The retro games of the year 2024
The best of the games I played for the first time in 2024, that weren't from 2024.
I’ve wrapped on featuring and reviewing retro video games for the rest of 2024, so, it’s time to look at the best of the ones I played for the first time in the last year. Not every one of these entries is necessarily retro: the only qualifications are that they (1) didn’t release in 2024 and (2) I hadn’t played them before, but now I have.
This isn’t a ranked list, but it’s not the entirety of my Not 2024 playing, either: a much larger sample has been reduced to the 15 best of the bunch. And the list is not every non-2024 game I played during the year: it’s just meant to be the ones I played for the very first time in 2024. (Or, as is the case a couple of times, seriously played in 2024.)
I’ll include developer, publisher, platform, and release year info for each game, too, but I’m restricting all of that, release year aside, to just the actual version I played instead of trying to be all-encompassing. And if I already wrote about the game here, I’m going to share a key section and link to my full write-up. Let’s get to it.
Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco
Sony Playstation
Original release year: 1999
Not the North American release of Ace Combat 3, no, but the Japanese one, specifically. They’re completely different games, as I got into at length back in February:
Compare this to the North American version, which (1) has no opening cutscene to set the scene and instead uses a short wall of text to intro you, (2) does not have you name a character, (3) removes the glossary of terms because the ultra-simplified story doesn’t require it, (4) cut out all of the named wingmen and allies and such, leaving you with a very basic story and a rogue AI to contend with, and (5) removes all of the branching pathways. Instead of 52 total missions that can all be experienced by playing the game repeatedly with different decisions being made to open up new pathways, you get 36 total in a more linear fashion. It’s not a terrible design choice, in the sense it was the choice that brought us Ace Combat 2, but Electrosphere, at least in Japan, wasn’t trying to be Ace Combat 2. It was trying to be Ace Combat 3, which was vastly different. The North American Ace Combat 3 doesn’t work as well as its predecessor, as Ace Combat 2 avoiding narrative for vibes worked due to intentional design, from levels to soundtrack choices, that reflected that choice. The same care wasn't put into narrative-less vibes for Electrosphere, but why would it have been? Namco built the game around a narrative and its themes, made it central, made it vital. Which is great… unless you cut it. The English language Ace Combat 3 is still fun to play even in this form, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a much emptier experience than originally intended.
Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2
Developer: Taito
Publisher: Taito
Arcade
Original release year: 1987
Heading into 2024, I was plenty familiar with Bubble Bobble, and Puzzle Bobble is one of the franchises I own the most different releases for (even though I’m pretty average at it as far as I can tell), but had somehow never explored many of the Bubble Bobble spin-off sequels. This year was the start of fixing that, with Rainbow Islands:
I cannot stress enough that Rainbow Islands might be bright and colorful and sound sugary sweet, but it is hard. You can make some progress for a bit, and then have everything unravel at once, even if you aren’t actively trying to unlock the bonus islands or the super secret items or what have you. It’s a killer platformer, though, full of real depth and replayability, and one of those games that makes you wonder how they ever managed to do all of that with just two buttons. It’s that simplicity that allowed for the hidden layers of depth, though, this having to start from something so basic and then build on it, that makes Rainbow Islands continue to shine nearly 40 years on. If you’ve never given it a whirl, you’re missing out, because it’s an exceptional piece of Taito’s history that remains as much of a joy now as it was back then, even if it is actively trying to kill you long before the flood waters come.
Gensei Suikoden
Developer: Compile
Publisher: Compile
Switch
Original release year: 1997 (Windows 95)
Just before the close of 2023, a Compile Disk Station game — Gensei Suikoden — got its first international release 26 years after it first came out. It’s a wonderful little RPG, stuffed with bits and gags and a “brisk” turn-based battle system deep enough that most of the game’s runtime is spent teaching it to you. I actually played this at the very end of 2023, but so late in the game that I’m carrying it over even though technically it should be ineligible since this was the first international release. I’m breaking my own rules so that it gets mentioned at all.
To rewind to the beginning for a second, this is a game that made its title into a confusing pun just because it’d be funny. You’ll see visual gags everywhere, like famous martial artists very much in the Similar To But Legally Distinct From realm such as Street Fighter’s Ryu or Tekken’s Heihachi Mishima. Smash is a bit of a pervert whose most prized possession is a girly magazine, and he also thinks a clean bathroom is basically the greatest thing in the world. It breaks the fourth wall on occasion, such as when Ataho says to the player, “If you leave here, you won’t be able to come back, so choose wisely!” only for Smash to respond with, “…Who are you talking to?” It’s a strange game, but said in a complimentary way, so why would you not want to see all it has to offer, especially when the runtime is so short for an RPG?
