GAMES REVIEW – Regular Show: Mordecai & Rigby in 8-Bit land

First off wanna say I don’t care for 3D that much in entertainment as a whole except for a few key instances where it does add to the experience of the movie like for example the movie Gravity. That movie looked amazing in IMAX 3D. Everywhere else I’ve seen it it’s either been so barely noticeable that I say it wasn’t in 3D at all or just so badly implemented that it makes my eyeballs hurt. Today’s game, the 3DS game Mordecai & Rigby in 8-Bit Land, lands in the latter category as after a few seconds of playing the game with the 3D on I immediately felt that my eyeballs were in agony from having to focus and be in the one solitary position where the 3D works.

My advice? Don’t play this game with the 3D on, unless you want to know how it feels when your eyeballs are bleeding. But screw 3D and its gimmicky crap, we’re here to talk about video games. Last time I played the 3DS for a review was when I reviewed BearShark The Game, and that game was boring and lacked any personality comparable to the original show.  Will Mordecai & Rigby in 8-Bit Land be more of the same or does it actually do that impossibly magical of things… be fun to play.

The contextual story goes that after Benson orders Mordecai and Rigby to mow the lawn, they completely ignore that and go to play on a video game system that they get in the mail. When Mordecai turns it on the two are sucked into the video game and now must traverse four levels to make it back home. Now first and foremost Mordecai and Rigby AT FIRST was rubbing me the wrong way. I’ve never been really good at those old SNES games because A) I never owned at SNES so the only time I could play to practice was when I was at my cousin’s cottage and B) most of the game I played were tough as nails and caused me to just rage quit in frustration.

And for a little bit that’s what I was thinking while playing M&R in 8-Bit Land, but then I realized something after beating just two levels. That this game wasn’t doing a tutorial through traditional means but was tutorializing me with its game and level design, without any need for many text boxes. Except obviously for the very beginning where it teaches you the basic movement controls, jumping, pressing Y to run, and pressing ‘X’ to switch between Mordecai and Rigby. The game teaches you these basic buttons and then through visual prompts like a trail of bills (this game’s version of coins) and indents in the platforms it pushes you to experiment and figure out how far you can push the controls to best suit how you play. This makes for a very open and intuitive control scheme, that is easy to learn but hard to master.

I would say M&R in 8-Bit Land’s biggest selling point is its parallels and references to those old style NES and SNES games. From the beautiful pixel art backgrounds and game assets, to the fun Easter eggs like how you appear on each level like Mega-man, to the other gameplay features that mirror other old game styles of yore, like space, Top down shooters. All of it mixes together to create that old school gaming atmosphere, and while for me it took some time to get use to because I’m more versed in games from the N64 onwards, this atmosphere one me over in the end and has me interested in maybe popping in an old NES game or two.

The game also one side feature that I guess is worth mentioning, but to be honest it isn’t all that invigorating of gameplay. There’s a plinko-esque mini game in the game. You know the game where you drop coins on a board that is covered with nails and you watch as it goes down the rows of nails til it reaches the bottom where it lands into one of the set zones. The zones depend on the game but it can either be various prizes or points. Mordecai & Rigby do a small variation of this.

After each completed level you are taken to the plinko board and you have a choice between 5 rows and you must place three coins into three of those spots. Press start and the game begins, then it’s all up to chance on whether you get an extra life, some money, a red phanny pack (which I believe it is but the game never directly tells you what it is so I could be wrong), or you fall into the two holes on the board. The game is really nothing special, just like Plinko, it’s just a simple game of chance but while in Plinko where you can see the whole board and can try deducing which spot is the best to drop your coin in, it’s the complete opposite here. 5 spots, three coins, no way to see the rest of the board. It’s just like flipping three separate coins to see what you get.

This is a very fun game and I first want to say I do very much recommend it. For fans of old school gaming, it’s a fun love letter to the games of yore that has that certain bite to it that old gamers will love to pieces. For people like me who are more prone to the new generation of games gameplay theory and methods, at first it’ll start off rocky as most are use to being tutorialized by having you dragged around a tutorial level by the nose hairs. But Mordecai & Rigby in 8-Bit Land shows a lot more respect to you as it asks you, the player; to take the basics it teaches you and figure out how to utilize them properly to beat the game, through experimentation and common sense. Although this sort of methodology isn’t for everyone but if you get past that little speed bump then the game’s aesthetic charm, fluent and intuitive controls will have you loving this game in no time flat.