fe17
1994
(This is the 104th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
Thanks to this challenge I finally played so many beloved Nintendo franchises for the first time in my life. Metroid, Zelda, Kirby and now, I finally played my first ever Donkey Kong game: Donkey Kong Country. I knew next to nothing about this game before playing it and I still know next to nothing about the rest of the games, but after playing Donkey Kong Country, I'm definitely excited to check out whichever games next for this character.
Donkey Kong Country released on November 18, 1994 and was developed by Rare. Rare developed 3 games before this that I actually played, namely Captain Skyhawk, Battletoads and The Amazing Spider-Man for the GameBoy. While I didn't necessarily enjoy all of these games (I'm looking at you Amazing Spider-Man), I saw even then that Rare are capable of developing good games, it's just gonna be a budgetary thing that'll decide the overall quality. So Rare developing a game for Nintendo sounded like a great combo before playing this, and turns out, it was.
Donkey Kong Country went on to sell over 9 million copies (3rd best-selling SNES game, best Donkey Kong game), which led to two sequels on the SNES that released in 95 and 96, which I'll check out for sure. But not before sharing my thoughts on this game. :)
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
There is no actual storytelling in the game. You control Donkey Kong and his nephew Diddy Kong to rid Donkey Kong Island of the Kremlings and to reclaim your bananas that were stolen. This is all explained in the manual exclusively, which has a nice, longer-than-usual story explaining the setting for the game. In the game itself, there are a few characters you meet who will help you out. Funky Kong, the cool dudebro surfer gorilla, who flings you back to a previously finished level really fast if you want to, Candy Kong, Donkey Kong's love interest according to the manual who saves your game, and Cranky Kong, an elderly and wise gorilla who gives you tips. His bio is pretty hilarious because he is apparently the Donkey Kong who featured in the games from the 80s and wants nothing to do with the fancy visuals of (then-)modern day. Legend.
But you're not gonna be playing this for the story and characters, but for the gameplay, the levels and the music.
GAMEPLAY | 14/20
Donkey Kong Country is a 2D platformer like many others before it. It differentiates itself mainly due to its main character and his barrel-flinging escapades, as well as the amount of space he takes up in the otherwise rather small levels. This changes the dynamic of avoiding enemies and objects somewhat because you have to be more precise with your inputs in many of the levels, which is one of the main reasons why Donkey Kong Country is not as easy as it may seem. There is a save system in place, both in-game and in-emulator (if you want), as well as a generous number of extra lives you can get as you play, so beating the game is by no means impossible, but you'll die more often than you think.
Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong run alongside each other and you can swap them out whenever you want. That's worth it at specific points because Diddy Kong is smaller (good for water levels), runs faster and jumps higher, but Donkey Kong is stronger (kills enemies by jumping on them just once instead of twice), grabs vines automatically and can hold a barrel over his head instead of just in front of him, which matters depending on enemy positioning.
There are many obstacles to face in the game, and they continuously change up as you play. The game uses the same items and enemies throughout, but makes use of them pretty creatively. The main challenges include avoiding enemies or killing them by jumping on top of them / rolling into them, grabbing ropes/vines to jump across platforms, jumping into barrels which catapult you forward and chaining together some of these challenges to get to otherwise inaccessible areas, which unlock bonus rooms. There are also mine cart levels, underwater levels and rainy levels which make the floor slippery (always love those), so the challenge is constant and varied enough. The difficulty is mostly fair, but not perfect.
Each world ends with a boss fight. These are pretty simple, which is typical for Nintendo platformers I find. Find a good time to jump on top of the enemy, repeat this 5 times (with Donkey Kong) and the enemy is down. Apart from the final boss, I found these to all be easy.
Overall, it's a fun loop and it's one of the better platformers for its time. Donkey Kong's move set is more limited than I would have liked, so I hope the sequels improve upon that, but gameplay is enjoyable enough to carry you through as you listen to the music and take in the great visual style.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
There is actually voice acting here, though mainly for Donkey Kong yelling. If you're talking about audio in Donkey Kong Country though, you're mainly gonna talk about its soundtrack. Beloved by just about each of the 9+ million individuals who bought it and the many more millions who emulated the game through other means, Donkey Kong Country's soundtrack is just as much part of the experience as the gameplay.
Having listened to the soundtrack for hours while playing the game and a couple more hours in addition to that, I can both definitely say that it's a great soundtrack, but also that I wouldn't put it among my favorites on the SNES. The soundtrack has a distinctive quality, which is that pretty much all of the tracks are nice to listen to and there are no real stinkers included, but the soundtrack, for me, doesn't have that many tracks that make me stop and listen to them like I have a tendency to. Games like A Link to the Past, Super Castlevania, Super Metroid, Super Mario World etc. come to mind.
What makes Donkey Kong Country's soundtrack additionally to me though is that I did not at all expect it to be this vibey and play with different themes like it did. I expected cheerful and jolly music throughout while you run around carefree from level to level. As discussed, the game is much harder than I would have anticipated as well, so it's only fitting I guess that from time to time, the music can set an almost dangerous vibe. If you wouldn't agree on dangerous, I'm sure you can agree that some tracks set a mysterious, adventurous and even thoughtful tone from time to time. Then there is a track like Acquatic Ambience, which sounds incredibly soothing and chill instead of hyper and energetic like I would have expected.
In general, the water levels have some of the better tracks in this game, which I'm thankful for, because the levels themselves sucked. So if you do play Donkey Kong Country, I hope the levels themselves don't ruin the songs for you. Overall, a great soundtrack by David Wise, who is another composer I can add to the list of "one's to look out for".
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 10/10
Wow. To call Donkey Kong Country's visuals unique would be an understatement. If you are looking for some of the best looking games of the early 90s, put Donkey Kong Country on your list asap. It's really worth reading up on the technology used to make these sprites come to life, but suffice it to say it's impressive how Rare pulled this off. I have no real working knowledge of this stuff, but if I understand it correctly, they managed to turn 3D geometry into 2D images to use in this game, and whatever way would be correct to explain it, all you need to know is that it looks great.
Environments from the jungles to the mines also look great to extend the vibes and emotions that are put forth by the soundtrack, as well as simply being pleasing to look at. Some locations are repeated here, which is worth pointing out, but thanks to obstacles/challenges constantly varying from level to level, the levels still feel much more distinct than different-looking levels in some other platformers were the challenge stays static.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
I've gone over the vibes and emotions I got from playing the game and how it is way different from what I would have anticipated. Apart from the whimsical, quirky characters that aid Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong in their adventure, there is no storytelling or anything here, so it's important for the music and visuals to set the main tone for this game and if you're like me and have played so many of these cheerful platformers that give off "low stake, made for children" vibes (and I don't mean this negatively, I enjoy them myself to this day), you might feel some fatigue from it from time to time. So to have Donkey Kong Country switch up the tone here and there was a very welcome change and definitely will make the game stick with me longer than some of its contemporaries.
