Gamesylvania

I stumbled across a new web show on YouTube done by two guys — Keith Burgun and Blake Reynolds — who challenge each other to play a lot of really terrible games. “Super Game Challenge” is, basically, play-by-play commentary making fun of these games as they try to get through a few levels in the 10 minutes of length you’re allowed to make a video on YouTube. It’s quickly becoming one of my favorite shows. But, aside from the comedy, it’s the fact that these guys routinely dig up titles I’d never heard of, or heard of but never played. A few of them look really interesting while the majority of them are, by design, abysmal. (When I say “by design,” I mean, they’re featured because they’re terrible. That’s the challenge!)

If you’ve ever seen the video podcast, “Broken Pixels,” done by Shane Bettenhausen, Sean Baby and Crispin Boyer, this is like that. Which is to say, it’s like “Mystery Science Theater 3000” for video games. Bad games + bad jokes = hilarity ensues.

In the latest video, they try out the 1990 Sunsoft game “Journey to Silius.”

Super Game Challenge: Journey to Silius

According to Wikipedia, “Journey to Silius” began life as a Famicom game called “Raf World” which was edited into a game based on “The Terminator.” When licensing fell through, however, the game was further modified into what it’s currently known as.

The thing that really grabs me is how good the game looks. The highly detailed backgrounds and fluid animation put this game a cut above the rest. All that’s missing is parallax scrolling, which Keith and Blake even lament in the video. Although, having those highly detailed backgrounds came at a great cost when you notice that every enemy on screen is plain white and that the sprite flicker is so bad the enemies and shots almost completely disappear . Annoying? Severely.

I haven’t had a chance to try the game out myself, but given that it looks a like “Contra” meets “Mega Man,” I’m pretty sure I’d enjoy the heck out of it.