198X Review

The year is 2019. From the dark bowels of Sweden comes a game called 198X. That really makes my opening sentence a little dumb doesn’t it? Oh well, the backspace key doesn’t work on this keyboard. We’ll just have to press onward.

Hit-Bit done and went and made a game that’s a love letter to the arcade culture of the 80’s. But also not quite at the same time. Sounds weird but stick with me. I’ll try and make it all make sense. You’d better grab a beverage.

Kid, our main character, is growing up in a fairly typical suburban life. You know. Quiet. Safe. Dullsville. Who wants that? I mean. Really. If that wasn’t enough, Kid is a kind of awkward teenager in some level of middle school. That’s a recipe for fun! Boy oh boy!

Well, Kid is a little overwhelmed with how awesome their life is so they go out and wander the streets at night and end up at an arcade. They pump a few dollars in quarters into a few machines and discover that this is really where they feel the most alive, the most welcome, and the most accepted.

But is it that simple? Really? Maybe. Maybe not.

The game itself is more of a collection of other arcade style games rolled up into a narrative that is told in the chapters between the games that we play inside the game. Gameception some might call it. Some might not be me.

The opening of the game is a beat em up. Think Streets Of Rage/Final Fight. We have no context for what’s going on, we’re just dropped in and start playing. At the end of that portion we get our first introduction to Kid, their life, etc. As the story moves along we get into a horizontal scrolling shooter, a racing game, a face paced QTE almost style of game (I don’t know the specific name for this genre if there even is one), and an RPG.

In between each of these gameplay segments, as I said, we learn a little more about Kid. What happened at school, at home, with their friends, family, everything. I don’t wanna say it’s heavy, but it’s not exactly light either.

The gameplay in each segment of 198X is damned near flawless. Each game we end up inside plays exactly like you’d expect them to. The beat em up has all the usual beat em up things. The shooter is very Gradius/R-Type like. The racing game? I don’t even like racing games and I LOVED that segment. They all just work. Know what I mean? Good.

The graphics are all 16 bit pixel style graphics and they look gorgeous. A lot of time, effort, energy, and dare I say heart went into making this game look and feel the best it can. They knocked it out of the park. Each game is, again, exactly what you’d be looking for and the plot segments are beautiful. As this is a game that takes place in the generic idea of the 80’s you can bet there’s a lot of neon, day glow colors, and plenty of high saturation and contrast. But the color isn’t limited to bright shiny bubblegum stuff. The color in the game is just as important to telling the story as the dialog is. It sets the mood amazingly well.

And you don’t think we’re gonna skip over the music do ya? If you like vaporwave, you’re gonna love this. I can’t even begin to really tell you about how amazing it is. There’s just too much to get into. It’d take me 18 paragraphs and these reviews are long enough already.

I went into 198X not knowing what to expect. We had some time on a stream to fill so I booted this thing up and loved it so much I ended up finishing the game in a single session. If I had one complaint about the game it’s exactly that. It’s too short. You can get through it in an hour, easy. And as there’s no other endings and you can’t really just go back and play the games in the game in full it really is a one and done kind of thing.

You can still replay it to experience the music and graphics and story and all that, but you’re not going to get a different or more complete experience on playthough 2 or 8 or 20 than you did on your first one. In fact, I’d even say that the more you play it the less impactful it’s going to be. Familiarity breeds discontent or something like that.

That said though, it’s been long enough since I first played it that I think if I were to go back to it I would have an equally as amazing time as I did the first time I played it. I know that kind of negates what I just said before but maybe don’t back to back this one.

It’s a game that I feel is begging for a sequel and I hope that we get one sometime. It’s too good to be left the way it ends.

TLDR, here’s some numbers.