Review: Championship Bowling (NES)

The recent influx of motion controllers in the videogame market has also exponentially increased the number of people who spend time bowling, or at least pretending to bowl. I think I understand where virtual ball rolling gets some of its appeal: you can wear whatever shoes you want, you have less chance of hurting yourself, you don't have to deal with a bunch of annoying kids on the next lane over, and you can stay home/play your own music/etc. While that can be convenient, physical bowling alleys are areas that maintain a behind-the-times ambiance and exude a unique brand of charm. So when games strip away all of the cigarette machines and dusty arcade cabinets, all that's left is simulated pin+ball physics coated with a splash of style in line with the other mini-game collections on you console of choice.

It's with this contemporary backdrop that I'm playing Championship Bowling, a product from a company called Romstar (a great name for a UK grime MC) originally released in 1989. Like bowling, the core game is 10 frames of rolling heavy spheres down a slippery wooden plank. Championship Bowling relies on old fashioned timed button presses to gauge how powerful and with how much curve each ball will be thrown. This is indicated by some self-explanatory HUD devices. That's pretty much the entirety of how the game plays.

There are a few variables to choose from before you begin a game that might accommodate different play styles. There are 4 characters to choose from, all of which look appropriately bowler-chic. There's not much difference in the way each handles except whether they are right or left handed, which affects your ability to hook the ball in particular directions. Since pins are setup symmetrically, it's not really a factor though. Also a matter of preference is the ball weight, which has 5 metered options. The pros and cons of the each size are what you might expect, balancing the scales between power and spin control. Oh and the lanes have 5 color swaps, one of which I found really difficult to see the power meter on my TV.

The surprising thing is that Championship Bowling can be kind of fun. Perhaps this is because the core of the bowling simulator experience hasn't really changed much over the years. It's still satisfying to get strikes and challenging to throw them consistently, yielding ever-prized depictions of turkeys. Likewise, Championship Bowling is a better group activity than a solo one. Bowling is often an activity associated with parties, another aspect that translates well from the real world to the game world. You don't have to pay attention to Championship Bowling or any other bowling game until it's your turn, keeping associated party experiences well-rounded instead of feeling gamer-exclusive.

Championship Bowling can be a bit frustrating for 2 reasons: party-killing music, and the rarity of strikes. Short in its loop, incessant in its repetition, and skull-gnawing in its melody, your television's mute button was invented to deal with tunes like the one Championship Bowling spews out. Doing so will also cancel out sound effects, but the noises employed here won't be missed. Something that will be missed however is at least one pin on the first bowl of each frame. Something is wrong with your bowling game when I can nail splits that I'd never be able to replicate in real life, but will finish 10 frames without a single strike (and around 9 spares). The exactness with which you must align, power-up, and hook shots to knock all 10 pins down is far too unforgiving. I'll wholeheartedly concede to modern bowling games on these two fronts.

I hope we'll get a break from bowling games for a while, seeing as they're now on every system on the market, and an individual console definitely doesn't need more than one of them. At this point, if you're seeking a bowling videogame, just pick up one for whatever controller you like best. As for Championship Bowling, there's not really much reason to go back to it, though, music aside, there's not anything horribly wrong with it either.

:screenshots from VGMuseum and Giant Bomb:

Review: TaleSpin (NES)

Having just reviewed Capcom's DuckTails game, their take on TaleSpin seemed like a fitting companion piece. The two have a lot in common, visually and structurally, despite fitting into totally separate genres. While they both seem to be marketed towards kids, the difficulty of TaleSpin doesn't dwindle as soon as you figure out how the core systems work. In fact, TaleSpin relies on pattern memorization and quick reflexes to a degree that will challenge most first time players.

TaleSpin is a side-scrolling shooter that requires you to dodge enemy fire, pick-up money and cargo, and defeat a boss character at the end of each of the 8 worlds. The game starts you in a frustratingly underpowered position, allowing you only one shot at a time, and clunky maneuvering capabilities. It's worth stomaching the first level and collecting enough money in the process, because you can use the cash to upgrade between stages. I found that getting the rapid fire gun as soon as possible made the gameplay much more pleasant to work with.

Even with an engine upgrade, the movement controls can feel sluggish from time to time. As a nice touch you can press A and flip your plane around backwards, making the screen scroll left instead of right. Unfortunately you can't flip while moving up or down, stunting the fluidity of an entertaining genre alteration. In general, every game mechanic is a bit of a chore to use until outfitted with the proper upgrade, at which point that device becomes enjoyable. I understand this concept as an incentive builder, but it's killing replay value for me because I know I'll have to drudge through those early stages if I want the game to become fun again.

