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(This is the 54th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
We're a bit late into the 'Wonder Boy' series, as the Platformer / Action-Adventure 'Wonder Boy in Monster World', which released on October 25, 1991 for the Sega Genesis, is the fifth game in the Wonder Boy series already and only two more games release for this series from here on out in 1994 and, interestingly enough, 2018. The games preceding and succeeding this game I'm about to review also received remakes in the past decade, so the series has seen somewhat of a revival recently.
For its time, Wonder Boy in Monster World received positive reviews and currently carries a 7.5 Moby Score. Multiple magazines are quoted saying something to the tune of "Who needs Sonic, when you can have Wonder Boy", which I found funny to read in retrospect, but it should tell you that this isn't just some random character, but rather a relatively popular one. Some magazines weren't all too kind, like Sega Power's review saying that this is "one aimed at younger players, but I think that even they will find this very boring or repetitive." Who was right according to my taste? Well I'll start with this: I didn't beat the game.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
In this adventure of Wonder Boy, you play Wonder Boy, who needs to save Monster World, which is under attack by ... monsters? Where else did you think the monsters wanted to be at? The Wonder Boy by the way has a name, he is called Shion.
Shion gets the help of many residents of Monster World. He can use one girl's 'Ocarina', an instrument that unlocks door if the right melody is played. He can use Poseidon's trident to explore the underwater areas. He gets the assistant of a dwarven kid that unlocks the path to a cave filled with monsters.
There isn't a lot of dialogue here besides the generic few talks you will have with people who want you to help them, so that they agree to help you afterwards. You are thanked a lot for being a hero and on you go until you win the game. After you defeat the final boss, the end credits actually play immediately after, which is kind of anti-climactic, though there are post-credit scenes where the resolution of the story is quickly explained. Again, it's generic "the hero saved everyone, so that they can live on happily ever after, or until the sequel at least." talk.
As is usual for games that call themselves side-scrolling Action RPGs at this time, you discover towns and have a few people there that you can talk to (I wouldn't call this an RPG though). Though when I say a few, I do mean just a few, as there aren't many characters walking around.
This game is also another one of those that has you run around colorful worlds for most of it, only to have the final act be in some sort of futuristic looking area against a futuristic looking final boss. Why were so many end-game areas designed like this? The games often have no hint of sci-fi, but all of a sudden some rogue AI / robot from a distant planet wants to use his futuristic weaponry to destroy you, and you poor dude with just your sword are supposed to put an end to it. Well, you do in the end, but you know, it's getting hilarious at this point how this seems to be the resolution so often.
GAMEPLAY | 9/20
This is called a side-scrolling platformer / action adventure / RPG. The first genre is correct. The second as well. As far as RPG's go, this I wouldn't call one of them. There is no character progression in terms of stats or any decisions you can make, there is in general no choice you can make and the only stats that are there are for attack, defense and speed. Armor, weapons, shields and boots are what effect those stats. You get those by opening chests and going to stores, though you'll have to do a lot of grinding for gold to get many of those store items.
So yeah, it's not an RPG, you simply control Shion in this side-scrolling platformer. From the 3 hours I've played, there wasn't much exploration but rather convoluted level design that made you look around for where to go next. There isn't really any area or anything that opens up for optional exploration. There are some harder to reach chests in this game, some of which are tricky to find. I got to one by accident by pressing up randomly (you press up to enter rooms), and a room appearing in the middle of nowhere and leading me straight to a chest. That can hardly be called exploration though.
So you are equipped with a melee weapon and have to fight enemies, some of which can jump up, some of which can swoop down, some of which can throw stuff at you, rush you, guard with their own shields and all sorts. The problem is that the swinging animation of yours takes a few frames too long, so what happens way too often is that you try to time the swing right, but you are a split second too early and before you get a second swing off, you already get hit by an enemy rushing you. The tough part is that once you die, you are sent back to your last save, which will be at the previous inn. This can send you back many, many minutes, and there is often plenty of time between your last save and the boss fight for example.
Boss fights represent ridiculous difficulty spikes here. Until the first boss for example, apart from those swing animation issues, you won't have any problems. And then you reach the boss and it just jumps on top of you constantly whilst throwing up tiny minions that hurt you when they run into you. So you got 4-5 minions coming after you from both sides, the boss coming from the top and until you take a looong time to figure out how to beat this thing, you'll, well, lose a loooot of time, and it doesn't really fell satisfying either. This the case for a lot of boss fights where it feels like the enemy attack patterns are way too wild and random. The main thing this game does with boss fights is just throw a bunch of stuff at you at once, which makes it hard to dodge, but even harder to find an opening to strike. Not fun.
The worst issue comes a few hours in however, when you are supposed to use Poseidon's trident to go underwater and find Poseidon. Multiple times I found myself thinking "where the hell do you want me to go and why are you making it this so convoluted?" I looked up the solution for a while and you know it's not a good sign when you see the actual path and think to yourself that this is way too unnecessary.
In the end, the save system and repetitively annoying gameplay made me abandon this one a few hours before completion. It's not even like this is a game where it being so hard is the point. It's not necessarily even that hard in terms of combat, bosses excluded, but finding your path and having to go all the way back to inns due to the lack of save points just makes the game annoying to play.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10
No voice acting. The soundtrack ranges from meh to really good. The intro track sets a good tone for a game this is both child-friendly and one that will kick your butt repeatedly, and while few tracks combine these themes, you'll have tracks do a pretty good job of using either one to give off a relaxing vibe or one that captures the tension well. However there are some true stinkers here as well, like Village Theme 1, not to be mistaken with Village Theme 2.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 7/10
This game has good looking graphics thanks to its use of a wide color palette and attention to detail in the scrolling backgrounds. One interesting thing the game does in its villages is a visual transition effect when you enter a house, which makes the inside of the house become visible.
The sprite work, enemy design and animation here is not great, but the devs created a cozy and inviting world here, at least graphically, though it kinda starts falling apart a bitonce you hit some rough patches when it comes to hard enemies/bosses or not knowing where to go.
ATMOSPHERE | 5/10
Welcome to monster world, a world called after monsters that is in turmoil as it gets invaded by monsters. The game uses all the tropes you'd expect from a platformer of the early 90s, so unless this was one of the few games you played over and over at the time, you will notice that it doesn't offer anything new and doesn't really pull you in like plenty of other games manage to do. The world that is created here in its basic form, thanks to its soundtrack and graphical presentation, is inviting overall though, however you'll be stuck at very hard bosses and puzzles multiple times, so more likely than not it's only inviting until a certain point, where you likely will find yourself stuck, especially if you were a kid in the 90s playing this.
CONTENT | 6/10
Enough content here for an Action Adventure like this. You got many boss fights, many different enemy types, different types of equipment, plenty of puzzles and hidden stuff too boot. Not all of this is good content, but you'll be busy for a good 10 hours if you decide to play it to the end.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 4/10
Most of the time, where you need to go is straightforward. Then there are times where you will keep running around in circles, unless you figure out that you need to go to X first or press Y, which unlocks a new path. That sort of environmental puzzle is pretty enjoyable. But most of the time when things aren't straightforward, you're meant to go to some place that is only described very imprecisely, and it's a lot of time away and makes it very easy to get lost with no positive impact on fun factor or satisfaction from figuring out the way. Add to that that if you die on your way there, you're sent back all the way to the last inn you saved at, and you can see where you'd get easily frustrated.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 2/10
Nothing new on offer here, it's a mix of features and a focus on themes and a theme for its world that you have seen in a lot of different games before. There isn't even a specific thing this game tries to focus on more than on other areas, the game is meh to alright in every area, which makes for a meh game overall. It's got average world building, basic gameplay, convoluted level design, a middle-of-the-pack soundtrack, frustrating boss fights, slow pace and a boring set of one-dimensional characters. I'm sure the series has done better than this, but this game isn't doing anything above-average unfortunately.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
You can look for some more of those hidden equipment or health items in a second playthrough, but there is no other motivation given to play through it twice.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL | 50/100
You know, I'll take a game that is below-average in most aspects of a video game, if it does a specific thing really well. But Wonder Boy in Monster World doesn't really rate better than "average" in anything, as it's a game that takes many features of better games, puts them together and ends up being a worse product. So it's a skip for me, there are plenty of better retro platformers / action adventures to play from this time period, though it's definitely not a 'terrible game'.
We're a bit late into the 'Wonder Boy' series, as the Platformer / Action-Adventure 'Wonder Boy in Monster World', which released on October 25, 1991 for the Sega Genesis, is the fifth game in the Wonder Boy series already and only two more games release for this series from here on out in 1994 and, interestingly enough, 2018. The games preceding and succeeding this game I'm about to review also received remakes in the past decade, so the series has seen somewhat of a revival recently.
For its time, Wonder Boy in Monster World received positive reviews and currently carries a 7.5 Moby Score. Multiple magazines are quoted saying something to the tune of "Who needs Sonic, when you can have Wonder Boy", which I found funny to read in retrospect, but it should tell you that this isn't just some random character, but rather a relatively popular one. Some magazines weren't all too kind, like Sega Power's review saying that this is "one aimed at younger players, but I think that even they will find this very boring or repetitive." Who was right according to my taste? Well I'll start with this: I didn't beat the game.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
In this adventure of Wonder Boy, you play Wonder Boy, who needs to save Monster World, which is under attack by ... monsters? Where else did you think the monsters wanted to be at? The Wonder Boy by the way has a name, he is called Shion.
Shion gets the help of many residents of Monster World. He can use one girl's 'Ocarina', an instrument that unlocks door if the right melody is played. He can use Poseidon's trident to explore the underwater areas. He gets the assistant of a dwarven kid that unlocks the path to a cave filled with monsters.
There isn't a lot of dialogue here besides the generic few talks you will have with people who want you to help them, so that they agree to help you afterwards. You are thanked a lot for being a hero and on you go until you win the game. After you defeat the final boss, the end credits actually play immediately after, which is kind of anti-climactic, though there are post-credit scenes where the resolution of the story is quickly explained. Again, it's generic "the hero saved everyone, so that they can live on happily ever after, or until the sequel at least." talk.
As is usual for games that call themselves side-scrolling Action RPGs at this time, you discover towns and have a few people there that you can talk to (I wouldn't call this an RPG though). Though when I say a few, I do mean just a few, as there aren't many characters walking around.
This game is also another one of those that has you run around colorful worlds for most of it, only to have the final act be in some sort of futuristic looking area against a futuristic looking final boss. Why were so many end-game areas designed like this? The games often have no hint of sci-fi, but all of a sudden some rogue AI / robot from a distant planet wants to use his futuristic weaponry to destroy you, and you poor dude with just your sword are supposed to put an end to it. Well, you do in the end, but you know, it's getting hilarious at this point how this seems to be the resolution so often.
GAMEPLAY | 9/20
This is called a side-scrolling platformer / action adventure / RPG. The first genre is correct. The second as well. As far as RPG's go, this I wouldn't call one of them. There is no character progression in terms of stats or any decisions you can make, there is in general no choice you can make and the only stats that are there are for attack, defense and speed. Armor, weapons, shields and boots are what effect those stats. You get those by opening chests and going to stores, though you'll have to do a lot of grinding for gold to get many of those store items.
So yeah, it's not an RPG, you simply control Shion in this side-scrolling platformer. From the 3 hours I've played, there wasn't much exploration but rather convoluted level design that made you look around for where to go next. There isn't really any area or anything that opens up for optional exploration. There are some harder to reach chests in this game, some of which are tricky to find. I got to one by accident by pressing up randomly (you press up to enter rooms), and a room appearing in the middle of nowhere and leading me straight to a chest. That can hardly be called exploration though.
So you are equipped with a melee weapon and have to fight enemies, some of which can jump up, some of which can swoop down, some of which can throw stuff at you, rush you, guard with their own shields and all sorts. The problem is that the swinging animation of yours takes a few frames too long, so what happens way too often is that you try to time the swing right, but you are a split second too early and before you get a second swing off, you already get hit by an enemy rushing you. The tough part is that once you die, you are sent back to your last save, which will be at the previous inn. This can send you back many, many minutes, and there is often plenty of time between your last save and the boss fight for example.
Boss fights represent ridiculous difficulty spikes here. Until the first boss for example, apart from those swing animation issues, you won't have any problems. And then you reach the boss and it just jumps on top of you constantly whilst throwing up tiny minions that hurt you when they run into you. So you got 4-5 minions coming after you from both sides, the boss coming from the top and until you take a looong time to figure out how to beat this thing, you'll, well, lose a loooot of time, and it doesn't really fell satisfying either. This the case for a lot of boss fights where it feels like the enemy attack patterns are way too wild and random. The main thing this game does with boss fights is just throw a bunch of stuff at you at once, which makes it hard to dodge, but even harder to find an opening to strike. Not fun.
The worst issue comes a few hours in however, when you are supposed to use Poseidon's trident to go underwater and find Poseidon. Multiple times I found myself thinking "where the hell do you want me to go and why are you making it this so convoluted?" I looked up the solution for a while and you know it's not a good sign when you see the actual path and think to yourself that this is way too unnecessary.
In the end, the save system and repetitively annoying gameplay made me abandon this one a few hours before completion. It's not even like this is a game where it being so hard is the point. It's not necessarily even that hard in terms of combat, bosses excluded, but finding your path and having to go all the way back to inns due to the lack of save points just makes the game annoying to play.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10
No voice acting. The soundtrack ranges from meh to really good. The intro track sets a good tone for a game this is both child-friendly and one that will kick your butt repeatedly, and while few tracks combine these themes, you'll have tracks do a pretty good job of using either one to give off a relaxing vibe or one that captures the tension well. However there are some true stinkers here as well, like Village Theme 1, not to be mistaken with Village Theme 2.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 7/10
This game has good looking graphics thanks to its use of a wide color palette and attention to detail in the scrolling backgrounds. One interesting thing the game does in its villages is a visual transition effect when you enter a house, which makes the inside of the house become visible.
The sprite work, enemy design and animation here is not great, but the devs created a cozy and inviting world here, at least graphically, though it kinda starts falling apart a bitonce you hit some rough patches when it comes to hard enemies/bosses or not knowing where to go.
ATMOSPHERE | 5/10
Welcome to monster world, a world called after monsters that is in turmoil as it gets invaded by monsters. The game uses all the tropes you'd expect from a platformer of the early 90s, so unless this was one of the few games you played over and over at the time, you will notice that it doesn't offer anything new and doesn't really pull you in like plenty of other games manage to do. The world that is created here in its basic form, thanks to its soundtrack and graphical presentation, is inviting overall though, however you'll be stuck at very hard bosses and puzzles multiple times, so more likely than not it's only inviting until a certain point, where you likely will find yourself stuck, especially if you were a kid in the 90s playing this.
CONTENT | 6/10
Enough content here for an Action Adventure like this. You got many boss fights, many different enemy types, different types of equipment, plenty of puzzles and hidden stuff too boot. Not all of this is good content, but you'll be busy for a good 10 hours if you decide to play it to the end.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 4/10
Most of the time, where you need to go is straightforward. Then there are times where you will keep running around in circles, unless you figure out that you need to go to X first or press Y, which unlocks a new path. That sort of environmental puzzle is pretty enjoyable. But most of the time when things aren't straightforward, you're meant to go to some place that is only described very imprecisely, and it's a lot of time away and makes it very easy to get lost with no positive impact on fun factor or satisfaction from figuring out the way. Add to that that if you die on your way there, you're sent back all the way to the last inn you saved at, and you can see where you'd get easily frustrated.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 2/10
Nothing new on offer here, it's a mix of features and a focus on themes and a theme for its world that you have seen in a lot of different games before. There isn't even a specific thing this game tries to focus on more than on other areas, the game is meh to alright in every area, which makes for a meh game overall. It's got average world building, basic gameplay, convoluted level design, a middle-of-the-pack soundtrack, frustrating boss fights, slow pace and a boring set of one-dimensional characters. I'm sure the series has done better than this, but this game isn't doing anything above-average unfortunately.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
You can look for some more of those hidden equipment or health items in a second playthrough, but there is no other motivation given to play through it twice.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL | 50/100
You know, I'll take a game that is below-average in most aspects of a video game, if it does a specific thing really well. But Wonder Boy in Monster World doesn't really rate better than "average" in anything, as it's a game that takes many features of better games, puts them together and ends up being a worse product. So it's a skip for me, there are plenty of better retro platformers / action adventures to play from this time period, though it's definitely not a 'terrible game'.
1990
Final Fantasy III was released exclusively in Japan for NES on April 27, 1990 until it got a worldwide release multiple times since, the first of such occasions occurring in 2006 with the DS release (a 3D remake). Most recently, a Pixel Remaster released worldwide on July 28, 2021.
I have played the original NES version because the DS version, despite few QoL improvements, is a 3D remake and therefore differs significantly enough that I chose to stick with the original. If you're considering playing this game, I would only play the NES version if you are really into old school RPGs of this time and have already played and finished something similar. Even though I found this to be more than playable, it hasn't aged well in many aspects that make a playthrough without using any guide extremely difficult. The HowLongToBeat time on this game (~20 hours for a playthrough) is very wrong in that regard. You will be stuck multiple times, you will die multiple times and most importantly, you will have to grind a lot (though this will not differ much from version to version).
The grind part is probably my most significant issue with this game and the reason why I didn't finish the game, and I'd assume a reason for many others. The game introduced the "job system" to Final Fantasy. This is a system of different classes (white/black/red mages, warriors and knights, dragoons and ninjas etc.) that you can apply to your characters on the fly. Each job has a separate level to your overall level and only the job you are currently using gains XP. This is in itself a great system and we will learn how it gets refined over the next few entries as this challenge progresses, however the first time this is implemented creates quite a lot of pain to first time players, especially those who don't check guides for this game.
The game has multiple sections where specific jobs need to be used to actually progress through them, and especially once you get near the end, there only are very few jobs that will actually be good enough for you to beat the game. Since jobs don't get XP unless you use them, this means you either have to use a guide (1), have to be lucky and figure out a working group of jobs (2) or grind out multiple of them (3). Even if you end up using a guide, you will not be spared of the grind.
It is typical for JRPGs of this age that you are expected to grind, and it's something I have done for a few hours over my 15 total hours with this game, but ultimately even that wasn't enough to progress through the boss that I ultimately abandoned the game at. I've definitely extended my tolerance for grinding with this game, which was pretty much non-existent before starting this challenge due to my inexperience with games like these (current JRPGs I usually play on "easy"). If you have a high tolerance, again, without a guide there is a good chance you will have build the wrong "team" to face the final dungeon with, which makes this a tough game to recommend to first time players on multiple fronts.
But if you're OK with all of that and want to play this game to experience every Final Fantasy entry (if you haven't played any FF games before, I would have to suggest picking one from 4 onwards), then you can check out the following review sections to learn more on what this game has to offer and what I thought about it. :)
STORYTELLING
This game has a very basic story about darkness and light that ultimately is your typical "the world is about to end, so be its hero" plot. I've not played many games from this time but they've so far all been the same overall. The reason why they're the same is because it works and is motivating enough, but don't look for anything special in the plot of this game.
You control four orphans who at the beginning of the game check out a cave that opened up as a result of an earthquake and find a crystal of light. The crystal gives the four of them its power and tells them to restore the balance in this world. In the past (a thousand years ago), a group of Warriors of Darkness fought against a "flood of light" to restore the balance, now our heroes of Light need to do the opposite. There are light crystals and dark crystals, antagonists looking to abuse their power, a bunch of characters that are aiding our heroes and all that stuff that works but is ultimately not memorable.
What makes this game stand out in this aspect however is the lore and world building. Each town has multiple town-folk running around who are waiting to dump a tiny bit of lore on you when you talk to them. This is optional and you don't gain anything from it apart from immersion - some NPCs do offer you items though - but the immersion gained is definitely worth it. They talk about the town you are currently in, the towns that are near, secret caves and/or entry points, about important characters in the world, about what ails their town and so on. So if you're looking for something extra from this game's story, this is where you find it.
GAMEPLAY
You start by giving names to your four characters, who all have the Onion Knight "job" when you start. Once you find the crystal in the first dungeon, new jobs unlock and you can start turning your characters into Warriors, Monks and three types of Mages. With each new crystal you find later on, new job sets unlock, though some prove more useful than others. Especially the final one you find pretty much gives you some of the only viable jobs that will help you go through the end game portion. Unfortunately, since only an equipped job gains XP, choosing "wrong" ones at any point can make you lose hours to grinding up the level of your newly chosen job. Also, before switching jobs, you have to unequip all items a character currently has on them.
A character can have 2 weapons, head gear, body armor and something for their hands. To my knowledge there is no level requirement for gear, you just have to have the correct job for them, but I'm not 100% on that. You can buy gear in item shops, but also find a lot of gear in items throughout the game world. I found that the more useful gear usually was hidden in the game world. Unfortunately, you had no way of knowing what items do in this game, so I found myself looking that up online many times. For example, who knew that "MidgetBread" would reveal the map of a specific location you're in? Some items are explained through specific people in towns but you'd have to find that person first.
So whenever you would switch jobs, you would have to unequip the gear, switch the job and then equip new gear. Why gear wouldn't automatically unequip itself when you switch jobs? Well, that's because there is an arbitrary inventory limit, at least for the NES version. You can carry a billion potions, but you can't carry more than 40 different items. The only way to clear your inventory is to sell stuff or use a "Fat Chocobo" that can only be found in a few specific locations. Since a lot of items are useful and shouldn't be sold, I found myself having to quicksell some of the stuff that was useful whenever I found multiple chests in dungeons. The items in the chests wouldn't be shown until I had enough inventory space, so it happened that I quicksold something useful for something that I had no need for and that was cheaper.
The DS version I believe has unlimited inventory space, and this is yet another reason to go with that (I think most ports of the game are based on the DS version) or the Pixel Remaster.
The items you do get are pretty varied however. For mages, there are tons of spells to use, both to heal your party and to attack the enemy. For your hand-combat focused party members, there are swords, nunchaku, daggers, bows and more. Unfortunately, bows need arrows that in the NES version where limited, whilst in newer versions are unlimited. Plus, in all my time playing this game I didn't find a single store selling arrows. Still, a lot of variety here.
Combat is turn-based and you can take your time before choosing your action. Your characters can attack and depending on the items they carry and their jobs, they can parry or cast magic or even "jump" (jump in one round, attack from the top in the next). You can also run away (in the NES version this reduces your defense to 0 and doesn't always work, so you can insta-die this way) or use items. I used a Warrior, Monk, White Mage and Black Mage until I unlocked the Black Belt job, and this group worked pretty well since I just let my White Mage heal party members while auto attacking or using black magic with the others.
In the game world, you always find better weapons and spells and are always incentivized to explore, but ultimately will need to grind to get your character stats up.
There are no side missions, mini games or other gameplay features in this game besides the overworld travel and the combat. Overworld travel first happens on foot, but as you progress you unlock a boat, an airship and various improvements to the airship, which was pretty neat.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Sound and soundtrack vary depending on the version you play. The Pixel Remaster for example modernized both but especially the soundtrack is still recognizable from the original, just remixed a bit. Since I'm rating the original, I can say that the sound design is great and that the music is for the most part excellent. As far as the tone of the music goes, I found that some boss fights could have gone for a bit more of an eerier tone since you're fighting this guy that is just pure evil to a rather cheery beat, but the soundtrack overall is pretty fun to listen to.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The game looks really good for its time. Locations are really varied in terms of color, tiles and design, which is nice, and sprites look mostly clean but I also really like the attention to detail in a lot of areas or the dev's attempt to make some cutscenes look much more realistic than the technology allowed back then, like two characters having trouble falling asleep, the crystals sparkle transferring from west to east, NPCs dancing when you talk to them etc. There is also a huge variety of both enemy and character designs. With character designs I'm talking about the variety in how your own characters look when you change their jobs in particular. The models are different, unique and frankly some look pretty cool.
There are two minor gripes that I had that are worth talking about. First, some areas needed you to press a hidden button to progress. There was no indication that the button was at a specific wall, so I had to press every single one, which was not unique for this time but still annoying considering I sometimes had to fight multiple tough battles before I could find the right one. The other is that the NES version used a ton of flickering and flashing, which should be noted for those of you who have an issue with flashing lights. I believe this was toned down significantly in later versions.
ATMOSPHERE
Overall, the lore and world building, the soundtrack and the locations differing based on appearance and simply their placement in this world (Floating Continent, Flooded World etc.) made for a pretty atmospheric game.
CONTENT
There is a lot of content here. I got a bit over 1/3 of the way through this game as far as a walkthrough goes that I checked out after deciding to abandon the game, and that was after 15 hours where I used a guide a few times to not be stuck for too long when I didn't know where to go. I would be surprised if you get done with this game with less than 30, if not 40 hours of playing time on your first time with minimal uses of guides. The Pixel Remaster may be easier to go through since it provides you with maps but I don't think it saves you from the hours and hours of grinding that is necessary, which fills up your playing time but essentially is mostly qualitatively low content.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
The NES version doesn't have side missions from what I can tell, so you go from main target to main target. At times, NPCs will follow you who have their little sub-story to worry about (which still is part of the main mission). These NPCs usually aren't around for long and don't help in combat, but you can talk to them and they sometimes give you advise. Their own little stories are nice little distractions from the heroes main goal, even if they don't necessarily all have happy endings. Since you don't spend much time with them however, nice distractions is what they pretty much all amount to and their endings often fall flat emotionally. Still, it definitely breaks up the monotony to have traveling mates who have their own goals and actually help you at the location you're going to anyway.
Apart from that, here is how it usually goes. You go to a town, get a mission which requires you to travel to a different town or usually to a dungeon. The dungeons often have multiple floors and require you to fight through a couple dozen random encounters before you meet the dungeon boss. You return to the town, get an item necessary to progress further, and so you do. It is not always clear where you have to go to progress, though most of the time it can be figured out by reading the dialogue or talking to people. Since the NES version doesn't have a map unless you have "MidgetBread" in hand, finding a town you know you need to go to can still be annoying.
The developers did a good job, mostly, of planning out dungeons in a way that lets you go through them without having your Magic Points run out, which would make completing it otherwise pretty much impossible. However, some dungeons require you to use a specific item/spell or some require you to change jobs, so it can happen pretty quickly that you are out of that item, magic points or CP and therefore stuck. In this regard, planning done by the devs was suboptimal at best.
Finally, the final dungeon, which I didn't get to play but have heard more than enough about, obviously sucks. It's a 2/3 hour dungeon with no way to save and multiple boss fights, some of which don't let you heal up in between. Emulators luckily let you do save states, but if you're playing without the ability of saving, there is a very good chance that you will run out of patience to beat this final dungeon.
It also doesn't help that the job system was implemented poorly here in that only a few specific jobs will help you beat this game and in that it requires a ton of grinding to be strong enough to win.
On a final note, most areas offer "secret routes" to chests that offer some incentive to explore. Some of these locations also aren't arbitrary and are actually very slightly marked, though you're more likely to notice after you found it than before on many occasions.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
The job system of course was here to stay following its implementation into Final Fantasy 3. That alone means this game rates highly in that regard, however the implementation in FF3 itself is not great. Apart from offering a great variety, it's not like most of the jobs are viable for the end game. Actually, less than a handful are. On top of that, making some of these necessary for specific parts where they can be under leveled, or having you unable to switch due to a lack of CP (which admittedly will rarely be an issue) are other negative points worth mentioning.
In addition, the game focused a good amount of resources on the job & battle systems in favor of adding anything unique to the story.
REPLAYABILITY
This is a tough one to judge. On the one hand, there are a lot of jobs here that you'd think there is a lot more strategy to them that makes multiple playthroughs viable. On the other hand, it's unlikely you'll find much end-game success with more than a few of those jobs. Plus, you'll still be auto-attacking through multiple long grinding sessions.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked fine at all times.
