I have a number of valuable games in my collection. Some I acquired through lucky timing, others I’ve actually shelled out for, but all of them are the result of questionable priorities. None are as valuable as my copy of Little Samson.

As of today, Little Samson is worth more than two months of rent for my small, one-bedroom apartment in a nowhere town. That’s really depressing because it both illustrates how ridiculous the collectors market is for video games and how ridiculously expensive it is ??just to afford a roof over my head for a fraction of a year.

But I don’t collect games to pretend I have some sort of valuable asset. I collect them to play and appreciate. And to demonstrate this, I put Little Samson in my NES. Then I kind of wiggled it around a bit to get it to display properly because I really need to replace m??y console’s pin connector.

Son of the shining path

Little Samson comes to us from Takeru, also known as Sur de Wave. The company was pretty short-lived, which is a massive shame. In total, they only did about four games, and Little Samson is the only one that came stateside.

It’s hard to find much information about Takeru, but another game they made for the Famicom, Cocoron, was helmed by Mega Man creator Akira Kitamura. As for Little Samson, the director here was Shinichi Yoshimoto, who was one of the designers of Ghouls ‘n Ghosts. Real Capcom royalty.

Given the company’s pedigree, it may be unsurprising that Little Samson is a good game. Perhaps not the maximum utmost, but it is Duck Tales good. It’s Super Mario Bros. 2 (US) good. Beyond that, it’s an impressive game for the NES. The graphics are solid, and the character animation has an anomalous level of detail. The characters move with a fluidit?y that seems almost impossible on the console. It flaunts it, too, with Samson doing a full twirl in the air every time he jumps. It’s practically excessive.

The clouded mind

From the outset, Little Samson gives the impression of heavy Mega Man influence. The game opens by allowing you to select from four levels, but really, this just allows ??you to select what order you play through the charac??ter tutorials.

There are four playable characters in the game that you can usually swap between during gameplay. Each one has different abilities and uses. Samson and the mouse, K.O., can climb across walls and ceilings. The dragon, Kikira, can fly and can charge her shots. The Golem, Gamm, has the most health, can walk on spikes, and has a punch that does a lot of damage. K.O. has the smallest amount of health but drops bombs as an attack. A single bomb place??d well can do catastrophic dama??ge to a boss.

Little Samson gives plenty of reasons to switch between characters. Rarely is a segment of level traversable by just one of them, but there are sometimes alternate paths that the right cha??racter can take. I don’t believe bosses have weaknesses, per se, but you can sometimes work out strategies with a specific character that can make encounters easier.

They all have their own individual h??ealth bar as well, but if a character dies??, it functions as a death for the whole party and kicks you back to the beginning of the stage you’re on. However, unless it’s Samson who dies, that character is eliminated until the end of the level. So, there’s a lot of swapping characters to try and preserve their health bars.

There are also branching paths, though I don’t think this is extensive. The only one I really know how to replicate is falling down a hole during a particular boss battle. This takes you to a sequenc??e where the bell that all the characters live in gets stolen from Samson and you have to ride a giant cra?b to a boss to get it back.

However, this time around, I wound up completely skipping an ice level midway through the game. I’m not entirely sure how I pul?led that off. Nintendo Power Issue 40 says you skip the area if you haven’t maximized Samson’s life bar, but I’m pretty sure I did. Maybe not.

Acting under orders from above

Little Samson is an all-around good time, but there are some questionable design decisions. Most are minor. But the one that sticks out most in my mind is the fact that, when you die while playing as any other character than Samson, they’re unavailable unless you either have a potion in their inventory.

Potions are essentially like E-Tanks from Mega Man 2. You use them to completely restore a character’s health. However, each character can only carry one. The po??tion goes to the character t??hat picked it up, and you can’t trade between your party members. This means that if a character is knocked out and they don’t have a potion, you can’t use them until you finish the level or hit a Game Over screen.

If Samson, on the other hand, dies, then you just get kicked back, and everything is fine. If you lose a character on a boss battle, you’re forced to retry the boss battle without that character. This can be fine in many instances, but on the last gauntlet of levels, I found myself expending my lives to hit a Game Over screen and resurrect my party. That’s really annoying and shouldn’t be necessary. Have some sympath?y for Samson.

More like Son of Sam

As for why Little Samson is so valuable, that’s a good question. While it’s no doubt a scarce game, Nintendo had a minimal print run for the NES, which former Nintendo of America President, Howard Phillips, recalls was about 10,000. Even if Little Samson was only produced i??n that amount, it’s not the only game on the console that was.

The answer is probably merely that it’s sought after because it’s always been sought after. The value of a game isn’t a mathematical equation. The concept of supply and demand only goes so far when explaining it. Before the collector’s market was really tracked and established, Little Samson was already considered valuable. So regardless of how much circulation the game has, it’s probably always going to maintain a reputation for being expensi?ve, and that ?reputation alone is going to keep the price high. Especially to people who collect as an investment, which is such an aggravating concept to me.

Ideally, Little Samson will get a re-release at some point. I’m actu??ally surprised it hasn’t yet. Folks like Limited Run Games and Retro-Bit often do reissues of rare and expensive games, and Taito (now a subsidiary of Square Enix) has been delving into its back catalog and partnering with people to have them resurrected. 

It’s possible that the rights stayed with Takeru, and no one knows who owns them now, but that’s just speculation. Hopefully, we’ll see Little Samson again sometime. ??1992 was an e?asy year for an NES game to get overlooked, and it’s a crime that it didn’t get more attention. 

For other retr??o titles you may?? have missed, click right here!

The post Little Samson on NES asks how much you’ll pay for a gem appeared first on Destructoid.

Ah, Star Wars Arcade. No, not that Star Wars Arcade game. Not that one, either. I’m talking about the 1993 Star Wars Arcade created by Sega. Except I’m not. I’m talking a??bout the 1994 port for the Sega 32X.

Ah, the Sega 32X. I own more games for that growth of a console than anyone should. One of the easiest to find, and one that I’ve owned since I picked up the console, is Star Wars Arcade, which is an expanded home port of the, well, arcade version. ??;

One thing to know is that the 32X was nowhere near as powerful when it came to 3D as the Sega Model 1. However, one of the things I kept hearing about Star Wars Arcade was that playing it out in the wild was very expensive. They may have been thinking of Star Wars Trilogy Arcade, but regardless, any home port is usually better than no home port at all. And since the 32X port is the only port of Star Wars Arcade, it could have been worse.

Save your quarters for laundry

The 32X is a fun piece of kit. At the time, Sega of America thought that rather than transition into the Sega Saturn like Japan was doing that year, they’d extend the lifespan of the Sega Genesis with an add-on that would end up being the 32X. It was a huge blunder that split developers and may have torpedoed the Saturn’s chances in North America. Sega of Japan also reportedly followed the advice of Sega of America because the Sega Genesis did so much better in North America than?? the Mega Drive did in Japan.

The 32X, despite being an obvious stopgap, isn’t a bad console. It has a really great port of NBA Jam: Tournament Edition, and that counts for a lot. However, beyond that, there weren’t very many games that were released in it. But why would you? Developers in North America knew that the Sega Saturn was coming down the pipe, so why dev??elop for something that was going to be obsolete in a year? As a result, there were close to 40 games released for the expansion system?, which is sad for anyone who bought one.

Like wi?th most of my personal problems, I blame the parents. Ma??king the Genesis more powerful sounds groovy to me, but it was mistimed and strategically mismanaged.

There were a few good games on the console, and Star Wars Arcade was ?one of them. It’s not the best game on the console, and it’s not even that great, but if I had played this when I was a kid, I would have been over the moon. 

That's no moon...

Star Wars Arcade puts you behind the ?joystick of an Incom T-65B X-Wing Starfighter, or if you’re playing with a friend, a Koensayr BT?L-Series Y-Wing. It kind of follows the movies by sort of depicting the Battle of Endor (Death Star II), but also kind of, sort of mixes it with the Battle of Yavin (Vanilla Death Star). You start off fighting TIE Fighters. Then, once you’ve exploded enough of them, you move on.

The console version gives you the option for Arcade or 32X mode. Arcade gives you the four stages of the, er, arcade version, while 32X mode is significantly extended. Arcade mode is Tie Fighters, Super Star Destroyer, Death Star Surface, and Reactor Run. 32X?? is TIE Fighters, more TIE Fighters, more TIE Fighters, Death Star Surface, Trench Run, m??ore TIE Fighters, Super Star Destroyer, more TIE Fighters, Death Star Surface, Reactor Run.

It’s a reasonable take on the space battles of the movies. The Death Star surface is particularly impressive, with turbolaser towers filling the skies with their beams. The level reminds me of the first stage in Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader. Obviously, the scale and visuals are different, but the fact that it was pulle?d off reasonably wel?l on the 32X is sort of impressive.

More TIE Fighters

What?? isn’t impressive is the combat. TIE Fighters kind of just appear on your tail, and your job is to get them in front of you. Rarely do you see them just wandering the area in little groups. They’re almost always just right behind you.

You can’t do a loop or even roll, so evading them is mostly just speeding up and sl??owing down, and it doesn’t really seem to matter whi??ch you choose to do. If you’ve got the pedal down, they’ll still sometimes pass you, and if you slam on the brakes, they seem to be able to do so just as quickly. For many of the early levels, my best strategy was to just fly in a straight line and continually vary my speed until someone got in front of me.

You have your lasers and your proton torpedoes. The torpedoes replenish? over time, so whenever you hear the lock-on sound, you may as well just fire and forget.

The missions where you need to fly through weird spaceship tunnels are more interesting. It’s here where you mostly see the graphical difference between the arcade and 32X versions, but it’s honestly not that bad. While everything is flat-shaded and textureless, the level geometry feels pretty close. It’s more impressive than 1993’s Star Fox on SNES, but the framerate does drop quit?e heavily in some areas.

Hook hand

But while it’s impressive Star Wars Arcade has some pretty hard-to-ignore deficiencies. The hit detection is questionable, for one thing. It’s very hard to see lasers o?r tell when a big ball of energy is going to hit you. TIE Fighters can also seemingly fly through walls, which makes the star hole segments feel kind of janky. It’s definitely playable, but when you can’t tell what is hitting you from where, it loses some of its effectiveness.

My biggest issue, however, is with the controls. Decelerate and Accelerate are A and B, respectively, while the C button is to fire your lasers. If you’re on a three-button controller, B and C together fires a proton torpedo, but that isn’t part of my issue. The problem is that accelerate and decelerate need to be held to maintain your speed, so if you want to fly slowly and fire your lasers at the same time �?which you ?often do �?you’re in for some finger gymnastics.

The proper way to play might be to set the right side of the controller on your thigh and work the buttons using your fingers. However, I’d often just use my thumb for A and B a??nd my index finger for C, hook hand style. It got painful, especially since the edge of the buttons began aggr?avating my thumb.

I’m not sure why X wasn’t used to fire lasers on a 6-button controller, since you could then use the end of your thumb to fire and the middle of it to maintain speed. Let the inferior? 3-button people suffer.

Don't fail me again

Star Wars Arcade was a launch title for th??e 32X, which was a good decision, even if it didn’t overcome the bad decisions around the console. It showed the add-on’s 3D capabilities, which were decent at the time but would quickly be superseded by the PS1 and S??aturn when they arrived in North America the next year.

It’s one of the top-shelf games for the 32X but, as I’ve established, there isn’t a whole lot of competition. In fact, a similar 32X game, Shadow Squadron, might be even better, but my attention span has yet to hold?? out past the second level.

It’s also maybe worth noting that Star Wars Arcade came out the year after Star Fox and Star Wars: X-Wing. Both of which are a lot more robust. But that alone just underlines the problems with Star Wars Arcade. It was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

For other retro titles you may have ?missed, cli??ck right here!

The post Star Wars A?rcade for Sega 32X has got i?t where it counts, kid appeared first on Destructoid.

Growing up, I played a lot of puzzle games, but I didn’t have much love? for them. This is beca??use my mother loves puzzle games, and I probably didn’t like them much because it was one of the genres she could beat me at.

However, the experiences I had playing Yoshi’s Cookie and Kirby’s Avalanche with her have left me with some nostalgia for the titles. I don??’t actually play them much, but they feel?? good to my soul, at least.

One game I used to play with her is different, however. It’s a puzzle game that I’m actually enthusiastic about and dust off every so often. It's one that I can enjoy without the sentimental attachment, even if some sentiment is still there. That is 1997’s Tetrisphere for the N64.

Phearing Change

Despite the name, Tetrisphere has very little to do with Tetris outside of falling blocks that remove other blocks. The blocks themselves aren’t ?even necessari?ly tetrominoes, though a few are.

It actually began development for the Atari Jaguar as Phear, which is a better name despite its lack of marketable brand recognition. According to the ancient tomb, Electronic Gaming Monthly, at the time, Nintendo was on the hunt for developers willing to?? stuff their games into a cartridge, so they scooped it up for their own.

It was created by H2O Entertainment, who would later create The New Tetris and Aidyn Chronicles (which I can’t believe I haven’t played) for?? the N64.

The concept is that you have a sphere that is covered in various shapes of blocks, and with the power of block fission, you need to burrow to its core, at least in most of the modes. Beyond just throwing blocks at the orb, you can also grab hold of them to shift them next to other blocks. While some of the block shapes just have to be touching, others, like the line block and square, have to be directly aligned, so you need to be carefu??l and set up the best combos you can.

Enraged strip mining

It works so damned well. 3D block-breaker puzzle games rarely figure out how to put the added dimension to good use, but Tetrisphere nails it. The persistent cursor that you control over the surface of ?the orb is communicative and useful, even with the You can grab blocks from beneath others and slide ??them up to the other layers if you’ve got the right setup. It feels good, which is extremely commendable.

Beyond that, it also has an amazing aesthetic. While the cartoon spheroid robots that act as the cast are a bit weird, you don’t see them much. Normally, you’re just looking at a colorful sphere floating in ethereal space. The soundtrack is this amazingly atmospheric techno, and all the?? sound effects have this reverb to them that makes them all?? impactful. 

All block-breakers are about destruction, but Tetrisphere feels closest to actually destroying something. On levels with the more easy-going shapes, you’ll often trigger huge combos that stretch across the surface of the sphere, popping like atomic bubble wrap. While you can ??peel the sphere like a clove of garlic, the best strategy is to focus on a single area and burrow ??into it like an enraged strip mining operation.

And then there are the bombs (called magic for some reason) that you can pick up. While these change depending on what mode you play, in the “Rescue�?mode, you can upgrade them. It starts as fireworks that blast?? a massive crater into the sphere, but you can upgrade it to an Atom that completely peels the top layer away with a blastwave. Even in the versus mode, the standardized bombs are fun to use with their big echo-y booms.

Lonely Rolling Star

Singleplayer consists of rescue, hide & seek, puzzle, time trial, and vs. CPU. Rescue requires you to clear off enough tiles in an area on the core of the cube to release a little ?guy trapped inside. ?Hide & Seek, is similar, but you’re looking for a picture plastered on the core. Each level gives a bit of a variation. Puzzle gives you a certain number of moves and drops to clear the board of preconfigured structures. Time trial is lame. Vs. CPU is essentially multiplayer for lonely people like me.

They’re all decent variations o??f block destruction, but I feel like the versus mode makes the best use of it. Any of the one-player modes tend to be laid back, but it’s versus where you really need to strategize. As is typical, big combos result in garbage blocks being dumped on your opponent, and they’re not easy to get rid of. This can lead to panicked moments where you have to open a new hole to expose the last few core tiles to win the game.

In contrast, modes like rescue and hide & seek seem a little vanilla. However, there’s enough in Tetrisphere to suck up an impressive amount of your time. It does, however, lack the endlessness of something like Tetris. Unless you’ve got a rival to ?compete against, it’s likely that?? you’ll clear the single-player modes and move on.

The Core

It surprises me that Tetrisphere has been left on the N64. As far as I have been able to find, there has never been a sequel, Nintendo has never ported it, and I can’t even find any indie games that cop the gameplay. It’s not that I think Tetrisphere was wildly impactful, but it’s weird to see any game be so forgotten about, even one with the arcane knowledge of how to make a block-buster puzzle game work in?? 3D.

And really, I’d love a sequel. Tetrisphere already has a masterful aesthetic that would be difficult to top, but it still has potential with shinier graphics.?? At the very least, I would like to see i?t on the Nintendo Switch Online N64 service. Does Nintendo not still own the publishing rights to it?

?I suppose, on the bright side, it’s pretty cheap and easy to find on the N64.

For other retro titles you may have missed, c?lick right ?here!

The post Tetrisphe??re for N64 feels like a sheet of atomic bubblewrap appeared first on Destructoid.

Umihara Kawase is a weird game to explain, but I’m going to try to anyway. It looks and sounds like an amateur production put out by some unkno??wn p??ublisher and created by some unknown developer, and maybe it is. But it’s also one of the best games on the Super Famicom.

I first heard about it on GameCenter CX (season 5, episode 1), and that was around the time that the series was finally making it stateside with Yumi’s Odd Odyssey (Sayonara Umihara Kawase). I finally jumped into the series in 2020 with Umihara Kawase Fresh, which was the topic of my second review ever written here at Destructoid. I absolutely loved it, which made me go ba??ck and finally play the earlier titles.

And you should, too.

Rubber banding

Umihara Kawase is a game that is built entirely around its central mechanic, sort of like, er, the Kuru Kuru Kururin series, maybe. I’m drawing a blank, but I don’t mean it’s like Bubble Bobble, where you blow a lot of bub??bles but it’s still action platforming; Umihara Kawase’s entire identity is based around its co??re unique idea.

And its core idea is a fishing line. The eponymous Umihara can barely jump, but she can cast a line like an expert angler. Or Batman. Probably more like Batman. You use it as a grappling hook, sinking your lure into a solid object and then using it to swing across gaps and over hazards. And yet, this isn’t Bionic Commando. Umihara is as graceless as a fish out of w??ater, and the fishing line appears to be made of rubber, so she bounces and slingshots around.

It’s tempting to say that Umihara Kawase is easy to learn and difficult to master, but it really isn’t that first thing. Getting used to the physics so y??ou can perform even the simplest of tasks will probably take a while, and getting to the point where it becomes second nature is a long journey. Eve?n then, the more advanced maneuvers that the game enables may be out of reach unless you really get sucked in.

Legged fish

However, it doesn’t make things comfortable. Despite its cute appearance of a little schoolgirl worki??ng her way across abstract labyrinths, it’s an extremely brutal game, and there are l??ayers to its brutality.

Beyond the unconventional movement system, there are no continues, and all death is instant. There are enemies in the form of various sea creatures that haunt the levels, and gently brushing against most of them will instantly drop Umihara to the floor. Aside from lives, there are no power-ups to help you. It’s just you a?nd your fishing line.

The actual rules of the game are similarly difficult to get a grasp on. There are 57 levels, but they don’t progress in a strictly linear fashion. Some levels have multiple exits that will take you forwa?rd or backward to different fields. There are bosses, which are rather cryptic puzzles on their own, but running into them is neither a guarantee or requirement. But more mysteriously, it’s also unclear where the end of the game really happens.

In the GameCenter CX episode I mentioned, Arino reaches the end credits rather early. But then, his staff explains to him that, after 30 minutes, the game will just skip you ahead to the last level. They suggest that he needs to reach field 57 in under 30 minutes to get th??e game’s good ending, whic?h, even knowing the quickest route, he fails to do.

However, after the show, the staff members go to work and actually manage to complete Umihara Kawase in under 30 minutes, at which point t?hey get the same non-ending that Arino got. So, even the game doesn’t have any recognition for whether you took too long and got shunted to ??the end or if you beat it before its timer ran out. It just ends either way. So, what is even considered “winning�?here?

Child's play

I suppose it’s really up to you to challenge yourself. Umihara Kawase is more of a playground. A series of challenges for ??you to overcome, bu??t contrary to its initial difficulty, it is easygoing about how you approach it.

Maybe, instead, you just challenge yourself to see every field. Or maybe, like the GameCenter CX staff, you try to beat it before 30 minutes are up. That’s kind of disappointing in its own way. I like to be told I did a good job. On the other hand, high-level play just looks incredible.

The fact that there isn’t really a set goal is one of the ways Umihara Kawase feels sort of amateur. Beyond that, the graphics look thrown together. The background is just a photograph of the ocean, which gives it the feeling of a neglected arcade game. The ice rink where I lived growing up had a few arcade cabinets, and one of them was Buster Bros. or Pang!, which did the same thing. In lieu of a background, they just slapped unrelated images of, like, the Taj Mahal behind the action. It always seemed uncomfortably weird to me when I was ?a kid, and that’s the feeling I get here.