CONTENT | 7/10
The content in this game is very good, but it doesn't feel like it has the budget of a Mario game for example. This is understandable for a video game character that remained dormant for a while, but is noteworthy nonetheless. Donkey Kong has a lack of skills, enemies and objects repeat pretty early on (even though their placement creatively differs regularly) and levels provide lots of fun, but not a lot of depth to them. It has the feeling of the start to something bigger to it in many ways.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 7/10
This game has a lot of levels. While I'd consider most to be good and some to be excellent, there were some levels I really didn't like. A lot of it has to do with the space given to your character and the timing of button presses. The windows to jump in order to reach a platform or barely just get past an enemy (like those damn zingers) felt too short many times. Two things come to mind especially. First, it's all the levels that include ropes. Half the time I'm struggling getting Donkey Kong to hold on, and the other half of the time where I succeed, I felt like I always would eventually hit my head or my legs on one of the zingers patrolling all the ropes in this world. The other situation where this issue arises is during water levels, where fish are seemingly everywhere and you don't have enough control nor space to maneuver past them reliably, at least as a new player. So if you find yourselves in these situations, best of luck to ya.
Apart from that though, there is more variety here than you'd expect based on the number of enemy types and the limited feature set for Donkey Kong. The barrel levels were fun, the mine cart levels, ditto. Finding secret areas is neat, riding one of the multiple types of animals a la Yoshi is cool too. I thought the mini games weren't as exciting as in Mario games for example, and the last boss was pretty annoying, so there is lots of good and bad here for me, though overall the good definitely wins.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
The innovation here definitely comes from the graphics. Apart from that, the level design and gameplay has similarities to many platformers of its time, and in many ways to Mario as well. It's just that Donkey Kong Country has passion oozing off of it from every direction and also controls well for the most part, which is more than I can say for most platformers in this era of gaming.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
After beating this, you can try and find more of the bonus levels to get closer to 101% completion, though as someone who has never done a speedrun or followed the scene, I still don't know what the additional percentages after 100 mean in these games.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 74/100
A must-play for platforming fans. Some of the most unique visuals for its time, a great soundtrack, fun levels (but also some frustrating ones) and overall just a charming game. I wouldn't call it my 3rd favorite SNES game like its sales would suggest, but I'm positive someone else out there will and I can definitely see their point.
Thanks to this challenge I finally played so many beloved Nintendo franchises for the first time in my life. Metroid, Zelda, Kirby and now, I finally played my first ever Donkey Kong game: Donkey Kong Country. I knew next to nothing about this game before playing it and I still know next to nothing about the rest of the games, but after playing Donkey Kong Country, I'm definitely excited to check out whichever games next for this character.
Donkey Kong Country released on November 18, 1994 and was developed by Rare. Rare developed 3 games before this that I actually played, namely Captain Skyhawk, Battletoads and The Amazing Spider-Man for the GameBoy. While I didn't necessarily enjoy all of these games (I'm looking at you Amazing Spider-Man), I saw even then that Rare are capable of developing good games, it's just gonna be a budgetary thing that'll decide the overall quality. So Rare developing a game for Nintendo sounded like a great combo before playing this, and turns out, it was.
Donkey Kong Country went on to sell over 9 million copies (3rd best-selling SNES game, best Donkey Kong game), which led to two sequels on the SNES that released in 95 and 96, which I'll check out for sure. But not before sharing my thoughts on this game. :)
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
There is no actual storytelling in the game. You control Donkey Kong and his nephew Diddy Kong to rid Donkey Kong Island of the Kremlings and to reclaim your bananas that were stolen. This is all explained in the manual exclusively, which has a nice, longer-than-usual story explaining the setting for the game. In the game itself, there are a few characters you meet who will help you out. Funky Kong, the cool dudebro surfer gorilla, who flings you back to a previously finished level really fast if you want to, Candy Kong, Donkey Kong's love interest according to the manual who saves your game, and Cranky Kong, an elderly and wise gorilla who gives you tips. His bio is pretty hilarious because he is apparently the Donkey Kong who featured in the games from the 80s and wants nothing to do with the fancy visuals of (then-)modern day. Legend.
But you're not gonna be playing this for the story and characters, but for the gameplay, the levels and the music.
GAMEPLAY | 14/20
Donkey Kong Country is a 2D platformer like many others before it. It differentiates itself mainly due to its main character and his barrel-flinging escapades, as well as the amount of space he takes up in the otherwise rather small levels. This changes the dynamic of avoiding enemies and objects somewhat because you have to be more precise with your inputs in many of the levels, which is one of the main reasons why Donkey Kong Country is not as easy as it may seem. There is a save system in place, both in-game and in-emulator (if you want), as well as a generous number of extra lives you can get as you play, so beating the game is by no means impossible, but you'll die more often than you think.
Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong run alongside each other and you can swap them out whenever you want. That's worth it at specific points because Diddy Kong is smaller (good for water levels), runs faster and jumps higher, but Donkey Kong is stronger (kills enemies by jumping on them just once instead of twice), grabs vines automatically and can hold a barrel over his head instead of just in front of him, which matters depending on enemy positioning.
There are many obstacles to face in the game, and they continuously change up as you play. The game uses the same items and enemies throughout, but makes use of them pretty creatively. The main challenges include avoiding enemies or killing them by jumping on top of them / rolling into them, grabbing ropes/vines to jump across platforms, jumping into barrels which catapult you forward and chaining together some of these challenges to get to otherwise inaccessible areas, which unlock bonus rooms. There are also mine cart levels, underwater levels and rainy levels which make the floor slippery (always love those), so the challenge is constant and varied enough. The difficulty is mostly fair, but not perfect.
Each world ends with a boss fight. These are pretty simple, which is typical for Nintendo platformers I find. Find a good time to jump on top of the enemy, repeat this 5 times (with Donkey Kong) and the enemy is down. Apart from the final boss, I found these to all be easy.
Overall, it's a fun loop and it's one of the better platformers for its time. Donkey Kong's move set is more limited than I would have liked, so I hope the sequels improve upon that, but gameplay is enjoyable enough to carry you through as you listen to the music and take in the great visual style.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
There is actually voice acting here, though mainly for Donkey Kong yelling. If you're talking about audio in Donkey Kong Country though, you're mainly gonna talk about its soundtrack. Beloved by just about each of the 9+ million individuals who bought it and the many more millions who emulated the game through other means, Donkey Kong Country's soundtrack is just as much part of the experience as the gameplay.
Having listened to the soundtrack for hours while playing the game and a couple more hours in addition to that, I can both definitely say that it's a great soundtrack, but also that I wouldn't put it among my favorites on the SNES. The soundtrack has a distinctive quality, which is that pretty much all of the tracks are nice to listen to and there are no real stinkers included, but the soundtrack, for me, doesn't have that many tracks that make me stop and listen to them like I have a tendency to. Games like A Link to the Past, Super Castlevania, Super Metroid, Super Mario World etc. come to mind.
What makes Donkey Kong Country's soundtrack additionally to me though is that I did not at all expect it to be this vibey and play with different themes like it did. I expected cheerful and jolly music throughout while you run around carefree from level to level. As discussed, the game is much harder than I would have anticipated as well, so it's only fitting I guess that from time to time, the music can set an almost dangerous vibe. If you wouldn't agree on dangerous, I'm sure you can agree that some tracks set a mysterious, adventurous and even thoughtful tone from time to time. Then there is a track like Acquatic Ambience, which sounds incredibly soothing and chill instead of hyper and energetic like I would have expected.
In general, the water levels have some of the better tracks in this game, which I'm thankful for, because the levels themselves sucked. So if you do play Donkey Kong Country, I hope the levels themselves don't ruin the songs for you. Overall, a great soundtrack by David Wise, who is another composer I can add to the list of "one's to look out for".
