Megaman (Rockman)

Vitals:

Year – 1987

Developer – Capcom

Genre – Action Platformer

Life – Not enough (28 bars)

Lives – 3

Continues – Unlimited

I remember more about the Megaman series as a whole than I do about the first instalment.  I’m actually not sure I ever played the original.  Well I’m getting the chance now. 

Turning on the game I got exactly what I was expecting, a stage select screen showing all the baddies that I was going to have to kill.  The names were also incredibly unique (Cutman, Elecman, Gustman, etc.).  Usually there’s a certain order that makes the game easier, but I don’t know what that is, so I just started on the Elecman stage (because I liked his facemask).

I was immediately presented with a task I found impossible.  Jumping up on platforms where these little spikey things would knock me off all over the place, I didn’t even get past the first screen.  Wow.  I’m either really rusty, or this is really hard – not sure which at this point.

After some time I did get to the next screen, which was the same thing, but twice as hard since the platforms were smaller – but I actually skipped through there after dying only once and having to start over.

My next stumbling block was a timing thing.  Blocks that appear and vanish and you have to jump from one to the other and just pray that it’s waiting for you so you don’t fall all the way back to the beginning. 

The rest of the level was a bit repetitive but it took me forever to finally get to the boss at the end.  Only to discover I was woefully unprepared to beat him.  I really have to work on my old school platforming skills.  I don’t think I even hit him 3 times my first 3 tries.  That electro bolt thing he threw was just too much for me to handle.  It took me a while (read a ‘long’ while) to finally beat him at his own jumping and shooting game, but I did it!  Then I discovered I could go back and play his stage again – kind of cool, but I was soooo not going back there.

Next – Bombman …

I actually breezed through this one.  The stage wasn’t that difficult, there was simple patterns to everything.  The platforming was relatively straightforward.  The only guys I had issue with were the shield guys.  I still don’t have a viable strategy for beating them without getting hit a bunch.  I am assuming that some type of weapon I don’t have yet would help.

The boss was easy, I beat him on my first run.  Switched to electro suit, blasted away trying to avoid the bombs – and that was all it took.

Next – Gutsman …

And my new nemesis … moving platforms that drop from beneath you.  I think part of the problem is that megaman drops like a stone.  He seems to go up in a slow beautiful arch, but down is another story.  Straight down, do not pass go, do not attempt to manoeuvre into a safe location.

But after getting past those the level was a breeze.  I switched over to electrozapper mode and busted in on the boss.  He wiped the floor with me – really quickly actually.  The stun when he jumped made things really difficult.  I tried a few times and just didn’t have any luck.  Then I switched suits and tried bomberman – that did it.  Those puppies do a good bit of damage, I think I only had to hit him three times and it was game over.  Nice.

Next – Cutman …

Another stage that didn’t really challenge me.  I was kind of disappointed, for a guy with a scissor on his head there wasn’t really much to this level.  I ran through most of it, got lucky with some energy drops and the only thing that stalled me was the bouncy thing just before the end of the stage.  Cutman himself was too predictable, though I did kill him then die from his returning scissors once.  It only took me one continue to get his pattern down cold and next time I beat him without being touched.  Easiest boss up to this point actually. 

Next – Iceman …

I suppose I should have known going in that I’d be slipping and sliding all over the level.  Well I didn’t, and I was surprised.  The level itself wasn’t difficult until the floating helicopters.  It’s like they throw something in to each level that is going to kill you over and over until you’re lucky enough to make it through.  I guess that’s how they can make random enemies drop free lives.

Next – (And last) Fireman

This level was actually one of the most challenging.  I spent a bunch of time farming the flying flame things for energy after jumping through all kinds of spurting flame, vertical, horizontal, flying, spinning, it never stopped.  Now I can see why the guy’s head is on fire.  The boss wasn’t a problem, basically stood there blasting with the ice beam until one of us died.  With all my cool weapons things are a snap at this point.  Yay, game over!  Or not … I’m comin’ for you Wily!

