This is the one hundred eighty-fifth entry in the Scratching That Itch series, wherein I randomly select and write about one of the 1741 games and game-related things included in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The Bundle raised $8,149,829.66 split evenly between the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Community Bail Fund, but don’t worry if you missed it. There are plenty of ways you can help support the vital cause of racial justice; try here for a start. This particular entry is also part of the Keeping Score series about games and their soundtracks. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.
Our one hundred eighty-fifth random selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality has flickered to life on an ancient CRT screen. It’s Super Win the Game, by J. Kyle Pittman (although in-game it’s credited to Minor Key Games, who are David Pittman and J. Kyle Pittman) and its tagline in the bundle reads:
A retro-core explosion of exploration and platforming action!!
That’s right: it’s time to get retro.
The name J. Kyle Pittman sounded familiar. Upon reading the itch.io page for Super Win the Game, I learned that it’s a sequel to You Have To Win the Game, which I wrote about on this blog way back in 2012! You Have To Win the Game is an excellent, free platformer modeled after classic PC platformers from the 1980s, down to the screens with individual names and 4-color CGA graphics. I never knew it had a sequel, let alone that I already owned that sequel as part of the bundle! What luck to stumble upon it for this series.
Like its predecessor, Super Win the Game is inspired by classic games, this time games for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Specific games, in fact: many outdoor areas bear a striking resemblance to the early Mario games, while subterranean areas have clear homages to Metroid. The clearest inspiration, however, is Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. I recently played both Metroid and Zelda II for my Console History series here on this blog, so that’s another bit of fortunate timing: I’m well positioned to appreciate the overt references that Super Win the Game makes. It has the same top-down explorable map that Zelda II does, with towns and other points of interest that can be entered and explored via side-on 2D platforming. Some of these are hidden and must be guessed at or stumbled upon. It has friendly folk who talk with text boxes that look nearly identical to those in Zelda II (and who sometimes give hints about secrets). The first place I explored was a clear homage to one of Zelda II’s dungeons, with a very similar entrance, and the signature curtains hanging from the ceiling in important rooms. The protagonist even wears a green tunic and cap, just like Link.
Super Win the Game also looks close to how its inspirations looked at the time, thanks to its CRT screen filter that imitates classic televisions. You Have To Win the Game had a similar filter, but here it’s a lot fancier, with an impressive array of options to customize exactly how it looks. Players can tweak the barrel distortion that creates a slight curve to the image, adjust the scanline effect, tune the persistence which gives a slight after-image for fast-moving things, and much more. I was impressed with how nice all of this looks, capturing everything from chromatic aberration on pixels to the reflection of the screen on the simulated TV frame at the edges. It definitely brings back memories of playing NES games on a small TV as a kid. But never fear: if you don’t like the effect, you can disable it and play with crisp pixels instead. Alternatively, if you like the effect a lot, J. Kyle Pittman made a (limited) version of the filter available for free, so people can play around with it.
Super Win the Game looks the part, then, but it feels quite different to play. Zelda II has a strong focus on sword-and-shield combat against tough and tricksy foes. Super Win the Game, by contrast, has no combat at all. It barely has any enemies, in fact. Its focus is instead on pure platforming challenges, and relatively mild ones at that. Most of it is just exploration, but later on players will find themselves facing precision platformer situations like rooms full of spikes and disappearing platforms. Many of the toughest areas are reserved for optional challenges like finding every last crystal hidden throughout Super Win the Game’s world, but some tricky sections and hidden secrets are required to finish the game. Fortunately — and again unlike Zelda II — there are sufficient hints to be found by talking with friendly folk that players shouldn’t have any trouble tracking things down themselves, without needing to look up anything online. I am stubborn and tracked down every little optional thing, managing it all own my own except for one bit that can be done after the main story is finished. And I would have figured that out too, if I hadn’t already explored the area it was in before finishing the game.