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 10/10
Wow. To call Donkey Kong Country's visuals unique would be an understatement. If you are looking for some of the best looking games of the early 90s, put Donkey Kong Country on your list asap. It's really worth reading up on the technology used to make these sprites come to life, but suffice it to say it's impressive how Rare pulled this off. I have no real working knowledge of this stuff, but if I understand it correctly, they managed to turn 3D geometry into 2D images to use in this game, and whatever way would be correct to explain it, all you need to know is that it looks great.
Environments from the jungles to the mines also look great to extend the vibes and emotions that are put forth by the soundtrack, as well as simply being pleasing to look at. Some locations are repeated here, which is worth pointing out, but thanks to obstacles/challenges constantly varying from level to level, the levels still feel much more distinct than different-looking levels in some other platformers were the challenge stays static.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
I've gone over the vibes and emotions I got from playing the game and how it is way different from what I would have anticipated. Apart from the whimsical, quirky characters that aid Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong in their adventure, there is no storytelling or anything here, so it's important for the music and visuals to set the main tone for this game and if you're like me and have played so many of these cheerful platformers that give off "low stake, made for children" vibes (and I don't mean this negatively, I enjoy them myself to this day), you might feel some fatigue from it from time to time. So to have Donkey Kong Country switch up the tone here and there was a very welcome change and definitely will make the game stick with me longer than some of its contemporaries.
CONTENT | 7/10
The content in this game is very good, but it doesn't feel like it has the budget of a Mario game for example. This is understandable for a video game character that remained dormant for a while, but is noteworthy nonetheless. Donkey Kong has a lack of skills, enemies and objects repeat pretty early on (even though their placement creatively differs regularly) and levels provide lots of fun, but not a lot of depth to them. It has the feeling of the start to something bigger to it in many ways.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 7/10
This game has a lot of levels. While I'd consider most to be good and some to be excellent, there were some levels I really didn't like. A lot of it has to do with the space given to your character and the timing of button presses. The windows to jump in order to reach a platform or barely just get past an enemy (like those damn zingers) felt too short many times. Two things come to mind especially. First, it's all the levels that include ropes. Half the time I'm struggling getting Donkey Kong to hold on, and the other half of the time where I succeed, I felt like I always would eventually hit my head or my legs on one of the zingers patrolling all the ropes in this world. The other situation where this issue arises is during water levels, where fish are seemingly everywhere and you don't have enough control nor space to maneuver past them reliably, at least as a new player. So if you find yourselves in these situations, best of luck to ya.
Apart from that though, there is more variety here than you'd expect based on the number of enemy types and the limited feature set for Donkey Kong. The barrel levels were fun, the mine cart levels, ditto. Finding secret areas is neat, riding one of the multiple types of animals a la Yoshi is cool too. I thought the mini games weren't as exciting as in Mario games for example, and the last boss was pretty annoying, so there is lots of good and bad here for me, though overall the good definitely wins.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
The innovation here definitely comes from the graphics. Apart from that, the level design and gameplay has similarities to many platformers of its time, and in many ways to Mario as well. It's just that Donkey Kong Country has passion oozing off of it from every direction and also controls well for the most part, which is more than I can say for most platformers in this era of gaming.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
After beating this, you can try and find more of the bonus levels to get closer to 101% completion, though as someone who has never done a speedrun or followed the scene, I still don't know what the additional percentages after 100 mean in these games.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 74/100
A must-play for platforming fans. Some of the most unique visuals for its time, a great soundtrack, fun levels (but also some frustrating ones) and overall just a charming game. I wouldn't call it my 3rd favorite SNES game like its sales would suggest, but I'm positive someone else out there will and I can definitely see their point.
1990
(This is the 23rd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
Did you know? Journey to Silius was originally meant to be a Terminator game. As Sunsoft lost the license mid-development, story and graphics were changed. In more recent news, the game was ported over to Nintendo Switch in 2019 for Switch Online subscribers, in case you're curious.
Journey to Silius is a run & gun video game developed by Sunsoft and released on August 10th, 1990 for the NES. The composor is Naoki Kodaka, and I mention that because he was the composer for a game I reviewed more recently: Batman for the Sega Genesis (I was a big fan of the soundtrack).
Whether the soundtrack is good here too, what the game is even about and whether I liked it I will discuss in more detail below.
____________
STORYTELLING
You play Jay McCray, who is the son of a scientist who was responsible for the development of space colony #428 at a time where emigration to space colonies has become necessary due to overpopulation of the Earth. Jay's father dies during development and leaves behind a floppy disk, where he's recorded a message. He says that terrorists are looking to destroy the colony, so Jay sets out to protect the colony and avenge his dad.
This is where the story begins and the storytelling pretty much ends. From here on out, you find yourself on the space colony and kill terrorists / aliens and once you defeat the final boss, a few-second long cutscene plays before the end credits roll. So if you're here for any sort of story, you'll get a setting that is slightly more detailed than usual but nothing beyond that.
GAMEPLAY
This is another pretty average platformer in just about every way. You use a hand gun to start the game and get up to 6 by the end of it, the most unique being the homing missile. There are 5 stages, each side-by-side platforming stages with a boss at the end. That's a formula that has worked very well at that time but it is really simple, not innovative at all and since the game really doesn't have enough features or a fun enough gameplay loop, it grows stale quickly and the reliance on the same formula is not really justified.
The way the levels are designed (I'll crap on that a bit more later) is just so frustrating because it makes it very, very hard to reliably dodge enemy attacks. There are so many of them that just are at spots that you can't reach, which means you will most of the time just tank the damage and move forward.
I also can't say I got much out of the 6 weapons on offer. Once you knew what to do, the hand gun did just fine, but you only knew what to do after suffering through a part multiple times.
In the end, I did beat the game in about 3 hours, and the formula DOES work in that it offers a little bit of fun next to all the frustration. But it would have been a lot less fun without the great soundtrack on offer, as I describe below.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Sound design ranged from OK to good, with the weapons sounding satisfying enough. The soundtrack is great, similarly to what the composer managed to do for the Batman Sega Genesis game. Banger after banger almost throughout. Unfortunately all boss fights use the same track and I would have definitely enjoyed more variety there, especially since the track that exists loops pretty quickly and isn't the highlight of the OST.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The game looks pretty good. It was actually designed with a space colony in mind (plenty of games didn't always stay true to their setting among the games I've played so far). The game makes good use of colors, the enemy design is mostly solid (apart from the bosses) and especially the outside stages allow for some great, detailed background work. Unfortunately, some of the boss fights simply took place with a simple black background, whilst the final one for example showed distant planets, stars and space stations. Not sure why they did that.
ATMOSPHERE
The game does a good job here. The way the levels are designed artistically suit the theme.
CONTENT
The game is on the shorter side - it took me roughly 3 hours to beat it - and there isn't much to it. All levels are pretty much: move side to side, choose one of 6 weapons to fire and do some (not so great) platforming until you get to the boss. No other content to mix it up, no power up items or the like and no real story progression. What does exist is fine but this is a fairly skippable game as far as the history of video games is concerned.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
It's a pretty simple concept as far as the level design goes. A level starts and you have to go through a bunch of enemies, do some platforming and hope you don't die to gravity and then fight a boss. You do that a few times and then you beat the game, but the game is purposely frustrating to make it harder to beat within a rental time, which hopefully leads to the player (or their parents) to buy a copy outright.
