Robotron is one of my all time favorite games, and coincidentally is one of the hardest games I’ve ever played. I have maintained for a long time that if you can get good at Robotron, you can do just about anything. Certainly the ability to focus on and distinguish all the chaotic elements around you, the incoming danger, the target humans that you have to rescue, somehow keep track of your character, and develop a split-second strategy takes some sort of advance skill, nay, sharpens one’s latent abilities. It’s not just the difficulty of the game, though, it’s also the amazing sound design, an onslaught of 8-bit sounds. It’s cathartic – orgasmic. It is the chaos and intensity of Robotron that makes it truly hardcore.

Let’s reminisce about what an intense game this is:

I have spent some time thinking about the genre that Robotron embodies, and I’m not quite sure what the proper label for the game type should be. I think it exists apart from other shooter games, although it has some descendants that definitely fall in the same category.

So, what typifies the genre as I see it. First of all, unlike other shooters, these games feature rapid auto-fire. Robotron has one stick for movement in 8 directions and one stick for shooting in 8 directions. When you use the firing stick, it unleashes a steady stream of rapid fire lasers accompanied by an awesome stream of laser pulse sound effects. There is something so satisfying about this type of game, that is similar perhaps to using a machine gun in a recent FPS, except that you never have to worry about ammunition or reloading. It’s just infinite weapon discharge, and there’s something kind of stimulating about that.

Another quality of the genre is being swarmed by enemies. If Pac Man seemed stressful at times, being chased by 4 ghosts and constantly trying to find your way out of tricky spots, Robotron is 10x more intense. Forget about the physical barriers of the maze, now, the enemy can see you at any time and come at you from any angle. The maze is itself formed by pathways between enemies, by which you can escape, and those pathways are constantly changing. You are perpetually escaping by the skin of your teeth.

As I mentioned, the genre is also typified by a sort of mixed focus that you have to maintain, that of your position in the densely packed arena, and that of your enemies, and “pickups”, in this case humans that must be rescued from the army of evil robots. I think this quality is a staple of the genre, the requisite of maintaining a mixed focus, which is more pronounced in this genre than in others.

So, since Robotron, there have been a number of games that have exhibited these requisite qualities. I’d like to create a comprehensive list of them, but I doubt I can, so I’ll focus on games which I’ve played or have heard about lately.

One that I know Troy and I have fond memories of is Smash TV. Smash TV is effectively Robotron with updated graphics and multiple weapons. One of the biggest advancements however was co-op play, where you could play with 2 players at a time, collaborating to kill waves of attackers but competing for “big money, big prizes, i~i love it”. If someone was awesome, they’d release Smash TV HD for PS3. With the awesome dual analog sticks of the DS3 and the vibration, the game would be truly a natural fit. I think it goes without saying that I would buy Robotron for PS3, in a heartbeat.

There are games similar to Smash TV on PS3. Zombie Apocalypse is effectively the same as Smash TV, with multiple weapons, and now up to 4 players instead of just 2. It has the same swarming, infinite fire, and dual stick control. I’ve had fun playing the demo, and still consider buying it when I can. However, I’m not sure how much variety the game packs. Perhaps that isn’t so much of an issue, but as they introduced newer 3D graphics, physics, and textures, the game became a little less minimal, a little less hardcore and focused on simple gameplay than it’s forebear, Robotron. Robotron, like Pac Man, was just about survival and score. There were a slim variety of enemies, but little else differentiated levels besides increased speed and complexity. It was simple, and better for it. In Pac Man, the variety was mainly different fruit prizes that you could collect, and changing mazes. Other than that, the game was kept simple, and you didn’t really want for more. With games like Zombie Apocalypse, the introduction of characters, vocal soundbites, atmospheric designed maps, and so on leave you looking for the next change, but I think those changes are somewhat limited. The game mechanics still exist, and ultimately the game is about survival and score, but somehow, it is less galvanized in my mind than Robotron and even Smash TV was to some extent. Still, I think it might be worthwhile for some drop-in sessions. Incidentally, I should mention Burn Zombie Burn, another Smash TV clone, that may be good, but has never released a demo on the PS3, so who can say. It does appear as interesting if not more than Zombie Apocalypse.

Zombie Apocalypse. Great graphics, humorous like Smash TV, but a little dry:

Burn Zombie Burn. More cartoony, but possibly better:

Incidentally, I think Call of Duty: World At War’s Nazi Zombie mode is one of the more successful riffs on the Robotron genre, with its never ending onslaught of zombies. Some of the requisites place it outside of the genre I’m discussing, but it maintains certain characteristics: that of indiscriminate destruction, and the minimalism of the gameplay concept – survive and get the highest score possible. Both Robotron and Nazi Zombies are designed so that you will eventually fail. The inevitability of this is a common point. However, you are expected to manage your ammunition, and though it’s a virtually limitless supply, it’s not the cathartic unlimited discharge that games of this genre exemplify, so Nazi Zombies may fall ever so slightly outside the category.

A dramatic trailer for Nazi Zombies, which still rules in my opinion:

One game that I have been intrigued by, but have yet to play is Geometry Wars. I guess the game was released as a mini-game on Xbox, and has since shown up on PC, Wii, and DS. Unfortunately, it has yet to arrive on PS3, and since it originated on Xbox, I think it’s fairly unlikely. This is unfortunate, since the game looks incredible. Geometry Wars is sort of like Robotron meets Flow. The graphics are very retro a la Tempest, but the game features a much more modern visual overload that I think typifies the genre. In Robotron, there was a lot of visual overload, and this was compounded by the sonic overload, that makes for an almost psychedelic experience. Geometry Wars though benefits from modern processors and filters and compounds the visual intensity. This game represents so much of what I liked when video games were new in the early 80s, and so much of what I feel I’m missing in my video game library today. I truly wish it was made available for PS3. By the way, it looks great on the iPad.

If Geometry Wars doesn’t make you LOL, I’ll be surprised:

Searching for something similar on the PS3, I noticed Super Stardust. It’s not quite the same, but it shares a lot of the same qualities that place it in this genre. I demoed it on the PS3, late last night. Indeed, gameplay is kept simple. You command a space ship orbiting a planet, with the task of defending the planet from asteroids and various alien technology. Just because you are destroying asteroids however, doesn’t make it as similar to Asteroids as you would suspect, although there are some similarities. In essence, you are constantly zooming around the orbit of the spherical 3D planet, chasing and destroying objects as quickly as possible. The demo didn’t let me get too far into the spectrum of difficulty, but it seems a safe bet from what I’ve seen, that the chaos will compound pretty quickly. The graphics look pretty nice in HD and the sound effects are pretty dense. The game, though feeling somehow different from Robotron’s flat map, is nonetheless a worthy addition to the genre. It’s on 2nd string of my games to own list.

Super Stardust HD. Different from Robotron in that your character is always at the center of the screen, but similar in other respects:

There is a genre that I have yet to explore, but I think may be synonymous or at least very similar to what I’m describing: the “bullet hell” genre. From what I can tell, the genre is almost entirely limited to Japan, and as I’ve come to detect, exudes a certain fetishy, obsessive quality that Japan seems to excel at producing. I am sort of out of my field of expertise here, but there are games that are so laden with “bullets” on the screen at one time, that the very nature of the game is mutated. Instead of being about destroying the enemy, the game is more about weaving through a matrix of dangers. If it were Pac Man, the dots and power pills would no longer have meaning, and escape would really be the focus.

虫姫さま Mushihime-sama aka Insect Princess. Ultramode boss fight. Total WTF:

These bullet hell games do however share some qualities with Robotron, although it may be a spiritual successor to Gradius in more ways. The firing, though, is almost an after thought. You simply hold down the button: fire and forget. Robotron is in comparison, a bit more strategic, but the auto-fire thing is a close similarity. I think Japan has tuned in on that perpetual shooting fetish and turned it into something almost obscene.

東方 Touhou. Check out this light show. Absolutely insane boss battle:

Bullet hell games also have the sensory overload, in spades. In fact, the overload is so extreme, that it seems like the player only makes minute adjustments, like weaving through an ever-changing maze that is extremely compact at any given time. This feature actually leaves me cold. I like the speed of running around, so there may be just a bit too much chaos on the screen at any given time, but nonetheless, it’s a very interesting sub-genre of gaming.

Additionally, these bullet hell games feature a lot of supplementary feedback, such as sound and visual effects for scoring and accomplishments. As if the matrix of bullets on screen wasn’t enough, they often overlay massive explosions, shockwaves, and point readouts. This is something I do love. Other genres have the same feature, and I think it’s entertaining in all of them. Fighting games that have big, over-the-top power moves like BlazBlue, tantalize the player with big light and sound shows. The style is undeniably Eastern. Asians are traditionally very much into fireworks, and these are the fireworks of the video age. Robotron had only a few mind bending visual transitions, but sonically it was like a string of firecrackers going off constantly. That is key to the genre, in my mind.

BlazBlue Calamity Trigger combo trailer:

Here’s a game that just came out for Xbox 360, with an interesting concept and a lot of eye candy. In essence, you choose the background music from your own collection and the game spawns enemies and adjusts your ships power based on the music. It somewhere in between a deluxe music visualizer and a game like Robotron. It seems like Xbox gets all the super-fetishy titles like this.

Anyway, while bullet hell games bear similarity, they aren’t quite what I’m referring to, and so I am struggling to give a name to the genre that is descriptive of the main tenants: sensory overload, mixed focus, perpetual gameplay, and infinite firing. Maybe you guys can help me name it and bring to my attention some other great games that represent the same qualities.

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