Have you ever had a moment where you fuck up royally at something, and you just wish that you could go back and do it over again so that it turns into a positive memory of your life? I’m sure we have all had those instances of memories we wish we could forget, as I definitely wish I could forget about a lot of the fuck ups I made in the past, or to go back and remedy those situations. Unfortunately, unless we ever invent time travel, that will most likely never happen. With video games and other forms of media, though, that is a different story. You could release something that many consider pretty lackluster, bad, or just flat out god-awful, and the people that worked on it could live in shame for the rest of their lives because of it, or, on the other hand, you could go back to what you had before, change some things up or rebuild it entirely from scratch, and you could redeem said product by making it much better in the public’s eyes. One such instance of this happening would be with the dated title known as New Adventure Island.

So, technically, this game is not a remake of the original Adventure Island, and it is instead just another game that was made in the Adventure Island series, but from what I have played here, it may as well be a remake. It shares a lot of very similar elements with the original game, from the levels to the things that you fight, even down to the bosses, which could be seen as a bad thing right out of the gate. I have mentioned plenty of times in the past that I think that the original Adventure Island, and the original Wonder Boy to an extent, are bad games, being extremely repetitive, way too difficult, and just not fun to play through after a while. Thankfully though, this game pretty much takes a lot of the problems that the original game had and fixes it, making a pretty good game out of it. I wouldn’t say it fixed all my major gripes with that original game, but it does make things a lot more fun to play, while also being charming and fast at the same time.

The story is all too familiar for every game in this series, where Master Higgins gets married to Tina in a glorious ceremony at the church, but all of a sudden, the evil Baron Bronsky comes down and not only kidnaps Tina, but also the many island children that have come to enjoy the ceremony, so in a fit of rage, Master Higgins then sets out to once again save Tina, all of the island children, and defeat the Baron once and for all, which is about as generic as a story for this series gets, and it does nothing more then continuing to make me feel bad for Higgins, as the guy just can’t have a relationship without someone kidnapping his girl. The graphics are fantastic, having a wonderful art style that I don’t want to stop looking at, even if the animations for the enemies and bosses leave a lot to be desired, the music is pretty good, having plenty of energetic and cheery tunes, along with some more menacing ones that were also nice to hear, and the control/gameplay is… well, it is an Adventure Island game, so you should know by now what to expect.

The game is a 2D action platformer, where you take control of Master Higgins yet again, go through six different worlds, each with four levels a piece, along with a seventh final stage, dodge plenty of enemies along the way or defeat them using whatever weapons that you may find on your journey, gather plenty of weapons, extra lives, and food items to keep your hunger bar from depleting completely, and take on several fun, albeit very similar bosses that will take some time to take down if you aren’t too careful. For those who have played any other Adventure Island game, especially the original game, then a lot of this will feel very familiar to you, but it does still manage to be very fun most of the time, and it does feel a lot better to play than the original game.

Like I mentioned before, the game is very similar to that of the original game, having very similar level structures, level themes, and the same type of bosses, but thankfully, this game manages to fix all of that by adding in a wonderful little spice of life known as variety. While the level layouts don’t change all too much, all the environments, hazards, and the types of enemies you can encounter change throughout the game, making things visually distinct and interesting for most of the journey and fun to play through, even if it isn’t as interesting as other games. Not to mention, while most of the bosses are the same dude with the head of a different creature, each one has a different attack, such as one that creates a wall of ice spikes to send shooting at you, or one which sends a wave of fire arching towards you. Each one is defeated the same way, but the way that you approach these fights is slightly altered each time, which does make things a lot more fun and engaging, which I really appreciate.

In addition, some elements that were brought into the series in previous sequels are also brought into this title as well. You now have multiple weapons that you can find throughout the land, such as spears, boomerangs, and fireballs, and while most of them work the exact same way, some end up doing more damage than others, making it so that you wanna stick with one weapon for as long as you can for the most effect. And finally, I know I already brought this up earlier, but I absolutely love the visuals in this game, and they help make me want to play more of it so that I can enjoy every second of this. It’s just such a cute art style, and it really shines in instances such as whenever you beat a world, and before the next one, you are greeted with a cutscene that has Master Higgins dancing in some way with some other island creatures, with me having a huge grin on my face the entire time whenever any of these popped up.

