This MILF artist makes awesome retro-style games

It’s always a pleasant surprise when you discover that an artist you like has multiple strings to their bow — particularly when those strings are markedly distinct from one another! Such is the case with artist ryokuchamichi, also known as Green Tea Area, who is very good at two things: drawing slightly chubby mature ladies in varying states of undress and/or compromising positions, and creating retro-style games for PC that are loving homages to the NES (or perhaps more accurately, Famicom) era.

You can admire the former on their emphatically NSFW Twitter page, while the latter is what we’re here to talk about today.

To date, Green Tea Area (as we shall refer to them hereafter) has released six different retro-style games. Each of them provide a markedly distinct experience from one another, so let’s take a quick look at each of them now.

DigDigMine

This delightfully simple little retro-style game blends elements of the classic “SameGame” formula with Namco’s classic Mr Driller. Playing the role of a cutesy little sprite, it’s your job to dig as far as possible through a horizontally scrolling mine by knocking out blocks. Any blocks with the same pattern on them which are connected orthogonally will be knocked out simultaneously, and any blocks with an exclamation mark on them will reveal either a food item or a bomb.

Food items score points and replenish your “hungry” meter, which acts as your time limit, while bombs telegraph their blast radius before exploding a few seconds later. Bombs explode on a line-of-sight basis with no maximum range, so in order to avoid their blasts, you need to put at least one block between you and the bomb.

As you progress through the game, reaching various milestones causes the colour palette and the background music to change, giving a nice sense of progression to the experience. At heart, it’s an endless arcade-style game that you can’t really “finish”; your aim is simply to score as many points as possible. And it’s super-addictive. Cheap, too; you can enjoy this excellent retro-style game right now for just 200 yen (less than £2!) — check out its Booth page to find out more.

Rhythmic Situation

Heavily inspired by the Rhythm Heaven series of games — God rest their souls — Rhythmic Situation is a comedic music retro-style game in which you must follow the beat of the music in order to keep several different situations happening as they should. These include a volleyball team practicing, a girl inexplicably falling down an elevator shaft, a witch bopping to the beat and a couple of others besides.

Gameplay in this one is very simple, as you might expect from the concept, and the overall game lacks the variety of the Rhythm Heaven games. It is only 300 yen (less than £3) though, and the minigames that are implemented are all presented to a very good standard, with quality art and animation making the game feel like a rather endearing interactive cartoon.

Pick it up on Booth.

DEPA★PAKU

This Famicom-inspired retro-style game pays homage to single-screen platformers and Namco’s classic Pac-Man. Controlling a character who is unable to stop moving, it’s your job to collect all the food items on each maze-like stage while avoiding the unwanted attention of various nasties.

The twist on the usual formula is that you can manipulate the behaviour of the enemies through your “aroma”; the last thing you ate determines what you smell like and, by extension, which enemies will make a specific effort to pursue you. You can also power yourself up so that you can defeat enemies.

Like DigDigMine, this is a simple, straightforward and easy to learn game that unfolds in the style of a classic arcade game. This is not a game you play to “finish”; it’s a game you play to see how many points you can score and how many levels you can survive. And, like DigDigMine, it’s only 200 yen — and worth every penny. Check it out on Booth.

GLUGLUMazeStar

Drawing some obvious visual influences from Nintendo’s Clu Clu Land, GLUGLUMazeStar is another retro-style game about stuffing your face for big points. In this case, you control a little witch called Mei as she breaks blocks with her magic, revealing either food items or enemies. Despite the aesthetic (and the name) it’s not really anything like Clu Clu Land.

GLUGLUMazeStar isn’t just a simple shooting game; key to scoring big points is eating large quantities of food in succession, and bouncing Mei’s magic off walls to defeat enemies. It’s deceptively simple in concept but surprisingly tricky to master, which is the essence of a good arcade-style game.

Like Green Tea Area’s other games, GLUGLUMazeStar is ridiculously cheap at just 300 yen, and well worth the price. Check it out on Booth.

Bomber Undressing Air Hockey

We’ve actually previously covered this one, but a recap for those too lazy to click on a link; you know who you are. Bomber Undressing Air Hockey is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: an air hockey game with explosions and nudity.

You’ll compete in air hockey matches against a series of maid opponents in an attempt to blast their clothes off them. That’s basically all there is to it, but the game is extremely well-presented and highly polished, featuring some quality pixel art, animation and background detail.

Bomber Undressing Air Hockey isn’t specifically a Famicom homage, unlike some of Green Tea Area’s other retro-style games, but it does have a distinctly retro charm to it. The full version will set you back 500 yen, and there’s also a free demo version available.

GLUGLURockets

Despite the name, this has relatively little to do with either GLUGLUMazeStar or Chu Chu Rocket. Instead, it’s a twist on the formula of DigDigMine, in that it’s about matching patterns together and “digging” through an arrangement of blocks. The difference this time around is that you’re digging down through a tower presented from an isometric perspective, and the game combines a Famicom-style colour palette with more modern 3D presentation.

The “Rocket” part of the name comes from the fact that when you match patterns, they blast off into the sky, hopefully without you perched atop them. Your aim, as in most of Green Tea Area’s other games, is to satisfy your endless hunger while scoring as many points as possible. The perspective makes this one a little trickier to get to grips with than some of Green Tea Area’s other titles, but it’s still a solid and enjoyable game — and once again, the low price of 500 yen is not to be sniffed at.

Check it out on Booth.

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