I appreciate the challenge that TaleSpin throws at you, particularly with some of the boss encounters and the well-hidden bonus worlds. The final boss was the most satisfying and arduous to take down, which is just how I like my action games to end. It's a plane vs. plane dogfight followed by a battle against an immense airship. In order to supe up your flying machine to a level that can compete with these tyrants, it's helpful to gain access to secret bonus worlds. These minigame stages let you rack up points and extra lives with ease by simply piloting around an enemy-less area, popping balloons. Hunting down these locales encourages you to swap between left and right scrolling often to fully explore each area's nooks and crannies.

TaleSpin's flaws end up denting the overall experience, but certainly not rendering it undrivable. Even more so than DuckTales, TaleSpin demands your respect, as it's not to be taken lightly despite it's cartoon tie-in.

:screenshots from Giant Bomb:

Review: DuckTales (NES)

Thinking about the broader concept of DuckTails as a "thing" is a bit mind-boggling. Nonetheless, numerous strings of duck-related cartoons and merchandise poured out of Disney in the late 80s and early 90s. The culmination of this has to be the point where duck-branding seeped into the real world as a professional hockey team. Considering all of this, Capcom's DuckTales game for the NES seems pretty understated and an example of a game that rises above the cash-in tendencies of most licensed fare.

In the game you play as Scrooge McDuck, crotchety mansion dweller and greedy treasure seeker. In an action-platformer style, you cruise through 5 levels, collecting precious gems, uncovering hidden treasures, and defeating several bosses. From the outset you're given a choice of which of the 5 levels you would like to begin with. The non-linear approach is pretty striking, though there does seem to be a planned progression to the levels in their given order, since the designs do gain slight complexity later on in the Himalayas and on the Moon. All in all, the path doesn't matter too much as there's just a cakewalk of a boss in each that needs to be defeated to get the special prize for each world.

The traversal does take some getting used to though. You can jump, but can't kill enemies by simply jumping on them Mario-style. In what is actually a needlessly complicated motion, in mid-air you can press and hold B and down, and Scrooge will start hopping on his cane like a pogo stick. Now you can stomp enemies, reach higher platforms, and open chests, and you'll keep hopping as long as you hold B. It's a fun twist on gameplay that had become pretty conventional, even if getting into the hopping animation takes a little more effort than it should.

I had a hard time making it through DuckTails at first, and was disheartened when I read reviews claiming how it's so easy. I don't think I approached this game with proper respect though, as the change-up in control scheme will make this feel like a different kind of game, and it takes getting used to. That said, once you do get it down, and figure out where the bosses are, the difficulty ratchets down tremendously and I found myself blazing through the entire game in no time. There are higher difficulty settings to add more challenge, but it becomes clear eventually that this game was probably meant for the younger set.

As a kid's game, DuckTales is really fantastic, but even without that qualifier it's pretty fun. There's a lot of exploration to undertake if you want to collect as much money as possible instead of simply conducting speed runs. The game seems like the type of thing that would have entertained me for hours back in the day, scouring print-outs of maps and hearing rumors at school about secret passages. In 2010 the brevity of the adventure keeps it from having Zelda-esque immersion, but consider how much more you're getting out of a licensed DuckTails product than what you were reasonably expecting.

:screenshots from Giant Bomb:

Review: Abadox (NES)

If the intro cinematic for Abadox doesn't get you excited to play it, I doubt anything I say will change your mind. The setup seems pretty simple. You play as a blaster-toting spaceman who must cut a path through the insides of a living planet-sized alien. The action alternates between side-scrolling and top-down perspectives in classic on-rails shooter fashion. Abadox isn't a perfectly balanced game, but it does have an impeccable visual flair that upholds and builds upon the more-than-competent shooter skeleton.

The analogy of visually overlaying a skeleton is particularly apt in Abadox too. In a genre where it's pretty easy to default to jets, tanks and other standard military combat fare, Abadox rises above a lot of the competition with its disgusting, fleshy art direction that still carries over despite the 8-bit representation. Giant tongues writhe and intestinal masses twitch as disembodied eyeballs and teeth attack from all sides. Altogether it amounts to one of the most creatively repulsive-looking games I've played.

By all accounts, Abadox operates as a serviceable shooter, and true to the hardcore leanings of more contemporary takes on the genre, it's strikingly difficult in a few places. There is an emphasis on pattern memorization and flawless maneuvering to the degree that continuing after your first death (enemies kill you in one hit unless you have certain expendable power-ups) can be a frustrating struggle. After a fatal mistake, your character is reset to just after the most recent boss battle with only your initial bare-bones abilities, expounding the treacherousness of the part of the game that was already difficult to pass with an upgraded arsenal. If nothing else, this forces you to learn the intricacies of the enemy placements, which will inform successive playthroughs.

That said, I seemed to die by running into walls as much as anything else. So, when the game allows the spaceman character model to overlap solid surfaces a little on the top and bottom, the inconsistency of what counts as "contact" is magnified as a significant problem in a game that asks for such agile pathfinding. I'd have to assume that the flipside of this "bug" is that it's an attempt to compromise on the lessened negative space that exists as a result of using relatively large character models. These detailed sprites help set Abadox apart from other similar games like Life Force that may control with more fidelity but offer only minuscule shaceships or indistinguishable triangle forms as protagonists.

