The discovery of video games has changed over the past 40 years. While we’re arguably in a golden age of creativity and innovation in the medium, it’s a different kind of creativity than when gaming was in its infancy – learning to crawl, struggling to find new ideas, and guessing at best practices. Modern gaming has been largely standardized, mostly for the better. But when we look back at retro gaming collections like the NES Classic or Digital Eclipse, we often remember the trailblazers, not the eccentrics. That’s what makes UFO 50 so special – it evokes the feeling of wild experimentation and surprise you find in a cross-section of the earliest video games.
The pitch is simple: UFO 50 is a collection of fictional retro games created in the 1980s by prolific developer UFO Soft. They range from 1982 to 1989, covering the entire retro genre. The brief leans into this, because picking up a game for the first time makes you dust it off. You’ll feel like you discovered these forgotten gems in an attic or garage sale. For the most part, these games adopt a design and story aesthetic common to 80s games, which I would describe as “sci-fi pulp reimagined by early computer programmers.”
Of course, these games are actually developed by a modern development team led by Spelunky’s Derek Yu. This led to the decision to make not just one retro game, but 50 retro games, which was a very ambitious decision. One would think that such a massive undertaking would only result in mini-games at best, but that’s not the case. The games are nearly the same size and scope as actual games you’d buy in the 1980s – often still smaller than the games we’d expect today, but not compromised by the fictional time period.
gallery
Although the story told in “UFO 50” is not simple, the meta-novel of “UFO Soft” contains rich content. You’ll see the logo change over time. In the fictional timeline, the game itself has become more complex and refined, with better art direction and better quality-of-life features. The game itself has almost no notes about its development, and you can piece together a criss-crossing plot thread involving the studio’s personalities and leadership. Occasionally sequels will appear, showcasing earlier iterations of the development style, which can result in vastly different gameplay styles from the same core concepts. One of them, a point-and-click adventure called Night Manor, offers a glimpse into early cinematic achievements that were influential in world fiction.
As with many early games, the simplicity of the controls means you can more or less learn the game by playing it. This can be a bit frustrating at times, especially when the game ventures into territory with more complex, board-game-like mechanics, such as Devilition. Others, like Mooncat, have strange and counterintuitive controls that I struggled to get the right feel for. This is realistic because many older video games attempt to approximate the complexity of board games or experiment with control schemes, but the abundance of other games makes it difficult to be patient with those that are more difficult to understand.
Despite being based on retro games, most of them have some special twist or feature that makes them stand out from similar games. You can mark a game as a favorite for future reference, and as I got deeper into it and the games became more polished, I kept marking more and more games, eager to go back and experience them fully. While UFO 50 is very casual, letting you play the games in any order, there are rewards for delving into each game – for every achievement in the game you’ll be rewarded with something to place in your garden, as well as a Golden reward.
To give you a taste, here are some of my favorite little reviews from the compilation:
Motor
This puzzle platformer gives you a team of peons willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, so that your resources and lives come from the same pool. Each one can perform a “ritual” that impales them into walls, turns them into stone, or blows up passages, so you can progress through the stage by carefully managing when and how to sacrifice them to move forward. This was followed by the follow-up to the series, Mortol II, which included a more complex class-based system for exploiting your willing sacrifices, but there was something very pure and compelling about the original idea.
bushido ball
A dodgeball and fighting game with a selection of samurai characters to choose from. You slam a projectile with your katana, causing it to bounce back to the other side, and in addition to requiring precise timing, each character has their own special ability, providing plenty of replay value and room for skill development.
camouflage
Camouflage is a great little puzzle game with its roots in stealth mechanics. As a largely helpless chameleon, you need to navigate your way home while avoiding wary predators. But being a chameleon, you can change the color to match the tile you’re standing on. This makes navigating the levels a tense exercise, requiring planning your way to new camouflage patterns. For an extra challenge, there are collectibles to pick up in each stage, including a little chameleon that follows you and picks up its own camouflage pattern, doubling the challenge.
party house
Perhaps my favorite surprise, Party House is a clever puzzle game with mechanics similar to those of a modern deck builder. You have strict turns to host a series of parties, and you control the guest list. Each guest is rewarded with cash and popularity – cash allows you to expand your house, and popularity allows you to invite new guests. Some guests have “troublemaker” attributes that will attract the police, while others may sacrifice some popularity for money, and vice versa. The stacking of dancers can increase popularity. One partygoer even brought a random friend, who could risk overloading your party and calling the fire marshal to kick someone out.
