Acidentalmente, acabamos fazendo um especial sem realmente ser algo próximo disto por pura sacanagem e Akira Toriyama acabou sendo o palco deste início de mês. Mesmo que eu já tenha finalizado algo que ele trabalhou há pouco tempo: Chrono Trigger; chegou a vez de concluir outra obra dele e neste caso, para mim e para muitos era parte de um backlog passado ou até mesmo a introdução dele: Go Go Ackman! para Super Famicom.

A empresa responsável pelo jogo chama-se Banpresto e pelo que já andei jogando na minha vida como um todo, grande parte dos jogos desta empresa e até mesmo coisas Bandai, costumam ter um estilo único para o Super Nintendo e tudo acaba ficando muito próximo do esperado e por se tratar de Akira Toriyama, não poderia ser diferente. Tudo exala Akira, não tem como... aqui vimos Dragon Ball à qualquer custo. Muito bem feito.

Enquanto o gráfico exala Akira, o som exala Super Famicom na sua mais pura essência. Tudo e quaisquer música ou sfx deste jogo tem cheiro ocidental na sua forma mais nobre, sem exagerar tanto do grave e mantendo sua melodia do início ao fim. Pode ser que haja um loop aqui ou ali, mas nada que atrapalhe ou irrite, pois é um jogo perfeitinho até nisto.

Já em questão de dificuldade o jogo deixa a desejar porque é realmente muito fácil. Não há muito o que se dizer em relação ao seu esforço em manter o jogador ali porque não existe empenho nenhum dos DEVs em querer te prender ao jogo. É um puro plataforma onde você apenas anda e pula, porém o erro não é tão justificativo visto que o jogo possui continue extra.

Mesmo que a dificuldade seja seu ponto fraco, o jogo te diverte de várias maneiras: chutar a cara de alguns inimigos é bem engraçado. Seus pulos de fé também são divertidos, visto que o jogo quer te assustar, mas quando tu ver, tem algo lá embaixo e que às vezes pode ser raro ou te ajuda na jogatina. O 3oitão é melhor arma do jogo!

Este é o típico jogo que você pega para finalizar no fim de semana tomando um cerveja. Sem preocupação, sem muito o que fazer... apenas anda para frente, dar uns pulos de fé e socar até mulher. Jogão!

I feel a lot of retro games from the 90's just have way cooler front covers than a lot of modern games do. I mean look at this beauty, it's like Starscream from Transformers speeding through orbit with a random background explosion. I love it.

As for the actual game it's a pretty good shoot 'em up overall. You control A 'Blaster Fighter' jet plane across six levels using a variety of weapons you can collect liberally. I do mean that as containers with about six power ups at once are found in generous quantities. There are 7 weapons types; Reverse shot, Six way shot, Satellite guns, Homing and three different types of missiles as well as power ups for your main weapon the Vulcan gun. In all honesty I feel the last one is the most important upgrade available. Sometimes the Reverse shot and Homing missiles can be helpful on some small enemies but overall the wall of firepower in front of you will be doing most of the work. Additionally there is a charge shot that damages all enemies on the screen though only the smaller enemies will die from the blast however the recharge time to use it is fairly short and doesn't require collecting or shooting to power up.

Where Aero Blasters really shines compared with Arrow Flash the last Mega Drive Shoot 'em up I played is in the level design and variety. Initially it seemed a little the same with the first level flying across a sky and city landscape followed by a slower cave level but things changed where that level suddenly sped up having to speed through narrow sections with warning signs for the obstacles ahead. The level after that the parallax scrolling came at an angle as if flying into the atmosphere with ships and enemies coming out of the clouds in front of you before finishing in orbit with a gorgeous horizon view of the planet below. From level 4 due to being in space the controls change so that pressing a direction the ship's velocity won't stop due to the vacuum meaning you need to constantly change direction to control it's direction and momentum.

This is a really neat idea but I feel this is where my experience with Aero Blasters slightly loses it's positivity as this can get a little irritating at times and creates an artificial difficulty. The last level inside what seems to be an alien mothership is also a real let down, it's absolutely full of moving obstacle puzzles and is really hard (I'm not good at shoot 'em ups to be fair) and I felt my earlier enjoyment of this title slipping as I directed poor Starscream into yet another moving block where I misjudged the small gap I had to traverse through. The wikipedia page for this game has this quote:

"MegaTech magazine gave the game 78%, commenting on the "excellent graphics, sound and playability", but criticising the low challenge factor."

