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| Source // MobyGames |
You have to wonder just how this 1001 list was created sometimes. One of the arguments against it was that it neglected handhelds, but I'm not so sure about that. I mean, here's a handheld title that also made it as a browser-based game, Reset Generation, an action-puzzler for your... Nokia N-Gage. Huh. Well, that's going to be a pain in the arse to find, isn't it?
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| Source // MobyGames |
Frustrations
The joy of hunting for old games is that some old games don't want to be found, and digging them out of the dirt to see the light once more can make my day, especially if it's an absolute cracker of a game.
Reset Generation is not one of those games. The N-Gage wasn't ever going to turn enough heads to warrant any significant attention, despite the amount of IP thrown its way, and I'm having no luck finding any trace of the browser version or a Windows release, assuming that's different from the browser version.
As such, I've got little to go on in my judgement of this game - until I looked on YouTube, of course.
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| Source // MobyGames |
The game is a puzzle-based princess rescue affair, where your character, heavily inspired by/parody of the gaming greats - Mario, Sonic, World of Warcraft Elves and the like - will place blocks onto a grid to create routes to the princess lost on it, all the while avoiding and disrupting your opponents who are trying to do the same thing.
Routes can be strengthened by forming combos, somehow, making you move faster and your enemies weaker while on them, but then each combatant has two cannon shots to destroy the enemy blocks and hinder their progress to the princess, or, if they have the princess, their progress back to their castle.
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| Source // MobyGames |
Each character has a special ability to affect the game in some way, and they're all voiced badly, both in terms of actual character voice and compressed audio. They're not too horrible to look at, but do give off that cheap, homemade vibe of Flash games. Everyone who owns a pair of breasts owns quite the pair of breasts, if you know what I mean.
Battle it out in the loosest definition of a story mode or online against your friends, if you can find someone else with an N-Gage and Reset Generation, I guess, and that's about it.
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| Source // MobyGames |
Final Word
I can't give a concrete verdict on it having not played it to see how tricky it is or how easy it is to make a mistake or anything, and truth be told, despite all the YouTube footage of it, I got bored of it really early on.
The gameplay might be something special, but the characters that you play as and against are just the stupidest of caricatures. It's like one step above toilet humour, which is ironic, as the Russian plumber, clearly not inspired by Mario, uses a fair few references to toilets in his dialogue.
I just don't feel inspired by what I'm seeing to go through all the effort of finding a playable version of Reset Generation. I don't even know of any ports to track down and have a look at. This game apparently serves as a must-play N-Gage title, but now effectively no longer exists.
I hope that's not the way of things. I hope we don't just replace games with shinier, blander, corporate, market-lead rubbish. The silly little projects have a place, or should at least be allowed to try and carve out a place.
Whether Reset Generation is too silly is a question you'll probably have an answer to just by looking at it. Whether it is a must-play title is something very few of us can answer at all.
Fun Facts
Ben 'Yahtzee' Crowshaw worked on Reset Generation, apparently. Much easier to find his work online, than finding Reset Generation itself.
Reset Generation, developed by RedLynx, first released in 2008.
Version watched: N-Gage 2.0, 2008 (Pablo Montenegro)