I played this game a lot with my older brother when I was a kid and had fond memories, and I finally revisited it and beat it for myself. I have a lot to say about this game after dwelling on it for a couple days, so get comfy.
Non-gameplay stuff:
The game opens with a short cutscene of a boy named Jason with a pet frog. The frog escapes its enclosure and hops out an open window and towards a crate marked "Radioactive." The frog grows bigger and the ground beneath it caves in. Jason jumps down the hole after the frog and finds an advanced battle tank so he puts on the pilot suit inside and takes off after the frog. This is the extent of story within the game itself, and it's fine enough for setting up the adventure. (Worth noting that the Japanese version has no story cutscene at all and an entirely different plot described in its manual, but that's not the version I played, so that's not what I'm reviewing.)
The music, like almost all of Sunsoft's titles, is back-to-back great tracks. The music fits the area you're in, and sets a good tone for a mostly lighthearted adventure. Sound effect design is similarly on-point.
The sprites and environments look great, I have no complaints in that area. Monster designs are mostly cool, particularly most of the bosses have great screen presence. It's not all good in the graphics department though. When entering a boss room, the entire screen rapidly flashes bright white. I had to cover my eyes during these sequences because flashing lights can trigger migraines for me. At least the flashing happens at set times so it can be prepared for, but that's far from an excuse.
Gameplay stuff:
The gameplay is split into two different styles. You begin the game in the first style, which I will refer to as the overworld. In the overworld you pilot the tank in an open side-scrolling environment where you can explore at your leisure. The tank can jump, shoot its main cannon, and fire sub-weapons. There are three sub-weapons you can select in the pause menu and use by pressing down+shoot, though you must first collect ammo for them. The sub-weapons serve mostly to hit enemies that are otherwise in difficult positions to hit with the main cannon, making them fairly valuable. You can also get out of the tank by pressing Select, which you will need to do periodically throughout the game. On foot you can access some areas the tank cannot reach as well as enter dungeons, which take you to the other style of gameplay, which I'll talk about later.
There's a lot of platforming and plenty of enemies while exploring the overworld, and in similar fashion to games like Metroid, you gradually get upgrades throughout the game that allow you to reach new places and bypass new obstacles. The overworld is split up into 8 zones, each containing a handful of dungeons. One of the dungeons in each zone will contain a boss, and defeating it will reward you with one of the tank upgrades.
Overall I consider this part of the game to be pretty good. The controls are responsive and the tank feels good to drive around. Enemies don't take too much damage to kill and regularly drop health recovery pickups. Most enemies you kill don't respawn until you change zones or enter a dungeon. It's a nice feature that lets you clear out monsters so you can explore and tackle tough jumps unharassed. I mostly enjoyed my time with the overworld.
That said, it is not without some flaws. There are two major things here I take issue with: First, the game gives you zero indication or hints on where to go. This is not a unique problem for an exploration heavy NES game, but it is no less frustrating to deal with. Some of the zones are easy to get lost in while looking for the boss dungeon or the door to the next zone. This problem is made worse by the fact that several times you have to backtrack to previous zones to find the entrance to the next zone.
The second major issue tied to one of the upgrades for the tank. You get a hover module that gives you limited flight that controls akin to a jetpack. The hover upgrade is required to reach a few mandatory areas but has limited fuel that does not recharge on its own. This means you need to find and collect fuel pickups that only drop off certain enemies or show up in dungeons. It is very frustrating having to leave to go collect fuel if you happen to run out at a crucial time, and in general it means you don't get to use the flight as freely as you'd probably want. Later overworld exploration would be considerably better if the jets either slowly recharged, or if the fuel pickups were more readily available.
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The second gameplay style occurs when you enter a dungeon and I'm going to say this upfront: these top-down segments end up being the bulk of the game and they range from almost tolerable to completely miserable. Once inside, the game switches to a top-down view and you must fight a variety of different enemies as you explore it. At your disposal is a gun and hand grenades, used with B and A respectively. The gun fires in the four cardinal directions and you can collect up to 8 upgrade pickups that power up its range, damage, and every few levels change the pattern of its shots. The grenades are thrown a short distance and explode on the ground, causing large amounts of damage but requiring careful spacing to use. Also within the dungeons are breakable blocks, some of which contain pickups, but most of which don't.