OVERALL
When you're playing this, it's clear that this game is higher in quality than most of its competitors at the time. While the job system is rather simple now, it obviously was a much bigger deal at the time and if I had to guess, I would assume that grinding wasn't seen as nearly as big of an issue as I make it out to be. If anything, it added hours to the playing time and increased the value of the cartridge. Today, I'd say the games faults do stand out and later entries that still have the old school charm are also much improved in pretty much all aspects, so I'd recommend playing Final Fantasy 3 only if you're looking to experience all games in this series or want to get the internet points that come with beating that final dungeon.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
Japan only release, no magazine reviews for this one.
I have played the original NES version because the DS version, despite few QoL improvements, is a 3D remake and therefore differs significantly enough that I chose to stick with the original. If you're considering playing this game, I would only play the NES version if you are really into old school RPGs of this time and have already played and finished something similar. Even though I found this to be more than playable, it hasn't aged well in many aspects that make a playthrough without using any guide extremely difficult. The HowLongToBeat time on this game (~20 hours for a playthrough) is very wrong in that regard. You will be stuck multiple times, you will die multiple times and most importantly, you will have to grind a lot (though this will not differ much from version to version).
The grind part is probably my most significant issue with this game and the reason why I didn't finish the game, and I'd assume a reason for many others. The game introduced the "job system" to Final Fantasy. This is a system of different classes (white/black/red mages, warriors and knights, dragoons and ninjas etc.) that you can apply to your characters on the fly. Each job has a separate level to your overall level and only the job you are currently using gains XP. This is in itself a great system and we will learn how it gets refined over the next few entries as this challenge progresses, however the first time this is implemented creates quite a lot of pain to first time players, especially those who don't check guides for this game.
The game has multiple sections where specific jobs need to be used to actually progress through them, and especially once you get near the end, there only are very few jobs that will actually be good enough for you to beat the game. Since jobs don't get XP unless you use them, this means you either have to use a guide (1), have to be lucky and figure out a working group of jobs (2) or grind out multiple of them (3). Even if you end up using a guide, you will not be spared of the grind.
It is typical for JRPGs of this age that you are expected to grind, and it's something I have done for a few hours over my 15 total hours with this game, but ultimately even that wasn't enough to progress through the boss that I ultimately abandoned the game at. I've definitely extended my tolerance for grinding with this game, which was pretty much non-existent before starting this challenge due to my inexperience with games like these (current JRPGs I usually play on "easy"). If you have a high tolerance, again, without a guide there is a good chance you will have build the wrong "team" to face the final dungeon with, which makes this a tough game to recommend to first time players on multiple fronts.
But if you're OK with all of that and want to play this game to experience every Final Fantasy entry (if you haven't played any FF games before, I would have to suggest picking one from 4 onwards), then you can check out the following review sections to learn more on what this game has to offer and what I thought about it. :)
STORYTELLING
This game has a very basic story about darkness and light that ultimately is your typical "the world is about to end, so be its hero" plot. I've not played many games from this time but they've so far all been the same overall. The reason why they're the same is because it works and is motivating enough, but don't look for anything special in the plot of this game.
You control four orphans who at the beginning of the game check out a cave that opened up as a result of an earthquake and find a crystal of light. The crystal gives the four of them its power and tells them to restore the balance in this world. In the past (a thousand years ago), a group of Warriors of Darkness fought against a "flood of light" to restore the balance, now our heroes of Light need to do the opposite. There are light crystals and dark crystals, antagonists looking to abuse their power, a bunch of characters that are aiding our heroes and all that stuff that works but is ultimately not memorable.
What makes this game stand out in this aspect however is the lore and world building. Each town has multiple town-folk running around who are waiting to dump a tiny bit of lore on you when you talk to them. This is optional and you don't gain anything from it apart from immersion - some NPCs do offer you items though - but the immersion gained is definitely worth it. They talk about the town you are currently in, the towns that are near, secret caves and/or entry points, about important characters in the world, about what ails their town and so on. So if you're looking for something extra from this game's story, this is where you find it.
GAMEPLAY
You start by giving names to your four characters, who all have the Onion Knight "job" when you start. Once you find the crystal in the first dungeon, new jobs unlock and you can start turning your characters into Warriors, Monks and three types of Mages. With each new crystal you find later on, new job sets unlock, though some prove more useful than others. Especially the final one you find pretty much gives you some of the only viable jobs that will help you go through the end game portion. Unfortunately, since only an equipped job gains XP, choosing "wrong" ones at any point can make you lose hours to grinding up the level of your newly chosen job. Also, before switching jobs, you have to unequip all items a character currently has on them.
A character can have 2 weapons, head gear, body armor and something for their hands. To my knowledge there is no level requirement for gear, you just have to have the correct job for them, but I'm not 100% on that. You can buy gear in item shops, but also find a lot of gear in items throughout the game world. I found that the more useful gear usually was hidden in the game world. Unfortunately, you had no way of knowing what items do in this game, so I found myself looking that up online many times. For example, who knew that "MidgetBread" would reveal the map of a specific location you're in? Some items are explained through specific people in towns but you'd have to find that person first.
So whenever you would switch jobs, you would have to unequip the gear, switch the job and then equip new gear. Why gear wouldn't automatically unequip itself when you switch jobs? Well, that's because there is an arbitrary inventory limit, at least for the NES version. You can carry a billion potions, but you can't carry more than 40 different items. The only way to clear your inventory is to sell stuff or use a "Fat Chocobo" that can only be found in a few specific locations. Since a lot of items are useful and shouldn't be sold, I found myself having to quicksell some of the stuff that was useful whenever I found multiple chests in dungeons. The items in the chests wouldn't be shown until I had enough inventory space, so it happened that I quicksold something useful for something that I had no need for and that was cheaper.
The DS version I believe has unlimited inventory space, and this is yet another reason to go with that (I think most ports of the game are based on the DS version) or the Pixel Remaster.
The items you do get are pretty varied however. For mages, there are tons of spells to use, both to heal your party and to attack the enemy. For your hand-combat focused party members, there are swords, nunchaku, daggers, bows and more. Unfortunately, bows need arrows that in the NES version where limited, whilst in newer versions are unlimited. Plus, in all my time playing this game I didn't find a single store selling arrows. Still, a lot of variety here.
Combat is turn-based and you can take your time before choosing your action. Your characters can attack and depending on the items they carry and their jobs, they can parry or cast magic or even "jump" (jump in one round, attack from the top in the next). You can also run away (in the NES version this reduces your defense to 0 and doesn't always work, so you can insta-die this way) or use items. I used a Warrior, Monk, White Mage and Black Mage until I unlocked the Black Belt job, and this group worked pretty well since I just let my White Mage heal party members while auto attacking or using black magic with the others.
In the game world, you always find better weapons and spells and are always incentivized to explore, but ultimately will need to grind to get your character stats up.
There are no side missions, mini games or other gameplay features in this game besides the overworld travel and the combat. Overworld travel first happens on foot, but as you progress you unlock a boat, an airship and various improvements to the airship, which was pretty neat.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Sound and soundtrack vary depending on the version you play. The Pixel Remaster for example modernized both but especially the soundtrack is still recognizable from the original, just remixed a bit. Since I'm rating the original, I can say that the sound design is great and that the music is for the most part excellent. As far as the tone of the music goes, I found that some boss fights could have gone for a bit more of an eerier tone since you're fighting this guy that is just pure evil to a rather cheery beat, but the soundtrack overall is pretty fun to listen to.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The game looks really good for its time. Locations are really varied in terms of color, tiles and design, which is nice, and sprites look mostly clean but I also really like the attention to detail in a lot of areas or the dev's attempt to make some cutscenes look much more realistic than the technology allowed back then, like two characters having trouble falling asleep, the crystals sparkle transferring from west to east, NPCs dancing when you talk to them etc. There is also a huge variety of both enemy and character designs. With character designs I'm talking about the variety in how your own characters look when you change their jobs in particular. The models are different, unique and frankly some look pretty cool.
There are two minor gripes that I had that are worth talking about. First, some areas needed you to press a hidden button to progress. There was no indication that the button was at a specific wall, so I had to press every single one, which was not unique for this time but still annoying considering I sometimes had to fight multiple tough battles before I could find the right one. The other is that the NES version used a ton of flickering and flashing, which should be noted for those of you who have an issue with flashing lights. I believe this was toned down significantly in later versions.
ATMOSPHERE
Overall, the lore and world building, the soundtrack and the locations differing based on appearance and simply their placement in this world (Floating Continent, Flooded World etc.) made for a pretty atmospheric game.
CONTENT
There is a lot of content here. I got a bit over 1/3 of the way through this game as far as a walkthrough goes that I checked out after deciding to abandon the game, and that was after 15 hours where I used a guide a few times to not be stuck for too long when I didn't know where to go. I would be surprised if you get done with this game with less than 30, if not 40 hours of playing time on your first time with minimal uses of guides. The Pixel Remaster may be easier to go through since it provides you with maps but I don't think it saves you from the hours and hours of grinding that is necessary, which fills up your playing time but essentially is mostly qualitatively low content.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
The NES version doesn't have side missions from what I can tell, so you go from main target to main target. At times, NPCs will follow you who have their little sub-story to worry about (which still is part of the main mission). These NPCs usually aren't around for long and don't help in combat, but you can talk to them and they sometimes give you advise. Their own little stories are nice little distractions from the heroes main goal, even if they don't necessarily all have happy endings. Since you don't spend much time with them however, nice distractions is what they pretty much all amount to and their endings often fall flat emotionally. Still, it definitely breaks up the monotony to have traveling mates who have their own goals and actually help you at the location you're going to anyway.
Apart from that, here is how it usually goes. You go to a town, get a mission which requires you to travel to a different town or usually to a dungeon. The dungeons often have multiple floors and require you to fight through a couple dozen random encounters before you meet the dungeon boss. You return to the town, get an item necessary to progress further, and so you do. It is not always clear where you have to go to progress, though most of the time it can be figured out by reading the dialogue or talking to people. Since the NES version doesn't have a map unless you have "MidgetBread" in hand, finding a town you know you need to go to can still be annoying.
The developers did a good job, mostly, of planning out dungeons in a way that lets you go through them without having your Magic Points run out, which would make completing it otherwise pretty much impossible. However, some dungeons require you to use a specific item/spell or some require you to change jobs, so it can happen pretty quickly that you are out of that item, magic points or CP and therefore stuck. In this regard, planning done by the devs was suboptimal at best.
Finally, the final dungeon, which I didn't get to play but have heard more than enough about, obviously sucks. It's a 2/3 hour dungeon with no way to save and multiple boss fights, some of which don't let you heal up in between. Emulators luckily let you do save states, but if you're playing without the ability of saving, there is a very good chance that you will run out of patience to beat this final dungeon.
It also doesn't help that the job system was implemented poorly here in that only a few specific jobs will help you beat this game and in that it requires a ton of grinding to be strong enough to win.
On a final note, most areas offer "secret routes" to chests that offer some incentive to explore. Some of these locations also aren't arbitrary and are actually very slightly marked, though you're more likely to notice after you found it than before on many occasions.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
The job system of course was here to stay following its implementation into Final Fantasy 3. That alone means this game rates highly in that regard, however the implementation in FF3 itself is not great. Apart from offering a great variety, it's not like most of the jobs are viable for the end game. Actually, less than a handful are. On top of that, making some of these necessary for specific parts where they can be under leveled, or having you unable to switch due to a lack of CP (which admittedly will rarely be an issue) are other negative points worth mentioning.
In addition, the game focused a good amount of resources on the job & battle systems in favor of adding anything unique to the story.
REPLAYABILITY
This is a tough one to judge. On the one hand, there are a lot of jobs here that you'd think there is a lot more strategy to them that makes multiple playthroughs viable. On the other hand, it's unlikely you'll find much end-game success with more than a few of those jobs. Plus, you'll still be auto-attacking through multiple long grinding sessions.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked fine at all times.
OVERALL
When you're playing this, it's clear that this game is higher in quality than most of its competitors at the time. While the job system is rather simple now, it obviously was a much bigger deal at the time and if I had to guess, I would assume that grinding wasn't seen as nearly as big of an issue as I make it out to be. If anything, it added hours to the playing time and increased the value of the cartridge. Today, I'd say the games faults do stand out and later entries that still have the old school charm are also much improved in pretty much all aspects, so I'd recommend playing Final Fantasy 3 only if you're looking to experience all games in this series or want to get the internet points that come with beating that final dungeon.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
Japan only release, no magazine reviews for this one.
1995
(This is the 106th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
How stupid am I? I played King's Field II instead of King's Field I because I didn't realize that King's Field II was called King's Field I in the US since King's Field I never released outside of Japan. You know? Either way, there is only a year that separates both of these games and apart from minor differences, they appear to be very similar in terms of gameplay. King's Field II is about twice as long though, which is worth pointing out.
Anyway, whether I played the game I wanted to or not, I got the King's Field experience alright, so I'd like to share my thoughts on the game for those of you curious about this game. As you probably know if you're looking to play (or have played) any King's Field game, they were some of the first games developed by From Software, who have built on the foundation here just a tiny bit to bring us games like Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and most recently, Elden Ring in an Action RPG subgenre that they've pretty much pioneered.
King's Field is not quite a soulslike than it is a dungeon crawler / Action RPG that doesn't change up the established genres all that much, but it's FromSoft finding their footing in the video game industry, so I wanted to see their first attempt (second attempt...) at developing a game by playing King's Field (II).
It's a game alright, and has some good ideas, but the experience is dragged down by sloooow combat and the obtuse nature of everything from dungeon design to itemization and overall progression.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10
The game starts with the camera flying over the island of Melanat, where the game takes place. You find yourself washed up on the coast of Melanat, which is in control of either a god or a demon (the storyteller itself wasn't quite sure). The writing isn't so good in this one. Your purpose isn't explained much further, other than what you can make out yourself. Go into the depths of this place and kill whatever controls the island.
As you make your way through the labyrinthine island, you will stumble upon multiple NPCs, who either give you lore on the island, the enemies and important people, or they will ask you to find something or someone. They'll give you helpful tips as well, and in classic FromSoft manner, you gotta talk to them multiple times to get all the information out of them that they have to give. There was one character in particular who stopped eating his soup to tell me that he is too fat to go down into the underworld. What, there is only a tiny hole that leads there? I laughed quite hard at this line just because of how blunt and out of nowhere it was. If you're wondering whether characters have personality here, that's as much as you'll get out of the ones that you'll see within your first 5 or so hours of playing the game.
Still, there is an effort here to tell a story of a hostile place filled with hostile enemies and one that is bigger than 'em all. Even though it's a story that has been told 80000 times in games by now, effort counts, especially during the early 90s, though the bar is definitely about to be set much higher as more and more PS1 games come out.
GAMEPLAY | 7/20
I know every console has its stinkers and its diamonds, but I still find it fascinating that the only two PS1 games I've played for more than a few hours are THIS and Metal Gear Solid. Talk about two ends of a spectrum.
King's Field has its fans, and I never want to take anything away from them when I play and review these games myself, but if I'm addressing this review to not just obtuse and retro dungeon crawler / RPG fans, then I can only say that these people should stay far away from King's Field, or at least that they should expect to drop it after their initial curiosity as Soulslike fans runs off.
Controls can be optimized thanks to emulation these days, but the basic controls look like this. D-Pad buttons to walk in four directions, L1 and R1 to strafe left or right, L1 and R1 alongside a directional button to circle around an area and turn around, and L2 and R2 to look up and down respectively. You will kind of get used to it but I never got really comfortable.
The game runs at a solid (/s) 20 FPS for most of the game but has some spikes both up and down from time to time. Don't know if it's emulation that rescues some frames from time to time or whether it's simply the optimization of the game, but what you need to know is that frames correlate with speed of attacks. Not just your attacks, but enemy attacks. In a game where staggering your enemy is key, not attacking the second your stamina comes back means opening yourself up to being hit. Get hit a couple times against most enemies and you're dead. So if the game plays fluidly for a few seconds, it's not something to be happy about when you're in combat.
If the game runs at its normal FPS, combat is very slow. First, you need to position yourself. Facing an enemy head-on, especially when there are more than 1 enemies in a given room, is guaranteed death. When you swing towards an enemy from the front, the one who hits sooner wins. If you hit the enemy, you stagger it and avoid damage. If you are hit, you don't get staggered but a hefty sum is taken from your health pool and you might be poisoned or paralyzed to boot. And even if you do hit first, you know have to play a game of timing your next attacks. Each swing depletese your entire health pool, so you have to wait for 1% of it to come back in order to swing again. Time it right and you can stagger-lock the enemy for the duration of the battle. Click too early and you lose precious frames before your input is finally recognized, meaning the enemy can get a fatal attack in. And EVEN if you manage to time it correctly every time, killing an enemy takes an agonizingly long amount of time for the first few hours. Then you level up a couple times and instead of taking 30 seconds, it takes 20 or 25. I can live with a lot that this game has to offer but combat was at no point satisfying, and having to circle around enemies to cheaply hit them from the side or back to avoid damage very quickly felt repetitive and even less satisfying, as you never really are besting the enemy but the game.
As I mentioned, death comes quick, and unfortunately this means you usually lose a lot of progress as well. In fact, the game drops you back at the very beginning of the game, even if you reach the first save room that is likely 1-2 hours away at least when you first start playing. If you do save, you spawn at the start, have to go into the menu and load the save point, which takes 20 seconds longer than spawning at your save point immediately would. Emulation and save states will be your friends.
Talking about the menu, this is where you use and equip stuff. Being low on health means opening the menu, going into "Use Items" and using the item before exiting the menu and returning to gameplay. Being poisoned means the same thing. It's not a big deal though because you can rarely heal anyway (I could only bring one healing potion with me 5+ hours into the game), so you mostly open the menu to use items or equip stuff you find.
Stuff you find is another thing. Merchants usually give you items that you find in the game world anyway, and anything that you can't is really expensive, so they don't feel useful at all for the first half of the game at least. Finding stuff is kind of fun, but then you have items like the knight's helm which is in some random corner and not even visible on the spot it's supposed to be on.
Items also have no information on them, whether it's for their use or what kind of stats they have (for equipment), so you equip and then go back to the stats screen to figure out what changed. This is pretty archaic even for 1994.
This all creates a pretty unsatisfying gameplay loop for someone who is into retro games but not quite a hardcore retro RPG gamer. Combat can be fun in 1994, games don't have to be this obtuse in 1994 and games can perform better in 1994 ... well, maybe not quite for that last part, especially for the new 3D market. But still, more likely than not, King's Field will not be enjoyable for you, unless you are part of the more hardcore retro RPG fanbase I mentioned, in which case, go solve this island and hopefully, you'll have some fun along the way.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 6/10
There are 10 or so large areas in the game and one track playing in each. One. Luckily the first few actually are nice to listen to and set the tone nicely, but it still gets very repetitive. The ending music is pretty nice.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 4/10
The visuals look really bad. The only saving graces here are the villages, which have some retro charm to them thanks to the odd character design and the vibes the locations give off, as well as the enemy art design, which I found to be somewhat well done. Enemies repeat a lot, but they look disgusting, and I think that's a positive for a game like this.
Other than that though, the gray just tired me out after a while. Areas look way too similar, which in a game with no map is not great for getting your bearings. Textures look bland and I can't say that the visuals added much to the atmosphere as a result, other than telling me that I'm trapped in this ugly world, at least until I found the X to close the window.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 5/10
The game is not scary, and the island does not have this mysterious feeling to it that I got in some other dungeon crawlers I've played as part of this challenge I'm doing. Even games from 1990 like Elvira: Mistress of the Dark oozes a lot more atmosphere than King's Field (II). 3D will have helped with immersion a lot more at the time, but I felt more immersed in those point-and-click style dungeon crawlers from years earlier. That said, death is truly around every corner in this game and the soundtrack at least pulls off a certain adventure-like vibe.
CONTENT | 6/10
It's a shame that I disliked combat and dungeon design so much, because the game has some fun content otherwise. Lots of locked doors, secret paths and items that unlock cool stuff can be found in this game. Finding a dragon stone to put into a stone tablet to finally get a MP-healing source was pretty nice for example. The game is pretty long, so I'm sure there is a lot more where that came from. Unfortunately, you gotta be OK with the gameplay itself, which will probably decide whether you have the interest to play on.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
Not the worst. As mentioned, areas have lots of secret rooms and paths to discover, which will lead you to lots of enemies and treasure. Much of it felt optional, so if you want to experience more of what King's Field has to offer, it felt like more was always next door, you just gotta find a way to get there. That said, the poor visuals and repetitive design of the dungeons as well as poor economy design are some clear weak points here.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 4/10
This Kings Field game wasn't the launch title, but it's still worth mentioning that that one was launched close to the release of the PS1, and games like these were not at all common at this time. Still, you can see the very short development time in the overall quality of the experience, which, no matter which way you put it, means that this sort of innovation was not for the best, at least not with the execution found here.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
You'll probably miss out on lots of secrets after your first playthrough. If you still want more after that, there will likely be plenty to find still.
PLAYABILITY | 4/5
Works well, but the low FPS is headache, and the odd spikes even more so. There is also head-bobbing enabled at the start, which I suggest you turn off asap through the options menu.
OVERALL | 49/100
There are many better dungeon crawlers and RPGs of all kinds available from 1994/5 or earlier. I'd suggest you play those. King's Field has very poor combat that is not only slow and hard to figure out at first, but once you do, you realize it's really not hard to cheese the game. The challenge for me was to stay awake as my character swung 25 times to kill a generic enemy. Maybe you'll feel differently, but I wouldn't personally recommend the game.
How stupid am I? I played King's Field II instead of King's Field I because I didn't realize that King's Field II was called King's Field I in the US since King's Field I never released outside of Japan. You know? Either way, there is only a year that separates both of these games and apart from minor differences, they appear to be very similar in terms of gameplay. King's Field II is about twice as long though, which is worth pointing out.
Anyway, whether I played the game I wanted to or not, I got the King's Field experience alright, so I'd like to share my thoughts on the game for those of you curious about this game. As you probably know if you're looking to play (or have played) any King's Field game, they were some of the first games developed by From Software, who have built on the foundation here just a tiny bit to bring us games like Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and most recently, Elden Ring in an Action RPG subgenre that they've pretty much pioneered.
King's Field is not quite a soulslike than it is a dungeon crawler / Action RPG that doesn't change up the established genres all that much, but it's FromSoft finding their footing in the video game industry, so I wanted to see their first attempt (second attempt...) at developing a game by playing King's Field (II).
It's a game alright, and has some good ideas, but the experience is dragged down by sloooow combat and the obtuse nature of everything from dungeon design to itemization and overall progression.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10
The game starts with the camera flying over the island of Melanat, where the game takes place. You find yourself washed up on the coast of Melanat, which is in control of either a god or a demon (the storyteller itself wasn't quite sure). The writing isn't so good in this one. Your purpose isn't explained much further, other than what you can make out yourself. Go into the depths of this place and kill whatever controls the island.
As you make your way through the labyrinthine island, you will stumble upon multiple NPCs, who either give you lore on the island, the enemies and important people, or they will ask you to find something or someone. They'll give you helpful tips as well, and in classic FromSoft manner, you gotta talk to them multiple times to get all the information out of them that they have to give. There was one character in particular who stopped eating his soup to tell me that he is too fat to go down into the underworld. What, there is only a tiny hole that leads there? I laughed quite hard at this line just because of how blunt and out of nowhere it was. If you're wondering whether characters have personality here, that's as much as you'll get out of the ones that you'll see within your first 5 or so hours of playing the game.
Still, there is an effort here to tell a story of a hostile place filled with hostile enemies and one that is bigger than 'em all. Even though it's a story that has been told 80000 times in games by now, effort counts, especially during the early 90s, though the bar is definitely about to be set much higher as more and more PS1 games come out.
GAMEPLAY | 7/20
I know every console has its stinkers and its diamonds, but I still find it fascinating that the only two PS1 games I've played for more than a few hours are THIS and Metal Gear Solid. Talk about two ends of a spectrum.
King's Field has its fans, and I never want to take anything away from them when I play and review these games myself, but if I'm addressing this review to not just obtuse and retro dungeon crawler / RPG fans, then I can only say that these people should stay far away from King's Field, or at least that they should expect to drop it after their initial curiosity as Soulslike fans runs off.
Controls can be optimized thanks to emulation these days, but the basic controls look like this. D-Pad buttons to walk in four directions, L1 and R1 to strafe left or right, L1 and R1 alongside a directional button to circle around an area and turn around, and L2 and R2 to look up and down respectively. You will kind of get used to it but I never got really comfortable.
The game runs at a solid (/s) 20 FPS for most of the game but has some spikes both up and down from time to time. Don't know if it's emulation that rescues some frames from time to time or whether it's simply the optimization of the game, but what you need to know is that frames correlate with speed of attacks. Not just your attacks, but enemy attacks. In a game where staggering your enemy is key, not attacking the second your stamina comes back means opening yourself up to being hit. Get hit a couple times against most enemies and you're dead. So if the game plays fluidly for a few seconds, it's not something to be happy about when you're in combat.
If the game runs at its normal FPS, combat is very slow. First, you need to position yourself. Facing an enemy head-on, especially when there are more than 1 enemies in a given room, is guaranteed death. When you swing towards an enemy from the front, the one who hits sooner wins. If you hit the enemy, you stagger it and avoid damage. If you are hit, you don't get staggered but a hefty sum is taken from your health pool and you might be poisoned or paralyzed to boot. And even if you do hit first, you know have to play a game of timing your next attacks. Each swing depletese your entire health pool, so you have to wait for 1% of it to come back in order to swing again. Time it right and you can stagger-lock the enemy for the duration of the battle. Click too early and you lose precious frames before your input is finally recognized, meaning the enemy can get a fatal attack in. And EVEN if you manage to time it correctly every time, killing an enemy takes an agonizingly long amount of time for the first few hours. Then you level up a couple times and instead of taking 30 seconds, it takes 20 or 25. I can live with a lot that this game has to offer but combat was at no point satisfying, and having to circle around enemies to cheaply hit them from the side or back to avoid damage very quickly felt repetitive and even less satisfying, as you never really are besting the enemy but the game.
As I mentioned, death comes quick, and unfortunately this means you usually lose a lot of progress as well. In fact, the game drops you back at the very beginning of the game, even if you reach the first save room that is likely 1-2 hours away at least when you first start playing. If you do save, you spawn at the start, have to go into the menu and load the save point, which takes 20 seconds longer than spawning at your save point immediately would. Emulation and save states will be your friends.
Talking about the menu, this is where you use and equip stuff. Being low on health means opening the menu, going into "Use Items" and using the item before exiting the menu and returning to gameplay. Being poisoned means the same thing. It's not a big deal though because you can rarely heal anyway (I could only bring one healing potion with me 5+ hours into the game), so you mostly open the menu to use items or equip stuff you find.
Stuff you find is another thing. Merchants usually give you items that you find in the game world anyway, and anything that you can't is really expensive, so they don't feel useful at all for the first half of the game at least. Finding stuff is kind of fun, but then you have items like the knight's helm which is in some random corner and not even visible on the spot it's supposed to be on.
Items also have no information on them, whether it's for their use or what kind of stats they have (for equipment), so you equip and then go back to the stats screen to figure out what changed. This is pretty archaic even for 1994.
This all creates a pretty unsatisfying gameplay loop for someone who is into retro games but not quite a hardcore retro RPG gamer. Combat can be fun in 1994, games don't have to be this obtuse in 1994 and games can perform better in 1994 ... well, maybe not quite for that last part, especially for the new 3D market. But still, more likely than not, King's Field will not be enjoyable for you, unless you are part of the more hardcore retro RPG fanbase I mentioned, in which case, go solve this island and hopefully, you'll have some fun along the way.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 6/10
There are 10 or so large areas in the game and one track playing in each. One. Luckily the first few actually are nice to listen to and set the tone nicely, but it still gets very repetitive. The ending music is pretty nice.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 4/10
The visuals look really bad. The only saving graces here are the villages, which have some retro charm to them thanks to the odd character design and the vibes the locations give off, as well as the enemy art design, which I found to be somewhat well done. Enemies repeat a lot, but they look disgusting, and I think that's a positive for a game like this.
