What the heck is on this $10 Retro Game handheld? Let’s find out!

[ShakeWell]

240. CARE BEAR

Candy, umbrellas and stars drop from above and you need to catch them. Just watch out for pineapples, because those bonk you and make you lose a life. This is apparently a clone of Kaboom! for Atari 2600, which Nice Code released as Mad Xmas, Angel, Dinosaur, Lucky Time, and Santa Claus.

The idea of playing a Kaboom!-a-like without an actual Atari paddle controller sounds like HELL.

The NES Gyruss is another one of those games that I’ve always wanted to play but never had the opportunity to.

I don’t think it’s the first game with the Ultra label, but it’s got to be among the first at the very least

I’m equally unsure if it’s supposed to be pronounced “Guy Russ” or “Geye Russ”

If only they'd made an ad that tells you, like some other shooters of the era.

I need to find (or make) that t-shirt, for real.

 

[Beowulf]

I need to find (or make) that t-shirt, for real.

As long as you don't get that haircut. I'm reeling that once upon a time, putting a guy with a mullet in an advertisement was considered a good thing.

 

[Phantoon]

As long as you don't get that haircut.

Don't listen to this man, do it

 

[Violentvixen]

A couple of my coworkers have mullets as of the last couple months. They both wanted to try one for years but were embarrassed. But with the pandemic they were able to grow their hair out and when people ask about it they can respond "oh it was a pandemic thing" and said no one seems to judge.

 

[Phantoon]

A couple of my coworkers have mullets as of the last couple months. They both wanted to try one for years but were embarrassed. But with the pandemic they were able to grow their hair out and when people ask about it they can respond "oh it was a pandemic thing" and said no one seems to judge.

I've steadily gone through a succession of beards and moustaches including (but not limited to) Lemmy from Motorhead, Village People and RAF waxed moustache. Great for derailing Zoom meetings!

 

[ShakeWell]

I don't have enough hair left to have the mullet, even if I wanted it.

 

[Kirin]

My hair's been long since 1995, it's just become less unusual during the pandemic. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Sarge]

I don't have enough hair left to have the mullet, even if I wanted it.

Haha, I could do a mullet, but it would look awful considering how little hair I have left on top.

 

[Phantoon]

Haha, I could do a mullet, but it would look awful considering how little hair I have left on top.

Yeah, mine would look increasingly Hulk Hogan

Which gives me a good idea for a moustache

 

[ShakeWell]

Rock the Hogan skullet and mustache, Phantoon!

 

[Sarge]

If I had enough hair left, I could totally go with the Nicolas Cage Con Air look. Been told I look a lot like him...

 

[Torzelbaum]

Rock the Hogan skullet and mustache, Phantoon!

brother!

 

[Beowulf]

249. HASSLE

You’re a fox-man, and you can shoot or throw grenades (which arc in a really weird way) at the other fox-men, the tanks, and the thumb-tacks that all attack you. You seem to be able to explore in several directions and get into your own tank, but the hitboxes and pathfinding are weird and the gray thumb-tacks are really aggressive. This is a hack of Front Line, which likely accounts for the hitbox issue.

250. HAYACHI SUPER IG

Is this Go? I can’t read the language and don’t recognize the game, and the name I have doesn’t turn up anything.

(That’s inauspicious for the halfway point, isn’t it?)

251. GAINER

Super Mario 16! Woo! We’re off to a great start for the back half of the list.

252. HELLO KITTY

Kitty has a hammer and a watering can, and you need to stun or knock away enemies long enough to water all the plants in each level. (Each plant needs enough waterings to sprout, and some of them sprout fruit that makes you temporarily invincible.) This is an adorable little puzzle-platformer once you figure out all the rules to it.

253. HOKUTONO KEN

This was the first Fist of the North Star game released in Japan, but the second one got localized to the US. It’s a primitive-looking (but fairly sound) side-scrolling beat-em-up. The dudes who split in half and then explode are…special. (I see how it’s referencing the source material, but recreating that as a common event in 8-bit graphics doesn’t quite work.) Dying takes you back to the beginning; which is frustrating because the stages are long and very repetitive.

 

[Dracula]

250. HAYACHI SUPER IG

Is this Go? I can’t read the language and don’t recognize the game, and the name I have doesn’t turn up anything.

Yep. The game is Igo Shinan, which translates to "Go Instructor." So I guess it teaches you how to play the game, or maybe presents you with specific puzzles. No idea where the menu title comes from.

