198X (

2019

)

My concerns about this game started with the title screen. 198X, a title that assures us of little more than the fact that the game will be set in the 1980s (and perhaps that it has a few off-handed allusions to Megaman [1987]). I can understand the desire of artists to set their work sometime in the 1980s, perhaps more than most. It is as fascinating a decade as any in recent history. The 1980s marked the end of the Cold War, The Chernobyl Meltdown, the Challenger disaster, and the start of the AIDS epidemic. On a lighter note, the 1980s produced some great movies, like Aliens (1986), Predator (1987), The Terminator (1984), and Raiders of the Lost Arc (1981) to name a few. The problem is, at this point, 80s nostalgia has become just another tool for cynical marketers and cheap cash-grabs. More often than not the stories being told don't benefit in a meaningful way from being set in the 80s. The period doesn't inform the characters or conflicts and instead just provides a layer of gloss. It's a cheap way of injecting some personality into an otherwise bland and uninspired project. That is not to say that no good 80s-nostalgia-bait films and video games exist, after all, I am personally fond of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon [2013]. However, there is just so much crap out there that seeing another entry fills me with more dread than anticipation. Sadly, 198X justifies my cynicism completely. All it really has going for it is 80s nostalgia and some flashy pixel art.

The game's story is so generic that, if I was the charitable sort, I'd argue it was trying to universal. Since I'm not charitable I'll call it what it really is: Lazy. You take on the role of The Kid, a teenage boy with a suspiciously feminine voice. The kid is your average mopey brat. We don't know what made him so emo, but it's implied that it's something to do with his Dad. We also know that his dad is not currently living with The Kid and his Mom. So that opens up a few obvious possibilities. Did his Dad die? Did his parent's divorce? Is his dad off rescuing POWs with Rambo? These questions are never answered, which is fine since they add a bit of tension and mystery to the Kid's character which is desperately needed given how one-note the sad bastard is.

The Kid longs to leave his dull hometown of Suburbia and escape to the neighboring City where he will presumably lead a life of excitement and adventure. But he's too much of a chickenshit to commit and instead spends his days and nights in a seedy arcade chasing the illusion of escape. This is where the game part of this video game comes in. Most of the story is the Kid narrating his feelings over a semi-animated pixel art canvas. The player has no control or impact on his miserable and tedious life. However, when the kid stops moaning long enough to grab a joystick you're granted control and get to play the arcade games he's indulging in.

The games on display here are a pretty impressive selection of genres, running the gamut from space shooters to driving sims. There's even a turn-based RPG that looks like something that would be more at home on the PC than in the arcades, but I still appreciate the variation even if at the expense of immersion. Other than the RPG, they all play like the old-school arcade games with the rough edges sanded off. If you run out of lives in the space shooter, for example, you're kicked back to a checkpoint, not to the start of the game. Likewise, when you die you get to keep all the power-ups you've collected rather than having to plink away at the final boss with a starting laser. This is a reasonable compromise, as early arcade games were less interactive stories and more rigged carnival games. Personally, I don't think anything is lost by cutting out their more annoying aspects.

The chief problem is that this is a narrative-based video game, and the actual game portion almost never interacts meaningfully with the story. There is one significant exception to this rule: The driving simulator. I never play driving games. I'm just not a car guy. Besides, commuting every day with a few thousand Rhode Island drivers is more than enough vehicular excitement for anybody. As a consequence, I was not particularly excited for the driving game in in 198X. I figured it would be a chore to take care of before I could back to games I was actually interested in. Yet somehow it turned out to be the highlight of the whole game.

The driving game opens with a challenging sequence, (well it's challenging if you're like me and have literally never played an arcade driving sim before). You drive a car down a desert highway as it gets narrower and narrower, taking turns as fast as you can without losing control, avoiding all the NPC vehicles moving around you, and keeping an eye on the clock that is steadily ticking down. The mechanics here are nothing special but the challenge and intensity of the game ensures that you will be completely engrossed in it until you go through a tunnel and find yourself on a huge, mostly empty highway with a massive time boost.