Other than that though, the gray just tired me out after a while. Areas look way too similar, which in a game with no map is not great for getting your bearings. Textures look bland and I can't say that the visuals added much to the atmosphere as a result, other than telling me that I'm trapped in this ugly world, at least until I found the X to close the window.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 5/10
The game is not scary, and the island does not have this mysterious feeling to it that I got in some other dungeon crawlers I've played as part of this challenge I'm doing. Even games from 1990 like Elvira: Mistress of the Dark oozes a lot more atmosphere than King's Field (II). 3D will have helped with immersion a lot more at the time, but I felt more immersed in those point-and-click style dungeon crawlers from years earlier. That said, death is truly around every corner in this game and the soundtrack at least pulls off a certain adventure-like vibe.
CONTENT | 6/10
It's a shame that I disliked combat and dungeon design so much, because the game has some fun content otherwise. Lots of locked doors, secret paths and items that unlock cool stuff can be found in this game. Finding a dragon stone to put into a stone tablet to finally get a MP-healing source was pretty nice for example. The game is pretty long, so I'm sure there is a lot more where that came from. Unfortunately, you gotta be OK with the gameplay itself, which will probably decide whether you have the interest to play on.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
Not the worst. As mentioned, areas have lots of secret rooms and paths to discover, which will lead you to lots of enemies and treasure. Much of it felt optional, so if you want to experience more of what King's Field has to offer, it felt like more was always next door, you just gotta find a way to get there. That said, the poor visuals and repetitive design of the dungeons as well as poor economy design are some clear weak points here.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 4/10
This Kings Field game wasn't the launch title, but it's still worth mentioning that that one was launched close to the release of the PS1, and games like these were not at all common at this time. Still, you can see the very short development time in the overall quality of the experience, which, no matter which way you put it, means that this sort of innovation was not for the best, at least not with the execution found here.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
You'll probably miss out on lots of secrets after your first playthrough. If you still want more after that, there will likely be plenty to find still.
PLAYABILITY | 4/5
Works well, but the low FPS is headache, and the odd spikes even more so. There is also head-bobbing enabled at the start, which I suggest you turn off asap through the options menu.
OVERALL | 49/100
There are many better dungeon crawlers and RPGs of all kinds available from 1994/5 or earlier. I'd suggest you play those. King's Field has very poor combat that is not only slow and hard to figure out at first, but once you do, you realize it's really not hard to cheese the game. The challenge for me was to stay awake as my character swung 25 times to kill a generic enemy. Maybe you'll feel differently, but I wouldn't personally recommend the game.
1991
(This is the 58th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
Before there was Wolfenstein 3-D, there was Catacomb 3-D: The Descent. Before that, there was Hovertank 3-D, but if you'd consider Catacomb 3-D a rough prototype, which I do, I don't know what you'd consider Hovertank 3-D to be. Humble beginnings to a genre that would evolve incredibly fast from here is what you'd call it I guess.
Id Software, developers of Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein, the latter of which will debut in 1992, started their work on the FPS genre by releasing the above mentioned games in 1991 using a prototype of the Wolfenstein 3-D engine. They would improve upon their framework in incredible pace, which you will be able to immediately notice just by comparing Hovertank (April 91), Catacomb (November 91), Wolfenstein (May, 92) and Doom (December 93).
Today's review focuses on the second of those 4 games, which is the third entry in the Catacomb series and the first in first person perspective. The game would be followed by the Catacomb Adventure Series that included three games. These weren't developed by id Software but rather internally by Softdisk, and apart from small improvements and additions, they offer pretty much the same gameplay, so I won't play and review them as part of this challenge.
But here is my review for Catacomb 3-D: The Descent. It will be more negative than I actually am about the game, it's just that from a critical standpoint it's not that good. From a video game historian's perspective, one will definitely appreciate the game for what it is and what it led to.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 1/10
Don't be fooled by the FPS categorization. You don't shoot bullets. You use your hand to shoot magic bolts in a game that has a dark fantasy setting.
You play a high wizard and need to rescue your friend, who is held captive by the evil lich Nemesis. There are 20 levels, some of which have scrolls in them that give you tips on how to progress. At the end of the game, you can just walk up to your buddy and rescue him without even defeating the Nemesis.
So yeah, no story, let's move on.
GAMEPLAY | 10/20
You likely know what the boomer shooter genre looks like. You move through 20 flat levels that are built in a more and more of a intricate maze-like fashion, with areas divided by walls and doors. The controls are set up so that you can move by pressing the keys on your keyboard while shooting with either the left mouse button or the ALT key. Although you can also use the mouse to help, turning is done very slowly in both cases.
You walk through all areas of a level to find keys that open locked doors, which hide portals. Some levels later on have more portals that mostly are there to confuse you and act as puzzles (read: filler). While looking for the keys, enemies - of which there are a grand total of 5 - will appear and will require getting disposed of. On easy, the first enemy, trolls, require 3 hits to die. The second enemy, orcs, require more like 10-15. Then there are mages, bats and red demon-type creatures, which require up to 50 hits. Only mages shoot bolts back, the rest just walk up to you and hit you, so the only real difference here is how many shots it takes to kill them, which should tell you how rudimentary the design is here.
Your bolts have no ammo and can be shot non-stop. That's also a requirement because a big part of progress here is to shoot at every single part of a wall, as some of them can be destroyed and hide key items, like, keys... So once you kill all enemies and still haven't naturally found the key to progress, you start a session of non stop shooting, killing your index finger in the process. It's not that bad actually, the simplicity of this task is definitely much better than having to play poorly controllable platformer game, by far.
You also can shoot nukes and rapid-fire bolts, and will find a large amount of healing items everywhere. The healing system is likely the same as in Wolfenstein 3D, but instead of having 100% health, your health is displayed with an image of your characters head. As he takes damage, he gradually loses the skin on his face and reveals more and more of his skull. I thought that was a nice touch.
Playing this will undoubtedly help in putting into perspective how quickly the genre is set to evolve. I thought it was interesting to see where the boomer shooter subgenre was about to find its foothold, but wasn't quite there yet.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 3/10
No voice acting. The sound design is as basic as the entire game, you know, apart from the fact of starting a new genre, but basic nonetheless. It includes some unpleasant noises, such as scraping against a wall, which was probably twice as annoying because you weren't intended to be stuck there in the first place. The soundtrack literally consists of one song, one that would a month later be used for a section in Commander Keen 4, so hearing that for 2 hours straight was very pleasant, as you can imagine.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 5/10
It's difficult to give this game a fair rating because, on the one hand, it is extremely brief and simplistic in design, with the only improvements over Hovertank being that the few enemies actually received some design attention and the walls featured textures rather than being painted a single color.
On the other hand, this graphics engine was quite revolutionary due to its unprecedented nature. Due to the nauseating movement structure of this game combined with the very little detail present here, I'll rate this lower than I probably will Wolfenstein 3D, but credit where it's due. Which it probably is with Hovertank.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 3/10
The only immersion comes from the fact that this plays in the first person view that players weren't accustomed to yet. There is barely any story or world-building here to really get immersed in anything else.
CONTENT | 4/10
20 levels that all have you do the same thing, just with a little bit more complexity each time. The simplicity of the shooting did feel fun when it flowed relatively well to be honest, and I'm likely going to enjoy the more sophisticated Wolfenstein and Doom quite a lot based on my experience here, but obviously this is very much lacking in depth and variety.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 4/10
You go through levels that become more and more complex as you go deeper and deeper into the 'dungeon'. Unfortunately, late game it felt like filler and unnecessary complexity rather than fun puzzles to tease your brain over. Making enemies bulletspongy enemies late-game is understandable, because how else are they going to differentiate them in these early times, but it's not good regardless, and the fact that you can simply walk past the final boss to find your friend and win the game is an odd, yet hilarious oversight.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 7/10
Similarly to the graphics section, how do you rate this fairly? By saying that Hovertank did it first and Catacomb didn't improve on it in a notable way to earn a high rating? I suppose. That doesn't make the fact that this is very innovative and a great thing that the dev team accomplished, and was about to accomplish from here on out.
REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
No replayability, though there are three difficulty levels. I can't imagine wanting to up the difficulty considering how bulletspongy enemies get in the later levels.
PLAYABILITY | 4/5
Crashed once when I was strafing a bit too much using ALT. Otherwise, works well.
OVERALL | 42/100
Hey, not the worst score in the world. Catacomb 3-D is a game I appreciate for showing what's possible, and for its time in history. As a game, its simplicity offered me with a fun, mindless first hour, but as a game from a critical standpoint, it's not good. If you want to go into id Software games, I'd recommend starting with Wolfenstein, as you don't miss out on anything significant with Catacomb that won't be present in Wolfenstein.
Before there was Wolfenstein 3-D, there was Catacomb 3-D: The Descent. Before that, there was Hovertank 3-D, but if you'd consider Catacomb 3-D a rough prototype, which I do, I don't know what you'd consider Hovertank 3-D to be. Humble beginnings to a genre that would evolve incredibly fast from here is what you'd call it I guess.
Id Software, developers of Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein, the latter of which will debut in 1992, started their work on the FPS genre by releasing the above mentioned games in 1991 using a prototype of the Wolfenstein 3-D engine. They would improve upon their framework in incredible pace, which you will be able to immediately notice just by comparing Hovertank (April 91), Catacomb (November 91), Wolfenstein (May, 92) and Doom (December 93).
Today's review focuses on the second of those 4 games, which is the third entry in the Catacomb series and the first in first person perspective. The game would be followed by the Catacomb Adventure Series that included three games. These weren't developed by id Software but rather internally by Softdisk, and apart from small improvements and additions, they offer pretty much the same gameplay, so I won't play and review them as part of this challenge.
But here is my review for Catacomb 3-D: The Descent. It will be more negative than I actually am about the game, it's just that from a critical standpoint it's not that good. From a video game historian's perspective, one will definitely appreciate the game for what it is and what it led to.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 1/10
Don't be fooled by the FPS categorization. You don't shoot bullets. You use your hand to shoot magic bolts in a game that has a dark fantasy setting.
You play a high wizard and need to rescue your friend, who is held captive by the evil lich Nemesis. There are 20 levels, some of which have scrolls in them that give you tips on how to progress. At the end of the game, you can just walk up to your buddy and rescue him without even defeating the Nemesis.
So yeah, no story, let's move on.
GAMEPLAY | 10/20
You likely know what the boomer shooter genre looks like. You move through 20 flat levels that are built in a more and more of a intricate maze-like fashion, with areas divided by walls and doors. The controls are set up so that you can move by pressing the keys on your keyboard while shooting with either the left mouse button or the ALT key. Although you can also use the mouse to help, turning is done very slowly in both cases.
You walk through all areas of a level to find keys that open locked doors, which hide portals. Some levels later on have more portals that mostly are there to confuse you and act as puzzles (read: filler). While looking for the keys, enemies - of which there are a grand total of 5 - will appear and will require getting disposed of. On easy, the first enemy, trolls, require 3 hits to die. The second enemy, orcs, require more like 10-15. Then there are mages, bats and red demon-type creatures, which require up to 50 hits. Only mages shoot bolts back, the rest just walk up to you and hit you, so the only real difference here is how many shots it takes to kill them, which should tell you how rudimentary the design is here.
Your bolts have no ammo and can be shot non-stop. That's also a requirement because a big part of progress here is to shoot at every single part of a wall, as some of them can be destroyed and hide key items, like, keys... So once you kill all enemies and still haven't naturally found the key to progress, you start a session of non stop shooting, killing your index finger in the process. It's not that bad actually, the simplicity of this task is definitely much better than having to play poorly controllable platformer game, by far.
You also can shoot nukes and rapid-fire bolts, and will find a large amount of healing items everywhere. The healing system is likely the same as in Wolfenstein 3D, but instead of having 100% health, your health is displayed with an image of your characters head. As he takes damage, he gradually loses the skin on his face and reveals more and more of his skull. I thought that was a nice touch.
Playing this will undoubtedly help in putting into perspective how quickly the genre is set to evolve. I thought it was interesting to see where the boomer shooter subgenre was about to find its foothold, but wasn't quite there yet.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 3/10
No voice acting. The sound design is as basic as the entire game, you know, apart from the fact of starting a new genre, but basic nonetheless. It includes some unpleasant noises, such as scraping against a wall, which was probably twice as annoying because you weren't intended to be stuck there in the first place. The soundtrack literally consists of one song, one that would a month later be used for a section in Commander Keen 4, so hearing that for 2 hours straight was very pleasant, as you can imagine.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 5/10
It's difficult to give this game a fair rating because, on the one hand, it is extremely brief and simplistic in design, with the only improvements over Hovertank being that the few enemies actually received some design attention and the walls featured textures rather than being painted a single color.
On the other hand, this graphics engine was quite revolutionary due to its unprecedented nature. Due to the nauseating movement structure of this game combined with the very little detail present here, I'll rate this lower than I probably will Wolfenstein 3D, but credit where it's due. Which it probably is with Hovertank.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 3/10
The only immersion comes from the fact that this plays in the first person view that players weren't accustomed to yet. There is barely any story or world-building here to really get immersed in anything else.
CONTENT | 4/10
20 levels that all have you do the same thing, just with a little bit more complexity each time. The simplicity of the shooting did feel fun when it flowed relatively well to be honest, and I'm likely going to enjoy the more sophisticated Wolfenstein and Doom quite a lot based on my experience here, but obviously this is very much lacking in depth and variety.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 4/10
You go through levels that become more and more complex as you go deeper and deeper into the 'dungeon'. Unfortunately, late game it felt like filler and unnecessary complexity rather than fun puzzles to tease your brain over. Making enemies bulletspongy enemies late-game is understandable, because how else are they going to differentiate them in these early times, but it's not good regardless, and the fact that you can simply walk past the final boss to find your friend and win the game is an odd, yet hilarious oversight.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 7/10
Similarly to the graphics section, how do you rate this fairly? By saying that Hovertank did it first and Catacomb didn't improve on it in a notable way to earn a high rating? I suppose. That doesn't make the fact that this is very innovative and a great thing that the dev team accomplished, and was about to accomplish from here on out.
REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
No replayability, though there are three difficulty levels. I can't imagine wanting to up the difficulty considering how bulletspongy enemies get in the later levels.
PLAYABILITY | 4/5
Crashed once when I was strafing a bit too much using ALT. Otherwise, works well.
OVERALL | 42/100
Hey, not the worst score in the world. Catacomb 3-D is a game I appreciate for showing what's possible, and for its time in history. As a game, its simplicity offered me with a fun, mindless first hour, but as a game from a critical standpoint, it's not good. If you want to go into id Software games, I'd recommend starting with Wolfenstein, as you don't miss out on anything significant with Catacomb that won't be present in Wolfenstein.
(This is the 25th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
I hadn't posted this review on here back when I played it, so I'm adding it now.
Sunsoft released 4 different games under the name Batman in 1990, and this review is for the Sega Genesis version.
The Game Boy version I played previously was rather simple and while it was fun, it didn't feel like Batman. Among other reasons, Batman uses a gun throughout that game, which doesn't suit him all that much.
The Sega Genesis version is much more sophisticated and actually uses gadgets and weapons that you know him for. You fight by punching and throwing batarangs. You can climb up using a grappling hook. You drive the Batmobile in one section. And while it comes together to deliver a solid platformer for its time, regular cheap deaths are to be expected here thanks to sometimes unresponsive, often inconsistent controls. At least that is my experience and if you have experienced it differently, I'd love to know about that.
I'll explain what I mean, but first, let's look at my thoughts on the game's story and storytelling.
STORYTELLING | 1/10
The story is mainly told in a scrolling text before the game starts, plus a few lines when the game ends. There is also a scene where you see the Joker next to Vicki Vale while you fight a different boss.
The plot has similarities to the 1989 movie by Tim Burton and the premise is that The Joker and his goons are plotting to take over Gotham City. They've also kidnapped photographer Vicki Vale. Throughout the game, you have to fight Joker's henchmen to get to him and put an end to this unrest.
It's the barest of bones as far as storytelling in game goes and that's fine, just know to not expect anything.
GAMEPLAY | 12/20
You get 3 Lives and 5 Continues and have to try and go through about half a dozen different stages, each concluding with a boss fight. The final stage pre-Joker fight even has you fight all previous bosses in succession, a boss rush basically, and it's the part where I likely would have given up if it weren't for save states.
The first level has Batman walk across the Gotham streets with a bunch of goons standing in his way with either pistols or knives. You can easily punch them, or throw the limited amount of batarangs you have at them. There are icons to collect that give you more batarangs, and others that give you a health or even a whole extra life.
You can duck, jump, somersault and even use a grappling hook to jump onto higher platforms. There are lots of platforming sections over bottomless pits that will test your patience, because that was the part where I started to get frustrated with the controls.
I can't say with full confidence that my emulator did or did not have issues (I'd guess no issues there) but the somersault was very inconsistent and almost felt random at times. In one area where you have to jump on top of small platforms, doing a somersault becomes necessary. Somersaulting requires you to press the jump button twice. For some reason, the second tap sometimes wouldn't trigger and I would end up falling into a pit, which takes a whole life away. Was it my fault? Was it the emulators? Was it the games? All I can say is that I didn't have issues like this with the majority of other games I've played, so I'm gonna go with faulting the game.
While most stages consist of platforming, there are two different stages, one each for the Batmobile and the Batwing. Both offer a nice change of pace, but I found them to be somewhat frustrating. The Batwing part has a few moments where 7 or 8 enemies are on the screen at once and it's almost impossible to find space to move your Batwing into. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that you get 4 health points after you lose your first life and no health items during the entire run. It's the same with the Batmobile part, only there you have these vans that throw bombs and I kind of found it hard to understand where exactly they would drop. Sometimes I would think that I am far enough away from them, only to be hit anyway, and since each hit takes 2 health, dying in these parts is extremely easy unless you play it perfectly.
The boss fights are OK but pretty easy once you know what to do, which you will know pretty fast. The Joker fight especially was ridiculous on Normal difficulty as the game gave me enough batarangs to essentially insta-kill him without getting touched once.
Overall, it's a middle of the pack platformer, which means it's an enjoyable enough game, but it doesn't stand out.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 8/10
No voice acting. I liked the sound design, my only issue with it was probably that there wasn't enough or pretty much any environmental sound. Would have enhanced the experience that tiny bit more. The soundtrack of this game is great. There is a different track for each stage and all are bangers.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
Graphically this fits the mood of a Batman game really well, and the streets of Gotham especially look really good for a game of its age. All in all, you can tell that this is a Batman game, and you don't need to control Batman throughout it to realize that.
ATMOSPHERE | 7/10
It already starts off pretty well in the first stage, where you find yourself walking through the streets of Gotham, which look really good. Driving through them and over a bridge in a high speed chase, climbing up a cathedral and walking through a museum were all moments that provided plenty of atmosphere. I would have loved some environmental sound to really drive some of it home, but even so the package here is well above average graphically.
CONTENT | 7/10
It took me 5 hours to beat it after 3 non-save state attempts and one including save states. It'll probably take closer to 10 hours if you want to try to beat it with only your 5 continues, but considering that the Batwing/Batmobile stages and the final boss rush stage are rather unfair considering they are pretty long and don't offer that many healing items (only 1 each for the Batwing/Batmobile stages), I'd say not all hours would be of high quality. Still, this is a tight package with solid gameplay throughout, minus some of my issues with some platforming segments being frustrating due to unresponsive controls.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 6/10
I didn't like how they only give you one health item for the entirety of the Batmobile and Batwing sections, they were way too long for that. The final stage also dragged on for far too long and felt like a lazy way to add a few more hours of frustrating gameplay, only for the game to finish off with one of the easier final bosses you'll ever see. I did like how the game attempted to mix up the platforming with the shoot 'em up like Batwing/Batmobile sections, despite my issues with them, I think every platformer should have something like that.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 4/10
Graphically, this is a step above many other platformers I've played, though this is my first Sega Genesis game, so I can't compare it to its contemporaries. The grappling hook is a nice feature and overall, this game is worlds above the Game Boy version, but it doesn't seem to be innovating in any notable way.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
No reason to replay this after beating it apart from the usual reasons, which would be beating your high score and playing it on Hard instead of Normal, if you didn't do so before.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL | 60/100
A average (=solid) platformer for its time that actually looks like a Batman game (looking at you, Game Boy version) and has plenty of cool moments involving Batman's actual gear. There is only a setting, no story development apart from the typical good guy beats bad guy moments, so you will only be playing this for its gameplay, which should entertain for a few hours but frustrate for just as many. At least the soundtrack is great throughout.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
H. H. W. for VGCE, Issue 31 (Aug 91): "There's an I've-played-something-like-this-before flair to Batman." | This is true for many other games that VGCE gave high grades for. Maybe by 1991 the landscape changed drastically?
Boogie Man for GamePro, Issue 24 (July 91): "Even though you may have done it all before, it's never looked this good." | Between this and the previous review, I'm getting real looking at a glass half-full / half-empty vibes
Matthew A. Firme for GamePlayers, Issue 25 (July 91): Well, it's not a review as much as it is a guide, however they do call Batman the Sega Genesis Game of the Month in this one
I hadn't posted this review on here back when I played it, so I'm adding it now.
Sunsoft released 4 different games under the name Batman in 1990, and this review is for the Sega Genesis version.
The Game Boy version I played previously was rather simple and while it was fun, it didn't feel like Batman. Among other reasons, Batman uses a gun throughout that game, which doesn't suit him all that much.
The Sega Genesis version is much more sophisticated and actually uses gadgets and weapons that you know him for. You fight by punching and throwing batarangs. You can climb up using a grappling hook. You drive the Batmobile in one section. And while it comes together to deliver a solid platformer for its time, regular cheap deaths are to be expected here thanks to sometimes unresponsive, often inconsistent controls. At least that is my experience and if you have experienced it differently, I'd love to know about that.
I'll explain what I mean, but first, let's look at my thoughts on the game's story and storytelling.
STORYTELLING | 1/10
The story is mainly told in a scrolling text before the game starts, plus a few lines when the game ends. There is also a scene where you see the Joker next to Vicki Vale while you fight a different boss.
The plot has similarities to the 1989 movie by Tim Burton and the premise is that The Joker and his goons are plotting to take over Gotham City. They've also kidnapped photographer Vicki Vale. Throughout the game, you have to fight Joker's henchmen to get to him and put an end to this unrest.
It's the barest of bones as far as storytelling in game goes and that's fine, just know to not expect anything.
GAMEPLAY | 12/20
You get 3 Lives and 5 Continues and have to try and go through about half a dozen different stages, each concluding with a boss fight. The final stage pre-Joker fight even has you fight all previous bosses in succession, a boss rush basically, and it's the part where I likely would have given up if it weren't for save states.
The first level has Batman walk across the Gotham streets with a bunch of goons standing in his way with either pistols or knives. You can easily punch them, or throw the limited amount of batarangs you have at them. There are icons to collect that give you more batarangs, and others that give you a health or even a whole extra life.
You can duck, jump, somersault and even use a grappling hook to jump onto higher platforms. There are lots of platforming sections over bottomless pits that will test your patience, because that was the part where I started to get frustrated with the controls.
I can't say with full confidence that my emulator did or did not have issues (I'd guess no issues there) but the somersault was very inconsistent and almost felt random at times. In one area where you have to jump on top of small platforms, doing a somersault becomes necessary. Somersaulting requires you to press the jump button twice. For some reason, the second tap sometimes wouldn't trigger and I would end up falling into a pit, which takes a whole life away. Was it my fault? Was it the emulators? Was it the games? All I can say is that I didn't have issues like this with the majority of other games I've played, so I'm gonna go with faulting the game.
While most stages consist of platforming, there are two different stages, one each for the Batmobile and the Batwing. Both offer a nice change of pace, but I found them to be somewhat frustrating. The Batwing part has a few moments where 7 or 8 enemies are on the screen at once and it's almost impossible to find space to move your Batwing into. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that you get 4 health points after you lose your first life and no health items during the entire run. It's the same with the Batmobile part, only there you have these vans that throw bombs and I kind of found it hard to understand where exactly they would drop. Sometimes I would think that I am far enough away from them, only to be hit anyway, and since each hit takes 2 health, dying in these parts is extremely easy unless you play it perfectly.
The boss fights are OK but pretty easy once you know what to do, which you will know pretty fast. The Joker fight especially was ridiculous on Normal difficulty as the game gave me enough batarangs to essentially insta-kill him without getting touched once.
Overall, it's a middle of the pack platformer, which means it's an enjoyable enough game, but it doesn't stand out.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 8/10
No voice acting. I liked the sound design, my only issue with it was probably that there wasn't enough or pretty much any environmental sound. Would have enhanced the experience that tiny bit more. The soundtrack of this game is great. There is a different track for each stage and all are bangers.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
Graphically this fits the mood of a Batman game really well, and the streets of Gotham especially look really good for a game of its age. All in all, you can tell that this is a Batman game, and you don't need to control Batman throughout it to realize that.
ATMOSPHERE | 7/10
It already starts off pretty well in the first stage, where you find yourself walking through the streets of Gotham, which look really good. Driving through them and over a bridge in a high speed chase, climbing up a cathedral and walking through a museum were all moments that provided plenty of atmosphere. I would have loved some environmental sound to really drive some of it home, but even so the package here is well above average graphically.
CONTENT | 7/10
It took me 5 hours to beat it after 3 non-save state attempts and one including save states. It'll probably take closer to 10 hours if you want to try to beat it with only your 5 continues, but considering that the Batwing/Batmobile stages and the final boss rush stage are rather unfair considering they are pretty long and don't offer that many healing items (only 1 each for the Batwing/Batmobile stages), I'd say not all hours would be of high quality. Still, this is a tight package with solid gameplay throughout, minus some of my issues with some platforming segments being frustrating due to unresponsive controls.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 6/10
I didn't like how they only give you one health item for the entirety of the Batmobile and Batwing sections, they were way too long for that. The final stage also dragged on for far too long and felt like a lazy way to add a few more hours of frustrating gameplay, only for the game to finish off with one of the easier final bosses you'll ever see. I did like how the game attempted to mix up the platforming with the shoot 'em up like Batwing/Batmobile sections, despite my issues with them, I think every platformer should have something like that.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 4/10
Graphically, this is a step above many other platformers I've played, though this is my first Sega Genesis game, so I can't compare it to its contemporaries. The grappling hook is a nice feature and overall, this game is worlds above the Game Boy version, but it doesn't seem to be innovating in any notable way.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
No reason to replay this after beating it apart from the usual reasons, which would be beating your high score and playing it on Hard instead of Normal, if you didn't do so before.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL | 60/100
A average (=solid) platformer for its time that actually looks like a Batman game (looking at you, Game Boy version) and has plenty of cool moments involving Batman's actual gear. There is only a setting, no story development apart from the typical good guy beats bad guy moments, so you will only be playing this for its gameplay, which should entertain for a few hours but frustrate for just as many. At least the soundtrack is great throughout.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
H. H. W. for VGCE, Issue 31 (Aug 91): "There's an I've-played-something-like-this-before flair to Batman." | This is true for many other games that VGCE gave high grades for. Maybe by 1991 the landscape changed drastically?
Boogie Man for GamePro, Issue 24 (July 91): "Even though you may have done it all before, it's never looked this good." | Between this and the previous review, I'm getting real looking at a glass half-full / half-empty vibes
Matthew A. Firme for GamePlayers, Issue 25 (July 91): Well, it's not a review as much as it is a guide, however they do call Batman the Sega Genesis Game of the Month in this one
This review contains spoilers
(This is the 61st game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
Sequel-time is always exciting, and even more so for games that were really enjoyable. With Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, the follow-up to The Secret of Monkey Island, we are in such a situation. This game probably requires no introduction for the majority of you. It released in December 1991 for the Amiga and MS-DOS, was developed and published by LucasArts, was led by Ron Gilbert and uses the SCUMM engine that was used for LucasArts adventure games until the late 90s.
