NES #47: Wurm: Journey to the Center of the Earth (1991)

(I have no idea where they fit the six person crew in this thing)

Wurm is one of the darkest and most serious games I have played on the NES. It features a very sober looking bunch of scientists as they travel to the center of the Earth where perils abound and evil scientists threaten to turn them into de-brained coma victims. It is more about figuring out how to destroy the enemies than it is about fighting. It features a strong female lead who stands out among the men in the story. So with all this information, what do we get for a cover? Joyriding futuristic teenagers having one last adventure before they are crushed by the very Earth itself. I don't know who would design a subterranean digger as a convertible. It seems like you would die almost instantly. I can't think of a more serious game with goofier cover art. There is also no point in the game where the name Wurm is used. It is supposedly the name of the ship, but at all times it is called the VZR. The Japanese Title was Vazolder: The Underground Battle Space. That might actually be sillier than Wurm, so I guess I'll let it slide. How about the game itself?

(I do enjoy the Phantasy Star styled cut scenes)

Like every other aspect of this game the gameplay is a bit hard to explain. It switches from shooter(both vertical and horizontal) to Metroid like side scroller to first-person boss fight. Each level is set up more or less the same. First you fly around in your ship and shoot things. There are different forms that the ship can take, but it took me a long time to learn how to switch between them, or even understand why I would want to do so. It seems like one setup keeps you alive and the other causes you to instantly die. Perhaps there is something I am missing. After you fly around for a while the crew of the ship start to get suspicious and Moby, whom the instruction manual describes as the game's "Lady Protagonist" goes out to investigate. It is nice to have a female lead in an NES game, but you kind of ruin it when you describe her like that. She functions well in the game though, and it's nice that she's kicking enemies to death while trying to save a man in distress. At least it's a slight diversion from the typical formula.

(It's nice to have a game with a woman who literally kicks ass)

The instructions also describe the side scrolling portion as role-playing, but there is nothing at all RPG like about it. Sure there are some branching paths and people to talk to, but you basically use your few bullets and awkward kick until you solve the mystery. There is no level gaining or money collecting. This description is probably another sign that publishers had no idea how to market the game. It's dark and surreal with several types of gameplay. Why not give it a silly cover and describe it as role playing?

The boss fights are also very unique in this game. Although they take place in a first person point-of-view involving plenty of shooting they are more focused on strategy and collaboration. Occasionally the action will switch back to the cockpit of the Wurm and you will have the chance to talk to your shipmates. The more helpful their advice is, the higher the percentage is that your attacks will be successful. There are also characters that will give you back life along with useless characters who will actually lower your percentage. The bosses will only pop on your screen for short amounts of time, so the best strategy is to spin around in a circle until prompted back to the cockpit until your percentage is up to 100. It is strange and almost impossible to lose, but at least they were trying to get us NES players to think about things in a different way. The bosses were nice and large on the screen so that's a plus.

(I don't like those odds very much)

So I played through this game like a champ and I'm still not sure what to make of it. The biggest drawback is that it is very short. It probably took around 90 minutes to play through it from start to finish which is very short for a game with a password. This fact only adds to the overall strangeness. It's one of those games where the manual doesn't even know what's going on. If you ever find it for sale at a used game store in the future you should probably pick it up. You won't necessarily enjoy it, and you probably won't be able to make much sense out of it. However, you will probably never forget it. Maybe I will be able to decide if I liked it or not after a couple more years of thinking about it.

NES #46: Commando (1986)

(As if they needed to tell you that)

When I wrote about 1942 I talked about how the other two games released by Capcom in 1986, Command and Ghosts N' Goblins, would make people hate themselves after they played them. Of course this thought appealed to me so I decided to go back and play one of them. I am not going to try Ghosts N' Goblins yet because I want to hold on to my last shred of sanity, but I did spend a very late night playing Commando. I am happy to say that I did not hate myself after playing it. Actually I felt better about myself. Maybe the makers of this game knew what they were doing after all.

I always found this game interesting because of its connection to Bionic Commando. In that game you are on a mission to rescue Super Joe and blow up Hitler's head. In this game you are Super Joe on a mission to destroy everyone and everything. Bionic Commando is the indirect sequel to this game although they don't share too much in common in terms of gameplay. If you've never played Commando, it is similar to the parts in Bionic Commando where you run into a truck on the map and switch to an overhead view. It is all overhead vertical scrolling action with that classic one man army motif that was so popular after the rise of Rambo.

