jtduckman
naw man i can't think of any reason why you should play this, especially over the much superior Basketball that came out much earlier. Like, I respect the attempt to innovate by making it be 2v2s instead of 1v1s, the visuals look more like a basketball court instead of the surface of mars, and you can hear the crowd cheer every time you score, but the added complexity of the team aspect of the game really hurts more than it helps.
The court is like split into two horizontal rows that each team player resides in, and you control them at the same time. You can't have the lower player go in the upper half and the upper player can't go in the lower half, it's like theres an invisible barrier that separates your two players. If the ball lands in the middle of the court, is it in the upper or lower half? Who knows! There's also the added problem of the pass and shoot buttons being bound to the singular button on the joystick, so it's very easy to do one action when you were intending to do the other. Awesome! The CPU obviously has none of these problems, and will absolutely smoke you no matter what difficulty settings you might have the game set to. I would say this might be fun with another player as both people are bound to the same control handicaps, but you know what else is more fun either by yourself or with a friend? REGULAR BASKETBALL PLAY THAT INSTEAD THAT GAME OWNS!!! if this is what real sports are I only care about fake sports.
luckily it's very unlikely you could be in a situation where you could only be able to play this and not regular basketball given the fact that this game was never actually released and as such the only way to play it is through compilation titles, flashcarts, or emulation. As far as I can tell, every title that features this game has the superior regular basketball as an option as well with the one exception being... Atari 50?!?!? What's up with that??
The court is like split into two horizontal rows that each team player resides in, and you control them at the same time. You can't have the lower player go in the upper half and the upper player can't go in the lower half, it's like theres an invisible barrier that separates your two players. If the ball lands in the middle of the court, is it in the upper or lower half? Who knows! There's also the added problem of the pass and shoot buttons being bound to the singular button on the joystick, so it's very easy to do one action when you were intending to do the other. Awesome! The CPU obviously has none of these problems, and will absolutely smoke you no matter what difficulty settings you might have the game set to. I would say this might be fun with another player as both people are bound to the same control handicaps, but you know what else is more fun either by yourself or with a friend? REGULAR BASKETBALL PLAY THAT INSTEAD THAT GAME OWNS!!! if this is what real sports are I only care about fake sports.
luckily it's very unlikely you could be in a situation where you could only be able to play this and not regular basketball given the fact that this game was never actually released and as such the only way to play it is through compilation titles, flashcarts, or emulation. As far as I can tell, every title that features this game has the superior regular basketball as an option as well with the one exception being... Atari 50?!?!? What's up with that??
1983
Neat idea for a game tbh. It's like a twist on breakout where there's your typical rows of bricks but instead of being the paddle under the brick row breaking the blocks with a ball, you are on the blocks side this time around and are trying to replenish the rows with blocks as the computer breaks through them from underneath. If a large enough hole is made that the computer can suck you out of your blocky fortress, then you lose. There's also a 2 player mode where one player gets to be the pig and the other player gets to be the wolf, but I haven't been able to try that mode out due to being a solitary gamer.
I get that they were going for a three little pigs theme by having the walls be made out of bricks plus each pig works as a way to give the player 3 lives, but it doesn't really look like Bigelow B. Wolf is actually blowing away bricks and sucking out the pigs as much as he's some sort of frog-wolf using his long tongue to eat the bricks and pigs.
The gameplay has the same frenetic energy as like having to put tracks over a constantly accelerating train to prevent it from crashing. The main way to stay alive and score well is just to keep pace with placing blocks right when the wolf destroys them, which is certainly easier said than done and eventually becomes impossible as you need to keep moving back to grab more bricks. I'd definitely suggest playing this on the B difficulty where you can drop the bricks from anywhere because on the A difficulty where you have to run up and down there's actually no hope of ever keeping pace with the wolf and you will die VERY quickly. I'd also suggest keeping an alternate controller like a genesis or looser aftermarket controller around because the constant erratic movement you gotta do does not mix well with the standard 2600 joystick. Supposedly if you can surpass 25000 points and send proof to Activision (supposedly on either difficulty, they don't really mention), you get to be an honorary Activision Oinker, complete with commemorative badge. I got around 45k points on my first attempt with B difficulty (A difficulty I died around like the 2k mark I think), so I better be an honorary Oinker, goddamnit. Microsoft better be using some of those 75 billion dollars to make more badges for people so help me god.
I get that they were going for a three little pigs theme by having the walls be made out of bricks plus each pig works as a way to give the player 3 lives, but it doesn't really look like Bigelow B. Wolf is actually blowing away bricks and sucking out the pigs as much as he's some sort of frog-wolf using his long tongue to eat the bricks and pigs.
The gameplay has the same frenetic energy as like having to put tracks over a constantly accelerating train to prevent it from crashing. The main way to stay alive and score well is just to keep pace with placing blocks right when the wolf destroys them, which is certainly easier said than done and eventually becomes impossible as you need to keep moving back to grab more bricks. I'd definitely suggest playing this on the B difficulty where you can drop the bricks from anywhere because on the A difficulty where you have to run up and down there's actually no hope of ever keeping pace with the wolf and you will die VERY quickly. I'd also suggest keeping an alternate controller like a genesis or looser aftermarket controller around because the constant erratic movement you gotta do does not mix well with the standard 2600 joystick. Supposedly if you can surpass 25000 points and send proof to Activision (supposedly on either difficulty, they don't really mention), you get to be an honorary Activision Oinker, complete with commemorative badge. I got around 45k points on my first attempt with B difficulty (A difficulty I died around like the 2k mark I think), so I better be an honorary Oinker, goddamnit. Microsoft better be using some of those 75 billion dollars to make more badges for people so help me god.
1978
Step aside, 2K.
It's Purple Guy vs. Kermit the Frog at a no-holds-barred 1v1 on Planet Basketball, winner takes all. It's incredibly simple, you move and shoot with the stick and button, and all you need to do is run into the ball to steal it from your opponent. You can hold the button down with the ball to aim it at the cost of standing in place, leaving yourself open to stealing, and the game just becomes this frantic scramble to get the ball and throw it in the hoop ASAP before you get cornered and the ball stolen. I've played this occasionally in the past with other people and it's pretty consistently gotten good times out of the multiplayer just for how goddamn simple and goofy the core gameplay is.
I honestly thought this game was like combat in that it was multiplayer only for the longest time, but lo and behold, I found out today that there is indeed a singleplayer mode where the AI plays as Kermit. All I can say is goddamn can this frog ball. Seriously, the computer opponent is no joke, as it has one sole purpose in life; to make sure the ball goes in the hoop under any means necessary. This mfer dodges and weaves around you to get net using constant rapid diagonal movements, and he very rarely ever misses any shots he takes so you gotta just rush his ass and hope that you can steal the ball in the tiny window when he's trying to shoot. Conversely, if you have the ball, you better believe this guy is gonna be on you to steal your ball and IMMEDIATELY go after getting more points before you can even process what's happened. I genuinely wasn't expecting my ass to get clapped so hard by an Atari 2600, but I perservered. The manual states that there's some kind of dynamic AI at play, where the closer the game, the greater Kermit's lust for points becomes. It states that if you can win by a lead of over 4 points, you are a "superior player", and I can confirm that yeah that about sums it up alright. I had to remove my power limiters and do the ol' plug-a-genesis-controller-in-the-atari trick so that I could even keep up with the CPU since dear god the constant diagonals the CPU makes felt deliberately planned in order to make it as difficult as possible to chase with the real Atari joystick. (how the hell do you use that thing comfortably???)
I have learned some tricks up my sleeve though. The top right corner of the court is a safe space that Kermit will just kinda hover around you but not actually steal the ball from you, so if you want to stand a chance, aim for shooting from up there. Conversely, if both players get close enough with the ball, it will erratically vibrate between both players like an atomic particle as both players exist in a state of stealing the ball. Sometimes you can get the AI to be stuck like that in the bottom right corner, so an easy way to become a certified Superior Player is to get an early point lead and then sacrifice Purple Guy to seal away the evil aggression of Kermit the frog by trapping them both through the power of Atomic Balling. I have also discovered that even though the CPU is controlling the second player, pressing the button on Player 2 will still make them jump anyways so you can also use this psychokinetic power to force Kermit to jump against his will, slowing him down so you can make some easy shots. If real basketball had strats like this, I'd be watching ESPN like a drug addict.
It's simple, it's dumb fun, it's fucking basketball on atari. The golden age of basketball games began and ended here for all I'm concerned. Even when times up and the game is over as the system rotates around the attract colors for Planet Basketball, you can keep playing either with a friend or against the AI like nothing changed, there just won't be any points that count. No other basketball game is going to be as dedicated towards balling eternally as this one. If you have the means to do so, definitely give this a try (preferably with a friend). atari games rule
It's Purple Guy vs. Kermit the Frog at a no-holds-barred 1v1 on Planet Basketball, winner takes all. It's incredibly simple, you move and shoot with the stick and button, and all you need to do is run into the ball to steal it from your opponent. You can hold the button down with the ball to aim it at the cost of standing in place, leaving yourself open to stealing, and the game just becomes this frantic scramble to get the ball and throw it in the hoop ASAP before you get cornered and the ball stolen. I've played this occasionally in the past with other people and it's pretty consistently gotten good times out of the multiplayer just for how goddamn simple and goofy the core gameplay is.
I honestly thought this game was like combat in that it was multiplayer only for the longest time, but lo and behold, I found out today that there is indeed a singleplayer mode where the AI plays as Kermit. All I can say is goddamn can this frog ball. Seriously, the computer opponent is no joke, as it has one sole purpose in life; to make sure the ball goes in the hoop under any means necessary. This mfer dodges and weaves around you to get net using constant rapid diagonal movements, and he very rarely ever misses any shots he takes so you gotta just rush his ass and hope that you can steal the ball in the tiny window when he's trying to shoot. Conversely, if you have the ball, you better believe this guy is gonna be on you to steal your ball and IMMEDIATELY go after getting more points before you can even process what's happened. I genuinely wasn't expecting my ass to get clapped so hard by an Atari 2600, but I perservered. The manual states that there's some kind of dynamic AI at play, where the closer the game, the greater Kermit's lust for points becomes. It states that if you can win by a lead of over 4 points, you are a "superior player", and I can confirm that yeah that about sums it up alright. I had to remove my power limiters and do the ol' plug-a-genesis-controller-in-the-atari trick so that I could even keep up with the CPU since dear god the constant diagonals the CPU makes felt deliberately planned in order to make it as difficult as possible to chase with the real Atari joystick. (how the hell do you use that thing comfortably???)
I have learned some tricks up my sleeve though. The top right corner of the court is a safe space that Kermit will just kinda hover around you but not actually steal the ball from you, so if you want to stand a chance, aim for shooting from up there. Conversely, if both players get close enough with the ball, it will erratically vibrate between both players like an atomic particle as both players exist in a state of stealing the ball. Sometimes you can get the AI to be stuck like that in the bottom right corner, so an easy way to become a certified Superior Player is to get an early point lead and then sacrifice Purple Guy to seal away the evil aggression of Kermit the frog by trapping them both through the power of Atomic Balling. I have also discovered that even though the CPU is controlling the second player, pressing the button on Player 2 will still make them jump anyways so you can also use this psychokinetic power to force Kermit to jump against his will, slowing him down so you can make some easy shots. If real basketball had strats like this, I'd be watching ESPN like a drug addict.
It's simple, it's dumb fun, it's fucking basketball on atari. The golden age of basketball games began and ended here for all I'm concerned. Even when times up and the game is over as the system rotates around the attract colors for Planet Basketball, you can keep playing either with a friend or against the AI like nothing changed, there just won't be any points that count. No other basketball game is going to be as dedicated towards balling eternally as this one. If you have the means to do so, definitely give this a try (preferably with a friend). atari games rule
was it fucking worth it?
As I am writing this right now, my car is perched atop a bus station, watching endless amounts of police cars slam themselves into the pillars below me as i rest motionless. Once I've rested long enough for the timer and bounty counts to reach their arbitrarily high numbers, I will retreat back into the bus station on a raised platform, where either the police will not realize what I am attempting to pull and they will remain under me at a length just far enough for the game to consider myself having evaded the cops, or they will catch onto my shenanigans, drive up to my platform, and catch me red-handed, putting the past 20 minutes or so of idling to waste, and forcing me to start over from square one. Yep, that's me. You are probably wondering how I got here, so allow me to explain.
I've been quite the fan of racing games these past few years, so I've been giving the NFS series a solid go. I've heard from many people that Most Wanted '05 was the pinnacle of the series, the thrilling fan-favorite before the slow but certain decline. "The cop chases are awesome", I've heard. After hearing all the hype, I grabbed myself a (surprisingly pricy all things considered) copy of the "definitive" Xbox 360 version, played through the Underground duology for context, and went to driving. The thing about this game is that it's strongest and most unique improvements are also the sharpest double-edged sword that makes this game so much less enjoyable compared to it's predacessors imo.
The game itself is pretty similar to the previous years NFS, Underground 2, albiet with some additions and changes. The open world is still there, though the game now offers a menu to just quick-jump to races instead of needing to spend time driving to waypoints. It definitely gives the game a much snappier pace to it, at the cost of making the free roam mode almost entirely optional unless you need to go to a car shop (and even then I found the fastest way to do that is to just go back to the safe house and use the shops right next to it). The races still feel just as weighty and solid as previous titles, cars still feel good to drive, and the drift/streetcross events are omitted from previous games. The dreaded drag race events are regrettably still here, but they are so few and far between that it's really not much of an issue imo. The races are still as fun as ever, and like Underground 2 the racing difficulty strikes a nice balance in never making you too far ahead, but also not going turbo overboard like Underground 1 did with the rubber banding. Races are still fun and cool!
The vibe of this game is also entirely different from previous games. We have gone full 7th gen mid-2000s edgy punk vibes by now, baby. This game is DRENCHED with that iconic Xbox 360 piss filter, races take place in a shady, dirgy, late-afternoon city rather than the neon-lit night life vibes that the Underground games carried. The muddy pallete isn't to say that this game is bland, it's still quite stylized after the dirty vibes that they are going for. Whenever you clear an event, the game shows a picture of your car at the time of winning, shown through various dynamic camera angles depending on how you finished, all shown through a detailed background of asphalt and concrete. The game has more of an edgy plot this time around; it's a revenge story. Your unnamed street racer man is doing street racer things when this sunnuvabitch challenges you, cheats the race by rigging your car beforehand, tries to steal your girl, and gets to the top of the street underworld using YOUR ride. It's up to you to rise up the hooligan leaderboards by taking out the top 15 racers to finally give that mfer a piece of your mind. Essentially, this is car-themed No More Heroes. Instead of the CG cutscenes of the previous games, this uses live-action FMV actors for the cutscenes and it is gloriously cheesy. Each member of the Blacklist has their own intro that looks like it came straight out of a trashy MTV reality show, complete with stylized graffiti tags for every member. The cheesy cutscenes if anything felt more like the series was going back to its roots on the 3DO, as the very first Need For Speed game had quite similiarly playful live-action cutscenes. My only wish was that the game could have had more to show in its narrative, as most of the cutscenes are at the very beginning of the game. It certainly knows how to set the mood really damn well though!
All of this falls apart with the newest gimmick this game offers; the famous cop chases. Cop chases are an iconic aspect of the original Need for Speed games, so this game brings them back after their absense in the Underground games. Sometimes while minding your own business, a cop can find you and instigate a cop chase. Evading the cops for long enough gets your heat gauge up, which gets more cops to show up until the game reaches cartoonish levels of police activity, flooding your screen with so many cops wanting to ram your ass you'd think you are playing Dynasty Warriors in Detroit. Cops can also sometimes rear their heads into you mid-race which turns things chaotic as now you have to handle both your opposition as well as your newfound persuers. All of this sounds good on paper, and at first the chases were really fun to do! The problem comes from the persuit milestones. In order to deem yourself worthy to challenge the next Blacklist opponent, you need to pass these arbitrary challenges, and they just get increasingly rediculous as time goes on. Stuff like "ram into 25 different police vehicles", "bypass 12 different police blockades", "stay in a persuit for longer than 13 minutes", etc. What's annoying about it it feels like the point of the higher heat levels feels more like a timer system a-la old arcade games making a higher effort to kill you the longer you linger, yet the milestones feel like they are set at directly counterintuitive goals, focused on farming RNG elements that are usually outside of your control (like when and where blockades spawn, or how many of certain cop cars can show up). Make a mistake and get busted, and you lose all of your progress for that chase, which gets REALLY frustrating when you lose 15+ minutes of chase progress to something stupid like a random truck in traffic running into you or a slightly uneven piece of terrain geometry catches you up. Get busted too many times, and you lose your car, and if you lose all your cars it's game over, so there's a significant punishment to messing up chases. I can understand why people see the high difficulty as a good sense of tension, but I really HATE it when games make me feel like I'm wasting my time, and the chases in this game felt so much like that. It never felt like whenever I got busted that it was a mistake on my end, but rather just some unfortunate circumstance that happened from the game deciding my time was up and launching 5 different waves of suicidal armored police SUVs on my ass that launch me into the pirhana pit of 20 cops chasing my ass. Like imagine playing Pac Man, but every minute the game adds another ghost to avoid, and the game just gives you dumb objectives like "eat 30 ghosts", forcing you to linger until things get too much. Eventually things got too much for me, and Need for Speed: Most Wanted became Need to Cheese: the Wanted System as I learned about the handy Bus Stop exploit that I have been using this whole time. And even then, sometimes the bus stop trick doesn't work and your time gets wasted anyways!!!! The only way to leave cop chases is to escape or get busted too, there's not even an option to quit to the menu in the pause screen so if a cop comes when you are trying to do something else enjoy having your time wasted!!!!!!! gaming!!!!!!!!
Idk man, this game certainly has vibes but the cop chases just made this game absolutely sour for me. I think I've come to realize from playing this and the Underground games that these games aren't really designed with the premise of actually being "cleared", and the fun comes more from being able to just drive around and vibe in the game. Because in my times playing any of these games so far, I've noticed that they revel in dragging themselves out way too far, wasting any progess-seeking players time. For every time I was vibing with the races and aesthetics, I was absolutely livid with frustration at watching my sweet time go to deadass nothing. The Blacklist 15 could have been the blacklist 10 and the point would have still made its way across imo.
Anyways, I was able to make it through that final cop milestone, so time to finish this game. I noticed one of the cop cars try to drive up and bust me while I was writing this, but they backed up and left on their own instead. Perhaps the game has finally taken pity on me, and realized enough has been enough. Usually I don't write reviews of stuff before having seen the credits roll, but I feel at this point my opinions have solidified and by the time anyone reads this, the deed will have been done.
As I am writing this right now, my car is perched atop a bus station, watching endless amounts of police cars slam themselves into the pillars below me as i rest motionless. Once I've rested long enough for the timer and bounty counts to reach their arbitrarily high numbers, I will retreat back into the bus station on a raised platform, where either the police will not realize what I am attempting to pull and they will remain under me at a length just far enough for the game to consider myself having evaded the cops, or they will catch onto my shenanigans, drive up to my platform, and catch me red-handed, putting the past 20 minutes or so of idling to waste, and forcing me to start over from square one. Yep, that's me. You are probably wondering how I got here, so allow me to explain.
I've been quite the fan of racing games these past few years, so I've been giving the NFS series a solid go. I've heard from many people that Most Wanted '05 was the pinnacle of the series, the thrilling fan-favorite before the slow but certain decline. "The cop chases are awesome", I've heard. After hearing all the hype, I grabbed myself a (surprisingly pricy all things considered) copy of the "definitive" Xbox 360 version, played through the Underground duology for context, and went to driving. The thing about this game is that it's strongest and most unique improvements are also the sharpest double-edged sword that makes this game so much less enjoyable compared to it's predacessors imo.
The game itself is pretty similar to the previous years NFS, Underground 2, albiet with some additions and changes. The open world is still there, though the game now offers a menu to just quick-jump to races instead of needing to spend time driving to waypoints. It definitely gives the game a much snappier pace to it, at the cost of making the free roam mode almost entirely optional unless you need to go to a car shop (and even then I found the fastest way to do that is to just go back to the safe house and use the shops right next to it). The races still feel just as weighty and solid as previous titles, cars still feel good to drive, and the drift/streetcross events are omitted from previous games. The dreaded drag race events are regrettably still here, but they are so few and far between that it's really not much of an issue imo. The races are still as fun as ever, and like Underground 2 the racing difficulty strikes a nice balance in never making you too far ahead, but also not going turbo overboard like Underground 1 did with the rubber banding. Races are still fun and cool!
The vibe of this game is also entirely different from previous games. We have gone full 7th gen mid-2000s edgy punk vibes by now, baby. This game is DRENCHED with that iconic Xbox 360 piss filter, races take place in a shady, dirgy, late-afternoon city rather than the neon-lit night life vibes that the Underground games carried. The muddy pallete isn't to say that this game is bland, it's still quite stylized after the dirty vibes that they are going for. Whenever you clear an event, the game shows a picture of your car at the time of winning, shown through various dynamic camera angles depending on how you finished, all shown through a detailed background of asphalt and concrete. The game has more of an edgy plot this time around; it's a revenge story. Your unnamed street racer man is doing street racer things when this sunnuvabitch challenges you, cheats the race by rigging your car beforehand, tries to steal your girl, and gets to the top of the street underworld using YOUR ride. It's up to you to rise up the hooligan leaderboards by taking out the top 15 racers to finally give that mfer a piece of your mind. Essentially, this is car-themed No More Heroes. Instead of the CG cutscenes of the previous games, this uses live-action FMV actors for the cutscenes and it is gloriously cheesy. Each member of the Blacklist has their own intro that looks like it came straight out of a trashy MTV reality show, complete with stylized graffiti tags for every member. The cheesy cutscenes if anything felt more like the series was going back to its roots on the 3DO, as the very first Need For Speed game had quite similiarly playful live-action cutscenes. My only wish was that the game could have had more to show in its narrative, as most of the cutscenes are at the very beginning of the game. It certainly knows how to set the mood really damn well though!
All of this falls apart with the newest gimmick this game offers; the famous cop chases. Cop chases are an iconic aspect of the original Need for Speed games, so this game brings them back after their absense in the Underground games. Sometimes while minding your own business, a cop can find you and instigate a cop chase. Evading the cops for long enough gets your heat gauge up, which gets more cops to show up until the game reaches cartoonish levels of police activity, flooding your screen with so many cops wanting to ram your ass you'd think you are playing Dynasty Warriors in Detroit. Cops can also sometimes rear their heads into you mid-race which turns things chaotic as now you have to handle both your opposition as well as your newfound persuers. All of this sounds good on paper, and at first the chases were really fun to do! The problem comes from the persuit milestones. In order to deem yourself worthy to challenge the next Blacklist opponent, you need to pass these arbitrary challenges, and they just get increasingly rediculous as time goes on. Stuff like "ram into 25 different police vehicles", "bypass 12 different police blockades", "stay in a persuit for longer than 13 minutes", etc. What's annoying about it it feels like the point of the higher heat levels feels more like a timer system a-la old arcade games making a higher effort to kill you the longer you linger, yet the milestones feel like they are set at directly counterintuitive goals, focused on farming RNG elements that are usually outside of your control (like when and where blockades spawn, or how many of certain cop cars can show up). Make a mistake and get busted, and you lose all of your progress for that chase, which gets REALLY frustrating when you lose 15+ minutes of chase progress to something stupid like a random truck in traffic running into you or a slightly uneven piece of terrain geometry catches you up. Get busted too many times, and you lose your car, and if you lose all your cars it's game over, so there's a significant punishment to messing up chases. I can understand why people see the high difficulty as a good sense of tension, but I really HATE it when games make me feel like I'm wasting my time, and the chases in this game felt so much like that. It never felt like whenever I got busted that it was a mistake on my end, but rather just some unfortunate circumstance that happened from the game deciding my time was up and launching 5 different waves of suicidal armored police SUVs on my ass that launch me into the pirhana pit of 20 cops chasing my ass. Like imagine playing Pac Man, but every minute the game adds another ghost to avoid, and the game just gives you dumb objectives like "eat 30 ghosts", forcing you to linger until things get too much. Eventually things got too much for me, and Need for Speed: Most Wanted became Need to Cheese: the Wanted System as I learned about the handy Bus Stop exploit that I have been using this whole time. And even then, sometimes the bus stop trick doesn't work and your time gets wasted anyways!!!! The only way to leave cop chases is to escape or get busted too, there's not even an option to quit to the menu in the pause screen so if a cop comes when you are trying to do something else enjoy having your time wasted!!!!!!! gaming!!!!!!!!
Idk man, this game certainly has vibes but the cop chases just made this game absolutely sour for me. I think I've come to realize from playing this and the Underground games that these games aren't really designed with the premise of actually being "cleared", and the fun comes more from being able to just drive around and vibe in the game. Because in my times playing any of these games so far, I've noticed that they revel in dragging themselves out way too far, wasting any progess-seeking players time. For every time I was vibing with the races and aesthetics, I was absolutely livid with frustration at watching my sweet time go to deadass nothing. The Blacklist 15 could have been the blacklist 10 and the point would have still made its way across imo.
Anyways, I was able to make it through that final cop milestone, so time to finish this game. I noticed one of the cop cars try to drive up and bust me while I was writing this, but they backed up and left on their own instead. Perhaps the game has finally taken pity on me, and realized enough has been enough. Usually I don't write reviews of stuff before having seen the credits roll, but I feel at this point my opinions have solidified and by the time anyone reads this, the deed will have been done.
2012
the absolute clueless energy I had going into this thinking it was going to be more of an offbeat simulator a la Seaman or The Tower but just airport flavored only to get absolutely slam dunked into the 7 layers of hell itself.
The game is more of a puzzle game than anything, and it's certainly hard to describe in words. There's a big tower of luggage carousels spinning around and you can press R to drop a leg on every layer to bring luggage downards, or L to lift a leg up to bring luggage upwards. Every luggage piece is color-coded, and the aim of the game is to time your inputs in an attempt to sort the luggage to go to their respective layer and get shipped off with a plane. It starts relatively simple albeit moderately stressful at first yet crescendos to a point of absolute lunacy that you'd need to have a supercomputer for a brain to do well in. It's a herculean juggling act of managing 7 different conveyer belts each with their own color and time limits to get at least one matching color of baggage in the plane lest the flight be cancelled and your airport funds plummet, managing a fuel mechanic that can hinder your play speed and visibility when left unattended, and taking care of various event baggage like bombs that need to be disposed of, picky mayors that need their luggage loaded first over anyone elses, presidential luggage with differently-colored tags indicating their true colors, so on and so forth. It is absolutely an utter and complete sensory overload that no sane person could ever hope to efficiently parse.
It's absolute unorthodox madness, but really aren't all the games that Yoot Saito makes like that? Seaman, Odama, and both The Tower games are certainly not conventional in the slightest, and this is absolutely in the same level of absurdity. I'd love to see what a TAS for this game would even look like, where someone has the tools to play this game at the superhuman level of efficiency that the game somehow expects out of the player. You'd think that this games absolutely absurd levels of stress and difficulty would make it a hard recommend but I really do suggest you give this game a shot if you can just to experience how overwhelming the game gets by the end, and see if maybe you can surpass your human limits to get a good score at the end.
If this is what actual airlines have to do in order for luggage to properly be shipped out then every airport worker deserves a trillion dollar salary. at duckman galactic airlines, we can gaurantee each flight will have at least one passengers bag shipped alongside them, provided our luggage system hasn't already accidentally exploded from the bombs that somehow keep making it in there.
The game is more of a puzzle game than anything, and it's certainly hard to describe in words. There's a big tower of luggage carousels spinning around and you can press R to drop a leg on every layer to bring luggage downards, or L to lift a leg up to bring luggage upwards. Every luggage piece is color-coded, and the aim of the game is to time your inputs in an attempt to sort the luggage to go to their respective layer and get shipped off with a plane. It starts relatively simple albeit moderately stressful at first yet crescendos to a point of absolute lunacy that you'd need to have a supercomputer for a brain to do well in. It's a herculean juggling act of managing 7 different conveyer belts each with their own color and time limits to get at least one matching color of baggage in the plane lest the flight be cancelled and your airport funds plummet, managing a fuel mechanic that can hinder your play speed and visibility when left unattended, and taking care of various event baggage like bombs that need to be disposed of, picky mayors that need their luggage loaded first over anyone elses, presidential luggage with differently-colored tags indicating their true colors, so on and so forth. It is absolutely an utter and complete sensory overload that no sane person could ever hope to efficiently parse.
It's absolute unorthodox madness, but really aren't all the games that Yoot Saito makes like that? Seaman, Odama, and both The Tower games are certainly not conventional in the slightest, and this is absolutely in the same level of absurdity. I'd love to see what a TAS for this game would even look like, where someone has the tools to play this game at the superhuman level of efficiency that the game somehow expects out of the player. You'd think that this games absolutely absurd levels of stress and difficulty would make it a hard recommend but I really do suggest you give this game a shot if you can just to experience how overwhelming the game gets by the end, and see if maybe you can surpass your human limits to get a good score at the end.
If this is what actual airlines have to do in order for luggage to properly be shipped out then every airport worker deserves a trillion dollar salary. at duckman galactic airlines, we can gaurantee each flight will have at least one passengers bag shipped alongside them, provided our luggage system hasn't already accidentally exploded from the bombs that somehow keep making it in there.
1983
What a stupidly petty concept for a video game, I kinda love it ngl. This game wasn't ever meant to be commercially sold; only like ~100 copies exist and they were given out at some business meeting or something. As a result, this game is one of the most expensive Atari carts costing thousands of dollars, so enjoy your four-figure atari coke propaganda, game collectors. The game is an extremely simple romhack of the Atari 2600 port of Space Invaders except now you control Coke and the invaders are Pepsi (with alien companions since pepsi is a 5-letter word and there are 6 columns of enemies in Space Invaders, good job with that one guys). The gimmick is that as you are the almighty Coca-Cola company, you are invincible the entire game. No matter how many times Pepsi hits you, you will always get right back up to continue destroying them. If the enemies get to the bottom, instead of triggering an immediate game over like regular invaders, the Pepsi invaders will just keep bouncing back and forth until you do destroy them. The game is set on a 3-minute score timer, loudly flashing "COKE WINS" once the time is up. Could this potentially mean that this is one of the first Caravan shmups...?????? (no)
Honestly since there's a timer that just stops the game no matter where you are it really doesn't feel like you "win" the game when its over like the crowning domination the game expects you to feel, it's more like a stalemate if anything. Maybe this is a reflection of the eternal corporate battle that large conglomerates fight with one another in late-stage capitalism, where there's no real winner or loser, just perpetual hostility..... (this is also not the case)
Despite being an incredibly petty joke advertisement of a video game, through screenshots and the title of the game you'd honestly think this is an endorsement for Pepsi instead of propaganda against them given that the game has more PEPSI's on screen through the enemies than the sole COKE WINS on the top left corner. At least you can strategically shoot aliens to make the game spell out PEEEEEEEEEE so that's gotta earn this game something.
It really goes to show how much simpler game development was back then that you could just manufacture some doofy romhack of a best-selling mainstream title whipped up by some dude as a joke and nobody bats an eye. Imagine if something like this existed nowadays, where only in shareholder meetings for fuckin mcdonalds or something can you get an elusive copy of MACDONALDRING, a hastily-made hacked version of Elden Ring that replaces your character with an invincible Ronald Mcdonald and changes all the bosses to Burger Kings that die in one hit. actually that sounds rad hold up
Honestly since there's a timer that just stops the game no matter where you are it really doesn't feel like you "win" the game when its over like the crowning domination the game expects you to feel, it's more like a stalemate if anything. Maybe this is a reflection of the eternal corporate battle that large conglomerates fight with one another in late-stage capitalism, where there's no real winner or loser, just perpetual hostility..... (this is also not the case)
Despite being an incredibly petty joke advertisement of a video game, through screenshots and the title of the game you'd honestly think this is an endorsement for Pepsi instead of propaganda against them given that the game has more PEPSI's on screen through the enemies than the sole COKE WINS on the top left corner. At least you can strategically shoot aliens to make the game spell out PEEEEEEEEEE so that's gotta earn this game something.
It really goes to show how much simpler game development was back then that you could just manufacture some doofy romhack of a best-selling mainstream title whipped up by some dude as a joke and nobody bats an eye. Imagine if something like this existed nowadays, where only in shareholder meetings for fuckin mcdonalds or something can you get an elusive copy of MACDONALDRING, a hastily-made hacked version of Elden Ring that replaces your character with an invincible Ronald Mcdonald and changes all the bosses to Burger Kings that die in one hit. actually that sounds rad hold up
1982
"We know that millions of people all over the world just love the PAC-MAN arcade game. PAC-MAN has won the hearts of men, women and children everywhere. We also know that PAC-MAN has traditionally been an arcade game. Well, we at ATARI know all about arcade games. After all, we make some of the greatest arcade games In the world, and we know now to bring the same dynamite game play into your home. Our PAC-MAN has all of the excitement and challenge of the standard arcade game, and you get to play in the comfort and convenience of your own home. This is especially advantageous if you still plan to make an occasional appearance at the arcade to show off your great playing skills. (Little do they know that you've been practicing at home all along.)"
-Page 1 of the Pac-Man Atari Manual
at that point in 1982, you could probably argue that those words in the manual were the biggest lie ever told in gaming. When it comes to converting arcade games to the ol' 2600, obvious compromises need to be made in order to crunch out that game essence. Some games, like Space Invaders, Asteroids, Defender, Berzerk, etc, make the conversion relatively unscathed. But sometimes you just get some absolute nonsense like Pac-Man. While this game is in literally no means an accurate conversion of the arcade classic, it does show some interesting insight into Atari history both in a cultural and gamedev sense.
So like, the game pretty much shares gameplay similarities with the arcade version and that's kind of it. You eat dots and avoid ghosts that chase you, but compared to the arcade the ghost AI is different, scoring is different, the hitboxes are different, the maze is different, you get the idea. The maze isn't even like a bastardized facsimile of the original, it's just a bunch of circles in a grid. The hitboxes for actually eating thepellets video wafers seem to be a lot smaller and more precise than the hitbox for touching ghosts which makes things feel kind of inconsistent since you gotta be further forward towards pellets video wafers in order for them to actually count as eaten whereas the ghosts touch any pixel of you and pac man dies right then and there. At least on the control front things still feel responsive and snappy. There are only 8 different game variations here, and they just change how fast Pac-Man and the Ghosts can move to somewhat alter difficulty. I found that Game 6 is the fastest for both and even then it's still not that fast, so that's my rec if you want the most engaging Pac-Man gameplay. The slowest ghost speed is designed for younger children apparently, and at that speed the only way the ghosts will ever get you is if you actively try and get yourself killed which is awesome. Also this is probably just a me thing but using the stiff Atari joystick to try and quickly maneuver Pac-Man definitely hurts my hands after a little while. If there are any boomers on this site reading this please let me know of any proper Atari controller holding tech because I still haven't figured out how to use it in both a comfortable and consistently functioning way just yet.
If you look at this game solely through the lens of how accurate of a conversion this is, it's pretty dire. But ngl this game is pretty cool to look at retrospectively. Atari crunched the fuck out of one guy in 6 months to make something they KNEW would sell millions on brand alone (and sell it did, this is the best-selling game on the system), and so within those constraints the guy likely chose to go for preserving what he believed to be the essence of Pac-Man, rather than trying to make a straight conversion with no proper time or resources. Honestly, the essence still comes through pretty well even in this conversion, and there are probably a solid amount of the 8 million copies sold were probably satisfied casual customers just trying to get their fill of eating dots and chasing ghosts without much care towards the details. It's also just that by 1982 the Atari 2600 was already roughly 5 years old, and Pac-Man was already 2, and many other people had understood standards of what they should be expecting from a first-party conversion of an immensely popular arcade title, and this definitely wasn't up to those expectations. Gaming wasn't a fad anymore, the market of core gamermen had bloomed by this point, and if there's anything we know about those guys it's that they have quite high standards for their gamin. As a result, this game (and it's partner in crime that would release at the end of the year, E.T.) could be described as one of the first games known to the general public as a "bad game", and are frequently cited by historians and fans alike as a major cause of the great American video game crash of '83 as well as being touted as some of the worst games ever made in the later internet sphere of things.
Do I think this game really deserves that kind of reputation though? I mean, kind of? It's not nearly as ambitious as something like E.T. and is a pretty blatant result of Atari cutting corners to get as much easy profit on their grubby hands at the cost of making a quality product for their consumers, so it's not exactly like this game is great or misunderstood or anything imo. The Atari could absolutely have done a more direct conversion of Pac-Man, as both the Ms. Pac man port and plenty of 2600 homebrew can prove, so it's not like it was entirely the hardware at fault either. I just think that the end product is such a fascinating result of so many factors that it's hard not to be curious about it. It will obviously never happen, but I do wish Namco would reference this bizarro version of Pac-Man or include it in compilations as a historical curio or something. If they had a 2600 pac-man skin in a championship edition game or something I would absolutely pop the fuck off ngl. I definitely still wouldn't really recommend it to anyone outside of the curious gaming historians out there in this day and age, but an absolute bottom-of-the-barrel irredeemable worst-game-ever-made this game is certainly not.
-Page 1 of the Pac-Man Atari Manual
at that point in 1982, you could probably argue that those words in the manual were the biggest lie ever told in gaming. When it comes to converting arcade games to the ol' 2600, obvious compromises need to be made in order to crunch out that game essence. Some games, like Space Invaders, Asteroids, Defender, Berzerk, etc, make the conversion relatively unscathed. But sometimes you just get some absolute nonsense like Pac-Man. While this game is in literally no means an accurate conversion of the arcade classic, it does show some interesting insight into Atari history both in a cultural and gamedev sense.
So like, the game pretty much shares gameplay similarities with the arcade version and that's kind of it. You eat dots and avoid ghosts that chase you, but compared to the arcade the ghost AI is different, scoring is different, the hitboxes are different, the maze is different, you get the idea. The maze isn't even like a bastardized facsimile of the original, it's just a bunch of circles in a grid. The hitboxes for actually eating the
If you look at this game solely through the lens of how accurate of a conversion this is, it's pretty dire. But ngl this game is pretty cool to look at retrospectively. Atari crunched the fuck out of one guy in 6 months to make something they KNEW would sell millions on brand alone (and sell it did, this is the best-selling game on the system), and so within those constraints the guy likely chose to go for preserving what he believed to be the essence of Pac-Man, rather than trying to make a straight conversion with no proper time or resources. Honestly, the essence still comes through pretty well even in this conversion, and there are probably a solid amount of the 8 million copies sold were probably satisfied casual customers just trying to get their fill of eating dots and chasing ghosts without much care towards the details. It's also just that by 1982 the Atari 2600 was already roughly 5 years old, and Pac-Man was already 2, and many other people had understood standards of what they should be expecting from a first-party conversion of an immensely popular arcade title, and this definitely wasn't up to those expectations. Gaming wasn't a fad anymore, the market of core gamermen had bloomed by this point, and if there's anything we know about those guys it's that they have quite high standards for their gamin. As a result, this game (and it's partner in crime that would release at the end of the year, E.T.) could be described as one of the first games known to the general public as a "bad game", and are frequently cited by historians and fans alike as a major cause of the great American video game crash of '83 as well as being touted as some of the worst games ever made in the later internet sphere of things.
Do I think this game really deserves that kind of reputation though? I mean, kind of? It's not nearly as ambitious as something like E.T. and is a pretty blatant result of Atari cutting corners to get as much easy profit on their grubby hands at the cost of making a quality product for their consumers, so it's not exactly like this game is great or misunderstood or anything imo. The Atari could absolutely have done a more direct conversion of Pac-Man, as both the Ms. Pac man port and plenty of 2600 homebrew can prove, so it's not like it was entirely the hardware at fault either. I just think that the end product is such a fascinating result of so many factors that it's hard not to be curious about it. It will obviously never happen, but I do wish Namco would reference this bizarro version of Pac-Man or include it in compilations as a historical curio or something. If they had a 2600 pac-man skin in a championship edition game or something I would absolutely pop the fuck off ngl. I definitely still wouldn't really recommend it to anyone outside of the curious gaming historians out there in this day and age, but an absolute bottom-of-the-barrel irredeemable worst-game-ever-made this game is certainly not.
2017
hataraku ufoooo~~~
its a chill fun time bein a lil scrimblo ufo guy stacking things for people. It's short and sweet, doesn't overstay its welcome, has those feel-good comfy vibes that HAL Labs know how to do so well, and there are enough optional challenges to keep invested players busy and encourage learning how to get good at stacking shit. The multiplayer seems like it would be a lot of fun, especially if you are in an environment where you have frequent downtime with the homies, but I am but a lone samurai so I couldn't try the multiplayer for myself. It's only like 9 bucks, it's absolutely worth a play if you got some switch funds lying around.
its a chill fun time bein a lil scrimblo ufo guy stacking things for people. It's short and sweet, doesn't overstay its welcome, has those feel-good comfy vibes that HAL Labs know how to do so well, and there are enough optional challenges to keep invested players busy and encourage learning how to get good at stacking shit. The multiplayer seems like it would be a lot of fun, especially if you are in an environment where you have frequent downtime with the homies, but I am but a lone samurai so I couldn't try the multiplayer for myself. It's only like 9 bucks, it's absolutely worth a play if you got some switch funds lying around.
I genuinely can't think of many other game series that have it as good as the Wonder Boy/Monster World lineage of games. From having every game of the original series be a well-revered classic among those that have played them, their lineage being preserved by M2 in the wonderful Sega Ages 2500 collection, and the Dotemu remaster of Dragons Trap that was made with more love for the source material and attention to detail towards it than most AAA remakes these days, Wonder Boy fans have been and continue to be eating fucking phenomenally. Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is absolutely no different, being a fantastic tribute to a series that's already so respected and beloved among the retro gamermen.
This game continues to evolve the style of open-ended yet still focused and linear design of Dragon's Trap and Monster World. It definitely leans towards the whole "metroidvania"-y style of genre moreso here than in those other games, but it still doesn't really fall in the design conventions of that genre all too well. The animal transformations return from Dragon's Trap (you can now play as the pig!), and unlike that game where most of the transformations were relegated to their own sections of the game, here you can switch between any of the 6 different forms you can earn on the fly whenever you want. There's the Pig that can sniff for secrets and use magic, the Snake that can go in tight passages and climb grass walls, the Frog that can use its tongue as a grappling hook, the Lion which can dash through blocks, the Dragon that can fly and breathe fire, and the Boy that can use a series of air-dashes. Each form has their own time to shine in the various levels, as the level layouts make the most out of each ability that you can use, with plenty of secrets throughout. If anything I do wish that there was more taken from Monster World 4, as I felt like having a changable Pepelogoo companion that could interact with each form in a unique way would have been cool. Designwise, it just feels like the culmination of what would happen if Dragon's Trap and Monster World were freed of their technical limitations, yet still designed in a very old-school traditional way.
The Monster World games are also known for their tight cohesion and continuity with one another, and despite not explicitly carrying the Wonder Boy name in its title, this game continues to have all the callbacks to previous titles as you would expect. The final dungeon from Monster Land is still here, each of the main sacred relics are artifacts from previous games, hell the in-game sanctuary is even adorned with stain-glass windows depicting all the previous heroes from games gone by. It's not so in-your-face that playing the previous games is required reading, but I would say that series familiarity will make this game hit like 10x harder than it would be if you went in blind.
And the music, oh my GOD the music dude. From the goddamn TITLE SCREEN I knew I was in for a fucking good OST. They literally got the whole ass avengers of game composers to make new tunes and arrange existing Wonder Boy tracks. They got Keiki Kobayashi, Yuzo Koshiro, Motoi Sakuraba, Michiru Yamane, and Takeshi Yanagawa in the kitchen to make some absolute bangers for this game alongside the studios in-house composer, Cédric Joder assisting with arrangements. Everyone on the sound team is firing on all cylinders, giving this game one of the best god damn game soundtracks I have ever listened to.
The game is just a banger, through and through. My only real gripes can be with the games length being a bit longer than my personal preferences for a Monster World game, mostly due to some sections having a few more mandatory subsections than was really necessary imo. The haunted house section was also a bit of a low point but that could have just been me being stupid and taking way too long to figure out the puzzles. If you are a fan of the Monster World series, this is such a no-brainer must-play that you've probably already went through this by now lmfao. If you enjoy classic open-ended sidescrollers, the whole Monster World series is seriously worth your time. Most fans of other game series would kill to be able to eat even half as good as Monster World fans do.