I...don't have much positive to say about these segments. Much like in the overworld, enemies remain dead until you leave the dungeon, with some rare exceptions, so that's a plus. The boss designs are neat but I said that before. Some of the tile sets are cool. I've already run out of nice things to say, so now it's time for the bad.
Your character sprite and hitbox are pretty large and you don't move super fast. Sometimes this leads to taking damage that feels nearly unavoidable, especially during some boss fights. Taking damage lowers the upgrade level of your gun by one, making it a frustrating tug-of-war to keep your gun at high levels. The last couple levels of gun upgrade change your shots to fire in a wave pattern, which can be useful for hitting enemies without needing to line up with them, but makes fighting in tighter spaces difficult, and sometimes the shots just outright miss the enemies. Dungeons that don't have a boss at the end only offer pickups and for the most part end up being a waste of time unless you're desperate for supplies.
The difficulty of the dungeons is overall not too bad, with the exception of the bosses. The boss fights that await you in progress dungeons range from trivial to completely asinine hard, with only one I considered a good middle-ground that was actually fun to fight. If you run out of lives and have to continue, you are sent back to the entrance of the overworld zone with no sub-weapon ammo and must make your way back to the dungeon. If you run out of continues, you must start the whole game over again. While there is a secret input on the title screen that lets you continue after a game over, I am considering that another negative point. Instead of putting that secret in, the game should just have unlimited continues.
Ultimately, the sad part of this game is that the overworld that I actually enjoy the gameplay of feels like it only serves to ferry you between the dungeons. There are no boss fights or any real goals to accomplish in the overworld other than "reach the next awful top-down segment." The concept of an exploration game having two completely different gameplay styles is a neat novelty for the time that I really wish was better, but its implementation leaves so much to be desired.
Do I recommend this?
No. The more I think about it, the more disappointed I am with the experience. If you have nostalgia for this game as I did, I advise you to just keep your rose tinted glasses intact and appreciate the memory you have of it. If you REALLY like "metroidvania" style games and feel the need to play this anyway, I suppose you could do worse, but there's no shortage of better offerings out there.
Non-gameplay stuff:
The game opens with a short cutscene of a boy named Jason with a pet frog. The frog escapes its enclosure and hops out an open window and towards a crate marked "Radioactive." The frog grows bigger and the ground beneath it caves in. Jason jumps down the hole after the frog and finds an advanced battle tank so he puts on the pilot suit inside and takes off after the frog. This is the extent of story within the game itself, and it's fine enough for setting up the adventure. (Worth noting that the Japanese version has no story cutscene at all and an entirely different plot described in its manual, but that's not the version I played, so that's not what I'm reviewing.)
The music, like almost all of Sunsoft's titles, is back-to-back great tracks. The music fits the area you're in, and sets a good tone for a mostly lighthearted adventure. Sound effect design is similarly on-point.
The sprites and environments look great, I have no complaints in that area. Monster designs are mostly cool, particularly most of the bosses have great screen presence. It's not all good in the graphics department though. When entering a boss room, the entire screen rapidly flashes bright white. I had to cover my eyes during these sequences because flashing lights can trigger migraines for me. At least the flashing happens at set times so it can be prepared for, but that's far from an excuse.
Gameplay stuff:
The gameplay is split into two different styles. You begin the game in the first style, which I will refer to as the overworld. In the overworld you pilot the tank in an open side-scrolling environment where you can explore at your leisure. The tank can jump, shoot its main cannon, and fire sub-weapons. There are three sub-weapons you can select in the pause menu and use by pressing down+shoot, though you must first collect ammo for them. The sub-weapons serve mostly to hit enemies that are otherwise in difficult positions to hit with the main cannon, making them fairly valuable. You can also get out of the tank by pressing Select, which you will need to do periodically throughout the game. On foot you can access some areas the tank cannot reach as well as enter dungeons, which take you to the other style of gameplay, which I'll talk about later.
There's a lot of platforming and plenty of enemies while exploring the overworld, and in similar fashion to games like Metroid, you gradually get upgrades throughout the game that allow you to reach new places and bypass new obstacles. The overworld is split up into 8 zones, each containing a handful of dungeons. One of the dungeons in each zone will contain a boss, and defeating it will reward you with one of the tank upgrades.