Abadox distinguishes itself visually as a unique slice of genre-fare with a solid Konami-like soundtrack. It can satisfy some impulse-play tendencies, but once some of the more arduous levels pop up, Abadox increasingly becomes a casual gamer's nightmare. Abadox is far from being a purveyor of "bullet hell," but it's also not to be taken lightly.

:screenshots from VGMuseum:

Review: Metal Gear (NES)

As I'm playing many of these acclaimed game franchise originators, I've noticed that some possess certain core elements that make the game a blast to play even on older hardware, and others seem overly ambitious or less-than-fully-realized until further iterations down the road. Metal Gear definitely qualifies for the latter category. For example, the first descriptor that springs to mind when I think of the Metal Gear series is "cinematic," owing a significant debt to the movements of the camera in a 3-dimensional space to convey a story across cutscenes in Metal Gear Solid and beyond. This debut game, ported from the truer MSX computer version, isn't able to pull off, in large part, what are understood as the concepts that Metal Gear does best.

This isn't to say that Metal Gear is totally lacking in Hideo Kojima signatures (behold the cardboard box!), but they do come of as underdeveloped in many cases. The largest innovation Metal Gear brought to the table was the notion of stealth gameplay, which stood in substantial opposition to the run 'n gun and brawler games that the action genre was so saturated with. The idea of not destroying everything that moves was certainly novel, as was the narrative twist (along with the something's-not-right-here hints) towards the end of the game. Seeing those two aspects carried out at what feels like such an embryonic stage for the Metal Gear franchise was my favorite component of playing Metal Gear, because it felt like I was seeing the beginning of something great.

You still take control of Solid Snake here, infiltrating the oft future-referenced Outer Heaven stronghold, to rescue POWs and gather intelligence about what kinds of heinous activities are taking place there. You're dropped off on the island in the jungle with only your fists and a pack of cigarettes at your disposal. Early on you learn how to use cover to your advantage to sneak up behind guards and take them out quietly. Throughout the game you will build an arsenal of weapons and gadgets that will make handling unfriendlies much easier and allow access to areas of the map that would have been otherwise restricted. Freeing POWs and responding to transceiver frequencies will prompt you to the next destination and provide hints for items to look out for.

The problem is in how the game actually plays, despite the grandiose framework it's supposedly built on. The efficacy of the stealth method is often compromised by indecipherable hit detection. When you approach an enemy from above, it's a touchy guessing game to see how close you need to be to land a punch. Character movement is also a bit clunky as Snake frequently gets snagged attempting to hug around corners. These aspects suck some of the cool factor out of the Escape from New York-inspired protagonist.

I can't go any further without addressing the cumbersome and tedious menu system, which interrupts the flow of the game throughout its entirety. You can assign one weapon and one item to your A and B buttons from the menu screens, but anytime you want to switch, you must reenter the menu and choose the new item. Other games have pulled this off without issue as even the original Legend of Zelda comes to mind. The main flaw here is that the game is full of doors that require 1 of 8 keycards to pass through them, and each of these cards are represented as separate items on the menu. This means approaching a door and pausing and unpausing the game up to 8 times until the correct card has been found. It's baffling in the face of such a simple solution as recognizing the highest rank keycard in your possession and allowing doors to open accordingly without having to individually equip them. I'd recommend keeping a map handy just to eliminate the trial and error process. Finally, with regard to the menu, it's worth mentioning the inconsistencies of its button navigation. The "back" button varies depending on which section you're looking at, making even simple menu navigation require memorizing an obtuse control scheme.

There remain a cavalcade of other minor annoyances in Metal Gear that serve to mar what could have been a truly great game. Each caveat adds it's own brand of monotony to the proceedings, leading you to trudge through one poorly designed element after another. I won't list all of the issues individually, but the point is that what this game lacks that the Metal Gear Solid series really utilized to its advantage, is polish. I understand that Kojima has dismissed this NES port as some kind of bastard child, but regardless of where the blame lies, even he understands where this forebearer fell short. And no, Metal Gear is not a bad game, but it's certainly not up to the usual standards of the pedigree behind it.

:screenshots from VGMuseum:

Review: Pixelated (Mobile)

This past weekend after my Samsung Instinct touchscreen phone died, I picked up a sharp new BlackBerry Curve and set out to see what apps I could download for free. A quick stop at the Top 10 list gave me the game Pixelated by Ebscer, which turns out to be a simple and addictive little puzzle experience. The game sort of plays like a combination of 7up's Spot for the NES and Tetris if you play with the random garbage blocks turned on to fill up a level. Beginning in the upper left corner, you have 21 turns to switch the entire mess of colored blocks on screen to one color. You select one color at a time to decide which color of adjoining blocks to convert next. Soon the rectilinear blob will be overtaking the rest of the squares in waves as you make strategic decisions as to which color selection will yield the greatest advancement while also tunneling the most effective avenue across the board.

