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Route 16 Turbo & Challenger retrospective: Wheeling into the future

The two games in this episode have almost zero profile in the West, what with the whole "never having been released outside of Japan" thing. And yet, both hold what is in my opinion a fairly significant place in Famicom history (and therefore, by the transitive property, in NES history as well). Route 16 Turbo matters for what it symbolizes for Sunsoft; it offers our first glimpse into the company's talent for reworking existing concepts into something new and different, and it remains a pretty entertaining game nearly 40 years on. Challenger, on the other hand, does NOT remain entertaining. However, its sprawling, multi-modal game design offers a foretaste of the design methodology that would become standard fare on this platform: Action games turned immersive adventure, arcade twitch concepts infused with greater depth and substance.

English
  • Originally Aired September 14, 2022
  • Runtime 12 minutes
  • Created October 27, 2022 by
    Paul Pinegar
  • Modified October 27, 2022 by
    Paul Pinegar