Max Payne
Developer: Remedy
Publisher: Rockstar
Xbox
Original release year: 2001
I don’t know how I’m as super into Remedy as I am and yet hadn’t played Max Payne until this year. It’s a real mystery, but at least it’s over with at this point. Man, what a game. I’m looking forward to playing the sequel in 2025.
Max Payne is not subtle. This is true whether you’re talking about the game or the character. And the sheer volume of killing and violence for a story where you’re playing as someone on the side of the police might feel a little off (as far as media depictions of American police go, I mean, not the real thing) if not for the flashing neon sign that displays “John Woo” on it contained within, mixed with the inherent cynicism and moral ambiguity of noir. Are we supposed to feel that Max Payne is justified in his killing of hundreds of members of mafia and rogue federal agents? That part actually doesn’t matter so much, as the point of the story is that Max himself feels that he’s justified, and cares for little else at this point besides revenge and the answers that will come with it. Which is to say, people who consume their media by assuming that, for instance, a game developer is saying, “what the protagonist did is Morally Good and we approve of it” just because it’s what happens in the story they’re telling might struggle with the likes of Max Payne, which is unapologetically itself from start to finish. But if you’re capable of understanding that the telling of a story is not the same thing as approving of the actions of its characters, then Max Payne has plenty to offer you, even over two decades later.
Grindstormer/V-V
Developer: Toaplan
Publisher: Toaplan
Arcade, Steam
Original release year: 1993
I’d dabbled in Grindstormer before, but it never fully grabbed me enough to see it through. When I finally got around to playing it in its original — and superior — Japanese form of V-V, however, then it clicked. It’s even more of a proto-bullet hell game than its successor, Batsugun, and not quite as good, but it’s close enough to be memorable.
V-V isn’t a sequel or even successor to Slap Fight, so much as that Slap Fight was built around an underutilized system that could be brought to the present by this new-look Toaplan development team. It’s both the only thing like it (in the vertical, non-Gradius space), and a completely different experience than its inspiration. V-V limits how many extends you can acquire, with them coming only at 300,000 and 800,000 points, along with the rare one-up item you might find: this makes continuing on after the game’s six stages within its loops far more challenging than in other Toaplan titles, where the extends get harder to come by, but do keep coming. The enemy variety and behaviors are significantly different in these two games, the way you play is new despite obviously taking inspiration from Slap Fight: they’re unrelated, really, except for that one feature with the upgrade bar, in the same way that Gradius and Slap Fight are unrelated outside of that. Slap Fight has just as much in common with Data East’s B-Wings, due to the ship changing shape and size as it powers up, as it does Gradius, in the same way V-V really has more in common with games that didn’t yet exist than it does Slap Fight. The inspiration drawn from it, though, is also very clear: the options in V-V are even named “WING,” which seems like it’s certainly a nod to Slap Fight!
Pipi & Bibi’s
Developer: Toaplan
Publisher: Toaplan
Arcade, Steam
Original release year: 1991
Another new-to-me from Toaplan, this time courtesy of playing the original through MAME, and the re-release sans eroge content through Steam. Pipi & Bibi’s/Spy Bros. is a weird, weird game, but it sure is a great time.
Now, if you want to be able to see any of this giantess fetish stuff, you’re going to have to learn to play the game. You play as one of two spies, armed with long-range stun guns. You use those stun guns to temporarily knock out guards, or, if you’re lucky and they have nowhere to land when they fall from one floor to the next, knock them right out of the level for a slightly longer time. You can stun them for just a second and try to sneak by them before they wake back up, or hold the button down until they slip to the floor below, but be warned: you get points for for the latter, but you also might create situations in which you’ve overloaded a floor with baddies who will swarm you faster than you can stun them. Be mindful of where they’re dropping these stunned guards off at, and plan your paths instead of just going any which way.
