gAmeDHD

or: “how even just the thought of gaming can keep us afloat”
or: “we make so many poor choices, gaming isn’t one of them”

UFO 50 aims to re-write the past on a scale we only wish we could.

by Colin Clark

Derek Yu and team at Mossmouth announced UFO 50 seven years ago this August and the wait – for me – has been a long and arduous one. I first heard the whisperings of this magical, hyper-targeted project while scouring the indie gaming Subreddit during a particularly rough patch in my life. I found myself in a state where I was clinging to any shred of positive news I could latch onto after I had recently and forcefully blown my life to smithereens, hurting a lot of people along the way. The premise the post proposed – and the game I had to look forward to – kept my head above water for another day. Yu’s idea seemed so specifically aimed at me and my chaotic gaming tendencies, I immediately did some internet sleuthing to verify the veracity of the dubious Reddit claim. I really wish I could find the comment in question. It went something like “I heard that the guy who made Spelunky is making 50 games all at once right now, so RIP to the hope of ever seeing a Spelunky 2”. RIP to that commenter’s lamentations, too. What I found was this Eurogamer article. The information was sparse, but it was something to prove that it was really, truly, honest to heck happening. And it was coming in 2018! (more on that later)

It wasn’t much to go on, but at the time I was in such a state of chaos, shame, sadness, and delusion, that I got a physically noticeable rush of dopamine at the idea of fifty 8-bit games being developed by five notable game makers with modern sensibilities. While I still knew things weren’t going to be OK, there was at least something right in the world, even if that thing was most certainly not me or my life choices.

Fast forward to Geoff Keighley’s Big Top: Summer Game Fest 2024, and particularly the Day of the Devs showcase, which showed off 21 astounding games from indie developers. I had kept loose tabs on UFO 50 throughout the years – and was obviously disappointed, if not surprised with the missed original released window – but I dang near jumped out of my chair when Derek Yu and Jon Perry appeared on screen to talk about the latest developments of the wildly ambitious project, including a release date (September 18th!).

We’ve learned a lot about UFO 50 since it was announced on August 7th, 2017. It truly is a work of art in premise. Following is the Narrative Mossmouth has woven surrounding their project. Holy shit, this thing’s cool. Between 1982 and 1990, the fictional software development company UFO Soft made the 8-bit similarly fictional Laser-X video game console, along with its library of games a-la Nintendo and the Nintendo Entertainment System. What ensued was a groundbreaking, ahead of its time entry into the third generation of gaming consoles. The Mossmouth team of today have limited themselves in terms of development restrictions of the 80s such as a 32 color palette, and sound chip limitations, but they credit “UFO Soft [being] obscure, but ahead of its time” in explaining away the fact that the gameplay in the games themselves benefits from modern sensibilities. The 50 games feature platformers, puzzlers, mechs, strategy gems, an arcade racer, a full-blown jrpg, a side-scrolling golf-pinball hybrid, and – my most anticipated – what appears to be an open world take on Kirby’s Dream Course (seen above). There even seems to be a mascot of sorts in Campanella, and there are sequels to be found in the mix, as the games increase in technical prowess as the “years” of the console’s life progress.

About half of the games even boast multiplayer. The entire library is unlocked from the get-go, so you get to explore the catalogue at your own pace. Yu and Perry have noted that they’re harkening back to a time when you might struggle to figure out simply how the game functioned before you could even make any progression. The age of misplaced manuals, or no manuals at all. The age of Blockbuster rentals and busted cartridges. I say again: holy shit, this thing’s cool. I’ve had literal dreams of stumbling upon a treasure-trove of videogames, now all my own to explore. It’s like Mossmouth can see inside my head. It seems UFO 50 is aiming for that feeling of going to your childhood friend’s house down the street, digging through their game library and pulling an all-nighter, and switching from game to game to keep yourselves entertained until the sun begins to peek through the cracks in the blinds. Remember that night we played the Stunt Track level of Rush 2: Extreme Racing (seen below) for the N64 until 5 in the morning?

