Day 130: Super Tux Kart

Ten years ago, Super Tux Kart would have been a perfect substitute for Mario Kart 64. It looks and feels every bit the mid nineties PC games it wants to be. Which makes it so unfortunate that it is currently 2008.


With several well done and very creative tracks, a nice assortment of characters and power ups and challenges to complete, Super Tux Kart is the sort of game I would have paid money for back in the days when everyone but me owned a Nintendo 64. Now it simply looks outdated. And not outdated enough to be retro cool, either. Just old.

It has a lot of features that could make it a great game. There's support for up to four players, but no control pad support, so you and three of your friends could huddle around the keyboard and invade each other's personal space and interfere with each other's driving. Up to ten karts can be in a single race, at the cost of severe slowdown to gameplay.


When you get right down to it, Super Tux Kart is just another kart racer. If I didn't already have so many at my disposal, I might be more impressed with but, frankly, it does nothing to distinguish itself from the crowd.

Day 105: It's the Big Game, Charlie Brown

There are two parts to It's the Big Game Charlie Brown. The first part is rounding up kids for the baseball team. That part's boring, so I'm going to skip to the baseball part, which is awful.


The game's mouse only control system is unwieldy, which is totally inexplicable as the much older Backyard Baseball used a similar mouse only system and was not only playable but actually enjoyable. The game is further hindered by the fact that the Peanuts gang, with the exceptions of Peppermint Patty and Snoopy, are terrible ballplayers. Charlie Brown is hard pressed to throw a ball from the mound to first in time to beat the runner, and when he does get it there he pulls Linus off the bag.

Innkeeper's wives may not have naturally curly hair, but center fielders apparently do. Freida has a cannon. She was regularly able to throw batters out at first base from deep center field. It's a handy skill to have since Chuck's only pitch seems to be the meatball.

If the controls don't make you quit before the first inning's over, the interesting interpretation of the rules of baseball just might. Getting a runner to take an extra base is sometimes difficult with the mouse, so the game discourages it by allowing runners to be forced out at apparently any base when in transit.

This being a game meant for small children, the argument seems to be that it's OK for it to be awful, since they won't know the difference anyway.

Your children deserve better.

Day 100: Torus Trooper

Torus Trooper could've had a story. Something about transdimensional aliens attacking through wormholes. It would have fit nicely on the first page of the instruction manual. The page everyone skips over on the way to the page that tells which buttons fire which weapons. That story was never written though, because all you need to know about Torus Trooper is go fast and shoot things.


This is a game that rewards speed. The faster you go, the more powerful your weapons. The more powerful your weapons, the more things you can kill. The more things you can kill, the quicker you get through each level. The quicker you get through each level, the more time you have for the next.

Like a cross between Tempest and Turbo, Torus Trooper sends you blasting your way through a cosmic roller coaster. Dying only matters because it takes away precious seconds and when the timer hits zero, the game is over.

This is a nice, retro style shooter that feels familiar without feeling like it blatantly ripped something off. The sense of speed is impressive, aided by a pounding soundtrack. Torus Trooper definitely does it right.

Day 98: Kumoon

First person and second person shooters don't really appeal to me. Even those that I like I only like for the multiplayer mode, which suggests that I enjoy shooting my friends more that I enjoy the game specifically. Now I've got this second person shooter with no enemies, no multiplayer and to top it all off, it penalizes me every time I fire my weapon. Must be some kind of cutesy clever puzzle game.

Which is exactly what Kumoon is. Like Boom Blox, the goal is to knock a bunch of stuff over, but instead of using the Wii's motion controls, Kumoon uses standard shooter keyboard and mouse controls. And since each shot after the first penalizes you, you want to break as much stuff as possible with as few shots as possible.

Oh, I also dislike peeps, which the fuzzy chick protagonist strongly resembles. That's why this one's already in the trash can.

Day 77: Chromatron

There's something to be said for making an entire video game using just four images and a few lines. That something is "You lazy bastard!" Look, buddy, this isn't 1979. No one wants to play your clever little thinky think game. They want stuff to blow up, so go back to your little nerd cave and come up with some zombies or something to train those lasers on, or better yet, something that hasn't been completely over played over the last three years, like werewolves. There hasn't been a good werewolf movie since Teen Wolf Too, and I can't think of any major werewolf video games offhand.

