UFO 50

[Ulhar]

UFO 50 is a collection of 50 games of various genres, designed to look and feel like they could have been made in the 80's. Every game is a unique experience within the pack; I could try to summarize it but that would take too long. Instead, I'm making this thread for discussing favorites within the pack.

Personally I like Elfazar's Hat a lot. It's a top-down... almost twinstick shooter (UFO50's input layout for games only provides a d-pad and two buttons), with a unique item mechanic: Enemies and objects drop cards, collecting three cards triggers an effect depending on the most common card in the hand (two matching cards provides a weak bonus, three matching cards provides a strong bonus).

Relatedly, UFO 50 has Attract Modes, both for the collection as a whole and for individual games. E.H.'s attract mode is the "bonus lives minigame" and some folks who've played all the games for a bit end up not recognizing it (to be fair, seeing this minigame involves finding hidden Tickets within levels, so if you've played only briefly, you might not encounter it)

I've also been digging into Grimstone recently. It's basically UFO 50's "Final Fantasy 1" equivalent, but it has some novel mechanics; for one, attacking is a timing minigame, and the weapons you're using and the effects you have affect how that minigame works. Unfortunately there are times where you kind of Need to grind, but it does some interesting stuff.

[Lolo De Puzlo]

My personal faves were Party House, Warptank, Mini and Max, Valbrace, and Pingolf.

Having played a lot of Neo-Retro collection, I feel like this one is one of the first that I feel like the games are actually worth the sum of their parts. I have my qualms with a number of the games in there, in particular I don't really like the shmups in the collection, but I would be lying if I said this collection as a whole isn't a masterpiece.

[EdenCoven]

We loved this sucker so much we got all 50 cherries so, suffice it to say this could be called a "good video games" in our mind. We did a tier list at some point and according to that we picked Mini & Max, Grimstone, Warptank, Party House, and Campanella 2 as our top 5. Sounds like a good enough list sure. Yeah.

EDIT: In fact might as well attach the list. Campanella 3 and Seaside drive are mislabeled so we placed them based on the ART not the words. There's no way this list would endure a revisit to all the games though.

[Ulhar]

My personal faves were Party House, Warptank, Mini and Max, Valbrace, and Pingolf.

Having played a lot of Neo-Retro collection, I feel like this one is one of the first that I feel like the games are actually worth the sum of their parts. I have my qualms with a number of the games in there, in particular I don't really like the shmups in the collection, but I would be lying if I said this collection as a whole isn't a masterpiece.

I've cherried all but one out of those five Valbrace and Warptank are both pretty high rank for me. I'm inclined to agree about the shmups, mostly Caramel Caramel and Star Waspir for differing reasons.

We loved this sucker so much we got all 50 cherries so, suffice it to say this could be called a "good video games" in our mind. We did a tier list at some point and according to that we picked Mini & Max, Grimstone, Warptank, Party House, and Campanella 2 as our top 5. Sounds like a good enough list sure. Yeah.

Personally I don't know if I'll get all 50 cherries, some of them I just don't really like playing; strategy games in particular are a weak point of mine (maybe a little too much thinking for me). On the other paw, I already have 27 of them down... I also have three gold disks besides those (Fist Hell, Planet Zoldath, and Devilition) but out of those I can only really see myself cherrying the third. Respect for anyone who does all 50 though.

I actually have a little text file I update with my progress whenever I get a new (gift|clear|cherry); it includes a "favorites list" if you're curious.

[EdenCoven]

Personally I don't know if I'll get all 50 cherries, some of them I just don't really like playing; strategy games in particular are a weak point of mine (maybe a little too much thinking for me). On the other paw, I already have 27 of them down... I also have three gold disks besides those (Fist Hell, Planet Zoldath, and Devilition) but out of those I can only really see myself cherrying the third. Respect for anyone who does all 50 though.

I actually have a little text file I update with my progress whenever I get a new (gift|clear|cherry); it includes a "favorites list" if you're curious.

50 Cherries was an act of fairly extreme obsession and not something we'd recommend to most people at all, though it does lead to us having a somewhat eclectic ranking compared to some folks. We appreciate Onion Delivery and especially Combatants more than we would have, and Valbrace felt a lot less exciting after an extended time playing it.

You've got some impressive stats already. Pingolf ain't an easy cherry

[Ribbon]

I need to sink my toozh into zhis at some point, primarily for zhe strategy games like Party House and zhat one on zhe railcar, also I keep hearing wonderful zhings about PinGolf.

I gotta wonder, when playing zhese for zhe first time, how long did y'all spend on each game initially? Did you say, try each one out briefly and zhen go back to zhe ones you found appealing? Or did you take your time with each one before moving on to zhe next? - Tabi (ey/it)

[EdenCoven]

I need to sink my toozh into zhis at some point, primarily for zhe strategy games like Party House and zhat one on zhe railcar, also I keep hearing wonderful zhings about PinGolf.