While Monkey Island 2 was a critical success, commercially it fell below expectations. According to Ron Gilbert they sold relatively well, but "Sierra On-Line and King's Quest were still kicking our ass completely". Plus, he wanted to make adventure games for kids after releasing Monkey Island 2. Both of these points combined explain why he left LucasArts less than a year after Monkey Island 2 released to create his own company. Unfortunately, what Ron Gilbert's exit and Monkey Island's good-but-not-good-enough sales meant was that we would not only see no 3rd Monkey Island game until 1997, but that the 3rd game was also not written by its original creator.
I mention this for two reasons. First, 2022's Return to Monkey Island, finally directed and written by Ron Gilbert (and Dave Grossman) again, continues from the ending of this game, not the 4th (which I have never played). Second, this game has an infamous ending, and knowing what I know about the future of the Monkey Island series, I am kind of unsure on how to feel about it.
This is the final game in my challenge in the 1991 play-list. Here is my review for the game.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 8/10
This section is going to be a spoiler-heavy part, so skip this in case you didn't play this game yet and still want to. There are only spoilers for 1 and 2 however, not for 3, 4 and Return to Monkey Island, all of which I haven't played.
Once again, you are Guybrush Threepwood, the clumsy yet determined pirate; a title he has earned for himself in the first Monkey Island game. Now that Guybrush is a pirate and has defeated the evil ghost-pirate LeChuck, he is looking for a new adventure: Finding the treasure called "Big Whoop".
The game starts on Scabb Island, where Guybrush accidentally arrives in search of the lost treasure. I say accidental because the treasure is actually not here. It's not for naught however, as he learns more about the treasure and that there are four map pieces that he needs to acquire in order to find it. To start his search, he needs to get off the island, but that is not possible. While Scabb Island is known for being a lawless island, a man called Largo Lagrande took it upon himself to impose the "Largo Embargo" and to tax all ships arriving and departing with a heavy tax that no pirates in the area could afford. His angry demeanor and, more importantly, his connection to LeChuck as his right hand man in the past, make people scared of him. Everyone but Guybrush of course.
So Guybrush needs to figure out to cleanse Scabb Island from Largo. In the end, he does, but with a cost. He, inadvertently, gives Largo the 'still-alive' beard of LeChuck that he was carrying around to boast about his accomplishments. Largo steals this beard to resurrect LeChuck. So Scabb Island is free of Largo, but Guybrush, as he goes on to explore many other islands in search of the four map pieces, is not free of LeChuck any longer.
The game features many new, but also many returning characters from the original, just like you'd expect from a sequel of a graphical adventure, if you've ever played a different one. This creates both a sense of nostalgia and comfort, but also of a fresh adventure. It helps that the majority of returning characters were funny and quirky in the original, like the "Men of Low Moral Fiber" or Stan the used ship salesman, who opened his own mortuary in this game.
Dialogue is basically the same mix as the original, containing good humor, incredibly dry jokes (in a positive way), a few double entendre's, regular 4th-wall breaking and a contemptuous attitude by most characters towards Guybrush's clumsiness and habit of putting others into precarious positions in order to get himself closer to his goals. Don't get me wrong, Guybrush is a million times more competent than Deponia's Rufus (though both are equally as succesful I suppose), but his charm, pretty much everyone's charm in this world comes from their oddness and naivete. For example, the drycleaner is hard of hearing, the cartographer cannot see without his monocole, the bartender pays you unheard of sums of money upfront only to fire you minutes later without asking for his money back, guard's arrest someone else under your name after they had just arrested you for it minutes earlier etc.
So overall, as endearing as each character is on their own, the game's narrative is nearly entirely as lovely. I say nearly, because there is the ending 'showdown' between LeChuck and Guybrush, and the ending itself to discuss.
First, the showdown: As Guybrush attempts to uncover the treasure from its designated location, a hole opens up and he fall into it. When he comes to, everything is dark, but he locates a light switch. Guybrush finds himself in a room, though not alone. He finds LeChuck himself standing next to him with a voodoo doll. The voodoo doll supposedly will send Guybrush to an endless dimension of pain once LeChuck uses some sort of lightning power to pierce through his voodoo heart. Guybrush does get teleported, but only to the adjacent room. Looks like the doll was made of poor materials. There are 5 such rooms in this ending showdown, and you constantly need to run away from LeChuck, who shows up randomly, and assemble a bunch of items to create your own voodoo doll of him.
This is not a bad idea in itself. The problem arises, or did for me, when I had to find the last piece, which, for the life of me, I couldn't figure out without a guide. There is a room with a broken vending machine. You press the "coin return" and see a coin fly out of the machine and come to a halt at the door. LeChuck enters in a scripted moment to hunch down and grab the coin. At this point, you grab his underwear. Easy. But what you also are apparently supposed to do is give him your handkerchief, so he can blow his nose.
The problem? This is only possible in that room. If LeChuck shows up anywhere else, you can't give him the handkerchief. The bigger problem? There were a lot of times where LeChuck wouldn't show up for minutes (!) at a time, and if he did, he would never enter that one room again for a good 20 minutes. Why? Because it's entirely random where and when he shows up. And if you don't use a guide but did try to use the handkerchief in a different room (out of the 30 items in your inventory at this time), and that didn't work, I don't blame you for not trying it again in that one specific room. I did get it done after a long time, but it was frustrating as hell to get there.
And now, the ending: You assemble the voodoo doll, Guybrush uses it to rip out LeChuck's limbs, and LeChuck, in his final breaths, asks you to take off his mask. It reveals ... Guybrush's brother Chuckie. Apparently, Chuckie was asked of their parents to hunt Guybrush down. A maintenance worker of some sort shows up and tells them that they can't be down there. Scene fades to black, and we get a new scene showing a young Guybrush and a young Chuckie at an amusement park, with their parents scolding Guybrush for running off. As they go off, Chuckie gives a quick stare at the camera and shows a red glow in his eyes. The end. The after-credits scene shows Elaine Marley, Guybrush's love interest, standing over the hole on the surface and wondering whether Guybrush is down there hallucinating again. The actual end.
Wow. Reading opinions on it online, I realized that this was quite an unpopular ending at the time. Having it sit for a day, I'm mostly OK with it, as it allows for your own interpretation and for a lot of discussion without appearing tacked on or fully unreasonable.
So what's the truth here? Is it A) Guybrush is actually still a kid and just imagined the entire stories of 1 and 2? Or B) The "endless dimension of pain" curse that LeChuck was talking about actually manifested itself, and Guybrush will have to endure childhood with Chuckie, who likely bullies him? I am going to try to make a case for both scenarios, knowing full well that both the non-Ron Gilbert and with-Ron Gilbert explanations already exist by now.
Scenario A) There are surprisingly many arguments that can be made for this scenario. Guybrush appears in the first game out of nowhere and declares he wants to be a pirate. One of the requirements to be a pirate? Swordfighting, which apparently are just verbal duels where you try to out-wit your opponent. Another thing: Many characters are returning from the original, even though you explore island far away from Melee Island. Objects too, like the vending machine you destroyed in Monkey Island 1, which appears in the final stage again. The barkeeper won't sell grog to Guybrush without some ID. The "Big Whoop" treasure turns out to just be ... a ticket? To an amusement park perhaps? There are a lot more points I could mention, but to not have this be an essay on the ending, I'll leave it there.
Scenario B) A lot of points that can be made for Scenario B simply include arguing against the likelihood of Scenario A. First, Elaine's after-credits scene makes it seem like she actually exists. She asks if Guybrush is hallucinating again, which makes it likelier that the amusement park scene is not actual reality, but rather a false one created by LeChuck, or simply a dream. Second, the glow in LeChuck's eyes makes it appear, as if LeChuck pulled Guybrush into that universe on purpose. Third, this could have been an elaborate plan by LeChuck throughout the game. There is an earlier scene where Guybrush falls and hallucinates. He sees his parents, then LeChuck, then wakes up shortly after. The final showdown area also has a room where two skeletons lie and supposedly are Guybrush's parents. So has LeChuck been able to track Guybrush's whereabouts throughout the game and manipulate him discretely, to break Guybrush's will and have the curse be a success?
Having the outcome of the story be "it was just a dream" is obviously not the most satisfying, so I understand how players would find it bad. Again, I didn't mind it, but I do agree that Scenario B is preferrable.
All in all though, another enjoyable set of characters and funny dialogue was enough to pull me through this game on its own.
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
This is a graphical adventure by LucasArts / Lucasfilm Games in the style that you've all seen if you ever saw an old-school graphical adventure. The interface consists of the verbs on the bottom left side and your inventory on the bottom right side. You interact with people and objects by clicking on a verb and then on the person/object. It's the same as in the original. You use this interface to pick up items, solve puzzles and talk to people.
What a lot of these games fall victim to at least once or twice, especially old-school graphical adventures, is to create puzzle solutions that are entirely unintuitive and non-sensical, to the point that most players will be stuck and be left with no option but to try out everything possible in order to progress. Or, you know, use a guide. Luckily, this issue doesn't really creep up in Monkey Island 2, at least I found almost all puzzles to more or less make sense. Sure, using a monkey on a water pump is not the most logical solution, but it works in this game world. There were a few times where I had to use a hint, but the solutions made sense in hindsight.
There isn't really too much else that could be said here since this is through and through your average graphical adventure. One thing that I didn't find great was ship travel. You need to go through three different islands to find four map pieces, but this also means that you need items from one island to solve the puzzle on another. Since you need time to figure out what you need to do, you find yourself constantly driving from one island to the other. You need to go back to your ship on the overworld to travel, and the time it takes to do this definitely adds up to the point where the pacing of it all is not always the way you'd like it.
Overall, it's pretty much the same game as the original, just with a slightly better interface.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
I used the Special Edition but played the classic version. In this edition, there is voice acting, which the classic game didn't actually have at release. But since the Special Edition is the only one available and the one any of you would play, I'm going to say that there is voice acting here for the purposes of this rating. The voice acting is great and the majority of the characters sound unique. It's a situation where half the jokes work because of the writing and half work because of the way they are said. Couldn't really have had a better voive for Guybrush either.
The soundtrack is a fantastic mix of reggae, jazz and classical music, just like the original, with a tinge of whatever is required to set the atmosphere, like a spooky melody for the swamps for example. Plus, it's much longer than the soundtrack for the original as well, and the majority of scenes have a unique track reserved for themselves, which adds to their recognizability.
I'll give this a 9 because voice acting technically wasn't included in 1991, but think of it as a 10 if you play the voice acted versions.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
I adore the game's art direction. This was extremely well done, right down to the smallest details that suggest there is something you can interact with. From the quirky designs of each character you meet to the significantly more varied and detailed locations compared to the original, to the deep use of the color palette all the way to the distinctively decorated interiors.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 9/10
You play a sympathetic oddball called Guybrush Threepwood in a world filled with sympathetic oddballs and embark on a pirate adventure spanning multiple different islands. The inhabitants all feel familiar and never out of place, whether it's characters that you met in the original or here for the first time.
CONTENT | 8/10
The game has a more or less perfect length for a graphical adventure at roughly 6 to 10 hours depending on how quickly you solve the puzzles. There are lots of puzzles to solve and a lot of different, distinct locations to visit. The majority of puzzles actually are very solvable and don't fall victim to the unintuitiveness that is commonplace at least once or twice in these games. My only main complaint is that the final half hour is not as well done in terms of puzzles as most of the rest of this game.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
I really like how many varied locations there are to visit, but it comes at the cost of pacing. You need to walk all the way back to your ship each time you want to move to a different island, and the further you are along, and the more stuck you are, the more common it is to keep traveling around. A fast-travel or shortcut to the ship would have been a big addition. The final showdown, as I already explained in much detail, I also found to be poorly done. Finally, there are many items that clog up your inventory that you never use, which I don't necessarily enjoy in these games. There are also items that you do use but that either don't leave your inventory or that you can pick up again under the impression that this means that you'll be using them later down the line. This never happens though, and since you need to constantly move up and down to pick the correct times, this surplus of items just get in the way for no added benefit.
Overall though, the levels are nicely designed, there is good variety in puzzles, there is logic behind almost all puzzles that I can get behind and locations look nice and are available in large numbers.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 5/10
At this point there have been multiple graphical adventures of this style at the time. This doesn't make them less fun necessarily, just less innovative as time goes on. The unique part about this game is that you got three islands that you constantly travel to and fro, but as I explained above, I see both positives and negatives with that approach, the negative namely being pacing from all the traveling.
REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
No motivation given to replay this game after having beaten it the first time. It's fairly linear, you could just pick up map pieces in different orders I presume. That's more than fine, there just isn't any replayability. If you use the Special Edition, there is the possibility of using dev commentary on a second playthrough to get some backstory on the game development. I didn't do that since I didn't know how much of the sequels would be spoiled potentially.
PLAYABILITY | 4/5
Worked well for 95% of the time. I had two crashes unfortunately (Special Edition) and, more notably, the final section literally didn't work for me for close to half an hour because LeChuck just wouldn't show up.
OVERALL | 74/100
Another great game in the Monkey Island series. I definitely understand why this has a cult following, the characters and dialogue is just very charming, the 4th wall breaking amusing and the "high stakes but not really" plot is enjoyable to follow. The sequel improves on graphics and adds more music, but is otherwise more of the same, with an ending that not everyone will enjoy. Even if you don't, the rest of the game is absolutely worth a playthrough.
Sequel-time is always exciting, and even more so for games that were really enjoyable. With Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, the follow-up to The Secret of Monkey Island, we are in such a situation. This game probably requires no introduction for the majority of you. It released in December 1991 for the Amiga and MS-DOS, was developed and published by LucasArts, was led by Ron Gilbert and uses the SCUMM engine that was used for LucasArts adventure games until the late 90s.
While Monkey Island 2 was a critical success, commercially it fell below expectations. According to Ron Gilbert they sold relatively well, but "Sierra On-Line and King's Quest were still kicking our ass completely". Plus, he wanted to make adventure games for kids after releasing Monkey Island 2. Both of these points combined explain why he left LucasArts less than a year after Monkey Island 2 released to create his own company. Unfortunately, what Ron Gilbert's exit and Monkey Island's good-but-not-good-enough sales meant was that we would not only see no 3rd Monkey Island game until 1997, but that the 3rd game was also not written by its original creator.
I mention this for two reasons. First, 2022's Return to Monkey Island, finally directed and written by Ron Gilbert (and Dave Grossman) again, continues from the ending of this game, not the 4th (which I have never played). Second, this game has an infamous ending, and knowing what I know about the future of the Monkey Island series, I am kind of unsure on how to feel about it.
This is the final game in my challenge in the 1991 play-list. Here is my review for the game.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 8/10
This section is going to be a spoiler-heavy part, so skip this in case you didn't play this game yet and still want to. There are only spoilers for 1 and 2 however, not for 3, 4 and Return to Monkey Island, all of which I haven't played.
Once again, you are Guybrush Threepwood, the clumsy yet determined pirate; a title he has earned for himself in the first Monkey Island game. Now that Guybrush is a pirate and has defeated the evil ghost-pirate LeChuck, he is looking for a new adventure: Finding the treasure called "Big Whoop".
The game starts on Scabb Island, where Guybrush accidentally arrives in search of the lost treasure. I say accidental because the treasure is actually not here. It's not for naught however, as he learns more about the treasure and that there are four map pieces that he needs to acquire in order to find it. To start his search, he needs to get off the island, but that is not possible. While Scabb Island is known for being a lawless island, a man called Largo Lagrande took it upon himself to impose the "Largo Embargo" and to tax all ships arriving and departing with a heavy tax that no pirates in the area could afford. His angry demeanor and, more importantly, his connection to LeChuck as his right hand man in the past, make people scared of him. Everyone but Guybrush of course.
So Guybrush needs to figure out to cleanse Scabb Island from Largo. In the end, he does, but with a cost. He, inadvertently, gives Largo the 'still-alive' beard of LeChuck that he was carrying around to boast about his accomplishments. Largo steals this beard to resurrect LeChuck. So Scabb Island is free of Largo, but Guybrush, as he goes on to explore many other islands in search of the four map pieces, is not free of LeChuck any longer.
The game features many new, but also many returning characters from the original, just like you'd expect from a sequel of a graphical adventure, if you've ever played a different one. This creates both a sense of nostalgia and comfort, but also of a fresh adventure. It helps that the majority of returning characters were funny and quirky in the original, like the "Men of Low Moral Fiber" or Stan the used ship salesman, who opened his own mortuary in this game.
Dialogue is basically the same mix as the original, containing good humor, incredibly dry jokes (in a positive way), a few double entendre's, regular 4th-wall breaking and a contemptuous attitude by most characters towards Guybrush's clumsiness and habit of putting others into precarious positions in order to get himself closer to his goals. Don't get me wrong, Guybrush is a million times more competent than Deponia's Rufus (though both are equally as succesful I suppose), but his charm, pretty much everyone's charm in this world comes from their oddness and naivete. For example, the drycleaner is hard of hearing, the cartographer cannot see without his monocole, the bartender pays you unheard of sums of money upfront only to fire you minutes later without asking for his money back, guard's arrest someone else under your name after they had just arrested you for it minutes earlier etc.
So overall, as endearing as each character is on their own, the game's narrative is nearly entirely as lovely. I say nearly, because there is the ending 'showdown' between LeChuck and Guybrush, and the ending itself to discuss.
First, the showdown: As Guybrush attempts to uncover the treasure from its designated location, a hole opens up and he fall into it. When he comes to, everything is dark, but he locates a light switch. Guybrush finds himself in a room, though not alone. He finds LeChuck himself standing next to him with a voodoo doll. The voodoo doll supposedly will send Guybrush to an endless dimension of pain once LeChuck uses some sort of lightning power to pierce through his voodoo heart. Guybrush does get teleported, but only to the adjacent room. Looks like the doll was made of poor materials. There are 5 such rooms in this ending showdown, and you constantly need to run away from LeChuck, who shows up randomly, and assemble a bunch of items to create your own voodoo doll of him.
This is not a bad idea in itself. The problem arises, or did for me, when I had to find the last piece, which, for the life of me, I couldn't figure out without a guide. There is a room with a broken vending machine. You press the "coin return" and see a coin fly out of the machine and come to a halt at the door. LeChuck enters in a scripted moment to hunch down and grab the coin. At this point, you grab his underwear. Easy. But what you also are apparently supposed to do is give him your handkerchief, so he can blow his nose.
The problem? This is only possible in that room. If LeChuck shows up anywhere else, you can't give him the handkerchief. The bigger problem? There were a lot of times where LeChuck wouldn't show up for minutes (!) at a time, and if he did, he would never enter that one room again for a good 20 minutes. Why? Because it's entirely random where and when he shows up. And if you don't use a guide but did try to use the handkerchief in a different room (out of the 30 items in your inventory at this time), and that didn't work, I don't blame you for not trying it again in that one specific room. I did get it done after a long time, but it was frustrating as hell to get there.
And now, the ending: You assemble the voodoo doll, Guybrush uses it to rip out LeChuck's limbs, and LeChuck, in his final breaths, asks you to take off his mask. It reveals ... Guybrush's brother Chuckie. Apparently, Chuckie was asked of their parents to hunt Guybrush down. A maintenance worker of some sort shows up and tells them that they can't be down there. Scene fades to black, and we get a new scene showing a young Guybrush and a young Chuckie at an amusement park, with their parents scolding Guybrush for running off. As they go off, Chuckie gives a quick stare at the camera and shows a red glow in his eyes. The end. The after-credits scene shows Elaine Marley, Guybrush's love interest, standing over the hole on the surface and wondering whether Guybrush is down there hallucinating again. The actual end.
Wow. Reading opinions on it online, I realized that this was quite an unpopular ending at the time. Having it sit for a day, I'm mostly OK with it, as it allows for your own interpretation and for a lot of discussion without appearing tacked on or fully unreasonable.
So what's the truth here? Is it A) Guybrush is actually still a kid and just imagined the entire stories of 1 and 2? Or B) The "endless dimension of pain" curse that LeChuck was talking about actually manifested itself, and Guybrush will have to endure childhood with Chuckie, who likely bullies him? I am going to try to make a case for both scenarios, knowing full well that both the non-Ron Gilbert and with-Ron Gilbert explanations already exist by now.
Scenario A) There are surprisingly many arguments that can be made for this scenario. Guybrush appears in the first game out of nowhere and declares he wants to be a pirate. One of the requirements to be a pirate? Swordfighting, which apparently are just verbal duels where you try to out-wit your opponent. Another thing: Many characters are returning from the original, even though you explore island far away from Melee Island. Objects too, like the vending machine you destroyed in Monkey Island 1, which appears in the final stage again. The barkeeper won't sell grog to Guybrush without some ID. The "Big Whoop" treasure turns out to just be ... a ticket? To an amusement park perhaps? There are a lot more points I could mention, but to not have this be an essay on the ending, I'll leave it there.
Scenario B) A lot of points that can be made for Scenario B simply include arguing against the likelihood of Scenario A. First, Elaine's after-credits scene makes it seem like she actually exists. She asks if Guybrush is hallucinating again, which makes it likelier that the amusement park scene is not actual reality, but rather a false one created by LeChuck, or simply a dream. Second, the glow in LeChuck's eyes makes it appear, as if LeChuck pulled Guybrush into that universe on purpose. Third, this could have been an elaborate plan by LeChuck throughout the game. There is an earlier scene where Guybrush falls and hallucinates. He sees his parents, then LeChuck, then wakes up shortly after. The final showdown area also has a room where two skeletons lie and supposedly are Guybrush's parents. So has LeChuck been able to track Guybrush's whereabouts throughout the game and manipulate him discretely, to break Guybrush's will and have the curse be a success?
Having the outcome of the story be "it was just a dream" is obviously not the most satisfying, so I understand how players would find it bad. Again, I didn't mind it, but I do agree that Scenario B is preferrable.
All in all though, another enjoyable set of characters and funny dialogue was enough to pull me through this game on its own.
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
This is a graphical adventure by LucasArts / Lucasfilm Games in the style that you've all seen if you ever saw an old-school graphical adventure. The interface consists of the verbs on the bottom left side and your inventory on the bottom right side. You interact with people and objects by clicking on a verb and then on the person/object. It's the same as in the original. You use this interface to pick up items, solve puzzles and talk to people.
What a lot of these games fall victim to at least once or twice, especially old-school graphical adventures, is to create puzzle solutions that are entirely unintuitive and non-sensical, to the point that most players will be stuck and be left with no option but to try out everything possible in order to progress. Or, you know, use a guide. Luckily, this issue doesn't really creep up in Monkey Island 2, at least I found almost all puzzles to more or less make sense. Sure, using a monkey on a water pump is not the most logical solution, but it works in this game world. There were a few times where I had to use a hint, but the solutions made sense in hindsight.
There isn't really too much else that could be said here since this is through and through your average graphical adventure. One thing that I didn't find great was ship travel. You need to go through three different islands to find four map pieces, but this also means that you need items from one island to solve the puzzle on another. Since you need time to figure out what you need to do, you find yourself constantly driving from one island to the other. You need to go back to your ship on the overworld to travel, and the time it takes to do this definitely adds up to the point where the pacing of it all is not always the way you'd like it.
Overall, it's pretty much the same game as the original, just with a slightly better interface.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
I used the Special Edition but played the classic version. In this edition, there is voice acting, which the classic game didn't actually have at release. But since the Special Edition is the only one available and the one any of you would play, I'm going to say that there is voice acting here for the purposes of this rating. The voice acting is great and the majority of the characters sound unique. It's a situation where half the jokes work because of the writing and half work because of the way they are said. Couldn't really have had a better voive for Guybrush either.
The soundtrack is a fantastic mix of reggae, jazz and classical music, just like the original, with a tinge of whatever is required to set the atmosphere, like a spooky melody for the swamps for example. Plus, it's much longer than the soundtrack for the original as well, and the majority of scenes have a unique track reserved for themselves, which adds to their recognizability.
I'll give this a 9 because voice acting technically wasn't included in 1991, but think of it as a 10 if you play the voice acted versions.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
I adore the game's art direction. This was extremely well done, right down to the smallest details that suggest there is something you can interact with. From the quirky designs of each character you meet to the significantly more varied and detailed locations compared to the original, to the deep use of the color palette all the way to the distinctively decorated interiors.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 9/10
You play a sympathetic oddball called Guybrush Threepwood in a world filled with sympathetic oddballs and embark on a pirate adventure spanning multiple different islands. The inhabitants all feel familiar and never out of place, whether it's characters that you met in the original or here for the first time.
CONTENT | 8/10
The game has a more or less perfect length for a graphical adventure at roughly 6 to 10 hours depending on how quickly you solve the puzzles. There are lots of puzzles to solve and a lot of different, distinct locations to visit. The majority of puzzles actually are very solvable and don't fall victim to the unintuitiveness that is commonplace at least once or twice in these games. My only main complaint is that the final half hour is not as well done in terms of puzzles as most of the rest of this game.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
I really like how many varied locations there are to visit, but it comes at the cost of pacing. You need to walk all the way back to your ship each time you want to move to a different island, and the further you are along, and the more stuck you are, the more common it is to keep traveling around. A fast-travel or shortcut to the ship would have been a big addition. The final showdown, as I already explained in much detail, I also found to be poorly done. Finally, there are many items that clog up your inventory that you never use, which I don't necessarily enjoy in these games. There are also items that you do use but that either don't leave your inventory or that you can pick up again under the impression that this means that you'll be using them later down the line. This never happens though, and since you need to constantly move up and down to pick the correct times, this surplus of items just get in the way for no added benefit.
Overall though, the levels are nicely designed, there is good variety in puzzles, there is logic behind almost all puzzles that I can get behind and locations look nice and are available in large numbers.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 5/10
At this point there have been multiple graphical adventures of this style at the time. This doesn't make them less fun necessarily, just less innovative as time goes on. The unique part about this game is that you got three islands that you constantly travel to and fro, but as I explained above, I see both positives and negatives with that approach, the negative namely being pacing from all the traveling.
REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
No motivation given to replay this game after having beaten it the first time. It's fairly linear, you could just pick up map pieces in different orders I presume. That's more than fine, there just isn't any replayability. If you use the Special Edition, there is the possibility of using dev commentary on a second playthrough to get some backstory on the game development. I didn't do that since I didn't know how much of the sequels would be spoiled potentially.
PLAYABILITY | 4/5
Worked well for 95% of the time. I had two crashes unfortunately (Special Edition) and, more notably, the final section literally didn't work for me for close to half an hour because LeChuck just wouldn't show up.
OVERALL | 74/100
Another great game in the Monkey Island series. I definitely understand why this has a cult following, the characters and dialogue is just very charming, the 4th wall breaking amusing and the "high stakes but not really" plot is enjoyable to follow. The sequel improves on graphics and adds more music, but is otherwise more of the same, with an ending that not everyone will enjoy. Even if you don't, the rest of the game is absolutely worth a playthrough.
1990
I've just beaten Captain Skyhawk, a scrolling shooter with vehicular combat, developed by Rare (Battletoads, Conker's Bad Fur Day & Sea of Thieves) and released for the NES in June 1990. It was also released for Arcade machines.
In this game, you are Captain Skyhawk, pilot of the plane "F-14VTS" and have to fight back against an on-going alien invasion. You never really see any aliens, nor do their spaceships and ground weaponry look very alien. If the game wouldn't have told me, I would have thought that we're simply fighting human terrorists or shooting up space stations for the fun of it. This is where I always crack up when I read reviewers of the time try to hype up the game's setting before diving into the gameplay. The Good Witch for GamePro Magazine's 13th Issue for example writes: "Imagine the ultimate parasites, creatures that suck the very life out of Earth and leave her a useless hulk spinning in space. This is the problem you, as Captain Skyhawk, must face." And then it's just you flying over 3D terrain and shooting at very normal looking planes and ground vehicles. Of course I admire the effort of trying to immerse potential players from the start and I doubt I would have done it differently back in the day, but that doesn't make it less funny to me reading it today, but in a good way.