To add to that, all the platforms in the game are just abstract blocks of different colors. Every once in a while, ?you get something with a little more effort to it, like platforms made of pencils or giant eggplants, but they’re rather sparse. Mainly, you're just looking at blocks that look like placeholders. In a way, this gives the game an ethereal, dream-like (if not entirely monotonous) quality. The fact that all the exits are jus??t modern Japanese-style front doors just adds to this.

Meanwhile, the musi??c sounds like the soundtrack to a series ?of travel promo videos.

And, by the way, the HUD being so close to the middle of the screen is how it's supposed to look. ??That isn't a glitch on my version of the game or something.

Fish hooks

I don’t have any hard data, but I don’t think Umihara Kawase did all that well during its 1995 release in Japan. That’s kind of unsurprising because I don’t know how you draw attention to a game like this. In a market full of jump-guys and shoot-guys, a little girl with a backpack and fishing rod isn’t what people tend to look for. The developer, TNN, seems to have only done one other game before ceasing to exist. At that point, the key staff members formed Studio Saizensen, who are perhaps best known over here for Code of Princess.

Umihara Kawase would continue on with Studio Saizensen, first following up with Umihara Kawase Shun in 1997 on PS1, then Sayonara Umihara Kawase in 2013 on 3DS, with Umihara Kawase Fresh being the most recent release in 2020. Whil?e, again, I don’t have any sales data, I’m assuming that the series is being kept alive by a cult following and the studio’s own passion.

And while no publisher was brave enough to release the games in North America until Yumi’s Odd Odyssey in 2013, all the titles are now available on PC via Steam. The original Umihara Kawase even made it to the Switch’s Online service, but only in Japan. Considering the game is completely play?able without needing a translation, it’s a little strange that it hasn’t made it to other regions, but maybe Nintendo will fix that at some point because more people need to play this bizarre game.

Truly, though, if you're interested in the series, either Sayonara Umihara Kawase or Umihara Kawase Fresh are better starting points. The rubber-band physics don't change a whole lot across the series, but b??oth those games offer better progression. You can learn the basics from those friendlier experiences before your fish grappling skills are p??ut to the test.

Fo??r other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post Umihara Kawase for SNES has legs under ??its bargain bin exterior appeared first on Destructoid.

It’s pretty easy to stand out in the Virtual Boy catalog. There were only fourteen games. Half weren’t very good, half felt like tech demos, and half were Virtual Boy Wario Ware. If a game?? di?dn’t fit into any of those three halves, it stuck out like a missing tooth.

Panic Bomber was one of those games. It’s a perfectly find match-3 puzzle game, with a heaping of Bomberman charm. I??t just didn’t benefit from bein?g on the hardware in the slightest. The Virtual Boy had its advantages, but it’s hardly the ideal way to play a puzzle game.

Thankfully, it wasn’t exclusive to the crimson goggles. It originally came out on PC-Engine Super CD-ROM² in 1994 and was ported to a number of platforms. Unfortunately, the only other time it came out in North America was a port on Wii U. Thankfully again, I have an Analogue Duo now, and it plays Japanese games. The Super CD-ROM² version isn’t that expensive, so now I can play Bomberman: Panic Bomber without wrecking my neck.

Not hereditary

I’ve never been terrific at puzzle games of the falling block variety. I’m not terrible, either. I can usually get through whatever story mode they present, but I’m not competitive. My sister, however, is a high-level Dr. Mario player. She and her college roommates got really into it for a time, and she built up skills that I would define as “mad.�?I can wreck her at most games, but I’d need a few training montages to compete against her in Dr. Mario.

Most of my affection for the genre comes from my mother. Not hereditarily. I mean, she used to play them a lot. I’d come home from school, and she’d be on my Super Nintendo engaged in Yoshi’s Cookie or Kirby’s Avalanche. I didn’t have much interest in the??m myself, but my concept of cozy larg??ely comes from my mom. It’s the same reason I often drink my tea with way too much milk.

Anyway, what I’m saying is that Bomberman: Panic Bomber gives off those same vibes. Puyo Puyo did a real number on the genre. This could practically be called “Bomberman’s Mean Bomb Machine,�?except that would completely destr?oy the rhyme.

The point is that you face off against various cartoon monstrosities whose portrait sits in the middle ?of the screen. When you put three Bomberman heads of the same color in a row, they disappear. The big difference here is that more explosives are involved.

Munitions stockpile

Every time you eliminate a row of heads, a bomb will pop up from the bottom of the screen. Eventually, a pink bomb will drop from the top, and you (sometimes) want to steer it so that it explodes (in the classic Bomberman plus shape) and cre??ates a ??chain reaction with all the unlit bombs you built up.

I know what you’re thinking, but contrary to what we’ve been taught, the Bomberman heads here are mostly immune to explosions. Like Puyo Puyo, the strategy isn’t to keep your field clean. It’s to cause as much frustration to your opponent as possible. Detonating a bomb sends garbage to their field with the goal, expectedly, to fill up their side of t?he screen until it overflows. Garbage can only be removed using the bombs, so the game boils down to amassing as many explosives as you can, then detonating it at the right time to both prevent your field from overflowing and fill up your opponents�?

You also build up a gauge as you knock ??out combos, and when it’s full, a big bomb dro?ps. This one will actually clear out Bomberman heads, so it’s especially useful when you’re about to drown and need some air. It also typically results in a lot of garbage getting flung to the other side of the screen.

This leads to some interesting back-and-forth a??ction as you clear your screen, send garbage to your opponent, and then they detonate their bombs and send it right back. When this gets going, it can be rather exciting, like a good sumo match. 

On the other hand, it seems like Panic Bomber has a single strategy, which is to stockpile bombs and detonate them at the least convenient time. You can still build up combos Puyo Puyo style, which will get you appropriate bonuses, but it all comes down to who can screw th?e other over the hardest. Just like the busines??s world.

Path of destruction

This is going to sound weird, but the Virtual Boy version of Panic Bomber is better. Not that I really want to assemble a team to set up my Virtual Boy just to play it, but the VB version had more detailed graphics. To the credit of the Super CD-ROM² version, it supports five players.

I was kind of disappointed that it doesn’t really take advantage of the Super CD-ROM² beyond just for the soundtrack. There’s only an outro cutscene, but it’s not as elaborate as I’m used to from the platform. In fact, th??e story isn’t really set up within the game itself. Y??ou just watch Bomberman cut a path of destruction through the world map.

Bomberman: Panic Bomber is far from the best match-3 puzzle game in the world. It probably isn’t going to replace Puyo Puyo for anyone, but it’s decent fun for a while. It’s especially beneficial if you have one friend too many any ne??ed a five-player game to keep everyone happy. I don’t have that problem. Being too popular has never been an issue for me.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right h?ere!

The post Bom?berman: Panic Bomber for PC-Engine is a blast, and no one has made that joke before, right? appeared first on Destructoid.

As with El Viento, I hadn’t heard of Sol-Deace before Retro-Bit’s reproduction of it was announced. However, it’s a good partner since, like El Viento, it was developed by Wolf Team.

Sol-Deace has something of a confusing history. It was originally released in Japan in 1990 on the Sharp X68000 where it was called Sol-Feace. It would then be ported to the Sega CD in 1991, but when it arrived on a Genesis/Mega Drive cartridge in 1992, it was named Sol-Deace. I don't know why the name changed, but the story uses Feace and Deace ?as surnames, which maybe they are. Weird words to me, so I'm not sure why they chose them. If I had to guess, I’d say the words probably sound cool to the Japanese ear. However, my only basis for that is the theory that I have no other explanation.

We had it coming

Sol-Deace is a horizontal scrolling shoot-’em-up. Humankind created the AI GCS-WT in the 31st c??entury, and, predictably, it backfired. It rightfully decided it was superior to hum??ans (as if that was a high benchmark) and demanded their subjugation. Humans, not knowing what’s good for them, went to war with the GCS-WT and got their asses handed to them. Some of them retreated to Sirius where they went to work developing �?and you can probably guess this part �?a single high-tech fighter to combat the AI. 

Li??sten, I’m not a scientist, an engineer, or a wa??rmonger, but I’d think a computer virus would be more effective against an AI than a solitary space jet.

In any case, the Sol-Deace is piloted by Ship Navigator Eric ??and Weapons Commander Misao. Oo-l??a-la. Do you think they’re smooching in there? I bet they are.

The Sega CD version tells a different version of the?? story. Dr. Feace hacks into the GCS-WT and deletes “the data�?from “the data bank,�?which forces the AI into a recovery period and gives them an opening to attack with the Sol-Fea??ce. You see? That’s what I was saying. I’m not sure why Dr. Deace didn’t think of that. Maybe that sort of logic doesn’t fit on a Genesis cartridge.

Top-of-the-line

Sol-Deace loses some cutscenes and audio fidelity from the Sega CD version, but the games are the sam??e.

It’s tempting to call Sol-Deace a boilerplate shoot-’em-up, but it does have a number of mechanics that make ??it unique. The co??re feature is the fighter’s stacked weaponry. While you start with the standard issue pea shooter, you fly into upgrades that stick to the top and bottom of your ship, giving you three-tiered firepower.

What’s unique about this is that they can each be a different weapon, and you can change how they’re aligned. If you speed up without firing, the weapons open up, giving you an angled spread. If you slow down, you can close them again. You can also stagger their alignment so only the top or bottom is shooting at an angle, but I found that difficult to work out in the midst of battle. It’s a bit like the option system from Gradius, but it also gives you some control as to whether you’re focusing more on defense or offense. There are a?lso moments where you can set your spread in a particular way to take out multiple targets at once.

You’ll probably find these moments because Sol-Deace is a rather difficult shooter. I’ve found that a lot of console titles in the genre lean on limited continues to extend their runtime out of rental range. However, Sol-Deace doesn’t. You can try a? level as many times as you’d like. That takes some real guts.

Put your hands together if you want to clap

You’ll need those continues. Sol-Deace isn’t a bullet hell shooter, but you’ll constantly be fitting your ship into small gaps, because there is always an unconscionable amount of things on scre??en. The variety of enemies is dizzying, but the developers also favored giant, rotating sprites. The screen is almost constantly full, even at the expense o??f the framerate. 

In fact, Wolf Team wa??s so dedicated to jamming everything they could into the game, that everything seems to be fighting for the same sound channel as your ship’s weaponry. The sound of your “pew-pew-pew�?gets cut off constantly in favor of something else going on, leading to a sputtering noise. This happens in both the Sega CD and Genesis versions.

On t??he other hand, they also managed to cram in some little details I thought were cool. If a smaller enemy gets up behind you, you can destroy them with your thrusters. You also don’t immediately die if you hit a wall. Your ?ship will just bounce off it in a shower of sparks.

Speaking of the sounds, I could instantly tell Motoi Sakuraba was behind the soundtrack. How? He’s the only Genesis composer I know of who makes extensive use of a clap as a percussive noise. It stood out to me in El Viento, and you can hear that sample as early as t??he first level. It’s charming in a retro kind of way.

With or without the clapping, the soundtrack is awesome. It helped ease the fact that I was trying t??he same levels repeatedly trying to make progress.

That may sound frustrating, but Sol-Deace manages to hit a pace that really makes you want to get better at the levels. You’re constantly learning from your mistakes and discovering new strategies to g?et by the road bumps you hit on the way to the boss. There’s a certain level of memorization required for each stage, and finally, toppling a ?boss feels earned. It’s satisfying to make progress in a way that I’m not sure I’ve ever felt in a shoot-’em-up.

What really matters

The Retro-Bit reproduction of Sol-Deace is once again a pretty lavish treatment. As with their other Genesis/Mega Drive reissues, it comes in a clamshell case with reversible cover art and a?n em?bossed slipcase. The cartridge is translucent black with little sparkles in it. It’s a pretty great way to play on original hardware with a bit of extra pizzazz.

Mostly, I appreciate their work bringing the work that companies like them do in bringing some of these games back from obscurity. Renovation-published games like Sol-Deace are also available through Antstream Arcade and Evercade’s Renovation Collection, but for those of us who like to bond with games through physical contact, Retro-Bit does a good job of re-issuing them w??ithout making them feel like affectionate tributes rat?her than counterfeits.

In the last care package I got from Retro-Bit, it was the shoot-’em-up, Gley Lancer, that stood out to me most. With this set, it’s the shoot-’em-up again. Sol-Deace seemed a bit plain on the surface, but the more I played it, the more I began to love it. I really dig the confident challenge of it, and it has a number of small touches that make it shine. It isn’t quite as aesthetically impressive as Gley Lancer, but it does have what really matters: the c??lapp??ing.

For other retro tit??les you ma??y have missed, click right here!

The post Sol-Deace for Genesis pairs spa??ce bat?tles with percussive clapping appeared first on Destructoid.

I really hadn’t heard of El Viento before Retro-Bit announced thei??r re-issue of it. It’s really hard to know what to make of it. It seems displaced from time, occupying a??n era that doesn’t exist.

That may be a weird way to describe it, but I think what I’m trying to say is that it looks reminiscent of Valis. It’s a sort of grainy-looking side-scroller that feels like it was developed for an early Japanese home computer before being ported to the PC-Engine and finally landing on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. A drifting vagabond tied to no home. To clarify, that’s what Valis went through. The difference here is that El Viento was never on a platform aside from the Genesis, and the developer, Wolf Team, wasn’t behind the Valis games. Though, they did handle some of the ports of the first game, and Renovation/Telenet published the lot in North America. Anyway, not important. I'm jus??t saying,?? they're similarly unusual.

Its similarities with Valis are largely that they’re both somewhat janky sidescrollers that feature a female lead. It just doesn’t have that distinct Genesis flavor to it, but that’s not to say it does??n’t have a flavor of its own.

You want to do what now?

You play as Annet, who is part of the bloodline of Hastur, an eldritch being from Robert W. Chambers�?1895 book of short stories, The King in Yellow. A cult in New York is trying to resurrect Hastur, which Annet, despite being rela?ted through blood, recognizes as being a spectacularly stupid idea.

She frequently asks the antagonists, “Why are you doing this? You know they’re just going to destroy the world,�?and nobody really has a good answer to that. I think the idea is that they’re going to take control of their power through Restiana, another woman of Hastur’s bloodline, but that sounds like just a story they’re feeding Restiana to keep her complacent. Every time Annet runs into Restiana, she tells her, “They’re just going to sacrifice you.�?/p>

So, Annet’s the only competent person in the room. I always say that?? if you lock a hundr?ed people in a room full of dry straw and give each of them a book of matches, someone is going to set the room on fire.

It has to be very frustrating for Annet. She’s giv??en the runaround and sent all over the U.S., and every time she defeats a boss, she just talks to someone to very patiently explain to them how dumb they are. She could just beat these people up, but aside from Restiana, she never does. She just lets them walk away. It’s like she’s watching a toddler trying to stick a fork into an electrical outlet. She keeps saying, “You don’t want to do that,�?but is absolutely willing to let them learn the hard way. I’m not a parent, obviously.

Check out that skyscraper

El Viento is kind of rad, honestly. It takes place in 1928, and makes de??cent use of the setting. You start out in New York, ma??gicking gangsters to death in the streets. Its fixation on the Empire State Building as though it's some phallic object waving in the face of the Old Gods is kind of spooky and cool. 

The graphics are over-detailed. The best games on 16-bit consoles tended to try and use simple colors to make the art readable, but occasionally, you’d get something like El Viento that tries to add too much texture to everything, and it creates this really grainy look. Adding to this is a lot of washed-out-looking colors. I’m sort of wond??ering if they were trying to make the game look like early color photographs, but it just makes it look rather drab.

The animation is pretty go?od, though, at least when it comes to Annet. She has a lot of frames and poses in her movement. However, this adds to the feeling of jankiness, as animation is often stopped and started in an extremely herky-jerky fashion when interacting with the environment.

The developers were at least playful with the Genesis hardware. It makes use of various warping and scaling effects. The most amusing result of this is the explosions. Many developers at the time would use multiple sprites to create bigger explosions, but Wolf Team opted to have a small sprite scaled to be bigger. The result is these huge, blocky pixels that take up massive portions of the screen. It looks like someone thought this was really cool because one of the screenshots on the back of the Japanese box is mostly obscured by a single explosion. T??hat’s one way to sell your game.

The best explosions

El Viento is still pretty fun to play. Annet attacks with a boomerang thing, and gradually builds up a variety of spells for use alongside it. She also levels up, gaining more health as you take out enemies. However, Wolf Team made sure to prevent grinding by not allowing enemies to respawn if you leave the area and return. There are spots? where small enemies spawn endlessly, but they give no XP.

The platforming, enemies, and bosses sometimes show ?some creativity. The levels also have a nice variation, changing focus from careful platforming to straight combat. However, some of the levels seem undercooked. The earlier levels are broken into sections and have decent length. Later stages are shockingly short. Level 7, for example, is over in less than 2 minutes, and that includes the boss battle. I wasn’t rushing, either. That was my fi??rst attempt. I could definitely cut that time down.

There are also limited continues, which is a pet peeve of mine. However, it only took me two attempts to get through El Viento, ???and it isn’t a very long game, so maybe that’s for the best.

Hot pink

As I alluded to above, Retro-Bit sent me their re-issue of El Viento, which is nice because t??he p?rice of the original run gives me pause.

I go into more detail about the quality of the re-issues in my review of their reissue of Valis, but to quickly reiterate, I’m a fan. The clamshell and slipcase are nicely done, and the cartridges are in attractive, transparent plastic. My favorite part of these reissues is that the ??back of the PCB inside them has the game’s logo in metallic foil, and you can see them through the shell. It’s a really nice touch.

When a new game gets made ?for an old console, I like it when it has the look of an officia??l release. However, for reproductions, it’s nice to see some extra flair. It both looks cool, stands out, and can’t be confused for an original release.

I also appreciate that Retro-Bit is shining some light on Renovation/Telenet Japan games. They’re not the only ones, as it’s also available as part of the Renovation Collection 1 for Evercade and is also available on the Antstream Arcade service. I like playing on original hardware,?? so Retro-Bit’s offering suits me well.

Ear candy

Before concluding this, I should probably mention that El Viento has a pretty rocking soundtrack. It was composed by Motoi Sakuraba, who has contributed to a number of fantastic games, such as Golden Sun, Shining Force 3, and Dark Souls. The dude’s a legend, and El Viento’s soundtrack is worth sticking in your ears.

El Viento sort of falls in the same spot as the Valis series. I’m happy to have played it, and I’m even interested in trying the sequels, but I don’t think it’s something I’m going to be pulling off my shelf all that often. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to like about El Viento, but ?there’s also a lot of rough edges. The most substantial is a lack of substance. But at least it’s full of ear candy, and we get some great images of the Empire State Building looking sinister.

For other retro tit??les you may have missed, click right here!

The post El Viento for Gen??esis is baffled by worl??d-ending cults appeared first on Destructoid.

The Hammerin�?Harry/Daiku no Gen-San series continued from 1990 to the last game, Hammerin�?Hero, in 2009. However, only the first game was released in arcades. After the original Hammerin�?Harry, the series shifted entirely to home platforms.

Whether or not a game in the series would be released in the West, however, was another matter. In fact, only the arcade original and the aforementioned Hammerin�?Hero would reach North America, though two other titles would at least find their way to Europe. The second Famicom/NES title, 1993's Daiku no Gen-san 2: Akage no Dan no Gyakushō was not one of them.

That is until Retro-Bit translated and reissued it. It was given to me as part of the Hammerin�?Harry Concrete Collection, which I was rather excited to try. I covered the first Hammerin�?Harry last week, so now it’s time to dive into the more ??elusive sequel.

Robo-fitness

Hammerin�?Harry 2: Dan the Red Strikes Back seems like a pretty straightforward sequel when you start out. You once again play as the eponymous carpenter, and his sprite, moveset, and even powerups are the same as they were in the first game. The first level even takes place at the Needless Markup Mall, which was under construction in the original game. However, it doesn’t stay all that reminis?cent.

The story this time around is that the ti�?the sub-titular Dan the Red is harassing Ha?rry to try and get revenge, while Dr. Parallel seems to pull the strings in the background. Apparently, Harry’s girlfriend, Donna, has been abducted, but I don’t remember it coming up very much. I think she was in distress in the first game, as well, but that sort of just felt like a formality in mimicking the typical �?0s protagonist motivation.

