Back in 1995 I owned Chrono Trigger for the Super NES and played the bejeezus out of it. Unfortunately, I never could get over the hump of beating the final boss, and after I foolishly sold it off along with the rest of my SNES-related items, I figured that hump would stay never surmounted.

Thank goodness for the Nintendo DS port, then.

Not including New Game+, I played through 100% of that port, which is something I rarely do nowadays. I did every sidequest. I got every special item. Unlocked every tech, double tech and triple tech. I even took down all of the bonus content available for the DS and iOS ports. I took down Lavos with vicious aplomb.

Instead of taking a breather, and then evaluating how I wanted to tackle New Game+, I erased my save, put the DS card back in the box, and went to eBay to post a sale auction. Title? “Chrono Trigger Complete, Like New”.

I liked Chrono Trigger when I first owned it, and I liked it just as much the second time around. Perhaps I don’t hold it in as high regard as most fans of videogaming do, but I truly, honestly really liked it.

I have absolutely zero desire to ever play it again.

Chrono Trigger is a game that I’d typically keep in my library. It’s a role-playing game, and even though I got every single piece of one-playthrough content I could have gotten, there’s still the challenge of beating the game under-leveled, or power-leveling to see how much patience you have. There are multiple party configurations with which you can march through and beat the game. Like exploring Marvel vs. Capcom teams, you can find out which “main” is your favorite. And specific to certain games, like Chrono Trigger, New Game+ exists solely for you to explore the game once again but in a different situation (in this case, marching through the game like a god just to see every one of its myriad endings).

I’ve been trying to figure out why I convulse at the thought of ever playing the game again. The one thing that I keep coming to again and again is the fatigue I developed with the game’s bonus content. Not present in the original, the additional quests you can go through comprise a sloppy patchwork of boring, zig-zag level design and irritating thrown-together tilesets of other existing dungeons. There’s no inventiveness to the dungeon layouts, and there’s only one truly interesting fan service reveal in the perhaps five to ten hours I spent doing extracurriculars. There are bonus weapons galore, and boy, are they worth it. But a weapon as a reward for a slog doesn’t make the slog itself any more interesting. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that, by the time I exhausted the extra content, Chrono Trigger had simply worn out its welcome. I just wanted to take the Epoch to Lavos and end it.

There’s a bit of irony to this, no? Extra content, which is supposed to get you to play the game more, has–in this case–made me not ever want to play the game again. Granted, the context is different; I did, in fact, play the game “more” than I would have if I just played through the main story one time. However, I might actually have the desire to play through the main story and even New Game+ more had the grueling experience going through the extra content not made me sick of the game. For the sake of a few extra hours of new stuff, I’ve given up a lifetime of extra hours replaying and enjoying the classic stuff.

Ultimately, this inaugural installment of GINPA is obviously less an indictment on the core game and moreso on the new content that Square Enix saw fit to slap onto the end of the game. It’s also indirectly an indictment of my decision to tenaciously pursue the completion of this content to the bitter end. Perhaps I should have tried some New Game+ gameplay before deciding to dip into the bonus content, so that I could see what I was missing back when I sold the original SNES cart, and experience it how I would have back in the old days before seeing what newfangled dungeons were lying in wait.

But perhaps Square Enix should have made extra content that, you know, wasn’t boring in the first place.

Canvas Curse dares to strip away any traditional button-based controls while delivering an experience traditionally played with said buttons. The game’s fiction explains this transition: Kirby, under a spell cast by a witch, has lost all of his limbs and is now nothing more than a pink ball. Restricted to rolling around while at the mercy of Mother Nature’s physics, Kirby now relies on you–armed with a magic paintbrush (and conveniently breaking the fourth wall)–to guide him around by drawing lines that do everything from propelling him along a path to changing his trajectory (either by drawing a line in the opposite direction or drawing a quick vertical wall).

There were hints of line-drawing affecting character movement in previous games, most notably Yoshi’s Touch N’ Go and, to a lesser extent, one of the “boss” mini-games in Wario Ware Touched!, but Canvas Curse is neither an auto-scrolling, hands off experience like Yoshi’s DS debut; nor is it a mini-game collection like Wario’s maiden touch-screen voyage. You can accelerate Kirby by directly tapping him, stun his enemies by tapping them (which allows Kirby to then copy their attacks), give him a speed boost by drawing a loop as opposed to a straight line, and shield him from oncoming projectiles by drawing barriers. You’re also forced to work with a limited ink well that regenerates slowly enough for you to have to think your actions through.

Combining all of these elements together proves to be an exciting exercise in stylus gymnastics, and challenges not only your reflexes (as any good platformer should) but also your capacity for physics and planning. To get Kirby across a chasm and onto an elevated ledge, what combination of loops and quick strokes–and at what angles–will propel him upwards in the right direction, without depleting all of the ink? Thanks to some fantastic level design, this type of thinking and activity is everywhere. In some scenarios, you’ll be guiding Kirby up chimneys lined with spikes. In others, you’ll be shielding Kirby from dangerous falling icicles with horizontal lines while coaxing him along a bottomless pit, enemies nipping at his heels—oops, I’m sorry, he doesn’t have heels this time–every step of the way. Still other scenarios are exercises in guiding Kirby towards and around enemies, using the most appropriate strokes possible to avoid dangerous situations and pick up collectibles.