This game is a vertical scrolling shooter and you fly around mountainous 3D terrain and try to dodge both enemy projectiles (which all look like the same "ninja star"-esque projectile) and the mountains off to the sides. There are 9 levels of that, with three different types of goals. In between, you have a little mini game where you have to line up your plane to be able to dock it perfectly into your station, plus a 2D mini level where you look at your plane from the rear, dodge incoming bombs and shoot up enemy ships that otherwise don't offer any resistance to gain some bonus points, which are then used to buy equipment at your station.
The gameplay loop is enjoyable, and especially the more fast paced segments were really fun, but what this game offers is limited, and it's not a looker (which is fine) nor a "hearer" (which was not fine).
____________
STORYTELLING
Within the video game, there is the littlest of environmental storytelling and that's it. And even that doesn't occur until the final objective of the game. Apart from that, there is no mention of where this game is set in, what your ultimate goal is or who you are. It just says "Alien Fleet destroyed" when you beat the game.
The real plot you will find in the game's manual, but apart from the final objective, it doesn't really translate to the full game. If you don't care for a story in a scrolling shooter like this, this is a non-issue, and I would guess that most of you do only care about the gameplay and about pretty much anything but the story. Still, it is worth mentioning that the game has no storytelling.
According to the manual, Aliens have invaded Earth and have built bases to drain Earth's energy. The end goal is to use this energy as fuel to vaporize Earth with a laser blast. You have to stop them by destroying their stations on Earth and ultimately destroying their space station.
As I mentioned, the ludonarrative dissonance makes the choice of an alien invasion story an odd one but since it is barely present, I didn't really think about it much further than that.
GAMEPLAY
You control a plane over simulated 3D Terrain. You can move your plane from side-to-side whilst the display scrolls vertically at an automated speed. You can also adjust your plane's altitude, and I found that reaching the highest possible level was the best strategy in order to avoid crashing into mountains. There doesn't really seem to be a reason to fly low. You can't crash into enemy planes or anything else besides those mountains that either are small and placed in the middle of an area or stretch out from the sides and at certain points only leave a very small opening for your plane to fit through.
In this vertically scrolling 3D part of the game, you use your "Cannon" to shoot. I found myself holding the A-Button throughout a level since your ammo is unlimited and enemies can show up at a moment's notice. There are also three other weapon types that you can stock up on whenever you finish a mission and manage to dock into your station.
There are "Phoenix Air Intercept Missiles" for air-to-air combat and "Maverick Air-to-Ground Missiles" and "Hawk Bombs" for air-to-ground combat. Over time you also get upgrades to your Cannon to make it fire quicker.
Enemies fire back with the same projectile pretty much. It's a small gray-and-white colored square shape and only one of these is fired individually every few seconds. Unfortunately, its effects are devastating, as one hit destroys your "specially designed plane" that was made specifically to combat the aliens. These projectiles and their hit boxes were a mystery to me throughout, as I never really could accurately say when it would hit my plane when I would fly past it and when it wouldn't. Figuring that out and maneuvering past it is really the key to success in this game, which apart from the final boss is pretty straightforward otherwise.
There are 9 total missions and they all go pretty similarly. There is the vertical scrolling section first, then a 2D section where you shoot down enemy planes to collect extra points and a docking mini game. The vertical scrolling section has one of three goals until the final missions: (1) Destroy enemy station, where you have to destroy four of its circled bases to make it explode, (2) Find scientist, where you have to destroy a prison holding a scientist in similar fashion to free him and grab some plane upgrades and (3) Drop supplies, where you have to drop supplies into holes that are placed somewhere in the map. You have to do that two times to win the mission.
The 2D section has the ships come from out of screen and become smaller as seconds pass until they disappear. If you hit them, you get points, if you don't, you don't get points. There are only bombs to dodge, which sometimes the ships carry with them. And if they spawn right where you are, you can be hit with it without even seeing the bomb, which results in instant-death. Annoying.
Finally, there is the docking mini game. There is a very small hole in a docking station in front of you. You have to align your plane on its level, wait for the right moment and press B to see a little animation where your plane circles toward the station. If you aligned it correctly, you enter the station and progress with the game. You can buy ammo there. If you fail, you crash against the station and lose a life. It's not really difficult once you understand it but I guess it's there.
There are 3 continues throughout the game, so if you're playing this game without save states, it can be tough to beat and will be pretty frustrating. If you use save states like me, it'll still be frustrating but becomes much more beatable until the final boss, which took me so many tries and almost made me rage.
Controls of the plane where alright but only because you really didn't have too much to do. Dodge a bullet if you can and then just fly from west-to-east whilst shooting your cannons, pretty straightforward throughout. Some missions for some reason had your plane flying 3x the normal speed for some reason, which meant having to somehow manage to anticipate where those valleys between the two mountains would show up, because otherwise you'd crash to your death. That was frustrating but at the same time, if you did it right, these missions would flow really well.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. The music was good, nice to listen to, no complaints there. But the sound design was bad. The sound of the cannons firing was annoying and nothing cannon-like, so I'm not sure why each individual bullet you fired got its own sound, especially when having to auto-fire was almost a necessity. The sound of hitting enemies was unpleasant as well. There are some good parts about it, like the sound of enemy planes being destroyed or the sound in the 2D sections of far-away planes approaching. But overall, it wasn't good to listen to. Music would only play during boss fights or in the menu.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Maps were all the same (more on that in "Atmosphere") and at no point did it feel like I was fighting aliens and their advanced technology. I've seen some comments on YT videos saying that "the game is one of the best graphically for the NES", but I don't really see it, it just looked bland and very simple.
ATMOSPHERE
I'd say the 2D sections were the ones that made me feel the most like I was flying a plane in the sky. Dodging bombs, hearing enemy planes approach from a distance and having to align just right to destroy them was an extremely simple task truth be told, but it was still able to draw me in the most. The docking mini game added a little bit to the immersion as well I guess, but the 3D vertical scrolling section just didn't make me feel like I was fighting back against an alien invasion in this super-plane that was specifically constructed to fight them. There was no music playing, the sound design was mostly bad and it was enough for one tiny projectile to kill me and destroy the flow of the attempt.
CONTENT
There are 9 same-y missions and very little variety to approach them. It doesn't have filler however and having less missions works in the game's favor. I'd definitely rather have 9 than 18 missions if they are going to be similar. There still is a lack of content overall.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
The 9 missions almost all play out exactly the same. The only ones I would call slightly different are the "supply drop" missions, which have no boss fight but rather just require you to time the drop of a package correctly. Other than that, you'll be doing the same thing over 9 missions in maps that pretty much are all the same. The only difference is that the placement of environmental obstacles is likely slightly different with each and that maps can have different colors. The terrain does only carry one (1) color (green or blue or orange), but it does change from mission to mission.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
I have never really played scrolling vehicular combat shooters like this one growing up, so this is almost entirely a foreign genre to me. Therefore I can't really judge this, but reviews I have read of the time don't mention this game excelling at any part or moving the needle in any way either. There is also no story component, very little adjustments you can make to your plane, the same maps with a different one-color terrain and very straightforward action.
REPLAYABILITY
There isn't really any variety here, so the only reason for replaying this after winning would be to beat your high score, which is as the devs intended it I'd assume.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL
It's the first game of this type I've played in probably 15 years, and even then I might have tried a vertical scrolling shooter with vehicular combat once or twice, so I have little experience to compare this to other similar games. On its own, it doesn't really seem to do anything particularly well, but its core gameplay loop and the challenge it provides is fun enough for a couple hours, if you're into this genre of games. But all of its features are very basic, which maybe is how these games were back then. I could also see this being more feature-poor than games that came out before or shortly after it, that is still be found out in the process of this project of mine.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- The Good Witch for GamePro Issue 13 (Aug 90): "Captain Skyhawk features a good combination of different game action [...]. Although the shoot-em-up action may not be challenging enough to keep an expert gamer busy for long, it's more than tough enough for the average player"
- ? for Nintendo Power Issue 16 (September-October 90): "Each level on this action packed flight simulation is fun and challenging"
In this game, you are Captain Skyhawk, pilot of the plane "F-14VTS" and have to fight back against an on-going alien invasion. You never really see any aliens, nor do their spaceships and ground weaponry look very alien. If the game wouldn't have told me, I would have thought that we're simply fighting human terrorists or shooting up space stations for the fun of it. This is where I always crack up when I read reviewers of the time try to hype up the game's setting before diving into the gameplay. The Good Witch for GamePro Magazine's 13th Issue for example writes: "Imagine the ultimate parasites, creatures that suck the very life out of Earth and leave her a useless hulk spinning in space. This is the problem you, as Captain Skyhawk, must face." And then it's just you flying over 3D terrain and shooting at very normal looking planes and ground vehicles. Of course I admire the effort of trying to immerse potential players from the start and I doubt I would have done it differently back in the day, but that doesn't make it less funny to me reading it today, but in a good way.
This game is a vertical scrolling shooter and you fly around mountainous 3D terrain and try to dodge both enemy projectiles (which all look like the same "ninja star"-esque projectile) and the mountains off to the sides. There are 9 levels of that, with three different types of goals. In between, you have a little mini game where you have to line up your plane to be able to dock it perfectly into your station, plus a 2D mini level where you look at your plane from the rear, dodge incoming bombs and shoot up enemy ships that otherwise don't offer any resistance to gain some bonus points, which are then used to buy equipment at your station.
The gameplay loop is enjoyable, and especially the more fast paced segments were really fun, but what this game offers is limited, and it's not a looker (which is fine) nor a "hearer" (which was not fine).
____________
STORYTELLING
Within the video game, there is the littlest of environmental storytelling and that's it. And even that doesn't occur until the final objective of the game. Apart from that, there is no mention of where this game is set in, what your ultimate goal is or who you are. It just says "Alien Fleet destroyed" when you beat the game.
The real plot you will find in the game's manual, but apart from the final objective, it doesn't really translate to the full game. If you don't care for a story in a scrolling shooter like this, this is a non-issue, and I would guess that most of you do only care about the gameplay and about pretty much anything but the story. Still, it is worth mentioning that the game has no storytelling.
According to the manual, Aliens have invaded Earth and have built bases to drain Earth's energy. The end goal is to use this energy as fuel to vaporize Earth with a laser blast. You have to stop them by destroying their stations on Earth and ultimately destroying their space station.
As I mentioned, the ludonarrative dissonance makes the choice of an alien invasion story an odd one but since it is barely present, I didn't really think about it much further than that.
GAMEPLAY
You control a plane over simulated 3D Terrain. You can move your plane from side-to-side whilst the display scrolls vertically at an automated speed. You can also adjust your plane's altitude, and I found that reaching the highest possible level was the best strategy in order to avoid crashing into mountains. There doesn't really seem to be a reason to fly low. You can't crash into enemy planes or anything else besides those mountains that either are small and placed in the middle of an area or stretch out from the sides and at certain points only leave a very small opening for your plane to fit through.
In this vertically scrolling 3D part of the game, you use your "Cannon" to shoot. I found myself holding the A-Button throughout a level since your ammo is unlimited and enemies can show up at a moment's notice. There are also three other weapon types that you can stock up on whenever you finish a mission and manage to dock into your station.
There are "Phoenix Air Intercept Missiles" for air-to-air combat and "Maverick Air-to-Ground Missiles" and "Hawk Bombs" for air-to-ground combat. Over time you also get upgrades to your Cannon to make it fire quicker.
Enemies fire back with the same projectile pretty much. It's a small gray-and-white colored square shape and only one of these is fired individually every few seconds. Unfortunately, its effects are devastating, as one hit destroys your "specially designed plane" that was made specifically to combat the aliens. These projectiles and their hit boxes were a mystery to me throughout, as I never really could accurately say when it would hit my plane when I would fly past it and when it wouldn't. Figuring that out and maneuvering past it is really the key to success in this game, which apart from the final boss is pretty straightforward otherwise.
There are 9 total missions and they all go pretty similarly. There is the vertical scrolling section first, then a 2D section where you shoot down enemy planes to collect extra points and a docking mini game. The vertical scrolling section has one of three goals until the final missions: (1) Destroy enemy station, where you have to destroy four of its circled bases to make it explode, (2) Find scientist, where you have to destroy a prison holding a scientist in similar fashion to free him and grab some plane upgrades and (3) Drop supplies, where you have to drop supplies into holes that are placed somewhere in the map. You have to do that two times to win the mission.
The 2D section has the ships come from out of screen and become smaller as seconds pass until they disappear. If you hit them, you get points, if you don't, you don't get points. There are only bombs to dodge, which sometimes the ships carry with them. And if they spawn right where you are, you can be hit with it without even seeing the bomb, which results in instant-death. Annoying.
Finally, there is the docking mini game. There is a very small hole in a docking station in front of you. You have to align your plane on its level, wait for the right moment and press B to see a little animation where your plane circles toward the station. If you aligned it correctly, you enter the station and progress with the game. You can buy ammo there. If you fail, you crash against the station and lose a life. It's not really difficult once you understand it but I guess it's there.
There are 3 continues throughout the game, so if you're playing this game without save states, it can be tough to beat and will be pretty frustrating. If you use save states like me, it'll still be frustrating but becomes much more beatable until the final boss, which took me so many tries and almost made me rage.
Controls of the plane where alright but only because you really didn't have too much to do. Dodge a bullet if you can and then just fly from west-to-east whilst shooting your cannons, pretty straightforward throughout. Some missions for some reason had your plane flying 3x the normal speed for some reason, which meant having to somehow manage to anticipate where those valleys between the two mountains would show up, because otherwise you'd crash to your death. That was frustrating but at the same time, if you did it right, these missions would flow really well.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. The music was good, nice to listen to, no complaints there. But the sound design was bad. The sound of the cannons firing was annoying and nothing cannon-like, so I'm not sure why each individual bullet you fired got its own sound, especially when having to auto-fire was almost a necessity. The sound of hitting enemies was unpleasant as well. There are some good parts about it, like the sound of enemy planes being destroyed or the sound in the 2D sections of far-away planes approaching. But overall, it wasn't good to listen to. Music would only play during boss fights or in the menu.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Maps were all the same (more on that in "Atmosphere") and at no point did it feel like I was fighting aliens and their advanced technology. I've seen some comments on YT videos saying that "the game is one of the best graphically for the NES", but I don't really see it, it just looked bland and very simple.
ATMOSPHERE
I'd say the 2D sections were the ones that made me feel the most like I was flying a plane in the sky. Dodging bombs, hearing enemy planes approach from a distance and having to align just right to destroy them was an extremely simple task truth be told, but it was still able to draw me in the most. The docking mini game added a little bit to the immersion as well I guess, but the 3D vertical scrolling section just didn't make me feel like I was fighting back against an alien invasion in this super-plane that was specifically constructed to fight them. There was no music playing, the sound design was mostly bad and it was enough for one tiny projectile to kill me and destroy the flow of the attempt.
CONTENT
There are 9 same-y missions and very little variety to approach them. It doesn't have filler however and having less missions works in the game's favor. I'd definitely rather have 9 than 18 missions if they are going to be similar. There still is a lack of content overall.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
The 9 missions almost all play out exactly the same. The only ones I would call slightly different are the "supply drop" missions, which have no boss fight but rather just require you to time the drop of a package correctly. Other than that, you'll be doing the same thing over 9 missions in maps that pretty much are all the same. The only difference is that the placement of environmental obstacles is likely slightly different with each and that maps can have different colors. The terrain does only carry one (1) color (green or blue or orange), but it does change from mission to mission.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
I have never really played scrolling vehicular combat shooters like this one growing up, so this is almost entirely a foreign genre to me. Therefore I can't really judge this, but reviews I have read of the time don't mention this game excelling at any part or moving the needle in any way either. There is also no story component, very little adjustments you can make to your plane, the same maps with a different one-color terrain and very straightforward action.
REPLAYABILITY
There isn't really any variety here, so the only reason for replaying this after winning would be to beat your high score, which is as the devs intended it I'd assume.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL
It's the first game of this type I've played in probably 15 years, and even then I might have tried a vertical scrolling shooter with vehicular combat once or twice, so I have little experience to compare this to other similar games. On its own, it doesn't really seem to do anything particularly well, but its core gameplay loop and the challenge it provides is fun enough for a couple hours, if you're into this genre of games. But all of its features are very basic, which maybe is how these games were back then. I could also see this being more feature-poor than games that came out before or shortly after it, that is still be found out in the process of this project of mine.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- The Good Witch for GamePro Issue 13 (Aug 90): "Captain Skyhawk features a good combination of different game action [...]. Although the shoot-em-up action may not be challenging enough to keep an expert gamer busy for long, it's more than tough enough for the average player"
- ? for Nintendo Power Issue 16 (September-October 90): "Each level on this action packed flight simulation is fun and challenging"
1992
(This is the 64th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
The Mega Man series and I don't get along. It's unfortunate, but it is what it is. So when I added Bucky O'Hare to my play-list, only to find out that it's a MegaMan-like right before playing it, I thought I was in for another frustrating - and short-lived - affair. Thankfully, this MegaMan-like I actually managed to beat and, despite the frustrations the game brings with it, I liked it as well.
Bucky O'Hare, the eponym of this video game, was the hero for a comic book and an animated TV series in the 80s and early 90s. Shortly after this game came out, Bucky O'Hare was rarely heard from again, though new action figures were released as recently as 2017. Don't expect to hear much from the rabbit in the future though.
This video game released on January 31, 1992 in both Japan and North America and was developed and published by Konami. Konami at this time was very well-known for releasing many quality games, and this game is definitely among their better titles at this time as well. This game released for the NES, though an Arcade game released the same year, too. These two games are the only games bearing Bucky's likeness. Reviews ranged from a 93 by Game Zone and 5 stars by Top Secret all the way down to 13.3/20 by Nintendo Power and 68% by Play Time.
My review is somewhere in between, if we consider that a 68% from me is way more complimentary than a 68% by a video game magazine.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
You play Bucky O'Hare, who is captain of the ship called "Righteous Indignation". Your crew consists of Dead-Eye, Jenny, Blinky and Willy, who are captured by the antagonist Toad Air Marshall at the start of the game. Go rescue them and take out Toad, you know the drill.
The intro, with a number of typo's in both game and manual (atacked, kidnaped, marshall), explains the scenario I just described. You know have to travel to four planets named after colors to rescue them. For each rescue, you receive thanks by your crewmates and the information that you can now use them and their special abilities. From there, each additional level has some short dialogue between the crew on what the next objective is.
My favorite little detail was a TV in one level depicting Toad with an "I hate you" speech bubble popping out of it.
Other than that, story is of course not a big deal here.
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
This is a mix of a platformer and a shoot 'em up. In addition, it is a MegaMan-like. You choose one of four planets that you want to go to. After long platforming levels, you meet the final boss. You kill the boss and rescue your crewmate, who you can now choose as your character. The difference to Mega Man is that the boss does not have the same skill as the crewmate you rescue. But you are free to choose which planet to tackle in what order (one exception).
One thing this game actually does way more conveniently than Mega Man: You can switch between characters by simply pressing SELECT. Sure, switching between eight characters in NES Mega Man games would be annoying, but I would like the option, especially when you still have 4-5 or fewer characters unlocked. The gameplay here is not interrupted thanks to this, though of course switching in a fast paced platforming game such as this will come with its share of annoyances when a timing-sensitive level kills you while you are trying to switch to the right character. Can't say this happened often enough for me to rather PAUSE the game each time I wanted to switch.
Bucky can shoot in four directions and also load up a POWER bar which lets him jump higher. Collecting P's increases the length of the POWER bar and lets you jump higher. Blinky, the android, is short and can destroy certain blocks, so he is the second-most useful character, and actually necessary to go through one of the planets. Each character has some sort of ability, though you won't need all for environmental puzzles, which should have been a thing in my opinion.
Most of the game is focused on platforming. Many of the tricks the game has on offer, actually all of them, other games will have already done. There are the slippery icey platforms which annoy everyone, there is a lava pit that you need to jump over, out of which fire is shot upwards, there are the projectiles flying down from the sky while you try to not fall down to your death, there are the disappearing platforms and the room that turns pitch black, with little fireflies giving you the tiniest hint of information on where there is a platform to jump on.
Few games manage to combine many of these things into one though, which is where this game is absolutely an above-average experience. The game doesn't take a few of those tropes and makes 10 levels repeating them, the game tries to offer a new and different challenge for each of its stages, even if they aren't new to the genre itself. Plus, there is a very lengthy shoot 'em up stage at the end as well, so variety is absolutely present here. From time to time, there are small environmental puzzles to solve as well, which isn't much but definitely more than most platformers offer. Usually, it's "50 things try to kill you, try to survive by memorizing stuff and timing your movement" and while Bucky O'Hare is exactly that for most of the game, there are also parts where you need to figure out where to place a boulder to avoid those spikes, which character to use to go through a section of the game most efficiently, which area to unlock to avoid being stuck in an infinite loop and how to come out of the other end of a turning wheel thing.
Are there frustrating parts? Absolutely. There are levels where you need to perform jumps with exact precision, where you need to out-run lava running down the edges of the walls at blazing speed, where you need jump, switch character in a second, load up the power bar in half a second, release it, hang on to a wall, climb a split second and jump again to get past a particularly frustrating bit and where you need to execute moves with a ship with such incredible timing that the controls simply don't reliably allow for. Oh, and there are no i-frames.
There is some really rough stuff here. It's like the elementary version of Battletoads, where you can't stop but wonder why the devs would make so many enjoyable levels, only to frustrate the hell out of the player and make these later levels inaccessible for 99% of the players who play the game. It's elementary here because instead of 99%, it's going to be more like 80-90% and the game absolutely IS beatable without selling your soul to the devil. I can't say I managed to go through everything without making use of the beautiful functions of my emulator, but the majority of the game I played as intended and did relatively well. Game magazines call this game easy for even non-players, a sentiment with which I couldn't disagree more.
But all in all, this is one of the more enjoyable platformers I've played during this challenge. Boss fights top it off by offering somewhat difficult, but certainly very beatable challenges. Bosses have a certain pattern that they repeat endlessly, and you simply master them to beat them. They're not the most creative bosses I've seen, but I'd call them slightly better than your average platforming bosses from this time period.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
No voice acting. The sound design is really good here, many sounds were really satisfying and I can't say I think the same for most NES games I've played on here, so it's absolutely above-average. The soundtrack is really good. It matches the fast-paced nature of most gameplay bits and it had me bopping my head along for most of the time that I've played this. The boss theme in particular just goes completely batshit insane. Though the majority of tracks in this soundtrack are great and worth a listen. I also think it's absolutely worth a mention that this soundtrack was composed by a female, Tomoko Sumiyama. She is only credited for 5 games, this game being the most recent.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
Looks pretty good, actually better than some early SNES titles we've played on this challenge so far. Got nice looking sprites and character designs, very colorful levels with some nice scenery like in the outer space level, and in general varied environments.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 5/10
Certainly there is a Bucky O'Hare theme used here to make this game, but in general it is your typical platformer in terms of presentation. These games don't try to have you immersed, they try to mainly get you hooked to the gameplay by offering you a challenge, sometimes fair, sometimes unfair. This is no different here, though the space theme is present regularly, especially in a fantastic stage where you jump from asteroid to asteroid and moon to moon to traverse.
CONTENT | 7/10
The two negatives with this game's content is 1) there isn't a lot of it and 2) there are a few very frustrating parts, which gatekeeps later content needlessly from lesser skilled players. Overall though, the content has plenty of variety and is enough to entertain for a couple afternoons. And what is here is higher quality than your average NES game for sure.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 6/10
There are some great levels here, nicely varied. Similarly to Battletoads, I'm not sure why the devs decided to add some very frustrating parts to make it harder to get to the later levels which are as excellently designed as the early ones, but that's what we got here. Finally, I feel like the last level, while I did enjoy it, was very long and I mean insanely long. Could definitely have been made shorter.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 5/10
There is plenty copied over from the Mega Man series, such as choosing which planet to tackle first, gaining new abilities after defeating each planet, and then having a final "castle" type stage where you go through multiple lengthy levels and some form of a boss rush. The way some stages are designed is definitely where the main innovation comes from, as Mega Man mainly sticks to being an Action-platformer with predictable level design, while Bucky O'Hare goes a bit more wild with one level where you hop from asteroid to asteroid, which all fly in different directions. There is the long shmup stage at the end as well, so it's definitely not a shameless copy or anything.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
Other than trying to beat your high score and potentially using certain characters more than you did in a previous playthrough, there is no motivation given to play the game again.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 63/100
If you're looking to play platformers on the NES, Bucky O'Hare should be on your list. It's unlikely to get into your Top 5, but I'd argue that it will offer an above-average experience for the genre and the console for sure. Nice graphics, great soundtrack and varied levels is all you need to have a good time with these types of games.
The Mega Man series and I don't get along. It's unfortunate, but it is what it is. So when I added Bucky O'Hare to my play-list, only to find out that it's a MegaMan-like right before playing it, I thought I was in for another frustrating - and short-lived - affair. Thankfully, this MegaMan-like I actually managed to beat and, despite the frustrations the game brings with it, I liked it as well.
Bucky O'Hare, the eponym of this video game, was the hero for a comic book and an animated TV series in the 80s and early 90s. Shortly after this game came out, Bucky O'Hare was rarely heard from again, though new action figures were released as recently as 2017. Don't expect to hear much from the rabbit in the future though.
This video game released on January 31, 1992 in both Japan and North America and was developed and published by Konami. Konami at this time was very well-known for releasing many quality games, and this game is definitely among their better titles at this time as well. This game released for the NES, though an Arcade game released the same year, too. These two games are the only games bearing Bucky's likeness. Reviews ranged from a 93 by Game Zone and 5 stars by Top Secret all the way down to 13.3/20 by Nintendo Power and 68% by Play Time.
My review is somewhere in between, if we consider that a 68% from me is way more complimentary than a 68% by a video game magazine.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
You play Bucky O'Hare, who is captain of the ship called "Righteous Indignation". Your crew consists of Dead-Eye, Jenny, Blinky and Willy, who are captured by the antagonist Toad Air Marshall at the start of the game. Go rescue them and take out Toad, you know the drill.
The intro, with a number of typo's in both game and manual (atacked, kidnaped, marshall), explains the scenario I just described. You know have to travel to four planets named after colors to rescue them. For each rescue, you receive thanks by your crewmates and the information that you can now use them and their special abilities. From there, each additional level has some short dialogue between the crew on what the next objective is.
My favorite little detail was a TV in one level depicting Toad with an "I hate you" speech bubble popping out of it.
Other than that, story is of course not a big deal here.
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
This is a mix of a platformer and a shoot 'em up. In addition, it is a MegaMan-like. You choose one of four planets that you want to go to. After long platforming levels, you meet the final boss. You kill the boss and rescue your crewmate, who you can now choose as your character. The difference to Mega Man is that the boss does not have the same skill as the crewmate you rescue. But you are free to choose which planet to tackle in what order (one exception).
One thing this game actually does way more conveniently than Mega Man: You can switch between characters by simply pressing SELECT. Sure, switching between eight characters in NES Mega Man games would be annoying, but I would like the option, especially when you still have 4-5 or fewer characters unlocked. The gameplay here is not interrupted thanks to this, though of course switching in a fast paced platforming game such as this will come with its share of annoyances when a timing-sensitive level kills you while you are trying to switch to the right character. Can't say this happened often enough for me to rather PAUSE the game each time I wanted to switch.
Bucky can shoot in four directions and also load up a POWER bar which lets him jump higher. Collecting P's increases the length of the POWER bar and lets you jump higher. Blinky, the android, is short and can destroy certain blocks, so he is the second-most useful character, and actually necessary to go through one of the planets. Each character has some sort of ability, though you won't need all for environmental puzzles, which should have been a thing in my opinion.
Most of the game is focused on platforming. Many of the tricks the game has on offer, actually all of them, other games will have already done. There are the slippery icey platforms which annoy everyone, there is a lava pit that you need to jump over, out of which fire is shot upwards, there are the projectiles flying down from the sky while you try to not fall down to your death, there are the disappearing platforms and the room that turns pitch black, with little fireflies giving you the tiniest hint of information on where there is a platform to jump on.
