The recently-out videogame Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (based on the comic book and upcoming movie) is a love letter to both 8-bit classic games and gamers who know their chiptunes to their Marios and Sonics. Here’s why:

- Lovely Graphics: The art of Paul Robertson impresses ever since he did his short movie “Pirate Baby’s Cabana Street Fight 2006″. SPvTW is that idea coming to life and made playable, and no amount of adjectives synonymous with “beautiful” can describe the detail and charm it emanates. Unless you really, really, REALLY hate pixel art; in which case, you need to have your pulse checked because you’re definitely a cadaver.

- The Sound Of A Past Generation Mixed In With The New: The game’s music is composed by rock-slash-electronica hybrid band Anamanaguchi (featured on our last issue’s Music Box of GameAxis Unwired). Their blending of NES synth sounds and musical instruments fit the game’s retro aesthetics to a tee. I’ll just state right now that Stage 1 and Stage 3’s music are my favorite tunes in the entire game.

- Old School Gameplay Made Fun: Imagine all the best bits of River City Ransom, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game and Streets of Rage boiled into one platonic mix. That’s SPvTW’s gameplay in a nutshell: four-player beat-em-up action with leveling-up elements.

The game’s beat-em-up system is also flexible. Your light attacks and jump kicks are able to chain and juggle enemies in the air. You’ll gain a better moveset to experiment with as you level up. Each playable character have slightly different movesets; Ramona can spawn objects at will while Kim Pines can do her version of Honda’s Hundred Hand Slap. The road to the final stage is arduous and hard, but well worth it as you see the expanded repertoire your chosen characters can pull off and the cheap tactics you can employ (the aforementioned juggling, jump attack-spamming, area-affecting tech attacks). Then again, your enemies can gang up and overwhelm you if you’re not careful. The game is tough, but with a few minutes of grinding and buying stat-boosting items, you’ll beat the game in no time flat.

- All Those Little Secrets and Little Things: From familiar sound bites and icons (E-Tank, anyone?), to the little touches and homage-to-pop-culture animations of the enemies (real-life wolverines pulling off attacks a little too similarly to Capcom’s interpretation of a popular Marvel character, for example), everything presented in the game is lovingly drawn and detailed down to the finest pixel. Don’t just play it for the awesome fighting, play it for the work put out by the artists, goddamit!

Also, here’s a game-breaking protip: do save up $500+ to pay for Scott’s Late Fees at the video store in the Shopping District. It’s worth the trouble; trust me.

To counterpoint, here’s where SPvTW fails.

- Game-crashing bugs. I had the game freeze up twice while playing on Stage 4 and Stage 7 halfway. Lord, it’s definitely annoying when you have to start a segment all over again with no checkpoints because of a programming error from the devs’ side. There were also a few instances where the music went wonky and fade out as I played the game for an hour or so.

So yeah: I’ve got nothing to refute the aforementioned good points. In case my slovenly typing can’t get through your thick skull, buy this game. Whether you own a PS3 or Xbox 360(coming later this month, so do wait), you owe it to your nostalgia to buy this labor of love.

Rating: 9.5/10