Retro Game Challenge has been getting some attention in year-end roundups. In a recent episode of The Brainy Gamer Podcast, Retro Game Challenge was praised for being true to the NES-era games it recreates without being as frustrating. While RGC includes a number of familiar retro games, it does not seem to be as punishing to play as the original games or their remakes (Mega Man 9, I’m looking at you).
RGC is not just a collection of retro homages: the player plays as a player that must complete a number of “betcha can’t” challenges across a bunch of old-school games. The design of this meta-game works against much of the frustration of playing otherwise difficult and unforgiving games. It creates a variety of things to do and game types to play, and keeps play sessions short and sweet, not long or repetitive. It also gives the player the ability to help herself out of uncertain, frustrating challenges.
Variety keeps things fresh
There are a variety of challenges in the game. Game Master Arino dares the player to get 250,000 points in Star Prince, or finish first in the third race of Rally King. These challenges are explicit—the player is told what to do and, sometimes, how to do it—and there is no doubt when the player has completed them.
The challenges encourage the player to experiment or play under certain constraints1, something the games do not do themselves. While Rally King only asks the player to come in the top five in a race, RGC asks her to perform a number of boosts, to win while avoiding damage, or to reach a high score—without cheating.
There is also a variety of games to be played: Robot Ninja Haggle Man is an action platformer, Rally King a racing game, Guadia Quest a JRPG, etc. Though some games are repeated (Haggle Man 2, Rally King SP), the shifts in mechanics and genre keep RGC from feeling like a grind.
Play is brief
Most of the challenges can be completed in minutes. Each game has five challenges. RGC also allows the player to quickly restart games. This makes it easy for players to retry challenges without having to go through many game menus.
As Adam Saltsman has noted, long play times can discourage a player because she finds it too daunting or the rewards too spread out. RGC does not ask the player to invest hours of her time into completing its challenges, instead asking the player for a few minutes and rewarding her often.2
Help is at hand
In the same podcast, it’s mentioned that Shigeru Miyamoto meant The Legend of Zelda to be played by many players who share tips and discoveries with one another. Sharing was important, often necessary, to play through those older games: without friends or game magazines, I would never have beaten Super Mario Bros. or put up with Battletoads.
The experience of sharing expertise is recreated in RGC. All of RGC’s games have manuals. The player’s in-game buddy drops hints after failed attempts. He also has a shelf of GameFan magazines that the player can browse through to find ways of overcoming challenges and improving her play.
These things help the player help herself. Through the amusing, player-driven help RGC keeps the player from becoming lost and frustrated, without putting her through tutorials or adding anachronistic button prompts to the games.
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In a way, RGC offers a series of achievements. These, however, are the foremost goals of RGC (rather than asides, like most Xbox achievements); playing each of the games from start to finish is something to do on the side, once the player has unlocked Freeplay mode.↩
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This is also in part because RGC is a DS game, likely to be played for a few minutes on the bus or during commercial breaks, not in long sessions.↩
Lucas really digs human–computer interaction, video games, and writing. He has a master's degree in computer science from UBC and a bachelor's in cognitive science from Queen's. 
