fe17
(This is the 59th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
Sequel to Sunsoft's first NES Batman game called 'Batman: The Video Game', Batman: Return of the Joker, released on December 20th, 1991, is an Action / Platformer game. The game has achieved some interesting feats, like the Joker portrayal here being called the 3rd best ever by IGN in 2019, or 'The Gamer' claiming this to be the best-looking game for the NES. Is it a fun game to play though? I go over everything in my review.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10
You get the story explained in the manual. Someone has stolen precious metals in Gotham City. Batman links this to the Joker. Now you must take on his henchmen to reach Joker's hideout.
The intro to the game shows three scrolling images. First, Joker leaning forward with a laugh on his face and "HaHaHa" written all over the screen. Second, a bat signal being sent, indicating the police asking Batman for help. Third, Batman, striking a pose and looking to the right, seemingly aware of the 2D nature of the game he is trapped in. Red balls scroll vertically behind him on a purple background. What are those red balls and why are they there?
Anyway, this is pretty much it. Is the portayal of Joker worthy of the #3 position given to it by IGN? You decide. I just gave you one third of his appearance in the entire game. He appears as a boss twice late-game, both in weird, futuristic devices, one where he uses some flying object and one where he is inside a wall-mounted robot type thing. Don't know a lot about the Joker, but haven't seen him use anything like this in any movies. Maybe in the comics? Anyway, what I'm saying is, if this is truly the 3rd (!) best rendition of the Joker in the video game medium, that's kind of sad, though I'd disagree, since the Joker has next to zero charm and pretty much is as replacable as an end boss as it gets.
GAMEPLAY | 11/20
Batman is equipped with a wrist projector, which basically shoots energy projectiles. Odd choice for Batman, but 1990's 'Batman: The Video Game' for the Game Boy had him equipped with a simple gun, so I guess this game wins.
There are three sorts of stages and substages. One where you do some platforming on horizontally scrolling stages and shoot enemies. One where you are in the same 2D perspective but are flying and need to shoot enemies in a shoot 'em up type stage. Finally, one where you fight bosses, where you get an individual health pool of 80.000.
The Sega Genesis Batman game from 1990 has more variety and is overall more enjoyable, makes sense considering it's a 16-bit game with more capabilities, but this Batman game also offers more variety than you usually see in these types of games, where all stages are just simple platforming and then boss fights where you carry your health into them.
The problem with this game is that it feels too by-the-numbers anyway. Due to the high detail in backgrounds and high processing power usage graphically, levels aren't all too populated with enemies, and those that do pop-up hit you a split-second after you see them. Gotta increase the difficulty somewhere I guess, and if it's not in enemy density, it's in unfair cheap shots. There are many enemies designed like this, but one particularly nasty part is where bombs drop from the heavens at specific points. There is no tell for these, and the only way to dodge them is to literally take a step forward and then run back, and do this over and over, unless you play enough to have the level memorized.
The boss fights are enjoyable for the most part, though poorly designed in a way because of the health allocation. Both you and the boss gets a boss-fight specific amount of health. You get 80k, the bosses start at about 20k and max out at over 100k with the final boss. Since this is the case, the first couple bosses can literally be spammed with attacks and all their hits can be tanked, since you will outpace them in damage easily. Conversely, later bosses, especially the first Joker fight, hit you with tons of attacks constantly which do 4 or 6k damage each, while each attack you make per attack window you get for each attack pattern is less than that, so there is an actual challenge there to avoid hits. I had the impression that the Joker fights in particular where very fair in their attack patterns and you could actually learn them easily, though mastering them without getting hit from time to time appeared tough. Basically, a solid challenge.
For your own attacks, you can collect differently lettered capsules to change your attacking style, though a criss-cross attacking weapon felt much more useful than a simple, frontward one-at-a-time projectile shooting attack, for obvious reasons.
Overall, this felt quite basic and forgettable, though not particularly annoying or frustrating.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 8/10
No voice acting. Fantastic, albeit very short title screen music. Rest of the track ranges from good to very good as well, with Sunsoft proving that they know how to make use of the NES' sound capabilities. It doesn't sound particularly like Batman but rather like a Sunsoft NES Action game soundtrack, but that'll do for sure.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
When it is said that this game might have the best NES graphics, I can't say I disagree when it comes to putting it into the upper echelon. Great graphics, pretty good sprite work and a ton of detail in the background.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 5/10
You don't ever feel like you're playing a Batman game but rather a simple NES Action game. That's more than fine of course, but it doesn't make for much atmosphere. The point where you feel it the most is in the title screen, when the opening track plays followed by the intro with the slideshow.
CONTENT | 5/10
There are 7 stages and I believe 3 sub-stages per stage, with 5 of these containing a boss fight at the end. As I explained, there are 3 types of levels in this game (platforming, shoot 'em up and boss fights), but it doesn't stand out in any particular way and is done very quickly as well. Don't think there are secrets to find, the enemy variety is low and most boss fights are push-overs due to the health system for them.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
The design of the levels is not unusual for early 90's platformers. This game suffers from its graphics, as this pretty much forces the game to stick with fewer enemies on-screen at the same time, which in turn has made the devs add difficulty by making the present enemies unfair in how they appear on screen and damage you a couple frames later. I did like how the game added little shoot 'em up stages to add variety, even if it only happened twice, and I didn't mind the later boss fights, which were more than doable after figuring out the boss patterns.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 4/10
The most innovative part about this game will be the fact that you get a separate health pool for boss fights. And apart from the great graphics, nothing else makes this game really stand out.
REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
No motivation given to replay this game after having beaten it the first time, not even a high score system to try to beat your previous one.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Worked well at all times.
OVERALL | 54/100
This is your pretty average NES platformer experience. The above-average graphics are really the only difference-maker here, but apart from that, this plays formulaic, and that formula has gotten pretty stale by now.
Sequel to Sunsoft's first NES Batman game called 'Batman: The Video Game', Batman: Return of the Joker, released on December 20th, 1991, is an Action / Platformer game. The game has achieved some interesting feats, like the Joker portrayal here being called the 3rd best ever by IGN in 2019, or 'The Gamer' claiming this to be the best-looking game for the NES. Is it a fun game to play though? I go over everything in my review.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10
You get the story explained in the manual. Someone has stolen precious metals in Gotham City. Batman links this to the Joker. Now you must take on his henchmen to reach Joker's hideout.
The intro to the game shows three scrolling images. First, Joker leaning forward with a laugh on his face and "HaHaHa" written all over the screen. Second, a bat signal being sent, indicating the police asking Batman for help. Third, Batman, striking a pose and looking to the right, seemingly aware of the 2D nature of the game he is trapped in. Red balls scroll vertically behind him on a purple background. What are those red balls and why are they there?
Anyway, this is pretty much it. Is the portayal of Joker worthy of the #3 position given to it by IGN? You decide. I just gave you one third of his appearance in the entire game. He appears as a boss twice late-game, both in weird, futuristic devices, one where he uses some flying object and one where he is inside a wall-mounted robot type thing. Don't know a lot about the Joker, but haven't seen him use anything like this in any movies. Maybe in the comics? Anyway, what I'm saying is, if this is truly the 3rd (!) best rendition of the Joker in the video game medium, that's kind of sad, though I'd disagree, since the Joker has next to zero charm and pretty much is as replacable as an end boss as it gets.
GAMEPLAY | 11/20
Batman is equipped with a wrist projector, which basically shoots energy projectiles. Odd choice for Batman, but 1990's 'Batman: The Video Game' for the Game Boy had him equipped with a simple gun, so I guess this game wins.
There are three sorts of stages and substages. One where you do some platforming on horizontally scrolling stages and shoot enemies. One where you are in the same 2D perspective but are flying and need to shoot enemies in a shoot 'em up type stage. Finally, one where you fight bosses, where you get an individual health pool of 80.000.
The Sega Genesis Batman game from 1990 has more variety and is overall more enjoyable, makes sense considering it's a 16-bit game with more capabilities, but this Batman game also offers more variety than you usually see in these types of games, where all stages are just simple platforming and then boss fights where you carry your health into them.
The problem with this game is that it feels too by-the-numbers anyway. Due to the high detail in backgrounds and high processing power usage graphically, levels aren't all too populated with enemies, and those that do pop-up hit you a split-second after you see them. Gotta increase the difficulty somewhere I guess, and if it's not in enemy density, it's in unfair cheap shots. There are many enemies designed like this, but one particularly nasty part is where bombs drop from the heavens at specific points. There is no tell for these, and the only way to dodge them is to literally take a step forward and then run back, and do this over and over, unless you play enough to have the level memorized.
The boss fights are enjoyable for the most part, though poorly designed in a way because of the health allocation. Both you and the boss gets a boss-fight specific amount of health. You get 80k, the bosses start at about 20k and max out at over 100k with the final boss. Since this is the case, the first couple bosses can literally be spammed with attacks and all their hits can be tanked, since you will outpace them in damage easily. Conversely, later bosses, especially the first Joker fight, hit you with tons of attacks constantly which do 4 or 6k damage each, while each attack you make per attack window you get for each attack pattern is less than that, so there is an actual challenge there to avoid hits. I had the impression that the Joker fights in particular where very fair in their attack patterns and you could actually learn them easily, though mastering them without getting hit from time to time appeared tough. Basically, a solid challenge.
For your own attacks, you can collect differently lettered capsules to change your attacking style, though a criss-cross attacking weapon felt much more useful than a simple, frontward one-at-a-time projectile shooting attack, for obvious reasons.
Overall, this felt quite basic and forgettable, though not particularly annoying or frustrating.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 8/10
No voice acting. Fantastic, albeit very short title screen music. Rest of the track ranges from good to very good as well, with Sunsoft proving that they know how to make use of the NES' sound capabilities. It doesn't sound particularly like Batman but rather like a Sunsoft NES Action game soundtrack, but that'll do for sure.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
When it is said that this game might have the best NES graphics, I can't say I disagree when it comes to putting it into the upper echelon. Great graphics, pretty good sprite work and a ton of detail in the background.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 5/10
You don't ever feel like you're playing a Batman game but rather a simple NES Action game. That's more than fine of course, but it doesn't make for much atmosphere. The point where you feel it the most is in the title screen, when the opening track plays followed by the intro with the slideshow.
CONTENT | 5/10
There are 7 stages and I believe 3 sub-stages per stage, with 5 of these containing a boss fight at the end. As I explained, there are 3 types of levels in this game (platforming, shoot 'em up and boss fights), but it doesn't stand out in any particular way and is done very quickly as well. Don't think there are secrets to find, the enemy variety is low and most boss fights are push-overs due to the health system for them.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
The design of the levels is not unusual for early 90's platformers. This game suffers from its graphics, as this pretty much forces the game to stick with fewer enemies on-screen at the same time, which in turn has made the devs add difficulty by making the present enemies unfair in how they appear on screen and damage you a couple frames later. I did like how the game added little shoot 'em up stages to add variety, even if it only happened twice, and I didn't mind the later boss fights, which were more than doable after figuring out the boss patterns.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 4/10
The most innovative part about this game will be the fact that you get a separate health pool for boss fights. And apart from the great graphics, nothing else makes this game really stand out.
REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
No motivation given to replay this game after having beaten it the first time, not even a high score system to try to beat your previous one.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Worked well at all times.
OVERALL | 54/100
This is your pretty average NES platformer experience. The above-average graphics are really the only difference-maker here, but apart from that, this plays formulaic, and that formula has gotten pretty stale by now.
1993
(This is the 88th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
After going my entire life without having played a singular Sonic title, I have now played Sonic the Hedgehog 1, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and now have even beaten my first ever Sonic game, Sonic CD. Sonic CD initially released on September 23, 1993 for the, you guessed it (I think), Sega CD. It got ported over to Windows and later to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but it is also available in its original form through the Sonic Gems Collection for the Game Cube and PlayStation 2 (which is where I played this) and in remastered shape as part of the Sonic Origins compilation that released in 2022.
Sonic CD was developed to showcase the capabilities of the Sega CD add-on for the Sega Genesis. Sonic CD would end up being the best-selling game for the add-on, selling over 1.5 million copies. It was supposed to be an enhanced port of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but developed into its own thing over time, giving us the debut of Metal Sonic and Amy Rose, as well as the "time warp" feature.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10
A short story in the manual explains the setting for this game. Sonic has a conversation with a "Princess Sally", a character I never heard of and one that apparently never appears in any Sonic game, but is rather introduced in comic books and animated series starting in 1993. She asks Sonic where he is going. Sonic would goo to Never Lake to visit 'the Little Planet'. "The one with the special stones that alter time", Sally says. Sonic mentions how the Little Planet appears of Never Lake on the last month of every year, so Sonic will check it out.
When they arrive there, something is off, as tall trees and bright flowers are replaced with nothingness. As they try to understand what is going on, Princess Sally is kidnapped by Dr. Robotnik and his newest creation, 'Metal Sonic'. Dr. Robotnik is looking to capture all time stones to manipulate time and take over the world and as per usual, it's Sonic's job to stop him.
So, in this game, there are two endings, a good and a bad ending. Each level you visit has three zones and the first two zones can be altered by going to its past and future to destroy 'transporters'. Depending on whether you do this or not, the third zone will either be a "good future" or a "bad future", which is indicated by a change in the song and in scenery, with good futures set in thriving nature and bad futures set in a metallic, dystopian style. If you turn all 3rd zones into good futures, you unlock the good ending. Otherwise, you get the bad ending, like me.
There isn't much 'story' in this game beyond this, but I was surprised with the amount of effort that went into making three distinct versions of each zone of a level and giving us two separate endings as a result. The story is not told through words at any point, but the scenery and the change of tone in the soundtrack do tell a story of their own which represents the actions you take, or don't, which is pretty nice.
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
Sonic CD plays pretty much the same as Sonic 1 and 2, though due to the small features added in 2, I'd say it plays like the middle-version between the two based on the features it has. There isn't really much I can say here that I haven't already said about the first two Sonic games. If you have played those already, you will know exactly what to expect. If you haven't, you probably know how Sonic games look like anyway. As always, you run through levels with three distinct zones, fight a boss on the 3rd zone and try to reach the finish line in large levels with many open and secret areas to access to make progress.
The unique aspect of this game is the Time Warp feature. You can travel to the Past and Future of a zone to destroy certain transporters to create a Good Future in each level's Zone 3 to unlock the Good Ending at the end. This is done by running through a sign saying "Past" or "Future" and then holding a certain speed will running to initiate a "warp". This is certainly a unique feature and while I didn't get Good Futures in most levels, this offers a nice additional challenge for everyone looking to do as much as possible on each zone.
Another way to get Good Futures on every third zone is to collect all "Time Stones", which replace Chaos Emeralds in this game. This means there is no Super Sonic in this game. I haven't been good enough to ever get him in Sonic 1 and 2, so it's not a big loss for me personally, but worth pointing out. To get all Time Stones, you need to finish levels with more than 50 rings each, which lets you enter a special stage where you have to destroy six UFOs within a certain time limit.
While I enjoyed all of this for the most part, I have the same issues with this game that I had with Sonic 1 and 2, and probably on an even bigger scale here. This game focuses more on exploration within given levels than the other two Sonic games on the Genesis, which means it has a bigger focus on having you slow down and look for different paths on each zone. While exploring paths is optional, this does translate over to each level as a whole, as they are pretty massive in this game and can get pretty complex. This plays into one of my complaints with these Sonic games that I mentioned previously.
Sonic has super-speed as his special ability. Unfortunately, a lot of the times this ability plays like its more of a tease, as there are a lot of obstacles that stop you from gaining top speed for more than a couple seconds. While this makes sense from a game design perspective to add challenge to these games, I feel like Sonic's speed offers more disadvantage than fun to me due to this. Whenever I'm on a straight path, I'm thinking I'll take off and get some top speed going, only to have an enemy pop into screen out of nowhere and making it impossible for me to avoid it in time, which leads me into a 2-second animation of hitting the enemy and losing all my rings. Same goes for gaining speed to fly into the air, which too many times leads to me landing on a platform with an enemy on it, which I fall on top of to lose my rings again. Simultaneously, these games have a lot of areas that force you to pick up momentum near a slope to get up there, which takes a couple seconds each time, there are non-stop obstacles which you run into that stop you dead in your track and there isn't a lot of platforming challenge for me here other than exploring and trying to avoid damaging situations that your speeds puts you into. This leads me to take it slower sometimes, which makes me want to play a Mario game instead.
I understand I'm possibly odd for having this type of criticism, but I think it has more to do with me not being the biggest fan of how these Sonic games are designed rather than me thinking that it is actually objectively bad design. Though I do have to say, running at Sonic's speeds to have enemies appear that give you 0.2 seconds to react is not something that I think is that good.
That said, I do appreciate how large the levels are and how, no matter where you go, there is (almost) always a way forward to the finish line. And finally, while I have some subjective complaints, I can conclude this by saying that if you enjoy Sonic's 2D platforming gameplay, you will enjoy Sonic CD in that aspect as well.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
Well do I have stuff to explain here. Sonic CD is in a pretty unusual spot because it does not have one, but two soundtrakcs. The first soundtrack is used in Japan and PAL regions, while the second is exclusively to NA. Why? I don't know if there is an official reason, but I think it is assumed that the American marketing team at Sega thought that American gamers wouldn't react well to the original soundtrack, which is why they composed their own.
Funnily enough, there are many people who heavily dislike the NA version of the soundtrack and who love the JP version. Not just retrospectively, but even at and around the time of its release. I didn't know about the two separate soundtracks, so I only originally rated this game based on the American soundtrack.
Listening to it, I was pretty surprised at its tone. Instead of the usual up-beat sounds of the other Sonic games, this one sounded a lot more ominous and like it wanted to accentuate the danger that Dr. Robotnik was presenting. It sounded more mature I suppose, or at least as if it was intended for more mature audiences than you would think played this game in the majority. For the most part, I didn't actually mind this. There are plenty of tracks here that are enjoyable to listen to and create a pretty nice atmosphere you can actually chill to. Then there are downright scary ones that I can't believe made it into the game, like the Game Over track and especially the track used for boss fights. I can't imagine being a ten year old back in 1993 playing this for the first time.
After playing this game, I listened to the OST again on YouTube like I always do, and while reading the comments discovered that there was a Japanese version as well. Listening to it, you can immediately tell how much more upbeat it is. Each track is different to the US version, I don't think there are any that were re-used, and the tone of the boss fight most notably is very different. Do I think each track in the Japanese version is better? Actually, I don't. While the lows of the US soundtrack are truly god awful, it's still a good soundtrack overall, and I don't mind that the composers went for more atmosphere than funk at times. I think I prefere the Japanese version overall however.
At the end of the day, I think it's cool that there are two full soundtracks that Sonic fans got with one game, though if you are one of the kids who got traumatized back in the day, you probably feel differently.
There are some pretty iconic themes here as well, such as Sonic Boom and the Japanese Special Stage Theme. Finally, since I haven't mentioned it yet, the Past, Present and Future versions of each zone have their own tracks, which means the total length of both OSTs is absurdly long for this game.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
Sonic CD is not a huge graphical jump over Sonic the Hedgehog 2 despite being released for the Sega CD add-on, which I would have expected to offer a little bit more visually. That said, Sonic CD is one of the better looking games for its time regardless.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 8/10
Atmospherically, the game suits a Sonic game quite well based on its visuals. What this game does differently though is lean away from the upbeat Sonic style at times to give you a more dystopian glance at the Sonic universe through its bad futures. This is still done in a sort-of funky way through Japan's soundtrack, but you're placed into a downright horrific horror moment through the US soundtrack at times.
CONTENT | 8/10
The game doesn't take too long to beat. It has 7 levels and pretty easy boss fights. Each level is pretty massive though, so you can pad your playtime easily by exploring them more thoroughly. On top of that, looking for those transporters in past and future parts of the zones will add a lot of playtime on top of that, and these versions of the zones also offer different environments on top of that, so the sheer amount of content in this game is pretty wild for a video game from 1993.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 7/10
As mentioned, levels are divided into 3 zones and the first two zones are designed three times for the past, present and future, which means there is absurd amounts of work that went into them here. On top of that, levels are truly massive, with tons of paths to explore that will make multiple playthroughs feel fresher than is usual for platformers and even for the first 16-bit Sonic games. Levels are also themed distinctly as always, though I wasn't blown away by any theme here like I was in Sonic 2 and some designs were also copied over from that game. Also, does every first level in a Sonic game start in a green environment? Just noticed that.
Levels being massive is great, but visually, the sheer amount of stuff going on in each visually is just overwhelming sometimes and makes for a messy presentation at times. It's also easy to get lost later on, which I thought was an odd wrinkle to put into a game like this.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
The Sonic team did a great job of keeping this Sonic game feel fresh despite the fact that it's another 2D platforming adventure. The Time Warp mechanic is not only unique to Sonic, but a unique mechanic in general, which I enjoyed to dabble with and which offer a lot of optional ways to tackle this game for each player.
REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
A ton of replay value here because of the 3 versions per zone that you can explore to your heart's content, because of the Time Stones you can collect optionally and because of two different endings. I don't count the two separate soundtracks in my ranking but for those interested, you can play the game's JP/PAL and NA versions as well to get a different feel each time while playing through the otherwise same levels.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times, though there can be some slowdown here and there depending on which version you play.