252. HELLO KITTY

It's not this one, but there's another Hello Kitty game on FC I've been meaning to pick up for years. "Hello Kitty World." It's basically a Balloon Fight sequel!

253. HOKUTONO KEN

This and most other Hokuto no Ken games from the era have a bad rap but I think they're fun to pick up for a while. The first one on FC is obtuse in the way a lot of early FC games are, and I kind of like figuring out the weird hidden language the game wants you to speak. It's not player-friendly, though.

 

[Beowulf]

254. HYDLIDE

I remember being suckered by this game in elementary school: It’s a Zelda-like rpg, right? That sounds super exciting…except that it’s really primitive by the standards of when it reached the US, the controls are a bit obtuse, and you can’t save. I respect it as a trailblazer, but every time I try playing it I remember why I so rarely try playing it.

255. CLOSE QUARTERS

An incredibly hard first-person shooter. Most games you don’t die in the first five seconds of play. This has a weird 3D background and planes and bullets that fly at you and you need to hit them via a hard-to-see targeting box. This is a Nice Code game also released as Space Battle, Aimless, Airial Hero, and Pearl Harbor.

256. ICE HOCKEY

Sports games (as you may have guessed) aren’t so much my thing, but this seems like a pretty decent representation of ice hockey.

257. ICE OCEAN

Another in the grand collection of Nice Code casual games: You’re the mermaid and you can shoot bubbles upwards. If you hit the fish, they just respawn. You need to hit the ice shelf and cause chunks of ice to hit the fish, which then removes them. Removing all the fish this way clears the stage. You have to avoid touching the fish, anything they shoot at you, and the chunks of ice, because all of those kill you. This was also released as Icecap and Invincible Girl.

 

[FelixSH]

My only experience of Hydlide is the LP Octo did, in TT 2.0, long, long ago. It, uh, didn't seem particularly good.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Speaking as the very same Octo who wrote that LP, I really enjoyed it, but I was also using emulator tricks to make it more palatable.

The much more recent Fairune games (on 3DS and Switch, and probably elsewhere) does a far better job of taking what was so appealing about those games and streamlining them for modern audiences.

 

[Peklo]

Hydlide's a series probably forever consigned to ridicule and mockery in English-language spaces for its antiquity and audiences' tendency to look down on and ignore the context of what's not familiar to them (and the easy target of Virtual Hydlide's kitschy qualities) but it can never truly be overlooked for the pioneering and widely influential work that it was. Super Hydlide on Mega Drive is the most accessible, if any of these can be counted as such, to those curious and is a rather excellent conversion of the third game from the original trilogy. Virtual is also fantastic in its own way and not to be missed.

 

[Octopus Prime]

I recently read a pretty detailed article on Hydlide in general, and Virtual Hydlide in particular, as a matter of fact

 

[Dracula]

Yeah, part of the reason the west has no patience for Hydlide (at least on NES) is just a simple matter of poor timing. The three years between its original release on FC (1986) and its release on the NES (1989) might as well be three hundred years in terms of software advancements. There's no way a kid picking up Hydlide could fail to compare it against something like The Legend of Zelda or Final Fantasy, unless they had absolutely no frame of reference.

The same fate befell stuff like Xevious, Dragon Quest, Star Force... the early FC years compared to the later FC/NES years might as well be two different consoles.

 

[ShakeWell]

Hydlide's a series probably forever consigned to ridicule and mockery in English-language spaces for its antiquity and audiences' tendency to look down on and ignore the context of what's not familiar to them (and the easy target of Virtual Hydlide's kitschy qualities) but it can never truly be overlooked for the pioneering and widely influential work that it was. Super Hydlide on Mega Drive is the most accessible, if any of these can be counted as such, to those curious and is a rather excellent conversion of the third game from the original trilogy. Virtual is also fantastic in its own way and not to be missed.

Hydlide occupies the same space as stuff like Galaxian and the first Virtua Fighter to me. I understand it's foundational, it's important, but that understanding doesn't turn it into something fun. In the time of its original release, it shifted a paradigm, but I can appreciate that from a distance.

 

[Peklo]

Sure, but learning the context for something is the first step in developing a further relationship with it, and once you've covered the history of something you can begin to experience the material on its own terms, in the here and now. Maybe it doesn't all land but a game like Super is just a really solid and captivating console RPG of the time that gets held down by the wider reputation of its series, whether it's framed uncharitably or not. It was a larger entity than the most maligned example that reached some kind of notoriety in the outdated-on-release NES port of the first game, but then again, Dragon Quest's NES release laboured under similar publishing circumstances, and that game and series eventually escaped that stigma. You really have to feel for Hydlide a bit in contrast, as much as you can be sympathetic to a concept like a video game series.

