Why I Just Gave ‘Super Retro Squad’ Fifteen Dollars

I was just say­ing yes­ter­day how much I miss the days when video games were uncom­pli­cated and didn’t take them­selves so seri­ously. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t take back expe­ri­ences like Heavy Rain or Skyrim for all the rupees in Hyrule. But once upon a time it didn’t take bleeding-edge advances in tech­nol­ogy and multi-million dol­lar bud­gets to deliver a fun and mem­o­rable expe­ri­ence to gamers.

Game designer Jay Pavlina, the guy who brought us the awe­some­ness that is Super Mario Crossover , under­stands this. He and his Explod­ing Rab­bit team are behind  Super Retro Squad , a new game being crowd­funded on Kick­Starter that hear­kens back to sim­pler times:

Super Retro Squad is a 2D plat­former that fea­tures char­ac­ters inspired by clas­sic video game char­ac­ters. These char­ac­ters will fea­ture unique game­play, but their core will be based on the orig­i­nals. This way, you get some­thing old and some­thing new, and it’s all com­bined together for a fresh, fun experience.

The game will fea­ture 40+ lev­els that will be spanned across 8 worlds. Each world will be based on one of the char­ac­ters, so there will be plenty of vari­ety found in the envi­ron­ments and ene­mies. There will also be an equip­ment and upgrade sys­tem that will allow you to cus­tomize your character’s abil­i­ties, strengths, and weak­nesses. We also plan on tying every­thing together with a cool story that will be explained through dia­log and cut scenes.

His intro­duc­tory project video is not only hilar­i­ous and full of jokes only a Nin­tendo fan could love, but will also help you to appre­ci­ate the cold, hard real­i­ties of indie game devel­op­ment and the blood, sweat and tears that go into pro­duc­ing one.

There’re a lot of gamers out there who feel the same way I do. That’s why I’m not at all sur­prised that  Super Retro Squad  has already more than dou­bled its orig­i­nal fund­ing goal of $10,000 (it’s hov­er­ing around $21.5K at the time of this writing).

I have no prob­lem hand­ing over fif­teen bucks  (pledg­ing $15 gets you a copy of the game) to some­one who’s already given me so much enter­tain­ment from a free game that remixes so many of the things I love about Nin­tendo.  I’m proud to sup­port indie devel­op­ers like Jay and the ongo­ing retro­vi­val of new and old clas­sics from gaming’s best era.*

*I would love to be able to say I just coined the term “retro­vi­val,” but alas Google proves there are many far clev­erer peo­ple on the inter­net than me!

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