After going through some construction areas, Hammerin�?Harry 2 begins to shift more and more in?to sci??-fi. There’s a factory, then you’re on some train in an underground tunnel, then there’s a bunch of secret base stuff. The bosses are typically Dan riding on some sort of giant robot shaped like an animal. But that’s really only the start of where things differ.

The wrong tool for the job

What struck me most is that Hammerin�?Harry 2 places more emphasis on p??latforming than combat. While there was a balance of this in the previous game, a lot of its focus was placed on enduring attacks from enemies. ?With the sequel, you’re more likely to be killed by the edge of the screen than waves of foes.

It’s fine. The controls are solid enough to make platforming enjoyable, but I feel that when you’re wielding a big hammer,? the game should be more focused on providing nails. Toward the end of the game, t??here were very few enemies, leaving you to hop around in complete isolation. If there was anything that would simply take a chip off your health bar, it was usually lasers or spikes; things that aren’t as receptive to a blunt weapon. I feel like some of the identity is replaced by something less satisfying.

A lot of the expressiveness of the first game isn’t ??there, either. I remarked that the art in Hammerin�?Harry, while obviously suffering from the NES�?limitations, is very detailed, but much of that is lost in the sequel. It’s not completely devoid of life, nor does it look bad, but in comparison, there’s a lot less love in its presentation. 

Everything looks like a nail

On the other hand, it still gets pretty creative at times. I mentioned the tunnel train earlier on, and the quickest way for a game to reach my heart is by? train. For some reason, moving trains are my favorite stage setting, whether you’re on them, in them, or driving them. This one has robots on it. They do sit-ups and shoot lasers like Rock 'Em Sock 'Em robots working on their beach bods. It’s just too bad the level isn’t that much fun.

??Later on, ther?e’s a pair of scrolling shoot-’em-up stages where Harry hops in a rocket mallet. It’s a charmingly amusing segment, but unfortunately, they’re not much fun either. There’s only a handful of poorly thought-out weapons, and enemies will only spawn in at maybe two at a time, assumedly not to push the sprites numbers into flicker territory. They’re pretty boring.

To its credit, Hammerin�?Harry 2 is a bit longer at eight levels over the previous game’s five. The fact that it’s also not as much fun as its predecessor means that, by the time it’s all over, you’re not exactly hungry for more. That’s damning with praise, so I will try and lighten that statement by saying it’s not all that bad. It’s just while Hammerin�?Harry had a lot of charm that made it stand out despite its weaknesses, Hammerin�?Harry 2 just doesn’t.

Solid

Retro-Bit’s translation is pretty solid, but there wasn’t a tonne of text to change to begin with. It sticks pretty close to the previously existing one of the first game. What I did find weird is that they left the voice clips in their original Japanese instead of changing them to be like the localization of t??he first game. So, instead of his trademark “Let’s get busy,�?Harry says “Ikuze!�??like a large portion of Japan’s early video game protagonists. More confusingly, however, is that the end level voice screams “GEN-SAAAAN!�?instead of “H’MM’RNHRY.�?I guess if you’re buying this game, you know Harry’s original name, but it feels a bit out of place.

If it was as easy as simply changing the voice clips, I assume that Retro-Bit would have just done it, so there’s likely a reason why they were left as is. To make up for?? it, the text does contain a heaping of hammer puns. A+ ri?ght there.

The production of the physical cartridge is as good as it was with Hammerin�?Harry. You can reference that article for a broader overview. This time around, the cartridge is made to look like concrete, and it’s a bit more convincing than the woodgrain of the first game. Both are pretty fine physical reissues. The cover for Hammerin�?Harry 2 isn’t really great, but it’s pretty much what the Famicom v??ersion looked like, so it is what it is.

Dangit!

It’s nice to be able to play a localized Hammerin�?Harry 2 in an official capacity, but the game itself is less than spectacular. I think my main issue is that, just a week ago, I said that the first Hammerin�?Harry “might not be the console’s best sidescroller, but it’s definitely not boring.�?This time around, I’m more of the opinion that Hammerin�?Harry 2 might be far from the console’s worst sidescroller, b??ut it’s definitely boring.

It’s a shame, because I was hoping that the series would be more of a fixture for me on the console. I was hoping for a more Duck Tales/Duck Tales 2 situation where after playing one, the closeness in quality makes playing through the second one an obvious choice. Here, I’m not so sure. There’s more of a gulf in enjoyment. I will, however, have to look into the later games in the series. Especially, perhaps, the SNES and PSP games that would follow. As for Hammerin�?Harry 2, it is, unfortunately, not the sharpest ??tool in the box.

For other re??tro titles you?? may have missed, click right here!

The post Hammerin’ Harry 2 for NES doesn’t quite nail it appeared first on Destructoid.

I have really been looking forward to Retro-Bit’s NES reissue of 1991’s Hammerin�?Harry. However, in retrospect, this is partially due to me getting it confused with Don Doko Don, a 1989 arcade game in Taito’s single-screen format??. If I knew what I was thinking about, I’d be even more excited.

Hammerin�?Harry is a port of Irem’s 1990 arcade game, which was called Daiku no Gen-san: Beranme-chō Sōdōki in Japan. While Irem is perhaps best remembered for their R-Type series, their back catalog is built from an extremely colorful mix of titles on both arcade and consoles. There are a lot of underappreciated greats like Undercover Cops and Gekisha Boy which, to be fair, are largely unknown in the West b?ecause they were never localized.

Hammerin�?Harry was, technically, localized, but it was only released in the tumultuous NES PAL regi??on. Because of its late release in a limited market, it ten?ds to resell for an extremely high price. However, Retro-Bit has sent me a copy of their recent retro re-issues to try out. It is both a meaty morsel to sink our teeth into and something simultaneously insubstantial.

The nail that pops up

If you’re unfamiliar with the arcade version, there’s not much to say. It’s a sidescroller where you play as a beefy c??arpenter dude who wields a big mallet. A rival construction company tears down his house for no reason, and he heads out to file a complaint with their boss.&??nbsp;

It’s a pretty routine affair where you travel the six levels while bopping enemies. You can also (sometimes) deflect projectiles back at them, bash the ground to stun enemies, and bop upwards. Then there are boxes and other objects in th??e environments that you can send flying at enemies, as well as power-ups that give you a bigger mallet or protect you from an additional hit. In the arcade version, you’re dead if you even brush elbows with an enemy.

While I say that the arcade version of Hammerin�?Harry is rather routine, it’s still pretty good. There’s a lot of variety in the levels and bosses, but more importantly, the graphics are very detailed and expressive. It’s also got a lot of pedigree, involving at least two staff members from the Metal Slug series: designer Susumu and sound composer Takushi Hiyamuta (HIYA!). I say “at least�?because, like in Metal Slug, everyone in the credits is listed under pseudony??ms that aren’t well attributed to actual people, even today. ??Any one of them might be hidden beneath a different alias.

On the other hand, the difficulty sways like hung laundry in a tropical storm. Harry’s lethal need for personal space doesn’t help, but the leve??l hazards are inconsistent, as are the bosses. It’s not completely unfair, but the first time through can drain you of precious quarters.

Stop! Hammer time!

The 1991 NES version is reasonably faithful. The levels and bosses have been changed a lot to accommodate the more limited hardware to the point where they're all essentially brand new. There are only five levels instead of the arcade version’s six, but one of them is completely new. Rather th??an die in a single hit, Harry has a health bar. There are now bonus rounds between levels where you smack as many enemies as possible, kind of like whack-a-mole.

However, it’s the same where it really counts. Harry has all the moves and pow?er-ups he doe??????????????????????????s in the arcade, but more importantly, the graphics are still extremely detailed and expressive. Obviously, the NES can’t match the arcade game, but it’s not a lazy facsimile. The art is overall very impressive, even for a 1991 title.

I’m not sure how you feel about me spoiling a 30-year-old game, but the ending is the best part of the NES version. While the arcade has Harry climbing the evil construction company’s headquarters and bashing the boss until he changes his ways, the console version has that same ?boss flee the fight. In his place, his receptionist bursts in, transforms into, like, the Ultimate Warrior, and tries to take you down. You then follow the boss to his house, which is the completely new level.

H’MM’RNHRY

Surprisingly, the console version of Hammerin�?Harry preserves the voice clips of the arcade v??ersion. Each time you begin a level or continue after a death, Harry shouts, “Let’s get busy!�?When he dies, he exclaims, “Ouch!�?When you complete a level, someone shrieks, “H’MM’RNHRY!�?It’s surprisingly clear, even if it still sounds lik?e a drive-thru speaker.

One place where it should have deviated from the arcade title is in its length. While it makes sense to keep a game short in the arcade, since people are usually standing to play, it leads to really short console games. In all, Hammerin�?Harry took ?me around 45 minutes to complete, and this was my first time playing i??t. I died plenty of times, but there is no limit on continues, so there’s nothing to stop you from brute-forcing your way through it.

Hammerin�?Harry is far from the shortest game of the era. Off the top of my head, The Little Mermaid on NES and Kirby’s Dreamland on Game Boy are roughl?y the same runtime. However, that’s hardly a compliment. It feels insubstantial, espec?ially if you don’t have the Japan-only sequel to move on to.

What's in the box?

Thankfully, I do have the sequel to segway into. Retro-bit sent me the Concrete Collection which comes with their reissue of Hammerin�?Harry, and their localization of Daiku no Gen-san 2: Akage no Dan no Gyakushō, which has been translated to Hammerin�?Harry 2: Dan the Red Strikes Back.

For Hammerin�?Harry, Retro-Bit got creative with the cartridge. It’s encased in a wood-grained textured plastic. The feel of the cartridge is a bit smoother than an official NES game, but the construction is solid. I took it apart, and there’s a clean-looking PCB solidly fixed in there. These are the first NES games I’ve received from them, and it’s nice to see they get the same treatment as their Genesis titles. They feel like quality in your hands, but there’s no way anyone would mistake them as an or?iginal production.

The box it comes in is a lot like the one Battletoads and Double Dragon came in. ?It’s cardboard, but it’s not the flimsy boxes original NES cartridges came in. It’s a lot more solid and has a magnetic flap that makes it easy to open and close without the risk of creasing. It comes with an instruction manual and an acrylic stand. I prefer to display my games on shelves like a library, but if you prefer the look of a store or place of worship, they’re pretty nice.

Unfortunately, the cover is based on the arcade artwork rather than the incredible European NES cover.

The only thing I wish for with these releases is a non-limited run. Like many boutique game publishers, pre-orders are taken in advance and manufactured based on sales. I absolutely understand how important this is when it comes to producing for demand and minimizing loss, but with the way it is, I can only talk about these games long after pre-orders have ended. The only lesson I can really teach is that Retro-Bit does?? some mighty f??ine re-issues.

Tenderized

On the other hand, it gives me an excuse to talk about some obscure titles, which fits neatly with the intentions of this article. I apprec?iate Retro-Bit’s efforts in giving new attention to rare and unlocalized games through its re-issues.

Hammerin�?Harry was an exceptionally fun one to visit. As I said at the start, it’s been on my radar for quite a while. Beyond just being a short but enjoyable platformer, it’s also an infectiously lively ga?me with terrific art design packed with humorous flourishes. It might not be the console's best sidescroller, but it’s definitely not boring.

While there was only one Hammerin�?Harry arcade game, the series stretched on across many platformers throughout its lifespan. Only the arcade title reached North America, but the Game Boy game, 1992’s Hammerin' Harry: Ghost Building Company, did get a release in?? Europe. That is until the 2008 PSP title, Hammerin�?Harry finally crossed the globe. It makes sense since the games are steeped in the culture of Japan. It’s just a shame that it’s taken until now for us to get an official release over here.

Fo??r other retro titles you may have missed,?? click right here!

The post Hammerin’ Harry for NES shows the lethal competition of the carpentry world appeared first on Destructoid.

When talking about SNEG’s efforts to re-release Strategy Simulation Inc.’s old PC catalog??, I mentioned that one of their most significant endeavors was putt?ing SSI’s D&D games back on storefronts. I bought them some time ago. I haven’t played them. They intimidate me.

Classic CRPGs are terrifying. I often say that game design doesn’t expire; it merely changes, but one common feature of �?0s and �?0s CRPGs is a wall of overcomplicated UI. The game itself might be relatively simple, but the sheer number of buttons, menus, and functions is staggering. I’ve been stopped while trying to create a charact?er.

So, for the purposes of this article, I decided to finally step into SSI’s D&D world. Not in an RPG, goodness, no. I’m still terrified. Let’s, uh�?Let’s start with 1990’s DragonStrike, the one where you ride on a dragon.

Good luck, Sir Goodman

There is a disappointing dearth of dragon-flight simulators. 2007’s Lair, perhaps? I don’t know, I haven’t played it. What I do know is that War Thunder doesn’t have dragons and is poorer for it. We’re all poore??r f?or it.

DragonStrike is exactly that; it’s an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game wh??ere you play as a dragon rider. It has a lot in common with comput??er flight sims of the time, right down to the simplistic fractal landscapes. Also, like much of the era’s flight sims, it’s surprisingly detailed.

I do know a few things about early flight sims, though it’s not my area of expertise. However, I know very little about Dungeons & Dragons. Most of what I know is from this year’s Baldur’s Gate 3, and I don’t know how well that still connects with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. I’m not able to give much context there. It takes place in the Dragonlance world of Krynn. Then, after that, I’m just assuming that DragonStrike represents the subject matter reasonably well.

Although, the side you’re aligned ??with is literally referred to as the “Good Army�?while the bad guys are the “Evil Army.�?Is that actually in the material? Is that an accurate re??presentation? Because that’s hilarious.

Patience and butterfingers

Actually, I can’t really talk about the plot told within DragonStrike all that well, either. It’s presented in literal walls of text, and I got frustrated because it takes “any key�?as permission to advance. Early on, I missed a huge blurb because when I took? my hand off the keyboard, I rolled the si?de of it off the right arrow key and missed a portion. So, the narrative had to compete against both my attention span and butterfingers, and it did not fare well.

So, that was a bunch of paragraphs saying I don’t know what I’m talking about. But? there’s so much more to talk about. Dragons, perhaps?

You, unfortunately, neither get to pick nor customize your dragon. The one you ride on is based on what Order you’re in, and choosing your Order ?is based on narrative choice. There isn’t a tonne of difference between the dragons aside from what color is beneath your crotch. They all fly roughly the same, and all of them have two attacks. I think they get progressively more powerful, but there’s a tradeoff.

The flight model isn’t too realistic, or maybe it is. Maybe dragons actually fly like that. I suppose I should say it doesn’t feel realistic. You kind of just glide over the flat-shaded landscapes, and you might as well just be a detached camera. Despite being on a w?inged beast, you can’t just ascend vertically, stop suddenly, or drop straight down. It can also be difficult to tell how close you are to a cliff or the ground, and that placelessness removes a lot of the visual feedback from the game.

I’d guess that DragonStrike was a? reskin of a WWII flight sim, but I can’t fi??nd anything similar in either SSI or Westwood’s catalog. Whether it’s an effective representation of dragon pilotry or not, it’s an impressive effort for 1990.

Tooth and claw

While the actual flight is maybe oversimplistic, there’s still a lot of depth to the game. Beyond your dragon’s breath, you also have your trusty lance to attack with, as well as ??your sword and your dragon’s claws and teeth. Most of these are beyond your control and just happen when you get close enough to an enemy. You can aim where your lan??ce is pointed, but I’m not sure if there’s a practical reason to do so.

However, your lance is actually the most reliable way of taking do?wn enemy dragons. The hard part is simply to light them up in front of you, but if you manage to poke them, they typically go down immediately. Your dragon has two scents of breath. One goes fast and far, and the other goes slow and lingers. There isn’t much feedback on how much damage they do, but they’re often not an instant kill.

You’re normally fighting other dragons, and that means they can also claw and bite. This is where combat starts to get really messy. You have separate health meters for your rider and dragon, and who takes damage when things get up close isn’t really clear. For that matter, the amount of damage seems random and may be the result of invisible dice rolls. There’s a confusing lack of control when it comes to combat, and this gets frustrating?.

The Knights of the Inept

What drove me to the edge was getting blindsided by enemy projectiles. I’m okay with getting hit by something offscreen, but often, this would just be an instant kill. M??y rider would get vaporized suddenly, forcing me back to the retry?? screen. I’d be doing really well one moment, then it would be over in an instant. If I was merely taking damage and needed to quickly remove myself from the situation, that would be one thing, but not even having the ability to react is frustrating.

I got stuck at a point midway through DragonStrike. The above situation kept happening, over and over. So, I checked the manual and found part of what was going wrong. You’re given the option to join orders in DragonStrike. You start?? in the Knights of the Crown, and can switch to Knights of the Sword, before finally having the chance to enter the Knights of the Rose. But beyond just upgrading your?? dragon, it also sets you on a harder path through the story. I was in the Knights of the Rose.

So, I restarted and refused the offers to join the other Orders. Sure enough, I was suddenly plowing through the story, galvanized by a stint in hard mode. Then, I got stopped by a mission where I was getting whittled? down by archers. I could probably overcome it with some carefully placed shots, but by then, it was midnight. This may surprise you, but I keep regular hours, so I needed to be up for work in the morn??ing. And that’s why my homework isn’t finished.

Soaring recommended at 6MHz or faster

I still wound up spending a lot of time with DragonStrike, and when I have the chance, I’ll probably dive back in to finish it. Even with its simple mission design and intangible physics held back by the restrictions of the technology at the time, there just isn’t much out there like DragonStrike.

Furthermore, I think the developers behind the game were enthusiastic about the subject matter. While, again, there were a lot of technical limitations, they still tried to get as much detail as they cou??ld in?to the game. You can even be dislodged from your mount and freefall toward the ground. Your dragon will try to catch you, but it might fail, and it’s game over. This would be a very cinematic moment in a modern game, but the fact that it’s in a DOS game from the 90s is a nice touch.

Early flight sims may seem superseded b??y technological advancements, but there’s still value in seeing how developers got around the limitations of the era. They can still be appreciated for their ??art.

This goes doubly for DragonStrike. Not only did the developers at Westwood have to deal with the limits of home computers at the time, but they also had to think about how they would ??represent the fictional warfare of dragon fights. The result is something th??at is somewhat compromised and often frustrating, but it’s endearingly earnest. It’s enough that I still want to dig deeper into the game, and when it comes to retro titles, that’s half the battle. Plus, dragons.

For oth??er retro titles you may have missed, click ??right here!

The post Drag?onStrike for PC lets you go beyon??d just imagining dragons appeared first on Destructoid.

The Earthworm Jim games were perhaps the earliest indication that I’d wind up in this career. They were the first time that I really became aware of the developers behind the games I played, and beyond that, I actually contacted one of them �?via snail mail.

I was probably 7 at the time, and I wrote to Shiny Entertainment asking them if they were going to make an Earthworm Jim 2. Amazingly, they wrote back. Not just some pre-formatted response, either. They actual?ly answered my questions. I wish I still had that letter.

After Earthworm Jim 2, Shiny adopted a no-sequel policy. Earthworm Jim 3D wasn’t developed by Shiny, and as an N64 owner, I wouldn’t play another game by the developer until 2003’s Enter the Matrix. At that point, Shiny had been sold to Infogrames, and their last years of existence were spent making l?icensed games.

But following the release of Earthworm Jim 2 and before Enter the Matrix, they created a small handful of games that still demonstrated the developer’s ingenuity. And they began with 1997’s MDK.

On a good day, 2.5 billion people will die

Before you ask, the meaning of MDK as an acronym isn’t really mentioned anywhere in the story or marketing. For a long time, it was believed to mean “Murder Death Kill,�?but this wasn’t confirmed until creator Nick Bruty stepped in and confirmed it. However, according to Bruty, “It was a temp name that stuck although I didn't like the actual meaning so we came up with a bunch of other names to cover it up.�?/p>

I can understand not really loving the name. The �?0s saw a lot of games that glorified graphic violence??, and the name “Murder Death Kill�?ki??nd of suggests it’s one of them. There’s violence, sure, but it’s not really graphic.

There isn’t much story told within MDK itself. Starting out, your only point of context is that a “Huge City Minecrawler�?is headed toward Laguna Beach. You start ??t?he game free-falling toward it, and then you’re blasting everything in sight.

The instruction manual is where it’s at, giving you a completely unhinged account of what’s going on. Dr. Fluke Hawkins gets mocked by the scientific community, so he kidnaps his janitor and goes into space to try and get proof that he’s not crazy. ?As it turns out, he is crazy, but rather than return to Earth, he decides to stay in space until he makes a real discovery. Eventually, Earth is invaded, and being in space at the time, Dr. Hawkins decides that he’s the planet’s only hope. So, he sends his janitor to clean up this mess.

Tourism is safe

You play as this janitor, Kurt Hectic. The good doctor has provided Kurt with the “Coil Suit,�?which is a formfitting little number with a chaingun on one arm and a face-mounted sniper rifle. After the aforementioned free-fall onto the minecrawler, your job is to gun your way to the pilot’s seat and ??eliminate whoever’s driving it, at which point you’ll be sucked back into space.

There are six levels, but the last level feels more like an epilogue to level five. Each one is a sprint through a variety of open environments that usual?ly feature combat and a light puzzle. The puzzles range from simply destroying a lock with the “World’s Smallest Nuclear Explosion�?to “where the hell am I supposed to go?�?levels of obtuse. It’s not too difficult. Normally I was able to figure out where the hell I was supposed to go by sh?ooting everything and, if that didn’t work, jumping on everything.

You’re given a handful of secondary weapons along the way, either devices or alternate ammunition for the sniper rifle.  Th??e sniper rifle ammo sucks to cycle through. Usually, I just want to use the standard bullet, but if you picked up, say, a mortar round along the way, it gets loaded over top, and I end up just embarrassing myself.

While the majority of MDK is just running and gunning, it does mix things up with platforming and short vehicle sections. The runtime is pretty short at about 4 hours, b??ut it at least keeps things interesting the whole way through.

I feel top!

I first played MDK around my college years. At that point, the third and first-person shooter genres were deep in their brown realism phase. Playing this game was a welcome change from carrying two guns and gluing my back to c?over.

Kurt’s chain gun is pretty weak, but it sprays at a ridiculously fast speed. He can run at about 60MPH, and the open environments were impressive during an era large??ly confined to corridor??s. More impressive was that, even though this was 1997, there wasn’t any fog occluding distant objects.

The trade-off is that the environments also aren’t very detailed, but that is hardly ever a problem. Usually, it only causes issues during platforming sections. However, this is exacerbated by the fact that Kurt is just a 2D sprite. He can actually cling to ledges a??nd pull himself up, but figuring out where the ledge is in relation to Kurt can be difficult.

MDK was released during the early days of 3D acceleration on PC, which I now hate. I don’t hate the games, really, but I do hate how badly they tend to play on modern setups. Interplay did recently patch it to improve compatibility, but it still very reluctantly runs ??at 640x480 resolution. Proper mouse aiming needs to be configured in the game’s settings, and the menus don’t really function correc?tly. One time, I alt-tabbed, and when I went back in, my mouse aim was broken. It’s a game that badly needs a source port or remaster.

Face mounted hardware

MDK also contains a lot of Shiny’s original weirdness. There are cows, for example. It’s largely a mix of dark and absurd humor. Earthworm Jim even ?makes a cameo appearance as a power-up icon ??that causes a cow to land on enemies.

There was a sequel appropriately named MDK 2, but it was handled by BioWare. It was generally well-received and well-loved, even getting an HD version in 2012. However, it was a disappointment to me. The gameplay alternates between three characters: D??r. Hawkins, Kurt, and Max. Kurt’s levels are rather similar to the first game, but Dr. Hawkin’s had more puzzle-oriented gameplay. I barely remember what Max played like. The biggest le??tdown for me was the fact that the humor leaned in more of a silly direction, losing its edge.

The original MDK is just dumb fun. But beyond that, it’s also an imaginative antithesis to the direction shooting games would take over the next decade. Even now, I can’t think of a game that comes close to MDK’s speedy, cathartic bl??asting mixed with a darkly surreal atmosphere. Shiny Entertainment’s ??games weren’t always the tightest, most polished experience on the market, but the world is poorer for the loss of that company’s unique perspective. There hasn’t been anything quite like them since.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right h?ere!

The post MDK shows us the damage a janitor can do appeared first on Destructoid.

Considering that Capcom was ruling the fighting game roost in 1993, Saturday Night Slam Masters is such a low-key production. Street Fighter 2 blended together with a wrestling game sounds like such an amazing concept, but that’s absolutely not what Saturday Night Slam Masters is.

And that’s really weird, considering that one of the grapplers, Gunloc, has a bio that suggests he is related to a famous street fighter while Chun Li appears in the audience. Yet, despite the references that imply it exists in the same universe as Street Fighter 2, Saturday Night Slam Masters is pretty much just a wrestling game. It’s not eve??n a particularly outstanding wrestling game, but it’s still one of my favorite arcade games of all time.

Why?

Mike Haggar. Mike Haggar! MIKE HAGGAR!

The Excellence of Execution

Saturday Night Slam Master was released in 1993 in arcades, but it also got ported to the SNES, Genesis, and FM Towns Marty. I first played it on the SNES where it became one of my most prized cartridges, but now that it’s more widely available through Capcom Arcade Stadium 2, that’s where I typically get my Haggar on.

In Japan, the game is actually called Muscle Bomber, but I personally love the Saturday Night Slam Masters moniker. I love it so much. It just sounds like an old televised wrestling show, similar to WWF’s Saturday Night’s Main Event. I love it so much that the flagship show of the fictional wrestling promotion I make over and over in every wrestling game with customization, Brea???kfast Time Wrestling, is Saturday Morning Slam. I almost italicized that like it’s a real thing.

Saturday Night Slam Masters centers around the worldwide Capcom Professional Wrestling Association. You choose a wrestler from a selection of 10 and then take them around the world to compete for the title belt. I don’t think that’s how wrestling titles are supposed to work, but it’s a great framework. And then, after you win?? the ti??tle, the game keeps on going, with you having to defend it.

There’s apparently more of a backstory. According to the Capcom Database citation-less summary, CPWA’s version of Hulk Hogan suddenly disappeared. With the vacuum of power where their champion was supposed to be, the CPWA decides to host their world tour Crash Carnival, to crown a new champion. But an evil promotion called ??the Blood Professional Wrestling Association decides that they want the title, and some of their wrestlers crash the Crash Carnival, which, again, I don’t think is how wrestling works. Maybe it’s kayfabe.

Magic Mike

Then there’s the aesthetic, which has that slight grit common in the Street Fighter and Final Fight games. The CPWA is a far cry from the glossy productions put on by wrestling promotions these days. It reminds me more of the early days of televised wrestling where the wrestlers would practically wade through a sea of people ??to get to the ring, rather than having an almost choreographed entran?ce.

Mike Haggar’s entrance, for example, simply has him throwing a towel into the crowd. If only I was there to catch that towel�?/p>

Then you get to the actual wrestling, and it’s just�?fine. There are punches, grapples, and Irish whips, plus plenty of button mashing. I feel that button mashing ?is actually key to arcade wrestling. Hammering that button and shaking the stick gives some physicality to the experience.

However, Saturday Night Slam Masters lacks any nuance beneath that. You can climb the ropes, but opponents don’t stay down long enough for you to really land a flyin??g elbow. It’s possible to get outside the ring and use weapons, but that’s largely pointless. If you do it to temporarily escape your opponent’s thrashing, it’s unlikely the opponent will actually join you. So you’re left standing out there, holding a bucket while the ref counts.

Haggarmania

Then there are the special moves. I only know of Mike Haggar’s, because when I have a choice to play as Mike Haggar or literally anyone else, I choose Mike Haggar. He has his spinning double-lariat from Final Fight, as well as a spinning piledrive. Except the spinning piledrive requires you to tie up with an opponent, rotate the joystick 360 degree?s, and hit the punch and jump buttons together. The problem is that once you tie up, you have about 1 second to mash the punch button to overpower your opponent. Otherwise, they perform a slam against you.

I can play Zangief just fine. I’m no str??anger to 360 rotations. But I have never once been able to perform M??ike Haggar’s spinning piledriver. To this day, its existence is hearsay to me.

Pins are also somewhat routine. If your opponent has no life left in their gauge, they’re out the moment you pin them. The same goes for you. Fight all you want, but if your life gauge?? is empty, you’re not getting free.

A lot of the actual combat in Saturday Night Slam Masters just feels “good enough.�?It’s not actually that much better than 1986’s Pro Wrestling on the NES or 1989’s Tecmo World Wrestling, just to name a couple. Heck, 1991’s King of the Monsters i?s a better wrestling game, and that game is really about kaiju.

Although, none of those have Mike Haggar, which means Saturday Night Slam Masters is the best.

Pinfall

I should note that there is a tag team mode, which is pretty fun. It allows you to team up with a friend or captive stranger to take on the CP??WA. Really, it’s more like a tornad?o tag. You’re both in the ring at the same time, and the goal is to pin both opponents, which can be done one at a time.

There were two follow-ups to Saturday Night Slam Masters. The first was Muscle Bomber Duo, which was k??ind of like the “Turbo�?version of the base game. The gameplay is more polished, and you can play as the boss characters. It actually does play quite a bit better. Getting into a tie-up actually requires you to press a button to grapple.

The actual sequel is Ring of Destruction: Muscle Bombers 2, and it’s a horrible abomination. For whatever reason, the developers turned it into a straightforward fighting game. The wrestling is now just an aesthetic choice. You don’t even have to pin at the end of the match. Even worse, it isn’t a good fighting gam?e. It does still have Mike Haggar, thoug?h.

Unfortunately, neither of these follow-ups were in Capcom Arcade Stadium 2, which isn’t a huge loss for Ring of Destruction, but Muscle Bomber Duo is a clear improvement over the original. I’m not sure if we’ll ever see a Capcom Arcade Stadium 3, but if they’re still not included, we riot.

Get back in the ring

Even though it isn’t the best wrestling game, I ??still love it. It’s easy to pick up and play a few rou?nds, the aesthetic is perfect, and while it isn’t great, it’s good enough. Good enough, plus Mike Haggar, is immediately top-shelf.

One of my dream games is for Capcom to return to Saturday Night Slam Masters. The wrestling sub-genre in video games is in a stagnant place right now. Much of the air in the room is dominated by the WWE 2K series' abundant flab, and fun arcade wrestlers are few and far between. A wrestling? game that eschews licensed wrestlers and instead provides a fun cast with a unique aesthetic feels like it would stand out today. Especially if it features Mike Haggar.

For other retro titles you may h?ave mis?sed, click right here!

The post ??Saturday Night Sla??m Masters gives us more reason to vote Mike Haggar appeared first on Destructoid.

I mentioned this once before, but after the launch of the Super Nintendo in 1991 (1990 for Japan), Konami went through this weird period of producing licensed games that were way better than you’d expect. I’ve covered Bucky O’Hare, but there’s also Zen: The Intergalactic Ninja, and this one: Monster in My Pocket.

Monster in My Pocket is more than just a cheeky euphemism, it was this media franchise in th??e age when everyone wanted a media franchise. Well, it was an attempt at one. It was based around a series of tiny figures produced by Matchbox, but they also pushed a cartoon special and a comic that only made it through four issues. It was pretty short-lived.

The Monster in My Pocket NES game came out in 1992. Among the short list of staff who worked on the game is Etsunobu Ebisu, who would become a major figure in the Ganbare Goemon series. I mean that literally. The character of Ebisumaru is based on the guy. Now, he’s the president of Good-Feel. The oth??er staff members are hardly slouches, either, but Ebisu is the one who’s still relevant today.

So, yeah. It’s more attenti??on than you’d expect from a licensed game. Especially when you consider that licensed games at the time? were typically dredged up from swamps.

I will keep my analogies holstered

Circling back to what Monster in My Pocket actually is; they were tiny little rubber figurines of, obviously, monsters. They were pretty cheap, and ??you could buy packs of them to fill your pockets with.

There’s a lot you can do when you just mash a bunch of monsters together, but the narrative of Monster in my Pocket is that Guile from Street Fighter II is evil, and he wants to�?Uh, do evil, I guess. Vampire and (Franke??nstein’s) Monster set out to stop him. To do so, they have to wade through a??ll his various underlings.

Also, all the monsters are tiny. That’s im??portant.

The plot might be pretty limited, but the really cool part of playing the game is seeing all the vario??us toys you might have in your collection brought to life. Personally, I didn’t ever get into the toys. I would have been three or four when they first came out, so I probably would have just stuck them up my nose or whatever kids that age normally do. However, I could totally see the appeal of trying to identify all the various toys.

Shatter-pocket

As a game, Monster in My Pocket is a pretty standard side-scroller with a shade of brawler. You run along and punch everything in your way, trying not to get hit in the process. Sometimes, you can pick up objects fro?m the environment and throw them, but this is pretty rare and not all that useful. There are places where there’s a bit of branching in the environments, but it’s mostly just a “high road, low road�?kind of situation. Speaking of which, it isn’t immediately obvious, but you can double jump.

In a way, the brawler-sidescroller mix feels a bit like Shatterhand, but don’t get your expectations too high; this is a really basic game. At least it has two-player simultaneou??s co-op.

What really brings its quality up is its use of various effects and technical trickery that the NES doesn’t typically do well. This includes quickly scrolling backgrounds, four-way scrolling, and fake parallax effects. This was the sort of thing that Bucky O’Hare also did, as well as Zen: Intergalactic Ninja, but we haven’t gotten there yet.

Pocketful of pugilists

The downside is that the enemies tend to heap up o??n the ground of these levels, and it caus??es a lot of flicker, especially when you’re punching your way through them. 

This leads me to a question for other people who play a lot of NES: have you also just gotten used to sprite flicker? I’m not trying to diminish the limitation. It’s really distracting and doesn’t help the aesthetic whatsoever. Howeve??r, when playing this, I realized that I don’t even notice anym??ore. I wonder if this is how children were able to tolerate it.

Anyway, the levels take you through a house, into a kitchen, out onto the streets, over a construction site, into Japan (weirdly), and then to a monster castle. Six stages. It’s a very short game, ??but there are limited continues, so it may take you a few attempts to get through it. Even with that, the first time I played it, I had it done with befor?e the afternoon was over.

There is some variety to the levels, but not a whole lot. The bosses are really where it’s at. I kind of wish I knew who these toys are. I think the first boss is Mad Scientist, and the fifth boss is Banshee (who was apparently never r?eleased). The bosses are pretty simple, but they take some pattern memorization to take down without dumping a few lives.

Evil-Guile's revenge

The music is pretty pleasing, as well. The track for the fifth level, Oriental Illusion (I know), sounds like it could have been from one of the Ganbare Goemon games. I don’t think there was really much of an e??xisting soundtrack to base the game’s music on, so it’s basically ju??st top-shelf NES noodling.

I think the point I’m trying to land here is that Monster in My Pocket is way better than it should be, but not all that special aside from some technical delights. It has an advantage over Bucky O’hare in that it isn’t especially frustrating. Plus??, there’s two-player co-op, if you can handle the extra flicker.

However, that’s what makes games like Monster in My Pocket more fascinating. It doesn’t feel like it should exist. Why not a Sega Genesis or SNES game instead? That seems like it would be easier. The fact that it was released on a console that was at the end of its lifespan, ??I would have expected it to be phoned in. But it’s not. It’s a completely competent game. Inoffensive at its very worst. Developers who were well beyond what the project called for still gave an impressive effort. You’ve got to hand it to them.

For other retro titles you ??may have missed, click right here!

The post Monster in My Pocket for NES is another licensed game that is way better than you’d expect appeared first on Destructoid.

How’s your week been? Mine? Horrible. Worse than normal. So, it’s time for some self-care. Get in your pajamas, order some pizza, and let’s get into some Super Smash T.V.

Smash T.V. was originally released in arcades in 1990. It was designed by the legendary Eugene Jarvis, the guy behind 1981’s Defender. More importantly, he created 1982’s Robotron: 2084, which is the godfather of twin-stick shooters. Smash T.V. was built as a spiritual successor to that game, so it has all the features you’d expect, which is to say, it is a?lso a twin-stick shooter.

Super Smash T.V. is the title used by the SNES, Genesis/Mega Drive, Master System, and Game Gear? versions. What makes it “Super?�?Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It’s just a straight por?t of the arcade title.

Go! Go! Go!

The SNES version is what I’m most familiar with, and it’s the one that is closest to the arcade version. For the Genesis and other versions, you can use the second player controller’s d-pad to work as a second stick, but the SNES has the now-standard four face button configurat??ion, so the buttons just act as a second d-pad. It works well, providing 8-way aiming that matches the arcade.

It also sounds the closest, even when it comes to voice samples. On the other hand, when played through the Genesis�?FM synth chip, the soundtrack is amazing.

Smash T.V. lifts pretty heavily from �?0s dystopian action flicks. Specifically, its premise is about a game show where contestants bet their lives to win big prizes, which is similar to 1987’s The Running Man. However, it also lifts from 1987’s RoboCop, with the rampant consumer themes and the host of the show frequently spouting, “I’d buy that for a dollar!�?/p>

I feel like the �?0s were the point where everyone was becoming wise to the fact that modern comforts and excessive consumerism were doing harm to humanity. While a lot of media at the time sincerely bought into the decade’s excess, others were looking at it with cynicism. It was a theme that ran under a lot of media at the time, resulting in the best era of cyberpunk and other dystopian narratives. Ideas like Max Headroom and The Terminator are emblematic of the times, and Smash T.V. captures that perfectly.

Total Carnage!

The actual game show, the eponymous Smash T.V., is e??qually glitzy and violent. Hordes of enemies pour in from the doors on all sides of the arena. Each one d??ies in an explosion of blood, though the console versions, unfortunately, don’t include the dismembered body parts that added a splash of color to the carnage.

Meanwhile, pick-ups of all types appear at random as you wade through the relentless masses. Enticing things like money, VCRs, keys, and power-ups keep popping into existence to distract you from the walk-and-chew-gum gameplay of a twin-stick shooter. Worse yet, for each carefully wrapped present that you pick up, it will tell you what ??you’ve just won beneath your score. Did you find a 2600�?Television, or was it a toaster? Don’t take your eyes off the sh?rapnel guy; he’s about to blow, and you need to get out of the path of his projectiles.

The feeling of excitement as you don’t just rack up points but also toasters is supplemented by the end-of-round tallies. As your buff dude in the dumb-looking helmet stands behind a podium, your VCRs and TVs get converted into points, stacking up behind you, accompanied by a buzzing noise building to a crescendo. If you manage to collect enough keys throughout the game, you win the ultimate prize: a trip to the Pleasure Dome. Except you don't, because the Pleasure Dome doesn't actually exist in the game.

Meanwhile, the show’s host pops up every so ??often to spout a one-liner, flanked by outrageously buxom women. “Big money! Big prizes! I love it!�?or “Total Carnage!�?among others. Unfortunately, the SNES version doesn’t show him taking overt glances at the women’s cleavage, but he still wiggles his eyebrows.

I'd buy that for a dollar!

The gameplay itself is dumb fun. There isn’t a huge variety of enemy types?, but there’s always a lot of them. Typically, there are the ones that arrive in swarms, while others will just complicate things by adding deadly projectiles to the mix. There are tank cyborgs and guys that explode, sending shrapnel in eight directions.

If you’re familiar with twin-stick shooters, or generally any shoot-’em-up, you know that it’s about finding a flow state amongst the chaos. Being able to watch where you are while still keeping aware of the situation. That’s Smash T.V.

Then there are the bosses, who are every bit as ridiculous as you’d expect from the game. The first boss, Mutoid Man, is a giant man melded to a tank. Your pea-shooter is useless, so you need to grab whatever power-up you can to simply damage him. Thankfully, he can’t shoot behind himself because he has no neck. You blow his arms off, and when you destroy his head, it explodes in a shower of heads. Then, when you destroy the body, there’s another head underneath it. Simply incredible.

Good luck! You'll need it!

On the other hand, it’s extremely difficult. Smash T.V. in arcades was a notorious quarter-muncher. ?The ?SNES version adds to this my favorite bugbear: limited continues. You have only a very small number of lives and continues before you’re starting the whole thing over again.

I’m not saying it’s impossible. There are three stages. On my first try, ?with the default number of lives and on the normal difficulty, I made it to the end of the second sta??ge. For my second attempt, I used a cheat that adds additional lives and continues, and with that, I made it to just before the boss room on the third stage. I could maybe/probably slice that down, but it is very difficult.

Luckily, you can also recruit a second player to join in, which is an absolute blast. I once trie?d to pressure someone into playing repeatedly until we could beat it with the default number of continues, but that didn’t last long before they escaped my basement.

Digital Prozac

Feel better? No, me neither. But Smash T.V. is one of those games that force me to hyperfocus to the point w??here I can’t hear the things bouncing around my head. It’s effective relief, if only tempor??ary.

Speaking of which, Smash T.V. did get a sequel called Total Carnage. Whereas I feel like Smash T.V. leverages its tacky satire to great effect, Total Carnage just feels plain tacky. It’s mostly a humorous take on the 1991 Gulf War, which feels pretty gross to write out. It’s probably made even less tasteful because of more recent conflicts. It also feels like they’re lifting another running joke from RoboCop, where the news would play off devastating events like they’re just the daily business, then pivot directly to feel-good fluff pieces. The difference is that RoboCop is using actual satire, and Total Carnage feels like? it’s simply making light of war. But again, that may just be in the light of more recent events.

Smash T.V., on the other hand, plays perfectly fine. I just wish we could get a port on modern systems. There was a port on Xbox 360, but it got delisted in 2010 after the company went bust. The last time we saw it on a home console was 2012’s Midway Arcade Origins. Without digging through the used section, the only way to play it now is on Antstream Arcade. Why? Because Warner Bros. bought all of Midway’s properties and seems to think that the only one of value is Mortal Kombat. But then, they’re also pivoting more to live service games, apparently, which is somehow even more d??epressing.

I think I’d better play some more Smash T.V.

For other retro titles you ma??y have missed, click right here!

The post Super Smash T.V. for SNES is a great way to unwind after ?a crap??py week appeared first on Destructoid.

I’ve been doing some exploration into the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive catalog after having played through the Valis games and Gley Lancer. The Genesis is??n’t what I’d call ??one of my blind spots, but I’m not as familiar with it as Nintendo’s early consoles. ;

As it turns out, the depths of its library are pretty murky. I had not heard of 1993’s Mazin Saga: Mutant Fighter. In fact, if I had heard of it, I probably would??n’t have been interested in playing it. And that would have been a shame. I would never know what an interesting game it is. On the other hand, my pride would still be intact.

Mazin Saga is the story of�?Hold on, I think I missed something here. Okay, so there’s a text crawl that says that in the unimaginably distant future of 1999, humanity lost a war. We got attacked by “Godkaiser Hell,�?and in the process of trying to fight their forces off, we kind of destroyed the envir?onment. The survivors hid underground, and it’s looking pretty bad for them, but a person named Dr. Kabuto (Dr. Helmet?) has created Mazinger Z to save them all.

Because, you know, creating weapons really ??work?ed out favorably for us before.

Wait a minute. This sounds extremely familiar. Apparently, Mazin Saga is based on a manga that is a mash-up of the Devilman and Mazinger Z series. ??Er, maybe? Resear?ching this is just confusing me more.

In any case, the Mazin Saga game is sort of a tokusatsu-style setup. You?? initially fight as a normal-sized dude through belt-scrolling beat-?’em-up sections, but at the end of each level, you fight a boss as a giant-sized dude.

The brawler levels are a bit routine. There’s a good variety of enemies, but Mazinger doesn’t have much in the way of special moves. There are various ways you can swing your sword, but because enemies are so aggressive and they recover from hits so quickly, most of your effort is spent trying to keep them at a range. There’s also your typical special attack that hits everything around your character. It damages you to prevent the possibility of just spamming it, but the damage you take is based on how many hits yo??u land, and it can stack up to some absolutely ludicrous levels. I never really used it.

Nonetheless, the brawling isn’t bad. It’s just, as ??I said, routine.

However, Mazin Saga comes to life during its boss battles, and I don’t just mean the tokusatsu-style giant ones. There are multiple instances of slapping a foot, an evil statue, and other indescribable monste?rs.

For how routine the basic gameplay is, the big boss fights have a lot going for them. They’re not on the level of, say, Street Fighter 2, but they’re challenging games that require reading your opponent’s movements carefully and reacting at the right time. You still don’t have very many different attacks, and they seem rather interch?angeable, but it’s a pretty fun time.

It’s made even better by the great-looking backgrounds. Mazin Saga is a pretty impressive-looking game to begin with. While the sprites are on the smaller side, the animations are top-notch. The small characters also make it so you get a good view of the backgrounds, and they’re all varied and great-looking. There was always something interesting?? to take in with every scene.

The downside is that it’s harder than a 5-year-old fruitcake. This is mostly because of my personal bugbear: limited continues. By default, you have three lives, and three continues. But starting with the third level, Mazin Saga begins throwing some unfair variations at you while the bosses start overpowering you mor??e and more.

There are only five levels, but I only got through the third level by finding a way t??o cheese the last boss. On the fourth level, I could make it to the final boss there, but I just couldn’t overcome it. After a few trips through, I just ??gave up�?for now.

The biggest issue with the?? limited continues is that most of the levels aren’t very interesting to replay. The bosses are reliable fun, but there are only so many times that you can take in a breathtaking background while swatting enemies in the foreground before it starts to wear. It’s not a very replay-??friendly game, so the fact that it forces you to do so anyway doesn't help its case.

So, the last level remains a bit of a mystery to me. That’s a lie. I just looked it up. The fifth level concludes with a boss fight (I could have gu?essed that), and then you’re put through a rush against all the previously defeated bosses. Then, after that, there’s an ultimate last boss. Wow, I really didn’t stand a chance. Even if I got past Buster Claws, I’d have to fight him again a bit later. And then what? I’d have to? be able to ride that through more bosses to victory.

Not sure that’s happening.

Mazin Saga is one of those titles that would probably benefit from a modern re-release that adds save states and rewinding. I don’t think it’s impossible to beat as is, but it’s not just a matter of simple repetition as something like Contra is. No, winning here req??uires figuring out effective strategies against the bosses, which is something that is hurt by something like limited continues.

As it is, Mazin Saga is more interesting from an aesthetic standpoint. Its animations have a great deal of fluidity, and its backgrounds have tremendous variation. Even its gameplay is decent enough. But whoever decided on that continue limit is as evi??l as Godkaiser Hell itself.

The post Mazin Saga for Genesis/Me??ga Drive can be hazardous to your ego appeared first on Destructoid.

I met the man who would become m?y husband at about the time that I started venturing more into horror games. I had just discovered that a switch ??had flipped in my head, and I was now immune to video game scares. 

He suggested Fatal Frame to me, insisting that it was the scariest game ever made. He even went as far as buying me a copy of it for Xbox. It was my introduction to the series, but the first game I wound up completing was Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse for my review right here on Destructoid. I didn’t complete it ?back in 2016 in my first experience with it.

There were a few reasons fo??r why I dropped it, but they’re pretty boring. Being scary wasn’t one o??f them. Though, its controls are horrifying for a different reason.

Candid Camera Obscura

Fatal Frame has you start off as Mafuyu Hinasaki, who is looking for a missing author in an abandoned mansion. One thing leads to another, and you’re switched over to his sister, Miku Hinasaki, as she searches for her brother. Turns ou??t, a bunch of bad stuff happened at the mansion that has left it cursed and lousy with angry ghosts.

Luckily, the two ??wind up in possession of a mysterious, old-fashioned camera called the Camera Obscura, which has the a??bility to ward off ghosts. Much of the time, after a few encounters, it looks like you capture the ghosts entirely, but in the options menu, it says “Ghosts Driven.�?nbsp;

That’s a pretty strange way to phrase it, but I’m doubtful very much of the budget was spent on the translation. After all, Fatal Frame is an ?extremely Japanese style of horror, it’s deep into folklore, and the manor is loaded with tatami floors and kimono racks. North Americans weren’t quite yet fully indoctrinated by anime in 2002, so anything set in Japan might as well be taking place on Mars for most people. As a result, it’s a translation typical of its era, complete with voice acting that sounds like everyone has been dosing tranquilizers.

Speaking of the localization, the game was advertised in North America as having been “Based on a True Story,�?which is ironic because that statement isn’t true. I go into a lot more detail about it in this article, but the short version of it is that director Makoto Shibata said he took inspiration from his own supernatural experiences and dreams, but the stories weren't adaptations of specific events. The true story claim was somewhat perpetuated by a 2002 IGN article that is notable for having absolutely no cited sources. Meanwhile, d?ecades of fans combing for one grain of truth to back up ??the claim have found nothing substantial. Marketing is a hell of a thing.

The rooooopes

While horror games at the time were experimenting with helpless protagonists, limited supplies, and terrible combat, Fatal Frame es??sentially has all of the above. As I mentioned, you can only protect yourself with the Camera Obscure, which takes you into a first-person perspective. This isn’t so bad on its own and is generally how combat works in the entire series. It’s unique, nuanced, and functions pretty well on most of your early encounters.

The frustrating part is that, later on in the game, ghosts get a bunch of tricks up their sleeve. While sometimes, this just means that it’s more difficult to get them to show a vulnerable side, it more vexingly manifests as the ability to just disappear in front of you and show up directly behind you, ready to sneak a grab of your fine cheeks. Add on top of this that they’re freely able to go through walls and obstacles, and you often find yourself at a massive disadvantage. You can sometimes just run away, bu??t that isn’t as easy as just leaving the room, and sometimes you can’t even do that.

As a result, my husband was witness to me slinging insults at the TV screen. I don’t think my language has gotten this colorful toward a video game since Ninja Gaiden on the NES.

At this point, I’ve played most of the games in the Fatal Frame series to some extent, and this is easily the worst the combat has ever been. This is keeping in?? mind that, like many survival horror ??games of the era, it just kind of never has been good.

Home comforts

With all the complaining out of the way, it’s probably prudent to clarify that Fatal Frame is a terrific horror game.? The series has a good way of grounding you in the terror by giving a sense of familiarity to everything. The ghosts generally have a backstory to them that can be gleaned from the various notes throughout the game. You se??e them frequently before your camera eats them, and that makes the mansion feel a bit like home.

Meanwhile, it’s very slow and meticulous with its plot. The game is separated into a few chapters, and each one generally covers a different part of the history of the mansion. Along the way, you’re fed pieces of informatio??n that slowly deobfuscate exactly what’s happening until you�??�ve got the whole picture. Gradually, the protagonist is linked with what’s going on, and eventually, your ultimate objective is made clear.

It also doesn’t make much use of jump scares, rather allowing its atmosphere and storytelling do all the work. That’s not to?? say there are none, but there aren’t any dogs jumping throu?gh windows.

The darkness comes

To add to some presentation issues, the game is extremely dark. Visually, I mean, though thematically as well. I had to adjust my telev??ision just to be able to see more than whatever was caught in the flashlight. That didn’t help with the video capture, though, which grabbed all its murky blackness. I played with the brightness and gamma here so you can actually see what’s going on. However, I thought it was a lost cause and only captured about 2 hours of gameplay before giving up (sorry if there isn’t a lot of variety in the screenshots).

It’s too bad because it is worth seeing. It’s rather disappointing that there has never been a re-release or remaster of the series aside from Mask of the Lunar Eclipse. While many people cite Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly as the absolute best in the series, the first three titles still languish on the PS2 and Xbox. I mean, I guess there was a port of Fatal Frame 2 for the Wii in Japan and Pal regions, but I’ve been told it?’s horrible.

But while Fatal Frame has some problems that are insult-worthy, it’s still an excellent horror title. It’s exemplary of its era, being an interesting horror experience that isn’t actually that much fun to play. However, if you’re used to the awkwardness found in the survival horror of the early �?0s, it won’t? bother you as much. I mean, it will probably bother you still, but it won’t be a dealbreaker.

Fo??r other re??tro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post Fatal Frame for PS2 and Xbox is a portrait of the era’s survival horror appeared first on Destructoid.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Battletoads, it was a series o?f games that Rare made before they started to make good games. He??y-oh!

I’ve probably already lost half of you, but it was worth it. For the rest of you who remain, I’m mostly kidding. Mostly. I think history is misremembering Battletoads as a landmark series, when most people only played the first two levels of the original title and never saw past the Turbo Tunnel. Let me tell you, it doesn’t get better from there. But before anyone really had time to l?et the trauma set in, Rare had ported it to a myriad of platforms.

Battlemaniacs is weirdly derivative of the original title. Bu??t, hey, the 1994 arcade game is pretty good.

And then there was Battletoads and Double Dragon. The concept is just incredible, taking the grandfather franchise of the belt-scrolling beat-’em-up and combining it with the Battletoads. And it isn’t bad. It isn’t good, either. I f?eel like it’s just more interesting to talk about than it is t??o play.

Psychotronic!

I’m playing Battletoads and Double Dragon because it was part of my care package from Retro-Bit. The only game I’ve yet to cover from the shipment. They did a reprint of it, which is cool for a few reasons. They redid the cartridge label, colored it a semi-glossy green, and put it in a sort of box that I wish all SNES games came in. The box is sort of a ha??rder cardboard and opens from the front. It’s not on the level of the Genesis/Mega Drive clamshells, but it’s? enough that you’d want to keep it. Also, my favorite part of the label is that it has the modern Rare logo on it. I have absolutely no affection for modern-day Rare, but it’s just cool to see the update.

Weirdly, however, I already owned Battletoads and Double Dragon on SNES. I even have the b??ox, which I don’t often c??ollect.

Anyway, aside from that, the game is basically the same, aside from the copyright on the main screen. Well, I hit a bug twi??ce during level 3 where I could no longer advance, but I feel like that might have been in the original game. I feel like I recall hitting it before, but I couldn't find anyone complaining about it online, so it might be a false memory. However, I don’t think Retro-Bit really changed enough that this one particular problem would occur.

So, Battletoads and Double Dragon are what it says on the box. It’s a game featuring the three toads, Zitz, Pimple, and Acne, as well as Jimmy and Bimmy. The plot is literally, “Oh no, bad guys are attacking. We’d better go p?ick up the Dragons.�?And then that happens, and the game starts??. You select from one of the three toads because Jimmy and Bimmy are just a couple of dudes, and that's boring. The Toads, meanwhile, confidently strut around naked, which I’m always a fan of.

Vague recollections

The gameplay of Battletoads and Double Dragon is like one of the designers of the original Battletoads was finally medicated. I’d say it was a halfway point between the two games, but it’s really more of a Battletoads game that doesn’t hate you as much. There are still the sidescrolling sections, a slower version of the Turbo Tunnel, and the vertical rappelling parts. It also leans a lot wackier than Double Dragon typically did. I mean, maybe aside from the shared hallucination that was Double Dragon V.

Combat was also usually a bit better in, well, the good Double Dragon titles. In Battletoads it's mostly just trying to hit an enemy before they hit you, at which point they're stunlocked so you can just mash the attack button until your character does a ??more powerful attack. If they hit you first, you’re stunlocked instead and will take a bunch of damage. On top of that, there’s a dash attack that you will be using all the time, an uppercut in the sidescrolling stages, and every once in a blue moon, you get to use a weapon.

Meanwhile, the elements taken from the Double Dragon series, like some of the enemies and bosses, are extremely, uh, made up. The guy built up as the archenemy of the dragons is called “The Shadow Boss,�?and that’s not something that really exists. In the NES version of Double Dragon, you were fighting someone known as “The Shado?w Boss,�?but it turned out to just?? be Jimmy in a twist that only occurred in that port.

In a fairly recent interview, Paul Machacek actually said that he doesn’t recall getting “too much direction or feedback from the DD IP holders.�?So, a lot of what they took just seems to have come from instruction manuals and their va??g??ue recollections.

Check out this Rash

This may all sound like Battletoads and Double Dragon sucks, but as I said, it isn’t b??ad. For one thing, the art style, animation, and sound are all on point. There are some great extra details, like when you push an enemy through the floor, or grab a woman by the hair and kick her in the butt. A lot of the levels that are just straight beat-’em-ups are good, if a bit shallow, and with a bit of memorizat??ion, the sidescroller parts can be fun.

The bosses, on the ??other hand, you need to learn to juggle against the edge of the screen or they’ll combo you into oblivion. A second player really helps that, but who has friends? That wou??ld mean interacting with humans, and have you ever met one?

Speaking of two players, you have three toads to choose from, and they’re all the same aside from color. Forget that Pimple is the big one and Acne is the one with shades. They’re all the same size, and all lack any sort of headwear. Jimmy and Bimmy are likewise the same asid?e from color, but, as I mentioned earlier, they’re just two d??udes. The Toads at least have different moves compared to the Dragons, but that’s where the variation ends.

Confidently naked

There are only seven stages of different lengths, but, as is standard for the series, there’s a limit on your continues. Considering how inelegant the combat is and how necessary memorization is, it will probably take you quite a few runs to crack it. It’s easier with a second player who knows ??the ins and out??s of retro games, but, in my experience, those don’t exist.

I’m aware that I’m being very negative about Battletoads and Double Dragon, but that’s because the only thing my teachers taught me to share is criticism. I feel that I must again walk things back and clarify that this is not a bad game. It’s not a great Battletoads title (if one happens to exist), and it’s not a very good Double Dragon game, but there are enough appreciable factors here to keep it from being a bad game. The music is good, and the designers k?new ho??w to have fun with things, and even with all the clumsy parts, that attitude gets transmitted.

More importantly, however, it was cool to see two games crossover. Even if you weren’t a fan of one or the other, just the fact that these two sets of characters were important enough to be combined into one game made it seem like you were playing something incredible. Like quality is accumulative. It isn’t, obviously. Battletoads and Double Dragon is proof of that.

F?or other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post B?attletoads and Double Dragon on the SNES feels like being p?art of something special appeared first on Destructoid.

After going through the Valis series and finding them fascinating but not especially great, I kind of lumped Gley Lancer in there with them since they’re all part of a care package Retro-Bit sent me. I figured it would be a niche title that was forgotten because it wasn’t especially noteworthy. That is not the case. Gley Lancer is beyond rad.

What’s Gley? I’m assuming it’s an off-white color, similar to cleam or beice. If you guessed mistranslation, then that seems to be the case here. The Japanese language doesn’t have any distinction between “r�?and “l�?consonant sounds, so someone was? so absolutely certain that they had translated it correctly that they put it on the title screen. Let's cut them some slack. The internet wasn't what it is now. It definitely gives it that �?0s charm.

Similar to cleam or beice

Gley Lancer was created by Masaya, and the development team has a lot of great crossover. Producer Toshirou Tsuchida is credited with creating the Front Mission series and served as director on most of the titles. Looking into other members of staff, you see them wind up working on Arc the Lad, Cybernator, and, uh, Cho Aniki.

Gley Lancer didn’t get a localized release until just recently on the Switch. However, that version, handled by Ratalaika, took the weird approach of translating the cutscen?es with subtitles rather than having the text actually within the ga??me. Retro-Bit sent me the recent Sega Genesis re-production, where they went to the effort of actually translating the text within the game itself.

Retro-bit’s reproduction is in exactly the same style as their Valis series rerelease, and I go into more detail about it in my write-up of Valis. To sum it up, however, it’s very nice, from the p??ackaging all the way down to the printing on the PCB.

Your dad's missing. Oh, and we're screwed.

While a translation is usually not really required for a shoot-’em-up, it’s worthwhile in the case of Gley Lancer. That’s bec?ause the game includes some rather lavish cutscenes that show up at certain junctures of the game.

The narrative itself isn’t terribly special. Humanity is losing a war against an alien threat. However, for some reason, during a key battle, they choose to teleport a human flagship off to a remote corner of space rather than just destroy it outright. Lucia, the daughter of the ship’s captain, is distraught. Even more so because she’s told that humanity is losing the war, and their only hope lies in the completion of a super-rad space fighter. Unfortunately, it’s still in th??e prototype stage, so saving her dad is going to have to wait.

So, Lucia takes the logical, level-headed approach and steals the prototype fighter to go and save her dad. And mayb??e save humanity while she’s at it.

It’s the standard tale of?? one spaceship going up against an army, but the cutscenes are really nice for a Genesis/Mega Drive game. It’s at least nice that the protag?onist of this particular shoot-’em-up has a name and a face, even if she’s just killing aliens out of a personal vendetta.

Gunner but no bombers

Gley Lancer is a rather standard horizontal shooter, but it’s refreshingly simple. Rather than having a slew of different power-ups, you basically just gain additional “gunners�?which are the equivalent to the “options�?from Gradius. There are different flavors of gunners, but you can only have two, ?and the configuration of them depends on what you choose at the beginning of the game. You can have gunners locked forward, backward, ones that fire in the direction you’re moving, or ones that automatically select a target and shoot. There are flamethrowers, lasers, and other types of lasers, but that’s it as far as power-ups go.

The speed of your ship is actually toggled between four levels, so you can select how fast or slow you want to move. This is handy because it means you can slow down to avoid oversteering into obst?acles or speed up to dodge projectiles. There’s a lot that’s up to you, and not a lot of variance you have to worry about. You don’t have to keep in mind whether you’re picking up blue or red power-ups, nor do you have to watch an upgrade bar to know when to activate it, and there aren’t any screen-clearing bombs to lean on.

So, that’s cool.

But the best part is definitely in the presentation. The first level sets you off flying through a gas giant’s ring, with mad parallax layers on the background asteroids. The music is killer, easily one of Gley Lancer’s high points. Aesthetically, the whole thing is butter. Some levels look a lot more vanilla than others, so the quality isn’t maintained throughout, b??ut it’s good at always delivering something new and sh??aking things up.

Balls of garbage

The downside to the simplicity is that the game gets a bit stale over its ?runtime. It’s rather lo??ng for a shoot-’em-up, clocking in at around an hour if you absolutely never die. Chances are, it’s going to weigh in at two or three hours for a normal human, and that’s extremely long for the genre.

Meanwhile, the bosses are easily the weakest point of the whole experience. Most of them might as well have just been balls of garbage for all I can remember of their visual appearance. A lot of them go down with very little fight, and a few of them have easily exploitable holes in their defense. Better bosses, and maybe even the addition of more interesting sub-bosses, would have gone a long way in reinforcing Gley Lancer, but unfortunately, they??’re all a letdown. Yes, even the final bos?s.

Entirely top-shelf

I was certainly surprised by Gley Lancer. As far as shoot-’em-ups go on the Genesis, it’s an entirely top-shelf title. This mainly comes down to presentation, which is often the case for the genre, but it also stands out for its simple mechanics. The simplicity doesn’t necessarily make the game any easier, but it definitely help??s. Really, though, it’s the e??xcellent graphics and outstanding soundtrack that make it worth visiting.

It is pretty amusing to have a game with such an egregious mistranslation in the title, and perhaps even funnier that its re-releases didn’t bother to fix it, but really, it’s part of the charm. Otherwise, Retro-Bit’s localized re-release is extremely solid, but, like their other games that I’ve covered, it’s completely sold out. I’m hoping they eventually do a non-limited run of their titles, ??but I understand that retro reproductions are a difficult market, and having strict production limits is a good prot??ection.

So, for now, you can still get Gley Lancer on Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox, and it’s defi??nitely worth checking out.

For other re??tro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post Gley Lancer for Genesi??s/Mega Drive is a lot more than just an amusing mistranslation appeared first on Destructoid.

The Sega Genesis/Mega Drive received three games from the Valis series. Thus far, I’ve covered Valis, a port of a remake, and Syd of Valis, a bizarre chibi version of Valis II. However, I while I find them somewhat charming, I don’t love them. However, what I’ve been told, both in the comments and on other publications, is that Valis III is where the series actually got good.

Certainly, it’s got the best narrative of the bunch, though that wasn’t a high bar to clear. It also has some neat added features, better level design and bosses, and a new bra for Yuko, so yeah,? it’s pretty good. It’s all right.

I got Valis III as part of a care package I received from Retro-Bit. They did a pretty swell job with a re-release through Limited Run Games. I outline the production values in my Valis write-up, but to sum it up: damn. I’ve seen a lot of reproduct?ion and homebrew titles in my time, but Retro-Bit really takes it to the next level. I especially love how the game’s name is etched ?on the back of the PCB, visible through the translucent case. Nice little detail.

The bad guy this time around is an evil tyrant called Glames. He’s different from the previous evil tyrants because he rules over the Dark World. The only reason he’s invading the Dreamland?? is because the Dark World is being absorbed into the nether and will soon cease to exist. So, really, he’s just trying to save his world, which is�?exactly what Yuko is trying to do. I guess he’s bad because he�?has bigger, pointier shoulder pads.

Cham shows up and tries to steal the Valis Sword so she can take on Glames herself, then immediately sucks and gets captured. Yuko saves her, so she becomes a second playable character. Cool! The two venture off to the?? Vecanti to save Valna, Yuko’s sister, ?who becomes the third playable character. Rad!

Yeah, one of the new features of Valis III is the ability to switch between three chara??cters. Eac??h one controls the same, but Cham has a whip, and Valna has magic projectiles. Sometimes you’re locked out of character switching, but for the majority of the game, you can play as whoever you want. Dialogue between characters will even change depending on who you’re actively playing at the time.

Valis III plays a lot better than the previous titles. The movement is still slow, and the jumping remains floaty, but the level design feels more like it takes this into account. The weird thing about jumping, though, is that you have to hold up on the D-pad to jump extra high. It was this way in the first Genesis Valis, but it still kind of bothers me.

The bosses are a lot better, as well. In previous games, you? could largely just hack away at them, but some of them here require a bit more gumption. They’re still a little clumsy when paired with the movement p?hysics, but better is better.

However, what driv?es me up the wall is that the cutscenes still have slow-ass text. They at least have better movement, and a lot of it looks great, but a lot of the time, I found myself just waiting for the words to crawl across the screen. I’m also moderately sure now that you can’t speed it up. You can only skip it entirely.

You c??an hurry along the in-game text, but it has a new, unique problem. The text boxes don’t have any indication of who’s talking, so you kind of have to figure it out for yourself. That, or just go by the idea that the ??characters are talking to themselves.

I’m also not sure about the translation here. It’s never been great, but it gets really confusing in Valis III. It talks about Nizetti as the “closest of the countries to being perfect.�?/p>

What? We’re talking countries now? Are Dark World, Dreamland, and the Human World considered countries, or is Nizetti a country within the Dreamland? I’m guessing this is a mistranslation of “kuni,�?which, in Japanese, can mean country, world, or,?? perhaps more accurately, land.

I think my favorite confusingly translated phrase is in the narrative recap at the beginnin?g. It says:

“Dreamland and the Human world are in danger!! Cheer up, Yuko!!�?/p>

Fantastic. I’m again making an assumpt?ion here that “Cheer up, Yuko!!�?is a weird way to translate “Ganbare Yuko.�?Ganbare ??is, like, a word for cheering someone on. It’s often translated to “good luck�?or “you can do it.�?Hold on, I can actually check on this.

Nope, I’m wrong. It says, “Stand, Y?uko!!�?I can honest??ly say that I’m not familiar enough with Japanese idioms that I can be certain if that’s a way of saying “cheer up.�?Sounds dumb, though.

The other big problem I have with Valis III is that the difficulty spikes spectacularly on the sixth level. It’s your typical ice stage, but just to make things extra difficult, they throw in a whole bunch of moving platforms, bottomless pits, and spikes. There are three parts to it and a boss, and if you lose all your?? lives, you’re repeating the whole thing over again. It’s excruciating.

The end boss is no pushover, either. I was stuck on him for a while, but the trick seems to be trying to keep all the power-ups you collect throughout the seventh stage. If you ??lose a life on him and have to repeat from the last level, you lose all your power-ups and the last fight becomes extremely difficult. You’ll probably die on him a lot, however, and that means repea?ting the last stage over and over again. Eventually, you’ll get it memorized enough to power through it and be sufficiently pumped for the fight against Glames.

Speaking of the ending, though, I want to spoil a part from the last cutscene. It’s actually the last line of text that occurs after Yuko returns to the Human World. It says, “Nobody has seen Yuko since then... nobody.�?/p>

What the hell kind of ending is that? What happened? I thought she went back to her normal life. Did she appear back in the Human World in the middle of the ocean? I guess I’ll have to wait to play Valis IV to find out. Which never had a Genesis version.

Valis IV was the last in the series, by the way. Un?less you count the, erm, pornographic spin-off.

While Retro-Bit’s reproduction cartridges sold out on Limited Run games, you can still play the Valis series via a pair of collections on the Switch. It’s also the best way to play the PC Engine CD-ROM² versions of some of the games, since that’s supposedly where they were at their best. Original copies of t??he Turbografx-CD go for astronomical prices.

Valis III is definitely the best of the series on the Genesis by a pretty wide margin. Even if it just told basically the same story over again, the sense of continuity between the games is still rat?her enjoyable. Plus, the design, in general, is just a lot better. It’s still not great, but it’s definitely more with playing.

For other retro titles you may have m?issed??, click right here!

The post Valis III for? Genesis/Mega Drive gives Yuko an upgraded bra appeared first on Destructoid.

The Sega Genesis didn’t technically get Valis II. Instead, it got the remake of the first Valis and Valis III. However, between these two games was a title that remained exclusive to the platform, and that was the bizarrely named Syd of Valis. The Japanese title makes more sense. It’s SD Valis, named such because it uses a “super deformed�?anime art style, which might be better known in the West as “Chibi.�?/p>

Why? Fucked if I know.

Syd of Valis is presumably a play on the whole “SD�?thing, but then the game goes on to refer to Yuko, ??the protagonist, a??s Syd, while the manual and box cover do not.

So, anyway, that’s a great start. Syd of Valis tells the same story as Valis II, but with smaller characters, essentiall??y. And with a dumber name.

Enemy!!

Syd of Valis came to me as part of a care package from Retro-Bit. They did a special re-release of the Genesis games in the series, and provided me with a set, so I’m playing through them. I summed this up in more detail in my article on Valis. Syd of Valis received the same impressively luxurious reproduction as the rest of the titles. I said t??his in the last article, but, damn, this is a nice-looking re-release.

However, like Valis, or perhaps even more so, Syd of Valis is a pretty obscure and niche title, so it’s interesting to see it be lavished with such a production. Despite this, Limited Run Games, who distributed the special edit??ions, are currently listing them as sold out. So, I guess their b??usiness plan worked out, which is nice to see.

I love it when obscure games get a bit of the spotlight. I’m always digging through retro libraries to find games that �?good or bad �?I just haven’t played before. The Valis series is certainly fertile ground, so Retro-Bit dropping them in front of me was the only incentive I needed to pi??ck them up.

Bonus or punishment

Syd of Valis is narratively similar to the first title. Schoolgirl-turned-dream warrior Yuko is ?called to save the dreamland of Vecanti after it’s been invaded by yet another jerk. This guy is Megas, and from the sounds of it, he’s having more success than Rogles.

In terms of actual gameplay, Syd of Valis is not very similar to the first Genesis game. The physics are completely different, as is the level design. You can swap out costumes and projectile types for an added level of strategy. Although, ??it doesn’t really amount to much because the hit detection is still butt, and the controls are very floaty and slippery. It also has that problem that some early platformers have, where rather than always center the camera on the player, there's a dead zone in the middle of the screen. So, when you're scrolling forward, you're always closer to the edge of the screen, giving you less time to react to obstacles. It's one of my pet peeves.

Worse, however, is that there are no co?ntinues. You gain lives every time you pass a score threshold, but if you run out, you’re done. It’s pretty frustrating since the boss battles are clunky and require a certain amount of pattern recognition. Just figuring out the best way to take down a boss will likely cost you liv?es, and if you spend too many, you’re back to the start of the game.

There isn’t a level-select password to help you, either. The best you get is an invincibility cheat that, hilariously, puts Yuko in a red bikini. I can’t tell if that’s supposed to be an extra bonus or if Syd of Valis is trying to punish you.

Revenge of the text crawl

Syd of Valis is just kind of�?weird. I don’t dislike it, and I actually appreciate how it builds on the story of the previous game. However, it doesn’t take itself seriously, but only in, like, a half-measured way. Characters die, but then maybe they come back? And then Megas, he says the whole thing was a ruse just so he could fight Yuko, and now they’re friends or something. I don’t think that’s canon. Especially since he ap?parently murdered a whole bunch of people. Seems excessive if you just want to spar with someone, but who am I to judge?

I just don’t think that Syd of Valis is the best way for the story to be delivered. The excruciatingly slow text crawls are back. Now that I think of it, I’m unsure if you can just press a button to expedite the text. The first Valis game would just skip the whole cutscene, which I think taught me to be afraid of advanc?ing the text, so I just never tried it.

However, as I pointed out last time, the Valis series started out on Japanese home computers but is best known for its PC-Engine Super CD-ROM² versions. To fit everything on the Genesis, they had to scale back the cinematics dramatically. Considering that was a large part of the appeal at?? the time, it g??ets lost in translation. Not sure what’s up with the chibi characters, though.

Yuko's got a great sassy face, though. Props to Telenet for keeping it pasted to the bottom-lef?t of the screen.

Sydlexic

I once again didn’t dislike Syd of Valis, but I don’t think I particularly like it, either. I’ve heard from more than one source (including the comments here) that the series started getting actually good with Valis III, which is where I’m off to next. I don’t know. There’s a lot to like with these games, especially with how they adapt t?he era’s Magical Girl anime. I just wish they were more fun to play.

If you’re curious enough to want to try it out yourself, Edia has released ports of the games on Switch. You can buy them piecemeal or in two collections. Syd of Valis is part of the Valis: The Fantasm Soldier Collection II. Just remem??ber that I warned you about it not having any continues. At least the ports have a rewind feature.

For other retro titles you may have missed, ??click r?ight here!

The post Syd of Valis for Genesis/Mega D??rive is a perplexing way to po??rt a sequel appeared first on Destructoid.

I received an unexpected (but not unwelcome) care package from Retro-Bit the other day. It contained five of their recent retro reissues. Now, I don’t think I agreed to anything at any time, but they obviously know my weakness. If you put old game cartridges in front of me,?? I can’t help but play them, research them, turn them over, and tickle their underbelly. So, heck yeah, let��s give them a look.

We’re starting with Valis for the Sega Genesis. Originally released in 1991, it’s technically a remake of a 1986 game for MSX, PC-98, and Sharp X1 home computers. The series was created by Telenet Japan, which was a game publisher and developer t??hat eventually went bust in 2007 after trying to pivot to hentai games. Their properties were reportedly bought up by Sunsoft, which might be why we’re seeing them resurface now.

Packages

Retro-Bit provided it to me as part of a trilogy of Valis Genesis games, and while I know a bit about the series, I haven’t played them yet. It ??was pretty hard not to get excited to try them out, given the rather lavish treatment Retro-bit gave them. They all come with traditional Genesis/Mega Drive hard cases with reversible inlays featuring both the Japanese and North American cover art. The cartridges are transparent with minimalistic labels that use metallic foil for the labels. If you look through the back of?? the cartridge, you can see the name of the game is stamped on the PCB. It’s pretty damned fancy, much more so than you’d see in a release from the Genesis�?heyday. I feel like I should be wearing gloves to handle them.

On the other hand, seeing such lavish attention on such a niche game is strange to me. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate whenever a boutique publisher so lovingly embraces even the smallest release. For that matter, the initial distribution through Limited Run Games is currently listed as sold out, so obviously, it accomplished what the??y set out to do.

Just, damn, I wish I could get some of my favorite games in collector’s editions like these. I would move mountains and eat unspeakable things to get a copy of Rocket Knight Adventures in such luxurious trappings.

Fighting evil by moonlight

Valis itself is the story of Yuko, a normal schoolgirl minding her own business. Apropos of nothing, monsters suddenly burst from the ground and accost her. A magical sword is? flung at her, so suddenly, she’s a hero. Because that's how it works. She winds up in another world, where she’s asked to save it f??rom an enemy called Rogles.

There’s this wonderful bit of dialogue that happens after you complete the first mission. This magical lady named Valia tells Yuko what’s going on and?? how she needs her help. Yuko replies (and I’m heavily paraphrasing here), “That’s a dick move l?ady. This isn’t my problem.�?Valia then just replies, “Quit arguing and just do it.�?Then she puts Yuko in a short skirt and bikini top. It is absolutely ridiculous.

Valis is known more for its PC-Engine Super CD-ROM² versions. Part of the appeal, as I understand it, is their animated and fully-voiced cutscenes that were made possible by the expanded CD storage. However, Valis is not a Sega CD game. Those cutscenes are jammed on the cartridge, so they’ve been scaled back significantly in terms of animation. They’re also, understandably, not voiced. And holy heavenly fuck are they long and slow.

Shut up and listen

The first cutscene is nearly fi??ve minutes long, and all it involves is Yuko talking to a friend and getting attacked by monsters before suddenly sword. It’s both insubstantial and at?tention-span strainingly long. Then there’s another one after the first level, and it’s seven minutes long. At least that one lets you see Yuko in her ridiculous golden bra.

What really makes them painful is how long it takes for text to appear on screen. Dialogue just slowly creeps onto screen. You can’t speed it up, either, since pressing a button just outright skips the cutscene. There aren’t many of these cutscenes throughout Valis, ??but you still spend a disproportionate a?mount of its time watching it talk slowly to you.

Your goal is about as straightforward as you get. You need to get to the other side of a level, fight through bosses, and get the Phantasm Jewel at the end. Or, as Valis sometimes calls it, the Fantasm Juely. I know, the game is called Valis: The Fantasm Soldier, but someone got it ??wrong. Valia clearly calls them the ?Phantasm Jewels. I know this, because I watched the words very slowly appear on the screen.

Not quite good, not entirely kusoge

Valis is, unfortunately, not a great game. I wouldn’t go as far as describing it as kusoge (crap game), but it’s certainly not on the same level as other Genesis games being released in 1991. Yuko moves very slowly. She can slide, but there seems to be very little reason to do so. Many of the bosses can be defeated simply by hacking away at it. There’s very little challenge to completing the game. The only time I saw the game over screen was during one boss battle where your opponent can use an attack that isn’t technically an instant kill but is close enough to see ?its toe hairs.

It’s also bewilderingly short. All in, it took me just under an hour to see all of Valis. This includes watching every cutscene slowly unfold, letter by letter?? on the screen, as well as viewing the comparatively hasty credits roll.

However, I can’t say I didn’t get any enjoyment out of the experience. Valis is a game that really captures the era’s style of magical girl anime. For that matter, female protagonists were extremely rare in that time period in video games. It doesn’t really innovate with its approach in ??any way, and the story in the Sega Genesis version is poorly delivered, but it still manages to put forth its vibe.

Video game mortuary

Valis is a pretty forgettable start to the series on Genesis. From the sounds of it, the series never got really much better than middling, so my expectations are set pretty low for the next two Genesis titles in the trilogy. On ??the other hand, I’m already weirdly fascinated with the series, so I may need to keep an eye out for some of the other titles that aren’t in this set. You know, maybe I’m wrong, maybe this is kusoge and tha??t’s why I’m so interested, but I don’t feel like mocking it. More than I already am, I mean.

If you’re interested in the Valis series, you don’t need a Genesis/Mega Drive and a copy of the game to try it out. There are two collections of the games on Switch, or you can buy them piecemeal if you’d prefer. I’m ha??ving troubl?e describing what, exactly, I find so fascinating about games like these. Let me try:

I like to check crawlspaces for corpses. Whenever there’s a series that has had the book closed on it, I want to be able to pull it out of wherever it was left to rot and really give it a good look over. See what went right and what went wrong. Who saw it last? Why didn’t anyone report when it went missing? What does that make me? A retro homicide detective? A video game mortician?

For other retro titles you may ha??ve missed, click right here!

The post Valis for Genesis/Mega?? Drive really rocks the golden bra appeared first on Destructoid.

There aren’t enough games that you can play as a Centaur. Or Centaurides, I guess. Or Centauresses, if you prefer. There aren’t enough games where you play as people with butts that are also horses. I’d have to think very hard to name a single one, which is why it’s unfortunate that it’s taken me so long to find Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder.

I’m familiar with the Golden Axe series, but I mostly know them from the games on Sega Genesis. My cousin and I used to play the original quite a bit, though we preferred Streets of Rage. I later discovered that the Japan-only Golden Axe III let you play as a ripped, shirtless panther-man. So, ??that’s pretty great.

Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder is a bit unique, however, in that it was arcade-exclusive. It has, to my knowledge, never been ported to a home console. The closest thing we have now is the Sega Astro City Mini, which isn’t exa?ctly available all over the market. I’m not sure why Sega is trying to keep all the centaurs under wraps.

[caption id="attachment_403173" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Me and my Centauride

It may be important to point out that Dora the Centauride isn’t the only character to choose from, but the only reason why I can imagine anyone choosing someone else is if they’re playing co-op and someone already picked Dora. It’s like playing Final Fight and not choosing Mike Haggar. You can choose someone else, and they may even be easier to ?play as, but you’re clearly?? not having the best experience.

Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder has four-player co-op if you happen to be on a cabinet that supports it. The Astro City Mini only supports two players, but I’m sad and alone, ?so it’s just me and my Centauride. That’s a shame, because co-op looks so cool. There are tag-team moves you can pull off, sort of like the Road Warrior’s Doomsday Device. So, if you have someone around who’s weak enough to bully into playing as?? someone other than Dora, it looks like a fun time.

Dora, on the other hand, comes equipped with one of those big cotton swabs from American Gladiators. Her attacks are kind of cute. Sometimes, she’ll just jab?? someone with the end of her cotton swab, whereas other? times, she’ll rear up and pummel them with her front hooves. For whatever reason, her dash attack is one of the worst of all the characters. I figure all the weight from the extra horse meat would make her more deadly in motion, but that’s not the case. Even more strangely, however, is that she has a jump kick that’s really effective. I guess horses can jump, I just don’t expect it when there isn’t a fence in their way.

[caption id="attachment_403174" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Horse meat

If you’re unfamiliar with Golden Axe, most of the core games are belt-scrolling brawlers. The first one was released in 1989 for arcade and Genesis/Mega Drive, and was unique for having monsters you could steal from enemies and ride around. Final Fight would be released later that year and immediately establish the standards for brawlers with its tight gameplay, but Golden Axe still stands on its own for its fantasy setting.

Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder is honestly not too far off from that. There’s still a weird floatiness to the combat, and attacks don’t really feel all that impactful. Likewise, there’s still no grab function, and I absolutely hate it when a brawler doesn’t have grab attacks.

On the other hand, the magic system has been revamped and is much easier to quickly understand and strategize around. There are branching paths to take through the game. There are sections?? where the perspective changes,?? and you walk away from the screen as things scale towards you. It looks both bizarrely off-kilter and fantastically Sega.

One weird feature is the inclusion of mountable weaponry. Things like little miniature catapults and ballistae. Enemies drag them onto the screen and then can only hit you if you’re standing on the same horizontal plane. If you knock them off of it, you can then control the w?eapon yourself. Once again, you can only hit things in two directions, but enemies don’t have a problem lining up to take a boulder in the face. The whole thing looks goofy, but it’s also completely awesome.

[caption id="attachment_403175" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Disappearing horse butts

Really, though, this is the best Golden Axe in the series because you can play as a Centauride. Pony people make everything much bette??r.

Another bizarre facet of Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder is the fact that Dora can still ride on beasts, but to do so, her horse butt disappears, and she just has a pair of human legs??. That’s pretty cowardly. I want to see a horse lady straddling a gigantic mantis. Having her magically grow a human backside is cheating!

There’s also a scene where the party is briefly captured and confined by being strung up by the ??wrists. So, Dora is hanging there by a rope, and her whole back half is off the ground. That seems painful; all that hors??e meat held up by her shoulders. I mean, she’s muscular and all, but horse butts are pretty heavy. I’m sort of making an assumption here. I’ve never tried to lift a horse, I just kind of assume that I can’t, and that I probably wouldn’t like it.

[caption id="attachment_403176" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Centaur bias

I talk a lot about the Centauride, but that’s only because that’s the only feature you need to sell me on a game. But beneath the horse-butted woman, Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder is a pretty great brawler through its other merits. I mentioned that it’s not a whole lot different than Golden Axe, but that’s largely underselling it.

What I love most about it is its personality. It has a sort of fantasy B-movie vibe to it. There’s some subtle humor packed in aside absurd magic that brings it to life. The animations are incredibly detailed, and the backgrounds are varied and impressive. You maybe don’t ride on the back of giant birds or adventure through?? towns on the backs of giant turtles, but there is an obnoxiously long ship, and you do catch a ride on a dragon. The little gnomes from the first game that you kick around to steal magic from are back in this one, alongside the camping intermissions between levels.

In a lot of ways, I prefer Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder, even to Capcom’s Dungeons and Dragons arcade brawlers. But, once again, tha?t just? might be because of the Centauride.

[caption id="attachment_403179" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Raiders of the Lost Arcade

My recent purchase of a Sega Astro City Mini has demonstrated to me that, while Sega is hardly the worst company when it comes to handling its arcade classics, there’s still a lot buried in its catalog that doesn’t get a lot of recognition. Considering that Golden Axe is one of their more renowned franchises and there’s a huge gap in the market for Centaur games, it’s rather surprising that we’ve seen so little of Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder.

That’s a shame since it’s easily the best entry in the series, even beyond the presence of half-horses. So, hopefully, Sega will eventually get around to giving it a wider re-release. But while I’m asking for unreasonable things, can we also have more games with Dora the Centauride as a playable character? I know the last attempt to revive Golden Axe went terribly, but maybe that’s just becau?se it didn’t have enough pony-people.

For other re???tro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder giv??es us muc??h needed Centauride representation appeared first on Destructoid.

I was first introduced to Bucky O’Hare through the NES game. This was back in 2010, long after the cartoon was off the air. It’s an interesting game, which I’ll get to in a bit. However, I quickly grabbed the cartoon to watch and maybe gave up after two episodes. I know that two episodes is a pretty brief amount of time to try and form an opinion on a show, but I couldn’t stand it. It was a horrible mael??strom of bad attempts at wordplay and nauseating self-righteousness.

The ship that the eponymous Bucky pilots is called the R??ighteous Indignation, which really tells you all yo?u need to know about the show’s tonality.

The cartoon was based on a comic from the late �?0s, but it’s one of those shows ?that were pretty obvious in their intentio??n to sell toys. However, it did wind up with a couple of video games by Konami, one for the arcade and the other for the NES. Fortunately, both are a lot more tolerable to me than the cartoon. So let’s look at the NES version.

[caption id="attachment_401226" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Terrible wordplay and furry appeal

The Super Famicom was released in 1990 in Japan, followed by the 1991 SNES release in North America. Publishers were quickly abandoning the NES and Famicom in favor of the new platform, but there ??was still a number of quality games that were released before the last official NES title dropped in 1994.

During the waning years of the NES, Konami, in particular, did a number of mostly licensed titles that were of unusual quality. These were games like Monster in My Pocket, Zen: Intergalactic Ninja, and Bucky O’Hare. None of these were particularly great licenses. None of them really survived the �?0s. But if you were expecting a crap game to go alongside them, you’re in fo?r a surprise.

I’m not saying that any of these games are great. It’s just they’re a lot better than you’d probably expect.?? While they do seem somewhat rushed, they all display a level of technique that you don’t find in the era’s licensed games. It’s like an extremely talented development team decided to phone it in.

In the case of 1992’s Bucky O’Hare, that’s exa?ctly what it is. Its director was Masato Maegawa, who went on to found the legendary development studio Treasure.

[caption id="attachment_401228" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Quantum kidnapping

If you’re unfamiliar with the premise of Bucky O’Hare, it’s essentially Star Wars with furries. It takes place in an alternate reality nauseatingly called the “Aniverse�?because everyone in it is an anthropomorphic animal. The Toad Empire is making life hell for anyone with warm blood. Bucky and his crew are rebels, fighting to free all the mammals from beneath the slimy heel of the Toad Empire. Also, there’s a child insert character who gets transported to this parallel dimension because nothing cements a fantasy in a chi?ld’s mind quite like quantum kidnapping.

The game is largely similar to the platforming in the Mega Man series. The crew of the Righteous Indignation is captured by the Toad Empire. Starting out as bucky, you choose from four planets, each with a differen??t member to save. Don’t pick the ice planet, though. You’ll be stuck. You first need to save Blinky from the Green Planet, since he’s the only one who can break ice blocks.

You can sort of see the Treasure DNA in Bucky O’Hare. Each planet has a traditional twist that makes it diffe??rent (fire, ice, yellow, etc.), but things ??get changed up pretty frequently in each level. The Yellow Planet, for example, has you riding on meteors one moment before later riding on a cart at processor-meltingly high speeds.

Similar to Zen Intergalactic Ninja and Monster in My Pocket, there’s a lot of programming magic pushing the NES to its limits. Parallax scrolling, huge objects that make clever use of the background layer, gadgets that are made to look like they rotate. There was cooler stuff happening on other platforms at the time, but Bucky O’Hare is a good place to see all the trickery ??that could be pulled of??f on the NES.

[caption id="attachment_401229" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Croak toads

The downside to this is that the game isn’t great. It’s not bad, and in a lot of ways, it’s better than your typical licensed game. It just isn’t fabulous. I wasn’t that far into Bucky O’Hare before I started wondering why I wasn’t playing Little Samson instead, as t??hat game has a ??lot of the same concepts but with better execution.

For starters, the characters are very uneven. You can trade them out at any time, but it��s best to just use Bucky unless someone else’s skill is needed for a situation. Everyone has their typical weapon and special ability, but they’re rarely useful. Jenny, for example, has a laser that doesn’t do as much dama??ge as Bucky’s normal shot, but she can also summon an energy sphere that I could never land on a target. The developers probably could have just gotten away with making every character interchangeable so you could play as your favorite, but they went with a half-measure that doesn’t work well.

But the biggest problem is that there’s just so much instant death in the game. There are too many instances where you? just touch certain parts of the environment, and your character drops dead. I once momentarily slipped off a log going across some water, and while my character stayed on the raft, they collapsed on the ground because their toe got wet.

The only real punishment for dying is losing any built-up health you have whenever you need to continue, b??ut extending your life bar isn’t that important. You’re most likely going to die from one of the insta-kill hazards, so it doesn’t matter h??ow much life you have. As a result, losing all your lives is just an inconvenience because it sends you back to the beginning of the act you were on.

[caption id="attachment_401230" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

A buried treasure

The music is at least terrific. It was apparently composed by Tomoko Sumiyama, but I’m not entirely certain about that. They were credited as a sound designer on Laser Invasion and Rampart (the Famicom version), and then I can�?�t find them having composed anything after 1992. Nonetheless, it’s an enjoyable little bop that fits in with Konami’s?? other stellar soundtracks.

As a whole, Bucky O’Hare isn’t a great title, but it’s a lot better than you might expect from a licensed title. Especially a license that isn’t that well remembered. I can only assume Konami was hoping that they were scooping up a license that would let them repeat the success of their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games. That plainly wasn’t the case.

For that matter, it also doesn’t feel like a lost Treasure title. While you can see some of the flourishes that would help define Treasure’s later games, it’s overwhelmed by how much it lifts from the Mega Man formula. If you’re already a fan of both Treasure and Mega Man, you might still be let down by how loose and uneven the whole thing is. Instead, go in with the ??expectations you’d have for an obscure licensed game, and you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised.

For other retro titles you may ?have missed, click right here!

The post Bucky O’Hare for NES is a Saturday morning treasure appeared first on Destructoid.

Sonic the Hedgehog first appeared in 1990’s Rad Mobile for arcade a few months before the first Sonic the Hedgehog game. H??e appears as an ornament dangling from the ceiling of ??the car.

I wanted to get that bit of trivia out of the way because it’s often all anybody knows about Rad Mobile. That is, if they even remember the name. I say that because I could never really rememb?er it. Not until I became ?interested in pre-3D racing games.

This is mostly because Rad Mobile was only once ported to console and never in North America. That is, until it was chosen as one of the games for the Sega Astro City Mini. That’s still a pretty niche pl??atform in this part of the world, so I��m still waiting for it to finally get the spotlight over here.

[caption id="attachment_399105" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

That pesky hedgehog

Rad Mobile is interesting to me because it uses the “Super Scaler�?pseudo-3D technique that Sega built their hardware around. It’s best remembered for Space Harrier, but it was used in OutRun and Hang-On. However, both OutRun and Hang-On used raster effects for their pseudo-3D road, whereas Rad Mobile just makes heavy use of scaling sprites. This is the same technique used by 1988’s better-remembered Power Drift.

So, rather than your car driving on a background layer or single sprite, you’re actually riding across a steady stream of overlapping sprites that gradually get bigger to simulate parts of the road getting closer to the screen. It’s as obvious as it is effective. Becau?se it was easy to create bridges and hills using Super Scaler, racing games that used the effect typically had a lot of variation in elevation, to the point where they can sometimes feel like roller coasters.

Despite being designed by Yu Suzuki, Rad Mobile is hardly the best racing game of its era. The floatiness of the car and the difficulty in gauging depth with 2D sprites combined with the ?first-person perspective makes it feel quite janky. However, it still has a lot going for it and I love it all the same.

[caption id="attachment_399103" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Are we there yet?

Rad Mobile is your typical story about a race across the United States, from West to East coast. This would also be seen in Turbo OutRun and Cruis’n USA, among others. The journey is separated into 20 short tracks, each depicting a different locatio?n. Like many racing games at the time, you have to make each checkpoint within a short time limit to replenish your clock. However, on top of this, you compete against other racers on the same trip. If you’re careful, you can drive across the U.S.A. in less than half an hour, so I’m not sure why planes exist.

I’m not sure that Rad Mobile was ever intended to be played with a digital controller. The Astro City Mini version allows this, but most cabinets I’ve seen hav?e a steering wheel. It’s a Sega System 32 board, so it most likely could have been installed in a real Astro City arcade cabinet, but the car controls are so sluggish and pressing an arcade button to accelerate is so uncomfortable it feels like a racing wheel is nece??ssary. Still, it plays okay with a normal arcade stick.

[caption id="attachment_399102" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

A long drive for someone with nothing to think about

A lot of Rad Mobile’s appeal comes from the variety it has stretched across the continent. Some tracks play at night, and you have to activate headlights to get a better view of the road. Meanwhile, it rains on others, and a pair of wipers keep your windshi??eld clear. My favorite, however, is one that forces you to drive on train tracks and puts an impending locomotive in your rear-view mirror, threatening to clobber you if you clip a wall.

Speaking of clobb??er, there are police in some legs of the race. I’m not totally clear on why, but sometimes, if they get ahead of you, they’ll pull you over. Then, a police officer walks up to you and absolutely crushes your (formerly) radical automobile with one punch. It was a weird era in video games where people beat up a lot of cars, I guess.

One of the strangest parts, however, is the Rocky Mountains. If yo?u slip off the edge of the track, you fall through nothingness for a few seconds before the road reappears beneath you and catches your car. It wrecks your car, but it was at least nice of the level to loop back around to give ??you something to land on.

[caption id="attachment_399100" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Scaling for consoles

The Sega Saturn version of Rad Mobile, Gale Racer, is something of a strange conversion. ?Largely, it’s a pretty reasonable port of the arcade game, but it’s also not as good. Mainly, this is because every track is separated by a loading screen, whereas the arcade version feels like one continuous journey. This not only kills the feeling of long-distan??ce travel, it also eliminates the competitive feel of the game. You still pass cars on your journey, but it seems more like you’re doing it for score rather than to win a race.

Also, your speed tops out at around 300km/h for some reason, compared to th??e arcade's 170km/h. You still move at the same clip, the speedometer just reads differently.

The other vehicle are rendered in polygonal 3D, for some reason. The car also handles a lot crappier. There are police vehicles, but I don’t think they can pull you over anymore. The worst part about it, however, is t??he draw distance. It’s a lot smaller than the arcade version, which I’m guessing is because the Sega?? Saturn doesn’t have the same dedicated sprite scaling hardware. However, it could also be because it released in 1994, and most games of that time were rushed for the new hardware.

On the other hand, there’s a two-player mode. The soundtrack is a lot better. It’s also interesting that it didn’t come to North America, because it’s entirely?? in English. There’s even a text crawl at the beginning that is completely in English, but has Japanese subtitles.

Still, Rad Mobile is better than no Rad Mobile.

[caption id="attachment_399106" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Sega Arcade Arena

Sega seems to be having trouble figuring out what to do with all its arcade classics. They’ve provided a slow trickle of their best games through series like Sega Ages, but a lot of them are still inaccessible. The Sega Astro City Mini is nice, but it’s expensive and works better ??as a showpiece ?than as a mini console.

They need something like Capcom Arcade Stadium. Some sort of bigger compilation of their arcade titles that don’t absolutely need online connectivity. That, or they need to let Hamster dig through their back catalog for the Arcade Archives series. Or something. I just ?hate having to scour through old ports to try and find specific titles.

Rad Mobile is worth scouring for. It pokes me directly in my love for road trips and appeals to me through its weirdness. Too often, racing games are just monotone and serious. It’s no wonder I just cling to any driving game that off??ers more than just four wheel and an engine.

Fo??r other retro titles you may have missed?, click right here!

The post Sega’s Rad Mobile deserves to be remembered for more than just its dangling keychain appeared first on Destructoid.

Everyone loves the Dreamcast. Okay, when the console needed people to buy it, it seemed like nobody loved the Dreamcast, but everyone loves the Dreamcast now. It was Sega at their best. The Genesis had some identity issues, and the Saturn compounded on them, but the Dr??eamcast presented a confident and focused Sega as they plunged toward the s?pot on the ground where they were about to leave a crater.

Like many people, I skipped out on the Dreamcast during its initial run, but I’ve been making up for it ever since. However, I never got around to Space Channel 5, one of the more unique experiments that came o??ut for the system in 1999.

So, why now? I’ve been watching GameCenter CX again, and t??here’s an episode where Arino makes an attempt at it,?? and he’s just so bad. Completely awful. I wanted to see if I’d be similarly as bad, and of course, I’m not.

[caption id="attachment_397527" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Whaaaao!

1999 was still very early in the evolution of the rhythm genre, and Space Channel 5 shows its age. You play as a reporter for the titular future TV station, Ulala. She travels from one crisis to another perpetrated by the Morolians, an alien race of adorable Gumby?? ?people. They’ve been going around forcing people to dance, so it’s up to Ulala to go and save the day.

Which is a strange thing for a reporter to do. The?? whole news program thing doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, but it ties into the twist at the end, so whatever.

Gameplay involves being in various situations where dance moves play out in front of Ulala, and she must repeat them. It’s a lot like the old Simon games where you have to repeat a sequence of colored lights. It’s also a bit like Parappa the Rapper, but without the visual cues, and ?that kind of drives me crazy.

[caption id="attachment_397528" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Space Cats

You repeat dance moves by pressing a direction on the stick or either the A or B button. You use the A button to zap aliens and the B button to save people. The scenes change between shootouts, dance-offs, and hostage situat?ions, which is an absolutely bizarre mix. The dance-offs give you a healthbar that gets whittled down whenever you make an error in a section, but for everywhere else, you just need to keep your ratings up. You need to push ratings up past a certain threshold by the end of each level or you fail and have to repeat it.

It can be a bit harsh. You only need to make one mistake during a se?ction of dance-off for you to lose a heart. Likewise, you might not know until the final tally if your rating will meet the threshold to pass a mission. Whenever you fail at one of these criteria, you’re pushed back to th??e start of the level. They aren’t very long, but I could only stand to hear Ulala say “Fab-u-lous�?so many times before I needed to take a break.

Likewise, there are only four levels. While you’re unlikely to beat all of them on your first try, getting through Space Channel 5 doesn’t really take long. U?nless you're a Japanese comedian with no rhythm. After that, there isn’t a whole lot of replay value. You get a harder mode, but I found this absolutely ??maddening.

[caption id="attachment_397530" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Blood on the dance floor

Don’t get me wrong, I found Space Channel 5 to be a pret?ty enjoyable game. It’s interesting in its absurd flamboyancy. It’s like a late �?0s Brittany Spe??????????????????????????ars music video on some mind-opening hallucinogens.

The strangest part is when you rescue “Space Michael,�?which is a cameo appearance by Michael Jackson. By the late �?0s, you were either holding onto the notion that Michael Jackson was still cool, or you found him deeply creepy. It’s really unclear which side Space Channel 5 is on because, for one thing, it’s a celebrity cameo, but I don’t know how anyone could see his appearance as cool. ??To put it charitably, a skin-tight chrome bodysuit doesn’t suit him.

On the other hand, I really had trouble with the lack of visual cues present on screen for a lot of the segments. There are some places where you can see how many button presses you need? for each direction. But a lot of the time, it falls on you to memorize. I can do that. Mostly. However, I can’t predict when the game is going to throw it back to me. Sometimes, it will be going through a steady pace of a few prompts before sending it back to you. Then it'll suddenly switch to throwing out one or two prompts before switching rapidly, and it’s impossible to prepare for.

From Parappa the Rapper to Rock Band, most rhythm games have a visual way of telling you when you need to press buttons. That mechanic hadn’t been proven necessary by 1999, and it hurts the fun of Space Channel 5.

[caption id="attachment_397531" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The show's been cancelled

It also has a weirdly ??immemorable soundtrack for a rhythm game. It’s not bad, but it really gets lost behind the “Left, ??shoot, right, shoot, up, shoot, shoot.�?I’m not saying it’s a huge issue, it just puzzles me that a rhythm game wouldn’t have more focus on providing a killer soundtrack.

It might sound like I didn’t enjoy Space Channel 5, and that’s not true. I have reservations, but I think it’s an interesting landmark in the gaming landscape. I mostly respect it because it’s such an extravagant presentation of something bizarre. Parappa the Rapper feels like an easygoing experiment, whereas Space Channel 5 busts through the door and start?s pelvic thrusting while chanting its own name.

So few games have been so confident of their weirdness and so secure in their flamboyancy. Space Channel 5 is the unemployed couch surfer you defend by saying they have a “great personality.�?I’m honestly curious about the VR-only Space Channel 5 VR: Kinda Funky News Flash simply because I honestly don’t believe that the sheer naked style of the first two Space Channel 5 games can convincingly be replicated today.

For other r??etro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post Space Chan??nel 5 for Dreamcast is a brief flash of sheer naked flamboyance appeared first on Destructoid.

Konami was once such a fun company. Beyond just being successful at innovating and even defining various genres, they had a strong interplay between their games that put even modern Nintendo to shame. Their development teams weren’t just skillful and talented, but they seemed to have real pride in their company. It felt like they were fans. ??And through that passion, it was hard not to become a fan y?ourself.

It makes the trajectory of modern Konami feel like that much more of a betrayal. They’re sitting on the games they made us fans of. Or worse. Some are just ge?tting sent to the graveyard that they send a??ll the properties they’re not interested in making new games for: Pachislot parlors.

Parodius Da for Super Famicom is a good example of this. The opening cutscene shows a crowd of penguins watching a screen showing all the milestones of the Gradius series. Amusingly, this spanned 1985 to 1992. Video games moved quickly back then. Eventua??lly, an octopus bursts through the screen, and that’s just a hint of the weirdness to come.

[caption id="attachment_396227" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

All the challenge, twice the fun

First released in arcades in 1990, Parodius Da is sometimes thought of as the first game in the sub-series. Its title just translates to a blunt and factual “It’s Parodius!�?However, it truly began its life on the MSX in 1988 with just Parodius. Parodius Da was the first one to hit arcades, however, and then in 1992 it? was ported to the Sup??er Famicom. Konami’s pretty stingy with the arcade ports these days, so the Super Famicom version is all I have currently. That’s okay since it’s the one with the bathhouse level.

As the name implies, Parodius Da is a parody of the Gradius series. Despite that, it has the same depth of gameplay. You have four selectable ships, but the biggest difference is that it’s just co??nsistently outrageous. The sub-boss of the first stage is a flying pirate ship with a cat’s head, and it just gets stranger ?from there.

However, if you’re not familiar with Gradius, then I’ll explain. It’s a horizontal shooting game with heavy emphasis on not touching obstacles. You bank power-ups to choose how you upgrade your weapons on the fly, which is the biggest bump in the learning curve. Generally, the key to performing well at a Gradius game is to power up your ship quickly and then don’t die. If you die, you lose all your power-ups, and it can be an ordeal to rebuild your power. Death also can happen from the slig?htest misstep.

[caption id="attachment_396222" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

No laughing matter

I’m not a Gradius expert, but I’m also not new to the series. However, I found Parodius Da to be brutally difficult. The SNES version makes things as accessible as possible. You can choose your stock of lives, but even if you don’t, there are infinite continues and using one just places you at the last checkpoint. It’s entirely possible to just bash yourself against a segment of Parodius Da until you get throu?gh with some combination of luck, skill, and memorization??.

The first stage is perfectly manageable, and the second isn’t too rough, either. The sub-boss on the second stage gave me a bit of problem until I memorized its movements. However, the third stage was a wall for me. There’s a segment in the middle where you need to blast your way through walls of Skittles, dodge bullets, and also know when?? to hurry to the next obstacle so you don’t get trapped.

It didn’t get much easier after that. Parodius Da really has a habit of screwing with you. And when it isn’t doing that, the screen is getting filled?? with projectiles and enemies. Again, the trick to getting through this is to stock up your ship and then just blast everything in your way.

Then don’t die. That’s really key here.

[caption id="attachment_396225" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Don't die

And if you do manage not to die, you get to see some choice weirdness. If there’s one benefit to the silliness of Parodius Da, it’s that it’s extremely difficult to predict. There are sumo wrestlers, for example, who come spinn??ing into view. At first, they seem to just be a larger version of a typical wall-hugging enemy, but then they turn their back to the camera and whip at you ?with their mawashi. Naked ass staring you directly in the face. It’s absurd.

And then there are the bosses, who are fascinatingly varied. At one point, you just fight a huge woman. The Super Famicom exclusive level caps off with a fight against an octopus that is just trying to wash its hair. Even the sub-bosses have their own style, like the strangely evocative lips that fire entire rows of teeth at you. If there’s one reason to keep playing Parodius Da, it’s to see what else it throws at you.

Unfortunately, this also means that the difficulty curve is a bit all over the place, which I alluded t?o earlier. The last level, for example, was one of the easiest, following a string of tricky challenges. I’m not sure if the final boss is even a boss at all. I took it down before it could even attack, so maybe it was just the finish line. I’m not really sure, it was a strange end t?o a strange game.

[caption id="attachment_396221" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The absolute bare minimum

The Parodius series would have a pretty extensive lifespan. Between 1988 and 1996, there were five unique titles and a turn-based offshoot. Then you could also roll in the two Otomedius games, as they too were parody titles of Gradius. And then, of course, the series went to the Pachislot gra?veyard. Thanks, Konami.

As I said in the beginning, Parodius Da really makes ?you mourn for the glory days of Konami. Right now, the company has been licensing out their properties to other companies, which is probably as close as we’re ever going to get to their internal culture of the �?0s and �?0s. At least most of these games are going to be designed by fans or people with some reverence for the titles. Whether or not they’ll live up to the source material is another question.

But if not, I at least hope that we can get some sort of Parodius collection. Some of the titles were released in Europe, but none of them made it to North America. But for that matter, Konami hasn’t been all that great about porting the Gradius or Twinbee series. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection is a nice step in the right direction, but Konami rea??lly needs to do better for the sake of its legendary back catalog.

For other retro titles you may have missed?, click ri??ght here!

The post Parodius Da for Super Famicom shows the height of Konami’s fall appeared first on Destructoid.

I have to wonder if the fighting game boom of the �?0s would have lasted longer if companies didn’t pump out sequels at such a dizzying pace. When you have Street Fighter Alpha 2 and X-Men vs. Street Fighter alongside Street Fighter III: New Generation and Street Fighter EX, what do you choose? These all came out in a roughly two-year span. The arcade mentality generally meant you dedicated yourself to a particular cabinet so you could dominate all competitors. A lot of people still weren’t willing to move away from Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo.

Of course, I wasn’t part of that scene at the time, so I’m kind of just talking out of my ass here??.

But with that mindset, Bloody Roar 2 arrived just over a year after the first game. This was not at all uncommon. In fact, if Hudson didn’t have a new version of Bloody Roar available so soon after the last game, they’d be left behind by the Tekkens and the Virtua Fighters they were in direct competition with.

I don’t have to worry about that now. I just discovered the Bloody Roar series for myself. So I got to move on to Bloody Roar 2 when I was ready for it.

[caption id="attachment_395081" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Fighting in flip-flops

Bloody Roar 2 is largely a refinement of the first game. However, a lot of bi??g chan?ges were made. Only four of the eight playable characters from the original roster return (technically five if you count Bakuryu). Seven are added, but two have to be unlocked, which roughly brings the roster up to 11 fighters.

Once again, these fighters have their regular human flesh mode, but during the battle, they can build up a gauge that allows them to transform into a furry. While some of the more interesting transformations from the first game, like Mitsuko the Boar and Hans?? the genderfluid Fox were removed, we do get Bus??uzima the Chameleon and Stun the “Insect.�?You win some, you lose some.

The ones that do remain have had their movesets rejiggered. My main girl Alice lost easy access to her deadly spinning roundhouse, but s?he still has her Frankensteiner grab. Her r??oundhouse is now part of a combo (down-back+kick, back+kick) and isn’t quite as vicious. So, I instead made friends with her dropkick as a way of launching foes across the arena.

??Also, Alice is like, a nurse now. But she doesn’t dress in scrubs. She has on what is essentially a sexy nurse outfit with thigh-high stockings and a skirt that is way too short to be throwing kicks in. I dunno, I’m not big on it. You can unlock a black alternate version that puts pants on the girl, but I still prefer her sportier lo??ok from the other games.

Return of the roundhouse

The general gameplay is the same. It’s an era-typical 3D fighting game, but the ring is boxed in with fencing. This is sort of like Sega’s Fighting Vipers. You can break the walls, but unlike the first Bloody Roar, which gave the option to have walls breakable just by knocking an opponent into them enough, they’re only breakable in Bloody Roar 2 when you finish o??ff your opponent. Kind of a drag, act?ually.

However, they added the all-important block button. You can still do a “light guard�?the same way as the first game by just not moving. However, heavy guard is now mapped to the R1 button. After playing so much of the original, it was heard to make my brain learn to use this in Bloody Roar 2.

Finally, Rave Mode has been replaced by a “Beast Drive�?special attack. Each character has this super power?ful move in beast mode. This expends beast mode immediately, which really sucks if you don’t manage to land the attack. However, it can also be a really flashy way to empty the rest of your bar if you’re about to get kicked back into human form.

[caption id="attachment_395083" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Furry rights

The biggest addition to the PS1 port is a story mode, but the narrative is, at least, very poorly told. The Tylon Corporation that made the zoanthropes was taken out in the first game. Now, there’s a Zoanthrope Liberation Front who claim to fight for furry rights, but are actually just following in the footsteps of T??ylon.

However, each character’s story just has a lot of dialogue between fighters and serves as a really weak basis for them to fight. Alice’s story, for e??xample, has her trying to help Yugo find Bakuryu, and then, ??for some reason, Gado decides she’d make a good leader and fights her. It’s the kind of story that is just kind of unremarkable and dumb, which is typical for a fighting game of the era. However, trying to describe it in shorter terms makes me want to vomit.

Still, a story mode is a great addition to add alongside the arcade, survival, an???d time attack. Fighting games are at their best when you have someone to compete with, but having ways for unlikeable people such as myself to get enjoyment is always appreciated.

[caption id="attachment_395084" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Come back when you're ready

Aside from some give-and-take and a lame narrative, I don’t have any significant complaints about Bloody Roar 2. I wish it didn’t take me so long to finally try t?his series ?out because it has really clicked with me.

While I liked the simplicity of the first game, Bloody Roar 2 feels much more s??olid. Landing a deadly combo feels a lot more e?arned, and the strategy doesn’t lie solely on how well you manage your beast mode. I mean, choosing the right time to slip into your fursuit is still a big, big part of it, but it’s not quite as pronounced.

People have already been warning me that Bloody Roar 2 is where the series peaked. However, my local purveyor of retro games says it was Bloody Roar 3, while others have said Bloody Roar: Primal Fury. I haven’t heard anyone say Bloody Roar 4, so that’s worrisome. Unfortunately, I don’t have such easy access to any of the remaining titles in the series, so I’m going to have to take them as they come. Hopefully, Bloody Roar 2 is able to keep me satiated until then.

Fo?r other retro titles you may have missed, c?lick right here!

The post Bloody Roar 2 for arcade and PS1 expands the fluffy fighti?ng appeared first on Destructoid.

There haven’t been many fighting games that I’ve really connected with. I’m not a competitive person by nature, and it’s a genre that is built around competition. The two times I really got into fighting games were a rivalry with my brother-in-law around Street Fighter II and another with a college friend over Soul Calibur 3. I still play them with some regularity, but I just have a ha?rd time falling into them and continuing after beating the arcade mode a coupl??e of times.

1997’s Bloody Roar was recommended to me a few times, but I only now got around to playing it. This is despite owning a copy of it, give??n to me by a friend who was c??leaning out their basement. If I had known how firmly I would click with it, I would have definitely gotten around to it sooner.

[caption id="attachment_394235" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

A bloody good time

Bloody Roar was published by Hudson back in 1997 and developed by Raizing Co, a Japanese developer founded by former members of Toaplan. It was strangely released in North American arcades as Beastorizer, but on PS1 as its Japanese name of Bloody Roar.

It’s worth noting that in arcades, it was released using the hardware commonly (but not officially) known as the Sony ZN-1. Why is that important? Well, the Sony ZN-1 is essentially the arcade version o??f the PlayStation. I’m not quite familiar enough to be able to confirm that Hudson didn’t make any of their own custom tweaks to the arcade hardware, but the PS1 port is, under mild scrutiny, pretty much exactly the same as the arcade version. It just has some home console tweaks, like a new cinematic intro that looks dopey in tha??t very specific early-3D way.

Speaking of early-3D, Bloody Roar landed during the 3D fighting craze that followed in the wake of 1993’s Virtua Fighter. It’s very similar to other games of its particular sub-genre. It uses three buttons (five if you have sidestepping turned on), and each level is a square stage. However, you can only ring out opponents if wall-?breaking is turned on. The walls can either be broken by finishers only or just by bashing your opponent into them enough times. It’s your choice.

However, I think the official rules lean toward finisher breaks only. If your strategy in other games leaned toward ring-outs, then ??you’ll have to come up with a new technique.

[caption id="attachment_394237" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Select your fursona

Oh, I haven’t even gotten to Bloody Roar’s main hook. Everyone’s a furry! All the fighters can transform into anthropomorphic animals, and that’s where the main strategy comes from. You have a gauge that fills as you attack and get attacked, and you choose when to transform into beast mode. Once? you’re in your fursuit, your character is more powerful, heals some of the damage caused to them, and gets a whole new set of moves. It gives you a major advantage.

The strategy comes from when to use this ability. Once you’re in beast mode, your gauge becomes a bit like a second health bar. It depletes as you take damage, and once it’s empty, you’re transformed back into a boring fleshy human. There’s a risk and reward to using it, and likewise, when your opponent unleashes their fur, then it’s time to get aggre?ssive as you try to knock them out of it. There’s a cooldown period before they can transform again, so that?? might be a good chance to turn the tables.

It’s interesting because while the combat is simple and easy to learn, the strategy of transformation keeps things interesting. There are lots of combos to ??learn, and the fighting is very impactful and flows well. For a game that only uses two buttons, with another being unlocked via transformation, there’s a great deal of depth to be had.

[caption id="attachment_394241" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Go ask Alice

I wound up c??hoosing Alice as my main. This is largely because she transforms into a bunny, an animal I have an affinity for. She clicked with me immediately, helped by the fact that she has a brutal spinning roundhouse kick and one of her grabs has her perform a Frankensteiner on her opponent.

Bloody Roar has a standard arcade mode, as well as versus and survival. It’s pretty standard for the time period. The story involves the Tyron Corporation, who created the “Zoanthropes�?as weapons. They plan on brainwashing them, but a bunch of them break out, and that’s the cast of Bloody Roar. Like many fighting games of the era, the story doesn’t play into the game much. You get an end credit cutscene that you may or may not understand based on whet?her or not you rea?d up on the background.

Strangely, at its default difficulty, I found Bloody Roar to be kind of easy. Most fighting games start you off against an opponent that barely competes before building you up to a big cheap boss that can read your mind. However, your first fight in Bloody Roar isn’t a complete pushover, and the last fi??ghts aren’t much harder. The boss isn’t entirely easy, but they aren’t cheap either.

[caption id="attachment_394242" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Follow the white rabbit

A lot of this kind of points to Bloody Roar being intended for comp?etitive play. Unfortunately, it was before the time when online competition was really a ??thing, so I��d have to rope someone into a rivalry. Maybe someday.

It’s unfortunate because I clicked with Bloody Roar in a way that’s rare for me with fighting games. I want to build my skill with it and get better, but without direct competition, it’s hard to find the motivation. At the very least I have the rest of the series to play through. I’ve already managed to grab a copy of 1998’s Bloody Roar 2. There are five games in total for the series, with it ending completely ?in 2003.

The company that?? owns the license, Hudson, went bust in 2012, with all assets being bought up by Konami. They’re not the worst possible rights holders at the moment, but they certainly rank. I would be far beyond jazzed to see a compilation or new title in the series, especially one?? with online play. At the moment, you can at least grab the game using the PlayStation store on PS3 as part of the PSone classics lineup. That’s something.

For? other retro titles you may ?have missed, click right here!

The post Bloody Roar is far overdue for a return appeared first on Destructoid.

Obligatory shake shake

When I was a kid, trying out different games for my new-fangled N64, I didn’t know what to make of Mischief Makers. Games like Pilotwings 64 were blowing my mind with their explorable 3D worlds, and here was a completely 2D g??ame that did?n’t even use the analog stick. Beyond that, though, its aesthetic was like something I had never seen, and nothing about it made any sense to my young mind. I don’t think I made it far during that rental period.

Then, in college, I had a friend who adored Mischief Makers and gave me an entirely new perspective on the game. It still made no sense to me. It makes no sense to me now. I love the developer, the legendary Treasure, to the Moon and back, but Mischief Makers is one tough piece of meat to chew on.

So, I’ve taken a few bites of this particular slice of ham, and now it’s time to really grind it up. To dig in and get right down to mas?ticating. Someone fetch me my dentures.

[caption id="attachment_393002" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

To punish evil forces, I have been charged

Mischief Makers ??was released promptly, around one ??year after the N64’s release. The console got very few sidescrollers throughout its lifespan. Polygons were the new thing developers were toying around with, and 3D was generally what big publishers were pushing their staff towards. So, right from the start, it’s a pretty odd game.

However, what makes Mischief Makers an absolutely unique experience is its aggressive and total lack of cohesion. It’s not a game that picks a direction and charges toward it.?? Instead, it prefers to just spin in place, faster and faster, until it even??tually falls over and calls it a day.

The narrative follows Marina, the Ultra-InterGalactic-Cybot G, and her perverted creator, Professor Theo. They’re on vacation or something on planet Clancer, and then the professor just keeps getting repeatedly kidnapped. There’s some sort of Empire that is oppressing the Clancer people or just driving them to evil. I’m fairly certain that Mischief Makers just makes up the plot as it goes along. One of the first levels introduces a guy who seems like he’s going to be sort of a mentor to Marina in her quest, then several levels later, a character just off-handedly says, “You know that guy? Yeah, he’s dead now.�?/p>

It never gets any more coherent. Characters are dropped in out of nowhere, and there’s no sense of flow or progress. It just goes. It jus??t keeps spinning.

[caption id="attachment_393003" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

A hero with shining armor is called

The gameplay is centered around this central mechanic of grabbing things. People, missiles, balls; you grab them all. Sometimes you give it a? good shake, causing Marina? to emit her trademark “shake shake!�?voice sample.

That’s largely it, but Mischief Makers gets a lot of mileage out of that one mechanic. Every boss is generally a game of figuring out what to grab and what to do with it. Sometimes it’s as simple as catching something and throwing it back, but other times it’s more specific. There are puzzles to solve, bombs to throw, and children to capture. The entire game is built up with the philosophy of, “We have this character that does this action. What are all the things we can do with it?�?/p>

It’s not really that far out of line with Treasure’s normal philosophy when creating games, but Mischief Makers seems to take it to the extreme. It opens up the game to Treasure’s signat?ure variety. As a whole, the experience is unpredictable. One moment you’re exploring a ball-themed amusement park, and the next you’re defeating a small cat in dodgeball before riding them into battl??e.

[caption id="attachment_393004" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Though fire, justice is served!

There’s an almost nauseating glut of personality packed within. Beyond “shake shake!�?I’ve had the line “Through fire, justice is served!�?repeating through my head since first witnessing it in college. The fact that there’s no cohesiveness to the plot opens it to completely off-the-wall dialogue. Mischief Makers has a habit of?? expressing and introducing bizarre concepts and acting like they’re completely normal and should already be understood by the audience. It’s always hard to keep track of but also consistently funny.

One of the best running jokes that it actually manages to briefly focus on is with the murdero??us intent of the Beastector. The Emperor will s?end one out to capture the Professor, but they’ll loudly and dramatically scream their intent to bring Marina to justice. The Beastector, as a whole, are some of the most memorable bosses I’ve encountered in a while.

There’s also this strange sense where the N64’s hardware limitations actually played in Mischief Makers�??/i> favor. The blurry, 2D digitized sprites,?? the muddy textures, and the muffled sound all create this aesthetic that just underlines the absurdity of everything.