Having stumbled upon a browser version of God of War that plays like an LCD handheld game of yore (“yore” largely falling into the 80s), I figured I’d use this as a chance to take a trip by memory lane (“trip” meaning “Wikipedia, Google searches, and YouTube excursions”).
Describing LCD games to someone who has never played one challenges even the vocabularically gifted (something I’m not). YouTube clips of these games don’t really evoke the painfully limited response time of the controls. Just thinking about it makes me want to throw something across the room. What a flip-book is to movies, LED and LCD handheld games are to the modern video-game platform. The illusion of motion is significantly less convincing. Top of the line video games run at 60 frames per second while the LCD games were roughly one to five frames per second. But as you’ll see in this week’s game that speed will not make you think the enemies are doing anything other than moving from one predetermined frame to another.
LCD games like that of Nintendo’s Game & Watch series predated the infinitely more popular GameBoy. Toy maker Tiger also got in on the action with ridiculous imitations of popular games at the time. Street Fighter II being one of the more laughable. They were not made to stand the test of our technological times.
This week’s waste of time is Greek & Wicked. It takes the epic battles that the God of War series is famous for and turns the volume way down. Depending on your knowledge of LCD games the entire venture will take you either 30 seconds or hours. If you need help, this video clip of the original God of War boss fight might give you a few clues. Not to mention that it shows you how remarkably dead-on the faux-LCD version is. The anti-capitalist statements that accompany your victories up the inexplicable-factor a tad.
Click here to play Greek & Wicked.
Enjoy.
This article appears in May 14 • 2010.