(It doesn't look like much, but trust me. This game is pure intensity)

 

The first thing to note about this game is that it is very deep for an arcade conversion from 1986. Hidden rooms abound in every level. Most of them have to be opened up by a well placed grenade, but some of them seem to come out of nowhere. They all have a grey brick look to them, but their actual contents vary. Sometimes you'll find a bunch of bonus points and extra lives. Sometimes you will find poison gas. Sometimes the exits of these rooms are hidden themselves. I would hate to get far into this game and run out of grenades trying to find the way out. This is frustrating and infuriating, but still impressive in its own way. All the hidden rooms means that you will be playing this game for hours if you want to find them all. Now that gaming goals were expanding beyond collecting high scores game developers were starting to think of new ways to give gamers their money's worth. One way was to fill their game with secret bonuses and easter eggs. This works as well in 2016 as it did in 1986. I could see you getting a trophy for finding all the hidden rooms if this game was on PS4. Sure it could ruin your game, but it was an important step in the evolution of gaming.
 

(These houses become deadly obstacles in the later levels)

The second thing to note about this game is that it is very hard. I have had my complaints about one man army games before. They are usually too hard to the point of impossibility like Ikari Warriors or way to easy like Guerrilla War. This game smartly finds a middle ground between these two future releases. It does have infinite continues, but the respawn points are fixed. This means that you can't just mindlessly run forward and hope for the best, but at the same time there is hope for seeing it through to the end. The game uses the same level layouts four times in a row giving this game a total of 16 levels. You would think that it wouldn't be so bad with 16 repetitive levels which are only a few minutes long each, but this game took me almost two whole hours to play though with many instances of self doubt. I almost gave up at least a half dozen times figuring it was too late to be able to focus. Luckily I stuck it out and powered through. The repeating levels are actually a good thing in my opinion. When you have a dozen or so soldiers shooting at you the last thing you want is to be memorizing new level layouts. As I said before, the developers knew what they were doing.

(Thankfully the fourth level is not as quite as hard as the third. This knowledge was the only thing that kept me going through the final run.)

In the end I was left with a sore thumb and a great sense of accomplishment. It's the kind of thing that only defeating a challenging game in one two hour session can give a person. It is the kind of experience that gaming can't duplicate no matter how hard they try. The ending is very simplistic, but that's beside the point. I"m not going to make any judgements on whether games were better back then or if they are better now. I am happy to have both, and spend plenty of time playing modern games. It is nice, however, to be able to go back and play a game from an era where it was all about the journey.

NES #45: Wizard and Warriors (1987)

Wizards & Warriors is one of the truly classic NES games. It's such a classic that I'm baffled by its lack of post 8-bit sequels. There are three games on NES and an oddly titled one on the Game Boy and that's it. It's hard to think of another series that had three NES games and none on any later systems. Well I guess there's also Adventures of Lolo. Oh yeah and Ikari Warriors. Maybe it's not that uncommon. Anyway, my point is that Rare has been doing this for the last thirty years. They have never been a company to drive a franchise into the ground even when it's probably a good idea to do so. Didn't the world always want another Banjo-Kazooie or Conker game? So instead of making sequel after sequel they stopped after Wizards and Warriors III. Because of this the series will forever be associated with the NES. It probably gives thirty year olds just as many warm feelings as Mario and Zelda without the recognition of seeing the characters in more games through the years. This makes it one of the more quintessential games even among the more famous ones that came out around the same time. Mario may be a Nintendo franchise, but Wizards and Warriors is an NES franchise.

(Who wouldn't want to play this forever?)

The game came out right at the tail end of Nintendo's breakout year of 1987. This is the year that saw Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, Castlevania, Mega Man, and Kid Icarus all get released. It's probably the most important year any Nintendo system ever had. At first glance a weird sword and sorcery platform game doesn't sound like it has much of a chance to stand out, but it doesn't take long to figure out that this game is special. It's a very hard game to put into one category. You play as a knight so the first thing you would probably think is action rpg, but it only has a few rpg elements. There are keys to find and items to accumulate, but that is about it. It's not a traditional platform game either because the levels don't just move from one side to another. They require some extensive exploration. The main object of the game is to find the right items to be able to progress past obstacles and then fight some truly zany bosses. They love floating heads, skeletons, and large things that burst into tiny versions of the same thing. But who doesn't, right? Sometimes a game that doesn't fall into one specific genre can end up being a mess, but in this case it's what makes the game so playable. You never quite know what's around the next corner so it never gets boring. It shows that by this time third party developers were thinking bigger and bolder.  