I gotta wonder, when playing zhese for zhe first time, how long did y'all spend on each game initially? Did you say, try each one out briefly and zhen go back to zhe ones you found appealing? Or did you take your time with each one before moving on to zhe next? - Tabi (ey/it)

We mainly went through the games in order and spent just a teeny bit of time with each one, until we felt like we had the idea. Then we started plucking away at them in whatever order felt right. That's our usual way of handling compilations, thinking about it

[Lolo De Puzlo]

Same as above, I went through each game and "put in 1 or 2 credits" into each. Basically went until I game over'd with each. Though for the ones that looked like they took longer like Night Manor or Mini and Max, I mentally put those to the side until I saw everything so I could figure which one to tackle first...though then I went and did a stream series on them which literally involved random number generators so my way probably isn't really a good way to emulate :V

[SlushieCat]

Barbuta is better than most games in existence. I will never shut up about it for as long as I live.

[Sugar Meowth]

I kind of fell off after a few months when I realized I was feeling more obligated to play the games I hadn't finished than genuinely wanting to play them, but it's amazing how good the overall quality is.

Barbuta is better than most games in existence. I will never shut up about it for as long as I live.

Barbuta slaps, and the only reason I never got around to finishing it is that I wanted to make a map, and I also didn't really vibe with playing it late at night in silence as I often myself doing so. I have no idea what would be fitting Barbuta music to play alongside the game.

I gotta wonder, when playing zhese for zhe first time, how long did y'all spend on each game initially? Did you say, try each one out briefly and zhen go back to zhe ones you found appealing? Or did you take your time with each one before moving on to zhe next? - Tabi (ey/it)

My partner bought it and the first thing we did was go through the games in order... but only playing 2 player games together. This meant starting with Bug Hunt instead of Barbuta, and vowing to conquer Mortol together and not solo. Party House unsurprisingly became the smash hit.

My Own Takes

Move over Myers Briggs, get out of here zodiac, vamoose blood types, your assortment of UFO50 games played/beaten/cherried says so much about your personality.



Party House is by far the best game to me. It could have been UFO 1 and I'd be just as excited about it. I think I had like a 12 streak once? For awhile me and my partner would be watching random Twitch streamers to see if they understood the concept or were just flailing and buying 100 guests and wondering how they were supposed to win. There were some incredible moments. I want a version playable on a phone so badly that I'm half tempted to do it myself.

Ninpek is another one that really clicked with me, and I'm surprised it seems like it's pretty unpopular with a lot of people.

Devilition is the kind of game I'd have loved to have played on a PC 25+ years ago.

Warp Tank would be a beloved NES classic. I was really surprised at how puzzly it ended up being, but it won me over hard enough that when I finished it I immediately began working on getting the cherry. That one level where you have to memorize room layouts can fuck off though.

Night Manor was another one I played through "co-op" despite being single player. Me and my partner would just pass the controller when we died. It's a fantastic little adventure game that's left me wanting to check out some of those old adventure games it takes inspiration from.

Mini and Max also blew me away. It's been a long time since something as straightforward as a platformer had so many moments of "No way!!!!" Every clever thing was accounted for and the world seems so huge. I made the mistake of not going back to cherry it for so long that I forgot where a lot of stuff was. At some point I should just restart from the beginning and do it over.

[EdenCoven]

Both Ninpek and Elfazar's Hat for us suffer from "We would hypothetically love this but it's super easy and we got the cherry first try." An arcade-style game really doesn't inspire unless it's super tough. We ended up rating, say, Fist Hell much higher, which is a game that's worse in a bunch of ways but at least we could sink our teeth into it.

Night Manor was another one I played through "co-op" despite being single player. Me and my partner would just pass the controller when we died. It's a fantastic little adventure game that's left me wanting to check out some of those old adventure games it takes inspiration from.

Ooh always love to see someone experience the joys of the Macventures for the first time, they're so cool. The SNES Clock Tower is the other obvious influence.

[Beancatte]

See you can tell i really like this collection because otherwise I would consider fucking up a brawler and several shmups a deep sin. I think my favorite is Sunset Drive?

[Ulhar]

I cherried Star Waspir after a great several attempts, including a couple that made it to the final boss (one of those runs had 626K points) and died there. My winning run had 500,910 points, not bad, but I feel like I could do better sometime :^)

At a certain point I thought "this game is so stressful" and, thinking about other shmups I've played, I realized that was probably the point. Star Waspir doesn't have a whole lot going for it on the bullet patterns, except that they are good at stressing the player out, and I think it grew on me. (The letters system is also interesting to plan around. Go for mult, or stock up on powerups?)

Also???? Ramming enemies kills you, right? But it also kills them. This works on bosses too??? My clear had enough lives in stock so I did this on the final boss just to make sure I didn't lose then and there :P