What a fun concept, a little grab bag of NES games that never existed!

I love the Japanese TV show Game Center CX, where comedian Shinya Arino is tasked with completing retro games, leading to marathon sessions of struggle and, occasionally, triumph. Thanks to the work of dedicated fans many episodes have been fansubbed. Officially localised releases are scant and unfortunately butcher the broadcasts, removing the charming extra segments. When they finally made a game of their own, it also got localised, to mixed results.

The game itself has little to do with the show. It’s more about capturing the feeling of gaming at home in 80s Japan; the bottom screen permanently shows your own character sitting in the tatami room of a young Arino. He shares anecdotes with you, offers laments, and provides you with magazines full of tips and cheats. It’s a really fun framing device that fills the game with a nostalgic atmosphere.

The top screen, meanwhile, is where you play the 8 fictionalised games while completing the “challenges” of the title, given by a mocking, digital, future version of Arino. These are a series of tasks such as complete this or that level, beat this many enemies, etc. They usually aren’t too difficult and provide a framework for introducing you to the concepts of the games before unlocking them for freeplay. Cheats are usually allowed, which is nice and can help if you’re not au fait with the genre in question. At one point Arino even buys a turbo controller, which makes rapid-firing in the second shmup easier.

But what about the games? Much like Shovel Knight, they ape Famicom games while ignoring limitations like sprite flickering, they mix and match conventions, and are informed by some elements of modern game design. But they do deliberately evoke specific trends of the era, some of which haven’t aged too well. That’s kind of the point though, to create new retro-style experiences, and it’s very successful at that.

The games include a blatant Galaga clone, a more advanced Compile-style shooter, two simple action platformer iterations based on Jaleco’s Ninja Jajamaru-kun, a top-down racer (and a special limited contest-prize product-placement variation), a Dragon Quest clone, and a nonlinear Ninja Gaiden-style game. It’s kind of set in a universe where the games they’re imitating don’t exist, so they have fun with parodying real-world circumstances in Arino’s dialogue and the pages of the magazines (such as repeated delays to the RPG, or the proliferation of rumours). They’re all really cool, well-made pastiches, and I had fun with some of them in the final challenge of completing each game, but opted out of the more frustrating or tedious ones.

I played the Xseed North American release, and the localisation is a little odd. They didn’t change the living room, which is very obviously in Japanese style with a Famicom, or the shape of the cartridges. All the text has been translated, as you might expect, and it’s a good job, but the attempts at reframing it to pretend it’s happening in America are odd. Like when the magazine references development staff, or talks about Takahashi Meijin style pro gamers, it doesn’t really land. This half-step makes for an obvious disconnect; I’d prefer a more authentic acknowledgement of the Japanese origin.

Overall it’s a really neat little package, sort of like the NES Remix games which turn old games into minigame challenges, except with brand-new old games that never existed. And the nostalgic atmosphere on top with schoolyard gossip, magazines, and consulting manuals mid-game—not to mention Arino’s spoken interjections over your gameplay—are such a fun layer over the experience. Cool stuff.