In a recent interview with Edge Magazine, Jon Perry noted on the 8 year development cycle that the team “worked out, how long would it take a game company to make this? But for some reason we didn’t include ourselves in that situation.” With something of this scope, I’m glad they took their time to get it right. I’ve already noted how hyper-targeted at my sensibilities this game collection is; I own a PlayDate and multiple emulation machines, so to say I enjoy jumping from game to game is a wild understatement. This project has done more for me, however, than aim deliver my perfect ideal of a game (collection). In its long development cycle, and how said cycle has lined up with my own life, UFO 50 has reminded me that sometimes we miss our own deadlines. We are all constantly works in progress, in which, though we have done our calculations, we often forget to “factor in ourselves”. UFO 50 was announced at truly the lowest and most self destructive point in my life. How apropos that the 8 years it to Yu and team to pull together this project, I spent pulling together the project of myself. I swear, I’m trying to make a point here, not wallow. I don’t feel bad for myself in the slightest.

We mark chapters in our lives with what games we are playing, and what games we’re looking forward to. The music from any particular game can be nostalgic, triggering, or equal parts both. Some games we simply will never open again, for fear of the feelings they’ll bring back. Some, we jump back into time and time again to try to recapture a specific point in our life. They give us that indescribable something feeling of a time and place long gone that nothing else quite can. Its as if the fraction of cells that remain in our bodies from a bygone era have all come together to sing in harmony, reminding us of the what-was. You know the feeling: something, out of nowhere will remind you of what winter 2021 felt like, and you’ll bask in that feeling for a few fleeting seconds, your very being vibrating to the tune of yesterday. Videogames do that to a lot of us on such a hyperbolic scale that folks who don’t play video games might not understand. In some ways, thinking about UFO 50 makes me feel sick. Those cursed brain pathways that still survive from 2017 scream out, transporting me back to the absolute train-wreck of a human I was. I see the UFO Soft color palette and I am reminded of all the myriad ways I hurt the people closest to me, and I shrink. And then I remember that it is 2024 and UFO 50 comes out this September. We often can’t fix any of the chaos we leave in our wake, but what we can do is make said wake a little smaller going forward, and we can look ahead to that thing on the horizon. Videogames have the power to keep us afloat just by thinking about them, just by their concept alone. Those on the outside often decry videogames as “escapism”, but we know better. Games often do more to snap us back into our own realities than they do allow us an escape. Depends on the game. Depends on what you bring to the game.

In either case, everyone has their UFO 50. What’s yours? Let us know below, or on our shiny-brand-new instagram!

UFO 50 releases from Mossmouth on Steam September 18th 2024. Don’t forget to Wishlist now! You can find out all the details at the UFO 50 website, and be sure to check out Mossmouth’s Day of the Dev’s video spot below!

hyperfocus

Final Fantasy XIV is down right now. It comes back up at (apparently) 5am my time tomorrow morning, so I’ll be up even earlier than I usually am. The wait is unbearable! I’m ready to Trail some Dawns! The new graphical update looks great on youtube, and I’m very excited to see it in practice. While I did have to purchase the expansion twice, once on PC and once on PS5 (thanks, Square Enix), it’s a price I’m willing to pay for what has become my favorite game of all time.

In the meantime, I have kerplunked myself into my own little experience as mayor in Go-Go Town thanks to the recommendation from this glowing God Is A Geek review. It’s a super slick, third person, isometric town builder for modern sensibilities. For now, something about it has just clicked with me, and it runs great on Steam Deck. You can check it out in early access here.

One of my favorite videogame podcasts, Into the Aether is in the middle of what it has dubbed X-Strike Summer, in which, while its two regular cohosts take a well-deserved summer break, producer AJ FIllari hosts guests from around the industry on a jampacked 8 week tour of the here and now in videogames. The topics vary so greatly – and while I’ll be excited to hear Brendon Bigley and Stephen Hilger in their triumphant return – I’m not ready for X-Strike Summer to end just yet.