 

[Beowulf]

My only experience of Hydlide is the LP Octo did, in TT 2.0, long, long ago. It, uh, didn't seem particularly good.

You can access it through the archive, which I was delighted to find, because either I missed it originally or I've completely forgotten it in the intervening 13 years.

Sure, but learning the context for something is the first step in developing a further relationship with it, and once you've covered the history of something you can begin to experience the material on its own terms, in the here and now. Maybe it doesn't all land but a game like Super is just a really solid and captivating console RPG of the time that gets held down by the wider reputation of its series, whether it's framed uncharitably or not. It was a larger entity than the most maligned example that reached some kind of notoriety in the outdated-on-release NES port of the first game, but then again, Dragon Quest's NES release laboured under similar publishing circumstances, and that game and series eventually escaped that stigma. You really have to feel for Hydlide a bit in contrast, as much as you can be sympathetic to a concept like a video game series.

I can appreciate it for what and when it was, but I think this project is teaching me that even in a mid-80s mindset, there are games that I enjoy and games that I just can't get into. I loved the original Dragon Warrior and I've been meaning to replay the remake; it's hella grindy but it it has nostalgia value and I can appreciate what it trailblazed at the time. And Zelda is still excellent to this day, on pure merits. But Hydlide...nope. Alas!

 

[Phantoon]

I definitely agree that you have to try to approach a game in its historical context, but often with truly foundational early texts that's really hard. If they influenced a whole genre I'll likely have played later clones or sequels that took its ideas and improved on them. So not thinking something like "Ys but less good" is difficult.

 

[Octopus Prime]

You can access it through the archive, which I was delighted to find, because either I missed it originally or I've completely forgotten it in the intervening 13 years.


I can appreciate it for what and when it was, but I think this project is teaching me that even in a mid-80s mindset, there are games that I enjoy and games that I just can't get into. I loved the original Dragon Warrior and I've been meaning to replay the remake; it's hella grindy but it it has nostalgia value and I can appreciate what it trailblazed at the time. And Zelda is still excellent to this day, on pure merits. But Hydlide...nope. Alas!

Re-reading that LP

Wow... umm...

I used some language I would not use today

 

[Phantoon]

I'd hope we've all grown since then!

 

[Dracula]

I loved the original Dragon Warrior and I've been meaning to replay the remake; it's hella grindy but it it has nostalgia value and I can appreciate what it trailblazed at the time.

Just to encourage this line of thinking, I only played the original Dragon Quest for the first time a few years ago, and I found that I had no need to grind until the final dungeon. Since different folks have different opinions of what "grinding" entails, what I mean here is, it was mathematically impossible for me to defeat the final boss unless I walked in a circle and defeated the same enemies over and over until I gained a few levels. Up to that point, simply proceeding through the game and returning to town when I had to heal was enough to gain the XP I needed.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Hydlide in particular literally can not be played without lots of grinding; and ducking away and waiting forever for your health to regenerate.

A fast forward option makes this less untenable

 

[Beowulf]

Just to encourage this line of thinking, I only played the original Dragon Quest for the first time a few years ago, and I found that I had no need to grind until the final dungeon. Since different folks have different opinions of what "grinding" entails, what I mean here is, it was mathematically impossible for me to defeat the final boss unless I walked in a circle and defeated the same enemies over and over until I gained a few levels. Up to that point, simply proceeding through the game and returning to town when I had to heal was enough to gain the XP I needed.

I generally grind right out of the gate to gain a few levels and buy better equipment in Brecconary; then depending on how I'm doing I might grind before the green dragon or axe knight; but I'm also a less-strategic jrpg player and hate losing battles. But yeah, unless you spend half a dozen trips meticulously mapping the Dragonlord's Castle before you challenge him (...which is likely what the designers intended), you'll need to grind before you can beat him. I think I actually reached him without Healmore once, and yeah, you cannot beat him like that.

 

[Peklo]

I recently read a pretty detailed article on Hydlide in general, and Virtual Hydlide in particular, as a matter of fact

Found a moment to read through this. Really excellent and thorough article. Even if I don't convince anyone to play much Hydlide in any of its forms (and I'm not particularly trying to), this is highly recommended reading on the subject.