The party starts, your randomly picked partygoer business cards appear, and you tabulate your cash and popularity to spend on the next party, while moving on to some specific win condition, like getting four aliens to attend A party. Its appeal is staggering and it’s easy to keep the party going late into the night.
bell competition
It’s one of the shortest games in the series, but also one of the best for multiplayer. Big Bell Race is pure game mechanics: you’re a spaceship navigating a boxy, maze-like track while bouncing off other racing boats and grabbing power-ups to build a track for your competitors Danger. There are eight quick matches in a single game, but competition can be fierce, and you can always try your luck with a friend in a two-player game.
warp tank
At first glance, the Warptank is partially similar to the classic Blaster Master tank, but what really sets it apart is the “warp” in the name. At any time, your tank can be flipped from the floor to the ceiling or the opposite wall. Beating levels is a delicate balance of frequently gaining new vantage points to avoid traps and eliminate enemies, which gives it the feel of an intense action game while also tickling your brain.
Wainger
This Metroidvania-like platformer has a similar hook to Warptank, but its take on the genre makes it feel very different. As an alien soldier, you can swap gravity polarity by double-tapping the jump button, so all traps and enemies can take advantage of the stage, which can be reversed at any time. The result is like the second mission in Symphony of the Night, in an upside-down castle, except you can control when the whole thing flips.
pin golf
Many early games tried to emulate sports like golf, but Pingolf is a more modern game with a sci-fi aesthetic. The side-scrolling stage is set up similar to a platform stage with some pinball elements, with tight corners and bouncing pads. It doesn’t quite feel like anything else, although the closest analogue is probably the recent Cursed Golf.
fist hell
It wouldn’t be a retro-style collection without the River City Ransom riff, but Fist Hell features fantastic pixel art and a catchy hook: Zombies! You fight hordes of the undead using only your fists and found objects, which leads to clever twists and turns, like chopping the skull off one zombie and throwing it at another. It’s a hilarious early gore game that feels bold in the ’80s, with four characters to choose from and plenty of replay value.
valbres
Another surprising favorite from a genre I’m not very familiar with, Valbrace is a first-person dungeon crawler RPG, similar to Dungeon Master or Witchcraft 2. The effects are excellent and simulate the unique pixelated look of these dungeons. What really makes it stand out, though, is the magic system, which maps spells to specific patterns drawn with the D-pad. You’ll discover these spells as you progress through the dungeons, but even if you die, the spell mode will still be in play on your next run. This means that if you can memorize the spells—or map them onto graph paper—you’ll make each subsequent run that much easier.
Rakshasa
This is a side-scrolling action game in the lineage of Ghosts & Goblins, where you will fight against hordes of demons through a unique resurrection mechanism. You’re extremely vulnerable and destined to die, but each time you die, you regain life by bypassing the demons on the spiritual plane. Each time you die, more demons are added, making restoring your body increasingly difficult – but not impossible.
star wasp
This isn’t so much a reimagining of the retro genre as it is an anachronistic take on Bullet Hell. Many shooters grace the NES and its similarly powered consoles, but Star Wasspir has a tense risk-reward dynamic as it’s constantly populated with the ability to get close to enemy fire. It’s this tough, responsive combat that makes the genre so popular, and it’s given a new context through a retro filter.
horror stone
An old-school JRPG set in a fantasy version of the Old West, Grimstone plays as an angel who rescues several adventurers from a burning tavern, and then they form a team to hunt down the outlaws. Its aesthetic is reminiscent of the earliest Final Fantasy games, but its setting and time-based combat system give it a modern twist.
Lord of Disconia
What if a strategy game had a touch of air hockey? Lords of Disconia lets you collect income from villages and use it to purchase an army of knights, archers, champions, and more, then take them into battle. But unlike a typical warzone, the soldiers here are discs of varying sizes that are launched and rammed into enemy units to attack. It’s a very different take on the strategy genre, giving it a tactical and dynamic feel at the same time.
Internet Owl
The final game in the series is also a smart, cheeky commentary on the Turtles craze of the late ’80s, and the efforts of nearly every cartoon studio or video game developer to make their own version of the franchise’s friendly creatures. Cyber Owls is a game you’ll see featuring a group of elite owl soldiers, each with their own stage to match their expertise – from combat to stealth operations. It’s probably the most diverse game in the series, and one of the most cinematic, serving as the perfect bookend to this decade of fictional game development.
In short, UFO 50 is a bold triumph. Dozens of games are engaging enough to warrant a complete playthrough, and even some of the less successful experiments have some interesting elements or inventive ideas to keep you hooked. Excited gaming experience that needs to be checked out. It’s nostalgia, but not the sweet feeling of reliving something you’ve already experienced. It’s about remembering what it felt like to discover something new.