The game doesn't shy away from this formula and there just aren't enough features here to justify it being so stale. Also, one of my biggest minor complaints, is that the game requires you to jump down a lot without being able to see what's there. And what's there usually is an enemy, so I very often either would step on them and take damage, or they would shoot a millisecond after I landed and I would take damage from that. It's just bad.
In its whole, level design isn't necessarily bad, it's just bland.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
There isn't really anything that I can think of that this game did that you didn't see before. Science fiction as a theme for a platformer, based on my experiences so far, were on the rarer side at the time, so there is that. Plus the soundtrack is definitely well above average and if you check the game's wikipedia page, you can read a bit about how the composer did some different stuff there, but other than that, this is a pretty forgettable game.
REPLAYABILITY
The game doesn't even have a high score system as far as I can tell, so the only reason you would want to replay it is for the sake of wanting to play it again. On its own the game doesn't incentivize this however.
PLAYABILITY
The game works well at all times.
OVERALL
"Make an average platformer, hire a great composer, slap the Terminator license on it and boom, you got a great seller. Oh but wait, you can't use the license anymore - Crap! Well then just make it its own world and release it." That's what I feel like the game's development looked like. This game is certainly playable and as I said, average, but I doubt many people remember it fondly for being a classic rather than a nostalgic and fun experience, which is fine if that's the case.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Andromeda for GamePro, Issue 16 (Nov 90): "Journey to Silius features great graphics and a dynamite sound track. However, in terms of substance, the game doesn't quite live up to the way it looks."
- Steve Harris for EGM, Issue 14 (Sep 90): "This game is not going to win any awards for being new or innovative, but Sunsoft does manage to introduce some new twists to the standard action/shooting theme." | Steve agrees with my opinion of 30+ years later as far as innovation goes, but I'd like to know what those "twists" are that the game apparently introduces
Did you know? Journey to Silius was originally meant to be a Terminator game. As Sunsoft lost the license mid-development, story and graphics were changed. In more recent news, the game was ported over to Nintendo Switch in 2019 for Switch Online subscribers, in case you're curious.
Journey to Silius is a run & gun video game developed by Sunsoft and released on August 10th, 1990 for the NES. The composor is Naoki Kodaka, and I mention that because he was the composer for a game I reviewed more recently: Batman for the Sega Genesis (I was a big fan of the soundtrack).
Whether the soundtrack is good here too, what the game is even about and whether I liked it I will discuss in more detail below.
____________
STORYTELLING
You play Jay McCray, who is the son of a scientist who was responsible for the development of space colony #428 at a time where emigration to space colonies has become necessary due to overpopulation of the Earth. Jay's father dies during development and leaves behind a floppy disk, where he's recorded a message. He says that terrorists are looking to destroy the colony, so Jay sets out to protect the colony and avenge his dad.
This is where the story begins and the storytelling pretty much ends. From here on out, you find yourself on the space colony and kill terrorists / aliens and once you defeat the final boss, a few-second long cutscene plays before the end credits roll. So if you're here for any sort of story, you'll get a setting that is slightly more detailed than usual but nothing beyond that.
GAMEPLAY
This is another pretty average platformer in just about every way. You use a hand gun to start the game and get up to 6 by the end of it, the most unique being the homing missile. There are 5 stages, each side-by-side platforming stages with a boss at the end. That's a formula that has worked very well at that time but it is really simple, not innovative at all and since the game really doesn't have enough features or a fun enough gameplay loop, it grows stale quickly and the reliance on the same formula is not really justified.
The way the levels are designed (I'll crap on that a bit more later) is just so frustrating because it makes it very, very hard to reliably dodge enemy attacks. There are so many of them that just are at spots that you can't reach, which means you will most of the time just tank the damage and move forward.
I also can't say I got much out of the 6 weapons on offer. Once you knew what to do, the hand gun did just fine, but you only knew what to do after suffering through a part multiple times.
In the end, I did beat the game in about 3 hours, and the formula DOES work in that it offers a little bit of fun next to all the frustration. But it would have been a lot less fun without the great soundtrack on offer, as I describe below.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Sound design ranged from OK to good, with the weapons sounding satisfying enough. The soundtrack is great, similarly to what the composer managed to do for the Batman Sega Genesis game. Banger after banger almost throughout. Unfortunately all boss fights use the same track and I would have definitely enjoyed more variety there, especially since the track that exists loops pretty quickly and isn't the highlight of the OST.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The game looks pretty good. It was actually designed with a space colony in mind (plenty of games didn't always stay true to their setting among the games I've played so far). The game makes good use of colors, the enemy design is mostly solid (apart from the bosses) and especially the outside stages allow for some great, detailed background work. Unfortunately, some of the boss fights simply took place with a simple black background, whilst the final one for example showed distant planets, stars and space stations. Not sure why they did that.
ATMOSPHERE
The game does a good job here. The way the levels are designed artistically suit the theme.
CONTENT
The game is on the shorter side - it took me roughly 3 hours to beat it - and there isn't much to it. All levels are pretty much: move side to side, choose one of 6 weapons to fire and do some (not so great) platforming until you get to the boss. No other content to mix it up, no power up items or the like and no real story progression. What does exist is fine but this is a fairly skippable game as far as the history of video games is concerned.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
It's a pretty simple concept as far as the level design goes. A level starts and you have to go through a bunch of enemies, do some platforming and hope you don't die to gravity and then fight a boss. You do that a few times and then you beat the game, but the game is purposely frustrating to make it harder to beat within a rental time, which hopefully leads to the player (or their parents) to buy a copy outright.
The game doesn't shy away from this formula and there just aren't enough features here to justify it being so stale. Also, one of my biggest minor complaints, is that the game requires you to jump down a lot without being able to see what's there. And what's there usually is an enemy, so I very often either would step on them and take damage, or they would shoot a millisecond after I landed and I would take damage from that. It's just bad.
In its whole, level design isn't necessarily bad, it's just bland.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
There isn't really anything that I can think of that this game did that you didn't see before. Science fiction as a theme for a platformer, based on my experiences so far, were on the rarer side at the time, so there is that. Plus the soundtrack is definitely well above average and if you check the game's wikipedia page, you can read a bit about how the composer did some different stuff there, but other than that, this is a pretty forgettable game.
REPLAYABILITY
The game doesn't even have a high score system as far as I can tell, so the only reason you would want to replay it is for the sake of wanting to play it again. On its own the game doesn't incentivize this however.
PLAYABILITY
The game works well at all times.
OVERALL
"Make an average platformer, hire a great composer, slap the Terminator license on it and boom, you got a great seller. Oh but wait, you can't use the license anymore - Crap! Well then just make it its own world and release it." That's what I feel like the game's development looked like. This game is certainly playable and as I said, average, but I doubt many people remember it fondly for being a classic rather than a nostalgic and fun experience, which is fine if that's the case.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Andromeda for GamePro, Issue 16 (Nov 90): "Journey to Silius features great graphics and a dynamite sound track. However, in terms of substance, the game doesn't quite live up to the way it looks."
