The original guitar hero with the Elvis attitude and purple hair pompadour, Johnny Bazookatone, has been imprisoned in the year 2050 in Sin Sin Prison by El Diablo, the Lord of the Underworld, who is jealous of his talent and kidnaps other musical legends as well in this 3D side-scrolling platformer. Johnny's guitar Anita has been taken from him and he sets out to escape and vanquish foes on his way to be reunited with Anita.
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Jobby Bazookatone
This review contains spoilers
This game was cryptic!
On the surface you have a delightful pre-rendered 2D run 'n gun that included platforming, item collecting, unique hovering mechanic, complete with boss battles. What's not to like? The moment you press start to begin your journey on the first stage it became clear something is off. Several things are wrong. What is considered background and foreground in order to jump on, slippery walking and running controls, hit detection of enemies, hit detection of your gun. But that isn't game breaking, more of a nuisance instead - besides it wasn't programmed by some big name developer. Then you realize you need to utilize the flying mechanic of shooting your gun down while doing a running jump in order to hover over obstacles such as spiked vines. Tricky at first but eventually will need to become second nature to progress throughout later stages.
So far not a terrible game, sloppy but not terrible. Now I will explain the cryptic elements. Stage 3 has you needing to move by shooting, a briefcase to use as a trampoline in order to jump on a roof of an exit door. A second one in order to collect a poorly visible ticket stub in the air. Bosses show little to no indication they are being attacked. Your charge shot ability takes fifteen seconds to shoot that is practically useless since enemies will walk into you or shoot you from across the screen. Charge shot also doesn't damage bosses and certain enemies. I'm still unsure what the importance of collecting musical notes were. On top of all this is the quick deaths from leap of faith jumps, soon your credits will expire.
I will give credit to the Kitchen stage, and tunnel they were not as obscure on the requirements to complete them. The second to final stages falls back to being cryptic returning to several elevators, melting monsters, and retrieving headphones to name a few. The wheelchair stages were a good change of pace. Overall a very amateur, sloppy, experience with a fantastic soundtrack. If it wasn't for all the issues it would have been an average score but it suffers from several that make it unnecessarily more difficult then it should be.
On the surface you have a delightful pre-rendered 2D run 'n gun that included platforming, item collecting, unique hovering mechanic, complete with boss battles. What's not to like? The moment you press start to begin your journey on the first stage it became clear something is off. Several things are wrong. What is considered background and foreground in order to jump on, slippery walking and running controls, hit detection of enemies, hit detection of your gun. But that isn't game breaking, more of a nuisance instead - besides it wasn't programmed by some big name developer. Then you realize you need to utilize the flying mechanic of shooting your gun down while doing a running jump in order to hover over obstacles such as spiked vines. Tricky at first but eventually will need to become second nature to progress throughout later stages.
So far not a terrible game, sloppy but not terrible. Now I will explain the cryptic elements. Stage 3 has you needing to move by shooting, a briefcase to use as a trampoline in order to jump on a roof of an exit door. A second one in order to collect a poorly visible ticket stub in the air. Bosses show little to no indication they are being attacked. Your charge shot ability takes fifteen seconds to shoot that is practically useless since enemies will walk into you or shoot you from across the screen. Charge shot also doesn't damage bosses and certain enemies. I'm still unsure what the importance of collecting musical notes were. On top of all this is the quick deaths from leap of faith jumps, soon your credits will expire.
I will give credit to the Kitchen stage, and tunnel they were not as obscure on the requirements to complete them. The second to final stages falls back to being cryptic returning to several elevators, melting monsters, and retrieving headphones to name a few. The wheelchair stages were a good change of pace. Overall a very amateur, sloppy, experience with a fantastic soundtrack. If it wasn't for all the issues it would have been an average score but it suffers from several that make it unnecessarily more difficult then it should be.
Несмотря на приличную графику, в игре ужасный левелдизайн. Музыка на любителя. Игра явно хотела хайпануть на волне популярности Donkey Kong Country
this is such an intriguing game. it was clearly supposed to be a huge breakthrough title for arc developments, who had previously been stuck with doing low-end amiga/master system games. now here they are, doing a high budget side scroller for consoles with silicon graphics computers, a WICKED studio-quality soundtrack, and a full-blown advertising campaign...well, the latter only applied to europe - us gold was floundering enough that they couldn't engage any of their localization plans for the us. plans that were advertised on what might be the very first website made for an individual video game.
and, hell, looking at gameplay footage, you can tell a lot of passion went into this game. the levels are themed weirdly and excellently, from a sprawling hotel to a restuarant with a giant fish tank and a killer chef.
such a shame then, that the controls and attacks are all herky-jerky and i couldn't find it in my heart to go past the first world. maybe next time. i feel a bit bad giving up so soon...
and, hell, looking at gameplay footage, you can tell a lot of passion went into this game. the levels are themed weirdly and excellently, from a sprawling hotel to a restuarant with a giant fish tank and a killer chef.
such a shame then, that the controls and attacks are all herky-jerky and i couldn't find it in my heart to go past the first world. maybe next time. i feel a bit bad giving up so soon...