That's when the kid starts to narrate again, talking about his desire to leave his small town behind and strike out for the big city. At the same time, a virtual city appears on the horizon, slowly growing as you inch closer. Through game-play, the player is made to feel the same emotions as The Kid. The same desire to reach the city. When the timer invariably runs out and we sputter to a stop we feel the kid's disappointment and frustration. Personally, I had nothing but contempt for the kid, he seemed like a loser who was blaming others and his circumstances for things that were ultimately his fault. Yet here, I actually began to come around to his point of view more than any other time in the game. It really shows the power that interactive elements have to make you empathize with characters you would otherwise detest.

Unfortunately, none of the other arcade games are able to pull this off with any degree of success. The problem here is not the games, which are fine if somewhat sparse, but rather the story and our lead character. The Kid has no narrative arch. He starts as an angsty little bitch and he ends as an angsty little bitch. He never leaves suburbia, never goes to the city, and never addresses his emotions about his dad. Hell, he doesn't even manage to talk to the girl he likes. So, by the end of the game, nothing has changed for him. All he has to show for the events of the game is a few less quarters and a couple of high scores.

The developers must have realized this problem because they try to force a climax in the final sequence of the game, the above-mentioned turn-based RPG. Unlike with the driving sim bit, the kid’s narration is not overlaid on top of the game but rather the game begins to resemble aspects of The Kid’s life. The maze that his character is trapped in becomes an allegory for his life stuck in suburbia. There is some potential here, but the problem is we just don't know enough about the kid or his life to say what is happening. When the game begins to plead with him, in a woman's voice, not leave her it causes more confusion than anything else. Is this the Kid's Mom asking him to stay? That's the only explanation that makes any sense. Yet the game never bothered to establish the kid's relationship with his mother. Or is it a personification of the game itself, as Arcade games are the only thing which can numb the kid's suffering and make life in Suburbia tolerable. If we knew that the kid was sticking around solely for the benefit of his mom then we could answer this, the final sequence is just more confusing than anything else. I shouldn't have to rely on guesswork to understand the emotional significance of a story's climax.

Moreover, the climax changes nothing for the protagonist. He is still in the same place and still just as miserable about it as ever.  The frustrating part is that it wouldn't take much to turn this into a compelling story. You could start the story earlier and show how the kid changed from a happy child to a miserable teen. Or you could take the story further and show the kid either learning to accept his mundane life or actually embarking on some kind of adventure in the city. It doesn't really matter what he does, but he has to do something.

It is obvious that the story simply wasn't flushed out before development started. As a result, it's full of dead ends and asides that go nowhere and contribute nothing to the overall arch. The worst of these is doubtlessly the punk girl that The Kid is crushing on. She is introduced, drives off after school and then is never seen again for the entire run-time of the game. Why even bother introducing her if you're not going to do anything with the character? I shouldn't complain too much, because the punk girl had every indication of being one of those Manic Pixie Dreamgirl archetypes that I detest so much. You know the ones, the ones that turn up to “save” the hapless male main characters. Pro-tip kids: Real men have to save themselves.

At this point, I feel I must relay a bit of advice for aspiring game developers, from horror icon Gunnar Hansen AKA Leatherface: “There is a real lesson here for the rest of us who are making low-budget horror movies. When you are starting out, the script is the least expensive part of your movie. A good one will cost you the same as a lousy one – nothing... So why not write a good script and give your movie a chance to overcome its limitations?” The same thing can be applied to indie game development, particularly if the game you're making is going to have a strong focus on narrative.

Now credit where credit is due. This game has some of the most stunning pixel graphics that I have ever seen. The semi-animated pixel-paintings that accompany the story sequences are breathtaking and each game looks fantastic. Indeed, I found myself long to play a full-length version of the Space Shooter game in particular. It's just a shame that so much gorgeous visual art is conjoined to such a pointless story.