Quite a few years ago, someone I know (who will remain unspecified because I’m not a narc) got an emulation-powered arcade cabinet, a sleek black and gray machine assembled and shipped to them by a somewhat dubious company. It had a finicky interface that would get stuck half the time and blaring internal fans that forced you to crank up the volume, but inside were close to 3,000 arcade games from the ‘80s and ‘90s, a treasure trove of almost every major coin-extracting hit from that era.
After seeing it for the first time, I became a bit obsessed. I played tons of beat ‘em ups and shoot ‘em ups, from the obvious, like Final Fight and R-Type, to the slightly more obscure, such as Ninja Baseball Bat Man. I was surprised by how much I noticed the technological leaps from the early ‘80s to the late ‘90s. I became a Joust-head, I got freaked out by Sinistar, I learned Makoto’s bread-and-butter combo in Third Strike. And while I frequently gravitated to names I’d heard, I would sometimes just scroll until I came across some random thing I’d never heard of and start playing.
While the circumstances here are specific, I’m sure many have fallen down similar retro rabbit holes. Whether it’s buying an older console with tons of games on eBay, receiving a family member’s hand-me-downs, perusing the Wii’s Virtual Console, or fully embracing MAME and emulation, there are plenty of avenues for diving headlong into these nearly inexhaustible catalogs.
And although there are plenty of ways to engage with retro backlogs, I never expected to play a new release that captures the mixture of emotions that comes from poring over old game libraries—to repeatedly channel the subtle anticipation that comes from booting up bygone software. Of course, I’m referring to the recently released UFO 50, a compilation with a hefty lineup of 50 brand-new retro-style games. Developed by Mossmouth, the studio behind Spelunky, it took eight years to make, and this dev time shows. Framed as a collection of ‘80s titles from a fictional developer (UFO Soft) for their made-up console (the LX), it captures something increasingly difficult to find for those who are well-versed in this medium: uncertainty about what’s around the corner.
As you start UFO 50 for the first time and see those rows of dusty cartridges, there’s a sense of possibility that each of them could be anything—good or bad, any genre imaginable—because you don’t live in this alternate timeline, and you haven’t been blasted by its marketing material. And even if you’re familiar with the real-world era of games being quoted, there are so many departures that you won’t know what to expect.
Yes, the collection borrows heavily from the design principles and 32-color aesthetic of ‘80s games, but it’s not afraid to get anachronistic. Each installment mixes old and new, often borrowing from both high-score-driven, arcade-styled experiences that have largely gone out of style while also peppering in aspects of relatively contemporary genres, such as idle games, platform fighters, and more. Many of these will demolish you in the way games of that era did, but usually, they’re much less brutal or outright clunky than early console titles.
But while it doesn’t adhere to real videogame history, it still mimics the feeling of watching game design and genres develop over time. There are recurring characters like the company mascot, Pilot, whose Campanella series receives several sequels and spin-offs, but what’s more interesting is how design ideas evolve. For instance, Barbuta, the first game in the collection, is punishing, achingly slow, and not very fun, but we see outlines of ideas that will be filled in later. Warptank uses a gravity-reversing mechanic (which is seemingly inspired by Terry Cavanagh’s VVVVV), which is then re-used in the excellent Metroid-styled platformer Vainger and in the fighting game Hyper Contender. Meanwhile, these digital cartridges come with little tidbits about their development that flesh out this fictional company, further tying us to this timeline.
This all comes together to recreate what it’s like to discover gaming history in a way that’s become increasingly logistically tricky in the real world—a growing collector’s market has jacked up the prices of older games and systems, subscription services with narrower selections have replaced more expansive storefronts like the Virtual Console, and Nintendo and other publishers are cracking down on emulation. At best, we get a few piecemeal compilation collections every once in a while, but the vast majority of legacy games are much more difficult to access than other old media, like movies, music, or books. Outside a few edge cases, the game industry is famously terrible at documenting its past, and even if UFO 50’s history isn’t real, it lets you live out the fantasy of having access to an exhaustive and affordably priced retro library.
And it also certainly helps that most of these games are really good—I sat down to briefly see what Party House was about and didn’t stop playing until I saw credits. Even if a particular one doesn’t suit your tastes, they all have interesting ideas, in large part because these titles channel the broad strokes of retro discovery instead of the messier specifics.
I think everyone with even a passing interest in the medium should play old games, frictions and all, but the fact that UFO 50 isn’t overly precious about replicating particulars is what allows it to be its own thing that doesn’t entirely drown in the design practices of the past. Instead, it mimics how weird and out-there old games could sometimes be before budgets and development time got out of control, jumping from the strange platformer Mortol, with its clever life system and morbid premise, to Bug Hunter’s compelling upgrade mechanics, to the genuinely tense point-and-click horror of Night Manor. There are sports, fighting, and strategy games, most of which introduce clever twists that meld ideas across decades to arrive at something novel. Frankly, it sometimes even feels like this collection is drawing from a much bigger pool of genres than releases of yesteryear. While some were boundary-pushing, many more fell into certain tried and true paradigms—back in the day, when people said certain games were Pac-Man or Space Invaders “clones,” they were not exaggerating.
When it comes to art and, well, most things, nostalgia is a trap. We think we want a hyper-specific, familiar experience, but what we really miss are the feelings associated with it. UFO 50 deeply understands the appeal of delving into games from the past but isn’t bound to them, concocting a fresh batch of funky releases to simulate what it’s like not to know what’s in store next. Hopefully, it will encourage newer players to dive down their own retro rabbit holes while reminding older folks that there are still fresh ideas, like, say, making a game that’s actually 50 games set in a fictional ‘80s videogame industry that never was.
Elijah Gonzalez is an assistant Games and TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to playing and watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves film, creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Twitter @eli_gonzalez11.