- Steve Harris for EGM, Issue 14 (Sep 90): "This game is not going to win any awards for being new or innovative, but Sunsoft does manage to introduce some new twists to the standard action/shooting theme." | Steve agrees with my opinion of 30+ years later as far as innovation goes, but I'd like to know what those "twists" are that the game apparently introduces
I love the Super Mario games, but I am not a fan of almost all Game Boy titles I have played in the past year. That's to be expected considering the handheld's limitations and the fact it loses its charm when emulated on a monitor, but based on this, you can maybe imagine how my expectations were both high and low for Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. Its the sequel to Super Mario Land 1, which itself was the start of the Game Boy Mario platforming series. After Super Mario Land 2, Nintendo did not release a new mainline Mario platformer for a handheld system until New Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo DS in 2006 (!) and didn't follow up on that until 2011 (!) with Super Mario 3D Land. However, Super Mario Land itself did get continued without Mario, and the name of the third game ended up being Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, a character which was first introduced in Super Mario Land 2. Why did this game get another sequel? Simple.
Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins sold over 10 million copies over its lifetime and became the fifth best selling game for the Game Boy (Color), only to be beaten by the first Super Mario Land, Tetris and two sets of Pokémon games. It sold twice as much as the 6th placed game, Dr. Mario.
This game is a 2D platformer in the vein of the home system games. It improves significantly over the original, which released in 1989, while this game in particular released on October 21, 1992. The original had somewhat odd looking and very small sprites, bland environments and very little variety in gameplay. Super Mario Land 2 meanwhile feels like it was made for a different handheld due to how many more features it manages to pack into a Game Boy cartridge.
First up, sprites are a lot bigger. In general, you see a lot less of a level, but what you do see ends up being much more visibly pleasing as a result. Some games, like the Mega Man series on Game Boy, don't work this way because they are usually much more difficult and when you have a small screen like this, enemies showing up at the edge of the screen being right next to you can become a problem. In Mario, that didn't feel like an issue to me because the difficulty felt pleasant at all times. In Mega Man: Dr Wily's Revenge on the other hand, you are much more susceptible to unfair hits because you just can't react that quickly.
Second, environments look much more varied. Instead of same-y settings, the game is divided into six zones with their own themes. So you end up having multiple basic "tree" levels that you will remember from the opening levels of Super Mario World, but you also have water levels, the Mario zone with its moving floors and lego levels (here, what look like Lego bricks are actually N&B blocks from Nintendo which competed against Lego in the 60s and 70s) and there is even a Space Zone where you explore the moon and where Mario changes into a spacesuit. It's all done on a pretty basic level of course, since this is a Game Boy game whichever way you slice it, but presentation and variety does a lot to keep things fresh and interesting, and ends up putting this game into 'Recommended' territory for me.
To conclude, here is a summary of my thoughts on each area of the game.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS |3/10
- Story is explained in the manual. Wario took control of Mario's castle in Mario Land. That's it.
- Wario is a new character in the Super Mario franchise at the time of this game's release. This fact plus keeping things consistent with the enemies is where the game gets the points from me
- There is a commercial on YT for this game that introduces Wario. Very much worth checking out
GAMEPLAY | 15/20
- Great controls for the most part, but sometimes they can feel a bit slippery
- Next to your typical power-ups, there is a new one, the "Carrot", which is fun to use
- Well-balanced in terms of difficulty
- Plenty of variety, such as the water levels, the space levels and the Mario zone levels
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10
- No voice acting
- You'll instantly be familiar with the sound effects. As per usual, they are fantastic
- Good soundtrack, but no memorable tracks and not as good as for other Mario platformers (my favorites: Athletic, Tree Top and Star Maze)
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 7/10
- Graphics on the poorer side with the industry now firmly in the 16-bit era
- Game makes up for the Game Boy's limitations through presentation
- Varied locations make for a pleasant experience for the eyes, unlike the original Super Mario Land
ATMOSPHERE | 8/10
- Great overworld with 6 unique zones
- Plays and feels like a typical Mario platformer
CONTENT | 8/10
- 6 zones with multiple stages on each
- A few extra optional stages
- Bonus levels for ringing bell at the end of each stage
- High quality and varied content
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 9/10
- The game allows you to choose in which order you want to tackle the zones
- The zones have variety in style and challenge
- Difficulty is fair, stages never felt like they were made extra difficult just to pad playtime
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
- Conceptually not different from the home console Mario platformers
- Added a couple new features like the Carrot power-up and balloons that you can ride into the 'sky'
- New iconic character introduced
- Probably did as much as they could with the Game Boy's limitations
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
- Main replay value comes from beating your high scores
- You can find a few extra secrets
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
- Worked well at all times
OVERALL | 70/100
(This is the 74th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins sold over 10 million copies over its lifetime and became the fifth best selling game for the Game Boy (Color), only to be beaten by the first Super Mario Land, Tetris and two sets of Pokémon games. It sold twice as much as the 6th placed game, Dr. Mario.
This game is a 2D platformer in the vein of the home system games. It improves significantly over the original, which released in 1989, while this game in particular released on October 21, 1992. The original had somewhat odd looking and very small sprites, bland environments and very little variety in gameplay. Super Mario Land 2 meanwhile feels like it was made for a different handheld due to how many more features it manages to pack into a Game Boy cartridge.
First up, sprites are a lot bigger. In general, you see a lot less of a level, but what you do see ends up being much more visibly pleasing as a result. Some games, like the Mega Man series on Game Boy, don't work this way because they are usually much more difficult and when you have a small screen like this, enemies showing up at the edge of the screen being right next to you can become a problem. In Mario, that didn't feel like an issue to me because the difficulty felt pleasant at all times. In Mega Man: Dr Wily's Revenge on the other hand, you are much more susceptible to unfair hits because you just can't react that quickly.
Second, environments look much more varied. Instead of same-y settings, the game is divided into six zones with their own themes. So you end up having multiple basic "tree" levels that you will remember from the opening levels of Super Mario World, but you also have water levels, the Mario zone with its moving floors and lego levels (here, what look like Lego bricks are actually N&B blocks from Nintendo which competed against Lego in the 60s and 70s) and there is even a Space Zone where you explore the moon and where Mario changes into a spacesuit. It's all done on a pretty basic level of course, since this is a Game Boy game whichever way you slice it, but presentation and variety does a lot to keep things fresh and interesting, and ends up putting this game into 'Recommended' territory for me.
To conclude, here is a summary of my thoughts on each area of the game.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS |3/10
- Story is explained in the manual. Wario took control of Mario's castle in Mario Land. That's it.
- Wario is a new character in the Super Mario franchise at the time of this game's release. This fact plus keeping things consistent with the enemies is where the game gets the points from me
- There is a commercial on YT for this game that introduces Wario. Very much worth checking out
GAMEPLAY | 15/20
- Great controls for the most part, but sometimes they can feel a bit slippery
- Next to your typical power-ups, there is a new one, the "Carrot", which is fun to use
- Well-balanced in terms of difficulty
- Plenty of variety, such as the water levels, the space levels and the Mario zone levels
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10
- No voice acting
- You'll instantly be familiar with the sound effects. As per usual, they are fantastic
- Good soundtrack, but no memorable tracks and not as good as for other Mario platformers (my favorites: Athletic, Tree Top and Star Maze)
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 7/10
- Graphics on the poorer side with the industry now firmly in the 16-bit era
- Game makes up for the Game Boy's limitations through presentation
- Varied locations make for a pleasant experience for the eyes, unlike the original Super Mario Land
ATMOSPHERE | 8/10
- Great overworld with 6 unique zones
- Plays and feels like a typical Mario platformer
CONTENT | 8/10
- 6 zones with multiple stages on each
- A few extra optional stages
- Bonus levels for ringing bell at the end of each stage
- High quality and varied content
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 9/10
- The game allows you to choose in which order you want to tackle the zones
- The zones have variety in style and challenge
- Difficulty is fair, stages never felt like they were made extra difficult just to pad playtime
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
- Conceptually not different from the home console Mario platformers
- Added a couple new features like the Carrot power-up and balloons that you can ride into the 'sky'
- New iconic character introduced
- Probably did as much as they could with the Game Boy's limitations
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
- Main replay value comes from beating your high scores
- You can find a few extra secrets
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
- Worked well at all times
OVERALL | 70/100
(This is the 74th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
1994
Earthworm Jim is probably the best animated video game since Battletoads at the time of its release, and I think it's fair to say that those two games were just at their own level in that regard beyond any other game on the market. It's hard not to be amazed at how much work went into dozens of different animations, whether it's for shooting, whipping, getting bitten in the butt, pulled from side to side by a raven biting at your head and more.
