fe17
1990
(This is the 22nd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
I've abandoned, checks notes, 13 of the 22 games I've played so far. It's the nature of games in 1990. Many were designed to be unbeatable within a rental period, so the devs made their games annoyingly (or if you played these back in the day, endearingly) difficult.
Never have I however actually "rage quit" any of the previous 12 games, until I've played Mega Man 3 that is, a platformer developed by Capcom and initially released for the NES on September 28, 1990. I found myself extremely frustrated throughout my entire time playing this. The only time I was really vibing with the game was when I didn't move and just listened to the amazing soundtrack. Maybe that's a bid too harsh, but we'll go over everything one by one below, so you understand where my frustration comes from for a game that does plenty right as well.
____________
STORYTELLING
While I call this the "Storytelling" section, it really is a review on storytelling, but also the plot itself, the characters and how they interact with each other. And as far as characters go, this legendary series has introduced a couple pretty important ones for the series in Rush, the robot dog that helps you jump to higher surfaces in this game, and Proto Man, who shows up in almost every level for a quick battle to test your skills. He appears to what has to be the most satisfying whistle sound I've ever heard.
The setting and the plot here are not explained in the game, only in the manual, and actual advancement of the plot only happens much later into the game. The set up goes like this: Two scientists are working on a "peace-keeping project" and need a few more energy crystals to finish their work. They send Mega Man to collect them, but Mega Man will have to face a bunch of bad guys to get to them.
This comes from the short conversation printed onto the manuals. In-game, you simply see a screen with Mega Man in the middle of a 3x3 display, with each of the other squares showing a portrait of a boss. You can freely decide which level/boss you want to face first and will be brought back here to select the next once you're done. All bosses have unique looks and abilities, but they don't talk and they don't taunt or something along those lines for them to have any personality, unlike Proto-Man, who's part in the story gets explained the further you go.
Overall, the story that is here has a bit more than your average one, where you get some text at the start and at the end of the game, but nothing in between. Here, you get nothing at the start, but a bit more towards the end with a nice little twist.
GAMEPLAY
First of, we gotta address the performance in this game. I thought it was due to my emulator but no, the game has lagging issues throughout and it really is irritating. Obviously it wasn't such a big deal back then, as it was sold over a million times, was placed 3rd in the Nintendo Power Awards for 1990 and got 9/10s and 4/5s from many magazines at the time. By today's standards, or even by my comparably lower standards for 1990 games as part of this challenge, a game that requires so much precision just got that much more frustrating to play when every time you used a specific weapon that shot multiple projectiles, the screen would lag significantly. This would happen when too many enemies where on screen at once as well.
But in general, the timing and precision required just was a bit too much for me. Not only that, but the game forces you to stand still, step back, wait for an opening and take a precise shot multiple times per level, or you'll be having a bad time. Add to that the amount of cheap hits you get in this game by things like clouds popping into frame just as you jump into mid-air, leading you to miss a platform fall to your demise, and it just wasn't an enjoyable time for me for most of the time. There was also a moment where I managed to avoid all clouds, only for the platform beneath me to clip Mega Man in an unfortunate way and torpedo him dozens of feet into the sky before dropping him out of the screen.
With all of this however, I managed to beat all levels at some point, but I just couldn't beat the bosses a lot of the time. I'd say it's lack of skill on my end for the large part, but also exposes some of the game's flaws again. Once more, I have to mention the poor performance of this game, which made using many of the weapons you collect by beating bosses a chore. It's not like many of these are effective per boss anyway, but have the game lag when using almost all of these also messed with my timing, which, as a new player, I suck at to begin with. With your basic starter weapon, the battles just are very tough because you have to dodge so many things at once and find an opening to attack yourself (with little damage output). It doesn't help that this is another game where you cannot turn your character until he finishes his attack animation, and when you press attack 0.001 seconds before you press turn, he will shoot in the wrong direction as well. Some of you might say this is fair, you might be right, but it just didn't translate to fun to me.
To explain the game more objectively to wrap this up, you pick a boss on the select screen and go through a few-minute long level to face him. If you win, you get the boss' power and can use it in future boss fights. The way you go through these is optional, but unless you are really patient, you will not want to face bosses with the wrong powers and have them take too long. Some bosses can be killed in a few hits with the right weapon for example.
Most levels have a fight with Proto Man as well, you have your dog Rush that lets you jump to higher surfaces and you can collect items that give you points, health and 1 Ups.
This was my first Mega Man game to play and the difficulty in addition to the terrible performance did leave a bad taste in my mouth, but I will obviously try out future Mega Man games and considering how popular the series is, I'm sure I'll enjoy some of the future releases much more than this one.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. The sound design I found to be pretty average for a game from this year, I've certainly heard them all in other games already. The MVP in this game for me is the soundtrack, which ranged from good to amazing throughout. Even if you didn't play this game, but you enjoy 8 bit soundtracks, this game's OST is definitely worth a listen. It already starts with the intro theme, it continues with the oh-so satisfying Proto Man whistle which I already mentioned, and then you got an individual track per stage as well. My favorite definitely was the Spark Man track (and on a soundtrack that has so many bangers, I think Spark Man's track still stands out a lot).
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The game looks pretty good in my opinion. Each boss has his own individual level, often with a unique theme. Shadow Man's level for example has a part where the stage darkens from time to time and the only thing you can see is the enemy coming at you. The Hard Man's level features rocky terrain, Spark Man has placed obstacles charged with electricity everywhere and Gemini Man's world offers two settings. Sprites look pretty good as well.
ATMOSPHERE
The game is supposed to take place on mining worlds. Now I don't know what that means, because most of the stages didn't really look like they were used for "mining" purposes, but disregarding that, most feel pretty atmospheric, but mostly in a cheery sense. Even the darker levels have cheerful music playing in the background, which makes sense due to the style and target group of these games. But due of that, it does waste some of the potential to create a more exciting and diverse atmosphere. Whenever the levels are colorful and cheery-looking as well however, the music fits very well.
CONTENT
On the surface, this appears to offer a lot. A bunch of boss fights, a little bit of storytelling, multiple different weapons and even the ability to choose the order of the fights yourself. In reality however, all of this is not only overshadowed by the regular lag issues, but there isn't as much here overall.
If you like Mega Man games and played these before, you maybe don't mind the lag by now. If a fellow newcomer to the series were to choose Mega Man 3 as their entry however, I don't know how many of that sort would be willing to stick with this.
Being able to choose boss fights randomly is correct, but I'd assume that unless you are very skilled, you will not be able to beat them in any order you want, but will have to rather rely on picking specific ones earlier to get specific weapons to make future boss fights that much easier. The weapons themselves do offer some variety, but since you can mostly use the basic weapon during the actual stages (where I personally died to gravity the most) and only need to use specific ones when you face bosses, I don't feel like they have as much purpose as I would have liked to see.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
As I mentioned above, being able to choose one of 8 bosses to start is cool, but you'll need to choose a much more specific order to get through this game in all likelihood. I also don't like how the stages themselves are designed in a way that you'll be taking cheap hits a lot and enemies pop into frame in a lot of unfortunate situations (like when you are mid-air), which forces you to anticipate this by jumping forward and back. Not only that but you're forced to stand still and wait a lot to be able to damage the enemy or at least walk pass without taking damage (if you're precise). Overall I found the game a bit too hard in the wrong places to find much enjoyment out of it, though I did like how each level had its own style and many of its own, unique challenges.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
The game innovates in a few pretty notable ways from Mega Man 2, namely introducing your companion Rush and giving you the ability to slide. The stages are also a bit longer (and I believe there are more stages overall as well), but other than that, the game doesn't do much else and is pretty similar to Mega Man 2, which I assume is what fans wanted in the first place. From what I've read however, Mega Man 3 is less adventurous with the design of stage challenges, bosses and weapons, which sounds like a step back to me.
REPLAYABILITY
Not as much replayability as I would have thought based on the boss structure, but still more than your typical 1990's platformer.
PLAYABILITY
It works, but the constant lag/slowdown just makes it an unpleasant playthrough for a lot of the time, especially since I don't bring any of the enthusiasm that someone who maybe has played the earlier versions back in the day, or some of the later more refined versions.
OVERALL
My experience with Mega Man 3 was ultimately disappointing, though I will remember it fondly for its soundtrack. And even though I didn't like a lot about the gameplay, I did enjoy other parts of it and I can see how people enjoyed both this, and later entries a lot, so I'm still looking forward to playing all the other 60 Mega Man games that have come out since. Next one on the list is Mega Man: Dr Wily's revenge on the Game Boy, which came out in July, 1990.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Tobar the 8 Man for GamePro, Issue 16 (Nov 90): "It's got everything that a great video game should have: incredible challenge, exceptional game play, stunning graphics and some nifty weaponry."
I've abandoned, checks notes, 13 of the 22 games I've played so far. It's the nature of games in 1990. Many were designed to be unbeatable within a rental period, so the devs made their games annoyingly (or if you played these back in the day, endearingly) difficult.
Never have I however actually "rage quit" any of the previous 12 games, until I've played Mega Man 3 that is, a platformer developed by Capcom and initially released for the NES on September 28, 1990. I found myself extremely frustrated throughout my entire time playing this. The only time I was really vibing with the game was when I didn't move and just listened to the amazing soundtrack. Maybe that's a bid too harsh, but we'll go over everything one by one below, so you understand where my frustration comes from for a game that does plenty right as well.
____________
STORYTELLING
While I call this the "Storytelling" section, it really is a review on storytelling, but also the plot itself, the characters and how they interact with each other. And as far as characters go, this legendary series has introduced a couple pretty important ones for the series in Rush, the robot dog that helps you jump to higher surfaces in this game, and Proto Man, who shows up in almost every level for a quick battle to test your skills. He appears to what has to be the most satisfying whistle sound I've ever heard.
The setting and the plot here are not explained in the game, only in the manual, and actual advancement of the plot only happens much later into the game. The set up goes like this: Two scientists are working on a "peace-keeping project" and need a few more energy crystals to finish their work. They send Mega Man to collect them, but Mega Man will have to face a bunch of bad guys to get to them.
This comes from the short conversation printed onto the manuals. In-game, you simply see a screen with Mega Man in the middle of a 3x3 display, with each of the other squares showing a portrait of a boss. You can freely decide which level/boss you want to face first and will be brought back here to select the next once you're done. All bosses have unique looks and abilities, but they don't talk and they don't taunt or something along those lines for them to have any personality, unlike Proto-Man, who's part in the story gets explained the further you go.
Overall, the story that is here has a bit more than your average one, where you get some text at the start and at the end of the game, but nothing in between. Here, you get nothing at the start, but a bit more towards the end with a nice little twist.
GAMEPLAY
First of, we gotta address the performance in this game. I thought it was due to my emulator but no, the game has lagging issues throughout and it really is irritating. Obviously it wasn't such a big deal back then, as it was sold over a million times, was placed 3rd in the Nintendo Power Awards for 1990 and got 9/10s and 4/5s from many magazines at the time. By today's standards, or even by my comparably lower standards for 1990 games as part of this challenge, a game that requires so much precision just got that much more frustrating to play when every time you used a specific weapon that shot multiple projectiles, the screen would lag significantly. This would happen when too many enemies where on screen at once as well.
But in general, the timing and precision required just was a bit too much for me. Not only that, but the game forces you to stand still, step back, wait for an opening and take a precise shot multiple times per level, or you'll be having a bad time. Add to that the amount of cheap hits you get in this game by things like clouds popping into frame just as you jump into mid-air, leading you to miss a platform fall to your demise, and it just wasn't an enjoyable time for me for most of the time. There was also a moment where I managed to avoid all clouds, only for the platform beneath me to clip Mega Man in an unfortunate way and torpedo him dozens of feet into the sky before dropping him out of the screen.
With all of this however, I managed to beat all levels at some point, but I just couldn't beat the bosses a lot of the time. I'd say it's lack of skill on my end for the large part, but also exposes some of the game's flaws again. Once more, I have to mention the poor performance of this game, which made using many of the weapons you collect by beating bosses a chore. It's not like many of these are effective per boss anyway, but have the game lag when using almost all of these also messed with my timing, which, as a new player, I suck at to begin with. With your basic starter weapon, the battles just are very tough because you have to dodge so many things at once and find an opening to attack yourself (with little damage output). It doesn't help that this is another game where you cannot turn your character until he finishes his attack animation, and when you press attack 0.001 seconds before you press turn, he will shoot in the wrong direction as well. Some of you might say this is fair, you might be right, but it just didn't translate to fun to me.
To explain the game more objectively to wrap this up, you pick a boss on the select screen and go through a few-minute long level to face him. If you win, you get the boss' power and can use it in future boss fights. The way you go through these is optional, but unless you are really patient, you will not want to face bosses with the wrong powers and have them take too long. Some bosses can be killed in a few hits with the right weapon for example.
Most levels have a fight with Proto Man as well, you have your dog Rush that lets you jump to higher surfaces and you can collect items that give you points, health and 1 Ups.
This was my first Mega Man game to play and the difficulty in addition to the terrible performance did leave a bad taste in my mouth, but I will obviously try out future Mega Man games and considering how popular the series is, I'm sure I'll enjoy some of the future releases much more than this one.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. The sound design I found to be pretty average for a game from this year, I've certainly heard them all in other games already. The MVP in this game for me is the soundtrack, which ranged from good to amazing throughout. Even if you didn't play this game, but you enjoy 8 bit soundtracks, this game's OST is definitely worth a listen. It already starts with the intro theme, it continues with the oh-so satisfying Proto Man whistle which I already mentioned, and then you got an individual track per stage as well. My favorite definitely was the Spark Man track (and on a soundtrack that has so many bangers, I think Spark Man's track still stands out a lot).
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The game looks pretty good in my opinion. Each boss has his own individual level, often with a unique theme. Shadow Man's level for example has a part where the stage darkens from time to time and the only thing you can see is the enemy coming at you. The Hard Man's level features rocky terrain, Spark Man has placed obstacles charged with electricity everywhere and Gemini Man's world offers two settings. Sprites look pretty good as well.
ATMOSPHERE
The game is supposed to take place on mining worlds. Now I don't know what that means, because most of the stages didn't really look like they were used for "mining" purposes, but disregarding that, most feel pretty atmospheric, but mostly in a cheery sense. Even the darker levels have cheerful music playing in the background, which makes sense due to the style and target group of these games. But due of that, it does waste some of the potential to create a more exciting and diverse atmosphere. Whenever the levels are colorful and cheery-looking as well however, the music fits very well.
CONTENT
On the surface, this appears to offer a lot. A bunch of boss fights, a little bit of storytelling, multiple different weapons and even the ability to choose the order of the fights yourself. In reality however, all of this is not only overshadowed by the regular lag issues, but there isn't as much here overall.
If you like Mega Man games and played these before, you maybe don't mind the lag by now. If a fellow newcomer to the series were to choose Mega Man 3 as their entry however, I don't know how many of that sort would be willing to stick with this.
Being able to choose boss fights randomly is correct, but I'd assume that unless you are very skilled, you will not be able to beat them in any order you want, but will have to rather rely on picking specific ones earlier to get specific weapons to make future boss fights that much easier. The weapons themselves do offer some variety, but since you can mostly use the basic weapon during the actual stages (where I personally died to gravity the most) and only need to use specific ones when you face bosses, I don't feel like they have as much purpose as I would have liked to see.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
As I mentioned above, being able to choose one of 8 bosses to start is cool, but you'll need to choose a much more specific order to get through this game in all likelihood. I also don't like how the stages themselves are designed in a way that you'll be taking cheap hits a lot and enemies pop into frame in a lot of unfortunate situations (like when you are mid-air), which forces you to anticipate this by jumping forward and back. Not only that but you're forced to stand still and wait a lot to be able to damage the enemy or at least walk pass without taking damage (if you're precise). Overall I found the game a bit too hard in the wrong places to find much enjoyment out of it, though I did like how each level had its own style and many of its own, unique challenges.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
The game innovates in a few pretty notable ways from Mega Man 2, namely introducing your companion Rush and giving you the ability to slide. The stages are also a bit longer (and I believe there are more stages overall as well), but other than that, the game doesn't do much else and is pretty similar to Mega Man 2, which I assume is what fans wanted in the first place. From what I've read however, Mega Man 3 is less adventurous with the design of stage challenges, bosses and weapons, which sounds like a step back to me.
REPLAYABILITY
Not as much replayability as I would have thought based on the boss structure, but still more than your typical 1990's platformer.
PLAYABILITY
It works, but the constant lag/slowdown just makes it an unpleasant playthrough for a lot of the time, especially since I don't bring any of the enthusiasm that someone who maybe has played the earlier versions back in the day, or some of the later more refined versions.
OVERALL
My experience with Mega Man 3 was ultimately disappointing, though I will remember it fondly for its soundtrack. And even though I didn't like a lot about the gameplay, I did enjoy other parts of it and I can see how people enjoyed both this, and later entries a lot, so I'm still looking forward to playing all the other 60 Mega Man games that have come out since. Next one on the list is Mega Man: Dr Wily's revenge on the Game Boy, which came out in July, 1990.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Tobar the 8 Man for GamePro, Issue 16 (Nov 90): "It's got everything that a great video game should have: incredible challenge, exceptional game play, stunning graphics and some nifty weaponry."
1990
Spaceship combat sims are games that I did not grow up with and that are not really for me. Since I wouldn't do their legacy any justice by rating them as someone who is not in the game's target group, I'll just give quick random thoughts on games like this but otherwise leave them without a rating, in case you were following my challenge to go through as many games as possible starting chronologically in 1990. This would be game 21.
Controls felt pretty complicated and it didn't really feel enjoyable to play with a mouse + keyboard and at the low framerate that was offered, which I don't think was unusual for space combat sims. I'm not sure if people played this with a joystick back in the day or it didn't simply bother them, but I would have been overwhelmed even if the game played at double digits, so this only exacerbated my problems.
That said, I did get through two missions before calling it a day. The vet who accompanied me somehow died after the first mission and while I still have no idea why (she just said "my ancestors await me" as I was trying to figure out how to dock), I could tell that the interaction between the player and other characters - in addition to the neat cinematic story telling - was a big deal. If I had grown up with this genre, I can imagine my experience with this game being positive. That said, the missions already felt repetitive very early on and I can imagine that this is a common complaint about this game, and not a surprising one due to the game's age.
Controls felt pretty complicated and it didn't really feel enjoyable to play with a mouse + keyboard and at the low framerate that was offered, which I don't think was unusual for space combat sims. I'm not sure if people played this with a joystick back in the day or it didn't simply bother them, but I would have been overwhelmed even if the game played at double digits, so this only exacerbated my problems.
That said, I did get through two missions before calling it a day. The vet who accompanied me somehow died after the first mission and while I still have no idea why (she just said "my ancestors await me" as I was trying to figure out how to dock), I could tell that the interaction between the player and other characters - in addition to the neat cinematic story telling - was a big deal. If I had grown up with this genre, I can imagine my experience with this game being positive. That said, the missions already felt repetitive very early on and I can imagine that this is a common complaint about this game, and not a surprising one due to the game's age.
Based on the movie by the same name from 1988, Michael Jackson's Moonwalker is a beat 'em up game released initially on August 24, 1990 for the Sega Genesis and Master System. An Arcade version was released a month earlier, which is an isometric run and gun game.
The game is better than I expected for a game around a celebrity, and the good parts go beyond the soundtrack. More on my thoughts in detail below.
____________
STORYTELLING
The setup for the story is explained in the manual, while the game itself only has any explanation shortly before the boss fight. What your goal is, is self-explanatory as you play though.
You control Michael Jackson, duh, and go into hostile territory to free a bunch of kidnapped children. All children look like Katie from the movie and say "Michael!" when you free them whilst giving you a boost to your magic/health bar.
At the end of each stage, Mr. Big - the boss - shows up and tells you that "you will never catch me" before he sends a bunch of his goons at you.
The manual tells you that Mr. Big is kidnapping every kid in the world to turn them into his slaves and the text in-game only tells you that you can now face him, so there isn't much here. I'm probably the guy who dived the deepest into the storytelling of this game ever right now because it's barely existent and not the point of this game.
GAMEPLAY
Michael Jackson shows up in a club and flips a coin into a jukebox to flip on a banging soundtrack that provides the backdrop for a gaming experience that is fun despite its limitations, but is held back tremendously by the game's level design.
In this 2D beat 'em up game, you do two things. First, you beat up a bunch of bad guys using your feet (or your arms when you jump), which releases magical sparkles that apparently damage bad people. Second, you have to rescue children.
The Fighting Part: This was fun but had plenty of issues. You see, you have only ONE bar in this game, which represents both your health AND your magical spark tank. And once you drop below a certain amount, you can only do weak punches, not shoot magic anymore. There is a special attack that you can do by spinning, which however drains your bar very fast. If you spin for a little bit, you throw your hat and it creates an explosion. If you spin for half of your health bar, every enemy on screen stands next to Michael Jackson and they do a little dance, which kills every enemy afterwards. It's a great little gimmick for this game but it's unfortunate that it drains your health bar to do it, instead of getting its individual bar. This made me ignore this feature apart from a few small instances throughout the game.
Another issue I got was that you couldn't both turn and shoot magic. Especially in the final two "chapters", enemies would be thrown at you in bunches from both sides, and it felt like it was pretty much impossible to get through the levels unless you knew where to find the kids and therefore skipped most of the level.
The Finding Children Part: And so, let's talk about this part. Depending on the level you find yourself in, you have to check windows, doors, in car trunks, in caves, behind bushes or even behind tombstones to find children. There are dozens of these per level and there is a set number of children hiding in pre-determined hiding spots. As mentioned, I'm glad, because this is probably the only way to beat the game (which I didn't), but imagine missing ONE spot and having to go through the entire level again trying to find it, whilst enemies keep respawning and draining your health bar.
Some hiding spots you won't even find because you won't know where to look. For example you will have to look behind manhole cover that seem to be there as part of the scenery, but no, you actually have to do a spin on top of it to essentially screw it open.
Overall, the core gameplay loop was fun enough, but it all went to shizzles starting in around Chapter 4, where so many enemies would appear that it would make looking for kids tedious. The boss fight only triggers once you find them all, and even the boss fights become a pain, because all of a sudden, 10, nope 20, nope 30 enemies appear one after the other, if not even more than that, and in the graveyard level in particular, those damn zombies appear that can just detach from their legs and fly at you to deal a lot of damage. Meanwhile you can't use any special attacks because it would drain your health too much and you'd die shortly after. These zombies are beatable, I managed it, but it only gets worse from there and that's where I said I've played this enough.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
Not fair to call it voice acting, but the children do say "Michael" every time you rescue one, which I imagine will be instantly memorable for those who have played this a lot when they were young. I have mixed thoughts about the sound design. Some actions sound good, like the sparkle of the magic or Michael saying "wooo" when you jump-punch, but then you got the bad swooshing sound that plays whenever you check windows, doors, bushes and so on. Overall it's not too bad, not that great either.
What is great however is the soundtrack. It's a 16 bit remix of some of Michael Jackson's most popular songs and whether you like the beats or not will make or break this for you. I think his most popular songs are timeless classics, so naturally I enjoyed this quite a lot. My only issue was that there was no Thriller during the graveyard level (zombies and Michael even did the dance) but apparently there were licensing issues there.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The design of Michael Jackson and enemies is great and the game has plenty of differently and nicely designed levels from a graphical standpoint.
ATMOSPHERE
Mixing beats from Michael Jackson songs alongside a graveyard level with zombies and Michael doing the Thriller dance is great and puts you in a great mood, even if the song Thriller itself is not licensed. Levels also have unique themes which I enjoyed, even if they didn't always feel like they suit Michael Jackson.
CONTENT
The overall package here is fun but there isn't a lot of variety. You don't gain any new abilities, there are no power up items, special moves are discouraged due to draining your health, mission objectives are always the same and most of the playing time you accrue comes from trial and error. As I said, the content overall is fun though, so I'll assume that most of you will enjoy a couple hours with it.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
This just gets progressively worse as more and more and more and more enemies are thrown at you, but your abilities never improve to properly tackle them on. Instead you just wildly shoot left and right and hope you get them all before your health runs out. Don't even think about using special items because that's basically suicide.
On a smaller scale, making it extremely hard to even figure out where to look for the children, making you go all the way to the boss fight whenever you die during one and making you run around the entire level if you miss a single child are some more annoyances with how this game is designed. Not good.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
The way they've added a bunch of Michael Jackson animation and dance moves, the dance he does with the enemies, the remix of his songs and designing the game to his likeness overall is pretty well done, however it doesn't really translate to other games.
REPLAYABILITY
No abilities to collect/find, no secrets apart from one if you somehow manage to catch a shooting star (check it out on YT if you don't want to play this game, it's pretty nice), no randomizing of hiding spots for children (though some of you might prefer this) and terrible level design in later chapters means a replay is only advisable if you really want to try and beat your high score.
PLAYABILITY
It works well from start to finish.
OVERALL
I liked the core gameplay here, even if its is feature-limited. Playing this to that great soundtrack was great fun for the first few hours but once I got into the latter stages of the graveyard chapter, it just got more and more annoying to play. Ultimately that makes it an average game for its time overall.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
This game was a big topic back in the day, with multiple magazines putting Michael Jackson on their covers.
- Andy Eddy for VGCE, Issue 19 (Aug 90): "Updated cartridges were constantly provided to Jackson, and his suggestions were then passed on to the programmers" | Not an 'opinion' but certainly awesome to hear Jackson being so involved in the creation of this game
- Andromeda for GamePro, Issue 13 (Aug 90): "The animation is smooth, realistic and eye-popping."
The game is better than I expected for a game around a celebrity, and the good parts go beyond the soundtrack. More on my thoughts in detail below.
____________
STORYTELLING
The setup for the story is explained in the manual, while the game itself only has any explanation shortly before the boss fight. What your goal is, is self-explanatory as you play though.
You control Michael Jackson, duh, and go into hostile territory to free a bunch of kidnapped children. All children look like Katie from the movie and say "Michael!" when you free them whilst giving you a boost to your magic/health bar.
At the end of each stage, Mr. Big - the boss - shows up and tells you that "you will never catch me" before he sends a bunch of his goons at you.
The manual tells you that Mr. Big is kidnapping every kid in the world to turn them into his slaves and the text in-game only tells you that you can now face him, so there isn't much here. I'm probably the guy who dived the deepest into the storytelling of this game ever right now because it's barely existent and not the point of this game.
GAMEPLAY
Michael Jackson shows up in a club and flips a coin into a jukebox to flip on a banging soundtrack that provides the backdrop for a gaming experience that is fun despite its limitations, but is held back tremendously by the game's level design.
In this 2D beat 'em up game, you do two things. First, you beat up a bunch of bad guys using your feet (or your arms when you jump), which releases magical sparkles that apparently damage bad people. Second, you have to rescue children.
The Fighting Part: This was fun but had plenty of issues. You see, you have only ONE bar in this game, which represents both your health AND your magical spark tank. And once you drop below a certain amount, you can only do weak punches, not shoot magic anymore. There is a special attack that you can do by spinning, which however drains your bar very fast. If you spin for a little bit, you throw your hat and it creates an explosion. If you spin for half of your health bar, every enemy on screen stands next to Michael Jackson and they do a little dance, which kills every enemy afterwards. It's a great little gimmick for this game but it's unfortunate that it drains your health bar to do it, instead of getting its individual bar. This made me ignore this feature apart from a few small instances throughout the game.
Another issue I got was that you couldn't both turn and shoot magic. Especially in the final two "chapters", enemies would be thrown at you in bunches from both sides, and it felt like it was pretty much impossible to get through the levels unless you knew where to find the kids and therefore skipped most of the level.
The Finding Children Part: And so, let's talk about this part. Depending on the level you find yourself in, you have to check windows, doors, in car trunks, in caves, behind bushes or even behind tombstones to find children. There are dozens of these per level and there is a set number of children hiding in pre-determined hiding spots. As mentioned, I'm glad, because this is probably the only way to beat the game (which I didn't), but imagine missing ONE spot and having to go through the entire level again trying to find it, whilst enemies keep respawning and draining your health bar.
Some hiding spots you won't even find because you won't know where to look. For example you will have to look behind manhole cover that seem to be there as part of the scenery, but no, you actually have to do a spin on top of it to essentially screw it open.
Overall, the core gameplay loop was fun enough, but it all went to shizzles starting in around Chapter 4, where so many enemies would appear that it would make looking for kids tedious. The boss fight only triggers once you find them all, and even the boss fights become a pain, because all of a sudden, 10, nope 20, nope 30 enemies appear one after the other, if not even more than that, and in the graveyard level in particular, those damn zombies appear that can just detach from their legs and fly at you to deal a lot of damage. Meanwhile you can't use any special attacks because it would drain your health too much and you'd die shortly after. These zombies are beatable, I managed it, but it only gets worse from there and that's where I said I've played this enough.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
Not fair to call it voice acting, but the children do say "Michael" every time you rescue one, which I imagine will be instantly memorable for those who have played this a lot when they were young. I have mixed thoughts about the sound design. Some actions sound good, like the sparkle of the magic or Michael saying "wooo" when you jump-punch, but then you got the bad swooshing sound that plays whenever you check windows, doors, bushes and so on. Overall it's not too bad, not that great either.
What is great however is the soundtrack. It's a 16 bit remix of some of Michael Jackson's most popular songs and whether you like the beats or not will make or break this for you. I think his most popular songs are timeless classics, so naturally I enjoyed this quite a lot. My only issue was that there was no Thriller during the graveyard level (zombies and Michael even did the dance) but apparently there were licensing issues there.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The design of Michael Jackson and enemies is great and the game has plenty of differently and nicely designed levels from a graphical standpoint.
ATMOSPHERE
Mixing beats from Michael Jackson songs alongside a graveyard level with zombies and Michael doing the Thriller dance is great and puts you in a great mood, even if the song Thriller itself is not licensed. Levels also have unique themes which I enjoyed, even if they didn't always feel like they suit Michael Jackson.
CONTENT
The overall package here is fun but there isn't a lot of variety. You don't gain any new abilities, there are no power up items, special moves are discouraged due to draining your health, mission objectives are always the same and most of the playing time you accrue comes from trial and error. As I said, the content overall is fun though, so I'll assume that most of you will enjoy a couple hours with it.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
This just gets progressively worse as more and more and more and more enemies are thrown at you, but your abilities never improve to properly tackle them on. Instead you just wildly shoot left and right and hope you get them all before your health runs out. Don't even think about using special items because that's basically suicide.
On a smaller scale, making it extremely hard to even figure out where to look for the children, making you go all the way to the boss fight whenever you die during one and making you run around the entire level if you miss a single child are some more annoyances with how this game is designed. Not good.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
The way they've added a bunch of Michael Jackson animation and dance moves, the dance he does with the enemies, the remix of his songs and designing the game to his likeness overall is pretty well done, however it doesn't really translate to other games.
REPLAYABILITY
No abilities to collect/find, no secrets apart from one if you somehow manage to catch a shooting star (check it out on YT if you don't want to play this game, it's pretty nice), no randomizing of hiding spots for children (though some of you might prefer this) and terrible level design in later chapters means a replay is only advisable if you really want to try and beat your high score.
PLAYABILITY
It works well from start to finish.
OVERALL
I liked the core gameplay here, even if its is feature-limited. Playing this to that great soundtrack was great fun for the first few hours but once I got into the latter stages of the graveyard chapter, it just got more and more annoying to play. Ultimately that makes it an average game for its time overall.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
This game was a big topic back in the day, with multiple magazines putting Michael Jackson on their covers.
- Andy Eddy for VGCE, Issue 19 (Aug 90): "Updated cartridges were constantly provided to Jackson, and his suggestions were then passed on to the programmers" | Not an 'opinion' but certainly awesome to hear Jackson being so involved in the creation of this game
- Andromeda for GamePro, Issue 13 (Aug 90): "The animation is smooth, realistic and eye-popping."
This game was such a trip. The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout, developed by Kemco for the NES and initially released in Japan on August 3, 1990, is a very odd game. If you'd ask me about the structure of this game after I played AND FINISHED IT, I would just say "I dunno".
The game is easy and frustrating at the same time and it goes on for far longer than it has the right to. It uses Looney Tunes characters as both the protagonist and all antagonists, which does add a certain charm, but it's also probably the only reason why it's relevant enough for me to have put on my 1990 playlist.
More on the game in detail below.
____________
STORYTELLING
The game starts with a short cutscene with text and stand still images of Bugs Bunny opening a letter. The Bugs Bunny character is celebrating its 50th birthday and his friends are throwing a birthday party for him. Some of the Looney Tunes characters are jealous, so they decide to stand in Bugs Bunny's way as he tries to get to his party. We're talking characters like Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepé Le Pew and Sylvester.
Once you beat the game, you get a similar cutscene that has a little surprise in store.
It's about the minimum you'd expect for a game that wants to have any sort of story in it.
GAMEPLAY
You control Bugs Bunny through a variety of different levels in a game that features roughly 20 FPS and is pretty consistent with that. You are armed with a hammer and go through a colorful world filled with a bunch of random assets and bear similarities to Super Mario games in design. You even warp through "pipes", though here these signify the end of a stage most of the time and lead to a boss.
The assets are truly random here. You'll be hit by rocks, walking alarm clocks that explode, lava that shoots up from the ground, some weird moist-looking orange texture that can fly, guys dressed like milk cartons and characters that have a hammer for their heads. At least the boss fights are only against Looney Tunes characters that you'll recognize.
The problem is, there are about 50 stages and that many boss fights throughout the game. I'm exaggerating, but only kind of, and each boss is repeated at least 3 times until it all of a sudden just ends. It's not like levels are creatively designed to warrant this. At points it feels like you are walking through pretty much the same levels over and over again with only slight changes here and there. The boss fights sure are the same, so why are you making the player suffer more by overextending the playtime? Again, it doesn't help that the game runs at a locked 20 FPS.
After each stage you beat, you enter one of two mini games and can play those multiple times if you collected enough carrots. One has a Bingo like card on it and you have to try and match 3 or more stars horizontally/vertically/diagonally. If you do, you get 1Ups. This is no challenge at all and you will find yourself with 50+ 1Ups left by the time you beat the game. Then there is a Whac-A-Mole type mini game as well. Both just become annoying necessities after you've played them a few times.
The 1 Ups makes the completion of this game much easier already, but it's not like the levels are difficult either way. You find plenty of items to regenerate your health (you'll need them because there is a lot of stuff that you can't reliably dodge in this game) and platforming barely offers any challenges. Your only enemy there is gravity.
There are barely any features in this game and in today's day and age, we've seen plenty of these licensed game that are only made as cash-grabs, as there really wasn't much effort put into this one.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Sound design is OK and the soundtrack is as well. The music is not terrible to listen to, it's very average as far as OSTs from this time go, but the repetitive and at parts non-sensical level design might cause anxiety whenever you listen to it after your time with this game is over.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The game is certainly colorful and Looney Tunes characters add to the charm of this game, but the game starts looking pretty basic the further you get into it, there isn't much creativity here and the fact that a bunch of random assets are thrown together here does reduce the aesthetical quality of the game in my opinion.
ATMOSPHERE
The game doesn't really do anything special graphically, it has a very average soundtrack and to add to this, your eyes are strained from looking at this 20 FPS, blurry, headache-inducing presentation.
CONTENT
It took me about 3 hours to beat the game and it should take you as much as well. Unlike some other platformers that take much longer for a first time player - but probably less than 3 hours for experienced players - 3 hours is all The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout has to offer. I rarely died, the game has barely any features that you could miss out on and it's a pretty straightforward experience. And even with a game that is 3 hours long, I was asking for it to be over very early on into my playthrough due to the sheer repetitiveness of it.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
Terrible. I don't really think much thought went into creating a cohesive structure at any point. They simply seem to have created a start and end point for a level, throw together a bunch of random assets in between and added about half a dozen rotating bosses at the end of each stage. Very poor.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
There is nothing innovative about this one. They seem to have copied a bunch of platformers that were more popular without understanding what makes platformers popular.
REPLAYABILITY
You can try to beat your high score, sure, but I doubt that anyone who starts playing this today would want to replay it.
PLAYABILITY
It works from start to finish, but playing it at 20 FPS or so throughout, if even that, really hurts the experience (replace 'experience' with 'eyes').
OVERALL
This is definitely in the running for Worst Game of 1990. It's the only game I've played so far that performed this poorly. If not for the Looney Tunes setting, this game wouldn't have anything to offer apart from boring, repetitive and simple platforming.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
Couldn't find any thoughts, just two notices of the game's release in Electronic Gaming Monthly and Nintendo Power magazines.
The game is easy and frustrating at the same time and it goes on for far longer than it has the right to. It uses Looney Tunes characters as both the protagonist and all antagonists, which does add a certain charm, but it's also probably the only reason why it's relevant enough for me to have put on my 1990 playlist.
More on the game in detail below.
____________
STORYTELLING
The game starts with a short cutscene with text and stand still images of Bugs Bunny opening a letter. The Bugs Bunny character is celebrating its 50th birthday and his friends are throwing a birthday party for him. Some of the Looney Tunes characters are jealous, so they decide to stand in Bugs Bunny's way as he tries to get to his party. We're talking characters like Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepé Le Pew and Sylvester.
Once you beat the game, you get a similar cutscene that has a little surprise in store.
It's about the minimum you'd expect for a game that wants to have any sort of story in it.
GAMEPLAY
You control Bugs Bunny through a variety of different levels in a game that features roughly 20 FPS and is pretty consistent with that. You are armed with a hammer and go through a colorful world filled with a bunch of random assets and bear similarities to Super Mario games in design. You even warp through "pipes", though here these signify the end of a stage most of the time and lead to a boss.
The assets are truly random here. You'll be hit by rocks, walking alarm clocks that explode, lava that shoots up from the ground, some weird moist-looking orange texture that can fly, guys dressed like milk cartons and characters that have a hammer for their heads. At least the boss fights are only against Looney Tunes characters that you'll recognize.
The problem is, there are about 50 stages and that many boss fights throughout the game. I'm exaggerating, but only kind of, and each boss is repeated at least 3 times until it all of a sudden just ends. It's not like levels are creatively designed to warrant this. At points it feels like you are walking through pretty much the same levels over and over again with only slight changes here and there. The boss fights sure are the same, so why are you making the player suffer more by overextending the playtime? Again, it doesn't help that the game runs at a locked 20 FPS.
After each stage you beat, you enter one of two mini games and can play those multiple times if you collected enough carrots. One has a Bingo like card on it and you have to try and match 3 or more stars horizontally/vertically/diagonally. If you do, you get 1Ups. This is no challenge at all and you will find yourself with 50+ 1Ups left by the time you beat the game. Then there is a Whac-A-Mole type mini game as well. Both just become annoying necessities after you've played them a few times.
The 1 Ups makes the completion of this game much easier already, but it's not like the levels are difficult either way. You find plenty of items to regenerate your health (you'll need them because there is a lot of stuff that you can't reliably dodge in this game) and platforming barely offers any challenges. Your only enemy there is gravity.
There are barely any features in this game and in today's day and age, we've seen plenty of these licensed game that are only made as cash-grabs, as there really wasn't much effort put into this one.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Sound design is OK and the soundtrack is as well. The music is not terrible to listen to, it's very average as far as OSTs from this time go, but the repetitive and at parts non-sensical level design might cause anxiety whenever you listen to it after your time with this game is over.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The game is certainly colorful and Looney Tunes characters add to the charm of this game, but the game starts looking pretty basic the further you get into it, there isn't much creativity here and the fact that a bunch of random assets are thrown together here does reduce the aesthetical quality of the game in my opinion.
ATMOSPHERE
The game doesn't really do anything special graphically, it has a very average soundtrack and to add to this, your eyes are strained from looking at this 20 FPS, blurry, headache-inducing presentation.
CONTENT
It took me about 3 hours to beat the game and it should take you as much as well. Unlike some other platformers that take much longer for a first time player - but probably less than 3 hours for experienced players - 3 hours is all The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout has to offer. I rarely died, the game has barely any features that you could miss out on and it's a pretty straightforward experience. And even with a game that is 3 hours long, I was asking for it to be over very early on into my playthrough due to the sheer repetitiveness of it.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
Terrible. I don't really think much thought went into creating a cohesive structure at any point. They simply seem to have created a start and end point for a level, throw together a bunch of random assets in between and added about half a dozen rotating bosses at the end of each stage. Very poor.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
There is nothing innovative about this one. They seem to have copied a bunch of platformers that were more popular without understanding what makes platformers popular.
REPLAYABILITY
You can try to beat your high score, sure, but I doubt that anyone who starts playing this today would want to replay it.
PLAYABILITY
It works from start to finish, but playing it at 20 FPS or so throughout, if even that, really hurts the experience (replace 'experience' with 'eyes').
OVERALL
This is definitely in the running for Worst Game of 1990. It's the only game I've played so far that performed this poorly. If not for the Looney Tunes setting, this game wouldn't have anything to offer apart from boring, repetitive and simple platforming.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
Couldn't find any thoughts, just two notices of the game's release in Electronic Gaming Monthly and Nintendo Power magazines.
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."
1990
Dr. Mario released on July 27, 1990 for Game Boy and NES in Japan before releasing in NA later that year. It was often compared to Tetris and Columns at the time, as it's a game about blocks (in this game: pills) falling from above, which need to be placed in a way that creates matches before you run out of space.
The game was a commercial success thanks to the popularity of Mario, as it sold over 10 million copies worldwide. It received a bit of backlash for including pills in a kids game (see What They Said At The Time section), but has otherwise been received very well, leading to multiple follow-ups being released over the years.
I found Dr. Mario to be a fun alternative to Tetris with a lot to like. More on the game in detail below.
____________
STORYTELLING
There is no story in-game. All you will find in the manual is a small convo between Dr. Mario and nurse Toadstool where she tells him that an experiment has gone out of control and led to the quick spreading of viruses.
It's a different premise for a Mario game, especially at the time, and some didn't find it as charming as Nintendo may have intended, though you can read more on that in the "What They Said At The Time" section. Personally, I understand how some parents wouldn't buy this game for their children, but I wouldn't get worried that such a theme would have a negative effect on my children myself, especially with proper supervision if needs be (not that I have any as of now).
But yes, beware, the game is about throwing pills into a jar to kill viruses because Mario and his nurse have had experiments go wrong.
GAMEPLAY
This is Nintendo's take on Tetris pretty much, though there is more than enough of a difference to warrant it being its own thing. First off, it has a theme. Mario is a Doctor in this one and instead of throwing differently shaped blocks, he throws pills. He throws them in a jar that has viruses in it, which come in three different colors, blue, yellow and red.
Pills have two halves and each half can be one of the three colors, so you can half blue-yellow, yellow-red or even red-red pills. These can be lined up vertically or horizontally and also be flipped, as you would expect. You need to stack up four of them either horizontally next to, or vertically on top of, one of the viruses to kill it. Removing all viruses clears the stage and lets you move to the next one, where there are more viruses than before, up until a max level of Level 20 with 84 viruses, though I've read that you can go all the way to Level 24 even (not selectable in the menu from the start).
You can adjust the speeds from low to medium to high and start with the lowest amount of viruses if you want. You can also choose one of two tracks to listen to while you play, "Feverish" or "Chill". Plus, there is a 2 Player mode too, which is pretty fun if you are looking for an unusual coop game to play.
Overall, I'd say I enjoy Tetris more and find it more addicting, but Dr. Mario certainly scratches the itch of a Puzzle game of this type. My main complaint that negatively affected the pacing of gameplay was whenever you would put four pill-halves of the same color on top of each other and they would 'pop', the adjacent pill-halves would fall down in this agonizingly slow pace. It just doesn't suit a game like this to wait for up to 5 seconds for the half to fall down in my opinion.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Sound design is fine, would have sometimes liked a more cheerful sound when pills would break. The music is the highlight here. There are two main tunes, one called "Feverish" and one called "Chill", both of which are extremely catchy and fit the mood of the gameplay perfectly. It's a shame that the soundtrack is pretty much limited to these two tracks but it's a minor complaint considering how nice to listen to both tracks are. Couldn't tell you which one I prefer, but I'm gonna go with Chill for today.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
It's nothing special graphically. If anything, the only noticeable part was the background during gameplay, which made me kinda dizzy when staring at it for too long.
ATMOSPHERE
This game was pretty much focused on both gameplay and the soundtrack combining to provide an addictive experience. The presentation was made to be cute in the typical Nintendo style, and it definitely is a charming game, but there isn't really much to it since it's a static game where you simply see pills moving down and viruses reacting to being killed. It's fine.
CONTENT
There are a few options to adjust difficulty, and then there is the gameplay. There isn't much else you need when playing a game like this, so it's good content for gameplay-only enthusiasts, but not for full-package connoisseurs.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
As mentioned somewhere above, my only frustration with this game is how it can take you out of it whenever pill-halves fall for up to 5 seconds and all you can do is watch. It's an odd pace-breaker for a game that is supposed to be paced more or less fast, depending on the speed you put it on. But even if you have it on slow, you can just pull the pills down fast by pressing the down button. You can't accelerate the very slow fall of pill-halves.
Next to adjusting speed, you can adjust the amount of viruses in the jar when you start. If you start at the lowest setting, the amount will increase over time until you lose. Additionally, you can select which song you want to listen to.
And finally, there is a local 2 Player Mode, which is a pretty cool addition. It's hard to not have a good time with that when playing with someone else.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
It's a different take on Tetris, and I'd argue it's not necessarily a better one. Clearly it had a ton of people who liked it, and for good reason, but I wouldn't say it moved the needle in any direction as much as Nintendo just smartly capitalized on the popularity of both Tetris and especially Mario at the time.
REPLAYABILITY
There is an ending to this game believe it or not. Usually replayability AFTER beating a game is what I consider for this segment, but for a game like this, I'll have to adjust my definition, because obviously the game is replayable as heck. It's the main idea behind the game. Play it. Play it some more. Get good at it. Get even better. It's a lot of fun and easy to jump into at whichever difficulty you prefer, so replayability is as high as it gets.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL
If you enjoy Tetris and Tetris-likes, and have no issues with Mario, I don't see you not enjoying your time with this one. It's fun, it's response, it's difficulty-adjustable and it has two banger tracks. If you're mainly looking for fun gameplay, you'll get your fill here. If you're looking for a more complete package, I'd look elsewhere however.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Andy Eddy for VGCE, Issue 21 (Oct 90): "It's disturbing to think that a parent may find a video game "teaching" their child that playing with pills is okay." | I've gone over this topic in the "Storytelling" part of my review, but this is the loudest opposition I've read on Dr. Mario and thought it was worth sharing. I understand how some parents don't like the idea behind this game, but I thought he was overreacting a bit when reading this. Looking into it a bit closer, it turns out Andy Eddy was suing a doctor for giving his child wrong prescriptions (according to Wiki), so suddenly his rant made a lot more sense, though I still disagree that this game could have turned any child into a pill addict.
- Steve Harris for Electronic Gaming Monthly, Issue 16 (Nov 90): "Dr. Mario is an annoyingly over-involved version of Tetris meets Columns" | Unexpectedly poor reviews by the two magazines I found that talked about the game, but player reception tells a different tale
The game was a commercial success thanks to the popularity of Mario, as it sold over 10 million copies worldwide. It received a bit of backlash for including pills in a kids game (see What They Said At The Time section), but has otherwise been received very well, leading to multiple follow-ups being released over the years.
I found Dr. Mario to be a fun alternative to Tetris with a lot to like. More on the game in detail below.
____________
STORYTELLING
There is no story in-game. All you will find in the manual is a small convo between Dr. Mario and nurse Toadstool where she tells him that an experiment has gone out of control and led to the quick spreading of viruses.
It's a different premise for a Mario game, especially at the time, and some didn't find it as charming as Nintendo may have intended, though you can read more on that in the "What They Said At The Time" section. Personally, I understand how some parents wouldn't buy this game for their children, but I wouldn't get worried that such a theme would have a negative effect on my children myself, especially with proper supervision if needs be (not that I have any as of now).
But yes, beware, the game is about throwing pills into a jar to kill viruses because Mario and his nurse have had experiments go wrong.
GAMEPLAY
This is Nintendo's take on Tetris pretty much, though there is more than enough of a difference to warrant it being its own thing. First off, it has a theme. Mario is a Doctor in this one and instead of throwing differently shaped blocks, he throws pills. He throws them in a jar that has viruses in it, which come in three different colors, blue, yellow and red.
Pills have two halves and each half can be one of the three colors, so you can half blue-yellow, yellow-red or even red-red pills. These can be lined up vertically or horizontally and also be flipped, as you would expect. You need to stack up four of them either horizontally next to, or vertically on top of, one of the viruses to kill it. Removing all viruses clears the stage and lets you move to the next one, where there are more viruses than before, up until a max level of Level 20 with 84 viruses, though I've read that you can go all the way to Level 24 even (not selectable in the menu from the start).
You can adjust the speeds from low to medium to high and start with the lowest amount of viruses if you want. You can also choose one of two tracks to listen to while you play, "Feverish" or "Chill". Plus, there is a 2 Player mode too, which is pretty fun if you are looking for an unusual coop game to play.
Overall, I'd say I enjoy Tetris more and find it more addicting, but Dr. Mario certainly scratches the itch of a Puzzle game of this type. My main complaint that negatively affected the pacing of gameplay was whenever you would put four pill-halves of the same color on top of each other and they would 'pop', the adjacent pill-halves would fall down in this agonizingly slow pace. It just doesn't suit a game like this to wait for up to 5 seconds for the half to fall down in my opinion.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Sound design is fine, would have sometimes liked a more cheerful sound when pills would break. The music is the highlight here. There are two main tunes, one called "Feverish" and one called "Chill", both of which are extremely catchy and fit the mood of the gameplay perfectly. It's a shame that the soundtrack is pretty much limited to these two tracks but it's a minor complaint considering how nice to listen to both tracks are. Couldn't tell you which one I prefer, but I'm gonna go with Chill for today.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
It's nothing special graphically. If anything, the only noticeable part was the background during gameplay, which made me kinda dizzy when staring at it for too long.
ATMOSPHERE
This game was pretty much focused on both gameplay and the soundtrack combining to provide an addictive experience. The presentation was made to be cute in the typical Nintendo style, and it definitely is a charming game, but there isn't really much to it since it's a static game where you simply see pills moving down and viruses reacting to being killed. It's fine.
CONTENT
There are a few options to adjust difficulty, and then there is the gameplay. There isn't much else you need when playing a game like this, so it's good content for gameplay-only enthusiasts, but not for full-package connoisseurs.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
As mentioned somewhere above, my only frustration with this game is how it can take you out of it whenever pill-halves fall for up to 5 seconds and all you can do is watch. It's an odd pace-breaker for a game that is supposed to be paced more or less fast, depending on the speed you put it on. But even if you have it on slow, you can just pull the pills down fast by pressing the down button. You can't accelerate the very slow fall of pill-halves.
Next to adjusting speed, you can adjust the amount of viruses in the jar when you start. If you start at the lowest setting, the amount will increase over time until you lose. Additionally, you can select which song you want to listen to.
And finally, there is a local 2 Player Mode, which is a pretty cool addition. It's hard to not have a good time with that when playing with someone else.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
It's a different take on Tetris, and I'd argue it's not necessarily a better one. Clearly it had a ton of people who liked it, and for good reason, but I wouldn't say it moved the needle in any direction as much as Nintendo just smartly capitalized on the popularity of both Tetris and especially Mario at the time.
REPLAYABILITY
There is an ending to this game believe it or not. Usually replayability AFTER beating a game is what I consider for this segment, but for a game like this, I'll have to adjust my definition, because obviously the game is replayable as heck. It's the main idea behind the game. Play it. Play it some more. Get good at it. Get even better. It's a lot of fun and easy to jump into at whichever difficulty you prefer, so replayability is as high as it gets.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL
If you enjoy Tetris and Tetris-likes, and have no issues with Mario, I don't see you not enjoying your time with this one. It's fun, it's response, it's difficulty-adjustable and it has two banger tracks. If you're mainly looking for fun gameplay, you'll get your fill here. If you're looking for a more complete package, I'd look elsewhere however.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Andy Eddy for VGCE, Issue 21 (Oct 90): "It's disturbing to think that a parent may find a video game "teaching" their child that playing with pills is okay." | I've gone over this topic in the "Storytelling" part of my review, but this is the loudest opposition I've read on Dr. Mario and thought it was worth sharing. I understand how some parents don't like the idea behind this game, but I thought he was overreacting a bit when reading this. Looking into it a bit closer, it turns out Andy Eddy was suing a doctor for giving his child wrong prescriptions (according to Wiki), so suddenly his rant made a lot more sense, though I still disagree that this game could have turned any child into a pill addict.
- Steve Harris for Electronic Gaming Monthly, Issue 16 (Nov 90): "Dr. Mario is an annoyingly over-involved version of Tetris meets Columns" | Unexpectedly poor reviews by the two magazines I found that talked about the game, but player reception tells a different tale
(This is the 15th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (released on July 20, 1990 in Japan only - available in NA/EU through MGS3: Subsistence for PS2) is the first Metal Gear game I have actually played and beaten, even though I've played a bit of MGS1, 3 and dozens of hours of MGS 5. I've abandoned those for various reasons over the years, mostly due to being distracted by other games and/or finding them too difficult (tried to play without guides), but I do plan on going through the entire series over the next few years.
For today, I am happy to say that the second MSX Metal Gear game made by Hideo Kojima has been beaten. It took me roughly 7 hours and I did use a guide whenever I didn't know what to do, and in my opinion, you will have a hard time beating this game without one. The gameplay mechanics themselves will not be a problem, but there are multiple instances where (1) you need an item for a boss that is very easy to miss and (2) you need to backtrack to an area and it can be hard to make out where you need to go. During those backtracking parts, often you will probably figure it out if you just check every available door but I decided to take a look at the guide whenever it took me about 10 minutes of looking around without being able to figure out my next move.
Sometimes the answer to a puzzle can be pretty convoluted as well. In one part of the game, an area is locked off by lasers. A guard is at that spot as well. There is a little shack next to it, and later on you find a keycard that allows you to enter. A few children in there tell you that "the lasers are turned off at night": There is no traditional day & night system in this game, so you can't just wait for it to be night. No, instead you have to find something elsewhere, figure out to use it near the guard, wait a few seconds for the guard cutscene to trigger, which makes him then turn off the lasers. You can get it eventually thanks to to the tips by the children, but sometimes it gets more complicated with fewer tips, at which point checking a guide is almost a must.
If you don't mind using guides a few times here and there, great, because the game is among the better ones you will get to play in 1990 and offers a fun way to spend a few afternoons. It improved on basically everything compared to the first Metal Gear game by Kojima. Plus, as I understand it, it's canon to the Metal Gear universe and much of what MG2 does is apparently repeated in some way or another in MGS1 and 2, both in gameplay and story.
More on the game in detail below.
____________
STORYTELLING
The game starts with a lengthy cut scene that briefly summarizes the plot of the first game and the setting for this one. After conflict between large nations like Russia, the USA and China started to settle down, a new nuclear threat emerged in 1999, the year this game is set in (4 years after the previous one). The country is called "Zanzibar Land", which arms itself with nuclear weapons and stars invading nearby countries.
In addition to this, there is an ongoing oil crisis (the game's premise and its story themes are evidently still relevant today). A Czech biologist named Kio Marv invents "Oilix" a microbe that synthesizes petroleum, and Zanzibar Land kidnap him to gain military superiority through a combination of nuclear weapons and Oilix.
Solid Snake receives his mission by Foxhound, a special forces squad, to sneak into Zanzibar Land and rescue Kio Marv. Of course, there is a nuclear weapon called "Metal Gear" to worry about as well, as Zanzibarland are mass-producing Metal Gear units.
The beauty of this story is manifold, though you won't necessarily fall in love with the in-game plot itself. It works well, it includes plot twists and plenty of both sad and thoughtful moments. Considering that this is a video game from 1990 however, it won't blow your socks off at this day and age. What I really appreciated, however, was the attention to detail.
If you look at the manual of this game, it shows you a biography of each relevant character (did you know Snake speaks 6 languages?). It lists all basic information about Zanzibar Land (population: 40,000), it even explains what kind of training Foxhound aspirants need to go through, what gear they wear during missions and what Foxhound itself even is. The game then mentions some of this information during radio conversations, some optional, some mandatory.
The radio/codec in general is a great feature because it has a ton of immersive uses that are both helpful and engaging. Each character has their own frequency and you can ring them to partake in optional conversations, which don't always trigger depending on what situation Snake finds himself in. But when they do, you can ring Holly to learn more about Zanzibar Land and your environment. You can ring Roy Campbell, your commander, to get more information about your mission and some helpful tips. You can call Kazuhira Miller, who often does meta commentary on "not drinking too much soda when playing" or "not playing within 30 minutes of eating" (not very immersive, but humorous/actually interesting). You can also call Johan Jacobsen to get some tips whenever animals are involved. This system gets fleshed out in future entries but this game is a big step in the right direction in that regard.
Throughout the game, you will meet characters either to rescue them or to help them (or for them to help you) and each time you do, there is an engaging conversation that you can follow along. One such conversation that was pretty memorable happened between Snake and Gustava. While waiting, both literally sat down and just talked about Gustava's past, why she became involved with the STB and about the only man she ever fell in love with. I love this sort of stuff and it helps make the bigger moments in the game's story hit that much more.
Most impressive about the story in this game has got to be its meta commentary on war. It is barebones compared to what I know future games delve into, but there is still plenty of thoughtful stuff here about how soldiers are pawns of leaders who don't care about them, about how some children who are saved from battlefields are simply trained to be put back into the battlefield and about how some soldiers don't have a life worth living outside of the battlefield, so they may as well die on it. It gives the "evil" antagonists a "motivation" for their actions unlike what you will see in almost any other game, where the simple goal is to reign over the world, whereas here, it goes way beyond that.
I'm probably making the story out to be way more than it actually is, but I truly do find the attention to detail and the themes to be impressive features of this game and something that obviously stuck around big time in future iterations.
GAMEPLAY
Where to start? You play Solid Snake, a special ops soldier, and have to sneak into Zanzibar Land to find Dr. Kio Marv. When you start the game, your are equipped with your radio to contact a few individuals who will help you. You immediately get access to a handgun, some rations (healing items) and you obviously have your next-level sneaking abilities.
The game has a LIFE bar that increases each time you defeat a boss. Boss fights sometimes occur within minutes of each other, sometimes you don't fight one for over an hour. There are close to 10 in total and are pretty varied. You fight a chopper, a Running Man that just keeps running away whilst the room fills up with toxic gas, a Ninja that throws stars and teleports and of course a Metal Gear. They are pretty simple once you know what to do and are equipped for them. Often, you can simply tank their damage and just eat Rations while you fire back until they die.
To aid you with your mission, there is a RADAR for the first time in the series. It is a 3x3 screen that shows each adjacent screen and marks enemies and yourself as dots. It is pretty primitive, in that it doesn't actually show which direction the enemies are facing, so it often happened at first that I walked into a screen and immediately alerted the guards because they were staring into my direction. Later on I figured out to let the enemies walk the other direction first, at which point I obviously knew which way they were facing.
Guards in this game have a bigger field of view compared to the previous game (45°) and sometimes stand still and turn there gaze to the left or right. In addition, there are multiple different floors in this game, some that squeak when you walk over them, which alerts the guards and makes them look around. For moments like these, you can crawl, which doesn't make any noise. Plus, you can hide under stuff, either to move past enemies yourself or hide until they move past you.
There are some sections where a room is dark (you get Night Vision goggles), where a room fills with Toxic Gas (Gas Mask) or mines are on the floor (crawl over them to pick them up and/or use a Mine Detector). The situations you find yourself in are plentiful and there is a safe and easy solution to everything. The tough part is finding them sometimes.
The big gameplay loop you have here is in finding Key Cards, which help you unlock areas that previously were inaccessible. There are 9 Key Cards and after you find 3, you can find a Key Card that combines them all (Red Card, Blue Card, Green Card). There are plenty of areas with multiple doors which all require a different key card to unlock, which is kind of annoying. You open a door with Key Card 4, then have to use Key Card 2 for the next one and Key Card 6 for the other one.
Overall, the depth in gameplay is definitely above anything other than some RPGs of the time probably, and it's a lot of fun, even today.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
-
No voice acting. I liked the sound design, while I found the soundtrack to range from OK to very good. The quality of the soundtrack really shined whenever the game entered action or story heavy scenes, while some of the overworld themes were catchy as well. I really enjoyed the intro theme too.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Metal Gear 2 certainly looks good for a 1990 game. It is much improved compared to Metal Gear in both use of colors and variety of locations. There is also more detail within locations, like the sewers, the "forest" area (not sure what the official name was), the swamps and then smaller locations like an infirmary, dining rooms etc.
ATMOSPHERE
I found this game to have fitting atmosphere throughout, but the game technically was obviously pretty limited in what it could do. It didn't help the setting that you spend like an hour on elevators it felt like, and I also found some things off putting and too game-y, like the fact that kids were just running around in random rooms waiting to give you tips on how to progress.
CONTENT
For a playthrough without the use of a guide, you are looking at a game that is about 10-15 hours long. If you use a guide here and there, you're looking at 6-8 hours, which for games of this time that are not RPGs or endless games is in my opinion the perfect length. Games at this time simply weren't feature rich or technically able enough to provide a lot of content that is limited in repetition.
I don't think I would necessarily have been to keen on spending ~$50 per game back in the day for this length, but the shorter length does a lot of good to the enjoyment of the game if we disregard that initial price tag.
There is a lot of fun stealth gameplay here that offers enough variety in how to approach things thanks to a multitude of stealth mechanics and weaponry. There is enough here that even a second playthrough may be worth it to you to approach some scenarios slightly differently. It's not like you can take different routes to get to the same destination - the game is pretty linear in that regard - but the moment to moment action can definitely easily be switched up a little bit.
There is some backtracking and as mentioned many times, you will likely need to use a guide here and there unless you're very patient, but Metal Gear 2 offers the best mix of quality and quantity of all 15 games I have played of 1990 up to this point.
Once you beat the game, there is a "boss rush" mode that unlocks as an additional mode.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
There are a few main areas (two different buildings, forest/swamp area, desert) and the game asks you to backtrack a lot, but each time you do, you are able to enter new areas that are unlocked by acquiring a key card. Buildings have multiple doors and floors that require different key cards (there are 9) and each time you enter a new area within an area, there is enough of a different stylistically that it doesn't really feel repetitive. Often there are new stealth challenges added as well, but it could have definitely been much more difficult in that regard.
You can obviously alert guards, but it isn't really that punishing, especially on Easy difficulty. You can simply go to the next screen and hide underneath something and the guards will disappear without being on "semi-alert" status or something like that like they do in future games.
The structure of this game is pretty much the same throughout, and it's a fun structure, so I don't have too much to say about that. You get your mission to go to Area X, on your way you find key items hidden in specific rooms, you sometimes gotta piece together which item you need to use at which point, and then you fight a boss to progress further. It all works well.
One thing I didn't like was how key items were sometimes hidden somewhere and totally missable. Some bosses for example can only be hurt with one specific weapon, like the chopper early on, so I didn't particularly enjoy showing up to that one unable to do any damage. Often, once you do find the item, defeating them is rather simple.
So yeah, overall pretty good stuff with that small complaint.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
Absolutely one of the more innovative games I've seen so far and it introduced many mechanics that were still in use when MGS1 released 8 years later. This game had everything you would want from a sequel. Bigger field of view for enemies makes stealth a bit more difficult, but the game offers a lot more "toys" for the player in terms of equipment, plus you can sneak and hide underneath stuff, and there is a lot more detail in the game's story telling.
REPLAYABILITY
There are two areas that will make this game slightly more replayable. There is a lot of equipment that I didn't use in my first playthrough. First, because I played it on easy (only available through MGS 3: Subsistence) and second, because there really are so many items and not all are necessary to be successful. There is a blanket for example that you can hide under, which I didn't use. Mice and cold medicine are other items that come to mind as one's I didn't require, to a point where I don't even know what cold medicine might be usable for. There are lots of other items like that which were in my inventory until the game was beaten.
The second area that allows for a little replayability are the radio conversations. There are dozens of optional conversations that you can try to find and I'm sure I didn't get to listen to all of them. It's nothing compared to what future games will offer, but considering the issue of memory limitations was pretty big at the time, it's impressive to see this much room put aside for optional conversations that offer (1) additional lore about the world and its inhabitants, (2) meta commentary and (3) humorous interactions.
Apart from this, you will experience everything in a singular playthrough.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL
So far, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake was definitely the best game I have played that released in 1990. Impressive amount of features with limited filler to pad play time, by far the most story telling and character development, limited frustration apart from not knowing where to go or what to do a few times and definitely a step in the right direction for video games. I think it's unlikely that I will manage to hold off from playing MGS1 all the way until I reach 1998, but I'll try, just to really build up that anticipation.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
Nothing here since it didn't release outside of Japan until 2005.
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (released on July 20, 1990 in Japan only - available in NA/EU through MGS3: Subsistence for PS2) is the first Metal Gear game I have actually played and beaten, even though I've played a bit of MGS1, 3 and dozens of hours of MGS 5. I've abandoned those for various reasons over the years, mostly due to being distracted by other games and/or finding them too difficult (tried to play without guides), but I do plan on going through the entire series over the next few years.
For today, I am happy to say that the second MSX Metal Gear game made by Hideo Kojima has been beaten. It took me roughly 7 hours and I did use a guide whenever I didn't know what to do, and in my opinion, you will have a hard time beating this game without one. The gameplay mechanics themselves will not be a problem, but there are multiple instances where (1) you need an item for a boss that is very easy to miss and (2) you need to backtrack to an area and it can be hard to make out where you need to go. During those backtracking parts, often you will probably figure it out if you just check every available door but I decided to take a look at the guide whenever it took me about 10 minutes of looking around without being able to figure out my next move.
Sometimes the answer to a puzzle can be pretty convoluted as well. In one part of the game, an area is locked off by lasers. A guard is at that spot as well. There is a little shack next to it, and later on you find a keycard that allows you to enter. A few children in there tell you that "the lasers are turned off at night": There is no traditional day & night system in this game, so you can't just wait for it to be night. No, instead you have to find something elsewhere, figure out to use it near the guard, wait a few seconds for the guard cutscene to trigger, which makes him then turn off the lasers. You can get it eventually thanks to to the tips by the children, but sometimes it gets more complicated with fewer tips, at which point checking a guide is almost a must.
If you don't mind using guides a few times here and there, great, because the game is among the better ones you will get to play in 1990 and offers a fun way to spend a few afternoons. It improved on basically everything compared to the first Metal Gear game by Kojima. Plus, as I understand it, it's canon to the Metal Gear universe and much of what MG2 does is apparently repeated in some way or another in MGS1 and 2, both in gameplay and story.
More on the game in detail below.
____________
STORYTELLING
The game starts with a lengthy cut scene that briefly summarizes the plot of the first game and the setting for this one. After conflict between large nations like Russia, the USA and China started to settle down, a new nuclear threat emerged in 1999, the year this game is set in (4 years after the previous one). The country is called "Zanzibar Land", which arms itself with nuclear weapons and stars invading nearby countries.
In addition to this, there is an ongoing oil crisis (the game's premise and its story themes are evidently still relevant today). A Czech biologist named Kio Marv invents "Oilix" a microbe that synthesizes petroleum, and Zanzibar Land kidnap him to gain military superiority through a combination of nuclear weapons and Oilix.
Solid Snake receives his mission by Foxhound, a special forces squad, to sneak into Zanzibar Land and rescue Kio Marv. Of course, there is a nuclear weapon called "Metal Gear" to worry about as well, as Zanzibarland are mass-producing Metal Gear units.
The beauty of this story is manifold, though you won't necessarily fall in love with the in-game plot itself. It works well, it includes plot twists and plenty of both sad and thoughtful moments. Considering that this is a video game from 1990 however, it won't blow your socks off at this day and age. What I really appreciated, however, was the attention to detail.
If you look at the manual of this game, it shows you a biography of each relevant character (did you know Snake speaks 6 languages?). It lists all basic information about Zanzibar Land (population: 40,000), it even explains what kind of training Foxhound aspirants need to go through, what gear they wear during missions and what Foxhound itself even is. The game then mentions some of this information during radio conversations, some optional, some mandatory.
The radio/codec in general is a great feature because it has a ton of immersive uses that are both helpful and engaging. Each character has their own frequency and you can ring them to partake in optional conversations, which don't always trigger depending on what situation Snake finds himself in. But when they do, you can ring Holly to learn more about Zanzibar Land and your environment. You can ring Roy Campbell, your commander, to get more information about your mission and some helpful tips. You can call Kazuhira Miller, who often does meta commentary on "not drinking too much soda when playing" or "not playing within 30 minutes of eating" (not very immersive, but humorous/actually interesting). You can also call Johan Jacobsen to get some tips whenever animals are involved. This system gets fleshed out in future entries but this game is a big step in the right direction in that regard.
Throughout the game, you will meet characters either to rescue them or to help them (or for them to help you) and each time you do, there is an engaging conversation that you can follow along. One such conversation that was pretty memorable happened between Snake and Gustava. While waiting, both literally sat down and just talked about Gustava's past, why she became involved with the STB and about the only man she ever fell in love with. I love this sort of stuff and it helps make the bigger moments in the game's story hit that much more.
Most impressive about the story in this game has got to be its meta commentary on war. It is barebones compared to what I know future games delve into, but there is still plenty of thoughtful stuff here about how soldiers are pawns of leaders who don't care about them, about how some children who are saved from battlefields are simply trained to be put back into the battlefield and about how some soldiers don't have a life worth living outside of the battlefield, so they may as well die on it. It gives the "evil" antagonists a "motivation" for their actions unlike what you will see in almost any other game, where the simple goal is to reign over the world, whereas here, it goes way beyond that.
I'm probably making the story out to be way more than it actually is, but I truly do find the attention to detail and the themes to be impressive features of this game and something that obviously stuck around big time in future iterations.
GAMEPLAY
Where to start? You play Solid Snake, a special ops soldier, and have to sneak into Zanzibar Land to find Dr. Kio Marv. When you start the game, your are equipped with your radio to contact a few individuals who will help you. You immediately get access to a handgun, some rations (healing items) and you obviously have your next-level sneaking abilities.
The game has a LIFE bar that increases each time you defeat a boss. Boss fights sometimes occur within minutes of each other, sometimes you don't fight one for over an hour. There are close to 10 in total and are pretty varied. You fight a chopper, a Running Man that just keeps running away whilst the room fills up with toxic gas, a Ninja that throws stars and teleports and of course a Metal Gear. They are pretty simple once you know what to do and are equipped for them. Often, you can simply tank their damage and just eat Rations while you fire back until they die.
To aid you with your mission, there is a RADAR for the first time in the series. It is a 3x3 screen that shows each adjacent screen and marks enemies and yourself as dots. It is pretty primitive, in that it doesn't actually show which direction the enemies are facing, so it often happened at first that I walked into a screen and immediately alerted the guards because they were staring into my direction. Later on I figured out to let the enemies walk the other direction first, at which point I obviously knew which way they were facing.
Guards in this game have a bigger field of view compared to the previous game (45°) and sometimes stand still and turn there gaze to the left or right. In addition, there are multiple different floors in this game, some that squeak when you walk over them, which alerts the guards and makes them look around. For moments like these, you can crawl, which doesn't make any noise. Plus, you can hide under stuff, either to move past enemies yourself or hide until they move past you.
There are some sections where a room is dark (you get Night Vision goggles), where a room fills with Toxic Gas (Gas Mask) or mines are on the floor (crawl over them to pick them up and/or use a Mine Detector). The situations you find yourself in are plentiful and there is a safe and easy solution to everything. The tough part is finding them sometimes.
The big gameplay loop you have here is in finding Key Cards, which help you unlock areas that previously were inaccessible. There are 9 Key Cards and after you find 3, you can find a Key Card that combines them all (Red Card, Blue Card, Green Card). There are plenty of areas with multiple doors which all require a different key card to unlock, which is kind of annoying. You open a door with Key Card 4, then have to use Key Card 2 for the next one and Key Card 6 for the other one.
Overall, the depth in gameplay is definitely above anything other than some RPGs of the time probably, and it's a lot of fun, even today.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
-
No voice acting. I liked the sound design, while I found the soundtrack to range from OK to very good. The quality of the soundtrack really shined whenever the game entered action or story heavy scenes, while some of the overworld themes were catchy as well. I really enjoyed the intro theme too.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Metal Gear 2 certainly looks good for a 1990 game. It is much improved compared to Metal Gear in both use of colors and variety of locations. There is also more detail within locations, like the sewers, the "forest" area (not sure what the official name was), the swamps and then smaller locations like an infirmary, dining rooms etc.
ATMOSPHERE
I found this game to have fitting atmosphere throughout, but the game technically was obviously pretty limited in what it could do. It didn't help the setting that you spend like an hour on elevators it felt like, and I also found some things off putting and too game-y, like the fact that kids were just running around in random rooms waiting to give you tips on how to progress.
CONTENT
For a playthrough without the use of a guide, you are looking at a game that is about 10-15 hours long. If you use a guide here and there, you're looking at 6-8 hours, which for games of this time that are not RPGs or endless games is in my opinion the perfect length. Games at this time simply weren't feature rich or technically able enough to provide a lot of content that is limited in repetition.
I don't think I would necessarily have been to keen on spending ~$50 per game back in the day for this length, but the shorter length does a lot of good to the enjoyment of the game if we disregard that initial price tag.
There is a lot of fun stealth gameplay here that offers enough variety in how to approach things thanks to a multitude of stealth mechanics and weaponry. There is enough here that even a second playthrough may be worth it to you to approach some scenarios slightly differently. It's not like you can take different routes to get to the same destination - the game is pretty linear in that regard - but the moment to moment action can definitely easily be switched up a little bit.
There is some backtracking and as mentioned many times, you will likely need to use a guide here and there unless you're very patient, but Metal Gear 2 offers the best mix of quality and quantity of all 15 games I have played of 1990 up to this point.
Once you beat the game, there is a "boss rush" mode that unlocks as an additional mode.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
There are a few main areas (two different buildings, forest/swamp area, desert) and the game asks you to backtrack a lot, but each time you do, you are able to enter new areas that are unlocked by acquiring a key card. Buildings have multiple doors and floors that require different key cards (there are 9) and each time you enter a new area within an area, there is enough of a different stylistically that it doesn't really feel repetitive. Often there are new stealth challenges added as well, but it could have definitely been much more difficult in that regard.
You can obviously alert guards, but it isn't really that punishing, especially on Easy difficulty. You can simply go to the next screen and hide underneath something and the guards will disappear without being on "semi-alert" status or something like that like they do in future games.
The structure of this game is pretty much the same throughout, and it's a fun structure, so I don't have too much to say about that. You get your mission to go to Area X, on your way you find key items hidden in specific rooms, you sometimes gotta piece together which item you need to use at which point, and then you fight a boss to progress further. It all works well.
One thing I didn't like was how key items were sometimes hidden somewhere and totally missable. Some bosses for example can only be hurt with one specific weapon, like the chopper early on, so I didn't particularly enjoy showing up to that one unable to do any damage. Often, once you do find the item, defeating them is rather simple.
So yeah, overall pretty good stuff with that small complaint.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
Absolutely one of the more innovative games I've seen so far and it introduced many mechanics that were still in use when MGS1 released 8 years later. This game had everything you would want from a sequel. Bigger field of view for enemies makes stealth a bit more difficult, but the game offers a lot more "toys" for the player in terms of equipment, plus you can sneak and hide underneath stuff, and there is a lot more detail in the game's story telling.
REPLAYABILITY
There are two areas that will make this game slightly more replayable. There is a lot of equipment that I didn't use in my first playthrough. First, because I played it on easy (only available through MGS 3: Subsistence) and second, because there really are so many items and not all are necessary to be successful. There is a blanket for example that you can hide under, which I didn't use. Mice and cold medicine are other items that come to mind as one's I didn't require, to a point where I don't even know what cold medicine might be usable for. There are lots of other items like that which were in my inventory until the game was beaten.
The second area that allows for a little replayability are the radio conversations. There are dozens of optional conversations that you can try to find and I'm sure I didn't get to listen to all of them. It's nothing compared to what future games will offer, but considering the issue of memory limitations was pretty big at the time, it's impressive to see this much room put aside for optional conversations that offer (1) additional lore about the world and its inhabitants, (2) meta commentary and (3) humorous interactions.
Apart from this, you will experience everything in a singular playthrough.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL
So far, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake was definitely the best game I have played that released in 1990. Impressive amount of features with limited filler to pad play time, by far the most story telling and character development, limited frustration apart from not knowing where to go or what to do a few times and definitely a step in the right direction for video games. I think it's unlikely that I will manage to hold off from playing MGS1 all the way until I reach 1998, but I'll try, just to really build up that anticipation.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
Nothing here since it didn't release outside of Japan until 2005.
I've just beaten Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, a platformer for the NES developed and published by Capcom. Its producer was Tokuro Fujiwara, who was also the producer for the Mega Man series and the Gargoyle's Quest games. It released on June 8, 1990 in Japan and in NA the following day.
The game is based on the kids TV show with the same name, and one that I used to watch a lot as a child myself. It was a nice flash of nostalgia whilst looking up info on this game and I was surprised to recognize some of the characters despite me not having watched the show for at least 15 years.
The game starts with an image of Chip, Dale and their friends and a little text of Chip talking, who says that a neighbor's kitten was lost and needs to be found by them. From there, the 2D platforming gameplay begins. From my count, there are about 10 levels if you decide to do them all, but at least 2 can be skipped. Levels have multiple stages and conclude with a boss fight.
You get 3 hearts and 3 continues, after which you have to restart the game. The game is very short, I beat it in roughly 2 hours, and I'd say it's the best introductory platformer to late 80s / early 90s gaming that I have played so far. To put it simple: It can be beaten relatively quickly and it has pretty basic features.
More on that down below.
____________
STORYTELLING
The game revolves around the cast of the TV show with the same name. There are Chip and Dale of course, but also their friends, namely Gadget, who in this game scouts ahead and gives players clue on upcoming levels once they finish the previous one, Monterey Jack, who finds "secret doors and pathways" for Chip and Dale (manual) and Zipper, who can be found as a special item and flies around you for a short while to kill every enemy in sight.
The intro dialogue between the friends reveals that the Rescue Rangers have a new job: Find the neighbor's lost kitten. During your search, the shows main antagonist, Fat Cat, introduces himself as well and will have to be bested to win the game later on.
Characters don't show up or talk apart from this intro until the end of the game. In between, only Gadget shows up to leave tips on upcoming levels, and Fat Cat has one little speech as well, but that's it. There is no storytelling beyond that. So it was pretty basic, which was more than fine for a game of this year of course.
GAMEPLAY
You can choose to control either Chip or Dale or even play with someone else. In each level you play, you must walk and jump for most of the game and either avoid enemies or kill them by throwing crates at them. There are cacti, electric wires and of course gravity that you can die to, but all of these deaths can be avoided by simply timing your jumps. There is nothing creative that you need to do to make it through this game. There is no jumping and slashing in mid air, climbing walls or stacking power ups that you need to worry about, especially since none of the latter are even available in this game.
All collectables are there for you to get "1 Ups". Collect 50 nuts, get a 1 up. Collect 10 stars, get a 1 up. Collect a 1 up item, get a 1 up. The only additional gameplay element that is provided in the game world are metal crates, which you can use to stack them up and access higher platforms.
Other than that, what I describes is pretty much it. There are 4 or 5 boss fights where you need to collect a red ball and throw it at the enemy whilst dodging their projectiles. This was very easy for most of the game, only the final boss gave me some trouble there.
After every level, an overworld opens up where you choose the next stage to go to. You can sometimes go one of two directions and pick different levels, but I haven't really tried going back and doing the level that I had missed, so I don't know if you are stuck with the direction you go in. Anyway, this offers tiny bit of replayability in a game that otherwise doesn't offer much depth.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. The music was good as per usual for games of this time period, there is a remix of the theme song of the TV show here too and the sound design was solid as well, or at least in line with how most games of this time made everything sound.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
I liked the graphics here. Good use of colors and despite the technical limitations at the time, the devs did a good job of creating detailed environments that all had an interesting theme. There aren't many enemies here, but they look unique and have clean sprites. There are few animations here and no special effects, so the game did well on the artistic front outside of those two areas.
ATMOSPHERE
Does it feel like a Chip 'n Dale game? I can't really say, it's been a while since I watched the show. I assume the enemies have some relation to the show, maybe, and all the characters do of course, and there definitely is relation to the show in the soundtrack but I can't judge it too much beyond that. As its own thing, I liked how the levels mixed up its themes, had bright colors, detailed environments and multiple unique assets included.
CONTENT
There are about 10 levels with bosses at the end of multiple of them. Almost every level adds new enemies, however there are a total of 10 enemy types overall, so variety is pretty limited there. The game is also very short at 2 hours or so based on someone with my ability, which I would call average. There is little filler, so I'll take 2 hours of this over 10 hours of some of the other, more unfair platformers, but at the end of the day 2 hours are pretty short and apart from themes and some new enemies, levels don't really mix it up in any other noticeable way.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
Artistically pleasing as levels are, they are not different enough in terms of gameplay challenge. I'd put this on lack of gameplay variety rather than the lack of puzzles, lack of environmental hazards and low enemy variety, but overall it's a combination of all those things.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
There isn't really anything the game does that stands out over the rest or moves the needle. Graphically I thought this game was above average, but if you just look at gameplay, you'll notice that it is pretty simple. There are no power ups in this game. You can't climb. You can't run faster, you can't double jump and you can't fly, you pretty much can't do anything apart from three things. Walk, jump and throw. Throwing is limited to apples, bombs and mostly, crates, which one hit enemies and clear your way forward. It's not a bad gameplay hook and the game doesn't need all of the things I mentioned before, but a bit of mixing up or one more feature or two would have served the game well. As it stands, it feels like a solid entry into the genre if for nothing else.
REPLAYABILITY
There isn't really any variety here, so the only reason for replaying this after winning would be to beat your high score AND to choose a different path in the overworld when you select stages.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL
Here is a game that uses a license and the platforming experience of its developers to be an enjoyable, albeit extremely average platformer. Due to its basic features, yet good soundtrack, solid graphics and short game length, it combines to make for a solid game to introduce newcomers to late 80s / early 90s platforming games. But unless you're the biggest Chip 'N Dale fan or have played this when you were young, it is unlikely that this makes for a game you will remember for long, which may be fine depending on your expectations.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Gary Barth for GamePro Issue 9 (Apr 90): "Chip 'N' Dale Rescue Rangers boasts the same fast action and detailed Disney graphics as [...] Mickey Mousecapades and Duck Tales."
The game is based on the kids TV show with the same name, and one that I used to watch a lot as a child myself. It was a nice flash of nostalgia whilst looking up info on this game and I was surprised to recognize some of the characters despite me not having watched the show for at least 15 years.
The game starts with an image of Chip, Dale and their friends and a little text of Chip talking, who says that a neighbor's kitten was lost and needs to be found by them. From there, the 2D platforming gameplay begins. From my count, there are about 10 levels if you decide to do them all, but at least 2 can be skipped. Levels have multiple stages and conclude with a boss fight.
You get 3 hearts and 3 continues, after which you have to restart the game. The game is very short, I beat it in roughly 2 hours, and I'd say it's the best introductory platformer to late 80s / early 90s gaming that I have played so far. To put it simple: It can be beaten relatively quickly and it has pretty basic features.
More on that down below.
____________
STORYTELLING
The game revolves around the cast of the TV show with the same name. There are Chip and Dale of course, but also their friends, namely Gadget, who in this game scouts ahead and gives players clue on upcoming levels once they finish the previous one, Monterey Jack, who finds "secret doors and pathways" for Chip and Dale (manual) and Zipper, who can be found as a special item and flies around you for a short while to kill every enemy in sight.
The intro dialogue between the friends reveals that the Rescue Rangers have a new job: Find the neighbor's lost kitten. During your search, the shows main antagonist, Fat Cat, introduces himself as well and will have to be bested to win the game later on.
Characters don't show up or talk apart from this intro until the end of the game. In between, only Gadget shows up to leave tips on upcoming levels, and Fat Cat has one little speech as well, but that's it. There is no storytelling beyond that. So it was pretty basic, which was more than fine for a game of this year of course.
GAMEPLAY
You can choose to control either Chip or Dale or even play with someone else. In each level you play, you must walk and jump for most of the game and either avoid enemies or kill them by throwing crates at them. There are cacti, electric wires and of course gravity that you can die to, but all of these deaths can be avoided by simply timing your jumps. There is nothing creative that you need to do to make it through this game. There is no jumping and slashing in mid air, climbing walls or stacking power ups that you need to worry about, especially since none of the latter are even available in this game.
All collectables are there for you to get "1 Ups". Collect 50 nuts, get a 1 up. Collect 10 stars, get a 1 up. Collect a 1 up item, get a 1 up. The only additional gameplay element that is provided in the game world are metal crates, which you can use to stack them up and access higher platforms.
Other than that, what I describes is pretty much it. There are 4 or 5 boss fights where you need to collect a red ball and throw it at the enemy whilst dodging their projectiles. This was very easy for most of the game, only the final boss gave me some trouble there.
After every level, an overworld opens up where you choose the next stage to go to. You can sometimes go one of two directions and pick different levels, but I haven't really tried going back and doing the level that I had missed, so I don't know if you are stuck with the direction you go in. Anyway, this offers tiny bit of replayability in a game that otherwise doesn't offer much depth.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. The music was good as per usual for games of this time period, there is a remix of the theme song of the TV show here too and the sound design was solid as well, or at least in line with how most games of this time made everything sound.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
I liked the graphics here. Good use of colors and despite the technical limitations at the time, the devs did a good job of creating detailed environments that all had an interesting theme. There aren't many enemies here, but they look unique and have clean sprites. There are few animations here and no special effects, so the game did well on the artistic front outside of those two areas.
ATMOSPHERE
Does it feel like a Chip 'n Dale game? I can't really say, it's been a while since I watched the show. I assume the enemies have some relation to the show, maybe, and all the characters do of course, and there definitely is relation to the show in the soundtrack but I can't judge it too much beyond that. As its own thing, I liked how the levels mixed up its themes, had bright colors, detailed environments and multiple unique assets included.
CONTENT
There are about 10 levels with bosses at the end of multiple of them. Almost every level adds new enemies, however there are a total of 10 enemy types overall, so variety is pretty limited there. The game is also very short at 2 hours or so based on someone with my ability, which I would call average. There is little filler, so I'll take 2 hours of this over 10 hours of some of the other, more unfair platformers, but at the end of the day 2 hours are pretty short and apart from themes and some new enemies, levels don't really mix it up in any other noticeable way.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
Artistically pleasing as levels are, they are not different enough in terms of gameplay challenge. I'd put this on lack of gameplay variety rather than the lack of puzzles, lack of environmental hazards and low enemy variety, but overall it's a combination of all those things.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
There isn't really anything the game does that stands out over the rest or moves the needle. Graphically I thought this game was above average, but if you just look at gameplay, you'll notice that it is pretty simple. There are no power ups in this game. You can't climb. You can't run faster, you can't double jump and you can't fly, you pretty much can't do anything apart from three things. Walk, jump and throw. Throwing is limited to apples, bombs and mostly, crates, which one hit enemies and clear your way forward. It's not a bad gameplay hook and the game doesn't need all of the things I mentioned before, but a bit of mixing up or one more feature or two would have served the game well. As it stands, it feels like a solid entry into the genre if for nothing else.
REPLAYABILITY
There isn't really any variety here, so the only reason for replaying this after winning would be to beat your high score AND to choose a different path in the overworld when you select stages.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL
Here is a game that uses a license and the platforming experience of its developers to be an enjoyable, albeit extremely average platformer. Due to its basic features, yet good soundtrack, solid graphics and short game length, it combines to make for a solid game to introduce newcomers to late 80s / early 90s platforming games. But unless you're the biggest Chip 'N Dale fan or have played this when you were young, it is unlikely that this makes for a game you will remember for long, which may be fine depending on your expectations.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Gary Barth for GamePro Issue 9 (Apr 90): "Chip 'N' Dale Rescue Rangers boasts the same fast action and detailed Disney graphics as [...] Mickey Mousecapades and Duck Tales."
1990
I've just beaten Captain Skyhawk, a scrolling shooter with vehicular combat, developed by Rare (Battletoads, Conker's Bad Fur Day & Sea of Thieves) and released for the NES in June 1990. It was also released for Arcade machines.
In this game, you are Captain Skyhawk, pilot of the plane "F-14VTS" and have to fight back against an on-going alien invasion. You never really see any aliens, nor do their spaceships and ground weaponry look very alien. If the game wouldn't have told me, I would have thought that we're simply fighting human terrorists or shooting up space stations for the fun of it. This is where I always crack up when I read reviewers of the time try to hype up the game's setting before diving into the gameplay. The Good Witch for GamePro Magazine's 13th Issue for example writes: "Imagine the ultimate parasites, creatures that suck the very life out of Earth and leave her a useless hulk spinning in space. This is the problem you, as Captain Skyhawk, must face." And then it's just you flying over 3D terrain and shooting at very normal looking planes and ground vehicles. Of course I admire the effort of trying to immerse potential players from the start and I doubt I would have done it differently back in the day, but that doesn't make it less funny to me reading it today, but in a good way.
This game is a vertical scrolling shooter and you fly around mountainous 3D terrain and try to dodge both enemy projectiles (which all look like the same "ninja star"-esque projectile) and the mountains off to the sides. There are 9 levels of that, with three different types of goals. In between, you have a little mini game where you have to line up your plane to be able to dock it perfectly into your station, plus a 2D mini level where you look at your plane from the rear, dodge incoming bombs and shoot up enemy ships that otherwise don't offer any resistance to gain some bonus points, which are then used to buy equipment at your station.
The gameplay loop is enjoyable, and especially the more fast paced segments were really fun, but what this game offers is limited, and it's not a looker (which is fine) nor a "hearer" (which was not fine).
____________
STORYTELLING
Within the video game, there is the littlest of environmental storytelling and that's it. And even that doesn't occur until the final objective of the game. Apart from that, there is no mention of where this game is set in, what your ultimate goal is or who you are. It just says "Alien Fleet destroyed" when you beat the game.
The real plot you will find in the game's manual, but apart from the final objective, it doesn't really translate to the full game. If you don't care for a story in a scrolling shooter like this, this is a non-issue, and I would guess that most of you do only care about the gameplay and about pretty much anything but the story. Still, it is worth mentioning that the game has no storytelling.
According to the manual, Aliens have invaded Earth and have built bases to drain Earth's energy. The end goal is to use this energy as fuel to vaporize Earth with a laser blast. You have to stop them by destroying their stations on Earth and ultimately destroying their space station.
As I mentioned, the ludonarrative dissonance makes the choice of an alien invasion story an odd one but since it is barely present, I didn't really think about it much further than that.
GAMEPLAY
You control a plane over simulated 3D Terrain. You can move your plane from side-to-side whilst the display scrolls vertically at an automated speed. You can also adjust your plane's altitude, and I found that reaching the highest possible level was the best strategy in order to avoid crashing into mountains. There doesn't really seem to be a reason to fly low. You can't crash into enemy planes or anything else besides those mountains that either are small and placed in the middle of an area or stretch out from the sides and at certain points only leave a very small opening for your plane to fit through.
In this vertically scrolling 3D part of the game, you use your "Cannon" to shoot. I found myself holding the A-Button throughout a level since your ammo is unlimited and enemies can show up at a moment's notice. There are also three other weapon types that you can stock up on whenever you finish a mission and manage to dock into your station.
There are "Phoenix Air Intercept Missiles" for air-to-air combat and "Maverick Air-to-Ground Missiles" and "Hawk Bombs" for air-to-ground combat. Over time you also get upgrades to your Cannon to make it fire quicker.
Enemies fire back with the same projectile pretty much. It's a small gray-and-white colored square shape and only one of these is fired individually every few seconds. Unfortunately, its effects are devastating, as one hit destroys your "specially designed plane" that was made specifically to combat the aliens. These projectiles and their hit boxes were a mystery to me throughout, as I never really could accurately say when it would hit my plane when I would fly past it and when it wouldn't. Figuring that out and maneuvering past it is really the key to success in this game, which apart from the final boss is pretty straightforward otherwise.
There are 9 total missions and they all go pretty similarly. There is the vertical scrolling section first, then a 2D section where you shoot down enemy planes to collect extra points and a docking mini game. The vertical scrolling section has one of three goals until the final missions: (1) Destroy enemy station, where you have to destroy four of its circled bases to make it explode, (2) Find scientist, where you have to destroy a prison holding a scientist in similar fashion to free him and grab some plane upgrades and (3) Drop supplies, where you have to drop supplies into holes that are placed somewhere in the map. You have to do that two times to win the mission.
The 2D section has the ships come from out of screen and become smaller as seconds pass until they disappear. If you hit them, you get points, if you don't, you don't get points. There are only bombs to dodge, which sometimes the ships carry with them. And if they spawn right where you are, you can be hit with it without even seeing the bomb, which results in instant-death. Annoying.
Finally, there is the docking mini game. There is a very small hole in a docking station in front of you. You have to align your plane on its level, wait for the right moment and press B to see a little animation where your plane circles toward the station. If you aligned it correctly, you enter the station and progress with the game. You can buy ammo there. If you fail, you crash against the station and lose a life. It's not really difficult once you understand it but I guess it's there.
There are 3 continues throughout the game, so if you're playing this game without save states, it can be tough to beat and will be pretty frustrating. If you use save states like me, it'll still be frustrating but becomes much more beatable until the final boss, which took me so many tries and almost made me rage.
Controls of the plane where alright but only because you really didn't have too much to do. Dodge a bullet if you can and then just fly from west-to-east whilst shooting your cannons, pretty straightforward throughout. Some missions for some reason had your plane flying 3x the normal speed for some reason, which meant having to somehow manage to anticipate where those valleys between the two mountains would show up, because otherwise you'd crash to your death. That was frustrating but at the same time, if you did it right, these missions would flow really well.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. The music was good, nice to listen to, no complaints there. But the sound design was bad. The sound of the cannons firing was annoying and nothing cannon-like, so I'm not sure why each individual bullet you fired got its own sound, especially when having to auto-fire was almost a necessity. The sound of hitting enemies was unpleasant as well. There are some good parts about it, like the sound of enemy planes being destroyed or the sound in the 2D sections of far-away planes approaching. But overall, it wasn't good to listen to. Music would only play during boss fights or in the menu.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Maps were all the same (more on that in "Atmosphere") and at no point did it feel like I was fighting aliens and their advanced technology. I've seen some comments on YT videos saying that "the game is one of the best graphically for the NES", but I don't really see it, it just looked bland and very simple.
ATMOSPHERE
I'd say the 2D sections were the ones that made me feel the most like I was flying a plane in the sky. Dodging bombs, hearing enemy planes approach from a distance and having to align just right to destroy them was an extremely simple task truth be told, but it was still able to draw me in the most. The docking mini game added a little bit to the immersion as well I guess, but the 3D vertical scrolling section just didn't make me feel like I was fighting back against an alien invasion in this super-plane that was specifically constructed to fight them. There was no music playing, the sound design was mostly bad and it was enough for one tiny projectile to kill me and destroy the flow of the attempt.
CONTENT
There are 9 same-y missions and very little variety to approach them. It doesn't have filler however and having less missions works in the game's favor. I'd definitely rather have 9 than 18 missions if they are going to be similar. There still is a lack of content overall.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
The 9 missions almost all play out exactly the same. The only ones I would call slightly different are the "supply drop" missions, which have no boss fight but rather just require you to time the drop of a package correctly. Other than that, you'll be doing the same thing over 9 missions in maps that pretty much are all the same. The only difference is that the placement of environmental obstacles is likely slightly different with each and that maps can have different colors. The terrain does only carry one (1) color (green or blue or orange), but it does change from mission to mission.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
I have never really played scrolling vehicular combat shooters like this one growing up, so this is almost entirely a foreign genre to me. Therefore I can't really judge this, but reviews I have read of the time don't mention this game excelling at any part or moving the needle in any way either. There is also no story component, very little adjustments you can make to your plane, the same maps with a different one-color terrain and very straightforward action.
REPLAYABILITY
There isn't really any variety here, so the only reason for replaying this after winning would be to beat your high score, which is as the devs intended it I'd assume.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL
It's the first game of this type I've played in probably 15 years, and even then I might have tried a vertical scrolling shooter with vehicular combat once or twice, so I have little experience to compare this to other similar games. On its own, it doesn't really seem to do anything particularly well, but its core gameplay loop and the challenge it provides is fun enough for a couple hours, if you're into this genre of games. But all of its features are very basic, which maybe is how these games were back then. I could also see this being more feature-poor than games that came out before or shortly after it, that is still be found out in the process of this project of mine.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- The Good Witch for GamePro Issue 13 (Aug 90): "Captain Skyhawk features a good combination of different game action [...]. Although the shoot-em-up action may not be challenging enough to keep an expert gamer busy for long, it's more than tough enough for the average player"
- ? for Nintendo Power Issue 16 (September-October 90): "Each level on this action packed flight simulation is fun and challenging"
In this game, you are Captain Skyhawk, pilot of the plane "F-14VTS" and have to fight back against an on-going alien invasion. You never really see any aliens, nor do their spaceships and ground weaponry look very alien. If the game wouldn't have told me, I would have thought that we're simply fighting human terrorists or shooting up space stations for the fun of it. This is where I always crack up when I read reviewers of the time try to hype up the game's setting before diving into the gameplay. The Good Witch for GamePro Magazine's 13th Issue for example writes: "Imagine the ultimate parasites, creatures that suck the very life out of Earth and leave her a useless hulk spinning in space. This is the problem you, as Captain Skyhawk, must face." And then it's just you flying over 3D terrain and shooting at very normal looking planes and ground vehicles. Of course I admire the effort of trying to immerse potential players from the start and I doubt I would have done it differently back in the day, but that doesn't make it less funny to me reading it today, but in a good way.
This game is a vertical scrolling shooter and you fly around mountainous 3D terrain and try to dodge both enemy projectiles (which all look like the same "ninja star"-esque projectile) and the mountains off to the sides. There are 9 levels of that, with three different types of goals. In between, you have a little mini game where you have to line up your plane to be able to dock it perfectly into your station, plus a 2D mini level where you look at your plane from the rear, dodge incoming bombs and shoot up enemy ships that otherwise don't offer any resistance to gain some bonus points, which are then used to buy equipment at your station.
The gameplay loop is enjoyable, and especially the more fast paced segments were really fun, but what this game offers is limited, and it's not a looker (which is fine) nor a "hearer" (which was not fine).
____________
STORYTELLING
Within the video game, there is the littlest of environmental storytelling and that's it. And even that doesn't occur until the final objective of the game. Apart from that, there is no mention of where this game is set in, what your ultimate goal is or who you are. It just says "Alien Fleet destroyed" when you beat the game.
The real plot you will find in the game's manual, but apart from the final objective, it doesn't really translate to the full game. If you don't care for a story in a scrolling shooter like this, this is a non-issue, and I would guess that most of you do only care about the gameplay and about pretty much anything but the story. Still, it is worth mentioning that the game has no storytelling.
According to the manual, Aliens have invaded Earth and have built bases to drain Earth's energy. The end goal is to use this energy as fuel to vaporize Earth with a laser blast. You have to stop them by destroying their stations on Earth and ultimately destroying their space station.
As I mentioned, the ludonarrative dissonance makes the choice of an alien invasion story an odd one but since it is barely present, I didn't really think about it much further than that.
GAMEPLAY
You control a plane over simulated 3D Terrain. You can move your plane from side-to-side whilst the display scrolls vertically at an automated speed. You can also adjust your plane's altitude, and I found that reaching the highest possible level was the best strategy in order to avoid crashing into mountains. There doesn't really seem to be a reason to fly low. You can't crash into enemy planes or anything else besides those mountains that either are small and placed in the middle of an area or stretch out from the sides and at certain points only leave a very small opening for your plane to fit through.
In this vertically scrolling 3D part of the game, you use your "Cannon" to shoot. I found myself holding the A-Button throughout a level since your ammo is unlimited and enemies can show up at a moment's notice. There are also three other weapon types that you can stock up on whenever you finish a mission and manage to dock into your station.
There are "Phoenix Air Intercept Missiles" for air-to-air combat and "Maverick Air-to-Ground Missiles" and "Hawk Bombs" for air-to-ground combat. Over time you also get upgrades to your Cannon to make it fire quicker.
Enemies fire back with the same projectile pretty much. It's a small gray-and-white colored square shape and only one of these is fired individually every few seconds. Unfortunately, its effects are devastating, as one hit destroys your "specially designed plane" that was made specifically to combat the aliens. These projectiles and their hit boxes were a mystery to me throughout, as I never really could accurately say when it would hit my plane when I would fly past it and when it wouldn't. Figuring that out and maneuvering past it is really the key to success in this game, which apart from the final boss is pretty straightforward otherwise.
There are 9 total missions and they all go pretty similarly. There is the vertical scrolling section first, then a 2D section where you shoot down enemy planes to collect extra points and a docking mini game. The vertical scrolling section has one of three goals until the final missions: (1) Destroy enemy station, where you have to destroy four of its circled bases to make it explode, (2) Find scientist, where you have to destroy a prison holding a scientist in similar fashion to free him and grab some plane upgrades and (3) Drop supplies, where you have to drop supplies into holes that are placed somewhere in the map. You have to do that two times to win the mission.
The 2D section has the ships come from out of screen and become smaller as seconds pass until they disappear. If you hit them, you get points, if you don't, you don't get points. There are only bombs to dodge, which sometimes the ships carry with them. And if they spawn right where you are, you can be hit with it without even seeing the bomb, which results in instant-death. Annoying.
Finally, there is the docking mini game. There is a very small hole in a docking station in front of you. You have to align your plane on its level, wait for the right moment and press B to see a little animation where your plane circles toward the station. If you aligned it correctly, you enter the station and progress with the game. You can buy ammo there. If you fail, you crash against the station and lose a life. It's not really difficult once you understand it but I guess it's there.
There are 3 continues throughout the game, so if you're playing this game without save states, it can be tough to beat and will be pretty frustrating. If you use save states like me, it'll still be frustrating but becomes much more beatable until the final boss, which took me so many tries and almost made me rage.
Controls of the plane where alright but only because you really didn't have too much to do. Dodge a bullet if you can and then just fly from west-to-east whilst shooting your cannons, pretty straightforward throughout. Some missions for some reason had your plane flying 3x the normal speed for some reason, which meant having to somehow manage to anticipate where those valleys between the two mountains would show up, because otherwise you'd crash to your death. That was frustrating but at the same time, if you did it right, these missions would flow really well.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. The music was good, nice to listen to, no complaints there. But the sound design was bad. The sound of the cannons firing was annoying and nothing cannon-like, so I'm not sure why each individual bullet you fired got its own sound, especially when having to auto-fire was almost a necessity. The sound of hitting enemies was unpleasant as well. There are some good parts about it, like the sound of enemy planes being destroyed or the sound in the 2D sections of far-away planes approaching. But overall, it wasn't good to listen to. Music would only play during boss fights or in the menu.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Maps were all the same (more on that in "Atmosphere") and at no point did it feel like I was fighting aliens and their advanced technology. I've seen some comments on YT videos saying that "the game is one of the best graphically for the NES", but I don't really see it, it just looked bland and very simple.
ATMOSPHERE
I'd say the 2D sections were the ones that made me feel the most like I was flying a plane in the sky. Dodging bombs, hearing enemy planes approach from a distance and having to align just right to destroy them was an extremely simple task truth be told, but it was still able to draw me in the most. The docking mini game added a little bit to the immersion as well I guess, but the 3D vertical scrolling section just didn't make me feel like I was fighting back against an alien invasion in this super-plane that was specifically constructed to fight them. There was no music playing, the sound design was mostly bad and it was enough for one tiny projectile to kill me and destroy the flow of the attempt.
CONTENT
There are 9 same-y missions and very little variety to approach them. It doesn't have filler however and having less missions works in the game's favor. I'd definitely rather have 9 than 18 missions if they are going to be similar. There still is a lack of content overall.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
The 9 missions almost all play out exactly the same. The only ones I would call slightly different are the "supply drop" missions, which have no boss fight but rather just require you to time the drop of a package correctly. Other than that, you'll be doing the same thing over 9 missions in maps that pretty much are all the same. The only difference is that the placement of environmental obstacles is likely slightly different with each and that maps can have different colors. The terrain does only carry one (1) color (green or blue or orange), but it does change from mission to mission.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
I have never really played scrolling vehicular combat shooters like this one growing up, so this is almost entirely a foreign genre to me. Therefore I can't really judge this, but reviews I have read of the time don't mention this game excelling at any part or moving the needle in any way either. There is also no story component, very little adjustments you can make to your plane, the same maps with a different one-color terrain and very straightforward action.
REPLAYABILITY
There isn't really any variety here, so the only reason for replaying this after winning would be to beat your high score, which is as the devs intended it I'd assume.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL
It's the first game of this type I've played in probably 15 years, and even then I might have tried a vertical scrolling shooter with vehicular combat once or twice, so I have little experience to compare this to other similar games. On its own, it doesn't really seem to do anything particularly well, but its core gameplay loop and the challenge it provides is fun enough for a couple hours, if you're into this genre of games. But all of its features are very basic, which maybe is how these games were back then. I could also see this being more feature-poor than games that came out before or shortly after it, that is still be found out in the process of this project of mine.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- The Good Witch for GamePro Issue 13 (Aug 90): "Captain Skyhawk features a good combination of different game action [...]. Although the shoot-em-up action may not be challenging enough to keep an expert gamer busy for long, it's more than tough enough for the average player"
- ? for Nintendo Power Issue 16 (September-October 90): "Each level on this action packed flight simulation is fun and challenging"
1990
Today I've played and beaten Gargoyle's Quest: Ghosts 'n Goblins, which is a spinoff to the arcade hit Ghosts 'n Goblins from 1985. Gargoyle's Quest itself released on May 2, 1990 in Japan for the Game Boy. This game focuses on the character Firebrand, a gargoyle known from the arcade game for being the most annoying enemy of all.
This game is mostly a platformer but can also be put into the Action Adventure category. It's even called an RPG, though if it classifies as that is questionable. There are two gameplay elements in this game. The first is a top down view of Firebrand as he moves around the overworld, a la Final Fantasy, Crystalis and all the other JRPGs of the time. Similarly to those, there are towns and dungeons you can enter, where you can talk to a few people and buy items, and you can even be put into random battles whilst traveling the overworld.
The other element is the platforming / random battles. Platforming is pretty simple and the amount of different obstacles aren't that many. You can jump, levitate/fly for a few seconds, hang on to walls and shoot projectiles. There are wasps, flying spiders and several ground enemies to fight whilst platforming past obstacles like spikes that try to spike you, water that tries to drag you down, fire bursting from the ground vertically and more.
Whilst random battles usually take a very short amount of time, dungeons have pretty long platforming sections and a boss at the end of them.
The game took me 5 hours to beat using save states but would take more than twice that without any I would assume due to the lack of health that is available and the game throwing you back pretty far whenever you get a GAME OVER screen. It's a solid platformer. I wouldn't say it was very hard, I mean I beat it (!), but that's because I used save states. I used save states in the other games I've played as well but those still were too tough to beat. The issue here isn't the platforming that makes this very hard to beat, but rather that you don't have much health and therefore have to do a whole lot of travelling and random-battling before you can attempt a dungeon again.
____________
STORYTELLING
The game starts by telling us that the "Great Realm" was attacked by Destroyers several hundred years ago and won, however at the start of this game, a threat looms once again. This time, it's Firebrand who has to save the day against the Destroyers' king, who is called "Breager".
On your journey, Firebrand has to get stronger and stronger to face him. Many allies aid him in that regard and there are many powerful members of the Destroyers that he has to face before he can get his hands on King Breager.
That's pretty much it. You can talk to a bunch of NPCs, mostly in towns, and you have to talk to a lot of barons of a lot of towns you visit, who tell you to go to Point A to get Item B. To get Item B, you need Item A, which the barons give you. You get Item B, return it to the baron, get Item C and move on. Slowly but surely, you learn a bit more about the world and your identity and ultimately try to save the Realm by defeating King Breager.
You can say "Yes" or "No" a bunch of times when you talk to Barons and others who give you tasks. King Breager even asks you to join him, to which I said "No". I always said the one you are expected to say to make progress, but unfortunately didn't try to say "Yes" to Breager or "No" to the others to see what happens. I can't imagine that much does happen since it would make you unable to progress. If that's true, there are no decisions you can make in this game. There really isn't anything that would make me call it an RPG.
Overall, the story is there and it's OK, it fleshes out the Ghosts 'n Goblins lore a tiny bit.
GAMEPLAY
The overworld gameplay is OK but not where the fun in this game is in my opinion. When you make your way to a town to receive your quest, you are thrown into random battles after every few steps. These take place in very small areas and are not all too varied. There are 6-10 different one's I encountered over 50+ random battles. In one you have to kill 3 enemies, jump to the next platform and somehow find a way to land on the platform below to kill the final 2 enemies, since it's a tight platform and they walk around constantly. You do that until you realize that you have individual health for each battle, so you just say screw it and let them hit you once to be able to kill them quickly and win the battle.
Each battle gives you 1-4 vials, which is currency in this game and is used exclusively to purchase "Talismans of the Cyclone", which are extra continues.
You can collect vials and talismans from vases as well, plus some items are hidden in the game world, which you can figure out by talking to the correct townspeople. One for example tells you that "wings" that let you hover above ground for a longer duration are hidden in a tree near the palace. Go there and you'll find them.
Apart from that, you receive pretty much all other items from quest-givers before and/or after you complete their quests. They give you new weapons (there are 4 total and some bosses are resistant to a few), they boost your wing ability and that's pretty much about it.
In the second gameplay section, the dungeon/platforming section, you do what you do in a lot of other platformers. There are rarely points where you are overwhelmed by too many enemies or environmental obstacles, but sometimes the controls don't feel tight enough, especially when you have to try to stick to a wall that is between two water sprites, both of which hurt you if you touch them and give you 2 damage. At the start of the game, that is enough for an insta-kill. Plus, sometimes you have to stick to walls and jump up to try and destroy a wall that blocks your path. If the ceiling is right there as well, you can be stuck in this weird loop of trying to shoot your projectiles in the split-second you got to aim at the wall before you drop down again.
Controls are still tighter than in most games I've played from this year up to this point, so those are mostly minor annoyances.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. The sound design was mostly average, but sometimes a bit too in your face, especially when opening up the combat menu to change weapons. The music in this game was mostly average but there were some good tracks in here, however unlikely that I'll remember it as much as I will with other games I've played of this year so far.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Looks better than a lot of other Game Boy titles out there, but it's still a Game Boy game. There are no colors, which is OK, but worst of all assets are just reused all the time and the overworld / towns look almost identical throughout. I appreciate that the game has tried to mix some genres together during a time where releasing unfairly difficult, grab-the-players-coin arcade game type platformers seems to have been the norm, but it doesn't enhance the experience, rather the opposite I'd almost have to say.
ATMOSPHERE
Overall, the lore and world building, the soundtrack and the locations differing based on appearance and simply their placement in this world (Floating Continent, Flooded World etc.) made for a pretty atmospheric game.
CONTENT
Without save states, it'll take you closer to ten hours to finish this, but it can get annoying pretty fast. For a playthrough where you use save states, you are looking at closer to 4-5 and overall, I did appreciate the lack of filler in this game apart from random battles becoming repetitive at some point. Apart from the main missions and those battles however, there isn't much else here.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
The game works the same pretty much throughout. You make your way to a town in the overworld. On your way there, a few random battles take place in small areas and they end when you kill the enemies.
Once you make it to a town, you are given a quest and go to the dungeon, where you have to do some platforming. You kill a boss, return to the quest-giver, go to a new town and so it goes. It's a fun little loop but the game doesn't try to mix it up.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
As I mentioned before, I did appreciate the mix of genres, but those features typically found in RPGs (overworld with towns and dungeons to enter, leveling systems) are the opposite of fleshed out and didn't quite work. With a bit better execution and more technological possibilities this could work though.
REPLAYABILITY
There isn't much incentive to replay this game after a first playthrough.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked well overall but specific sections had very low FPS for some reason. I didn't have problems with the emulator with any other game and the FPS drops happened at the same few areas, which was noticeable, so I think it's worth mentioning, but I had no issues other than that.
OVERALL
An above-average platformer as an overall product, but I would put that on the platforming sections being fairer than others that I have played rather than the game having RPG / Action Adventure elements mixed in. Most of you will probably enjoy your time with this one, but I'd suggest the use of save states when playing. You won't need to use any guides however, and it won't take you too many afternoons to go through it either.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Charlie T. Aslan for GamePro Issue 13 (Aug 90): "Every once in a while, a game comes along that is so original and enjoyable it becomes an instant hit and remains a top-seller for years to come. Gargoyle's Quest [...] falls into this category." | Based on this review, the mix of genres was seen as a good thing, a reminder that MY reviews represent MY opinion and yours may vary
- ? for Nintendo Power Issue 12 (May-June 90): "The excitement of an action game and the depth of a [RPG] are combined in Gargoyle's Quest from Capcom."
This game is mostly a platformer but can also be put into the Action Adventure category. It's even called an RPG, though if it classifies as that is questionable. There are two gameplay elements in this game. The first is a top down view of Firebrand as he moves around the overworld, a la Final Fantasy, Crystalis and all the other JRPGs of the time. Similarly to those, there are towns and dungeons you can enter, where you can talk to a few people and buy items, and you can even be put into random battles whilst traveling the overworld.
The other element is the platforming / random battles. Platforming is pretty simple and the amount of different obstacles aren't that many. You can jump, levitate/fly for a few seconds, hang on to walls and shoot projectiles. There are wasps, flying spiders and several ground enemies to fight whilst platforming past obstacles like spikes that try to spike you, water that tries to drag you down, fire bursting from the ground vertically and more.
Whilst random battles usually take a very short amount of time, dungeons have pretty long platforming sections and a boss at the end of them.
The game took me 5 hours to beat using save states but would take more than twice that without any I would assume due to the lack of health that is available and the game throwing you back pretty far whenever you get a GAME OVER screen. It's a solid platformer. I wouldn't say it was very hard, I mean I beat it (!), but that's because I used save states. I used save states in the other games I've played as well but those still were too tough to beat. The issue here isn't the platforming that makes this very hard to beat, but rather that you don't have much health and therefore have to do a whole lot of travelling and random-battling before you can attempt a dungeon again.
____________
STORYTELLING
The game starts by telling us that the "Great Realm" was attacked by Destroyers several hundred years ago and won, however at the start of this game, a threat looms once again. This time, it's Firebrand who has to save the day against the Destroyers' king, who is called "Breager".
On your journey, Firebrand has to get stronger and stronger to face him. Many allies aid him in that regard and there are many powerful members of the Destroyers that he has to face before he can get his hands on King Breager.
That's pretty much it. You can talk to a bunch of NPCs, mostly in towns, and you have to talk to a lot of barons of a lot of towns you visit, who tell you to go to Point A to get Item B. To get Item B, you need Item A, which the barons give you. You get Item B, return it to the baron, get Item C and move on. Slowly but surely, you learn a bit more about the world and your identity and ultimately try to save the Realm by defeating King Breager.
You can say "Yes" or "No" a bunch of times when you talk to Barons and others who give you tasks. King Breager even asks you to join him, to which I said "No". I always said the one you are expected to say to make progress, but unfortunately didn't try to say "Yes" to Breager or "No" to the others to see what happens. I can't imagine that much does happen since it would make you unable to progress. If that's true, there are no decisions you can make in this game. There really isn't anything that would make me call it an RPG.
Overall, the story is there and it's OK, it fleshes out the Ghosts 'n Goblins lore a tiny bit.
GAMEPLAY
The overworld gameplay is OK but not where the fun in this game is in my opinion. When you make your way to a town to receive your quest, you are thrown into random battles after every few steps. These take place in very small areas and are not all too varied. There are 6-10 different one's I encountered over 50+ random battles. In one you have to kill 3 enemies, jump to the next platform and somehow find a way to land on the platform below to kill the final 2 enemies, since it's a tight platform and they walk around constantly. You do that until you realize that you have individual health for each battle, so you just say screw it and let them hit you once to be able to kill them quickly and win the battle.
Each battle gives you 1-4 vials, which is currency in this game and is used exclusively to purchase "Talismans of the Cyclone", which are extra continues.
You can collect vials and talismans from vases as well, plus some items are hidden in the game world, which you can figure out by talking to the correct townspeople. One for example tells you that "wings" that let you hover above ground for a longer duration are hidden in a tree near the palace. Go there and you'll find them.
Apart from that, you receive pretty much all other items from quest-givers before and/or after you complete their quests. They give you new weapons (there are 4 total and some bosses are resistant to a few), they boost your wing ability and that's pretty much about it.
In the second gameplay section, the dungeon/platforming section, you do what you do in a lot of other platformers. There are rarely points where you are overwhelmed by too many enemies or environmental obstacles, but sometimes the controls don't feel tight enough, especially when you have to try to stick to a wall that is between two water sprites, both of which hurt you if you touch them and give you 2 damage. At the start of the game, that is enough for an insta-kill. Plus, sometimes you have to stick to walls and jump up to try and destroy a wall that blocks your path. If the ceiling is right there as well, you can be stuck in this weird loop of trying to shoot your projectiles in the split-second you got to aim at the wall before you drop down again.
Controls are still tighter than in most games I've played from this year up to this point, so those are mostly minor annoyances.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. The sound design was mostly average, but sometimes a bit too in your face, especially when opening up the combat menu to change weapons. The music in this game was mostly average but there were some good tracks in here, however unlikely that I'll remember it as much as I will with other games I've played of this year so far.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Looks better than a lot of other Game Boy titles out there, but it's still a Game Boy game. There are no colors, which is OK, but worst of all assets are just reused all the time and the overworld / towns look almost identical throughout. I appreciate that the game has tried to mix some genres together during a time where releasing unfairly difficult, grab-the-players-coin arcade game type platformers seems to have been the norm, but it doesn't enhance the experience, rather the opposite I'd almost have to say.
ATMOSPHERE
Overall, the lore and world building, the soundtrack and the locations differing based on appearance and simply their placement in this world (Floating Continent, Flooded World etc.) made for a pretty atmospheric game.
CONTENT
Without save states, it'll take you closer to ten hours to finish this, but it can get annoying pretty fast. For a playthrough where you use save states, you are looking at closer to 4-5 and overall, I did appreciate the lack of filler in this game apart from random battles becoming repetitive at some point. Apart from the main missions and those battles however, there isn't much else here.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
The game works the same pretty much throughout. You make your way to a town in the overworld. On your way there, a few random battles take place in small areas and they end when you kill the enemies.
Once you make it to a town, you are given a quest and go to the dungeon, where you have to do some platforming. You kill a boss, return to the quest-giver, go to a new town and so it goes. It's a fun little loop but the game doesn't try to mix it up.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
As I mentioned before, I did appreciate the mix of genres, but those features typically found in RPGs (overworld with towns and dungeons to enter, leveling systems) are the opposite of fleshed out and didn't quite work. With a bit better execution and more technological possibilities this could work though.
REPLAYABILITY
There isn't much incentive to replay this game after a first playthrough.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked well overall but specific sections had very low FPS for some reason. I didn't have problems with the emulator with any other game and the FPS drops happened at the same few areas, which was noticeable, so I think it's worth mentioning, but I had no issues other than that.
OVERALL
An above-average platformer as an overall product, but I would put that on the platforming sections being fairer than others that I have played rather than the game having RPG / Action Adventure elements mixed in. Most of you will probably enjoy your time with this one, but I'd suggest the use of save states when playing. You won't need to use any guides however, and it won't take you too many afternoons to go through it either.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Charlie T. Aslan for GamePro Issue 13 (Aug 90): "Every once in a while, a game comes along that is so original and enjoyable it becomes an instant hit and remains a top-seller for years to come. Gargoyle's Quest [...] falls into this category." | Based on this review, the mix of genres was seen as a good thing, a reminder that MY reviews represent MY opinion and yours may vary
- ? for Nintendo Power Issue 12 (May-June 90): "The excitement of an action game and the depth of a [RPG] are combined in Gargoyle's Quest from Capcom."
1990
Final Fantasy III was released exclusively in Japan for NES on April 27, 1990 until it got a worldwide release multiple times since, the first of such occasions occurring in 2006 with the DS release (a 3D remake). Most recently, a Pixel Remaster released worldwide on July 28, 2021.
I have played the original NES version because the DS version, despite few QoL improvements, is a 3D remake and therefore differs significantly enough that I chose to stick with the original. If you're considering playing this game, I would only play the NES version if you are really into old school RPGs of this time and have already played and finished something similar. Even though I found this to be more than playable, it hasn't aged well in many aspects that make a playthrough without using any guide extremely difficult. The HowLongToBeat time on this game (~20 hours for a playthrough) is very wrong in that regard. You will be stuck multiple times, you will die multiple times and most importantly, you will have to grind a lot (though this will not differ much from version to version).
The grind part is probably my most significant issue with this game and the reason why I didn't finish the game, and I'd assume a reason for many others. The game introduced the "job system" to Final Fantasy. This is a system of different classes (white/black/red mages, warriors and knights, dragoons and ninjas etc.) that you can apply to your characters on the fly. Each job has a separate level to your overall level and only the job you are currently using gains XP. This is in itself a great system and we will learn how it gets refined over the next few entries as this challenge progresses, however the first time this is implemented creates quite a lot of pain to first time players, especially those who don't check guides for this game.
The game has multiple sections where specific jobs need to be used to actually progress through them, and especially once you get near the end, there only are very few jobs that will actually be good enough for you to beat the game. Since jobs don't get XP unless you use them, this means you either have to use a guide (1), have to be lucky and figure out a working group of jobs (2) or grind out multiple of them (3). Even if you end up using a guide, you will not be spared of the grind.
It is typical for JRPGs of this age that you are expected to grind, and it's something I have done for a few hours over my 15 total hours with this game, but ultimately even that wasn't enough to progress through the boss that I ultimately abandoned the game at. I've definitely extended my tolerance for grinding with this game, which was pretty much non-existent before starting this challenge due to my inexperience with games like these (current JRPGs I usually play on "easy"). If you have a high tolerance, again, without a guide there is a good chance you will have build the wrong "team" to face the final dungeon with, which makes this a tough game to recommend to first time players on multiple fronts.
But if you're OK with all of that and want to play this game to experience every Final Fantasy entry (if you haven't played any FF games before, I would have to suggest picking one from 4 onwards), then you can check out the following review sections to learn more on what this game has to offer and what I thought about it. :)
STORYTELLING
This game has a very basic story about darkness and light that ultimately is your typical "the world is about to end, so be its hero" plot. I've not played many games from this time but they've so far all been the same overall. The reason why they're the same is because it works and is motivating enough, but don't look for anything special in the plot of this game.
You control four orphans who at the beginning of the game check out a cave that opened up as a result of an earthquake and find a crystal of light. The crystal gives the four of them its power and tells them to restore the balance in this world. In the past (a thousand years ago), a group of Warriors of Darkness fought against a "flood of light" to restore the balance, now our heroes of Light need to do the opposite. There are light crystals and dark crystals, antagonists looking to abuse their power, a bunch of characters that are aiding our heroes and all that stuff that works but is ultimately not memorable.
What makes this game stand out in this aspect however is the lore and world building. Each town has multiple town-folk running around who are waiting to dump a tiny bit of lore on you when you talk to them. This is optional and you don't gain anything from it apart from immersion - some NPCs do offer you items though - but the immersion gained is definitely worth it. They talk about the town you are currently in, the towns that are near, secret caves and/or entry points, about important characters in the world, about what ails their town and so on. So if you're looking for something extra from this game's story, this is where you find it.
GAMEPLAY
You start by giving names to your four characters, who all have the Onion Knight "job" when you start. Once you find the crystal in the first dungeon, new jobs unlock and you can start turning your characters into Warriors, Monks and three types of Mages. With each new crystal you find later on, new job sets unlock, though some prove more useful than others. Especially the final one you find pretty much gives you some of the only viable jobs that will help you go through the end game portion. Unfortunately, since only an equipped job gains XP, choosing "wrong" ones at any point can make you lose hours to grinding up the level of your newly chosen job. Also, before switching jobs, you have to unequip all items a character currently has on them.
A character can have 2 weapons, head gear, body armor and something for their hands. To my knowledge there is no level requirement for gear, you just have to have the correct job for them, but I'm not 100% on that. You can buy gear in item shops, but also find a lot of gear in items throughout the game world. I found that the more useful gear usually was hidden in the game world. Unfortunately, you had no way of knowing what items do in this game, so I found myself looking that up online many times. For example, who knew that "MidgetBread" would reveal the map of a specific location you're in? Some items are explained through specific people in towns but you'd have to find that person first.
So whenever you would switch jobs, you would have to unequip the gear, switch the job and then equip new gear. Why gear wouldn't automatically unequip itself when you switch jobs? Well, that's because there is an arbitrary inventory limit, at least for the NES version. You can carry a billion potions, but you can't carry more than 40 different items. The only way to clear your inventory is to sell stuff or use a "Fat Chocobo" that can only be found in a few specific locations. Since a lot of items are useful and shouldn't be sold, I found myself having to quicksell some of the stuff that was useful whenever I found multiple chests in dungeons. The items in the chests wouldn't be shown until I had enough inventory space, so it happened that I quicksold something useful for something that I had no need for and that was cheaper.
The DS version I believe has unlimited inventory space, and this is yet another reason to go with that (I think most ports of the game are based on the DS version) or the Pixel Remaster.
The items you do get are pretty varied however. For mages, there are tons of spells to use, both to heal your party and to attack the enemy. For your hand-combat focused party members, there are swords, nunchaku, daggers, bows and more. Unfortunately, bows need arrows that in the NES version where limited, whilst in newer versions are unlimited. Plus, in all my time playing this game I didn't find a single store selling arrows. Still, a lot of variety here.
Combat is turn-based and you can take your time before choosing your action. Your characters can attack and depending on the items they carry and their jobs, they can parry or cast magic or even "jump" (jump in one round, attack from the top in the next). You can also run away (in the NES version this reduces your defense to 0 and doesn't always work, so you can insta-die this way) or use items. I used a Warrior, Monk, White Mage and Black Mage until I unlocked the Black Belt job, and this group worked pretty well since I just let my White Mage heal party members while auto attacking or using black magic with the others.
In the game world, you always find better weapons and spells and are always incentivized to explore, but ultimately will need to grind to get your character stats up.
There are no side missions, mini games or other gameplay features in this game besides the overworld travel and the combat. Overworld travel first happens on foot, but as you progress you unlock a boat, an airship and various improvements to the airship, which was pretty neat.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Sound and soundtrack vary depending on the version you play. The Pixel Remaster for example modernized both but especially the soundtrack is still recognizable from the original, just remixed a bit. Since I'm rating the original, I can say that the sound design is great and that the music is for the most part excellent. As far as the tone of the music goes, I found that some boss fights could have gone for a bit more of an eerier tone since you're fighting this guy that is just pure evil to a rather cheery beat, but the soundtrack overall is pretty fun to listen to.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The game looks really good for its time. Locations are really varied in terms of color, tiles and design, which is nice, and sprites look mostly clean but I also really like the attention to detail in a lot of areas or the dev's attempt to make some cutscenes look much more realistic than the technology allowed back then, like two characters having trouble falling asleep, the crystals sparkle transferring from west to east, NPCs dancing when you talk to them etc. There is also a huge variety of both enemy and character designs. With character designs I'm talking about the variety in how your own characters look when you change their jobs in particular. The models are different, unique and frankly some look pretty cool.
There are two minor gripes that I had that are worth talking about. First, some areas needed you to press a hidden button to progress. There was no indication that the button was at a specific wall, so I had to press every single one, which was not unique for this time but still annoying considering I sometimes had to fight multiple tough battles before I could find the right one. The other is that the NES version used a ton of flickering and flashing, which should be noted for those of you who have an issue with flashing lights. I believe this was toned down significantly in later versions.
ATMOSPHERE
Overall, the lore and world building, the soundtrack and the locations differing based on appearance and simply their placement in this world (Floating Continent, Flooded World etc.) made for a pretty atmospheric game.
CONTENT
There is a lot of content here. I got a bit over 1/3 of the way through this game as far as a walkthrough goes that I checked out after deciding to abandon the game, and that was after 15 hours where I used a guide a few times to not be stuck for too long when I didn't know where to go. I would be surprised if you get done with this game with less than 30, if not 40 hours of playing time on your first time with minimal uses of guides. The Pixel Remaster may be easier to go through since it provides you with maps but I don't think it saves you from the hours and hours of grinding that is necessary, which fills up your playing time but essentially is mostly qualitatively low content.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
The NES version doesn't have side missions from what I can tell, so you go from main target to main target. At times, NPCs will follow you who have their little sub-story to worry about (which still is part of the main mission). These NPCs usually aren't around for long and don't help in combat, but you can talk to them and they sometimes give you advise. Their own little stories are nice little distractions from the heroes main goal, even if they don't necessarily all have happy endings. Since you don't spend much time with them however, nice distractions is what they pretty much all amount to and their endings often fall flat emotionally. Still, it definitely breaks up the monotony to have traveling mates who have their own goals and actually help you at the location you're going to anyway.
Apart from that, here is how it usually goes. You go to a town, get a mission which requires you to travel to a different town or usually to a dungeon. The dungeons often have multiple floors and require you to fight through a couple dozen random encounters before you meet the dungeon boss. You return to the town, get an item necessary to progress further, and so you do. It is not always clear where you have to go to progress, though most of the time it can be figured out by reading the dialogue or talking to people. Since the NES version doesn't have a map unless you have "MidgetBread" in hand, finding a town you know you need to go to can still be annoying.
The developers did a good job, mostly, of planning out dungeons in a way that lets you go through them without having your Magic Points run out, which would make completing it otherwise pretty much impossible. However, some dungeons require you to use a specific item/spell or some require you to change jobs, so it can happen pretty quickly that you are out of that item, magic points or CP and therefore stuck. In this regard, planning done by the devs was suboptimal at best.
Finally, the final dungeon, which I didn't get to play but have heard more than enough about, obviously sucks. It's a 2/3 hour dungeon with no way to save and multiple boss fights, some of which don't let you heal up in between. Emulators luckily let you do save states, but if you're playing without the ability of saving, there is a very good chance that you will run out of patience to beat this final dungeon.
It also doesn't help that the job system was implemented poorly here in that only a few specific jobs will help you beat this game and in that it requires a ton of grinding to be strong enough to win.
On a final note, most areas offer "secret routes" to chests that offer some incentive to explore. Some of these locations also aren't arbitrary and are actually very slightly marked, though you're more likely to notice after you found it than before on many occasions.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
The job system of course was here to stay following its implementation into Final Fantasy 3. That alone means this game rates highly in that regard, however the implementation in FF3 itself is not great. Apart from offering a great variety, it's not like most of the jobs are viable for the end game. Actually, less than a handful are. On top of that, making some of these necessary for specific parts where they can be under leveled, or having you unable to switch due to a lack of CP (which admittedly will rarely be an issue) are other negative points worth mentioning.
In addition, the game focused a good amount of resources on the job & battle systems in favor of adding anything unique to the story.
REPLAYABILITY
This is a tough one to judge. On the one hand, there are a lot of jobs here that you'd think there is a lot more strategy to them that makes multiple playthroughs viable. On the other hand, it's unlikely you'll find much end-game success with more than a few of those jobs. Plus, you'll still be auto-attacking through multiple long grinding sessions.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked fine at all times.
OVERALL
When you're playing this, it's clear that this game is higher in quality than most of its competitors at the time. While the job system is rather simple now, it obviously was a much bigger deal at the time and if I had to guess, I would assume that grinding wasn't seen as nearly as big of an issue as I make it out to be. If anything, it added hours to the playing time and increased the value of the cartridge. Today, I'd say the games faults do stand out and later entries that still have the old school charm are also much improved in pretty much all aspects, so I'd recommend playing Final Fantasy 3 only if you're looking to experience all games in this series or want to get the internet points that come with beating that final dungeon.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
Japan only release, no magazine reviews for this one.
I have played the original NES version because the DS version, despite few QoL improvements, is a 3D remake and therefore differs significantly enough that I chose to stick with the original. If you're considering playing this game, I would only play the NES version if you are really into old school RPGs of this time and have already played and finished something similar. Even though I found this to be more than playable, it hasn't aged well in many aspects that make a playthrough without using any guide extremely difficult. The HowLongToBeat time on this game (~20 hours for a playthrough) is very wrong in that regard. You will be stuck multiple times, you will die multiple times and most importantly, you will have to grind a lot (though this will not differ much from version to version).
The grind part is probably my most significant issue with this game and the reason why I didn't finish the game, and I'd assume a reason for many others. The game introduced the "job system" to Final Fantasy. This is a system of different classes (white/black/red mages, warriors and knights, dragoons and ninjas etc.) that you can apply to your characters on the fly. Each job has a separate level to your overall level and only the job you are currently using gains XP. This is in itself a great system and we will learn how it gets refined over the next few entries as this challenge progresses, however the first time this is implemented creates quite a lot of pain to first time players, especially those who don't check guides for this game.
The game has multiple sections where specific jobs need to be used to actually progress through them, and especially once you get near the end, there only are very few jobs that will actually be good enough for you to beat the game. Since jobs don't get XP unless you use them, this means you either have to use a guide (1), have to be lucky and figure out a working group of jobs (2) or grind out multiple of them (3). Even if you end up using a guide, you will not be spared of the grind.
It is typical for JRPGs of this age that you are expected to grind, and it's something I have done for a few hours over my 15 total hours with this game, but ultimately even that wasn't enough to progress through the boss that I ultimately abandoned the game at. I've definitely extended my tolerance for grinding with this game, which was pretty much non-existent before starting this challenge due to my inexperience with games like these (current JRPGs I usually play on "easy"). If you have a high tolerance, again, without a guide there is a good chance you will have build the wrong "team" to face the final dungeon with, which makes this a tough game to recommend to first time players on multiple fronts.
But if you're OK with all of that and want to play this game to experience every Final Fantasy entry (if you haven't played any FF games before, I would have to suggest picking one from 4 onwards), then you can check out the following review sections to learn more on what this game has to offer and what I thought about it. :)
STORYTELLING
This game has a very basic story about darkness and light that ultimately is your typical "the world is about to end, so be its hero" plot. I've not played many games from this time but they've so far all been the same overall. The reason why they're the same is because it works and is motivating enough, but don't look for anything special in the plot of this game.
You control four orphans who at the beginning of the game check out a cave that opened up as a result of an earthquake and find a crystal of light. The crystal gives the four of them its power and tells them to restore the balance in this world. In the past (a thousand years ago), a group of Warriors of Darkness fought against a "flood of light" to restore the balance, now our heroes of Light need to do the opposite. There are light crystals and dark crystals, antagonists looking to abuse their power, a bunch of characters that are aiding our heroes and all that stuff that works but is ultimately not memorable.
What makes this game stand out in this aspect however is the lore and world building. Each town has multiple town-folk running around who are waiting to dump a tiny bit of lore on you when you talk to them. This is optional and you don't gain anything from it apart from immersion - some NPCs do offer you items though - but the immersion gained is definitely worth it. They talk about the town you are currently in, the towns that are near, secret caves and/or entry points, about important characters in the world, about what ails their town and so on. So if you're looking for something extra from this game's story, this is where you find it.
GAMEPLAY
You start by giving names to your four characters, who all have the Onion Knight "job" when you start. Once you find the crystal in the first dungeon, new jobs unlock and you can start turning your characters into Warriors, Monks and three types of Mages. With each new crystal you find later on, new job sets unlock, though some prove more useful than others. Especially the final one you find pretty much gives you some of the only viable jobs that will help you go through the end game portion. Unfortunately, since only an equipped job gains XP, choosing "wrong" ones at any point can make you lose hours to grinding up the level of your newly chosen job. Also, before switching jobs, you have to unequip all items a character currently has on them.
A character can have 2 weapons, head gear, body armor and something for their hands. To my knowledge there is no level requirement for gear, you just have to have the correct job for them, but I'm not 100% on that. You can buy gear in item shops, but also find a lot of gear in items throughout the game world. I found that the more useful gear usually was hidden in the game world. Unfortunately, you had no way of knowing what items do in this game, so I found myself looking that up online many times. For example, who knew that "MidgetBread" would reveal the map of a specific location you're in? Some items are explained through specific people in towns but you'd have to find that person first.
So whenever you would switch jobs, you would have to unequip the gear, switch the job and then equip new gear. Why gear wouldn't automatically unequip itself when you switch jobs? Well, that's because there is an arbitrary inventory limit, at least for the NES version. You can carry a billion potions, but you can't carry more than 40 different items. The only way to clear your inventory is to sell stuff or use a "Fat Chocobo" that can only be found in a few specific locations. Since a lot of items are useful and shouldn't be sold, I found myself having to quicksell some of the stuff that was useful whenever I found multiple chests in dungeons. The items in the chests wouldn't be shown until I had enough inventory space, so it happened that I quicksold something useful for something that I had no need for and that was cheaper.
The DS version I believe has unlimited inventory space, and this is yet another reason to go with that (I think most ports of the game are based on the DS version) or the Pixel Remaster.
The items you do get are pretty varied however. For mages, there are tons of spells to use, both to heal your party and to attack the enemy. For your hand-combat focused party members, there are swords, nunchaku, daggers, bows and more. Unfortunately, bows need arrows that in the NES version where limited, whilst in newer versions are unlimited. Plus, in all my time playing this game I didn't find a single store selling arrows. Still, a lot of variety here.
Combat is turn-based and you can take your time before choosing your action. Your characters can attack and depending on the items they carry and their jobs, they can parry or cast magic or even "jump" (jump in one round, attack from the top in the next). You can also run away (in the NES version this reduces your defense to 0 and doesn't always work, so you can insta-die this way) or use items. I used a Warrior, Monk, White Mage and Black Mage until I unlocked the Black Belt job, and this group worked pretty well since I just let my White Mage heal party members while auto attacking or using black magic with the others.
In the game world, you always find better weapons and spells and are always incentivized to explore, but ultimately will need to grind to get your character stats up.
There are no side missions, mini games or other gameplay features in this game besides the overworld travel and the combat. Overworld travel first happens on foot, but as you progress you unlock a boat, an airship and various improvements to the airship, which was pretty neat.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Sound and soundtrack vary depending on the version you play. The Pixel Remaster for example modernized both but especially the soundtrack is still recognizable from the original, just remixed a bit. Since I'm rating the original, I can say that the sound design is great and that the music is for the most part excellent. As far as the tone of the music goes, I found that some boss fights could have gone for a bit more of an eerier tone since you're fighting this guy that is just pure evil to a rather cheery beat, but the soundtrack overall is pretty fun to listen to.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The game looks really good for its time. Locations are really varied in terms of color, tiles and design, which is nice, and sprites look mostly clean but I also really like the attention to detail in a lot of areas or the dev's attempt to make some cutscenes look much more realistic than the technology allowed back then, like two characters having trouble falling asleep, the crystals sparkle transferring from west to east, NPCs dancing when you talk to them etc. There is also a huge variety of both enemy and character designs. With character designs I'm talking about the variety in how your own characters look when you change their jobs in particular. The models are different, unique and frankly some look pretty cool.
There are two minor gripes that I had that are worth talking about. First, some areas needed you to press a hidden button to progress. There was no indication that the button was at a specific wall, so I had to press every single one, which was not unique for this time but still annoying considering I sometimes had to fight multiple tough battles before I could find the right one. The other is that the NES version used a ton of flickering and flashing, which should be noted for those of you who have an issue with flashing lights. I believe this was toned down significantly in later versions.
ATMOSPHERE
Overall, the lore and world building, the soundtrack and the locations differing based on appearance and simply their placement in this world (Floating Continent, Flooded World etc.) made for a pretty atmospheric game.
CONTENT
There is a lot of content here. I got a bit over 1/3 of the way through this game as far as a walkthrough goes that I checked out after deciding to abandon the game, and that was after 15 hours where I used a guide a few times to not be stuck for too long when I didn't know where to go. I would be surprised if you get done with this game with less than 30, if not 40 hours of playing time on your first time with minimal uses of guides. The Pixel Remaster may be easier to go through since it provides you with maps but I don't think it saves you from the hours and hours of grinding that is necessary, which fills up your playing time but essentially is mostly qualitatively low content.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
The NES version doesn't have side missions from what I can tell, so you go from main target to main target. At times, NPCs will follow you who have their little sub-story to worry about (which still is part of the main mission). These NPCs usually aren't around for long and don't help in combat, but you can talk to them and they sometimes give you advise. Their own little stories are nice little distractions from the heroes main goal, even if they don't necessarily all have happy endings. Since you don't spend much time with them however, nice distractions is what they pretty much all amount to and their endings often fall flat emotionally. Still, it definitely breaks up the monotony to have traveling mates who have their own goals and actually help you at the location you're going to anyway.
Apart from that, here is how it usually goes. You go to a town, get a mission which requires you to travel to a different town or usually to a dungeon. The dungeons often have multiple floors and require you to fight through a couple dozen random encounters before you meet the dungeon boss. You return to the town, get an item necessary to progress further, and so you do. It is not always clear where you have to go to progress, though most of the time it can be figured out by reading the dialogue or talking to people. Since the NES version doesn't have a map unless you have "MidgetBread" in hand, finding a town you know you need to go to can still be annoying.
The developers did a good job, mostly, of planning out dungeons in a way that lets you go through them without having your Magic Points run out, which would make completing it otherwise pretty much impossible. However, some dungeons require you to use a specific item/spell or some require you to change jobs, so it can happen pretty quickly that you are out of that item, magic points or CP and therefore stuck. In this regard, planning done by the devs was suboptimal at best.
Finally, the final dungeon, which I didn't get to play but have heard more than enough about, obviously sucks. It's a 2/3 hour dungeon with no way to save and multiple boss fights, some of which don't let you heal up in between. Emulators luckily let you do save states, but if you're playing without the ability of saving, there is a very good chance that you will run out of patience to beat this final dungeon.
It also doesn't help that the job system was implemented poorly here in that only a few specific jobs will help you beat this game and in that it requires a ton of grinding to be strong enough to win.
On a final note, most areas offer "secret routes" to chests that offer some incentive to explore. Some of these locations also aren't arbitrary and are actually very slightly marked, though you're more likely to notice after you found it than before on many occasions.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
The job system of course was here to stay following its implementation into Final Fantasy 3. That alone means this game rates highly in that regard, however the implementation in FF3 itself is not great. Apart from offering a great variety, it's not like most of the jobs are viable for the end game. Actually, less than a handful are. On top of that, making some of these necessary for specific parts where they can be under leveled, or having you unable to switch due to a lack of CP (which admittedly will rarely be an issue) are other negative points worth mentioning.
In addition, the game focused a good amount of resources on the job & battle systems in favor of adding anything unique to the story.
REPLAYABILITY
This is a tough one to judge. On the one hand, there are a lot of jobs here that you'd think there is a lot more strategy to them that makes multiple playthroughs viable. On the other hand, it's unlikely you'll find much end-game success with more than a few of those jobs. Plus, you'll still be auto-attacking through multiple long grinding sessions.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked fine at all times.
OVERALL
When you're playing this, it's clear that this game is higher in quality than most of its competitors at the time. While the job system is rather simple now, it obviously was a much bigger deal at the time and if I had to guess, I would assume that grinding wasn't seen as nearly as big of an issue as I make it out to be. If anything, it added hours to the playing time and increased the value of the cartridge. Today, I'd say the games faults do stand out and later entries that still have the old school charm are also much improved in pretty much all aspects, so I'd recommend playing Final Fantasy 3 only if you're looking to experience all games in this series or want to get the internet points that come with beating that final dungeon.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
Japan only release, no magazine reviews for this one.
1989
Bonk's Adventure is a platformer released for the TurboGrafx-16 and developed by Red Company and Atlus. Actually it apparently got initially released in December 15, 1989 in Japan, and released in April 1990 in NA (so it's technically not a 1990 game, but I played it anyway). It later was ported to NES and Amiga.
In Bonk's Adventure, you play as Bonk, who fittingly is equipped with a strong head that he can bonk his enemies with. He is a young, bald, strong caveboy and to go through levels, you have to hit enemies with your head, avoid running into them and ... well, that about covers it.
STORYTELLING
If you're looking for a platformer with a story, you got a little bit of story here. If you're looking for a bit more than about a dozen or so lines, you should look elsewhere.
In this game, there are 5 levels, which all have multiple different stages. At the end of each level is a boss, who thank you after you beat them and it appears as if they're being mind controlled by something. They all look kinda unique and most like dinosaurs, with one wearing boxing gloves and another glasses. And there is also a princess to rescue, Princess Za, but that's not something I learned from playing the game, since that goal only becomes known if you reach the final boss or read the manual.
There is a small little epilogue that is something cute to reward the player with, and while the story and characters will add to making the experience a bit more memorable, there isn't much here overall, not that there needs to be, since platformers live and die by their gameplay, especially in these times.
GAMEPLAY
This is a 2D-platformer and sees you fight a bunch of different enemies, some that fit the "10000 BC" theme of this game, some that don't necessarily feel as tied to it. There are dinosaurs, mosquitos, eagles that throw axes, erupting volcanoes, cacti and more. Some actively attack you, some simply follow a specific route. All pretty typical stuff.
The attack button leads to Bonk smashing his big slab of a head to the ground in front of him, so most ground-based enemies can be easily taken care of this way. Some enemies attack from the air, so a well timed jump can lead to Bonk smashing his head to the enemy from below, which does the trick just as well.
There is also an invincibility mode that you can trigger by eating some meat, similar to Mario collecting a star. This lets you rush through enemies, which is pretty neat thanks to the meat.
The gameplay mostly is the same throughout, but there are some water levels added to the mix as well. Plus, as mentioned, each level ends with a boss fight. The dinosaur with gloves is called "Punchy Pedro", the one with glasses called "Gladdis" and a big one with a cap that you fight first is called "Huey". Mostly, you try to avoid the stuff they are throwing while "bonking" the top of their heads until they die and are broken free from the claws of the ulitmate boss, King Drool.
The final boss fight is a pretty big mess and even playthroughs by skilled players will just not look all too pretty because it was just designed that poorly. Overall however, enemy design is mostly charming, though it does lack in variety over time.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Average sound design for the time with sounds that you have heard in many other games. The sound quality is good overall.
As with many games from this time, Bonk's Adventure has a really solid soundtrack overall. It ranges from OK to really catchy, and while it's not a soundtrack I'd listen to outside of the game, it does enhance the experience in a positive way.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Very good. Levels are mostly in tune with the theme of the game, sprites are clean, the game has a very good use of the available color palette and most importantly, the animations in this game are great. From Bonk's angry demeanor when smashing his head to his outburst when he eats meat to turn invincible for a bit, to holding on to a ledge by using just his teeth, to holding his breath underwater and even foaming at the mouth when he dies - which did look a bit gross though - the animation here is really well done for the time.
ATMOSPHERE
From music to art design to sound, the devs created a pretty atmospheric game that is in tune with its theme.
CONTENT
There are 5 levels and a few bonus levels, plus all the boss fights. The levels are separated into multiple stages, so there is a good 5-10 hours of content here before you probably are good enough to beat the game. At times the sections do get repetitive and the game could have done with more power ups to mix things up, but there is good content here if you are looking for an old platformer to master or just beat.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
Especially early on, there is good variety in levels. There is your basic ground floor level, then there is the under water level and then there even is a level where you have the ability to swing from a liana. From there, levels start to feel a bit similar, probably due to the use of a few similar enemy types a lot. But there still are enough different levels here where I thought it was a plus overall.
The two big minuses come from the bad boss fight design at the end (which I didn't manage to get to myself but watched others play) and the cramming of enemies into tight spaces a lot. Even skilled players wouldn't be able to get out of those situations without taking damage, which is a sign of suboptimal level design to me usually. Sometimes you'd have two ground enemies coming at you with two monsters flying above and ready to fly down, so sometimes I would just have to be OK with eating the hit and use my invincibility seconds after that to get out fast. Due to that it didn't often flow well, which was annoying.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
Different combat ability than other games based on looks and animation, but not too different in terms of mechanics. This was a fun little platformer but it didn't really bring anything new to the table.
REPLAYABILITY
Not much replayability here once you complete a playthrough, apart from trying to beat your high score of course.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked fine at all times.
OVERALL
I've played platformers mostly since starting this challenge and I'd say out of all of them, this is an above average one overall thanks to it's solid presentation in pretty much every category you can think of from its animation work to the soundtrack to the color use. As an overall package, you're looking at a platformer that works well, that should provide a fun challenge for the couple hours you would spend with it, but probably will have controls that don't feel tight enough and levels that don't feel fair enough to make you wish to see it through until the annoying boss fight at the end, which is followed by a nice epilogue to be fair. Bonk's Adventure is a solid platformer for its time but not a must-play at this point.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Clayton Walnum for VG&CE, Issue 15 (Apr 90): "Bonk's Adventure is a terrific game, the best I've seen on the TurboGrafx-16 yet." | The TG-16 released in NA 8 months prior to this game
- The Eliminator for GamePro, Issue 10 (May 90): "The graphics and animation are great."
- Noreen Lovoi for Game Players Issue 9 (March 90): "a clever and thoroughly addictive game with cartoonlike graphics"
In Bonk's Adventure, you play as Bonk, who fittingly is equipped with a strong head that he can bonk his enemies with. He is a young, bald, strong caveboy and to go through levels, you have to hit enemies with your head, avoid running into them and ... well, that about covers it.
STORYTELLING
If you're looking for a platformer with a story, you got a little bit of story here. If you're looking for a bit more than about a dozen or so lines, you should look elsewhere.
In this game, there are 5 levels, which all have multiple different stages. At the end of each level is a boss, who thank you after you beat them and it appears as if they're being mind controlled by something. They all look kinda unique and most like dinosaurs, with one wearing boxing gloves and another glasses. And there is also a princess to rescue, Princess Za, but that's not something I learned from playing the game, since that goal only becomes known if you reach the final boss or read the manual.
There is a small little epilogue that is something cute to reward the player with, and while the story and characters will add to making the experience a bit more memorable, there isn't much here overall, not that there needs to be, since platformers live and die by their gameplay, especially in these times.
GAMEPLAY
This is a 2D-platformer and sees you fight a bunch of different enemies, some that fit the "10000 BC" theme of this game, some that don't necessarily feel as tied to it. There are dinosaurs, mosquitos, eagles that throw axes, erupting volcanoes, cacti and more. Some actively attack you, some simply follow a specific route. All pretty typical stuff.
The attack button leads to Bonk smashing his big slab of a head to the ground in front of him, so most ground-based enemies can be easily taken care of this way. Some enemies attack from the air, so a well timed jump can lead to Bonk smashing his head to the enemy from below, which does the trick just as well.
There is also an invincibility mode that you can trigger by eating some meat, similar to Mario collecting a star. This lets you rush through enemies, which is pretty neat thanks to the meat.
The gameplay mostly is the same throughout, but there are some water levels added to the mix as well. Plus, as mentioned, each level ends with a boss fight. The dinosaur with gloves is called "Punchy Pedro", the one with glasses called "Gladdis" and a big one with a cap that you fight first is called "Huey". Mostly, you try to avoid the stuff they are throwing while "bonking" the top of their heads until they die and are broken free from the claws of the ulitmate boss, King Drool.
The final boss fight is a pretty big mess and even playthroughs by skilled players will just not look all too pretty because it was just designed that poorly. Overall however, enemy design is mostly charming, though it does lack in variety over time.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Average sound design for the time with sounds that you have heard in many other games. The sound quality is good overall.
As with many games from this time, Bonk's Adventure has a really solid soundtrack overall. It ranges from OK to really catchy, and while it's not a soundtrack I'd listen to outside of the game, it does enhance the experience in a positive way.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Very good. Levels are mostly in tune with the theme of the game, sprites are clean, the game has a very good use of the available color palette and most importantly, the animations in this game are great. From Bonk's angry demeanor when smashing his head to his outburst when he eats meat to turn invincible for a bit, to holding on to a ledge by using just his teeth, to holding his breath underwater and even foaming at the mouth when he dies - which did look a bit gross though - the animation here is really well done for the time.
ATMOSPHERE
From music to art design to sound, the devs created a pretty atmospheric game that is in tune with its theme.
CONTENT
There are 5 levels and a few bonus levels, plus all the boss fights. The levels are separated into multiple stages, so there is a good 5-10 hours of content here before you probably are good enough to beat the game. At times the sections do get repetitive and the game could have done with more power ups to mix things up, but there is good content here if you are looking for an old platformer to master or just beat.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
Especially early on, there is good variety in levels. There is your basic ground floor level, then there is the under water level and then there even is a level where you have the ability to swing from a liana. From there, levels start to feel a bit similar, probably due to the use of a few similar enemy types a lot. But there still are enough different levels here where I thought it was a plus overall.
The two big minuses come from the bad boss fight design at the end (which I didn't manage to get to myself but watched others play) and the cramming of enemies into tight spaces a lot. Even skilled players wouldn't be able to get out of those situations without taking damage, which is a sign of suboptimal level design to me usually. Sometimes you'd have two ground enemies coming at you with two monsters flying above and ready to fly down, so sometimes I would just have to be OK with eating the hit and use my invincibility seconds after that to get out fast. Due to that it didn't often flow well, which was annoying.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
Different combat ability than other games based on looks and animation, but not too different in terms of mechanics. This was a fun little platformer but it didn't really bring anything new to the table.
REPLAYABILITY
Not much replayability here once you complete a playthrough, apart from trying to beat your high score of course.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked fine at all times.
OVERALL
I've played platformers mostly since starting this challenge and I'd say out of all of them, this is an above average one overall thanks to it's solid presentation in pretty much every category you can think of from its animation work to the soundtrack to the color use. As an overall package, you're looking at a platformer that works well, that should provide a fun challenge for the couple hours you would spend with it, but probably will have controls that don't feel tight enough and levels that don't feel fair enough to make you wish to see it through until the annoying boss fight at the end, which is followed by a nice epilogue to be fair. Bonk's Adventure is a solid platformer for its time but not a must-play at this point.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Clayton Walnum for VG&CE, Issue 15 (Apr 90): "Bonk's Adventure is a terrific game, the best I've seen on the TurboGrafx-16 yet." | The TG-16 released in NA 8 months prior to this game
- The Eliminator for GamePro, Issue 10 (May 90): "The graphics and animation are great."
- Noreen Lovoi for Game Players Issue 9 (March 90): "a clever and thoroughly addictive game with cartoonlike graphics"
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light is a tactical RPG and the first game in the Fire Emblem series, developed by Nintendo and Intelligent Systems and released for the NES on April 20, 1990 in Japan only. The first official Western release happened on December 4, 2020 for the Nintendo Switch, however for whatever reason Nintendo made it a timed exclusive, meaning it is not available for purchase anymore since March 2021.
That baffling decision aside and disregarding the fact that the newest Fire Emblem game was just recently announced, this series was not an instant hit. The initial reception by some critics was poor due to "poor graphics" and the game being "difficult to understand". This resulted in poor initial sales, a situation that would improve over time through positive word-of-mouth (especially a positive Famitsu column on the game about half a year after release) and led Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light to sell well over 300.000 units up until 2002.
Since the Switch version is no longer for sale, I wasn't able to play with the official translation. The translation I got, as I noticed after playing for many hours, did not really fit with the official names for items, characters and locations. The main protagonist / the prince is called Marth, not Mars.
STORYTELLING
The translation differences on seemingly everything notwithstanding, it was still "easy" to follow since the different translation was used consistently. Unfortunately, the game throws around a bunch of names of people and kingdoms all the time so it takes a while to get a grasp on what is going on. At first, many names simply end up sounding the same, so I had to find my way out of that web of confusion.
There are 25 chapters/missions in this game, and before and after each, there is some text or dialogue progressing the story, plus a small monologue during missions when you would get near the more notable chapter bosses.
You play as the Prince of Altea, Marth, who was able to escape when Altea was under attack by the Dolhr Empire. Marth's sister Elice sacrificed herself so that Marth could escape. During this time, their dad had left an ally, Gra, to watch over his kingdom, but Gra betrayed them to the Dolhr Empire. Meanwhile their dad had left to fight the leader of the Dolhr Empire, the Shadow Dragon, but failed and died. He used a Falchion in battle, a divine weapon that had stopped the Shadow Dragon 100 years earlier and it was taken from Marth's dad when he lost the battle. It is needed to fight the Shadow Dragon.
At the start of this game you stop an invasion of the new home of Marth, Talys, and then move out with your allies to fight the Dolhr Empire. Before that, you visit and free many other kingdoms and find more allies to aid you in your quest. All characters that aid you are named and have their own little back story (once the game ends, there is a brief summary on what each character is doing after the story conclusion, provided they survive).
And this is where the game gets its uniqueness from. The dev team decided to build on their experience from war games such as Famicom Wars, and add "RPG elements" to them. I think this game pushes the definition of an RPG, but that's a different discussion.
Each character is assigned a class and can level up to increase their stats. While this has gameplay implications only at first glance, it goes way beyond that. Characters barely have any dialogue apart from when your first recruit them, so building a connection to them is only possible on a limited scale. However, it still happens as you find characters that increase in level over time and improve in their abilities. You're excited when they then get criticial hits at the right time to get you out of tricky situations or you love them for simply being consistent throughout. And ultimately, this means it can hurt for a short while when you lose them to the perma-death system. It's a feeling I only know from XCOM games, but in those characters don't even have that backstory like they do here.
It's a system that is very limited here but is effective in general, and I can only imagine how much later entries built on it.
The main plot itself is convoluted for a first time player because you get a lot of lore dropped with no way to read it again or look up any info on anything. In general, the game lacks a tutorial or codex.
Once you get to grips with it, it is a solid plot but basic storytelling due to the technical limitations of the time. In addition, it was pretty typical for the time. I have just played 9 games in 1990 through this challenge so far and more than a few included the concept of "divine weapon is the only way to kill final boss". It works for a game to give the player needed motivation, so I can see why this seems to have been a popular choice for the overall theme. You'll be content with the storytelling for a game this old and with this much content outside of it, it'll the do the job, but nothing beyond that.
GAMEPLAY
Lots to discuss here. The game is a tactical RPG. Back in 1990, you would have found a lot of strategy games and a lot of RPGs, but few, if any, that combined the two.
The tactical part looks like this: You control a battle unit out of a set number of characters based on the level. Often, you would have about 15 units on the battlefield at once. If you had more characters available than the maximum possible amount - through recruiting them - a level would start by making you select the specific units that you want to deploy.
Once you do that, battle commences on a grid-based map. Maps changed for each level and would add strategical challenges, but wouldn't really change anything graphically or of their tone. The game has a turn-based battle system. You select a unit, move it up a specific number of grids based on the unit's Movement stat, and then attack an enemy if it is in range.
There are 21 classes in this game that mostly are specialized in something. There are your typical Fighters and Mercenaries who wield swords and axes and have average Movement range. Then there are your Archers who can only use bows, Clerics who cannot fight but only use a staff to for example heal or warp units (send them to anywhere else on the map, very useful) and Mages who can use powerful Magic and have high resistances. There are also "Pegasus Knights" that are on horseback and can fly over obstacles on the ground like buildings or trees, which usually take an additional step to move past for ground units.
Weapons usually have multiple different qualities. The lowest is the "Iron quality" and the best quality that is usually accessible is the "Silver quality". As you make more progress in this game, you come across many enemies that can resist Iron quality weapons, making the upgrade necessary. Luckily, money is literally no issue in this game, so all you need to do is buy new items. Unluckily, there is no "safe hub" or anything like that to stock up. Instead, shops are somewhere on the map in levels and usually guarded by enemies. Often, there would only be one store as well, so you could only send one unit to buy something per round. So I would spend multiple rounds after a map was cleared to just get everyone new items. This is a typical QoL issue that is surely handled differently in newer entries. I haven't played any Fire Emblem game up to this point, so I don't know.
Another QoL issue is how slow progression in this game is. When you control 15 units, you have to move all 15 units at a time, of course, but that takes a lot of time. This is probably a thing in current Fire Emblem games as well, and not the worst thing to do, but it does take a while and gets kinda boring once you are 10+ chapters in. I prefer the XCOM games here, where you only have 6 characters to control.
But again, this isn't the worst thing in the world. What is much worse is the individual battles themselves. The animation for one attack takes seemingly ages and when you enter over a handful of fights in a single round, it will take minutes to go through them all. Luckily, my emulator had a fast forward function, so I could skip through these much quicker. I didn't finish this game (I made it to Chapter 22/25) but I think it's worth pointing out that I got there in just 17 hours compared to the 26-40 hours it takes on a normal playthrough according to HLTB.
Strategically, there are a lot of ways to play this game thanks to the different classes and their specialties. If you want to bring a Cleric, Thief and Archer for example, they will not be - or you don't want them to be in the Thief's case - in close combat. A big system in this game is the "counter", which means if an enemy character attacks you, your character can counter and vice versa. If the Archer is attacked in melee combat, he will not be able to counter, which can make a big difference. Clerics don't attack at all. Thieves barely have any strength and limited health, so they usually will only be part of your squad to unlock doors and/or open chests. Clerics heal and warp and Archers can be devastating in long range combat, so they all do provide arguments for why they should be included in the squad.
But bring a few more Mercenaries, Fighters and Paladins and you'll have a lot more strength in Melee Combat. So do you go for more of them, or for a more mixed approach? All strategies have their advantages and disadvantages and more than a few will work, so it's nice to see these options being available.
Bringing the right squad to do the job becomes more important however when different Chapters are filled more with specific enemies that can only be significantly damaged with specific weapons. Some need to be fought with Magic, some with Arrows and some with Melee weapons. Plus, maps have enough strategical differences that having Pirates or Pegasus Knights that can go over water or having Mages and Archers who can shoot over walls becomes more important.
On the flipside, you can quickly find yourself in a bad situation when the most useful units for a particular level are the most under leveled. The only way to level up units is by having them battle. Especially later on, bringing those low level characters with you can be pretty bad since you will need all the fire power you got when the game starts throwing infinite reinforcements in your face until you finally defeat the boss and send Prince Marth to the Castle, which is a location he must visit to finish the level.
There is a balance that must be struck here, but I would have liked to get more additional ways to train my units outside of battle (probably expecting too much in a 1990 game). Especially when my strong units started dying late into game and enemy units just started being filled with strong Dragons that would show up in the dozens, the game pretty much had me in an impossible situation. You can't now level your low-level guys, nor can you even get them weapons since you need to do that within levels. When never ending groups of enemies come at you, when are you supposed to find the opportunity?
Due to this, I didn't get to finish the game, but there is a lot to like here.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. There is nothing noteworthy to discuss regarding the sound design, it sounded average for the time.
The music was definitely one of the highlights for me. 3 or 4 tracks were playing for most of the game, so it didn't necessarily have variety, but some tracks just were bangers, especially the start of chapter track. Look for "Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light- Chapter Start" on YouTube.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Even back then the game wasn't considered graphically pretty. I'd say it has some strong colors and the varied character design is pretty good, but there isn't much else to it besides that. You see the same few assets on every level, maps are mostly green spots of grass and even battles take place in a black background with nothing else on it.
ATMOSPHERE
Once I got firmly into the gameplay loop, playing this game was rather comfortable thanks to the mix of a solid soundtrack, uninspiring but not-ugly graphics and simply being around a cast of characters that have a place in this world and start to grow into trusted allies. It is nothing special but to me the atmosphere was rather positive than negative.
CONTENT
25 chapters, each take about 30-60 minutes on average. Lots of repetition here but also a satisfying strategical challenge throughout.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
There is a good mix in the design of the maps, especially considering what technical limitations the devs had to battle. Map design and enemy placement means that challenges that players have to fight through are varied, but sometimes the enemy placement and especially reinforcements get so ridiculous that you have no way of progressing through them with the units you have on hand. And this was clear hours ago, you just weren't aware. Infinite reinforcements also mean that the amount of opportunity is limited to level up underleveled units and to stock up on weapons and other items in the lead up to chapters 20+, which was frustrating.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
One of, if not THE first tactical RPG that started a whole genre. Due to that, this game already gets iconic status, and it's a mix of genres that works pretty well too (as evidenced by the series status even today).
REPLAYABILITY
This game can be played in different ways, but the hours and hours of watching animations and moving your units make this a hard sell for people looking for replayability. Apart from improved stats, there also is no incentive to play through the game and try to keep different units alive compared to previous runs.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked fine at all times.
OVERALL
Definitely worth checking out if you're a Fire Emblem fan and want to see its origins. There is also some fun to be had and mostly the game offers a fair strategic challenge. If you're a veteran of the series, you might also do much better than me in the first half of the game and go into the second half more prepared, which will make or break your chance of completing this game.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
Japan-only release, nothing to find in Western magazines
That baffling decision aside and disregarding the fact that the newest Fire Emblem game was just recently announced, this series was not an instant hit. The initial reception by some critics was poor due to "poor graphics" and the game being "difficult to understand". This resulted in poor initial sales, a situation that would improve over time through positive word-of-mouth (especially a positive Famitsu column on the game about half a year after release) and led Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light to sell well over 300.000 units up until 2002.
Since the Switch version is no longer for sale, I wasn't able to play with the official translation. The translation I got, as I noticed after playing for many hours, did not really fit with the official names for items, characters and locations. The main protagonist / the prince is called Marth, not Mars.
STORYTELLING
The translation differences on seemingly everything notwithstanding, it was still "easy" to follow since the different translation was used consistently. Unfortunately, the game throws around a bunch of names of people and kingdoms all the time so it takes a while to get a grasp on what is going on. At first, many names simply end up sounding the same, so I had to find my way out of that web of confusion.
There are 25 chapters/missions in this game, and before and after each, there is some text or dialogue progressing the story, plus a small monologue during missions when you would get near the more notable chapter bosses.
You play as the Prince of Altea, Marth, who was able to escape when Altea was under attack by the Dolhr Empire. Marth's sister Elice sacrificed herself so that Marth could escape. During this time, their dad had left an ally, Gra, to watch over his kingdom, but Gra betrayed them to the Dolhr Empire. Meanwhile their dad had left to fight the leader of the Dolhr Empire, the Shadow Dragon, but failed and died. He used a Falchion in battle, a divine weapon that had stopped the Shadow Dragon 100 years earlier and it was taken from Marth's dad when he lost the battle. It is needed to fight the Shadow Dragon.
At the start of this game you stop an invasion of the new home of Marth, Talys, and then move out with your allies to fight the Dolhr Empire. Before that, you visit and free many other kingdoms and find more allies to aid you in your quest. All characters that aid you are named and have their own little back story (once the game ends, there is a brief summary on what each character is doing after the story conclusion, provided they survive).
And this is where the game gets its uniqueness from. The dev team decided to build on their experience from war games such as Famicom Wars, and add "RPG elements" to them. I think this game pushes the definition of an RPG, but that's a different discussion.
Each character is assigned a class and can level up to increase their stats. While this has gameplay implications only at first glance, it goes way beyond that. Characters barely have any dialogue apart from when your first recruit them, so building a connection to them is only possible on a limited scale. However, it still happens as you find characters that increase in level over time and improve in their abilities. You're excited when they then get criticial hits at the right time to get you out of tricky situations or you love them for simply being consistent throughout. And ultimately, this means it can hurt for a short while when you lose them to the perma-death system. It's a feeling I only know from XCOM games, but in those characters don't even have that backstory like they do here.
It's a system that is very limited here but is effective in general, and I can only imagine how much later entries built on it.
The main plot itself is convoluted for a first time player because you get a lot of lore dropped with no way to read it again or look up any info on anything. In general, the game lacks a tutorial or codex.
Once you get to grips with it, it is a solid plot but basic storytelling due to the technical limitations of the time. In addition, it was pretty typical for the time. I have just played 9 games in 1990 through this challenge so far and more than a few included the concept of "divine weapon is the only way to kill final boss". It works for a game to give the player needed motivation, so I can see why this seems to have been a popular choice for the overall theme. You'll be content with the storytelling for a game this old and with this much content outside of it, it'll the do the job, but nothing beyond that.
GAMEPLAY
Lots to discuss here. The game is a tactical RPG. Back in 1990, you would have found a lot of strategy games and a lot of RPGs, but few, if any, that combined the two.
The tactical part looks like this: You control a battle unit out of a set number of characters based on the level. Often, you would have about 15 units on the battlefield at once. If you had more characters available than the maximum possible amount - through recruiting them - a level would start by making you select the specific units that you want to deploy.
Once you do that, battle commences on a grid-based map. Maps changed for each level and would add strategical challenges, but wouldn't really change anything graphically or of their tone. The game has a turn-based battle system. You select a unit, move it up a specific number of grids based on the unit's Movement stat, and then attack an enemy if it is in range.
There are 21 classes in this game that mostly are specialized in something. There are your typical Fighters and Mercenaries who wield swords and axes and have average Movement range. Then there are your Archers who can only use bows, Clerics who cannot fight but only use a staff to for example heal or warp units (send them to anywhere else on the map, very useful) and Mages who can use powerful Magic and have high resistances. There are also "Pegasus Knights" that are on horseback and can fly over obstacles on the ground like buildings or trees, which usually take an additional step to move past for ground units.
Weapons usually have multiple different qualities. The lowest is the "Iron quality" and the best quality that is usually accessible is the "Silver quality". As you make more progress in this game, you come across many enemies that can resist Iron quality weapons, making the upgrade necessary. Luckily, money is literally no issue in this game, so all you need to do is buy new items. Unluckily, there is no "safe hub" or anything like that to stock up. Instead, shops are somewhere on the map in levels and usually guarded by enemies. Often, there would only be one store as well, so you could only send one unit to buy something per round. So I would spend multiple rounds after a map was cleared to just get everyone new items. This is a typical QoL issue that is surely handled differently in newer entries. I haven't played any Fire Emblem game up to this point, so I don't know.
Another QoL issue is how slow progression in this game is. When you control 15 units, you have to move all 15 units at a time, of course, but that takes a lot of time. This is probably a thing in current Fire Emblem games as well, and not the worst thing to do, but it does take a while and gets kinda boring once you are 10+ chapters in. I prefer the XCOM games here, where you only have 6 characters to control.
But again, this isn't the worst thing in the world. What is much worse is the individual battles themselves. The animation for one attack takes seemingly ages and when you enter over a handful of fights in a single round, it will take minutes to go through them all. Luckily, my emulator had a fast forward function, so I could skip through these much quicker. I didn't finish this game (I made it to Chapter 22/25) but I think it's worth pointing out that I got there in just 17 hours compared to the 26-40 hours it takes on a normal playthrough according to HLTB.
Strategically, there are a lot of ways to play this game thanks to the different classes and their specialties. If you want to bring a Cleric, Thief and Archer for example, they will not be - or you don't want them to be in the Thief's case - in close combat. A big system in this game is the "counter", which means if an enemy character attacks you, your character can counter and vice versa. If the Archer is attacked in melee combat, he will not be able to counter, which can make a big difference. Clerics don't attack at all. Thieves barely have any strength and limited health, so they usually will only be part of your squad to unlock doors and/or open chests. Clerics heal and warp and Archers can be devastating in long range combat, so they all do provide arguments for why they should be included in the squad.
But bring a few more Mercenaries, Fighters and Paladins and you'll have a lot more strength in Melee Combat. So do you go for more of them, or for a more mixed approach? All strategies have their advantages and disadvantages and more than a few will work, so it's nice to see these options being available.
Bringing the right squad to do the job becomes more important however when different Chapters are filled more with specific enemies that can only be significantly damaged with specific weapons. Some need to be fought with Magic, some with Arrows and some with Melee weapons. Plus, maps have enough strategical differences that having Pirates or Pegasus Knights that can go over water or having Mages and Archers who can shoot over walls becomes more important.
On the flipside, you can quickly find yourself in a bad situation when the most useful units for a particular level are the most under leveled. The only way to level up units is by having them battle. Especially later on, bringing those low level characters with you can be pretty bad since you will need all the fire power you got when the game starts throwing infinite reinforcements in your face until you finally defeat the boss and send Prince Marth to the Castle, which is a location he must visit to finish the level.
There is a balance that must be struck here, but I would have liked to get more additional ways to train my units outside of battle (probably expecting too much in a 1990 game). Especially when my strong units started dying late into game and enemy units just started being filled with strong Dragons that would show up in the dozens, the game pretty much had me in an impossible situation. You can't now level your low-level guys, nor can you even get them weapons since you need to do that within levels. When never ending groups of enemies come at you, when are you supposed to find the opportunity?
Due to this, I didn't get to finish the game, but there is a lot to like here.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. There is nothing noteworthy to discuss regarding the sound design, it sounded average for the time.
The music was definitely one of the highlights for me. 3 or 4 tracks were playing for most of the game, so it didn't necessarily have variety, but some tracks just were bangers, especially the start of chapter track. Look for "Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light- Chapter Start" on YouTube.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Even back then the game wasn't considered graphically pretty. I'd say it has some strong colors and the varied character design is pretty good, but there isn't much else to it besides that. You see the same few assets on every level, maps are mostly green spots of grass and even battles take place in a black background with nothing else on it.
ATMOSPHERE
Once I got firmly into the gameplay loop, playing this game was rather comfortable thanks to the mix of a solid soundtrack, uninspiring but not-ugly graphics and simply being around a cast of characters that have a place in this world and start to grow into trusted allies. It is nothing special but to me the atmosphere was rather positive than negative.
CONTENT
25 chapters, each take about 30-60 minutes on average. Lots of repetition here but also a satisfying strategical challenge throughout.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
There is a good mix in the design of the maps, especially considering what technical limitations the devs had to battle. Map design and enemy placement means that challenges that players have to fight through are varied, but sometimes the enemy placement and especially reinforcements get so ridiculous that you have no way of progressing through them with the units you have on hand. And this was clear hours ago, you just weren't aware. Infinite reinforcements also mean that the amount of opportunity is limited to level up underleveled units and to stock up on weapons and other items in the lead up to chapters 20+, which was frustrating.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
One of, if not THE first tactical RPG that started a whole genre. Due to that, this game already gets iconic status, and it's a mix of genres that works pretty well too (as evidenced by the series status even today).
REPLAYABILITY
This game can be played in different ways, but the hours and hours of watching animations and moving your units make this a hard sell for people looking for replayability. Apart from improved stats, there also is no incentive to play through the game and try to keep different units alive compared to previous runs.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked fine at all times.
OVERALL
Definitely worth checking out if you're a Fire Emblem fan and want to see its origins. There is also some fun to be had and mostly the game offers a fair strategic challenge. If you're a veteran of the series, you might also do much better than me in the first half of the game and go into the second half more prepared, which will make or break your chance of completing this game.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
Japan-only release, nothing to find in Western magazines
1990
Crystalis is an Action RPG / Action Adventure game that initially released on April 13, 1990 in Japan for the NES. It was re-released for the Game Boy Color 10 years later and it's celebrated by many for being an "underappreciated NES gem".
The NES version is the one I played, and there are major differences in both versions in case you want to try it yourself. The Game Boy Color version has an almost completely new soundtrack that is worse in my opinion (1), from what I've seen it plays less fluidly and has lower resolution (2), a story sequence was altered (3) but most importantly, the Game Boy Color version is actually way more helpful in guiding the player and actually explains to you what the story is about (4).
STORYTELLING
So what do I mean by that last sentence? Well the issue I had with the NES version was that apart from a very brief introduction to the world in the menu screen, there was just about no explanation as to who you are or why you are fighting all these monsters and doing what these people told you to do. Every hour or two you'd get a line or so of information on what this game is about, but nothing substantial up until the end of the game, where all info would be dropped at once.
In the GBC version, there is a much longer intro sequence explaining why you were summoned and what the lore behind all those items and people is that you find and meet. Every time you find a useful item, one of the characters also would show up to tell you what it can do. Plus, characters also tell you a bit more about what to do next and there are much more intermissions filled with monologues on this world and its lore. Due to the other differences I listed which I actually dislike compared to the NES version, I still am glad I stuck with the NES version I guess.
So what's the story about? You play a hero that you name and that has been frozen in time for 100 years after a war in 1997 nearly meant the end of civilization. The survivors decided to abandon the ways and technology that led to this war and created a floating Tower, where they would live, gain power to control the world (to make sure no harm was done anymore) and to study the ways of magic. You and a companion of yours, Mesia, are now awakened 100 years after the war because an evil magician called Dragonia used his abilities to grow in power and fill the land with Monsters, to ultimately enter the Tower and control everything that is left of the planet.
Four magicians that will become your helpful companions in this world used their abilities to create four Swords of different elements. They used these to attack Dragonia, but he was able to take the Swords from them and scatter them throughout the land. With no additional way of defending themselves through magic, a safety put into place 100 years ago for a worst case scenario triggers and awakens both you and your companion Mesia. What you have to do now is find all four swords, which form the ultimate sword called "Crystalis", and use it to kill Dragonia and end his reign of power.
Throughout your journey, you meet these magicians and can use a skill called "Telepathy" to request hints from them. There are other characters as well that aid you in your quest, like the fisher that lets you use his boat if you find an item of his. There is also a guy called Kensu, who does help you out a lot but loves to play hide and seek and must be found many times to finally give you what you need.
In the NES version, you speak the absolute minimum with all of these characters, but in the GBC version, there is a lot more dialogue and detail to the lore. Since I played the NES version and won't play through the GBC version, I'm going to rate the NES version, which has none to little storytelling for most of the game, and not finding out the true reason for what you are doing for a long time isn't that motivating. It kinda pays off in the end though. There aren't that many twists and turns in this game, there is little environmental storytelling and overall, the package present here is average.
GAMEPLAY
As per usual for the time, gameplay interruptions are rare, so the action is pretty much constant. You start the game by gaining the Sword of Stone and you play the game by attacking the many different monsters with a thrust attack. Most of the enemies don't attack back but rather either walk in a pre-determined direction or into you, which damages you. Unfortunately, the enemies usually have a pretty tight hit box, so you have to do some positioning beforehand before you attack. It's not rare for you to do a 360 spin to try and position yourself in a way that opens up an attack for you without exposing you for damage by the enemies. Your hitbox sadly is much larger than it should be, so even if your character isn't actually touched, you will still take damage. This can become frustrating over the first couple hours as you try to figure out where the game wants you to attack from, but once you figure it out, it works most of the time as you want it to.
There are four swords of different elements to find in the game, and as a result, monsters with resistances and weaknesses to specific elements. While this is a good thing as it brings variety to the fold, it happens often that a room has two enemies with different resistances. Since there are no hotkeys, I would find myself equpping the Sword of Fire, killing an enemy, equipping the Sword of Water, killing an enemy and so on. This would not only throw me out of the action but also quickly become tiresome.
In addition, some enemies cannot be harmed at all until you reach a certain level. Worse even, bosses have the same effect. How does level 11 make you able to attack a character when level 10 means they are invincible? I don't know. But imagine my frustration when I tried my luck at a boss for 20 minutes, only to fail with each element because of a level difference. "Kill it with fire", a guide online said, which I used lavishly, though not only due to combat questions. When fire didn't work as well, I looked it up further. Turns out, I really had to be level 11 to hurt the boss, but my save state was right at the boss fight, so I couldn't back out. Luckily, I had a back up state from 30 minutes before, because otherwise that would have probably been the end of my run.
Leveling becomes harder and harder because the XP requirements grow exponentially, whilst I found that the XP you get by later enemies wouldn't increase quite as fast. This meant I had to grind for 30-60 minutes at multiple points to progress further, which even the most skilled walkthroughs incorporate online. Grinding has seemingly become a core feature of JRPGs since, and it's no more fun here than it is in Final Fantasy games for example, though at least here you don't have to load in and out of battles.
Dying in this game is very easy and checkpoints do not exist, so you have to save often to be able to actually beat this game. By now I'm used to it having played a bunch of other games from 1990 with similar requirements, but it's worth pointing out.
The game has a lot of different environments to explore, but often it requires you to do the same thing, just with a different element. There is however a snow area for which you will need Rabbit Shoes to be able to jump up a hill and most notably, there is a poison swamp, for which you will need to find a Gas Mask to not take damage from the poison.
Unfortunately, when I say "explore", I mean that you usually try to find a way forward and battle enemies. You do have to find "lost items" here and there, bring it back to someone and get something in return that enables further progress, however it's not like these items are shown anywhere on the map. A pendant for example is in a random spot in a cave and you find it by accident when walking over that exact pixel. There are some non-essential items to find, like healing herbs or teleportation boots, and secret locations to find those in.
Overall, gameplay is repetitive and exploration opportunities are limited, but it's enjoyable enough due to enough enemy variety and the core combat being fine once you figure out how to not take unfair hits all the time.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
There is no voice acting. The sound design is good, but nothing special. You hear the same sounds in dozens of other RPGs or Action Adventures from that time.
The music is really good, but this compliment is only for the NES version. The overworld theme simply sounds fun, cheerful and catchy. My favorite track has got to be on the "sea" level. An above average soundtrack that can definitely be listened to outside of the game.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN:
The game has solid graphics for the time and makes good use of color, but doesn't stand out beyond that at a time filled with games that look similar. There is a good variety in locations and especially the poison swamp is worth pointing out here again, but the majority of the game does take places in same-looking dungeons that simply use a different color based on the pre-dominant element.
ATMOSPHERE
The game mostly has a cheerful atmosphere in line with a lot of upbeat music, but it sometimes contrasts with the events in the game, like when a group of people are kidnapped and you wander to their desolate town with the same cheerful music as per usual. Even during the moments leading to the game's final battle it still felt too cheerful and sort of out of place due to the stake's involved per the game's storytelling. That said if you're looking for something to play that may have raised stakes but a more lax soundtrack, you'll be happy with Crystalis.
CONTENT
The game does take 10+ hours if you use guides here and there and are a first time player, but a few of those hours are spent grinding and you do hold the "attack" button for most of it. If you enjoy that, you'll probably enjoy your time with this game, which even with that playing time is much shorter than the RPGs of its time and therefore may be worth a try at least.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
The game plays rather linearly even though you can visit multiple locations at once. If you do visit those locations, you usually can't hurt the enemies, so there is no point to deviate from the main road. That main road involves doing the same thing usually and often walking through the same-looking corridors that simple have a different coat of paint. There is variety in locations here and there and the sea level offers a unique battleground at least. The final few locations are also much more unique in design, but the way the final chapter is designed is not necessarily my cup of tea, as it's boss fight after boss fight after boss fight until you meet the final boss, but wait, it's not the final boss, here he is, the end.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
Most of what this game does has been done before this game came out and not all it does ages well. It's a good game for mixing these elements together and making this an enjoyable adventure overall, but I wouldn't say it set a new benchmark or brought anything new to the table, though its graphics were praised at the time along with the "depth", as in how much there is to do. As mentioned previously, some of the depth is stuffed with repetitive filler and therefore not simply a positive, unless you really are enamored with all core concepts here and don't want the game to end.
REPLAYABILITY
After a first playthrough, there isn't much that you can really do differently.
PLAYABILITY
The game works perfectly fine at all times and plays pretty fluidly.
OVERALL
This is a solid Action RPG / Action Adventure with very catchy music, varied environments and mostly enjoyable, though flawed combat. It's definitely worth taking a look at if you've enjoyed similar games like Zelda games or Final Fantasy, but it lacks depth and logic to its storytelling even when it does get going late into the game, key items are placed in arbitrary locations making progress very difficult and tedious without a guide and there is a lot of mandatory grinding required.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Martin Alessi for Electronic Gaming Monthly, Issue 13 (Aug 90): "A post-apocalyptic storyline with cinema displays mixes with one of the best search, solve and save the world games in recent memory."
- Chris Bieniek for VG&CE, Issue 20 (Sep 90): "the main thing that sets this title apart from most other [RPGs] is its tremendous depth. I've never seen a game with so many places to explore"
The NES version is the one I played, and there are major differences in both versions in case you want to try it yourself. The Game Boy Color version has an almost completely new soundtrack that is worse in my opinion (1), from what I've seen it plays less fluidly and has lower resolution (2), a story sequence was altered (3) but most importantly, the Game Boy Color version is actually way more helpful in guiding the player and actually explains to you what the story is about (4).
STORYTELLING
So what do I mean by that last sentence? Well the issue I had with the NES version was that apart from a very brief introduction to the world in the menu screen, there was just about no explanation as to who you are or why you are fighting all these monsters and doing what these people told you to do. Every hour or two you'd get a line or so of information on what this game is about, but nothing substantial up until the end of the game, where all info would be dropped at once.
In the GBC version, there is a much longer intro sequence explaining why you were summoned and what the lore behind all those items and people is that you find and meet. Every time you find a useful item, one of the characters also would show up to tell you what it can do. Plus, characters also tell you a bit more about what to do next and there are much more intermissions filled with monologues on this world and its lore. Due to the other differences I listed which I actually dislike compared to the NES version, I still am glad I stuck with the NES version I guess.
So what's the story about? You play a hero that you name and that has been frozen in time for 100 years after a war in 1997 nearly meant the end of civilization. The survivors decided to abandon the ways and technology that led to this war and created a floating Tower, where they would live, gain power to control the world (to make sure no harm was done anymore) and to study the ways of magic. You and a companion of yours, Mesia, are now awakened 100 years after the war because an evil magician called Dragonia used his abilities to grow in power and fill the land with Monsters, to ultimately enter the Tower and control everything that is left of the planet.
Four magicians that will become your helpful companions in this world used their abilities to create four Swords of different elements. They used these to attack Dragonia, but he was able to take the Swords from them and scatter them throughout the land. With no additional way of defending themselves through magic, a safety put into place 100 years ago for a worst case scenario triggers and awakens both you and your companion Mesia. What you have to do now is find all four swords, which form the ultimate sword called "Crystalis", and use it to kill Dragonia and end his reign of power.
Throughout your journey, you meet these magicians and can use a skill called "Telepathy" to request hints from them. There are other characters as well that aid you in your quest, like the fisher that lets you use his boat if you find an item of his. There is also a guy called Kensu, who does help you out a lot but loves to play hide and seek and must be found many times to finally give you what you need.
In the NES version, you speak the absolute minimum with all of these characters, but in the GBC version, there is a lot more dialogue and detail to the lore. Since I played the NES version and won't play through the GBC version, I'm going to rate the NES version, which has none to little storytelling for most of the game, and not finding out the true reason for what you are doing for a long time isn't that motivating. It kinda pays off in the end though. There aren't that many twists and turns in this game, there is little environmental storytelling and overall, the package present here is average.
GAMEPLAY
As per usual for the time, gameplay interruptions are rare, so the action is pretty much constant. You start the game by gaining the Sword of Stone and you play the game by attacking the many different monsters with a thrust attack. Most of the enemies don't attack back but rather either walk in a pre-determined direction or into you, which damages you. Unfortunately, the enemies usually have a pretty tight hit box, so you have to do some positioning beforehand before you attack. It's not rare for you to do a 360 spin to try and position yourself in a way that opens up an attack for you without exposing you for damage by the enemies. Your hitbox sadly is much larger than it should be, so even if your character isn't actually touched, you will still take damage. This can become frustrating over the first couple hours as you try to figure out where the game wants you to attack from, but once you figure it out, it works most of the time as you want it to.
There are four swords of different elements to find in the game, and as a result, monsters with resistances and weaknesses to specific elements. While this is a good thing as it brings variety to the fold, it happens often that a room has two enemies with different resistances. Since there are no hotkeys, I would find myself equpping the Sword of Fire, killing an enemy, equipping the Sword of Water, killing an enemy and so on. This would not only throw me out of the action but also quickly become tiresome.
In addition, some enemies cannot be harmed at all until you reach a certain level. Worse even, bosses have the same effect. How does level 11 make you able to attack a character when level 10 means they are invincible? I don't know. But imagine my frustration when I tried my luck at a boss for 20 minutes, only to fail with each element because of a level difference. "Kill it with fire", a guide online said, which I used lavishly, though not only due to combat questions. When fire didn't work as well, I looked it up further. Turns out, I really had to be level 11 to hurt the boss, but my save state was right at the boss fight, so I couldn't back out. Luckily, I had a back up state from 30 minutes before, because otherwise that would have probably been the end of my run.
Leveling becomes harder and harder because the XP requirements grow exponentially, whilst I found that the XP you get by later enemies wouldn't increase quite as fast. This meant I had to grind for 30-60 minutes at multiple points to progress further, which even the most skilled walkthroughs incorporate online. Grinding has seemingly become a core feature of JRPGs since, and it's no more fun here than it is in Final Fantasy games for example, though at least here you don't have to load in and out of battles.
Dying in this game is very easy and checkpoints do not exist, so you have to save often to be able to actually beat this game. By now I'm used to it having played a bunch of other games from 1990 with similar requirements, but it's worth pointing out.
The game has a lot of different environments to explore, but often it requires you to do the same thing, just with a different element. There is however a snow area for which you will need Rabbit Shoes to be able to jump up a hill and most notably, there is a poison swamp, for which you will need to find a Gas Mask to not take damage from the poison.
Unfortunately, when I say "explore", I mean that you usually try to find a way forward and battle enemies. You do have to find "lost items" here and there, bring it back to someone and get something in return that enables further progress, however it's not like these items are shown anywhere on the map. A pendant for example is in a random spot in a cave and you find it by accident when walking over that exact pixel. There are some non-essential items to find, like healing herbs or teleportation boots, and secret locations to find those in.
Overall, gameplay is repetitive and exploration opportunities are limited, but it's enjoyable enough due to enough enemy variety and the core combat being fine once you figure out how to not take unfair hits all the time.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
There is no voice acting. The sound design is good, but nothing special. You hear the same sounds in dozens of other RPGs or Action Adventures from that time.
The music is really good, but this compliment is only for the NES version. The overworld theme simply sounds fun, cheerful and catchy. My favorite track has got to be on the "sea" level. An above average soundtrack that can definitely be listened to outside of the game.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN:
The game has solid graphics for the time and makes good use of color, but doesn't stand out beyond that at a time filled with games that look similar. There is a good variety in locations and especially the poison swamp is worth pointing out here again, but the majority of the game does take places in same-looking dungeons that simply use a different color based on the pre-dominant element.
ATMOSPHERE
The game mostly has a cheerful atmosphere in line with a lot of upbeat music, but it sometimes contrasts with the events in the game, like when a group of people are kidnapped and you wander to their desolate town with the same cheerful music as per usual. Even during the moments leading to the game's final battle it still felt too cheerful and sort of out of place due to the stake's involved per the game's storytelling. That said if you're looking for something to play that may have raised stakes but a more lax soundtrack, you'll be happy with Crystalis.
CONTENT
The game does take 10+ hours if you use guides here and there and are a first time player, but a few of those hours are spent grinding and you do hold the "attack" button for most of it. If you enjoy that, you'll probably enjoy your time with this game, which even with that playing time is much shorter than the RPGs of its time and therefore may be worth a try at least.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
The game plays rather linearly even though you can visit multiple locations at once. If you do visit those locations, you usually can't hurt the enemies, so there is no point to deviate from the main road. That main road involves doing the same thing usually and often walking through the same-looking corridors that simple have a different coat of paint. There is variety in locations here and there and the sea level offers a unique battleground at least. The final few locations are also much more unique in design, but the way the final chapter is designed is not necessarily my cup of tea, as it's boss fight after boss fight after boss fight until you meet the final boss, but wait, it's not the final boss, here he is, the end.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
Most of what this game does has been done before this game came out and not all it does ages well. It's a good game for mixing these elements together and making this an enjoyable adventure overall, but I wouldn't say it set a new benchmark or brought anything new to the table, though its graphics were praised at the time along with the "depth", as in how much there is to do. As mentioned previously, some of the depth is stuffed with repetitive filler and therefore not simply a positive, unless you really are enamored with all core concepts here and don't want the game to end.
REPLAYABILITY
After a first playthrough, there isn't much that you can really do differently.
PLAYABILITY
The game works perfectly fine at all times and plays pretty fluidly.
OVERALL
This is a solid Action RPG / Action Adventure with very catchy music, varied environments and mostly enjoyable, though flawed combat. It's definitely worth taking a look at if you've enjoyed similar games like Zelda games or Final Fantasy, but it lacks depth and logic to its storytelling even when it does get going late into the game, key items are placed in arbitrary locations making progress very difficult and tedious without a guide and there is a lot of mandatory grinding required.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Martin Alessi for Electronic Gaming Monthly, Issue 13 (Aug 90): "A post-apocalyptic storyline with cinema displays mixes with one of the best search, solve and save the world games in recent memory."
- Chris Bieniek for VG&CE, Issue 20 (Sep 90): "the main thing that sets this title apart from most other [RPGs] is its tremendous depth. I've never seen a game with so many places to explore"
Batman: The Video Game is a collection of platform games that are different in gameplay and story depending on the platform it released for, developed and published by Sunsoft.
The first version released for the NES in 1989 and is a side-scrolling platformer with features like the grappling hook, wall jumps and projectile weapons like the batarang and batdiscs.
The version I played, the Game Boy version, released on April 13, 1990 and is much less ambitious in both graphics and gameplay. It features Batman with a gun and is also a side scrolling platformer.
There are two other versions for the Sega Genesis, a game I will play as we move further along in 1990, and a PC Engine version which released in Japan-only and is an action-puzzle game.
Each game ties in to the movie from 1989 starring Jack Nicholson as the Joker to varying degrees, with the Game Boy version having the "least relation".
STORYTELLING
There is almost none present. Each "chapter" starts and ends with a very brief cutscene involving Joker and Batman. It would have been nice to have a bit more here or, as I will discuss later, more of a Batman feel in the level and/or graphic design, because while the game was fun, it could have been called anything but Batman and no one would have batted an eye.
GAMEPLAY
A lot of fun. If you are looking for platformers from this time and are looking for a game that is easier than usual for this period (1), that has more generous hit boxes (2), doesn't take too long (3) and has some variation (4), you'll find a pretty good game in the GameBoy version of Batman: The Video Game.
This is a side scrolling platformer with your usual dangers. There are enemies that simply follow a pre-determined route and will damage you if you touch them. Later on, they start shooting at you as well. Plus you can of course fall down to your death as well. You control Batman who is pointing a gun forward at all times. Batman using a gun already doesn't seem quite like Batman, but so be it. You can find a bunch of power-ups as you go through levels which alter your damage output and the way your gun shoots. Some give you more power but reduce your range, some make the bullet fly in half circles up and down. Stages are different enough that specific bullets (each different bullet variation is marked with a letter like "N" or "S) will be required to go through them without taking any damage, or perhaps even go through them period. One stage for example has enemies covering a whole platform and can't be shot at with the low-range bullet, so you have to jump on top of it and sacrifice some of your health. If your health is too low at that point, you're basically guaranteed to die. But each level allows you the opportunity to switch to a more usable bullet.
Shooting and platforming becomes more and more tricky as the game goes on, but it doesn't really become hard until about Chapter/Stage 3. I immediately noticed how hit boxes were really the opposite of what I came to expect out of games from 1990. Bullets could touch your sprite and you sometimes would take no damage. Especially when crouching down, bullets would touch your head but it wouldn't register as a hit. Conversely, bullets that barely scrape the enemy still hit them. Pretty much all the other games need you to be way more specific and give you way less leeway there, so this was a welcome surprise. As you will find out over the course of this game, that does make the game simpler, but it's hardly easy throughout. It's simply actually beatable without spending dozens of hours perfecting later stages. If you are a side-scrolling platform veteran however, this game will not scratch that hardcore challenge itch that you might have.
There is also a bat mobile shmup type level which offers some nice variety and is pretty challenging as more and more enemies and bullets start flying around you.
Boss fights are not that plentiful and end up being bullet-sponge fests more than anything, so they were a bit of a let down.
But overall, gameplay wise I had a lot of fun with this, even if the last stage and boss fight did my head in.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Sound design was average, which is good for the time, but the firing sound could have done with a little bit more 'oomph'. This gun holding animation-starved Batman could have definitely used it to give him at least some sort of badass vibes.
I liked the music but only because it pretty much sounds like any other soundtrack of its time, and most 8 bit soundtracks were bangers, but as with most of this game, it didn't give off any Batman vibes.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The Game Boy games of this time weren't particularly nice to look at, and that is no different here. Many magazines and reviews of the time I found call this game one of the better looking Game Boy games of the time, so I'm going to believe them here. Still, there isn't much here, you could have put any character in here instead of Batman and it would have done the same, minus the presence of Joker in cutscenes (his in-game character also looks like a random detective-like NPC though).
ATMOSPHERE
It has a typical Game Boy platformer atmosphere and that is totally fine, but again, it doesn't feel at all like Batman. I find this to be a good platformer first rather than a bad Batman game, so it depends on what you value more here.
CONTENT
There isn't much here, but what is here is fun. It took me roughly 4 hours to beat it.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
It's an odd choice to turn this into a generic platformer because Sunsoft's other Batman games in this 'package of platformers' include a lot more of Batman's typical gear, in addition to wall climbing. Here, they just gave BATMAN a gun and said enjoy.
There are four chapters with 3 or 4 stages in each and apart from the final one, which was so long, I enjoyed going through them all. Boss fights also took too long even though they didn't take long to figure out.
But the game gets an additional bonus for putting each level in different locations. For a 1990 Gameboy game, that is commendable.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
From the reactions of 1990 it's clear that this game was one of the better Game Boy games at the time, both graphically and in terms of gameplay, which is good, but not innovative.
REPLAYABILITY
You can play games with about a handful of different 'bullet effects' and of course try to beat your high score, or try to go from start to finish without any continues. The boring and long boss fights and not many gameplay elements overall to take away some from the game's replayability.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked fine at all times.
OVERALL
This is a game that is not notable as a package because it pretty much only does one thing really well or even above-average, but what it does well is be an enjoyable, fair platformer that is atypical for this time where games were supposed to be punishing to artificially increase playing time of otherwise short games. This one does that in its final chapter as well, but even then it is more than beatable and flows well overall, if it weren't for those long and boring boss fight interruptions.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Steve Harris for Electronic Gaming Monthly Issue 14 (Sep 90): "The graphics, by GameBoy standards, are superlative"
- Sushi-X for Electronic Gaming Monthly Issue 14 (Sep 90): "Gee Batman, better lose a few pounds and put that gun away and slug it out like you're supposed to" Glad this was addressed back in the day as well. Fyi, he gave the game a 7/10 anyway because this really is a fun game.
- ?? for Mean Machines Issue 3 (Dec 90): "if you're a Nintendo owner, miss this game at your peril."
The first version released for the NES in 1989 and is a side-scrolling platformer with features like the grappling hook, wall jumps and projectile weapons like the batarang and batdiscs.
The version I played, the Game Boy version, released on April 13, 1990 and is much less ambitious in both graphics and gameplay. It features Batman with a gun and is also a side scrolling platformer.
There are two other versions for the Sega Genesis, a game I will play as we move further along in 1990, and a PC Engine version which released in Japan-only and is an action-puzzle game.
Each game ties in to the movie from 1989 starring Jack Nicholson as the Joker to varying degrees, with the Game Boy version having the "least relation".
STORYTELLING
There is almost none present. Each "chapter" starts and ends with a very brief cutscene involving Joker and Batman. It would have been nice to have a bit more here or, as I will discuss later, more of a Batman feel in the level and/or graphic design, because while the game was fun, it could have been called anything but Batman and no one would have batted an eye.
GAMEPLAY
A lot of fun. If you are looking for platformers from this time and are looking for a game that is easier than usual for this period (1), that has more generous hit boxes (2), doesn't take too long (3) and has some variation (4), you'll find a pretty good game in the GameBoy version of Batman: The Video Game.
This is a side scrolling platformer with your usual dangers. There are enemies that simply follow a pre-determined route and will damage you if you touch them. Later on, they start shooting at you as well. Plus you can of course fall down to your death as well. You control Batman who is pointing a gun forward at all times. Batman using a gun already doesn't seem quite like Batman, but so be it. You can find a bunch of power-ups as you go through levels which alter your damage output and the way your gun shoots. Some give you more power but reduce your range, some make the bullet fly in half circles up and down. Stages are different enough that specific bullets (each different bullet variation is marked with a letter like "N" or "S) will be required to go through them without taking any damage, or perhaps even go through them period. One stage for example has enemies covering a whole platform and can't be shot at with the low-range bullet, so you have to jump on top of it and sacrifice some of your health. If your health is too low at that point, you're basically guaranteed to die. But each level allows you the opportunity to switch to a more usable bullet.
Shooting and platforming becomes more and more tricky as the game goes on, but it doesn't really become hard until about Chapter/Stage 3. I immediately noticed how hit boxes were really the opposite of what I came to expect out of games from 1990. Bullets could touch your sprite and you sometimes would take no damage. Especially when crouching down, bullets would touch your head but it wouldn't register as a hit. Conversely, bullets that barely scrape the enemy still hit them. Pretty much all the other games need you to be way more specific and give you way less leeway there, so this was a welcome surprise. As you will find out over the course of this game, that does make the game simpler, but it's hardly easy throughout. It's simply actually beatable without spending dozens of hours perfecting later stages. If you are a side-scrolling platform veteran however, this game will not scratch that hardcore challenge itch that you might have.
There is also a bat mobile shmup type level which offers some nice variety and is pretty challenging as more and more enemies and bullets start flying around you.
Boss fights are not that plentiful and end up being bullet-sponge fests more than anything, so they were a bit of a let down.
But overall, gameplay wise I had a lot of fun with this, even if the last stage and boss fight did my head in.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Sound design was average, which is good for the time, but the firing sound could have done with a little bit more 'oomph'. This gun holding animation-starved Batman could have definitely used it to give him at least some sort of badass vibes.
I liked the music but only because it pretty much sounds like any other soundtrack of its time, and most 8 bit soundtracks were bangers, but as with most of this game, it didn't give off any Batman vibes.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The Game Boy games of this time weren't particularly nice to look at, and that is no different here. Many magazines and reviews of the time I found call this game one of the better looking Game Boy games of the time, so I'm going to believe them here. Still, there isn't much here, you could have put any character in here instead of Batman and it would have done the same, minus the presence of Joker in cutscenes (his in-game character also looks like a random detective-like NPC though).
ATMOSPHERE
It has a typical Game Boy platformer atmosphere and that is totally fine, but again, it doesn't feel at all like Batman. I find this to be a good platformer first rather than a bad Batman game, so it depends on what you value more here.
CONTENT
There isn't much here, but what is here is fun. It took me roughly 4 hours to beat it.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
It's an odd choice to turn this into a generic platformer because Sunsoft's other Batman games in this 'package of platformers' include a lot more of Batman's typical gear, in addition to wall climbing. Here, they just gave BATMAN a gun and said enjoy.
There are four chapters with 3 or 4 stages in each and apart from the final one, which was so long, I enjoyed going through them all. Boss fights also took too long even though they didn't take long to figure out.
But the game gets an additional bonus for putting each level in different locations. For a 1990 Gameboy game, that is commendable.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
From the reactions of 1990 it's clear that this game was one of the better Game Boy games at the time, both graphically and in terms of gameplay, which is good, but not innovative.
REPLAYABILITY
You can play games with about a handful of different 'bullet effects' and of course try to beat your high score, or try to go from start to finish without any continues. The boring and long boss fights and not many gameplay elements overall to take away some from the game's replayability.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked fine at all times.
OVERALL
This is a game that is not notable as a package because it pretty much only does one thing really well or even above-average, but what it does well is be an enjoyable, fair platformer that is atypical for this time where games were supposed to be punishing to artificially increase playing time of otherwise short games. This one does that in its final chapter as well, but even then it is more than beatable and flows well overall, if it weren't for those long and boring boss fight interruptions.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Steve Harris for Electronic Gaming Monthly Issue 14 (Sep 90): "The graphics, by GameBoy standards, are superlative"
- Sushi-X for Electronic Gaming Monthly Issue 14 (Sep 90): "Gee Batman, better lose a few pounds and put that gun away and slug it out like you're supposed to" Glad this was addressed back in the day as well. Fyi, he gave the game a 7/10 anyway because this really is a fun game.
- ?? for Mean Machines Issue 3 (Dec 90): "if you're a Nintendo owner, miss this game at your peril."