Category: Retro Gaming

In recent years, I’ve fallen head over heels for Ys, a lesser-known series of action RPGs by Nihon Falcom. The Ys series has been around for nearly as long as I have, but I’ve never really known anything about Falcom as a developer. So at some point in the last 12-24 months, I looked up what they have on the Switch eShop besides a handful of Ys titles.

One of the things I found was The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails. It sparked my interest, so I looked a little closer, and my first reaction to seeing the screenshots was “Wow, this looks very similar to Ys!” And it is a lot like Ys! Nayuta is actually a spin-off of The Legend of Heroes, which is probably Falcom’s biggest franchise, but while the Heroes games are more traditional turn-based JRPGs (to my understanding), Nayuta is a side-scrolling(ish) action RPG.

And so I had placed The Legend of Nayuta on my wishlist for some time, waiting more for a time when I would actually play it than I was for a sale. Then January 2026 rolled around, and I was all like “Well, I just finished up Clair Obscur, what do I want to move onto next?” I think the writing is on the wall for what I chose.

The first thing that I noticed about this game was that the hardest difficulty mode was locked. So at least two playthroughs would be required for 100%. Classic. But not the good kind of classic.

I jest, though. That’s unimportant. The real first thing I noted is that Nayuta is a very wordy game. Like, probably the thing that I enjoy least about it is the sheer volume of dialogue. Now, I usually do my best to try to care about the stories the devs are trying to tell, but so much this game is just repetitive filler that tends to be common in JRPGs. And yes, it is an RPG, but it’s an action RPG. Give me a story, a reason to run and jump and beat up monsters, but keep it brief. I sometimes like 10+ minute cutscenes, but not in a game like this. (I think Ys might be the same way, actually, but I’ve never felt a need to mash through dialogue in a Ys game.)

It doesn’t help that all the characters are little more than your standard anime archetypes. Plucky hero! Doting sister! Amnesiac swordsman! They’re all here! So yeah, as much as the story wanted to make me care about these characters… I just wasn’t feeling it. I’m pretty sure I was supposed to cry at one or more points during the finale, but I simply did not resonate with it on any emotional level.

The plot, on the other hand, was kind of interesting. Having played all the Xenoblade games, nothing in any game’s plot is really going to blow my mind at this point, but this one got me pretty good. At first it was very much a paint-by-numbers “save the magical realm” kind of thing, but then there’s a pretty big revelation that a third of the Earth exploded at some point in the past and the planet is now slowly crumbling to pieces, and the magical realm is actually a space station that’s going to re-form the Earth’s core and regenerate the planet. Which will of course kill every currently living thing on the planet, but you’ve gotta break a few eggs, right? So yeah, I may not have cared about the characters, but I’m very much interested in the game’s world, history, and lore.

And now, let’s talk about the running and jumping and swording bits. Nayuta is a very simple kind of game. At first you’re greeted with a looooong tutorial where you have to just run around and talk to townsfolk for much too long. Finally, after what seems like an eternity, you’re granted access to the world map, when you get to pick a stage and then get to slashing. Stages are largely left-to-right affairs, with plenty of alternate paths, collectibles, and enemies along the way. Also once in a while you may come across a puzzle. They’re much too rare, in my opinion.

What makes this game special is that once you’ve completed a section of the world map, you’ll get the ability to change the region’s season, which alters most of the levels. This changes the landscape, gimmicks, and enemies in a stage, making it harder and materially different from the first time you played it. Then in the post-game you can choose a third season for each region, and then in New Game+ you get the fourth season. So most stages have four distinct versions to play through, and while it does sound a bit like Falcom stretching out their content as far as they can, the changes are thorough enough that I honestly never felt like I was just playing the same levels over and over with different seasonal themes.

Every stage also awards you with up to three stars per stage: one for clearing the level, one for finding all the collectibles, and one for clearing a unique challenge, like beating a stage while jumping less than ten times. Earning these stars is for more than just bragging rights – for every six you earn, you’ll gain access to a new sword technique. Sometimes it’s simple things like extending your combo, sometimes it’s a new special move, and sometimes it’s a move that probably should have been available by default, like blocking. It’s always nice when there’s a tangible, valuable reward for doing something that would just be busywork in most games.

