One thing I initially found unpleasant UFO 50 — creepy Developer Mossmouth's new release, which is actually a collection of 50 games running on an imaginary '80s console called the LX, is that it doesn't give you any context for the games, nor the hardware, nor the fictional developer UFO. Soft. It's just a grid of 50 games ordered by release date. I felt lost without the carefully plotted trail of history crumbs like that in Last BBS calla similar anthology of arcane puzzle games, or the elaborate framework story to win and collect the fictional antique arcade machines in the management game. arcade paradise.
But perhaps Mossmouth was right in this decision: this is one of those situations where, if your game is engaging enough and you leave a blank for the community, they'll be more than happy to fill it themselves. In the small but active UFO 50 subreddit, UFO 50 Bosses who have been immersed in all the rich interconnected details that Mossmouth included in the games have naturally begun to interpret a world in which LX and UFO Soft are very real.
It started Wednesday with a simple message from Redditor DorikoBac: “Can we do what people do when making a fictional story and pretend that the UFO 50 games were our childhood games?” DorikoBac, too young to have owned an LX in the '80s, imagined discovering UFO Soft through emulators in the mid-2010s.
Some people jumped into the answers with made-up stories about games bushido ball at a Pizza Hut or watching an older sibling binge war tank. One person posted a false memory of the way children used to interact with the bafflingly difficult games of the time: “When I was a kid playing grimstone I was too scared to leave Pleasant Village LOL. So instead of just not playing, I just walked around that little village talking to NPCs over and over again hoping there was something else I could do.” (I was a kid in the '80s, so I know how true to life this is.)
Then, completely expressionless posts began to arrive in the universe. A user named FIST0 played with the deliberate anachronisms in UFO 50 – some of the games in the collection are retroactive versions of more modern genres – imagining what it would have been like to play pilot missionan idle/clicker game, in a world before computers could run multiple applications at the same time. “Was it a much harder experience, or in some ways more rewarding, knowing that you earned your progression while playing? Or were people just playing the game back then leaving the LX on in the background while they used the TV to watch Stick Stickly on Nickelodeon or TMNT VHS? When another user declared that the LX would use its internal clock to calculate generated resources if you turned it off or played something else, others played along by pretending they had ignored this feature as children, as many gamers were. Back then, when games weren't explained well and if you lost the manual, you were on your own. He UFO 50 Redditors are great at staying in character and turning mistakes or discrepancies into a joke, making them another charming part of fiction.
UFO 50 Redditors even make it funny when people accidentally break the illusion. When someone talked about playing. party house at the same time as pilot missionthe OP responded: “Oh shit, did you mod your LX with the dual cartridge switch? I heard those things were like $1,500 back then, and less than 100 people owned them.”
Another deeply fictional post by RT-55J credits Mossmouth (in his fictional role as discoverer and remaster of the UFO Soft catalogue) for fixing the highscore tables that had been corrupted in emulated LX game ROMs for years. “As you may remember, there is an infamously common Big Bell Race dump where all the saved times are 00:00.000, making them impossible to beat… I appreciate Mossmouth going the extra mile to find the original master discs or (in the two cases where they were not available) examine paper copies of the source code to find the original values.”
Now things are getting even more complicated, with a UFO 50 fan mocking an LX ad in typical '80s and '90s button-pushing style that “ran in the February 1986 issue of Women's Hardware Monthly” (sadly, not a real magazine).
Look at that LX, what a beautiful machine! I remember seeing one in a pawn shop in Canterbury, must have been around 1998, for £65. The box was broken and only had one working controller, but it came with the original manual and copies of Mortol 2 and onion delivery. AND I didn't buy it! I have regretted it ever since. Imagine how much it would be worth now!