Retro Endurance 8bit will appear familiar on first glance to fans of Nintendo’s classic WarioWare and Mossmouth’s recent UFO 50, but it nonetheless relies on its own formula to create a unique experience that’s both great for short bursts and as an outlet for a satisfying sense of progression that’s reminiscent of the retro era that zsKnight captures in their own game.
The main draw, and where you’ll likely spend most of your time, is the Shuffler Story Mode. After a fun little intro where you, the player, have been grounded by Mechanical Order Machine, or M.O.M., for entering the “Forbidden Zone”, you’ll find yourself with no other choice but to tackle several dozen games over and over to compete for high scores, defeat bosses, and unlock new games and features. These games cover all the genres you would expect, including platformers, scrolling shooters, block-based puzzlers, racing, beat ‘em ups, and a whole lot more. The catch is that you’ll never spend very long on each game per session, which are all drawn from a gradually growing pool that you build up over time and are randomly selected for each run. Later on, you’ll acquire the ability to manipulate which games appear, if you prefer. Just a sidenote here: you’ll hear me use the word “run” more than once in this review, but this isn’t necessarily a run-based game with permanent death or any of the usual features you’d expect for that genre. That isn’t a slight against this game at all, it’s just to say that Retro Endurance 8bit is about the experience of sitting down with a handful of cartridges to kill an hour or two. And that’s something it does very well.
If this also sounds to you like a deliberate invocation of the WarioWare core loop, you wouldn’t be far off the mark; controls here in Retro Endurance 8bit are similarly simplified with only the requirement of a trusty DPad and a single button for each game. Keyboard controls are supported, too, and while you can’t remap them there’s a wide range of choices for your movement and action buttons. But as I said before, Retro Endurance 8bit isn’t merely a reimagining of another game or series. Where it differs from something like WarioWare is that it’s a loop prioritizing progression in its games (now totaling 52 at the time of this review) over the rapid puzzle solving of microgames. An inspiration for sure, but a cool angle worth stressing.
While randomness is a key feature for Shuffler Mode, there are a few things you can count on to persist. One is that you’ll always begin and end with a racing-type game and another is that you’ll always return to each game in a set order. This incentivizes developing a strategy around the progression meter, which tracks your overall progress for the run and handily flashes to warn you of an incoming shuffle. And so, you’ll find yourself encouraged, whenever possible, to leave yourself in an ideal position for the next go round. Finally, each run will conclude with your high score, which is then funneled into your overall progress toward leveling up. Each level is a mark of progression on the world map, with most representing new games, while a select few lead to a handful of boss fights. Retro Endurance 8bit’s boss fights boil down to challenging the player with a knowledge check of their mastery of the most recent games they’ve been shuffling through. To win, you’ll make use of each game’s mechanics and turn them against the boss while also avoiding a game over by preventing your health from running out. And if that’s all not enough for you, there’s also random events that add an extra layer of challenge, including wind gusts that push you around and inversed controls.
As this is an early access game, it has grown in the months since it was released in January of this year. Not only has the total count of games grown to 52, covering just about every genre and homage you would hope for, but the developer has been gradually converting each game into an unlockable arcade machine, as well, with leaderboard tracking and multiple levels. Arcades are unlocked with coins earned by playing through the main Shuffler Mode, but a later update added an additional mode, called Arcade Only. With this, you can bypass shuffling games and enjoy each one as is. Located within the game’s main hub are various challenges, which have similarly been updated during the early access period. Currently, they include a daily challenge that rotates a selection of games from the entire pool, a speedrun challenge that tasks you to reach a target score as quickly as possible, and “Insane Mode” for those that crave the hardest variations possible. Overall, this is a game that entered early access with a clear vision, has so far executed on what it set out to do, and threw in some surprises along the way, including the addition of full games outside of the shuffler.
As it is now during early access, Retro Endurance 8bit’s $3.99 price point makes it an extremely easy recommendation based on how much game there is here. But, summing it up like that would be a disservice to the game underneath. Simply put, this is a great pick-up-and-play experience that doesn’t seek to soak up all your time and rewards you for coming back as you please. Each game itself is a fun throwback or general nod of respect to the history of video games, while the whole thing is itself wrapped up in a neat modern concept that actually exists within the emulation scene. Get it and support more fun passion projects like this.