After the easy stages all I have to say about the Wily stage is: HOLY CRAP HARD.

The Good Stuff:

The gameplay is addicting, the levels are short and sweet with enough variation that you never know what’s coming.  The unlimited continues is really nice, there are even ‘save points’ during the levels where you start over (new life, not continue).  You get some variety of weapons, all of which have their uses during the game.  It adds a nice mix of strategy into a platformer. 

I also love the look of megaman when he jumps ‘Yeah!’ every time it makes me smile.  Especially jumping through the sliding door things and getting the slow motion jump through the air.

The Ugly Stuff:

Not being able to save your position when the game crashes kind of sucks.  Basically starting over because you couldn’t keep the power on long enough to finish doesn’t seem fair after all the work you have to do to get your cool new weapons.

The obscene difficulty of the mud monster thing that rips itself apart and rebuilds itself.  I think I burned out my jump button on that and still didn’t ‘quite’ get the pattern perfectly every time.

Didn’t Megaman have 8 bad guys?

Overall:

Really enjoyed the game, I was kind of thrown off with the ‘Rockman’ title, I didn’t know Megaman spawned from that.  At the end of the game he’s running along with two good arms and he isn’t a robot – interesting how things changed isn’t it?

I almost found it too easy getting through the initial stages, but Wily’s area made up for that in spades.  Having to fight all the bosses one after another to get to Wily was pretty brutal.  But I learned new strategies for dealing with them all having to fight them again and I think I could beat them in their own stages even faster now.

Not sure about replay, I don’t currently want to subject myself to playing through the whole game at one sitting again so soon, but maybe I’ll get the urge again in the future … not holding my breath though.

Breakdown:

Fun - 7/10

My fun meter broke when the game crashed after I’d killed the mud monster thing for the first time.

Gameplay – 9/10

The controls are smooth, Rockman did exactly what I wanted him to do when I wanted him to do it.  The reaction was excellent and I didn’t have any ‘how did that work’ moments

Story - 3/10

There really wasn’t much story involved.  ‘Fight for peace!’ That’s all a good guy needs right?

Audio – 7/10

I actually enjoyed some of the music in this one, maybe my hearing is going?

Visual – 8/10

Interesting graphics, nice levels, well done.

Arbitrary coolness – 30/?

Overall Score – 10/10

Dragon Warrior III

Vitals:

Year – 1988

Developer – Chunsoft

Publisher - Enix

Genre – RPG

Life – 15 hp

Lives – 1

Dragon Warrior was one of my favourite series back in the day.  It started with my obsession about beating the bad guy in the original and moved on from there.  I love RPG’s, they are just my favourite type of genre.  What I remember most of DW3 was the introduction of the class/job system that Final Fantasy had already coined.

When I turned on the game the backgrounds and sprites jumped out at me, from the corny tiled floor to the silver ‘inside’ of buildings that you can’t see until you go inside.  There is where it all started for me, and I think I’m going to love every minute of diving back in to it.

The action menu!  How could I have forgotten, pressing a button to bring up the available actions.  None of this ‘click a button and stuff automatically happens’.  If you don’t know what action to take you don’t get to do it.  The ability to use your brain in a console game instead of running around pressing the action button every 2 steps to see if something happens … what a novelty.

As the game gets started I find out my father apparently died on his quest, and that the King is allowing me to follow in his footsteps and kill the main evil bad guy that’s causing all kinds of trouble.  I’m also not supposed to go on my own, so I should hire some mercenaries at the local brothel down the road.  No problem.

Since I’m playing the game for fun, and not necessarily looking to optimize anything I started out with: Soldier, Pilgrim, Goof-off.  I kind of ignored everyone telling me not to bother with a Goof-off, because that sounded exactly like the kind of character I wanted included in my party.

The game is pretty linear to start, you have to go to a tower to get a key, then start exploring.  I did quickly rediscover why carrying around an inventory full of antidote herbs was a good idea – stupid babbles.  What is a green pile of slime doing with eyes and a mouth anyway?

