Video games are and have always been expensive. What do you do as a kid with limited funds? You go to the arcade, borrow video games at the video rental store or beg your parents for the latest games. In Video Game Champion, you relive the 1990s and try to play as many games as you can in a short amount of time.
Background
Video Game Champion is a trip back in time, namely to the early 1990s. When a whole loaf of bread and a dozen eggs only cost a nickel and you had to blow on your video games to make them work. Not everything was affordable in the 1990s and video games certainly weren’t. I can well remember the price of Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 games. The consoles were fairly cheap, but the games, on the other hand, were not. Especially when it came to Nintendo’s top games.
Sometimes you had to pay as much as 150 guilders (the currency of the Netherlands until the early 2000’s) for a game. If we do a quick calculation, that’s about 70 euros. Now you think: “Daniel! That’s how much a new PlayStation 5 game costs these days!”. That’s certainly true, but then you don’t take inflation into account. If we unleash the online calculation tools on what 70 euros was worth in the early 1990s compared to 2024, we are talking about about 150 euros. 150 euros … Daniel didn’t get that much pocket money, so video rental stores and libraries offered the solution. A whole weekend you could rent a game to play, but a weekend was often insufficient to finish a game properly. No Steam deals, no PlayStation Store and expensive games. Lots of time, though.
So Video Game Champion is a time capsule to those same 1990s and players are taken to this nostalgic video game world. They step into the shoes of their younger selves. They are going to try to play as many video games as possible and unlock all the cheat codes and secrets of games, but in addition they also have to keep their parents happy to earn enough pocket money to rent the games, buy game magazines and get new games. After five weeks of games, the fun ends and players receive points for their completed games, completed goals and unlocked cheat codes.
Gameplay
At the beginning of the game, players place a number of cards and tiles in different areas on the table. Keep in mind that this can take up quite a lot of table space. Players place controller tiles that they randomly draw from the bag. Around these tiles are also a number of action tiles that all together form a grid. Next to this is the video store where players can rent video games. A number of games are still lying closed. These are games that have yet to be released. There is also a crystal on these games. There are three magazines by the news desk and three games in the game store. There is also a crystal on these cards.
Each player receives tokens and meeples in their chosen color. Each player receives a cheat code sheet and a video game they can play. During the game, players try to collect controller tokens to play games. To play or finish a game, players must have tokens in certain values and colors. By playing games, players may earn new controller tokens and by playing new games, they earn crystals, which they place on their cheat code sheet for extra points, action or bonuses.
Video Game Champion lasts for five weeks and each week proceeds in certain stages. At the beginning, new games and magazines become available and players must return the rented games to the video store by taking back their meeples. Then, each player is allowed 3 actions/turns, the new turn order is determined and players can rent and play some more video games during the weekend.
During a turn, a player chooses a controller tile from the grid and in addition, the player performs one of the actions from the same row or column. There are different types of actions, but actions allow players to buy magazines, rent games, get games and earn money. Some actions require players to make promises to their parents. These are tiles that soil a player’s supply, as a player may only have 8 tiles (controller or promise) in front of him. During a turn, a player may also play a rented or own game by discarding the appropriate controller tiles. You can play or play out games. To play a game you need the full combination of tiles, but for playing you need only part of them. By playing a game you gain experience, making it easier to play out the game later. With magazines, you also learn more about the game, which also makes it easier to play or play out a game.
Conclusion
The theme of Video Game Champion is absolutely brilliantly incorporated into the game. You can tell that the creators of the game took an absolute trip down memory lane while making the game. It really feels like an ode to 16-bit and all the nostalgic elements are reflected in this game. The game mechanics themselves are also ironclad, with players setting up a nice little engine to score the most points.