However, if none of that sounds all too enticing for you, then at the end of the day, this is just another Adventure Island game. You run around throw things, eat things, and die to that octopus that you didn’t see coming until it is too late. You know how it goes at this point, and this game really doesn’t do anything new or original when compared to every other game before it. That doesn’t necessarily make the game bad at all, but at this point, we are four games in, and the lack of any prominent new features does kinda suck, and it does make it to where I can’t say this game is any better than that of Adventure Island II or even Super Adventure Island. A cute art style can only do so much for something like this before you start asking where all the new, cool shit is.

Overall, despite a major lack of change, and while it isn’t technically a remake at all, New Adventure Island manages to take most of what was wrong with the original game in this series and fixes it to where I ended up having a really great time with it, having the same basic, yet really fun gameplay at a reasonable length, coupled with an amount of charm that made this really enjoyable to admire as I was going along. I would definitely recommend it for those who fans of the previous games in the series, as well as those who didn’t like the original game like me, because while I can’t say for sure that you will like this one much more, you can definitely appreciate the effort put into making this into what is essentially a much better version of that original title. It’s also too bad that this was only released on the TurboGrafx 16, because I would kill to be able to play this game on modern platforms. Yeah, it did get re-released for the Virtual Console and PSN a while back… you know, before those services got shut down……… I hate video game companies so much.

Game #539

After finishing FF7 Remake last month, I just knew that I had to play FF7 Rebirth as soon as it released. It's now been almost a month since I started playing this game and I put over 60 hours into it.

I will say that if you enjoyed FF7 Remake then you will likely enjoy FF7 Rebirth. This game doesn't really take anything away from its predecessor, just improves on what worked and adds more stuff on top. Even something simple like adding air combos and ranged attacks to Clouds moveset made my experience so much better.

Thankfully, most of my problems with FF7 Remake got fixed in this game. Each character now has just one skill tree. The difficulty is a lot more balanced, even on Easy. The pacing of the story is better, but I definitely felt the length towards the end of the game.

Wasn't expecting that one of my many highlights with this game would be the card minigame. Queen's Blood is incredibly addictive. It's frustrating to lose, but also it's so satisfying to win. I would probably get super addicted to Queen's Blood if it was its own standalone game.

You should know that this game is very beefy. Even when you're mostly focusing on the story like I did, you'll still spend quite a bit of time playing it.

I don't know why this game was marketed as an open world game when it isn't really. Sure, there's lots of stuff to do in each region, though they're all pretty separate.

This next part may sound unfair, but I didn't care for how traversal worked in the open areas. It felt like there wasn't much challenge or fun when traversing across the world. Even a simple jump button would make things more interesting.

I'd describe the story in a nutshell as both exactly like what you expect and nothing like what you expect at the same time. These two realities can coexist.

The final chapter was just incredible. Can they really top it? I'm not really sure, the ending was just so good.

Overall, the story is very good. I enjoyed pretty much every character, my favorites were Barret, Yuffie, and Cait Sith. I'm not quite sure that I can call the story perfect when it's not quite over yet. We'll see if the third and final entry in the FF7 Remake trilogy manages to stick the landing, though I'm confident that it will.

[ATROPOS_SCOUT_LOG_#01]://“DualSense"

The drizzle of rain rippling through my fingers. Stone hearts pulsating, shocks to my system. A fog unending. This ain’t home but the place where I must be. The ghost of Sisyphus lost in a dark forest where the rivers run red with neon-blood at her feet.