 I love the monster arena.  I don’t think I won much money out of it, but betting on a long shot sometimes pays out.  The odds counter guy I found to be a waste of money, usually I’d ask him then bet the opposite way because it never seemed like the ‘smart money’ won.

I did discover why I seemed to recall that DW was a big grind fest for a lot of the time.  Gold is pretty scarce.  You aren’t killing stuff to get experience, you’re killing it to get money so you can buy the equipment that will let you survive when the bigger stuff starts beating on you.  Of course my game experience might have been compromised by my Goof-off … most of my battles went something like this:

T slaps monster around

Monster beats the crap out of Beef

Cutie casts a helpful spell

Genius flashes a big smile!

Monster pounds Cutie into the ground

Genius is assessing the situation

Beef pokes monster really hard!

Monster slays T

Genius does a little dance!

Cutie attempts to flee and is stopped

Genius cheers her companions on!

… and so on

I had just begun to bemoan the lack of mini-bosses when I ran in to the first one!  It seems like RPG’s nowadays you’re fighting a mini-boss every other fight.  This took quite a while before I ran in to one here.  He wasn’t anything special or fancy of course, he was just had really strong attacks and a whole ton of HP.  No patterns to learn or really much strategy involved.  It felt kind of anti-climatic.  In the end it also wouldn’t let me summarily execute him, I had to choose the option to ‘let him go’.  Psh – I was so ready to knock that guy’s head off.

I was even excited when I ran into the crazy hydra in the cave as the next mini-boss.  It happened so quickly too.  I ran through this deserted town with a dead guy in a bed upstairs (where they all come back to life at night) and had a nice pleasure cruise, then blamo ‘save us, save us’ – just what every hero wants to hear right?  Well I tried to save them, but the scary ass hydra beat the crap out of me.  I just couldn’t take him down, he hits too hard and gets too many attacks per round.  I did get to see the game over screen for the first time though!  Which is more like a scolding screen where the king tells you to stop disgracing your father.

I ended up at this castle where an old man wants to become a young girl and everyone wants to be something they aren’t – and there is this guy on a pedestal that can revert you to level 1, but change your character class.  Kind of cool idea actually, so I ran a quick test and you keep about ½ your stats, which is nothing to sneeze at starting back at level 1 with a huge benefit.  I was getting pretty tired of my Goof-off at this point, so I figured I’d change her to something else, maybe a wizard or something.  Then I saw this ‘Sage’ class that apparently only she has access too.  So the idiots are actually the smartest guys in the world?  How cliché … awesome for me though, all that work I went through and now I’ve got this kick ass magic user out of it.  Nice trade off.

Not many stories after this point – I didn’t quite get to the end of the game this week, I’ll probably keep playing in the future just to get the coveted ‘you have completed the game’ feeling.

The Good Stuff:

Tileset RPG?  How can you go wrong with that?  Being able to save the game whenever I wanted was a big bonus.  Also not having to start over when I died was also great.  I didn’t even have to go back to my last save game, just my last save point (with everyone dead) after I lost a battle.  Progressive thinking or what?

The monsters kept me busy, gaining a level or so every area generally kept me in good stead – I didn’t have to spend a lot of time levelling up to get through the story (which is really the important part) until quite a bit later in the game.

Talking to everyone is really a must – after you do something, go back and talk to everybody, and pay attention when they mention some random thing because that’s probably the clue you need to go to the next place.  As long as you’re paying attention and listening you don’t really get stuck with the story, it leads you to where you need to go.

The return spell – pure gold.

The Ugly Stuff:

Boss battles that seem impossible.  I ended up reading around after spending a day trying to kill one of them to find out that they have a hidden ‘regen’ attribute every round, which is why battles can seem to go on forever, if you aren’t doing enough damage, you’ll never win.  Knowing that would have saved me a lot of time – something new RPG’s do great is show you the enemy health meter so you can at least gauge your progress.