While the core gameplay is fine, that’s really all it is. The stages are generally short (which makes replaying for stars much easier), some of them get quite complex, and many of them have unique gimmicks, but it never feels especially engaging. I’ve spent some time pondering why exactly that is, but I can’t come up with a reason. Playing New Game+ helped to shed a little light on what might be part of the problem: the game is generally too easy on Normal difficulty. Yeah, I died on a couple of the bosses because I was playing fast and loose, but never really felt like there were any roadblocks. There was never any real danger. I never had to try.

That was, until I started NG+. And let me tell you, that was a mistake. I only started a second playthrough because I figured it would be a snap to round up all the achievements. And one of them was for clearing the game on the unlockable Infinite difficulty level. Let me tell you, the game becomes entirely too unforgiving at that level. Even at max level, even with the best gear, I was getting clobbered repeatedly on even the earliest stages. But the thing about that was, is that I was having way more fun when I had to actually focus on what I was doing. It doesn’t help that there’s an NG+-exclusive season for each region, with monster levels that are boosted into the stratosphere.

I think it’s important to note that the New Game+ actually does a lot of cool things. It adds new characters, story content, and sidequests. Most of that is kind of forgettable, sadly. It also lets you choose which elements from your previous playthrough that you want to keep, so if you wanted to say, start at level 1 but keep all your armor and money, you can do that. Lastly, you’ll gradually unlock options in a special shop, where you can spend points on special NG+-exclusive features, like the new season for each region, increased movement speed, increased level cap, increased experience points, so on and so forth. Those special points are earned by unlocking achievements, and that was the biggest driver for me to start a second run in an effort to unlock more of them.

The downside to NG+, and the reason I gave up on it halfway through, is that even though it was fun to bash my head against the jacked-up difficulty level, the game is still 50% cutscenes by volume. And you can’t skip cutscenes. It’s brutal and baffling, and doubly so for me because I didn’t even really like the story that much the first time around. So on my NG+ run I spent a lot of time mashing the B button mindlessly with my eyes rolled back in my head until I was allowed to play again. It honestly might be Nayuta’s biggest flaw, at least in my opinion. I probably would have finished my second playthrough if it didn’t grind to a dead stop after every couple stages.

The Legend of Nayuta, as it turns out, is actually a PSP game from 2012. Whoops! That sure explains a lot, at least. And honestly, while I don’t have intensely negative feelings about the game, I think I would have liked it a lot more back then. It’s really quite an average game overall, though the whole ‘lack of cutscene skipping’ thing really soured me. Probably more than it should have. All of this said, I don’t think I’d ever recommend it. Again, I don’t think it’s bad by any means, and in fact it seems like my general opinion of the game is quite high, but it didn’t truly spark any excitement or wonder in me. Next time I get the hankering to play an Ys game, I’m just going to replay an Ys game.

It’s 2026 now. You know, a new year and all. You know what’s not new? Aggressive Inline for the GameCube. That’s kinda what I’ve been playing the most of over the last few days.

I don’t think I’ve ever really written about it at length, but I have a very strong proclivity for skate-based games. Whether said skates be of the board or inline variety, as long as I’m rolling around and flying off ramps and doing tricks and grinds and generally being a menace to society, I’m very happy. The very early 2000s soundtracks also help out a lot.

I loaded up Aggressive Inline just for a little taste the other night, and then ended up accidentally playing it until 2AM. I don’t stay up until 2AM anymore (on purpose). And I didn’t even get past the first stage.

Of course, a reasonable chunk of that time was spent on the rather robust tutorial, re-learning how to play the game and how the controls differ from Tony Hawk’s. I played dozens upon dozens of hours of this game back in the day -or at least that’s how I remember it- but my Pro Skater muscle memory is still much stronger, and the slightly different button layout really ended up throwing me for a loop. By the end of my first session, I still wasn’t entirely comfortable with the control scheme, but I was getting there.