I talk about how much of a classic this game is, but honestly I only played it for the first time a couple years ago. Even though it's the type of game that is right up my alley I somehow missed it. I never even played it as a rental when I was a kid. I was finally able to play it thanks to my wife owning a copy. It's another great endurance test for the NES. It plays differently than games like 1942 though because it is always changing. The play mechanics stay mostly the same, but environments change vastly from level to level. This caused me to frequently rethink my strategy. What works in a cave doesn't work in a cloud. Sometimes the game requires long jumps and sometimes there is lava to keep you more careful. The continues are infinite, so it encourages the exploration of every nook and cranny. Why not get that extra treasure chest? It's not like battling through monsters to get it is going to cause permanent death. The game actually gets more fun as you get closer to death because the low energy music is so entertaining. It's not an annoying beep like Zelda. It is a cheerful tune that seems to be encouraging you to venture further. This game is one of the most inviting on the whole system.

(This bat drove me crazy. I will admit that)

This game took me right around an hour and a half which is starting to seem like the average for NES endurance games. It was made a bit easier by my wife's advice of skipping the treasure chest which contained the practically useless Boots of Force near the end of the game. It was a fun, very old school feeling afternoon. I usually sneak these games in on the weekend and start playing much later than I should. I had a day off when I played this, so I was able to finish it at a reasonable hour without getting too frustrated. I have talked about Rare before as being one of the great game developers of the era. This was the first in a long string of classics for Nintendo systems right up to their infamous buyout by Microsoft in 2002. In the future they would develop Battletoads, Goldeneye, and Donkey Kong Country just to name a few. Wizards and Warriors was the first indication that they were going to be something special. They were able to live up to the hype and more over the next twenty years.

NES #44: 1942

There is something very exciting about finally being able to cross 1942 off of my list. This is one of those games that everyone with an NES seems to have. It doesn't matter if you like shooters or not you'll probably have a copy. I think it is one of those games that just appears out of the ether. Okay I know that's not true because I bought a copy with real money years after I should've had one already. Oh well a guy can dream. The popularity of this one has more to do with its age and publisher than anything else. It was one of the first three North American Capcom games released way back in November of 1986. It was released right after third parties started making NES games which was a very important step toward Nintendo dominance. The NES had a pretty spectacular launch, but their well was starting to go dry. Nothing in 1986 was really setting the world on fire. They were mostly releasing old arcade games and genre oddities like Mach Rider and Urban Champion. Sure Donkey Kong is a great game, but it was already on about a dozen systems and probably still in most pizza parlors in 1986. Luckily the third party support meant that Nintendo could slow down and focus on good games while other companies filled out the catalogue. Capcom got in the game just before Christmas by releasing 1942, Commando, and Ghost 'n Goblins. Of those three 1942 seems to be the one that everybody has. It's also the one that nobody seems to like. It's the least heralded but most popular. Isn't that always the way?

(This island was a relief after nothing but blue)

Well it's probably a little harsh to say that people dislike this game. They just don't get very excited about it. I can see what their complaints are too. First and foremost is the awful music. This game has the worst sound I have ever heard. It is full of random scrapes and high pitched beeps that never seem to stop. The only relief is the bit of actual music between levels. I wonder why they didn't just have music like this during the levels themselves. Perhaps the high level count caused the developers to cut some corners. I'm sure there was a better solution than snare drum and morse code though. The high number of levels is another thing this game is known for, but much like the music it is not in a good way. This game has 32 levels of oceans and islands with the same few plane designs over and over again. Nothing really changes much except for an occasional boss just to keep things interesting. However, even the bosses repeat over and over. This could all be a very dull affair, but I had a blast playing this one. I am kind of a sucker for ancient games of course, but I certainly also see this one as a symbol of what made the NES so great in the first place.

(I think this screenshot has every color you will see in the game)

This game is one of the great NES endurance matches. It takes about a hour and a half to play through and it all has to be done in one sitting, or at least as long as you feel comfortable leaving you system's power on. This almost makes the sound seem strategic. The developers are daring you to sit an play for a long period of time while the sound effects slowly melt your brain. Of course I turned the sound down and listened to my itunes. I'm crazy but I'm not that crazy. The gameplay itself is repetitive but with a satisfying challenge that keeps a player interested. It has unlimited continues so it gives you a chance to think about your next move and how you would play a certain section differently. Playing a game like this is certainly a cerebral experience. I was surprised by how much thought went into it. It's much more than mindless shooting. 

