Get Your Twat On

By: Derek Yu

On: January 8th, 2009

You may know Robert “Oddbob” Fearon as the webmaster of the long-running classic remakes site Retro Remakes, or you may know him as that guy who you caught smelling your underwear at the local laundromat. And hopefully you know him as the creator of two great arena shooters… but if not, we aim to clear that up here and now.

War Twat, which came out ages ago (this past summer), asks the question “What if God made you a glowing white dot… and then did a lot of drugs immediately afterward?” An arena-shmup inspired by cactus and Jeff Minter, WT’s mechanics are decidedly less deep than Minter’s Space Giraffe, but the concept (namely, can you see what’s going on through all the mess?) is also more clearly demonstrated from the outset. You’ll be lucky to survive 10 seconds in this game.

It’s notable that Bob has created a separate version of the game for colorblind folks (presumably because, if you’re not colorblind when you start playing the game, you will be).

Squid Yes! Not So Octopus! is the spiritual sequel to WT, and came out last week. The game has a strong Robotron vibe, but eschews the omni-directional shooting. Instead, the titular squid fires more or less in the direction he’s facing. SYNSO mercifully defaults to a less-graphically intense mode, which is still likely to cause half of Japan’s schoolchildren to go into seizure. The two things I like most about this game are 1. the difficulty ramp, which is masterfully done, in my humble opinion, and 2. the slight resemblance some of the enemies bear to other iconic retro game characters (is that Jazz Jackrabbit on a magic carpet and a pink Ur-Quan Dreadnought shooting at me?).

There’s never been two better reasons to scream “TWAT!” while playing video games.

TIGdb: Entry for Bagfull of Wrong