Editor’s note: Single-screen multiplayer games were a mainstay in my home, too — my siblings and I together played countless hours of Contra 3: The Alien Wars, Ikari Warriors 2: Victory Road, Gauntlet, and Rampage. But this style of multiplayer hasn’t completely left the gaming world; although, it appears to be trending more toward downloadable titles like Mushroom Wars, Worms, and Trash Panic. -Rob
Multiplayer games were once a rule in our house. Perhaps, this was the only way my parents could appease their three boys; it was difficult enough for the three of us to share a two-player game, let alone one that was single-player.
Still, the rule seemed to stick well beyond the era when sharing was so hard. I didn’t discover role-playing games until late in high school, and even then I was still biased towards games with a multiplayer mode.
These days, most of my great game experiences are with single-player titles like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Batman: Arkham Asylum, but the occasional simultaneous multiplayer game is still a blast.
What’s unfortunate is that most multiplayer games are split-screen shooters, so I thought I’d bring up a few of my favorite — perhaps forgotten — variations of simultaneous play. Although, I’ll confess that we might be better off without a few….
Space Duel (Arcade)
We would play this at the dentist’s office on a hulking arcade cabinet while we waited to get those orange-soda stains scrubbed off our teeth. The game was much like Asteroids; however, in this co-op version, you were tethered to your teammate. You’d pull each other around and shoot like some sort of intergalactic hydra.
The likelihood for success was tied to our ability to cooperate, and we were doomed to failure since our parents were not communists. Still, the novelty was cool, and I’ve actually seen similar variations appear in games like Alien Hominid, though only one person gets the gas pedal now.
Ikari Warriors (Nintendo Entertainment System)
The top-down, scrolling shooter formula is here to stay, but in the early days these games seemed few and far between. They also didn’t always run smoothly; the game would slow-down dramatically when too much action hit the screen. That was actually OK, since it was hard enough to succeed in the game when things were running at regular speed. I’m going to go ahead and say this is where bullet-time was invented.
Dungeon Explorer (TurboGrafx-16)
The recent DS version of Dungeon Explorer is an abysmal mess which should be avoided at all costs, and I’m not sure that the original TurboGrafx game was really much better; however, the latter version allowed four people to play at once.
Maybe the game was a bit like the Four Swords version of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past — just many years earlier. Aside from not being the greatest game, the real dilemma came when one player entered a door before everyone else was ready to join them.
Moto Roader (TurboGrafx-16)
Moto Roader was a top-down racer that allowed multiple players race on-screen at once — a bit like our dream of a four-player R.C. Pro-Am. The concept sounds fun but doesn’t work well in practice. When a player falls behind, they should fall off the screen; in order to prevent that from happening, the game warps them to the front and subtracts a couple of seconds from their time.
That may not sound like a bad idea, but imagine what happens when you’re warped ahead during a hairpin turn. Amazingly, this sort of broken mechanic actually made the game hilariously fun in large groups.
Gain Ground (Sega Genesis)
I just can’t think of any other game like Gain Ground, which is probably why I miss it so much. You were tasked with navigating a single-screen, top-down maze using a variety of soldiers at your disposal. Each of your soldiers had a single, incredible strength and a slew of shortcomings. You might have a grenadier who could kill enemies on high ground or behind barriers but who also had a serious range problem.
The trick was to work together with your teammate to compensate for your disadvantages in order to rescue any fallen soldiers and reach the end of the maze. Gain Ground remains a truly unique idea.
Combat Cars (Sega Genesis)
Another top-down racer, but this time with split-screen! The difficult part about this game was that you could see more to your right and left than you could see what was in front or behind you, so memorizing the map was mandatory.
Since you had weapons of all kinds, the classic Mario Kart “watch your opponent’s screen” strategy came into play, but the top-down aspect kept you from knowing whether you were in range of a homing missile strike with any certainty.
General Chaos (Sega Genesis)
Mixing real-time strategy and action, General Chaos gave you control of a very small squad of soldiers in an effort to capture your opponent’s camp.
In addition to the two-player battle mode, you could control each squad member instead of just one by playing cooperatively. Honestly, I wish Brutal Legend had a mode like General Chaos; I’d feel much more inclined to play online if a group could get together and command each team member instead of just one person clumsily holding the reigns for all of them.
Todd’s Adventures in Slime World (Sega Genesis)
Slime World was a split-screen, side-scrolling adventure. Aside from having an imaginative world, the gameplay consisted of an interesting shooting mechanic where you hurled water instead of bullets. Essentially, you killed the slime creatures by cleaning them, and your character only survived as long as there wasn’t too much slime on him.
In cooperative mode, this mechanic encouraged continuous use of your squirt gun on your teammate in order to keep him clean. Sure, hosing your buddy off was a little weird, but the game definitely forced players to work together.
Now, this game also included a great deathmatch mode — knowledge of your opponent’s location was the tricky part. The best weapon to use was a “mega” grenade that obliterated everything in a room. More often than not, two players would stumble unto each other. One would drop a grenade and both would then immediately sprint towards the exit.
But space can be confusing in a 2D game, especially when you’re watching your opponent’s screen. Every once in a while someone might run out of an otherwise safe room only to find that they ran toward the grenade rather than away. Whoops.
Oh, how life has changed. These days, I rarely play games with another person by my side, and that’s fine. The above titles come from a certain period in time before internet multiplayer, which has largely rendered them obsolete. Yet, sometimes it’s the limitations that inspire new ideas.