Which is hilarious to me considering how insanely hard I found the last couple of levels. Overall though I had a good time with this one. The music is pretty fast paced with a nice beat, the action is good and the graphics are crisp and bright with some nice level aesthetics and interesting mechanics. Just slightly too hard for me on the backend, there's a reason the title banner for this game here says 'Game Over'.

+ Some nice unique level design/mechanics
+ Colourful, vivid visuals.
+ Action packed gameplay.
+ That front cover.

- The last couple of levels are way too hard.

Não sei bem como iniciar esta análise porque este jogo entregou a mim muito menos que ele me apresentou. Talvez eu não tivesse ido no fogo de querer jogar algo de Playstation 1 apenas por jogar, mas parabéns: que jogo merda.

Não há nada do que reclamar quanto ao gráfico que de longe é bonitinho já que faz parte do charme do jogo, porém ainda assim tem algo que me incomoda e muito ao ver como este jogo se apresenta. Em sua primeira vista, chega a brilhar os olhos de ver a perfeição que está na tela, mas nada comparado ao Aladdin do Mega Drive que mesmo sendo de outra empresa, não foi o suficiente para a Eurocom aprender com os caras. Se a direção de arte do jogo fosse igual aos amigos da Virgin, o jogo seria outro e muito mais "bonitinho" do que já é. Essa arte de pegar frame a frame e jogar como se fosse animação, mesmo na TV de tubo, você consegue ver os recortes nos cantos do personagem... muito feio.

Pelo menos eu, Alexandre, acho que qualquer jogo da Disney pós Aladdin e Mickey Mania deveria ser feito com os traços dos próprios desenhistas da Disney.

Quanto a jogatina, a maneira que o Hercules se comporta em relação aos botões que o jogador aperta é muito lenta. Sinceramente, não sei se talvez seja o primeiro da Eurocom pro Playstation 1, mas parece que as coisas não funcionam do jeito que era pra funcionar. Tinha tudo pra ser bem polido nesta questão só que tudo parece tanque e ao mesmo tempo não parece tanque., simplesmente uma confusão. Sem dizer nas várias armadilhas que o jogo te joga, como pro exemplo aqueles gatos no meio da cidade que tomam um raio e do nada te suga a vida toda.

Talvez esta seja a mecânica do jogo: te atrapalhar usando o controle e te jogar armadilha sem ver nada na tela. Mesmo na dificuldade setada pelos DEVs, este jogo é deveras irritante, ele não é difícil por ser difícil e ser por ser mal feito.

Quanto ao som: HERCULES; Herculey.. É o que você irá ouvir o jogo todo.

EU CORRI TUDO AQUILO PARA O FINAL BOSS SER UMA MERDA. OBRIGADO HERCULES!

I wish shoot-em-ups continued developing in this direction.

This game has one of the most gorgeous art-designs I've ever seen. And it's spectacle galore without sacrificing the gameplay depth. That being said, the gameplay is pretty basic (as most shoot-em-ups are). Most of the time you're either shooting or dodging, because your aiming and movement are controlled with the same directional keys. And, when you turn around or to your sides, you can't move at all.

Now imagine this game with a free mouse look on PC. If you could control your aiming and movement separately, the gameplay depth would've doubled or tripled, because the level designers could invent challenges that require dodging and shooting simultaneously. The old shoot-em-up formula would've immediately died off.

Still, Panzer Dragoon feels very fresh even today, largely because of the amazing presentation and meticulously designed levels and bosses.

Half a star removed for the bullshit "easy mode" that removes the last two levels of the game completely. I hate when games do that. It's not easy mode, it's incomplete mode. Had to replay the same levels because of this.

When finally trying to revive this franchise the devs opted to trade the thought out and deliberate approach that earlier games had with their enemy placements and variations that forced the player calculate shots and prioritize targets, and instead decided to throw horde after horde of the same bland, uninspired grey zombies that swarm the screen in the dozens.

Just because you CAN put 50 enemies on screen because of new graphics capabilities does not mean that is the best for a game with a reputation for unique enemies types made to diversify the already restricted gameplay of rail shooters.

Seeing chariot and hangedman on the Unreal Engine was pretty satisfying.
However, Moon was one of the most unsatisfying boss encounters in the entire franchise. While all games have a reputation for bad voice acting, they actually had a interesting and unique way of placing dialogues in the games. Moon's voice acting on the other hand just feels abnormally bland, without any personality or even goofyness to it, it's just bad and that's it. His animations are also horrible, he feels weightless for his size and when he moves on water you can see the clipping all over and no response, no splash, no nothing coming from the water. It just clashes so much with the whole UE rendering and feel.

