I decided to give R-Type a run on my iPhone just for old time’s sake and what a blast it turned out to be. Not only did it brings back memories of the hours I spent playing it on my Atari STE, but surprisingly it has proved to be just as captivating as it was all those years ago. It is still frantic, still frustrating, and gloriously long. Very few games make me want to come back time and time again to get through a level and I am still hankering for just one more go.
That’s all very nice, but the real story for me is how my 10 year old son greeted the game.
“This is too difficult!”
“It’s sooooo annoying!”
“Is this what you called fun when you were young?”
To say he has been struggling with the game is an understatement, and this for a boy who is way better than me at Doodle Jump, Angry Birds, Loopy Laboratory and countless other games. He is a bright kid, he cleared all of the levels in Loopy Laboratory in 1 day, but he struggles to cope with the challenge R-Type offers him.
And I am so happy that he is struggling because I can ramble on about how things were more difficult when I was young, you don’t know you are born etc. etc. It feels weird to reminisce about computer games, but we have reached that time where they are too old and difficult for some children today.
R-Type is an exception because the retro renaissance happening in the App Store has not always produced titles that are worth playing today. For example, the Commodore 64 emulator is going just too far back and the games are rubbish. However, I come away feeling slightly smug that some of the games from my day are slightly too tricky for my 10 year old son and that’s a good feeling. It feels even better to be playing the game on a phone 23 years after I first played it and to still be enthralled by the experience.
Would today’s kids find it as hard if they had the proper tools? Playing it with a proper joystick like we did, not some fiddly smartphone interface.