Unfortunately, as a game, Earthworm Jim was probably one of the more frustrating experiences I've had during my 100+ game journey from 1990 to this game's October 30, 1994 release date. A poor control scheme that I not once really felt in control of, enemies popping up and attacking you less than a second after they become visible, environmental objects pulling, pushing and locking you up while you try to just get past them, and a slight delay in movement made this very, very annoying to play.
The visuals are great, the soundtrack was nice to listen to, sound effects are well done and funny, but unless I find a time machine that brings me back to the late 90s and early 00s with nothing but Earthworm Jim to play, I don't see how I would ever force myself to push through this game.
(This is the 103rd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
Unfortunately, as a game, Earthworm Jim was probably one of the more frustrating experiences I've had during my 100+ game journey from 1990 to this game's October 30, 1994 release date. A poor control scheme that I not once really felt in control of, enemies popping up and attacking you less than a second after they become visible, environmental objects pulling, pushing and locking you up while you try to just get past them, and a slight delay in movement made this very, very annoying to play.
The visuals are great, the soundtrack was nice to listen to, sound effects are well done and funny, but unless I find a time machine that brings me back to the late 90s and early 00s with nothing but Earthworm Jim to play, I don't see how I would ever force myself to push through this game.
(This is the 103rd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
1992
The survival horror genre is one of my favorites, and the genre has Alone in the Dark to thank for where it got its beginnings, at least in its game design and 3D perspective. Due to its age, I never played it, nor any of the other, less popular, entries in the series, but I am glad to say I got to do so today. It released in 1992 for the MS-DOS, was developed by Infogrames and while it shows its age obviously, I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I initially thought I would. This game will receive a remake in just a few months after this review is posted.
In Alone in the Dark, you pick one of two characters. Edward Carnby, a private investigator, or Emily Hartwood, the niece of Jeremy Hartwood. Jeremy Hartwood is the reason both of them are looking to visit the 'Derceto' mansion, as Jeremy Hartwood used to live there and had died of suicide shortly before the start of this game. Edward Carnby is tasked to find a piano for an antique dealer, while Emily Hartwood wants to find out more about Jeremy's suicide, which supposedly is explained through a secret note hidden somewhere near the piano.
I thought that was a nice touch to give both characters different motives to visit the mansion instead of giving the player a simple choice of male or female. I decided to pick Edward Carnby, who, if I may, looks like an absolute chad. His chicken walk up the stairs in the game's introductory cinematic had me immediately enamored with this character.
What the cinematic also depicts is the character you have chosen driving to the mansion and, as they enter it, the door closing behind them. Next, they walk up the stairs to the attic, from where you start your mission to escape. From here, if you choose Edward Carnby, that's pretty much your only goal. You're thinking "Shit, why did I accept this job?" and try to get out. If you're Emily Hartwood, you actually have an additional reason to be there, which is "Why did my uncle kill himself and was he really just insane or was there something else going on?". Sure enough, there is something going on in Derceto manor.
The game has the characters you pick hold a monologue describing their motives for going into the mansion, but once you are there, have no more lines. Instead, the story is told through books, parchments and notes, which are voice acted by Jeremy Hartwood (for his own letters) and other voices. Some books are simply there to add to the atmosphere of the game, while others include useful information for puzzle solving that are 1) optional to read, as you can solve the puzzles without doing so and 2) also add to the lore and atmosphere. The voice actor for Jeremy Hartwood does a fantastic job of expressing the voice of a man who is losing his mind and added a lot to the storytelling.
Ultimately, unearthing the secret of Derceto mansion is not as much of a big deal as the journey to get there, and the entire process is not as fleshed out as we have become used to through the power of bigger memory storage, but it was enough to keep me intrigued and the form of storytelling is unique enough for its time that I personally enjoyed it more than you probably would if you play it after having played more modern survival horror games recently.
This is even more true when it comes to the gameplay, though I doubt anyone today would say that the game's gameplay is 'good' either way.
This is a survival horror game that introduced all the elements you'll be familiar with by now. You explore the mansion and look for items that you will need to solve puzzles, heal yourself or engage in combat. The game has an inventory management system that is weight-based, meaning you can only hold items up to a certain weight that is not noted anywhere. Items like first-aid kits remain in your inventory even after you use them up, so you have to manually throw them away to make space, which is an odd system but something I can appreciate for the fact that this is something unique to this game.
The game's controls are tanky and the action you can use by pressing the Action button "Space" is something you select in the inventory screen. Your options are FIGHT, which allows you to get into a hilarious fighting stance while pressing Space and punching/kicking is done by pressing arrow keys simultaneously. OPEN/SEARCH lets you search cupboards, wardrobes and cabinets while you stand next to them, CLOSE lets you close doors, PUSH lets you push stuff to reveal hidden areas and later on, you get a JUMP action that is used for late-game platforming segments that put the tank of the controls to World of Tanks-esque levels.
Alone in the Dark has a pretty great way to start you off in the attic. As you are still trying to grasp the controls, an enemy jumps into the room through the window and attacks you. You can kill it with your fists but will take some damage. Just as you think the danger is averted, another enemy comes up from a trap door and you engage him as well. For new players, these will both surprise you and you'll 100% of the time have a suboptimal approach. Because see, the game quite clearly is OK with you avoiding its combat system as much as possible. I'd like to think they had mercy with players even back then, as they knew how unspectacular the combat was and is.
What you can do here is push the wardrobe in front of the window and a chest on top of the trap door, which lets you avoid the combat here altogether. Later on in the game, you can close doors to do the same, avoid a ghost lady by simply ignoring her and skip fights by placing certain items next to the enemies to distract them, like a gramophone or a pot of soup. You do have to engage in combat multiple times, but you will quickly realize that the best way to get through the game is to avoid it as much as possible. The game also only has very few healing items that you can find, adding credence to this.
The game is quite short overall, it took me a bit over 4 hours to beat it, but it could easily be done quicker, if you figure out some puzzles faster than I did. A lot of the time I lost though was due to the controls, especially in the last third of the game that included platforming sections, where it was very easy to fall into the water.
Additionally, to beat the game you will need to make sure that you don't fall into that water because it will wet your matchbox, which means you can't light your oil lamp, which means you can't see in the dark. The last major area before the final boss is a dark maze, so I had to replay over half an hour after realizing that I could simply not beat the game anymore.