Few games manage to combine many of these things into one though, which is where this game is absolutely an above-average experience. The game doesn't take a few of those tropes and makes 10 levels repeating them, the game tries to offer a new and different challenge for each of its stages, even if they aren't new to the genre itself. Plus, there is a very lengthy shoot 'em up stage at the end as well, so variety is absolutely present here. From time to time, there are small environmental puzzles to solve as well, which isn't much but definitely more than most platformers offer. Usually, it's "50 things try to kill you, try to survive by memorizing stuff and timing your movement" and while Bucky O'Hare is exactly that for most of the game, there are also parts where you need to figure out where to place a boulder to avoid those spikes, which character to use to go through a section of the game most efficiently, which area to unlock to avoid being stuck in an infinite loop and how to come out of the other end of a turning wheel thing.
Are there frustrating parts? Absolutely. There are levels where you need to perform jumps with exact precision, where you need to out-run lava running down the edges of the walls at blazing speed, where you need jump, switch character in a second, load up the power bar in half a second, release it, hang on to a wall, climb a split second and jump again to get past a particularly frustrating bit and where you need to execute moves with a ship with such incredible timing that the controls simply don't reliably allow for. Oh, and there are no i-frames.
There is some really rough stuff here. It's like the elementary version of Battletoads, where you can't stop but wonder why the devs would make so many enjoyable levels, only to frustrate the hell out of the player and make these later levels inaccessible for 99% of the players who play the game. It's elementary here because instead of 99%, it's going to be more like 80-90% and the game absolutely IS beatable without selling your soul to the devil. I can't say I managed to go through everything without making use of the beautiful functions of my emulator, but the majority of the game I played as intended and did relatively well. Game magazines call this game easy for even non-players, a sentiment with which I couldn't disagree more.
But all in all, this is one of the more enjoyable platformers I've played during this challenge. Boss fights top it off by offering somewhat difficult, but certainly very beatable challenges. Bosses have a certain pattern that they repeat endlessly, and you simply master them to beat them. They're not the most creative bosses I've seen, but I'd call them slightly better than your average platforming bosses from this time period.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
No voice acting. The sound design is really good here, many sounds were really satisfying and I can't say I think the same for most NES games I've played on here, so it's absolutely above-average. The soundtrack is really good. It matches the fast-paced nature of most gameplay bits and it had me bopping my head along for most of the time that I've played this. The boss theme in particular just goes completely batshit insane. Though the majority of tracks in this soundtrack are great and worth a listen. I also think it's absolutely worth a mention that this soundtrack was composed by a female, Tomoko Sumiyama. She is only credited for 5 games, this game being the most recent.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
Looks pretty good, actually better than some early SNES titles we've played on this challenge so far. Got nice looking sprites and character designs, very colorful levels with some nice scenery like in the outer space level, and in general varied environments.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 5/10
Certainly there is a Bucky O'Hare theme used here to make this game, but in general it is your typical platformer in terms of presentation. These games don't try to have you immersed, they try to mainly get you hooked to the gameplay by offering you a challenge, sometimes fair, sometimes unfair. This is no different here, though the space theme is present regularly, especially in a fantastic stage where you jump from asteroid to asteroid and moon to moon to traverse.
CONTENT | 7/10
The two negatives with this game's content is 1) there isn't a lot of it and 2) there are a few very frustrating parts, which gatekeeps later content needlessly from lesser skilled players. Overall though, the content has plenty of variety and is enough to entertain for a couple afternoons. And what is here is higher quality than your average NES game for sure.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 6/10
There are some great levels here, nicely varied. Similarly to Battletoads, I'm not sure why the devs decided to add some very frustrating parts to make it harder to get to the later levels which are as excellently designed as the early ones, but that's what we got here. Finally, I feel like the last level, while I did enjoy it, was very long and I mean insanely long. Could definitely have been made shorter.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 5/10
There is plenty copied over from the Mega Man series, such as choosing which planet to tackle first, gaining new abilities after defeating each planet, and then having a final "castle" type stage where you go through multiple lengthy levels and some form of a boss rush. The way some stages are designed is definitely where the main innovation comes from, as Mega Man mainly sticks to being an Action-platformer with predictable level design, while Bucky O'Hare goes a bit more wild with one level where you hop from asteroid to asteroid, which all fly in different directions. There is the long shmup stage at the end as well, so it's definitely not a shameless copy or anything.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
Other than trying to beat your high score and potentially using certain characters more than you did in a previous playthrough, there is no motivation given to play the game again.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 63/100
If you're looking to play platformers on the NES, Bucky O'Hare should be on your list. It's unlikely to get into your Top 5, but I'd argue that it will offer an above-average experience for the genre and the console for sure. Nice graphics, great soundtrack and varied levels is all you need to have a good time with these types of games.
1990
Dr. Mario released on July 27, 1990 for Game Boy and NES in Japan before releasing in NA later that year. It was often compared to Tetris and Columns at the time, as it's a game about blocks (in this game: pills) falling from above, which need to be placed in a way that creates matches before you run out of space.
The game was a commercial success thanks to the popularity of Mario, as it sold over 10 million copies worldwide. It received a bit of backlash for including pills in a kids game (see What They Said At The Time section), but has otherwise been received very well, leading to multiple follow-ups being released over the years.
I found Dr. Mario to be a fun alternative to Tetris with a lot to like. More on the game in detail below.
____________
STORYTELLING
There is no story in-game. All you will find in the manual is a small convo between Dr. Mario and nurse Toadstool where she tells him that an experiment has gone out of control and led to the quick spreading of viruses.
It's a different premise for a Mario game, especially at the time, and some didn't find it as charming as Nintendo may have intended, though you can read more on that in the "What They Said At The Time" section. Personally, I understand how some parents wouldn't buy this game for their children, but I wouldn't get worried that such a theme would have a negative effect on my children myself, especially with proper supervision if needs be (not that I have any as of now).
But yes, beware, the game is about throwing pills into a jar to kill viruses because Mario and his nurse have had experiments go wrong.
GAMEPLAY
This is Nintendo's take on Tetris pretty much, though there is more than enough of a difference to warrant it being its own thing. First off, it has a theme. Mario is a Doctor in this one and instead of throwing differently shaped blocks, he throws pills. He throws them in a jar that has viruses in it, which come in three different colors, blue, yellow and red.
Pills have two halves and each half can be one of the three colors, so you can half blue-yellow, yellow-red or even red-red pills. These can be lined up vertically or horizontally and also be flipped, as you would expect. You need to stack up four of them either horizontally next to, or vertically on top of, one of the viruses to kill it. Removing all viruses clears the stage and lets you move to the next one, where there are more viruses than before, up until a max level of Level 20 with 84 viruses, though I've read that you can go all the way to Level 24 even (not selectable in the menu from the start).
You can adjust the speeds from low to medium to high and start with the lowest amount of viruses if you want. You can also choose one of two tracks to listen to while you play, "Feverish" or "Chill". Plus, there is a 2 Player mode too, which is pretty fun if you are looking for an unusual coop game to play.
Overall, I'd say I enjoy Tetris more and find it more addicting, but Dr. Mario certainly scratches the itch of a Puzzle game of this type. My main complaint that negatively affected the pacing of gameplay was whenever you would put four pill-halves of the same color on top of each other and they would 'pop', the adjacent pill-halves would fall down in this agonizingly slow pace. It just doesn't suit a game like this to wait for up to 5 seconds for the half to fall down in my opinion.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Sound design is fine, would have sometimes liked a more cheerful sound when pills would break. The music is the highlight here. There are two main tunes, one called "Feverish" and one called "Chill", both of which are extremely catchy and fit the mood of the gameplay perfectly. It's a shame that the soundtrack is pretty much limited to these two tracks but it's a minor complaint considering how nice to listen to both tracks are. Couldn't tell you which one I prefer, but I'm gonna go with Chill for today.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
It's nothing special graphically. If anything, the only noticeable part was the background during gameplay, which made me kinda dizzy when staring at it for too long.
ATMOSPHERE
This game was pretty much focused on both gameplay and the soundtrack combining to provide an addictive experience. The presentation was made to be cute in the typical Nintendo style, and it definitely is a charming game, but there isn't really much to it since it's a static game where you simply see pills moving down and viruses reacting to being killed. It's fine.
CONTENT
There are a few options to adjust difficulty, and then there is the gameplay. There isn't much else you need when playing a game like this, so it's good content for gameplay-only enthusiasts, but not for full-package connoisseurs.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
As mentioned somewhere above, my only frustration with this game is how it can take you out of it whenever pill-halves fall for up to 5 seconds and all you can do is watch. It's an odd pace-breaker for a game that is supposed to be paced more or less fast, depending on the speed you put it on. But even if you have it on slow, you can just pull the pills down fast by pressing the down button. You can't accelerate the very slow fall of pill-halves.
Next to adjusting speed, you can adjust the amount of viruses in the jar when you start. If you start at the lowest setting, the amount will increase over time until you lose. Additionally, you can select which song you want to listen to.
And finally, there is a local 2 Player Mode, which is a pretty cool addition. It's hard to not have a good time with that when playing with someone else.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
It's a different take on Tetris, and I'd argue it's not necessarily a better one. Clearly it had a ton of people who liked it, and for good reason, but I wouldn't say it moved the needle in any direction as much as Nintendo just smartly capitalized on the popularity of both Tetris and especially Mario at the time.
REPLAYABILITY
There is an ending to this game believe it or not. Usually replayability AFTER beating a game is what I consider for this segment, but for a game like this, I'll have to adjust my definition, because obviously the game is replayable as heck. It's the main idea behind the game. Play it. Play it some more. Get good at it. Get even better. It's a lot of fun and easy to jump into at whichever difficulty you prefer, so replayability is as high as it gets.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL
If you enjoy Tetris and Tetris-likes, and have no issues with Mario, I don't see you not enjoying your time with this one. It's fun, it's response, it's difficulty-adjustable and it has two banger tracks. If you're mainly looking for fun gameplay, you'll get your fill here. If you're looking for a more complete package, I'd look elsewhere however.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Andy Eddy for VGCE, Issue 21 (Oct 90): "It's disturbing to think that a parent may find a video game "teaching" their child that playing with pills is okay." | I've gone over this topic in the "Storytelling" part of my review, but this is the loudest opposition I've read on Dr. Mario and thought it was worth sharing. I understand how some parents don't like the idea behind this game, but I thought he was overreacting a bit when reading this. Looking into it a bit closer, it turns out Andy Eddy was suing a doctor for giving his child wrong prescriptions (according to Wiki), so suddenly his rant made a lot more sense, though I still disagree that this game could have turned any child into a pill addict.
- Steve Harris for Electronic Gaming Monthly, Issue 16 (Nov 90): "Dr. Mario is an annoyingly over-involved version of Tetris meets Columns" | Unexpectedly poor reviews by the two magazines I found that talked about the game, but player reception tells a different tale
The game was a commercial success thanks to the popularity of Mario, as it sold over 10 million copies worldwide. It received a bit of backlash for including pills in a kids game (see What They Said At The Time section), but has otherwise been received very well, leading to multiple follow-ups being released over the years.
I found Dr. Mario to be a fun alternative to Tetris with a lot to like. More on the game in detail below.
____________
STORYTELLING
There is no story in-game. All you will find in the manual is a small convo between Dr. Mario and nurse Toadstool where she tells him that an experiment has gone out of control and led to the quick spreading of viruses.
It's a different premise for a Mario game, especially at the time, and some didn't find it as charming as Nintendo may have intended, though you can read more on that in the "What They Said At The Time" section. Personally, I understand how some parents wouldn't buy this game for their children, but I wouldn't get worried that such a theme would have a negative effect on my children myself, especially with proper supervision if needs be (not that I have any as of now).
But yes, beware, the game is about throwing pills into a jar to kill viruses because Mario and his nurse have had experiments go wrong.
GAMEPLAY
This is Nintendo's take on Tetris pretty much, though there is more than enough of a difference to warrant it being its own thing. First off, it has a theme. Mario is a Doctor in this one and instead of throwing differently shaped blocks, he throws pills. He throws them in a jar that has viruses in it, which come in three different colors, blue, yellow and red.
Pills have two halves and each half can be one of the three colors, so you can half blue-yellow, yellow-red or even red-red pills. These can be lined up vertically or horizontally and also be flipped, as you would expect. You need to stack up four of them either horizontally next to, or vertically on top of, one of the viruses to kill it. Removing all viruses clears the stage and lets you move to the next one, where there are more viruses than before, up until a max level of Level 20 with 84 viruses, though I've read that you can go all the way to Level 24 even (not selectable in the menu from the start).
You can adjust the speeds from low to medium to high and start with the lowest amount of viruses if you want. You can also choose one of two tracks to listen to while you play, "Feverish" or "Chill". Plus, there is a 2 Player mode too, which is pretty fun if you are looking for an unusual coop game to play.
Overall, I'd say I enjoy Tetris more and find it more addicting, but Dr. Mario certainly scratches the itch of a Puzzle game of this type. My main complaint that negatively affected the pacing of gameplay was whenever you would put four pill-halves of the same color on top of each other and they would 'pop', the adjacent pill-halves would fall down in this agonizingly slow pace. It just doesn't suit a game like this to wait for up to 5 seconds for the half to fall down in my opinion.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Sound design is fine, would have sometimes liked a more cheerful sound when pills would break. The music is the highlight here. There are two main tunes, one called "Feverish" and one called "Chill", both of which are extremely catchy and fit the mood of the gameplay perfectly. It's a shame that the soundtrack is pretty much limited to these two tracks but it's a minor complaint considering how nice to listen to both tracks are. Couldn't tell you which one I prefer, but I'm gonna go with Chill for today.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
It's nothing special graphically. If anything, the only noticeable part was the background during gameplay, which made me kinda dizzy when staring at it for too long.
ATMOSPHERE
This game was pretty much focused on both gameplay and the soundtrack combining to provide an addictive experience. The presentation was made to be cute in the typical Nintendo style, and it definitely is a charming game, but there isn't really much to it since it's a static game where you simply see pills moving down and viruses reacting to being killed. It's fine.
CONTENT
There are a few options to adjust difficulty, and then there is the gameplay. There isn't much else you need when playing a game like this, so it's good content for gameplay-only enthusiasts, but not for full-package connoisseurs.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
As mentioned somewhere above, my only frustration with this game is how it can take you out of it whenever pill-halves fall for up to 5 seconds and all you can do is watch. It's an odd pace-breaker for a game that is supposed to be paced more or less fast, depending on the speed you put it on. But even if you have it on slow, you can just pull the pills down fast by pressing the down button. You can't accelerate the very slow fall of pill-halves.
Next to adjusting speed, you can adjust the amount of viruses in the jar when you start. If you start at the lowest setting, the amount will increase over time until you lose. Additionally, you can select which song you want to listen to.
And finally, there is a local 2 Player Mode, which is a pretty cool addition. It's hard to not have a good time with that when playing with someone else.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
It's a different take on Tetris, and I'd argue it's not necessarily a better one. Clearly it had a ton of people who liked it, and for good reason, but I wouldn't say it moved the needle in any direction as much as Nintendo just smartly capitalized on the popularity of both Tetris and especially Mario at the time.
REPLAYABILITY
There is an ending to this game believe it or not. Usually replayability AFTER beating a game is what I consider for this segment, but for a game like this, I'll have to adjust my definition, because obviously the game is replayable as heck. It's the main idea behind the game. Play it. Play it some more. Get good at it. Get even better. It's a lot of fun and easy to jump into at whichever difficulty you prefer, so replayability is as high as it gets.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL
If you enjoy Tetris and Tetris-likes, and have no issues with Mario, I don't see you not enjoying your time with this one. It's fun, it's response, it's difficulty-adjustable and it has two banger tracks. If you're mainly looking for fun gameplay, you'll get your fill here. If you're looking for a more complete package, I'd look elsewhere however.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Andy Eddy for VGCE, Issue 21 (Oct 90): "It's disturbing to think that a parent may find a video game "teaching" their child that playing with pills is okay." | I've gone over this topic in the "Storytelling" part of my review, but this is the loudest opposition I've read on Dr. Mario and thought it was worth sharing. I understand how some parents don't like the idea behind this game, but I thought he was overreacting a bit when reading this. Looking into it a bit closer, it turns out Andy Eddy was suing a doctor for giving his child wrong prescriptions (according to Wiki), so suddenly his rant made a lot more sense, though I still disagree that this game could have turned any child into a pill addict.
- Steve Harris for Electronic Gaming Monthly, Issue 16 (Nov 90): "Dr. Mario is an annoyingly over-involved version of Tetris meets Columns" | Unexpectedly poor reviews by the two magazines I found that talked about the game, but player reception tells a different tale
(This is the 69th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
We have reached Game #69. Nice. Even nicer that this milestone was achieved with a good game, Flashback, a 'cinematic' platformer by Delphine Software that released some time in 1992. There are a few ways in which you could describe this game. I don't think anything would be more than apt though than calling it "ahead of its time", for mostly good but also bad reasons.
This game uses rotoscoped animations and would be best compared to other platformers such as Prince of Persia and especially "Another World", otherwise known as "Out of this World". While Prince of Persia was made by Broderbund, Another World was also developed by Delphine Software, and having played Flashback, feels like what Catacombs 3D is to Wolfenstein 3D, meaning that it feels like a short tech demo to show what's possible. (Fun fact: Just like Flashback is a milestone game for this challenge, Another World was the 50th game I reviewed)
If that doesn't give you an understanding of rotoscoped animations, think of the original Mortal Kombat, which probably is the most popular game to use this technique. It's basically the technique describing animators tracing over motion picture footage to create an illusion of realistic and very fluid animations.
Flashback has a lot of good traits, but definitely stands out thanks to using this animation technique. It has sold over 2 million copies over time and was at the time of its release the best selling French game of all time. It released for more platforms than Skyrim did, and initially released for the Amiga, though funnily enough had been created for the Sega Genesis originally. There is a sequel that released in 1995 called Fade to Black and Flashback 2 is set to release in November 2023 at the time of posting this review.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 8/10
This game shines here in many ways, and primarily in presentation. What makes this game unique is that it has cinematic cutscenes in a cyberpunk style and using polygon graphics that you're not going to see anywhere else apart from Another World. You can tell the devs really took their time making these and they definitely add a lot to the overall experience thanks to their great presentation. For example, in an early cutscene, you wake up and accidentally drop a 'holocube' as you get up. Then, in another cutscene, when you find the holocube, you can see it displaying a message while the main character is holding it in his hands. Cutscenes also play every time you pick up an item or give one to another character. It's a small thing that enhances the meaning of finding a key item, and even though the cutscene has half a second loading screens before they play, I still appreciated them.
Now for the story. You play Conrad B. Hart, a graduate student and agent of the Galaxial Bureau of Investigation (GBI). He is also described as an "overall cool dude" in the manual. You run away from some sort of spaceship with your own, but crashland in an unfamiliar area. When you wake up and pick up the holocube I just mentioned, the message that appears is from your past self. Apparently, you willingly removed your memory and need to see your friend Ian in "New Washington" to get it back.
You play the first level and make your way over there. In the first level, you meet a wounded stranger who asks you to find his teleporter so he can teleport to safety from these woods that you are both trapped in. Later, you meet an elderly man on a chair next to a giant hole. He says he will give you an Anti Gravity Belt if you have enough credits for him, so you can jump down to the next level.
Once you make it to New Washington, you are met with the sort of setting that would have made me go crazy at the time. There is a subway system that lets you visit for key areas in New Washington that are called "America", "Asia", "Europe" and "Africa". In one of these locations, you will find a bar, in another, you will find a room with job notices that you can take on with a work permit, in another, there is an Admin office that gives you said work permit.
In practice, this ends up being a level where you continously backtrack to ultimately pay another NPC to move on to the next level, and it does get boring and frustrating at times, but to have a world that actually feels real like this in a video game from this time period is extremely rare and absolutely worth a positive mention.
The overall story is relatively interesting as well. The manual has a comic book style opening to the overall story, which you will be able to find with a quick Google search. It shows what happens before the story begins, so maybe you'll want to look at it after playing the game, since figuring out what happened before Conrad lost his memory is part of the appeal of the story. I'm not going to spoil anything, and it doesn't get the crown for most in-depth story for a non-RPG and non-graphic adventure (I'd still give that to Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake) and it also does not have any shocking twists, but it's entertaining enough and most importantly really well presented that the reward you get from learning more is ultimately pretty satisfying.
GAMEPLAY | 12/20
This is a platformer that uses rotoscoping for its animations. This means movement looks really fluid and life-like, similarly to Prince of Persia and Another World. These animations don't just look real, but often they also play out like they would in reality, meaning they are deliberately slow. This has its positives and negatives. On the one hand, this slow movement means a methodical and strategical approach is more important, because there are plenty of enemies that you need to fight here as well. On the other hand, slow is slow. When you have to go over the same section of the game for the 5th time or have failed to make a jump three times in a row, having to wait for animations to play out will get a bit boring after a while.
The game has a somewhat convoluted control scheme that takes getting used to. To reach a platform right above you, you need to stay at one specific point below it and grab up. This makes Conrad grab on, and if you keep pressing up, he will climb up. If you are a single step behind or in front of this spot, he will not hold on. For 7 hours, I constantly had to do one extra step to be in the right position. Not a terrible thing, but annoying at times. It gets worse when there is a platform that is above you but on the other side of the room. Here, you need to hold A, press RIGHT/LEFT to sprint (you needed to run straight) and then UP to jump up. Or was it RIGHT/LEFT again? Actually, it's both. I couldn't quite figure out which one the game wanted me to do for specific jumps, but some jumps required you to press RIGHT/LEFT twice, and others required you to press RIGHT/LEFT first and then UP later. But what timing do you need for the jump? Do you press the appropriate button multiple times hoping the game recognizes your input in time? Do you button mash? Or do you hold on to the button? I can tell you that all approaches worked at times and didn't work at others. Finally, another frustrating thing that would happen is from being able to roll forward when crouching. The game doesn't scroll but rather plays on independent screens. Whenever you enter a new screen, your action from the previous screen would be remembered however. So if you roll from one to the next, you keep rolling as the next screen loads up. In some screens, there would just be pits that you would fall right into, and if you fall too far down, you die. Happened more often than I'd care to admit.
Dying is another thing. There are SAVE points in this game, but sometimes they are pretty far apart. You have 5 lives that you can recharge at certain checkpoints. If you ever die, and you will plenty of times, you go all the way back to your last save point, which can set you back as far as 15-30 minutes easily and all the progress you made is lost. Fall damage takes all your health, and running into portal-like things that have green myst coming out of them instantly kill you too, so you can imagine how many cheap deaths await in this game that make you lose hours of progress over the course of your playthrough.
But enough of the negatives. Despite these points, which do make me reluctant to recommend this game to anyone but retro gamers who have grown somewhat immune to these pains, I had a fun time with this from a gameplay perspective overall.
You are equipped with a simple gun at the start. Taking on enemies with it is not as simple as going in run and gun style. You need to crouch at times to not get shot first yourself, you can throw stones to distract them first or alert turrets that shoot the enemies for you, and you get a force field later on that acts as a shield if you time it right. You can also use teleportation devices or explosive mechanical mice later on to spice things up further.
Apart from combat, you do a lot of platforming and puzzle-solving, which either involves figuring out where to go or, if something is blocking your way, figuring out how to bypass it. It's never too difficult but enough of a braintease as well, so I liked the difficulty here. You collect key items like, well, keys, quest items and credits that allow you to make progress. These are on the floor randomly and some are hard to see, so you basically have to walk over every inch of a level to not miss anything. You get a Pick-Up notice once you are on top of an item, so you will find all of them just by being thorough.
Overall, the game offers a strategic challenge in both platforming, puzzle-solving and combat that I appreciated. It was enough to have me entertained for the 7 hours I played. I feel like the atmosphere did a lot of the heavy lifting to make some of the more frustrating parts more bearable. I would call this game "ahead of its time" because it offers a lot of things that just feel futuristic at this point, but the technology at the time meant many things couldn't be done in a way that the devs probably wanted, which means we got some frustrating gameplay parts as a result. The sequel is a 3D adventure game, so I'm curious to see if the devs were able to make use of the three years of technological progress to make gameplay more enjoyable throughout.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10
No voice acting, at least in the Sega Genesis version I'm reviewing. Later, the game would release for the Sega CD for example, where CGI cutscenes and voice actors would be used. I've seen some footage and the voice acting sounds like it takes away more than it adds to the atmosphere, so you'll be fine with this version of the game.
Sound design ranges from meh to excellent, and I particularly love the sounds that are added in to the short cutscenes when you pick stuff up or give and take items.
The soundtrack can be described similarly. Very sci-fi, really adds to the atmosphere. Music plays at specific points of certain screens or during combat, and overall the use of music can be described as "sparingly", and I can't say I mind this. Lots of games with incredible atmosphere forego the use of music for most parts of their gameplay. A great example that comes to mind are the Soulsborne games. This would mean that the game should make me listen to the protagonists footsteps and to the environmental sounds to further set an atmosphere, but for some reason footsteps are only heard while running, not walking. Seems like a weird thing to not do. But back to the soundtrack. Great, when used. Overall the OST is only about 15 minutes long.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
Can't go through this section without going over the rotoscoping that is used here. The animations here are to this day some of the more realistic you will see. Very clean. There is no question what the main reason is for why this and Another World still have a cult following to this day.
Apart from this, graphically there are nice special effects and diverse locations to compliment. It's not a very colorful game despite its cyberpunk theme and most of the game plays in grayish-green outdoor areas.
The HUD consists of an icon on the top right showing the item you currently have equipped. The UI opens up by pressing START and is a simple inventory screen with 4 items shown per line. Move to the item, select START again, and done. There are some items that are always useful, like the force field, and many items that are only useful once or twice, so it would have been nice for these very useful items to be equipped and useable without having to switch to it mid-combat every time. Or for example, charging stations serve one purpose for 99% of the game - charge your shield/hitpoints. Just because it is used for something else once (!) you need to equip shield every time you want to charge it, which seems like something that could have been automated.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 9/10
There are a lot of ways through which this game manages to set a very good atmosphere. The animations of course add a lot of realism at a time where this was hard to achieve. The sound design and soundtrack set a great sci-fi vibe. Cutscenes add close-up looks at the events. New Washington, while backtrack-heavy, is an unusual setting for a level because it creates the illusion of a genuinely lived in oxymoronic tiny metropolis, something that was uncommon at the time. Cutscenes playing when picking up an item or giving something to a different character also add immersion on a deeper level, even if it is a tiny detail. Overall, I definitely felt like there was a world here that the developers actually thought about and they did a great job of making it seem grounded and realistic despite the sci-fi theme.
CONTENT | 6/10
The game takes roughly 6-8 hours, a pretty good length for a game of this type. It's not too short to appear more like a tech demo like Another World, and it's not too long to overstay its welcome. You can tell by the missions you are assigned that there is only so much variety the game has to offer, so I appreciated that it ended when it did. The game does a solid job of offering new challenges throughout, but as I mentioned over this review, there are too many parts where the gameplay does hold the fluidity of the game back, along with the pretty annoying save system, which was only manageable to me thanks to the emulator's own save state feature.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 7/10
The level design in this game has high and lowlights. Highlights are New Washington, where the pros of its uniqueness outweigh the cons of the backtracking that you need to do there. The balance of platforming, combat and puzzle-solving is also well struck. On the negative side, dying setting you back so far, death coming unfairly too often, and some gunfights being in awkward locations that are made even more awkward by the control scheme of the game are some of the more prominent points.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
This isn't the first game to use rotoscopic animation nor cinematic cutscenes. Another World did both of these things. That game didn't do it on this scale though, and animations look a lot more fluid in Flashback. The game is not groundbreaking in what it does, but it certainly is daring and innovative, and I really like that. Games in this time period pre-CD and pre-3D often stick to the status-quo, similarly to what is being critiziced in modern times, though there was little complaining at the time. Magazines had no issues spreading around 8s and 9s for nearly every game for not doing anything special at all. So developers who try something different are always much appreciated, and while these innovations did come with some drawbacks in this game, I can say the good absolutely outweighs the bad overall.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
No replayability here apart from trying to beat your high score and maybe using some tools that are optional, like the mechanical mice.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 72/100
70+ is usually "at least check it out" territory for me. With this game, I have the same recommendation to retro gamers for sure, but unlike, say, a Super Mario World, Zelda or Monkey Island, Flashback has A LOT of the noticeable growing pains that come with old-school video games. I'd understand if it's too much for some people to take. That said, the game does plenty right as well and its unique status is undeniable.
