Retro video games have officially made a full-blown comeback. Nintendo has re-released NES and SNES “Classic Edition” game consoles, Rampage was inexplicably made into a movie somehow, and Pixels, woof. And the retro gaming craze is hitting the coffee shop with Coffee Crisis, a Double Dragon-style brawler. It’s like coffee shop Battle Toads but not frustratingly impossible.
As reported by TNW, Coffee Crisis is the creation of Megacat Studios and follows the baristas of Black Forge Coffee, an actual coffee shop in Pittsburgh—the same shop we reported about last year with the controversial punch cards—as they battle aliens trying to take over the Steel City, presumably for its main natural resources: math rock and Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin. But the Smurglians—the name of the race of baddies—didn’t know what was in store for them when they landed in the backyard of Black Forge baristas Nick and Ashley, who use unique “punches, combos, suplexes, and special attacks” to pummel the Smurglians through five levels of side-scrolling glory.
Each level is hand-drawn and draws inspiration from “city scenes across Pittsburgh,” including “landmarks from across the metropolis like the PNC baseball park and the Duquesne Incline railroad.” True to Black Forge’s occult chic form, the game’s soundtrack features “energetic metal” from local band Greywalker.
Coffee Crisis is available for Mac, Windows, or Linux on Steam for a paltry $5.99. Or if you’ve been pulled in by the undertow of the retro gaming wave, a cartridge version fully playable on the Sega Genesis and “other non-emulation hardware consoles” is available via the game’s website for $40.
There are certainly worse ways to spend $5.99.
Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
*all media via Megacat Studios
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