168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland is a throwback to both the games and TV shows of a '90s kid's childhood, but not always at the same time. Developed as a modern NES release published by Limited Run, the game was built with the constrained pixel art aesthetic and p☂alette that players will remember from platformers of the era.
You can still play that version in the final release. But over time, developer The MIX Games decided to expand the game’s art style offerings with an HD mode that perfectly recreates the look of the classic show. Now, you can swap between them in seconds from the pause menu, like in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Halo: The Master Chief Collection or the recent 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tomb Raider I-III Remastered.
The demo began with a playable reimagining of the Rugrats opening, with your baby of choice escaping their pen, crawling past a sleeping Grandpa Lou, defeating Angelica's robot cat, and reaching the front door as Didi and Stu enter.
"I've got a passion for 8-bit 2D platformers, our whole team does," says Tom Guinan, co-founder of The MIX Games and lead developer on Adventures in Gameland. "What we really wanted to do was bring back that era of good quality licensed 2D platformers, similar to Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers and DuckTales...
"There's a lot of games coming out in that style, but people aren't releasing [them] as an actual NES game... That was something that was really important to us, but we also wanted something... that would be a good experience on modern consoles. So having that HD toggle in there, it's something that's really cool, because you can either play it looking like the retro game, or you can play it looking like a modern game."
As Guinan noted above, Adventures in Gameland is getting an actual NES release, and the cartridg🔯e is in the classic Nickelodeon VHS tape 💙orange.
This toggle is pretty wild in action as it entirely transforms the look of the game — complete with an aspect ratio switch that approximates the different shapes of CRTs and modern widescreen TVs — while leaving the feel exactly the same. Gameplay draws heavily on the Western version of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Super Mario Bros. 2. You can pick objects up and throw them to take out enemies or build stairs, and each of the four playable characters (Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, and Lil) control slightly differently. Levels are designed with more vertical sprawl than most sidescrollers and less exploration than a Metroidvania. It's a very specific kind of game that we just don't get anymore.
"Mega Man [and] Mario 2, they had very interesting level layouts where you had that verticality to them. You didn't necessarily go A to B, you would go left to right, and then you might climb a ladder and go up a screen, and then go left," Guinan says. "I just always found that an interesting way to go about level design. So we tried to implement some of that, and I think it does give it that classic feel because it's something that you don't see as often these days."
For example, in the second (and significantly longer) of the two demo levels, ‘Sand in my Diapie,’ I ran into a locked gate. To get Tommy's handy-dandy screwdriver, I didn't just need to go back, I needed to go up, venturing to a higher level and past some desert-themed enemies like scorpions and snakes. The levels don't form a sprawling, interconnected world map, but they encourage greater exploration than most 2D platformers.
Hearkening back to an earlier era of gaming can be a double-edged sword as certain gameplay choices can age like the milk in Tommy's bottle. I enjoyed playing Adventures in Gameland demo, but the movement feels a little rigid in the way you might expect from an early '90s platformer. I played the demo through twice because, with one hit to go, I lost the closing boss battle. Some of that is getting used to a new game, but some of it is a side effect of the game recreating the stiff jumping and throwing of a game like Super Mario Bros. 2, making it easy to overshoot your target and difficult to evade projectiles.
Last year, on the strength of the reveal trailer, I called Adventures in Gameland 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:my most anticipated game of 2024. That was partially due to the sheer number of releases skipping this year, but as someone who grew up on the cartoon, a game that could reproduce that art style as one-to-one as The MIX has here was irresistible. I still feel that way. I just hope that, in practice, the gameplay doesn't feel as old and tired as Grandpa Lou snoring in his favorite chair.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Hea♏ding Out Is Sin City On The Open Road
In our PAX East preview, Heading Out was the only racing game we've seen that's bl🤪ack and white and red all over.