(Get used to this giant plane boss. Make sure you fly above his guns and shoot his wings. I should've written the FAQ on this one)

What this all adds up to is one of the first games that has the true NES long play experience. It was an important shift away from arcade style games to a new style which required a much larger investment of time by the gamer. It was a promise that games were going to be more than five minute diversions. Nintendo started this with Super Mario Bros. and to a lesser extent other launch titles like Ice Climber and Clu Clu Land. However, by 1986 they had started to stagnate and went back to releasing simpler games. Capcom could see that the new long form game was the future and reflected this in their early titles. They weren't the first third party publisher, but they were the first good one and probably most important. As time went on more people published games in the Capcom mold and after suffering its weakest year the NES would rebound and become a legend instead of the one hit wonder it could've become. So we owe a great debt to 1942 and the other two games Capcom released in late 1986. They set the template of the kind of games we still play today, but unlike the other two 1942 won't make you hate yourself after you get done with it. This is the one that didn't go overboard. It manages to be long enough to be challenging but short enough to still be fun.

Game Boy Advance #1: Gumby vs. The Astrobots

In retrospect much of the output on the Game Boy Advance feels like a ripoff. The system was able to squeeze out over 1000 games in just six years or so, but far too many of them take five hours or less. Even many of the good ones like Metroid Fusion can be played through in an afternoon. It almost feels like the entire game catalogue could be played through in less hours than it would take to play through Bethesda's output on PS3. It also doesn't garner much attention from collectors. Used gaming stores will often have dusty bins filled with licensed shovelware games that the average person would never want to play in 2016. Of course I love these bins and will sometimes go in and stock up on obscure GBA games. I know I shouldn't but then how would I ever come across oddities like Gumby vs. The Astrobots?

(Never would've guessed!)

 

Gumby is an odd franchise. The old cartoons are great showcases of animation and surrealism. Almost every episode of the television series was written and directed by Art Clokey which gives the whole thing a very singular feel. The strangeness of his vision is probably missed on little kids, but watching it as an adult I can't help but seeing the nonsensical plots and exotic settings as intentional pieces of art. I have a great deal of admiration for Art Clokey and his work. He wasn't, however, a person who brought out his characters all that often. We weren't bombarded by other media such as books and comics like so many other classic kid franchises. There was just the original series, a revival series in the 80s, and a very strange movie from 1995. This makes the game's existence all the more unusual. When this game was released it was the first significant piece of Gumby related media in over a decade. There were no games to tie in with the movie or the revival series so this is the first, and to date only, Gumby game. It is also a very slight affair obviously targeted toward children, so of course your thirtysomething game profiler is going to talk about it. I am probably not the target audience, but like every game I've ever played I enjoyed it.

(As usual the mine cart was the hardest part of this game)

If you know anything about the Game Boy Advance than you can probably already guess that this is a platform game with story segments between the levels which can easily be beaten in a couple of hours. There are probably 600 games like this on the GBA, and hopefully I will write about each one of them on here. I can see myself at the age of 95 finishing the last one knowing that I had completed my life's work and that I could now die happy. The game does use the Gumby premise well though. Each level takes place in a different book which features a completely different environment. You play as Gumby going along and collecting ice cream while also saving your family and friends from the Blockheads. They were the main villains in many Gumby episodes, and their wordless destruction was always a bit unsettling. Sadly they are underused in this game. The majority of the enemies are Astrobots. They were friendly until the Blockheads transformed them using a stolen remote. Basically you make your way through the levels until you get to the end. I have done this sort of thing hundreds of times at least. Sometimes there are bosses and sometimes there aren't. The bosses that the games does have are a bit strange  and of course easy. It doesn't sound like this game has much going for it.

(What could possibly go wrong?)

At the very least it does manage to capture much of Art Clokey's style. The characters are very claylike and Gumby has special moves that reflect this such as rolling up into a ball. You know if this were a show or game today it would be ugly CGI. It also features Clokey's favorite themes of indifference and miscommunication. The whole thing starts because Professor Kapp is unable to communicate properly. He is unable to talk to the mute Blockheads and gets his Astrobot controller stolen. Clokey loved doing this as a way to teach people that being unable to communicate is what causes many of our problems. I appreciated that this made it into the game. I am probably starting to go a little too deep, but that gameplay doesn't give me too much to talk about. 

