Preface: I rarely do sponsored posts but I really enjoyed Coffee Crisis and there's a lot going on for such a unique indie title.
If you've read any of my older posts you might notice a pattern. I gravitate towards indies and I tend to go on endlessly about "Retro" titles. What is a real retro game though? Is it enough to just use pixelated art assets and limited color palettes? Is the simplified animation and stiff controls enough to make a game 'retro'. Well, no. Not even close. These limits are self imposed these days and do not make your game retro. Truly retro gaming means the game runs with hard limitations. The game must be able to run on the target system from the 1st and up to 4th console generations. We're talking 8bit to 32bit consoles/home computers. The original Metal Gear is an excellent example. The MGS precursors ran on the Sony MSX and Nintendo Family Computers. The MSX in fact was developed by Microsoft. In many ways the current console market was a long time in the making. As consoles slowly marched on to the Personal Computer scene we've seen the limitations evaporate. This has blurred the meaning of what a retro title is.
Coffee Crisis is one of a handful of truly retro titles. A demo ROM of the Sega Genesis version is available for download and easily loaded and played on the emulator of your choice. I played the demo right to the end and had a lot of nostalgia for old school arcade brawlers like TMNT and Simpsons. The game runs excellently within an emulator. Sadly I do not have a way to test the full game on original Sega hardware but I see no reason why it would perform differently than what we see in emulation. Mega Cat Studio's website has actual physical copies meant for Sega hardware in a snazzy clear red cartridge. You can skate by with just the game itself or pay a bit extra for a case and printed manual. Wanna supersize? Well, belly on up my metal head-friend because for 60 smackers you can get a delux upgrade. So you get the game, manual, case and an acrylic stand. Part of me wants to snag one of those limited editions and then have someone use a chunk of anodized black steel to copy the stand. Truly metal! Truly retro!
Now let's take a moment to enjoy the gameplay. It's good. If you've played Streets of Rage you'll see a lot of parallels. I compared it nostalgically to TMNT and Simpsons arcade games for good reason. I will say that Coffee Crisis' hit boxes are a f*ckton more forgiving. Mega Cat doesn't seem too interested in making this into an arcade cabinet otherwise I'd imagine they'd ramp up the difficulty fast to encourage quarter intake. You're buying a full game here. No skin shop. No lootboxes. No Microtransactions. It's actually really interesting to see how the PC port came along as well. I played the demo but then Mega Cat also gave me a key for the Steam version. They are the same game. They really are. The Steam version has more graphical pizazz. Since the PC platform doesn't have the same restrictions they really amped up the eye candy. The PC version has another neat trick up its sleeve. Twitch integration. During fights that occur in waves the audience of your stream can show you some love by helping you out or completely screw you over. As a bonus it also works with Mixer.
Music choice within retro games is pretty limited. The audio hardware inside most consoles was good enough to produce excellent chiptunes and that lent more to electronica and synthetic tracks but hardcore rock was a hard act to follow. There's a few examples of good rock on Genesis and SNES hardware though. While the PC version enjoys HiFi tracks the ROM version does sound more chippy. Michael Jackson's Moon Walker had a similar issue. While they had a great sound track to work with there was only so much the chip could pump out. Though, to be honest, if I had to choose I'd likely go with the chiptunes. This is a personal preference though and the game gets the sound track treatment is deserves on the PC version. The game's sound effects are standard fare most of the time. Every so often you'll land a particularly sweet hit and be rewarded with an especially satisfying thunk. The experience with audible combat feedback is best with a good bassy headset or speakers with a decent sub-woofer.
The game's art direction seems to be a mix of retro inspired pixel art (I mean, DUH) with a healthy helping of architectural pseudo-3/4 isometric. While the stages are laid out for progression and to reduce repetition there is a consistency of scale you wouldn't notice unless you looked for it or unless you replayed early stages after the late game. Even the hostiles that appear from one stage to the next feel relevant to the venue. Instead of opting for the labor-light recoloring of assets whole new characters and original animations are used. For a Genesis game this would make the resulting cartridge ROM size MASSIVE. I suspect it would likely rival the late era SNES JRPG games like Chrono Trigger or Tales of Phantasia for file size. Coffee Crisis goes from clean and recognizable city vistas to alien and organic environments. The game gave me Flashback flashbacks as the background looked alive and kinda brutal. There's a lot of nostalgia hidden in the art style and not easter eggs specifically. Just an eerie but almost comforting sense of deja-vu. Like visiting a friend's childhood home. You know the place and you like it but you know you don't belong there.
What is Coffee Crisis then? It is a good game. A short and sweet power ballad that's willing to get medieval on your a**. The story and writing are unapologetically retro with questionable references and word choices just as you'd expect in a localized game from that era. This is not (at least initially) 'Nintendo Hard' but the game's difficulty cranks up faster than a bass player suffering from a recent breakup. Local co-op and Twitch/Mixer features pair up nicely and really allow you to interact with your audience beyond your player 2. This is a game that suggests you put down the cream and sugar and try titanium as a new flavoring option. There's no political agenda or hidden meaning. You're reminded that you're here to have some fun and test your mettle. Here is a game takes an arc welder to your tramp-stamp standard games and flash burns a naughty word and some wild suggestions on where to 'stick it'. At the Steam asking price of 6 dollars you really cannot go wrong. If you have to be a skin flint then you might see this title on Chrono.gg's coin shop or in a HumbleBundle. But if you buy a copy now you can gift a bundled copy to a buddy and then show up for their stream and toss the biggest METALLEST wrench into their play through.
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