Sidescroller

In the many, many (many) retro throwbacks that have appeared over the last decade, there have been a lot of things that have consistently worked toward a titles success, from the deliberate nostalgic touches, to the grueling difficulty curves, to the catchy music that has become such a staple of these type of games. Tembo the Badass Elephant does indeed bring these three standards to the forefront, as expected, but where it really shines is with the sense of joy and silliness that it uses to present itself.

The recent revival of local multiplayer has been a welcome addition in the crowded, independent platformer genre. Towerfall in 2013 and Nidogg in 2014 both provided a seemingly endless source of group fun with their own particular flavor of easy to learn, difficult to master gameplay. Now in 2015, Adult Swim Games will release Duck Game on Steam (previously an OUYA exclusive), in what seems to be an attempt to bank on single screen multiplayer resurgence. ASG have a pretty excellent track record as of late, including the much praised Jazz Punk and the brilliantly old school Völgarr the Viking. Thankfully Duck Game succeeds where it matters most, with a group of friends and some genuinely unexpected moments, yet like so many of its counterparts, it leaves little for the solo player.

There’s a moment in the Super Metroid finale, somewhere in between being brain-blasted by a creature that looks like it escaped from Attack on Titan and being saved by a flying alien parasite, that the whole nature of the battle is suddenly revealed to be entirely scripted. The idea of scripted battles, an idea that was still incredibly new back in the 16-bit era of the SNES, made for something of a rarity in the mid-90’s.