RetroGaming Shorts Part 101 - Lunar Landing
This hybrid of Frogger and Lunar Rescue is interesting to me because the obstacles move in orbital arcs rather than straight left-right. The arcs are jerky due to being restricted to 8x8 char tile movements, but the overall result is smooth enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUkIDDq4BR8
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RetroGaming Shorts Part 100 - Coup D'Etat
Old school BASIC inspiration! This game has evocative greyscale PETSCII art. You're trying to overthrow the government, with old school BASIC action where you simply input choices and numbers to spend/buy/etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK9XK89cQg0
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RetroGaming Shorts Part 098 - Angry Ninja
Awesome PETSCII art inspiration! This game really shows off what old school C64 PETSCII aesthetic can do. Just because you CAN fill up the whole screen doesn't mean you should. The small size of the map view gives an interesting sense of scale, and cropping the fights to just around the two (well animated!) characters makes combat feel more focused and deadly.
Oh yeah, the PETSCII animation of the melee fights is excellent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DefcRDflDv4
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RetroGaming Shorts Part 082 - Dungeons of Zedd
This modern action dungeon crawler is what we now call a "roguelike", due to its randomly generated dungeons. I think it has twin stick style WASD+IJKL controls, although the pacing of the game makes it look okay with 8 directional movement plus fire as well.
There are a lot of interesting game design details here, like the way you are limited in experience point gain between boss fights, and the way some enemy gangs respawn at their original spawn points when the last member of the gang is killed.
RetroGaming Shorts Part 081 - Chitei No Monster
Pixel art inspiration! Undergrand Monster has a distinctive look with blocky 160x100 resolution semi-block graphics and 4x4 pixel sprites.
While I love 8x8 pixel art, honestly 4x4 is a bit too little for expressiveness for me. Nevertheless, I present this example because it's rare and could serve as interesting inspiration.
RetroGaming Shorts Part 080 - Byter
"Byter" is the best name for an 8-bit Pac Man clone. That is all.
RetroGaming Shorts Part 079 - Camelot
Camelot is another sort of old school proto-CRPG, with a board wargame map of regions rather than a typical terrain map of squares. It has graphic adventure style graphics for showing encounters or non-encounters, resulting in sort of a hybrid between graphic text adventures (proto-point-and-clicks) and CRPG mechanics.
Anyway, it could be good game design inspiration for a hybrid point-and-click with CRPG mechanics ... even a graphical MUD or something ...
RetroGaming Shorts Part 078 - Black Crystal
Black Crystal is an example of old school proto-CRPG, with lots of death and only rare wins. It shows how you can do a CRPG with very limited resources.
RetroGaming Shorts Part 077 - The A Team
This game is so bad. It is so bad. I pity the fool that payed for this game.
I feel like there may be some retrogame design inspiration somewhere in here ... or maybe just what not to do ...
... or maybe it's just a train wreck worth gawking at.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3JG-xoYJYo
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RetroGaming Shorts Part 076 - Binary Parasite
Some puzzle game design inspiration! These puzzles basically revolve around trying to add up powers of 2 into the target number. Pretty easy peasy stuff for those of us who grew up manually adding binary in our head for POKE data.
RetroGaming Shorts Part 075 - Just Yer Basic Missile Command
This PD Missile Command clone is the version I played the most. The graphics looked really sharp for the time - 640x400 interlaced!
I love the smooth fast action. It's the sort of game design where the programmer clearly played it over and over and kept bumping up the speed and numbers of enemies to pump up the difficulty to taste.
The result is usually a game that is WAY too hard for me. But in this case, the generously large explosions kept things manageable to me.
As a result of this game, most Missile Command ports/clones look really sedate to me.
RetroGaming Shorts Part 074 - The Outfoxies
More game design/art inspiration! The Outfoxies is a fighting game sort of, but it's got a crazy gonzo action flick sensibility. There's just a lot of nuts stuff in there that maybe you wouldn't have thought about just because ... well, you just never thought it.
RetroGaming Shorts Part 073 - Lost Realms of Murkasada Episode II
This "RPG-lite" has lovely 8x8 pixel art. Lots of pixel art inspiration here! It may also serve as game design inspiration, showing how you don't really need complex RPG systems or even battle animation for a cool CRPG experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqEPzJYaQaQ
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RetroGaming Shorts Part 071 - Section Z
Section Z is an NES game nominally based on the arcade game, but Capcom dramatically redesigned the game for the home version. This video dives into the game design changes, and why the home version is much better and more interesting than the original arcade version.
Section Z mixes things up by having different scrolling speeds - some sections scroll so fast that you can do little more than dodge the terrain. Some sections scroll very slowly, turning them into endurance survival tests. Unfortunately none of the levels scroll at a rate of classic force scrolling games, like TRS-80 Sea Dragon, where you must judiciously use diagonal rearward movement and sprinting forward when you get the chance, to navigate the terrain. But, for a Section Z inspired game, you could add that into the design.
Another thing that makes Section Z particularly interesting is the way you choose the next section to go to. Unfortunately, it does not include any sort of "automap" feature, but if you design a Section Z inspired game, you can include this. Without automap, Section Z only becomes playable with manual mapping. Bleh.
I'm not sure, but I may use both ideas with Rivers of Impossibility. Forced scrolling with different speeds allows interesting different player challenges, while keeping the basic game engine and graphics assets the same. The non-linear choices of which section to go to next all for a feeling of exploration while automap should alleviate the frustration of uselessly going in circles. The basic idea is that you need to seal off all of the spawn points in a level, so a "single pass" scrolling paradigm won't do. The player must be able to circle around to redo any sections as needed to seal off remaining spawn points.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPljIydOWOk
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RetroGaming Shorts Part 071 - Tank Wars
This is a game mechanic you see more often in board games, even though computers are ideally suited for it - preplotted movement.
Basically, you enter a sequence of movements, rather than just one at a time. And then they play out ... hopefully how you intended, but maybe not!
RetroGaming Shorts Part 070 - Battle Shark
More retro art/setting inspiration! Battle Shark wasn't popular enough to get home ports, so unless you happened to run across it in arcades you probably missed it. But the aesthetic is pretty interesting and different.
Submarine games were generally less common, but, say, the aesthetic of In the Hunt will feel familiar because of Metal Slug. Battle Shark's aesthetic is worth checking out.
RetroGaming Shorts Part 069 - Uchu Yohei
Art inspiration! Uchu Yohei has a quasi-vector graphics look. This aesthetic is suitable for all sorts of platforms, including just plain old modern "indie" games.
RetroGaming Shorts Part 068 - Beast of Eden
I love the cute 8x8 pixel art/animation of the beast and devil in this game.
RetroGaming Shorts Part 067 - Sea Route to India
A COMPUTE type in BASIC game of the Oregon Trail type, with nice little minigames, all in PETSCII.
I think it could serve as good inspiration for mobile game design and aesthetics. For example, the PETSCII map and travelogue "dot" movement gives a particularly effective feeling of scale and adventure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG5WvhyFp44
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RetroGaming Shorts Part 066 - Coil Cop
Thing on a Spring is a cute platformer where you control a cute cartoon creature with a springy pogo leg. Here in the USA, though, it was renamed Coil Cop and advertised by Epyx as part of its totally rad MAXX OUT series.
So look at the totally rad COP OUT magazine ad for Coil Cop. And then contrast with the cutesy gameplay. I still wish the game I imagined from the ad existed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwEiKJXPpMA
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