This game continues to evolve the style of open-ended yet still focused and linear design of Dragon's Trap and Monster World. It definitely leans towards the whole "metroidvania"-y style of genre moreso here than in those other games, but it still doesn't really fall in the design conventions of that genre all too well. The animal transformations return from Dragon's Trap (you can now play as the pig!), and unlike that game where most of the transformations were relegated to their own sections of the game, here you can switch between any of the 6 different forms you can earn on the fly whenever you want. There's the Pig that can sniff for secrets and use magic, the Snake that can go in tight passages and climb grass walls, the Frog that can use its tongue as a grappling hook, the Lion which can dash through blocks, the Dragon that can fly and breathe fire, and the Boy that can use a series of air-dashes. Each form has their own time to shine in the various levels, as the level layouts make the most out of each ability that you can use, with plenty of secrets throughout. If anything I do wish that there was more taken from Monster World 4, as I felt like having a changable Pepelogoo companion that could interact with each form in a unique way would have been cool. Designwise, it just feels like the culmination of what would happen if Dragon's Trap and Monster World were freed of their technical limitations, yet still designed in a very old-school traditional way.
The Monster World games are also known for their tight cohesion and continuity with one another, and despite not explicitly carrying the Wonder Boy name in its title, this game continues to have all the callbacks to previous titles as you would expect. The final dungeon from Monster Land is still here, each of the main sacred relics are artifacts from previous games, hell the in-game sanctuary is even adorned with stain-glass windows depicting all the previous heroes from games gone by. It's not so in-your-face that playing the previous games is required reading, but I would say that series familiarity will make this game hit like 10x harder than it would be if you went in blind.
And the music, oh my GOD the music dude. From the goddamn TITLE SCREEN I knew I was in for a fucking good OST. They literally got the whole ass avengers of game composers to make new tunes and arrange existing Wonder Boy tracks. They got Keiki Kobayashi, Yuzo Koshiro, Motoi Sakuraba, Michiru Yamane, and Takeshi Yanagawa in the kitchen to make some absolute bangers for this game alongside the studios in-house composer, Cédric Joder assisting with arrangements. Everyone on the sound team is firing on all cylinders, giving this game one of the best god damn game soundtracks I have ever listened to.
The game is just a banger, through and through. My only real gripes can be with the games length being a bit longer than my personal preferences for a Monster World game, mostly due to some sections having a few more mandatory subsections than was really necessary imo. The haunted house section was also a bit of a low point but that could have just been me being stupid and taking way too long to figure out the puzzles. If you are a fan of the Monster World series, this is such a no-brainer must-play that you've probably already went through this by now lmfao. If you enjoy classic open-ended sidescrollers, the whole Monster World series is seriously worth your time. Most fans of other game series would kill to be able to eat even half as good as Monster World fans do.
1980
Usually when it comes to Atari 2600 ports from the arcade there's usually a lot of compromises that have to be made in order for the game to even be mfin legible, let alone carry the same game feel. Luckily for Atari, Space Invaders is a game so popular and simple that it can make the jump with primarily frivolous changes.
The core gameplay here is the same space invading as it always has been. Only one shot from your guy can appear on-screen, waves of invaders coming down that increase in speed as their numbers fall, blocks to hide behind, if they reach the bottom it's game over, a bonus ship comes by periodically for extra points, yadda yadda. Some primary changes from the arcade include the fact that the ship can't move entirely across the screen on both sides which makes prioritizing the right side way more important than the left, the number of invaders per level has been cut from 5 rows of 11 invaders to 6 rows of 5 invaders, and the scoring is different between the two. The secret of hitting the bonus ship on the 23rd shot to get extra points is also entirely absent from this conversion, so score junkie shot-counters won't get much practice from playing this. They did add some interesting new game modes to shake things up though, such as the ability to make the game have any combination of moving shields, zigzagging enemy bullets, super speed enemy bullets (but no extra speed on yours because fuck you i guess), and invisible invaders. The moving shields and zigzagging bullets honestly give the game a bit of extra freshness, but the other two modes just feel too unfair against the player for me to have any sort of fun with em. There are also a ton of two player modes that are good fun with a friend. Each combination of modes is represented as its own distinct game number so there's 110 different game types you gotta flip through. Make sure to keep that manual handy to know which one is which!
While it definitely seems like the nuances between this game and the arcade version would make it pretty crummy for actual score practice at home, I don't really think that many people buying this in its time really cared about that kind of thing. The core game feel is close enough to the arcade that I'd say it's a good port. Hell, I bet most people didn't even notice there were differences and were just happy to play some space invaders without throwing endless quarters in a machine. It's no wonder this game wound up being the second best selling game on the system.
The core gameplay here is the same space invading as it always has been. Only one shot from your guy can appear on-screen, waves of invaders coming down that increase in speed as their numbers fall, blocks to hide behind, if they reach the bottom it's game over, a bonus ship comes by periodically for extra points, yadda yadda. Some primary changes from the arcade include the fact that the ship can't move entirely across the screen on both sides which makes prioritizing the right side way more important than the left, the number of invaders per level has been cut from 5 rows of 11 invaders to 6 rows of 5 invaders, and the scoring is different between the two. The secret of hitting the bonus ship on the 23rd shot to get extra points is also entirely absent from this conversion, so score junkie shot-counters won't get much practice from playing this. They did add some interesting new game modes to shake things up though, such as the ability to make the game have any combination of moving shields, zigzagging enemy bullets, super speed enemy bullets (but no extra speed on yours because fuck you i guess), and invisible invaders. The moving shields and zigzagging bullets honestly give the game a bit of extra freshness, but the other two modes just feel too unfair against the player for me to have any sort of fun with em. There are also a ton of two player modes that are good fun with a friend. Each combination of modes is represented as its own distinct game number so there's 110 different game types you gotta flip through. Make sure to keep that manual handy to know which one is which!
While it definitely seems like the nuances between this game and the arcade version would make it pretty crummy for actual score practice at home, I don't really think that many people buying this in its time really cared about that kind of thing. The core game feel is close enough to the arcade that I'd say it's a good port. Hell, I bet most people didn't even notice there were differences and were just happy to play some space invaders without throwing endless quarters in a machine. It's no wonder this game wound up being the second best selling game on the system.
2000
I am a massive sucker for those colorful 1999/2000 Y2K aesthetics and by god does this game deliver that in spades. Stylistically this game is awesome, with some insanely cool cool character designs done by Ippei Gyoubu, an artist that does hella rad work. The visuals are that perfect level of dreamcast low-poly chonkiness mixed with an assortment of pop colors all over the place. Aesthetically and stylistically, this game owns.
While there is a plot involving two random kids getting yote into their TV into coolcooltoonland where everything must be settled by shmooving danceoffs, the plot really isn't the most coherent and seems like it serves as more a means to an end, that end being to show off the aforementioned rad ass character designs and world. Plot points and new characters get thrown around left and right, and the main point isn't to think about it and just enjoy the colorful craziness that each chapter offers.
That all being said the actual rhythm gameplay is pretty ho-hum. There's a big circle with various button inputs that you gotta move the cursor with the stick and press the button to make the input happen. My only gripes with it are really the fact that I can't do the edge-of-the-circle slide moves to save my life which ruins all my combos and sometimes when things get busy it's really hard to sight-read what the hell the game wants you to do even if the pattern and rhythm is quite simple. The game is hella forgiving though both with timing windows and how close your cursor actually needs to be to make a hit count so it's not all too bad. This game even supports the samba de amigo maracas officially! (though it's quite tiring to play that way and the game actually does have to handicap its own gameplay to make it work, but hey!) The setlist is also quite existent, nothing super offensive to listen to but also nothing that I would ever go looking up the OST for.
It's def style-over-substance at the end of the day but yanno that doesn't stop it from being cool cool. Honestly if the soundtrack was as cracked as the visual design this would have been an easy 4 for sure. It's crazy to me that this game was made by SNK of all people because this looks and plays so unlike ANYTHING else they have made before that it's shocking to see their logo on here. Considering this was made like the exact same year SNK imploded in on themselves I wonder if this was some effort to diversify their game lineup outside of the Neo Geo that was just done too late or something. There's surprisingly not a mobygames page for this that I can quickly scan the credits of, but I wonder if this was made by a veteran team or a team made out of new talent... Apparently there was going to be an english localization of this at its time, but the aforementioned SNK implosion kind of put a stop to that. There's a fan translation of decent quality out there by now, so if you have the means to play this, I would def suggest giving it a shot if not just to admire the visuals.
put a team of mfers from this game in the next KOF, cowards
While there is a plot involving two random kids getting yote into their TV into coolcooltoonland where everything must be settled by shmooving danceoffs, the plot really isn't the most coherent and seems like it serves as more a means to an end, that end being to show off the aforementioned rad ass character designs and world. Plot points and new characters get thrown around left and right, and the main point isn't to think about it and just enjoy the colorful craziness that each chapter offers.
That all being said the actual rhythm gameplay is pretty ho-hum. There's a big circle with various button inputs that you gotta move the cursor with the stick and press the button to make the input happen. My only gripes with it are really the fact that I can't do the edge-of-the-circle slide moves to save my life which ruins all my combos and sometimes when things get busy it's really hard to sight-read what the hell the game wants you to do even if the pattern and rhythm is quite simple. The game is hella forgiving though both with timing windows and how close your cursor actually needs to be to make a hit count so it's not all too bad. This game even supports the samba de amigo maracas officially! (though it's quite tiring to play that way and the game actually does have to handicap its own gameplay to make it work, but hey!) The setlist is also quite existent, nothing super offensive to listen to but also nothing that I would ever go looking up the OST for.
It's def style-over-substance at the end of the day but yanno that doesn't stop it from being cool cool. Honestly if the soundtrack was as cracked as the visual design this would have been an easy 4 for sure. It's crazy to me that this game was made by SNK of all people because this looks and plays so unlike ANYTHING else they have made before that it's shocking to see their logo on here. Considering this was made like the exact same year SNK imploded in on themselves I wonder if this was some effort to diversify their game lineup outside of the Neo Geo that was just done too late or something. There's surprisingly not a mobygames page for this that I can quickly scan the credits of, but I wonder if this was made by a veteran team or a team made out of new talent... Apparently there was going to be an english localization of this at its time, but the aforementioned SNK implosion kind of put a stop to that. There's a fan translation of decent quality out there by now, so if you have the means to play this, I would def suggest giving it a shot if not just to admire the visuals.
put a team of mfers from this game in the next KOF, cowards
lmfao i didn't even realize this shit had a backloggd page, ive played this ages ago lets go
it's a tech demo sent to devs to showcase what the gamecube can do. There are 7 different rooms that each focus on a specific technical feature that the Gamecube can easily do whereas previous hardware would have struggled, all themed around one big nintendo-y princess peachy castle.
There are showcases for high-resolution textures, bump-mapping, anti-aliasing, local light sources, texture projection, environment mapping, and large amounts of on-screen objects. Rather than having each demonstration be its own bland tech demo interface, they are integrated dynamically within each room of the castle. What better way to demonstrate large textures like a large mural covering the walls and ceiling? How else could you emphasize environmental mapping than using a giant reflective metal mario statue, or showing local lighting in a lowly-lit cave with swaying overhead lamps? Even in making something not to be seen by the general public, there's still the usual amounts of polish and charm that Nintendo has in their full-fledged titles.
Shoutouts to whoever dumped this guy for anyone with emulators/modded systems to explore, because I def have a soft spot for tech demos like this. While it's certainly not a game in any sense as there's no objective or goal, just tech demos, I think if this was put in a pack-in demo disc with like a few other game demos and videos at launch people would fondly remember this little showcase. They absolutely could have done that too, given the fact that gamecube discs couldn't have been that expensive to make and it didn't have a pack-in game traditionally. Maybe in another timeline we would all be asking for the red arrow to be in smash bros...
it's a tech demo sent to devs to showcase what the gamecube can do. There are 7 different rooms that each focus on a specific technical feature that the Gamecube can easily do whereas previous hardware would have struggled, all themed around one big nintendo-y princess peachy castle.
There are showcases for high-resolution textures, bump-mapping, anti-aliasing, local light sources, texture projection, environment mapping, and large amounts of on-screen objects. Rather than having each demonstration be its own bland tech demo interface, they are integrated dynamically within each room of the castle. What better way to demonstrate large textures like a large mural covering the walls and ceiling? How else could you emphasize environmental mapping than using a giant reflective metal mario statue, or showing local lighting in a lowly-lit cave with swaying overhead lamps? Even in making something not to be seen by the general public, there's still the usual amounts of polish and charm that Nintendo has in their full-fledged titles.
Shoutouts to whoever dumped this guy for anyone with emulators/modded systems to explore, because I def have a soft spot for tech demos like this. While it's certainly not a game in any sense as there's no objective or goal, just tech demos, I think if this was put in a pack-in demo disc with like a few other game demos and videos at launch people would fondly remember this little showcase. They absolutely could have done that too, given the fact that gamecube discs couldn't have been that expensive to make and it didn't have a pack-in game traditionally. Maybe in another timeline we would all be asking for the red arrow to be in smash bros...
1998
Interesting game, but not really my personal jam for 2D platformin. Whereas Wario Land 1 was more of a straightforward level based platformer akin to the Mario Land games that it piggybacked on, with the extra gimmick of being graded based off of how many coins you were able to collect, this game abstracts itself even further from its parent(?) series.
Most notably is that in this game Wario must have eaten some crazy kind of garlic or something because he is invincible now. There aren't any bottomless pits, and no matter how many times Wario gets smacked, slapped, roasted, frozen, squashed, or stretched, he cannot die. While there are certainly benefits to immortality, Wario Land 2 taught me that such a blessing can really be a curse. The level and game design has been fundamentally changed as a result, and now things are much more slow and explorative. Finding secrets is the real aim of the game here, as trying to straight-shot through the levels will only let you access 25 out of the whopping 51 levels that this game contains. As there's no threat of failure or death, the game really wants you to take your time combing the levels to find secret treasures and exits by leaving no door unvisited, no coin ungrabbed, and no wall/floor tile unchecked.
That isn't to say that there's zero punishment or challenge in this game, as while getting hit won't diminish any of Wario's health or make him any less capable than he normally is, it will put him in a cardiac arrest state for a few seconds while launching him with knockback force that makes the Belmont clan look like they have iron boots. Some enemies will instead change Wario's state like flame guys that will turn him into a fireball that can break blocks, hammer guys that will smash him into a bouncy spring form which can jump higher, hydraulic presses that flatten the lad into a pancake that can flutter, penguin lookin mfers that can make Wario drunk, and so on and so forth. You really don't know which enemies will knock you on your ass and which ones are actually powerups until you get hit.
All of this comes together to just kinda make a game that felt really annoying to play tbh. Since there's no mechanical punishment for getting hit the game usually punishes mishaps by resetting your progress whether that be by putting Wario in a state where you'd have to go back and revert or just by knocking you back down to the ground where you gotta get back to where you were before. Obviously, even in platformers with health systems mistakes commonly get punished by resetting progress by way of like checkpoints if you die or whatnot, but that's usually an automated process whereas here in Wario Land there are points where if you fuck up, you gotta drag your ass back to the starting line before you can try again. This is most egregious in the bosses, as there are a lot of bosses that punish any hit by forcing you out of the boss chamber, resetting the fight from square one no matter how far you initially got. For a game with an invincible protagonist, there's a surprisingly low margin for error in some of these levels. It makes an already slowly designed game feel even more sluggish, and my goopy gamer brain already isn't the biggest fan of slower, more explorative 2D platformers.
It still has that goofy wario charm that's all in good fun, and Captain Syrup is a fun antagonist. Instead of your typical victory animation or whatever, Wario just front-faces to look directly at you upon clearing any level to let you know what you've done. While I did get most of the endings on this playthrough, if I had this as a kid I guarantee you I would only have seen the default 25-level ending and nothing else. Definitely not my favorite game out there, but I still respect its experimentation with the platformer genre and its quirky charm.
Most notably is that in this game Wario must have eaten some crazy kind of garlic or something because he is invincible now. There aren't any bottomless pits, and no matter how many times Wario gets smacked, slapped, roasted, frozen, squashed, or stretched, he cannot die. While there are certainly benefits to immortality, Wario Land 2 taught me that such a blessing can really be a curse. The level and game design has been fundamentally changed as a result, and now things are much more slow and explorative. Finding secrets is the real aim of the game here, as trying to straight-shot through the levels will only let you access 25 out of the whopping 51 levels that this game contains. As there's no threat of failure or death, the game really wants you to take your time combing the levels to find secret treasures and exits by leaving no door unvisited, no coin ungrabbed, and no wall/floor tile unchecked.
That isn't to say that there's zero punishment or challenge in this game, as while getting hit won't diminish any of Wario's health or make him any less capable than he normally is, it will put him in a cardiac arrest state for a few seconds while launching him with knockback force that makes the Belmont clan look like they have iron boots. Some enemies will instead change Wario's state like flame guys that will turn him into a fireball that can break blocks, hammer guys that will smash him into a bouncy spring form which can jump higher, hydraulic presses that flatten the lad into a pancake that can flutter, penguin lookin mfers that can make Wario drunk, and so on and so forth. You really don't know which enemies will knock you on your ass and which ones are actually powerups until you get hit.
All of this comes together to just kinda make a game that felt really annoying to play tbh. Since there's no mechanical punishment for getting hit the game usually punishes mishaps by resetting your progress whether that be by putting Wario in a state where you'd have to go back and revert or just by knocking you back down to the ground where you gotta get back to where you were before. Obviously, even in platformers with health systems mistakes commonly get punished by resetting progress by way of like checkpoints if you die or whatnot, but that's usually an automated process whereas here in Wario Land there are points where if you fuck up, you gotta drag your ass back to the starting line before you can try again. This is most egregious in the bosses, as there are a lot of bosses that punish any hit by forcing you out of the boss chamber, resetting the fight from square one no matter how far you initially got. For a game with an invincible protagonist, there's a surprisingly low margin for error in some of these levels. It makes an already slowly designed game feel even more sluggish, and my goopy gamer brain already isn't the biggest fan of slower, more explorative 2D platformers.
It still has that goofy wario charm that's all in good fun, and Captain Syrup is a fun antagonist. Instead of your typical victory animation or whatever, Wario just front-faces to look directly at you upon clearing any level to let you know what you've done. While I did get most of the endings on this playthrough, if I had this as a kid I guarantee you I would only have seen the default 25-level ending and nothing else. Definitely not my favorite game out there, but I still respect its experimentation with the platformer genre and its quirky charm.
between this and the crew, this really is the year of playing midass games under the motivation of "ah fuck, guess i gotta finish this before i can't anymore". at least me and the homies were able to finish a playthrough of this with roughly 72 hours left on the clock baby
the game itself is okay, pretty unremarkable tbh. The game uses small levels instead of large dungeons to not only make things quick and snappy for portable play with friends/randos but also to add some weird element of grindiness to it. The big gimmick of this game are the various different costumes that you and your companions can wear to get various perks, which on one hand, yeah it certainly makes it a bit more personalized, but on the other you need to make the costumes with materials and you only get ONE mfin material per level at random which means time to hit that grindhouse if you want that tingle outfit, pig. I can't imagine how mind-numbing it would be to 100% this, doing the same dungeon levels over and over with randos of varying levels of cooperation just to try and get that 1/3 rare item. blegh
the real memorable moments really aren't from the game itself, but just from fucking about with the boys ngl. you'd think that 3 minds working to finish a zelda dungeon would mean we'd be 3 times as smart, but it really ended up being 3 links each taking one third of the singular collective braincell as we all bumbledumped our way through the levels. Shenanigans can and will ensue, as it's really easy to just be a little shit in this game. Picking up other players without their consent, trying to nab or use items in dubiously humorous ways, wearing some dumbass outfit that can actively hinder progress (shoutouts to the bomb suit baby), theres just a lot of ways to make this game either really funny or hair-rippingly irritating depending on your groups sense of humor. I can't really imagine it would be that fun if you tried to play this alone or with randos online, your friends definitely make or break the experience for sure.
It's not like this game is going anywhere when the servers get shut down, as there's still local play that's an option (you even get exclusive friendship token items when you play locally vs online), but unless you are in the particularly lucky situation where you live around or with people that still use a member of the Nintendo 3DS Family of Systems™ you are going to be shit out of luck playing this on stock hardware. Luckily, I believe the priitendo fan servers already have this games online functioning so hacked 3DS havers won't need to worry much in the future. I think you can also play this online through emulation, but me and my gang have still never been able to figure out citra netplay tbh. I def want to try out the four swords games for more multiplayer zelda shenanigans (those games have a whole extra link to share the same braincell with!), but alas it was already a herculean effort for me and the gang to schedule our busy adult lives effectively enough to play this and that was just with three people...
rest in pepperoni 3DS and wii U online servers, the nintendo netcode honestly wasn't that great and it died before 360 xbox live or PS3 PSN did despite releasing 5-6 years later, but it brought a lot of smiles and good memories regardless. From the premier titles like smash 4, mario kart 7/8, and splatoon to dumpy spinoffs like this game, its shutdown will make it a great deal harder to thoroughly experience this period of Nintendo's history.
the game itself is okay, pretty unremarkable tbh. The game uses small levels instead of large dungeons to not only make things quick and snappy for portable play with friends/randos but also to add some weird element of grindiness to it. The big gimmick of this game are the various different costumes that you and your companions can wear to get various perks, which on one hand, yeah it certainly makes it a bit more personalized, but on the other you need to make the costumes with materials and you only get ONE mfin material per level at random which means time to hit that grindhouse if you want that tingle outfit, pig. I can't imagine how mind-numbing it would be to 100% this, doing the same dungeon levels over and over with randos of varying levels of cooperation just to try and get that 1/3 rare item. blegh
the real memorable moments really aren't from the game itself, but just from fucking about with the boys ngl. you'd think that 3 minds working to finish a zelda dungeon would mean we'd be 3 times as smart, but it really ended up being 3 links each taking one third of the singular collective braincell as we all bumbledumped our way through the levels. Shenanigans can and will ensue, as it's really easy to just be a little shit in this game. Picking up other players without their consent, trying to nab or use items in dubiously humorous ways, wearing some dumbass outfit that can actively hinder progress (shoutouts to the bomb suit baby), theres just a lot of ways to make this game either really funny or hair-rippingly irritating depending on your groups sense of humor. I can't really imagine it would be that fun if you tried to play this alone or with randos online, your friends definitely make or break the experience for sure.
It's not like this game is going anywhere when the servers get shut down, as there's still local play that's an option (you even get exclusive friendship token items when you play locally vs online), but unless you are in the particularly lucky situation where you live around or with people that still use a member of the Nintendo 3DS Family of Systems™ you are going to be shit out of luck playing this on stock hardware. Luckily, I believe the priitendo fan servers already have this games online functioning so hacked 3DS havers won't need to worry much in the future. I think you can also play this online through emulation, but me and my gang have still never been able to figure out citra netplay tbh. I def want to try out the four swords games for more multiplayer zelda shenanigans (those games have a whole extra link to share the same braincell with!), but alas it was already a herculean effort for me and the gang to schedule our busy adult lives effectively enough to play this and that was just with three people...
rest in pepperoni 3DS and wii U online servers, the nintendo netcode honestly wasn't that great and it died before 360 xbox live or PS3 PSN did despite releasing 5-6 years later, but it brought a lot of smiles and good memories regardless. From the premier titles like smash 4, mario kart 7/8, and splatoon to dumpy spinoffs like this game, its shutdown will make it a great deal harder to thoroughly experience this period of Nintendo's history.
2003
okay actually what the fuck? what the dog doin
This games fuckin weird bro. Pretty much every individual part of this game goes for a completely different tone, and it all comes together as the gaming equivalent of eating paste made out of bananas, peas, and sardines. The visuals are made up of reasonably solid looking (albiet framerate-chugging) levels populated by uncanny-looking people. The writing is immensely crass and immature, with a wise-cracking snarky dog interacting with a myriad of cheesy stereotypes with enough poop/fart/sex jokes added in to make any middling dreamworks movie blush. The soundtrack ranges from bumping techno jingles to ambient music that straight up astral projects me to another plane of existence. Our doggy protagonist moves and animates with a shockingly realistic attention to detail compared to other cartoony platformers. It really does feel like the games director, writers, animators, composers, and designers all misunderstood the assignment in their own unique way, making the game an absolute tonal rollercoaster. And that's not even considering the unfittingly eerie and morbid ending.
The thing is though, the actual core game is a pretty solid collectathon, and the more I played it and got used to the serial-killer vibes the game has, the more I honestly enjoyed it. It really did feel like there was a lot of genuine thought in analyzing what dogs do and how to convert them into palpable game mechanics. Like dogs usually just beg, retrieve stuff for people, piss and shit everywhere, dig around in the mud, bark at things, sniff around random places, and eat potentially questionable food from god knows where. All of those aspects of being a dog and more are covered in this game, and the main gameplay of doing dog things to accomplish tasks to earn bones to progress is just as fun as collecting progress mcguffins in any other collectathon.
The game is weird, but it's not half-assed shovelware. If anything, the bizarre vibes make this game certainly hard to ever forget, and I could definitely see this game leaving an impact on me in many different ways if I had played it growing up. It definitely has a cult following, and I can honestly see why. Give it a shot if you enjoy some absolute strange fuckshit. Sasuga europe
This games fuckin weird bro. Pretty much every individual part of this game goes for a completely different tone, and it all comes together as the gaming equivalent of eating paste made out of bananas, peas, and sardines. The visuals are made up of reasonably solid looking (albiet framerate-chugging) levels populated by uncanny-looking people. The writing is immensely crass and immature, with a wise-cracking snarky dog interacting with a myriad of cheesy stereotypes with enough poop/fart/sex jokes added in to make any middling dreamworks movie blush. The soundtrack ranges from bumping techno jingles to ambient music that straight up astral projects me to another plane of existence. Our doggy protagonist moves and animates with a shockingly realistic attention to detail compared to other cartoony platformers. It really does feel like the games director, writers, animators, composers, and designers all misunderstood the assignment in their own unique way, making the game an absolute tonal rollercoaster. And that's not even considering the unfittingly eerie and morbid ending.
The thing is though, the actual core game is a pretty solid collectathon, and the more I played it and got used to the serial-killer vibes the game has, the more I honestly enjoyed it. It really did feel like there was a lot of genuine thought in analyzing what dogs do and how to convert them into palpable game mechanics. Like dogs usually just beg, retrieve stuff for people, piss and shit everywhere, dig around in the mud, bark at things, sniff around random places, and eat potentially questionable food from god knows where. All of those aspects of being a dog and more are covered in this game, and the main gameplay of doing dog things to accomplish tasks to earn bones to progress is just as fun as collecting progress mcguffins in any other collectathon.
The game is weird, but it's not half-assed shovelware. If anything, the bizarre vibes make this game certainly hard to ever forget, and I could definitely see this game leaving an impact on me in many different ways if I had played it growing up. It definitely has a cult following, and I can honestly see why. Give it a shot if you enjoy some absolute strange fuckshit. Sasuga europe