The atmosphere this game creates these days can be described as creepy in a funny way. I can imagine certain parts of the game to have been scary at the time, and fighting two enemies in the first area while you still try to understand the controls certainly does a great job of having you on edge from the get-go, but at this point in time I can't say I was ever truly scared. The chicken-walk your character does up and down the stairs is hilarious, the male character has the ugliest face in video-game history, the enemies look like cartoons rather than actually scary monsters and whenever you hit an enemy, the game plays a smack sound akin to what it would sound like when you bitch-slap somebody, which in addition to your character's fighting pose had me in tears during the intended-to-be tense opening fights. The best way the game genuinely scares you I think is through the random deaths that can occur at every step and with its random use of its spooky sound effects, which make you think that enemies are nearby, even if they aren't.
Overall, I can definitely recommend the game to survival horror fans, because it is enjoyable enough to warrant an afternoon of your time. It pioneered an entire genre, so I think it's definitely worth being played. Outside of fans of the genre, fans of video game history will surely find some enjoyment with this for a little while, but I wouldn't say it's a good game by today's standards, though it does a solid job as a graphic adventure through its simple yet clever puzzles.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 7/10
Two characters to choose with different motivations, though this doesn't impact the playthrough
Story (Voice acted) told through books, notes and letters, with plenty of optional texts to dive into
GAMEPLAY | 12/20
Enjoyable mix of exploration, puzzle solving and combat
A lot of enemies to fight or avoid, but which constantly keep you on your toes
Inventory management that has its charm because it is done in a unique way for its time, but wouldn't be a lot of fun once more games start doing it
Tank controls that you do get used to, but which aren't that good. Running animation in particular often just doesn't trigger
Too many cheap deaths means you'll need to save often or be ready to replay many parts of the game
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
All text voice acted, but there is no in-game dialogue
Voice actor for Jeremy Hartwood has the best performance by far
Hilarious smacking sound when punching that didn't fit in with the atmosphere but still had me in tears from laughing
Sound effects are otherwise the scariest part about this game
Good soundtrack that fits the vibe of the game, accentuating both the mystery of the Manor and the horror within
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 7/10
A rare 3D game for its time with charmingly ugly polygon graphics
Many areas in the mansion varying in appearance
Some scary, ominous looking characters like the ghost lady and the dancing ghosts in the dance hall
Odd choice for the design of many enemies
ATMOSPHERE | 8/10
Confident that it was rather scary for its time, though not quite as scary anymore (I don't get easily scared though, so your experience may differ)
The game does a good job of creating an uneasy atmosphere and has many moments that tell you to expect the unexpected, which keeps you on edge
The incredibly ugly design of the male character, the smacking sound when kicking/punching and the cartoonish look of some enemies make the game much more light-hearted in feel than probably intended
CONTENT | 7/10
Will take 2 to 5 hours to beat
Not many puzzles in retrospect, but plenty of interesting ones
Many items in the game simply useless however
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 7/10
Some parts of the game can be approached in multiple ways
Game does a great job laying out the dangers in the game and you can feel gradually improving as you go
Attic part of the game is just superb game design
The basement and maze levels in the final third of the game were not so good
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 10/10
The start of a whole genre as we would know it for years to come
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
Two main characters, though will little difference in playstyle
You can tackle some parts a bit differently, as you gain more tricks
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Worked well at all times
OVERALL | 74/100
(This is the 78th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
In Alone in the Dark, you pick one of two characters. Edward Carnby, a private investigator, or Emily Hartwood, the niece of Jeremy Hartwood. Jeremy Hartwood is the reason both of them are looking to visit the 'Derceto' mansion, as Jeremy Hartwood used to live there and had died of suicide shortly before the start of this game. Edward Carnby is tasked to find a piano for an antique dealer, while Emily Hartwood wants to find out more about Jeremy's suicide, which supposedly is explained through a secret note hidden somewhere near the piano.
I thought that was a nice touch to give both characters different motives to visit the mansion instead of giving the player a simple choice of male or female. I decided to pick Edward Carnby, who, if I may, looks like an absolute chad. His chicken walk up the stairs in the game's introductory cinematic had me immediately enamored with this character.
What the cinematic also depicts is the character you have chosen driving to the mansion and, as they enter it, the door closing behind them. Next, they walk up the stairs to the attic, from where you start your mission to escape. From here, if you choose Edward Carnby, that's pretty much your only goal. You're thinking "Shit, why did I accept this job?" and try to get out. If you're Emily Hartwood, you actually have an additional reason to be there, which is "Why did my uncle kill himself and was he really just insane or was there something else going on?". Sure enough, there is something going on in Derceto manor.
The game has the characters you pick hold a monologue describing their motives for going into the mansion, but once you are there, have no more lines. Instead, the story is told through books, parchments and notes, which are voice acted by Jeremy Hartwood (for his own letters) and other voices. Some books are simply there to add to the atmosphere of the game, while others include useful information for puzzle solving that are 1) optional to read, as you can solve the puzzles without doing so and 2) also add to the lore and atmosphere. The voice actor for Jeremy Hartwood does a fantastic job of expressing the voice of a man who is losing his mind and added a lot to the storytelling.
Ultimately, unearthing the secret of Derceto mansion is not as much of a big deal as the journey to get there, and the entire process is not as fleshed out as we have become used to through the power of bigger memory storage, but it was enough to keep me intrigued and the form of storytelling is unique enough for its time that I personally enjoyed it more than you probably would if you play it after having played more modern survival horror games recently.
This is even more true when it comes to the gameplay, though I doubt anyone today would say that the game's gameplay is 'good' either way.
This is a survival horror game that introduced all the elements you'll be familiar with by now. You explore the mansion and look for items that you will need to solve puzzles, heal yourself or engage in combat. The game has an inventory management system that is weight-based, meaning you can only hold items up to a certain weight that is not noted anywhere. Items like first-aid kits remain in your inventory even after you use them up, so you have to manually throw them away to make space, which is an odd system but something I can appreciate for the fact that this is something unique to this game.
The game's controls are tanky and the action you can use by pressing the Action button "Space" is something you select in the inventory screen. Your options are FIGHT, which allows you to get into a hilarious fighting stance while pressing Space and punching/kicking is done by pressing arrow keys simultaneously. OPEN/SEARCH lets you search cupboards, wardrobes and cabinets while you stand next to them, CLOSE lets you close doors, PUSH lets you push stuff to reveal hidden areas and later on, you get a JUMP action that is used for late-game platforming segments that put the tank of the controls to World of Tanks-esque levels.
Alone in the Dark has a pretty great way to start you off in the attic. As you are still trying to grasp the controls, an enemy jumps into the room through the window and attacks you. You can kill it with your fists but will take some damage. Just as you think the danger is averted, another enemy comes up from a trap door and you engage him as well. For new players, these will both surprise you and you'll 100% of the time have a suboptimal approach. Because see, the game quite clearly is OK with you avoiding its combat system as much as possible. I'd like to think they had mercy with players even back then, as they knew how unspectacular the combat was and is.
What you can do here is push the wardrobe in front of the window and a chest on top of the trap door, which lets you avoid the combat here altogether. Later on in the game, you can close doors to do the same, avoid a ghost lady by simply ignoring her and skip fights by placing certain items next to the enemies to distract them, like a gramophone or a pot of soup. You do have to engage in combat multiple times, but you will quickly realize that the best way to get through the game is to avoid it as much as possible. The game also only has very few healing items that you can find, adding credence to this.
