Game #69 of my challenge
This is the first game in my list made by the well-known company Sunsoft and they have a whole bunch of commercial success in the west, and this was the first one of them.
First of all, the plot is kind of weird and the reason is that when it was first released in Japan, it was an anime type of plot. They though that it wouldn't work for the western side of the world, so they slapped a rushed-up story to replace the original one. The American story of this game is a little boy (Jason) that have a frog (Fred) as a pet. That frog ran away and jumped on an radioactive crate that was in Jason's backyard. We don't know why that kid has some radioactive stuff in the backyard, but let's assume it's normal. Fred becomes massive, dropped into a hole (in that same backyard) and disappeared. That boy followed him in that hole and found a vehicle named Sophia. That vehicle is designed to destroy mutants living inside the earth. So Jason puts a suit on and jumped in that vehicle to destroy the mutants, kill the Plutonian boss and to find his frog. All of this is shown as a slideshow in the game. I know the story doesn't makes much sense, but here we are.
The graphics are actually good. The enemies looks different from each other (even though there are some variants of the same enemy), the background is really nice and immersive. All the different parts of the game is really different from one another, so for a Metroidvania type of game, it's really important. The music is really good. There's a different song for each world and there weren't one that I though was bad, or I wanted to mute. My favorite song was Stage 2 (castle), but the song from Stage 1 (forest) is the most well known of the game. The boss music is really intense and makes you motivated to defeat that boss. The SFX are really average. There no much to say about the sound effects.
The controls as a vehicle are simple at first, but when you progress though the game, they get more complicated, but also more annoying. The reason being is about the wall and celling power-up and the swimming power-up. The vehicle can stick to wall and celling, and when it's time to do some tight jumps, it can be really annoying. The reason is that if you are too close to the edge, you will go down the surface under you when you didn't wanted to. This occurs mostly at the end of the game, but it was still irritating. The swimming power up is only bad because when you want to use your special weapon, you need to hold down and press B. When swimming downward, you will waste a lot of those special ammunitions only because you want to shoot those enemies. The control on foot weren't that bad. It took me some time to learn that if you throw a grenade with A and you hold that button, you can strafe. It's not really instinctive but I figured it out around the middle of the game.
The gameplay is a mix of a Metroidvania, a Platformer and half of the gameplay is a run and shoot. This makes an interesting mix, and you can see that they were inspired with the first Metroid game. The map can be really confusing, but they did something that the Metroid game was missing : a map. Of course, the map is not in-game, but in the instruction manual. It's a good enough map for you to not get lost in it. It shows you a general idea where are the doors and the location of each stages. That was ultra helpful. Throughout the game, your vehicle gets upgrades when Jason defeats bosses. Those upgrades helps you to get access to other parts of the game. Your vehicle can shoot bullets in front of it and on top. Sofia also have access to 3 types of special projectiles : A three missile thing, a lightning bolt and some homing missiles. The three missiles are shot in front of you in a fork shape and can be useful. The lightning bold is the worst weapon, because it shoot under you. It wouldn't be that bad if it would always hit at the same spot. However, the arc of the lightning bolt and the place where it hits is random, so this is mostly useless. The last weapon is the homing missiles. They can be really good, but sometimes, they don't want to hit the target and decides to do some back-and-forth around your vehicle. Those specials weapons were mostly useful in my playthrough against one type of enemy : the worms. Those worms are the most annoying and frustrating enemies by far because your normal cannon cannot hit them because they are too low on the ground. Let me tell you that there are a lot of them in the game.
For the Jason gameplay, I would say that his regular weapon is really bad. The reason being is that his gun can be upgraded by collecting some weapon power-ups. The more you got them, the stronger the weapon is. When you get hit, you also lose one bar of that weapon power-up. Let me tell you that this gun is the most inaccurate weapon in the game. It shoots some projectiles that does an S trajectory. each bullets has a different starting point so it's really hard to aim. I say that it's hard to aim, but I should actually say that it's impossible. There's nobody (excepts maybe speed runners) that can aim precisely with that weapon. So when you see an enemy, you mash the button and prey that it will hit. This is mostly visible against a boss in this game. Because of that, the bosses are really hard in this game. Fun fact, you fight against your frog twice in this game.
The game had some really good ideas, like the weapon upgrade of jason, the mix of on foot and vehicle gameplay. However, there were a lot of frustrating things in the game like the inaccuracy of bullets and annoying creature that makes me giving it a lower score that I would love to.
This is the first game in my list made by the well-known company Sunsoft and they have a whole bunch of commercial success in the west, and this was the first one of them.
First of all, the plot is kind of weird and the reason is that when it was first released in Japan, it was an anime type of plot. They though that it wouldn't work for the western side of the world, so they slapped a rushed-up story to replace the original one. The American story of this game is a little boy (Jason) that have a frog (Fred) as a pet. That frog ran away and jumped on an radioactive crate that was in Jason's backyard. We don't know why that kid has some radioactive stuff in the backyard, but let's assume it's normal. Fred becomes massive, dropped into a hole (in that same backyard) and disappeared. That boy followed him in that hole and found a vehicle named Sophia. That vehicle is designed to destroy mutants living inside the earth. So Jason puts a suit on and jumped in that vehicle to destroy the mutants, kill the Plutonian boss and to find his frog. All of this is shown as a slideshow in the game. I know the story doesn't makes much sense, but here we are.
The graphics are actually good. The enemies looks different from each other (even though there are some variants of the same enemy), the background is really nice and immersive. All the different parts of the game is really different from one another, so for a Metroidvania type of game, it's really important. The music is really good. There's a different song for each world and there weren't one that I though was bad, or I wanted to mute. My favorite song was Stage 2 (castle), but the song from Stage 1 (forest) is the most well known of the game. The boss music is really intense and makes you motivated to defeat that boss. The SFX are really average. There no much to say about the sound effects.
The controls as a vehicle are simple at first, but when you progress though the game, they get more complicated, but also more annoying. The reason being is about the wall and celling power-up and the swimming power-up. The vehicle can stick to wall and celling, and when it's time to do some tight jumps, it can be really annoying. The reason is that if you are too close to the edge, you will go down the surface under you when you didn't wanted to. This occurs mostly at the end of the game, but it was still irritating. The swimming power up is only bad because when you want to use your special weapon, you need to hold down and press B. When swimming downward, you will waste a lot of those special ammunitions only because you want to shoot those enemies. The control on foot weren't that bad. It took me some time to learn that if you throw a grenade with A and you hold that button, you can strafe. It's not really instinctive but I figured it out around the middle of the game.
The gameplay is a mix of a Metroidvania, a Platformer and half of the gameplay is a run and shoot. This makes an interesting mix, and you can see that they were inspired with the first Metroid game. The map can be really confusing, but they did something that the Metroid game was missing : a map. Of course, the map is not in-game, but in the instruction manual. It's a good enough map for you to not get lost in it. It shows you a general idea where are the doors and the location of each stages. That was ultra helpful. Throughout the game, your vehicle gets upgrades when Jason defeats bosses. Those upgrades helps you to get access to other parts of the game. Your vehicle can shoot bullets in front of it and on top. Sofia also have access to 3 types of special projectiles : A three missile thing, a lightning bolt and some homing missiles. The three missiles are shot in front of you in a fork shape and can be useful. The lightning bold is the worst weapon, because it shoot under you. It wouldn't be that bad if it would always hit at the same spot. However, the arc of the lightning bolt and the place where it hits is random, so this is mostly useless. The last weapon is the homing missiles. They can be really good, but sometimes, they don't want to hit the target and decides to do some back-and-forth around your vehicle. Those specials weapons were mostly useful in my playthrough against one type of enemy : the worms. Those worms are the most annoying and frustrating enemies by far because your normal cannon cannot hit them because they are too low on the ground. Let me tell you that there are a lot of them in the game.
For the Jason gameplay, I would say that his regular weapon is really bad. The reason being is that his gun can be upgraded by collecting some weapon power-ups. The more you got them, the stronger the weapon is. When you get hit, you also lose one bar of that weapon power-up. Let me tell you that this gun is the most inaccurate weapon in the game. It shoots some projectiles that does an S trajectory. each bullets has a different starting point so it's really hard to aim. I say that it's hard to aim, but I should actually say that it's impossible. There's nobody (excepts maybe speed runners) that can aim precisely with that weapon. So when you see an enemy, you mash the button and prey that it will hit. This is mostly visible against a boss in this game. Because of that, the bosses are really hard in this game. Fun fact, you fight against your frog twice in this game.
The game had some really good ideas, like the weapon upgrade of jason, the mix of on foot and vehicle gameplay. However, there were a lot of frustrating things in the game like the inaccuracy of bullets and annoying creature that makes me giving it a lower score that I would love to.
An early metroidvania with a neat use of a vehicle. I liked it as a kid, but I could never beat it. 3 lives, 2 continues (basically 9 lives with a severe punishment for every third death, in modern terms), and the game takes hours to beat, with you starting from the beginning every time. I have to say, the remake, Blaster Master Zero, fixed a lot of what this game did wrong, though I like the original game's music kinda better.