The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails
Developer: Falcom
Publisher: NIS
Steam
Original release year: 2012
Originally released in Japan in 2012, The Legend of Nayuta didn’t make it to North America until late-2023, and I didn’t get to it until early 2024. It’s something of a blend of styles from various Falcom properties — not quite Ys, not quite Trails, not quite Tokyo Xanadu — but you get a little bit of everything all put together into something new. It’s very dungeon-heavy, but also platform-heavy, and with loads and loads of action RPG goodness. If you’re into Falcom’s stuff at all, this one comes highly recommended: it’s not their greatest work by any means, but I still had a lot of fun, and wouldn’t be mad at a continuation of the series or, at least, the specific style found within.
Tetrisphere
Developer: H20 Entertainment
Publisher: Nintendo
Nintendo 64
Original release year: 1997
I’ve had a copy of Tetrisphere for some time now, but didn’t dig in until this year. It hooked me, and fast, and not just because the soundtrack is killer. There’s some fascinating gameplay here, worthy of re-release or a sequel or whatever it takes to get it back in the spotlight.
That’s a real shame, but it’s absolutely worth unearthing a copy and playing it. You can listen to Neil Voss’ fantastic soundtrack while you wait for it to arrive, or really, while doing anything. The electronic-heavy soundtrack was so obviously great even at the time that it received a spotlight feature, “Composing Tetrisphere,” at IGN 10 months after the game released for the N64. And if you’ve played Tetrisphere before, or at least hit play on the embedded soundtrack video from earlier in this feature, you already know why IGN bothered to tell that story. It’s the perfect marriage of sound and sight, and you get to pick whichever of the game’s many, many bangers you want to be playing as you puzzle solve from the main menu, too. Check them all out, even if you’ve got an immediate favorite. You’ll find others.
Mad Max
Developer: Avalanche Studios
Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Xbox One
Original release year: 2015
One of those games where I cannot believe that I didn’t play it when it first came out. I love Mad Max! Fury Road is one of my favorite movies! Luckily, as I waited for Fury Road’s prequel, Furiosa, to hit theaters, I remembered that Mad Max was still out there waiting for me. And am I glad that I did.
Now, if you’ve been reading for a while, you know that I tire of endless open-world games. Of the endless scope that can’t necessarily justify itself with things to do, with the mess of icons that litter these maps, with the gameplay systems designed to force you to play an unwieldy percentage of these games in order to progress against enemies you might not even feel like fighting against. Of the sameness, from game to game, the Ubisoftification of it all. Mad Max lacks these issues: it’s an open-world game with an expansive map, yes, but it has more in common with, say, Breath of the Wild than with a modern Assassin’s Creed. There are vast, open spaces with little in them, with few distractions to take you off the path that you’re on. The distractions that are there, though, are compelling ones, borne out of curiosity to see what’s over that ridge, that dune, rather than being just another icon on a map full of them. The empty space is inviting rather than daunting: it wouldn’t work as well with a smaller, crunched map, but since you spend your time driving through a massive chunk of what used to be Australia and also the Pacific Ocean, it absolutely does.
The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle
Developer: Kemco
Publisher: Seika
NES
Original release year: 1990
When I started playing The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle, my plan was to just play a few levels and see what the deal was, then put it away for later. I ended up playing almost the entire thing in one go instead, whoops.
You see, The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle, which did not release in Japan, released in Japan before it released in North America. That sentence makes sense, I promise! That’s because The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle, when it came out in February of ‘89 for the Famicom Disk System, was known as Roger Rabbit. And in September, when it released for the Game Boy in Japan, it was known as Mickey Mouse. Not “Roger Rabbit Crazy Castle” or “Mickey Mouse Crazy Castle,” just Roger Rabbit, and Mickey Mouse. North America received the same game on the NES that same September, where it was known as The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle.
Puzzle & Action: Ichidant-R
Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega
Switch (Arcade)
Original release year: 1994
Speaking of games I didn’t expect to play all of, this is one my wife chose to get through when we were taking turns picking puzzle games to compete against each other in. I can’t recommend enough picking up the Sega Ages version on Switch and playing it cooperatively like we did.
The way the game handles this repetition is by ensuring that every repeat play is more difficult than the last one. Those UFOs you shot down in an earlier stage? Now they move even more erratically, and also have more health. And no, you don’t have more time to get the job done now, either. More frogs to complicate the lily pad puzzle. More coins to pick up with the train whose tracks you’re manipulating to lead it to said coins. More symphonies for you to guide the conductor through with quick-paced button presses, more complicated patterns to follow and repeat, that woman behind the window moves faster and faster, more rice crackers to watch being flipped while you attempt to see which two are the same… just more of everything, and faster, and less forgiving.