Also, they developed various gore effects and responses to shots on the creatures, but then scrapped it all due to censorship, effectively putting the last nail in the coffin on the most uninteresting game of this franchise.

Feels bad knowing that for some reason they think this is the best path for this franchise and future games will follow this same path seeing no one is pointing out these flaws and just acting happy that the game got attention

I’m not sure exactly as to why or what happened, but back when I played The Revenge of Shinobi, I didn’t really enjoy my time with it at all. It wasn’t too much different from the past two Shinobi games, and I would still say it was the best game in the series at that point, but the amount of stuff thrown at you, the difficulty, and some of the trappings the game lays out for you made it a pretty miserable journey overall. I dunno, maybe it was just a dud of the bunch, so moving forward with high spirits, we now get to the next game in the series, which isn’t a brand new entry entirely, but moreso a loose adaptation of Shadow Dancer that was released exclusively released for the Sega Genesis. Not sure why they didn’t just make a straight port of the original Shadow Dancer for the system, but nonetheless, this resulted in the game Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi.

Thankfully, after playing through this game, I found myself having a pretty good time with it, being a definite improvement over not just the original Shadow Dancer, but also as an improvement over the previous Shinobi game. Yeah, it may just be more of what had come earlier, but compared to the original, and moreso the Master System version of it that I played, it does feel a lot better to play, it looks better, and they actually managed to put the dog in the game! That already makes it an instant improvement just on that factor alone.

The story is actually different from the original game, with the main threat surrounding it being a cult called Union Lizard, which is the worst name for a cult I have ever heard, the graphics are pretty good, but nothing too mind blowing in comparison to previous games in the series, the music, on the other hand, is fantastic, being a massive step up from the previous titles (from what I remember, at least), the control is about what you would expect, but I had no real gripes with them, so they are all good to me, and the gameplay is what you would come to expect from Shinobi and Shadow Dancer, but with elements mixed in from previous titles to change things up… not too much, but enough.

The game is a 2D action side-scrolling platformer, where alongside your very own canine companion, you travel through a good handful of stages, defeat many ninjas and foes that stand in your way with regular and special attacks, rescue hostages to get points, extra lives, and powerups from them along the way, participate in bonus stages for more points and extra lives, and take on several challenging, yet doable boss fights. As an adaptation of Shadow Dancer, it doesn’t do too much to change the gameplay that was seen in the original game, or from any other Shinobi game at that point, which is perfectly fine. Yeah, the formula may be getting a little stale at this point, but again, it is an improvement from what Revenge of Shinobi gave me, which was much appreciated.

For what WAS changed from the original, it all mostly just comes down to the presentation, which can be seen as a downgrade or an upgrade, depending on who you ask. The graphical style is relatively the same, but obviously, there isn’t much detail on sprites or animations as there were with the original, which is kind of a bummer, but that is to be expected with a Genesis title. If it makes up for it, at least the music is better this time around. Not to mention, rather then loosely adapting the stages from the original game, this game has all new levels created for it, and while nothing about them is changed mechanically compared to the original game, it is nice to see new stuff rather then this just being a complete retread of what was previously seen.

Like I mentioned before though, at this point in the series, things are starting to get kind of stale with the gameplay, which could be one of my main issues with the game. It does stand out from other titles by having the dog companion with you, but he was in the original Shadow Dancer as well, so it doesn’t feel like too much of a difference here. I have no problem with game series that reuse gameplay styles with each installment, but we are four installments into this series now, and there haven’t really been any changes with the formula, which makes me wonder why I would keep playing these games if almost nothing is changed with each installment. Maybe it is just because this is an adaptation and not a full new title, so that’s why there are no real changes, but still, it would’ve been appreciated.

For one actual minor complaint that I have with the game itself, the final boss sucks. The boss himself has a pretty cool design, but all he does is just sit on his throne and summon goons to try to take you out, and them sometimes takes his head off to throw fireballs at you. That’s it. For a final boss encounter, that is pretty pathetic, and while he is still somewhat difficult, and while I am not expecting some grand display of actions, I wish he did a little more to make the victory over him feel earned.

Overall, while it does stick too close to what has already been established in previous games, I still ended up having a good time with this game, at least more then I did with The Revenge of Shinobi, and I definitely prefer this over the original Shadow Dancer any day. I would recommend it for both fans of Shinobi and fans of Shadow Dancer to check out, cause I think you would enjoy it. Although, with all that said and done… we never did find out what the secret of Shinobi was. What is the secret, Sega? WHAT ARE YOU HIDING? TELL ME, YOU COWARDS!

Game #278