Mockenreviews

Kirby's Dream Land

2011-08-07T16:07:00.000-07:00

Kirby is a character that almost never happened. A simple pink blob (despite the fact that the box art for Kirby's Dream Land depicts him as white), Kirby pioneered the puffy ball of cuteness in a time when one's response to "Jigglypuff" was typically "God bless you." But did you know that Kirby's design was just a stand-in while the developers tried to come up with a real character for their game? They just found the little rascal so cute they decided to keep him on. Then they named him after a vacuum cleaner, stuck him in a Game Boy cartridge, and called it Dream Land.

The basic plot of Kirby's Dream Land is that the self-proclaimed ruler of Dream Land, King Dedede, has gone around stealing food from everyone because he's hongry. Kirby, a resident of Dream Land who is honestly equally famished, decides to go retrieve the food. That's basically it. Two gluttons fighting over a banquet. Also, as though it's somehow important, the feast is supposed to be eaten at midnight. I don't know if there's some sort of Cinderella vibe going on here, but the game itself never alludes to this - in fact, it's never even dark, which would seem to put the whole thing to rest. Unless...

Maybe Dream Land has multiple suns! You know, it's not Earth or anything. We're talking about a world where little pink things go around swallowing everything that moves. Why should we assume that they have the same sort of solar cycle as we do? Or you know what? Maybe they don't even have a sun at all! Yeah, maybe the world is lit up by something magical. Like...um...maybe the ground is covered in glittery gumdrops! They're too small to see on the Game Boy, of course, but they project enough light to make it like an eternal day. But see, they're spread out so uniformly that you don't notice they're the world's light source at all, unless you really get down and examine them scientifically. But nobody does science in Dream Land! That's got to be it!

Aaaaaanyway, Dream Land really is a happy place. They even name their major landmarks things that invent memes. I mean, who was really using the internet back in 1992? And if you were, you certainly weren't hunting down memes. You didn't even know what they were. But here comes Kirby's Dream Land, dropping the lulz all over you. Now, I admit it's possible that this is pronounced "low low low," but doesn't that just make it the predecessor for this instead? You cannot avoid the truth here: Kirby's Dream Land changed the entire course of mankind. There, I said it.

Kirby's main weapon is a little on the lame side. It's air. See, Kirby can inhale, exhale, and that's basically it. But he can inhale a lot of air, to the point where he can even float around. Now, this doesn't make any sense, because inhaling the air doesn't make him lighter than air, but you have to remember that this is a Game Boy game, and stop expecting so much. He can also expel this air with such force as to kill small lifeforms, something which will occur with some frequency in this game. In addition, of course, you can just directly inhale the enemies themselves, and spit them out as stars. Don't ask.

Now, Kirby's air-sucking abilities allow him something rather unique in platformers; he can essentially fly anywhere at any time. It's this dynamic that sets Kirby apart, more than any other single thing. They even have you fight a boss in this way, though they give you a power-up just prior that allows you to spit air puffs indefinitely. The other bosses are largely forgettable, except for the first. That's Whispy Woods, a tree that tries to Newton you to death, dropping apples from its branches in hopes that one of them will strike you. This would turn into Kirby's sort of trademark boss-that's-not-really-very-important-to-the-story, which a few other games utilize as well.

The basic enemies in this game are actually mostly "normal," considering everything else going on. You've got Waddle Dees, which appropriately do nothing but waddle. You've got Waddle Doos, which are like the Dees, except cycloptic and they shoot crap out of their eyes. Perhaps most treacherous are the Gordos, which are, and I ask that you brace yourself, sentient, mobile spikes. Say WHAAA? Remember in Sonic how dastardly those things were? Or heck, go back even further to Mega Man! Or even Mega Man 2! Jiminy Crickets man, even Mega Man 3! Spikes are deadly abominations of sin. You see a Gordo, you RUN. You hear me? RUN!

And then there's these little spawns of Satan. I know. You think I'm some sort of cold-hearted maniac. How could anyone not adore those happy little bunnies floating there disembodied staring blankly into space? You're in for a rude awakening. These guys are no less vicious than the rabbit that attacked King Arthur and his knights at the caves of Caerbannog (check your history textbooks; it's there). You make one wrong move, and they will charge you and explode. All over your face. That glee on their face isn't because they think Dream Land's a pretty spiffy place to raise a family - it's because they can't wait to blow you into little pink bits the color of which your game system can't even recognize.

With all of this, it's nice that the game gives you a health bar instead of the Mario style "stub a toe on a goomba and die" method of meting out punishment. And the health can be healed by - what else? - eating. Specifically, there are giant tomatoes emblazoned with the letter M that will restore your life completely. Or, if you're only feeling a tad thirsty, you'll find bottled water lying around, ready for the ingesting. You eat the plastic too, but to no apparent ill effect. And look at it this way: when you have to poop, you're recycling!

So...King Dedede. Did you know he's a duck? A big ol' duck with a hammer. Wearing a wooly cap and a bathrobe. All right, I'll roll with it. I've come this far. Defeating him is a tad troublesome at first because, like the other bosses in the game, he is immune to your bursts of air. But, unlike the previous bosses, he doesn't generate any objects for you to inhale and spit back at him. Eventually you've got to just say "This is crazy, but..." and swallow the biggest thing you can see in the foreground other than King Dedede himself - the animation of his hammer hitting the ground. Yes, the cute little star that poofs out to show impact is itself your weapon. It's ridiculous, it's absurd, it's genius.

Beating Dedede causes his castle to start spontaneously ejecting all the food he'd collected. So I guess if you ever had a strong desire to watch a castle vomiting various fruits and fish, you can always hit up Kirby. I have to admit though that it's really an unsatisfying finish. Frankly, the game is too easy. From start to finish, nothing here is a challenge. They even have you replay all the earlier bosses before fighting Dedede in the Mega Man style, but the bosses were easy the first time, and now you already know how to beat them. It's a rather short game too; you can finish it in 30 minutes or less without any real problem the first time through.

All this is mostly rectified, however, by the inclusion of an "extra game." After emerging from Dedede's castle victorious and sitting through the game's credits, you'll be presented with a code to enter at the title screen for this extra game. It's the same thing, only with harder enemies (same dealio as Super Mario Bros.). It won't take long before you notice the increased difficulty here. There are more enemies, and all of them are more difficult than their previous incarnations. You'll even see little walking cupcakes that launch their icing at you. Nothing really ever shot at you the first time through. Whispy Woods starts dropping Gordos from his tree as well as apples, and he drops them faster. The list goes on, but the point is that the extra game is basically the challenge that Kirby arguably should have been in the first place.

Kirby is a refreshing departure from the usual offering of platform gaming, daring to be creative in what was already threatening to be a stagnant genre. You've got to respect it for that. While its concept was original and entertaining, its execution left a bit to be desired. It was too easy, too short, and relatively unfocused. Still, they gave us an option in the game to correct the first flaw on that list, so all in all, you've got to say it was a good start for Kirby and the gang.

Bottom Line: 13/20

Star Wars: Dark Forces

2011-05-28T11:47:00.001-07:00

When you think about it, Doom was one of the best things ever to happen to Star Wars. The franchise had already seen some games released, but they were at times just pitiful Game Boy ports of nearly as pitiful NES games. Even good games like X-Wing and TIE Fighter only granted you interaction into one aspect of the Star Wars universe: ship combat. But with the onset of first-person shooter technology made effective and popular by Doom, they could finally set you in the role of an individual without resorting to stupid side-scrolling levels full of spikes.

In Dark Forces you play as Kyle Katarn, a mercenary running jobs for the Rebel Alliance because the Empire had a hand in the still-not-totally-resolved murder of his father. The game opens with you having to steal the Death Star plans to deliver them to Princess Leia, which of course immediately precedes the first film's events. Cool tie-in, if nothing else. Then the rest of the game takes place between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, but by now you're a known entity, and the Empire wants you dead.

Maybe it's just the fact that this is the first time Star Wars has ever been experienced in this format, but Dark Forces is just so full of murderous intent it's a little frightening. Everyone in this game wants to violently end your life. We're not talking about the legions of hell from Doom, or even the dehumanized Nazis from Wolfenstein anymore. These are living, breathing, thinking, presumably otherwise moral human beings. Sure, they may hide under clunky white suits of armor, but for crying out loud, doesn't anyone think twice before pulling the trigger? Has anyone really ever sat back and contemplated what it truly means to end a life?

Maybe it's just that they're too stupid to even reflect on such matters. After all, if you stand behind a transparent forcefield, they will continue to shoot at you with reckless abandon, even as the lasers reflect back into their own armor. Yes, that's right. You can eliminate entire rooms of enemy soldiers without ever firing a shot, simply by standing there and letting them shoot themselves down. They're more efficient at that than at shooting you anyway. Stormtroopers have never exactly been renowned for their accuracy.

But you know what? I think they get judged a little unfairly on that. After all, Dark Forces is the first time we really get to use that blaster rifle for ourselves. And let me tell you - it ain't going to win you any target shooting contests. It's not that the stormtroopers have abysmal aim, it's that the gun the Empire foists upon them can't fire straight in the least. I can only imagine the frustration. We're talking about the dominant force in the galaxy with all the resources you can imagine and they just refuse to equip their infantry with so much as a gun that can fire straight. It's darned irresponsible, that's what it is.

Not that accuracy is really going to be working in your favor either here. Dark Forces defies reason and makes all your weapons shoot off to the left instead of the center. Why this is I have no idea, but it'll throw you way off at first. Even your "accurate" pistol has this issue. Once you lock down what the correction is in terms of aiming to the right of what you want to hit you'll be fine on that issue, but there are others. You see, Dark Forces made a couple leaps forward in FPS technology. For the first time, levels are in legitimate 3D. This means you can jump, duck, swim, have rooms on top of other rooms, and perhaps most notably, look up and down. Unfortunately you can't aim vertically with your mouse. You've got to actually hit your page up and page down keys to adjust your vertical aim, and there's no way to restore you to default height automatically.

The game tries to make up for this by auto-adjusting shots vertically to an extent. This creates graphical confusion when you point a gun straight forward and see the laser shoot to the left and downward at a 70 degree angle, but I guess it does make the game playable. I'll give them a bit of a pass, because I understand that nobody had worked out all the 3D kinks yet. I mean, they include "bottomless" pits in some levels that all have visible bottoms. You may even intentionally leap into one because you can see the floor and you think "I might survive that." Nope. You'll just hear yourself screaming from a stock sound effect and have to try again. Works the other way too though - I don't know why, but you can jump like 5 feet vertically in Dark Forces. Don't be silly.

You want proof this game wants to end your life?
ICE LEVEL.
Why is there an ice level in a shooter?! And don't tell me it's just aesthetic because that crap is slippery for reals. You actually have to find "ice cleats" in the level to stop from sliding uncontrollably, and you know where they put those things? On a narrow cliff over a bottomless (that is to say, bottomed) pit. You also get other little gadgets and extras as you go, like IR goggles that don't actually view anything in infrared (it's more of a night-vision puke green), and a gas mask that is absolutely necessary to survive one section of a level.

What? Plot? Oh, all right. The main premise of the game is that the Empire has begun building "Dark Troopers." These are, for lack of a better word, Terminators. You've got to find out how and where they're making these things and then destroy all associated facilities in their production before blowing up an Imperial ship acting as the mobile launching base for them. Eventually the metal endoskeletons get enhanced with armor, a jetpack, and a giant plasma rifle with an attached missile launcher. Yipes. But they're still not the scariest things in the game. That distinction is reserved for two other baddies.

The first are the Gran. They're an alien species with multiple eyes protruding out of the forehead. Eyes that in Dark Forces glow green. In the dark. And guess what they do?

Do they lob infinite numbers of thermal detonators?

Absolutely correct!

Good news? You can load up on the things when they die and use them to explode entire rooms of guys who would do the same to you if given half a chance. They've got sick aim too. And those eyes....*shudder*

The other most deadly enemy? Turrets. There are ceiling turrets in various places throughout the levels. They have tons of health, a fairly quick rate of fire, and they never miss (even if you're sprinting randomly). Probably responsible for a healthy majority of the deaths I experienced playing this game.

You'll notice I didn't include any bosses among the game's enemy elite. There's a couple reasons for this. First, there's only one boss in the whole campaign, at the very end. Secondly, if he weren't chatting dialogue at you as the fight started, you wouldn't even realize he was a boss. He acts virtually identical to the Dark Troopers and doesn't seem any more difficult to kill. Who I really feel bad though is the single Imperial officer hanging out in the only room after the boss fight. He was assigned "guard the shuttle" duty, but the idiots had the brilliant idea to load the shuttle bay with explosive barrels. And if you just knocked out the "hardest" enemy in the game, what chance does this fool have? Makes me think that all their efforts to execute me might actually be in vain.

!!!

Dark Forces is a somewhat decent game flawed by a number of imperfections that can mostly be chalked up to being the first to attempt the things they were attempting. The cutscenes are pretty good for the era, though I do feel obligated to mention that the line "Stop, rebel scum!" isn't said with as much zest as would feel appropriate. It's a moderately tough shooter that looks and feels a lot like Doom without the demons...though those garbage monsters come pretty close. Don't swim in trash, folks. Shizz is nasty.

Bottom Line: 12/20

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

2011-04-30T08:45:00.001-07:00

Every video game family has a black sheep. I'm talking about that game where they tried to be "different" or "innovative" but instead ended up being "mediocre" or "lame." In the NES era, it was the second game of franchises that tended to trend this way. Castlevania II was noticeably different from its predecessor, though maybe in that case it was a good thing. Super Mario Bros. 2 was obviously quite a departure from the first game. I could go on, but you get the idea: the sequels to popular NES games are usually odd. And thus I present you Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.

The astute among you may have noticed that we are no longer speaking of The Legend of Zelda, but just Zelda II. Which might normally cause you to believe that Zelda will be more prominent in this game than in the last, but she is, if possible, even less involved than before. You see, apparently some years after Link saved Hyrule and dipped out of town for a while, Zelda's spoiled brother wanted the third Triforce piece (that one we wouldn't discuss last time around) and when Zelda wouldn't tell him where it was, he had some wizard stick a sleeping spell on her so powerful that the wizard died while casting it. So, you guessed it: while Zelda spent the entire first game kidnapped, she gets to spend the entire second one unconscious. At that point I can't even fault them for officially declaring her life less legendary. Sheesh.

So anyway, you've got to go find the third Triforce (now called forevermore the Triforce of Courage) because it's the only thing that can awaken Zelda. To do that you've got to take some crystals and stick them in six palaces/temples across Hyrule, which will reveal the resting place of the little golden triangle that everyone's so worked up about. Meanwhile Ganon's loyal minions found out that you're back in Hyrule and they want you dead. Evidently if they sprinkle your blood on Ganon's ashes, he'll come back to life. Gross.

Unlike the last game which used an overhead perspective, this game is comprised of a bunch of sidescrolling "action screens." You'll walk around the overworld map in the usual way, but periodically shadows of enemies will appear and chase you. If one touches you, you enter the action screen to do some 2D battle with it. It throws you off a little at first for a couple reasons. For one, Link is just abnormally big and blurry. You don't notice it too much until you go into a village and see the other people, but you are huge and obviously a lower res than the world around you. And if you see how low res the world around you is, well... The second odd moment will be when you first kill an enemy and see experience points awarded. Like a real RPG. People usually try to claim that the Zelda games are all RPGs, and they're all clearly wrong. Still though, Zelda II comes closer than any of them to crossing that genre.

When you reach your experience goal you'll get the option to increase one of your only three stats: life, magic, or attack power. They have differing levels of cost, but if you just buy the cheapest thing every time you'll progress fairly evenly. You can also find hearts and magic potions hidden in the world that increase your gauges at the top from 4 all the way up to 8. But all is not well on the experience front. Zelda II can save, which is great and all, but here's the catch: the game doesn't save your experience. Oh it'll save your purchases, so all your stat upgrades will be there, but it'll reset your actual experience pool to nothing whenever you exit the game. So let's say you need 5000 experience points to buy something, and you get to 4995 but then have to quit. When you load back up, it's 0/5000. BONED. Maybe that's why they stick P-bags around the world too, that just give free experience. But they're one-time use too, so if you used one then quit, your experience is gone and so is the bag. Ruthless.

You also never get life back from enemies. Oh sure, they'll drop the occasional magic potion or the rare P-bag, but never any health. It makes each section of progress a sort of gauntlet, because you can't heal until you get back to a town or luck into finding a fairy hanging out in some meadow, begging you to touch it. It's like that scene in Hook where Julia "Tinkerbell" Roberts tries to have sex with Peter Pan. It gives you the willies. And come to think of it, Link and Peter Pan aren't really dressed that differently, they're both boys in their teens......you know, I think we're getting off track here.

If you've read my Castlevania review you know there is one kind of enemy attack pattern so heinous its inventors were executed for crimes against humanity: the medusa head. Unfortunately for gamers, the people behind Zelda II saw that sine wave-looking unavoidable onslaught of death and said "Hey, that's a good idea!" In Zelda II it's skeletal fish heads instead of medusas, but the effect is the same. Except that these ones spit rocks at you too. And oh yeah, if you touch one you lose experience. What the hell man! I might have even given all this a pass because at least they can't cheese you off instant-death ledges like in Castlevania, until I remembered that they most frequently appear on bridges over lava or, you know, nothingness. The only thing the medusa heads still have on these guys is that the Zelda bonefish move a little slower and Link is a little more agile than Simon "Belmondo." Dear game developers: NEVER DO THIS AGAIN. Regards and etc., Homicidal Gamer #749201.

Link's got a couple helpful abilities though. For one thing, his sword shoots out energy when he's at full health. This is, of course, completely unexplained, but you'll take it. Later on in the game he'll find recluses in towns who will teach him how to stab upward and downward in midair with his sword. You wouldn't think someone would actually have to show you how to angle your sword, but whatever. When you get these attacks, they will become all you use. Jumping on someone's head and holding down, you'll become a living pogo stick of death and destruction. Some of the fiercest enemies in the game (like knights in blue armor who are absurdly strong) can just get destroyed by this.

Towns are awesome. They're full of villagers, though almost all of them look the same, and most of them will just tell you that they can't tell you anything. But each village has a house with a hottie in a red dress who invites you in for a little sumthin-sumthin' to restore your life. That is glorious. There's another house with an old hag who invites you in to restore your magic, though I'ma wager she just offers you tea. Or maybe some stew. You'll also find random stuff like a fat dude in a purple tunic saying "I am ERROR." Great work guys on checking that text for bugs. In one house there's a disembodied voice from under a table. You're so intent actually on invading people's homes that you'll even occasionally pull a Santa Claus and jump down their chimneys. And nobody even seems to mind! Hyrule is laid. back.

Every town also contains an old man with a pulsating beard anxious to teach you some magic. None of it's super impressive - we're talking about jumping higher, or taking less damage...utility-type stuff. Of course, one of them teaches you the Heal spell and your life stops sucking that instant. But in order to earn the spell you usually have to complete silly errands for the chick guarding the house's door. "A child in the town went missing, please bring him back!" "I lost my trophy! Please find it!" Or, in the case of one haughty broad, "Fetch me some water." You should take pointers from the lady at the sex hut, hun. That girl knows what's up.

A couple more complaints and observations before we hit the last area. First, why do some of these temples look straight-up like Bowser's castle? And second, why is it that if I try to quickly turn around I pinball all over the screen? No lie, if you move in one direction, then quickly turn the other way and back again, you will launch off to the side of the screen, taking damage from everything in your way. After a time you'll slingshot back the other way automatically. I don't know why this happens and I tried it on multiple copies of the game to make sure it wasn't just the one I was playing, and they all had this problem. It's easy enough to say "Well just don't rapidly turn around anymore," but that invites all kinds of other problems in combat when you're moving all around trying to avoid things like, oh, say, bony fish skulls spitting rocks and stealing your experience. That's a pretty major glitch, Nintendo.

But if you persist through it and get to the Great Temple, you'll see the giant laser beams blocking its entrance disappear and you can go inside. It's a long journey but when you finally reach the boss pictured here, guess what? It's invincible. LOVELY. There's a sort of "spell to end all spells" you have to get to damage this boss, but there's no indication of that until you're at the boss itself. If you reach it without the spell, you've got to kill yourself repeatedly until you use a continue, then journey all the way back from the temple to hunt down this last spell, then go all the way back to and through the temple again. And using the spell doesn't kill it; it just makes it vulnerable. But your bread and butter up/down strikes won't hurt it either. This is one of those Yoda "Unlearn what you have learned" type moments, I guess. Couldn't you throw that out a little earlier?

When you defeat the thunderbird you find some old friar guarding the Triforce. I guess he lives in the temple or something. He makes you fight a shadow version of yourself, which causes some immature chuckles because of where Link holds his sword when he gets hurt. When you put that into a silhouette, well. So you kill your clone, take the Triforce, wake up Zelda, and she makes out with you. For serious. That's the game. It's not as good as the first one, for sure, and a lot of the changes to the basic gameplay were the culprits for detracting from the enjoyment. But that said, the score ceiling for a game with medusa head style enemies isn't very high, and you might argue that Zelda II comes near it. It's almost the epitome of average gaming. So at least it's the best at something.

Bottom Line: 10/20

Shining in the Darkness

2011-02-26T14:47:00.001-08:00

Do you like mazes? Do you ever sit down with a puzzle book and do the maze because it gets you your jollies? Do you like going out with friends to a corn maze or a hedge maze and finding your way through? Does it feel rewarding when the maze is finally solved? If you answered yes to any or all of the above, would you still enjoy mazes if they were filled with an infinite number of deadly monsters bent on hunting you down and murdering you?

Well you're in luck! Welcome to Shining in the Darkness, a game that gives you precisely that. An old dude in a rocking chair will introduce you to the Kingdom of Thornwood, where you're the son of the King's most trusted knight, Mortred. Unfortunately, he's gone missing along with the king's daughter (please note: "king's daughter" is no more than a synonym for "princess"), and you are charged with finding them. Then some dark sorcerer shows up calling himself "Dark Sol" and cackling about he's the one responsible and he's trapped the king's daughter in the giant Labyrinth that is conveniently located in the kingdom but for some reason nobody recalls building or exploring. Mmkay.

Thornwood's straight creepy. There's a town near the castle with all your amenities, but it's populated by those creatures from the kid's show Arthur. Yeah, I don't know what kind of animal they're supposed to be either, but they're happy to sell you crappy weapons and armor. "Oh, you're on a royal mission to save the life of the heir of the kingdom? Well in that case for 100 gold pieces I'll give you this leather glove." Whoa whoa, nevermind that a leather glove is meaningless in the long run, and nevermind the price gouging for it. What concerns me is who this dude skinned to get it. I mean, if the shopkeeper is some sort of anthropomorphic mammal of indeterminate nature, doesn't it stand to reason that animals in this kingdom are capable of higher cognitive processes? What I'm getting at is that by selling me a leather glove he might as well be offering me my uncle's severed arm. I'll pass, man.

The town's layout gives me pause too. The game is entirely from a first-person perspective, which is fine. So in the town you choose which building to enter by turning in a panorama and selecting the given buildings that are encircling you. This doesn't seem like a problem except for two things. First, the screen pans far too slowly. I don't have all day. Second, who builds a town like that? Who puts up buildings to form a circle with nothing in the middle? I know who. Cultists. Cultists do that. The Kingdom of Thornwood is full of murderous animal cultists. Yeah, I said it.

All this without even setting foot in the Labyrinth! When you get in there you'll be ready to get out. I'm talking battles every 2-3 steps on average. It starts off innocently enough, with just slimes or oozes or whatever name you want to give the same stereotypical blob that opens virtually every RPG. But the monsters really ramp up to a frustrating degree as you move along. Not to mention the keys. See, the whole idea is that Dark Sol is on the top (fifth) floor of the complex, and you've got to work your way up to his sanctum. But it's not that simple; much of the maze on the ground level is blocked off by locked doors or similar obstacles. In exasperation you'll just return to the king ready to quit. Instead some adviser of his will start prattling about having to complete four ancient trials to move on, and the town will foist a couple other people on you to make a "party."

The embarrassing part is that each of these helpers, named Milo and Pyra, is more useful than your own character. By far. They both use a little something we in the video game world like to call "magic." You should check it out at some point. Lots of possibilities. Milo comes from the "Shrine" to whatever higher power he worships. The game never really commits. But it's got stained glass windows, so we're going to just assume it's Christianity. Though, I guess it's a fantasy world, so....Aslan. Milo is a priest of Aslan. Pyra though is an arrogant wizard skank (and also one of those wallaby-rat abominations from the town). This means Milo can heal and pray and stuff, and Pyra can burn and electrocute things. Your dude? He swings his sword. That's it. Solid.

Now what comes as a really disappointing surprise is that each of the four trials you've got to do is another maze. They're like basement levels of the complex. So that means to "pass" all the trials you've got to actually explore and solve five mazes, each throwing enemies at you every few steps. And thanks to the whole "I may be king and I may own that place but I never bothered sending anyone to explore it" bit, you've got no map. None, that is, until Pyra reaches a certain level and spontaneously learns a spell that lets her see an overhead view of the maze level on which you're currently located. And thank goodness, because to that point I was having to scribble it on a sheet of paper as I went along. It's damn tedious drawing a new line every step to make sure your maze drawing is accurate.

Then there's some revelation that Dark Sol was actually one of the king's advisers at the beginning and it's supposed to be all shock-worthy and stuff. Whatever. I just want to finish these mazes. I guess it's good that Shining in the Darkness managed to do away with some RPG battle failings from older games. For example, if you tell two people to attack the same enemy, and the first one kills the enemy, your second character will actually attack someone else. I know, right? Someone finally caught on. Monsters are also divided into groups, which are somewhat randomly sized. A group of enemies might be two or it might be five, but either way when you tell your characters to attack, you attack the group and not the individual. This sometimes can create a minor amount of frustration by not eliminating certain individuals in the order you'd want, but there actually aren't any major hiccups with the system. For one, groups can only be composed of the same type of monster. So while you might have to fight a group of slimes at the same time as a group of slugs, you'll never have a group composed of both slimes and slugs together. Secondly, there's a bit of AI going on wherein your characters will attempt to maximize their damage by not using stronger attacks to kill weaker enemies, and so forth. It's actually very well done, which allows you to focus less on how to battle and more on what the various species of dumb creatures you'll be slaying are.

There are two types of monsters in this game: those with generic names, and those with names that are bad puns. The former includes such writing gems as "Zombie," "Minotaur," "Ghost," or even "Brikeye" (which, yes, is a brick with an eye in the middle). The latter is comprised of things like "Centaurion" (a centaur in classical Roman armor), "Lancerot" (an undead knight), or "Battle Oxe" (a half-man half-ox wielding a giant battle axe). Hardy-freaking-har, game.

It's not enough though for the monsters to have weird names. They've also got to do weird things. I'm talking statues coming to life and "exhaling a blast of freezing breath" that wipes out your entire party in one go. I'm talking necromancers "howling for help," which when you hear it sounds like an obese cat doped up on catnip and coke, and being answered by monsters literally called "Meat Zombies." I'm talking about when it says "Tommyhawk 2 is flexing its muscles!" Hell if I know. Even the cursor to select your target is an upside-down male symbol. If this game is some type of message in support of feminism, I've got to admit it went right over my head. If you've got an agenda, maybe next time start by creating a plot that doesn't revolve around another princess getting kidnapped, okay?

Consider for a moment the question of what happens when your party is on the verge of death. There's a tavern in town with the typical "rest for a night and somehow you'll recover the quarts of blood you lost yesterday" thing going on, and you can save in that shrine, but how does that help you from inside the Labyrinth? Answer: It doesn't. You've got to leave the mazes every single time you want to save or rest. And you've got to then retread the parts of the maze you've already explored to get back to where you were. This is infuriating at times, which is why you'll be thrilled when a familiar wizard decked in gray shows up to give you an item that lets you create checkpoints on every floor of the complex as you ascend. Even still, you'll be going back to town and therefore redoing entire maze floors repeatedly. Doesn't help that the inventory is largely against you.

Each of your characters has eight inventory slots, though at any given time four of each of these will be taken up by equipped armor and weapons. This means each person has four "usable" slots of inventory, though keys and other necessary items to progress through the mazes will also take up space. Realistically you'll have four or five free spots of inventory total among all your characters, so space is really at a premium. It's not at all uncommon to be full on space, particularly as you find better items you don't want to ditch. So let's say a character dies and happened to be holding the item that allows you to return to town to heal up and restart. You go to use the item and aren't allowed. Why? Because that guy is dead, that's why. Don't worry yourself over the fact that you've got two perfectly healthy people (or one healthy person and one half-animal abomination) who could just pick the item up out of the bag and use it. We don't deal in common sense, here; did you forget this is a video game?

And God forbid you try to use the "Miracle Herb." It's an item that claims to revive a slain character, but it doesn't actually work. Ever. You're treated to text stating "But nothing happened!" every single time. It's a dirty lie is what it is. But the chumps in town will buy it off you for 6000 gold, so feel free to pass the scam around. And don't be surprised, the townies are pretty idiotic. I once had two identical swords. I sold them to the blacksmith one at a time. Know what he says when I hand him the second one? "I've never seen anything like this before!" Dude, I sold you that exact same sword not five seconds ago.

In order to get the cell key to save the princess you've got to kill the dark knight, Mortred. If you're anything like me, you reacted to this by going "Okay? So?" Lemme lay a refresher on you: scroll up to the second paragraph of this review. Mortred's your dad. Whoooooaahooo yeah! That's a sick plot twist isn't it?! Except that by this point in the review you probably completely forgot who "Mortred" was, and you probably never really cared in the first place. Let me tell you something: it's no different in the actual game. I was actually surprised when I came across the princess in her jail cell because I forgot I was looking for her. I'd forgotten everything other than the understanding that there was some dude with a really lame name I needed to kill. But moreover, I just wanted to get through the mazes. The maze is supposed to be the means to the end, but the nature of the game is such that if you don't quit playing after the first two hours, finishing the maze becomes the end in itself. Plot be damned.

I think here it's also worth noting that one of those horse-faced rodent people from town, named "Edward," was an ass to me the whole game. He kept saying something about bringing him "Dai," and I didn't know what in the world he was talking about. At the end of the game, this Dai showed up in the tavern complaining about how tough it was to escape the dungeon on an injured ankle. So let me make this clear: the plot in Shining in the Darkness is so forgettable that there was an entire character I could have rescued and neglected to for the entire game, with no ill consequence. Unless deeply desiring to grind up Edward for my glue counts as an ill consequence, that is.

If you like doing mazes, and especially if you like doing the same mazes over and over with continuous interruptions, you've hit the jackpot with Shining in the Darkness. If that doesn't sound too appealing, don't fret. On rare occasions within the mazes you'll come out onto a balcony, and it plays some sweet balcony music. It's like elevator music, only you're in the open air, and you're walking, and you're not actually going up or down, and it sounds completely different. Worth the price of admission alone? You be the judge.

Bottom Line: 13/20

Donkey Kong Land

2011-02-11T15:07:00.001-08:00

It's a fairly common practice to take a popular game and make a portable version of it. There's a Game Boy version of Mega Man, Tetris, and really any number of other titles from home consoles that developers figured could earn them a few extra bucks by way of a watered-down re-release. But as Nintendo had showed already with Super Mario Land, they wanted to push things a little further by offering watered-down new games on their handheld instead. And so, after the big success of the reviving of the Donkey Kong brand through Donkey Kong Country, Nintendo followed up with Donkey Kong Land, named even in the spirit of that mediocre Mario game.

The trick with this one that didn't exist for Super Mario Land was that they wanted a strong tie-in quality with the Super Nintendo game. When Super Mario Land came out, multiple Mario games were hits worldwide. They just needed to attach his name and that was that. But there were no Donkey Kong games in ages excepting the most recent 16-bit effort here. And so the core of the game remained the same for Donkey Kong Land, to the point where you could mistake it for a pure port if you weren't paying attention.

The plot, believe it or not, is that Cranky Kong (the original Donkey Kong from the 80s games, bear in mind) got pissed that Donkey Kong Country was successful and that its star characters were popular. A-freaking-men, Cranky. So Cranky claims that the game was only a hit because of the fancy graphics and sound, and that the gameplay was crap. Dude. Get out of my head. So he convinces King K. Rool to go steal all the bananas again to force Donkey and Diddy to recover them, this time on a system with bad sound, low graphical capability, and no color. He then expects the game to be a disaster to prove his point about how Donkey Kong Country sucked.

Cranky Kong is my hero.

Now credit where credit's due before I go any further: despite the system's limitations, the audio in Donkey Kong Land is still pretty good. The soundtrack remains inspired, so you won't be tempted to mute the Game Boy in anger or anything as you go. And for what it's worth, the barrel blasting stuff that was so atrocious at times in Donkey Kong Country is noticeably improved here. There are a couple spots that can lead to frustration, but nothing like the level you'd experience on the SNES. And, mercifully, this time around we're spared the levels revolving around being in the dark. Maybe they figured with no color it would be impossible to navigate anything meaningfully in such a stage. Or maybe they just came to their senses and realized the whole concept was idiotic. Either way, gamers profit.

The list of positive changes pretty much ends there, sadly. There's one particular change worth mentioning though that doesn't really improve or detract from the game experience. It's that saving can be done after any level instead of having to hunt down Donkey Kong's sleazy girlfriend whenever you want some good old fashioned data backup. But there's a catch to it, naturally. In order to save after the completion of a level, you've got to collect the K-O-N-G letters in the stage. If you fail to finish with all four, you'll get credit for beating the level, but will be unable to save. And with no save point actually on the map, this forces you to be extra vigilant in each stage just so you don't run out of lives and lose all your progress.

And believe me, your progress is most definitely at risk in Donkey Kong Land. Death is lurking everywhere for you, including especially places where it has no business hanging around. I get that the graphics aren't going to be great and I don't really even care that the game can't feature more than various shades of puke-green. What I can't accept is the overall fuzzy quality of the entire endeavor. Consider for a moment how small that Game Boy screen actually is. Think about the general distance you've got to have your eyes from it in order to really see what you need to in a standard game on the system. Whatever that is for you, you've got to get twice as close to make anything out in this one, and that's pretty lousy for a first-party franchise title.

The jumping is also really sticky. I'm not sure of what better word I can use as a descriptor here, but clearly "sticky" isn't the adjective of choice for a platformer, which is by nature a jumping game. I guess the apes just feel weighty somehow, or like they drop in ways you don't think they really should every time you jump. It's almost as hard to describe as it is to jump in this game. See what I did there? It's especially noticeable when jumping from something other than the ground - say ropes for instance. While some of the bad levels from Country are gone, the good ones (mine cart stages, I'm looking at you) have disappeared as well. Instead we get giant pirate ships that don't really make any design sense (they are surely not seaworthy, at the very least), the gameplay of which entails jumping from mast rope to mast rope while snakes spawn out of the woodwork to slither toward your hands. Get that business out of here, guys. No need for it.