Pixelated's appearance is as basic as it gets, this side of color TV. The squares are as directly geometric as they sound and there are no graphical flourishes or sound effects to correspond with the moves you make. That said, the game doesn't really require any of that, and it's otherwise justified by the game's nonexistent price tag (unless you want to Plus version, which has extra difficulty settings and other options). I basically made a competitive analog version of this game 2 years ago using construction paper and a tile floor, so I understand why Pixelated's banal aesthetic has it's own brand of appeal. Also, this being a mobile game, the easier it is to distinguish between objects, the better.

I'm just speaking from playing the free version, but one of the keys to Pixelated's addictiveness is the 21-move completion point. For the size of the board, 21 moves is the perfect number to maintain a relative level of difficulty and force most rounds down to the wire. I actually enjoy how the free version doesn't display a move counter, adding a degree of suspense when you whittle the screen down to a couple of remaining squares and you wonder for a quarter second whether or not you've got enough selections left to complete the round. Maybe I'm being overly dramatic about what is essentially an on-the-go twitch puzzle experience, but I still see a simplistic elegance at work.

Review: Final Fight (WiiVC/SNES)

Unlike the other older games I've reviewed on the site so far, I played Final Fight back when it was current. Though I'm sure I previously touched the SNES port I'm evaluating here (via Wii Virtual Console), my primary experience with it was in the arcades. Unfortunately the console port loses some key components of Capcom's original product. That said, this is still classic beat 'em up action with iconic characters and late-80s style at its most ridiculous.

Structurally, Final Fight is incredibly simple. The plot is no more than a save-the-kidnapped-girl story while the game plays as a basic two-button brawler. However, the strongest appeal of Final Fight is its style, which melds perfectly with the rudimentary backdrop. You play as either Metro City Mayor, and former pro wrestler, Mike Haggar or streetwise roughneck, Cody. The level of cheesy machismo on display here is at superhero action figure status, where musclebound, often bare-chested thugs will take you on in the streets, in subway cars, and across other rumble-worthy locales. In between tussles you can bust up barrels to reveal large plates of barbecued meat, which act as health items. The wrestling motif also continues with set-piece fights staged in a boxing ring and in a steel cage match. One reoccurring enemy is Andore, a 16-bit replica of legendary grappler Andre the Giant. In fact a lot of the bad dudes in Final Fight could be interpreted as homages to WWF heel characters. You have to be able to extract value from this kind of dumb, sweaty-guy soap opera source material to appreciate the vibe Capcom was going for with Final Fight because they absolutely nail it.

Pro wrestling and John Carpenter film references aside, the gameplay mechanics of Final Fight hold their ground. As with many games of this type and era, the solutions to the game's challenges often involve very game-y tactics. For example, enemies frequently fly off-screen after taking several punches, and instead of waiting for them to come back, it's most efficient to walk to the edge of the screen and rapidly jam on the attack button as the gang members continually waltz into your blind jabs. It might seems strange today, but this was just the way games played back then, often acknowledging space outside of the viewing area, but only allowing the player to partially access and exploit it. One could draw the connotations between this and the knowledge that pro wrestling is fake. Knowing this might cause some disillusion, but allows for a more honest appreciation (or disgust) of what is actually happening.

With those positive aspects of Final Fight laid out, it's worth addressing the porting issues that make this Wii Virtual Console version of the SNES game not the quality of product that a fan of the arcade game would hope for. A quick list of problems and omissions is as follows: no two-player cooperative play, only two of the three protagonists are present (no Guy), various censorship throughout, including that of salty language, transvestite/transgender enemies, and other non-kid-friendly (as determined by Nintendo) components, the lack of an entire level from the original, and a drop in audio/visual quality due to the limitations of the console hardware. These are serious shortcomings that may dissuade someone from purchasing this title. It should be noted that Final Fight: Double Impact is heading to PSN and XBLA in April, which looks to be the best version of this rather old game to date and rights all of the wrongs I mentioned while adding a hearty number of unique bonuses. If Wii is all you have then the SNES Final Fight may be the easiest choice, but it's a bittersweet package. My final technical note is that I played this game with a Gamecube controller, which has a painfully misguided and unalterable button configuration (Y=punch, B=jump) that makes special moves frustrating to execute and is just plain uncomfortable for rapid button presses. Why the punch command isn't the giant "A" button, I cannot fathom.

Despite these caveats, Final Fight is still a fun old-school beat 'em up game, and one of the best in its class. The SNES version doesn't offer the full original experience, but if you're just looking to feed a quick fix, it can do the job. Otherwise, seek the more robust port which will be widely available soon.

:screenshots from VGMuseum:

Review: Sin & Punishment (WiiVC/N64)

10 years ago cult-favorite developer Treasure put out Sin & Punishment, an English voice acted on-rails shooter, for the Nintendo 64, but only made it available in Japan. It's the N64 game that I came closest to importing purely on the basis of how it looked and what I had read about how it played. There's a grandiose anime-inspired, more mature (for N64) storyline with StarFox-like action, but you control a person instead of a plane. It was a game that looked extremely desirable in tiny screenshots on the back pages of EGM magazines. Now that Sin & Punishment has finally come stateside on the Wii's Virtual Console service, it was time to see if I was actually missing out.

For starters, let's get the unmet lofty expectations out of the way. S&P does not belong in the pantheon of all-time great N64 games, but it is still an incredibly stylish and unique product that has moments of absolute brilliance. Visually the game has a low polygon count for its characters, but not unexpectedly so, given its turn-of-the-millennium release. That said, the character models are rather grotesque, but in a way I find undeniably appealing. Everything has sharp, pointy angles, rigid joints and muddy textures. It seems like Treasure was trying to pull off something ambitious and cinematic with the designs, but I'd argue the game's all the better for these shortcomings as the characters literally look uncomfortable in their own skins.

This individualized discomfort seems to be one of the key elements of the story, but the character models alone do a better job of conveying this than any part of the formal plot in S&P. You control a guy who occasionally transforms into a giant mech-like monster and a girl who fights through an alternate future dream world and ultimately against the evil plot of their supposed-friend who I think they originally shared a common enemy with. So the story here, told mainly in non-interactive cutscenes, is nonsense that can be casually watched for awkward laughs, but thankfully skipped at will. As for the English voice acting, it's on par with some of the worst out there. All of these sloppy elements combine to create a broad feeling of camp that may have been awkward had this game actually been played in the US 10 years ago. S&P's overall presentation has aged both extremely poorly and extremely well, if that makes sense.

The design elements of S&P are worth noting, but are overall somewhat inconsequential to what this game is about. Like other games from Treasure, particularly those from the shooter genre, S&P leans heavily toward the hardcore sect. You control a character that, at times, must strafe, double jump, target, and shoot and/or sword slash at the same time, with each of those actions mapped to separate buttons. The control scheme has a sharp learning curve that requires significant practice to even handle properly, much less master. None of the three control setups offered are ideal on the Gamecube controller that I used to play the game, but hopefully the Classic Controller is more intuitively functional. S&P isn't a game that gives you much time to feel this stuff out either (though there is a tutorial mode) as you're quickly thrust into barrages of unrelenting enemy fodder at the game's outset that never let up. Still, it only takes about an hour to get through everything, so learning takes place on successive playthroughs more than over the course of one. As a side note, I would personally prefer a more movement-sensitive targeting cursor, as the sluggish one you're given makes parts of the game frustrating that could have been simply challenging. If it's not already clear, I recommend playing this game on Easy difficulty before engaging with Normal.

The strength of Treasure's game is its epic set-pieces. The ocean fleet chapter is particularly thrilling. The protagonist stands atop a floating platform that dramatically sweeps past armed frigates, waves of jet fighters, and countless energy blasts. Players would do well to get into pattern-memorization mode in such levels if they hope to get through with the least damage and highest score. After the sea battle the scene shifts to the sky where you must then take out a giant satellite fortress. Once destroying that, a huge asteroid mass hurtles towards your transformed mechanized monster friend and it's up you to tail the rock and detonate it before impact. There are quite a few tricky moments in this chapter, but in general it makes for an intense ride. Speaking of epic, the final boss fight is against some kind of evil clone Earth, and feels like an updated take on Space Invaders. When Sin & Punishment puts you in these larger-than-life scenarios, it's easy to get wrapped up in the excitement and discard the half-hazard story behind the action.

As with many elusive products, Sin & Punishment seems to be viewed by many critics through rose-colored glasses, glossing over the game's faults in favor of hardcore allegiances. To be fair, it does appeal to those tastes, but all in all it didn't live up to the expectations I've harbored for this game over the past decade. Perhaps the best news to come out of the Virtual Console version of S&P is that Nintendo plans for an international release of Sin & Punishment 2 for Wii this year. I have to imagine this sequel will control much more naturally given the light-gun style aiming that will be implemented into the Wiimote controls. The original Sin & Punishment still remains a stylistically unique, frantic shooting experience, but one would do well to keep their expectations in check before getting all huffy towards Nintendo for depriving US and European gamers of it for so many years.

:screenshots from Giant Bomb and IGN:

Review: StarTropics (NES)

It's about time I put a non-generation-spanning franchise game under the microscope here, so I present my critique of Nintendo's StarTropics. This Japan-developed but US-only release really presents itself as a game that Americans are supposed to like. You take on the role of Mike, a baseball-loving, yo-yo-swinging adventurer from the island of Americola. If the title wasn't a giveaway, the setting of StarTropics is a series of islands, each with a humorous "cola" ending on their title. The game is broken up into 8 chapters, each taking place on a unique island, except for the final two which are on a spaceship. So we've got baseball, soda, aliens, and action/adventure. Maybe Japan had our 1990's interests down pretty well.

With each chapter, StarTropics presents a smaller story that needs to play out in order to progress further with Mike's overarching plot to find his scientist uncle who mysteriously disappeared. This leads our protagonist to traverse numerous underground caverns, littered with puzzles, enemies, and secrets. It's very Zelda-like in the way you usually advance from one screen-filing, top-down perspective room to the next, but the controls are altered in a significant way, and not necessarily for the better. StarTropics surfaces are basically laid out as large grids, limiting your movement to only four directions. More the issue though is that Mike is always stuck on the grid and can never stand in-between "tiles." This means if you move one way and immediately recognize that as a bad move, Mike will still need to fully subscribe to the original command, stop, and then turn around. This grid makes sense for the jumping puzzles that use actual tiles and switches, but makes regular ground movement horribly stilted.

The lack of fluid control does seemingly make the game more difficult, but StarTropics is actually a very fair game, despite the frustration it can cause. Dungeons are conquered with sometimes lengthy trial and error, slowly progressing and figuring out the tricks to passing through each room. The nice thing about this is once you figure out how to beat a room, you'll likely breeze through it on successive visits, making the restarting process feel like the game is trying to teach you rather than punish. Boss fights often require you to use the surrounding environment to defeat them, adding a level of strategy to the projectile-dodging. In general, the puzzles and action in StarTropics are smartly designed experiences that both with and despite the controls, feel very unique.

The art direction is initially one of the main draws here. The tropical ocean backdrops are a nice change of pace from the high fantasy worlds that are so commonplace in this genre. I found the whole setting to be pretty amusing, as all the islands are filled with what seem to be sun-tanned Caucasian natives. Pale-faced Mike clearly hasn't spent enough time outside in Americola to fit in with his beach-bum relatives. Visuals in the overworld are pretty bland and blocky, but the caverns have a zoomed-in perspective that lends iself to a higher degree of detail. Unfortunately, most of the caves look pretty similar, with only some palette-swapping taking place occasionally (but with purpose). The alien levels are the obvious black sheep here, presenting a jarringly divergent aesthetic of pipes and ducts to the previous crevices and rocks.

For all the connotations critics draw to the original Zelda adventure, I found the gameplay experience of StarTropics to be entirely different. Most of this has to do with the tone of the game being rather upbeat and tongue-in-cheek. I know when I first played Zelda I was much younger, but the dungeons in that game were terrifying. By comparison, StarTropics feels more like The Goonies, with a kid exploring some caves and fending off the occasional ghost (OK, perhaps I was afraid of The Goonies too, but I'm guessing most kids weren't). With the trial and error process in the dungeons, I continually had to die and restart the levels, making me consistently aware that I was playing a video game where I needed to get past some challenge. The story of StarTropics is mainly corny fun, and doesn't pull you further into the world so much as simply make you recognize that it's done some cool or cute things. This is partially due to the largely episodic nature of the chapters, but also the cliched implausibility of its alien invasion conclusion.

Maybe this review reads as a little more harsh than I mean it to, but while StarTropics pulls off a fun and unique challenge, it's also a game that I'm glad to be finished with. Maybe this says more about me than the game, but 8 chapters feels like just the right length for a game of this structure and type of difficulty. I should probably seriously avoid Demon's Souls. Thus, I leave my time with StarTropics very well satisfied, and willing to play its sequel (Zoda's Revenge) at some point down the road, but it's not at the top of my queue.

:screenshots from VGMuseum:

Review: Castlevania II - Simon's Quest (NES)

Another famous game franchise entry is up for review here in the form of the sequel to Konami's side-scrolling action/adventure game, Castlevania. Unlike so many follow-ups, Simon's Quest actually innovates and dramatically changes the gameplay structure of its forebearer. These deviations don't work in all cases though, making Castlevania II a game that strives for more ambitious inventiveness than it's ultimately capable of fulfilling.

The alternative tone is apparent from the outset as whip-cracking protagonist Simon Belmont begins his quest in a small town absent of enemies, but instead inhabited by townsfolk who offer cryptic "clues" for Simon's journey as well as selling items as merchants. The only direction given the player is the paragraph of prologue during the title screen dictating that Simon must recover five pieces of Count Dracula, whom he defeated in the previous title, in order to rid himself of a deadly curse which has been cast upon him. The player can choose to exit the town screen to the left or the right, which seems to offer a degree of open-worldness, but the left option is a far too difficult path at the beginning of the game. This is one example of many in Simon's Quest where the game appears to offer the player distinctive choices when in actuality there is only one correct solution.

Upon exiting the town the player will have to fight though enemies to get to the next destination, which, for the most part, is a breeze. If the player simply upgrades Simon's equipment at every opportunity in the towns and finds hidden items along the way these monsters will continue to be pushovers. Even the boss characters can be beaten with ease given constant attacks with the right weapon. Defeated bad guys might drop hearts which act as the game's currency. Simon's Quest also cycles through day and nighttime settings every few minutes, with enemies at night being more powerful and espousing more hearts as a reward. There will probably be a couple occasions where the player must grind through some enemies outside of a town to build up enough hearts to purchase a desired item for sale, but usually normal world traversal will yield enough moneys to serve one's needs. Simon begins with three lives, and will lose all stored hearts if he is killed in action so it's best to think strategically about when to venture away from towns and when to grind through nearby enemies to play it safe.

Simon's Quest is a very difficult game, not because of its enemy forces, but because the game is incredibly vague about what the player is supposed to be doing in so many situations. The "clues" from townspeople are most often not helpful or incorrect information. There are three acquirable crystals that are essential to progressing in the game but even in the instruction manual it's not explained how they can be used. Apparently having one equipped and holding the "down" button in the correct locations will open up new pathways. This obtuse trial and error process also rears its head with the countless fake floors and walls that reveal themselves after being doused with holy water, requiring throwing vials of water every step just in case there might be something secret that would otherwise be overlooked.

Unfortunately, the way to make Simon's Quest a much more fun and manageable game today is to sparingly use an online walkthrough to inform players on these otherwise indecipherable situations. It seems reasonable that if someone was to play this game when it was just released that a number of the abstract solutions to the game's challenges would have been spread through word-of-mouth. Given that Simon's Quest is a much older game now, using a free guide is the way to go unless an extensive timeframe has been set aside to play it.

Castlevania II does have plenty of positives going for it that both show innovation for the series and help compensate for some shortcomings. First and foremost the game has an excellent soundtrack that players may find stuck in their head hours after putting down the controller. The score includes the debut of Castlevania series staple "Bloody Tears," which sounds especially great considering it's coming off a NES cartridge. Simon's Quest's day and night cycle may not have truly capitalized on the feature, but it was still a pretty novel addition at the time. The main purpose of the device, other than some combat variety, is to keep track of time. Remembering back to the prelude text, Simon is growing weaker because he's been cursed, and so the sooner he can defeat Dracula for good, the better. This brings about another emerging gameplay system: multiple endings. Depending on the speed one completes the game, they could be rewarded to one of three endings depicting whether or not Simon was fast enough to reverse his condition and truly kill Dracula.

Castlevania II certainly has its problems (botched localization, lack of instruction, and an incoherent hint system), but knowing about these issues ahead of playing will prevent them from being much of interruptions. This is a case where some limited exposure to help texts or even just taking into account the troublesome scenarios listed in this review, will make for a far less frustrating game experience and allow for the positives of the game to shine. Not to make too many excuses for a game that clearly misses the mark on some important design decisions, but there is still a considerable amount of fun to be had here.

:screenshots from VGMuseum:

Review: Metroid (NES)

Some of these older videogame reviews will be for games I'm somewhat embarrassed to have never played. Metroid is one of those games. I feel I can't justify this omission without noting that my first full playthrough of a game in this series was Metroid Prime for Gamecube. Some would call that heresy, but I came away from Prime and its sequel having had some incredibly profound and affecting (in a good way) gaming experiences. As a result, I've been pining to go back and check out where this all started.

Two of the more amazing things about playing Metroid now are how many well-executed similarities it has to the Prime series and how much of a sense of adventure this old game could convey despite my mind being spoiled by the visually immersive gaming experiences on modern systems. The player controls Samus Aran, then-secretly female bounty hunter, equipped with an arm cannon, as she explores the planet Zebes. At the beginning of the game, Samus' abilities are limited, making the locations she can access restrained. By locating ancient relics she will learn new techniques which allow her to research new areas and progress through the game. This formula is still the core of contemporary Metroid gameplay.

Even knowing this, I remain surprised by just how non-linearly Metroid allows you to play. There are three boss characters in the game, the final of which cannot be fought until the other two have been defeated, but you can approach either of those two first. The non-final boss characters can also be faced at any point once the required abilities have been found to conduct the platforming needed to reach them. In other words, they can be faced with a bare bones set of skills for the player looking to speed through things, or by the well-prepared player who has found all of the helpful abilities that will make the battles easier.

Another key aspect of "adventure" as a genre is exploration, which Metroid offers, but not without one caveat that my Prime sympathies can't help but mention: the lack of a map. To be clear, I would have liked a map that only kept track of where I had been, not where there was still to go. Having that sense of discovery and not knowing what's through the next door is what adventure games are all about and I wouldn't want to disrupt the up-and-running system already in place. However, when I finally reached the point where I was ready to descend to the final boss confrontation, I discovered that I had to go back and reacquire the ice beam to continue further. Without a map to assist in retraversing the entire maze, this fetch quest became unnecessarily frustrating. Alternatively, Samus could have been given the ability to switch between different beams on the fly. Sadly, I remember Metroid Prime pulling a similarly unfun backtracking stunt on me at the end of that game. Some traits shouldn't be passed on through generations.

The lack of a map is truly a shame though, as it's the only aspect that mars the otherwise stupendous game. Metroid is a game that knows how to set an eerie, enveloping mood. Zebes is a harsh and alienating place, without any lines of dialogue or townsfolk to offer hints or friendly confidence. The music is bizarre and not always conventionally melodic or rhythmic, but still impressively memorable. The titular Metroid creatures are legitimately terrifying monsters. The story begins when Samus is simply dropped onto the planet and given little in the way of further direction. Granted Metroid was produced during a time when instruction manuals were actually used as a reference, so it was assumed that the player would be able to look up things like power-ups and know what they do. In an ironic twist, since the game itself doesn't tell the player anything, the world becomes even more authentic than the developers may have intended. I was consistently having to figure out what I just picked up and truly get acclimated with the item rather than the screen telling me what I could now do differently. This makes for an even more pure adventure experience without adding frustration.

Metroid is the total package when it comes to game design, so much so that the franchise isn't much different in modern iterations (though improvements have been made). It offers a legitimate challenge, one that actually forces the player to think strategically during combat while presenting puzzles and hidden secrets that test one's wits and encourage (and reward) discovery. I have come away from the game extremely eager to jump into Super Metroid in the near future.

:screenshots from VGMuseum:

Review: Super C (NES)

The original Contra on the NES is a classic run n' gun game that sits in the greater game canon and is looked upon with a nostalgic fondness by those who grew up with it. People tell me that game is supposed to be difficult, but it's one of those few games that I've beaten so many times that there's no real challenge and I instead enjoy it as a form of catharsis. Strange then that I'm only recently playing its sequel Super C (short for Super Contra, one would assume). Full disclosure: this review is referring to the original NES cartridge version of the game.

As with many sequels, it's difficult to talk about subsequent entries in a franchise without addressing their predecessors, especially one as iconic as Contra. Super C recycles some of the original graphics, including the protagonists, a few enemies, and sound effects. However, there are plenty of newly minted sprites here as well, and for the most part the new graphics appear slightly more sophisticated. Gameplay is nearly identical, maintaining the basic format of platforming, shooting, dodging, grabbing power-ups and fighting bosses at the end of each level (8 here). There are a couple notable exceptions including the addition of inclined surfaces, a retooling of the F gun into a charge shot, and two stages where you control the character from a top-down perspective. All three are well-executed and either enhance or take gameplay into a new direction for the series. The music is still solid this time around, but not quite as catchy as some of the tunes in the original.

As for that trademark difficulty level, Super C proves to take a bit more skill, but maybe this is just because I haven't locked in near as many hours as Contra. That said, level 8 in particular throws a lot of obstacles in your way that if you die and lose what is likely your spread shot gun, it can be rough. We're still talking one-hit deaths here. Even so, bosses are, for the most part, a cinch. The final boss is especially a letdown seeing as you fight through a grimy, disgusting alien fortress only to discover a weird, gray, human-faced statue-like mass coming out of the ground to spew a few spike-balls your way as you easily run up to it and shoot it in the face, totally unabated. Furthermore, the lame ending then kicks in which is just a shot of a helicopter flying during a sunset, offering no text explanation or really any kind of resolution. Not that anyone really cares about the "Contra fiction," but something to add more of a sense of accomplishment would be welcome.

Some design choices in Super C certainly raise a few eyebrows. It's no secret that the protagonists Bill and Lance are clearly modeled after Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator and Sly Stallone from Rambo, but the design knock-offs go further in the sequel. The running alien enemies in the last two levels are total rip-offs of Ridley Scott's Alien aliens and you could make a case that the level 6 boss' face looks an awful lot like the Predator monster. Sure these developer decisions seem a bit dubious in a way, but they also provide a gameplay experience that compliments those films pretty well. Where I'd rather criticize design is when it comes to the sharpness and clean appearance of the last two boss characters which really don't fit into the fleshy, sticky alien lair where they are found. Those fights feel more like they're against some crappy background image than an actual monster to be feared.

It's not really fair that Super C is as overlooked as it is, seeing as it's a successful sequel to a hit game. Perhaps it's the fact that Super C is short on significant innovations in the greater series that keep it from standing out. If you're only going to play one Contra game per console, you should select the original game since it's more relevant in terms of modern references, but Super C does follow-up on that formula in an incrementally satisfying way that will serve players who are already series fans just fine.


:screenshots from VGMuseum: