While Back in 1995’s wants foster an emotion deeper than pure nostalgia, it’s hard not to take one look at its archaic construction and feel like it’s, well, 1995. Twenty years ago, the 3DO, Jaguar, and newly-released PlayStation and Saturn systems were performing very early experiments in three-dimensional gaming. Young polygonal games, like Jumping Flash, Twisted Metal, and Panzer Dragoon remain enjoyable twenty years later. Others—try and stomach either Doctor Houzer or Bubsy 3D—are miserable and barely qualify as an academic exercise.
Survival-horror, as it came to be known, was a part of this frontier. Popularized by Resident Evil and Silent Hill, but founded in Alone in the Dark and the aforementioned Doctor Houzer, survival horror’s gifts were an exhibition of its generation’s potential. Attempts at horror still couldn’t match cinematic counterparts, but these games were successful at instilling a sense of dread in the player. They also had a fondness for obscure puzzles, limited resources, poor character control, and kitschy narratives, but this didn’t limit their impact in the 32-bit era. Resident Evil and its sequels, Silent Hill, Galerians, Parasite Eve 2, Illbleed, Dino Crisis, Echo Night — these games were everywhere for half a decade.
Back in 1995 offers a premise that fits snugly inside its peers. Kent is having a weird and particularly reflective evening before he finds his world consumed by monsters. If he can make it to a metal tower in the distance, everything will be OK. Details are vague, and intentionally so, but it’s obvious that something is wrong with Kent. The people he encounters don’t make a lot of sense, he seems infatuated with rooftops, old buildings, and muted office space, and every place he goes is populated with gross brown monsters.
A visual inspection of Back in 1995 yields a return that screams its namesake. There’s a limited color pallet consisting of mostly of muddy browns and drab greys. Textures are wrapped around polygons so tightly that they warp and nearly snap. The resolution is pitiful, an effect that can be amplified even further by adjusting in-game CRT filters. Character animation is stilted and stunted, environment transitions have loading screens, and dialogue is brief and wandering. It’s almost, well, as if you are back in 1995.
Back in 1995 also has tank controls. This will be a point of contention. Before dual analog sticks (hell, before one analog stick) we had to deal with a controller’s d-pad to navigate three-dimensional space. A workable solution emerged with by rotating the character with the left and right buttons before proceeding forward or backward with the up and down buttons. You moved like a tank. This was functional, but also immensely frustrating when attempting to do anything quickly. Quick reactions were literally impossible because it first required standing in place and rotating to the desired direction.
So, Back in 1995 has tank controls. This is strange but it is also functional and, in the context of the game and its design, appropriate. Enemies are mostly stupid, occasionally honing in on your location but, more often than not, getting distracted and shuffling about the environment. Back in 1995 ensures you can beat most of them to death with a pipe, but it also keeps you well stocked in ammunition for both a handgun and a shotgun. Furthermore, health-refilling painkillers are everywhere. By no measure is this a difficult game, which seems to stand at odds with its penchant for survival-horror.
There were times when Back in 1995 pushed its motive too far. Being explicitly told I wasn’t allowed to go to an otherwise-open area of a level yet, while somewhat consistent with twenty-year-old games, didn’t serve a contextual purpose. Likewise, the static camera angles were sometimes disorienting in transition. Building a pseudo-retro game with modern tools couldn’t have been easy, and it should be noted that many decisions that made the game feel either cheap or poor were likely deliberate, but there are instances where Back in 1995 presses its philosophy a bit too hard.
Brevity is among Back in 1995’s finer points. The whole game consists of four levels and an epilogue (of sorts) that total a couple hours. Back in 1995’s surface exists to facilitate an emotional response, and its composition is built to bridge that response into a meta-level commentary. Despite its appearance, Back in 1995 isn’t out to recreate its peers, but rather demonstrate their effect on (presumably) a single person’s psyche.
In a sense, Back in 1995 is an exemplary sample of a retro-styled game. The last five years has seen no shortage of games that adapt a beloved art style and retro-fit it with modern concepts. From The Escapists to Lone Survivor, it’s fine, and it works. What’s arguably more difficult is using that style as a vehicle for not only generating an intended mood a relatable sentiment, but also a detached observation of that effect on a generation. Back in 1995 is too literal with this — an epilogue makes its feelings clear — but the player’s takeaway is unscathed. Back in 1995’s creators communicated an idea that I wasn’t expecting, and I walked away thankful for that transaction.
It’s an intangible position, but there’s also Back in 1995’s role as a herald of the 32-bit era’s accent into a desirable style. The omnipresence of 8 and 16-bit inspired games is appreciated, but there’s a different je ne sais quoi for the wild experimentation and inventive chaos of early polygonal work. Barely anyone making games knew what they were doing, and the few that did were basically starting over. Back in 1995, if nothing else, is a passionate echo of a dramatic time in gaming history. Its construction isn’t authentic, but there’s little doubt the effort and affection that responsible for Back in 1995 merits a different source of recognition.