We have reached Game #69. Nice. Even nicer that this milestone was achieved with a good game, Flashback, a 'cinematic' platformer by Delphine Software that released some time in 1992. There are a few ways in which you could describe this game. I don't think anything would be more than apt though than calling it "ahead of its time", for mostly good but also bad reasons.
This game uses rotoscoped animations and would be best compared to other platformers such as Prince of Persia and especially "Another World", otherwise known as "Out of this World". While Prince of Persia was made by Broderbund, Another World was also developed by Delphine Software, and having played Flashback, feels like what Catacombs 3D is to Wolfenstein 3D, meaning that it feels like a short tech demo to show what's possible. (Fun fact: Just like Flashback is a milestone game for this challenge, Another World was the 50th game I reviewed)
If that doesn't give you an understanding of rotoscoped animations, think of the original Mortal Kombat, which probably is the most popular game to use this technique. It's basically the technique describing animators tracing over motion picture footage to create an illusion of realistic and very fluid animations.
Flashback has a lot of good traits, but definitely stands out thanks to using this animation technique. It has sold over 2 million copies over time and was at the time of its release the best selling French game of all time. It released for more platforms than Skyrim did, and initially released for the Amiga, though funnily enough had been created for the Sega Genesis originally. There is a sequel that released in 1995 called Fade to Black and Flashback 2 is set to release in November 2023 at the time of posting this review.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 8/10
This game shines here in many ways, and primarily in presentation. What makes this game unique is that it has cinematic cutscenes in a cyberpunk style and using polygon graphics that you're not going to see anywhere else apart from Another World. You can tell the devs really took their time making these and they definitely add a lot to the overall experience thanks to their great presentation. For example, in an early cutscene, you wake up and accidentally drop a 'holocube' as you get up. Then, in another cutscene, when you find the holocube, you can see it displaying a message while the main character is holding it in his hands. Cutscenes also play every time you pick up an item or give one to another character. It's a small thing that enhances the meaning of finding a key item, and even though the cutscene has half a second loading screens before they play, I still appreciated them.
Now for the story. You play Conrad B. Hart, a graduate student and agent of the Galaxial Bureau of Investigation (GBI). He is also described as an "overall cool dude" in the manual. You run away from some sort of spaceship with your own, but crashland in an unfamiliar area. When you wake up and pick up the holocube I just mentioned, the message that appears is from your past self. Apparently, you willingly removed your memory and need to see your friend Ian in "New Washington" to get it back.
You play the first level and make your way over there. In the first level, you meet a wounded stranger who asks you to find his teleporter so he can teleport to safety from these woods that you are both trapped in. Later, you meet an elderly man on a chair next to a giant hole. He says he will give you an Anti Gravity Belt if you have enough credits for him, so you can jump down to the next level.
Once you make it to New Washington, you are met with the sort of setting that would have made me go crazy at the time. There is a subway system that lets you visit for key areas in New Washington that are called "America", "Asia", "Europe" and "Africa". In one of these locations, you will find a bar, in another, you will find a room with job notices that you can take on with a work permit, in another, there is an Admin office that gives you said work permit.
In practice, this ends up being a level where you continously backtrack to ultimately pay another NPC to move on to the next level, and it does get boring and frustrating at times, but to have a world that actually feels real like this in a video game from this time period is extremely rare and absolutely worth a positive mention.
The overall story is relatively interesting as well. The manual has a comic book style opening to the overall story, which you will be able to find with a quick Google search. It shows what happens before the story begins, so maybe you'll want to look at it after playing the game, since figuring out what happened before Conrad lost his memory is part of the appeal of the story. I'm not going to spoil anything, and it doesn't get the crown for most in-depth story for a non-RPG and non-graphic adventure (I'd still give that to Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake) and it also does not have any shocking twists, but it's entertaining enough and most importantly really well presented that the reward you get from learning more is ultimately pretty satisfying.
GAMEPLAY | 12/20
This is a platformer that uses rotoscoping for its animations. This means movement looks really fluid and life-like, similarly to Prince of Persia and Another World. These animations don't just look real, but often they also play out like they would in reality, meaning they are deliberately slow. This has its positives and negatives. On the one hand, this slow movement means a methodical and strategical approach is more important, because there are plenty of enemies that you need to fight here as well. On the other hand, slow is slow. When you have to go over the same section of the game for the 5th time or have failed to make a jump three times in a row, having to wait for animations to play out will get a bit boring after a while.
The game has a somewhat convoluted control scheme that takes getting used to. To reach a platform right above you, you need to stay at one specific point below it and grab up. This makes Conrad grab on, and if you keep pressing up, he will climb up. If you are a single step behind or in front of this spot, he will not hold on. For 7 hours, I constantly had to do one extra step to be in the right position. Not a terrible thing, but annoying at times. It gets worse when there is a platform that is above you but on the other side of the room. Here, you need to hold A, press RIGHT/LEFT to sprint (you needed to run straight) and then UP to jump up. Or was it RIGHT/LEFT again? Actually, it's both. I couldn't quite figure out which one the game wanted me to do for specific jumps, but some jumps required you to press RIGHT/LEFT twice, and others required you to press RIGHT/LEFT first and then UP later. But what timing do you need for the jump? Do you press the appropriate button multiple times hoping the game recognizes your input in time? Do you button mash? Or do you hold on to the button? I can tell you that all approaches worked at times and didn't work at others. Finally, another frustrating thing that would happen is from being able to roll forward when crouching. The game doesn't scroll but rather plays on independent screens. Whenever you enter a new screen, your action from the previous screen would be remembered however. So if you roll from one to the next, you keep rolling as the next screen loads up. In some screens, there would just be pits that you would fall right into, and if you fall too far down, you die. Happened more often than I'd care to admit.
Dying is another thing. There are SAVE points in this game, but sometimes they are pretty far apart. You have 5 lives that you can recharge at certain checkpoints. If you ever die, and you will plenty of times, you go all the way back to your last save point, which can set you back as far as 15-30 minutes easily and all the progress you made is lost. Fall damage takes all your health, and running into portal-like things that have green myst coming out of them instantly kill you too, so you can imagine how many cheap deaths await in this game that make you lose hours of progress over the course of your playthrough.
But enough of the negatives. Despite these points, which do make me reluctant to recommend this game to anyone but retro gamers who have grown somewhat immune to these pains, I had a fun time with this from a gameplay perspective overall.
You are equipped with a simple gun at the start. Taking on enemies with it is not as simple as going in run and gun style. You need to crouch at times to not get shot first yourself, you can throw stones to distract them first or alert turrets that shoot the enemies for you, and you get a force field later on that acts as a shield if you time it right. You can also use teleportation devices or explosive mechanical mice later on to spice things up further.
Apart from combat, you do a lot of platforming and puzzle-solving, which either involves figuring out where to go or, if something is blocking your way, figuring out how to bypass it. It's never too difficult but enough of a braintease as well, so I liked the difficulty here. You collect key items like, well, keys, quest items and credits that allow you to make progress. These are on the floor randomly and some are hard to see, so you basically have to walk over every inch of a level to not miss anything. You get a Pick-Up notice once you are on top of an item, so you will find all of them just by being thorough.
Overall, the game offers a strategic challenge in both platforming, puzzle-solving and combat that I appreciated. It was enough to have me entertained for the 7 hours I played. I feel like the atmosphere did a lot of the heavy lifting to make some of the more frustrating parts more bearable. I would call this game "ahead of its time" because it offers a lot of things that just feel futuristic at this point, but the technology at the time meant many things couldn't be done in a way that the devs probably wanted, which means we got some frustrating gameplay parts as a result. The sequel is a 3D adventure game, so I'm curious to see if the devs were able to make use of the three years of technological progress to make gameplay more enjoyable throughout.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10
No voice acting, at least in the Sega Genesis version I'm reviewing. Later, the game would release for the Sega CD for example, where CGI cutscenes and voice actors would be used. I've seen some footage and the voice acting sounds like it takes away more than it adds to the atmosphere, so you'll be fine with this version of the game.
Sound design ranges from meh to excellent, and I particularly love the sounds that are added in to the short cutscenes when you pick stuff up or give and take items.
The soundtrack can be described similarly. Very sci-fi, really adds to the atmosphere. Music plays at specific points of certain screens or during combat, and overall the use of music can be described as "sparingly", and I can't say I mind this. Lots of games with incredible atmosphere forego the use of music for most parts of their gameplay. A great example that comes to mind are the Soulsborne games. This would mean that the game should make me listen to the protagonists footsteps and to the environmental sounds to further set an atmosphere, but for some reason footsteps are only heard while running, not walking. Seems like a weird thing to not do. But back to the soundtrack. Great, when used. Overall the OST is only about 15 minutes long.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
Can't go through this section without going over the rotoscoping that is used here. The animations here are to this day some of the more realistic you will see. Very clean. There is no question what the main reason is for why this and Another World still have a cult following to this day.
Apart from this, graphically there are nice special effects and diverse locations to compliment. It's not a very colorful game despite its cyberpunk theme and most of the game plays in grayish-green outdoor areas.
The HUD consists of an icon on the top right showing the item you currently have equipped. The UI opens up by pressing START and is a simple inventory screen with 4 items shown per line. Move to the item, select START again, and done. There are some items that are always useful, like the force field, and many items that are only useful once or twice, so it would have been nice for these very useful items to be equipped and useable without having to switch to it mid-combat every time. Or for example, charging stations serve one purpose for 99% of the game - charge your shield/hitpoints. Just because it is used for something else once (!) you need to equip shield every time you want to charge it, which seems like something that could have been automated.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 9/10
There are a lot of ways through which this game manages to set a very good atmosphere. The animations of course add a lot of realism at a time where this was hard to achieve. The sound design and soundtrack set a great sci-fi vibe. Cutscenes add close-up looks at the events. New Washington, while backtrack-heavy, is an unusual setting for a level because it creates the illusion of a genuinely lived in oxymoronic tiny metropolis, something that was uncommon at the time. Cutscenes playing when picking up an item or giving something to a different character also add immersion on a deeper level, even if it is a tiny detail. Overall, I definitely felt like there was a world here that the developers actually thought about and they did a great job of making it seem grounded and realistic despite the sci-fi theme.
CONTENT | 6/10
The game takes roughly 6-8 hours, a pretty good length for a game of this type. It's not too short to appear more like a tech demo like Another World, and it's not too long to overstay its welcome. You can tell by the missions you are assigned that there is only so much variety the game has to offer, so I appreciated that it ended when it did. The game does a solid job of offering new challenges throughout, but as I mentioned over this review, there are too many parts where the gameplay does hold the fluidity of the game back, along with the pretty annoying save system, which was only manageable to me thanks to the emulator's own save state feature.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 7/10
The level design in this game has high and lowlights. Highlights are New Washington, where the pros of its uniqueness outweigh the cons of the backtracking that you need to do there. The balance of platforming, combat and puzzle-solving is also well struck. On the negative side, dying setting you back so far, death coming unfairly too often, and some gunfights being in awkward locations that are made even more awkward by the control scheme of the game are some of the more prominent points.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
This isn't the first game to use rotoscopic animation nor cinematic cutscenes. Another World did both of these things. That game didn't do it on this scale though, and animations look a lot more fluid in Flashback. The game is not groundbreaking in what it does, but it certainly is daring and innovative, and I really like that. Games in this time period pre-CD and pre-3D often stick to the status-quo, similarly to what is being critiziced in modern times, though there was little complaining at the time. Magazines had no issues spreading around 8s and 9s for nearly every game for not doing anything special at all. So developers who try something different are always much appreciated, and while these innovations did come with some drawbacks in this game, I can say the good absolutely outweighs the bad overall.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
No replayability here apart from trying to beat your high score and maybe using some tools that are optional, like the mechanical mice.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 72/100
70+ is usually "at least check it out" territory for me. With this game, I have the same recommendation to retro gamers for sure, but unlike, say, a Super Mario World, Zelda or Monkey Island, Flashback has A LOT of the noticeable growing pains that come with old-school video games. I'd understand if it's too much for some people to take. That said, the game does plenty right as well and its unique status is undeniable.
1992
The Top Gear series, but especially this first title, was and is incredibly popular in South America. I found out about this pretty quickly when researching the game. What this game's unique selling propositions are would be three-fold.
First, Top Gear has a fast pace. Not F-Zero fast, but pretty fast. Especially if you're going up and down hills, it can get pretty hectic. Second, it comes with dozens of courses spanning the whole world, from Germany to Brazil, from LA to Tokyo. Is there enough variety to support these 32 total courses? Not quite. Most actually feel very similar, and are distinguished by pretty small additions (obstacles on the course) and length.
The third and final USP is pretty cool. The game adds strategy to races. There is your typical nitro system that is limited to 3 uses per race. There is the selection of one of four cars, which differ in speed, handling and fuel consumption. Finally, fuel consumption itself is a big deal, as you have limited fuel that will get depleted before you finish the race on certain courses that are up to 7 laps long I believe. This means you need to use pit stops and time your visits well, as you will lose ground while you're waiting for your fuel to charge.
Overall, I appreciated these elements. Adding this feature does mean however that some tracks can take up to 6 minutes though. That's something you might feel one way or the other about in arcade racers, but I enjoyed the shorter levels more, even without pit stops becoming a factor.
One negative I want to mention is that half of the screen is constantly blocked by a split-screen setup that shows a computer racing below you. This is no issue in 2-Player of course, but could have been removed for single player.
In terms of content, the game offers you the four aforementioned cars, the 32 maps and puts these two things together for one single mode, which is a campaign through all maps in the game. You start in the USA and have to finish in a certain spot on the ranking to qualify for the next set of maps. I finished 2nd once and still qualified, so up to half of the game, there was no need to finish 1st yet. Finishing 4th didn't do the job though.
Finally, the soundtrack is worth a mention. There are some great tracks here, but out of the 4 used for the 32 tracks, I felt indifferent about two, so I felt there wasn't enough variety here and it wasn't an F-Zero situation where I was bopping my head to pretty much all tracks and even listened to some of them outside of the game from time to time. In general, the soundtrack is seen as one of the highlights of this game, so your enjoyment of it may differ. I just found 4 tracks to be too few either way.
Overall, Top Gear is a fun racing game. It doesn't surpass F-Zero as my favorite racing game for the SNES (so far), but it is similarly addictive and I have no hard time figuring out why it's still popular at some parts of the Earth.
(I played this as part of my challenge to go through notable video games in chronological order starting in 1990.)
First, Top Gear has a fast pace. Not F-Zero fast, but pretty fast. Especially if you're going up and down hills, it can get pretty hectic. Second, it comes with dozens of courses spanning the whole world, from Germany to Brazil, from LA to Tokyo. Is there enough variety to support these 32 total courses? Not quite. Most actually feel very similar, and are distinguished by pretty small additions (obstacles on the course) and length.
The third and final USP is pretty cool. The game adds strategy to races. There is your typical nitro system that is limited to 3 uses per race. There is the selection of one of four cars, which differ in speed, handling and fuel consumption. Finally, fuel consumption itself is a big deal, as you have limited fuel that will get depleted before you finish the race on certain courses that are up to 7 laps long I believe. This means you need to use pit stops and time your visits well, as you will lose ground while you're waiting for your fuel to charge.
Overall, I appreciated these elements. Adding this feature does mean however that some tracks can take up to 6 minutes though. That's something you might feel one way or the other about in arcade racers, but I enjoyed the shorter levels more, even without pit stops becoming a factor.
One negative I want to mention is that half of the screen is constantly blocked by a split-screen setup that shows a computer racing below you. This is no issue in 2-Player of course, but could have been removed for single player.
In terms of content, the game offers you the four aforementioned cars, the 32 maps and puts these two things together for one single mode, which is a campaign through all maps in the game. You start in the USA and have to finish in a certain spot on the ranking to qualify for the next set of maps. I finished 2nd once and still qualified, so up to half of the game, there was no need to finish 1st yet. Finishing 4th didn't do the job though.
Finally, the soundtrack is worth a mention. There are some great tracks here, but out of the 4 used for the 32 tracks, I felt indifferent about two, so I felt there wasn't enough variety here and it wasn't an F-Zero situation where I was bopping my head to pretty much all tracks and even listened to some of them outside of the game from time to time. In general, the soundtrack is seen as one of the highlights of this game, so your enjoyment of it may differ. I just found 4 tracks to be too few either way.
Overall, Top Gear is a fun racing game. It doesn't surpass F-Zero as my favorite racing game for the SNES (so far), but it is similarly addictive and I have no hard time figuring out why it's still popular at some parts of the Earth.
(I played this as part of my challenge to go through notable video games in chronological order starting in 1990.)
This game was such a trip. The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout, developed by Kemco for the NES and initially released in Japan on August 3, 1990, is a very odd game. If you'd ask me about the structure of this game after I played AND FINISHED IT, I would just say "I dunno".
The game is easy and frustrating at the same time and it goes on for far longer than it has the right to. It uses Looney Tunes characters as both the protagonist and all antagonists, which does add a certain charm, but it's also probably the only reason why it's relevant enough for me to have put on my 1990 playlist.
More on the game in detail below.
____________
STORYTELLING
The game starts with a short cutscene with text and stand still images of Bugs Bunny opening a letter. The Bugs Bunny character is celebrating its 50th birthday and his friends are throwing a birthday party for him. Some of the Looney Tunes characters are jealous, so they decide to stand in Bugs Bunny's way as he tries to get to his party. We're talking characters like Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepé Le Pew and Sylvester.
Once you beat the game, you get a similar cutscene that has a little surprise in store.
It's about the minimum you'd expect for a game that wants to have any sort of story in it.
GAMEPLAY
You control Bugs Bunny through a variety of different levels in a game that features roughly 20 FPS and is pretty consistent with that. You are armed with a hammer and go through a colorful world filled with a bunch of random assets and bear similarities to Super Mario games in design. You even warp through "pipes", though here these signify the end of a stage most of the time and lead to a boss.
The assets are truly random here. You'll be hit by rocks, walking alarm clocks that explode, lava that shoots up from the ground, some weird moist-looking orange texture that can fly, guys dressed like milk cartons and characters that have a hammer for their heads. At least the boss fights are only against Looney Tunes characters that you'll recognize.
The problem is, there are about 50 stages and that many boss fights throughout the game. I'm exaggerating, but only kind of, and each boss is repeated at least 3 times until it all of a sudden just ends. It's not like levels are creatively designed to warrant this. At points it feels like you are walking through pretty much the same levels over and over again with only slight changes here and there. The boss fights sure are the same, so why are you making the player suffer more by overextending the playtime? Again, it doesn't help that the game runs at a locked 20 FPS.
After each stage you beat, you enter one of two mini games and can play those multiple times if you collected enough carrots. One has a Bingo like card on it and you have to try and match 3 or more stars horizontally/vertically/diagonally. If you do, you get 1Ups. This is no challenge at all and you will find yourself with 50+ 1Ups left by the time you beat the game. Then there is a Whac-A-Mole type mini game as well. Both just become annoying necessities after you've played them a few times.
The 1 Ups makes the completion of this game much easier already, but it's not like the levels are difficult either way. You find plenty of items to regenerate your health (you'll need them because there is a lot of stuff that you can't reliably dodge in this game) and platforming barely offers any challenges. Your only enemy there is gravity.
There are barely any features in this game and in today's day and age, we've seen plenty of these licensed game that are only made as cash-grabs, as there really wasn't much effort put into this one.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Sound design is OK and the soundtrack is as well. The music is not terrible to listen to, it's very average as far as OSTs from this time go, but the repetitive and at parts non-sensical level design might cause anxiety whenever you listen to it after your time with this game is over.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The game is certainly colorful and Looney Tunes characters add to the charm of this game, but the game starts looking pretty basic the further you get into it, there isn't much creativity here and the fact that a bunch of random assets are thrown together here does reduce the aesthetical quality of the game in my opinion.
ATMOSPHERE
The game doesn't really do anything special graphically, it has a very average soundtrack and to add to this, your eyes are strained from looking at this 20 FPS, blurry, headache-inducing presentation.
CONTENT
It took me about 3 hours to beat the game and it should take you as much as well. Unlike some other platformers that take much longer for a first time player - but probably less than 3 hours for experienced players - 3 hours is all The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout has to offer. I rarely died, the game has barely any features that you could miss out on and it's a pretty straightforward experience. And even with a game that is 3 hours long, I was asking for it to be over very early on into my playthrough due to the sheer repetitiveness of it.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
Terrible. I don't really think much thought went into creating a cohesive structure at any point. They simply seem to have created a start and end point for a level, throw together a bunch of random assets in between and added about half a dozen rotating bosses at the end of each stage. Very poor.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
There is nothing innovative about this one. They seem to have copied a bunch of platformers that were more popular without understanding what makes platformers popular.
REPLAYABILITY
You can try to beat your high score, sure, but I doubt that anyone who starts playing this today would want to replay it.
PLAYABILITY
It works from start to finish, but playing it at 20 FPS or so throughout, if even that, really hurts the experience (replace 'experience' with 'eyes').
OVERALL
This is definitely in the running for Worst Game of 1990. It's the only game I've played so far that performed this poorly. If not for the Looney Tunes setting, this game wouldn't have anything to offer apart from boring, repetitive and simple platforming.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
Couldn't find any thoughts, just two notices of the game's release in Electronic Gaming Monthly and Nintendo Power magazines.
The game is easy and frustrating at the same time and it goes on for far longer than it has the right to. It uses Looney Tunes characters as both the protagonist and all antagonists, which does add a certain charm, but it's also probably the only reason why it's relevant enough for me to have put on my 1990 playlist.
More on the game in detail below.
____________
STORYTELLING
The game starts with a short cutscene with text and stand still images of Bugs Bunny opening a letter. The Bugs Bunny character is celebrating its 50th birthday and his friends are throwing a birthday party for him. Some of the Looney Tunes characters are jealous, so they decide to stand in Bugs Bunny's way as he tries to get to his party. We're talking characters like Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepé Le Pew and Sylvester.
Once you beat the game, you get a similar cutscene that has a little surprise in store.
It's about the minimum you'd expect for a game that wants to have any sort of story in it.
GAMEPLAY
You control Bugs Bunny through a variety of different levels in a game that features roughly 20 FPS and is pretty consistent with that. You are armed with a hammer and go through a colorful world filled with a bunch of random assets and bear similarities to Super Mario games in design. You even warp through "pipes", though here these signify the end of a stage most of the time and lead to a boss.
The assets are truly random here. You'll be hit by rocks, walking alarm clocks that explode, lava that shoots up from the ground, some weird moist-looking orange texture that can fly, guys dressed like milk cartons and characters that have a hammer for their heads. At least the boss fights are only against Looney Tunes characters that you'll recognize.
The problem is, there are about 50 stages and that many boss fights throughout the game. I'm exaggerating, but only kind of, and each boss is repeated at least 3 times until it all of a sudden just ends. It's not like levels are creatively designed to warrant this. At points it feels like you are walking through pretty much the same levels over and over again with only slight changes here and there. The boss fights sure are the same, so why are you making the player suffer more by overextending the playtime? Again, it doesn't help that the game runs at a locked 20 FPS.
After each stage you beat, you enter one of two mini games and can play those multiple times if you collected enough carrots. One has a Bingo like card on it and you have to try and match 3 or more stars horizontally/vertically/diagonally. If you do, you get 1Ups. This is no challenge at all and you will find yourself with 50+ 1Ups left by the time you beat the game. Then there is a Whac-A-Mole type mini game as well. Both just become annoying necessities after you've played them a few times.
The 1 Ups makes the completion of this game much easier already, but it's not like the levels are difficult either way. You find plenty of items to regenerate your health (you'll need them because there is a lot of stuff that you can't reliably dodge in this game) and platforming barely offers any challenges. Your only enemy there is gravity.
There are barely any features in this game and in today's day and age, we've seen plenty of these licensed game that are only made as cash-grabs, as there really wasn't much effort put into this one.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Sound design is OK and the soundtrack is as well. The music is not terrible to listen to, it's very average as far as OSTs from this time go, but the repetitive and at parts non-sensical level design might cause anxiety whenever you listen to it after your time with this game is over.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The game is certainly colorful and Looney Tunes characters add to the charm of this game, but the game starts looking pretty basic the further you get into it, there isn't much creativity here and the fact that a bunch of random assets are thrown together here does reduce the aesthetical quality of the game in my opinion.
ATMOSPHERE
The game doesn't really do anything special graphically, it has a very average soundtrack and to add to this, your eyes are strained from looking at this 20 FPS, blurry, headache-inducing presentation.
CONTENT
It took me about 3 hours to beat the game and it should take you as much as well. Unlike some other platformers that take much longer for a first time player - but probably less than 3 hours for experienced players - 3 hours is all The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout has to offer. I rarely died, the game has barely any features that you could miss out on and it's a pretty straightforward experience. And even with a game that is 3 hours long, I was asking for it to be over very early on into my playthrough due to the sheer repetitiveness of it.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
Terrible. I don't really think much thought went into creating a cohesive structure at any point. They simply seem to have created a start and end point for a level, throw together a bunch of random assets in between and added about half a dozen rotating bosses at the end of each stage. Very poor.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
There is nothing innovative about this one. They seem to have copied a bunch of platformers that were more popular without understanding what makes platformers popular.
REPLAYABILITY
You can try to beat your high score, sure, but I doubt that anyone who starts playing this today would want to replay it.
PLAYABILITY
It works from start to finish, but playing it at 20 FPS or so throughout, if even that, really hurts the experience (replace 'experience' with 'eyes').
OVERALL
This is definitely in the running for Worst Game of 1990. It's the only game I've played so far that performed this poorly. If not for the Looney Tunes setting, this game wouldn't have anything to offer apart from boring, repetitive and simple platforming.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
Couldn't find any thoughts, just two notices of the game's release in Electronic Gaming Monthly and Nintendo Power magazines.
Doom II: Hell on Earth came out not too long after the original Doom. It took only 10 months, in fact. When you play the game, it's easy to see how the game was developed so quickly. It's basically the same game with larger levels, more enemy types and an additional weapon, among some other minor changes.
If you loved the original Doom, that's great. As someone who liked it, I didn't see that much reason to go through the entirety of Doom II though, since story is, understandably, irrelevant for the game (though not "not important" in general, John Carmack!).
From the couple hours I put into the game, what I realized was that the setting 'Earth' felt somewhat off-putting compared to the first game, that many of the tracks sounded way too tame for a game like Doom and that I've otherwise already played this game, as it plays exactly the same way, just with more levels now.
Don't get me wrong, if you enjoy boomer shooters and Doom in particular, you won't be looking for much else. Additionally, from what I was told, the modding scene is what makes the game so popular still, and having checked some of the user-made levels out, yeah, I can see why. Custom enemies, custom weapons, custom maps, custom music... You can probably spend the next few years solely playing this game and not run out of content.
I've got thousands of other games I would like to play, so I'm not gonna get into that rabbit hole, but you're invited to do so if that sounds interesting to you. Me personally, I'll gladly return to the series for the next game, but I'm hoping to see a little bit more innovation, if the story itself is irrelevant in these games.
(This is the 105th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
If you loved the original Doom, that's great. As someone who liked it, I didn't see that much reason to go through the entirety of Doom II though, since story is, understandably, irrelevant for the game (though not "not important" in general, John Carmack!).
From the couple hours I put into the game, what I realized was that the setting 'Earth' felt somewhat off-putting compared to the first game, that many of the tracks sounded way too tame for a game like Doom and that I've otherwise already played this game, as it plays exactly the same way, just with more levels now.