Speaking of...ugh. Just ugh. Country's water stages suffered from two major faults. The first was a substantial overpopulation of enemies you couldn't hurt, making navigation a nightmare. The second was that they were water levels. Donkey Kong Land fixed the first fault, but retained the second (and arguably more egregious), while adding two more of its own. The first is that the water in this game has crazy stupid inertia. I know that water is by its very nature wet at all times, but that doesn't mean a single tap of the A button ought to launch you across the screen uncontrollably. And the second insidious fault? That damn nautilus is out for monkey flesh and will not stop until it gets some. It only appears in one level, but bloody hell. That stage is even called "Nautilus Chase" and revolves around a bunch of these things just hunting you down as you fight bad swim control through an underwater maze. Keep in mind that you've got to grab the KONG letters too if you want to save afterward, and that detours will almost certainly get you ingested. What is wrong with game designers?! Why does this most basic of mistakes continue to plague me? WHY?! And you know what? They took the swordfish out of this game, so now when you're down in that watery soup of death, you've got no help. Fan-freaking-tastic.

One of the game's four bosses is in the water too, just to rub it in a little more. He's pretty easy though, which can be said really for all the bosses. The hardest part of each fight, as with most of the game in general, is just seeing what the heck is going on and making sense of it in the first place. Once you do that, you're golden. It doesn't help then when you're already struggling to make sense of stuff visually that the game's manual straight up lies to you. There's a stage the manual calls "Balloon Barrage" and another called "Construction Site Fight." Well, the former has no balloons and the latter doesn't take place in a construction site. In fact, each level matches with the opposite name, which means they didn't even proofread the instruction booklet that came with the cartridge. There's a real positive sign.

Even with most of the bells and whistles removed, I still got gripes with these levels. Jumping onto floating oil drums that spontaneously combust and then self-extinguish in front of infinitely tall skyscrapers? If you ever wanted to perform such an act, Donkey Kong Land is the game for you. Hanging from a rope and blind jumping off it to a platform that may or may not be there but could very well kill you either way? Heck yeah, we got that too. Or maybe you want a stage where you have to roll a tire around as a portable bouncing tool only to get it stuck and have to go back and redo the whole thing because the design doesn't allow for mistakes. You're covered with Donkey Kong Land.

They've got bonus areas, but they're pretty lame and virtually all the same. As you go you'll collect big coins. When you enter a bonus area it'll display the number of coins you've collected to that point on the screen, and an auto-rotating barrel will move back and forth at the top of the screen. You've got to step on a switch on the screen and the barrel will shoot one of your coins. If you grab it, you get an extra life. This is totally inane. Think about it - you get the 1-up for getting the coin. But you can only collect the coin if you already had it and stuck it in a barrel to shoot it at yourself. Why do you need to do this? Is that coin-launching barrel somehow supercharging that stuff with soul energy or something? Or am I once again just trying to assign meaning to something to avoid the mental hernia all the nonsense would bring me?

I guess what I'm really trying to say to you is this: get used to this screen. You will be seeing plenty of it. All. The. Time. Donkey Kong Country had its rough spots but it's got nothing on the difficulty of its neglected little cousin. I wish I could promise a feeling of satisfaction and/or a rewarding ending for when and if you finally do complete it, but I can't. You'll get neither. Maybe a feeling of gratitude and relief that you don't have to keep playing it, but honestly you can have that at any time by simply not playing this game at all in the first place. Just trust me on this one, please. Don't make me have reviewed this in vain.

Ultimately you've got to figure Cranky was right to this point. Donkey Kong games are just garbage. And yet again I find myself with a score that's better than the review would indicate. Again it's mostly thanks to the soundtrack, and the fact that I did hate life a little less throughout this game than Country, for whatever that's worth. But seriously guys, if you liked the SNES game, you probably won't get a kick out of its Game Boy "sequel" - too much has changed. And if, like me, you didn't care much for the SNES original, you won't get a kick out of this game - too much is still wrong. So take this score with a grain of salt, and please...be on the lookout for bees. Those bastards hide in plain sight I tell ya.

Bottom Line: 11/20

Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers

2010-11-20T09:44:00.000-08:00

Oh Street Fighter. You just can't stop coming out with new versions of yourself, can you? It'd be one thing if we were talking about actual sequels, but we're not are we? No, you just keep making Street Fighter II all over again in slightly different forms. While the first "remake" had some notable improvements, its followup was just damaging a good thing. So what could you possibly offer now, another year later?

Well, the game is called "New Challengers" for a reason: there are four new fighters here to check out, which gave Capcom excuse enough I suppose to put Street Fighter II back on the shelves. So I'll bite. Let's take a look at 'em. You've got Thunder Hawk (in the game referred to as T. Hawk to save precious text space), a native Mexican who nonetheless sits down and says "hao" when he wins a match. Totally Native American, dude. There's Dee Jay, a Jamaican kickboxer who wants to launch a rap career on the side. Great. There's Fei Long, a complete Bruce Lee ripoff who's there because Bruce Lee is awesome. And finally you've got Cammy, an English special forces member with a shady past somehow relating to M. Bison. But let's be real - she's actually there because Chun-Li needed some female companionship on the roster, and no other reason.

Now at first the thought is "Cool, new characters, that's neat." But once you pick one up to play one I guarantee you'll just go "Ugh, this guy sucks," and return to an old favorite. That's not because the new fighters actually do suck, but because they're new. It'll take some playing and practice to get used to them, and after you play single player and watch them destroy you I think you're going to be willing to check them out. Fei Long is the most useful out of them though, based on his speed and moves, for what it's worth. But no surprise there; it's Bruce Lee. Seriously.

I think maybe I'm still a little averse to them though because they just don't feel right (Fei Long being an exception). Look at this picture. I'm sorry, but that's just not Street Fighter to me. Capcom would keep pushing Cammy on us in later games, and I admit eventually I was won over...but these two clowns can go and I wouldn't miss them at all. Which is why it's good to know that Super Street Fighter II does more than simply adding a few new bodies and calling it a day.

For one thing, the graphics and sound are noticeably improved over previous versions. Not that graphics are the be-all and end-all by a long shot, but the game certainly is nicer to look at. Also along those lines, all fighters now have eight different colors to choose from instead of just one or two. While a lot of these colors remain ugly, options never hurt anyone. And some days maybe I'm in the mood for a lavender Balrog. Don't judge me man. You don't know me. Oh, and speaking of Balrog - he's no longer Mike Tyson. I know, it's equal parts relief and heartbreak. They let him keep a tooth chipped, but otherwise the resemblance is gone. Had to happen sooner or later I guess. And part of improved sound means new voices for some of the characters, like Guile. Problem is they didn't complete the vocal makeover; when he suplexes someone he still makes his old deep grunt, but when he says "sonic boom" it's in the most non-threatening, casual tenor possible. In fact, it's obvious they just got the same guy who does the announcer work for the game to double as Guile's voice, and it's laughable. I suppose now at least we know why those guys at his army base just let him get beat up, so there's a silver lining.

Of course, there are gameplay changes as well. The first thing to catch your eye will be the game speed. The "Street Fighter on cocaine" speed from Hyper Fighting has been mercifully removed, and the game now runs at its normal tempo again. Speed junkies might be a little upset, but don't worry - it's not like Capcom won't update the game again, right? Moves have also been almost entirely rebalanced, with some glitches fixed along the way. There are occasional anomalies (like Ryu's arms getting about 25% longer whenever he shoots a hadouken), but they don't really drastically affect matches at all.

Certain moves have been tweaked in a number of ways. Ryu can launch a flaming hadouken now and Ken can do a flaming dragon punch. Chun-Li's fireball has a different size and shape. Vega can now punch in mid-air. E. Honda can't infinitely hand-slap you in a corner anymore (thank God!). Zangief has a new slam. M. Bison has a follow-up attack to his Head Stomp. Throws have had their damage reduced so that they're no longer match-winners in and of themselves...though they're still stronger than anything else you've got in your arsenal.

And hey, since they needed to make new endings for the four new characters, why not address the others as well? Sagat, Vega, Balrog, and M. Bison never really had proper endings anyhow before, so they've fleshed that out appropriately. There are some little changes to some of the other characters too, all for the better (though the endings in general remained the same for all of them). Vega's ending actually says he "returns to his mansion to praise himself." Hilarious. And credit where credit's due - Fei Long's ending has him at least acknowledging that he's a Bruce Lee ripoff, and the ending revolves around honoring Bruce. Makes you a little more comfortable that they're not just trying to pass him off as original. Strangely, if his ending is any indication, Dhalsim is a pretty lousy Hindu. First off, he's chilling at home eating and talking to his kid. I didn't think ascetics were allowed to do any of the above. Moreover, when his kid asks him about a picture of Dhalsim as champion of the tournament, Dhalsim goes "Oh that's just your dad in his past life." Dude, I don't think that's what it means. I'm pretty sure you have to legit die and be reborn to call something a past life. You are basically the worst Hindu holy man ever.

Oh right, the game. Where was I? Yeah, the difficulty. It's up, my friends. Definitely up. The computer still has no qualms whatsoever about chaining a bunch of moves together that have no business being chained. Of course this still includes charge moves that don't require any actual charge time on the part of the CPU. Beyond that though, the computer will cross you up (attacking you in quick succession from both left and right so as to negate the ability to block) regularly, it'll break sustained grabs right away while for your part you just get stuck in them, and it'll spam fireballs all freaking day with Ryu or Sagat. Sagat's AI had been shouting nothing but "Tiger" since Hyper Fighting, but now he's clever enough as well to bait you with his projectiles until you try to jump over them - at which point he'll say his awkward "Tiger!...uppercut!" that sounds like two separate sound clips hastily merged together, and knock you out of the sky. Lesson learned: don't jump in toward Sagat. Ever.

At least this time around they've given you your own brand of cheese to beat the CPU at its own game. Yes my friends, the Psycho Crusher is back in full force and this time around it's just unstoppable. Remember the all-powerful leg sweep from Mortal Kombat? Yeah, it's that good. With proper timing you can just launch back and forth across the screen, hitting every single time, getting perfects against any opponent you might face. Even the boss, himself also M. Bison, is helpless against the fury. I don't know if it was an oversight or if Capcom intentionally made the move a world-killer for testing or something, but whatever. I'll take it. It's not nearly so invincible in multiplayer of course, and it's not like the computer's going to complain that I'm being cheap.

Really, compared to Hyper Fighting, this game is a huge improvement. But considering Hyper Fighting was a big step backward, that means Super Street Fighter II is only a minor improvement over the last really solid version of the game, Champion Edition. Some of the old gripes never went away (charge moves still don't command reliably, despite having three incarnations to fix it), but there's enough new here to like, and enough done right that it's heartily recommended. You probably won't like T. Hawk or Dee Jay, but that's okay - nobody does, and nobody's forcing you to be them. So I can safely say that Super Street Fighter II was the best version of the game yet at its release, and you know what that means. It means it's time for us to celebrate in the appropriate Russian fashion.

Oh....oh dear.

Bottom Line: 16/20

Tecmo Bowl

2010-11-13T08:47:00.001-08:00

In 1987 Tecmo released their take on football into the arcades and dubbed it Tecmo Bowl. The game had promise but didn't really deliver, and was limited in a number of ways. Two years later Tecmo decided the best way to improve on the game was to actually attach the NFL brand to it and make it more accessible. And thus we have the NES version of the game, featuring actual NFL players of the time. The result was a raging success, and the phenomenon of console sports games began in earnest.

Of course, Tecmo Bowl couldn't hope to deliver NFL action with all its bells and whistles, what with the technology limitations of the time. As a result only 12 teams of the NFL's then 28 are represented in any fashion here. Additionally, the game consists entirely of 9 on 9 play, which I guess meant there were some unhappy starters in the NFL who saw themselves get axed for Tecmo Bowl. Ouch. It was like complaining about your Madden score before such a thing even existed, really. The other major fundamental drawback was the play selection, or lack thereof. Every team got four plays and four plays only. Usually this is broken evenly with two runs and two passes, but a couple teams have three pass plays instead (and only the one run). And defense doesn't have plays - in fact, defense in Tecmo Bowl largely consists of just guessing which play the offense is going to run next. If you guess right, your team gets a huge speed and strength boost for the play as though they were the 1970s Steelers on steroids marching their way towards another Super Bowl and eventual medical complications.

Yet the lack of plays is as much a charm as it is a drawback. The simplicity of the game makes it immediately accessible (of course, mastery of its various quirks takes more time). As a player, you only get control of one player on the field at any given time. On offense it's the quarterback to start, and then the ball-carrier after you hand it off or throw it. On defense though, you choose your player before the snap, and you're stuck with him through the entirety of the play. Such a choice might require some deliberation, which is why it's nice that the game has no play clock. As such, the offense can happily use an infinite snap count, complete with sounds, at will. Of course, the game clock stops after every play as well, rendering this unusable as an exploit (and also incidentally rendering timeouts unnecessary - they aren't in the game).

Choosing your defensive player can be a nice crutch in case you guessed the wrong play, because at that point it's all you. Your teammates will even just stand around idle on many plays for little to no reason. And when you're up against guys like Joe Montana and Jerry Rice, even Lawrence Taylor is going to need a little help once in a while. The game is pretty stacked for the offense, after all. Fumbles don't exist in Tecmo Bowl, so ball security is never an issue. Incomplete passes are even rare, thanks to how the game handles every toss. See, when you throw to a receiver, instead of leading them in stride, the ball launches toward their current position. This means that except in the rare instance the random number generator deems your pass to be errant, the ball is heading directly at a receiver at all times, and receivers don't drop passes. Passes also can't be deflected by defenders, so the scoreboard is likely to light up every contest.

So it's worth noting that the game gives the defense some advantages. For one, interceptions occur all the freaking time. If a guy is even lightly covered with a defender a step or two away, there's about an 80% chance of an interception. You might see a guy break free of the defense and streak ahead, and launch that deep ball - but once you do your receiver will simply stop and wait for the ball, giving guys ample time to catch up and get the easy pick. So it stands to reason that you'll want to run more than you pass in most cases, or at least toss short routes that are tougher to defend. But even if you do get deep and beat your guy, the defenders have a trick up the old sleeve: cheat speed. Cheat speed occurs only when a defender is chasing down a breakaway, and is exactly as it sounds - for no good reason, the defender accelerates at an alarming rate until he is faster than should be possible and can make the tackle to save a touchdown. You'll love it when you're the beneficiary, but otherwise, well...it's called cheat speed for a reason.

Thankfully Tecmo Bowl also recognized the importance of halftime ceremony. After the second quarter, some cheery music plays while still images of various kinds of awesomeness cycle. They've got balloons, a marching band, and all kinds of burning hot cheerleaders. But as you can see, sometimes they go overboard. Too far, guys. Too far. Halftime can also be skipped if you want to get right back to the bone crunching action. And if you think "bone crunching" is extreme, you've never seen the kinds of blocks guys level in this game. It's pretty common to watch a dude get launched 15 yards before hitting the ground. There's just no real reason for it, but it's great. When it gets annoying is when your opponent figures out that there are no penalties in the game, and therefore blocks in the back are perfectly legal. You'll get blindsided so often you'll feel like a redshirt on Star Trek.

On that note, tackling can be a tricky affair in Tecmo Bowl. You can tackle a player just by running into him and mashing buttons (and he can break tackles by mashing buttons more quickly), but you can also press a button to dive toward the ball carrier. If you make contact, the tackle is instant and can't be broken. Should you miss though, you'll take a few seconds to pull yourself back up, and run noticeably slower when you are on your feet again. It's total risk-reward, which puts a bit of strategy into it - do you give up 4 yards to ensure contact (and risk getting blocked in the back) or dive for the quick stop but risk getting juked?

I admit I use the term "juke" pretty lightly here. Really it consists of zig-zagging, which is the be-all and end-all of Tecmo Bowl open field moves. When running against a computer defense, they will dive at your ankles every chance they get. By zig-zagging constantly up and down, you ensure that these diving tackles miss, and so can run the length of the field, barring a cheat-speeder who refuses to dive. Occasionally a dive can extend for 10 yards (ten yards) which is hard to deal with, but it doesn't happen often. Trust in the zig-zag and victory shall be yours.

Special teams in Tecmo Bowl are straight crazy. First off, every kick for a field goal or extra point is always 100% accurate. That doesn't mean you'll always make it though, since you do have a power meter to determine your kick distance. Just know that if it's long enough, it will always go in. There's just one little catch. See the dude marked with a number 2 in that picture? HE IS THE BANE OF YOUR KICKING EXISTENCE. That guy will always, and I mean always get free run to the kicker on every attempt. The reason is that the six blockers flanking the long snapper will automatically engage the guys right across from them, and nobody can block two guys at once in Tecmo Bowl. The long snapper himself just stands idle after he snaps it. Unless you run straight into him, you can blast between the other blockers with ease and tackle the holder before the kick is taken. On extra points you don't really have enough time unless the kicker is dilly-dallying, but otherwise it's a gimme. Especially on a team like New York, which puts Taylor in that position. It's evil.

Even punts get way up there on the "Okay, this is really nuts" scale. They use the same basic power meter, and at higher ends of the spectrum we're talking 80 yards...in the air. 80 yards of hangtime on a punt? I'm not sure that's even remotely possible. If you get stopped at your own 10 and punt it, you can very well expect to pin the opponent inside his own 20. Football announcers always say a good punter is a weapon, and Tecmo Bowl will make you believe it. Also, try your best not to be down multiple scores with under a minute left, as there are no onside kicks in Tecmo Bowl. You can do a short kickoff, but the other team still gets it 100% of the time, again with no chance of fumbling. If you're down, you're done. One last oddity here: during kicks and even throws from the QB, the players doing the kicking or throwing are invincible. You may have John Elway lined up and about to take a sack only to dive straight through him because his arm was moving. On the one hand it ensures there's never going to be a Tuck Rule fiasco in Tecmo Bowl as there was in real life...but on the other....come on.

And "come on" is the mantra you're going to hear yourself violently screaming the second you find yourself up against this guy. Bo Jackson is Tecmo God. He's the fastest player in the game, and in Tecmo Bowl where speed is everything, that's a huge deal. Let me give an example: Once, as Bo Jackson, I found that the defense had correctly predicted my play, and so had double speed and strength for the play. I ran 20 yards back behind the line of scrimmage to draw the entire defense to me, then swept around them and ran back upfield for 25 yards before the cheat speed (which had brought them up to quad speed) finally caught me. Folks, that's a 5 yard gain on a play the game specifically programmed to lose 2. Bo Jackson is so unfair that most people have to ban the use of his team when buddies are playing. San Francisco is occasionally banned too because Joe Montana to Jerry Rice is relatively unstoppable as well, but, well, Bo knows Tecmo. A typical "Tecmo Bo" stat sheet in a single six minute game: 7 carries for 485 yards and 7 TDs. No, I'm not kidding. He's so good that when people meet the real Bo Jackson they spend less time talking about what a fantastic athlete he was in real life, and more time regaling him with stories about how they used him in Tecmo Bowl to dominate. No, I'm still not kidding.

Should we be surprised though? I mean, we're talking about a guy who, when he got a career-ending hip dislocation, popped it back into its socket on his own, without assistance, while lying on the football field. If you're going to make anyone the king of Tecmo kings, I guess he's your guy. The Raiders aren't even the best team in the game, but because of Bo's one play they're magically elite. But oops, I probably shouldn't say "Raiders" here. You see, while Tecmo was able to get the player names for their game and therefore the cooperation of the NFL Players Association, the NFL itself refused to let them use actual team names and franchises. So instead of the Minnesota Vikings, you just get "Minnesota," a team clad in purple and white with the 1989 Vikings roster. Wink wink, right Tecmo Bowl?

There are things about this game that don't really have bearing directly on the gameplay yet are funny in themselves. For instance, after a QB throws an interception he doesn't move. At all. He stands there with his arm forward in ball-release position, stupefied that his inability to lead a receiver resulted in a turnover. The intercepting player can even run right at the QB and elicit no reaction. Less funny though and more "Oh my gosh don't make me look at that" is the stadium crowd. They only appear behind the endzones, but that's MORE than enough. They turn their heads back and forth in unison, wearing creepy blank smiles on their creepy blank faces, undoubtedly longing to massacre everything you hold near and dear to your heart. You'll be so terrified of them that you'll be thanking Captain Field-Goal-Death-Man for annihilating your holder before you can get the kick off; it saves you from watching them in their creepy evil head turning ritual. On a lighter note, you can actually "magic eye" them and they'll turn 3D. Really! Go ahead and enlarge that picture and try it out. I like to think that was the intent all along; "Oh, they're not trying to murder me, they just want to turn into a penguin* when I go cross-eyed!"

Tecmo Bowl is, frankly, awesome. It's at its best, as many games of this ilk are, when played against a human opponent of similar skill. It's even got a nifty "coach mode" for people who don't want to take full control or just want something to make bets on. In coach mode you just choose the play you want to run (or defend) and the results are simulated. It takes away a lot of the nuance and removes skill, but at the same time better emphasizes mind-games. A good option, whether you use it or not. The game isn't scored as high as it could be still, thanks to the many exploitable things to be found therein. A friendly game between two skilled Tecmo Bowlers can quickly degenerate into a zig-zagging, cheat-speeding, kick-murdering fest of unfairness on both sides.

Actually, I guess that actually makes it fair in the end, doesn't it? Hum.

Bottom Line: 14/20

*crowd does not actually turn into penguin when viewed as a "magic eye"

Star Wars

2010-11-06T10:46:00.000-07:00

Remember when it was cool to like Star Wars? Boba Fett was basically the most awesome thing you or any of your friends had ever seen, fake sword fights were replaced by fake lightsaber fights, you could have a bunch of action figures without being called a nerd, and as you matured you could even reflect publicly on the directorial prowess of Irvin Kershner without anyone so much as batting an eye.

What happened? Where did it all go wrong? Some people like to take Jar Jar Binks and make a scapegoat out of him (which I admit brings him closer to a recognizable species than the movies), but I want to argue here that the damage was being done before the prequel trilogy. Before even the Special Editions and their inexcusable omission of the Ewok celebration song. No, for Star Wars to remain cool, it had to be cool to a new generation of people. And you know what's not cool? Bad video games.

Star Wars on the Game Boy opens with what you'd expect: the big title logo and a midi synth of John Williams' iconic theme. Then it goes nuts and flings you from a landspeeder into a cave before you even realize that the game's begun. And just like that, you take control of Luke Skywalker and have to roam the deserts of Tatooine to find the missing R2-D2. Along the way you encounter one of the aliens from M. Night Shyamalan's Signs, who calls himself "Obi-Wan Kenobi." Come on guys! Really? Really?! I was at such a loss here I really debated turning off the game and calling it quits. They only sucked me in more because Obi-Wan gives you your lightsaber, which is too promising to leave alone.

Wait, you know what? Why do you find him in the bottom of some bug-infested cave? There aren't even sandpeople about, though it wouldn't really matter if there were, since in this game all they do is pace back and forth harmlessly while you shoot them. They're incapable of changing heights too, just like every other non-flying enemy in the game. Just stand on a nearby ledge and fire away. Actually, while I'm on the subject, why are there caves anywhere here? I feel like there was enough going on in Star Wars that they could have just developed gameplay out of crap that actually happened in the film without having to generate a bunch of caves and requiring you to explore them all.

The Mos Eisley section is ridiculous. You just go through town slaughtering everything you see. Yeah, that's how you lay low. And the whole time you're trying to collect shields for the Millennium Falcon, or in other words a ship you don't even know exists. And you know what? If you collect every possible shield before you board the Falcon, you'll still be two away from max. You have to redo whole areas if you want full shielding. And considering the totally unacceptable number of blind jumps in the caves (most of them going into spikes), you'd rather just not bother and make do with less shielding.

And hey, that works out nicely, because when you actually get into the Falcon, you have to navigate the asteroid field, or as I like to think of it, Neo-Alderaan. It's supposed to be a game of reaction and your shielding is supposed to be important, but guess what? You can just tell the ship to fly straight down and you will never get hit. It becomes impossible for an asteroid to make contact with the ship, and after a minute or so of cheesing the system, you'll arrive at the Death Star without so much as a scratch. It's a joke. Also a joke: the vehicles share health with the humans. This means if you're riding around in a landspeeder and it takes a few hits, Luke will get out of the landspeeder nearly dead. And vice versa.

The enemies are all equally stupid, though they manage to attain their stupidity in different ways. Womp rats die in one hit but are too short to shoot with a blaster, even if you duck. And they come out of little throbbing nests, which is just nasty. I already talked about the sandpeople. You get these dudes at right, who launch blades out of their guts. Beats me. The Jawas in Mos Eisley come out of nowhere. They literally rain from the sky. And they love to hit you with chain-knockback wherein every hit sets you back in their path for another hit until you die. Lovely. There are also a bunch of Mandalorians wandering about with seeker blasters, because that's just like the movie. The Death Star is full of droids, all of which happen to be totally invincible. You just have to avoid them. And I'm not even talking interrogation droids, or even protocol droids. Nothing so sensible. Trash droids, them's the ones who will take your life.

And speaking of the Death Star, I was under the impression it would be a big facility with plenty to do and see. Instead it's just a maze of elevators. First you have to navigate the big elevator maze to find the tractor beam controls and disable them (which you do by jumping off ladders and firing at it while turrets shoot at you...have they no respect for the source material?), but you'll quickly hit a dead end while you're trying. You'll have gone through every elevator and reached nothing new, while there are several platforms that you can just walk off into the nothingness. And naturally, you'll die if you do, except for one. That one lands you where you need to go. So to be clear, the game forces you to take a leap off a cliff in order to proceed, and if you don't leap correctly or from the right cliff, you'll die. Even if you choose the correct one you'll take a bunch of fall damage. Learn to design a game properly.

After the tractor beam you navigate a second maze of elevators to find Leia and eventually escape. When you do you get to fight a bunch of TIE fighters, and let me tell you, this is one of the most welcome sights of the game. Maybe because it's the only part of the game they didn't appear to screw up. Nevermind that the Falcon's guns are apparently just twin cannons that fire Kix cereal. Shooting TIEs is a merciful break from everything else. Of course, once you clean them out it shows you manning an X-Wing on Yavin and then you get to go fight more. And of course, that fight is bugged. One TIE is indestructible because it flies in a pattern such that your shots can't hit it. You have to keep shooting down its missiles (I thought they had green lasers?) and just stay alive. It's so simple, yet so poorly done. Get used to it.

One of the ways the game tries to market itself as cool is that Han Solo and Princess Leia are playable. As Luke you can go into the Mos Eisley cantina and recruit Han, and/or rescue Leia from torture and death at the hands of the Empire in the Death Star. Let me emphasize that both of these guys are optional. You can choose to let Leia die; you can leave Han on Mos Eisley and hijack his ship; heck, you can even refuse to talk to alien Obi-Wan and go through the game with no lightsaber. But in the former two cases you wouldn't be missing much. Han has a stronger blaster than Luke so there are times he's useful, but Leia is all-around worthless. She's got a weak blaster and no other beneficial qualities. And here's the kicker: if Luke dies, you lose a life and get to keep going. If Han or Leia dies, they're dead. You lose a life still, but they are permanently deceased. You can talk to Obi-Wan if you got him to join you and he'll use the Force to resurrect one of them (what?!), but he can only do that a few times the whole game. So you'll never even use Han or Leia for fear of losing them.

Of course, there's a bug to exploit there as well. Han and Leia can't use the lightsaber for obvious reasons, but if you go to the menu and select Luke with lightsaber, then change characters to one of the others, pressing attack will cause them to morph into Luke, swing the saber, and morph back into themselves. In many ways this is preferable to using Luke, because while you risk killing Han or Leia, you don't have to watch Luke do his little pimp walk constantly. Yeah, don't ask me why, but for whatever reason they animated Luke walking with a pimp limp. Who knows. Besides, the extra life display is blacked out half the time anyhow so you'll never actually be aware of how many more lives you've got till you die. Might as well live on the edge, right?

One of the strange mechanics throughout the game is air tunnels. You'll see this column of up arrows, clearly marked. Jumping into it launches you up along the "air current" to higher ground. Sometimes instead of higher ground it's just ceiling spikes, because this game wants you to despise your life. And speaking of heights, this game has probably the weirdest and dumbest glitch I've encountered to date. There are ladders in the game for ascending heights in normal fashions. Well, if you fall off a ladder you can grab back on before hitting the ground. Pretty routine. However, if you do this and climb back up, stepping off the ladder will kill you (even on level ground that isn't a "fall"). The game I guess calculates fall damage as you're falling, and when you grab the ladder it doesn't reset that number. So the moment you touch ground afterward, no matter what, you explode. And it's not like I sat there experimenting with the game to discover this glitch - you'll probably die at least twice from it in the course of normal play. How does that get through testing?

The game ends, naturally, with the Death Star trench run. The trench is huge, only defended by a few turrets and the odd wandering TIE fighter, and features an exhaust port roughly three times the size of your X-Wing in diameter. Who needs to use the Force when it takes up the whole screen? In fact, the game's other "boss encounter" is also ridiculously easy. It's the garbage monster in the Death Star, but it's a two second fight, if that. See, when the level begins you hit attack, because by that point in the game you've realized that they love putting crap right in front of you with no warning. So pressing the button causes Luke to swing his saber (or Han/Leia to transform into Luke and do likewise). And the garbage monster will just run its head into the lightsaber and kill itself. Seriously. One hit, it does the work for you, level's over. Unbelievable.

"So," you might be wondering, "does this game have any positives?" Yes, it does. It's got a sweet 8-bit remix of the cantina theme. And that's about it. Even the menu is ugly and pointless. You can select characters there, but you can also talk to Obi-Wan, C-3PO, and R2-D2. Obi-Wan just says "May the Force be with you," C-3PO just tells you it's not his fault and don't deactivate him, and R2-D2 gets you a narration stating "This is R2-D2." Derrrrr. Don't touch this game. Because it's Star Wars, you'll think about it. And because there is a bit of variety in the different levels, you'll think about it. And because if you picked it up as a kid not knowing any better you'd probably like it a little, you'll think about it.

But don't. Don't think about it. Move along. Move along.

Bottom Line: 7/20

Mega Man 3

2010-10-30T10:22:00.000-07:00

Mega Man 2 was a huge success both critically and commercially, so you knew a sequel was coming. By now the formula was tradition: eight themed stages each culminating in a boss battle with a themed robot, the defeat of whom unlocks a themed weapon that does massive damage to one of the other themed robots, and so forth. So let's skip the long introductions on this one - Capcom sure as heck does.

The first thing you'll notice about Mega Man 3 is its stunning lack of anything before the title screen. You'd expect some little 8-bit cutscene giving a general plot outline. I mean, we all know how the game will play out, but at least you'd think they'd try to justify it before thrusting you into action. And don't act like they couldn't do it, because there are cutscenes in the rest of the game. Why neglect the beginning? I'm not easily deterred though, so I hunted down the game's backstory. Evidently Dr. Wily is now claiming to be reformed, and is helping Dr. Light build some sort of robot for some sort of purpose. But the robots in charge of various mining operations across the world start going haywire, so Mega Man is sent off to handle them. Whatever. Who decided tops were ideal mining equipment anyway?

I'm thankful to not see an ice or heat derivative robot in this one, I must say. As outlandish and silly as the bosses may be, at least they're trying to branch out and avoid rehashing the same concepts over and over in this one. There is, sadly, an obligatory lava-based stage, even though none of the bosses are fire-related themselves. Also, a quick complaint about the stage I like to call Spark Man's Seizure Emporium. The background for the whole thing is flashing lights, and I don't mean just a few. They're all over the place for the entire level. The whole thing! I wish there were some sort of study I could reference indicating the percent of Mega Man 3 players who acquired headaches on this stage, but you'll have to just take my word for it. It's rough.

Of course, some habits do die hard. Like ripping off Bullet Bills. Again, Capcom? Wait, don't tell me - because you used these in the first game you now feel like they're a "classic" Mega Man enemy. I'm sorry guys, but no matter how hard you try, you will never lay claim to a bullet with eyes and a mouth. Never. Stick to the hard hat bots. Which, by the way, are now capable of piloting bulldozers. Some of them have propellers in their hats and fly around dropping crap on your head. There's even a giant one that spawns the small ones infinitely. Didn't see that one coming.

But maybe it's for the best that the game's designers weren't given free reign to invent all new enemies. Because you know what showed up when they did? Fish eggs. Literally, fish eggs. Gemini Man's level is loaded with walls and walls of fish eggs for no good reason. Shooting one hatches the egg and a little fish or tadpole or whatever the heck it is wriggles in your general direction unless you kill it. What in the world? And even if you're dead set on including this in the game, why Gemini Man? That theme has absolutely nothing to do with fish, nor their underdeveloped spawn. When you fight Gemini Man, you know what he does? He splits into two and fights you two-on-one. That makes sense. Fish eggs? Not so much.

Spikes are every bit as ridiculous this time around as before. Perhaps even more so. Look at Mega Man just closing his eyes and shaking his head. Can you blame him? That room has no business existing. How is it possibly convenient or cost-effective to construct all of this? How many robots died to make this room? Just one finger prick on one edge of one spike and it's Explosionville: Population, you. And why the platforms? Why would Mega Man use them? At the end of every stage we see him turn into a little blue line and shoot up into the air. Can't he just do that for like half a screen, then grab the ladder? Why can't I ever use that ability? Quit holding out on me, game.

But hey, you do get a couple new toys. First is the slide. In the previous two games, Mega Man couldn't so much as duck from enemy fire. Well, he still can't bend those little robo-knees, but he can launch himself into a slide across the floor, which accomplishes basically the same thing. He can also fit himself into tight little horizontal spaces using the technique, and he moves quicker sliding. Still, it's not perfect; you can't slide through boss doors. Anyone who's anyone knows that one of the best things about Mega Man games, for no good reason, is jumping through boss doors. Now you give me this epic looking slide move, and I can't do it through a door? Humbug.

And God bless the other new stuff you can do, all revolving around Mega Man's new robotic dog, Rush. Designed essentially to replace the ambiguous "Item-1" and such from the previous installment, Rush initially can extend a spring from his back to launch Mega Man high in the air at the cost of a little special energy. After completion of a certain stage, Rush is upgraded with the Rush Jet, which lets Mega Man ride him through the air anywhere he pleases, at the cost of a constant drain on the special energy reserves. But perhaps most important is the Rush Marine adapter, also acquired after a certain stage. It turns the dog into a boat...wait, I really need to emphasize that. Your dog turns into a submarine of living death. It's easy to forgive the water levels when you can ride through on that badboy! Naturally, then, there are only two areas of the whole game with enough water to use it. Figures. Water levels. No winning with them.

There's another new character too, by the name of Proto Man. Seems Dr. Light created him first (hence "Proto," like prototype) and he's stronger offensively than Mega Man, but with a weaker defensive core, so Dr. Light made Mega Man to address that flaw. Throughout the game Proto Man will play a tune on his dandy whistle, leap out, and starting blasting shots at your face. Talk about sibling rivalry. Ostensibly it's just to "train" you for the game's actual bosses, but if you die, you're dead. How am I going to save the world now, jackass? And why is it that at a certain spot in the game they call him Break Man instead? Come to think of it, they also call Dr. Light "Dr. Right" in one of the cutscenes. Make up your mind, game.

