With the fate of humanity under the siege of evil forces, it takes a pair of heroes to save the day. Unfortunately the duo of Bill and Lance from Contra are unable to answer the call, and nobody wanted the bromance of Elliot Salem and Tyson Rios from Army of Two. For this situation we need a special kind of heroic duo. A team nobody has ever heard of. It looks like the fate of our world rests in the hands of Guy and Bob! Who? Yes, Guy and Bob. A duo who have a love of guns and a hatred for Dr. Slug and his alien attackers. Well then I guess they'll do just fine.

Nasty, from Fun Infused Games, is a 2D shooter on Xbox Live Indie Games that is a take on old-school arcade games that I've grown up playing. The game is a fast-paced action shooter that has you wasting enemies while jumping on different platforms and avoiding enemy fire. Along the way you'll collect items like fruit and weapon power-ups to aid in the cause. The main goal however is to destroy all the aliens and make it to the door within a certain amount of time. Take too long and a Doom Bolt will appear and he's not to happy with you.

Nasty seems to borrow from many game elements in the retro era and it's pulled off rather well. The main characters are reminiscent of Contra, the level design is reminiscent of Bubble Bobble, the ghost enemies are from Pac-Man, and the Doom Bolt is from Berserk! Catching a theme here? The blocky level design is considered very old-school although some new-school players may be turned off by it. Look, Nasty is not the kind of game that's going to blow you away with eye catching visuals, but what it does have is some pretty good gameplay which trumps graphics any day of the week.

At a whopping 100 levels of shooter action, Nasty will have you busy for a few hours as you collect medals based on your heroics. The game is also very unforgiving at times which is how old-school games were back in the day. Get hit once and you lost a life. Lose all three lives and it's "Game Over!" If this happens there's no need to get frustrated, because the game has a limited number of continues letting you pick up where you left off. For every ten levels you complete, you'll gain a save point for you to start from in case you lose all your continues so this way you don't have to start over from the beginning.

Most of you out there will probably end up playing Nasty the majority of the time in it's single-player campaign. While playing the game this way is fun and challenging, the option of saving the world in the same campaign in co-op with a friend is even better. If that's not enough, there's a Battle Mode where up to four players can go to war with each other to see who's the best. All of the game's multiplayer modes are local only. Nasty also features a local leaderboard to show off all of your high scores.

With all the classic gaming elements that players remember along with some fun gameplay mixed in, Nasty is retro gaming at its finest. Sure the game is unforgiving at times and the graphics might not live up to new school gamer's expectations, but who cares. Not every game is meant to be perfect. Nasty is the kind of game that's just good enough to keep you playing for hours as well as having those nostaligic moments that made us enjoy video games in the first place.