OVERALL | 74/100
I've heard mixed opinions about this game online, but I think this is my favorite Sonic game out of the three that released on the Genesis / Sega CD so far. The Time Warp mechanic definitely spices things up, the moment you meet Metal Sonic was pretty scary and memorable, the soundtrack defied expectations for both good and bad reasons and levels are massive, which made for a pretty good Sonic game overall in my opinion.
After going my entire life without having played a singular Sonic title, I have now played Sonic the Hedgehog 1, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and now have even beaten my first ever Sonic game, Sonic CD. Sonic CD initially released on September 23, 1993 for the, you guessed it (I think), Sega CD. It got ported over to Windows and later to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but it is also available in its original form through the Sonic Gems Collection for the Game Cube and PlayStation 2 (which is where I played this) and in remastered shape as part of the Sonic Origins compilation that released in 2022.
Sonic CD was developed to showcase the capabilities of the Sega CD add-on for the Sega Genesis. Sonic CD would end up being the best-selling game for the add-on, selling over 1.5 million copies. It was supposed to be an enhanced port of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but developed into its own thing over time, giving us the debut of Metal Sonic and Amy Rose, as well as the "time warp" feature.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10
A short story in the manual explains the setting for this game. Sonic has a conversation with a "Princess Sally", a character I never heard of and one that apparently never appears in any Sonic game, but is rather introduced in comic books and animated series starting in 1993. She asks Sonic where he is going. Sonic would goo to Never Lake to visit 'the Little Planet'. "The one with the special stones that alter time", Sally says. Sonic mentions how the Little Planet appears of Never Lake on the last month of every year, so Sonic will check it out.
When they arrive there, something is off, as tall trees and bright flowers are replaced with nothingness. As they try to understand what is going on, Princess Sally is kidnapped by Dr. Robotnik and his newest creation, 'Metal Sonic'. Dr. Robotnik is looking to capture all time stones to manipulate time and take over the world and as per usual, it's Sonic's job to stop him.
So, in this game, there are two endings, a good and a bad ending. Each level you visit has three zones and the first two zones can be altered by going to its past and future to destroy 'transporters'. Depending on whether you do this or not, the third zone will either be a "good future" or a "bad future", which is indicated by a change in the song and in scenery, with good futures set in thriving nature and bad futures set in a metallic, dystopian style. If you turn all 3rd zones into good futures, you unlock the good ending. Otherwise, you get the bad ending, like me.
There isn't much 'story' in this game beyond this, but I was surprised with the amount of effort that went into making three distinct versions of each zone of a level and giving us two separate endings as a result. The story is not told through words at any point, but the scenery and the change of tone in the soundtrack do tell a story of their own which represents the actions you take, or don't, which is pretty nice.
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
Sonic CD plays pretty much the same as Sonic 1 and 2, though due to the small features added in 2, I'd say it plays like the middle-version between the two based on the features it has. There isn't really much I can say here that I haven't already said about the first two Sonic games. If you have played those already, you will know exactly what to expect. If you haven't, you probably know how Sonic games look like anyway. As always, you run through levels with three distinct zones, fight a boss on the 3rd zone and try to reach the finish line in large levels with many open and secret areas to access to make progress.
The unique aspect of this game is the Time Warp feature. You can travel to the Past and Future of a zone to destroy certain transporters to create a Good Future in each level's Zone 3 to unlock the Good Ending at the end. This is done by running through a sign saying "Past" or "Future" and then holding a certain speed will running to initiate a "warp". This is certainly a unique feature and while I didn't get Good Futures in most levels, this offers a nice additional challenge for everyone looking to do as much as possible on each zone.
Another way to get Good Futures on every third zone is to collect all "Time Stones", which replace Chaos Emeralds in this game. This means there is no Super Sonic in this game. I haven't been good enough to ever get him in Sonic 1 and 2, so it's not a big loss for me personally, but worth pointing out. To get all Time Stones, you need to finish levels with more than 50 rings each, which lets you enter a special stage where you have to destroy six UFOs within a certain time limit.
While I enjoyed all of this for the most part, I have the same issues with this game that I had with Sonic 1 and 2, and probably on an even bigger scale here. This game focuses more on exploration within given levels than the other two Sonic games on the Genesis, which means it has a bigger focus on having you slow down and look for different paths on each zone. While exploring paths is optional, this does translate over to each level as a whole, as they are pretty massive in this game and can get pretty complex. This plays into one of my complaints with these Sonic games that I mentioned previously.
Sonic has super-speed as his special ability. Unfortunately, a lot of the times this ability plays like its more of a tease, as there are a lot of obstacles that stop you from gaining top speed for more than a couple seconds. While this makes sense from a game design perspective to add challenge to these games, I feel like Sonic's speed offers more disadvantage than fun to me due to this. Whenever I'm on a straight path, I'm thinking I'll take off and get some top speed going, only to have an enemy pop into screen out of nowhere and making it impossible for me to avoid it in time, which leads me into a 2-second animation of hitting the enemy and losing all my rings. Same goes for gaining speed to fly into the air, which too many times leads to me landing on a platform with an enemy on it, which I fall on top of to lose my rings again. Simultaneously, these games have a lot of areas that force you to pick up momentum near a slope to get up there, which takes a couple seconds each time, there are non-stop obstacles which you run into that stop you dead in your track and there isn't a lot of platforming challenge for me here other than exploring and trying to avoid damaging situations that your speeds puts you into. This leads me to take it slower sometimes, which makes me want to play a Mario game instead.
I understand I'm possibly odd for having this type of criticism, but I think it has more to do with me not being the biggest fan of how these Sonic games are designed rather than me thinking that it is actually objectively bad design. Though I do have to say, running at Sonic's speeds to have enemies appear that give you 0.2 seconds to react is not something that I think is that good.
That said, I do appreciate how large the levels are and how, no matter where you go, there is (almost) always a way forward to the finish line. And finally, while I have some subjective complaints, I can conclude this by saying that if you enjoy Sonic's 2D platforming gameplay, you will enjoy Sonic CD in that aspect as well.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
Well do I have stuff to explain here. Sonic CD is in a pretty unusual spot because it does not have one, but two soundtrakcs. The first soundtrack is used in Japan and PAL regions, while the second is exclusively to NA. Why? I don't know if there is an official reason, but I think it is assumed that the American marketing team at Sega thought that American gamers wouldn't react well to the original soundtrack, which is why they composed their own.
Funnily enough, there are many people who heavily dislike the NA version of the soundtrack and who love the JP version. Not just retrospectively, but even at and around the time of its release. I didn't know about the two separate soundtracks, so I only originally rated this game based on the American soundtrack.
Listening to it, I was pretty surprised at its tone. Instead of the usual up-beat sounds of the other Sonic games, this one sounded a lot more ominous and like it wanted to accentuate the danger that Dr. Robotnik was presenting. It sounded more mature I suppose, or at least as if it was intended for more mature audiences than you would think played this game in the majority. For the most part, I didn't actually mind this. There are plenty of tracks here that are enjoyable to listen to and create a pretty nice atmosphere you can actually chill to. Then there are downright scary ones that I can't believe made it into the game, like the Game Over track and especially the track used for boss fights. I can't imagine being a ten year old back in 1993 playing this for the first time.
After playing this game, I listened to the OST again on YouTube like I always do, and while reading the comments discovered that there was a Japanese version as well. Listening to it, you can immediately tell how much more upbeat it is. Each track is different to the US version, I don't think there are any that were re-used, and the tone of the boss fight most notably is very different. Do I think each track in the Japanese version is better? Actually, I don't. While the lows of the US soundtrack are truly god awful, it's still a good soundtrack overall, and I don't mind that the composers went for more atmosphere than funk at times. I think I prefere the Japanese version overall however.
At the end of the day, I think it's cool that there are two full soundtracks that Sonic fans got with one game, though if you are one of the kids who got traumatized back in the day, you probably feel differently.
There are some pretty iconic themes here as well, such as Sonic Boom and the Japanese Special Stage Theme. Finally, since I haven't mentioned it yet, the Past, Present and Future versions of each zone have their own tracks, which means the total length of both OSTs is absurdly long for this game.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
Sonic CD is not a huge graphical jump over Sonic the Hedgehog 2 despite being released for the Sega CD add-on, which I would have expected to offer a little bit more visually. That said, Sonic CD is one of the better looking games for its time regardless.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 8/10
Atmospherically, the game suits a Sonic game quite well based on its visuals. What this game does differently though is lean away from the upbeat Sonic style at times to give you a more dystopian glance at the Sonic universe through its bad futures. This is still done in a sort-of funky way through Japan's soundtrack, but you're placed into a downright horrific horror moment through the US soundtrack at times.
CONTENT | 8/10
The game doesn't take too long to beat. It has 7 levels and pretty easy boss fights. Each level is pretty massive though, so you can pad your playtime easily by exploring them more thoroughly. On top of that, looking for those transporters in past and future parts of the zones will add a lot of playtime on top of that, and these versions of the zones also offer different environments on top of that, so the sheer amount of content in this game is pretty wild for a video game from 1993.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 7/10
As mentioned, levels are divided into 3 zones and the first two zones are designed three times for the past, present and future, which means there is absurd amounts of work that went into them here. On top of that, levels are truly massive, with tons of paths to explore that will make multiple playthroughs feel fresher than is usual for platformers and even for the first 16-bit Sonic games. Levels are also themed distinctly as always, though I wasn't blown away by any theme here like I was in Sonic 2 and some designs were also copied over from that game. Also, does every first level in a Sonic game start in a green environment? Just noticed that.
Levels being massive is great, but visually, the sheer amount of stuff going on in each visually is just overwhelming sometimes and makes for a messy presentation at times. It's also easy to get lost later on, which I thought was an odd wrinkle to put into a game like this.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
The Sonic team did a great job of keeping this Sonic game feel fresh despite the fact that it's another 2D platforming adventure. The Time Warp mechanic is not only unique to Sonic, but a unique mechanic in general, which I enjoyed to dabble with and which offer a lot of optional ways to tackle this game for each player.
REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
A ton of replay value here because of the 3 versions per zone that you can explore to your heart's content, because of the Time Stones you can collect optionally and because of two different endings. I don't count the two separate soundtracks in my ranking but for those interested, you can play the game's JP/PAL and NA versions as well to get a different feel each time while playing through the otherwise same levels.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times, though there can be some slowdown here and there depending on which version you play.
OVERALL | 74/100
I've heard mixed opinions about this game online, but I think this is my favorite Sonic game out of the three that released on the Genesis / Sega CD so far. The Time Warp mechanic definitely spices things up, the moment you meet Metal Sonic was pretty scary and memorable, the soundtrack defied expectations for both good and bad reasons and levels are massive, which made for a pretty good Sonic game overall in my opinion.
1992
As for a lot of gamers, I am a big fan of Hideo Kojima's work. Not just because I find it of high quality and a lot of fun to engage with, but because these days, he is among few AAA game directors who truly try to make unique video games. Not those "focus-grouped to death" copies of each other with a different coat of paint to appear as mainstream as possible, but once in a lifetime experiences where he doesn't care whether it is universally praised or not. See Death Stranding for example, a game literally about making deliveries from Point A to B. Go into it deeper and you will find a way more profound experience with a lot of commentary on modern society (scarily apt during the pandemic that started a year after its release as well), and personally I found the gameplay to be a lot of fun as well.
Just as Hideo Kojima's work over the past couple decades is unique to the AAA video game industry to this day, his work in 1988 with SNATCHER is unique to this day's Hideo Kojima. It's not an Action blockbuster like the Metal Gear Solid or Death Stranding games, but it's rather a game in a genre of games Hideo Kojima enjoyed during his own formative years, the visual novel / crime mystery genre that was somewhat popular in Japan at the time.
Snatcher released initially on November 26, 1988 for the PC-8801 and the MSX2, two Japanese personal computers. It then released in a "remade" version on October 23, 1992 for the PC-Engine (exclusively for the Japanese version of the TurboGrafx-16) before it finally got an English release in December 15, 1994 for the Sega CD, which is the excuse I used to add it to my playlist for the challenge I am currently doing. To be honest, I have no idea how it came about to release this game in the West after not having done so in the 6 years prior, especially since the spritual successor 'Policenauts', which also released in 1994, did not get a Western release. But, thankfully, it happened, and with voice acting to boot. These games have a cult following these days and after having finished Snatcher, you can count me in among those who would be happy to see Hideo Kojima do another game of this type as some sort of side project during these modern times.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
If you decide to play Snatcher, you will probably do so to mainly experience its story. If that is not your expectation going in, I'm sure it will quickly become what will hold your attention, as the gameplay is rather typical for a visual novel. It's mainly clicking at prompts and listening to dialogue.
So with that being the case, delivering an interesting story full of interesting characters, plot twists and tense moments is quite important for this game to be worth playing. Luckily, the game delivers on all fronts thanks to its cyberpunk setting filled with a lot of well thoughtout, interesting lore, its compelling premise and its cast of characters.
50 years ago, the explosion of a biological weapon in a research facility near Moscow called "Lucifer-Alpha" killed over half of the world's population in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. In the present, a new city on an artificial island in Eastern Asia was made and is called "Neo Kobe City", a melting pot of cultures due to large number of immigrants from China, the USA, Eastern and Western Europe and even more areas of the world. Mankind faces a new dilemma due to the appearance of humanoid robots that are called "Snatchers", because they 'snatch' a person (kill and dispose of them) and take up their spot. They can't be detected due to the fact that they breathe, bleed and sweat like any human and even wear artifical skin to look exactly like the person they are copying. They mainly snatch VIP types however, which presumably means that their appearance goes beyond "AI gone rogue".
You play Gillian Seed, who, along with your wife, is an amnesiac and just got assigned to the JUNKERs, a special anti-Snatcher task force (Japanese Undercover Neuro Kinetic Elimination Ranger). Your assignment is to be a runner, an in-field operative taking on the highest of risks by facing these Snatchers head on and eliminating them. To do this, you are assigned a Navigator, a robot that assists you on the field. Navigators get their personalities formed somewhat after the Junker they are assigned to, so yours. Your navigator is called "Metal Gear Mk. II", designed after the "Metal Gear menace from the 20th century", so yes, this seems to play in an alternate future of the Metal Gear universe.
This game is a visual novel, so gameplay looks like this. The first screen you see is that of the Junker HQ reception. A panel of prompts appears at the bottom half of the screen. You can "Look" at things, "Investigate" things, "Talk" and "Ask" if a person is in the room with you and also look at your "Possessions" to "look" and "investigate" them as well. Looking at things and investigating things is different in that investigating them is more analytical. You are often meant to look and investigate things multiple times, as each time reveals new information and thoughts. Some of these options are optionable if you want to get immersed more deeply with your surroundings, and some you are meant to use to trigger a moment that lets you progress, such as uncovering a new clue. As someone who likes to get immersed as much as possible, I have used every single option as many times as I could (at least I think), which not only does what I just told you, but also triggered a few "hidden" moments that I found quite entertaining. In one part of the city for example, Gillian attempts to "pick up women" and if you do so multiple times, one woman turns out to be a Snatcher, which triggers a "Game Over?" screen before it is revealed that Gillian was just daydreaming.
Gillian Seed in general is a pretty odd fellow, though he is more of a poster-boy for how Kojima seemingly wanted the game's atmosphere to be more humane to balance out the fact that Snatchers dominate everything else in this game. Gillian is an amnesiac as mentioned and has a wife called "Jamie", though they don't remember each other. He likes to use humor whenever possible to lower the tension that the entire case and his occupation represents, though balances that out with a get shit done attitude when the situation requires it. The non-serious part of his personality would have felt a bit too "in your face" however, if he wasn't assisted by Metal Gear Mk. 2, who steals the show in this game in my opinion. Both the voice acting and the personality of Metal Gear is perfection, as Metal Gear uses his analytical makeup to save Gillian's butt countless times on the field, but also roasts him every chance he gets when they get a break from the Snatcher-hunting they do. For a guy like Gillian who I can only describe as a "creep" for most parts of the game, I think it was a great idea to have him be accompanied by someone like Metal Gear who keeps him in line as much as possible. I say "creep" because there are 3 female side characters and several other female NPCs in this game, and I don't think there was a single one Gillian didn't make a pass at. For one, you can "look" at any character several times, and doing so once illicits a "she looks great" type response from Gilliant, while doing so more than once prompts the women to say that they feel uncomfortable, which doesn't stop Gillian from making way more straightforward remarks about their apperance. Now don't get me wrong, this type of behavior doesn't usually weird me out and I can see it for what it is, which is entertainment. But with Gillian, it's different. For one, he has a wife, which you can call in this game to tell her how much you want to get to know and to love her again. This creates a very weird situation where Gillian talks to Jamie on the phone, only to flirt with several women over the next hour alone. Second, one of the women includes the 18-year old daughter of a fallen co-worker, who is 14 in Japan's version of the game, so that Gillian doesn't know boundaries whatsoever is pretty off-putting. Otherwise though, his attempts at flirtation are mainly meant to be humorous, and it works since he gets shot down constantly (and gets ridiculed by Metal Gear for it), but on his own he doesn't make a great main character because his personality is mainly doing this shtick.
Apart from Metal Gear, who is the best character in the game for me, there are several individuals who have this mysterious aura around them, like there is more to them than you'd think. Harry the engineer is one of these types, but it extends to the Chief of the JUNKER operation, a bounty hunter named Random Hajile, your wife Jamie, an informer you talk to several times, and Gibson, the only other JUNKER who currently works as a runner alongside you.
With that, I want to get to the main story. I don't want to spoil anything, and in general I think the big story beats flow at a great pace and introduce a lot of twists and memorable moments. However, there is one flaw to the premise of the story that I found to be pretty odd. Actually, there were several over the first couple of hours, but it is worth noting that the plot cleared up plenty of questions I had and actually answered them in a quite satisfactory manner. This one issue that remains though is that this JUNKER operation seems pathetically tiny considering that the "Snatcher menace" presents a huge issue to all of mankind. ALL OF MANKIND. Meanwhile, here you are in the secret JUNKER operation tasked with stopping it and all you have is 5 (five) measly people working there, including just two actual runners. What? Even if Snatchers would snatch up everyday folk, this would be unrealistic, but when VIPs are exclusively involved, you'd think more monetary efforts would be made to make sure the menace was eradicated asap. The game does have an answer to this worry later on at least somewhat I suppose, but I still think that is too unrealistic to have two guys do all the work.
That said, if you enjoy a good mystery story, if you enjoy visual novels and if you like the cyberpunk aesthetic, I think you will enjoy the story that this game tells. It's well executed, I never felt like the game dragged with filler moments and the plot twists were well executed. The pre-1992 version had only 2 acts, but while this version comes with an additional third, which turns this game from one with a cliffhanger ending to one with a complete story. Knowing this, the third act did feel slightly out of place, as the majority of it involves listening to dialogue instead of much player input when it comes to investigation or the like, but the act does end things on a satisfactory note, so I'm glad it's there to give the player a full story to enjoy, though it does leave some room for a sequel.
GAMEPLAY | 12/20
This is a visual novel, though not exactly like most modern ones. Instead of listening to a story and just clicking the A/X button to read the next lines, you select options to look at and investigate, so you are constantly involved with what the next set of lines of dialogue will focus on, keeping you more engaged. But of course, gameplay is a low priority in this game overall.
There is only one part about this game that has true gameplay, which is the game's light gun sections. In a 3x3 grid akin to a game of whack-a-mole, enemies appear in one of the 9 spots and you need to quickly react and aim and shoot at the part of the grid that they are on. This is a pretty small part of the game and I found it to be appear just the perfect number of times over the course of the game. I didn't fail once, but I've read that some found these parts to be kind of difficult. There is a rush of enemies in one late-game section of this, which might give you some trouble, if you are slower on the buttons, but I'm not nearly the fastest and got by with plenty of health remaining.
With visual novels, I find that the quality of the story makes the gameplay more or less tolerable, and since I found the story to be so good, I enjoyed taking my time with this one. This involved choosing every option to investigate multiple times, even to just trigger some optional dialogue from the characters.
You don't just choose options however. First, to find clues and progress, you often need to choose specific options multiple times. The order you would usually choose is to look at something and then to investigate. Sometimes though, you look, investigate and then have to look again to trigger an event, which was a weird way to do things, so be wary of this. That said, asking the player to be thorough is not a bad thing on its own, as reading through all the lines that are available adds to the overall context that the player gets.
One final part of the gameplay here are the puzzles. Often, you need to input answers, such as the password to talk to an informant, the name of a person, the really contrived "Oleen" puzzle and more. If a puzzle gives you any trouble, the game guides you to the answer pretty nicely, so don't worry about not figuring them out.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
This game has voice acting!!! An anomaly for games that I play as part of this retro challenge I'm doing. Of course, it's less unique for Sega CD titles, but still a very new thing for video games at the time. Due to this, I was expecting terrible performances, but the majority of characters are genuinely well voiced. These of course do not compare to today's quality, but for 1994, they don't take away from the experience. Some voices I thought didn't really have much emotion in them, such as the voice of Katrina, while the voice actress for Metal Gear did a fantastic job in my opinion. It's a good performance from the cast overall, with some high and low points.
The soundtrack of this game has a very unique sound to it in my opinion, and I mean that in a positive way. This is a cyberpunk / cyber noir themed game, and while I couldn't have told you what that sounded like beforehand, I think the game nails that atmosphere really well. The track that plays when shit hits the fan really gets you off your seat and ready to investigate the crap out of the place you're in, while I have no doubt that I will remember some tracks (like the Junker HQ one) years and years down the line. Liked it a lot overall.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
Snatcher has a great cyberpunk aesthetic. Whether its the neon-lit Neo Kobe City, the run-down slums in the otherwise high-tech environment or the presentation of the Snatchers, it has a great visual style, timeless you could even say. The game features some pretty gory sections (decapacitated humans, dead animals), so if you don't like that sort of stuff, stay away. For me, it added a lot to the legitimacy of the Snatcher threat and was not used too much as to be tactless. The presentation of the screens in this game looks pretty good in this remade version of the game, though they are simple-looking for the most part, as the majority of screens had little to no actual movement in them but rather remained still. This didn't take away from the cinematics however, which were well done despite the visual limitations the game had to work with.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
Incredibly atmospheric. Cyber noir is presenting "technology as a destructive and dystopian force that threatens every aspect of our reality", and that fits the game's theme perfectly. It's a story about humanity's lack of trust in one another and how it is one of our biggest flaws, and it carries that from its beginning all the way to the end. Heck, due to suffering from amnesia, Gillian is partly defined by this, though he hardly is the only one here. The game portrays this theme well several times throughout the game. The cyberpunk part of the cyber noir theme is also well represented here, with the contrast of high tech and the rich parts of Neo Kobe City being compared to the slums ridden with poverty. There are even minor things here, like a group of women taking their artificially enhanced pets to the vet, like a parrot with instant memorization, a dog that barely makes any sound and ... a pigeon? The deep lore that you can read up on on the computer at Junker HQ also is worth going through to familiarize yourself with Neo Kobe City.
CONTENT | 8/10
The game took me about 10 hours to beat, though you can easily beat it a couple hours sooner, if you skip some of the optional stuff. For example, reading through all the lore on the computer at Junker HQ took me over half an hour and is completely optional. There is a lot of good stuff here, and little feels as filler.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
This is a pretty well-paced adventure throughout, with a good mix of investigating, action, comedy and romance, though the last part never really felt right to me due to what I talked about in the Story part of this review. My only issue was that progression was somehow hidden behind a combination of Look / Investigate / Look that felt unnecessary, and some of the puzzles felt really contrived. That said, this is a pretty focused game and does its job well in terms of the design of its structure.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
This is not a new concept, as Hideo Kojima used similar Japanese crime adventures as inspiration for this game. It is unique in that I haven't played it in the 4+ years worth of games I've played as part of this challenge, it is a visual novel, which is a rare breed for its time, especially in the West and it tells a good story that aged pretty well. And I guess it's also worth pointing out that the game does enough to keep the player engaged without making this game feel like a book and without making the limited light gun sequences to feel annoying.
REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
This is a very linear adventure. If you are going through all options like me, which doesn't take a lot of effort, you will see everything in one go, besides some minor dialogue results at times perhaps. But other than that, one playthrough will give you pretty much everything here.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 78/100
A visual novel that is worthy of being played. If you are a fan of Kojima's work, this is a must play, if you are a fan of visual novels or adventure games, this is well worth a playthrough and if you enjoy good stories in video games, this is in the upper tiers, especially for its time.
(This is the 94th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
Just as Hideo Kojima's work over the past couple decades is unique to the AAA video game industry to this day, his work in 1988 with SNATCHER is unique to this day's Hideo Kojima. It's not an Action blockbuster like the Metal Gear Solid or Death Stranding games, but it's rather a game in a genre of games Hideo Kojima enjoyed during his own formative years, the visual novel / crime mystery genre that was somewhat popular in Japan at the time.
Snatcher released initially on November 26, 1988 for the PC-8801 and the MSX2, two Japanese personal computers. It then released in a "remade" version on October 23, 1992 for the PC-Engine (exclusively for the Japanese version of the TurboGrafx-16) before it finally got an English release in December 15, 1994 for the Sega CD, which is the excuse I used to add it to my playlist for the challenge I am currently doing. To be honest, I have no idea how it came about to release this game in the West after not having done so in the 6 years prior, especially since the spritual successor 'Policenauts', which also released in 1994, did not get a Western release. But, thankfully, it happened, and with voice acting to boot. These games have a cult following these days and after having finished Snatcher, you can count me in among those who would be happy to see Hideo Kojima do another game of this type as some sort of side project during these modern times.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
If you decide to play Snatcher, you will probably do so to mainly experience its story. If that is not your expectation going in, I'm sure it will quickly become what will hold your attention, as the gameplay is rather typical for a visual novel. It's mainly clicking at prompts and listening to dialogue.
So with that being the case, delivering an interesting story full of interesting characters, plot twists and tense moments is quite important for this game to be worth playing. Luckily, the game delivers on all fronts thanks to its cyberpunk setting filled with a lot of well thoughtout, interesting lore, its compelling premise and its cast of characters.
50 years ago, the explosion of a biological weapon in a research facility near Moscow called "Lucifer-Alpha" killed over half of the world's population in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. In the present, a new city on an artificial island in Eastern Asia was made and is called "Neo Kobe City", a melting pot of cultures due to large number of immigrants from China, the USA, Eastern and Western Europe and even more areas of the world. Mankind faces a new dilemma due to the appearance of humanoid robots that are called "Snatchers", because they 'snatch' a person (kill and dispose of them) and take up their spot. They can't be detected due to the fact that they breathe, bleed and sweat like any human and even wear artifical skin to look exactly like the person they are copying. They mainly snatch VIP types however, which presumably means that their appearance goes beyond "AI gone rogue".
You play Gillian Seed, who, along with your wife, is an amnesiac and just got assigned to the JUNKERs, a special anti-Snatcher task force (Japanese Undercover Neuro Kinetic Elimination Ranger). Your assignment is to be a runner, an in-field operative taking on the highest of risks by facing these Snatchers head on and eliminating them. To do this, you are assigned a Navigator, a robot that assists you on the field. Navigators get their personalities formed somewhat after the Junker they are assigned to, so yours. Your navigator is called "Metal Gear Mk. II", designed after the "Metal Gear menace from the 20th century", so yes, this seems to play in an alternate future of the Metal Gear universe.
This game is a visual novel, so gameplay looks like this. The first screen you see is that of the Junker HQ reception. A panel of prompts appears at the bottom half of the screen. You can "Look" at things, "Investigate" things, "Talk" and "Ask" if a person is in the room with you and also look at your "Possessions" to "look" and "investigate" them as well. Looking at things and investigating things is different in that investigating them is more analytical. You are often meant to look and investigate things multiple times, as each time reveals new information and thoughts. Some of these options are optionable if you want to get immersed more deeply with your surroundings, and some you are meant to use to trigger a moment that lets you progress, such as uncovering a new clue. As someone who likes to get immersed as much as possible, I have used every single option as many times as I could (at least I think), which not only does what I just told you, but also triggered a few "hidden" moments that I found quite entertaining. In one part of the city for example, Gillian attempts to "pick up women" and if you do so multiple times, one woman turns out to be a Snatcher, which triggers a "Game Over?" screen before it is revealed that Gillian was just daydreaming.
Gillian Seed in general is a pretty odd fellow, though he is more of a poster-boy for how Kojima seemingly wanted the game's atmosphere to be more humane to balance out the fact that Snatchers dominate everything else in this game. Gillian is an amnesiac as mentioned and has a wife called "Jamie", though they don't remember each other. He likes to use humor whenever possible to lower the tension that the entire case and his occupation represents, though balances that out with a get shit done attitude when the situation requires it. The non-serious part of his personality would have felt a bit too "in your face" however, if he wasn't assisted by Metal Gear Mk. 2, who steals the show in this game in my opinion. Both the voice acting and the personality of Metal Gear is perfection, as Metal Gear uses his analytical makeup to save Gillian's butt countless times on the field, but also roasts him every chance he gets when they get a break from the Snatcher-hunting they do. For a guy like Gillian who I can only describe as a "creep" for most parts of the game, I think it was a great idea to have him be accompanied by someone like Metal Gear who keeps him in line as much as possible. I say "creep" because there are 3 female side characters and several other female NPCs in this game, and I don't think there was a single one Gillian didn't make a pass at. For one, you can "look" at any character several times, and doing so once illicits a "she looks great" type response from Gilliant, while doing so more than once prompts the women to say that they feel uncomfortable, which doesn't stop Gillian from making way more straightforward remarks about their apperance. Now don't get me wrong, this type of behavior doesn't usually weird me out and I can see it for what it is, which is entertainment. But with Gillian, it's different. For one, he has a wife, which you can call in this game to tell her how much you want to get to know and to love her again. This creates a very weird situation where Gillian talks to Jamie on the phone, only to flirt with several women over the next hour alone. Second, one of the women includes the 18-year old daughter of a fallen co-worker, who is 14 in Japan's version of the game, so that Gillian doesn't know boundaries whatsoever is pretty off-putting. Otherwise though, his attempts at flirtation are mainly meant to be humorous, and it works since he gets shot down constantly (and gets ridiculed by Metal Gear for it), but on his own he doesn't make a great main character because his personality is mainly doing this shtick.
Apart from Metal Gear, who is the best character in the game for me, there are several individuals who have this mysterious aura around them, like there is more to them than you'd think. Harry the engineer is one of these types, but it extends to the Chief of the JUNKER operation, a bounty hunter named Random Hajile, your wife Jamie, an informer you talk to several times, and Gibson, the only other JUNKER who currently works as a runner alongside you.
With that, I want to get to the main story. I don't want to spoil anything, and in general I think the big story beats flow at a great pace and introduce a lot of twists and memorable moments. However, there is one flaw to the premise of the story that I found to be pretty odd. Actually, there were several over the first couple of hours, but it is worth noting that the plot cleared up plenty of questions I had and actually answered them in a quite satisfactory manner. This one issue that remains though is that this JUNKER operation seems pathetically tiny considering that the "Snatcher menace" presents a huge issue to all of mankind. ALL OF MANKIND. Meanwhile, here you are in the secret JUNKER operation tasked with stopping it and all you have is 5 (five) measly people working there, including just two actual runners. What? Even if Snatchers would snatch up everyday folk, this would be unrealistic, but when VIPs are exclusively involved, you'd think more monetary efforts would be made to make sure the menace was eradicated asap. The game does have an answer to this worry later on at least somewhat I suppose, but I still think that is too unrealistic to have two guys do all the work.
That said, if you enjoy a good mystery story, if you enjoy visual novels and if you like the cyberpunk aesthetic, I think you will enjoy the story that this game tells. It's well executed, I never felt like the game dragged with filler moments and the plot twists were well executed. The pre-1992 version had only 2 acts, but while this version comes with an additional third, which turns this game from one with a cliffhanger ending to one with a complete story. Knowing this, the third act did feel slightly out of place, as the majority of it involves listening to dialogue instead of much player input when it comes to investigation or the like, but the act does end things on a satisfactory note, so I'm glad it's there to give the player a full story to enjoy, though it does leave some room for a sequel.
GAMEPLAY | 12/20
This is a visual novel, though not exactly like most modern ones. Instead of listening to a story and just clicking the A/X button to read the next lines, you select options to look at and investigate, so you are constantly involved with what the next set of lines of dialogue will focus on, keeping you more engaged. But of course, gameplay is a low priority in this game overall.
There is only one part about this game that has true gameplay, which is the game's light gun sections. In a 3x3 grid akin to a game of whack-a-mole, enemies appear in one of the 9 spots and you need to quickly react and aim and shoot at the part of the grid that they are on. This is a pretty small part of the game and I found it to be appear just the perfect number of times over the course of the game. I didn't fail once, but I've read that some found these parts to be kind of difficult. There is a rush of enemies in one late-game section of this, which might give you some trouble, if you are slower on the buttons, but I'm not nearly the fastest and got by with plenty of health remaining.
With visual novels, I find that the quality of the story makes the gameplay more or less tolerable, and since I found the story to be so good, I enjoyed taking my time with this one. This involved choosing every option to investigate multiple times, even to just trigger some optional dialogue from the characters.
You don't just choose options however. First, to find clues and progress, you often need to choose specific options multiple times. The order you would usually choose is to look at something and then to investigate. Sometimes though, you look, investigate and then have to look again to trigger an event, which was a weird way to do things, so be wary of this. That said, asking the player to be thorough is not a bad thing on its own, as reading through all the lines that are available adds to the overall context that the player gets.
One final part of the gameplay here are the puzzles. Often, you need to input answers, such as the password to talk to an informant, the name of a person, the really contrived "Oleen" puzzle and more. If a puzzle gives you any trouble, the game guides you to the answer pretty nicely, so don't worry about not figuring them out.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
This game has voice acting!!! An anomaly for games that I play as part of this retro challenge I'm doing. Of course, it's less unique for Sega CD titles, but still a very new thing for video games at the time. Due to this, I was expecting terrible performances, but the majority of characters are genuinely well voiced. These of course do not compare to today's quality, but for 1994, they don't take away from the experience. Some voices I thought didn't really have much emotion in them, such as the voice of Katrina, while the voice actress for Metal Gear did a fantastic job in my opinion. It's a good performance from the cast overall, with some high and low points.
The soundtrack of this game has a very unique sound to it in my opinion, and I mean that in a positive way. This is a cyberpunk / cyber noir themed game, and while I couldn't have told you what that sounded like beforehand, I think the game nails that atmosphere really well. The track that plays when shit hits the fan really gets you off your seat and ready to investigate the crap out of the place you're in, while I have no doubt that I will remember some tracks (like the Junker HQ one) years and years down the line. Liked it a lot overall.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
Snatcher has a great cyberpunk aesthetic. Whether its the neon-lit Neo Kobe City, the run-down slums in the otherwise high-tech environment or the presentation of the Snatchers, it has a great visual style, timeless you could even say. The game features some pretty gory sections (decapacitated humans, dead animals), so if you don't like that sort of stuff, stay away. For me, it added a lot to the legitimacy of the Snatcher threat and was not used too much as to be tactless. The presentation of the screens in this game looks pretty good in this remade version of the game, though they are simple-looking for the most part, as the majority of screens had little to no actual movement in them but rather remained still. This didn't take away from the cinematics however, which were well done despite the visual limitations the game had to work with.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
Incredibly atmospheric. Cyber noir is presenting "technology as a destructive and dystopian force that threatens every aspect of our reality", and that fits the game's theme perfectly. It's a story about humanity's lack of trust in one another and how it is one of our biggest flaws, and it carries that from its beginning all the way to the end. Heck, due to suffering from amnesia, Gillian is partly defined by this, though he hardly is the only one here. The game portrays this theme well several times throughout the game. The cyberpunk part of the cyber noir theme is also well represented here, with the contrast of high tech and the rich parts of Neo Kobe City being compared to the slums ridden with poverty. There are even minor things here, like a group of women taking their artificially enhanced pets to the vet, like a parrot with instant memorization, a dog that barely makes any sound and ... a pigeon? The deep lore that you can read up on on the computer at Junker HQ also is worth going through to familiarize yourself with Neo Kobe City.
CONTENT | 8/10
The game took me about 10 hours to beat, though you can easily beat it a couple hours sooner, if you skip some of the optional stuff. For example, reading through all the lore on the computer at Junker HQ took me over half an hour and is completely optional. There is a lot of good stuff here, and little feels as filler.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
This is a pretty well-paced adventure throughout, with a good mix of investigating, action, comedy and romance, though the last part never really felt right to me due to what I talked about in the Story part of this review. My only issue was that progression was somehow hidden behind a combination of Look / Investigate / Look that felt unnecessary, and some of the puzzles felt really contrived. That said, this is a pretty focused game and does its job well in terms of the design of its structure.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
This is not a new concept, as Hideo Kojima used similar Japanese crime adventures as inspiration for this game. It is unique in that I haven't played it in the 4+ years worth of games I've played as part of this challenge, it is a visual novel, which is a rare breed for its time, especially in the West and it tells a good story that aged pretty well. And I guess it's also worth pointing out that the game does enough to keep the player engaged without making this game feel like a book and without making the limited light gun sequences to feel annoying.
REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
This is a very linear adventure. If you are going through all options like me, which doesn't take a lot of effort, you will see everything in one go, besides some minor dialogue results at times perhaps. But other than that, one playthrough will give you pretty much everything here.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 78/100
A visual novel that is worthy of being played. If you are a fan of Kojima's work, this is a must play, if you are a fan of visual novels or adventure games, this is well worth a playthrough and if you enjoy good stories in video games, this is in the upper tiers, especially for its time.
(This is the 94th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
1992
(This is the 68th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
There are three things about this challenge than I enjoy the most. Reaching a new generation of consoles. Playing my first ever game or a sequel in a well-known franchise. And witnessing the debut of an iconic character/series. The second and third points both apply to this game I'm reviewing today, which is Kirby's Dream Land, the debut of Kirby.
The game came out on April 27, 1992 in Japan and released in NA and PAL regions later that same year exclusively for the Game Boy. I never played a Kirby game before and pretty much all Game Boy titles I've played as part of this series I didn't find enjoyable, but this game is definitely by far the best one on that system for me so far.
The game is unique for its focus on beginner gamers over experienced ones, and I can confirm that this game works as intended in that regard. Though newer entries in the Kirby series probably get the job done even better, if you ever want to introduce a beginner/new gamer to Kirby or platformers in general, this game does a fine job there as well, though the monochromic graphics of the Game Boy might be offputting at this point in time.
It did the job back in the day though, and how! Up until 2022's Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Kirby's Dream Land was the best selling game in the entire series with over 5 million copies sold, over a million more than 3rd placed Kirby Star Allies. The newest entry in the series finally bested the 92 Game Boy title with about 6.5 million copies sold up to this point.
Is it the second best game in the series? I'm going to assume no, even though this is my first ever Kirby game. It will obviously lack a lot of features introduced later on and the Game Boy is not known for being a powerful system of course, so there was only so much the developers led by Masahiro Sakurai could do, though there is no doubting the creativity and marketing behind this game at the time.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
I'm giving it additional points for introducing an iconic character, but as is common for the early 90s, there is very little story here and that is pretty much relegated to the manual.
Dream Land is a place on a tiny star "somewhere far". The inhabitants are called "Dream Landers" who use magical Sparkling Stars to play and work among the heavens. But, of course, something evil befalls this place, as otherwise the player would have no reason to be here in the form of Kirby. Kirby is a "spry little boy", who sees the need to rescue his fellow Dream Landers because evil King Dedede swooped down on Dream Land from the neighbouring Mount Dedede and stole both food and Sparkling Stars.
For obvious reasons, I'm not going to overanalyze this, it's a basic, cutesy setup that isn't supposed to make a lot of sense to introduce us to this character.
What is more interesting is that Kirby was supposed to be named "Popopo" and the developers, HAL Laboratory Inc were looking to self-publish the title. That is, until they realized that pre-orders for the game were on the lower end, so they asked Nintendo publish, who decided to change the character's name to Kirby based on the results they got from polling Nintendo of America. While the Popopo game was no more, you can see it live on in other parts of the game. Stage 2 plays on Castle Lololo. The final stage plays on Mount Dedede and you fight the final boss King Dedede there.
Another notable tid-bit is that there was some confusion regarding Kirby's color. We now know it's purple, but the monochromic display of the Game Boy meant nobody but the developers knew this at the time, so there is a funny story that some of the staff thought Kirby was white, while Shigeru Miyamoto assumed he was yellow (like Pac-Man or 'Noobow'). I can't say if this is the main reason for it, but in later Kirby games that had 2-player modes, the second Kirby would be yellow.
GAMEPLAY | 12/20
Kirby is a 2D platformer. As is usual practice for the time, you move to the left or right of the screen, fight enemies and do some platforming until you reach the end of the level and move on to the next stage. There are bosses in each stage as well.
What makes Kirby unique are two things. First, Kirby can inhale and exhale enemies. Think of Yoshi from Super Mario World. He inhales them and when he spits them back out, they turn into a star and kill other enemies. You can also inhale with Kirby to make him fly. Kirby will continue flying until you exhale, which releases an "Air Pellet" that kills enemies but also makes Kirby fall back down.
The other unique feature here is the difficulty. The director, Masahiro Sakurai, wanted to make this game beginner-friendly and an easy pick up and play title. He also wanted to have the player to make use of enemies in a way that wasn't the case in other games, both of which where the core ideas behind this game. This is pretty easy to see in gameplay. Inhaling an enemy and spitting it back out makes things pretty easy. Flying allows you to entirely bypass enemies and some of the "harder" platforming segments in this game. And bosses usually only need to be hit a couple of times before they die. We went over the sales numbers, so this definitely worked in attracting players.
Now, while this game is 'easy' and definitely wants to help the player in actually beating it (which will only take an hour for the majority of players), it's by no means a game where you just run straight and beat the game. Kirby is equipped with a health bar, and after six hits taken, he dies. You can use "Pep Brew" and "Bag of Magic Food" items to replenish health, but I did lose more than a few lives. After 4 deaths, you get a GAME OVER screen.
Where the game gets even easier though is that there seem to be unlimited continues (I used 4 and didn't see a counter for how many I have left) and that, if you simply lose a life, you just go to the beginning of the screen, which is usually just a few seconds of gameplay.
Regardless, boss fights were clever enough to be enjoyable and the five stages, while short and mostly easy, offered a nice introduction to Kirby.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10
No voice acting. The sound design is pretty good and way more intricate than you would expect from a Game Boy title. Sound effects sound unique here and not chosen from a pre-made selection like some other games. Notable sounds are for inhaling/exhaling and for dropping the microphone power-up, which lets out a cute screeching noise.
The soundtrack suits the game really well and gives off the vibe of a fun little adventure with low stakes. So, again, suitable for this game. Most of the tracks have a slow pace, with the boss theme being the exception. There is no track specifically here that stands out in my opinion. It's a soundtrack that I feel like I'd definitely be nostalgic over had I played this back in the day, but there is no iconic song here like we'd get from future Kirby games. Tracks that even non-players of Kirby games like me knows of, such as Gourmet Race.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 7/10
The Game Boy is a great handheld. I'm not disagreeing on that. But because it is a handheld from the late 80s and Nintendo had to achieve a lot from so little, there are many things about it that don't translate well to today in my opinion, unlike the home consoles from the time. The monochromic screen doesn't help.
That said, this game is probably my favorite looking Game Boy game so far simply due to its design and presentation. Kirby immediately endears himself to the player through his cute character design. On top of that, the visual effects in this game are pretty good for the Game Boy.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 7/10
If you're looking for a low-stakes, low-challenge, quick to beat type game, and you want it to be retro, this is the one. The game does a great job of making this obvious as well, from the gameplay to the visuals to the music. No color is a shame though, and on the Game Boy there aren't areas in this game as diverse as you'd like to see, but that's something that can be built on in future entries.
CONTENT | 6/10
There are 5 stages and 30-60 minutes of gameplay here for one playthrough. You got one or two bosses per stage. I give the game an above-average score because a one hour game that is enjoyable to play is 10 times better than a 30 hour game with 95% of that being boring and repetitive. That said, it still is very little and the gameplay, while unique and enjoyable, is what it is.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 7/10
The first four stages are similarly designed in two parts. You go through the first part and I believe 2 or 3 times take on a mini-boss at the end. Then you climb on a star and are shot through the map to the second part of the stage. At the end of this stage, you fight bosses in all stages, collect a star, watch Kirby and two clones do a victory dance, and move on to the next stage.
As explained, the stages are usually pretty easy. Later on, there is enough going on that you WILL end up losing lives and continues, but nothing that will give you trouble the second or third time through.
The final stage is a boss-rush stage. You enter four doors and go through very short stages to fight the same four bosses at the end. After that, the final door opens up and you enter a boss fight with King Dedede. The boss fights all are distinguishable and unique enough considering what the devs were working with in terms of gameplay.
Overall, the devs had a concept in mind and stuck with it, and unlimited continues bring it all home to make for a frustration-free experience.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
This game sold over 5 million copies! The creation of an iconic character and making a fun, beginner-friendly game will be major reasons for that. You'll be hard-pressed to see gameplay based on inhaling enemies too, and it's a fun idea that can definitely be built upon. I'm looking forward to see how the game translates to a home console next.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
There is a hard mode that you can play after initially beating the game. This adds some enemies to the screen, makes the bosses attack faster and in different patterns compared to normal (aka easy) mode. So if you want to experience a Kirby game on the level of a medium difficulty NES platformer, there you go. Apart from this, the only replay value you get is from trying to beat your high score.
**PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 65/100
Often enough, the debuts of certain franchises and characters are skippable. Kirby's debut is not necessarily firmly the opposite, but the game is short enough that the novelty of the gameplay elements here don't get old by the time you finish it. So if you do intend to do a marathon, I'm sure you'll appreciate this game for what it is, though don't expect a memorable experience, but rather one that can appreciated for its place in video game history.
There are three things about this challenge than I enjoy the most. Reaching a new generation of consoles. Playing my first ever game or a sequel in a well-known franchise. And witnessing the debut of an iconic character/series. The second and third points both apply to this game I'm reviewing today, which is Kirby's Dream Land, the debut of Kirby.
The game came out on April 27, 1992 in Japan and released in NA and PAL regions later that same year exclusively for the Game Boy. I never played a Kirby game before and pretty much all Game Boy titles I've played as part of this series I didn't find enjoyable, but this game is definitely by far the best one on that system for me so far.
The game is unique for its focus on beginner gamers over experienced ones, and I can confirm that this game works as intended in that regard. Though newer entries in the Kirby series probably get the job done even better, if you ever want to introduce a beginner/new gamer to Kirby or platformers in general, this game does a fine job there as well, though the monochromic graphics of the Game Boy might be offputting at this point in time.
It did the job back in the day though, and how! Up until 2022's Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Kirby's Dream Land was the best selling game in the entire series with over 5 million copies sold, over a million more than 3rd placed Kirby Star Allies. The newest entry in the series finally bested the 92 Game Boy title with about 6.5 million copies sold up to this point.
Is it the second best game in the series? I'm going to assume no, even though this is my first ever Kirby game. It will obviously lack a lot of features introduced later on and the Game Boy is not known for being a powerful system of course, so there was only so much the developers led by Masahiro Sakurai could do, though there is no doubting the creativity and marketing behind this game at the time.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
I'm giving it additional points for introducing an iconic character, but as is common for the early 90s, there is very little story here and that is pretty much relegated to the manual.
Dream Land is a place on a tiny star "somewhere far". The inhabitants are called "Dream Landers" who use magical Sparkling Stars to play and work among the heavens. But, of course, something evil befalls this place, as otherwise the player would have no reason to be here in the form of Kirby. Kirby is a "spry little boy", who sees the need to rescue his fellow Dream Landers because evil King Dedede swooped down on Dream Land from the neighbouring Mount Dedede and stole both food and Sparkling Stars.
For obvious reasons, I'm not going to overanalyze this, it's a basic, cutesy setup that isn't supposed to make a lot of sense to introduce us to this character.
What is more interesting is that Kirby was supposed to be named "Popopo" and the developers, HAL Laboratory Inc were looking to self-publish the title. That is, until they realized that pre-orders for the game were on the lower end, so they asked Nintendo publish, who decided to change the character's name to Kirby based on the results they got from polling Nintendo of America. While the Popopo game was no more, you can see it live on in other parts of the game. Stage 2 plays on Castle Lololo. The final stage plays on Mount Dedede and you fight the final boss King Dedede there.
Another notable tid-bit is that there was some confusion regarding Kirby's color. We now know it's purple, but the monochromic display of the Game Boy meant nobody but the developers knew this at the time, so there is a funny story that some of the staff thought Kirby was white, while Shigeru Miyamoto assumed he was yellow (like Pac-Man or 'Noobow'). I can't say if this is the main reason for it, but in later Kirby games that had 2-player modes, the second Kirby would be yellow.
GAMEPLAY | 12/20
Kirby is a 2D platformer. As is usual practice for the time, you move to the left or right of the screen, fight enemies and do some platforming until you reach the end of the level and move on to the next stage. There are bosses in each stage as well.
What makes Kirby unique are two things. First, Kirby can inhale and exhale enemies. Think of Yoshi from Super Mario World. He inhales them and when he spits them back out, they turn into a star and kill other enemies. You can also inhale with Kirby to make him fly. Kirby will continue flying until you exhale, which releases an "Air Pellet" that kills enemies but also makes Kirby fall back down.
The other unique feature here is the difficulty. The director, Masahiro Sakurai, wanted to make this game beginner-friendly and an easy pick up and play title. He also wanted to have the player to make use of enemies in a way that wasn't the case in other games, both of which where the core ideas behind this game. This is pretty easy to see in gameplay. Inhaling an enemy and spitting it back out makes things pretty easy. Flying allows you to entirely bypass enemies and some of the "harder" platforming segments in this game. And bosses usually only need to be hit a couple of times before they die. We went over the sales numbers, so this definitely worked in attracting players.
Now, while this game is 'easy' and definitely wants to help the player in actually beating it (which will only take an hour for the majority of players), it's by no means a game where you just run straight and beat the game. Kirby is equipped with a health bar, and after six hits taken, he dies. You can use "Pep Brew" and "Bag of Magic Food" items to replenish health, but I did lose more than a few lives. After 4 deaths, you get a GAME OVER screen.
Where the game gets even easier though is that there seem to be unlimited continues (I used 4 and didn't see a counter for how many I have left) and that, if you simply lose a life, you just go to the beginning of the screen, which is usually just a few seconds of gameplay.
Regardless, boss fights were clever enough to be enjoyable and the five stages, while short and mostly easy, offered a nice introduction to Kirby.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10
No voice acting. The sound design is pretty good and way more intricate than you would expect from a Game Boy title. Sound effects sound unique here and not chosen from a pre-made selection like some other games. Notable sounds are for inhaling/exhaling and for dropping the microphone power-up, which lets out a cute screeching noise.
The soundtrack suits the game really well and gives off the vibe of a fun little adventure with low stakes. So, again, suitable for this game. Most of the tracks have a slow pace, with the boss theme being the exception. There is no track specifically here that stands out in my opinion. It's a soundtrack that I feel like I'd definitely be nostalgic over had I played this back in the day, but there is no iconic song here like we'd get from future Kirby games. Tracks that even non-players of Kirby games like me knows of, such as Gourmet Race.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 7/10
The Game Boy is a great handheld. I'm not disagreeing on that. But because it is a handheld from the late 80s and Nintendo had to achieve a lot from so little, there are many things about it that don't translate well to today in my opinion, unlike the home consoles from the time. The monochromic screen doesn't help.
That said, this game is probably my favorite looking Game Boy game so far simply due to its design and presentation. Kirby immediately endears himself to the player through his cute character design. On top of that, the visual effects in this game are pretty good for the Game Boy.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 7/10
If you're looking for a low-stakes, low-challenge, quick to beat type game, and you want it to be retro, this is the one. The game does a great job of making this obvious as well, from the gameplay to the visuals to the music. No color is a shame though, and on the Game Boy there aren't areas in this game as diverse as you'd like to see, but that's something that can be built on in future entries.
CONTENT | 6/10
There are 5 stages and 30-60 minutes of gameplay here for one playthrough. You got one or two bosses per stage. I give the game an above-average score because a one hour game that is enjoyable to play is 10 times better than a 30 hour game with 95% of that being boring and repetitive. That said, it still is very little and the gameplay, while unique and enjoyable, is what it is.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 7/10
The first four stages are similarly designed in two parts. You go through the first part and I believe 2 or 3 times take on a mini-boss at the end. Then you climb on a star and are shot through the map to the second part of the stage. At the end of this stage, you fight bosses in all stages, collect a star, watch Kirby and two clones do a victory dance, and move on to the next stage.
As explained, the stages are usually pretty easy. Later on, there is enough going on that you WILL end up losing lives and continues, but nothing that will give you trouble the second or third time through.
The final stage is a boss-rush stage. You enter four doors and go through very short stages to fight the same four bosses at the end. After that, the final door opens up and you enter a boss fight with King Dedede. The boss fights all are distinguishable and unique enough considering what the devs were working with in terms of gameplay.
Overall, the devs had a concept in mind and stuck with it, and unlimited continues bring it all home to make for a frustration-free experience.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
This game sold over 5 million copies! The creation of an iconic character and making a fun, beginner-friendly game will be major reasons for that. You'll be hard-pressed to see gameplay based on inhaling enemies too, and it's a fun idea that can definitely be built upon. I'm looking forward to see how the game translates to a home console next.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
There is a hard mode that you can play after initially beating the game. This adds some enemies to the screen, makes the bosses attack faster and in different patterns compared to normal (aka easy) mode. So if you want to experience a Kirby game on the level of a medium difficulty NES platformer, there you go. Apart from this, the only replay value you get is from trying to beat your high score.
**PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 65/100
Often enough, the debuts of certain franchises and characters are skippable. Kirby's debut is not necessarily firmly the opposite, but the game is short enough that the novelty of the gameplay elements here don't get old by the time you finish it. So if you do intend to do a marathon, I'm sure you'll appreciate this game for what it is, though don't expect a memorable experience, but rather one that can appreciated for its place in video game history.
Possibly the best written and most replayable video game out there. It's been over a year since I originally beat this, but coming back to it the past few days and deciding to play things differently confirmed the magic of this game to me once again.
I'd be lying to you, if I said I understood everything, especially when the characters start getting into long discussions on political ideologies mixed in with Disco Elysium lore in a way that is hard to differentiate at times for layman like me, which makes me doubly confused. Notwithstanding that, the dialogue in this game has me hooked nonstop anyway, and I suppose if you're more of a politically inclined person, even those long discussions would be a major positive for you.
There are so many iconic moments in this game, an unreal amount of laugh out loud lines that rivals and bests almost any video game I ever played and to top it all off, some truly magical scenes that I won't spoil.
I started this review with the keyword "replayability", so I want to end this review by explaining what I am. 1) There are thousands of passive checks that lead to different and/or additional conversation paths. How you pick and develop your skills impacts conversations quite notably. 2) There are dozens of "thoughts" you can internalize, leading to even more dialogue choices, and I got 3 thoughts I didn't get in my first playthrough within the first 2 hours of playthrough #2. They also sometimes allow you to DO certain things as well, not just make dialogue choices. 3) There are a lot of ways to tackle your overall mission of solving a case. I don't want to go into them, since they are spoiler territory, but it's pretty wild how significantly different approaches can be. 4) You can align yourself with and against many of the bigger characters, again leading to very different (smaller scale) outcomes.
In terms of games that don't have any actual combat, Disco Elysium to me is far and away the best game out there right now, and it's one of the best games I ever played period.
I'd be lying to you, if I said I understood everything, especially when the characters start getting into long discussions on political ideologies mixed in with Disco Elysium lore in a way that is hard to differentiate at times for layman like me, which makes me doubly confused. Notwithstanding that, the dialogue in this game has me hooked nonstop anyway, and I suppose if you're more of a politically inclined person, even those long discussions would be a major positive for you.
There are so many iconic moments in this game, an unreal amount of laugh out loud lines that rivals and bests almost any video game I ever played and to top it all off, some truly magical scenes that I won't spoil.
I started this review with the keyword "replayability", so I want to end this review by explaining what I am. 1) There are thousands of passive checks that lead to different and/or additional conversation paths. How you pick and develop your skills impacts conversations quite notably. 2) There are dozens of "thoughts" you can internalize, leading to even more dialogue choices, and I got 3 thoughts I didn't get in my first playthrough within the first 2 hours of playthrough #2. They also sometimes allow you to DO certain things as well, not just make dialogue choices. 3) There are a lot of ways to tackle your overall mission of solving a case. I don't want to go into them, since they are spoiler territory, but it's pretty wild how significantly different approaches can be. 4) You can align yourself with and against many of the bigger characters, again leading to very different (smaller scale) outcomes.
In terms of games that don't have any actual combat, Disco Elysium to me is far and away the best game out there right now, and it's one of the best games I ever played period.
(This is the 86th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
As is tradition with early 90s Spider-Man video games, Spider-Man 3: Invasion of Spider-Slayers is among the worst games I have ever played, and it possibly tops the list. As per usual, this was developed by Bits Studios and published by Acclaim Entertainment (or LJN at the time), possibly the worst grouping of developer + publisher of its time that actually made professionally developed video games. Spider-Man 3 released for the Game Boy and is the sequel to The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which, up to this point, I would have called the worst game I've ever played, especially within this challenge I'm doing. That game, and I'll use any opportunity I can to bring it up, got a 98% from Consoles +, a French video game magazine. Spider-Man 3's Consoles + review score is unknown, but it got a 6.1 Moby Rating, which is on the poorer side on the site.
The first level of this game is all you really need to know about. With each iteration in this Game Boy trilogy, the fudges given have gone down more and more, and it's apparent in many ways. The first game was developed by Rare and was awful in most aspects but at least had competent level design and started each level with witty dialogue between Spider-Man and the stage's boss, which gave it some charm. The second game, made by Bits Studios, didn't have this dialogue anymore and was even worse in all other aspects. Its level design was also just dull and lacked any sort of creativity and passion. This third game went down yet another level that I didn't think was possible. Instead of having some sort of love put into an opening 'cutscene' where Spidey reads that he is being framed, like in the second game, this third game just starts with Spider-Man saying that he will take a walk in the park. Then a white image with black text says that you should defeat 20 muggers. That's it. Then you walk around awkwardly from left to right looking for these men.
1) Spider-Man looks and walks as awkwardly as in all of the other 6 Spider-Man games I've played
2) Spider-Man controls as horrificly as in all of the other 6 Spider-Man games I've played
3) The level looks as bland as toast
4) There are nearly no assets on this whole level. The tiny space is only separated by a random wall placed in around the middle part of the level, which you can jump over to get to an area that looks and works exactly the same
5) There is a singular depiction of a man walking around the park endlessly. The challenge on this level is to figure out whether the guy is innocent or a "mugger". You wait for 2 seconds for the man to pull something out of his jacket. If it's a newspaper, he's innocent. If it's a gun, well, you do what Spider-Man does. Kick him in the nuts once and watch him vanish into thin air.
6) If you're too close to the man, your kick just goes through him. You have to stand a specific distance away from the man to kick him, or you'll miss.
7) KIDS ON SKATEBOARDS roam the area and run into you, unless you jump over them. Pressing the jump button comes with input lag, meaning it takes an extra second or two to actually do the jump, meaning you need to time it pretty early. Even then, it's likely you'll touch the back of the head of the kid and still take damage.
8) SPIDERS FALL DOWN OUT OF THIN AIR and damage you, if they fall on top of you
9) THIS IS THE DUMBEST SHIT I'VE PLAYED IN MY LIFE.
It's not even creatively bad. It's the same type of bad platformer that you saw in the thousands in the late 80s and early 90s, it's just among the least competent that was made by an actual professional development studio and backed by a professional publisher, LJN, who, as you might know, have had and still have a terrible reputation. I now know why. People complain about Zelda 2, Castlevania 2, The Zelda CD-I games, ET and that N64 Batman game, and for good reason, but man, I wish I could be playing any of those games instead of these never-ending Spider-Man games that all are of the same ilk and just get worse.
TLDR: Shit.
As is tradition with early 90s Spider-Man video games, Spider-Man 3: Invasion of Spider-Slayers is among the worst games I have ever played, and it possibly tops the list. As per usual, this was developed by Bits Studios and published by Acclaim Entertainment (or LJN at the time), possibly the worst grouping of developer + publisher of its time that actually made professionally developed video games. Spider-Man 3 released for the Game Boy and is the sequel to The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which, up to this point, I would have called the worst game I've ever played, especially within this challenge I'm doing. That game, and I'll use any opportunity I can to bring it up, got a 98% from Consoles +, a French video game magazine. Spider-Man 3's Consoles + review score is unknown, but it got a 6.1 Moby Rating, which is on the poorer side on the site.
The first level of this game is all you really need to know about. With each iteration in this Game Boy trilogy, the fudges given have gone down more and more, and it's apparent in many ways. The first game was developed by Rare and was awful in most aspects but at least had competent level design and started each level with witty dialogue between Spider-Man and the stage's boss, which gave it some charm. The second game, made by Bits Studios, didn't have this dialogue anymore and was even worse in all other aspects. Its level design was also just dull and lacked any sort of creativity and passion. This third game went down yet another level that I didn't think was possible. Instead of having some sort of love put into an opening 'cutscene' where Spidey reads that he is being framed, like in the second game, this third game just starts with Spider-Man saying that he will take a walk in the park. Then a white image with black text says that you should defeat 20 muggers. That's it. Then you walk around awkwardly from left to right looking for these men.
1) Spider-Man looks and walks as awkwardly as in all of the other 6 Spider-Man games I've played
2) Spider-Man controls as horrificly as in all of the other 6 Spider-Man games I've played
3) The level looks as bland as toast
4) There are nearly no assets on this whole level. The tiny space is only separated by a random wall placed in around the middle part of the level, which you can jump over to get to an area that looks and works exactly the same
5) There is a singular depiction of a man walking around the park endlessly. The challenge on this level is to figure out whether the guy is innocent or a "mugger". You wait for 2 seconds for the man to pull something out of his jacket. If it's a newspaper, he's innocent. If it's a gun, well, you do what Spider-Man does. Kick him in the nuts once and watch him vanish into thin air.
6) If you're too close to the man, your kick just goes through him. You have to stand a specific distance away from the man to kick him, or you'll miss.
7) KIDS ON SKATEBOARDS roam the area and run into you, unless you jump over them. Pressing the jump button comes with input lag, meaning it takes an extra second or two to actually do the jump, meaning you need to time it pretty early. Even then, it's likely you'll touch the back of the head of the kid and still take damage.
8) SPIDERS FALL DOWN OUT OF THIN AIR and damage you, if they fall on top of you
9) THIS IS THE DUMBEST SHIT I'VE PLAYED IN MY LIFE.
It's not even creatively bad. It's the same type of bad platformer that you saw in the thousands in the late 80s and early 90s, it's just among the least competent that was made by an actual professional development studio and backed by a professional publisher, LJN, who, as you might know, have had and still have a terrible reputation. I now know why. People complain about Zelda 2, Castlevania 2, The Zelda CD-I games, ET and that N64 Batman game, and for good reason, but man, I wish I could be playing any of those games instead of these never-ending Spider-Man games that all are of the same ilk and just get worse.
TLDR: Shit.
1993
(This is the 84th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
Less than a year after the Game Boy and overall debut of Kirby with Kirby's Dream Land, Nintendo released Kirby's Adventure on the SNES on March 23, 1993. Oh wait, what? It's an NES game? 2 1/2 years into the SNES' existence? Interesting.
What started as a request to simply port over Kirby's Dream Land to the system turned into something much grander when director Masahiro Sakurai chose to take advantage of the increased storage capacity available on the NES. Why it released on the NES instead of the SNES, I don't know. Some suggest that more people having the NES played a big role, and that it makes the game more accessible to children that way, though I can't comment on that.
They did do it however, and did take over some features of the Game Boy game while adding plenty more. Kirby, just like in Kirby's Dream Land, can inhale enemies and spit them back out, and Kirby can inhale air to fly. The game also remains on the easier side, though criticism about the game's lack of difficulty has been heard by making the game a bit tougher, which I can attest to, having played Kirby's Dream Land just a month or so ago before this. What has changed is that Kirby is now, for the first time, presented in color, and I think it's a fun fact that Shigeru Miyamoto initially thought Kirby would be yellow when Kirby still was only known to people in his monochrome form. What has also changed is that this game is significantly longer than Kirby's debut showing. A first-time playthrough will easily take an average player close to 6-8 hours, if not 10+, if you're on the less skilled side. That's partly because some sections can be a bit more difficult, partly because of a few annoyances with the game's controls we will get to in a bit and partly because the game is pretty long, with 41 levels over 7 worlds. Kirby's Dream Land sported only 5 levels.
The most notable other addition in this game is the "copy abilities" feature. To put it plainly, Kirby has two ways to kill enemies, when he inhales them. Either spit them back out or swallow them. Having come off a recent playthrough of Shin Megami Tensei 1, I can't say I've seen such brutality in that game and Kirby scares me ever since.
In all seriousness though, what swallowing enemies does is give Kirby the enemy's ability, which is a really fun feature. This allows Kirby to, for example, spit fire, wield a sword, roll up into a ball and roll through the map, take an icey form to produce ice cubes or even swallow lethargic enemies to take up their power of ... taking a nap and not doing anything for a couple seconds. I can imagine how limitless the possibilites are with such a feature and having not played any other Kirby game besides the first two, I'm excited to find out. In this game in particular, there appear to be 25 abilites Kirby can copy, though I found that most of the time you have access to about 10 of these in particular. There are multiple enemies carrying these abilities spread through each level, with them getting more and more diverse as you progress through stages, and usually you can pick and choose the ability you like best and progress through almost all areas using those. Sometimes, certain enemies are specifically placed in certain locations where their ability would prove to be most useful, like a wheel enemy near a slide. I found two locations that I don't think I could have progressed without using the enemy's ability placed nearby, but I think otherwise it's optional which one's you choose.
Apart from this feature, what is most impressive about Kirby's Adventure is that they were able to cram it all on the NES. Visually and in terms of gameplay it is one of the most impressive games on the system for sure (and the last NES game I will play as part of this challenge I'm doing, so it's nice to end the NES era on a very positive note). However, this does come with one caveat, which is performance. As retro gamers are well aware, whenever there are too many sprites or too many effects on the screen, the game experiences slowdown, and it happens often enough in this game to become annoying. There is a workaround though, which is playing the Nintendo 3DS version, which fixed all these performance issues. One other possible side-effect is the issues you will experience with the controls. I am not sure if this happened because of the slowdown or not, though I'm pretty sure it's part of the game's design that once you inhale, you are locked from turning Kirby around for a good second, which is an eternity, especially during boss fights. Input seems to also not respond immediately at times, so a lot of boss fights would just become way harder than they should have been because I would fight the controls for most of them. Similarly, whenever you jump down too far, an animation of Kirby falling on his face plays and you once again can't control him for a second, which allows enemies to easily get a hit in while you recover. For a game such as this, this was an odd thing to include, and I can't say I see that sort of jumping penalty a lot, perhaps ever, in these types of platforming games.
The boss fights are enjoyable enough apart from this. Some boss fights one will remember, if you've played Kirby's Dream Land, such as the tree called "Whispy" and, of course, King Dedede, who both use the same attack patterns pretty much. Boss fights happen at the end of each world, but there are several mini bosses in the 5 or 6 levels per world that you have to go through. End of world boss fights definitely feel like a bigger deal though, and are significantly tougher. I wouldn't call them hard at all, I also wouldn't call some of them pieces of cake, mainly because of the aforementioned performance and control issues.
The levels themselves are incredibly varied visually and again, I was just so impressed with how good this game looked on the NES. I'd say it's one of the best looking games on the system for sure. Apart from the main levels, there is an overworld for each world where you can also enter minigames and other small areas, such as one's that offer you a selection of enemies whose abilities you can then take into the main level, which is useful if you died and are left without an ability before a boss fight for example. The art style of the entire game is very appealing, especially to kids, but also to everyone else, as it just presentes itself as a laid back, relaxed, casual experience. Each new world is also introduced through a short little thematically fitting clip of Kirby in that world, which is pretty nice. Finally, I enjoyed the soundtrack but I wouldn't say it's among my favorites on the NES due to the lack of memorable tracks. Vegetable Valley 1 and Butter Building are worth highlighting. My favorite sound-related thing in the entire game has got to be the Mike ability, which you can use three times to damage everyone on the screen by having Kirby scream into a microphone. The scream was cute in Kirby's Dream Land already, but here they've added to it by making the third scream have a bit more oomph and Kirby leaning the mic forward like a rockstar when he screams into it, which was just adorable and got a chuckle out of me.
OVERALL | 73/100
Kirby's Adventure is definitely still worth playing today, and best enjoyed using the 3DS version due to the performance issues that are fixed on there. I would call this one of the best games on the NES for sure, so I'd recommend it to any and all platformer and retro fans. The "Copy Abilities" system was pretty fun and added replay value thanks to the amount of them available, and I'm looking forward to seeing how Nintendo builds on it, though I'm not sure if it's next mainline title, Kirby's Dream Land 2, can replicate it on this level due to being a Game Boy game.
Less than a year after the Game Boy and overall debut of Kirby with Kirby's Dream Land, Nintendo released Kirby's Adventure on the SNES on March 23, 1993. Oh wait, what? It's an NES game? 2 1/2 years into the SNES' existence? Interesting.
What started as a request to simply port over Kirby's Dream Land to the system turned into something much grander when director Masahiro Sakurai chose to take advantage of the increased storage capacity available on the NES. Why it released on the NES instead of the SNES, I don't know. Some suggest that more people having the NES played a big role, and that it makes the game more accessible to children that way, though I can't comment on that.
They did do it however, and did take over some features of the Game Boy game while adding plenty more. Kirby, just like in Kirby's Dream Land, can inhale enemies and spit them back out, and Kirby can inhale air to fly. The game also remains on the easier side, though criticism about the game's lack of difficulty has been heard by making the game a bit tougher, which I can attest to, having played Kirby's Dream Land just a month or so ago before this. What has changed is that Kirby is now, for the first time, presented in color, and I think it's a fun fact that Shigeru Miyamoto initially thought Kirby would be yellow when Kirby still was only known to people in his monochrome form. What has also changed is that this game is significantly longer than Kirby's debut showing. A first-time playthrough will easily take an average player close to 6-8 hours, if not 10+, if you're on the less skilled side. That's partly because some sections can be a bit more difficult, partly because of a few annoyances with the game's controls we will get to in a bit and partly because the game is pretty long, with 41 levels over 7 worlds. Kirby's Dream Land sported only 5 levels.
The most notable other addition in this game is the "copy abilities" feature. To put it plainly, Kirby has two ways to kill enemies, when he inhales them. Either spit them back out or swallow them. Having come off a recent playthrough of Shin Megami Tensei 1, I can't say I've seen such brutality in that game and Kirby scares me ever since.
In all seriousness though, what swallowing enemies does is give Kirby the enemy's ability, which is a really fun feature. This allows Kirby to, for example, spit fire, wield a sword, roll up into a ball and roll through the map, take an icey form to produce ice cubes or even swallow lethargic enemies to take up their power of ... taking a nap and not doing anything for a couple seconds. I can imagine how limitless the possibilites are with such a feature and having not played any other Kirby game besides the first two, I'm excited to find out. In this game in particular, there appear to be 25 abilites Kirby can copy, though I found that most of the time you have access to about 10 of these in particular. There are multiple enemies carrying these abilities spread through each level, with them getting more and more diverse as you progress through stages, and usually you can pick and choose the ability you like best and progress through almost all areas using those. Sometimes, certain enemies are specifically placed in certain locations where their ability would prove to be most useful, like a wheel enemy near a slide. I found two locations that I don't think I could have progressed without using the enemy's ability placed nearby, but I think otherwise it's optional which one's you choose.
Apart from this feature, what is most impressive about Kirby's Adventure is that they were able to cram it all on the NES. Visually and in terms of gameplay it is one of the most impressive games on the system for sure (and the last NES game I will play as part of this challenge I'm doing, so it's nice to end the NES era on a very positive note). However, this does come with one caveat, which is performance. As retro gamers are well aware, whenever there are too many sprites or too many effects on the screen, the game experiences slowdown, and it happens often enough in this game to become annoying. There is a workaround though, which is playing the Nintendo 3DS version, which fixed all these performance issues. One other possible side-effect is the issues you will experience with the controls. I am not sure if this happened because of the slowdown or not, though I'm pretty sure it's part of the game's design that once you inhale, you are locked from turning Kirby around for a good second, which is an eternity, especially during boss fights. Input seems to also not respond immediately at times, so a lot of boss fights would just become way harder than they should have been because I would fight the controls for most of them. Similarly, whenever you jump down too far, an animation of Kirby falling on his face plays and you once again can't control him for a second, which allows enemies to easily get a hit in while you recover. For a game such as this, this was an odd thing to include, and I can't say I see that sort of jumping penalty a lot, perhaps ever, in these types of platforming games.
The boss fights are enjoyable enough apart from this. Some boss fights one will remember, if you've played Kirby's Dream Land, such as the tree called "Whispy" and, of course, King Dedede, who both use the same attack patterns pretty much. Boss fights happen at the end of each world, but there are several mini bosses in the 5 or 6 levels per world that you have to go through. End of world boss fights definitely feel like a bigger deal though, and are significantly tougher. I wouldn't call them hard at all, I also wouldn't call some of them pieces of cake, mainly because of the aforementioned performance and control issues.
The levels themselves are incredibly varied visually and again, I was just so impressed with how good this game looked on the NES. I'd say it's one of the best looking games on the system for sure. Apart from the main levels, there is an overworld for each world where you can also enter minigames and other small areas, such as one's that offer you a selection of enemies whose abilities you can then take into the main level, which is useful if you died and are left without an ability before a boss fight for example. The art style of the entire game is very appealing, especially to kids, but also to everyone else, as it just presentes itself as a laid back, relaxed, casual experience. Each new world is also introduced through a short little thematically fitting clip of Kirby in that world, which is pretty nice. Finally, I enjoyed the soundtrack but I wouldn't say it's among my favorites on the NES due to the lack of memorable tracks. Vegetable Valley 1 and Butter Building are worth highlighting. My favorite sound-related thing in the entire game has got to be the Mike ability, which you can use three times to damage everyone on the screen by having Kirby scream into a microphone. The scream was cute in Kirby's Dream Land already, but here they've added to it by making the third scream have a bit more oomph and Kirby leaning the mic forward like a rockstar when he screams into it, which was just adorable and got a chuckle out of me.
OVERALL | 73/100
Kirby's Adventure is definitely still worth playing today, and best enjoyed using the 3DS version due to the performance issues that are fixed on there. I would call this one of the best games on the NES for sure, so I'd recommend it to any and all platformer and retro fans. The "Copy Abilities" system was pretty fun and added replay value thanks to the amount of them available, and I'm looking forward to seeing how Nintendo builds on it, though I'm not sure if it's next mainline title, Kirby's Dream Land 2, can replicate it on this level due to being a Game Boy game.
1991
(This is the 55th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
We found ourselves our first 1991 Game of the Year contender, ladies and gentlemen. Super Castlevania IV, an iconic platformer by Konami that originally released in Japan on October 31, 1991, is pretty much as good as advertised. And that says a lot considering that it was advertised as "one of the greatest games of all time". In many ways, from atmosphere to soundtrack to the simplicity of its gameplay loop, the game is timeless. In others, such as graphics, controls and features, it obviously lags behind more recent video games, but that's not a comparison we make here of course. For its time, Super Castlevania IV ranks high in those categories as well however.
Here is my in-depth review for the game. For the challenge, we'll be returning to the Castlevania series in October 1993 with Castlevania: Rondo of Blood.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
If you're a big fan of video games, you will know about Castlevania and the story set-up for its games, at least for most of them. There is a clan of vampire hunters called the Belmont family, who are tasked with defeating the evil Dracula, who resurrects himself every 100 years, when the "forces of the Good mysteriously become weak".
Super Castlevania IV doesn't do things differently, in very large part because this game is actually a remake of Castlevania for the NES from 1986. Or at least kind of it is.
The Japanese version, called Akumajō Dracula (the Japanese name for the Castlevania series), shows both in its name and in its story set-up that this is a remake of the first Castlevania. Simon Belmont, the main character for this game, is described as the young heir to the Belmont clan and prepares himself for its first adventure.
In the USA version, it is said that it is "time once again for Simon Belmont to take up his whip...", indicating that there was a different time when Simon Belmont had been active, which would be Castlevania II. See, Konami USA didn't actually factor in that this would be a remake, I suppose hence the name Super Castlevania IV (IV!), so it was actually considered a sequel all the way until 2005, when Konami released an "Xtreme desktop app" with the canon timeline, which didn't include Super Castlevania IV at all (as it is in essence a retelling of the first Castlevania, which IS included in the timeline).
With that out of the way, what IS the story here? You play Simon Belmont, as explained, who must defeat the evil Count Dracula in 1691 Transylvania. Equipped with a holy whip called 'Vampire Killer', which makes him the heir to the Belmont clan, Simon Belmont makes his way to Dracula's castle.
That's pretty much it. As per usual, story has no big considerations for these early 90 platformers, but there is enough here to set a dark, gothic atmosphere that will be palpable throughout your time with the game. For some additional lore, the manual states that "Simon has found an ancient tome left to him by his ancestors revealing the secret of the whip. In it, he learns that the whip can snap in eight directions." Some tiny little lore to explain a new gameplay mechanic is the kind of attention to detail I like to see, even if the game otherwise doesn't have a lot to offer in terms of storytelling.
GAMEPLAY | 16/20
This game is a platformer of the best kind. You know, I have my typical issues with platformers that are almost ubiquitous in the early 90s. Whether it's unfair hit boxes, long-distance jumps that you will die due to unless you can time them perfectly, too many enemies and obstacles on-screen at the same time, unresponsive controls, no ability to jump and hit, not being able to jump and redirect yourself, only having the ability to hit straight, no crouch-and-move function, ridiculously overpowered bosses and many many more things I often find that make these old-school platformers incredibly frustrating.
But Super Castlevania IV manages to elegantly incorporate so many QoL-improvements and the devs seem to have figured out how they can find a great balance of fun and challenging, even if it's not perfect at all times.
Simon Belmont is equipped with a whip. As per usual, you can use it to hit enemies and candles, the latter of which are almost everywhere and drop items. These items are food items, which give you health, heart items, which give you ammunition for special weapons (ok..) and the special weapons themselves (boomerang (goes across screen, comes back) axe (flies in an arc), fire bomb (burns anything in path), dagger (flies straight) and watch (stops most enemies and their attaks for a few seconds)). Next to these, you can also pick up special items that destroy all enemies on screen, grant you invincibility for a couple seconds (called 'invisibility' in the manual, hah), that allow you to shoot twice per ammunition and that increase the power of your weapons. So a nice variety here.
The whip itself has gained new functions in this game, and boy are they useful. First, the whip can be whipped in eight (!) directions now. So up, down, left, right and then in each direction diagonally as well. Second, the whip can be used at rings, which allows you to latch onto them and leap into the air like you're Spider-Man. Third, you can also hold the attack button, which allows you to swing the whip around in a sort of limb state, which is funny and kind of unnecessary, but I appreciated it existing for sure.
What this game really does well, and is what I opened with here, is to keep the cheap deaths to a minimum. Your own hit-box is reduced, so projectiles that graze your hair don't damage you. The enemy hit-boxes are extended, and you can even hit them from below through the blocks that they're standing on. Enemies that would take a lot more hits in previous versions take fewer this time. Jumps on distant blocks are successful, even if one of Simon's legs barely touches the platform. The majority of enemies are easy enough to hit and avoid, and not bouncy and very quick like in previous games. The fact that you can whip in 8 directions makes hitting enemies above and below you so much easier, especially when you're on stairs. Enemies attack slower, and the levels are designed much better in a way that you don't have to worry about fighting multiple enemies AND having to avoid environmental obstacles at the same time.
None of the points above make this game a cake walk. They just make it a lot more fair and a lot more fun without all the hours of frustration that don't really need to be there. Are there still frustrating parts? Sure. When you enter a new screen and enemies jump on top of you immediately, that kind of sucks. When you jump and fall out of the map instead of on the stairs that are right below your feet, that's still annoying. Spikes one-hitting you is kind of dumb.
But for the majority of the game, you actually feel like you can control the action and do so naturally, without having to adjust to the idiosyncracies of a game's particular control scheme.
For some, most boss fights might be very easy, and to me, from what I've seen, I'd place them between Castlevania 1 and 2 in terms of difficulty, though closer to 2. What this game does a lot better than 2 though is that boss fights are actually mostly cleverly designed, or at least each battle has its distinctive challenges it asks the player to overcome. Some bosses you CAN simply brute-force your way through by mashing the attack button, and those definitely could have been improved upon, and the final boss fight does have some annoying parts in particular, but I'd say the boss fights were enjoyable for the most part.
Heck, the whole game was enjoyable for the majority of it. If you're looking for a retro platformer, you'd be remiss to not check out Super Castlevania IV.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
No voice acting. It makes use of the sound engine of the SNES to create a satisfying group of sound effects, but where this game really shines in the aural category is with its soundtrack. Man is it fantastic and does it set the tone. The opening alone sounds so beautifully eerie and mysterious that it sets you off on the right foot before you even press START. The exact same can be said for the Prologue track and then some. That one got me bopping my head. The 'Stage 1 Theme of Simon Belmont' I can only imagine being iconic, but I loved listening to themes like 'Bloody Tears' and 'Beginning', which move the soundtrack from eerie to downright epic. Bloody Tears is originally from Castlevania II and I'd argue it sounds even more epic on there, but I'm glad it got re-used and re-mixed, so I could hear it here for the first time. It's literally one of my favorite video game tracks of all time now, it's like it's straight out of a symphony.
'Beginning' is from Castlevania III, as the NES trilogy's tracks were re-used in part here as you can tell, especially in the later levels.
And you know what else is amazing? When you are in the final stage of the lengthy final boss battle against Dracula and his two strongest goons, when both goons are defeated and Dracula is on his last few health bars, what music kicks in? Simon's theme. Not only is that a badass track to begin with, but the implications of using it just adds to the moment so much, as Simon knows he got Dracula, Dracula knows Simon's got him and now it's on the player to beat Dracula's ass one final time. Beautiful.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
The SNES offers a big jump graphically, and this game makes use of it. Each level looks unique, with a lot of attention to detail in the design of the backgrounds and environments. There are some genuinely unique levels to explore here in terms of technical composition as well, like the rotating level that is powered thanks tothe Mode 7 graphics mode or the stage where you need to hang on to a ring with your whip while the screen itself is rotating. There is also the chandelier level with rotating chandeliers that you need to jump on, but oddly, the background for that level is simply black like it was more common to see in the NES days. These levels are pretty rare and don't really last that long and don't provide a big challenge, but it's still nice to see how creative the devs can get with this technology.
There hasn't been nearly as much work put into sprites and animations I felt like, which both end up feeling and looking like NES models a lot, but Simon himself has gotten some detail added to his sprite when it comes to the armor he is wearing, his hair and the definition in his arm and leg muscles.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 9/10
Tremendously atmospheric. The soundtrack and story set-up already put you in the right mood for this one, but thanks to the power of the SNES, there is a lot more attention to detail in the graphical presentation, along with the Mode 7 feature that I just mentioned which allows some levels to come alive more. Now about those cooked meals that are hidden in the walls ...
CONTENT | 8/10
There are 9 numbered and two lettered levels, so a total of 11 stages. A full playthrough for someone who doesn't die once takes a bit more than an hour. For me, it took about 6-7 to get to the final stage, but I couldn't defeat the final boss gauntlet without using save states. These stages are varied in looks, sometimes even in design (keywords, again, Mode 7) but there is no progression system or any special hidden rooms or unique levels with different style of gameplay to mix it up. Regarding the progression system, you literally have all your abilities available to you from the first level and nothing new is introduced apart from different enemies in different stages. But your health stays the same, your strength can be temporarily improved by finding the appropriate items and you don't gain new skills. That's all fine of course, but a little bit more meat on the bone in some way wouldn't have been a bad thing I think.
That said, a game that can be beaten in one or two afternoons depending on your skill set, especially now with the power of emulation, and one that does what it focuses on really well, is a game with great content in my eyes.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
In its core, this is pretty basic. 11 total stages, each with their sub-stages and boss fights, either at the end or sometimes in the middle. What this game gets bonus points for is its execution of the basic, which is simply very well done and shows why this formula has been so popular among devs and players for so long in the first place. Some levels that show off the skills of the SNES in particular add to the variety of it all as well.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 7/10
There isn't anything particularly innovative about the core gameplay here. This game simply does a great job of putting it all together and bringing it to the 4th gen of consoles, while adding a lot of QoL improvements, a few very much welcomed additions to Simon's whip and creating a very dark and tense horror atmosphere.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
The main motivation to play this again would be to beat your high score. There are a couple secret rooms to find as well, though all they offer are a bunch of candles to find regular items. This is interestingly a step back for the series, as Castlevania III offered multiple different characters and multiple paths that you could take after specific stages, which added to replayability. Personally, I don't think this is a big deal at all, as I enjoyed the focus on Simon, who now had a lot more abilities, and not having multiple paths allowed for more focus on the fewer stages that had to be created. I'd be lying if I said I would have minded multiple paths for added replayability though.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL | 76/100
One of the best platformers of the early 90s for sure. It's a tremendous improvement on earlier entries of the series in pretty much every way, it's rather easy to progress in compared to its contemporaries and the much tighter controls along with the greatness that is the game's OST, the majority of you will have a great time playing this I'm sure.
We found ourselves our first 1991 Game of the Year contender, ladies and gentlemen. Super Castlevania IV, an iconic platformer by Konami that originally released in Japan on October 31, 1991, is pretty much as good as advertised. And that says a lot considering that it was advertised as "one of the greatest games of all time". In many ways, from atmosphere to soundtrack to the simplicity of its gameplay loop, the game is timeless. In others, such as graphics, controls and features, it obviously lags behind more recent video games, but that's not a comparison we make here of course. For its time, Super Castlevania IV ranks high in those categories as well however.
Here is my in-depth review for the game. For the challenge, we'll be returning to the Castlevania series in October 1993 with Castlevania: Rondo of Blood.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
If you're a big fan of video games, you will know about Castlevania and the story set-up for its games, at least for most of them. There is a clan of vampire hunters called the Belmont family, who are tasked with defeating the evil Dracula, who resurrects himself every 100 years, when the "forces of the Good mysteriously become weak".
Super Castlevania IV doesn't do things differently, in very large part because this game is actually a remake of Castlevania for the NES from 1986. Or at least kind of it is.
The Japanese version, called Akumajō Dracula (the Japanese name for the Castlevania series), shows both in its name and in its story set-up that this is a remake of the first Castlevania. Simon Belmont, the main character for this game, is described as the young heir to the Belmont clan and prepares himself for its first adventure.
In the USA version, it is said that it is "time once again for Simon Belmont to take up his whip...", indicating that there was a different time when Simon Belmont had been active, which would be Castlevania II. See, Konami USA didn't actually factor in that this would be a remake, I suppose hence the name Super Castlevania IV (IV!), so it was actually considered a sequel all the way until 2005, when Konami released an "Xtreme desktop app" with the canon timeline, which didn't include Super Castlevania IV at all (as it is in essence a retelling of the first Castlevania, which IS included in the timeline).
With that out of the way, what IS the story here? You play Simon Belmont, as explained, who must defeat the evil Count Dracula in 1691 Transylvania. Equipped with a holy whip called 'Vampire Killer', which makes him the heir to the Belmont clan, Simon Belmont makes his way to Dracula's castle.
That's pretty much it. As per usual, story has no big considerations for these early 90 platformers, but there is enough here to set a dark, gothic atmosphere that will be palpable throughout your time with the game. For some additional lore, the manual states that "Simon has found an ancient tome left to him by his ancestors revealing the secret of the whip. In it, he learns that the whip can snap in eight directions." Some tiny little lore to explain a new gameplay mechanic is the kind of attention to detail I like to see, even if the game otherwise doesn't have a lot to offer in terms of storytelling.
GAMEPLAY | 16/20
This game is a platformer of the best kind. You know, I have my typical issues with platformers that are almost ubiquitous in the early 90s. Whether it's unfair hit boxes, long-distance jumps that you will die due to unless you can time them perfectly, too many enemies and obstacles on-screen at the same time, unresponsive controls, no ability to jump and hit, not being able to jump and redirect yourself, only having the ability to hit straight, no crouch-and-move function, ridiculously overpowered bosses and many many more things I often find that make these old-school platformers incredibly frustrating.
But Super Castlevania IV manages to elegantly incorporate so many QoL-improvements and the devs seem to have figured out how they can find a great balance of fun and challenging, even if it's not perfect at all times.
Simon Belmont is equipped with a whip. As per usual, you can use it to hit enemies and candles, the latter of which are almost everywhere and drop items. These items are food items, which give you health, heart items, which give you ammunition for special weapons (ok..) and the special weapons themselves (boomerang (goes across screen, comes back) axe (flies in an arc), fire bomb (burns anything in path), dagger (flies straight) and watch (stops most enemies and their attaks for a few seconds)). Next to these, you can also pick up special items that destroy all enemies on screen, grant you invincibility for a couple seconds (called 'invisibility' in the manual, hah), that allow you to shoot twice per ammunition and that increase the power of your weapons. So a nice variety here.
The whip itself has gained new functions in this game, and boy are they useful. First, the whip can be whipped in eight (!) directions now. So up, down, left, right and then in each direction diagonally as well. Second, the whip can be used at rings, which allows you to latch onto them and leap into the air like you're Spider-Man. Third, you can also hold the attack button, which allows you to swing the whip around in a sort of limb state, which is funny and kind of unnecessary, but I appreciated it existing for sure.
What this game really does well, and is what I opened with here, is to keep the cheap deaths to a minimum. Your own hit-box is reduced, so projectiles that graze your hair don't damage you. The enemy hit-boxes are extended, and you can even hit them from below through the blocks that they're standing on. Enemies that would take a lot more hits in previous versions take fewer this time. Jumps on distant blocks are successful, even if one of Simon's legs barely touches the platform. The majority of enemies are easy enough to hit and avoid, and not bouncy and very quick like in previous games. The fact that you can whip in 8 directions makes hitting enemies above and below you so much easier, especially when you're on stairs. Enemies attack slower, and the levels are designed much better in a way that you don't have to worry about fighting multiple enemies AND having to avoid environmental obstacles at the same time.
None of the points above make this game a cake walk. They just make it a lot more fair and a lot more fun without all the hours of frustration that don't really need to be there. Are there still frustrating parts? Sure. When you enter a new screen and enemies jump on top of you immediately, that kind of sucks. When you jump and fall out of the map instead of on the stairs that are right below your feet, that's still annoying. Spikes one-hitting you is kind of dumb.
But for the majority of the game, you actually feel like you can control the action and do so naturally, without having to adjust to the idiosyncracies of a game's particular control scheme.
For some, most boss fights might be very easy, and to me, from what I've seen, I'd place them between Castlevania 1 and 2 in terms of difficulty, though closer to 2. What this game does a lot better than 2 though is that boss fights are actually mostly cleverly designed, or at least each battle has its distinctive challenges it asks the player to overcome. Some bosses you CAN simply brute-force your way through by mashing the attack button, and those definitely could have been improved upon, and the final boss fight does have some annoying parts in particular, but I'd say the boss fights were enjoyable for the most part.
Heck, the whole game was enjoyable for the majority of it. If you're looking for a retro platformer, you'd be remiss to not check out Super Castlevania IV.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
No voice acting. It makes use of the sound engine of the SNES to create a satisfying group of sound effects, but where this game really shines in the aural category is with its soundtrack. Man is it fantastic and does it set the tone. The opening alone sounds so beautifully eerie and mysterious that it sets you off on the right foot before you even press START. The exact same can be said for the Prologue track and then some. That one got me bopping my head. The 'Stage 1 Theme of Simon Belmont' I can only imagine being iconic, but I loved listening to themes like 'Bloody Tears' and 'Beginning', which move the soundtrack from eerie to downright epic. Bloody Tears is originally from Castlevania II and I'd argue it sounds even more epic on there, but I'm glad it got re-used and re-mixed, so I could hear it here for the first time. It's literally one of my favorite video game tracks of all time now, it's like it's straight out of a symphony.
'Beginning' is from Castlevania III, as the NES trilogy's tracks were re-used in part here as you can tell, especially in the later levels.
And you know what else is amazing? When you are in the final stage of the lengthy final boss battle against Dracula and his two strongest goons, when both goons are defeated and Dracula is on his last few health bars, what music kicks in? Simon's theme. Not only is that a badass track to begin with, but the implications of using it just adds to the moment so much, as Simon knows he got Dracula, Dracula knows Simon's got him and now it's on the player to beat Dracula's ass one final time. Beautiful.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
The SNES offers a big jump graphically, and this game makes use of it. Each level looks unique, with a lot of attention to detail in the design of the backgrounds and environments. There are some genuinely unique levels to explore here in terms of technical composition as well, like the rotating level that is powered thanks tothe Mode 7 graphics mode or the stage where you need to hang on to a ring with your whip while the screen itself is rotating. There is also the chandelier level with rotating chandeliers that you need to jump on, but oddly, the background for that level is simply black like it was more common to see in the NES days. These levels are pretty rare and don't really last that long and don't provide a big challenge, but it's still nice to see how creative the devs can get with this technology.
There hasn't been nearly as much work put into sprites and animations I felt like, which both end up feeling and looking like NES models a lot, but Simon himself has gotten some detail added to his sprite when it comes to the armor he is wearing, his hair and the definition in his arm and leg muscles.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 9/10
Tremendously atmospheric. The soundtrack and story set-up already put you in the right mood for this one, but thanks to the power of the SNES, there is a lot more attention to detail in the graphical presentation, along with the Mode 7 feature that I just mentioned which allows some levels to come alive more. Now about those cooked meals that are hidden in the walls ...
CONTENT | 8/10
There are 9 numbered and two lettered levels, so a total of 11 stages. A full playthrough for someone who doesn't die once takes a bit more than an hour. For me, it took about 6-7 to get to the final stage, but I couldn't defeat the final boss gauntlet without using save states. These stages are varied in looks, sometimes even in design (keywords, again, Mode 7) but there is no progression system or any special hidden rooms or unique levels with different style of gameplay to mix it up. Regarding the progression system, you literally have all your abilities available to you from the first level and nothing new is introduced apart from different enemies in different stages. But your health stays the same, your strength can be temporarily improved by finding the appropriate items and you don't gain new skills. That's all fine of course, but a little bit more meat on the bone in some way wouldn't have been a bad thing I think.
That said, a game that can be beaten in one or two afternoons depending on your skill set, especially now with the power of emulation, and one that does what it focuses on really well, is a game with great content in my eyes.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
In its core, this is pretty basic. 11 total stages, each with their sub-stages and boss fights, either at the end or sometimes in the middle. What this game gets bonus points for is its execution of the basic, which is simply very well done and shows why this formula has been so popular among devs and players for so long in the first place. Some levels that show off the skills of the SNES in particular add to the variety of it all as well.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 7/10
There isn't anything particularly innovative about the core gameplay here. This game simply does a great job of putting it all together and bringing it to the 4th gen of consoles, while adding a lot of QoL improvements, a few very much welcomed additions to Simon's whip and creating a very dark and tense horror atmosphere.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
The main motivation to play this again would be to beat your high score. There are a couple secret rooms to find as well, though all they offer are a bunch of candles to find regular items. This is interestingly a step back for the series, as Castlevania III offered multiple different characters and multiple paths that you could take after specific stages, which added to replayability. Personally, I don't think this is a big deal at all, as I enjoyed the focus on Simon, who now had a lot more abilities, and not having multiple paths allowed for more focus on the fewer stages that had to be created. I'd be lying if I said I would have minded multiple paths for added replayability though.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL | 76/100
One of the best platformers of the early 90s for sure. It's a tremendous improvement on earlier entries of the series in pretty much every way, it's rather easy to progress in compared to its contemporaries and the much tighter controls along with the greatness that is the game's OST, the majority of you will have a great time playing this I'm sure.
(This is the 100th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
I've played 100 games as part of this challenge now! Shame that the milestone was achieved with this game in particular, but also kind of fitting as one big theme of the challenge so far has been me finding out that Spider-Man games were shockingly bad for many, many years, so why not reach the 100 mark with another one of those?
Well, if there is another silver lining to that, it's that hey, you know what? Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage is the best of the 8 (!) Spider-Man games I've played between 1990 and 1994. That says much more about the other seven than it does about this game, but it's worth acknowledging nonetheless.
This beat 'em up game released on September 16, 1994 to be exact, was developed by Software Creations (who developed the other, actually functional, Spider-Man game in 1992) and published by Acclaim Entertainment / LJN, who retro fans need no introducing to. It feels like yet another game where the publisher went "fuck it, do what you want with the license, here are 8 bucks", and the developers went "Ok, we'll actually try".
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 5/10
The plot is apparently the first ever for a Spider-Man game to be picked straight out of an actual comic book story. It's told in a comic book style as well, which is a cost-efficient and fitting way to do things for a Spider-Man game. Finally a Spider-Man game that picks the easy and better path in that sense.
While there is more emphasis on the plot here than for most non-RPGs of the time, the problem here is that the storytelling is a jumbled mess at times because there are so many characters involved and just appear seemingly out of nowhere, so it is very easy to get confused by what is going on. The simple version of it is that Eddie Brock is released out of jail, and the Venom symbiote bonds to his former cellmate Cletus Kasady, who turns into supervillain Carnage. Venom and Spider-Man begrudgingly work together to defeat him whilst Carnage builds a team of villains.
For gameplay, this translates to fighting the same 5 or 6 types of enemies through well over a dozen stages and fighting the villains themselves about a dozen times overall as well. The pacing is pretty weird and clearly a lack of budget and/or time limited enemy variety so much that the devs just re-used the same events many times to make each encounter feel less and less special.
Overall, I think comic book fans who are more aware of all the characters will easier understand what's going on and get a little more enjoyment out of this, and I'm glad that comic book storytelling was used here, but it's not going to be the driving force to keep you playing, if gameplay doesn't do it for you.
GAMEPLAY | 8/20
If you play this and think "man, controls are not great", than boy do I have something to show you with all the other Spider-Man games that preceded this one. Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage's gameplay controls OK actually, but the issue is that enemy attack patterns are hard to discern in many ways, which will lead to you getting hit a ton, even though you are in the midst of attacking an enemy that for most of the time staggers enemies (meaning they don't attack back), until it somehow doesn't.
To explain it a bit further, this is a beat 'em up game in the same vein of Streets of Rage, Double Dragon and Final Fight. You walk down alleyways and can progress as you beat up enemies that show up continuously, until you reach the end of a stage and face a boss. You control Spider-Man, but the game lets you pick between him and Venom from time to time as well, which is pointless since their moveset is pretty much identical.
You hit enemies with punches for the most part, but you can also tie them up with your webs, use your webs to jump up and kick them in the air, jump & kick and pull them towards you with your webs to punch and throw them. If you time it right, you can sit inbetween two enemies and pull them towards each other and make their hands bang together, which is the highlight of this combat system.
There are stages where you have to dodge bombs and projectiles from above by swinging from one building to another and then back, but mainly it's the classic beat 'em up gameplay here.
Enemies are more or less aggressive depending on the color of their clothes, which indicates toughness, and enemy types do have their own attacks, but as mentioned, there are just very few of them in this game. It's so limited that they actually use a specific enemy type as a boss upon first introduction, before throwing them into the normal enemy pool in the next stages.
Then you have the fights against the main villain group, where you face up to 4 of them in one boss rush-type sequence. This is where the gameplay falls apart, as you can't reliable hit and dodge them, and their health pools make the fight last for way too long. The idea is to hit Carnage once or twice and move away, because he will not be staggered and just rush towards you. Then you gotta watch out to not dodge into Shriek's path, because she will just horizontally shoot her sonic energy blasts, which covers way more space than it appears she would. Then you punch her a couple times, at which point she teleports to another area on the screen, but not before leaving a vertical energy blast in her stead, which is going to hit you 100% of the time unless you punch just enough times to tread backwards before she teleports. Punching one too few times however will open you up to her horizontal blast, so it's a tediously tight game of do enough but not too much until she is disposed of, at which point you can focus on the others. You do this, as I said, 10+ times, which is not very creative nor fun.
To help you out a little bit, you can pick up power ups that let you spawn your allies, who will do a special attack that knocks out all bosses on screen and takes just a little bit of their health, or that kills all normal enemies on screen. It's OK but not too useful.
Overall, the gameplay works but is too unfair and repetitive to be considered fun.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 6/10
No voice acting besides grunts. Sound design is a pretty basic SNES soundboard affair, while the rock soundtrack itself is actually pretty good. Not too many tracks in it, and I can't say it's all that unique, but you'll be OK with listening to it at minimum.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 4/10
The graphical quality is average for an SNES title. It stands out though for the fact that many locations look and are identical/repeated, enemy variety is low and overall, visual diversity is just too little. Unlike all other Spider-Man games from its time, Spider-Man doesn't have horrendous posture though, which is at least something.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 5/10
Feels like a Spider-Man game thanks to the comic book storytelling and the multitude of characters appearing, but doesn't feel like a Spider-Man game because all the normal enemies are just random dudes and gals hitting you with frying pans and ... their hair.
CONTENT | 3/10
You will play this game for 3-8 hours depending on your skill level, if you want to beat it. For that run time, the game offers you fairly little. The moveset is very limited, enemies are always the same, levels look similar, there are no surprises the game really ever has in store for you in its gameplay, and the frustration levels here are very high anyway. With all these points combined, you'll see everything the game has to offer in an hour and probably not want to spend more than that anyway.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 3/10
Alleyway, rooftops, the insides of bland looking buildings. That's what you'll get in terms of locations for the majority of this game. In almost all of them, you will be doing the same thing as well. Move from side to side (sometimes even back the way you came???), punch a bunch of bad guys, fight bosses that are the normal enemies, just tougher and move on with the story. Very bland.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 3/10
The game doesn't do anything do differentiate itself from prior beat 'em up games. It just uses that formula to make a functional, not terrible video game. The most (read: only) inspired part about this game is the comic book storytelling, but that loses its novelty after a while once you realize the story is not particularly well told despite the method they chose fitting the titular main character very well.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
You can choose Spider-Man or Venom as part of an illusion of choice for some levels. In reality, the only replayable part about the game is the high score system, in that you can try to beat your previous one.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 43/100
So yeah, the best Spider-Man game of the early 90s by far, but only because the other ones are so much worse. This game doesn't do so much wrong, it just does very little right. If you want to play a Spider-Man game, play the modern ones or those from the early 2000s, and if you want to play a beat 'em up, play Streets of Rage or Final Fight. The devs clearly had some passion for this game, which is nice, but an LJN-led (Spider-Man) game being only pretty bad is probably the best we got.
I've played 100 games as part of this challenge now! Shame that the milestone was achieved with this game in particular, but also kind of fitting as one big theme of the challenge so far has been me finding out that Spider-Man games were shockingly bad for many, many years, so why not reach the 100 mark with another one of those?
Well, if there is another silver lining to that, it's that hey, you know what? Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage is the best of the 8 (!) Spider-Man games I've played between 1990 and 1994. That says much more about the other seven than it does about this game, but it's worth acknowledging nonetheless.
This beat 'em up game released on September 16, 1994 to be exact, was developed by Software Creations (who developed the other, actually functional, Spider-Man game in 1992) and published by Acclaim Entertainment / LJN, who retro fans need no introducing to. It feels like yet another game where the publisher went "fuck it, do what you want with the license, here are 8 bucks", and the developers went "Ok, we'll actually try".
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 5/10
The plot is apparently the first ever for a Spider-Man game to be picked straight out of an actual comic book story. It's told in a comic book style as well, which is a cost-efficient and fitting way to do things for a Spider-Man game. Finally a Spider-Man game that picks the easy and better path in that sense.
While there is more emphasis on the plot here than for most non-RPGs of the time, the problem here is that the storytelling is a jumbled mess at times because there are so many characters involved and just appear seemingly out of nowhere, so it is very easy to get confused by what is going on. The simple version of it is that Eddie Brock is released out of jail, and the Venom symbiote bonds to his former cellmate Cletus Kasady, who turns into supervillain Carnage. Venom and Spider-Man begrudgingly work together to defeat him whilst Carnage builds a team of villains.
For gameplay, this translates to fighting the same 5 or 6 types of enemies through well over a dozen stages and fighting the villains themselves about a dozen times overall as well. The pacing is pretty weird and clearly a lack of budget and/or time limited enemy variety so much that the devs just re-used the same events many times to make each encounter feel less and less special.
Overall, I think comic book fans who are more aware of all the characters will easier understand what's going on and get a little more enjoyment out of this, and I'm glad that comic book storytelling was used here, but it's not going to be the driving force to keep you playing, if gameplay doesn't do it for you.
GAMEPLAY | 8/20
If you play this and think "man, controls are not great", than boy do I have something to show you with all the other Spider-Man games that preceded this one. Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage's gameplay controls OK actually, but the issue is that enemy attack patterns are hard to discern in many ways, which will lead to you getting hit a ton, even though you are in the midst of attacking an enemy that for most of the time staggers enemies (meaning they don't attack back), until it somehow doesn't.
To explain it a bit further, this is a beat 'em up game in the same vein of Streets of Rage, Double Dragon and Final Fight. You walk down alleyways and can progress as you beat up enemies that show up continuously, until you reach the end of a stage and face a boss. You control Spider-Man, but the game lets you pick between him and Venom from time to time as well, which is pointless since their moveset is pretty much identical.
You hit enemies with punches for the most part, but you can also tie them up with your webs, use your webs to jump up and kick them in the air, jump & kick and pull them towards you with your webs to punch and throw them. If you time it right, you can sit inbetween two enemies and pull them towards each other and make their hands bang together, which is the highlight of this combat system.
There are stages where you have to dodge bombs and projectiles from above by swinging from one building to another and then back, but mainly it's the classic beat 'em up gameplay here.
Enemies are more or less aggressive depending on the color of their clothes, which indicates toughness, and enemy types do have their own attacks, but as mentioned, there are just very few of them in this game. It's so limited that they actually use a specific enemy type as a boss upon first introduction, before throwing them into the normal enemy pool in the next stages.
Then you have the fights against the main villain group, where you face up to 4 of them in one boss rush-type sequence. This is where the gameplay falls apart, as you can't reliable hit and dodge them, and their health pools make the fight last for way too long. The idea is to hit Carnage once or twice and move away, because he will not be staggered and just rush towards you. Then you gotta watch out to not dodge into Shriek's path, because she will just horizontally shoot her sonic energy blasts, which covers way more space than it appears she would. Then you punch her a couple times, at which point she teleports to another area on the screen, but not before leaving a vertical energy blast in her stead, which is going to hit you 100% of the time unless you punch just enough times to tread backwards before she teleports. Punching one too few times however will open you up to her horizontal blast, so it's a tediously tight game of do enough but not too much until she is disposed of, at which point you can focus on the others. You do this, as I said, 10+ times, which is not very creative nor fun.
To help you out a little bit, you can pick up power ups that let you spawn your allies, who will do a special attack that knocks out all bosses on screen and takes just a little bit of their health, or that kills all normal enemies on screen. It's OK but not too useful.
Overall, the gameplay works but is too unfair and repetitive to be considered fun.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 6/10
No voice acting besides grunts. Sound design is a pretty basic SNES soundboard affair, while the rock soundtrack itself is actually pretty good. Not too many tracks in it, and I can't say it's all that unique, but you'll be OK with listening to it at minimum.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 4/10
The graphical quality is average for an SNES title. It stands out though for the fact that many locations look and are identical/repeated, enemy variety is low and overall, visual diversity is just too little. Unlike all other Spider-Man games from its time, Spider-Man doesn't have horrendous posture though, which is at least something.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 5/10
Feels like a Spider-Man game thanks to the comic book storytelling and the multitude of characters appearing, but doesn't feel like a Spider-Man game because all the normal enemies are just random dudes and gals hitting you with frying pans and ... their hair.
CONTENT | 3/10
You will play this game for 3-8 hours depending on your skill level, if you want to beat it. For that run time, the game offers you fairly little. The moveset is very limited, enemies are always the same, levels look similar, there are no surprises the game really ever has in store for you in its gameplay, and the frustration levels here are very high anyway. With all these points combined, you'll see everything the game has to offer in an hour and probably not want to spend more than that anyway.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 3/10
Alleyway, rooftops, the insides of bland looking buildings. That's what you'll get in terms of locations for the majority of this game. In almost all of them, you will be doing the same thing as well. Move from side to side (sometimes even back the way you came???), punch a bunch of bad guys, fight bosses that are the normal enemies, just tougher and move on with the story. Very bland.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 3/10
The game doesn't do anything do differentiate itself from prior beat 'em up games. It just uses that formula to make a functional, not terrible video game. The most (read: only) inspired part about this game is the comic book storytelling, but that loses its novelty after a while once you realize the story is not particularly well told despite the method they chose fitting the titular main character very well.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
You can choose Spider-Man or Venom as part of an illusion of choice for some levels. In reality, the only replayable part about the game is the high score system, in that you can try to beat your previous one.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 43/100
So yeah, the best Spider-Man game of the early 90s by far, but only because the other ones are so much worse. This game doesn't do so much wrong, it just does very little right. If you want to play a Spider-Man game, play the modern ones or those from the early 2000s, and if you want to play a beat 'em up, play Streets of Rage or Final Fight. The devs clearly had some passion for this game, which is nice, but an LJN-led (Spider-Man) game being only pretty bad is probably the best we got.
(This is the 85th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
In this challenge I'm doing, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past or 'Zelda 3' is still my 2nd favorite game I've played up to this point. Knowing that its sequel, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, was released on the Game Boy, I didn't have too high expectations because I've come to realize that most games on the Game Boy have not aged well due to the handheld's capabilities. Looking at Super Mario Land 2, I expected this to be one of the better games on the system though, and after having played it for a good while, I can confirm as much. It's absolutely one of the best games on the system. Unfortunately, I didn't have as much fun with this game as I would have liked, and it mainly has to do with the slow pace of it at all, mainly due to one issue.
Story-wise, Link's Awakening starts off as a follow-up to A Link to the Past in that Link travels by ship to other places and, on his return home to Hyrule months later, has his ship destroyed by a storm and washes ashore on a place that is not actually Hyrule, which makes this game the first Zelda game to not play in Hyrule. The island he is on is called "Koholint Island", and he is taken home by a girl called Marin, who tends to him until he wakes up. When he wakes up, Link can talk to Marin's father, Tarin, who looks suspiciously like Mario (and also likes mushrooms) to recover his shield. He makes his way to the beach to recover his sword, where an owl tells him that he needs to wake the Wind Fish, which is in an egg crowning the large mountain of this island. Only this way can Link escape the island. To do this, Link needs to collect 8 instruments out of 8 dungeons.
It's a pretty neat setup for this game and it's nice to see it be different from the typical save Hyrule from Ganon plot, which is by no means bad, but from there, the game plays exactly like A Link to the Past, but on the Game Boy. This is luckily also not a bad thing, as the concept put forth by A Link to the Past is rightfully praised all over. It is, however, on the Game Boy, so it just plays like a smaller version with fewer features. In addition, I want to say it is designed for children in terms of its difficulty, but one constant issue that "pops up" (pun intended) makes me think this was designed for 6-year olds, though even 6-year olds are unlikely to need this much help on this front.
What I am referring to are "message pop-ups" that constantly, and I mean constantly, interrupt your gameplay, to the point it drove me to near-madness and made me end my playthrough, as it just made the game straight-up unenjoyable. The way these games are set up is in a Metroidvania-style where you lack all abilities at the start and therefore can't enter certain areas until you find suitable items elsewhere. For example, pots and stones can not be carried unless you equip a "Power Bracelet". This presents the two main issues I had with this game. First, there are many items in this game (just like in 'A Link to the Past') but here, instead of having them be passive skills, you need to constantly manually equip the items you need at a given moment, with two items equippable at the same time. You need to switch a lot, which slows the game down too much for me and has led to many annoying deaths over the time I played. Second, which is the worst part, EVERY time you accidentally run into any item that you cannot interact with, a message screen pops up telling you that you cannot do that. I KNOW. And it's not like the message goes away once you have the Power Bracelet. No, every time you don't have it equipped, you get the message again. Why? For whom? You also get the same message about the same items you pick up in each dungeon explaining their functions. It takes so much time to constantly have to wait to skip through them and just felt so odd throughout.
Perhaps my fixation on these pop-ups was exacerbated by the fact that I found the puzzles in this game to be less clever (and more annoying because of the constant item-swapping) and "whimsical character wants an item to trade" as puzzle-solving multiple times didn't really translate to enjoyable content to me at some point. I think overall, it just felt like the worse version of A Link to the Past that it is and it couldn't really excite me enough to see through the story, which hadn't really moved along at all at the time I stopped playing apart from the Owl constantly sending me to different dungeons to collect instruments. It definitely didn't help that all of this was happening on my computer screen instead of on a handheld like initially intended, but I'm also not a kid anymore, haven't played this game back in the day and after thousands of games, both by and not by Nintendo, that copied Zelda's charm, as well as the monochrome graphics, I just couldn't really get excited about most of what I was seeing and playing.
OVERALL | 66/100
To call The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening a competent game would be my way of saying that it is not a bad game at all, and if you love Zelda games, you will really enjoy this one as well (though I'd opt for the remake at this point). But calling it competent is also my way of saying that the game did little 'wrong', however the things it did do wrong (message pop-ups, item switching) hampered my enjoyment of the game a lot. It doesn't help that this game follows the same rigid collect a certain number of things to beat the game like seemingly all first-party Nintendo Game Boy games (which I presume is due to the limitations of the Game Boy), so even though it had the Zelda coding on it, I couldn't help but feel unimpressed from an enjoyment-perspective. From a technical perspective, it is undoubtedly impressive how much the devs were able to get out of the Game Boy with this game.
In this challenge I'm doing, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past or 'Zelda 3' is still my 2nd favorite game I've played up to this point. Knowing that its sequel, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, was released on the Game Boy, I didn't have too high expectations because I've come to realize that most games on the Game Boy have not aged well due to the handheld's capabilities. Looking at Super Mario Land 2, I expected this to be one of the better games on the system though, and after having played it for a good while, I can confirm as much. It's absolutely one of the best games on the system. Unfortunately, I didn't have as much fun with this game as I would have liked, and it mainly has to do with the slow pace of it at all, mainly due to one issue.
Story-wise, Link's Awakening starts off as a follow-up to A Link to the Past in that Link travels by ship to other places and, on his return home to Hyrule months later, has his ship destroyed by a storm and washes ashore on a place that is not actually Hyrule, which makes this game the first Zelda game to not play in Hyrule. The island he is on is called "Koholint Island", and he is taken home by a girl called Marin, who tends to him until he wakes up. When he wakes up, Link can talk to Marin's father, Tarin, who looks suspiciously like Mario (and also likes mushrooms) to recover his shield. He makes his way to the beach to recover his sword, where an owl tells him that he needs to wake the Wind Fish, which is in an egg crowning the large mountain of this island. Only this way can Link escape the island. To do this, Link needs to collect 8 instruments out of 8 dungeons.
It's a pretty neat setup for this game and it's nice to see it be different from the typical save Hyrule from Ganon plot, which is by no means bad, but from there, the game plays exactly like A Link to the Past, but on the Game Boy. This is luckily also not a bad thing, as the concept put forth by A Link to the Past is rightfully praised all over. It is, however, on the Game Boy, so it just plays like a smaller version with fewer features. In addition, I want to say it is designed for children in terms of its difficulty, but one constant issue that "pops up" (pun intended) makes me think this was designed for 6-year olds, though even 6-year olds are unlikely to need this much help on this front.
What I am referring to are "message pop-ups" that constantly, and I mean constantly, interrupt your gameplay, to the point it drove me to near-madness and made me end my playthrough, as it just made the game straight-up unenjoyable. The way these games are set up is in a Metroidvania-style where you lack all abilities at the start and therefore can't enter certain areas until you find suitable items elsewhere. For example, pots and stones can not be carried unless you equip a "Power Bracelet". This presents the two main issues I had with this game. First, there are many items in this game (just like in 'A Link to the Past') but here, instead of having them be passive skills, you need to constantly manually equip the items you need at a given moment, with two items equippable at the same time. You need to switch a lot, which slows the game down too much for me and has led to many annoying deaths over the time I played. Second, which is the worst part, EVERY time you accidentally run into any item that you cannot interact with, a message screen pops up telling you that you cannot do that. I KNOW. And it's not like the message goes away once you have the Power Bracelet. No, every time you don't have it equipped, you get the message again. Why? For whom? You also get the same message about the same items you pick up in each dungeon explaining their functions. It takes so much time to constantly have to wait to skip through them and just felt so odd throughout.
Perhaps my fixation on these pop-ups was exacerbated by the fact that I found the puzzles in this game to be less clever (and more annoying because of the constant item-swapping) and "whimsical character wants an item to trade" as puzzle-solving multiple times didn't really translate to enjoyable content to me at some point. I think overall, it just felt like the worse version of A Link to the Past that it is and it couldn't really excite me enough to see through the story, which hadn't really moved along at all at the time I stopped playing apart from the Owl constantly sending me to different dungeons to collect instruments. It definitely didn't help that all of this was happening on my computer screen instead of on a handheld like initially intended, but I'm also not a kid anymore, haven't played this game back in the day and after thousands of games, both by and not by Nintendo, that copied Zelda's charm, as well as the monochrome graphics, I just couldn't really get excited about most of what I was seeing and playing.
OVERALL | 66/100
To call The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening a competent game would be my way of saying that it is not a bad game at all, and if you love Zelda games, you will really enjoy this one as well (though I'd opt for the remake at this point). But calling it competent is also my way of saying that the game did little 'wrong', however the things it did do wrong (message pop-ups, item switching) hampered my enjoyment of the game a lot. It doesn't help that this game follows the same rigid collect a certain number of things to beat the game like seemingly all first-party Nintendo Game Boy games (which I presume is due to the limitations of the Game Boy), so even though it had the Zelda coding on it, I couldn't help but feel unimpressed from an enjoyment-perspective. From a technical perspective, it is undoubtedly impressive how much the devs were able to get out of the Game Boy with this game.
1992
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is the sequel to, surprise surprise, Sonic the Hedgehog, both of which released on the Sega Genesis. This sequel released just 1 1/2 years later and with only 9 months of development time, but it not only helped Sega claim a lot of market share held by Nintendo at the time, but it also solidified Sonic as the iconic video game mascot we know today and as Sega's answer to Nintendo's Mario.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was developed by Sega Technical Institute released on November 21, 1992 for the Sega Genesis and, at the time, was the first Japanese game ever to have a simultaneous worldwide launch and popularized this concept at the time. It also become the fastest-selling game at the time, breaking video game records. It's also interesting to note that Sega wasn't quite sold on Sonic like you might think, which is interesting because one thing I felt while playing this game was "this feels more like the big deal that I expected Sonic the Hedgehog 1 to be".
The game does what a sequel should do. It realizes (most) of what ailed the original and improves upon it without taking anything away from everything else that made the original what it is. Now, I can't say I loved the original game, which I played just a few months back for the first time ever, but it was enjoyable and the 'speed' gimmick for Sonic certainly made the game stand out.
With Sonic 2, I have more positive, but somewhat mixed feelings still. It absolutely is one of the standout games of 1992 and deservedly called a classic and one of the greatest games of all time. Its gameplay is timeless in the sense that it is still very easy to pick up and play the game today. My complaint mainly is that I still didn't get quite as comfortable with Sonic's gimmick as I might have had I been introduced to him in my childhood.
My biggest complaint with the original for example was that way too often, speeding through a level was disrupted by countless obstacles, and you'd need to constantly jog back to gain momentum to run up a steep slope. The developers apparently recognized this and added a skill that allows Sonic to gain momentum for a second with a dash-like bump to his speed, which definitely helped a lot. Still, to activate it, you need to step back a bit to not be on an inclining area of the platform, then you need to stand still for a second, then press 'down' and then press the appropriate button to charge up the dash.
My other issue is that the obstacles could have been made much less frustrating. When you run up a slope and fall on top of any enemy, you are the one that takes damages and lose all your rings. Why? Because flying up in the air and falling on top of an enemy (or a power-up) is not registered as a 'jump'. To actually be able to hit them, you need to actually press the 'jump' button, which seems to me like it's the same thing and would have helped make the game a smoother experience. On the other hand, the game was called 'easy' at the time in its current state as well, and it certainly isn't the most difficult game I've played, so allowing for hits to be recognized without pressing 'jump' might have made things too easy. Though, with that being the case, you can see what my issue is with these game's design. It's not necessarily an objective flaw, just a subjective opinion on how it feels to play the game.
That said, this was certainly still plenty of fun. The soundtrack is as good as the first game, the levels are even more varied (the Casino zone is especially memorable) and there are more challenges to spice up the gameplay, like the underwater levels, trap platforms that you can fall through and the "half-pipe courses" that were added as a bonus stage to collect the Chaos Emeralds which turn Sonic into Super Sonic.
I really liked the design of most zones, though some felt a bit too busy. Some also include certain tubes that suck you up and shoot you around the level for a while, which takes control out of your hands and makes you wait for a bit, which quickly gets repetitive after a few Game Overs. But each level introduces its own challenges and themes, and there are many branching paths you can take to mix up each playthrough, which shows the high production values in this game compared to almost all competitors in the genre.
This game is also the debut of Tails, who has a very cute design but, unless you change it in the hidden "Options" menu, for some reason runs around with you even in 1P mode and just seems out of place.
Overall, I think most people will have a fun couple hours with this game at least and it has aged pretty well. I think even today, you'll get more or less the same out of it as people from 30 years ago did, especially if you're a kid, which isn't something that can be said about many games of this time period. Personally, I can't say these initial Sonic games suit what makes a video game a lot of fun for me because I find that the factor of 'speed' runs opposite to the countless obstacles that make you stop and play it more slowly, but I still had fun with it.
(This is the 79th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was developed by Sega Technical Institute released on November 21, 1992 for the Sega Genesis and, at the time, was the first Japanese game ever to have a simultaneous worldwide launch and popularized this concept at the time. It also become the fastest-selling game at the time, breaking video game records. It's also interesting to note that Sega wasn't quite sold on Sonic like you might think, which is interesting because one thing I felt while playing this game was "this feels more like the big deal that I expected Sonic the Hedgehog 1 to be".
The game does what a sequel should do. It realizes (most) of what ailed the original and improves upon it without taking anything away from everything else that made the original what it is. Now, I can't say I loved the original game, which I played just a few months back for the first time ever, but it was enjoyable and the 'speed' gimmick for Sonic certainly made the game stand out.
With Sonic 2, I have more positive, but somewhat mixed feelings still. It absolutely is one of the standout games of 1992 and deservedly called a classic and one of the greatest games of all time. Its gameplay is timeless in the sense that it is still very easy to pick up and play the game today. My complaint mainly is that I still didn't get quite as comfortable with Sonic's gimmick as I might have had I been introduced to him in my childhood.
My biggest complaint with the original for example was that way too often, speeding through a level was disrupted by countless obstacles, and you'd need to constantly jog back to gain momentum to run up a steep slope. The developers apparently recognized this and added a skill that allows Sonic to gain momentum for a second with a dash-like bump to his speed, which definitely helped a lot. Still, to activate it, you need to step back a bit to not be on an inclining area of the platform, then you need to stand still for a second, then press 'down' and then press the appropriate button to charge up the dash.
My other issue is that the obstacles could have been made much less frustrating. When you run up a slope and fall on top of any enemy, you are the one that takes damages and lose all your rings. Why? Because flying up in the air and falling on top of an enemy (or a power-up) is not registered as a 'jump'. To actually be able to hit them, you need to actually press the 'jump' button, which seems to me like it's the same thing and would have helped make the game a smoother experience. On the other hand, the game was called 'easy' at the time in its current state as well, and it certainly isn't the most difficult game I've played, so allowing for hits to be recognized without pressing 'jump' might have made things too easy. Though, with that being the case, you can see what my issue is with these game's design. It's not necessarily an objective flaw, just a subjective opinion on how it feels to play the game.
That said, this was certainly still plenty of fun. The soundtrack is as good as the first game, the levels are even more varied (the Casino zone is especially memorable) and there are more challenges to spice up the gameplay, like the underwater levels, trap platforms that you can fall through and the "half-pipe courses" that were added as a bonus stage to collect the Chaos Emeralds which turn Sonic into Super Sonic.
I really liked the design of most zones, though some felt a bit too busy. Some also include certain tubes that suck you up and shoot you around the level for a while, which takes control out of your hands and makes you wait for a bit, which quickly gets repetitive after a few Game Overs. But each level introduces its own challenges and themes, and there are many branching paths you can take to mix up each playthrough, which shows the high production values in this game compared to almost all competitors in the genre.
This game is also the debut of Tails, who has a very cute design but, unless you change it in the hidden "Options" menu, for some reason runs around with you even in 1P mode and just seems out of place.
Overall, I think most people will have a fun couple hours with this game at least and it has aged pretty well. I think even today, you'll get more or less the same out of it as people from 30 years ago did, especially if you're a kid, which isn't something that can be said about many games of this time period. Personally, I can't say these initial Sonic games suit what makes a video game a lot of fun for me because I find that the factor of 'speed' runs opposite to the countless obstacles that make you stop and play it more slowly, but I still had fun with it.
(This is the 79th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
I don't know what I expected, but The Amazing Spider-Man for Game Boy was almost just as bad as the Amiga / Commodore 64 game which I had played a month prior.
This one came out in July 1990 for the Game Boy exclusively and was developed by Rare (who developed a different rather below average game in 1990 as well, Captain Skyhawk).
My first immediate complaint about the Commodore 64 game was how it looked like Spider-Man had back issues and how the assets used didn't have much to do with Spider-Man. The moment gameplay started for this Game Boy game, I noticed how Spidey walked like he was having back issues yet again, however the use of multiple Spider-Man villains and the typical Spider-Man quick-wittedness in dialogue at least gave me some Spider-Man vibes here.
That doesn't take away from the fact that this game was a bad one in pretty much any way you can think of, but here is a one-by-one rundown of it all.
____________
STORYTELLING
Mary Jane has been kidnapped by 6 villains, apparently, and Spider-Man needs to save her. He learns about this when Mysterio calls him by phone. Mysterio then is the boss of the first stage. The second stage begins with Hobgoblin giving him a call, the third stage boss is Scorpion and so it goes 6 times until the game ends.
The plot is not really of importance, but what this game does that I found fun was how every conversation is just filled with a bunch of one-liners and insults that Spider-Man and his enemies throw at each other. Spider-Man called Mysterio a "Fishbowl Face", Hobgoblin a "Pumpkin Brain", Scorpion a "Tail-Twirler" and so on. They are not necessarily clever or big zingers, but I can imagine especially younger players getting a kick out of it, so I see it as a plus.
Still, there isn't much here overall.
GAMEPLAY
There are two types of stages in this game. The first is the most common: Moving Spider-Man to the right in a horizontally scrolling 2D Action game with limited platforming. The other appears twice and involves you moving Spider-Man vertically up the wall of a tall building.
During the side-scrolling sections, platforming is really limited to jumping and web-swinging. Web-swinging has got to be working randomly, because I barely ever got it to work even though I always pressed the button like the manual says. Hold B. And yet, every 10th press or so actually started the animation, which sees you progress through the level up in the air, where you can't be hurt by most enemies and can actually swing over boxes that you would be unable to jump over.
Ugh, this just felt like a drag throughout. Spider-Man walks weird and slow, you can only throw a punch or shoot webs (at least until you run out of web fluids) and graphically this game is so simple that you can't even make out what kind of items the enemies drop when they die. Even the manual calls it "stuff" multiple times, so it literally is a bunch of pixels that they drop.
There is a level like this on a random street, but also on a train, but they play the same apart from the fact that Spider-Man crouches down automatically on the train to not get smashed by a brick wall.
The wall-climbing stages include rocks falling from above which you have to avoid and enemies looking out of windows to try to hit you. Pretty straightforward and easy. Not that fun.
Boss fights have some similarities but differences as well, but all of them have pretty simple patterns that you need to figure out and then counter attack until they die.
Later stages then include a whole bunch of crap coming across the screen that pretty much forces you to stay in place for a few seconds at a time before moving to avoid taking damage. You'll probably take damage anyway.
The game is also so feature-barren that bats that fly above you don't even fly down to attack because there is no ability to defend against it, so you literally move forward for several seconds while they just fly above your head.
It's just not that fun of a game to play.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Standard sound design for the most part, but really low quality of the sound at some others, like for example the disgusting sound the poison dust of Mysterio makes. Music meanwhile was almost completely bad. I thought the Intro Theme was OK and the Boss Battles theme was definitely the highlight, but everything else - which mainly means the main stage theme which is on repeat almost throughout - is really bad. Not only does it sound low quality, but there are parts which almost got me nauseated. Check out Stage Theme 1 starting at 0:27 on YouTube to know what I mean. I didn't like it. Luckily the game is on the shorter side.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Game Boy games often don't look that good, though there certainly are many better looking one's than this game and some that look pretty good, like Donkey Kong Land III. What makes that game stand out despite the technical limitations of the handheld console to me is the detail in animations. This game game had so few that you could count them with two hands, and it didn't look good or detailed in any way, but also not terrible since it is, after all, a Game Boy game.
ATMOSPHERE
The conversations did most of the carrying as far as hitting that Spider-Man atmosphere goes. Apart from that, there is nothing special here and with this soundtrack, I'd almost recommend playing it on mute, if at all.
CONTENT
It's on the shorter side. I've played for 1.5 hours and got to the final boss, where I died and decided it's not worth it to push on. Play the first two levels and you've pretty much seen what this game has to offer, which isn't much. If you really get a kick out of the conversations between Spidey and the villains, that might be enough motivation to push on, and the game being short is a blessing if you are more hardcore than me and are looking to beat all of these games, but there isn't much here in both quantity and quality.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
Two different styles of stages with an increasing amount of different enemies on screen as you go. You don't really become stronger as you go, there aren't any power up items to look for, the pace is slow and it all comes together to provide you with a bad and unrewarding experience overall, at least in my opinion.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
Web swinging, if it works, looked cool I guess and I liked how they at least tried to make the game stand out with all those light-insult-battles between Spider-Man and the enemies, but there isn't anything here besides that that stood out and was innovative in any way.
REPLAYABILITY
Apart from trying to beat your high score, there isn't any replayability here.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked well at all times. There was one big problem though, and that was that the aforementioned "Web Swinging" literally worked at random. Very weird. And it not working often means you will take damage in the meantime.
OVERALL
The game has one saving grace, and that's the interactions between Spider-Man and the villains. But that's just a tiny portion of this game, and the rest of it is simply filled with slow-paced, poorly-animated, feature-less platforming.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Maurice Molyneaux for VGCE, Issue 19 (Aug 90): "Spidey has a number of weapons and defenses at his disposal." | Now that's just a lie.
- Gideon for GamePro, Issue 11 (June 90): "The gameplay is top-notch, and the funky Spiderman theme is a groove."
This one came out in July 1990 for the Game Boy exclusively and was developed by Rare (who developed a different rather below average game in 1990 as well, Captain Skyhawk).
My first immediate complaint about the Commodore 64 game was how it looked like Spider-Man had back issues and how the assets used didn't have much to do with Spider-Man. The moment gameplay started for this Game Boy game, I noticed how Spidey walked like he was having back issues yet again, however the use of multiple Spider-Man villains and the typical Spider-Man quick-wittedness in dialogue at least gave me some Spider-Man vibes here.
That doesn't take away from the fact that this game was a bad one in pretty much any way you can think of, but here is a one-by-one rundown of it all.
____________
STORYTELLING
Mary Jane has been kidnapped by 6 villains, apparently, and Spider-Man needs to save her. He learns about this when Mysterio calls him by phone. Mysterio then is the boss of the first stage. The second stage begins with Hobgoblin giving him a call, the third stage boss is Scorpion and so it goes 6 times until the game ends.
The plot is not really of importance, but what this game does that I found fun was how every conversation is just filled with a bunch of one-liners and insults that Spider-Man and his enemies throw at each other. Spider-Man called Mysterio a "Fishbowl Face", Hobgoblin a "Pumpkin Brain", Scorpion a "Tail-Twirler" and so on. They are not necessarily clever or big zingers, but I can imagine especially younger players getting a kick out of it, so I see it as a plus.
Still, there isn't much here overall.
GAMEPLAY
There are two types of stages in this game. The first is the most common: Moving Spider-Man to the right in a horizontally scrolling 2D Action game with limited platforming. The other appears twice and involves you moving Spider-Man vertically up the wall of a tall building.
During the side-scrolling sections, platforming is really limited to jumping and web-swinging. Web-swinging has got to be working randomly, because I barely ever got it to work even though I always pressed the button like the manual says. Hold B. And yet, every 10th press or so actually started the animation, which sees you progress through the level up in the air, where you can't be hurt by most enemies and can actually swing over boxes that you would be unable to jump over.
Ugh, this just felt like a drag throughout. Spider-Man walks weird and slow, you can only throw a punch or shoot webs (at least until you run out of web fluids) and graphically this game is so simple that you can't even make out what kind of items the enemies drop when they die. Even the manual calls it "stuff" multiple times, so it literally is a bunch of pixels that they drop.
There is a level like this on a random street, but also on a train, but they play the same apart from the fact that Spider-Man crouches down automatically on the train to not get smashed by a brick wall.
The wall-climbing stages include rocks falling from above which you have to avoid and enemies looking out of windows to try to hit you. Pretty straightforward and easy. Not that fun.
Boss fights have some similarities but differences as well, but all of them have pretty simple patterns that you need to figure out and then counter attack until they die.
Later stages then include a whole bunch of crap coming across the screen that pretty much forces you to stay in place for a few seconds at a time before moving to avoid taking damage. You'll probably take damage anyway.
The game is also so feature-barren that bats that fly above you don't even fly down to attack because there is no ability to defend against it, so you literally move forward for several seconds while they just fly above your head.
It's just not that fun of a game to play.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Standard sound design for the most part, but really low quality of the sound at some others, like for example the disgusting sound the poison dust of Mysterio makes. Music meanwhile was almost completely bad. I thought the Intro Theme was OK and the Boss Battles theme was definitely the highlight, but everything else - which mainly means the main stage theme which is on repeat almost throughout - is really bad. Not only does it sound low quality, but there are parts which almost got me nauseated. Check out Stage Theme 1 starting at 0:27 on YouTube to know what I mean. I didn't like it. Luckily the game is on the shorter side.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Game Boy games often don't look that good, though there certainly are many better looking one's than this game and some that look pretty good, like Donkey Kong Land III. What makes that game stand out despite the technical limitations of the handheld console to me is the detail in animations. This game game had so few that you could count them with two hands, and it didn't look good or detailed in any way, but also not terrible since it is, after all, a Game Boy game.
ATMOSPHERE
The conversations did most of the carrying as far as hitting that Spider-Man atmosphere goes. Apart from that, there is nothing special here and with this soundtrack, I'd almost recommend playing it on mute, if at all.
CONTENT
It's on the shorter side. I've played for 1.5 hours and got to the final boss, where I died and decided it's not worth it to push on. Play the first two levels and you've pretty much seen what this game has to offer, which isn't much. If you really get a kick out of the conversations between Spidey and the villains, that might be enough motivation to push on, and the game being short is a blessing if you are more hardcore than me and are looking to beat all of these games, but there isn't much here in both quantity and quality.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
Two different styles of stages with an increasing amount of different enemies on screen as you go. You don't really become stronger as you go, there aren't any power up items to look for, the pace is slow and it all comes together to provide you with a bad and unrewarding experience overall, at least in my opinion.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
Web swinging, if it works, looked cool I guess and I liked how they at least tried to make the game stand out with all those light-insult-battles between Spider-Man and the enemies, but there isn't anything here besides that that stood out and was innovative in any way.
REPLAYABILITY
Apart from trying to beat your high score, there isn't any replayability here.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked well at all times. There was one big problem though, and that was that the aforementioned "Web Swinging" literally worked at random. Very weird. And it not working often means you will take damage in the meantime.
OVERALL
The game has one saving grace, and that's the interactions between Spider-Man and the villains. But that's just a tiny portion of this game, and the rest of it is simply filled with slow-paced, poorly-animated, feature-less platforming.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Maurice Molyneaux for VGCE, Issue 19 (Aug 90): "Spidey has a number of weapons and defenses at his disposal." | Now that's just a lie.
- Gideon for GamePro, Issue 11 (June 90): "The gameplay is top-notch, and the funky Spiderman theme is a groove."
1992
I enjoyed the first Streets of Rage, and pretty much the same is true for its sequel, Streets of Rage 2, which released on December 20, 1992 for the Sega Genesis and later for the Game Gear and Master System. Developed by Sega, Streets of Rage 2 is pretty much the same game with a few minor and one major change.
First, instead of 3, you now have access to 4 characters to choose from, each with their different stats. Second, instead of everyone having the same special attack, each now has an individual one. However, this time, using a special attack drains your health, adding a quite significant penalty to using it. Third, there is an Easy mode in this game that is ACTUALLY easy. I managed to beat the game on my first time through using one continue on the final stage, and that's mainly thanks to the fact that Sega cooled it with the ridiculous bosses that felt like they were designed to swallow coins on Arcade machines due to their unfair difficulty. In Streets of Rage 2, unfair enemies are still a thing - especially on harder difficulties - but it's not on the same ridiculous level to the point that you won't manage to beat the game within 10 hours.
The soundtrack here is another great one and the levels are varied and good looking. The game looks prettier than the original, with bigger and better looking sprites and more detailed backgrounds. This creates the right atmosphere for this game where, once again, the whole city turns into chaos due to an evil syndicate taking over. This time it is Mr. X, who you face in a pretty cool final stage.
In terms of its gameplay, it has a fun loop but becomes pretty repetitive after a while. There is no dodge button, no guard button or anything of the sort, which means there is little you can do in terms of defending yourself in gameplay. The trick to being successful in this game is to time the enemy attack patterns and strike at the right time, at least that's what I would assume. Since that is much easier said than done, a lot of the game for me was spent either breezing through all normal enemies or getting into a slug-fest with one of the tougher enemies, where I would usually lose one life and try to out-damage the enemy. There aren't a lot of combos you can do either, so overall, I can't say I enjoyed pressing the same button over and over again for the entirety of the couple hours I've spent with the game.
All in all, it's a solid beat 'em up game I can recommend if you're a fan of the genre, but I didn't have as good a time with it as I would have hoped.
(This is the 80th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
First, instead of 3, you now have access to 4 characters to choose from, each with their different stats. Second, instead of everyone having the same special attack, each now has an individual one. However, this time, using a special attack drains your health, adding a quite significant penalty to using it. Third, there is an Easy mode in this game that is ACTUALLY easy. I managed to beat the game on my first time through using one continue on the final stage, and that's mainly thanks to the fact that Sega cooled it with the ridiculous bosses that felt like they were designed to swallow coins on Arcade machines due to their unfair difficulty. In Streets of Rage 2, unfair enemies are still a thing - especially on harder difficulties - but it's not on the same ridiculous level to the point that you won't manage to beat the game within 10 hours.
The soundtrack here is another great one and the levels are varied and good looking. The game looks prettier than the original, with bigger and better looking sprites and more detailed backgrounds. This creates the right atmosphere for this game where, once again, the whole city turns into chaos due to an evil syndicate taking over. This time it is Mr. X, who you face in a pretty cool final stage.
In terms of its gameplay, it has a fun loop but becomes pretty repetitive after a while. There is no dodge button, no guard button or anything of the sort, which means there is little you can do in terms of defending yourself in gameplay. The trick to being successful in this game is to time the enemy attack patterns and strike at the right time, at least that's what I would assume. Since that is much easier said than done, a lot of the game for me was spent either breezing through all normal enemies or getting into a slug-fest with one of the tougher enemies, where I would usually lose one life and try to out-damage the enemy. There aren't a lot of combos you can do either, so overall, I can't say I enjoyed pressing the same button over and over again for the entirety of the couple hours I've spent with the game.
All in all, it's a solid beat 'em up game I can recommend if you're a fan of the genre, but I didn't have as good a time with it as I would have hoped.
(This is the 80th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
(This is the 32nd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
Usually when I am this negative on a game, the reviews online reflect that somewhat, by having the score be something like 2.xx/5 (though every game has its nostalgic fans under a YT walkthrough calling it amazing no matter how shitty it is in hindsight, and more power to them, nostalgia is a beautiful thing). This time, Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi is a game that scores much better than I would have anticipated, because in anything related to its gameplay, I disliked this very much. Though due its critical reception as well, I wouldn't say the game is necessarily objectively bad.
This game released on December 1st, 1990 for the Sega Genesis and is a platformer/hack&slash game. There is a tiny story explaining the setting, but nothing worth playing the game for. And that's fine because the game was always meant to be played for its gameplay and its gameplay alone.
The game has a soundtrack that is not bad but not a memorable one in my opinion if we compare it to the OSTs of all these other games I've played in 1990. Still, it's nice enough to listen to and overall, the game does plenty right in just about every way apart from its gameplay, at least in my opinion.
The graphics and special effects are pretty good for its time, the animations are well done and the boss design is great for the most part.
Unfortunately, I just couldn't ever get acclimated with the gameplay and the design of the levels. First off, you are this bad ass Ninja that dies after his heel is touched slightly because you only have one hit point. That's already something I dislike (see Silver Surfer) but it's something I could live with if death didn't come so cheap as it does in these games.
The first 10-20 minutes were filled with death after death after death with every new step I took because enemies would come from the front, the back, the front and back, have wild attack patterns etc. This is fine of course, that's the intention behind the start of the game and you're supposed to overcome that. But as I neared my end of a 1 hour attempt to slog my way through this, I kept dying to the way these enemies were being positioned. Jump down into one enemy and immediately duck because someone else is firing at you. He does that every 2 seconds, so you better time your get-up right or else you'll die. Gotta fend off the other guy though, so better make sure you have your eye on both guys. Kill them, take a step to the left and there is this green dude who throws his shield at you. Jumping over it is not gonna work because you'll touch the tip of the shield with your toes and die. Instead, die, restart the whole level, go back to the same spot and make sure you go exactly to the point where you can see him, but where he can't reach you. Now send your companion dog at him so he distracts him while you come in for the kill. Oh wait, your dog is useless because he has both shields up, which knocks out the dog for 15 seconds.
Ugh, even if I know I will get through this part with repetition, it just is not fun. Gameplay is in many ways similar to Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, but just worse because of insta-death, and without the charm.
OVERALL
Again, I'll give it props for graphics and animation, but it's not a game I enjoyed as someone who had no prior experience with this series. It received praise at the time of its release though, so I guess I might be overly critical here? Nah, this just was bad.
Usually when I am this negative on a game, the reviews online reflect that somewhat, by having the score be something like 2.xx/5 (though every game has its nostalgic fans under a YT walkthrough calling it amazing no matter how shitty it is in hindsight, and more power to them, nostalgia is a beautiful thing). This time, Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi is a game that scores much better than I would have anticipated, because in anything related to its gameplay, I disliked this very much. Though due its critical reception as well, I wouldn't say the game is necessarily objectively bad.
This game released on December 1st, 1990 for the Sega Genesis and is a platformer/hack&slash game. There is a tiny story explaining the setting, but nothing worth playing the game for. And that's fine because the game was always meant to be played for its gameplay and its gameplay alone.
The game has a soundtrack that is not bad but not a memorable one in my opinion if we compare it to the OSTs of all these other games I've played in 1990. Still, it's nice enough to listen to and overall, the game does plenty right in just about every way apart from its gameplay, at least in my opinion.
The graphics and special effects are pretty good for its time, the animations are well done and the boss design is great for the most part.
Unfortunately, I just couldn't ever get acclimated with the gameplay and the design of the levels. First off, you are this bad ass Ninja that dies after his heel is touched slightly because you only have one hit point. That's already something I dislike (see Silver Surfer) but it's something I could live with if death didn't come so cheap as it does in these games.
The first 10-20 minutes were filled with death after death after death with every new step I took because enemies would come from the front, the back, the front and back, have wild attack patterns etc. This is fine of course, that's the intention behind the start of the game and you're supposed to overcome that. But as I neared my end of a 1 hour attempt to slog my way through this, I kept dying to the way these enemies were being positioned. Jump down into one enemy and immediately duck because someone else is firing at you. He does that every 2 seconds, so you better time your get-up right or else you'll die. Gotta fend off the other guy though, so better make sure you have your eye on both guys. Kill them, take a step to the left and there is this green dude who throws his shield at you. Jumping over it is not gonna work because you'll touch the tip of the shield with your toes and die. Instead, die, restart the whole level, go back to the same spot and make sure you go exactly to the point where you can see him, but where he can't reach you. Now send your companion dog at him so he distracts him while you come in for the kill. Oh wait, your dog is useless because he has both shields up, which knocks out the dog for 15 seconds.
Ugh, even if I know I will get through this part with repetition, it just is not fun. Gameplay is in many ways similar to Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, but just worse because of insta-death, and without the charm.
OVERALL
Again, I'll give it props for graphics and animation, but it's not a game I enjoyed as someone who had no prior experience with this series. It received praise at the time of its release though, so I guess I might be overly critical here? Nah, this just was bad.
2017
In Tacoma you play as Amy Ferrier and have the task of retrieving data and the wetware of an AI, ODIN. from an abandoned station, Tacoma, which was struck by a meteor a few days prior. The crew was rescued, so as you collect the data, which happens automatically, you are free to explore the many different rooms in the station, where you can re-watch interactions between the crew members during and immediately after the meteor strike from a few days ago. Doing this, you find out about each member's role, ambitions, backgrounds and relationships between each other.
As mentioned, the devs are behind Gone Home as well. These games are very similar in that there isn't any threat, you can basically just explore a location and piece together the story and the events that unfolded and so, they place a heavy burden on narrative, world building and atmosphere.
It's possible that you can beat the game without really "completing" the story or finding out every truth but I wouldn't recommend it, because the story is actually pretty interesting (way more than Gone Home in my opinion). Beware that this is a walking simulator, so there isn't much in terms of gameplay. You just walk around, read some notes, listen to dialogue, do a few very easy puzzles and interact with a couple other things and that's it. All the value here is in the story and the characters, so your prior experiences with walking sims should tell you, if this game is for you.
That said, that value is quite high, as the game places you in a narrative that is quite thoughtprovoking when it comes to our current dabbles and battles with AI and how it might look like in the future where AI is more embedded into our everyday lives. I don't want to say too much, because as I said, the narrative is very important in carrying your experience, but this is a game that, while it doesn't take that story theme to an unexplored area, does create an interesting and engaging plot where the player feels actively involved thanks to the rewinding / fast-forwarding mechanic that the player needs to use to gather clues on what happened on this station.
Overall, I can recommend it and it's definitely up there as one of the more enjoyable walking sims I've played. This comes from someone who isn't necessarily a big fan of the genre, but whatever that genre needs to do to make up for its lack of gameplay, this game has accomplished.
As mentioned, the devs are behind Gone Home as well. These games are very similar in that there isn't any threat, you can basically just explore a location and piece together the story and the events that unfolded and so, they place a heavy burden on narrative, world building and atmosphere.
It's possible that you can beat the game without really "completing" the story or finding out every truth but I wouldn't recommend it, because the story is actually pretty interesting (way more than Gone Home in my opinion). Beware that this is a walking simulator, so there isn't much in terms of gameplay. You just walk around, read some notes, listen to dialogue, do a few very easy puzzles and interact with a couple other things and that's it. All the value here is in the story and the characters, so your prior experiences with walking sims should tell you, if this game is for you.
That said, that value is quite high, as the game places you in a narrative that is quite thoughtprovoking when it comes to our current dabbles and battles with AI and how it might look like in the future where AI is more embedded into our everyday lives. I don't want to say too much, because as I said, the narrative is very important in carrying your experience, but this is a game that, while it doesn't take that story theme to an unexplored area, does create an interesting and engaging plot where the player feels actively involved thanks to the rewinding / fast-forwarding mechanic that the player needs to use to gather clues on what happened on this station.
Overall, I can recommend it and it's definitely up there as one of the more enjoyable walking sims I've played. This comes from someone who isn't necessarily a big fan of the genre, but whatever that genre needs to do to make up for its lack of gameplay, this game has accomplished.