The early Zelda games helped define the conventions of Metroidvania design, just as much as the Metroid and Castlevania series did. Over the years, these design principles have become more formalized, and that modern sensibility is evident in Super Win the Game. It has an auto-mapping feature similar to that of Super Metroid, which is now common in nearly all Metroidvania games. The upgrades that players find, which allow them to reach previously inaccessible places, are classics like a double jump or the ability to cling to walls. It will all be familiar to anyone who’s played a Metroidvania in the last two decades, but presented with the look and feel (and sound; more on that later) of NES games from the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The story is also more involved and interesting than the NES classics it imitates. There’s a mysterious framing story about dreams, and our green-lad Wayfarer meets many folks who are happy to give a few history lessons about the world. The main objective is to restore the king’s heart, which was stolen and broken by an evil wizard, but the journey involves meeting the mysterious Arcadians who seem to know a lot more than they’re letting on. It also takes players to varied locations with different themes, from spooky dungeons full of secrets to trap-filled ice palaces to towers that reach into the clouds. These are all pleasingly interconnected, not just through the Subcon which acts as a fast travel hub, but through other secret exits and paths. One location, for example, apes the Death Mountain area from Zelda II, switching often between caves navigated in platforming mode and short paths on the top-down overworld. But some of these caves feature drops that might deposit players in unexpected places in the overworld, perhaps even across a river that they could not easily ford otherwise. Once I was able to explore the subterranean waterways area, I was pleased to find it had exits in rivers and beneath bridges all across the world.
Discovering all of this is a joy. Super Win the Game may rely on tried-and-true design, but it’s immaculately constructed. I was always excited to explore a new area, or to revisit an earlier location to search for secrets. Its world is big enough to host an impressive number of gems and other hidden goodies, but not so vast as to be overwhelming. I took about 7 hours to finish the game, according to the fortune tellers hanging out in the towns, but that includes a lot of backtracking and poking around as I hunted down every last thing in the game. Those who are more focused on the story could easily finish faster. And for those who felt that hunting down everything wasn’t enough, there are optional speedrunning courses available as a separate challenge, or even a Random Game mode that lets players start over but puts upgrades and items in random locations for a fresh experience. I did not try the Random Game mode, so I’m not sure exactly how it works, but I’ve heard of similar features in other modern Metroidvanias and it sounds pretty cool.
This one is an easy recommendation. If you have any interest in platformers or Metroidvanias, definitely give Super Win the Game a go. If you missed it in the bundle, it’s sold for a minimum price of $7.99 (but at the time of writing is half off, for a $3.99 minimum!), including versions for Windows, Mac and Linux, and bundling in the soundtrack as well. Which brings me to…
The Score:
The Super Win the Game soundtrack, composed by J. Kyle Pittman himself, features 18 tracks that clock in a just under 24 minutes total. These are chiptune pieces that imitate the capabilities of the Ricoh 2A03, the venerable sound chip used in the NES. Although the music here sounds a bit different than the NES games I’ve been emulating for my Console History series, to my ears. The triangle wave bass and noise channel percussion are spot on, but the two square wave channels used for the main melodies sound a little reedier and not quite as loud as the NES games I’ve played so far. I actually think this sounds nice, making the music less harsh and more relaxing. Part of me wonders if I’m just hallucinating this, but the high melody from “Americana Suburbia” (for example) sounds peaceful, whereas I’d expect it to sound piercing on an actual NES.
I was going to describe the pieces as jaunty, with bouncy syncopated rhythms and a lot of tempo changes or breakdowns. But then, while perusing the itch.io page for the game, I saw this thread which describes the music as pop-punk and Midwest emo adapted for the NES sound chip. The similarities to those genres hadn’t registered for me while playing, but now I can’t un-hear them. Many pieces are striving to approximate guitar chords, using the limited voices of the Ricoh chip to imply more notes than are actually there. “Texas Sun” is a great example, clearly mimicking some chugging, distorted rhythm guitar, often abandoning the simple melody completely so all the voices can pile on for rhythm duty. Elsewhere, one or both of the square waves joins in on bass duty with the triangle wave, giving a fuzzier sound, as in “Great White” and “Pity Wings”, which are both far more bass-heavy than most NES music. “It’s Time To Super Win the Game” and “The Razor’s Edge” have an almost reggae-like rhythm (although perhaps ska is a more appropriate touchstone?), with the triangle bass playing off against higher-pitched harmonized square wave staccato notes that sound like the off-beat strumming common in reggae songs.
The standout track for me is “Bored and Bled”, which I feel manages the most impressive harmonies for its catchy main melody, before dropping into a more relaxed bass-heavy breakdown section. It feels the most like a verse-chorus structure to me, albeit within a very short running time. Like most music from NES games, the selections here are very short, most clocking in between 1 and 2 minutes in length even though they are looped once and then faded out. The soundtrack manages an impressive number of memorable motifs regardless, and I often had “Bored and Bled” stuck in my head after a play session. All the pieces are nice to listen to outside of the game, however, and like the best soundtracks they conjure fond memories of different parts of the game. They were a great accompaniment to my in-game explorations and they make for a nice listen on their own too. Worth checking out after you’ve played the game!
That’s 185 down, and only 1556 to go!
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