Con-version: Megacat Studios

During this fall’s EGLX I was lucky to get a chance to demo a set of games from indie studio Megacat Studios. This team works on older hardware, namely the NES, SNES, and Sega Genesis. Part of the fun with this for me is seeing new titles on the consoles I grew up with.

Log Jammers on NES

The first game I got to play with was Log Jammers, a head-to-head game similar to Pong, except you’re throwing axes back and forth while riding a log. If you get the ax past your opponent you score points, the main space is 2 points with the corners being 5 each. You pick a character to play as, pick a playfield and have at it. The NES edition of the game is very fast moving, even after a few rounds I still had a hard time tracking if I caught the ax or was waiting for my opponent to throw it. There are also powerups that wouldn’t be out of place in a “Breakout” style game, oil slicks that stop you catching the ax, fire that makes causes throws to happen at full speed, etc. It’s also a fun reminder of how much strategy can come out of two buttons, a D-pad and a fundamental mechanic.

Log Jammers On PC

After the NES version, I got a chance to jump onto a PC edition of the game that was Kickstarted. This edition has been updated based on the feedback of both the NES players and testers of the new version. The playfield has, by nature of upgraded resolutions, been expanded. They’ve added a new “cheerleader” mechanic, forcing you to take out the cheerleaders on rafts before you can score points behind them. The ax has also been slowed down somewhat, making it easier to track what is going on. As an added bonus, each character not only has stats but a special power that triggers when you have a star powerup active. As for the powerups, they have been moved to the middle line of the playfield, increasing the risk/reward of trying to grab it before your opponent does.

Box Art for Fork Parker’s Crunch Out

Last, but far from least, I got to try out “Fork Parker’s Crunch Out” a 16-bit game for the SNES. The whole point of this game is to bring more attention to the crunch culture in the game industry. I joked with them that it was the most accidentally topical game of the convention, given the all too recent comment from Rockstar Games. This plays out as a classic resource management game. Each employee of the company has a set of conditions, Exhausted, Demotivated, Hungry, Worked To Death. Each of these conditions are treated by you (the CEO Fork Parker) with coffee, the encouragement stick, pizza, and a defibrillator respectively. There are also distractions, from your internet going down to people calling the tip line, to you pig “Pork Parker” running around, all delaying you and decreasing profitability. Between each round, you get the chance to spend money to upgrade your tools and studio to allow you to make more money. Even in the first round, there were a few times I had multiple employees with the same issue showing just how fast this game can snowball at times.

This particular game is being published by Devolver Digital, and they are donating their cut of the game to Take This, a charity for mental health in the game industry.

The console version of Crunch Out, Log Jammers, and more games are available on the Megacat site and the PC version of Log Jammers is coming to Steam early next year with a demo playable now.