And then there was the “difficult” choice of choosing a skater to play as. The game comes loaded with something like a dozen facsimiles of real-life roller-blade mans, and I don’t know a single one of them. My passion for skating lies entirely in the video games and the general culture, not the athletes. But for the sake of “diversity” (oh and how that has changed in the last 20 years), there are also two playable female characters, both of them custom-made for the game. Because there were no real girls that rollerbladed in 2002, of course. And one of those fictional girls, Chrissy, I’m sure exists solely as a showcase for Z-Axis’ then-innovative boob-jiggling physics technology. And oh lordy, do those boobs a-jiggle. Like, way way too much.

So of course I was playing as Chrissy. I always did. It’s tradition.

There isn’t really a ton I can say about my actual experience with the game, other than I forgot how different it is from the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater franchise. Yeah, it’s the same in that you pick a stage and then complete challenges, but you’re not on a hard timer in Aggressive Inline. Instead, you have a juice meter that’s very slowly running down. You can refill it by doing tricks and collecting gigantic, glowing juice boxes that are scattered about the stages. And it really doesn’t take a lot of tricking to get it back to full, either, so it’s very easy to end up playing a single session for, well, hours. While it does lose that “just one more run” effect by essentially giving you unlimited time to play, it’s maybe even harder to put down because you basically need to choose when you’re going to end your session. I suppose bad players could, in theory, actually run out of juice, but I’m not exactly a super star myself and I was never once in danger of a Game Over.

My one real true beef with Aggressive Inline is the soundtrack. But not for the choice of music. Perish the thought! I’ve regularly listened to it as a YouTube playlist over the years. No, I hate how short it is. In my couple hours of play, I must have cycled through the entire track list at least three times. Maybe even four. I wasn’t exactly counting. I’m not going to look it up or anything, but I think that a generous guess would place it at thirteen songs. For a PS1 game, okay, maybe that would have been sufficient. But this is PS2 era! They could have easily fit double that amount in there. I’m sure it’s was more of a licensing limitation though; Acclaim folded in 2004, so I doubt that in 2002 they were just throwing around bags of money. Or maybe they were and that’s exactly why they went defunct. Who knows? Not I. For whatever reason, there’s just not nearly enough music in this game.

Oh, and also someone really dropped the ball on balancing the audio levels for the music. Some songs are significantly louder than others, and there’s at least one in there that you can barely even hear over the clack-clack-clack of your skates.

So yeah! It’s been great fun! I don’t know how much I’ll really end up playing, but I do want to at least unlock all the levels to get the full breadth of the experience. Completing all the objectives and finding all the collectibles is… maybe not as high up there on the priority list, but we’ll see! If I continue having as much fun as I have been so far, I might finally finish the game for the first time ever. It’s weird that I played it as much as I did but never truly beat it, right?

I honestly don’t know if this one is cheating or not. I guess it doesn’t really matter.

• Release year: 2024
• Developer: Mossmouth
• Platform: PC, Switch

UFO 50 is, indeed, a collection of 50 different video games. And to be quite honest, I haven’t even played all of them yet. maybe about half, if I’m being generous. But what I’ve played has generally been quite good! Since these games are all very retro-styled and distinct from each other, it’s quite a diverse grab bag, which is good because anyone should be able to find at least one game that really works for them, but also bad because there are few real stinkers.

The collection itself tells the story of a made-up game development studio, as each game in the collection is one of their releases over however many years. But unlike Retro Game Challenge, the framing device isn’t very substantial, and while it offers some nice extra flavour that ties everything together, the real focus here is are the actual games within.