Ranger X
Developer: GAU Entertainment
Publisher: Sega
Genesis
Original release year: 1993
Ranger X is another one that I messed around with a few times in the past, but didn’t sit down and commit to a playthrough until this year. It was one of the first things I got to after undergoing knee surgery — not being able to move around was pretty good motivation for sticking with some games I’d been meaning to get to.
Looking good is one thing, but Ranger X also feels great to play. Once you figure out how to play it, anyway. Like the movement of all the robots and mechs in the game, Ranger X is intricate: you control a mech with some of the buttons on the controller, and with others, in quite a few levels, you also control an assault bike. You can control them at the same time, independently, or as one unit where the mech is riding the bike. You can let the bike follow your movements on its own, you can take more control of it yourself when you want to, and figuring out when to do which is significant, as it can be much more active and useful when you’re controlling it, but it’s also impervious to damage when it’s just out there doing its own thing, so there’s a strategic balance to be struck.
Private Eye Dol
Developer: HuneX
Publisher: NEC
PC Engine Super CD-ROM²
Original release year: 1995
Another game I’d been wanting to play forever, where knee surgery gave me the opportunity. I love an adventure game, and Private Eye Dol is a real good one. Bless its unofficial translators for bothering with a title that doesn’t even have its own Wikipedia page.
Private Eye Dol is constantly tweaking the gameplay in little ways, beyond just navigation. You don’t have the same mechanics for every case you’re trying to solve. There’s a ton of environment manipulation in the first act, but in the second, you’re on a ship with rules and regulations, and you can’t just go wherever you want, including into the rooms of other passengers. So you have to dig for information in limited spaces, and then build your investigation around the act of identifying various potential culprits, which you’ll do in the command menu: once you’ve selected a possible suspect, the dialogue with that person will change until you select a different one. With one very large exception, there isn’t much in the way of failure states. Just the game telling you that May maybe isn’t very smart or as good at this job as her father was. Which, to be clear, is a dig at you more than her. That exception, by the way, is in the final “showdown” with the person behind most of the death and destruction you’ve witnessed during the game. Luckily, you can save at any time, so just do that before this very obvious confrontation, and you’ll get to try again without repeating too much of the game.
Jumping Flash!
Developer: Exact/Ultra
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Playstation
Original release year: 1995
I know. I know. But I’ve played it now, and that’s what counts. It’s funny how these things snowball. I didn’t have a Playstation until they were releasing the smaller version of them, and that was my sister’s system, not mine. I didn’t pick it up on the Playstation 3 when that system was releasing PSX games digitally, because I didn’t know about it. When I first gave it a shot on the Playstation Classic, it wasn’t that impressive — turns out that’s because Sony put the PAL version on all of them, which impacted the experience and undersold it, too. Jumping Flash! rules, though, I know this now.
Let’s set the scene: you are a rabbit robot named Robbit, and you’re on the search for jet pods that have been spread around the game’s world by its antagonist, Baron Aloha, who could not lean into this moniker more given the monocle/Hawaiian shirt outfit he’s seen in. There are four jet pods in every non-boss level, and 18 levels total across six worlds: two platforming stages and one boss per world for the first five worlds, then one platforming stage and two boss stages for the sixth and final one. When you’ve found every jet pod in a stage, you can access the exit, which is usually high up and out of reach, higher and more out of reach the deeper into the game you get.
Wanted: Dead
Developer: Soleil
Publisher: 110 Industries
Xbox Series X
Original release year: 2023
Wanted: Dead got a lot of shit when it released in 2023, for being both weird and unbalanced, but the whole idea of it appealed to me a ton since the reviews made it sound like it was a return to the action games of the Playstation 3 era, released on hardware that could ramp up the Playstation 3-ness of it all. I ended up finding a copy early in the year real cheap, and then the massive patches that rebalanced the game’s difficulty (without sacrificing the Good Weird of it all) started to roll in. By the time I got around to it, it was something special.
If you haven’t played Wanted: Dead but the idea of this kind of throwback to the specific proclivities of aughts-era action game design speaks to you, or if you did give it a shot but it was before all the patching began, go for it. It’s always heavily discounted on digital stores, and it’s absolutely worth whatever you end up paying for it. It’s complete nonsense, it’s completely out there, but boy does that combat system sing when you get the feel for the various katana-based attacks with interspersed gun action. The last boss is still a tremendous pain in the ass, but don’t let that stop you from experiencing the rest.
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