Overall I consider this part of the game to be pretty good. The controls are responsive and the tank feels good to drive around. Enemies don't take too much damage to kill and regularly drop health recovery pickups. Most enemies you kill don't respawn until you change zones or enter a dungeon. It's a nice feature that lets you clear out monsters so you can explore and tackle tough jumps unharassed. I mostly enjoyed my time with the overworld.
That said, it is not without some flaws. There are two major things here I take issue with: First, the game gives you zero indication or hints on where to go. This is not a unique problem for an exploration heavy NES game, but it is no less frustrating to deal with. Some of the zones are easy to get lost in while looking for the boss dungeon or the door to the next zone. This problem is made worse by the fact that several times you have to backtrack to previous zones to find the entrance to the next zone.
The second major issue tied to one of the upgrades for the tank. You get a hover module that gives you limited flight that controls akin to a jetpack. The hover upgrade is required to reach a few mandatory areas but has limited fuel that does not recharge on its own. This means you need to find and collect fuel pickups that only drop off certain enemies or show up in dungeons. It is very frustrating having to leave to go collect fuel if you happen to run out at a crucial time, and in general it means you don't get to use the flight as freely as you'd probably want. Later overworld exploration would be considerably better if the jets either slowly recharged, or if the fuel pickups were more readily available.
-------------
The second gameplay style occurs when you enter a dungeon and I'm going to say this upfront: these top-down segments end up being the bulk of the game and they range from almost tolerable to completely miserable. Once inside, the game switches to a top-down view and you must fight a variety of different enemies as you explore it. At your disposal is a gun and hand grenades, used with B and A respectively. The gun fires in the four cardinal directions and you can collect up to 8 upgrade pickups that power up its range, damage, and every few levels change the pattern of its shots. The grenades are thrown a short distance and explode on the ground, causing large amounts of damage but requiring careful spacing to use. Also within the dungeons are breakable blocks, some of which contain pickups, but most of which don't.
I...don't have much positive to say about these segments. Much like in the overworld, enemies remain dead until you leave the dungeon, with some rare exceptions, so that's a plus. The boss designs are neat but I said that before. Some of the tile sets are cool. I've already run out of nice things to say, so now it's time for the bad.
Your character sprite and hitbox are pretty large and you don't move super fast. Sometimes this leads to taking damage that feels nearly unavoidable, especially during some boss fights. Taking damage lowers the upgrade level of your gun by one, making it a frustrating tug-of-war to keep your gun at high levels. The last couple levels of gun upgrade change your shots to fire in a wave pattern, which can be useful for hitting enemies without needing to line up with them, but makes fighting in tighter spaces difficult, and sometimes the shots just outright miss the enemies. Dungeons that don't have a boss at the end only offer pickups and for the most part end up being a waste of time unless you're desperate for supplies.
The difficulty of the dungeons is overall not too bad, with the exception of the bosses. The boss fights that await you in progress dungeons range from trivial to completely asinine hard, with only one I considered a good middle-ground that was actually fun to fight. If you run out of lives and have to continue, you are sent back to the entrance of the overworld zone with no sub-weapon ammo and must make your way back to the dungeon. If you run out of continues, you must start the whole game over again. While there is a secret input on the title screen that lets you continue after a game over, I am considering that another negative point. Instead of putting that secret in, the game should just have unlimited continues.
Ultimately, the sad part of this game is that the overworld that I actually enjoy the gameplay of feels like it only serves to ferry you between the dungeons. There are no boss fights or any real goals to accomplish in the overworld other than "reach the next awful top-down segment." The concept of an exploration game having two completely different gameplay styles is a neat novelty for the time that I really wish was better, but its implementation leaves so much to be desired.
Do I recommend this?
No. The more I think about it, the more disappointed I am with the experience. If you have nostalgia for this game as I did, I advise you to just keep your rose tinted glasses intact and appreciate the memory you have of it. If you REALLY like "metroidvania" style games and feel the need to play this anyway, I suppose you could do worse, but there's no shortage of better offerings out there.