This is a game that specializes in the odd. It doesn't end with fish eggs and seizure stages. Snake Man's stage takes place, by and large, on the bodies of enormous robotic snakes. Someone actually constructed - as a mining site - huge robotic snakes, intertwined them, gave them the ability to shoot stuff out of their mouths, and deemed the work well done. Heck, even the enemies there are really screwed up. One of the common ones is some little trash can looking thing sprinting at you with a push broom. When it gets close to you, it actually pole vaults off the push broom before landing behind you and running away. Huh? People make robots to serve functions. What the hell kind of function is that? I didn't even mention the giant robotic cats who barf balls of yarn. And I won't.

Anyway, after beating the eight robot masters, guess what? Wily steals the robot he was helping Dr. Light to build, sends out four robots of his own (four Mega Man 2 bosses in new bodies), and retreats to his castle. Again. Just kill the dude already, seriously. So you kill his four other robots, then do a "final test" against your robro Proto Man, and it's off to Wily's fortress for the same old dance.

Sadly, the special weapons this time around leave a bit to be desired. A couple are useful - Magnet Man's weapon seeks targets vertically which is nice, Gemini Man's laser bounces off walls and such...but moves like "Top Spin" are just a waste of cartridge data. Mega Man leaps into the air and pirouettes, costing him about a third of his special energy. What does this accomplish? Sure, there's the one boss with a fatal weakness to it, but otherwise tell me when you'll use that. But you know what's just embarrassing? "Search Snake." It's a little green "snake" that looks a bit too ready to fertilize something, and it drops limply out of your arm cannon before squirming along the floor until it hits something. That's super uncalled for. And insult to injury - you're going to need it to beat Wily, since he's shielded from every direction but the top. Yep, you'll be dropping your ~~seed~~ snakes down on his head to finish up the game. Lovely.

Overall, the level design remains pretty good, and the game is certainly playable and enjoyable. While things like Rush and the slide are improvements to the gameplay, there's not a whole lot of fresh excitement here. It's up to the standards the series had set to this point, even if a sliver less fun than its immediate predecessor. Fans will love it, haters will find nothing new to like. Except that Rush Marine. Freaking water levels.

Bottom Line: 14/20

Strider

2010-10-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

Know what's charming? Communism. Or specifically, the rampant belief throughout the mid-late twentieth century that Soviet Russia would be a thorn in the free world's side indefinitely. And that's why in 1989, just two years before the USSR would dissolve completely, you get a game like Strider appearing in the arcades.

The story goes that in the year 2048 some Soviet Grandmaster is acting dictator over the oppressed world. The Striders, a secret group of ninja armed with advanced robotics, want to assassinate this guy and send Strider Hiryu to do the dirty work. Which is heartening, because it means even in 2048 in a communist world, ninja haven't lost sight of their favorite pastime: efficiently murdering people more important than themselves. And while the times and technology have changed, the ninja are no less effective at succeeding in their missions. It's at the point where the dude had to basically booby trap all of Siberia just in case you happened to approach from that angle. I'd call it unnecessary, but judging from the fact that I actually did cross a bunch of minefields on the way, I guess I have to yield. Good planning, Future Stalin.

In the future I guess ninja stars have fallen out of fashion, along with shivs and heck, even masks. Instead you get some sort of plasma sword that you hold like a police tonfa. But that's not all! Hiryu's also got hooks he can use to scale walls and hang from ceilings. Think like more advanced versions of suction cups, except in a style that would make pirates jealous. It's their design, after all. And Hiryu is about as acrobatic as you might expect, though in some ways that's a problem within the game. The jumping can get pretty awkward since you're always flipping and cartwheeling all over the place. If you're standing against a wall, you can't jump forward over it; you've got to back up because Hiryu needs room to flail. I could do without that.

One of the things Strider does that's really nifty though is play with gravity. There are several areas of the game featuring total gravity reversals in which the ceiling becomes the floor and vice versa. It's a little startling the first time you leap into the air and fall upwards, but after a while you sort of get used to it (though it's always more comfortable to move through the levels right-side up). When it gets really awesome is when there are gravity bosses like the one pictured. They'll zoom around a large room trying to kill you in various fashions, but by jumping toward them you can actually put yourself into orbit around them and attack them while doing so. It's pretty fantastic.

The other thing pictured there floating around is the Ouroboros, which in reality is a snake eating its own tail. For whatever reason they decided that concept applied to a little mushroom with robotic feet, so that's cool. But it shoots out rings at stuff as you swing your sword, so it's at least helpful. There are a number of other little robot buddies too, like mecha-tigers and mecha-hawks. These are all acquired by breaking power-up containers that appear in the various stages at planned intervals. I don't honestly know where I stand on the whole "should a ninja have robotic tigers" debate, but I'm certainly paying attention to arguments on both sides.

Other power-ups in the game are more traditional, I suppose. You've got health items, which include ones that increase your maximum life as well as ones that simply heal you. There's the mandatory invincibility here and there, which also has the lovely effect of creating little shadow Striders behind you that will mimic you and kill things on their own as well. But sometimes the best things in life are the simplest, like the sword power-up that doubles your attack range, letting you hang from ceilings and kill cybernetic silverbacks. Wait, what? It's so baffling on so many levels. First off, what??? Secondly, why are the Soviets of the future building giant mechanical animals? What could this possibly accomplish? Why deposit them in the middle of frigid Siberia? Is it so they won't overheat? Why an ape, of all the animals you could choose? Even Hiryu goes with hawks, which at least can fly around and scout and crap. And tigers, which are fast and have sharp parts to erm, cut stuff. He could probably even ride them if he wanted. And don't act like the ape has some sort of special ability that I'm overlooking. It takes two steps forward and limply raises an arm. That's it. No wonder Reagan beat you guys.

As awesome as that sword looks in action, and as pleasant as it may be to slice guys up when you first start playing, there are some definite drawbacks. First and perhaps most importantly, there is no way to attack vertically. Strider Hiryu, so far as I can tell, is completely incapable of hitting anything over his head or under his feet. That's terribly embarrassing for an elite future ninja, don't you think? You'll also get sick of hearing the "schwing!" sound every time you press the attack button, and trust me - you're going to be pressing that attack button an awful lot during the game. Virtually every second, if we're being honest. Seriously, my finger was getting tired as I reached the later levels. So the good news is that if you've got a bit of finger pudge, Strider is the perfect way to work it off.

From the size of that primate earlier, you might think it would be a stage boss, but you'd be sadly mistaken. Actually, the first boss you encounter is what's at the left here. You see, as you crash a little Soviet council meeting in the Kazakh region of the Soviet empire, all the council members are noticeably upset you're there. It's hard to blame them, considering your mission is clearly to wipe out their government. What's unexpected though is that they react not by fleeing, or even by shooting guns (or future lasers) at you. Instead they all fuse together into an enormous Soviet centipede, armed with a hammer in one hand and a sickle in the other. That at once makes both the most and the least sense possible. The human mind is literally incapable of deciding how to feel about this. So instead you can just hop on its back and ride it around. It's as rational as any other response.

What I think does make sense, though at this point I honestly can't be sure about anything anymore, is that a lot of crap blows up in this game. With so many robotics and electronics all over the place, explosions seem as natural as anything. The problem is that when things explode, they like to keep exploding. For instance, whenever one of those big gravity orbit machines explodes, it sets fire to the area around it, and that fire starts spreading. You've got to run away from the fire in order to survive, but again you're your own worst enemy; every time you try to jump down a shaft or something to make a quick getaway, you'll just barely touch a wall and latch onto it with your hooks. It's pretty much impossible to ever jump down anything, since you'll always just wall climb by default at the slightest touch. Sometimes I don't want to do cool ninja things, man. Sometimes I just want to run and live and save a quarter. Why can't you fall down?

But naturally, when you don't want to fall down, Strider's all over it. Every bit of downhill terrain you descend, no matter how gradual a slant or how slow you go down it, will cause Strider Hiryu to skid forward as he tries desperately to maintain his balance and slow his momentum. This often results in running into enemies or landmines, which gets really annoying really quickly. So let me just remind everyone here of a fact that's easy to lose among the craziness of this game: Strider is an arcade game, and arcade games are designed to drain your bank account one quarter at a time. This is no exception. Yes, I know, you can ride around on dinosaurs for no good reason. Don't be deceived. That has no bearing on how much this game wants to steal your money.

I'll tell you something else they did well though: voice modulation. Unlike other Capcom ventures like, say, the first Street Fighter, Strider manages to make voice modulation not sound like dying walruses. Don't get me wrong, nobody's going to win any awards for outstanding voiceover work or anything, but none of the voices in Strider are painful to listen to, and none really take you out of the atmosphere of the game...whatever that's supposed to be.

The icing on the cake comes appropriately at the end of the game, when you're asked to fight a mecha-Kong simultaneously with a Tyrannosaurus. Should you succeed, you're rewarded by a fight with a humongous golden dinobot that shoots its claws at you. Killing it allows you to fight another Sovietpede, which you can ride all the way to the Grandmaster for the final boss battle. All without a break in between. Sheesh. The Grandmaster himself is some legless creep in desperate need of a manicure, wearing a raggedy red cloak. Oh, and he shoots green lightning at you from his hands. Why not? Then you kill him, jump on a whale, and job well done.

I knew from the premise of the game that there would be some...interesting moments to be found here, but yikes. This game got really out there in a hurry, didn't it? Luckily the game is fast-paced enough that your brain goes too numb to question any of the absurdity until you've actually finished it and had time to reflect. Seriously, the first time you jump on the back of a sauropod I promise you won't think a thing of it other than "Oh hey, that's convenient." So I guess that's a plus - Strider has created the dumbest, most random video game world anywhere short of Moonwalker and still manages to get you to assent to it. There are enough small gripes to prevent it from being a real standout, but it's certainly worth checking out for a bit of a mindblow.

Bottom Line: 13/20

Dragon Warrior

2010-10-16T10:17:00.000-07:00

What does RPG stand for? Radioactive plutonium giant? No. Remember Peter Gabriel? No. Rocket-propelled grenade? N...well, yes. But no. No, what we're looking for here is "role-playing game." In 1986 the concept was relatively foreign to gamers, at least those who liked pictures. There were text RPGs, sure, but nothing really fit the image of a console RPG we have today. Nothing, that is, until Dragon Warrior showed its face.

Called Dragon Quest in Japan, the game follows a knight (named whatever you want him to be named) descended from the hero of legend, Erdrick. The Dragonlord residing in a nearby castle has stolen the "Ball of Light" and somehow this is going to cause apocalyptic destruction for the world unless you personally go recover the ball. Well, that's a little extreme, but I guess it's better than the whole "save the princess" crap every other game tries to pull. Oh hang on, this says there's one more plot detail. Let me see....ah, it seems that Princess Gwaelin was also kidnapped by the DragonlOH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! How hard is it really? Why do all these princesses keep getting taken like kids after some sweet sweet stranger candy? Why is it my job to go bail them out every single time? You're the heir to the freaking throne, you'd think you could learn some freaking responsibility for once. Or hey, how about, I don't know, a bodyguard or some castle security?

And I'm not excusing you either, oh kings and queens of ages past. It's your daughters getting swiped by the Winona Ryders of the world. Maybe go out yourself and take care of it instead of sending me. "Oh but I have a kingdom to king," ye say. Well damn fine job you're doing of it, what with letting a freaking dragon come into your castle and yoink your little tiara-toting bink. My job is to prevent the the world from falling into complete and utter ruin and you want to task me with hunting some stuck-up prude in a cave? And you think I'm going to respect your ruling authority? Pshaw, I say, PSHAW!

At least things can't get much worse....oh dear mother of pearl. They took the tomatoes too? That. Is. IT. Dragonlord, you are so done now. I'm ready. Ready to beat you down and make you cry for your little scaly momma. Let's see, I go to the world map from the castle, and hey, there's your place just slightly southeast. Oh it is on now....wait a minute. Why can't I get down there? You're kidding. You absolutely must be kidding. The only thing separating the starting castle from the Dragonlord's castle is a small river. And you can't cross it. So now, on top of everything else, we've got a hero of destiny who can't even swim. Will the king make you a boat or something? Of course not. Legendary heroes, they walk. F that, man. F that.

And it ain't long walking before you start fighting the many denizens of the world. Battling in Dragon Warrior is turn-based. You input a command, the monster chooses to attack you using one of its available moves, and both things happen. Then it repeats. None of it you'll ever see on the screen - you'll just get a still image of the enemy you're fighting and it'll flash occasionally when something happens. It's not very pretty or exciting, but it is time-efficient, so I can give some props there.

Of course, that time efficiency goes straight out the window when you consider the quantity of battles you'll have to engage in if you want to actually complete the game. The world map is pretty well segregated into different enemy types. One region might have nothing but slimes and little bats, while walking to the next square over results in ghosts slaying you in a single stroke. There's a good deal of trial and error involved in figuring out not just where you should go next but especially where you can go next, in terms of how much abuse you can survive. So while technically speaking Dragon Warrior isn't linear and you can go anywhere you please at any time, you'll die unless you progress through the game the way they want you to, and in order to survive you'll need to spend a lot of time in each spot grinding up your levels. A chore, to say the least.

Each battle gives you experience and gold, both of which you'll need. Certain monsters give a ton of one and virtually none of the other, so you'll learn as you go which spots to farm whichever you need more. The good news is that when you eventually do find the princess, she's not out of your way - although technically the whole game is out of your way...seriously, you can't even just build a bridge? What kind of kingdom can't figure out how to build a bridge? But I digress. When you find her and kill the creature guarding her, guess what she has you do? If you guessed anything other than "carry her lazy ass all the way back home," you guessed wrong.

I mean, don't get me wrong. She's got the common decency once you get her back to the castle to fall in love with you and pledge herself to your manly desires, so there's that. And considering every other woman in the game is a hag, you could certainly do worse. But of course, getting down to business would mean abandoning your slightly more important mission, so the inn will have to do. But more good news - sleeping in a medieval hotel is basically the greatest medicine ever conceived. For real. All ailments cured, all wounds completely healed without so much as a scar, all soul juice (or mana if you're an atheist) replenished... sheesh. Holiday Inn Express got nothin' on that.

Speaking of your soul juice, I guess this protagonist must be some sort of prodigy. As you level you'll automatically learn new spells. I can understand maybe having some of the game's sages teach you stuff or whatever, but it's pretty darn impressive for a dude to just spontaneously learn how to radiate light out from himself at will. And it's a good thing you can do that stuff, because the Dragonlord apparently has a little mojo himself. Throughout the game you hear about some town called Hauksness, which got all infernoed on by the Dragonlord. Naturally, this town is now inhabited by some of the most nasty foes you'll encounter in the entire game, and naturally it contains the legendary armor of your ancestor that you'll need if you want to take out the Dragonlord.

Since you are inventing this magic on the fly, it's not very promising that your creativity in naming the spells is so limited. I can envision all kinds of lights and sounds and flashes and glowing and otherwise very intimidating energies flowing around you as an enemy looks on, horrified. And then you go "Prepare thyself fell demon! I call this one...HURT!" Kindergartners are laughing at you, dude. I mean, you could even call it "Pain" and that'd be sufficiently frightening. Who wants to get hit with a big blast of pain? Yikes. You can do better. You ought to do better.

The Dragonlord himself is rough to approach. His castle is littered with powerful guys, and if you need to rest and recover, you'll have to flee and make the whole journey back again. Of course, that's sort of the point - it's not supposed to be easy, but you're leveling up every time you push a bit deeper into his crib. When you finally encounter him, he asks if you'll join him in extinguishing the living world and governing what's left. And you actually get a choice box! You can actually choose yes! If you do he'll even double check. Credit to the villain for being suspicious, but if you choose yes again, he actually hands over half the world and you guys conquer it. That's freaking awesome. Do I want to side with the all-powerful sovereign of dragonkind, or with the guy who can't figure out how to cross a stream? The downside is that allying with the Dragonlord ends the game, so you'll have to refuse his offer if you actually want to finish. Weak.

The Dragonlord is immune to magic too, so good luck with all that Hurtmore nonsense. He's actually really tough to beat, but if you do kill him you get the Ball of Light and expel the shadows from the land, blah blah blah. Let me get back to hookin' up with that broad I saved. You'll cast a spell to get back to the castle and everyone in the place quite clearly wants to worship you. Who wouldn't, right? The King even begs you to take his kingdom. Hot damn! And it's at this point you kind of ask yourself "What am I even doing here?" These guys are so far from self-sufficient it's scary. Kinging these scrubs is like the the worst babysitting job ever. No way. So you decide to go make your own kingdom somewhere far away. The princess wants to come with you, but you know what traveling with her means - hauling that bimbo around because she's incapable of walking on her own. No thanks, babe.

Dragon Warrior is a simple, straightforward game that doesn't try too hard to be too much. That's its charm, really. Grinding gets old....brutally, terribly old....but at least you feel accomplished when you can enter a new region without getting slaughtered. It's about breaking it down into little mini-goals. If you can do that, you'll find enough to like about the game. If you can't, you're probably better off building a boat and sailing away from it all. Not like anyone from this game could follow you anyhow. For real, guys. It's a freaking river.

Bottom Line: 12/20

Metroid II: Return of Samus

2010-10-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

Half a decade after the abominable first Metroid game, Nintendo finally opted to release a follow-up. This was odd in the sense that most sequels tended to come out only a year or two after the original game's release. For instance, Super Mario Bros. was followed by its sequel a mere year later. Ditto virtually every other game that warranted a sequel. So why did Metroid II take so long to come out? And...Game Boy? It's on the Game Boy?

At first the idea of putting the first sequel to a franchise-worthy game (in terms of popularity...obviously not quality) exclusively on a big gray and green paperweight seems moronic. But on further reflection, it just might be genius. Consider all the people who were reluctant to invest in a Game Boy. It's too big, drains batteries too fast, doesn't play in color...apart from its portability it really didn't have much going for it. And by 1991 the system could only really boast Tetris and Super Mario Land, and we all know that wasn't much to brag about. So really, by putting Metroid II on the Game Boy, Nintendo was forcing fans to go out and buy the system if they didn't already own it. Pretty tricky stuff, eh?

The story of Metroid II takes place some vague length of time from the first game. In that first game you destroyed the Space Pirate base on Zebes and killed Mother Brain, their freaky leader-in-a-jar. In doing so you helped prevent them from experimenting with metroids to their nefarious ends, and the Galactic Federation (the "good guys" who hired you) decide metroids are too dangerous a species to have alive in the galaxy. So they start sending teams of troopers to planet SR388, which they have determined is the metroid homeworld. These troopers were assigned to eliminate the metroids, but all got killed on the planet. So Samus is hired to go to SR388 and do the job herself, and be quick about it. So let me make this abundantly clear: your goal in Metroid II is to commit genocide as efficiently as possible.

To that end you have some sort of device that I guess can read metroid energy signatures or something. It tells you how many metroids are left alive on the planet, so you know at any given time how close you are to successfully murdering a species. But when you first encounter the bodies of metroids in the game, which doesn't take long, you'll notice that they are empty. That is, the jellyfish-like shell is there, but there is nothing inside. You can even jump in yourself if you're feeling that demented. And this is because apparently the metroids you that you had come to know from the first game were just the larval stage of the organism. So you will encounter what are known as Alpha Metroids, which fly around trying to headbutt you and are immune to any weapon but missiles. Occasionally, as above, you can even catch them emerging from their shells. It seems a novel concept, and while I can't really complain about not having something latch onto my head incessantly, the whole thing just feels totally out of place and bizarre.

On that note, the entire layout of the game is different than might be expected. Whereas the first Metroid was just open-ended and had you explore everywhere to find powerups that might let you into new areas, Metroid II is far more linear. At the beginning of the game, only certain metroids are accessible to you, because acid blocks your way to all other areas. Upon killing every metroid you can, an earthquake occurs. This earthquake will remove some of the acid that had been in your way, revealing a little more of the game world, with more metroids there to kill. Killing them removes more of the acid, and so forth. The first game was all about finding powerups and trying to locate Mother Brain, but this is just an exercise in "find the metroids in this area, then proceed to the next" over and over until the last bit of the game. It's not necessarily a bad thing; it just feels odd and never stops feeling odd the entire game.

That's not to say that powerups aren't a big part of Metroid II as well. Every powerup from the first game makes a return in Metroid II, with the exception of the morph ball (which you start with) and the long shot (which is unnecessary because your shots now actually travel the length of screen to begin with...imagine that). It also adds a few new powerups, all of which are helpful and interesting. The spring ball allows you to jump in morph ball mode, which relieves a lot of the tedium of trying to propel yourself with bombs. The spider ball allows you to cling to walls and travel on ceilings. The space jump allows you to jump in midair repeatedly, and when combined with the screw attack makes you virtually invincible when leaping. There are also two new beams: the spazer and the plasma beam. The spazer splits your shot in three ways making it easier to hit targets, while the plasma beam burns through enemies, crossing the length of the screen unhindered by enemies or walls, killing everything in its wake. You can still only hold one weapon at a time though, so there is some planning involved. And as you can see, perhaps the greatest powerup improvement is the fact that the statues holding them can now actually be jumped over. Gone are the days of being stuck behind a giant stone bird. Thank goodness.

As you progress through the game, you'll start to see further incarnations of the metroids. You'll enter a room with an Alpha Metroid only to see it grow in size, gain armor in the back (making it only vulnerable from the front or below), and a big swinging electric tentacle. Thus you fight your first Gamma Metroid, and soon thereafter every metroid you find is of this harder variety, which also take twice as many missiles to kill. Then you'll see the Gamma transform as well, growing legs, having the tentacle turn into a tail, sporting a distinctive head. This is the Zeta Metroid, which takes twice the missiles to kill as the Gamma did, is only vulnerable from the front, and spits balls of fire at you. I'm going to go on record as saying that by now any claim these creatures had to the name "metroid" is gone completely. Now it's closer a floating space toddler. What happened to the standard metroids? I never thought I'd miss them, but sheesh.

So it doesn't help when the Zeta Metroids then transform yet again into the Omega Metroids. They look the same really, except that they're a lot bigger, spit bigger balls of plasma, try to run into you a lot, and take 50% more missiles to kill than the Zeta. That's six times more missiles than the Alpha Metroids took to kill, if you've been keeping track. Ridiculous.

Which is why it's wonderful that this game made a few really key improvements to the series. First, the game actually had a save feature. While the first Metroid had a save system, it only existed in Japan. America had a bulky password system that only showed you your password when you died. If you were out of time to play, but far enough in the game, you had to sit there in acid for 5 minutes killing yourself just so you could continue later. Metroid II eliminates these issues with the save post. Just stand on one and save your game instantly and completely. Man, it's so simple. And not only that! But the first thing you might notice when you start the game is your health. It's at 99. That's right folks, you actually start the game off with full life. Amazing. And loading a save file puts you at whatever life you had when you saved. Brilliant. Moreover, in various spots in the game are energy and missile refills. Touching either will max out your supply of that item. So you don't even have to sit there grinding life in increments of 5 anymore. You can also now shoot directly below you when in midair, which you will use a lot throughout. You can even fire while crouched. While these improvements are fantastic, their inclusion doesn't make Metroid II a great game. Rather, they're all so simple and obvious that it just makes the first Metroid game look even more atrocious in retrospect for not having them.

And speaking of not having something, you know what else the first game didn't have? A freaking map. Know what Metroid II still doesn't have? A freaking map. Oh sure, the game is more linear, harder to get lost. If you're stuck you at least know where to be looking for stuff. But give me a damn map already. Stop trying to make me buy Nintendo Power to actually see how to get around the place. And don't act like selling magazines wasn't your goal this time as well. We know where you put that map.

So anyway, after you maplessly find your way to the lair of the Metroid Queen, you finally encounter some of the "standard" metroids again. And at first you feel nostalgic and relieved, because these are the guys you remember. But you'll quickly be pissed off, because these are the guys you remember. They'll latch onto your head too quickly for you to react, take multiple bombs to get off, reattach in less than a second...and they're still immune to everything but the ice beam. Good grief. On second thought I didn't miss you folks at all. At least this time around Nintendo put another ice beam right next to them so it's easy enough to reacquire. There's also a save point and an energy/missile refill there. Ain't it funny what common sense design can do for a game.

Common sense clearly didn't apply to the Queen though. So you're saying that metroids will, if given the time and resources, evolve into giant bony dragon dogs who spit gobs of plasma at anything that comes near? I call shenanigans. And naturally it's not weak to ice. None of the other metroid "evolutions" were, after all. So instead you get to pound its face with stupid amounts of missiles. And you have less room to maneuver than you'd think looking at that picture, because the Queen pretty regularly sticks her big head out and waves it around. The good news is if you nail it in the mouth with a missile, you can roll your ball into its throat and down into its stomach thing. Then you can start laying bombs, and it dies a LOT faster this way. I guess they're rewarding outside-the-box thinking, and I can appreciate that.

So after killing the Queen and exterminating an entire species you proceed back to your ship. But on the way out, the last metroid egg hatches, and out comes a little baby, thinking you're its mom. And conveniently, there are barriers in your way that are immune to all your weaponry, but that metroids can just touch and destroy. It doesn't make a lick of sense, but what in this game has? So the baby metroid opens a path back to your ship, and you get super sentimental, don't kill it, and instead let it in with you. So in Metroid II you have killed off the entirety of a species with the exception of one...and you're taking that as your pet. That's simultaneously awful and badass.

Which might describe the game experience itself, really. Everything in this game is better executed than before, and so for the first time the concept of playing an interstellar bounty hunter feels pretty cool. But that's what the first game should have accomplished. The linearity of Metroid II manages to partially destroy the atmosphere of exploration the first game tried to establish, and the only reason this is acceptable is because if Metroid II had been expansive, its lack of a map would have driven players to suicide before game's end. And there's a definite ceiling on "cool factor" when you're asked to fight the sorts of absurdities Metroid II keeps pushing in your face. As a result, Metroid II is vastly superior to the first in terms of gameplay, but remains merely an average game in its own right.

Oh yeah, the music sucks too. Sounds like clowns burying themselves alive.

Bottom Line: 10/20

Super Mario Bros. 2

2010-10-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

While the success of Super Mario Bros. was swiftly followed by a sequel in Japan, the western hemisphere was mercifully spared it. However, the upshot of this was that the Super Mario franchise in the United States was without a second game for about a year and a half. But since Japan already had its sequel, and Nintendo didn't much feel like developing a brand new Mario game from the ground up for just one region, it decided instead to take the Japan-only title Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic and convert its Aladdin-like characters to Mario ones.

At the beginning of the game, and the beginning of each stage thereafter, you can choose to be Mario, Luigi, Toad, or Princess Peach. Mario is the most well-rounded character, with decent speed and jumping and strength. And I guess that's to make up for the fact that Luigi jumps the highest (and kicks his legs in a ridiculous manner as he does so), solidifying his aerial superiority over Mario from The Lost Levels. He's weak though, and not terribly fast. They just couldn't let Luigi win, could they? Peach is weak and slow and doesn't jump too terribly high, but she can hover for a short time, which is pretty useful. And Toad, well. Toad is just a beast. Gone are the days of getting kidnapped by Bowser and tied up in a little brown sack praying not to suffocate before Mario can let him out. Now Toad has some biceps of his own to flex, and he's also really speedy (though his leaping isn't too good).

The mentioning of "strength" might seem a little weird, so let me clarify. Or maybe more accurately, let me further confuse. Mario 2 is full of vegetables. Littered with them. Everywhere. Every level has a bunch of little leaves sprouting from the ground which can be plucked up, revealing some type of vegetable. It might be a radish, or a turnip, even a pumpkin. Then the plucker brandishes the food overhead before flinging it away, killing whatever it strikes. Huh? Jumping on enemies doesn't even kill them anymore. Instead you just sit on top of them as they move around, and can pluck them up too, throwing them at other enemies. So when I say Toad is a beast, what I mean is Toad is the most adept at manhandling enemies against their will and using them as living projectiles to murder their allies. I guess he just snapped after all that kidnapping. He's like the Hulk now. You don't wanna mess.

Sometimes though, you won't get a vegetable when you pluck. Sometimes it's a bomb. And sometimes it's a flask with a bubbly red potion that poofs into a door when it hits the ground. Walking through this door transports you to a negative dimension where you can collect coins and mushrooms to increase your life (indicated by the red hexagons on the left side of the screen). I could try to make some sort of joke or even give an explanation for how it all works or why it's in the game, but you know what? It's not worth it. I don't understand it at all, and I honestly believe I'm better off for it. If I could wrap my head around it, I'd be a little worried.

Actually, you know what? This whole game is just totally loopy. Featuring not a single returning enemy from the first Mario games, the areas of Mario 2 are instead filled with things like shyguys (little robed dudes with hockey masks) riding around on ostriches. Sure. There are POW blocks, taken from the Mario Bros. arcade game, that can be thrown and will obliterate everything on the screen when they are. There are hopping cats dressed up like ninjas. There are vases everywhere which can be entered, and apparently they've got some sort of magic crap going on, because these are the roomiest pieces of pottery I've ever seen. There are entire deserts down there. What?

Doors are a big part of the game too. Especially locked ones. That need keys. That are guarded by floating deadly masks called Phantos. The locked doors are, without exception, not optional. You must enter them to complete the level, and every key is guarded like this. It doesn't seem that bad maybe, but upon picking up the key one of those masks will start chasing you until you finally unlock and enter the door requiring it. It will chase you through other doors, across screens, anywhere. It is invincible. It is heinous. If you drop the key it will leave you alone until you pick it up again, so at least there's that. But it's legitimately frightening, which I guess gives it a weird sort of charm. When did Mario 1 ever make you feel afraid for your life?

The game is a bit shorter than its predecessors, featuring only seven worlds instead of eight, and only three levels per world instead of four (except the seventh and final world, which contains but two levels). That said, the level design is clearly superior here, although as the rest of the game, totally non-sensical in the Mario context. What's a plumber doing in the middle of a desert or hopping on clouds in the sky? Nevertheless, there are a lot of little bits of design throughout the game that will make you go "Huh, that's neat." Such as one stage in which you start directly over the exit, but the exit is underground and you're above ground. So you navigate the level on virtually the same screen, but it takes some time to get back there...all to a spot that was like 10 feet away at the outset. Many areas also have screens that scroll horizontally. That is, leaving the left side of the screen causes you to emerge from the right, and vice versa. This mechanic is used a few times throughout the game in pretty cool ways.

Less enjoyable here as in any game, I present the ice world. This is, in a word, inexcusable. The ice here is more treacherous than perhaps any game before or since. Adding to the pain are the little creampuffs with eyes that waddle at you. Oh, I know what you're thinking. What sounds more harmless than waddling creampuffs? Unless you've played this game, you have no idea what it's like. There are also flying monkeys with pitchforks who swarm you. Add to that the fact that you have to navigate around whale blowholes spouting water that hurts you unless it's blasting up your dress (despite enemies walking through with no problem)...all to get to a rocketship at the end of the area. Really? A rocketship? That makes sense guys. That's context-appropriate. Even beyond Mario stuff, even if you look at the content of Doki Doki Panic, where is there room for a rocketship? It's Arabian! There aren't Middle Eastern space programs!

Almost every stage ends as bizarrely as they play out, too. There's some sort of dinosaur type creature that spits eggs out of its blunderbuss of a mouth. To defeat the creature, for some reason named Birdo (despite its mislabeling in the game's credits), you have to leap on the eggs it spits at you, grab them out of the air, and chuck them back at the being. As the levels progress, Birdo changes color from its original pink, indicating its higher difficulty as it learns to spit fireballs in addition to eggs. Eventually it won't even spit eggs at all, instead having to be vanquished by little blocks that vaguely resemble mushrooms.

When Birdo dies, it will leave behind a crystal ball (at least that's what I think it is) that causes the disembodied head of a giant bird of prey attached to the wall to open its mouth. To exit the level, you allow yourself to be eaten. What. The. Hell. It doesn't really strike me as much of a reward to be ingested by some sort of enormous feathered beast, you know. If given the choice, I'd rather have a high five. Or like, a flagpole or something where I could raise a banner indicating my victory. What happened to that guys? I tried to rationalize it by thinking that maybe the bird's body is just offscreen and it carries you from world to world as some sort of big organic vehicle. But after getting eaten, you get to spend coins you collected from that level's negative zones in a slot machine. So either my theory is incorrect, or there is a casino inside this bird. And at that point I'm not even sure which I'd prefer. Color me stumped.

The difficulty isn't too bad, and there are plenty of nifty little shortcuts to skip over areas or entire levels if you're clever and curious enough to find them. But at World 7 it really ramps up on you. Vases start to appear that infinitely spawn enemies out of them unless you plug them up with a block. This is really just nasty on 7-1, where shyguys incessantly emerge from a pot in clouds that are right atop one another. In order to progress you've got to zig zag down the clouds, because jumping will land you on a higher cloud; it takes you backwards, essentially. But you can't dodge these shyguys without jumping, and if you try to tank a hit and just run into them, it's unreliable too. It's downright rude.

The last level takes things to a whole new level, though. Erm...yeah, just roll with it. Finding the right spot to potion yourself up a pretty red door in order to find those elusive life-giving mushrooms is out of control here. There are conveyor belts all over the place with those spawning vats of enemies atop them, often bombs. The key you have to get to proceed is in the stomach of a Birdo, whom you also fight on a conveyor. When you finally reach the eagle head thing, collecting the crystal ball just makes it angry, and it starts swooping all over the place trying to beak you to death. Then you finally reach Wart, the big frog thing guy with a vegetable-spewing pipe organ in his royal chambers. He belches at you, and you've got to force-feed him veggies till he chokes and dies. YEAH. And it wasn't until actually fighting him that I got around to asking that most simple of questions: why? Why am I fighting this guy? What did he do? No princesses are kidnapped...finally...and I don't see any oppressed citizens anywhere. What's the deal? After defeating him you unplug some concrete from a hole and these unidentified flying critters come out, but that's really all I have to go on. Motives be damned.

But you know what? They couldn't leave it like that. The developers must have realized that this whole game was one giant LSD trip, even for Mario. So they made it a dream. Yeah, like unimaginative third graders who can't figure out a legitimate ending to their stories about cows rebelling against neo-Marxist special interest groups, they went the whole "It was only a dream" route. It's offensive. I felt like I was making a difference in this fantasy world, and you robbed me of that. But hey, at least it sort of justifies how almost nothing Mario related was in this Mario game, right?

The silver lining in all of this? Super Mario Bros. 2 is fun. It's so stupid and so crazy, but the level design is fantastic and you really don't ever get tired of seeing Luigi's dinky little feet kicking around every time he jumps. And when bombs explode, they actually say "bomb." Awesome. I recommend it, but don't get emotionally attached. It's all a lie.