The brilliant level design is mostly responsible for keeping the line-drawing motif from getting stale, but there are other elements–both mandatory and optional–that further serve to make Canvas Curse a varied and replayable experience. For starters, the “boss” battles at the end of each stage aren’t exactly battles, but rather three types of stylus-based challenges. One has you racing to a finish line in a mine cart–for which you must draw the trajectory, natch–grabbing fruit for speed boosts and avoiding mines and spikes. Another has you scribbling through strictly-timed series of Connect-The-Dots, while the final type has you drawing spring boards to guide Kirby through a gauntlet of Breakout-esque obstacles. Not only are these unlockable as bonus games, but time- and ink-trials for each world are unlockable as well (the latter of which rewarding you for making it to the goal using as little ink as possible). While playing each of the game’s worlds, as well as the bonus games and trials, you collect medals that will serve to unlock even more bonus levels and extra niceties (such as an increased life bar), keeping you motivated to search every nook and cranny and beat every time.

Kirby: Canvas Curse is also aesthetically appealing, though those without a sweet tooth might grimace a little. Canvas Curse doesn’t change up Kirby’s whimsical and cartoony style, instead pushing it even further with a mixture various themes including angles, watercolor splotches, and even broadly-stroked mechanical designs. None of this pushes the technical envelope, but it’s perfect for the series and fits into the mythology of this particular game. With the musical score following suit in its upbeat whimsy and simplicity, it’s fair to say that the game’s presentation successfully ties everything together–so long as you can handle its insistence on being cute.

It should be noted that this is being written nearly four years, and plenty of top-notch Nintendo DS releases, after Canvas Curse’s original release. To answer the obvious question given this revelation, then, the game absolutely holds up as an all-time great DS title. It also stands as one of the platform’s most unique titles, which would be surprising were it not for the fact that very few action titles have dared to follow its lead. What HAL Laboratories accomplished with Kirby: Canvas Curse was and is extraordinary; that it hasn’t been aped since is baffling and, ultimately, unfortunate.

Verdict:

The driving concept behind Retro Game Challenge is actually a fantastic one. Its backstory serves as a framework to throw at you a variety of old “Famicom” games and issues of a gaming magazine–both fictional, of course. You’ll split your time between playing the games and flipping through the magazines for gameplay tips and tricks on your way to completing the various challenges that get thrown your way. The challenges vary greatly in difficulty and time spent, from scoring a certain amount of points in a space shoot-em-up to grinding in an RPG to get your characters to level 10.

The challenges are nicely varied because the games themselves span through different genres. The four genres represented are racing, space shooting, role-playing and action platforming. Each of the games are also expertly-crafted to capture the spirit of the mid-to-late 80′s, complete with pixelated sprites and blippy music which evolves with every game, matching the progress games saw from year to year. Let’s not forget to mention the terrible yet lovable localization we all remember from that era. Of special note are the space shooter Star Prince; the role-playing game Guadia Quest; and the Metroid-style action platformer Super Robot Ninja Haggle Man 3. Though not full-length games (as with the rest of the titles within), these titles still take a lot of skill, time and dedication to fully explore, and are just great to play in their own rights.

The problems start to trickle in when you look at how everything progresses within Retro Game Challenge’s main construct. The challenge concept very closely resembles the Achievements and Trophies concepts of today’s modern games. However, challenges and games open up in a completely linear fashion, with the next challenge not becoming available until you beat its predecessor. As a result, you can’t choose to turn on one of the games and play it straight through in an attempt to complete as many challenges as you can in one go. I realize this is called “Retro Game Challenge” and not “21st Century Game Challenge”, but regardless, this makes it more difficult to enjoy the games within the natural flow of gameplay.

As a further disruption, once you complete a challenge, the game halts and you’re greeted with some “All Clear!” fanfare–then you’re booted out of the game. To complete the next challenge, you’re then made to “boot up” the game again and start it from the beginning (unless it was “made” with battery backup saves). Here’s an aggravating example: In Rally King, the top-down R.C. Pro-Am knock-off, the first three challenges are to complete two drifting power slides; complete the first course; and complete the second course with a ranking of 5th or higher. Ideally this set of challenges would be easily attainable in one sitting. But no–with the way Retro Game Challenge handles progression, you end up having to sit through course 1 at least twice (once to beat it, once to race through it en route to beating course 2–and arguably, once to complete the first power-slide challenge depending on how long it takes you).

I suppose that the act of completing a challenge boots you out of the games you’re playing so that Retro Game Challenge can dole out issues of GameFan one by one, but there’s also somewhat needless dialogue stuffed in between each completion. See, the backstory of the game reveals that Game Master Arino has sent you back in time to beat these challenges alongside a younger version of him, which is fine for setup purposes, but the conversations that take place between you and young Arino are inconsequential and can’t be skipped. Indeed, upon first booting up the game, it took me minutes of reading incessant dialogue and backstory before I even got to my first instance of actual gameplay. This is irritating, considering that this game that aims to bring back the feel of the mid-80′s, when you were often thrust right into action-packed gameplay within seconds.

The final insult to injury is that many of the games repeat themselves. Rally King appears a second time, when it’s called “Rally King SP” instead. The most significant changes? Some bumps and puddles are added to the same courses you already raced through, and some of the colors change. That’s it. Robot Ninja Haggle Man’s sequel, Haggle Man 2, contains nearly identical in gameplay, with the key difference being its difficulty. In addition, a few of the games have a second loop–in other words, to truly “beat” it, you have to play through all the stages a second time. It would have been nice to see either different games instead of sequels, or noticeably different gameplay or level designs in said sequels.

It’s really somewhat of a shame that Retro Game Challenge offers such linear progression, repeats itself one time too many, and sits you through pointless chatter. These all blemish what would otherwise be a fantastic homage to the NES era. Nonetheless, there is an attention to detail that makes these games look and play exactly like you’d expect an 80′s game to, and some of the creations are good enough to warrant sitting through this game’s issues. Just be prepared to grit your teeth and roll your eyes as you do so.

Verdict: