Blast from the past video game: Shadowgate (1989)

Many moons ago, when I was a hardcore Nintendo kid, Shadowgate was one of my favorites.  A point & click adventure that I seemed to be more suited to play than the rage inducing platformers and brawlers many of my peers seemed to excel at.  This was an era of what I affectionately call, "games that hated you".  Horrific, brutal, and genuinely malevolent games that beat you like a red-headed stepchild.  The sad thing is you always went back for more (even when your controller was held together with tape because you rage-spiked it into the 12" CRT during some bullshit Ninja Gaiden - p.s. fuck Ninja Gaiden).  I was also a big fan of fantasy and horror Choose Your Own Adventures when I was a kid so when I got my nerdly mitts on Shadowgate I nearly wet myself.

I loved Shadowgate (not as much as I love Shadowrun for the SNES) and whilst looking around youtube:

This game was madness and I blame it for several of my current RPG techniques. Torches would fizzle out and were a precious commodity. Any mistakes caused death after death after death. The thing was there was no gamefaqs.com, no IGN help guides to this bastard. Trial and error and intuition were all you had to rely on. Truth be told I don't know if I ever got to the end of the game even though I felt like I played it for a very long time and often (for some reason I have the memory of starting a new game every time I played).  I no longer own a NES but I might poke around the internet and see if I can find a ROM.  I kind of hope I can, just so I can do a review of it.

Braid (2008) Number None Inc.

Once upon a time there was a game for the NES called Castle Quest. It was one of those NES Classics that hated you as much as you hated it. This was an unmerciful bastard of a game that I think I once got half way close to winning.

Braid is cut from the same cloth - a puzzle/platformer that at times makes you want to punch yourself, your television, the dog, the cat, and spike your controller though the floor. Unlike Castle Quest the designers of Braid actually made the game some what forgiving, fun, and fascinating. The puzzles start easy enough but eventually reach a point where you want to pull out your eyes. The puzzles are based on time manipulation but each world has a different style of time manipulation that doesn't carry over to other worlds - which would have made life easier. The ability to rewind time makes life a little easier and less frustrating. If Braid had lives - a la Castle Quest, Super Mario Brothers - then I probably would have spontaneously combusted.

It's a gorgeous game with great music and puzzles that made me pretty happy. Some of the puzzles actually surprised me with their cleverness. Number None Inc isn't going to make a bajillion dollars off this game. I imagine that most people aren't willing to put forth the brain power, patience, and masocism required to complete Braid. At the very least download the demo. If Braid is an example of things to come from Number None Inc then they are going to put forward so great games.