Bottom Line: 14/20

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie

2010-09-25T09:19:00.000-07:00

Oh man, Power Rangers. Where do I start? If you grew up in the 90s and claim you never watched this show, you are a dirty rotten liar. And don't give me that "Well, I mean, I watched it, but I never actually liked it" garbage. Power Rangers was awesome back when it first came on, and everybody knows it. Then they added the Green Ranger, who could summon robotic dragons out of ponds using a flute, and it only got cooler. Eventually, the series reached that breaking point of popularity where they just couldn't stop themselves from making a movie. And that means they'd have to make a game based on that movie. But on the Game Boy? I'm definitely going to curb my enthusiasm.

The first problem is obvious just from the player select screen. You get to choose which Power Ranger you want to use for each stage, but you know how we tell the Power Rangers apart? Color. You know what the Game Boy can't display? Color. So unless you've memorized the details on the helmets of each Ranger, you don't really have a clue who you're choosing. And if you have memorized their helmet details, we have another problem entirely. If you look reallllllly closely, you can sort of see some boob contours on the two outer Rangers, which are indeed the females. But really, there had to be a better way than this, right?

Once you choose your Ranger, you choose which stage you want to play. There are six stages, and you can choose from five of these from the start of the game. The sixth can only be played after the first five have been completed. Each stage has a different boss at the end, though none of these but the last one have anything to do with the movie. Actually, for being a movie-based video game, Power Rangers is shockingly unrelated to the film. Not that I was expecting a scene-by-scene recounting or anything, but these levels are completely random! One stage has you riding mine carts and avoiding falling stalactites. One has you walking through empty buildings fighting laser-shooting robots as tall as your ankles. Don't recall that from the film.

And not to keep harping on the Game Boy's color handicap, but what do you make of this situation? You go to the level whose boss appears to be some sort of giant mutant rat, and before long emerge from a door to find this. Where do you go? I'm standing on land, but I'm surrounded by what looks like bubbling lava. If only this were in color at least I'd have a better idea what I'm up against. So I try to figure out if there's something I'm missing. Maybe I can leap and grab onto those ladders to cross. No, that didn't work. Maybe if I go back through the same door I'll be in a different spot than I came from. Nope, no dice. Maybe I'm supposed to keep killing those infinitely-spawning satellite things that keep floating around, and something will happen. But you know what? By that point you are giving this game way too much credit. You just walk through the goop. Hell if I know what it is, but it doesn't hurt you. Nevermind that any other time I've seen anything that looks like that in any game, it's damaged if not instantly killed me. But how silly of me...these are the Power Rangers. They'll be fine.

The mechanics of the gameplay are just odd. I don't want to say they're bad, because they're honestly not, but they're definitely odd. Whenever you start a stage with whatever Ranger you chose (whether you knew which one you picked or not), you will be in their ninja outfits. You may recall that the movie introduced the whole Power Rangers Ninja crap. So you'll run around in your headbands and "ninja gear" initially. Enemies will keep coming at you, and you can punch and kick them into submission. Every couple guys you kill will fill one bar of "POWER." When the meter fills, you can press Select to strike a pose while a beam of light shoots down at you from heaven and bestows your armor on you. It will completely refill your life and you'll do double-damage the rest of the stage.

As you continue killing enemies, your power meter will get to full again. Now when you press Select, the coin for whatever ranger you have will flash on the screen while you pose, and everything around you will die. Even bosses will lose absurd amounts of life from the attack, so it makes sense to just save your power for them. This attack is also probably the first time you'll realize who you selected. "Oh, the Mastodon coin. I've been the Black Ranger this whole time!"

The only gaping issue with this system is that if you die before the boss of a level, you'll respawn in your weaker ninja garb. Depending on how close you were to the boss area, you might not have enough enemies to kill to get back your Ranger armor, which can be a nuisance. I mean, if you get to the boss with your armor, and then the boss beats you, you'll continue at the boss fight in your full armor again. But if you get there without the armor in the first place, you're just screwed. You have to either beat that guy at half strength or redo the whole stage. Can't you just give me my armor, please? It's the Power Rangers for crying out loud. I've a right to complain for even having to earn the suits in the first place.

The enemies themselves are pretty standard and uninspired. Yes, we get it, there are putties in Power Rangers. They make odd noises, attack in groups, and tend to get the snot beat out of them. "Blade blasters up!" is probably the most frightening thing these guys have ever heard. But can we do better than this for the game? I'm not saying invent enemies completely, but some more variety in the putties would be nice. As it stands, the game features putties that walk toward you slowly, and putties that are somehow on jetpacks. That's about it. The other baddies are just laser turrets or bats. For an action game, it makes the combat very dull. I realize it can be hard to balance making the game challenging with making it play well and being faithful to the core material, but this was a pretty lackluster effort. You abandoned the whole "Stay true to the source" mantra when you chased me through a mine shaft with a giant tunneler, anyhow.

Now, with six selectable Rangers that have only the most minuscule visual differences, you'd hope they at least played uniquely. Well, yes and no. There are two "types" of Rangers here. The Red, White, and Blue Rangers all do high damage but are slow and less mobile, while the chicks and the Black Ranger (poor guy) are weak and take hits like wusses, but are quicker and can jump a good deal higher. The difference in damage dealt isn't really noticeable outside of boss fights, but the damage taken certainly is. So that means you'll usually want the stronger Rangers, yeah? You're more survivable, clear stuff quicker, can take down bosses more easily...

Except that the boss battles are awful. A few of them, such as Goldar here, feature platforms above the floor. Only the weaker Rangers can jump high enough to land on these platforms. Or, as you can see, to hover off the side of the platform. No, that's okay game, you don't need functional programming. Just keep doing your thing. The boss is a moron, too. He'll just stand in place swinging his sword up and down, hoping you walk into it. Occasionally if you're across the screen he'll dash at you, or sometimes he'll teleport a few steps away, but mostly he'll just flail. And if you're above him, he can't hit you. Not to mention you can jump upward through that platform to land on it, so you can just drop down, kick him, jump back up, and repeat ad nauseam until he dies.

The technical flaws don't even end there. You can walk through the boss. You can stand in him, occupying the same space. And you won't take any damage. He'll stand there flailing wildly, trying to exorcise you from his bodily confines, but there is nothing he can do. Why is it that one of the safest spots to fight a boss in this game is inside the boss itself? Of course, you can't hit him from there either, so eventually someone has to move. Now again, you'd think if you're down there, you'll want the stronger Rangers. But there's an entire boss fight that is literally impossible without the higher jump. This big Tengu (vulture sort of thing) keeps flying in and out of the screen, and it's only vulnerable if you hit it on the way up or down. But the only way to do that is from the elevated platform, which you can't jump to if you're one of the stronger Rangers. Hope you didn't pick one of them to do this stage, because it looks like you're going to be dying very shortly.

Eventually you'll get to the final stage, where you have to fight the first five bosses all over again with intermittent combat areas. At the end you'll have a showdown with the movie's primary villain, Ivan Ooze. He sits in a throne and flicks crap at you. Seriously. Defeating him reveals his second form (multiple forms for an end boss?! Preposterous!!), which is remarkably easy to kill. And at least here they do make sure you've got your armor for the task. You'll beat Ooze and he'll shatter into a bunch of pieces, after which the credits roll and whatever Ranger you beat the game with will say something completely unnecessary. It's not very exciting.

To be fair, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (The Game) really isn't terrible. It really isn't great either. In fact, it really isn't anything at all. It's an easy game, but if it were more difficult it probably wouldn't actually be any more fun to play. I mean, the Power Rangers were freaking sweet back when they hit the scene, but it's no surprise that the ceiling of quality on a Power Rangers video game would be pretty low. It's a game that suffices to waste some time, and you won't really regret playing it per se, but there are plenty of better titles to spend a few hours with. Ones that are in color.

Bottom Line: 10/20

Doom II: Hell on Earth

2010-09-18T09:11:00.000-07:00

It had been a little less than a year since id software's hugely popular Doom had hit the shareware scene like a hot pancake ready for love. And the masses, they spake, and request they did more visceral carnage. Well, masses from sixteen years ago, do I have news for you. Enter Doom II: Hell on Earth.

If you'll recall, by the end of the first Doom game you, as an anonymous space marine, successfully avenged the death of your pet rabbit by annihilating all the forces of hell you found on two Martian moons and even in hell itself. Sadly, while you were working on that, the demons were busy invading Earth and doing a pretty darned good job of it. Apparently by now they've killed off billions of humans on the planet, and the rest are trapped in a spaceport trying to escape the planet. The demons know this and have shielded off the spaceport to trap them on Earth, dooming mankind forever.

Of course, the legions of hell didn't count on you being a part of their plans. When you emerged from hell at the end of the first game (in the bonus episode, especially), instead of coming back through the Deimos gate you entered in, you emerged from a gate on Earth. So here we go again. I would like to then take note here that the entirety of Doom 1 and 2 are continuous, beginning to end. This means this space marine never eats, sleeps, pees, takes a drink of water to our knowledge...anything. Though I guess from seeing the stills at the end of Doom 1 we realized he never had to breathe while on the surface of the Martian moons, so maybe basic human functions are just too mundane for a guy so clearly badass that he can take on hell and win - twice.

The violence is definitely ramped up in this one. Because the graphics and engine and all other technical aspects of the game are identical to the first, the increase in savagery had to be accomplished through quantity over quality. By this I mean the monster count in Doom II is staggeringly high, making the first game look downright tame by comparison. It's odd then that only one weapon was added to the game. That weapon though, hilariously, is the "super shotgun." The shotgun was like the second best weapon of the game already! But now you can get a double-barreled version that takes twice the ammo but delivers about 150% more pain. That's a bargain, folks, and when you see how quickly this bugger knocks stuff out, you'll be hooked for the long run.

Which brought me to a very unexpected problem as I played through the game: low ammunition. Now don't get me wrong, ammo was littered around the levels at least as liberally as it had always been. But the sheer number of monsters this time around had my bullets and rockets constantly streaming forward, and ammo conservation suddenly became a real issue. And this was decidedly in the game's favor. The first time around, of course, I just saved ammo on everything by shotgunning everything down and by the end killed the last boss in four quick BFG hits. But here I occasionally found myself running on my last 5 rockets and nothing else, and it was exhilarating.

Of course, success is a little more difficult to come by when that's where you find yourself, but at this point you start to realize that success is always fleeting in Doom anyway. Sure, you cleared Phobos, but now there's Deimos. Sure, you cleared Deimos, but you still have to delve into hell yourself. Sure, you killed off half of hell, but now they're taking over Earth. And the story in Doom II works largely in the same manner, with you actually reaching the spaceport and allowing that ship to escape, then resigning yourself to death with a pat on the back. What? I mean, I get that you're tired and probably pretty hungry, but your planet is swarming with demons. And you're cool with it now? At least the dudes in space have a conscience and radio you to go track down the other hell gate and destroy it. Strangely, they keep referring to the demons as aliens - not sure what's going on there, but whatever.

But this does bring up a great point of divergence from the first Doom, and quite a welcome one - because Doom II is supposed to take place on Earth, in cities, the levels are no longer just cramped corridors of some moon base, but are often very large and open. A couple of the middle levels make good use of various tall buildings to decorate the city, all of which are accessible, while the main area still provides tons of breathing room. It's certainly a pleasure to get away from the confines of tight metal halls once in a while.

And while Doom II only introduced a single new weapon, it went a little crazier on adding new enemies, actually doubling the number of non-boss demons in the game. There is now a "heavy weapons guy" with a chaingun, skeletal revenants with twin shoulder-mounted missile launchers, floating jerks who incessantly spawn flaming skulls and spit them at you, an obese mass of flesh with its arms replaced by flamethrowers...but the most infuriating new enemy is definitely the Arch-Vile. These dudes have the fastest move speed in the game, the highest health of all standard monsters, literally sets you on fire from any distance he pleases, and resurrects other monsters at will. Freakin' A, man. Cut me some slack. It even makes some creepy whispering noise when it knows you're there. Unsettling.

In fact, a lot of the game is "unsettling," though never in a bad way. The level design is far more clever in terms of setting you up for a surprise or an "oh my gosh" moment than ever before. For instance, there is a level called "Dead Simple" which has you spawn in an enclosed room with four of the aforementioned Fatty McFlamethrowers (officially called a Mancubus, but I like my name better). This is the first time in the game you see them, and when they start launching their crap at you you'll wish it were the last. Instead, killing them merely opens the walls around you. At this point several "arachnotrons" come after you, which are little brains mounted on steel legs with rapid fire plasma guns. Yeah. About that. Not cool.

Or IS it? Doom II's designers got so giddy with this sort of thing that they began riddling all the maps with traps of all sorts. There's even an entire level called "Tricks and Traps" which features, amongst other things, the room here pictured. That is absurd, guys. Need I remind you that the big guy in the back of the room is the baddest boss from the first game, and that all the pink guys in the middle are also bosses? And there's an army of them? What? Know what's worse? When you finally finish the rest of the level and run to the exit, the walkway drops as you go. If you hesitate in the slightest, you end up in lava and get to restart the whole level. That's cold. There's one level in which you can find a health pickup that puts you back to max health, which naturally is extremely valuable. Unfortunately, collecting it triggers a loooooooong series of monster teleports. I'm not exaggerating when I say you'll soon be besieged by about forty monsters of various types all at once, just because you picked up the health you so desperately needed in the first place. It's brutal.

And my point is that this is actually a good thing. You start to become paranoid of picking up any helpful item for fear that it will only ruin you to do so. Which is precisely the sort of vibe a game like this should give you - fear and uncertainty. Luckily, there are also a couple ridiculous levels like "Barrels O' Fun" which exist solely to enjoy crazy situations like, say, rooms lined with monsters as well as explosive barrels, and a little phenomenon we like to call "chain reaction."

One of the best touches of both Doom games so far that gives both of them that extra little edge of enjoyment is monster infighting. Let's face it - demons are demons for a reason. They're not going to be very loyal or reliable, even to others of their own ilk. So if a demon attacks another demon, tempers are gonna flare. You as the player can abuse this at will, catching demons in the crossfire of other demons and then watching them ignore you so they can rip each other to shreds. On levels like the game's final showdown, in which monsters spawn infinitely and continuously in a relatively small area, this tactic is almost even necessary for survival. And it results in some downright nutty kill percentages when all is said and done.

All in all it's a little surprising how much new stuff Doom II was able to cram in there without actually changing anything from the base formula of the game or any of its technical specifications. There were a lot of new and fresh ideas injected into Doom II; even subtle touches like doors that will only open when you shoot them (and yet these were somehow the obstacles that stumped me the most). Plus, unlike in Doom 1, the final boss doesn't die in four shots from the BFG-9000. In fact, Doom II's final boss is immune to the BFG. It's like a real boss for crying out loud! Crazy talk! The main complaint with the first game was the repetition and tediousness of much of the stage design. Somehow all of that is gone now; even key hunts aren't boring or monotonous, since the range of locales to explore is so heightened. Doom II is the perfect example of taking something old and making it new without really even changing anything at the core. Except the difficulty. Gird those loins, guys. This one's a challenge.

Bottom Line: 16/20

Castlevania

2010-01-15T16:05:00.000-08:00

Transylvania. Doesn't the name just send chills down your spine? Doesn't it make you fear for your very soul? Conjuring up images of all kinds of demonic activity and virgin sacrifices, with the devil lying in wait to claim you for his army of evil?

No? Transylvania doesn't frighten you? Well, how about Castlevania? Now that's scary. Let me introduce you to the nightmares that enter the deepest recesses of my memory when the word "Castlevania" is mentioned.

Castlevania is the story of wealthy Spanish hero and whipaholic, Simon Belmondo. His entire family, or "clan" if you're Scottish, is self-employed as vampire and monster hunters. Well, legends speak of some blah blah blah, and then so-and-so does the whatsit. And to the horror of the world, the something something led by that one guy results ultimately in the earthly resurrection of Dracula. And hey, fun fact: Dracula is a pretty evil dude. Powerful, too. So it falls on Simon, by some blood oath I guess, to venture to Dracula's castle and kill him. Again.

To do this, he brings his trusty family whip, and wouldn't you know it? Dracula was kind enough to litter his entire castle with torches and candles that, when broken, can actually empower Simon's whip! Sadly, none of them enable Simon to whip in any direction but straight forward in front of his face, but what can you do? Some of them even contain sacks of gold that Simon can use to get a fine Spanish mistress. You know, to ensure the continued safety of the world by extending the line of vampire hunters. He's a team player.

That's not all, either. The torches, as well as many enemies, can also drop hearts of varying sizes. These hearts act as ammunition for Simon's array of ~~stereotypical~~ innovative monster-hunting weapons. He can collect daggers to throw directly forward, axes to hurl in an upward arc, vials of holy water to compel Dracula and his minions with the power of Christ, a jeweled cross that he throws like a boomerang (not sure that's what "take up your cross" means, Señor Belmondo), and even a stopwatch to freeze time around him. Whoa. Don't remember reading about that one in monster lore.

The special weapons are pretty simple to use too, if you have the hearts to blow. Whereas normally your attack button cracks your whip, holding up and pressing attack uses whatever special weapon you currently own (you can only have one at a time). This sounds reasonable enough, but it won't take long before you see the problems with the system. They can be summed up in a single word: Stairs. Stairs are the worst thing about Castlevania. When at the top or bottom of a staircase, pressing up makes you go up the stairs, while pressing down makes you go down the stairs. Not seeing an issue yet? Look at the picture above. To get onto stairs, Simon takes a second or two to shift into the background or foreground so he can actually use them. So let's say you're at that top step and a fireball is coming at your beautifully groomed face and you need to duck. You press down and awwwww sorry, you just turned slightly and began going down the stairs instead. Slowly. So very slowly. You can't avoid getting hit.

Want to use your special weapon near some steps without going up them? Tough. Want to attack something above or below you when on the steps and sandwiched between enemies? Tough. If they're not coming directly at your face, you're out of luck. Maybe you'll have the axe special weapon and can sort of like, be near the bottom of the stairs, then try to use it so you're halfway up when it throws because you had to hit the up button, but that lets it hit stuff at the top of the stairs....you know what? Nevermind. If you get trapped on stairs, just reset your game. Call it a day.

And don't even think you can just tank a hit and move on with your life in that situation. I know you see a life bar there, and I know it looks snazzy, and I know there are sixteen segments that comprise it. All that is meaningless, because you die in four hits. Any four hits, from any monsters. The first thing you see in the entire game? Kills you in four hits. Dracula? Kills you in four hits. Life bar? Wants to pretend you won't die in four hits. Being that fragile is easily the worst thing about this game. The only way to survive four hits in a single life is to eat some roast chicken, which Dracula has cleverly lined within his stone castle walls. Huh?

"Okay," you're thinking, "but I'll just avoid getting hit four times. That can't be so hard." Pardon me a moment while I take have an extended laugh at your expense. Hahahahaha. Haaaaaaaaaahahahhahaa. Oh hohohohohohoho. Hooohoohoohooo. Weeeeeeeeeee ahhhhhhhhhhh, hehehehehehe. Ohhhhh dear. Much better now. Yeah, you're gonna die.

I mean, maybe you'd have a shot if you could attack while moving, but that's right out. Wouldn't want to make this game too easy, would we? Noooo. Every time you attack Simon must stop in his tracks to do his little windup and whip forward, exclusively straight ahead of him, before he can continue his previously scheduled movement. You can't change either whipping or movement directions in midair. Now I know that if I were to run ten feet and leap forward, the odds of me actually moving backward in midair if I put my mind to it are slim to none, but this is an NES game for crying out loud. Throw the physics out. You can't get realism in 8 bits. Stop trying for it. You can't even lengthen or shorten your jump after leaving the ground. Which makes for a pretty frustrating situation when the bosses are too tall to hit without jumping. Come on now. I don't know how tall Simon is supposed to be, but even if he's 5'6'' that still makes Death like 9 feet tall. It really forces you to plan for each boss by making sure you have the right special weapon and all, which can be really tough to do, and at the very least makes you have to replay the whole stage to get what you need.

That said, the bosses are the least of your worries in terms of enemies. They're all basically stock monsters. You've got some mummies, a giant bat, Frankenstein's monster, Death, and of course Dracula himself - who, might I mention, looks totally lame. I mean, you get to him at the end expecting this dark lord of terror or something and all you get is a sickly old man with a comb-over coughing fireballs at you out of his cloak. That's the best you could do? At any rate, it's the standard enemies that make this game near intolerable. There's a sewer level with lizard serpent sewage men who just rocket up out of the water into your face. They don't even look menacing or prepared to attack. It's like someone loaded them into an underwater cannon and they were launched against their will into you while you were jumping across a pit. Which naturally knocks you into said pit and kills you.

And then there are the Igors. Ugh. They're the worst thing about this game, I swear. Little red hunchback banes of your existence hopping around. They hop so madly that it's a painful endeavor just trying to hit them with your whip. And they'll just flop around humping your head until you take your requisite four hits of death. And what's this nonsense? Oh, you mean there are actually birds who fly on screen and drop them on my head? That's perfect. Just what I always wanted. At least they'll occasionally hop into pits. Hey, just like you! Sometimes, you'll even go through the floor you're jumping on and fall to your death. Oh that Dracula. So crafty.

Even beating a level has its drawbacks. The game gives you bonus points based on how much life you have left, which is fairly standard. Then it awards points for each unused heart you have as well, which wouldn't be a problem if not for THAT EXCRUCIATING SOUND. Every time a heart is converted into end-of-level bonus points, the game makes a piercing and migraine-inducing pinging noise. So really, if anything, you have incentive to score fewer points, if you don't want to burn through Excedrin like it's candy. I literally started muting my game every time I beat a level just to preserve my sense of hearing. That's not a good thing.

Also qualifying as "not a good thing," I present to you the medusa heads. Medusa heads are unquestionably the worst things about Castlevania. It's an endless stream of floating blue heads flying in wavy patterns through any bit of background they damn well please, coming as many as three at a time. Don't even bother killing one, because they'll keep coming. Have other enemies to deal with on the same screen? They don't care. They'll get you first. Jumping over that pit? The medusa barrage begs to differ. The hallway before the fight with Death is the most brutal, braving a gauntlet of the flying heads along with multiple axe-tossing knights....I'm not even sure how I ever got past it. Just know that you don't have to. Really. I hereby give you, my readers, permission to not only never cross through the medusa gauntlet, but also to never play Castlevania.

So looking back at this glimpse of the stupidly difficult Castlevania, I count four worst things about the game. And I stand by all of them. So what's the best thing? I suppose it's the (mostly) lack of programming glitches. Or maybe the infinite continues so the game isn't downright impossible. Or maybe that feeling of deep satisfaction upon finishing the game. That feeling of "Wow. I actually did it. I finished Castlevania. That was hard as balls. And now I really, truly, never have to touch this game again."

Well, at least not until the next resurrection.

Bottom Line: 9/20

Pokémon Blue and Red

2009-10-24T11:50:00.000-07:00

Oh Game Boy. You can make any franchise mediocre and painful. Mario, Zelda, fighting games...nothing is off limits to your green-tinted erosion. And then 1996 came along. Ask anyone to name the best game on the original Game Boy. 10% of people will say Tetris, but they had social problems growing up. The other 90% will proudly proclaim "Pokémon!" and they'll be right. Pop quiz for anyone reading this who has played Pokémon Blue or Red Versions:

Did you enjoy the game?

1) "Yes."
2) "No."
3) "Yes...I mean...no! No, Pokémon is for queers dude. Of course I wouldn't like it...hahaha...ha..."
4) "Yeah, that game is sweet. But uh, I never watched the show or played the card games or anything. I mean, Pokémon still sucks, but the games are good."

Let's be honest, almost nobody falls under number 2. So this review isn't to tell you whether or not the game is good - it definitely is - but rather the extent to which you should be embarrassed and ashamed for liking it.

The concept of the game is pretty straightforward...ish. You are a young boy, let's say of the tender age of 8, living in a world that is populated (some might say downright infested) by 151 different species of creatures called Pokémon. They lurk in caves, in any kind of body of water, and are attracted to tall grass like freaking velociraptors. This obviously has a pretty heavy effect on how human beings live within this world. And while basic occupations like doctors, shopkeepers, and police officers still exist, it seems that the vast majority of people spend their lives as trainers. Your goal, then, is to become the greatest trainer in the world. To do that you will need to subdue and enslave as many Pokémon as you possibly can, and force them to fight other Pokémon over and over whenever you let them out of solitary confinement.

You see, the word "Pokémon" is actually an abbreviation of sorts for "pocket monsters," which refers to the devices you use to hold the creatures. Conveniently termed Poké Balls, they are spheres only slightly larger than a ping pong ball that hold an extradimensional space in which whatever Pokémon you entrap can while away its existence. There are claims that each ball contains full flora and other sorts of "natural" environments that are friendly to the Pokémon, but this is clearly unsubstantiated. So you have to "catch" (the kid-friendly form of "imprison") all kinds of different Pokémon and raise their levels through combat until they are powerful enough to defeat the ones "owned" by the Pokémon League Champion.

But first you're going to need to get around the world, called Kanto. Of course, they haven't invented cars in this world, so that sort of sucks. But hey, you can buy a bicycle if you want. It only costs....oh good grief, a million bucks?! A million dollars for a bicycle?! You're kidding me! That's totally ridiculous! And you know what? The game only lets you carry 999,999 bucks at once. If you max out your cash, you will still be a dollar short of purchasing a BICYCLE. I don't even want to know what it costs to get like, a canoe.

And while we're speaking of navigating the geography of the land, it's worth pointing out that the "world" is actually pretty small when you think about it. There are seven cities, two towns, and an island with a few buildings on it, and they're all named after colors in some way. And that's all. And the word "city" is pretty generous here, since apparently all you need to qualify is a gym. Take Viridian City, for example, which is a mere 2 minute walk from the next closest locale. It's got five buildings. Total. The total human population of the world has got to be somewhere under 200 judging from the sheer lack of living space, and yet all these people keep appearing everywhere, and all of them do nothing but incarcerate Pokémon for some purpose or another. How does this world even have an economy in the first place?

And what would any epic quest be without a rival keeping you on your toes every step of the way? The rival, here named Herpes, is a total douchebag. When Professor Oak, the world's foremost researcher of Pokémon, gives you one of your own to start off, Herpes snatches the one that is specifically designed to kill yours. Ass. He also happens to be related to Professor Oak himself, so you can't just secretly assault him and leave him to a pack of wild Growlithes. Come to think of it, nobody ever actually attacks anyone else directly in Pokémon. Why is that? I mean, I understand that Pokémon training is something of a sport in these games and that competitive battling for its own sake is what it is, but even the criminals don't do anything themselves. There are huge sections of the game in which you single-handedly defeat and cripple an entire criminal organization, Team Rocket, led by a mafioso named Giovanni. And you pull it off because all they do is tell their Pokémon to fight other people's Pokémon. Seriously. I'm not sure they even know what guns or knives are. It's pretty confusing, but man are the police happy.

Battling the monsters is pretty interesting, really. The entire combat system is set up like the most complex version of Paper, Rock, Scissors that you've ever seen. Pokémon are divided into 15 types: Normal, Fighting, Flying, Fire, Water, Grass, Electric, Ice, Rock, Ground, Poison, Bug, Psychic, Ghost, and Dragon. Every Pokémon has at least one of these types, though many have two simultaneously. These determine your Pokémon's strengths and weaknesses. For example, a Water type is going to be weak to an Electric type, but that same Electric type can't hurt a Ground type. Most of it can be explained rationally in such a way, really, which is impressive.

So as you battle the Pokémon, they'll gain experience and level up, and learn new moves to kill one another. Occasionally they will even "evolve," altering their physiological structure to become bigger and more powerful. And it all starts with Professor Oak offering you that first Pokémon. When you think about it, he's sort of like a drug dealer. "Hey man, let me hook you up with this. I just got it the other day. Yeah man, totally free, try it out. Oh by the way, here's this Pokédex to catalog all of them if you want more." He's just trying to get you addicted for the sake of his research. Sly old man. Well, he offers you a Squirtle (Water-spitting turtle), a Bulbasaur (Grass type baby dinosaur with a Poison flower growing on its back), or a Charmander (fire lizard). Now because your quest begins with fighting the Gyms in the cities, which all specialize in a certain Pokémon type, conventional wisdom states that you should pick the Bulbasaur. The first two Gyms are Rock type and Water type, and the Grass type is powerful against each. It's even resistant to the third Gym's type, Electric. I counter that winners choose Charmander, because fire lizards are sweet, and it's eventually going to evolve into a big dragon named Charizard and kill things and that's cool.

The game also expects you to assemble a team of six (the maximum you can carry) Pokémon designed to sort of cover all your bases and ensure you're not particularly susceptible to any kind of attack. This means leveling them all fairly evenly, and you'll find that the levels of your enemies' Pokémon scale appropriately. However, what I found to be effective was to kill everything with my massive Charizard and make it unstoppable. For real. Oh sure, it's weak to the first couple Gyms, but that just drives you to level it up so highly that it overcomes its weakness with sheer brute force. And from there it can pretty much single-handedly annihilate everything in the game, to the point where I got to the Pokémon League Champion (the game's final battle), and he used a Pokémon with a level around 65, give or take a couple. Charizard? 91. It wasn't even close.

As you go you'll see and hear tales of certain legendary Pokémon that, unlike every other species, are one of a kind. There are the rulers of ice, thunderstorms, and fire, and somehow you manage to capture all of them and force them to do your bidding. Not sure how that works, but hey, you won't be complaining. There's also some mysterious Pokémon named Mew that you can only get in the game by exploiting a programming glitch. The in-game researchers believe that Mew is the common ancestor to all Pokémon and start performing experiments on it. They eventually clone it before it escapes. The clone, named Mewtwo, is genetically engineered to be stronger in every way, and so it becomes a violent killing machine, and it escapes too. And you know what you can do? That's right. After you become the Champion, you can hunt down and capture Mewtwo. What sort of child are you anyway?

And capturing these legendaries is necessary if you're looking to complete the other objective of the game - acquiring data on all 151 species (minus Mew) in the Pokédex Professor Oak gave you. You get data just by owning that Pokémon. But the devious people at Nintendo deliberately made some species unobtainable in each version of the game, forcing you to trade with others to "catch 'em all." Some Pokémon also only evolve when traded, and some (like the starting three Pokémon) you'll have to trade with multiple times to get everything. So while it might not seem like a terrible ordeal to get a full Pokédex, it's not exactly easy. And your reward? An in-game "diploma" telling you that you did, in fact, get them all. Burn.

It's not exactly accurate to say the replay value on Pokémon is high, because the game was designed in such a way to never end. After you become Champion, you can still play indefinitely on your file, and level up your team. And you can battle your friends using a Game Boy link cable, which was great. You'd go to school and talk trash with people about how your Rhydon could totally kill their Wigglytuff, and you could do it while never losing confidence in your sexuality. I mean, so long as having people too insecure to admit they liked the game making fun of you didn't drive down your confidence, you were fine.

There are a lot of details about the game I didn't hit on, of course, but there's quite a lot going on in this title. And don't worry - there are umpteen sequels to cover eventually. We'll get there. As for the original stuff, Pokémon Blue and Red are good games with a bunch of minor flaws and annoyances - the inventory system is terrible, just to name one. When in caves, you battle literally every three steps, which is excruciating, to name a second. And the message it sends to children (stick animals in little balls and make them fight) is questionable. But you're going to like playing anyway. And there's no reason to be ashamed about enjoying a good game. So, in the immortal words of that one commercial for Monday Night Football, "Play on, playa."

Bottom Line: 14/20

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

2009-10-03T14:30:00.001-07:00

If you like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, you will not like this game. If you do not like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, you really will not like this game. I get the feeling Ultra, the company responsible for this mistake, never even watched the Ninja Turtles show. They included the bare minimum of reference points to the franchise to claim it was a licensed game. And what's worse, everyone bought it. Did you know Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the sixth highest-selling NES game of all time? That also earns it the dubious distinction of being the highest-selling rancid-bowl-of-garbage-soup game on the system.

The first thing you see when you start up the game is Leonardo standing on allegedly the streets of New York City. This is a lie. Nothing on the screen reminds one even remotely of New York City, and most of what you'll see is just random tiles of graphics tossed together, like the "trees" between buildings. The second thing you'll notice is a steamroller appearing practically on top of you the moment you round the first corner. It will instantly kill you and you will restart the level. You are incapable of damaging it. What a way to start the game. Every stage but the final one has some such overworld screen, from which you get from action area to action area, usually consisting of sewers or buildings. On one of these you get to ride around in the Party Wagon, but even that's lame as balls - it shares a health bar with your turtles, has only one weapon by default, and can't kill those freaking steamrollers with one shot (meaning they'll run over you before you can destroy them).

The plot is as weak as you might expect. When the game opens, April O'Neil is kidnapped by Bebop and Rocksteady. Splinter sends you out after her, though at no point in the game do you even realize that this is your mission until you accidentally bump into Bebop and see April all tied up on a ledge with Rocksteady. Which means that for the first while, with no clue of where to go, you're just sort of wondering what's going on. When you finally rescue April, you have to stop a terrorist plot, and then Splinter gets kidnapped. Shredder informs you of this by possessing your television set and talking to you while inexplicably sticking his hand out of the screen. When you save Splinter you have to track down the Foot Clan to their camp, find the Technodrome somewhere underground, and eventually kill Shredder. It's as simple and dull as you'd expect.

Whenever you enter a building or sewer from the overworld, the game becomes a sidescrolling action title, but one of the most ridiculous ones you can think of. Ultra just programmed in as many irrelevant and stupid obstacles as they could, such as sewers full of conveyor belts, or instant-kill lava, or yes, even magnets that pull the turtles into spikes. How in the world does a magnet, which functions by attracting metal, suck in a reptile? And even if I were to accept that there could be such a magnet, I'm positive it wouldn't look like that crap.

As for the turtles themselves, problems galore. They are all unique in terms of attacking, but there isn't anything close to a balance here. Donatello is far and away the best turtle in the game. His bo does more damage than any other turtle's weapon, and has the best reach as well. Leonardo has almost the same amount of reach with his katana, but he's really weak. Raphael has a decent amount of strength, but his sais have no range whatsoever, so he virtually can't hit anything without being hit himself. Michelangelo has gimpy range (barely more than Raphael) and is the weakest turtle in terms of damage. Neither Raphael nor Michelangelo can attack downward, either. Only Leonardo or Donatello can hit an enemy below them. So you'll basically be playing the entire game as Donatello, unless you need to switch turtles for health purposes, which you can do at any time on the pause screen, instantly.

And that's the other thing. Each turtle has a health bar, but it will deplete a lot quicker than you might think. There is only a split second of invulnerability after being hit, so you'll touch an enemy and often get hit three or four times consecutively before you can move. You collect pizza to recharge your health, but because the pizza disappears, you have to choose which turtle you want to stay alive (always Donatello). If any one of your turtles dies, he is "captured" and you have to restart the area with your remaining turtles at their remaining health. So if all your guys were low on life, and one dies, you will lose all your progress on that level and have to start from the beginning with everyone dead in a single hit. Isn't that fun? If (when) all your turtles die, you get the game over screen and the choice to continue, which starts you at the beginning of the stage with all four turtles at full health. But you only get two continues for the whole game, which means you really have to be perfect as you play. Using a continue before Shredder's level virtually guarantees your failure.