This is not an ordinary planet. Everything wants [to kill] me. The worm-fed wolves and the speckled colossi uncoiling their endless garments of tentacles. Selene gets bashed into her suit by a biological blade slicing through the bullet rainbow. Azure echoes, a scan. Soft waves washing over my palms, producing new images, forming a sense of space built on the past-pulled directions of her previous deaths - rubber-banded triggers and reflexes snatching at the pressure of our fingers, dashes across a yard of grass, concealing its cosmic horrors, gestating new ones, each loot chamber a tomb filled with little dilemmas like a gun or another gun or a malignancy that’s worth the bite it will inflict on your virtual corpse once the creeper’s been fed if only I could survive that long - come through the other side of the mirror not unscathed but changed, finally, freed from the kind of anxious death-drive repetition forces upon you with its binaries of risk and reward. The sepulchral horror of Returnal’s feedback loop isn’t so much the impossibility of our escape as it is the unveiling of desire’s deepest seat; Selene - and by extension the player - are exactly where they’re meant to be, embedded within this unbelievably tight system of dashes and haptics, movement mechanics that thankfully prioritize responsiveness over groundedness complimented by an array of weapons each embodying distinct ways of approaching and eradicating our outer demons in this inner hell - and god does it feel good to burst this Hollowseeker open, watch Ixion fold into a cloud of golden dust; to see polygons devolve by my hand and understand this information in the skin directly then commits the player to kinesthesia as a form of immersion in which Returnal refuses subjugation and offers a direct line of conversation with the text instead - the best rumblescape since Rez’s Trance Vibrator. I’d go one step further even : Atropos as a sexual device. Of parasites latching onto my arm and skin saturated in power-ups. Digital matter that burrows in my brain's DualSense, carries me over this teleporter and away. Pop the bubble bath. Selene crumbles like the feeble being of particles that she is before reappearing somewhere else. Another room, another reverberation, this time I fail miserably at dispatching the heretic Phrike but I’ll soon be here again no doubt, and if not here then perhaps up in this spire that festers into infinity, grinding the score, collecting poppy flowers, attempting to make sense of the frenzy of it all. Bared tendrils at the mere sight of me, so I respond in kind - they tear me to pieces, they send me under.

Hihi, Atropos.

-

[ATROPOS SCOUT LOG_#02] :// “DreamSequence”

“Her name was Echo and she made the mistake of helping Zeus succeed in one of his sexual conquests. Hera found out and punished Echo, making it impossible for her to say anything except the last words spoken to her. Soon after, Echo fell in love with Narcissus whose obsession with himself caused her to pine away until only her voice remained. Another lesser known version of this myth has Pan falling in love with Echo. Echo, however, rejects his amorous offers and Pan, being the god of civility and restraint, tears her to pieces, burying all of her except her voice. Adonta ta mete. [—Adonta ta… = “Her still singing limbs.”]”

- Chapter V, House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski

Between every crash, a vision. Dreams in cathode ray-tubes and ocean-memories leaking through [her] with each failed attempt, a corrosive force of time itself, a marriage happening in reverse. Days falling into darkness; back to the beginning. In that particular fold of forest green a house stands - stood - still. Upon entrance, on the left wall just before a flight of stairs resonates with unknown footsteps, there hangs, I remark, the wooden-carved face of a sun left alone long ago. My son. Her daughter. Someone else’s Pandora's box - the soft voyeurism of play as metaphor. If DualSense’s intent was to obfuscate, to render tenuous and tactile the delineation between player and character then the house serves an opposite function - it sings with echoes, granting my poor astronaut the corporeal presence she so desperately craves in order to grasp the dream sequence and tear this body away from me. In her first-person perspective, at last, a new symbolic layer of reality touched in artifacts. Each passage through the house's pristine innards bores new holes in the narrative whilst grounding Selene in a larger picture of Returnal as an object both about her and itself - incapable of escaping its own maze of contradictions. But it's never enough. For me, for her. Even in death the proverbial rug is pulled from under us; to end her life on Earth means the same for Selene as it does on Atropos. We never escaped. And in this realization something shifts in our perception. Biomes of meaning begin to coalesce as crimson wastes become fractured and composed again, a ruin overgrown no longer and instead echoing our knowledge of design, confronting it to that of a decaying specter - except there's no one to race against but ourselves, frolicking in lasered flesh, taking a certain pleasure in charting that tract of scorched earth turned calcified snowmetal, in knowing that the planet glances back at us with every variation of its arcade terminologies. Sometimes on the ground you find a music box. Couple of omens, couple of tunes. Suddenly Returnal shrinks - and then expands. This planet is real, I’m convinced of it and the more Selene remembers, the more she seems to forget. I was lost in a forest once but now, it seems, I am trapped at the bottom.

