Game collections are all the rage these days, and are becoming increasingly something that goes beyond just the game. Retro collections aim to be museums as much as things you play, with Digital Eclipse in particular mastering the “interactive museum” format. Riki 8Bit Game Collection isn’t really a “retro collection,” though it looks like it from the screenshots. Rather it’s a wafer-thin collection of two games designed to look retro, and a bunch of music players.
Let’s start with the two games. The first is Kira Kira Star Night, which is an auto-running platformer where you choose one of three characters and try and collect stars that fly around in the sky above you. You’ve got two different jumps and the ability to bounce off the edges of the screen, and you’ll be using those skills to try and get every star in each level.
The game looks the part – the art is actually gorgeous both in terms of the modern “promotional” art and the in-game retro-style visuals. This is thanks to the considerable artistic talents of Riki, whose name is on the title because the art really ties the whole package together. It plays fine too, though I found the avatar to be a touch more stiff and slippery to control than I might have liked for a platformer that required such precision (the stars you need to collect are tiny). But as a minute or two diversion, Kira Kira Star Night is not something I regret playing.
Astro Ninja Man DX, meanwhile, is a vertical-scrolling shooter. You start with just a single “ninja” running endlessly north and shooting on auto-pilot, but by collecting additional characters you’re able to end up with an additional four “allies” that stand by your side and fire in unison with you. Think of Galaga, when you manage to shoot the tractor-beam alien and get a second ship to shoot with.
The catch here is that your allies don’t disappear if they get hit. It’s only if your main, central character gets hit that the allies start to disappear. This allowed the developer to make a game that gets very busy on screen, and there’s a chaotic beauty to it, trying to keep an eye on the one character that matters while also monitoring what ALL the characters are shooting down makes for an interesting way to challenge your ability to pay attention.
A few levels of that, though, and the game’s over too, so while Astro Ninja Man DX is also not something I regret playing, I find it incredible that this entire “collection” can be done with in about ten minutes play, with very little incentive to come back to afterwards.
On the more “prestige” side of things, Riki 8Bit Game Collection has three separate music players. Why there isn’t just one, I’m not entirely sure, but in having three I guess the developer does get to expand the list of “apps” in the collection to five. Across the music players you’ll be able to listen to tracks from nearly 40 composers, and the talent behind them is real. You’ll be able to hear 8-bit music from musicians behind everything from Streets of Rage to Mega Man, Final Fantasy X (no, not Nobuo Uematsu, but still very talented) and Ape Escape contributed music to this collection.
All of this is presented nicely as well, with plenty of dynamic visuals and various ways to interact with the music by turning instruments on and off. It’s clear that a lot of effort went into allowing the package to really showcase the music artistry on display, rather than simply providing players with a music player with “play” and “pause” commands. There are even some little “hidden” Easter Eggs in here, including minigames, though they do make the Wario Ware microgames seem in-depth by comparison.
I hate to be the guy railing against a lack of content in a game, but while Riki 8Bit Game Collection was clearly a labour of love, I have to question why this wasn’t released as a music CD or music download instead, because 99% of the experience is in those music players and the Switch is not the ideal place for a music player. There’s less than ten minutes worth of gameplay in this collection, and as good as that music is, I can’t add it to my Apple playlists for working out or enjoying while I’d reading a book. The end result is, sadly, a conceptual misfire.
