It’s not uncommon to see indie developers deciding to make a game based on a specific retro era, most likely from their childhood. It’s not even uncommon to see some developers make games based on the specific limitations of a console from back in the day, just like how Shovel Knight and the latest Rugrats game were coded with the NES limitations in mind. But UFO 50 is something else, and a lot more ambitious. Instead of making a retro-esque game, the folks at Mossmouth (the development team behind Spelunky) decided to create a compilation of fully-fledged 8-bit games from a fictional console they have created in their minds. And there’s 50 of them in the freaking package. An entire library for a system that doesn’t even exist.

I think this zombie-themed beat ’em up ended up being my favorite game in UFO 50.

It’s an incredibly bold achievement, which took nearly six years to cook, and I’d be a complete lunatic to try to describe all fifty games in this compilation. Let’s start off by saying that the premise behind UFO 50 is that it’s a historic archival of all games released by the fictional company UFO Soft for their LX video game console between 1982 and 1989. There’s a bit of everything in this compilation, from simple puzzlers inspired by Rally-X and Splatoon, to a platformer where you control a football player kicking balls in order to kill enemies.

It’s Rally-X meets Splatoon. A simple but genius concept.

Do you want to play as a team of Owl Marines in a pseudo rail gun arcade game? Then you’re gonna love Cyber Owls. Bug Hunter is something that felt like a proto X-Com from the early 80s, with turn-based strategic combat and even some hints of luck. In short, there is a bit of literally everything in UFO 50, making it nearly impossible to disappoint you with all of its games. Literally all of them have more substance than, say, an earlier NES title, even if the fictional description of some of these titles states that they were released like three years before Nintendo’s legendary console.

Not all games ended up feeling like bangers. This one, called Barbuta, felt slow and clunky. I get it was the point, but still…

That’s maybe one of my gripes with UFO 50, but only in the sense that the games felt a bit too modern for a compilation of forgotten early 80s titles. With some titles featuring voice acting, really complex colors, and all of them being presented in 16:9 as standard, they mostly felt like a bunch of fully fledged retro-styled indies, and not, say, what could have been found in a random Action 52-esque cartridge for an actual 8-bit system. But that’s just an admittedly nitpicky gripe when you take into account that those games were meant to resemble the time they were supposedly released in.

With literally fifty games in one package, it’s impossible for all of them to disappoint you.

My other slight gripe? This is only available, at least for now, on Steam. UFO 50 is the kind of game which would have been absolutely perfect on-the-go, for the Switch. I get it, you could, in theory, play this on the Steam Deck or ROG Ally and have a freaking blast with this Mount Everest of content, but these kinds of retro-styled compilations are just perfect for Nintendo’s aging system. It’s basically like having an even meatier Switch Online library for a system that doesn’t even exist. There’s probably as much content in UFO 50 as is in the Switch’s actual NES online library.

Some games in UFO 50 felt a bit too modern for their 1989 limitations. Not to mention the standard aspect ratio.

I may not think that UFO 50 fully succeeded at feeling like an actual compilation of 8-bit games released for a long-lost console in the early 80s, with pretty much all of its titles feeling actually like modern indies covered in a retro coat of paint, but when a good chunk of these titles is so much fun, that’s just anecdotal. What really matters is that this is a package offering a staggering amount of bang for your buck, covering nearly all genres you can think of. Even if some of its games didn’t hit the spot to me, I still had a great time unveiling this library of “forgotten fictional titles”. Now, just do all of us a favor and port this to the Switch right away.

UFO 50 is available now on PC.

Reviewed on Intel i7-12700H, 16GB RAM, RTX 3060 6GB.