Off the top of my head, I think probably the game that I’ve spent the most time with so far is Barbuta, which is a side-scrolling platformer of sort, with some puzzle and action elements. It’s slow, and difficult, and gives you absolutely no help in figuring out where to go or what to do, but that’s actually what I like about it. I’ve spent a ton of time mapping out the game’s world and trying to piece together how to complete it, but still haven’t actually managed to get to the end. But one day I will. Probably not until I’m retired and actually have time for games like this, but one day…

The game I’ve had the most fun with, on the other hand, is Velgress. This is another platformer, but this time it’s vertically-scrolling. Velgress looks a lot like Kid Icarus at first, but then you start playing it and realize that it’s much less forgiving and will require much more practice and patience to finish. Velgress also sticks to the vertical-scrolling stages and never gives you the dungeons or side-scrollers that Kid Icarus offers, but that’s fine. What’s there is plenty entertaining on its own and even though it’s only four stages long, it kept me busy for hours. Even after I managed to beat it, I just kept playing because it’s so much fun.

Some other games that I really liked in the collection include: Magic Garden, a game about moving about a checkerboard while saving slimes and avoiding mushrooms. Ninpek is an action-heavy auto-scrolling platformer about ninjas and sandwiches. Kick Club feels a lot like Bubble Bobble, but instead of shooting bubbles at enemies, you’re kicking around a soccer ball. Camouflage is a brilliant puzzle game where you play as a chameleon trying to save its babies by using the different environment tiles to avoid predators. And lastly, Block Koala, which looks like The Adventures of Lolo, but is made even harder by incorporating math.

All the games I’ve mentioned so far have made UFO 50 worth playing, and I probably would have played them all a ton if they had been real NES games that I’d owned back in the day. But that’s also kind of a curse because it’s hard to stick to any one of these games for too long when you have 49 more right there vying for your attention. Suffice it to say, I have a very high opinion of UFO 50 as a collection, and there’s still so many games in it that I haven’t even tried yet. This is a must-buy for anyone who likes retro games and hates how expensive modern games are getting.

Some retro games are just retro as an aesthetic. Other retro games are retro because they are top-down love letters to the 80s. The next entry on my list, Prison City, rests firmly in the latter camp.

• Release Year: 2023
• Developer: Retroware, Programancer
• Platform: All of them

Prison City, as per the Steam store’s description, is a “dystopian, action-packed side-scroller with tight mechanics and intricate level design.” That’s all 100% true. It’s also more or less Escape From New York but with the serial numbers filed off. And I adore that about it.

You play as Hal Bruzer, a retired solider who has been called back to duty to infiltrate Detroit, which has been turned into a gigantic prison colony, and take down the techno-terrorists who have taken over the city and are presumably plotting something nefarious. The game opens with eight stages that you get to choose from freely, and then gives you a few more stages that serve as the finale, Mega Man-style.

The initial eight stages can be explored rather freely, and your goal is typically to find one of Hal’s allies, then locate and defeat the boss. Each stage also has a hidden power-up that will improve Hal’s abilities permanently, and a mini-game that you can play afterward to earn extra lives. One of the final stages is a huge map that you can roam around freely, where your objective is to place a number of bombs in specific locations. It reminded me strongly of the NES G.I. Joe game that I had as a kid and could never beat.

There’s also a ton of replay value in this one, with several different difficulty levels, a rather large list of achievements to earn, and even an extra “bomber mode” that unlocks once you beat the game.

Obviously the old-school action-platformer gameplay is the main thing that caught my attention, but I also ended up being completely charmed by the 80s aesthetic and references to movies and games of the era. Each boss is radically different, and quite honestly, I accidentally started with the hardest one, and it almost frustrated me enough that I was going to quit the game. But I pressed on, and I’m so glad that I did, because everything that came afterward seemed as if it was crafted specifically to my tastes.

The thing that really won me over, though, was the fact that there’s a cheesy (but incredible) rap song that plays over the credits. Which is just so very 80s, in all the ways. The whole soundtrack is pretty damn good, actually, and it’s available on Bandcamp. I played this game all the way back in January and I still listen to the soundtrack all the time while working, drawing, and driving.

So yeah, there’s no question here. Prison City is absolutely one of the best games I’ve played this year. It’s a rock-solid platformer that boasts a killer soundtrack and has character to spare. What else could you even ask for? …Some spare time to play through it again, would be my answer.