New Indie Games That Prove Old School “16 Bit” Is Making a Comeback

It’s not just that you can play SNES games on your Android now with an emulator that’s making old style games come back into vogue on all of the awesome new phones that you can upgrade to these days like the Moto X.

 It’s also the huge influx of Indie games in places like KickStarter and Indiegogo that are revitalizing old school gamer graphics. It just goes to show that there’s a reason why many people vote a 16 bit game- Chrono Trigger the best video game of all time.

People love the whole package in games-music, mood, and writing, way more than they care about how great the graphics are ultimately. And now that indie gamers have been let loose on the world, we are probably going to see this more and more- the experience of video games being emphasized over just mere spectacle.

Here are a few examples of this happening right now.

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HyperLight Drifter

This game is like Chrono Trigger meets the Terminator? Sound awesome?

It is-

A better comparison in terms of gameplay would be like a Link to the Past. Imagine playing Chrono Trigger, but instead of the whole RPG choose your attack thing, you hit a button to swing your sword, hit a button to fire your ‘hardlight” cannon, and so on. I admit I always wondered what some of the more awesome RPG titles would be like they had more of an open action-RPG approach. In my incredibly humble opinion Action RPG is the best game type.

And God, this game looks so unique. It has the whole post-apocalyptic vibe going on, with huge robotic and bio-monsters, and a real lone-hero-with-cape feel. Everything is monolithic looking, like in Shadows of the Collosus, but with more of a sci fi feel.

Hyperlight is still on Kickstarter still as of the time of this posting, and will be for a few more weeks.

Here's a comparison that might look familiar.

      Hyperlight with a campfire loner feel.

  ChronoTrigger, with a campfire team feel. It almost looks like Magus (the purple cloak guy on the right) should migrate up into the top loner screenshot.

Mighty Number 9

If haunting post-apocalyptic sci-fi isn’t your speed, how about a happy Japanimation megaman clone? Mighty No. 9 might not be technically 16-bit, but it’s definitely done in an original 16 bit sidescroller style. It looks like they’re going to stick with some of the stuff that Made MegaMan fun back in the day, but with weird cool stuff added in like being able to turn into random tools.

Apparently you’ll be able to steal some “cell” energy after beating enemies and store it, using it when you’re fighting even harder bosses later on to do cool stuff like fill the screen with fire, or do tons of punches, so it’s keeping the strategy from Megaman and raising the stakes. It might even come to Nintendo 3DS at some point, which would look super fantastic.

Crystal Kingdom

Crystal Kingdom is taking old school JRPG and adding in the MMO for some great letter combinations. That’s right, instead of just have 2 or 3 friends jump in on an SNES type RPG game, you can play with the entire Internet!

You can play for free since it’s currently in open Beta.

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It really makes you wonder just how awesome retro 16 bit games are going to get. Maybe we'll start 16 bit-ifying modern games. A 16 bit RPG version of CoD would be sweet maybe?

How to Fool Your Friends into Thinking You Are Magic with Real Tech Devices (Part 1)

It’s been my dream since the *dawn of time* to just point my fingers at things and magically affect them. I wanted to be able to talk to technology and make best buds with them the way aquaman does with fish. It’s mind-blowing just how close we’re starting to get to being able to let people like me pretend. Here are a few examples-remember that the key is showmanship. If you don’t tell people how you can do all of these things, then maybe you and actually convince them you are descended from a machine god and have magic techno powers. Maybe, in time, you can also convince yourself. And yes, all of these gadgets are actually real. Welcome to the future. It's awesome.

Remote Lock-Goji

This little gadget is insanely cool looking. It got started through Indiegogo which just goes to show that now that we’re in the future, apparently mad scientist shenanigans are crowdsourced. Obviously

Sweet Austrian accents are optional.

But What IS it?

Oh nothing much, it’s just a magic door-transforming techno lock that you can control with techno magic. OK, fine-your smart phone. You can do it with ANY lock though. You just slip this thing over your regular “dumb” lock in your house, and you can now unlock it through your smartphone. You can also unlock it based on any behavior you want. This includes features like-

·         Unlock whenever you approach-

·         Unlock with a “fob”: You can get la little computer thing to jam into the slot to unlock it if all else fails. They even get you

·         Have it Unlock at a Certain time- Say you have cleaners coming over at 11 am, you can have it unlock between the hours that they’ll be there, and lock again right after. All without even being there at all.

·         Do it Whenever You want with the App

How to Be Magical-

Get our your harry potter wand, or whatever the techno equivalent might be, slip your hand into your pocket and shout ALOHA MORA! Or maybe, I abjure thee, in the name of the Machine God Machinima, OPEENNNN! Then either hit the button in your pocket, or if that’s too obvious, just wait until the last second to move within range of Goji. The door will unlock right on cue, seemingly by itself, and you can convince people that you can communicate with the spirits of machines.

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WeMo

The Belkin WeMo Light Switch can actually do way more than what I'll describe here, but we’ll go with one amazing thing at a time. This gadget is a plug that you can connect your gadgets to, just like any other plug. Except! This one can be turned on or off remotely. This means you can turn on any gadget in your house even when you aren’t there using a smartphone. You can also hook up a remote sensor that works via your home’s WiFi network. There are tons of them, but the simplest one is the motion sensor. You can use it to get lights to turn on when you enter a room, or turn on and off at random intervals to make it look like you’re there when you aren’t.

How to be Magic

Use a surge protector to hook up every device in your room up to the WeMo switch and sensor. Then get your audience.  Tell everyone they mustn’t disturb the sanctity of the room that you’ve blessed with “techno fire,” and instead to watch from the room over. Then rush into the room and proclaim; “BE SILENT!”  When all the blaring televisions, computers, radios, that you had left on earlier, even the lights in the room go off, everyone will be convinced of your technosorcery. For bonus points laugh sheepishly a bit afterwards and say “Maybe I overdid it a bit.”

Come On, Get Real

OK, so that might not work on anyone long term, and you probably wouldn't seriously want anyone to think you were some supernatural menace.A new techno-witch hunt would be pretty awkward at dinner parties. But even if you manage to make them doubt themselves for a split second, think about how awesome that would be? And even beyond that- these devices are all real, and they are darn cool. The possibilities with them are practically limitless, especially when you see some of the others later on in this series. And even if you can't convince anyone that you're a techno-sorcerer, you'll feel like one, and come on, that's way more important.