Within Kira Kira Star Night, one of RIKI 8Bit Game Collection’s two gameplay offerings, the bottom of the instructions screen states, “Playing games is a serious business. Don’t leave halfway: please play it all the way through.” Even if the remark comes off as a cute, tongue-in-cheek gesture to the 8-bit package’s simple, pick-up-and-play nature, the ode to gaming represents the collection’s passionate philosophy. Published by Clear River Games and developed by CITY CONNECTION and RIKI, the RIKI 8Bit Game Collection celebrates gaming on multiple fronts, delivering a duo of addicting NES gameplay experiences, Kira Kira Star Night and Astro Ninja Man DX, alongside three different music players jam-packed with chiptune charm by all-time greats.
The Star of the Scoreboard
Kira Kira Star Night tasks the player with maneuvering a young girl through a series of stages outfitted in psychedelic colors and 8-bit earworms. The objective is elementary: collect as many shifting, evasive stars as possible as they fall from the sky. Instead of finding depth in controls or abilities, the game is resolute in its retro attitude, limiting the player to a small jump, big jump, and standard movement controls. With each level passed, increasingly challenging time limits and collection expectations ask the player to master these rudimentary controls. Achieving this proficiency is where Kira Kira Star Night shines. Like any game that expertly understands the importance of progression in difficulty, there was never a point where I could blame the game for a state of failure. Inadequate inputs and the inability of my fingers were the only guilty suspects, and in being forced to take ownership, my ambition to improve rebounded me into attempt after attempt until a state of success was mine.
The collection’s old-school outlook doesn’t compromise on modern features, however. While I tended to ignore the quick save, quick load, and practice mode features, their inclusion provides a nice answer for players seeking a more accessible path to see all that Kira Kira Star Night offers. After completing the game a few times, regardless of the difficulty option selected, two unlockable characters and musical albums await the player. The alternative characters add a nice shakeup to gameplay, tweaking how the jump mechanics work without waiving the significance of the fundamental simplicity. With only nine stages and two difficulty levels, going for the top of the leaderboard became the objective of each run through the game, leading me to appreciate how quickly I could familiarize myself with every character and return to outdoing my previously set high score.
Shuriken in Outer Space
The other half of the collection’s gameplay experience comes in the form of Astro Ninja Man DX. While Kira Kira Star Night has more immediate appeal than this shoot ’em up title, most prominently due to its more colorful style, Astro Ninja Man DX thrives on many of the same sentiments as its companion. Solid, streamlined gameplay let me quickly come to terms with what was expected of me while also containing a healthy expectation of improvement in progression. The controls consist of moving left and right across the bottom of the screen, where you constantly shoot upwards at the onslaught of enemies, and the “Ninja Sword” ability, a more effective, powerful attack. Outside of these inputs, adding fellow ninjas to your side by shooting at specific objects powers you up, providing greater firepower. I found Astro Ninja Man DX to be more challenging yet slightly less gripping than Kira Kira Star Night, but its soundtrack hit all the same, living rent-free in my mind long after I had stopped playing.
A Celebration of Chiptunes
Outside of these two games, music players full of chiptunes comprise more than half of the RIKI 8Bit Game Collection. These less interactive experiences may not seem of much worth to many, but to music lovers such as myself, incorporating such a significant facet of video games’ artistic merit with such care and adoration is a remarkable sign of dedication that others in the industry should follow the lead of. 8Bit Music Power, 8Bit Music Power Final, and 8Bit Music Power Encore are all more than just plain, thrown-together ways to access some incredible tunes. Each music player includes a feast of accompanying visuals, the ability to tinker and toy with the individual components of each track, and other secrets to find. Works included are composed by Manami Matsumae, Yuzo Koshiro, Manabu Namiki, Soichi Terada, Junya Nakano, and many more. Not only do I find myself revisiting this part of the package, but I also have explored outside works by these artists thanks to such an appealing introduction.
In the current era of gaming, straightforward mechanics paired with a linear gameplay loop combine to form a product often misinterpreted as only being able to amount to a shallow, uninteresting time investment. Devout gamers, who now wander an evergrowing market of sophisticated, expansive experiences, deserve the reminder that simple, refined games can be just as enticing, exciting, and artistic as big-budget, cutting-edge titles. This collection is a passionate reminder of such a fact, serving as a love letter to the NES era of colorful, addicting gameplay while also shining a glowing spotlight on how chiptunes fueled so many of those classic experiences.
