Greg Sewart is one of the co-hosts of the Player One Podcast and formerly an editor at publications such as Gaming Age, EGM, and Expert Gamer. You can check out his retro gaming channel, Generation 16.
One of the best parts about turning in my Games Media™ membership card was getting a chance to take a breath and only play the games I wanted rather than jumping from new release to new release all year long. The freedom to play whatever I want has crystalized into a tendency to play way more retro games each year in between the major releases I’m most interested in. So with that in mind, here are three retro games I’m glad knocked off the ol’ backlog in 2023!
Crusader of Centy
This most expensive and rare of Sega Genesis games has been on my backlog for almost 30 years. Thanks to its inclusion on the Genesis Mini 2 and a guest spot on the Games My Mom Found podcast, I had an excuse to finally play through Crusader of Centy early in the year.
To the casual observer Crusader of Centy looks like a Zelda: A Link to the Past clone. I mean, some of the background sprites look like they were lifted directly from Nintendo’s classic. So I guess that comparison is fair. But play Centy for more than an hour or so and you start to realize that this game is its own thing. Light platforming and a mostly linear quest split up into very distinct levels feels more like a hybrid of multiple game styles rather than a Zelda “me too.”
The variety comes in the form of the animals our hero, Corona, meets during his quest. Having been afflicted with an inability to communicate with his fellow humans right at the start of the adventure, Corona finds himself able to talk to animals, some of whom will befriend him and lend him their powers. Corona can equip up to two of these animals at a time, giving him myriad different abilities such as running fast, imbuing his sword with different elemental properties, and tossing his weapon across the screen to hit distant switches or enemies.
And Centy doesn’t take itself too seriously. While wandering the beach early in the game Corona will find himself face to face with a sun-bathing blue hedgehog who’s too hot to touch. Later in his quest, Corona has to beat the Cheetah in a go-kart race before he’ll lend our hero a hand. Or…you know, you could just bribe him to join you instead.
The best way to describe Crusader of Centy is light. The story never gets too dark, the different abilities keeps the challenge at a manageable level, and the quest itself clocks in at just around 10 hours. I’m so glad I finally had a reason to get around to this one, and that it’s possible to play it legitimately on the Genesis Mini 2 and Nintendo Switch rather than forking out a month’s pay on ebay for the privilege of playing it. Crusader of Centy isn’t perfect, nor is it a masterpiece, but it’s so worth playing.
Policenauts
When I bought Snatcher for my Sega CD almost on whim back in 1995, I wasn’t prepared for how much I came to love it. I’d never experienced a “Digital Novel” before, and Hideo Kojima’s Christmas-y take on Blade Runner (with a splash of The Terminator) had me instantly hooked. So, of course, when I heard there was a spiritual follow-up out there called Policenauts, I immediately imported it for my Saturn in spite of the fact that I can’t read or understand Japanese.
It sat on my shelf, unplayed, for over a decade. And then the Policenauts Translation Project happened, and finally around 2009 I was able to play this long-languishing Kojima classic. Which I promptly did 14 years later!
Policenauts has absolutely nothing to do with Snatcher outside of its similar architecture. Where Snatcher dropped players into a Kojima-fied Blade Runner universe, Policenauts is Lethal Weapon, but set in the distant future on a space station. You play as Jonathan Ingram, one of the original Policenauts lost in space after a freak accident, only to turn up alive and well a quarter of a century later without having aged a day. OK…so it’s Lethal Weapon crossed with a bit of Aliens.
First of all, the translation patch is incredible. I just want to be sure I give the team some praise for their amazing work.
Secondly: Policenauts is not as good as Snatcher. I enjoyed it, but not nearly as much as it predecessor. That being said, it was fascinating to play through it for a few reasons.
Those of us who did experience Snatcher in English did so via an official localization that censored a bit of nudity, as well as adjusted the age of one of those partially naked women. In the original game, 14 year-old Katrina Gibson is seen naked in the shower. In the North American version, she was given a towel and was aged up to 18. Gillian Seed, the main character, was also toned down a bit to be a little less lecherous.
Of course, with the fan translation of Policenauts, those corporate shackles are off. The English version of this game is crazy horny, and in the most Kojima way possible. Unlike with Snatcher, in Policenauts you can interact freely with many different hotspots on each screen with what is basically a mouse pointer.
The tone is set early in the game when Jonathan is on a zero-grav flight and is approached by a flight attendant. If he touches her on the chest, you get the expected bounce animation. But what you might not expect is a lengthy dialogue scene explaining why bras are not needed in zero gravity! So Kojima!
The more interesting part to me, however, was getting a good look at a previously missing link in Hideo Kojima’s body of work. Back in the day my experience with Kojima’s games was limited to the NES version of Metal Gear and Snatcher. Of course, many were introduced to his cinematic style of storytelling with Metal Gear Solid on the PlayStation.