Sofa Sharers: Rose-Tinted Memories

Split-screen, couch co-op, just playing with your mates; whatever you want to call it, it’s dying out. Sure, online gaming has brought people from all over the world together and made it easier to game with your friends, but in my opinion there’s nothing that can replace the brilliance of playing a videogame with your friends literally beside you. Which brings us nicely to this week’s edition of Sofa Sharers. In previous editions we’ve covered some of the best split-screen games of all time, from Bond to Bowser, and shared some fantastic stories along the way. This week Joe gives us a little history on one of the best local co-op games ever and gives us an insight into his related brotherly struggles. Plus, a very personal story from myself. We’ll also be taking a look at a brilliant split-screen game that’s now free to play on PS4!

 

Looking Back - The Best of Split-Screen

First up, Joe Pring gives us his thoughts on the Sonic franchise as a hub for couch co-op gaming.

Sonic wasn’t always a loser. Before Sega decided to make the superfast blue mascot the poster boy for awful, gimmicky gameplay (Werehogs are not good, OK?), the hedgehog celebrity was cool - even standing shoulder to shoulder with Mario on the popularity scale.

Sonic’s golden age has most definitely been and gone, and unless you put stock in Sega’s latest reboot, Sonic Boom, it’s probably never coming back. But that’s fine, because Sonic the Hedgehog 2, 3 and Sonic & Knuckles are still some of the finest platformers ever created. Especially if you had another sat beside you to enjoy the blistering speeds that Sonic, Tails and Knuckles could reach.

As a wee lad, I spent countless hours of my childhood playing sidekick to a brother who was as infatuated with Sonic as I was. I say sidekick because he was older; hence, I was begrudgingly stuck with the two-tailed fox on our journey. In the standard mode, both heroes could be controlled, and having two players meant Tails didn’t suck (as much) under the guidance of another person, and Sonic 3’s Marble Garden zone threw a nice big sucker punch by revealing that he was essential for beating Robotnik’s (no, not Dr. Eggman’s) mid-air end-of-stage boss fight

You didn’t have to be partners though: all three games featured competitive multiplayer. Not only were these stages exclusively built for head-to-head racing, they also featured music tracks as memorable as those found in solo play, and for anyone who has fond memories of old Sonic games, you’ll know that Sega’s composers are half of what made the old cartridge games so revered today. Being able to pass the controller around a group of four friends, endlessly racing against each other and humming along to catchy tunes is a testament to how fundamental the Sonic series was for many - it’s just a shame Sega haven’t managed to replicate the same magic since

Please Sega, don’t make Sonic Boom suck.

 

Looking Within - Split-Screen Memories

The ball is back in my court this week, so I thought I’d break out quite possibly my number one top split-screen memory:

The year is probably 2005, or at least one of those now rather blurry years in which I was battling the big bad boss that is puberty. It was my birthday, I can remember that much at least. My friends and I (all of us wearing irreverent hoodies, no doubt) gathered at my house to party in a way that only young teenage boys can - super ultimate gaming sleepover. That was the mission, and boy did we achieve it. While games like Buzz!: Junior Jungle Party and Singstar provided the most masculine treats of the evening, there was one game, and one part of that game, that provided all the memories. The game was WWE SmackDown vs Raw 2006 (or something similar) and the section was the infamous ladder match.

The group of us launched into a fully blown six-man ladder match without even the slightest concern over what would follow. What did follow, to both our pleasure and dismay, was a diabolically intense two hour long ladder match from hell. We began the battle in pretty standard fashion; some wild grappling, striking and ladder swinging leading to most of us taking heavy-duty damage early on. Within 20 minutes everyone had been thrown off ladders, smacked in the face with chairs and hit with finishers so many times that it became difficult to get our superstars to actually stand up. A slight graze across the cheek would lead to a horrible period of stagnation for the player who’d received it, as their superstar passed out on the ring mat. One by one the characters would rise, only to be knocked once and fall to the floor for another five minute stretch.

Bizarrely, due to the imbalances in play within the core mechanics of the game as well as the simple fact that matches weren’t supposed to last that long, that cycle continued for over two whole hours! I distinctly remember each and every one of us experiencing a strange mix of entertainment and pure unbridled annoyance. That desire to be the victor drove us all to the endgame; my friend Scott won in the end, he was playing as John Cena (go figure). To this day that ridiculous ladder match is a cause for hysterical nostalgia for the lot of us; the near-misses, the pain of failure, the brilliant high of near-success. We tried to replicate that same experience for years after that date and while the matches we had were always fun (and often just as long), it was never quite the same.

In those two hours a game had brought us all closer; a game based on a field that most of us didn’t have an interest in. Yet that is easily one of the highlights of my gaming life (if that’s what I can call it). As Dark Souls players will know, it’s often the toughest grind that leads to the greatest success, and although we hadn’t all won that fateful ladder match, we all felt like we’d taken something really great from those two mad hours.

 

Looking Forward - The Future of Split-Screen

I’m going to cheat just a little bit this time and feature a game that’s already been released. In fact, the original Dead Nation was released way back in 2010 exclusively for PS3; it was, after all, developed by Sony platform favourites Housemarque. Don’t worry, I’m not that desperate for current news on split-screen gaming. Wonderfully, Dead Nation: Apocalypse Edition is now free on PS+ for PS4 gamers. This is a tooled up version of the original that also includes the DLC pack Road to Devastation. Anyone who’s been looking for a game to play with their friends on PS4 should download this straight away. The local co-op mode is arguably the best element of the game; top-down shooters like this are practically built for a couple of players to duke it out together.

You’ll be glad to know that I speak from experience. I owned Dead Nation back in the day (I got it as part of Sony’s ‘sorry you got hacked’ package, in fact), and while I didn’t expect all that much from it, the few sessions I played with my mate were bloody brilliant. The game features simple yet wonderfully tense gameplay that does an excellent job of forcing you to work as a tightknit unit of zombie slayers. The Apocalypse Edition has retained the local co-op mode, so I can fully recommend it. I know I’ll be getting my mates round to play this one; I’ve had so few games to play with them that they’re starting to wonder if I use my PS4 for anything other than Netflix (they’d be right, of course).

 

That’ll do it for this week’s edition of Sofa Sharers. The articles go live on Friday every two weeks, so keep your eye on GameGrin for the latest editions. Let’s not let split-screen die, but help it rise from the ashes like a Phoenix!