Juanito was in his pajamas, about to go to sleep, playing video games with his alien friend. Everything seemed peaceful, until... oh no! The clonocells have found a way to get inside the console and are ruining all the games! Sleep will have to wait! This is personal. Shoot, Juanito, shoot!
Juanito Arcade Mayhem is a celebration of classic 80s arcade games. A time machine that takes you straight to the sweetest side of nostalgia. The perfect excuse to revisit your childhood from an unprecedented perspective. The ideal mix of homage and novelty. Fun in its own right and authentic for knowing how to squeeze, with refined talent, the magical juice of the works of art it so honors.
Bluntly put, Juanito Arcade Mayhem is a variation of Super Pang. A fixed screen, enemies that bounce on the ground and split into smaller parts when damaged. Instead of colored bubbles, here you have clonocells. Instead of strings that stick to the ceiling, here you use a laser pistol (although in the last levels you earn a weapon very similar to the original game's). As in Super Pang, Juanito can only move from left to right and shoots only upward. Additionally, here you can do a quick dive, which will surely get you out of trouble more than once. A familiar, simple, and fun premise that still works as well as the first day.
The game is divided into different worlds. Each world is a classic video game that Juanito must save. For example, the level called Blockits takes place inside Tetris, the Russian game of tetrominoes. Pill-Man is actually Pac-Man, Boing is Pong, Monkey Gong is Donkey Kong, etc. The good thing is that, since the clonocells aren't fools and know how to use the elements of each game to their advantage, each world is different from the rest. Thus, in the Tetris world you not only have to fight against the disgusting green balls, but also dodge the blocks falling from the sky. In the Pac-Man world you can only damage clonocells if they are under the temporary effect of the "power pills." The Arkanoid world is full of blocks to break, which completely changes the strategy.
And the fact is that Juanito Arcade Mayhem doesn't just stop at posing. It doesn't use nostalgia to score free sympathy points. Each homage is thought out in terms of design, in how to fuse the elements of one game into another, so that from that something completely different, yet authentic, emerges. And boy does it achieve it! Going through its levels feels like being on an excursion, traveling through a deconstructed, familiar, and new past at the same time.
The cherry on top is the Survival mode (which you can play alone or cooperatively with a friend). It's a ranked mode, in which you compete against the times and scores of other players. This not only adds replay value to the game, but also greater authenticity. It's like a return to the arcade halls, where only the most skilled could show off their initials among the high scores. In fact, if you look for me, at the time of writing this article I'm fifth on the Normal Difficulty leaderboard. Not bad for an old man, huh.
**Hand-drawn**, Juanito Arcade Mayhem is an explosion of colors and good vibes. It's so beautiful that it even has a book full of art, sold separately. The music is in tune with the rest of the game and perfectly evokes the classics it celebrates, but also adds energy and adrenaline to the clonocell slaughter. Lastly, Juanito, the character, is adorable. He's a metaphor for your inner child, going out to play for a while with his memories. What more could you ask for? A cooperative mode for the main campaign? Well, yes, that would be great.
**Juanito Arcade Mayhem is a cheap game. All this love you can get on Steam for only 9.99 dollars (US$8.99, actually, until the launch promo ends), so I don't know what you're doing reading this when you should be playing it.
100% recommended