So here's how it will work. We'll take your lasers and mirrors and use them to set traps for werewolves. I'm not sure it there are any established standards for werewolf bait. Scantily clad women seem to work for most monsters and will boost the game's appeal to pubescent males. Players will have to position mirrors as to create a barrier around the maiden before the werewolf can get to her. This will keep the thinky think aspect and add either a gruesome werewolf feeding or a bloody werewolf death.

All of this, of course, hinges on whether or not werewolves are vulnerable to lasers. I haven't been able to locate any research on the matter, but I suspect a laser would beat any mystical creature any day.

Day 70: Ultratron

So impressed was I with Puppy Games' reimagining of Space Invaders that I decided to try their take on Robotron. I did. I was disappointed. Ultratron misses the mark in just about every way imaginable. Yes, you still have to destroy swarms of robots and yes you can still walk in one direction while shooting in another thanks to the keyboard/mouse control combination which works but not as instinctively as the double joystick configuration.


Rather than appear all at once, enemy waves appear a few robots at a time. Even in the higher levels this allows you to stay relatively in control of the situation. In fact, the only times I ever really felt in danger were the times I lost track of the position of my mouse in relation to the screen. Again, this is where dual joystick control wold have come in handy.

The only reason I find myself returning to Ultratron is to make sure I didn't miss something. Is there an option to play with a control pad? Can't find one. Is the human family there and I just didn't recognize them? Doesn't look like it. Like Titan Attacks, Ultratron has a very cool retro look, it just doesn't have cool retro game play to go along with it.

Day 69: Titan Attacks

Forty-one days ago I gave the creator of Space Battle flack for that uninspired name and the uninspired Space Invaders clone saddled with that uninspired name. Titan Attacks is an inspired Space Invaders clone. Just look at it. It's gorgeous.


Okay, so Titan Attacks has the advantage of running on modern hardware instead of the Atari 2600. Just because it's on new hardware doesn't automatically make it good. Ever heard of Ninjabread Man? My point.

Titan Attacks is good because it stays faithful to the original concept and cranks it up. The invaders are faster and more vicious. Their attacks are more varied. Plus, just like in the mega popular and not even slightly over played Guitar Hero series, you can buy stuff.

When it comes to video games, the simplest concepts are usually the best. Titan Attacks goes a long way in proving that argument.

Day 45: Gravitation

If you're looking for proof that video games have made the leap from entertaining diversion to art, I suggest Gravitation. Playing Gravitation is a lot like watching one of those movies critics say is great but is really just two hours of uppity smart people sitting around talking about how much they hate themselves. You sit through it and tell all your friends you thought it was great so they won't think you're an idiot, but you really would've rather watched Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. Again.


The instructions are appropriately vague. Use the arrow keys to move, the space bar to jump. Everything else is up to the player to figure out and interpret. I don't want to do that for you, so I'll just leave you with the link to the developer's website.

Day 8: Ninja Quest

I have a theory about role-playing games. In good role-playing games, the player fights enemies that fit in the game's genre. Sword and sorcery games have goblins and dragons. Sci-fi games have cyborgs and aliens. Bad role-playing games try to distract players from their badness by using out of place enemies. Robots in a sword and sorcery game for example. Or enemies that aren't even enemies, like dining room furniture. In really bad role-playing games, the player fights clip art.


Ninja Quest is a really bad role-playing game. There's nothing very "ninja" about it at all. It's a typical first-person dungeon crawl, a la Wizardry, with a clumsy interface and a fervent belief that putting the word "zombie" in front of any random word automatically makes it funny.

Right away Ninja Quest gave me problems. I had to change my computer's screen resolution to 1280 x 960 just to see the whole thing. That's a lot of screen for a text adventure with pictures. Typing which direction I want to move is fine. It's quaint. It's retro. Having to type the exact right thing in order to pick up an item is annoying. Upon finding a grenade lying on the dungeon floor, I typed "get grenade." Nothing happened. "Get 1 grenade." Nothing. "Get 1 grenades." I am now the proud owner of 1 hand grenades.

When an encounter begins, a new window appears asking me to select which weapon I want to use by entering a number from 0 to 5. This window completely overrides the regular command input, meaning that I don't have the option to flee a battle. Having players type "use hatchet" would work just as well and give them more options.

The images of the so-called zombies look sloppy. Everything in the game has a jagged white edge. Some of them are photos, some are drawings, all of them look out of place in front of that Apple II green background and none of them have been zombified in the least. Photoshop is your friend. A few minutes turning things green and adding a little decay would have improved the look and enhanced the retro flavor.

I guess you get what you pay for, and Ninja Quest is freeware.