A Boat with no map for a confusing world does make.  Especially when you’re trying to find some random shoals in the middle of the ocean.  At least the whole map is based on tiles so if you do some grid work you can create a search pattern … but who does that anymore?

No spell explanation made things pretty difficult, the spell names aren't even very useful.  What is more powerful, bang or boom?  A gun bangs while a bomb booms ... thats the best I can do.  

Overall:

I had a ton of fun, I love RPG’s so I have some Bias in this area, but this is definitely one that I would go back and play again and again.  While it is a bit thin in storyline, I always feel like I’m doing something important to the progression of the game.

I love the party system, and being able to re-build characters after level 20 and bump their stats and stuff?  That was great, especially trading in my Goof-off for a wayyy useful character.

Breakdown:

Fun - 9/10

My Bias shows

Gameplay – 8/10

The controls are easy to get used to – having the cursor save your last battle commands would be really great (something I love from new RPG’s).  Sword and Sorcery is all you really need for a good RPG, no special skills for each character type or anything fancy.

Story - 7/10

While there was a story behind the scenes the dialogue wasn’t the best.  I felt kind of a disconnect from the story in a lot of cases.

Audio – 6/10

Really starting to remember why I muted a lot of NES games.  While the music was entertaining for a while, the repetition was more than I could take long term

Visual – 8/10

Don’t judge the tileset by its tiles.

Arbitrary coolness – 75/?

Overall Score – 18/10

Astyanax

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.

The name?  Seriously?  I should get a reward for spelling it out so many times in this review - I'm not sure what makes it so difficult, but there it is.

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

Rush’n Attack (a.k.a Green Beret)

Vitals:

Year – 1985

Developer – Konami

Genre – Run and gun

Life – 1 hit

Lives – 5

Modes – Solo, 2P Co-Op

I decided to slip out of my comfort zone and start playing some games that I had heard of, but might not have played (or don’t remember playing).  So all I really know about this game is that you’re one guy with a death wish breaking in to the bad guy’s base (which are the soviets I think) to kill everyone/everything.  Sounds like fun.

As usual I just got right in to the game without further preparation.  Usually I kind of knew what was going on, this game wasn’t really that hard to pick up.  I was kind of confused starting with a knife considering the genre is ‘Run and Gun’ but I’m not going to complain.  I started stabbing guys left and right – who apparently are just happy to run up to a guy air stabbing until they get close enough to get popped.

I went up ladders, and down ladders, ran around a bit – killed a bunch of guys.  Then something occurred to me.  All these guys are carrying guns.  But they aren’t shooting at me; they just run up and try to bash in to me.  Maybe the Soviets were too cheap to buy ammunition for the weapons?  “Hey Boss, we can buy guns for everyone, or guns and ammo for half of them, what do you think?”

Not far in to the level I came across these flashing things on the ground.  Immediately I’m thinking ‘touch activated mines!’  I’m not sure how to jump though – I’d pressed both buttons and neither of them is jump.  The bad guys were just running over them – so I figured maybe they were decorations.  Run run run – BANG.  Nope, touch activated mines.  Teach me not to go with my gut.

It took me a while to get far enough to run in to the guys that try to dropkick me instead of just running in to me.  That was new, it also took me a bunch of tries to figure out how to kill them.  They can do this superman-like bouncing dropkick thing that sure makes it difficult to poke them.  I also ran in to some guys who lay on the ground, so I figured out that I can also lie on the ground and poke stuff.  How awesome is that!  My wife was laughing her head off at my running commentary.  “Oh crap I jumped on that guy’s head, this isn’t Mario.  Ah, bouncing dropkick guy is after me!  Hey, I can lie on the ground and poke people - that’s cool.  This guy has a gun – well it isn’t really a gun it’s like a bazooka or something – that doesn’t seem fair” (at which point she said that me having a knife and them having guns wasn’t fair so this seemed more reasonable.)  The bazooka is pretty cool too – it goes through people and doesn’t explode.  It also blows up mines on the ground if you lay down to shoot – double bonus.