Smile, Atropos.

-

Further journal entries will be added, in due time.

A couple of years ago, they announced a rerelease of Hebereke/Ufouria and I played the original on an emulator to prepare for the official release and to promote it saying it would come out soon. Turns out it took way longer than expected. It’s weird as the Gimmick one came out a long while ago and we also got Trip World DX. It then just randomly got announced right as Hebereke 2 was going to release. What made this rerelease interesting was we were even getting the Japanese version and not the PAL version that was shown years ago. Now that it’s finally out, should you get this Enjoy Edition? It’s hard to say really.

Let’s get this out of the way now, this is a pretty similar release to the one Gimmick got so any opinions you had on that rerelease will probably be true here. Not much was added outside of the usual borders, scans of the boxes and cartridges and manuals, achievements, and a speedrun mode that you can post to the leaderboards. There’s no challenges, no hard achievements to earn, no interviews, no scans of just the artwork, not even a sound test. I think the reason it lacks a sound test is because you can pay additional money for the OST to listen to on Steam which is kind of stupid if you ask me. I’m not really sure about input lag or the sorts as I’m not one to notice that stuff, I heard Gimmick had some little issues with that so it might be the same here? Though this is a much easier and more relaxed game, you’ll never really cry foul for any input lag shenanigans.

Actually I guess there is one important feature that is the Special Snaps. You see, the original has always been Japan only, you needed a fan translation to ever read the dialogue in English. This release sort of adds English support but it’s kind of weird. Once you see a dialogue box, the game will let you view it there and translate the scene in English. You can even compare it to the PAL version called Ufouria the Saga. While these are cool, it might hurt the experience for some as you have to go to the menu and then look at the Special Snap to even read what the dialogue said. The translation can feel a bit iffy at times but it's not unreadable. There’s also a before and after scene that’s incorrectly placed for the Ufouria images. How this got past testing is beyond me and hopefully a patch can fix it. They also hilariously made an error where pressing the A button does “ChengeTitle” according to the bottom of the screen. Speaking of Ufouria, I wanna talk about something related to it.

Look, I don’t like Ufouria at all. I always hated the replacement sprites, especially Bop Louie. The dialogue has also lost a lot of the charm it once had and it’s why I always recommend the Japanese original. That said, I can understand why someone would prefer Ufouria even if I don't agree. Which is why I find it very disappointing that you just can’t play it here at all. It makes no sense to not have it here as it has scans, the comparisons in Special Snaps, and even a border. It’s even more of a shame as every release of Ufouria that was on Virtual Console in the past has been delisted meaning there’s still no easy way to play it outside of emulation. I don’t get why there’s no toggle to play that version. This makes me even more confused why they even bothered localizing the sequel under the PAL name if they were just not gonna do that here for this rerelease. It’s something I hope they can patch in but I don’t expect it to happen.

Should you buy Hebereke Enjoy Edition? Honestly, it’s hard to say. It doesn’t add too much to warrant playing it over emulation unless you just don’t feel morally okay with doing something like that and the release just isn’t perfect in general. They did make this one cheaper than the Gimmick rerelease with this being $9.99 and it’s a dollar off currently but this still could have been better. Hebereke is an expensive Famicom game unfortunately and the rerelease on PS1 has poor sound emulation so this is your best bet for an official release. It also might be a nice buy if you wanna compare it to Hebereke 2. Hebereke is still a wonderful game and I enjoyed my time replaying it here and got every achievement as well (even though it’s super easy to do). Stick with emulation if you think the price isn’t worth it but this is still a playable release of one of Sunsoft’s greatest games.

