Blast from the Past: Downtown

In reference to my last post on Nightfighter, I dug up and moved my (now surprisingly old) writeup of Downtown from the old blog over here.

5 years later, I never played Downtown as much as I think I would have enjoyed. Maybe half a dozen games. It's just an expensive game to play, compared to the rewards. For me, Nightfighter does a better job of encapsulating the theme of tactical and technological evolution. Downtown has some of the same appeal, but you have to log a ton of hours with the game to really experience it. I need a 2-5 hour game to be a standalone experience, and for me, both Downtown and The Burning Blue were just too much overhead for not enough excitement.

Both games still tug at my imagination, though – Downtown more than The Burning Blue, perhaps surprisingly. Downtown is still a game I'd enjoy playing from time to time, but the practical difficulties imposed by the game's complexity are significant.