My progress over the next few days was dismal …

Day 1: Level 2

Day 2: Level 3

Day 3: Level 2

Then I started getting really good at color recognition and I learned a few tricks for how to get past guys and such, so I did really well on day 4 and got to level 4.  Then I got stuck on level 2 again.  Finally I decided to abuse the save state function of emulators to actually make some progress to write about. 

The levels almost seemed to get easier, or maybe I just got better at them – it’s hard to say.  But I made it to the end, which actually happened sooner than I thought it would.  Of course at that point I was so tired of different coloured bad guys that I was kind of happy it was over.

The Good Stuff:

Getting through the levels was challenging, without being impossible.  The ‘bosses’ at the end of each stage were actually quite intuitive, and while they took a bit of practice weren’t all that difficult.  Getting to them and surviving was really the challenge.

It wasn’t too complicated, for a straight run and gun game all you really want to do is move forward and kill stuff – this game definitely delivered that.

The lack of weapons kind of annoyed me at first until I discovered that you have to poke certain guys for weapons to pop out.  From then on it became a matter of finding those guys and using the weapons properly.  (I actually learned this from watching the intro movie thing at the start of the game).

The Ugly Stuff:

Not being able to save progress and continue made this one of the most repetitive and difficult games I’ve played recently.  I have discovered that I really rely on being able to keep my forward progress and not have to play the whole game over and over and over again.

The lack of variety and level grinding over and over left me not wanting more, and I kind of ended this review prematurely.  I suppose as games have evolved apparently so has my attention span.  While it was amusing for a while to poke guys and babble out loud to make my wife laugh it just wasn’t lasting fun.

Overall:

Not a game I’d go back for.  Having finished it off there really isn’t much left to do.  I played through the game so many times that when it finished and started me back at the beginning again (with more lives this time) I was actually disappointed, and felt obligated to kill myself.  It didn’t look like the difficulty had altered, but I didn’t really get far the second go around, my heart just wasn’t in it.

Breakdown:

Fun – 5/10

Repetitive play started to wear me down after a few days

Gameplay – 8/10

Mechanics were quite smooth and controls made the game easy to play

Story – 1/10

What story?

Audio – 2/10

Upbeat bleeping, and bad siren sounds

Visual – 5/10

Other than different colors there wasn’t much soldier varation, backgrounds weren’t stunning

Arbitrary coolness – 1/?

Not a keeper

Overall Score – 4.6/10

Castlevania

Vitals:

Year – 1986

Developer – Konami

Genre – Platformer

Starting Life – 16 Bars

Starting Lives – 3

Continues – Unlimited!!!

I only very vaguely remember Castlevania, which is one reason I want to go back and play it.  What I do remember is:  You have a whip, you beat things to death with it, there is lots of falling in holes, you want to kill Dracula because he ate the last piece of pizza.

So, I turned on the game, and without any huge storyline or anything here I am at these fancy looking gates and walking inside this big mansion.  Way to get things rolling, who needs character development before a game even starts right?  So there’s a long walk, and I’m all tensed up in case I have to run away from zombies and stuff … nothing happens.  I get to the end of the stage and there’s a doorway waiting for me – I walk in.  Man this game is easy.

So … stairs.  You walk up them right?  I’ll pretend it didn’t take me long to figure out I had to press the up button to walk up them.  Though I’m still having problems with the walking down them, sometimes I still fall in holes because I think my guy will be smart enough to take the stairs instead of jumping. 

I learned pretty quickly to beat up all the candles and such, they drop valuable things.  At first I thought the hearts were for health and was like ‘damn I’m never going to die’.  Then I had a special weapon and wanted to use it (now tell me that UP+attack is intuitive for using a special weapon).  I was pressing all kinds of combinations of stuff, then finally it works and he whips out a knife!  Great – how did I do that again?

Now ok – how is this fair?  I have a whip, I suck at jumping, and there is this bat that can fly around wherever it wants trying to kill me?  Well it sure succeeded, humiliating me while I tried to jump and beat it with my whip.  Why doesn’t it hurt the bat to touch me?  I mean that would only make sense right?

It’s kind of cool seeing the layout of the Mansion after defeating the ‘boss’ though.  At least I know that there is an end to this and I can see how much more work I have to do to get there.

I now hate giant flying heads, and moving platforms.  One or the other is hard enough to deal with, but both at the same time? Really?  Also, one hit kills squishing spike things over my head suck too.  Even one pixel maybe touching the side of one of those is a death sentence.  They must be super powered spike trap things of DOOM!

What went on in my mind at the end of this level:  “I made it to the end!  Why won’t this door open … wait, what’s that music?  OMG giant medusa head!! And I’m trapped between her and the door.  Oh, look the continue screen.  What do you know.”

I found an interesting staircase in the next level, there was no middle.  I figured it must lead somewhere extra special so I started trying to get up on it.  I did about everything I could figure to get up on the stupid thing, but since jumping didn’t land you on staircases I couldn’t see any way to get up there.  Waste of time.  It was around this time that my wife called me; I’d been safe for a while so I left forgetting to hit the start button.  I came back and I was dead … Figures I leave it for a minute and something come along and kills me.  Whatever right, it happens … then it happened to me again when I’d left it sitting for a while.  Then I noticed, hey there is this timer thing counting down … do I win most observant person in the world or what?

I had a ton of trouble with the next few bosses. Frankenstein was crazy, I spent so long mastering a strategy, and I killed him!  Then I got hit with the last flying bullet and died.  Twice.  Then I killed him!  And my game locked up.  At that point I thought the universe was trying to tell me something.  And it was – it was trying to tell me that I should get used to frustration … I spent most of a day starting stage 15 over and over and over again.  The grim reaper guy at the end was just too much for me.  On the plus side I really got to know that stage well.

The Good Stuff:

How bad can it be, you’re going to kill a vampire.  Just pretend its Edward Cullen or something – that makes it twice as much fun.

Unlimited continues, that’s the best thing ever!

The way the special weapons are handled (after I figured out how to use them) is really cool.  It puts an extra touch of strategy in the mix when you’re trying to save a holy water and a knife drops on your head.  Then you remember, ok don’t hit that candle, and move on.

The Boss fights didn’t feel scripted, they always did something different – and the move I thought was going to be the one to beat them, turned out just getting me killed.  I really had to adapt on the fly, and while that was frustrating, boy did it give me a sense of accomplishment to finally beat down Igor and Frankie. 

The levels were just long enough to be interesting without making them too simple.  It was always a challenge to have to start a level over from the start when I died.  On the flip side, doing the Stage/Room thing (EX: Past Door 3 on Stage 2) and saving intermediate progress at the doors was excellent.  It made me go back just far enough to keep me from freaking out about dying.  Sometimes I would spend time just killing myself in different ways to figure out what worked and what didn’t in a level.

The Ugly Stuff:

The jumping mechanics were awful.  Only being able to jump up OR jump sideways was killer in a lot of situations.  Right up to the end of the game I was trying to jump backwards and control momentum while in the air (like I’m used to now).  Mastering the jump-whip and jump-special combos was pretty much essential in winning the game though – so as awful as it is you better get used to it.

I ran in to a bunch of brutal ‘how did my whip miss that guy’ stuff.  Not sure if it was bad programming or I just don’t really understand how the physics are supposed to work.  Sometimes I’d hit things I didn’t think I was going to, and in the same situation in a different area would miss completely.

Flying medusa heads suck.

Overall:

I really enjoyed the game.  My wife doesn’t think so because I was complaining a lot about being stuck and not knowing what to do – but sometimes that’s part of the fun.  I’m not sure if the game was too short, or my expectations have just changed over time.  It seems like a pretty good mix – the enemies are varied enough in different levels to keep it interesting without have too many to remember.

Aside from a few problems during gameplay it was quite engrossing.  And hey if you’re looking for replay value?  The End Game screen pops up for a few seconds, then you’re right back at the start, but starting 2x difficulty.  I think the game just figured that it couldn’t kill me enough the first time and wanted another crack at it.  “Oh, you made it!  Congratulations – Now try again, I’ll throw in more bad guys and make you twice as fragile!”

Breakdown:

Fun – 9/10

Yeah lots of fun.

Gameplay – 8/10

Some minor problems.

Story – 2/10

Must kill Dracula!  That was about it for storyline.

Audio – 2/10

Damn you death bleeps!  Stop mocking me!

Visual – 7/10

Sprites were pretty seamless.  Some nice backgrounds.  Nothing eye popping.

Arbitrary Coolness – 50/?

Three thumbs up!

Overall Score – 13/10

Afterburner

Vitals:

Year – 1987

Developer – Sega

Genre – Flight Sim/Shoot’em

Lives – 3

Continues – 0

Another one I remembered from my youth, and after being frustrated by the last couple games I decided I just wanted to kill some stuff.  So this was a great choice.  I remembered playing with a joystick though which sure made the controls a lot easier.  Unfortunately no more joystick, so doing those awesome barrel rolls required major co-ordination.

I hopped right into the cockpit on this one and started blasting away.  Planes came in from the sides, I shot them down – hey this is easy!  Then there was this bleep and a square in the distance on my radar.  Then there was a missile, then there was me crashing and burning.  Crap.

It didn’t take me long to find the Game Over screen, probably about 30 seconds.  Then I went and read the manual.  Ooohh, missiles, right.  Those squares mean shoot a heat seeking missile.  So I started to unload on these guys.  Man I wish I had a real plane that could carry 150 missiles, I’d be pretty much unstoppable.  Well, maybe not unstoppable, this game stops me pretty quickly.

It took some time to master the swooping and cutting in and out when missiles were coming at me, but it wasn’t long before I was cruising along, blasting guys out of the sky and laughing at their pathetic attempts to shoot me down.

Then something unexpected happened.  A missile showed up behind me!  I tried to outfly it, but no luck.  Kabooom.  Over and over and over and over again.  At first I thought it was some kind of special power-up since it was floating beneath my plane, but after a while randomly exploding I figured it out.  Next step … how to get rid of it?  Took me a while to realize that when I did a barrel roll the missile lost its tracking.  Awesome.

Next problem, when doing a barrel roll and there are missiles in front of you your plane stays too stationary and the enemies laugh at you while you explode into a million pieces.  So … missiles to the left of me, missiles to the right of me, missiles before me!  I think I was set up to fail.

I did come across these interesting ‘bonus’ type levels where you just absolutely demolish everything on the ground with very small chance of being destroyed.  I think I ran in to one tower and that was it the whole time I went through them.  They were pretty cool though, of course if I was an idiot and took a jet plane in a small canyon like that I wouldn’t expect to live through it.

The Good Stuff:

Being part flight sim the controls on this game were really cool.  Flying forward instead of side to side is a major difference from most plane shoot’em up games from back in the day.  Being able to almost move in three dimensions really gives you options for avoiding missiles. 

Not having to worry about anything but killing the other planes was really what I was looking for at this point.  There are no power-ups, nothing fancy, just plain killing planes and trying to survive.

The Ugly Stuff:

No continues sucks!  I’m not even sure how far through the game I actually got.  It’s hard to see much progression; the scenery is just different shades of the same scene.  Some of the shades made it really difficult to see the missiles, which basically made the stages impossible.

Not being able to move while rolling was a challenge in itself.  Of course that mostly comes from the problem of not always being able to control when I did a barrel roll.  It seemed like when I wanted to do one, it didn’t happen, and when I was trying to dodge missiles I’d go in to one and explode.