Bandai-Namco released Boomeroad worldwide two days ago as part of a suite of simple and experimental games to train new recruits from their indie developer Gyaar Studio. The concept here combines a standard 3D platformer with boomerang throwing that creates grindable rails that can be chained for extended mid-air traversal. You refresh your energy gauge by passing through rings and landing on platforms, and you can increase the gauge's capacity by collecting optional artifacts. Unfortunately, the gameplay is undercooked. You can't adjust the shape of the boomerang's arc besides flattening the upward curve a little, there's very few interactable objects (switches and fans) that force the player to throw the boomerang at them for activation, and you can in fact avoid most of these elements entirely by throwing two chained boomerang arcs to climb up and walk on top of the level's walls, skipping entire sections of the level while never running out of gauge. While I thought speedrun mode would mitigate most of these shortcomings, I don't find the movement satisfying enough because there's fairly little momentum conserved upon jumping off of rails for speeding up, so the movement itself lacks weightiness and route planning isn't very interesting when you're incentivized to just follow the set path of rings for time bonuses. I suppose there's only so much I can complain about a free game nevertheless, and although I don't see Gyaar Studio returning to this, I do think they've got a solid concept on their hands that could prove to be an interesting 3D puzzle-platformer if thoroughly fleshed out with more committal movement and tighter level design.

Isn’t it always satisfying to see a redemption arc be fully completed? You know, you have this character, series, or whatever that starts out at the lowest point imaginable, where only small percentage of people could say they are a fan of it, but then gradually over time, it starts getting better and better through whatever means, until it then reaches the point where it isn’t necessarily beloved per se, but it is liked by a lot more people then before, outnumbering the others that still don’t like it. One redemption arc I never expected to see would be with the World Heroes series, starting off with a pretty piss-poor attempt at capitalizing on the success of Street Fighter II, which was greeted by groans that could be heard across the world, and then there was World Heroes 2, a sequel that definitely did improve on some elements that were featured in the original game, but it wasn’t enough to make it really great or even pretty good, like with other fighters at the time. Thankfully, I think we have reached the point where the series finally found its stride, thanks to World Heroes 2 Jet.

Despite what the title may tell you, this is NOT an updated version of World Heroes 2, but rather instead, it is the third mainline game in the series. I don’t know why the fuck they decided to name it that with that in mind, or why they decided to include the word “Jet” at the end of the title, but I’m sure it did cause a lot of confusion for plenty of people back in the day. I wasn’t really focused on that for too long though when going into this game, because I was more worried about if I was gonna like it to begin with. This was World Heroes that we’re talking about, and I knew that the second game was better than the original, but it could always drop off in quality again at the drop of a hat. Thankfully though, that was not the case, as this is without a doubt the best game in the series so far, and it is pretty damn good all on its own. Maybe I am foolishly blinded due to the last fighting game I played before this being Double Dragon V, but this game manages to be quite an improvement on the formula established in the previous games, while also improving on several elements that I am very thankful for.

The story is about as lazy and generic as this entire series is, where sometime after the previous game's villains were defeated and their tournament was stopped, ANOTHER tournament is started up by a new team of villains as a ploy to take over the world, so it is up to the previous game's fighters, along with several newcomers, to figure out what's going on and save the world again, which is a story that I expected from a series like this, but at the same time, they could've put a little more effort into it. The graphics do look better than the previous game, having a lot of new flashy animations and detailed stages, but it mostly looks the same as every other fighting game from SNK at the time, so you know what you’re gonna get from it, the music is an improvement from what we got before, with there being some pretty sweet tracks here, but most of it is pretty forgettable overall, and the control/gameplay is what you have come to expect from these games, but this game definitely feels better to play then any other game in the series at this point.

The game is a one-on-one fighting game, where you take control of one of 17 different fighters from all across time, with most of them returning from the previous games, face off against many different opponents in plenty of different stages from across the world, throw out many different punches, kicks, and special attacks to deal damage to your opponent and to throw them off their game, make sure to dodge or block any oncoming attacks yourself so that you can get that sweet perfect bonus, and take on one or two different bosses that will certainly put up a challenge and test your might. It is a 90s fighting game, so you know exactly what you are gonna get with this, but to its credit, not only does it feel better to play then other entries in the series, but there are some slight changes that do make it feel different from the other games.

Like with the last games, there are two primary modes that you can take on, but they are much more simple this time around, with Entry to the Tournament being your standard arcade story mode for one of these games, and The Forging of Warriors is your standard versus mode. Both of them work as you would expect, but what is changed is the match setups that are contained in these modes. Unlike previous games, where all of the fights work in the same 2 out of 3 wins fashion, there are a good handful of fights here where you will take on three opponents at once, one for each round, which makes these fights much more interesting, fast, and exciting. Not only that, but depending on how well you do with each opponent, it will change the ending that you get, which is pretty good for adding some replay value to the entire experience.

Speaking of, the fights themselves do feel like an improvement over the previous games, feeling much smoother, faster, and more manageable than in previous games, with there being plenty of great special attacks that you can pull off that provide some great visuals, considering what came beforehand. In addition, they actually managed to find a balance in the difficulty, which is great to see. We had a problem with the original game where it was too easy, and then with the second game, it did feel pretty hard to get through a lot of the fights, but thankfully this time, a lot of the fights feel doable compared to other SNK games, while not being too easy to the point of being pathetic. Beginners to the series, or just in fighting games in general, may have a bit of a hard time, but you should get used to it pretty quickly and take down your opponents all the same.

If none of that is interest to you though, then there is nothing else here that will catch your attention. What we get here is, say it with me now, another typical SNK fighter of the time, with it having plenty to keep fanatics of the genre entertained, but nothing too new or interesting for me to truly recommend it over the many, MANY other options that were out at the time. Not to mention, while I did say that this is the best game in the series, it isn’t too much of a substantial jump in quality from World Heroes 2, so if you weren’t a fan of either of the two previous games, then you are still not going to have a good time with this one. I managed to have a pretty good time with it, but I can’t say for certain you would as well.

Overall, despite a lack of any major changes and being as uncreative as a typical SNK fighter would be, WH2J managed to take this series and change it from a slightly passable good fighting game to a pretty good fight game, one that has fast and fun enough gameplay, some neat ideas that do make fights more enjoyable for the time they use them, and is sure to satisfy the die-hard fans of this franchise plenty… you know, all two of them. I would recommend it for those who were big fans of the previous two games, as well as those who are big fighting game fans in general, because while this isn’t quite as good as other fighters of that era on the market, there are certainly worse options out there that you can choose over this.

But anyway, before we end this off, can we talk about the dumbass dialogue that is in this game for cutscenes? Yeah, I know SNK games at the time always had horrible translations, but this one is just… chef’s kiss, it is exquisite. There are several moments in particular from the end game that stick out to me, where there are multiple lines talking about wieners, which I am pretty sure is supposed to be winner, and one of the winning quotes from the main villain basically said that I am not good enough to… pop his zits? I don’t know what kind of zits he is talking about, but I don’t want anything to do with him or his zit fetish. Seriously, if you haven’t seen the cutscenes in this game and what they say, go look up a video of it, because it is some GLORIOUS shit, it’s so bad.

Game #538

Honestly, a super awesome beginner-friendly way to learning Riichi Mahjong. I wanted to learn how to play because I've been checking out the original famicom releases from 1983 and a mahjong game is one of them! I didn't want the cartridge just gathering dust on my shelf, so I asked a friend to help me learn how to play, and voila, wouldn't you know, he sends me to Mahjong Soul, and I couldn't be happier! Because of this website, I officially understand how to (shittily) play a game of Riichi Mahjong!

I'm someone who is super not into gacha or throwing anime girls into stuff randomly either, so the idea of Mahjong Soul initially didn't interest me too much, but honestly the way its all handled is marvelous! I truly expected it to be more intrusive with its gacha aspect, but ignoring it doesn't hinder the game at all for me. The girls can be a little annoying if I'm being super picky (nyaa~), but honestly they're fine characters, and they don't demand much attention. All together, Mahjong Soul is a really great way to learn, practice, and battle your friends in Riichi Mahjong!! It helps me understand the rules and what I can/can't do amazingly! Now I can't wait to kick some 1983 Famicom AI ass.

4/5

Well this was a nice surprise. After watching the movie for the first time, I was expecting another bad game like with that Predator game. I honestly only played it cause I heard good things but I thought maybe it was an overreaction, no it’s actually just a good game.

This is a good run n gun type of game with good graphics and a really good OST. Most of the OST was seemingly done by Joey Kuras but there’s others credited like Brad Ira Fiedel, Bijan Shaheer, and Teknoman of Teknologic. Seriously the OST is 100% worth listening to if you haven’t yet omg it’s so amazing! I was surprised how enjoyable the game is even if the enemy design and level design can get a bit repetitive. I also feel the controls could also be better but the game is generous enough (on Normal difficulty) to not annoy me. It’s a decently long game for the genre being about an hour long.

Now honestly I don’t know if watching the movie for this was really worth doing. I was a little confused why a lot of levels took place in 2029 but then you go back in time and it’s like ahh here it is. There’s FMVs but good god the quality of these movie clips are so terrible and aren’t even voiced, I don’t know if it was worth the effort. I was also very confused why Kyle Reese lived at the end of this game like the devs couldn’t have forgotten considering it has the ending cutscene so like, what the heck? While some of it makes me remember moments from the movie, you don’t really need to watch the source to enjoy this game fully. Though damnit developers, you couldn’t have put the sex scene in the game? Where else am I going to see low quality nudity?!

Overall, it’s a fun one. It could be better but for an American developed console game for the time, I’m impressed. If anyone is wondering, no I will not play the other Terminator games on stuff like NES, sorry. Give this game a try if you haven’t yet or at least listen to that OST. I’m probably gonna watch the sequel tomorrow so maybe I’ll review the Famicom version of that game’s adaptation to consoles? Ehhh, I’ll think about it.

There were quite a lot of pre-historic-themed games that were made back in the day, primarily platformers, and out of all of them, Joe & Mac/Caveman Ninja was arguably one of the best of the bunch. The game itself wasn’t really all that special, just being a typical arcade platformer themed around cavemen and dinosaurs, but it’s simple yet approachable gameplay, coupled with its cartoonish style, made it very appealing and a good time all around. The same can also be said for the game’s “sequel”, Congo’s Caper, which didn’t differ itself too much from the original, but managed to be just that more fun and challenging from the original to where I would say it is an improvement over the original. But then again, most people probably didn’t even know that game was related to Joe & Mac, because who the fuck is Congo, and why should we worry about his Caper? So, to remedy this, when making the next game, Data East would make the next game focus on the original duo once again, and it would be known as Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics.

Like with the original two games, I had first heard about this game from JonTron’s video that he made on Joe & Mac way back in the day, but I had never actually taken the time to play it myself until before typing this review. From what I had seen, it didn’t really seem like anything all too different or spectacular, just being another game in this series to keep the money rolling in, even if these games were making any money to begin with. So, it didn’t come as any surprise to me when I played the game, and it turned out to be nothing more then good. It is still a perfectly competent platformer, and the ideas it implements are… interesting to say the least, but if you have played the other games before this, you pretty much know almost exactly what to expect from this game.

The story is pretty similar to the other games, although instead of cave-babes being kidnapped this time around, a crown is stolen instead by the evil Gork, so it is up to Joe & Mac to set out to find the Rainbow Stones (definitely not ripping off something else) and get the crown back, which is about as basic as any 90s platformer can get for a story, but hey, at least they swapped out the damsel in distress for an object… in distress? I dunno. The graphics are good, having that same cartoony style, coupled with plenty of vibrant levels to go through, but it doesn’t look any better or worse then the other two games in the series, the music is good, having plenty of pre-historic tunes fitting for your caveman escapades, and the control/gameplay is pretty close to that of the other two titles, except with some changes that can be seen that make the game different, but not for the better.

The game is a 2D platformer, where you take control of either Joe or Mac yet again, go through six different levels across grassy plains, caves, icy mountains and volcanos, defeat plenty of pre-historic enemies from cavemen to tiny little rodent freaks using whatever tool you have for the job, gather plenty of wheels and other items to give you an advantage along the way, and defeat plenty of bosses that are not only pretty easy to deal with, but also have no distinctions to make them stand out from previous bosses in the series. As is Data East tradition, you can pretty much tell here that they put no effort into actually trying anything too new or exciting for this title, but to their credit, they did try to change things up… but fell flat on their face.