I can even complain about the map screen. In the past, I've rightfully decried the lack of a map function in games. But what is this nonsense? I can't tell what's going on in this map at all, and it's the simplest one in the game. The third stage of the game is essentially an enormous maze to go find Splinter, but you have no idea where he's being held. And when you're looking at a map that's just red with some white dots, it really doesn't help you figure out where you need to be going. It's salt in the wound then when April or Splinter starts yapping at you when you're trying to make sense of it. Usually April will tell you that "You have my support," which is about as worthless as a wheelchair to an armless man, and Splinter will say "You can do it" after telling you something that's either obvious or hard as hell. There is no in-between. And then, as you see above, sometimes April just asks to be smacked in the mouth. Don't you have some news to report or something? Like, "This just in: I'm a rotten skank?"

The only good news is that the game has some bonus weapons the turtles can collect. Killing enemies will occasionally yield one of three different weapons, all of which have limited ammo. The first is a ninja star, which does as much damage as Donatello's staff. Which means Donatello is better off just attacking, since his staff can hit multiple people at once and the ninja star can't. Why's he so good? More to the point, why are the other turtles so bad? You can also get a triple star, which throws three at once in a spread pattern, which would be useful if they didn't fire so slowly. Then there's the boomerang, which is actually nice, though it only travels a short range before returning. At least when it returns to you, you get to save the ammo on it. Here's a trick too: you can throw a boomerang with one turtle, switch to another, then let the boomerang return to you. Now that turtle has boomerangs. Nothing like cheating the system, eh? Finally, there is the ultimate weapon, the scroll. Yes, the ultimate weapon you can acquire in this game is literally a rolled up piece of paper. And what does it do when shot? Naturally it creates a shock wave that rips through enemies and does massive damage. As if paper could do anything else. Pfft. You people.

But you know where devastatingly powerful scraps of parchment don't matter? In the melon farming son of a biscuit water stage. This may well be the worst water level I have ever seen, and it's only the second stage of the game. Where do I even start? It's supposed to be in the Hudson River, where the Foot Clan has planted eight bombs to destroy the dam. Stop right there. The Federal Dam in the Hudson isn't anywhere near Manhattan. It's actually closer to Troy, New York. So already this situation is nonsensical. Continuing though, we see that there are devices underwater which shoot electrical bolts vertically, and the turtles have to time their swimming to avoid them. Let's pause there again. If these devices are firing electric currents underwater, the whole river is boned. At the very least, the whole of the stage should be. The fact that you don't start the stage off watching yourself get electrocuted just indicts this stage further. Next up, we see that there is seaweed all over the place. This seaweed is also electrified, so that touching it injures you. And there are currents that push you into the seaweed, meaning you have a hell of a time not touching any. Which as we know from the way the game chains hits against you, means your health will deplete rapidly until death. Now let's stop there again. Seaweed can only occur in saltwater, or at least brackish water (mixed salt and fresh water). The Lower Hudson is indeed brackish, but if this actually takes place at the dam, which we said is upriver and upstate, then seaweed can't exist. Nevermind that it's electrified, which violates the other problems we've discussed.

There are rotating wheels of barbs in there. I know the Hudson is polluted, but give me a break. Nobody has polluted the river with multiple rotating lines of barbs. They just haven't. Why is that there? And what about that orange crap near the bottom left of the picture? Well, I'm not even sure what it's supposed to be, but I know that if any part of you touches it, it grabs you and pulls you under. Instant kill. Now let me get this straight. You, a turtle, which by nature is a marine-based reptile, are doomed to death because something pulled you a little deeper into the water? Ridiculous. And of course, this means you have to go back with less health to the beginning of the level with another turtle. At least the bombs you've already disarmed stay that way. And oh yeah, this entire time, you have a timer counting down to detonation. If the timer reaches zero and you haven't gotten to all the bombs, which is a virtual guarantee if you don't have the level memorized, it is an automatic game over. Not a loss of a turtle. A game over. And even if you win, you have to watch a long, unskippable, irritating cutscene. It makes me want to strangle myself with electrified seaweed.

Enemies. There are a lot of them. No, like really. A lot of them. If at any point the spawn point of an enemy enters your screen, the enemy appears. Which sounds normal, except that I really do mean at any point. Even if you're already fighting that same enemy. You might be moving around in combat to fight it and happen to walk away from the spawn, and then happen to move back near it. Which means another one appears and attacks. And you don't even have a clue as to what will appear, because it's all random. The game has random sets of enemies for each area and will change them at will, even partway through the area. There's just nothing you can do except prepare for every possible enemy at every possible time. And the enemies themselves by and large have absolutely nothing to do with Ninja Turtles. There are mousers and foot soldiers, sure. But it really ends about there. The rest of the time you're fighting cyborgs with chainsaws, exceedingly angry guys on jetpacks with laser rifles, balloons that drop missiles on your head (?), walking incarnate fire that constantly reproduces asexually at you as a weapon...the list goes on.

And you know what's really infuriating? Jumping. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles utilizes a pressure-sensitive jump system, so that pressing the button fully makes you flip really high, and tapping it makes you do a little hop. Neither is easy to control precisely, which is a huge problem in the areas that require you to leap onto single squares of terrain. Even worse, in many of these spots, missing a jump has you land in some water. The turtles then flail helplessly and have to restart the area. What the hell! Didn't you just do an entire level revolving around swimming underwater? How did you forget how to swim in the past 15 minutes? It's mind-numbing.

So with a game this stupid, frustrating, and difficult you would expect the bosses to be virtually impossible, yeah? Wrong. If at any time during the game any of the bosses hits you a single time, you probably suck. If you're using Donatello, and you absolutely should be, they're all so easy it's just confusing. Bebop just runs back and forth and you can chase him around hitting him until he dies. With Rocksteady, you can jump up on some boxes, attack downward, and pummel the crap out of him while he runs at a wall like a moron. There's a robotic evil turtle that you can just launch scrolls at and kill in 10 seconds while he forgets how to hit you. There's this giant mouser which can be attacked in his mouth by just standing below him and attacking up (which also kills all the little guys he spawns, as well as avoids all his other attacks). You can just throw ninja stars and crap at the Technodrome tank until everything that can hurt you is destroyed...without ever even getting near it. And Shredder? Shredder will literally jump into your staff over and over until he dies. Which is a good thing, because he has a gun that instantly kills you, and if any turtle loses to him you restart the entire level again.

Playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is like having an extramarital affair with a brain-dead vegetable. It's pointless, not enjoyable or rewarding at all, and yet you're still morally wrong for doing it. The ending to this game is as terrible as the beginning and middle are. The only time you aren't playing as Donatello is when he's low on life or you're in that freaking dam, because then you can use Michelangelo as seaweed fodder to save your useful turtles. This game is six stages of "action" that belong more in a sewer than the turtles themselves do. It doesn't even ever play the Ninja Turtles theme. And yet it sold millions of copies. Were you one of the suckers who got duped into buying this game based solely on the license? Shame on you.

Bottom Line: 4/20

Mortal Kombat

2009-09-19T10:14:00.000-07:00

The juggernaut of fighting games was just starting to rear its head with Capcom's recent offerings of the early 1990s when Midway Entertainment decided there was a significant flaw in the Street Fighter series of games. Not enough gore. They decided to hire in some actors to be filmed and video captured for their own game, added in more gore than the world had really seen until that point, and invented their own unique control scheme. The result was Mortal Kombat, which was eventually ported to the SNES and Sega Genesis from the arcades.

The game featured seven selectable fighters, though they all control identically in terms of basic moves. The primary difference among them, therefore, was their respective repertoires of special attacks. Whereas Street Fighter characters had moves that revolve around shooting damaging projectiles or simply performing more powerful direct physical attacks, the moves in Mortal Kombat were based more directly on the personality of each character, which could provide pretty outrageous results.

There were the two rival ninjas, Scorpion and Sub-Zero. The former was an undead spectre from the Mortal Kombat (MK) equivalent of hell; the latter was the ice master who murdered him. The former shoots harpoons out of his hand to impale you and pull you in for a followup attack. The latter can freeze your body solid. There is Liu Kang, the Buddhist monk who has trained so hard he can shoot balls of fire and seemingly defy gravity whilst kicking you repeatedly and making whooping noises. There is Kano, the cyborg thief who throws knives, and Sonya, the military lieutenant trying to arrest him. And of course, there is Raiden, Earth's God of Thunder, who can electrically burn off all the flesh on your body by touching you. What's he even doing here?

And who could forget the movie star, Johnny Cage? His signature move? He does the splits and punches you in the nuts. No lie. It seems he was modeled after Jean-Claude Van Damme, who did a similar move in one of his films, but it's this sort of stylistic difference that really elevates this game above the label of "Street Fighter wannabe."

That's not to discount the control style. Mortal Kombat only has four attack buttons to Street Fighter's six, but it utilizes them differently. Each button attacks differently at range than in proximity, and moves like roundhouse kicks are performed by combining button presses with directional inputs. But the most startling departure is the addition of a block button. Now characters don't block by holding the back direction or retreating, which makes the learning curve pretty steep for Street Fighter veterans. The good news about this system is that it allows for easier buffering of special moves without unwanted movement, and gives greater opportunity for counterattacks. The bad news is that you have to freaking press a special button to block and it's a freaking pain in the butt.

MK also introduces the world to the concept of the secret character in a fighting game. Somewhere hidden in the game is a third ninja, conveniently identical in appearance to the others in every way except color. Why hire another actor and record more moves when you can just run the thing through a filter and call it a day, right? His moves are even identical. For Reptile, they simply gave this new ninja the special moves of both selectable ones, patted themselves on the back, and hid him somewhere in the code. He'll even come out between two-player matches from time to time just to tantalize you with little hints of how to find him.

With all that buildup, you figure there's got to be some sort of payoff, right? Well, on a home console it doesn't mean much, but in the arcade where scores are king, defeating Reptile was basically an automatic high score. You see, a normal bonus for winning a round might be somewhere around 35,000 points total, and successfully finishing an opponent off yields 100,000 points. Reptile, if killed, gives the player 10,000,000 points. Ten million. Win.

The game also featured a bonus stage called Test Your Might, which was in general not new to the genre, but was easily better executed than ever before. Players must mash certain buttons to build up their power meter before attempting to chop through whatever object is placed before them. As you can see here, this got ridiculous in a hurry, eventually asking players to karate chop through about 1.5 feet of solid diamond. Give me a break, ya know?

And I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up the most controversial inclusion in the game - the fatalities. In earlier fighting games, defeating an opponent would result in a knockout or some other such pansy finish. In Mortal Kombat, fighters are commanded by a mighty voice to brutally slay their opponents. Hearts were ripped out of chests all Temple of Doom style, spines were removed from their skeletons, bodies were incinerated alive...all in glorious 16 bit rendering. Of course, the good folks at Nintendo were a little put off by all that blood and guts, and so the fatalities were toned down a bit in the SNES version. You know, to be slightly...less...fatal..... Even the blood was altered to be sweat. Lame.

The game itself is pretty difficult after the first few matches. The enemy skill and AI on the default difficulty setting is daunting to say the least. But eventually you're bound to find the one move that proves machines are a long way from taking dominion over mankind: the leg sweep.

It's probably one of the least fair things I've ever seen in a fighting game. You just sweep the legs and the guy falls down, and it does a reasonable amount of damage. Doesn't sound bad, right? And indeed, against a fellow human, attempting to do it twice in succession will result in you getting blocked and counter-attacked. But the game's AI evidently never figured out how to stop the onslaught. If you get into sweep range and connect on the first one, you can simply keep doing leg sweeps until you win. Really. The computer player will just keep getting up and falling back down until it is dead. It's like a completely legal invincibility cheat. And suddenly the game gets a LOT easier.

And you figure the game's programmers had to realize this, because when they made this monstrosity of a boss at left known as Goro, they made him immune to leg sweeps, presumably because any character you can select isn't strong enough to destabilize him. He also shoots fireballs, stomps on your face, and beats the living daylights out of you with all four of his arms. And he's not even the final boss of the game!

That distinction belongs to Shang Tsung, an ancient sorcerer who can transform at will into any other fighter in the game, including Goro, with full access to all their special moves and strengths. And when he beats you, he steals your soul. Lovely. It also makes the justification pretty clear for all the fighting - if you don't kill this dude, he's so going to eat your soul and conquer Earth. Better get on that.

As an added bonus, Mortal Kombat added in the ability to juggle. An opponent knocked airborne could be hit again, even multiple times, before hitting the ground. This resulted in added depth of play and potential for some pretty powerful move combinations. It's no shock that virtually every fighting game of any merit created after this would adopt some form of the system.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're disappointed about the Super Nintendo version. Even the Sega Genesis port had the Abacabb code to restore the gore. Restore the gore, that's your little cyber battle cry. Here's my quick defense - the Super Nintendo version features better control than the Genesis port, and also higher technical quality than any other console version of the game. So if you're after the game for the gore factor, check out one of the other versions. But the best fighting experience in Mortal Kombat outside of the arcade is to be found on the Super Nintendo, and it's a pretty decent one. Just don't forget how to block when you boot it up.

Bottom Line: 14/20

Dragon Ball Z: Kyôshū! Saiyajin

2009-09-14T09:18:00.000-07:00

Before Dragon Ball Z helped lead an anime craze here in the states, it had already established itself in Japan with literature, TV shows, movies, and even several video games. "Kyôshū! Saiyajin," translates to roughly "Fierce Attack! Saiyan," but in this review I'll just arbitrarily say "Attack of the Saiyans" for easier reference. Made by Bandai, the same company that makes Power Rangers action figures, Attack of the Saiyans (which was never released in the US) was the first attempt at an RPG based on the Dragonball Z storyline.

To that end it picks up with the beginning of the series and more or less (it's less) parallels it throughout the game. While certain specifics of the show naturally weren't going to carry over to the game for the sake of making the game enjoyable to play, the hope was to retain almost every key element of the show's story. The game therefore opens with Raditz arriving from space and kidnapping Goku's son, Gohan. Then Piccolo, who had been a villain, teams up with Goku to get him back, just like in the show. Then the cutscenes are done and control passes to the player, and the gameplay is immediately different than what you might expect.

Everything in Attack of the Saiyans happens through cards. And I do mean everything. At the bottom of the screen you will see five cards. Centered on each card is a large symbol which corresponds to a given fighting style. In the bottom right and upper left corners are two dragon balls. The upper one has dots corresponding to stars on the balls, while the lower has symbols that correspond to the numbers 1-7 in Japanese. In addition, either or both of these dragon balls may instead have a letter Z on it. So when you appear on the map screen after the initial cutscene dialogues are over, you'll find Goku and Piccolo next to each other on a grid. The game will highlight one of them and you will choose a card for him. You can then move as many grid squares as there are stars on the upper left dragon ball (1-7, with a Z acting as 8). Then you move the other one similarly.

These same cards you use for movement also carry into battle with you. When you choose a card to use for a round of battle, the upper left dragon ball acts as your attack value, with the lower right one acting as your defense value. Every fighter in the game also has a "favored style," which lines up with one of the possible symbols on the center of the cards. If you attack with a card that has your favored symbol on it, your power is boosted for that turn. So whatever else may be said about this game, let me say now that this system is incredibly interesting. Because you can land in a random battle after any movement, do you use your good cards to move and get where you're going sooner, or do you take really small movements so that you have better cards for battle? I think outside of strategic RPGs (which this game is not), I have not seen any game that requires that level of planning just to move around. The intrigue of the card system is easily the best thing about this game.

Additionally, the leveling system is novel. In a more traditional RPG you gain experience points after each battle, and after attaining a certain amount of them, your character becomes more powerful. You maybe get some more health, maybe higher strength, maybe additional spells. In Attack of the Saiyans, each character has only three stats. They are: Hit Points, Battle Energy, and Battle Power. While hit points are nothing new, and battle energy essentially just corresponds to magic points, battle power (BP) is a twist on the system. Characters in DBZ all have power levels, and BP is an implementation of that. The game's formula in determining how much damage you deal or take involves measuring your BP stat against your enemy's, meaning BP is even more important than what card you use. Furthermore, when you win a battle, you are awarded BP, and not some otherwise-meaningless experience points. This means that instead of having to win many battles and accumulate many points to become marginally stronger, your characters are literally more powerful after every single fight. You could fight the exact same monsters three times in a row (and trust me, you will...) and each time you'd be stronger than the last. So when you gain a level in Attack of the Saiyans, only your maximum hit points and battle energy increase. Otherwise you are constantly and steadily gaining strength, which is pretty neat.

Sadly, the interest of the whole thing sort of ends there. While you gain a new card every time you use one and this is supposedly at random, the game only has certain cards it will give you. That is, with eight possible numbers in each of the card corners, and six center symbols, there are 384 possible cards you should be able to see. Of these, you probably will only ever get 40 or so from the game, and it loves to give the same card multiple times in a row. It was not uncommon for me at the end of the game to use a set of five different cards in a single round of battle, and the next round have received those exact same cards back as my "random" replacements. This can really suck when you're trying to get rid of bad cards. And what's worse is that enemies seem to have no trouble getting the card combinations you can't, often landing cards with a Z attack value, Z defense value, and their favored symbol. Ouch.

The second complaint is the most major. If someone asked me to sum up this game in just one word, it'd be this: tedious. Every primary chapter of the game revolves around trying to defeat a given enemy who is, without exception, far stronger than you are. While in the show this creates excitement and you get to watch the heroes figure out ways to defeat these massive villains, in the game it means hours of grinding. When you start as Goku and Piccolo, your battle powers are in the low-mid 300s. Raditz has 1200 BP, by contrast. Enemies around you will give you 3 BP each. 5 if you fight the harder ones. Do the math, and you'll realize how much mindless battling that is just to break even. And even then he'll still have many more hit points than you, because he's a boss.

It only gets worse from there, as you'll next have to fight another 1200 BP boss raising powers from the 200s (as more playable characters are introduced into the game), then again from the 200s to 1300, then a third time from the 200s to 1500. And finally, when you've got six new fighters all around 1000 BP and you're feeling pretty good, the next boss has 3500 BP. It's a slap in the face.

It's then a curse as well as a blessing that the battles are done in a cinematic fashion. Every attack has a long, unskippable animation that accompanies it. You'll watch the combatants fly around punching and kicking and blocking until finally a hit is landed and you see how much damage was dealt. Then the other guy attacks and it's the same dance. The biggest culprits are the ki attacks. One of the card symbols is the ki attack one, which allows you to spend some battle energy to unleash a signature move on your opponents. All of these entail zooming in on the character in question, showing them doing whatever crap they do, then showing the energy ball or beam or whatever you shot moving toward the target, and then finally the target getting hit (or dodging, joke's on you!). Each one of these is really cool to watch. Once. Then you desperately wish you could skip over them along with every other battle animation. So not only do you have to battle countless times to make it through what is otherwise a very short game, but each battle takes forever. The enemies are also painfully limited in variety. Apart from the game's seven bosses, there are nine different enemies. Nine. Total. And three of these are just palette swaps of other ones. That's pathetic.

And trust me, the game really is brief apart from the battles. Over half the game actually revolves around the first DBZ movie, Deadzone, which is not even considered canon (although admittedly it's the closest of the films to being such). The idea is that while Goku is training on King Kai's planet, the six "Z-Fighters" (Piccolo, Gohan, Krillin, Yamcha, Tien, and the suicidal Chaozu) are trying to defeat Garlic, Jr. as he makes a bid for world domination. But the game even stretches that for all it's worth, making you split into groups of two and hunt down the henchmen before reconverging to take down Garlic, Jr. himself. It justifies this exercise by giving Garlic, Jr. and cronies some of the dragon balls the Z-Fighters will need to wish Goku back to life. Nevermind the fact that even were you to force the events of the movie into the canon timeline, they would have happened before the entire series, including all the Raditz crap. My guess is that because this movie had come out in Japan not too long before the game's release, the content was added to encourage sales. But its only accomplishment in the game is forcing the player to grind more. I'd honestly prefer they just give me a little cutscene saying "The Z-Fighters trained for a year. Here's 1000 BP added onto everyone." Sure it cuts about 10 hours out of the game...but they're some of the most monotonous and boring 10 hours you can imagine having to sit through.

There are a number of minigames present in Attack of the Saiyans. None of them have any real depth, and most are based on dumb luck. For instance, on King Kai's planet you must use Goku to catch Bubbles the monkey and smash Gregory the cricket with a hammer. These games consist of having the animal in question generate a random card, and you have to use a card that's higher in attack value from your stash. It's like playing war with the deck stacked against you. War's painful enough to play without that caveat, thank you very much. The other minigames, accessed on the world map by landing on certain spaces, are not much better. One will show you a card and you have to choose one of your own, matching any of the three variables (attack, defense, symbol) to get minor amounts of BP. If you spend 15 minutes in this game getting 50 cards matched in a row (which is horrendously dull, but I tried it just to see), you'll gain maybe 200 BP. And even then it depends on the character. But, unlike when battling, only the character in the minigame gets this BP, so you'd have to do that with everyone to have it be meaningful. And at that point you're looking at spending even more time on it than you would if you just battled over and over. It's a lose-lose.

And speaking of multiple characters, until your crew takes on Garlic, Jr. himself (which is the penultimate area of the game), you move characters individually rather than as a group. So when you move a character, a random battle might happen, and that character will be isolated against an entire group of baddies. Early on you'll be screwed when this happens, and by the time you're strong enough to single-handedly kill them all, you're realizing how long it will take (you cannot attack multiple targets at once) and start slamming your head against a wall. The only time you can fight as a group like this is to have the characters standing on adjacent grid squares. So you'll constantly inch through the game a space at a time here, another space there, all for the sake of being allowed the ability to fight as a group. Not that fighting as a group is without its flaws, since like in certain other RPGs, your characters are too stupid to attack another enemy if their commanded target is killed before their turn. And when you have five people in your group, but only three enemies to kill (all of which will be downed in one shot), you still have to tell as many people to attack as you have cards, throwing away potentially good cards in the process. What a waste.

Because you'll likely try to cut down on how many hours of pointless battling you'll engage in, items are crucial to make it past the bosses. Items also consist of cards, although in this case they are just pictures of different things, which have varying effects. Cards like Bulma or Master Roshi heal you, cards like the stunningly racist Mr. Popo restore some battle energy, and cards like the scouter will reveal enemy locations on the map. Since you have a limited inventory, you'll have to be selective about what items you're carrying, which makes it a nuisance that you can't ever drop any. You have to use them to get rid of them, but you can't use a healing card if everyone is at full health, and you don't want to use an item that changes out all your battle cards if you have five good ones...the list goes on. And the game is really inconsistent on what cards it will give you.

For instance, the Shenron (the dragon of Dragon Bball Z) card restores every character in your group to maximum life and energy. And it's laughably easy to get. There's a minigame where you just play the memory game with some crap and you can get a Shenron every time. For free. But items like the Tail, which is responsible for the gargantuan ape pictured here, can apparently only be acquired through getting a perfect score on this memory game and having nine open inventory slots. Stupid.

As for the end of the game, Nappa has 4000 BP (strangely semi-reasonable after having just fought the 3500 BP Garlic, Jr.), but Vegeta has 18,000. Have fun grinding that out. When fighting Nappa, Goku is supposed to show up and join in, making that fight easier and helping prepare you for Vegeta. It also lets you train Goku up some more along with everyone else for that last fight. But I guess not everything goes as planned, because when I fought Nappa Goku never came. He showed up at the start of the Vegeta fight, which is well and good except for the fact that at that point it's impossible to raise his power level any further. Luckily for me I came in with like 8 Shen Long cards and won a two hour (no joke) battle of attrition. That's what happens when you don't feel like grinding BP for an eon or two.

After that fight you are shown passwords for every character you have still alive, which can be used in the game's terrible Budokai mode. Here you can choose up to four fighters and...go into battle with them. As if you hadn't had enough battling already. And now you can't even see what cards you're picking. It's a worthless addon to the game. So you watch the credits and they end with the ginormous visage of Frieza looking at Earth all aroused-like. It's creepy as hell.

Attack of the Saiyans is definitely a notch below average as games go. I really like and appreciate the card system in its concept, but the fact that it's not nearly as random as it purports to be is a problem. And I wouldn't mind never seeing another 8-bit DBZ battle for the rest of my life. Doesn't help that they all occur at night in midair. I guess it saved coding to have them fighting in a black background with no land in sight the entire game. But whatever. This is one of those games that's worth ten minutes of your time to get a taste for the good and interesting things it does. But no more than ten minutes. For the love of all that's right in the world, not more than ten minutes.

Bottom Line: 8/20

Doom

2009-09-09T09:05:00.001-07:00

By the end of 1993, id's Wolfenstein 3-D was still going strong. A couple rip-offs had surfaced here and there, but nothing that would threaten the title's popularity or status atop the genre (it's the game that established it, after all). Yet the folks at id Software were busy during the year and a half that transpired after Wolfenstein's release. They were developing new technology and ideas, and once Doom was released the gaming industry would never be the same.

Doom introduced plenty of new textures and scenery, which stood out as extremely immersive when compared with Wolfenstein's bland and repetitive walls. The technology also allowed for variances in height within the game. Stairs and elevators could now exist and the player got a much greater sense of moving in three dimensions, which was pretty cleverly done, considering the game actually operated on two-dimensional physics. You see, levels existed on a plane as they always had (for instance, never will any room be on top of another one), but the textures and models were such that height would appear to exist in a fully three-dimensional state. So when you shoot your guns you'll feel like you're auto-aiming along the Z-axis, while in reality there is no Z-axis at all!

Of course, all this technobabble is just preliminary stuff to go over before getting to the meat of Doom. No, quite literally, the meat of it. This game consists of eliminating your enemies with as much excessive violence as you can muster, even mutilating them if you get the chance. Naturally, when you view the game now and see the blood falling from the sprites, you'll get a chuckle over how panicked people were about this game's gore. They even tried to sue id for the Columbine debacle, which was pretty absurd (and thankfully the judge declared as much).

So if Wolfenstein got away with its violence because your targets were all Nazis, how can Doom justify an even greater level of gore without resorting to the same ploy? Let's think about that one a moment. What could possibly be more universally evil than Hitler's Nazis? How about, say, the very legions of hell itself?! So there's no need to feel bad about shooting things mercilessly - they're all demons bent on torturing you for eternity. Man, how do they do it? At first I was hesitant to engage in all this brutality, but somehow with that one caveat I'm now not only okay with it, but I feel like it's my duty to go slay the foul beasts.

Naturally, that does require a little bit of justification from the story. After all, were you dead and sent to hell, you'd hardly have an arsenal of weapons at hand to combat them. So how did hell come to you? Doom takes place, at least initially, on a research base on Phobos (one of the moons of Mars). You are a marine working security for the Union Aerospace Corporation, which owns the base. Somehow, in some way, the forces of hell invade the base and kill everyone, leaving only you alive (why/how they didn't kill you is unexplained). Now normally you'd try to get out of there as soon as possible, because who in his right mind would try to single-handedly defeat the armies of hell? But they made one fatal mistake in their assault on the base - they killed Daisy, your pet rabbit. And you are going to make them pay. You probably think I'm kidding. You probably think this can't actually be the justification for the game's action. Just you wait.

So, as any curious scholar might ask, "Of what exactly do the forces of hell consist?" Glad you asked! The first baddies you see are zombies. They're your fellow marines, somehow transformed and converted into employees of the enemy, and carry either pistols or shotguns. Then there are imps, which are basically wookiees with haircuts who throw balls of fire. What you see above are generically termed "demons," and just run at you to gnaw your flesh. Some of these are even partially invisible. There are flaming skulls and big red spherical uglies called cacodemons, and the minotaur-like Barons of Hell. Finally, the bosses consist of a big mechanical spider monster and the Cyberdemon - a gigantic horned beast with a semi-automatic missile launcher for a hand. His loud metal footsteps will scare the living tar out of you.

And scaring the player appears to be one of the major goals the developers had for this game. Wolfenstein would frighten you by circumstance, when you'd hear a guard from another room shout an alert, or somehow not see a dude with a gun in your face. But Doom frightens by design. A very large portion of the game is not fully lit. That isn't to say it's pitch dark or anything, but just that the lights are dimmed intentionally both to partially hamper vision and to generate a creepy atmosphere. Some lights will even flicker, which was new at the time. There are times when you will be in an empty room and a wall will open behind you, unleashing monsters on your back. It's pretty effective all things considered, although in some sense it's only a notch above the "cheap" scares of its predecessor.

The environments also include extra little tidbits to create the game's atmosphere. Throughout the Phobos base you will find the corpses of your fellow marines, or occasionally just their pools of blood and guts. As the game progresses, you find that the invasion of Phobos came from Deimos, the other moon of Mars. And then you realize that a gate to hell itself was opened on or near Deimos, and so proceed to invade the home of your enemy. And here the ambient creepiness really jumps up a notch. Rivers and lakes of blood are common fare. You'll find other marines who attempted the same infiltration impaled on stakes, twitching in agony. Totems of the skulls of your comrades have been collected and placed in various spots, and there are even a few times at which you can see the souls of people drifting by in the walls.

The game also helped pioneer powerups, which are items you can walk over that enhance your abilities in some way. Previous games had health and ammo pickups, and Wolfenstein had random bits of treasure to collect for points, but Doom's powerups are more significant. There are radiation suits that make you immune to corrosion from toxic waste or...lava... There are goggles that allow you to see in full lighting for a time, temporary invincibility orbs, and a computer which reveals that area's full map. The map itself is a great feature, which allows you to view a wireframe layout of the area at any time, helping you to not only not get lost, but also to have extra help in locating hidden doors and rooms. Man. Including a map in a game that might cause players to otherwise get lost. It sounds so obvious. How could anyone miss it? Anyway, the funniest powerup is the berserk kit, which empowers your fist to such a degree that you can split monsters into pieces with a single punch. Awesome.

And on that note, it's long overdue to talk about guns. Wolfenstein's guns were simple and straight- forward, but Doom helped establish the concept of crazy weapons in games. Your fists and pistols need no mention. Similarly, the chaingun is about what you'd expect. Doom's rocket launcher though fires a lot more quickly than you'd think it might, and makes a pleasant sound effect with each shot. There's a chainsaw that rends flesh from monsters, but is usually worthless in practice. Then there's the plasmagun, which is damn strong. And of course, the BFG-9000. For those not in the loop, the BFG part stands for "Big F--king Gun," and it just annihilates everything. The final boss dies in three shots with this guy, and almost everything else is obliterated with one. Final boss. Three shots. Ammo isn't even that hard to find. Weapon balance be damned! It's a heck of a lot of fun to play around with, but it might be too strong.

I'm a worrier, always conserving ammo and the like. If you're anything like me, you'll find yourself running around 98% of the game with the shotgun. It can kill weaker enemies in one shot, and even stronger ones without too much hassle as long as you're quick on your feet. I found myself never using the stronger weapons just because I was afraid of having no ammo if and when I actually needed them. Perhaps that's my own foolishness, but perhaps the shotgun is just really that good.

By the way, for those of you still waiting for proof of the bunny slaying motive, see below. You evidently just carry the carcass (or at least the head) around with you. Nevermind the question of how bunnies survived on Mars in the first place. You want revenge. Wait, come to think of it, how are you surviving? I understand that there's a base that surely has its own life support system, but there are plenty of times you set foot out onto the surface of the moons. With no helmet, if your little face at the bottom of the screen and the picture below are to be believed. Either you hold more reserve air in your lungs than Fort Knox holds reserve gold or the Martian moons have oxygenated atmospheres. If it's the latter, we need to get on board the colonization train, pronto.

Oh wait, scratch that. I almost forgot they're the gateway to hell.

I do want to air some complaints about the game though. While the general concept and experience is decidedly positive, I found it impossible to play for longer periods of time. The main reason is this: the game is repetitive. I can only play a few levels at a time before I'm just tired and bored of the same old shotgun dance. Most maps revolve around finding keys to open doors, and killing monster after monster along the way. How many blue keycards do I really need here? Why are they in the most illogical of places? And while we're on the subject, why don't these demons just get rid of all the weapons and health and ammo and keys to impede your progress? It's like they want you to win. But that's the main reason this game's score is lower than it otherwise would be - once you've played the first few maps, you've played them all. Bosses and other monsters aside, there's nothing new to find anymore, and that's disappointing.

Overall though, Doom is a solid game. It didn't do anything really original from a gameplay perspective, other than the new guns (and even that's debatable). But it did do everything better than any similar game before it, and remains enjoyable to play. Just don't try to rush through it all at once or you'll get sick of it. Pace yourself as you go, a level here and a level there, and you'll really get the most out of your Doom experience. They even included a bonus fourth episode called "Thy Flesh Consumed" to the original trilogy for subsequent releases of the game, so there's more action to go around. If you ever were curious as to how and why first-person shooters hit the mainstream gaming populace, go play Doom and learn ya somethin' right.

Bottom Line: 13/20

Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels

2009-09-04T08:27:00.000-07:00

It was less than a year after the release of Super Mario Bros. and Japan was hungry for more. Nintendo had created a smash hit bigger than anyone might have predicted, and began crafting the sequel. They realized that most of the diehard players of the first game would have been proficient at it to the point of mastery, and so decided that its successor needed to be harder. Much, much harder.

They opted to keep virtually everything else the same. Oh, some of the backgrounds changed a little bit, and the mushrooms had eyes now, for whatever that was worth, but the core of the gameplay remained: you run around jumping on crap to beat a stage, with the ultimate goal being the rescue of Princess Peach Toadstool, who was again kidnapped by the evil King Bowser Koopa. Except, you know. Now it's hard.

Now, the story goes that when Nintendo of America got their hands on this "Super Mario Bros. 2," they claimed it was too difficult for American audiences and hid the game away from our novice little eyes. I would like to present a slightly different point of view here. What Nintendo of America claimed firstly was that this game didn't actually bring any innovation to the Mario franchise, and innovation is what has always driven the company. It was the same old exercise again, just with different stages. And the second part of the claim, I believe, wasn't that the game was too difficult for an American audience, but rather that it was too difficult for any audience. That it was a mistake to release the game even in Japan, because it would provide nothing but a source of frustration to the hardcore gamers, and would totally alienate the casual ones. And as we view this game, one thing becomes undeniably clear: Nintendo of America was right.

Thus, the US didn't see this game until it was rereleased for the Super Nintendo as "Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels," as part of a collection of NES Mario games known as "Super Mario All-Stars." This is why the pictures you see here are of 16-bit quality rather than 8-bit; consumers in America had no other way to experience the game until very recently (and more on that later). So what was it about The Lost Levels that was so ridiculous?

To begin with, take a look at this. Do you see a landing area? No. You do see a paratroopa, who flies up and down. You must time a jump perfectly so as to land on it and bounce to safety. And note that when you arrive at this area, you cannot even see the enemy at all. It's a blind jump, and you'll almost certainly miss and die when you take it. You have to stop all your momentum, inch the screen slowly to the right by manipulating the game's scrolling mechanism, then rebuild your momentum and jump at just the right instant to hit that koopa. This is on World 4-3, mind you. Not even halfway through the game. Similar blind jumps occur at other times, even requiring you to hit multiple successive koopas to get around. Alone it might seem an interesting challenge, but this is merely the tip of the iceberg.

