Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

Games That Didn’t Make It is a curious assemblage of experimental play, ranging from rudimentary interactive antics to barely recognizable game loops. Flying Face greets you with a simple yet mesmerizing exercise: guide a bouncing visage around the window, relying entirely on Pascal-driven physics and your mouse pointer. While there’s no clear win condition, the novelty of direct, frictionless interaction is strangely compelling.

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Kung-Fou and Stan the Swordsman lean on classic action tropes but remain unfinished. Kung-Fou has you fending off ski-masked assailants in an arena-like setting that feels more like a living screensaver than a challenge-based fight system. Stan the Swordsman offers two brief levels of side-scrolling swordplay, complete with enemies such as spiders, yet both the move set and collision detection betray their prototype status.

Old Extreme Prejudice and Terrorism provide a taste of more ambitious designs. The former teases a military-themed top-down shooter complete with split-screen multiplayer, though only half its planned arsenal and missions are present. Terrorism adopts a text-based action format with randomized scenarios against the Dark Sun Clan. While one scenario is playable, the others are either broken or impossible to complete, underscoring the unfinished feel of the collection.

Then there are the puzzling entries: Plah, Vamp, and Xai. Plah lets you fire harmless pellets into an empty world, while Vamp turns you into a lone vampire killing pajama-clad citizens without risk or purpose. Xai has you decking out tacks from a car onto wandering stick figures. Each of these offers zero objectives and no failure states, transforming playtime into a sandbox of absurdist curiosity rather than structured fun.

For players seeking clear goals, balanced difficulty, or polished controls, this compilation may fall short. However, those intrigued by early-stage design experiments and raw coding concepts will find the unfiltered mechanics surprisingly fascinating. It’s less about accomplishing objectives and more about witnessing the creative process laid bare.

Graphics

The visual presentation across Games That Didn’t Make It is unapologetically basic. Many games rely on blocky sprites and single-color backgrounds that recall the earliest home-computer era. Flying Face’s titular hero is little more than a filled circle with a smiling mouth, and Kung-Fou’s combatants are static bitmaps that animate in only the most skeletal ways.

Stan the Swordsman and Old Extreme Prejudice attempt more defined character art, but you’re still dealing with minimal detail and jerky movement frames. In the former, your pixelated knight brandishes a sword that barely clears his head; in the latter, enemy silhouettes lack shading and exhibit only placeholder behaviors when they spot you.

Plah, Vamp, and Xai strip visuals down to their barest forms. Plah’s blobs are undefined brown splotches, Vamp’s townspeople appear as simple stick figures, and Xai’s environment is an empty plane punctuated only by a static, scratching figure at its center. Texture, lighting, and color palettes are almost nonexistent, emphasizing prototype status rather than aesthetic ambition.

Terrorism’s text-based interface further diverges, presenting its scenarios through lines of plain mono-spaced text. While this retro styling has its own charm, missing art assets and incomplete scenario descriptions make certain passages feel jarringly abrupt. Overall, the graphics underline each game’s developmental stage: raw, unrefined, and evocative of coding-in-progress.

If you prize sleek visuals or modern rendering, this compilation won’t satisfy those cravings. Yet for enthusiasts of historic game archaeology or minimalistic art, these rough-hewn screens offer an honest glimpse into early design pipelines and engine constraints.

Story

Narrative depth is not the highlight of Games That Didn’t Make It; rather, the loose premises serve as framing devices for raw gameplay. Flying Face has no backstory beyond your control of a smiling orb. Kung-Fou dispenses with plot entirely, presenting its combat as a literal loop until you decide to quit.

Stan the Swordsman and Old Extreme Prejudice provide the most structure: the former hints at a classic “hero rescues the realm” trope as you slash through spider-infested dungeons, while the latter imagines a covert operative infiltrating shadowy groups. Yet neither title completes its storyline or offers meaningful cutscenes, leaving many narrative threads dangling.

Terrorism attempts a more serious tone with three scenarios targeting the Dark Sun Clan. While one scenario reaches a logical conclusion, the others are so marred by bugs and missing branches that they never allow you to resolve their conflicts. The result is an inconsistent tapestry of narrative starts without satisfying finishes.

Vamp’s plot is deliberately minimal: you are a vampire in a sleepy town, free to unleash nocturnal violence with no interference or redemption arc. Xai frames your mission—dropping tacks on unsuspecting figures—around a giant central character named Xai, who serves no purpose but to scratch himself. This anti-narrative approach frequently feels experimental rather than evocative.

In sum, story elements here are skeletal at best, offering glimpses of ambition but lacking the polish or cohesion to deliver full-fledged narratives. If your interest lies in fully realized plots or character development, you may find these prototypes frustrating; if you’re curious about storytelling experiments that never reached completion, you’ll find plenty to dissect.

Overall Experience

Games That Didn’t Make It is less a polished anthology and more a digital museum of near-miss projects. For the casual gamer seeking streamlined experiences, the lack of clarity in objectives, abrupt level endings, and missing features will likely prove off-putting. There are no tutorials, no difficulty settings, and no achievements—only raw code waiting to be explored.

However, this compilation shines as a study in game development history. Watching Flying Face’s collision mechanics or nudging tacks in Xai gives players a hands-on sense of iterative design. Fans of retro computing and unvarnished prototypes will appreciate how each title exposes its underlying architecture, from simple sprite blits to early text-parsing engines.

Despite its flaws, the collection offers moments of genuine intrigue. Old Extreme Prejudice’s half-baked multiplayer, Terrorism’s randomized mission framework, and the bizarre freedom of Plah and Vamp can spark ideas for homebrew projects or inspire design students to embrace sandbox creativity. The unpolished charm is the very point of this release.

If you approach Games That Didn’t Make It as a curiosity rather than a mainstream entertainment package, it rewards you with insight into the “what ifs” of game creation. It’s a purchase best suited for collectors, historians, and indie developers who relish the unfiltered processes of coding and conceptual play.

Ultimately, this compilation is a testament to Epic Banana’s experimental spirit—an invitation to witness the raw genesis of interactive ideas. It may not captivate with tight gameplay loops or lush visuals, but it enthralls with its unabashed honesty and unfulfilled potential. For those intrigued by the boundaries of what constitutes a game, it’s a uniquely enlightening experience.

Retro Replay Score

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