For some reason, this game tries to have somewhat of an adventure game feel, where upon the start of the game, you can explore your home village, go into houses, talk to NPCs, and shit like that, as if the game was an RPG. Later after the first level, you are then given the chance to go to a town that has a shop, where you can buy plenty of items, as well as other locales that can take you to certain places or let you view parts of the map. And speaking of the map, you also have a miniature overworld you can run around as well, allowing you to choose to go through the six levels in any order you want, which is a nice change of pace. Not to mention, in one or two cases, there will be an instance where you will need to revisit a previous location, which adds to that sense of adventure that the game is trying to make.

Unfortunately though, that’s really all the benefits you do get from these unique changes, because as for everything else I have mentioned, it all feels so… underwhelming. None of it is really bad, mind you, but everything that this game tries to do in terms of new additions feels completely pointless, with you being able to ignore most of these new elements, and you will get the same experience as you would in any other Joe & Mac game. The only actual purpose that any of this serves is that you are able to buy flowers from the shop, which you can use to woo a cavewoman, who will eventually become your cave bride, and the mother of your future child in the best ending, but again, none of it feels like it has any impact on anything. It just feels like something to do for the sake of it, which is not how you wanna treat a new feature in your third game.

As for the main stages themselves, like with the previous two games, they are fun enough to play through, keeping the same basic run, jump, and attack formula that you know and love from the previous games, except now, there are a few new things added… and by that, I mean like only two real new additions. There are the animal buddies you can now find in this game, which do about what you think they would, and then there are the new types of power ups that you get in the levels, which are… not great, but I will get into that more later. These additions to the gameplay are pretty good and all, but again, like with the other shit I mentioned earlier, both of these just feel pretty underwhelming, like they were added in as a means to make the game more fun and exciting, but they end up either being inconsequential, or not all that useful.

In terms of the issues I have with this game, like I mentioned earlier, the new power ups that you get in this game kinda blow when compared to the original power ups. The boomerang, wheel, and axes from the original game are completely gone, and instead, we get a few melee weapons that can shoot short range projectiles, which are fun to use, but they definitely don’t do as much as you are hoping for. If you are wanting long-range projectiles once again, those come in the form of the various food and patches of water you find lying around, which you can then eat, and then spit back out to your advantage, which is a neat idea, but the projectiles themselves are pretty small, and they feel unreliable most of the time. Aside from that though, there is also an unneeded boss rush, accompanied by re-fights with the game’s main villain, which can only be seen as a means to drag the game’s playtime out even further.

If you haven’t already figured it out already, the main problem that this entire game suffers from is that it is extremely underwhelming. It feels like the people at Data East were looking around at all the other games coming out at the time, seeing what they were doing to enhance the platforming genre, so they decided to take those elements and put them in their own game, but they never quite figured out what made them as impactful or exciting as they did in other games. This also rings true for most of the entire game, where, if we ignore all of the new features and changes present, it is essentially just Joe & Mac again. You go through the same types of levels, fight the same type of enemies, the same type of bosses, all that shit, and none of it feels original enough for me to care anymore then I do. Granted, you could argue other franchises like Mario and Kirby also don’t get too creative with those elements either, but at least with those games, there is always a new visual style, pace, or energy to the games that makes you want to play them again and again, but with this game, it just feels like… nothing.

Overall, despite still keeping the core foundation of the game strong, and having plenty of elements that make it certainly ambitious, Joe & Mac 2 feels like a nothing sequel, one that has plenty of great ideas and a great foundation to build off of, but never quite figured out where to start, and just sorta places these elements along in the game for the sense of being there without any semblance of weight or importance. I would recommend it for those who are fans of the other two Joe & Mac games, as well as those who are fans of old-school platformers in general, but for everyone else, there are plenty of other platformers that you could be playing over this, and get a much more enjoyable experience out of. But I mean, hey, I guess if I had to give the game some credit, I would say that making an underwhelming sequel is a lot better then making a sequel that is just flat-out garbage. Looking at you, Rastan.

Game #522