The game is quite short overall, it took me a bit over 4 hours to beat it, but it could easily be done quicker, if you figure out some puzzles faster than I did. A lot of the time I lost though was due to the controls, especially in the last third of the game that included platforming sections, where it was very easy to fall into the water.
Additionally, to beat the game you will need to make sure that you don't fall into that water because it will wet your matchbox, which means you can't light your oil lamp, which means you can't see in the dark. The last major area before the final boss is a dark maze, so I had to replay over half an hour after realizing that I could simply not beat the game anymore.
The atmosphere this game creates these days can be described as creepy in a funny way. I can imagine certain parts of the game to have been scary at the time, and fighting two enemies in the first area while you still try to understand the controls certainly does a great job of having you on edge from the get-go, but at this point in time I can't say I was ever truly scared. The chicken-walk your character does up and down the stairs is hilarious, the male character has the ugliest face in video-game history, the enemies look like cartoons rather than actually scary monsters and whenever you hit an enemy, the game plays a smack sound akin to what it would sound like when you bitch-slap somebody, which in addition to your character's fighting pose had me in tears during the intended-to-be tense opening fights. The best way the game genuinely scares you I think is through the random deaths that can occur at every step and with its random use of its spooky sound effects, which make you think that enemies are nearby, even if they aren't.
Overall, I can definitely recommend the game to survival horror fans, because it is enjoyable enough to warrant an afternoon of your time. It pioneered an entire genre, so I think it's definitely worth being played. Outside of fans of the genre, fans of video game history will surely find some enjoyment with this for a little while, but I wouldn't say it's a good game by today's standards, though it does a solid job as a graphic adventure through its simple yet clever puzzles.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 7/10
Two characters to choose with different motivations, though this doesn't impact the playthrough
Story (Voice acted) told through books, notes and letters, with plenty of optional texts to dive into
GAMEPLAY | 12/20
Enjoyable mix of exploration, puzzle solving and combat
A lot of enemies to fight or avoid, but which constantly keep you on your toes
Inventory management that has its charm because it is done in a unique way for its time, but wouldn't be a lot of fun once more games start doing it
Tank controls that you do get used to, but which aren't that good. Running animation in particular often just doesn't trigger
Too many cheap deaths means you'll need to save often or be ready to replay many parts of the game
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
All text voice acted, but there is no in-game dialogue
Voice actor for Jeremy Hartwood has the best performance by far
Hilarious smacking sound when punching that didn't fit in with the atmosphere but still had me in tears from laughing
Sound effects are otherwise the scariest part about this game
Good soundtrack that fits the vibe of the game, accentuating both the mystery of the Manor and the horror within
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 7/10
A rare 3D game for its time with charmingly ugly polygon graphics
Many areas in the mansion varying in appearance
Some scary, ominous looking characters like the ghost lady and the dancing ghosts in the dance hall
Odd choice for the design of many enemies
ATMOSPHERE | 8/10
Confident that it was rather scary for its time, though not quite as scary anymore (I don't get easily scared though, so your experience may differ)
The game does a good job of creating an uneasy atmosphere and has many moments that tell you to expect the unexpected, which keeps you on edge
The incredibly ugly design of the male character, the smacking sound when kicking/punching and the cartoonish look of some enemies make the game much more light-hearted in feel than probably intended
CONTENT | 7/10
Will take 2 to 5 hours to beat
Not many puzzles in retrospect, but plenty of interesting ones
Many items in the game simply useless however
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 7/10
Some parts of the game can be approached in multiple ways
Game does a great job laying out the dangers in the game and you can feel gradually improving as you go
Attic part of the game is just superb game design
The basement and maze levels in the final third of the game were not so good
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 10/10
The start of a whole genre as we would know it for years to come
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
Two main characters, though will little difference in playstyle
You can tackle some parts a bit differently, as you gain more tricks
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Worked well at all times
OVERALL | 74/100
(This is the 78th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
2013
I've had Papers, Please on my wishlist for many years. Finally picked it up for very cheap recently as part of the game's 10 year anniversary. Playing it taught me that I've been 10 years late to the party.
In this game, you are an "Inspector" at the border to Aristotzka, and your job is to check entry documents of everyone trying to enter. At first, you grant entry to Aristotzkians and deny it to every foreigner, but with every passing day, new rules are added and present ones change. By Day 20+, passports can be forged, both natives and foreigners need multiple different entry forms, you check for fingerprints to confirm identities, search bodies to check for contraband, detain criminals and also take part in shady activities as part of the main story if you want. The main story takes a lot longer than I imagined based on the premise, but the game keeps presenting new challenges to keep things interesting.
Whether you will enjoy the game yourself depends on how you feel about the core gameplay loop. As someone who does enjoy doing "mundane" tasks like looking over passports for discrepancies, I've enjoyed Papers, Please's gameplay a lot. It also sounds a lot easier than it is in practice. The number of times I made mistakes in this game is staggering. The game does a great job of making you feel and look dumb as hell. And it will happen to you often, simply because in the latter half of the story, there just is way too much to look out for that something small is tiny to slip by you. The only things I found a bit unfair were single letters being different in certain words (Citu instead of City is very hard to discern) and invalid height being a criteria too, since heights don't seem consistent enough.
There is also the part of the game being a low budget indie game. Not a bad thing, the game is a creative beauty, but the visual look is very simplistic and repetitive, there are very few sounds and tracks in the game, there are only a couple dozen faces in the game so they get repetitive too and all this combined adds to the repetitive feeling that comes up herre and there overall. This is one of those games though where a bigger budget wouldn't necessarily have done a whole lot for the overall experience relative to the potential income for the developer. As it stands, this is a very fun experience for the right player, a very unique experience no matter who you are (unless you're a border patrol agent irl) and one of the more creative games I've ever played. Check it out!
In this game, you are an "Inspector" at the border to Aristotzka, and your job is to check entry documents of everyone trying to enter. At first, you grant entry to Aristotzkians and deny it to every foreigner, but with every passing day, new rules are added and present ones change. By Day 20+, passports can be forged, both natives and foreigners need multiple different entry forms, you check for fingerprints to confirm identities, search bodies to check for contraband, detain criminals and also take part in shady activities as part of the main story if you want. The main story takes a lot longer than I imagined based on the premise, but the game keeps presenting new challenges to keep things interesting.
Whether you will enjoy the game yourself depends on how you feel about the core gameplay loop. As someone who does enjoy doing "mundane" tasks like looking over passports for discrepancies, I've enjoyed Papers, Please's gameplay a lot. It also sounds a lot easier than it is in practice. The number of times I made mistakes in this game is staggering. The game does a great job of making you feel and look dumb as hell. And it will happen to you often, simply because in the latter half of the story, there just is way too much to look out for that something small is tiny to slip by you. The only things I found a bit unfair were single letters being different in certain words (Citu instead of City is very hard to discern) and invalid height being a criteria too, since heights don't seem consistent enough.
There is also the part of the game being a low budget indie game. Not a bad thing, the game is a creative beauty, but the visual look is very simplistic and repetitive, there are very few sounds and tracks in the game, there are only a couple dozen faces in the game so they get repetitive too and all this combined adds to the repetitive feeling that comes up herre and there overall. This is one of those games though where a bigger budget wouldn't necessarily have done a whole lot for the overall experience relative to the potential income for the developer. As it stands, this is a very fun experience for the right player, a very unique experience no matter who you are (unless you're a border patrol agent irl) and one of the more creative games I've ever played. Check it out!