In fact, the game lets you know right off the bat that you are screwed. World 1-1 instantly looks a bit trickier than you feel like a World 1-1 should, although it's not too terrible to anyone who's played the first game. Before long at all, you come across the trademark question mark boxes and hit a few, getting coins. Then you hit the last one and a mushroom comes up, so you grab it. And die. Because that mushroom just so happens to be poisonous, killing you on contact (or making you small again if you're big). Now, in the SNES version of the game, poison mushrooms have purple tops and are generally discolored in a clear manner, so once you know what they are you know to avoid them. But in the original NES (well, Famicom, but who cares) version of the game, the color difference was slight between a super mushroom and a poison mushroom. As if that weren't bad enough, later stages of the game are littered with invisible blocks containing the things. And these are strategically placed in spots that require precise jumps, such that you make your jump and are stopped halfway by an invisible mushroom of death. If the resulting fall doesn't kill you, the fungus almost certainly will.

Let's jump ahead several tedious hours to the "end" of the game. When you finally defeat Bowser at the end of World 8-4 and save the Princess (who in the NES version is still a mutt), she again entreats you to "press start" for a more difficult quest. My inclination at this point was to tell her to shove it - the harder quest in Super Mario Bros. consisted of turning one kind of enemy into another and calling it a day, and I had no interest in wasting time on that. I pressed start anyway expecting a title screen, and it sent me to....World 9-1?! WORLD 9-1?!?! And it's a WATER LEVEL?!?!?!

"Yes!" says the game, "And I'll do you one better! This isn't just a water level...it's a water level with ground-based enemies! Haven't you always wanted to swim for dear life while Hammer Bros. and paratroopas and lakitus hunt you down like the felon you are? Haven't you always wanted to be completely defenseless while we defy all convention and physics with the sole purpose of murdering you repeatedly?"

No! I've never wanted any of that! It's so ridiculous that after the water levels of Worlds 9-1 and 9-2, in World 9-3, Bowser music starts playing. When you eventually find him he is inside a wall, completely invincible, happily chucking hammers at you. What. The. Hell. And then 9-4? Yep. Another water level. Uncalled for! Moreover, it is my understanding that in the NES version of the game, you had a single life to complete all four stages consecutively. No second chances. Furthermore! Completion of 9-4 sends you to World A-1. So they have to letter them now? I guess the hexadecimal coding would have thrown a fit with "10-1" or something. And the absurdity continues, as now squids will fly through midair and the like. And in the original version of the game, access to these "letter worlds" was granted only after beating the game eight times. Which of course, as you can tell from the existence of more levels, wasn't actually beating the game at all. You had to play the thing eight times just to finish it?! Why do that to your customers? Why?!

Oh, and THIS GUY. Super Mario Bros. introduced the warp zone, but now you can get sent backwards? How twisted can you get? It's bad enough to play through any given stage once, but to send me back to do it all over again because I found a freaking bonus area is downright insulting. It's a cruel irony that the only solace to be found in this situation is to remember that eventually the clock will run out and you will die, so you can at least start at your current level, if you have the presence of mind to realize this before jumping into the pipe and wiping away all that hard work.

And hard work it is! Keep in mind that Super Mario Bros. had no save system whatsoever. The Lost Levels, appearing on the SNES, bucks that tradition and allows you to save at the beginning of each world. And when you lose all five of your starting lives (as you're quite unlikely to actually acquire more), you may continue from the stage on which you died as many times as you like so long as you don't quit the game. However, the NES version featured no saving capabilities, continues were offered only at the beginning of each world (as opposed to per stage), and you only started with three lives. That's three lives to get through four nightmarish levels each time. I can't call it impossible, but it's damn near it...certainly improbable at the very least. So yes, even when Nintendo of America DID decide to give us this game, they made it easier. And it's still quite possibly the hardest game I have ever completed.

All kinds of challenges are implemented in this game, most of which are not possible to figure out the first time through, forcing you to replay entire levels and worlds. The game added wind effects, such that Mario can be blown off platforms to his death. You have to walk against the wind to stay on, but as you try to simply "treadmill" the effect by walking against the current, you inevitably hit that sudden moment at which you outwalk the wind and run off the opposite edge of the platform, again to your death. And most of these levels feature giant springs, which were never a fun part of the first game. But now they launch you entirely off the screen and you must traverse whole sections of the level with no real idea where you are, and land (in the wind) on a tiny platform with another such spring, and so on until level's end. It's a total pain, not enjoyable in the least, and often your descent is littered with flying enemies as well. What a waste of gameplay.

There is at least one point at which you can literally not proceed with a level because you are guaranteed to take a hit and you are small Mario. And with no question boxes around, you have to sit there spending the first part of the stage jumping everywhere in sight until you find the invisible block with the super mushroom. Then you must retain your "bigness" until the part that is guaranteed to hurt you, and survive the remainder of the level as little Mario. I will note that this is in a castle stage, which also features a second Bowser. Yeah, that's right, you get to Bowser and get by him and there's another Bowser. Lovely.

And speaking of powerups, it wasn't until World 6-3 that I even saw a fire flower. I know because I marked the occasion specially. I was convinced for a while that they didn't even exist, because I figured they didn't need to. While poison mushrooms were plentiful (the game IS trying to kill you as often as possible, after all), super mushrooms were few and far between. Retaining one long enough to find another powerup block seemed unfathomable, so when I finally saw a fire flower I grabbed it right away, eager to have any extra edge. And of course, I fell into a bottomless pit ten seconds later on a rigged jump, designed specifically to kill you right after you get a powerup, because that crushes your dreams more than normal.

As an added slap in the face, The Lost Levels did away with multiplayer. Sure, the two player mode on Super Mario Bros. only consisted of taking turns, waiting for one another to die so you could have a chance to play, but it was something. Here, in perhaps the game's only act of mercy, Nintendo decided that having more than one person experience this game at a time would be heinous. So instead, they offered a choice to play through the game as Luigi instead of Mario.

And this marked the first real difference in how the two characters played, establishing a precedent that would last to this day. While Mario played as always, Luigi actually jumped higher and farther than his older brother. This is naturally humiliating, because jumping is the only thing Mario is good for. He can even jump over the flag at the end of the levels as you see pictured above, which he does from time to time in order to take a dump on this deformity of a game. So you'd think playing the game as Luigi would be easier and a no-brainer, but of course it's not. To compensate for his extra jumping abilities, Nintendo made Luigi run slower and skid more. That is, when trying to slow down or change direction on the ground, Luigi is out of control for longer. So while you'll land the hard jumps a little easier, you'll also fall off platforms almost constantly, which makes it so that Luigi is probably an even worse choice than Mario in many cases. Still though, despite controlling a little more awkwardly, the ability to outjump Mario made Luigi a popular choice, and his more appealing color combination (to many gamers' eyes) meant perhaps Mario was going to have some competition for fans...

Now Nintendo has released The Lost Levels, in its original NES version, on the Wii's Virtual Console at a cost of $6. Is this a worthy investment? The answer is a resounding no. The game is like gargling a vial of acid while trying to play "Chopsticks" one-handed on a piano covered in tar. The easier SNES version is bad enough without actually PAYING for the earlier one. Its inclusion in a bundle of GOOD games is the only reason anyone should ever own it. Nintendo of America was right to keep this game from seeing the light of day...if only Nintendo of Japan had done the same thing.

Bottom Line: 4/20

Mega Man 2

2009-08-30T10:07:00.000-07:00

A year or so had passed since Mega Man first graced the Nintendo Entertainment System, and its sales had been less than spectacular. The game wasn't even that bad, so perhaps it was just dumb luck preventing the title from really catching on. Regardless, Capcom hesitantly decided to go ahead and make a sequel to see if it would fare any better than the first. They knew they liked what they had on their hands, but if the public wasn't buying, what can you do? So if Mega Man 2 was successful, they could justify the series. If not, I suppose it was time to throw in the towel. Mega Man 2: This time, the fate of the franchise lies in your hands.

Regarding the game's internal plot, things are more or less the same as the first time around. Whereas the background of the first game was that Dr. Wily had stolen and reprogrammed the game's six robot bosses, the intro for Mega Man 2 states that after his defeat (when you inexplicably walked away from him, letting him go where he pleased) Dr. Wily created eight robots of his own in an effort to destroy Mega Man and conquer the world. Which is no surprise, really. We're talking about, as you might recall, the quite literal Albert Einstein of the engineering world, and he just happens to be a total jerk. This is why you don't let villains go free when you beat them. At the very least you throw them in jail. Even the "I'm not gonna kill anyone but I'll use a really gruff voice to make you think I might" Batman realizes this point. Why can't a robot whose sole purpose in existence is to protect humanity from this sort of thing?

The good news, if the stage select screen is any indication, is that Dr. Wily created the eight "Robot Masters" out of whatever he happened to have lying around. I guess he couldn't be troubled to get high quality parts, or maybe couldn't afford to really go all out with it. So he decided to take a floor fan and put some eyes on it. Some lumber and stick a microchip in the top. You know, whatever works.

And for the rest of his robot army, the standards were even lower. Giant bats lie in wait for you in the forests, eager to fly off screen harmlessly when you least expect it. Scary, isn't it? Many of the standard robots from the first game make a return here. Particularly worth noting is the hard hat robot, which hides under its hat until you get near, and then reveals itself to shoot you. Then it retreats again. This thing would become synonymous with Mega Man games over time, and is one of the most memorable "standard" enemies in the game regardless of the fact that it's one of the most basic things you'll see. But hey, we remember Goombas and Koopa Troopas pretty well too, so I guess there's something to be said for the little guys.

In addition to the sharper graphics, one of the first things you notice as you play Mega Man 2 is that music is really quite good. The music in the first game was fine, but I also can't sit here and say that I actually remember any of the tunes or how they went. Mega Man 2, by contrast, has a few really great numbers, particularly on the first Dr. Wily stage. Which is a bit of a surprise (although perhaps it shouldn't be), because when we look for stellar video game music, we often tend toward games like RPGs that are trying to set up an "epic" kind of atmosphere. So bravo Mega Man 2 for saying, through your music, "I am what I am, and this song is gonna kick ass anyway."

But what doesn't kick ass is a water level. The first Mega Man didn't have one (though it did have an ice stage, which is bad enough), so you might enter this game lulled into a false sense of security. Don't be fooled! Mega Man 2 will submerge you, assault you with robotic fish and...metroids...before finally pitting you against the stage's boss, also totally underwater. The only good news is the lack of a need to breathe, which I assume is a product of your being an android. Or "super robot" as the game calls you. I trusted you, Mega Man. I trusted you to be the one game character who didn't have to go underwater to prove himself. But you just had to sink down to that level, didn't you?

That all said, the stages do have nice, distinct feels to them. Air Man's level takes place, predictably, entirely in the sky on various platforms. You'll even have to ride on robotic clouds to get through part of it (which might be a little overboard in the story department. Why is Dr. Wily manufacturing robotic clouds?) There's a good deal of challenge and outright panic from lasers in a stage or two as well. When you enter a given screen, laser beams will begin to fire. These kill you on contact, so the goal is to pass the screen before the lasers block your ability to do so. You'll probably die quite a bit, and it's very hectic, but an interesting concept.

The weapons system is all snazzied up now as well. Now you get a screen telling you the name of each weapon when you acquire it, and showing Mega Man's suit change colors. Oooooooh. At three different points along the way, Dr. Light will interrupt you on this screen to tell you that an "item" has been completed. The only way to have any idea what these items are is to use them in the game, and figure it out from there, which is a little confusing initially. Each one is helpful though, as Item-1 creates a platform that rises when jumped upon, Item-2 creates a platform that moves forward laterally, and Item-3 creates a platform that crawls up the sides of walls. The game will force you use all of these at some point or other to progress, even if only to justify their existence in the game.

There are also now energy tanks to be found in the game, or E-tanks for short. These are found in often hard to reach places in the levels, and are collected for use at any time down the road. Opening the pause menu will show how many E-tanks you have, and using one will completely fill Mega Man's life bar. This is a great addition for difficult bosses and the like. Enemy special weapons also bear more use outside of boss battles. While the convention of having each weapon be extra effective against a specific boss remains, now some standard enemies can only be damaged by special weapons. There are more weapon-specific shortcuts through stages to be found as well. While you still don't really know what weapon will help in what way outside of trial and error, the fact that they have added worth is a bonus.

But what would a Mega Man game be without gobs of spikes waiting to obliterate you with a single poke? Mega Man 2 turns up the spike content of the game, culminating with rooms like the one at right. Here you must wait for the little platform to go around its winding track to drop from your ladder safely. Then you must ride it around, jumping strategically at various points to avoid certain spiky death, all while avoiding the enemies that fly in at you from the sides of the screen (and they will continuously spawn if you kill them). This goes on for a few screens in a row, and it's quite traumatizing if you happen to have a paralyzing fear of stationary pointy objects. Personally, I now shudder any time I see a conical piece of metal, and I blame Mega Man for it.

With all this, you'd think the game's difficulty would be significantly higher than its predecessor, but you'll be pleasantly surprised. For one thing, in a move of typical Japanese gaming arrogance, Capcom made an easier difficulty level for the North American release of the game. Rather than call this mode "Easy," they called it "Normal" and made the original product "Difficult." Yet even on "Difficult" mode, the game isn't as hard as the first. Part of this is from the E-tank and added weapon functionality. Part of this is a tighter control that means Mega Man doesn't scoot as much when walking as he used to, which was a minor problem the first time around. But the main advantage was the password system. As the game still lacked a save function, players could now write down passwords that contained which stages they had completed (and therefore what equipment they had), as well as how many E-tanks they possessed, allowing them to pick up where they left off after any length of time. It was a great idea and helped buck the notion that "real games" had to be played start to finish all at once.

By the Dr. Wily stages at the end of the game, you've encountered a lot of enjoyable content. Which is why it's pretty satisfying to see the triumphant return of Gutsman from the first game, now in tank form. He also launches those hard hat bots at you, which is a great if silly way to lay on the attack. The only really confusing thing is his size. If Dr. Wily just grafted his upper half onto some tank treads, as it would appear, then how is he so big? Wasn't he just barely taller than Mega Man in the first place? Either way, he's one of a few memorable bosses at the end of the game, the others being a dragon and Dr. Wily himself.

And that fight is interesting, because after enduring the long battle with Wily's new big riding contraption, he leaps out all kung fu style, in slow motion even, with wind blowing his hair and labcoat. And then he transforms into a flying alien and starts shooting you. What in the world. It's a great twist, and even cooler when you defeat him and realize what's actually going on (I won't ruin what, but suffice it to say appearances can be deceiving). But infuriatingly, you let him go. Again. Artificial intelligence my butt.

Mega Man 2's improvements to the formula weren't drastic and didn't alter the feel of the game, but there is no doubt that they were all important and successful. The public must have noticed, because the game caught on like wildfire and suddenly Capcom felt justified in keeping the series alive. Mega Man 2 is not a perfect game, and possibly not even an excellent game, but it had to be good in order to survive, and it definitely is, and definitely is better than the first. Check it out if you haven't already.

Bottom Line: 15/20

Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting

2009-08-25T05:01:00.000-07:00

By late 1992 there was some actual competition developing in the fighting game market. While Capcom sought to stay a step ahead by releasing a new version of their popular fighter, entirely new games with their own styles, characters, and fighting systems were appearing and gaining their own followings. So it was that eight months after the release of Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, Capcom decided to revamp their now-flagship franchise once again.

Arcade owners had long been hacking into the hardware of Street Fighter II, reprogramming the game to run more quickly for faster action and more combo potential. "Combos" were becoming quite the rage, you see. And it was in this sort of illegal modification world that Capcom figured they could make a buck and sate their fanbase. Thus, the primary new feature of Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting was a substantially increased game speed. To play one of the older versions and jump straight into this was like a sugar rush, and honestly a bit disorienting at first.

The second major change from the previous versions was the addition of new special moves for many of the characters. For instance, as pictured, Chun Li can now shoot a fireball. Dhalsim can now teleport, borrowing a popular convention from a rival game. Ryu and Ken can now hurricane kick while in mid-air. The new moves naturally alter the way most of these characters can be played, opening up entirely new strategies, and therefore requiring entirely new strategies to defeat them as well. Which might be exciting and interesting, but the moves haven't been balanced incredibly well. Most of the new moves are a bit overpowered here in their first incarnation, though they'd eventually become great additions to the franchise. Dhalsim's teleport comes to mind, which allows him to clip through most any attack during the animation - before he actually performs the teleport itself.

The third difference in Hyper Fighting from its predecessors is really the most head-scratching. With the exception of M. Bison, every character in the game has had his or her primary costume colors altered. While some, like Ryu, don't produce a huge difference, some create bizarre appearances. Others are just plain ugly. As an example, Zangief had always worn red trunks and been covered in red bear-wrestling scars. For Hyper Fighting, his trunks were changed to blue. Which is no biggie on its own, but the way the colors were programmed into the game, it made it so that every bit of red on his body was now blue. Blue scars, heck, even a blue tongue. It's just odd. Blanka isn't even green anymore. I can't imagine why they felt it was necessary to make these changes, but the good news is that the original costumes are available as alternates, by pressing the start button to select your character instead of a different input.

Of course, when you toy with the game speed and give everyone new moves, gameplay balance is bound to change quite a bit. That's not necessarily bad in every case, but it really doesn't strike me as a positive in this game. I'd like to single out E. Honda as possibly the most broken character in Hyper Fighting for that reason. He was never a fast guy, so he was always fairly strong...probably third behind Balrog and Zangief in terms of sheer strength. He also had a couple decent special moves and okay mobility. But now they give him a giant butt splash that allows him to leap diagonally from one corner of the screen to another, hitting potentially twice. Of course, it's commanded with a charge (holding a direction a certain amount of time before releasing, to give the general idea), to prevent you from abusing it. But the computer doesn't need to charge anything - it just says "This move is in my programming, I want to do it now, done." So he'll chain this crap and it's stupidly powerful. Not to mention he is now able to actually walk while doing his rapid hand slap attack. A sample (and honestly not unusual in the least) match against E. Honda might go like this:

1) Announcer says "Fight."
2) Honda attacks you and you block.
3) You press any button other than block to move or counter.
4) Honda instantly butt splashes you for a third of your life.
5) He does it again for another third, which also stuns you.
6) Now you're in a corner, so he hand-slaps you while walking forward, effectively trapping you and forcing you to take every hit.
7) You're dead after 12 ticks of the clock.

Even his throws are absurd, one of them doing at least half your life bar in damage when it fully connects. There are other instances of broken moves or unbalanced characters, but this is by far the most glaring.

Overall, Hyper Fighting was a bit of a step back for the Street Fighter II franchise. The speed, which was supposed to be its greatest feature, is actually its greatest shortcoming. The action on screen (and the match timer by association) is all much quicker, but the system can't recognize your inputs any faster to match. So you're always a step or two behind the game in trying to do anything, which can get frustrating in a hurry. You'll be driven crazy at the constant shouting of "Tiger!" from Sagat when his new AI tells him to stand on the other side of the screen doing nothing but barraging you with projectiles, faster than a human could possibly input them. And the new special moves aren't bad, but really aren't appealing enough to cause this game to be preferable to either of its previous incarnations. As a result, Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting is the worst version of the game. If you have a choice to play one of the other ones instead, do it.

Bottom Line: 11/20

Street Fighter II: Champion Edition

2009-08-18T14:36:00.000-07:00

A year after Street Fighter II: The World Warrior was released, other companies had begun developing their own fighting games to compete with Capcom. While no substantial competitor had yet been released, Capcom decided to get a step ahead and release an updated version of Street Fighter II, called Champion Editon. While not a new game in its own right, Champion Edition brought a few important changes to the game that are worth noting.

The first thing you'll notice is that the four boss characters from Street Fighter II: The World Warrior are now selectable. Players can now be Balrog, Vega, Sagat, or even M. Bison, complete with the special moves of all. All four of these characters therefore also received their own endings, though they are less personalized or interesting than the original eight characters.

Because these bosses are playable, some of their abilities have been tweaked. Now Vega can perform his swan dive in the absence of a fence, which is handy considering that is only present on one stage. Balrog's punches have been toned down in damage as well, and there are several other similar changes. In fact, the overall character balance has been retooled a bit in the arcade matches as well. Originally, Balrog and Vega were very tough, while Sagat and M. Bison weren't that bad. Now M. Bison is significantly tougher, even bordering on cheap the way he clips through most attacks, but the other three bosses are all easier than the first time around to even things out.

The second major change Champion Edition brings is that characters are now able to fight themselves using alternate color schemes. This also adds an extra match to the single-player game, but is great for multiplayer; for the first time, two people who love to be Ken, for instance, can both have their way. It's a feature that virtually every fighting game thereafter would adopt. Of course, if viewed from a story perspective it doesn't exactly make any sense whatsoever. But that's not the point, and who could complain in this case?

All told, the two major additions outlined above are great improvements to an already solid game. Yet some of the character rebalancing isn't as nice as you'd like it to be, and the game actually feels a little stiffer and slower than its first incarnation. The framerate will occasionally slow down for a brief moment, only to overspeed the next to compensate. It's not a huge issue and doesn't ruin the gameplay really, but in the end it averages the score out so that Champion Edition isn't any better or worse than The World Warrior. This one has better selection options, and the original has a better gameplay feel, so pick your poison really.

Bottom Line: 15/20

Final Fantasy

2009-08-15T09:41:00.000-07:00

Back when games were created to be played and finished in a single setting, this title dared to be different. Square designed one of the largest and longest games anyone had ever seen, put in a save feature, stole as much Dungeons and Dragons material and gameplay as they could without infringing any copyrights, and looked on as players would spend hours upon hours trying to complete their creation. Final Fantasy was born.

The game opens with some lovely midi arpeggios while a loose backstory is given through a wall of text. You are then taken to the party creation screen. Here you select four characters out of six possible classes (though it is possible to have multiples of the same character should you desire it), and name them. These are now the Warriors of Light, prophesied to save the world. The classes are: Fighter (high attack and defense), Black Belt (high health and accuracy), Thief (high ability to run from combat like a coward), White Mage (healing and defensive magics), Black Mage (damaging and other offensive magics), and Red Mage (limited proficiency with both schools of magic and reasonable combat ability).

With your selection, the game begins, but don't let this title screen fool you. You don't see this until a ways in. Instead, after choosing your party, you're sent right into the world. You know that the basic background story has something to do with some orbs that you're carrying, but that's sort of all you've got to go on. So you find the nearest king and ask him what in the world you should be doing. He tells you that some rogue knight named Garland has kidnapped the princess (ugh...) and is holding her in a ruined temple. So off you go on your little errand.

It's only after defeating Garland and saving the princess that the title screen even shows up. And looking at it, I can understand why. If the A-Team had a hand in the making of this game, of course they want to jump straight into the action. It suddenly makes a lot more sense. Sadly, the same can't be said for the plot itself.

While it might have seemed like saving the princess was important from the way everyone was yelling at you to do it, your actual reward is a locked castle treasury (the key to which is who-knows-where) and a bridge to go to another town and see if they have any errands for you. Aren't you supposed to be the mighty Light Warriors? Isn't your goal supposed to be saving the entire world in some way, or at the very least felling all manner of foul and ill-tempered beasts so that your name might be passed down in legend?

Instead you get to jump from town to town doing things like scaring off pirates. Please. And really, even if you're not saving the world right now, what you really want is to just get into that treasury in the first castle. That's your real motive as you're playing the game at this point - you want that damn treasure, so you have to find the key. And that's when the horrible truth reaches you. The desire for this key will send you on a chain of monotonous and otherwise pointless errands. You find out that the key is held by the elven prince, so you go to talk to him. But he's been cursed and the only cure is an herb, held by a witch on the other side of the continent. So you find her, but she won't cough up the herb because she's lost her crystal and gone blind. Some guy named Astos evidently stole it, so now you're hunting him. So you find an area you haven't been to and ask some guy about Astos, and he won't help you until you find him a crown. The crown just happens to be in a cave swarming with enemies, but in you go anyway, because what else can you do? So you get it for him and he tells you he actually was Astos all along and then tries to kill you. Are you bored yet reading about this? If so, that's a good thing - it means you're still sane. And imagine having to play it! Let's sum up your order of tasks here:

Get a boat so you can...
Find a guy to tell you about a cave so you can...
Clear the entire cave of monsters to get a crown so you can...
Find Astos to give him the crown so you can...
Defeat Astos to get a crystal so you can...
Give the crystal to the witch to get the herb so you can...
Give the herb to the cursed prince so you can...
Get a key to finally get some freaking treasure.

That's a whole lot of work just to open a few treasure chests, but there is literally no other motivation provided for doing any of it. And the entire time you're wondering why you aren't doing something more important, or even related to the overall plot. So off you go, destroying groups of undead Thomas Dolbys, hoping that eventually you'll have a real purpose in this game. But it won't come soon, considering the treasury just gives you another item that causes you to go off on more errands. Isn't this game supposed to be about story? Isn't that supposed to be its strength? Shouldn't I have some reason for engaging in battle after battle?

The good news is that the battling itself isn't terrible. Battles consist of rounds, with each round providing an opportunity for every participant in the fight to take a turn. You are given a menu with the options to attack an enemy, cast a spell, drink a potion, use a magical item, or attempt to run away. The order of turns is apparently random each round, although it seems like some characters tend to take longer than others to act. With each attack you are shown who or what is attacking which target, how they are attacking it (if in an unusual way), and then the result of that attack (either the damage dealt, or that the attack missed, or possibly some other effect). After everyone has taken a turn, the next round begins until there is either a winner or you flee the battle. Upon a battle victory, you are rewarded experience points and gold. The former of these grants you better stats as you reach certain numbers of points (to "level up"), and the latter obviously lets you buy things.

And you'll need a lot of gold because things get expensive in a jiffy. Some characters are cheaper to maintain than others (for example, the Black Belt never uses any equipment), but by and large you will be pressed for cash quite often. Which results in a need to "grind" out extra gold by deliberately engaging in battles. This aspect of the game is honestly a bit of a nuisance, and would be incredibly detrimental if the battling weren't enjoyable in itself. Even still, it does get tedious, particularly because the battle system isn't perfect. For instance, if you told a character to attack an enemy, and that enemy dies before your attack occurs (say, from an attack from one of your other three characters), your attacker will not follow common sense and target another enemy. He will instead unleash a fury of blows upon the empty space, and you will be told it was "Ineffective." That's just silly. Battles can also last longer than it seems like they should, because magic spells work incredibly slowly. Casting a spell is often necessary, or at least highly beneficial, but they take so much real-life time that you might just skip it most of the time.

But the magic is a pretty neat addition regardless. You buy the spells from shops (and these are the most expensive things in the game), and thus "teach" them to your mages. Spells are divided into schools of white and black magic, and then again into spell levels, of which there are eight. Level 8 spells are very powerful, while Level 1 spells are pretty worthless. There are four spells per level per school, though any given character can only learn three spells per level, requiring some planning and choice in the matter. While the Red Mage class can get by attacking with swords and the like, the White and Black Mages are far too weak to do anything but cast magic. By the end of the game this is great because their arsenals of spells will be exceedingly helpful, but it's a pain in the ass when you start. Especially because you are limited to a certain number of spell casts per level before you need to rest, so early on when that number is low, you will be out of magic quite often. And since their attacks are worthless, you end up just carrying dead weight on your team. No good.

Now I'm aware the tone of this review has seemed more negative than positive so far, and that's probably because the areas in which this game falls short are the ones that drag it out longer and create an impression of mindless repetition in the game. But if you are patient enough to get through the meaningless adventuring that comprises the first half of the game, you're nicely rewarded with a very fun experience. Suddenly you start to find out more and more about the mysterious orbs you're lugging around. Suddenly you start encountering the powerful evil beings that are threatening the world as you know it. Suddenly you realize that your mages have enough spells to not be annoyances, and that battles take less time to complete with a higher reward for their completion. Suddenly you start finding yourself in various vehicles, including, eventually, an airship that lets you travel the entire world very quickly. And that's a godsend. Suddenly you start seeing and appreciating the subtle humor in the game's text and dialogues, such as a mermaid in the underwater shrine asking you how you can breathe underwater (for which no explanation actually is given), and another making a pretty hilarious reference to Splash.

There are even some fun side-quests that really help you out, such as finding Bahamut, King of Dragons. He sends you to a dungeon of sorts - appropriately called the Castle of Ordeals - to prove your courage, and then rewards you by giving each of your characters new and improved classes. The Fighter becomes a Knight, the mages all become wizards of their respective colors, the Black Belt becomes a Master, and the Thief (who as you might recall was good solely at fleeing battle) now becomes a Ninja, and that's awesome. It's like an added bonus for putting up with an otherwise worthless class for so long. With these new classes come new abilities, such as the casting of higher level spells, or drastically improved stats, or the ability to use more equipment. And with your newfound power you recharge each of the orbs, one by one, to reach your final destination.

Now I won't spoil the plot here, because it's actually pretty neat. I think that was their plan, really. They made the story so worthless for so long that when it finally shifts back into reasonable and interesting territory, you're eating it up like it's the best thing you've ever heard. And hey, can't fault them for what works. I will say though that the "ultimate evil force" that you have to defeat at the end (regardless of how or why it got to that point) is Chaos. That's right, your goal is to fight an abstraction and lay it to waste. And by abstraction I mean big yellow demon. Because I'm sure that's what chaos would really look like, if it materialized.

And how sweet is it that you get a spell called Nuke? Oh sure, there's fire and ice and lightning, and sure you can heal people and blind enemies and all that...but we're talking about a guy splitting an atom and doing it like he's firing a Street Fighter-style hadouken. And directing it all into your face. Is it worth all the hours of play to get to the point at which you can begin detonating nuclear bombs on people's heads? Unequivocally, yes. Yes it is.

Final Fantasy was definitely groundbreaking in a number of ways. While it has some noticeable flaws (even some spells that outright weren't programmed correctly), and its first half is grueling and pointless, its second half is really engaging and entertaining. The plot goes from possibly interesting when you turn on the game, to cliché, to non-existent, to minimal, and then back all the way to well-thought out and surprisingly decent. It's a game with ups and downs, but it's always better to start with the down and improve than the reverse, and Final Fantasy does this. It's certainly worth a look, although you may have to be patient at first. Give it time - it grows on you.

Bottom Line: 14/20

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior

2009-08-11T09:56:00.000-07:00

Four years after the release of Street Fighter, its sequel was finally about to arrive. And in general nobody cared. The first game probably had its following, but was terrible any way you slice it. I'd even go so far as to say the game not only didn't deserve a sequel, but also that the creation of a followup game would be on the fast track to being one of the worst games of the year.

Sometimes, it feels pretty good to be wrong, and Street Fighter II: The World Warrior is one of those times. With this game Capcom took everything that was awful about the original and either removed or fixed it. Then they took everything that was good about the first game (which wasn't much, but it had its decent ideas, execution aside) and made it better. That Street Fighter II was a good game was surprising, but after playing it, there was no surprise at the way it spawned an entire fighting game industry.

The first improvement is obvious from the beginning. While Street Fighter only let you play as Ryu (or Ken if you were in two-player battles), Street Fighter II expands the character selection to eight. And while Ryu and Ken are still essentially the same fighter with different appearances, each of the remaining six choices are completely unique from one another.

Ken and Ryu continue to rely on their special moves from the first game, but then you have Guile, who is less a martial artist and more of a street fighter in style. Which is already a step up, since now there is finally someone whose technique actually fits the game's title. There is Zangief, a Soviet wrestler covered in scars from all the bear wrestling he does in his spare time. Now that's a man (who just happens to be adapted directly from Mike Haggar of Final Fight fame). We have E. Honda, a sumo who can launch himself like a human projectile. We have Dhalsim, a Hindu ascetic whose yoga mastery allows him to stretch his limbs across half the screen. And we have Chun Li, significant more for being female than for anything else, though she can kick like lightning.

Finally, there's Blanka, who gets Street Fighter II's "Why Do You Exist?" award. He's supposedly human, despite the greenish appearance, and he's supposedly fighting with the Brazilian martial art capoeira, but most of the time he'll be somersaulting, biting his opponent like a vampire, or generating electricity by constipating himself. Not that I'm upset he's in the game; he's a great character and fun to play. It just doesn't make much sense when compared to everyone else. In that sense we might call Blanka the father of all the bizarre characters in fighting games...those guys who always seem just a tad out of place.

The gameplay mechanics are unchanged from Street Fighter, but are actually in working order this time around. Blocking is still accomplished by moving away from your opponent. There are still six attack buttons, but now they really make up six different kinds of attacks. There are still special moves, but now they control far more tightly so it's not a debacle trying to execute one. And the entire game is now responsive. The first game was so laggy it was nearly unplayable, but the game and control speed have now been evened out to make the whole thing run very smoothly.

Bonus stages make a return in Street Fighter II, occurring after every three victories through the single-player game. Now instead of kicking through boards, however, you have to beat a car to death with your bare hands, or destroy barrels that are falling on your head. These stages make less sense than their predecessors, but perhaps that's part of why they're so much more fun. And it's nice to have a diversion on occasion from the senseless violence the rest of the game espouses.

Not that the violence is bad - it's thoroughly enjoyable. But the story for the game is still pretty sparse. The overarching "plot" is virtually identical to the first game: it's a fighting tournament taking place all over the world to determine who the world's strongest/best fighter is. But that's not really compelling. We know that you won the first tournament in Street Fighter as Ryu, and he is therefore the defending champion, but it's meaningless within the game. To that end Capcom created loose backstories and motivations for each character. Guile and Chun Li are hunting down the game's final boss for criminal activity, for instance (Guile with the US military and Chun Li with Interpol). E. Honda wants to prove that sumo isn't just fat dudes in thongs belly bumping. None of these is fleshed out, but I give Capcom credit for recognizing they should explain the presence of all these diverse characters.

After defeating every selectable character in the single-player game, you must fight through four consecutive boss battles. The common thread is that all bosses are members of the criminal organization Shadaloo, which is also sponsoring the tournament. When the game was released in Japan, the first of these four bosses was an African American boxer named Mike Bison who was designed to be, of course, Mike Tyson. He even had the gap in his teeth, and wore some bling in his closeup photo. Because in America that would result in a suit for copyright infringement (you can copyright a human being?), they changed his name to Balrog.

Balrog is the game's only fighter who can't kick, but he doesn't need to. He punches absurdly hard, and is pretty quick to boot. Defeating him sends you to Vega (who had been the original Balrog in Japan...this is confusing I know), a Spanish narcissist who is the only character to use a weapon. That, and he can go into the background where he is invincible (as pictured above) to swan dive on your face. Afterward, you fight Sagat, who was the boss of Street Fighter. He's now got a massive scar on his chest from Ryu's dragon punch special move at the end of the first game, and he's pretty pissed about it. Which I guess led him to join a crime ring.

Finally, when everyone else is defeated, you fight the end boss. In Japan this was the original Vega, but because Vega was now the claw dude, America was left with Mike Bison as the remaining unused name. But does a military dictator in full uniform really strike you as a "Mike Bison?" No? What about an "M. Bison?" Yeah, sounds better now doesn't it? What's the M stand for now? Murder?

While the single-player game is superior in every way to Street Fighter's, it's the multiplayer mode where the game really shines brightest. You're bound to find a character out of the eight who is your favorite, and with six attack buttons that themselves can do 3-4 different attacks each depending on situation, there are a lot of nuances to learn. It's one of those "easy to learn, hard to master" types of games that generates a lot of really fun and rewarding competition. And the balance between fighters is significantly better than you might think. At first you'll choose Dhalsim because he can punch you from across the screen, and you'll think you're unstoppable. But then you'll realize that he's one of the slowest people in the game and is easily counter-attacked. So you'll move on to another fighter, but will find weaknesses there too. No single character is vastly superior to any other, and that's quite a feat considering it's the first time Capcom branched out beyond one playable guy.

Every character also has an individual ending for finishing the game. They range from lame (Dhalsim showing a kid a picture of him winning), to cool (Ryu skipping the awards ceremony to find more people to beat up), to downright strange (Blanka shouting "Mommy!" and blubbering like a baby). It further enriches the depth of the experience, which is one with few flaws. The only real complaints are that a few of the special moves still don't command reliably (Guile's "flash kick" comes to mind), the bosses feel like they should be playable, and the fighting can feel a bit stiff. Not laggy or terrible, but just stiff.

All that said, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior is a good game. Comparing it to the original isn't even fair. The main reason nobody remembers Street Fighter is that it was garbage. But the secondary reason is that with this game, Capcom eliminated any reason for anyone to ever play the first title again. So with that said, I think it's now time for us to celebrate in the appropriate Russian fashion.

Bottom Line: 15/20

Donkey Kong Country

2009-08-07T09:45:00.000-07:00

Donkey Kong was an arcade legend. He had given Mario his first appearance in a game, as both hero and villain. He made red girders into a cultural icon. He introduced us to his son, Donkey Kong, Jr. He even helped teach us math, which in hindsight was a little on the weird side. And then he vanished until 1994, when Nintendo hired a company called Rare to bring him back.

Rare decided to make a platforming game that was simultaneously true to old formulas while breaking new ground. They utilized fancy rendering technology to make the game look great, which is probably the main reason people remember this game as being awesome (it wasn't). They gave us a huge, detailed map screen, an extended credits sequence, and a truly outstanding musical score. But you'll notice that I didn't include gameplay in that list of notable positives in this game.

First off, gameplay generally consists of running around a sidescrolling level, jumping on the heads of any enemy you come across. Sound familiar? You can also do a frontal attack on some enemies, but many will kill you for trying, so you might as well just jump. You'll find bananas floating around as you go. Collect a hundred for an extra life. Ringing any bells yet? There are occasionally hidden bonus areas full of bananas for you to collect. Still nothing?

Of course, then you start riding around on a rhinoceros. Occasionally in the game you will find a crate with the picture of an animal on the side. These can be the rhino, a swordfish, a frog, or even an ostrich. They all have special abilities that are supposed to aid you. I say supposed to, because often you'll end up screwed due to the difference in how they play. For example, when riding the ostrich, you can't jump on enemies anymore. But that's all you do in the game so how was I supposed to know? So I jump on an enemy and my ostrich gets hurt and runs away. And now I'm flashing temporarily invincible because the game doesn't want me to get hit multiple times in a row. Which is normally respectable, but I can't interact with anything on screen (enemies, objects, etc) during this time period. In fact, I even clip through enemies. So now when I try again to jump on that same enemy because I'm no longer a worthless ostrich, I go through it. And then the invincibility wears off and the game says "Hey, you're standing in the enemy. Unacceptable." And you die. I wish I could say this kind of glitchiness is infrequent, but it's not.

Now you might be wondering why there are always two apes around. The answer is that you play through this game controlling both Donkey Kong, the big one with...the necktie...and Diddy Kong, who is supposed to be his nephew or some sort of freaky relation. You start with one Kong but can break barrels with "DK" on the side throughout the game to have the second one accompany you, which gets you an extra hit before you die. You can also switch between them by hitting the select button, but only if you're standing perfectly still on solid terrain that is flat....how is a gorilla related that closely to a chimpanzee anyway? Sorry, it's just still bothering me.

The functional difference between the two is fairly clear. Donkey is heavier than Diddy and can therefore kill more enemies by jumping on them than Diddy can. Diddy will usually just bounce off these enemies (more often than not straight into a bottomless pit). Donkey attacks with a somersault, and Diddy with a cartwheel, though this is meaningless since you never use these attacks anyway. That said, Diddy is faster than Donkey, jumps higher, and his smaller frame helps him avoid hits that much easier. As a result, throughout the game you will virtually always want to be Diddy, unless you are forced to be Donkey for certain enemies or situations. How sad is it that he's not even the best character in his own game? And when you have both, the one you aren't controlling follows you around, ignoring physics entirely. He'll float in midair, phase through objects, you know, whatever suits his fancy at the time. It's like they weren't even trying.

Level design is a huge gripe here. Rare sought to relieve the tedium of run-around-and-jump-on-stuff by creating a variety of different level types to play through. Only one of these kinds of levels, the mine cart, is any fun. You get to ride around in a mine car jumping from track to track while avoiding enemies, and it's actually a pretty good time. All the other non-basic levels suck.

For example, barrel blasting. There are a significant number of stages in this game devoted to shooting yourself out of barrels and into other barrels. It sounds like it might possibly be entertaining, but don't be lured in. The occasional barrel launch is fine, but the stages devoted entirely to the cause belong in a vault, never to be played again. You shoot yourself out of automatically-rotating barrels, having to press the button at the right time to go where you want. But the timing is screwed up and it will frequently rotate the barrel an extra notch (even a notch backward) when you tell it to fire. Which of course kills you. If you manage to get it right, you'll end up in another barrel to do the same thing. Or maybe in one that fires you automatically into oblivion. That's right, there are times you can jump into a barrel and it will automatically kill you. No thanks.

There are multiple levels dedicated to not having lights. Let me emphasize: there are multiple levels that revolve entirely around you not being able to see anything you're doing. Sign me up, right? And by "sign me up" I mean suck my life away with rabid leeches. It's not fun in the least, especially when a couple of these dark stages are additionally designed around moving platforms that either fall away when you stand on them, or require tanks of gas to move, and should they run empty, you die. I can't imagine how anyone looked at and played these stages during the development process and said "Yeah, these are real winners."

But then again, these are the same people who decided to champion the water stages and make them even more intolerable than their predecessors. Mario can shoot fire underwater. Sonic can still just spin into stuff and kill it. The Kongs? They can die. And die repeatedly. You can't touch anything down there - it all kills you. Thank goodness you don't ever have to breathe despite being a land mammal not known for swimming...I'm so willing to take any handicap I won't even question it. If you're lucky you'll find the swordfish to ride around on, so at least you can kill some of the enemies, but only from head-on, and the worst enemies remain invincible. It's an underwater gauntlet that you just want to be over.

In fact, "I just want it to be over" will sum up your opinion of the entire game once you get about ten or fifteen levels in. Which makes it a terribly cruel joke that there is a fake ending screen on the last boss, who then gets back up and kills you. In seeking to avoid monotony of platforming, Rare instead just burdened you with horrible level after horrible level. A stage comprised of jumping on small platforms covered in ice when the control is a bit wonky anyway? Sure! Sounds like an absolute blast.

And let's not forget the wonderful cast of characters. The original Donkey Kong has actually aged quite a bit, and is now sitting semi-crippled in a rocking chair, going by the name of Cranky Kong. Way to reinforce stereotypes, game. That means you are actually Donkey Kong, Jr. all grown up. Save points (which are your holy grail as you play) are run by your girlfriend, Candy Kong. And there are airports to get you from area to area, run by this dude, who is, like, more than happy to announce his name to anyone passing by. Who came up with this stuff? There's even an orangutan in some levels (including the ones with no lights!!) that incessantly hurls barrels at you, and the credits list him as Manky Kong. What? Are they related, or is every simian a Kong by default?

At least the plot is deep. You see, King K. Rool, the big crocodile man thing who acts as the game's boss, stole Donkey Kong's bananas from his banana hoard. So you have to go get them back. Man, I was upset about this game, but now that I know it's for the sake of dude's banana stash I am ready to do anything it takes to get it back.

You might be wondering why this game doesn't have a lower score with how I've been dismantling it. It's because the basic platforming stages aren't actually that bad, and there are a good number of them. But because they offer nothing new or notable, they aren't worth detailing. The music is also truly great. Maybe they should have released Donkey Kong Country just as a soundtrack. That'd be sweet.

Always remember: Just because a game is "classic" does not mean it is any good.

Bottom Line: 9/20

Final Fight

2009-08-03T09:35:00.000-07:00

Metro City has been overrun by gangs for quite some time. The elections for mayor have just been held, and the winner was Mike Haggar, a large man with a moustache that is not to be trifled with. He announced that he would not tolerate the existence of the gangs as his predecessors had, and would seek to eliminate them from the city. Mad Gear, the dominant gang of Metro City, responded to this promise by kidnapping the mayor's daughter and demanding a guarantee that he would let them do as they pleased as payment for her safe return.

Big.
Mistake.

Mayor Haggar took off his shirt and headed down to the gym. There, talking and training, were two allies: Cody, the boyfriend of his daughter, and Cody's good friend Guy, who was a little too good at martial arts to be anything but a video game character. The three of them then set out on their quest...the quest to kick a whole lot of ass. This is Final Fight.

The enemies in Final Fight consist of members of the Mad Gear gang, with the common thugs being the game's bread-and-butter enemies and the higher ranking members acting as area bosses. The enemies all look distinctive, be they wearing a belt covered in knives or a neo-punk getup. But why is Andre the Giant in this game? They call him "Andore" so don't act like it's coincidence. Not that I'm complaining - Andre the Giant is welcome in any video game at any time for any reason. But it's certainly a bit random, particularly in that ruby red leopard print he's got going on there.

The three characters in Final Fight all play fairly distinctly. Mayor Haggar moves slower than Nancy Kerrigan after her "accident," but he doles out massive pain with his fists, and can also slam bodies around in a number of ways. Guy is the reverse of this; he moves quicker than Rain Man can count cards, but hits like a pansy and dies from only a few attacks. Cody is the healthy medium between the two extremes, which on a thought might make him seem like the best character. It's really all dependent on your style though - if you want to just truck everything you see, pick Haggar. If you really don't want to get hit at all, be Guy. If you want to wear normal clothes, pick Cody.

As Haggar's daughter is being held on the other side of town, the game's direction consists in moving eastward across Metro City through various districts and locales. Usually there's some sense to this, with each stage being subdivided into several smaller areas that all reasonably connect to one another and provide a believable change of scenery. And then, sometimes, you simply appear in a wrestling ring with no explanation, fighting an armored, two-sword wielding dude whose name really gives you some motivation to not let him knock you unconscious.

Completing a boss fight essentially equates to ridding that section of town of Mad Gear's presence, as their leader in that area would be gone. Presumably this would mean that any of the gang's members you didn't slaughter throughout the course of the stage would either quit or run off to the next section of the game under the leadership of its boss, ready to be punched repeatedly by your fists. But this sort of speculation is probably putting a bit too much weight into the story of the game, which exists only to give some sort of loose excuse to engage in copious amounts of fisticuffs. Amen.

While every character can attack and jump, and even attack whilst jumping, they all have a special attack as well. The special attack costs health to use, with the amount of health lost dependent on the number of enemies hit with it. As such, it's primarily a tool for getting out of a tight spot, and not to be used liberally. Guy's special move is something a little too similar to Ryu's hurricane kick from Street Fighter, but it does a nice job of clearing space. Cody sort of does this flailing jump kick thing. And Haggar just sticks his arms out, screams, and spins around. Which is obviously the best of the three. High damage AND reach? I'll take me some of that.

The game's also got a lot of weapons. Most of these are found in containers throughout the stages. To be specific, you will most commonly encounter weapons inside oil drums, which is probably the least likely place they could have programmed for them.

-Exec: "We need something to hold the weapons."
-Dude: "Hrm. How about.....uh....oil........drums?"
-Exec: "Give that man a raise!"

Yet oil drums cover the landscape of Metro City, and if they're going to take up the space anyway, why not fill them with implements of violence? There are knives, swords, pipes...more knives. You know, come to think of it, Final Fight might contain more knives than I've ever seen in any other video game. Not only are they strewn about the ground everywhere, but enemies come in chucking them at you, and you can often pick them back off the ground to return the favor. Which is odd because as far as I can tell, only Cody can actually stab someone with a knife. The other two just throw it. Why are there this many knives when stabbing is out of the question?

But you know who doesn't have a problem using weapons? This guy. By this point the question starts to enter your mind about just what sort of gang Mad Gear is. Their bosses have included a samurai, a couple giants, and now...a military dictator? What? And how is he not the last boss? You'd think being the dictator and all, he'd be unlikely to be anyone's subordinate, but that's clearly not the case. And maybe that's what's angering him enough to flip around lobbing infinite numbers of grenades at you. Don't be fooled by that nightstick he's got there. I've only seen him actually attempt to attack with it once. No, Rolento is set on making you explode. Dead set.

So who is the final boss then? Who's the guy who ultimately stole the mayor's daughter and who's the guy who ultimately runs all the Mad Gear gang activity in the city? I mean, if it's not Rolento, this guy must surely be totally awesome and powerful yeah?

Well, I hate to break it to you, but you're looking forward to a fight with a dude in a wheelchair. As if that's fair. You go through this whole game killing a veritable army of knife-throwers, barrel-rollers, and Andre the Giant clones, and when you're ready to put the pain on the dude in charge, he's a cripple? How dare you make me pity my last enemy! And he's a vicious little bugger too. He takes that moment of quiet hesitation and reflection on life's meaning to whip out a crossbow and start a-firing. You know why he has a crossbow? Because he can't shoot a normal bow in that wheelchair of his. See? How's that feel?

"You want to play my sympathies, I swear I will walk laps around your chair just to show off. And then I will hurl you out of a high rise window, because that's what happens to dirty old men like you, ya understand?"
~Mike Haggar, Mayor of Metro City

Dude means business.

Bottom Line: 14/20

Metroid

2009-07-30T07:17:00.000-07:00

I'm going to say something that many readers might find downright offensive, but I implore you to stick with me on this one: Metroid is not a good game. Nor does it come close. Don't get me wrong; I wanted to like Metroid. I tried to like Metroid. Yet of all the old Nintendo classics that launched franchises, this is probably the worst. And its problems would be so easily corrected that it's inexcusable they were left in, particularly when they are so destructive to the gameplay experience.

The game opens with you, bounty hunter Samus Aran, arriving on Planet Zebes to complete your mission to destroy the secret base of the Space Pirates and their pet metroids. But that backstory is all you know, and booting up the game finds you standing on a screen with a couple enemies already walking around, pondering whether or not to kill you, while you have to figure out what in the world you should be doing and where you should be going.

So rather than show you screenshots of the game's action, which admittedly looks cool on its own, I decided I would show you the painful reality of this game as best I could. A major premise of the game is the collection of powerups - Samus' body armor was designed by a birdlike alien race known as the Chozo, who had once inhabited Planet Zebes, and left behind statues with suit modifications on them in case they ever returned. So Samus can steadily gain these throughout the game, becoming more powerful.

Which naturally makes the screen above completely ironic, because somehow - I don't even recall how I found myself there - I got stuck behind this statue whose sole purpose is to give me a powerup. You can't jump back over it because you can't fit between its head and the ceiling. The only way past is to have bombs, which you lay in "morph ball" mode. So if it was unclear, that orange ball is me in this position. The red thing under me is the bomb, which, if I'm lucky, will eventually propel me back over the statue. If I didn't have bombs? Reset the whole game. YEAH.

And then the bosses. Metroid only has three boss fights, and in a game this expansive, that means you'd better make them count. But they all suck. Below is Ridley, whose species is classified as "Space Dragon," as ridiculous as that sounds. He's also the chief of security for the Space Pirates, which is probably why you were able to infiltrate their top secret base in the first place. He fights you by jumping up and down and tossing little purple balls that slow the framerate of the game so severely it's nigh impossible to do anything.

In fact, when you enter through that door on the right, you will likely drop to the platform directly under it to try to shoot him. It's the most reasonable place to go, right? But then you realize you can't shoot through those purple ball things he's firing, so you have to get up on his platform. But you can't jump up there. You know why? Because the door closes and juts out above your head. Seriously! You will drop into that acid stuff because the freaking door was designed to screw you over. If you DO manage to get on the platform, the purple crap usually launches you back deeper into the acid, which constantly drains your life. I honestly have no clue how I got to the place I'm standing in the picture. What I do know, however, is that if you are on that point with the most powerful gun in the game, Ridley can't hit you at all, and you can shoot him freely.

Which sounds like a great deal, except he just...won't...die. The best option at that point is to weigh down the shoot button on your controller somehow, leave the room, and do something productive for a while. Come back half an hour later or so. He might be dead by then, maybe. It's a fight that doesn't test your coordination and gaming skill...only your patience.

And what about this crap? You get knocked back when an enemy hits you, which is fairly standard. But why make this spot that you can get knocked into with absolutely no hope of escape? I tried everything. Jumping out, shooting out, bombing out, even trying to submerge myself in the lava and go under the pillars, but none of them worked. Instead you just get to sit there and watch all your health slowly evaporate until the game over screen. How is that in any way fun?

And speaking of health, that's easily my biggest issue with this game. You start the game with 30 health, or "energy." I thought that was an odd number, but hey, maybe that's where you max out. But no, you quickly realize after killing some enemies and collecting health that you max out at 99. Why would Samus start a mission at less than full strength? It makes no sense. And whenever you die, you continue from the entry point of the region you died in, which is fine in itself; I can accept a penalty for dying. But you start at 30 energy again! Throughout the game you collect energy tanks, each of which increases your capacity by 100 energy points. Eventually you can have 700 energy. But if you die, say on a boss, you are sent back to that starting area at 30 life. Just 30. And of course at that point enemies are doing about 20 damage to you per hit, so you end up in this mind-numbing cycle of dying and restarting. The only way to avoid it is to sit there for an hour killing respawning enemies to refill your health. And the more you can have, the longer time you spend. It's penalizing you for getting upgrades! So you can understand how depressed was on the screen above, with all that health gone forever.

Then there are the metroids themselves, which you honestly by this point begin to believe don't actually exist at all. They're freaky jellyfish things that latch onto your head and suck life away almost as quickly as this game sucks your soul. You have to lay bombs inside them to get them off for a second, but one isn't enough! Imagine someone put a bomb inside your throat. Would you stop whatever you were doing? Of course you would, because you're not ridiculous. This game is. And what's worse, if you've been putting in the effort and time, by this point of the game you have the most powerful weapon upgrade. But guess what? Metroids are immune to it. Fooled you, huh! You have to go all the way back to a totally different area of the game and downgrade your weapon to even have a chance of surviving the encounter.

Not that finding the weapons is easy in the first place. The emphasis in Metroid is on exploration, which is great. I love exploring, and I don't even mind being plopped down with no explanation of where to go, as long as the game is compelling enough to warrant it. Metroid obviously does not fit that bill. So instead, you wander around aimlessly, getting killed repeatedly thanks to your 30 health, around screens that look practically identical to one another. In fact, the game does reuse exact screens - enemies and all - from time to time, which can be incredibly confusing. If you survive to find any powerups, you'll have to keep wandering to see if you can get anywhere new. All it would take to make this acceptable would be a map. Let me see a map when I hit pause. Why isn't there one in here? Oh, because you put that map in Nintendo Power magazine. I honestly believe that this game was created specifically to sell subscriptions to Nintendo's pet magazine, because who was going to figure this out on their own? I bet Nintendo Power even called it one of the best games of all time. Oh wait, they did.

Now we've all probably seen shots of the final showdown with "Mother Brain," the leader of the Space Pirate forces (none of whom are even present at any point during the game). It looks simple, and possibly fun, standing on that pillar shooting missiles into the brain until the whole place explodes and you win. What I am showing you instead is the horrible truth behind that fight. The fact that there is so much crap shooting you that you will inevitably fall into the lava here. You'd like to jump back up to where you were, but that's not possible. It's too high. Instead, you have to jump up to the platform where Mother Brain is. But if you touch the glass, you get shot back down into the lava. If you don't touch the glass, something will likely hit you, so you fall back into the lava. The entire fight revolves around trying to shoot a stationary target while escaping a lava pit right next to it, and it's hard as hell. Who green-lighted this thing? And naturally, missiles are the only thing that hurts it. If you run out of missiles during the fight (or even before it, because you have to destroy 5 walls with them on the way...that constantly regenerate), guess what? You're boned. Can't win. Go die. Come back with 30 health. See how you do then.

Then, when you finally do manage to beat the thing, the whole base is set to explode and a countdown timer appears for you to escape. The escape route consists of tiny little platforms that you have to jump to. But jumping is far from precise in Metroid, so here you are trying to methodically jump from tiny platform to tiny platform, often falling, while a timer counts down to your death. If you die, guess where you start? Yeah, with 30 health before the boss. Fight it again. I don't think it's a coincidence that the happiest-sounding music of the entire game plays during this escape sequence. The game is genuinely elated that you're going to die and have to redo everything. And if you DO get out of there, you get a screen saying, in broken English, that you succeeded and there's peace. Sike! Just kidding, there's not really peace, but you can pray for it if it'll make you feel better. What a load of horse manure.

The only reason Metroid has a score this high is that when you get fully powered up, which is like Chinese water torture to accomplish, the game is admittedly a little enjoyable. Because then you're not dying when random freaks of nature so much as look in your general direction, and things don't take 90 shots to kill. If you're one of the people crying blasphemy and thinking this game was the cat's meow or the bee's knees or somesuch, go back and check it out now. It might not be as hideous the second time, because you at least already know where to go. But rereleases of the game were generally called mediocre at best. Because they didn't change anything from the original. Because the original game, my friends, sucks the big one.

Bottom Line: 5/20

Sonic the Hedgehog

2009-07-26T09:16:00.001-07:00

Backed up against the Mario juggernaut, Sega tried to gain its market share with raw power, and for a time they had in the Genesis a machine more powerful than Nintendo's offerings. But it wasn't until they loosely borrowed from the Mario franchise that things really took off. "Why," Sega thought, "is Mario so gosh darn slow? Why can he only jump on things and not through them?" Sega then took the initiative, decided to put all their money on a blue hedgehog, and made many digits of dollars.

I'm going to kick this review off by ruining the ending for you. You ready? You ready?! Glance to the right. BAM! Ending spoiled. And that's the good ending. There's actually a worse one if you don't collect all the chaos emeralds during the game, which I'll talk about later down the page. This ending was too awesome for the cartridge label or title screen, and can only be earned by beating the game like a consummate pro. That's the kind of dude Sonic is, and you'd better get used to it. There are even multiple paths through every single level in the game. Make your own rules. Sonic does.

The game is a side- scrolling platformer, but is designed on most levels to be played quickly. By that I mean Sonic can just run, at blazing speeds, through each level without stopping so long as he's not getting hit or running into walls. Need to run upside down a bit to accomplish this, or up a wall? No problem. Just run fast enough. The earlier stages especially allow this. And the powerups on each level consist of different items sitting around inside television screens, which can be accessed by destroying the television set itself. Sonic the Hedgehog rewards vandals. But I guess "stage" and "level" aren't the right words. Sonic has "zones," which are each divided into three "acts." So classy.

The game does borrow a few conventions, though. For one thing, the plot of the game is that the evil Dr. Robotnik has started turning cute little animals into deadly robots. Since the rest of mankind doesn't seem to have the least concern about such a venture, it is up to Sonic to put an end to the nefarious schemes. He also collects rings along the way, which are solid gold floating objects that empower Sonic to take damage without dying. He simply drops whatever rings he's carrying instead of losing a life, and is usually able to recollect a few of them afterward. Collecting a hundred earns an extra life, making them sort of the equivalent of Mario's gold coins. Except that rings are less cumbersome, are more aesthetically pleasing, and can double as halos in second grade church reenactments of the nativity scene. Sonic is more efficient with his bling.

The variety of each zone's design will be immediately apparent. The backgrounds are different, of course, but so are the enemies, obstacles, and style of gameplay. Some zones are covered in springs, which launch Sonic high into the air. Some have lightning orbs pulsing electricity out. Some have giant pools of lava. It really helps the game retain its fun factor throughout the entire experience.

But the developers did fall into that ever present booby trap. You know the one. We've seen it a couple times now already. I am speaking, of course, about the always-present-yet-never-desired water area.

Sonic doesn't swim. He's soooo over swimming. Plus he sinks like a rock. Yet his underwater movement is significantly slowed. Which is understandable, but this game is built around speed, right? Why do that? Plus, unlike certain other video game protagonists before him, Sonic actually breathes. Eventually, if you spend too long underwater without a breath, this "You're about to die" music starts playing and a big countdown timer appears on the screen. If you don't sneak a swig of air before that thing hits zero, say goodnight. Except you can't, because, you know, your little hedgehog lungs are all full of water and stuff.

To that end Sega is diligent about trying to include ample opportunities for you to breathe. You can jump out of the water, of course, but most of the time you'll be looking for bubbles. Stand atop the bubble area long enough, and eventually a large enough bubble will emerge that Sonic is able to "breathe" it in and replenish his oxygen supply. Which brings me to a larger question: Why make him need to breathe at all? I suspect the rationale was that it would lend an extra degree of realism to the game, or perhaps extra challenge and urgency. But with so many bubble areas all over, the urgency isn't there. And why would you seek realism in a game with a blue hedgehog breathing bubbles and running almost as fast as the speed of sound?

If you are in possession of at least 50 rings by the end of any given act (except boss acts and the final couple zones), a gigantic ring floats above the level's end. Jumping into it accesses a constantly rotating bonus stage in which Sonic curls up into a ball and tries not to vomit all over himself, while simultaneously attempting to acquire a gem called a chaos emerald. Having all the emeralds grants obscene power, so Sonic has to get to them before Dr. Robotnik can. The bonus stages are pretty strange, but I have to admit they're enjoyable once you get the hang of them. I just hope you aren't someone who gets motion sickness easily.

Each zone culminates in a battle with Dr. Robotnik, who always has some new device and/or attachment to his hovercraft to foible your attempts to stop him. It's cleverly simple - you attack him the same way every time (by jumping into him), but because you're avoiding different weapons from his machines, the timing and tempo change up. Each boss battle is actually a good time in itself. The good doctor even punks you at the end when you think you've reached him in his own factory. He flips a switch that drops the floor out from under your feet and sends you into...another water level. Touché, sir! It definitely makes his final defeat a good deal more satisfying.

All said Sonic the Hedgehog is definitely a good time to play. It loses a point here or there because of those unnecessary water levels, and for the fact that occasionally when you're tearing through a stage with any speed they'll place an enemy or damaging obstacle in such a way that it is guaranteed to hit you. In those cases it's a conscious choice between going really fast, which is what the game is supposed to be about, or not taking damage, and we should be able to have both. But these complaints aren't enough to prevent me from happily recommending the game.

Bottom Line: 15/20

Super Mario Land

2009-07-22T09:31:00.000-07:00

The Game Boy was the pale green bastard child of the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was a black hole for batteries, didn't play in color, and was almost as large as Andre the Giant's right knee. But hey, it was portable, which was a huge deal at the time. You'll buy it for that, right? You know you will. And what better way to say "You're going to buy this crap whether it's any good or not" than with a game like Super Mario Land?

Mario had the name, the selling power, and was the unquestioned king of video games at the time. The first two Super Mario Bros. games were already out in America, and Japan had The Lost Levels and even Super Mario Bros. 3 to play. The guy's name was as good as gold. By putting his mug on a Game Boy launch title, it wouldn't matter if the game sucked or the whole console sucked - both would sell. It's a prudent marketing strategy, really. And while it's not exactly fair to say Super Mario Land sucks, it would certainly be a stretch to call it good.

If you've ever taken trigonometry or calculus, and the screen at left seems eerily familiar, it might be because someone in your class was playing it on his or her graphing calculator. That's right, a TI-83 could in essence run Super Mario Land. Clearly part of that is the fact that, like any console, it takes several games to figure out how to get the most out of it. But I feel like they had to have been able to do better than this, right? And what's with that enemy? There's a piranha plant which is well and good, but what is up with that prancing colonist? The worst part is that he doesn't even die when you jump on him. It just stuns him, and he keeps following you. Creeper.

The game's story is pretty incomprehensible. Mario is out to save Princess Daisy, who doesn't seem to have any relation whatsoever to Peach, from her captors. But her captor isn't Bowser; I'm not really sure it's anyone. The enemies all seem totally unrelated, as do the worlds. And half the boss fights are just total clones of the Super Mario Bros. Bowser fights, including the "bridge release" switch or whatever it's supposed to be. So why not just make it Bowser? Why this Sphinx thing? What's the Egypt motif actually accomplishing here?

There's also a whole world dedicated to aliens for some reason, and another one on Easter Island. They even replace the flying Koopa Troopas with - I kid you not - winged Easter Island heads. Why? Speaking of Koopas, when you jump on one in this game, they detonate. Yeah, like a bomb. I don't know why either. I have no answers for you.

The game is mercifully brief, at least. Whereas Super Mario Bros. had 8 worlds with 4 levels each (32 levels total), Super Mario Land has 4 worlds with 3 levels each (12 levels total). Throughout most of them there plays a catchy little ditty that you may have heard in the context of a 4 strength/4 stam leather belt, but that's probably the high water mark of the positives of this game. The control, which was so tight and responsive in Super Mario Bros., is now dreadful by comparison. Midair control is pretty lacking, and many times Mario will glitch off platforms when jumping to them, falling into pits and the like.

The game does commendably try to shake things up a bit by including two vehicle levels. The first of these uses a submersible pod that fires torpedoes at everything in your way, and the second is an airplane that works in exactly the same way. These levels are interesting and more fun to play than the standard ones, and have special bosses that you fight within the vehicle. This game almost works better as a sidescrolling vehicle shooter than it does as a Mario game, which is pretty sad when you think about it.

Some of the gameplay mechanics are unusual as well. For instance, often times if you run or jump straight into an enemy (rather than on top of it), the enemy will still take a hit and die, though you'll take damage. It's not really one or the other anymore. Bullet Bill launchers can now emerge from pipes, and the bullets themselves cannot be jumped on or killed. Mario's fireballs now also act like boomerangs, and can collect coins for him. One change I liked: if you're jumping when you get a super mushroom (the ones that make you big), your momentum doesn't stop. In Super Mario Bros., getting a powerup in midair was a virtual death sentence, which wasn't too fair.

At least the princess this time around actually appears to have been worth saving. Not only does she thank you unconditionally, but she also runs straight over to you and gives you a little heart affection. Taking notes here, Peach? The hilarious thing is that, as Nintendo would later reveal, Princess Daisy is actually the girlfriend of Luigi. Mario's younger brother. It's unclear whether that happened after Mario had had enough of her, or whether he was just taking advantage of his brother's absence. But this is arguably the first instance of Luigi-prejudice...a theme we will see slowly develop over time throughout Mario's game library.

But back on point. Super Mario Land is a quick game, which is wholly a good thing. It looks ugly, plays ugly, and doesn't feel too Mario-like, which is obviously unacceptable for a flagship Mario game to launch a console. But it succeeds a bit in the vehicle stages, the music is too catchy to ignore, and you're never too frustrated as you play, which can be a rarity amongst Mario games. Overall, it's pretty much a completely average game.

Bottom Line: 10/20

The Legend of Zelda

2009-07-18T09:55:00.001-07:00

The scope of this game at its release was unlike anything the video game industry had seen. The concept of an epic adventure that revolved around puzzle and problem solving in conjunction with engaging combat was a relatively novel idea at the time, and made The Legend of Zelda a pretty ambitious title. The game was certainly quite large, and packed a good deal of content into the cartridge, but how much fun could an elf running around in a Robin Hood costume really be?

The game cartridge contained an internal battery that allowed saving. While we take that concept for granted now, the ability to save (much less to have multiple save files on one cartridge) was a pretty nifty feature at the time. And with a game as challenging as this one, it was definitely a blessing.

The game's plot is pretty straightforward: in the kingdom of Hyrule, a dark wizard named Ganon has kidnapped Princess Zelda in an effort to gain the relic she possessed known as the Triforce. There were three such Triforces, one of which Ganon already owned. The second was shattered into eight pieces and hidden by Princess Zelda, buried within dungeons across the land, under guard by monsters. The third? Well...we don't talk about him. You are Link, a young boy tasked with saving the princess and defeating Ganon.

Of course, this would provide the first piece of confusion in the game: it's called The Legend of Zelda, but Zelda is just this kidnapped damsel? You mean your character is someone altogether different? And doesn't that plot (save the kidnapped princess) sound almost identical to Mario, just with different names?

Thankfully, you'll soon find that the similarities with Mario stop at the basic plot outline. The Legend of Zelda plays from an overhead perspective, and from the start puts you in the middle of this giant kingdom with nothing to your name but a tiny shield and no indication of where to go or what to do. But Hyrule can be unforgiving, and it's dangerous to go alone, so you should first find some sort of weapon.

From there on it's basically a search for the dungeons holding the shards of the Triforce, without which you can't hope to defeat Ganon. And dungeoneering comprises the bulk of the gameplay and challenge. While you can go anywhere at any time, the dungeons are labeled numerically to give you an idea of the recommended order and challenge of them. Each dungeon has a map you can find, which is inordinately helpful, as well as a compass showing you where the Triforce piece is hidden. Yet inside the complex are all manners of monsters, from animated skeletons to bats to the bouncing rabbit heads you see above.

But over and above the combat with monsters, the emphasis in the game is placed on puzzles. The old man at right is a regular sight in the game, giving you cryptic clues as to what to do next or where to go to find helpful items. Of course, he's also completely senile, which might cause you to attack him in frustration. But that's really a bad idea. The flames at his sides will start shooting crap at you and you'll get destroyed pretty quick. The Legend of Zelda subtly is telling children to respect their elders, and you have to give it some credit for that.

The puzzles themselves range from the simple to the completely head scratching. You'll often find yourself just wandering around the world looking for the next thing to do. You might have completed dungeon 6, and as you walk realize you have no earthly idea where to find dungeon 7. So you go around looking for any sort of clue, and even when you think you're on the right track, you still might have to try everything you can think of to make it all work. Your opinion of the game will undoubtedly be shaped by your patience for this sort of thing. If you like a mental challenge, you'll love this. But if you want to just play through a game without doing a lot of thinking, you will hate this game with a passion. Or you'll use a walkthrough. Cheater.

