial and error. There are very few instructions, beyond maybe a few lines of text on the title screen. During my first few attempts at each game, I had no idea what I was doing and died instantly. And you know what? refreshing.
It reminds me of Shovel Knight, the gorgeous retro-style platformer that took the best of 8-bit games and turned them into something new. But Shovel Knight is just one game, and this is, once again, fifty One of them, an RPG called Grimstone, is 20 hours long, according to lead developer Derek Yu. Yu, who is most famous for Spelunky (what a game!), worked with five other indie developers over nine years to create this anthology, and because each game is a passion project, each one feels personal, almost intimate. The scale and generosity of what they’ve created here is quietly astonishing.
When we interviewed Yu about UFO 50 a couple of months ago, he said that what most appealed to this small supergroup of developers was the “mystery and charm” of 1980s games. “You weren’t always sure what kind of experience awaited you, and that alone added an air of tension and excitement,” he said. “They weren’t afraid to let you get a little lost while playing. Despite the limitations of the hardware, they felt more adventurous in their design… The graphics weren’t realistic, but the world felt incredibly real to me.”
UFO 50 has given me that same feeling: each new game feels like a little mystery. Once you figure out how they work, little worlds start to open up to you, you see the imagination behind them, and you feel a connection to the developer who created them. I think it’s a feeling that anyone who played in the early days of the medium will recognize.
What to play?
The messenger is another superb indie game that feels like a lost classic from a bygone era. It’s a 16-bit action game with elements of Prince of Persia, Metroid, and, most obviously, Ninja Gaiden, but with the self-referential humor of the late 2010s. And while we’re on the subject: not enough people played Iconoclasts, a splendid platformer that was reminiscent of the Mega Drive with a more adventurous story than anything I played in the ’90s.
Available in: PC, Switch, PS4, Xbox One
Estimated playing time: 10-12 hours
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Block of questions
A question this week for readers, from Mate:
“I grew up playing countless first-person games, from Wolfenstein to Portal, without any issues. But in recent years, first-person games make me dizzy, often quickly, to the point where I’ve all but abandoned the genre. It’s the main reason I was quite disappointed with the game’s presentation of Indiana Jones. I think modern games with their shaky cameras and motion blur are probably to blame, but I was wondering if you or any of your readers have experienced something similar as adults, and any tips on overcoming it would be greatly appreciated.“
This is a surprisingly common problem. I’ve had a lot of people ask me the same question over the years. I’ve had it myself from time to time, with specific games. All modern games let you play around with the settings, adjusting motion blur, movement speed, field of view, and the visibility of the cursor in the center of the screen. One of these settings usually fixes the problem for me, but I’ll leave this question to the readers: does anyone have any more tips for Matt?
If you have a question for Question Block, or anything else to say about the newsletter, email us at pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.