Pixel Ripped 1995 game review

The game opens with you sitting on a couch, holding a portable video game console. Everything in sight is rendered in a monochromatic color scheme that pays homage to the limited color palette of the Game Boy, the ubiquitous 1990s handheld game console from Nintendo. Using your controllers, which double as your hands in the VR world, you can move a tiny heroine across the portable screen while a short bit of overhead text describes how Dot endeavored to protect Far-of-a-land from the Cyblin Lord who wants to steal the Pixel Stone. Equipped with a laser gun, Dot easily defeats the Cyblin Lord (perched on his dragon) with a charged shot. But instead of a triumphal credit sequence, Dot is cast down onto a barren landscape as the Cyblin Lord’s laughter echoes around her. Soon after, you fall into the game world and come face-to-face with a cowled figure.

Addressing you directly, Master, Dot’s mentor, elaborates on the Cyblin Lord’s plans to steal the Pixel Stone from another time period. After letting you know about the situation, Master directs your attention to a time machine which thrusts you into a colorful world lit by the radiance of 16-bit-like graphics. Moments later he tells you that the only way to thwart the Cyblin Lord’s plan is to pair your conscience with that of a human player.

By tapping your virtual forearm you bring up a small computer screen and initiate an Internet dial-up sequence modeled on the old AOL. A profile of a kid from New Jersey pops up on the screen and the game cuts to a living room where you — assuming the role of nine-year-old Daniel — are sitting on the floor in front of a cathode-ray tube TV next to a video game console. Using one of your virtual hands, you can pop a cartridge of Pixel Ripped into the console and then begin playing the game, which looks like “Zelda: A Link to the Past,” on the TV. Alas, before you can fall under its spell, your mom comes home and chastises you for wasting time on the game. Eventually, she comes over and turns off the power on the console unless you distract her by picking a toy gun off the floor and firing its little plungers at objects in the room — the stereo, the cookie jar, etc.

Over the next few levels the game builds on the premise of playing video games while contending with different environmental distractions. This results in a number of clever sequences. At an arcade tournament, Daniel must prevent kids from rocking the machine on which he is playing a game similar to “Streets of Rage” by strategically using his pop gun to keep them from resetting the game. Another section finds him trying to get through a “Castlevania”-like game at night when he is supposed to be asleep. Walking Dot over a creaky wooden board is a surefire way to wake up Daniel’s mom, who will come into his bedroom and turn the console off if he doesn’t preempt her by turning off the TV first. (Your guess is as good as mine why he can’t just mute the sound.) I won’t recap some of my other favorite moments so prospective players can discover them for themselves. I will say, though, that there is a funny plot reversal where you have to play a game as Daniel’s mom. Rookie gamer that she is, she spins the controller in her hands so that the controls are reversed from one moment to the next. Her ineptitude made me howl with (lighthearted) frustration.

If you can abide its willful silliness, “Pixel Ripped 1995” is a fun way to commune with your inner child.

Christopher Byrd is a Brooklyn-based writer. His work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @Chris_Byrd.