QCF: Retro Game Crunch

t's certainly no secret that in my faded, old, dying eyes, the golden years of gaming are now a bygone era with only reminders of its glory remaining in my collection of cartridges and CD ROMs that, for the most part, currently reside in the closet of my studio. Pixels and bits trump system specs and polygons. FOR LIFE!

To that end, I'm loving PC gaming more and more, especially with the increasing number of retro-inspired and old-school feeling titles on services such as Desura, Steam and the Humble Store. Sure, there are typically zero physical copies appearing for the PC platform for these games, but that doesn't make the games any less fun and often times, they are nice and affordable.

One game that is sure to strike the fancy of any retronaut like myself is Retro Game Crunch, a delightful collection of 3^rd generation-inspired titles, complete with the huge pixels, lo-fi sound and often-brutal difficulty old-timers like myself crave the ever-loving bits out of. Each title is totally different from the last yet somehow manages to stay just as fun and fresh between games. But for $15, is it worth your time? Get ready for a Ser Flash Seven-Part Machine-Gun review for Retro Game Crunch!

In Super! Clew Land Complete, you take on the role of a little...uh, blob thingy. At first, there's not much to do other than chowing down on smaller creatures and matching up the bits of food that make their way into your guy's stomach. But after just a few of these little morsels, you'll start to change, evolving into a more and more complex creature with more abilities such as jumping, swimming and eventually flying, as you go.

With these newfound abilities, more of the world can be explored and eventually you will come across gemstones, which not only demand your attention, but need collecting. Super! Clew Land Complete is very accommodating with its gameplay, but also has some sweet action based puzzles to complete in addition to finding all of the eatables throughout the game's rather expansive world.

With great music, deliciously retro sound and spot-on control, Super! Clew Land Complete really feels like the most polished and worthwhile game of the whole package at a glance and shouldn't disappoint fans of action platforming.

A lone robot wants nothing more than death, and it's up to you to lead him to it. But dying isn't quite enough. In End of Line, you take control of the most manic depressive of all of the robots ever, and it's your task to be the end of your production line. However, there are number of contraptions and other machinations that will prevent your demise so long as they remain able to do so.

In this action-puzzle game, making sure everything is disabled before destroying your very being is tantamount to success. More than a little thought and ingenuity will be needed to ensure you can never be rebooted again.

Granted, the subject matter here is more than just a little morbid, and it definitely feels counter-intuitive at first, but it's definitely a unique spin on the action puzzler you'll find nowhere else.

As the ground falls away, you have precious little time to make your next move; Gaia attack is a frantic action-platformer on a timer that requires fast reflexes and a little foresight to get to the top of a crumbling – or perhaps sinking – column-style stage set.

With a vast array of enemies and more than a little skill required to make it to the end of each level, Gaia Attack is a game that's great fun for fans of games like Kid Icarus.

If games like Metroid are ore your style, Paradox Lost is sure to resonate with you in a big way. Travelling through time and space, it’s your job to find and rescue hostages being held captive throughout the world that you'll traverse. To do so, you'll have to upgrade your gun, Metroid Style.

Different guns yield different effects; You have your typical killing shots, freeze shots can create platforms of your enemies, and time shots allow you to transport yourself to different time periods by shooting large crystals.

Everyone you meet has a bit to add to the story, and your overall score hinges on how many people you save. This game is perhaps the slowest burn of all, but the amount and quality of gameplay it houses is great.

A tiny pug with a huge amount of loyalty to his master who has been captured by aboriginal tribesmen in a strange land set out to save his best friend in Wub-Wub Wescue. With tons of stages and clever, music based gameplay straight from the vein of Nintendo's classic Donkey Kong Junior, Wub Wub Wescue is one challenging little game.

Making your way to your master is a tough road, but along the way, records can be collected that do anything from putting hostile creatures to sleep to slowing time itself. You can also bark at things to get them moving in order to traverse specific parts of stages (bats, for example, hate it when you bark at them.)

Wub-Wub Wescue was my third-favorite title within Retro game Crunch; it’s poised to appeal to the single-screen puzzle-platformer crowd!

Easily the weakest part of the Retro Game Crunch package is Brains and Hearts, a digital card game that is both mildly entertaining and fairly boring. This is the kind of game that can actually be played with an actual set of cards, and it has a pretty in-depth set of rules that take a while tolearn and even longer to master.

The only problem is that it ju7st feels like the cards are stacked against you and the computer takes great pride is destroying your efforts every time. Cheating bitch syndrome is what I call it. The good news is that skipping this one won't hurt Retro Game Crunch's overall value.

Aww yeah. Now this is what I'm talking about. Shuten (get it?) is a vertical shmup with ninjas! Yes! Shuten is a pretty ambitious shooting game that not only has a whole bunch of stages, but also some decent mechanics that make this a shmup great for the long haul.

With standard but sharp 8-way movement, the core to Shuten's gameplay is the ability to steal enemy abilities with your sward. These abilities are kept once the stage is completed and can be upgraded later. There are all kinds of great abilities like giant ball and chains, shurikens, kunai and more.

Collecting money from felled enemies allows for several different upgrades and even extends to be purchased for use in the progressively harder stages that become available. Completed stages can also be replayed with harder enemy patterns and bosses.

As far as shooting games go, this one is a pretty solid winner and rounds out Retro game Crunch rather well.

In the end, Retro Game Crunch is a collection any retronaut enthusiast such as myself, should have on their hard drive without hesitation. The homages they to their classic source material is fantastic and really makes each one – save for maybe Brains and Hearts – feel like solid evolutions of their respective genres without the flash that these days is more or less a distraction from broken mechanics and ho-hum gameplay. Buy it with confidence!