EvaUnit02 on 18/10/2024 at 14:26
I remember in 1995 going over to a friend's house in primary school and he had a NES with one of those infamous bootleg 100 in 1 game carts. Was pretty cool.
On the big TV in the lounge they had hooked up a PS1. We played a Batman Forever beat 'em up which had photo/video scanned IRL people sprites like Mortal Kombat. I thought this game was pretty cool. We also played one of the Ridge Racers and I encountered the infamous Namco trademarked arcade game on the load screen.
Aja on 26/11/2024 at 04:01
I keep trying to type up a UFO 50 post because after putting it down for a couple weeks I'm back on board! But writing reviews for multiple games feels daunting, so I'll just ramble for a minute.
Magic Garden is great. It's simple but challenging, and the little syncopation in the music gives the impression that the fictional composer was trying to do something cool. That's kind of UFO 50 in a nutshell; the games are all good, but the real charm is the embedded story of a group of developers that honed their skills as they tried to realize more complex and creative ideas. I get the sense that there's some kind of meta mystery horror element (mostly because of the terminal), but I don't want to spoil that for myself yet.
I also really liked Night Manor, which made me want to seek out other NES point-and-click games. In fact, UFO 50 inspired me to try out some of the random 700-odd NES games in my emulator. I avoided licensed games but otherwise tried to pick ones whose title was an immediate turnoff. And I found some odd gems like Nightshade and Faxanadu, and it felt like playing a real-life UFO 50. I probably won't even sample all 700 games, but where I used to feel overwhelmed at the prospect, now it's exciting. I grew up with five NES games, and I decided early on that Nintendo made good stuff and most everything was worthless. But UFO 50 is attuning me to the possibility that imperfect games from that era are worth playing. As an adult who's spent most of his life hating the NES apart from Super Marios, this feels like a minor revelation.
I also love Waldorf; what an absurd, wonderful premise for a game, and it's atmosphere is incredibly dreamlike.
House Party I almost immediately wanted to quit (and I did), but I've been reading how popular it is, and henke loves it. It didn't really occur to me that it's a deckbuilder of sorts. I'll give it another shot.
henke on 26/11/2024 at 06:03
I also tried Nightshade (via Nintendo Switch Online) for the first time recently. It's hard to think of a single NES game with good writing, but Nightshade impressed me, it was funny in a Lucasarts-esque way. The actual puzzles were a tad cryptic for my liking tho, so I didn't play far.
House Party I think might be the most popular game in UFO 50? I feel like it's almost always included in peoples fave games lists. It's ok if you're not digging it tho, the great thing about this collection is that there's something for everyone and what folks gravitate towards varies a lot.
Also, yes, it's a deckbuilder. I don't like deckbuilders. But Party House does such a good job of disguising itself as NOT a deckbuilder, that by the time I noticed, I was hooked! The game tricked me! Cajoled me into having a good time!! :mad:
Aja on 26/11/2024 at 18:12
I don't like deckbuilders either except Balatro is probably my favourite game of 2024, so maybe I do after all!
Part of me feels compelled to complete every game in UFO 50. That would be absurd... wouldn't it?
demagogue on 26/11/2024 at 20:09
One of my favorite games I got this year is Dune Imperium (it's also making a lot of people's top game lists, so it's not just me), and it's also a deckbuilder that doesn't feel like one.
I think all of these examples work and don't feel like deckbuilders (well I don't know about Party House, talking about Dune & Balatro, but I'm guessing PH has this too), because the game is first about whatever the cards are doing, and the deckbuilding part is just a much deeper level of gaming what they're doing in the main game, and they can get really creative with it, playing with the structure of the game itself. This is getting off topic though! It does me sorrow.
Aja on 26/11/2024 at 23:30
Yeah, Balatro isn't about building the perfect deck, at least not at higher levels. It's about knowing how the jokers interact with each other and reacting to the obstacles each game throws at you. Maybe all good deckbuilders are like that. I always assumed they were more about collecting; in Balatro your deck is wiped out at the end of every game anyway.
henke on 25/12/2024 at 10:44
Finished another couple games in the collection this Christmas vacation.
Mortol 2 - part 1 is one of my UFO 50 faves, the sequel expands the scope in ambitious ways. It's a 2D platformer set in one big open map where you need to infiltrate a castle and destroy 4 big hearts. You have 99 lives, which sounds like a lot, but your guys die in one hit and you'll regularly need to sacrifice units to unlock certain paths into the castle. 1 playthrough lasts roughly half an hour, and you'll need to play it a few times to learn the layout and optimal routes before having a decent chance at victory. A very compelling game, but I still prefer the sleekness of its predecessor.
Vainger - a gravity-flipping metroidvania where you're investigating what's gone wrong in a space station. You're a soldier in a cool space suit, with a big upgradeable laser gun, running around blasting monsters and exploring. This might actually be the game in the collection with the most pure "gamer appeal", so I'm surprised to not have heard much chatter about it. Then again, that might also be just because it's not terribly innovative or interesting. It's just a really dang solid metroidvania. Good game!
That brings my gold cartridges up to 10! :cool:
edit: make that 11 cartridges. Just finished WARPTANK, just like that. Game select screen says I've only finished 63% of it, so I figured I had a lot more to go, but guess that's just optional stuff. Anyway, good game!
henke on 11/1/2025 at 12:06
Nabbed gold cartridges 12 & 13!
The Big Bell Race - pretty simple 2D hover racing game. I'd heard this is one of the easiest games to finish and yeah it just might be. Total playtime: 17m
Avianos - The first time I played this dinosaur-themed turn based strategy game it felt too complex to bother with and I bounced off it after a few minutes. But I've been hearing a lot of good things about it so I decided to revisit. Initially it's kinda intimidating because there's no tutorial so you just gotta play it to see what everything does and fail miserably once before you can really give it a proper go, but after 15 min I had a pretty good grip on the mechanics, and you only need to finish 3 levels to complete the campaign. It turned out to be a very compelling game with a lot of systems and mechanics packed into a tight package. Total playtime: 2h15m
henke on 12/1/2025 at 18:21
Spent so much time with Avianos this weekend that it became my most played (8h47m) AND my first cherry!
Inline Image:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/mdogie6yh2ojssxhazb67/UFO50_prog.jpg?rlkey=q1i6cflgs4k29tuv8khi0tj9o&raw=1I normally haven't been interested in the cherries, because most of them require meeting optional hardcore objectives which feel like getting a cherry for the sake of getting a cherry. But with Avianos the cherry condition was completing 5 extra levels after finishing the main 3-level campaign, and I wanted more Avianos, so sure! The final level was brutal, probably took me 3 hours and really made me think deeper about the mechanics. Anyway, fantastic lil TBS.
Revised Top 5:
Party House
Mortol
Avianos
Lords of Disconia
Mooncat
Aja on 13/1/2025 at 23:07
I'm still playing it, and my tastes have shifted. Some of the games I brushed off initially are now favourites.
Specifically
Overbold. I love this game. And I hate it. I haven't wanted to throw my controller across the room like this since Demon's Souls, but I keep coming back anyway. I got the gold, and now I'm gonna get the cherry.
I also got the cherry on
Velgress, another one that felt frustrating at first but quickly activated whatever stupid part of my brain compels me to improve at pointless tasks (see also: Overbold).
Here's my progress screencap.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/mzKweDD.jpegAnd my current top five:
Night Manor
Overbold
Magic Garden
Velgress
Pilot Quest
Looking at that list it feels like it's missing something. Weren't there other games that I liked even more? But maybe that's the UFO50 effect. It's not about individual games; it's about the experience of playing all of them.