Don't get me wrong, if you enjoy boomer shooters and Doom in particular, you won't be looking for much else. Additionally, from what I was told, the modding scene is what makes the game so popular still, and having checked some of the user-made levels out, yeah, I can see why. Custom enemies, custom weapons, custom maps, custom music... You can probably spend the next few years solely playing this game and not run out of content.
I've got thousands of other games I would like to play, so I'm not gonna get into that rabbit hole, but you're invited to do so if that sounds interesting to you. Me personally, I'll gladly return to the series for the next game, but I'm hoping to see a little bit more innovation, if the story itself is irrelevant in these games.
(This is the 105th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
1996
(This is the 120th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
I've officially gotten into the Big Three of id Software IPs. First there was Wolfenstein 3D, which built on lesser known Catacomb 3D to be the introduction to the FPS genre for some. Then came Doom, which was the introduction to the FPS genre for many. After that came Quake on June 22nd, 1996, which brings the genre to a whole new level.
I enjoyed them all over the past 12 months or so, none more though than Quake. For what on the surface might look like another Doom sequel, Quake does so many new things that spice up the entire experience. It introduces more puzzles, platforming and way more creative level design to the genre. As someone who mainly plays id Software FPS games through this challenge, it also lets you view up and down with the mouse for the first time in their history, which puts the icing on the cake.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10
As per usual, the story is an afterthought for an id Software game. I mean, John Carmack famously said: "Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not important". So it's actually a positive surprise that you get as much as you do I suppose.
Earth is invaded by an enemy code-named Quake (Shub-Niggurath). You need to find 4 runes to eventually find your way to Shub-Niggurath and kill it. The difference to Doom is its Lovecraftian theme and that these alien beings can jump through portals I guess, but you're not gonna be playing the game for the lore, or be disappointed if you do.
GAMEPLAY | 17/20
90's id Software FPS gameplay at its finest? I'm sure Doom vs Quake has been debated endlessly online, though I'd say both are very fine games in their own right. What makes Quake better for me is that it simply improves upon nearly everything over Doom from an objective standpoint. More enemy variety? Check. 3D objects over sprites? Check. Much more interesting and clever level design? Check.
The weapons are slightly different in Quake, and the weapons that both games share are balanced somewhat differently (like the shotgun, which I felt is weaker in Quake). Types of enemies are a bit different, music and theme are not the same either. So taste will play a role in these cases. But just based on what id Software was able to do with Quake in 96 versus with Doom in 93 from a technical standpoint just makes Quake a smoother, more modern experience that obviously resonated with me more in 2024.
Similarly to Doom, you enter a stage and need to kill enemies on your way to the exit. You gotta find keys hidden throughout the level to open locked doors in the meantime as well. The difference here is that id could do so much more that they couldn't with Doom 3 years earlier.
You can jump, you can platform, rooms can now be placed below rooms (exploring a river under a bridge in the first level as an example), secrets are not just moaning at every wall texture anymore but rather placed more intuitively, enemies are not just ranged threats anymore but also in melee thanks to enemy types like dogs, fiends and those horrible spawns, as well as others that have both ranged AND melee attacks combined.
Simultaneously, the most powerful weapon in the game, at least that's how I perceived it, are the rocket and grenade launchers (at least in terms of weapons that you regularly get ammo for). The trick with them is that they do significant damage, but when you're (not even all that) close to the enemy when they detonate, you take a lot of damage yourself. This means it's a high risk / high reward situation against all these enemies that rush you in the close quarter environments that Quake has, adding a strategic element to battles. Do I go quick and easy with these launchers but risk my own health, or do I go back to the shotgun and take them down slowly while opening myself up to more punishment from the enemy?
Vertical camera movement being possible also adds a lot here, though from what I understand it wasn't as smooth on MS-DOS back in the day as it is now. From a today standpoint, it's a fantastic addition of course.
On the face of it, it looks like a full 3D Doom with a visual upgrade, but all these additions make the gameplay experience much more smooth. Personally, I prefer this over Doom for sure, though Doom is still worth playing today as well.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
Sound effects sound solid, and the soundtrack is very good. Quake goes for ambient music mainly, which I found interesting, but it adds a lot to the atmosphere. It's not music you can listen to outside of playing the game, but I can already hear you say "the music has to fit the game, not your Spotify playlist you nerd" and you're very correct about that indeed. In that regard, Quake's OST is very good as I mentioned.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
The jump to full 3D suits the game very well. Enemies look much scarier, environments much prettier and overall, levels and episodes are way more varied visually and thematically.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
The visuals and ambient music make for a great, dark atmosphere. The lighting effects for 96 are also pretty impressive and add to each level, especially whenever you see a dark room with a small, well-lit corner and a strong enemy standing right in there, staring at you menacingly. I'm still not sure whether to be disappointed by the reveal of Shub-Niggurath or impressed by what it means, but I think I'm going for the latter.
CONTENT | 10/10
Lots of content to indulge in here. A 7-8 hour main single player campaign over 4 episodes, multiple equally long expansion stories, plenty of weapons, power ups and enemy types to have fun with and I've read many times that Quake's multiplayer is supposedly fantastic, if you're interested in that. I'm sure it has an active mod community as well.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 9/10
Outside of very few individual levels, including the final one, the level design is just superb here. So many different environmental challenges, so much variety, so many secrets that can be found through simple exploration instead of wall spamming to unlock some random door and getting rewarded so many times for it makes for a grand time. Thematic differences in episodes adds to all this, really impressed.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 9/10
Sure, it's yet another FPS by id Software, but it more than sufficiently brings the genre forward in great ways. Vertical camera movement, jumping, platforming, more clever puzzles, more exploration, more differently acting enemies etc. If I played this when it came out, I'd feel like I'm playing something familiar like I would have wanted, as well as feeling like I'm playing the next gen version of it, which is all, if not more than I would ask for.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
In the sense of replaying the main story, there is some incentive to do so in terms of finding more secrets, going through levels quicker and going for higher difficulties. In an overall sense, more campaigns and multiplayer obviously make this game endlessly replayable for the right player.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 83/100
1996 continues in strong fashion with Quake. My expectations for this game were definitely met and then some, and it's probably my favorite old school FPS after Half-Life now. It's a shame to read up on all the issues during the development of this, as well as the fallout, but all the more impressive that this was the end product of all that anyway. Going back to the starting days of the FPS genre and experiencing the growth has definitely been very enjoyable and if you're a fan of the genre I would definitely recommend you to do the same to gain a new appreciation for it all.
I've officially gotten into the Big Three of id Software IPs. First there was Wolfenstein 3D, which built on lesser known Catacomb 3D to be the introduction to the FPS genre for some. Then came Doom, which was the introduction to the FPS genre for many. After that came Quake on June 22nd, 1996, which brings the genre to a whole new level.
I enjoyed them all over the past 12 months or so, none more though than Quake. For what on the surface might look like another Doom sequel, Quake does so many new things that spice up the entire experience. It introduces more puzzles, platforming and way more creative level design to the genre. As someone who mainly plays id Software FPS games through this challenge, it also lets you view up and down with the mouse for the first time in their history, which puts the icing on the cake.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10
As per usual, the story is an afterthought for an id Software game. I mean, John Carmack famously said: "Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not important". So it's actually a positive surprise that you get as much as you do I suppose.
Earth is invaded by an enemy code-named Quake (Shub-Niggurath). You need to find 4 runes to eventually find your way to Shub-Niggurath and kill it. The difference to Doom is its Lovecraftian theme and that these alien beings can jump through portals I guess, but you're not gonna be playing the game for the lore, or be disappointed if you do.
GAMEPLAY | 17/20
90's id Software FPS gameplay at its finest? I'm sure Doom vs Quake has been debated endlessly online, though I'd say both are very fine games in their own right. What makes Quake better for me is that it simply improves upon nearly everything over Doom from an objective standpoint. More enemy variety? Check. 3D objects over sprites? Check. Much more interesting and clever level design? Check.
The weapons are slightly different in Quake, and the weapons that both games share are balanced somewhat differently (like the shotgun, which I felt is weaker in Quake). Types of enemies are a bit different, music and theme are not the same either. So taste will play a role in these cases. But just based on what id Software was able to do with Quake in 96 versus with Doom in 93 from a technical standpoint just makes Quake a smoother, more modern experience that obviously resonated with me more in 2024.
Similarly to Doom, you enter a stage and need to kill enemies on your way to the exit. You gotta find keys hidden throughout the level to open locked doors in the meantime as well. The difference here is that id could do so much more that they couldn't with Doom 3 years earlier.
You can jump, you can platform, rooms can now be placed below rooms (exploring a river under a bridge in the first level as an example), secrets are not just moaning at every wall texture anymore but rather placed more intuitively, enemies are not just ranged threats anymore but also in melee thanks to enemy types like dogs, fiends and those horrible spawns, as well as others that have both ranged AND melee attacks combined.
Simultaneously, the most powerful weapon in the game, at least that's how I perceived it, are the rocket and grenade launchers (at least in terms of weapons that you regularly get ammo for). The trick with them is that they do significant damage, but when you're (not even all that) close to the enemy when they detonate, you take a lot of damage yourself. This means it's a high risk / high reward situation against all these enemies that rush you in the close quarter environments that Quake has, adding a strategic element to battles. Do I go quick and easy with these launchers but risk my own health, or do I go back to the shotgun and take them down slowly while opening myself up to more punishment from the enemy?
Vertical camera movement being possible also adds a lot here, though from what I understand it wasn't as smooth on MS-DOS back in the day as it is now. From a today standpoint, it's a fantastic addition of course.
On the face of it, it looks like a full 3D Doom with a visual upgrade, but all these additions make the gameplay experience much more smooth. Personally, I prefer this over Doom for sure, though Doom is still worth playing today as well.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
Sound effects sound solid, and the soundtrack is very good. Quake goes for ambient music mainly, which I found interesting, but it adds a lot to the atmosphere. It's not music you can listen to outside of playing the game, but I can already hear you say "the music has to fit the game, not your Spotify playlist you nerd" and you're very correct about that indeed. In that regard, Quake's OST is very good as I mentioned.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
The jump to full 3D suits the game very well. Enemies look much scarier, environments much prettier and overall, levels and episodes are way more varied visually and thematically.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
The visuals and ambient music make for a great, dark atmosphere. The lighting effects for 96 are also pretty impressive and add to each level, especially whenever you see a dark room with a small, well-lit corner and a strong enemy standing right in there, staring at you menacingly. I'm still not sure whether to be disappointed by the reveal of Shub-Niggurath or impressed by what it means, but I think I'm going for the latter.
CONTENT | 10/10
Lots of content to indulge in here. A 7-8 hour main single player campaign over 4 episodes, multiple equally long expansion stories, plenty of weapons, power ups and enemy types to have fun with and I've read many times that Quake's multiplayer is supposedly fantastic, if you're interested in that. I'm sure it has an active mod community as well.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 9/10
Outside of very few individual levels, including the final one, the level design is just superb here. So many different environmental challenges, so much variety, so many secrets that can be found through simple exploration instead of wall spamming to unlock some random door and getting rewarded so many times for it makes for a grand time. Thematic differences in episodes adds to all this, really impressed.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 9/10
Sure, it's yet another FPS by id Software, but it more than sufficiently brings the genre forward in great ways. Vertical camera movement, jumping, platforming, more clever puzzles, more exploration, more differently acting enemies etc. If I played this when it came out, I'd feel like I'm playing something familiar like I would have wanted, as well as feeling like I'm playing the next gen version of it, which is all, if not more than I would ask for.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
In the sense of replaying the main story, there is some incentive to do so in terms of finding more secrets, going through levels quicker and going for higher difficulties. In an overall sense, more campaigns and multiplayer obviously make this game endlessly replayable for the right player.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 83/100
1996 continues in strong fashion with Quake. My expectations for this game were definitely met and then some, and it's probably my favorite old school FPS after Half-Life now. It's a shame to read up on all the issues during the development of this, as well as the fallout, but all the more impressive that this was the end product of all that anyway. Going back to the starting days of the FPS genre and experiencing the growth has definitely been very enjoyable and if you're a fan of the genre I would definitely recommend you to do the same to gain a new appreciation for it all.
Elvira: Mistress of the Dark is an adventure game / RPG developed by Horror Soft and released by Accolade in March 1990 for the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64 and MS-DOS. It is named after the movie that released in 1988. A sequel was released in 1992, which already gives us a hint that this game must have done alright commercially.
And sure enough, the reception for this game was very good. On Wikipedia you won't find a score below 4 stars or 81% and it received the Computer Gaming World RPG of the Year Award for 1991. Not sure why it won a year later, but know that the competition wasn't light at the time.
In Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, we play, well, ourselves, called upon by Elvira to prevent her great-great grandmother Emelda's return from the dead. The game plays in a castle and has multiple elements. It is part point & click adventure with its typical verb-interface (open, unlock, look in), part action game with real time combat and part horror game as it uses a lot of gore and has some scary surprises in store overall.
If you don't know Elvira, as a non-American I didn't before today (though her style does look familiar), she is a character portrayed by Cassandra Peterson and was most popular in the 80s. She is most known for her gothic, cleavage-showing wardrobe and her edgy humor.
I checked out the movie before playing and thought it was a funny movie, though a lot of gore and horror is present in it, so I wasn't sure what to expect with this game. Sure enough, it's a lot of tense, creepy horror interspersed with Elvira's edgy humor.
In the game, you control your character by clicking forward, turn right, turn left or turn around. Whenever an enemy approaches, you start in attack mode and have to click LUNGE / HACK to strike. Depending on a variety of stats and some RNG, your strike hits or is blocked. If you hit, often you get a second attempt (again, depending on your stats vs the enemies) but if you are blocked, you go over to Defense Mode and have to BLOCK / PARRY.
But let's dive deeper into that whilst we go through each category in more detail.
STORYTELLING: You start the game by moving two steps forward before being arrested. In a humorous little scene, your character is in his dark prison cell as light shines in and the characters jaw DROPS. In comes Elvira, and she quips that you were sent to save her, but instead she is saving you. She brings her to her room in this castle, in which she is a prisoner. Her great great grandmother Emelda is about to awaken from the dead, so you have to help prevent that from happening.
Elvira then is found in a kitchen where she can mix spells for you, she can also climb into a little hole if you find her some light for that and there are a variety of other things that she does / expects you to do, but most of the time, she is not gonna be on screen. She is pretty much her witty self from the movies and TV shows and it works well.
Then there is the guy who arrested you, who seemed to be on drugs or something, and later an old woman who takes over the kitchen, meaning you have to "scare her off", otherwise Elvira will not mix any more spells for you.
Depending on how you stand on her edgy humor and a horror story like this one, this might work or it might not. It's not particularly advanced story telling and most of the game is spent in combat or exploration, with some environmental storytelling as well to be fair. There isn't that much here overall, but it's solid.
GAMEPLAY: Combat took a while to get used to, especially defense. Your enemy reaches back for a swing for a second before striking to your left or your right. From what I figured out, BLOCK or PARRY is assigned to one side during a specific fight, so when he attacks left, you BLOCK for example. However, I believe stats matter here too and sometimes, I would click it too early or too late and the swing would hit me anyway. Considering that you have 99 LIFE to start, you can lose it all rather quickly, especially because the tougher enemies can be found very early on. But the game has a real time combat system that was uncommon for the times and even if it isn't great, it's still unique.
This means that the entire game is filled with trial and error moments that you will die to dozens, if not hundreds of times. Make sure to save often.
The rest of the game is puzzle solving and exploration. For example, outside in the garden area, a man stands with a bird on his arm. When you get too close, the bird jumps into air and flies at you. Within this time, you have to figure out how to defeat it. Turns out, there is a very specific way to beat it, and if you don't have the item, a bolt, go and find it. The game doesn't indicate that you need it though, but this is one of the easier "puzzles" to solve. Problem is, your aim is terrible, so you can't hit it. What do you do now? The manual has a tip regarding that if you're stumped, but even though the answer is very "game-y", it kinda makes sense.
Many puzzles are like that. Often they do make sense and you'll get them eventually. The problem is, figuring out where item A is to use it with item B to get the wanted result can take a long time and will involve a lot of dying. Considering your life points are rather low, even saving a lot will still mean losing a lot of time to find this random item. Games back in the day did this a lot I notice to add an additional "challenge" for people looking to complete games, so you probably will either have to use a guide or look for hours and get lucky. Not the most fun.
To complete puzzles and for combat purposes, you have an inventory and can drag and drop items in and out of it. The manual says that you have a lot of space and shouldn't be shy when picking things up, however there are a lot of necessary items to collect and going over the invisible quota happened quicker than I would have liked. If you are over encumbered for too long, you become too tired and the game ends, so it's actually important to pay attention. Luckily you can simply drop items anywhere and then pick them up later. But there's a lot of inventory management without a lot of "reliable" management to be done.
Plus, there is a kitchen where Elvira mixes you spells, but once you visit and exit for the first time, the kitchen is blocked by an old lady and you need to find an item later to get her out. Until then, no spells. That means you shouldn't go there for a while, but if you don't, you gotta keep the ingredients in your inventory, which means you have to manage dropping them somewhere and getting back to them later. There is some strategy involved here, but to me it wasn't the most fun.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE: There is a little line by Elvira when she first talks to you, but it's not even linked to what she is actually saying, so it's not much more than a noise and not worth discussing.
The sound design is solid. From the sound of swords clashing to the sound of enemies shouting when being hit (though the sound is the same for both man and monster), not to mention the sound when you beat a sharp wooden stick into the chest of a vampire with a hammer, the sound design works well in line with the game's atmosphere.
The real highlight of this game though is its soundtrack (for the Amiga version). There are three or four tracks that you hear based on the location you are in and all set the mood perfectly. The track in the garden especially I could definitely listen to outside of the game. The music is creepy, unsettling truly does the most work to make this game feel like a horror game. I can recommend a listen.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN: Oh man, what can I say here? I think it's safe to say that this game is one of the bigger gore-fests of its time. The first character you meet that imprisons you for example has no pupils. Or the first time you are in combat, you realize that whenever the enemy's health depletes, cuts in his chest become visible. But that's the harmless stuff.
Because whenever you die, your character's demise is shown in very graphic ways. When the bird manages to kill you, it takes your eyeballs and you see your character in that particularly gruesome image. When a vampire bites you, you have bite marks in your head. When the old lady gets her hands on you, your head ends up swimming in a cooking pot. There are many more unique ways you die and even the most basic death is hard to look at, not to mention that your character is bloodied in every scene.
ATMOSPHERE: The grotesque design mixed with the tense music and the appearance of a bunch of in-theme characters make this one of the more atmospheric games of 1990.
CONTENT: If you know what to do, this game takes a bit over an hour. If you don't, you'll probably be busy closer to 10 if you use guides sparingly. 10 hours will be filled with a lot of reloading and guessing on which way to go in which order, in addition to inventory management, so a shorter length or a bit less complexity in the level design would have done this game good I think.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN: As I mentioned, the design is too complex at times and a lot of it has to do with the dungeon (here: castle) being small overall, but filled with enemies that are too strong at pretty much every second door, meaning you will go into the wrong direction or enter the wrong room on a very regular basis.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION: The amount of gore present here is certainly noticeable and I'm gonna say it's unlikely that there were many other games like this back in the day where you had so many different ways of seeing your character's death. If you enjoy horror games, this definitely pushed the scene in the right direction, but if you're in it for the RPG mechanics, it'll probably not be as welcomed.
REPLAYABILITY: Once you have finished the game, there is some replayability in approaching puzzles slightly differently or of course trying to beat your previous time (or limiting the amount of reloads), but generally the game is fairly linear in how to solve things.
PLAYABILITY: The game is perfectly playable.
OVERALL: The focus on puzzles in addition to the RPG mechanics present in this game make for awkward gameplay mix. If you're a fan of one genre but not so much of the other, this will probably be off-putting to both fronts. If you enjoy both genres however and don't mind experiencing how a mix between the two would work, and especially if you don't mind but rather welcome the horror elements in this game - which set a great atmosphere - you'll likely enjoy the game for what it's worth, however the complexity and the reliance on save states may be frustrating to you.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Leah Wesolowski for Computer Gaming World Issue 82 (May 91): "these images are simply not acceptable for two-year-olds (in reference to the gory scenes) No shit, Leah.
And sure enough, the reception for this game was very good. On Wikipedia you won't find a score below 4 stars or 81% and it received the Computer Gaming World RPG of the Year Award for 1991. Not sure why it won a year later, but know that the competition wasn't light at the time.
In Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, we play, well, ourselves, called upon by Elvira to prevent her great-great grandmother Emelda's return from the dead. The game plays in a castle and has multiple elements. It is part point & click adventure with its typical verb-interface (open, unlock, look in), part action game with real time combat and part horror game as it uses a lot of gore and has some scary surprises in store overall.
If you don't know Elvira, as a non-American I didn't before today (though her style does look familiar), she is a character portrayed by Cassandra Peterson and was most popular in the 80s. She is most known for her gothic, cleavage-showing wardrobe and her edgy humor.
I checked out the movie before playing and thought it was a funny movie, though a lot of gore and horror is present in it, so I wasn't sure what to expect with this game. Sure enough, it's a lot of tense, creepy horror interspersed with Elvira's edgy humor.
In the game, you control your character by clicking forward, turn right, turn left or turn around. Whenever an enemy approaches, you start in attack mode and have to click LUNGE / HACK to strike. Depending on a variety of stats and some RNG, your strike hits or is blocked. If you hit, often you get a second attempt (again, depending on your stats vs the enemies) but if you are blocked, you go over to Defense Mode and have to BLOCK / PARRY.
But let's dive deeper into that whilst we go through each category in more detail.
STORYTELLING: You start the game by moving two steps forward before being arrested. In a humorous little scene, your character is in his dark prison cell as light shines in and the characters jaw DROPS. In comes Elvira, and she quips that you were sent to save her, but instead she is saving you. She brings her to her room in this castle, in which she is a prisoner. Her great great grandmother Emelda is about to awaken from the dead, so you have to help prevent that from happening.
Elvira then is found in a kitchen where she can mix spells for you, she can also climb into a little hole if you find her some light for that and there are a variety of other things that she does / expects you to do, but most of the time, she is not gonna be on screen. She is pretty much her witty self from the movies and TV shows and it works well.
Then there is the guy who arrested you, who seemed to be on drugs or something, and later an old woman who takes over the kitchen, meaning you have to "scare her off", otherwise Elvira will not mix any more spells for you.
Depending on how you stand on her edgy humor and a horror story like this one, this might work or it might not. It's not particularly advanced story telling and most of the game is spent in combat or exploration, with some environmental storytelling as well to be fair. There isn't that much here overall, but it's solid.
GAMEPLAY: Combat took a while to get used to, especially defense. Your enemy reaches back for a swing for a second before striking to your left or your right. From what I figured out, BLOCK or PARRY is assigned to one side during a specific fight, so when he attacks left, you BLOCK for example. However, I believe stats matter here too and sometimes, I would click it too early or too late and the swing would hit me anyway. Considering that you have 99 LIFE to start, you can lose it all rather quickly, especially because the tougher enemies can be found very early on. But the game has a real time combat system that was uncommon for the times and even if it isn't great, it's still unique.
This means that the entire game is filled with trial and error moments that you will die to dozens, if not hundreds of times. Make sure to save often.
The rest of the game is puzzle solving and exploration. For example, outside in the garden area, a man stands with a bird on his arm. When you get too close, the bird jumps into air and flies at you. Within this time, you have to figure out how to defeat it. Turns out, there is a very specific way to beat it, and if you don't have the item, a bolt, go and find it. The game doesn't indicate that you need it though, but this is one of the easier "puzzles" to solve. Problem is, your aim is terrible, so you can't hit it. What do you do now? The manual has a tip regarding that if you're stumped, but even though the answer is very "game-y", it kinda makes sense.
Many puzzles are like that. Often they do make sense and you'll get them eventually. The problem is, figuring out where item A is to use it with item B to get the wanted result can take a long time and will involve a lot of dying. Considering your life points are rather low, even saving a lot will still mean losing a lot of time to find this random item. Games back in the day did this a lot I notice to add an additional "challenge" for people looking to complete games, so you probably will either have to use a guide or look for hours and get lucky. Not the most fun.
To complete puzzles and for combat purposes, you have an inventory and can drag and drop items in and out of it. The manual says that you have a lot of space and shouldn't be shy when picking things up, however there are a lot of necessary items to collect and going over the invisible quota happened quicker than I would have liked. If you are over encumbered for too long, you become too tired and the game ends, so it's actually important to pay attention. Luckily you can simply drop items anywhere and then pick them up later. But there's a lot of inventory management without a lot of "reliable" management to be done.
Plus, there is a kitchen where Elvira mixes you spells, but once you visit and exit for the first time, the kitchen is blocked by an old lady and you need to find an item later to get her out. Until then, no spells. That means you shouldn't go there for a while, but if you don't, you gotta keep the ingredients in your inventory, which means you have to manage dropping them somewhere and getting back to them later. There is some strategy involved here, but to me it wasn't the most fun.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE: There is a little line by Elvira when she first talks to you, but it's not even linked to what she is actually saying, so it's not much more than a noise and not worth discussing.
The sound design is solid. From the sound of swords clashing to the sound of enemies shouting when being hit (though the sound is the same for both man and monster), not to mention the sound when you beat a sharp wooden stick into the chest of a vampire with a hammer, the sound design works well in line with the game's atmosphere.
The real highlight of this game though is its soundtrack (for the Amiga version). There are three or four tracks that you hear based on the location you are in and all set the mood perfectly. The track in the garden especially I could definitely listen to outside of the game. The music is creepy, unsettling truly does the most work to make this game feel like a horror game. I can recommend a listen.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN: Oh man, what can I say here? I think it's safe to say that this game is one of the bigger gore-fests of its time. The first character you meet that imprisons you for example has no pupils. Or the first time you are in combat, you realize that whenever the enemy's health depletes, cuts in his chest become visible. But that's the harmless stuff.
Because whenever you die, your character's demise is shown in very graphic ways. When the bird manages to kill you, it takes your eyeballs and you see your character in that particularly gruesome image. When a vampire bites you, you have bite marks in your head. When the old lady gets her hands on you, your head ends up swimming in a cooking pot. There are many more unique ways you die and even the most basic death is hard to look at, not to mention that your character is bloodied in every scene.
ATMOSPHERE: The grotesque design mixed with the tense music and the appearance of a bunch of in-theme characters make this one of the more atmospheric games of 1990.
CONTENT: If you know what to do, this game takes a bit over an hour. If you don't, you'll probably be busy closer to 10 if you use guides sparingly. 10 hours will be filled with a lot of reloading and guessing on which way to go in which order, in addition to inventory management, so a shorter length or a bit less complexity in the level design would have done this game good I think.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN: As I mentioned, the design is too complex at times and a lot of it has to do with the dungeon (here: castle) being small overall, but filled with enemies that are too strong at pretty much every second door, meaning you will go into the wrong direction or enter the wrong room on a very regular basis.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION: The amount of gore present here is certainly noticeable and I'm gonna say it's unlikely that there were many other games like this back in the day where you had so many different ways of seeing your character's death. If you enjoy horror games, this definitely pushed the scene in the right direction, but if you're in it for the RPG mechanics, it'll probably not be as welcomed.
REPLAYABILITY: Once you have finished the game, there is some replayability in approaching puzzles slightly differently or of course trying to beat your previous time (or limiting the amount of reloads), but generally the game is fairly linear in how to solve things.
PLAYABILITY: The game is perfectly playable.
OVERALL: The focus on puzzles in addition to the RPG mechanics present in this game make for awkward gameplay mix. If you're a fan of one genre but not so much of the other, this will probably be off-putting to both fronts. If you enjoy both genres however and don't mind experiencing how a mix between the two would work, and especially if you don't mind but rather welcome the horror elements in this game - which set a great atmosphere - you'll likely enjoy the game for what it's worth, however the complexity and the reliance on save states may be frustrating to you.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Leah Wesolowski for Computer Gaming World Issue 82 (May 91): "these images are simply not acceptable for two-year-olds (in reference to the gory scenes) No shit, Leah.