Which is it? Which is the game you absolutely shouldn’t miss? This is precisely the wrong question, I think, but it’s taken me a long time to arrive at that decision. For my first few hours, my first few days, it felt like exactly the right question. It felt like the only question.
UFO 50 is a collection of 50 new games that look like very old games – games that have come to us, by the armful, straight from the 8-bit generation. An opening graphic shows a storage locker roller door being flung back, and someone gasping in wonder at what’s inside. 50 new games, arriving all at once. Not mini-games. Not micro-games. These are full games – games about driving and drifting and blowing planes out of the sky, games about betting on alien sporting events, and games about exploring the deepest oceans. They’re polished and internally coherent and often filled with secrets. They’re the kind of thing you’d buy individually on a NES cart in 1986 or rent from Blockbuster on a Friday night.
So the sense is, inevitably, that not all of these games are equal. In fact, there must be one truly special one in here. The first to be made perhaps, or the most lavishly detailed. There must be a polished gem, in amongst games about hitting people with beanbags, games about exploring while playing golf, and games about a hellish take on the Old West. There must be a sun around which the rest of the collection orbits like planets, like comets.
