Review: UFO 50 rewards every minute you spend with it

The problem I had when reviewing UFO 50 It's not the problem you'll have when playing it.

It is presented as an anthology of the 50 games developed by UFO Soft, a fictional game studio active between 1982 and 1989. UFO 50 The game is all about breadth and variety. The player is presented with the entire catalog of games from the start and can choose to play them in any order and for as long as they like. These aren't WarioWare-style microgames, mind you. These are full-length titles of varying lengths, ranging from arcade-style side-scrollers to fully-fledged dungeon crawlers, all presented in the 8-bit style of the imagined “LX” console on which they were first released.

I chose to play the games in chronological order, which is how they are presented by default. In order to analyze the game, I felt it was important to play all 50, partly because I felt it important to at least try out the entirety of what is presented here, but also because, as I quickly realized, the unique joy of UFO 50 It's not just about playing the individual games, but about seeing how ideas develop throughout the fictional company's entire oeuvre. Mechanics, characters, and recurring themes morph and deepen over time. Accordingly, I tried to play enough of each game to be able to comment on it and move on once I got a feel for its design and scope, while keeping the ultimate goal of finishing my review on time.

Then I got to Bushido Balland, well, I forgot about all that.

Each game in the collection comes with a brief description to give you an idea of ​​what you're playing. Here's what it said Bushido Ball:“It’s the annual Bushido Ball tournament. Choose from 6 fighters and compete to win!” A sports game, I thought. I get it. Bushido Ball It wasn't the first sports-themed game, chronologically. That honor would go to Kick Clubreleased a year earlier. But Bushido BallWhat I would roughly describe as samurai tennis, was so intensely fun that I accidentally played it for an hour and a half straight, losing sight of my goal of playing all 50 titles by just the 14th game of the lineup.

In Bushido BallYou throw a ball back and forth, slicing it with your sword or, more clumsily and less effectively, blocking it with your body. You build up a special meter with each successful slice of the ball, allowing you to use two special moves unique to your chosen character. The game progresses tournament-style, with increasing difficulty as volleys become increasingly faster, requiring you to figure out that you've actually had the ability to throw the ball all along (hold the joystick back while pressing slice), as well as discovering the ways in which different moves can counter backswings and power shots. It's all a total audiovisual joy, and in addition to single-player mode, it's one of 25 titles in the anthology that includes local multiplayer. If you've got a friend, a couch, and fond memories of playing titles like Fall of the tower either Nidhogg, Bushido Ball I'll just do it UFO 50 An essential title in A year full of essential titles.

And that's it Only one set of 50.

The way I played UFO 50 This is not how the game should be played UFO 50. When a game like Bushido Ball If a game grabs you, you can and should let itself be carried away by its depth. That's the fun of this title, period. Whether it's the deck-building and party-planning simulator, the idle game that generates resources while you play the other games, or the three sequels to a game starring an adorable red spaceship, UFO 50 It has RPG-worthy content, including a proper turn-based RPG. As I tried out title after title, there were plenty more I wanted to dive into, including a Pikmin-ish game starring killer ants, a clever puzzler involving a color-changing chameleon, and an adventure game where you play as a sentient golf ball. UFO 50 has more ideas than any game I've played in decades, and the magic is that they're all well executed. UFO Soft may not be a real developer, but when you're done with UFO 50You'll wish it were that way.

Which brings me back to the metafictional element of the game. The opening credits posit that, in 2018, Mossmouth and his friends (game developers Derek Yu, Jon Perry, Eirik Suhrke, Paul Hubans, Ojiro Fumoto, and Tyriq Plummer, to be specific) discovered a lost LX console in a warehouse and worked to rescue the games and get them running on a modern PC. To quote LCD Soundsystem, UFO 50 changes “Nostalgia borrowed from the forgotten 80s”, It works as a love letter to 8-bit gaming and 80s consoles. But beyond that, it's also a beautiful reflection on game development itself. Each title is valuable on its own, but it's the way they complement each other that makes the game unique. UFO 50 fly.

Take the first game in the anthology, BarbutaIt's not, to my taste, always funny. It's a brutal film. Metroid-like with one-hit kills and only six continues to complete the entire game, and I quickly left it behind. But without Barbutathere would not be Mortalwhere every time you die, you can turn your body into a ledge or rock that makes your next attempt even easier, an idea that evolves even further in Mortal 2which turns that concept into a Metroidvania where you get 99 sacrificial characters (warriors, gunners, ninjas, and more) to complete the game, which resets every time you turn it off. You can also trace the way the original Campanella charts the course of the expanded sequel, only to take a strange turn in Tinker Bell 3the fictional studio's penultimate game. Taking the metafictional concept even further, you can imagine a critic thinking that 3 lacked the things that made 1 and 2 Unique and, as enjoyable as it may be on its own, it could be argued that it is not worthy of the Campanella name.

In short, whether you're following the stories of individual fictional developers or just the ideas that are repeated from UFO Soft's earliest games to its latest, there's enough material to write a dissertation on. You can lose yourself in this title and the world it imagines. This is a feast of games, presented buffet style.

I recommend it with all my heart UFO 50 On the level of gameplay alone, I feel confident in saying that if you can stomach high difficulty and occasionally confusing objectives, you'll find a game, or two, or 30 in UFO 50 that sounds familiar to you. But I also recommend UFO 50 as a metafictional narrative argument that we all benefit when the same people have the opportunity to make multiple titles together. In an industry plagued by layoffs and closures, UFO 50 Imagine a group of people who created 50 games together, building on successes and taking huge turns throughout their career. Sure, it's a work of fiction, but it's hopeful.

Unmatched in scope and execution, UFO 50 It's a game of creativity and perseverance that rewards every minute you spend playing. You'll wish there were another 50 to play next time.

UFO 50 will be released on September 18th on Windows PC. The game was reviewed on PC using a pre-release download code provided by Mossmouth. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions on products purchased via affiliate links. You can find Additional information on Polygon's ethics policy here.