The flip side is that this gives you a huge sense of reward when you solve a problem. I'm not sure I've ever felt better about myself for merely setting foot in the entrance door of a dungeon as I have in this game, because sometimes finding the dungeon takes longer than completing it! And a great feature of the game is the inventory, which will steadily expand as you play. Every dungeon has at least one inventory item you can add to your possession. So while you start with just a shield (and a dinky wooden sword when you find it), eventually you're throwing boomerangs, shooting silver arrows, riding rafts, exploding bombs, and...handing out...giant hocks of ham.....ok, so it doesn't all make sense, but it's still pretty entertaining.

There's pretty good variety in the environments of the overworld (that is, anything not a dungeon) as well. The game starts you off in a relatively mountainous and rocky region, but you'll find forests, lakes, deserts, and so forth as you traverse the world. One set of woods infamously trapped the player. You could exit in a certain direction at any time, but attempting to get to the other side would place you back on the same screen. People thought they had glitched cartridges, and the only way you find out how to get through the place was by talking to someone on the other side of the woods. That's just cruel.

And then there's the enormous graveyard, which comprises six or seven screens. Usually there's a ghost floating around each screen, which you can't kill with any standard weaponry, because it's a ghost. So you're content to leave them all alone, but then some hag tantalizes you with the knowledge that there is someone hiding in the graveyard who will give you something. So you walk around trying to move the gravestones to find hidden passages, as any sane, greedy grave robber might do. And the ghosts get pissed. Every time you touch a tombstone a new ghost appears and it's not long before you are having the poop haunted out of you by legions of the undead. And then you flee to the adjacent screen where there are a bunch of warrior statues camped out, and accidentally bump one, and oh god, now it's coming to life and trying to kill me with its spear, get it off get it off!

If you manage to survive the dangers of the world and figure out how to even GET to Ganon's hideout, you're rewarded with the hugest and most difficult dungeon yet. It's even shaped like a skull, which we all know is the universal sign for "You're about to get owned." When you finally find Ganon, who is basically an overgrown swine thing, you have to fight him while he's invisible. That's fair, right?

Beating Ganon saves the princess, who then sends you on a harder quest, just like some other ungrateful prude we remember from some other game. The second quest in The Legend of Zelda is actually more fleshed out though, and is really, really tough. They even change some of the puzzles and item/person locations just to keep the challenge escalated. All totaled, this game is definitely not bad, but definitely not great. It lays the groundwork for an immensely successful formula while never really mastering its implementation. This game is better as the starting point to a wonderful series of games than it is as a game in its own right, but merits a playthrough from any serious gamer regardless.

Bottom Line: 13/20

Street Fighter

2009-07-14T08:27:00.001-07:00

When this title came out, Capcom had released several games, but nothing that drove their popularity or success through the roof. Mega Man was still a few months away, and the folks at the company thought they'd try their hand at fighting games. Fighting games were a primitive thing, with terrible games like Urban Champion on the market. From that perspective, the bar wasn't too high for Street Fighter, and Capcom thought "Why not? We can make a better game than all that."

With that said, I'm going to shock a lot of you here: Street Fighter is one of the worst games I can remember playing. It's better than Urban Champion, for sure, but Street Fighter is just a nightmare to play. I want to blame the 1987 technology, but that's not fair when you look at the vast array of good games coming out in that time period. That schmuck you see above is Ryu. Yes, the Ryu. That's taken from one of the game's bonus levels, in which you have to chop through a cinder block, or kick wooden boards for extra points. But the guy is clearly a tool, as are the nameless sycophants cheering him on.

And throughout the entire game, he is the only fighter you have the ability to control. You'll "fight" a wide range of different people throughout the game, and some of them seem like they would be marginally less painful to play as, but alas, you are stuck with Ryu.

Now let's talk about the multiplayer component of the game before we go any further. That portion of the game is significant because it involves the only point at which you can control anyone other than Ryu. While Player 1 is still stuck with him, Player 2 gets control of a guy named Ken, who is blonde and clothed in red, but otherwise identical in every single way to Ryu. Same moves, same style, same control, everything. And Ken exists only in the multiplayer portion; he appears nowhere in the single player game. The reason for this is unexplained.

That said, the single player game is absolutely atrocious. You begin by picking a country out of the USA, United Kingdom, Japan, or China. There are two fighters in each country, and your choice of where to start only determines which ones you will fight first. You'll fight them all eventually though, as a little map screen shows you traveling from point to point, so the whole choice is relatively meaningless.

The other fighters are usually just amalgamations of stereotypes condensed into single beings. You get a Chinese farmer type dude, the British punk (keeping in mind this was on the heels of the British punk movement), Japan has a ninja...you get the idea. The other Brit is this dude, named Eagle, who looks like he belongs less in Street Fighter and more in a rousing game of Clue.

The text on that screen is notable too, because that's a pretty frequent occurrence in the game. Anytime you win or lose a match, you get somebody's mug with a wall of text underneath it. In itself that's no biggie, but the game sees fit to attempt to speak the text as well. It's got a voice modulator with horrible, horrible sound quality, and they got a Japanese guy to speak the stuff so it has an overly thick accent too. It's barely decipherable but really gritty and might as well be fingernails on a chalkboard. Not to mention that the continue screen displays a countdown clock on some sort of homemade bomb. That's pleasant.

The worst part of the game though is the fighting. Which is obviously pretty unacceptable when working within the format of a fighting game. There are six attack buttons, though many times it is difficult if not impossible to distinguish any difference in their functions. Every move, and I do mean every move, including jumping, happens on a severe delay. You'll be mortified the first time you press the punch button and see the arm fly out a full second later.

And though you see a special move (the hadouken, which at this point was called "ball fire" or something ridiculous) being performed above, it's really more luck than anything to pull one off. They're supposedly controlled as you would expect, with the quarter-circle motions on the joystick and whatnot, but 80% of the time they just don't work. The input for them has to be incredibly fast, which is ironic in a game that runs so incredibly slowly. And often you'll do a dragon punch when trying to shoot a hadouken, or vice versa, because you're spamming the command so much just hoping for anything to work.

Not that it matters too much anyway, because the fights themselves are absurd. You can button mash the first full six or seven matches and never take a hit. The AI is just terrible, and it's obvious that the computer can't even handle the lag of this game. And if you do somehow manage to land a special move, you'll take away half the opponent's life, and that's not an exaggeration.

Then, suddenly, you'll reach a match that you just can't seem to win. The enemy AI is no better - the game makes matches progressively harder by making the computer do more damage to you. By Sagat at the end (above), you die in three hits. Any. Three. Hits. Less if you get hit by one of his special moves. It's one of the furthest things from "fun" I can imagine. If you want to make the difficulty that obscene by the end, why not gradually build there? I didn't even think it was possible to lose a single round until I was getting annihilated repeatedly.

Well, I persevered so you wouldn't have to. The last two fights take place in Thailand, where both fighters (Adon and Sagat) fight in Muay Thai. Surprised? No? Because you're used to the stereotypes by now. And when you finally win, a battered Sagat tells you that you're now "king of the hill." Only he tells you through that horrible voice modulation crap. Then the credits roll, and they're all in broken English. They even misspell some of the names of their own programming and design team. I know, because I looked it up. Again, so you wouldn't have to.

So do me a favor, and never, ever play Street Fighter. It's a painful experience, only earning what points I gave it for the fact that you'll get a few chuckles out of how bad it is. It's the sort of game that in no way merits a sequel of any sort, and had I been aware of it at the time, I'm sure I would have cursed Capcom when they announced they were making a Street Fighter II. After all, with a series foundation this utterly poor, surely the sequel must be pure crap as well, right?

Bottom Line: 3/20

Wolfenstein 3-D

2009-07-11T09:55:00.001-07:00

In the early 1990s, a small team of game developers found themselves faced with a conundrum. They had developed a method of displaying environments such that the player appeared to be in a fully three dimensional area, seeing things from a first-person perspective. And they wanted the player to be able to go around shooting people. Their dilemma was this: How can we make a game that revolves around realistically shooting people dead while not offending the world?

The answer? Make the people you are shooting Nazi soldiers, and the player an American Jewish prisoner of war. Who could complain? The result was Wolfenstein 3-D, a game banned in Germany not because they were offended by its bloody content, but because they were embarrassed by the concept of a Nazi prison complete with swastika banners and portraits of Hitler. Fantastic.

The game is divided into six episodes of ten levels each, though one out of each ten is an optional bonus stage. When the game opens, you are inside your prison cell in presumably the basement of Castle Wolfenstein, having just wrested a knife from the guard and killed him with it. You then take his pistol as well, and begin your escape up the floors of the castle to daylight.

You'll find quickly that the Nazis are a sloppy bunch of people, who tend to leave things strewn about in any old place. Baskets of dog treats, tv dinners, first aid kits, pistol clips, hoards of treasure...you name it. There seems to be zero accountability within the Nazi ranks for cleanliness concerns. Conveniently, the food and ammunition happen to help you out on your quest to escape. So much for German efficiency.

The guards themselves generally consist of vicious attack dogs, run-of-the-mill infantry, SS officers, and military officers. They're all over the place, really. The castle has hundreds of guards, and as far as I can tell, you are the only prisoner. What are they all doing with their time?

The game has four weapons - the aforementioned knife and pistol, machine guns that SS officers carry, and a powerful chaingun. Each bigger gun is a direct upgrade to the one before it, but the knife actually retains some usefulness throughout; if you incessantly stab at an enemy, they will be too busy wincing to shoot at you. And then they'll die. It's barbarous, yes, but guess what? They're Nazis. See how well that works?

After nine or ten floors of murdering and pillaging, only one enemy stands in your way. And he just happens to be 8 feet tall, 600 pounds, and able to wield a massive chaingun in each hand. But killing him yields your freedom, and it's not long before the Allies send you on a new mission to go eliminate a Nazi-engineered plague.

The evil genius behind the plague is this dude, Doctor von Badguy or something. He's holed himself up in another big fortress where he infects people with his zombie plague and manufactures enormous throwing syringes filled with poisonous doom. But mainly infects people with his zombie plague.

The thinking must have been that if the Nazi army could be bolstered by unstoppable zombie legions, the Allies would be forced to surrender. This was, of course, a terrible plan. One should never try to engineer the zombie apocalypse. It's inevitable enough as is without giving it a little nudge, you know?

So you naturally have to fight through a bunch of these Nazombies on your way to kill the schmuck. They're actually pretty frightening. All the living enemies make some sort of noise when they become aware of your presence. I still wake up in a cold sweat some nights thinking I heard someone shout "SPIEN!" before shooting me. Even the dogs bark, at least. But these guys are silent killers. Killers with guns. Coming out of their chests. Which are fired by raising their arms in alternation. With quite a bit of speed and enthusiasm. It's not pleasant, and so Doctor von Badguy must perish.

Finally, after completing that mission, you are sent to assassinate Adolf Hitler himself. Again, he is hiding in a fortress, so you have to navigate to the top floor. Naturally it's the most heavily guarded one yet, but the really strange part is when you get to the top.

You'll find the standard guards and such, but you will also see Hitler in a black cult robe, literally floating around the area. His chest will spontaneously generate balls of fire that shoot at you. Huh? You kill him, which doesn't take long, and the robe falls empty to the ground all Obi-Wan Kenobi style, and you hear this echoing laugh throughout the halls. Since when was Adolf Hitler a voodoo priest? You encounter this several more times, occasionally even seeing two of them at once. What is going on?

It's therefore a bit of a relief when you finally get to the large room containing the madman himself. Although it's pretty unhelpful of him to be riding around in a large suit of battle armor. And even when the armor is destroyed, he jumps out with two chainguns that were evidently in his hands the entire time. How were you operating that suit again?

But it's worth it to finally lay that last bullet into him. The game even hilariously gives you a "Kill Cam" and shows you the grisly death on instant replay, complete with Hitler wistfully saying "Auf Wiedersehen." Wonderful.

All that said, the game actually continues with three prequel episodes which are harder, but extremely anticlimactic. They don't offer anything new in terms of gameplay from the previous ones either, which is a shortcoming and makes the game feel like it drags on a bit. The game is enjoyable, but can get tedious quickly. Hunting around for keys is a pain, and the level variety leaves something to be desired. It's definitely worth playing through the first three episodes however, and for those this game gets a positive score overall.

Bottom Line: 13/20

Mega Man

2009-07-08T08:32:00.000-07:00

Capcom's blue bomber burst onto the scene in 1987. His name (and therefore the name of the game) was and is actually Rockman in Japan, but due to copyright issues in North America, he became known as Mega Man. Don't let the completely misleading box art fool you. This game doesn't consist of wannabe Tron characters riding around with guns on invisible horses and blowing up palm trees. Instead, it consists mainly of trying to not die.

The first thing you see after the title screen is the stage select, and it definitely makes you a little wary. I'm all for keeping it simple, but this singular screen tells you that the game will revolve around defeating six robots, each of which being just a different gimmick. Thanks to the old Mega Man cartoon, enemies like Cutman and Gutsman have grown on us a little, but it feels more on the lame side here.

The good news about it is that the game is fun to play anyway, albeit a bit frustrating at certain points of stages. The gist of the story is that Mega Man is the first cyborg, or android, or whatever semi-human robotic term you want to apply to him. He was made in the actual year 20xx by the beneficent Dr. Light to help the world in peaceful ways, but mean old Dr. Wily (Dr. Light's rival) started making robots to conquer the planet. Dr. Light installed a cannon on one of Mega Man's arms, and sent him off to save the world.

This creates a gameplay environment characterized by jumping and shooting your arm cannon, called the Mega Buster. Each stage is littered with smaller robots designed by Dr. Wily to aid in his conquest, as well as various hazards. Among the hazards, two will instantly kill you. The first is the ubiquitous bottomless pit. The second, of course, is spikes. Now I'm not sure how someone with the intelligence and capability to create an android from scratch fails to solve the problem of "exploding upon any contact with a stationary pointed object," but there you have it. It makes me wonder - if Dr. Wily was so sincere in not wanting to be stopped, why not surround his entire fortress with miles of spikes? He'd be invincible. But I digress.

A nice addition is the fact that when Mega Man defeats a Robot Master, he is able to take that robot's power and use it at the cost of some special energy (refills of which are available throughout the game as item pickups). And every boss is weak to the weapon of a different boss, meaning if you find the proper weakness, you really take advantage and fight the boss in a different way. It's a clever mechanic and a hallmark of the whole series.

The stages each have a distinct feel to them, which is a nice touch. Although some of this plays on the obvious, such as having lightning shooting around on Elecman's stage, many times simple changes of scenery can go a long way to prevent the game from feeling tedious or monotonous. The game really climaxes in the visual department with what you see above. There's not really any good reason for anything that is going on in that picture to be happening. It all just sort of happens simultaneously and without explanation. And it's great.

Now most of the game's content, while often cliched, was at least Capcom's own creation in some way. But then you notice this guy flying around and everything breaks down.

<--

What the hell is that! Who do they think they're fooling, honestly? I don't care that you can shoot them, or that they don't die by jumping on them, or that they explode instead of just plowing through you. That is clearly a Bullet Bill. At least take the face and teeth off, you know? When I saw this I was instantly on the lookout for other Mario standards - Goombas, Koopas, all of it. I'm thankful to say nothing else stood out to me, but I wouldn't be surprised if a number of the other enemies were ripped from different, non-Mario games. Horrible.

And then of course, when you finally get to the heretofore unseen Dr. Wily, you realize that this entire time you've actually been trying to murder Albert Einstein. The guy was apparently the greatest scientific genius of the twenty-first century as well as the twentieth. Greedy snob. He also rides around in a flying saucer. So if this game taught me anything, it is that Albert Einstein was responsible not only for nuclear weaponry, but also for UFO sightings, conspiracy theories, and the eventual robot takeover of Earth. What an ass. And when you finally beat him, he just sits there crying like a little girl. And you let him go. Stupid. I guess we'll see you in Mega Man II, jerk.

Then Mega Man starts running across the screen while the credits roll, as the background scenery slowly changes from a beautiful sunset to downtown Metropolis, and he sort of spontaneously sheds all his armor to star in random NES beat-em-up games. Huh?

All in all, the game is decent. The basic mechanics work well enough, the boss weakness system is good, and the levels are tough without being stupidly hard. But there are some issues hampering the game down. For one thing, movement isn't as tight as it should be. Mega Man always slides a little, as though he were on ice. Which naturally means the ice level itself is a nightmare to play. Some of the stages and bosses are far easier than others as well, which the game basically admits by assigning various scores to each stage for its defeat. Mega Man is a game with promise that falls short a little, while never being bad.

Bottom Line: 12/20

Michael Jackson's Moonwalker

2009-07-05T09:59:00.001-07:00

(This review is dedicated to Michael Jackson, who departed us far too soon.)

Most people don't believe me when I first tell them that this game actually exists. Many are willing to concede that there might possibly be a video game based on Michael Jackson, but insist that I am lying when I begin to describe the game in detail. My retort is simple and oft-repeated. You just can't make this up.

Moonwalker is based on the movie of the same name, with the loose plot being that the villain, Mr. Big (played in the film by Joe Pesci), has been kidnapping children. Therefore, Michael Jackson has two major tasks to complete in this game.

1) Save all the little children.
2) Kill Joe Pesci.

The game itself is a beat-em-up from an isometric perspective. Most games like this are mere sidescrollers, but Michael Jackson lived in three dimensions. Each stage features a midi synth version of a Michael Jackson tune as background music, which is fantastic.

This game features only two buttons. They are labeled "Shot" and "Dance." Pressing Shot causes Michael to place one hand behind his head and the other extended forward, which unleashes a blue energy shock. Holding the Shot button down causes him to place both hands overhead to charge up a blast. All movement during this charging period consists of moonwalking. Releasing the button shoots a powerful blast with extended range. Using Shot in close quarters makes Michael do a spin move, which oddly enough is inordinately strong.

The Dance button, on the other hand, requires dance power to use. You start with one dance power per life, and can occasionally get bonus dance powers. Using Dance sends a spotlight down on Michael, changes the music, and causes every enemy (even dogs) on screen to dance with him in tandem. After all, when Michael Jackson starts dancing, who can resist joining in with perfect synchronization? At the conclusion of the dance, everything on screen spontaneously explodes. It's like looking in the face of God - one cannot dance with Michael Jackson and expect to survive the experience.

There are five stages in the game. Throughout each stage you will find children huddled in corners and the like crying "Michael! Michael!" Touching them (on the shoulder) effectively rescues them, for which they will thank you. Sometimes they will give you health or bonus dance power. Michael has to save every child to advance to the boss of the stage, but only the last four stages have boss encounters.

After defeating the boss, the children you saved during the level excitedly run toward Michael to celebrate their liberation. And then Michael celebrates with them, as you see above....well, I'm sure it's totally innocent. He's just dancing and they want hugs. He saved their lives, after all. The next level will then begin with a quick comic book style intro, the usual Jackson yelp, and a dance move.

On the subject of stages, I do have a bone to pick. First off, the game itself is pretty short. I suppose that saves money in an arcade, but another stage or two wouldn't hurt anyone. Secondly, stage 1 is called "Cavern" and stage 5 is called "Evil Fortress," but they are clearly the exact same level. The only difference is that the Cavern is over within a minute of starting it and has no boss. I guess it was supposed to be a training stage or something. They even have the same background song, "Bad."

And speaking of background songs, there is a graveyard level complete with zombies, and yet "Thriller" is nowhere to be found. The exclusion is understandable when you look at the fact that every song appearing in the game was written entirely by Michael Jackson, and Jackson did not do any writing on "Thriller." Even still, the feel is just not what it could be.

And you know, zombies are probably some of the most "normal" enemies in this game. As you play you will be confronted by: Mobsters, Laser-wielding shock troopers, shirtless crack addicts with knives, dog handlers with stun batons, armor plated dogs, robotic statues, laser turrets, zombies, guys rolling around in tires, miniature steamrollers with lasers, renegade vacuum cleaners, buzzsaw launchers, flamethrowing sewer lids, drone hovercraft, tear gas grenades, and finally, small and giant versions of frog-hopping piston machines. These last are some of the most difficult to defeat; partly because they take a lot of damage, and partly because you really don't want to touch them.

As bizarre as all this has been, I haven't even gotten to the strangest part yet. Toward the end of every level you will encounter a chimpanzee running around in overalls. Why the chimpanzee is there, how it is able to survive with all of the above, and why it is dressed are all unexplained questions. All Michael cares about is the fact that touching this chimpanzee turns him into Mecha Jackson.

In this form the Shot button now shoots lasers out of Michael's fists. Holding the button down charges his missiles. When released, Michael fires missiles out of his abdomen at whatever unfortunate soul is in front of him. The Dance button causes Michael to temporarily revert to human form (so he can do more dance moves than just the robot, presumably), explode everything on screen as usual, and transform back into the cyborg version of himself. It is in this form that Michael fights every boss battle.

The bosses start out pretty reasonably, as far as this game is concerned. The first is a pair of cannons on wheels, with protective shields. It's weird looking but not totally strange in concept, I guess. The second boss is Joe Pesci in a hovering machine surrounded by little laser pods, all of which can be killed individually. When Pesci's vehicle itself takes enough damage, he flies away, ending the stage.

It's the last two boss fights that really get you scratching your head. In the graveyard level Joe Pesci has somehow commandeered or created a machine that spawns ghosts out of three separate tubes. The entire fight he's shouting what sounds like "BOOM! Move it!" but I can't really be sure. Robo-Michael Jackson has to destroy each tube individually while also lasering the ghosts that attack him. When the machine explodes, the entire catwalk Joe Pesci is standing on levitates with jet engines or something, and flies away. What just happened?

And the final boss fight takes place atop the Evil Fortress, with Joe Pesci in some sort of spiderlike contraption. As it walks around smoke and sparks come through the floor at you. I don't really know what they're supposed to be. So you shoot and dance your way to its destruction, and you're treated to a screen of Mr. Big screaming like a girl whilst burning to death. Meanwhile his fortress is exploding. Michael, unable to run out of the fortress in time to escape the explosion, decides to do what any rational person would do in such a situation. He transforms into a jet and flies away. I repeat: Michael Jackson turns himself into a jet.

Then we get the epilogue which consists of a textual summary telling us that the children are safe and Joe Pesci is dead, but what of Michael? Well, the children seem to say he'll be back someday to...and that's it. It cuts off there. He'll be back someday to what?! Now, maybe the machine I was playing it on was glitched, maybe I've never seen what the ending was supposed to say, but that's a rotten cliffhanger. Then we get shots of Jackson's feet dancing and stuff, and a high score screen with him sweating a lot. It's all pretty ridiculous, and it really makes you wonder who in the world could come up with this thing.

...Oh.

Bottom Line: 13/20

Super Mario Bros.

2009-07-02T09:25:00.000-07:00

Super Mario Bros. is perhaps the single most influential and important game ever made. It revolutionized the industry and possibly even prevented the death of the video game as a form of media. It's seen countless sequels and spinoffs, and even a (terrible) Hollywood feature film. Yet for all this hooplah and mystic reverence surrounding the game, there's still one vital question. Is it actually good?

The first thing you'll notice about this game is the lack of a title screen. It jumps straight into the select menu for a one or two player game. That tells you right off the bat that this game is all about getting you into the hardcore action early.

The story is simple enough: you are Mario, a plumber from somewhere not here, and the Princess of the Mushroom Kingdom has been kidnapped by a giant evil turtle bent on forcing her to marry him. All previous attempts to rescue her by her servants have resulted in their also being captured, so it is up to you to go save her from, presumably, interspecies rape.

The Mushroom Kingdom is, with a few exceptions consisting of overgrowths of enormous mushroom towers, a total wasteland. The entire ground has been paved over by a nasty reddish-brown brick. Any sight of plants that aren't coming out of pipes trying to devour you are distant. And the landscape is dotted with inexplicably floating bricks and golden boxes with question marks on them.

The contents of these boxes are puzzling to say the least. Inside you will find gold coins, which are the standard Mushroomian currency (and collecting 100 of which give you an extra life without ever visiting a banker), smaller, edible mushrooms, sentient stars that make you completely invincible to everything but gravity, and glowing flowers that, when touched, ignite Mario's snot into flaming bouncing balls of doom.

The mushrooms themselves can either make Mario double in size or give him an extra life, depending on their color. Personally I have never eaten a mushroom that enables me to either become giant or die and resurrect automatically. If anyone knows where I can find either of these morsels, please let me know.

In any case, each level consists of running from one little castle or outpost to the next one, lowering the enemy Koopas' flag, raising a new flag that is a little reminiscent to the flag of Vietnam, killing some of God's heavenly host, and then repeating on the next stage.

Along the way are an assortment of opposing creatures that have no business existing. Goombas are little brown mushrooms with feet, Koopa Troopas are happy looking turtles bent on killing you and everything you hold dear, Lakitus are owls (?) riding around on clouds dropping spiked stuff on your head, and of course there are the Hammer Bros. who spontaneously generate hammers and throw them non-stop without eating, sleeping, or even using the bathroom.

All this is great and exciting, but then you come to a place where your enthusiasm dies with your soul and you begin to wish this game had some sort of warp zone: I am speaking, of course, about the dreaded water levels.

In hindsight, if they knew how this game was going to change the face of it all and would become a template for so many other games, I like to think the good people at Nintendo would have said "You know what, let's scrap the water stages." It's not so much that the water levels in Super Mario Bros. are bad; it's that invariably when you get to the obligatory water level in any video game, you groan. You know you do. We all hate them, yet they keep coming. And it all starts here.

The upside is that apparently all those years as a plumber dealing directly with the bodily waste of portly Italian men like himself taught Mario how to survive without breathing. Those air bubbles? From the squids. Squids have to breathe. Mario doesn't. It also helps that his fiery mucus is incapable of being extinguished even on the ocean floor. And that cash money is floating around free for the taking.

The game starts out easily enough, though by the eighth and final world, the difficulty has ramped up quite a bit. As you can see at right, the enemies become more populous and cannons start firing at your face and it's all just quite the mess. There are usually safe areas to stand, but even then, good luck. The game is a challenge for sure, though it becomes far easier with practice and is never unreasonably hard by any degree.

Probably the best thing about the game is its control. It plays very tightly and responds about as well as you could hope and expect it to. Complaints about hit detection and the like are minimal, and mid-jump maneuverability was a big plus. So at least when you're fighting your way through 32 levels of acid trip, you'll have some command over it.

Of course, after every castle and supposed fight with Bowser, the King Koopa, you only find a little mushroom man telling you that the Princess is in another castle. By the time you get to the real Bowser, he's spitting fire and throwing hammers like it's his job. All you have to do is run by him to win, but that can be easier said than done. Unless, that is, you're giant Mario. Then you can just run into and through him. You'll shrink, but he'll die. Hey, it works.

And when you finally do, you get treated to the screen above. A butt-ugly redhead giving you a cursory thank you while sending you off on some other errand. That errand, if you follow her directions to find out, ends up being to save her captured ass all over again, with harder enemies. No thanks wench. Call me when you eventually get hot. We both know you will.

Bottom Line: 14/20

The Oregon Trail

2009-06-29T22:17:00.000-07:00

Oregon Trail for the Apple IIe redefined the way gaming was done. It boasts a non-linear storyline, a fully customizable player party, multiple minigames, and more.

First things first. Choose a career. With unparalleled customization, you can be a carpenter from Ohio, or even a farmer from Illinois. This choice will have a drastic impact on your gameplay, determining just how well you might be able to repair wagon wheels, or collect fruit. As if this wasn't enough, you then proceed to name your entire wagon party. Any name you wish. Finally, you can even choose what time of the year you want to leave for Oregon. Even the weather is at your command!

The game opens simply enough, with you and your family of poor, still-healthy Missourians at the general store, buying supplies for the long and arduous journey.

As you travel the trail, you'll encounter hardship after hardship. From broken legs to disease, from the savages whose land you're stealing to deteriorating wagon axles, this game has it all. Don't expect your entire family to make it to Oregon. I promise at least one of them will die. Probably more. And if you think you're making it without getting 50% of your possessions robbed from you along the way, well my friend. You have quite the surprise in store.

Eventually, hopefully, you reach Oregon itself. Along the way you'll have ended up doing a lot of river crossing, for better or for worse, but primarily you'll have spent many a day hunting. Hunting is perhaps the chief reason Oregon Trail is played. What better illustrates the American independent spirit than walking out into the untamed wilderness with a rifle and killing off the rest of the bison in the country? If that ain't patriotic, I don't know what is.

It's also easily the most fun thing to do in Oregon Trail, as the rest of the game generally consists of you watching an ox plod along, occasionally finding out that there is inadequate grass, or a poorly marked trail, or that Michael has died of a fever. Hunting tosses all that aside, giving you complete control over yourself as you can turn in a whopping eight directions to shoot prey that probably has no business being in the area of the country you are travelling. And of course, no matter how well you hunt, you're only as good as how much you can bench.

Lastly, Oregon Trail is educational. It teaches you what life (and death) was really like for the pioneers of the west. Coonskin caps, covered wagons, and all the cholera you can eat are the orders of the day, and Oregon Trail delivers them in spades, giving you a real feeling that you're actually there, experiencing it all, no longer able to control your bodily functions. Its stunning graphics and crystal clear sounds immerse you in the environment of 19th century America like no other game could ever do. The game even opens with an information screen daring you to feel the reality of it all course through your veins.

<--

Oregon Trail invites everyone to come enjoy the power and glory of Willamette Valley in the fall (or winter, if you suck). So hop on board your wagon, caulk it across some rivers, raid some general stores, hunt some bears, and break your arms on the way to Oregon. I'm pretty sure you won't be disappointed. And even more certain you won't survive the trip. Check it out. It's the good high.

Oregon Trail - 15/20

Godzilla

2009-06-26T09:12:00.000-07:00

Godzilla is a movie star (top billing over Matthew Broderick, at that), a template for all sorts of other Hollywood monsters, a symbol for poor dubbing in films, and an icon of all things Japanese. Unfortunately for everyone involved, he's also the title character of this rotten Nintendo game.

Godzilla is designed to be a side-scrolling action game. While it succeeds at the side-scrolling, it comes up remarkably short in the "action" category. The plot is that the race of beings inhabiting Planet X - that supposed 'bonus' planet in our solar system - have somehow assembled an army of space monsters. 'Space monsters' is, I'm told, the proper scientific terminology here. The denizens of Planet X want to invade Earth with this army. While it's not clear in the least what their motives are, they sure are dogged about it.

This leads the Earth to send its trusted guardians, Godzilla and Mothra, to combat the threat. Now I was concerned that this meant Godzilla had gone soft, because I distinctly remember him terrorizing cities. But after looking into a bit of Godzilla history, it seems that the reason he and Mothra are teaming up is because of territorial issues. Space monsters invading Earth doesn't exactly make for a happy home. So, you as the player get to control both of these um, things, as you play through the game.

As you can see at left, the map of the Earth is incredibly detailed and accurate. Godzilla can move two hexes per turn, while Mothra can cover four. What hex you land on determines the kind of terrain you'll encounter...partially. But more on that in a bit. See those two other monsters down at the bottom right? Them's your "bosses."

On this map are Moguera, some sort of robot thing that likes to shoot fire, and the incredibly irritating Gezora. The latter of these is literally incapable of damaging you, but merely flicks a tentacle in your face repeatedly, disabling your movement. When you want to fight a boss in the game, you simply land on the hex next to it, complete the normal stage, and you face the boss at the end of it. Other bosses you'll fight in the game include a hydra, a robotic Godzilla, a quadrupedal dinosaur, and a monster comprised entirely of smog. None of them is particularly difficult; however, you'll be forced to fight them on every single map until the game is over.

The maps themselves are supposed to represent the planets. You progress from Earth outward in the solar system, such that completion of the Earth map takes you to the Mars map, and so forth. Every planetary map brings more of the same. The levels look basically like what you see at right, regardless of the planet. I wish I could even say that each planet simply offered a palette swap of the basic level to distinguish them, but palette swaps happen completely at random in this game. Occassionally levels will also have you fight large brain mushroom things, whatever they're supposed to be.

The only real noticeable difference between the planetscapes is what's in the background, but there's even fault to be found with that. In order to show that you are on a given planet, it shows that planet in the night sky as the background. So, for instance, to play on Saturn, a gas giant to begin with, the background is a clear view of Saturn. What? Imagine going out at night and instead of a full moon, you see the planet you're supposedly standing on. What do you do? If you answered "Get a psychiatric evaluation," you are correct. It's mind-boggling.

You'll encounter a variety of non-boss enemies throughout your planetary romps, but this is by no means a good thing. Enemies are so strange and random that the game never finds any sense of self-consistency or personality. You'll fight anything and everything that is animated. This includes the expected, such as tanks and aircraft, to the wholly absurd. Things like punching a volcano to make it explode, or a pillar of planetary crust that keeps bouncing up and down, or flame-launching totem poles. Most infuriating, there's this one fireball-ish enemy that not only cannot be killed in any way, but also seeks you and when it hits, does so repeatedly until it leaves the screen, often killing you at early stages. There are no continues.

Along these same lines, there are two ways to complete any given map. First, you may finish the end stage of the map with both Godzilla and Mothra. Second, if one of the two dies, you must beat the end stage with the remaining one. What this means is that if you beat the end stage with one character and the other one dies afterward, it is game over. The game ignores the fact that one of your dudes is on the next planet and healthy. Back to the title screen. Why bother?

At least the two playable characters are themselves reasonably different. Godzilla moves slowly, but has a lot of power, and can attack high, medium, or low. He is also able to jump and duck, though his size prevent these from being incredibly useful most of the time. His special move (fueled by "POWER," as you can see) is his atomic breath, which pretty much kills anything it hits. Mothra, on the other hand, is much quicker and more agile. She takes up less space and is harder to hit, but does significantly weaker damage. She also is able to fly over much of the terrain and drop bombs, or poison darts, or spore, or larvae, or whatever you want to call those weird blue pixelated things, down upon her foes.

And a note about the "LEVEL" appearing in the above screens: this is not level as in the stage you are on. This title attempts to pass itself off as an action RPG, by having the playable characters level throughout the game. Your game score is your combined experience points, if we may even use the term. After you score a certain amount of points on a given character, that character levels. It will gain an extra health and/or power bar, and that's about it. While bosses may require a bit more health to defeat, the levels are otherwise virtually meaningless. They exist to provide an illusion of depth that simply doesn't exist.

All in all, the tediously repetitive gameplay is enough to make you either quit the game altogether or kill yourself along the way. Even the ending sucks. Before you reach the inane screen to the left, you are treated to a wall of text explaining a note that the defeated civilization of Planet X has left. It states something along the lines of "We got beaten because Godzilla is more powerful than we thought, but don't worry, we'll be back." It would be terrible enough if it was left at a simple cliffhanger sort of thing like that, because this game should never, ever see a sequel. But the Planet X-ians went on to insist that they would never give up their dreams to invade Earth, and even if it took eons, would form a new space monster army to do so. All this is being said as they settle on a new world in another solar system.

What's your problem man? Why do you want to kill Earth so much? There's only one answer I can think of that would explain the blind hatred Planet X has for Earth - Earthlings made this atrocity of a game.

Bottom Line: 4/20