Vitals:
Year – 1989
Developer – Aicom
Publisher - Jaleco
Genre – Platformer
Life – 20 hearts
Lives - 3
Continues – Unlimited (not used)
Another game that I decided to try out for the first time. It sure seems like I’ve played a lot of side scrolling kill bad guys games – hmm, maybe there’s some kind of pattern here? Will see about mixing it up for the next one.
Anyway – I was suitably impressed that the game actually starts out with a story rather than just diving in to it. You’re a high school kid with a weird ass name (bet life was rough eh?). You have weird dreams – then one day this talking butterfly girl brings you into another world and tells you to save the princess (what a novel concept). No problem, let me kill the evil wizard and get back to high school, this won’t take long at all. I possess the wonderful miracle power! And an Ax(no e?) named Bash!
Well it didn`t take me long to discover that the miracle power and the axe bash really don`t take you far in this game. I think I got to the first series of 3 jumps before I hit the game over screen – harsh …
I finally got to the end of the stage and killed the bad guy, w00t! Then I got ported to this screen with a giant man eating snake horse thing. Game Over. Do it all over again.
So I killed the giant snake monster! And the guy jumped off it`s back and tried to kill me … and succeeded. Start back at the beginning.
When I did finally get to the next level it was mostly more of the same, but they did switch up the bad guys – and they even made it a vertical scroller instead of just horizontal. Nice touch.
What I was even happier about was when I hit the Game Over screen again it let me continue on level 2! Best thing ever. Maybe I’ll get through this one without resorting to save states or something similar.
As time went on I was more and more impressed with the cut scenes, I mean – Nintendo back in the day, using animated cut scenes for story progression and character exploration? No way!
I got to the point on one level that it seemed like every time I went to jump I landed in a hole. Flying bubble things, sprouting flower things that shoot flame, flying Metroid brain like things … it was all just too much. And although I haven’t actually been able to test it accurately yet it looks like my axe can only hit one thing at a time – who decided that one? If I was swinging around a giant axe like this and two people were occupying the same space I bet you I could hit them both with one swing. Even if I didn’t kill them both, they’d both be hurting.
On that note – who decided that the axe turns in to a sword and gets STRONGER … I mean, wouldn’t an axe do more damage? Swinging an axe at a flying brain thing, and poking it with a sword seems like a no brainer to me. The game designers obviously don’t agree with me – but that just proves they’re all idiots when it comes down to it.
I was so proud of myself for beating the bad guy – the cut scene is all – “Yay I killed him!” Then it kind of turns in to … “Hahahaha, you’re going to die with me!” … then … “No Cutie don’t die!” … then … “I’ll really kill you this time!” … Best dialogue ever.Funniest thing – at the end, you see that apparently in this other world there is Faery sex slavery or something, because the princess (instead of rewarding you herself) gives you someone else to keep you happy. Nice of her isn’t it?
The Good Stuff:
It was great to finally play a story with cut scenes. It was really nice actually having some dialogue to follow and knowing what I was actually fighting for. I was even impressed by the moving sprites in the cut scenes – high tech stuff.
The levels were difficult without being impossible, and while the gameplay wasn’t the best ever there was always some kind of ‘trick’ that you had to perfect if you wanted to advance. The whole game was a learning process – which is kind of what I enjoy about a game – each trick led to another trick, and using all that knowledge to build on you eventually master the game.
The Ugly Stuff:
The axe swinging mechanics were brutal. There was no real ‘getting used to it’. It was an ‘I’ll live with it to finish the game’ kind of thing. It was slow, clunky, and only hit one thing at a time. Sometimes swinging the axe would damage me instead of damaging the guy I was attacking – never did figure out why that happened. Apparently enemies could hurt me by touching the axe.
The magic system gave me some issues too. Doing an up+attack key combo usually isn’t that bad, but it didn’t seem like it always went off when I wanted. It also took me forever to figure out how to switch spells (pause the game, press up) even after reading the manual (which wasn’t clear). Not that I spent much time switching spells, the blind one was really cool – the others I couldn’t ever find a use for.
Overall:
I had kind of a ‘meh’ experience with the game. It didn’t impress me, and I didn’t really hate it. I had some issues with the mechanics, but I made it work and got through it. I admit to abusing save states for a few of the bosses – sometimes you had to be perfect. Especially on the level with the jumping green guys and flying fish – that one was really brutal. I could never get through it without being close to death. And then trying to beat the boss … yeah that wasn’t going to happen.
Breakdown:
Fun – 6/10
While I enjoyed parts of the game, it just doesn’t have lasting appeal for me
Gameplay – 6/10
I had trouble with some of the game play all the way to the end, when a major part of the game is beating stuff with your axe, that should be seamless
Story – 7/10
The story was amusing – it was really corny in parts, but it was a nice change of pace
Audio – 2/10
More successive bleeps, while I’ve kind of gotten used to that it’s hard to be impressed
Visual – 6/10
Some of the sprites were really well done, others just weren’t. The backgrounds were hard on the eyes a lot of places
Arbitrary Coolness – 15/?
Overall Score – 7/10
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