It might seem strange to suggest that a game filled with tough-as-nails twitch action games, thoughtful arcade puzzles, and even full-blown narrative RPGs isn’t all about nostalgia, but UFO 50 is a compilation of 50 retro-inspired games. That’s it. Games of different sizes are full of surprises. Of course, that also has an impact. The magic garden attracts the snake. Valtress is a cross between Kid Icarus and Downwell. We’re constantly working to make it look and sound like games from the past. But UFO 50 draws as much from 2000s game jam culture as the NES itself. Rather than simply conjuring up retro titles, UFO 50 aspires to creative contraction. The simplicity of each individual game serves to expand and deepen the desire to get the most out of every pixel. UFO 50 creates an open feeling that video games can be anything. This is a feeling that cannot be labeled as generalized nostalgia because it has only thrived on the periphery of video games. When big companies want to believe that their newfound popularity represents what video games are all about, it’s refreshing to look to the past and the future simultaneously.
In my opinion, UFO 50’s retro aesthetic serves two purposes. First, it keeps the game resources light. Each game has little structure and often lacks an explicit tutorial. Most games only have six buttons. Maintain the arcade game’s arcane mechanics and repetition without a quarterly business model. Each game can be just big enough to not overwhelm the rest. So the focus is not on endless racks of content, but on the kind of replayability, mechanical density and complexity that comes from careful design. The feeling is closer to setting up an emulator with cult classics than to childhood memories of buying an 8-bit console for Christmas.
Second, the retro vibe focuses on the individual decisions and ideas of each game. Some UFO 50 games, such as Campanella, its sequel, and The Big Bell Race, have clear relationships to each other. Others, like the surreal Waldorf’s Journey and the strategic Avianos, feel like they’re from another world. But it feels like every game in UFO 50 is made of the same components: pixels, code, and a few buttons. But there are so many possibilities. Simplicity unlocks the scope of what is possible. Each new trick feels amazing.
One of UFO 50’s most standout games is Mooncat, a two-button platform puzzle game. Most of the game, at least on your first run, is a discovery as you learn how it works. You control a two-legged creature, presumably named Mooncat, that moves based on combinations and timing between two buttons. There are jumps, ground pounds, some dashes, and basic movements from left to right, but none of these movements are performed in a conventional way. All prior knowledge about how video games work disappears. The artistic direction is quirky and strange, but with no small amount of menace. Green fields populated by small animals turn into ancient tombs tangled with giant skulls and harsh deserts overlooking red skies. This is the kind of game that, even in 1985, would be difficult to imagine becoming an actual commercial product. Its presence among simpler games shows that UFO 50 is experimental. Sometimes the product may fit genre conventions, but often times it doesn’t.
Appropriately, UFO 50’s meta-narrative focuses on unearthing forgotten catalogs rather than revisiting classics. The opening “cutscene” shows members of the UFO 50 team finding the game’s virtual console in an old storage device. This isn’t something that’s written down in gaming history, nor is it something you can (easily) find at your local retro store. Overlooked. This is why the games take place in warehouses rather than mom-and-pop stores or lovingly curated collections (this contrasts with retro collections like The Sega Master Collection, which features a main menu designed like a childhood bedroom). UFO 50’s main menu focuses on the game itself, showing off the cartridges. But they are not arranged on shelves. Instead, it is covered in spider webs. Select a game you haven’t played yet and it will be dusted off. It’s cute, sure, but it’s more reminiscent of an archive than a basement.
In other words, UFO 50 represents an excavation rather than a return to the past. I want discovery, not rediscovery. There is no past to return to. Even in the novels inside UFO 50, you’re playing the game now, not in the fictional 1980s. The emphasis on discovery has two effects. This helps these games feel alive and on their own merits rather than simply echoes of the past. It’s discreet and classy, but still playful.
I’ve tried reducing the UFO 50 a lot, but it’s still too much. There are 50 games in total! It would be possible to write at length about each of them individually. But its excess is found in the wealth of experience and the diversity it presents. Most big-budget video games are large and over-the-top, but they tend to emphasize the same actions over and over again, all serving a meta-goal. It will take over 100 hours to fully complete all of UFO 50’s offerings, but each game is a complete experience in its own right.
There’s a bit of melancholy to UFO 50’s unique location. Critic Liz Ryerson describes UFO 50 as “a kind of lost innocence about gaming and what it could have been before it became a huge, dominant cultural industry.” Now, video games, or at least the video game business, are a relatively narrow set of genres. The open world was codified by Ubisoft expansion. Live service games chase the brand integration of Fortnite or the expansion of Genshin Impact. Call of Duty has been the dominant first-person shooter for over a decade. Mainstream games have lost their experimental edge. UFO 50 is probably the largest scale at which an experimental game can work. It’s still very small.
Nonetheless, UFO 50 is worth celebrating. I’ve often lamented the lack of Martin Scorsese in video games. I don’t want more crime dramas or Catholic horrors, but rather more game developers who respect the past of video games. I wish there were more developers who treat history with respect for history rather than empty, touchy-feely nostalgia, a genuine willingness to learn from history, and a desire to expand and evolve rather than replace or improve on the past. Deepen your relationship with it. UFO 50 is a small but confident and exciting step in that direction.
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