Overall:

I remember this game being tons of fun in the arcade with the special joystick, or in the cockpit style game where you actually felt like you were driving.  On the NES - not so much.  I got what I wanted out of it, which was blowing stuff up, but that gets old pretty quickly.  I was considering diving in to Afterburner 2 during this review just to see the changes but I was so burned out from shooting down planes that I just couldn’t work up the energy.

For a quick 30 minutes every now and then when you just want something to keep busy and would have fun flying a plane, this is definitely a good choice.

Basewars

Vitals:

Year – 1991

Developer – Konami/Ultra

Genre – Sports

Modes – Single Player; Two player Co-op; Two player Competitive

Back to another one of my favourites; Basewars.  For those of you who don’t know what the game is about I’ll lay it out for you, from what I remember.

Imagine baseball, in the future, played by battle ready robots.  Play too close to call?  The one who is still alive wins.  Add to that being able to upgrade/customize your team (kind of like the draft but way better) and you’re rockin.

So I was all psyched to start playing and customize my team – unfortunately I discovered pretty quickly that you can only do that in the ‘pennant’ matches which are player v/s player.  Not having a second player made that pretty difficult.  Everything else was exactly like I remembered though.

It took me a while to get the hang of things, hitting the ball was especially difficult at the start.  Why was it so difficult you ask?  Because the pitcher has control of it the whole time it’s in flight.  Ever seen a ball change direction three times?  Four?  Well if you haven’t come play this game. 

Powering up the pitch was another thing that took some practice.  I learned really quickly that throwing fast balls made for lots of opposing home runs.  The key was to fake out the batter.  Throw a ball like you’re going to hit him, then dodge it at the last second over the plate, they never see it coming.

The base wars were not as fun as I remember.  Basically pummelling the CPU into the ground wasn’t all that entertaining.  I seem to remember that as friends we had a ‘code’ for fighting these battles which involved letting the other guy stand up for a second between your rapid fire punching.  And if you have a sword, or are a flying bot, steal every base all the way to home, you can’t lose.  It’s fun turning an infield ground ball into a home run.

The Good Stuff:

The concept is great, robots fighting over bases.  The execution is pretty great too.  The pitching control and the player controls are quite well done.  You have to get good at guessing where the ball is going to land because you won’t necessarily see your bot until just before its falling.  It isn’t terribly difficult, but takes practice.

The graphics are actually pretty cool for 16-bit days, where you can see the bots close up anyway, the fielding graphics are nothing special.

I remember the customization being one of my favourite parts of the game – it’s too bad I couldn’t get in to that part of it.  Oh well – I still had a bunch of fun stomping all over the CPU players in the open season.

The Ugly Stuff:

I had a lot of trouble throwing the ball to the right place.  I would always be pressing left or right to throw to the ‘next’ base - instead I was supposed to be pressing up to throw to second.  Now this isn’t really a con of the game, being able to throw to home plate from left field is really simple and a one click button/direction – but for some reason my brain didn’t want to work that way.

The battles didn’t live up to my memories of the game.  They seemed to consist of who could press the attack button the fastest.  And the special attacks for the hoverbots were pretty brutal.

When playing the CPU on a foul/fly ball the players wouldn’t run back to their appropriate bases.  So no matter how long I took to finally throw the ball to the right places, I got outs on all of them.  I think this is a pretty big downside to playing against a computer.  I mean, it helped me win a bunch easier, but sure took some of the challenge out of the game.

When having multiple bots on base it was difficult to tell them all to run to the appropriate bases, sometimes two would go to the same place, or one would go backwards instead of the right one moving forwards.

Overall:

Definitely a two player game to get the most out of it.  It held my attention for a while just beating on the computer, but lacking that customization and second player interaction really left me wanting more.  I think that’s the same with most sports games though, they aren’t made to necessarily be played alone. 

What is really unfortunate is that there was never a sequel, and nothing like this has been done since.  Can you picture a Wii game like this?  I sure can.