Video Game Review: 198X

198X

Hi-Bit Studios

Arcade

Nintendo Switch, PC, Playstation 4, Xbox One

We might be just entering a new decade but nostalgia is still at an all-time high. Shows like Stranger Things for instance tap into that love of all things past, and the ’80s, in particular, is one of the preferred times to journey back to. Therefore, it’s not too surprising that 198X takes the player back to that time too, focusing on a teenager’s experience of life and the arcade games they play.

The game mostly consists of some narration by the protagonist about their life (whose name we never know, but we presume is just meant to represent any one of us), and split up with a series of mini-games modeled after various types of arcade games. It’s a cool device but ultimately makes the story feel somewhat vacant – we don’t really care all that much about the protagonist and each little patch of story feels more like filler in between the mini-games. The games themselves are well crafted and fun callbacks to other well-known arcade classics and the diversity of them is a nice touch, but they don’t really add much to the story of the game.

Visually is where this game really excels – it mimics the more old-style graphics of the era it came from to great effect and really gives that impression of an old game. The mini-games are nothing amazing but are decently complex and frustrating, providing enough difficulty so that players can’t just breeze through them all the first time. There are five in total – a fighter game, sci-fi shooter, racing game, a side-scrolling ninja runner, and an RPG. Of the five the latter two have the most depth to them though the shooter has a reasonable amount of difficulty to it. The ninja runner is perhaps the most fun and there are some nice aesthetics involved with the enemies and the last boss which is genuinely quite creepy. The final game brings to mind old computer RPGs where players had very minimal controls and are guided through a maze and fight dragons, but this game is perhaps the most linked with the main story. It isn’t particularly difficult once you figure out the enemy’s weaknesses but this segment is definitely rather eerie. And then, the game just… sort of ends. It’s a bit anticlimactic and you find yourself wishing for more closure for the protagonist or at least some kind of resolution to their dilemmas.

Ultimately, however, this is a game that feels as lost as the protagonist – it can’t decide if it wants to deal with a serious topic about finding joy and escapism in video games and there’s no real progression for the character to find some resolution to this. ‘Kid’ (as the credits dub the protagonist) appears to exist, occasionally finding distraction in the underground arcade they’ve discovered, but nothing much really happens. Perhaps this is supposed to be a realistic interpretation of a teenager’s life in a boring suburban town back in the ’80s but ultimately, it makes for a mostly non-existent story and nothing more than a framing device to hold the mini-games. 

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