(I do love this kind of overworld though)

So Gumby vs. The Astrobots is a slight game but not an unpleasant one. I played through it on a sick day, and it has just the right amount of challenge for a person with a fever who can't quite think straight. It manages to capture the Gumby spirit without updating anything too much. It is an oddity in the Gumby universe, but it's a universe that thrives on oddity. This is probably the most obscure game I've played through so far on the blog, but it doesn't bother me too much if this one doesn't get a ton of views. I totally understand. It's not exactly a lost classic. I enjoyed it but I am a special case. If you really love Gumby and easy games that you can cross of your backlog than you should pick it up the next time you see it for a dollar or two. It did encourage me to go back and watch some of the old Gumby shorts and that's never a bad thing.

Playstation #3: Guardian's Crusade

My journey through the RPGs of the original Playstation has finally brought me to Guardian's Crusade. One of the things the Playstation was most known for in the late 90s was finally bringing the RPG into the mainstream. They were able to turn the new Final Fantasy games into events which is no small feat considering that  about half of them were skipped over in the U.S due to lack of interest. The better marketing and more powerful graphics made even smaller companies want to get into the RPG business and for the first time a console was over saturated with RPGs. Consoles in the US rarely had more than 20. The Playstation, however, featured nearly 80. Because of this even someone obsessed with the genre who constantly read gaming magazines during the late 90s was bound to miss a few. That's why it took me so many years to stumble upon Guardian's Crusade which has to be one of the most obscure RPGs on the system. 

(High definition graphics: 90s style)

 

It is always exciting when I can find an old RPG that is both unusual and cheap, and this one just about drowns itself in unusual. The influence of Pokemon shows up very quickly. Luckily I never get tired of collecting cute creatures. This one had to go and be awkward about it though. The main gimmick is that you go around collecting living toys which aide you both in and out of battle. There are 70 of them in all, so you can probably imagine that some of them are going to be completely useless. What do you need in a game like this? You need things that attack and things that heal. Status effects are usually fairly useless because they take up a round that you can spend attacking. They probably could've gotten by with having about ten and letting you level them up. Instead we get about 30 that will never get used. One of them only does play-by-play of the battle. This might be fun if not for the fact that all he does is repeat what is already written in the text box with a "congratulations" at the end. At least they spelled it correctly. I imagine they were a lot of fun to design though, and if the only problem with this game was that it had too many goofy battle toys than it might be a lost classic. Unfortunately it just misses the mark thanks to some other issues.

(Our heroes)

The main problem with this game has to do with the two most important parts of any RPG, the characters and the story. There are only two party members and only one that the player is in direct control of. This is annoying because anytime you want to use an item or call out a living toy you can't use your main attacker. This makes using living toys in the first half of the game almost pointless. The monsters are fairly easy in the beginning and don't usually take too many hits so you're better off attacking by yourself. The two characters, a young knight and his baby dragon pal, are creatively named Knight and Baby. That right there is a perfect example of how generic the game's story is. You go on a journey to save the world which features one betrayal, one boss who turns out not to be the big boss, a late quest to find special armor, and a boss that goes through a couple forms before it is dead. This is basically the plot of every RPG without the interesting bits and character interactions.

(Look how skinny that thing's neck is. Seriously, how does it eat with a neck like that?)

This is also one of those games that is so easy that I played it wrong right up to the end and didn't even notice. As I said earlier, Baby is not a controllable character. He is, however, supposed to be cared for or else he starts acting irresponsibly and attacking you during battle. You have to take care of him by giving him treats and playing fetch with him. Being the notorious instruction skipper that I am I had no idea I was supposed to do this. I just figured he attacked me sometimes because he was stupid. I didn't find out until I was going to fight the final boss that I was actually supposed to be caring for him and feeding him weapons and armor. If you do this his stats will grow. This also explains why I had so much money near the end of the game. I should've been spending it on treats and equipment. However, even though I never even so much as patted him on the head I had no trouble killing just about everyone. I only died permanently in battle once and after I gained a few more levels nothing really threatened me. It's never a good sign when a person can miss one of the main mechanisms in the game and not even suffer any ill effects. I certainly haven't learned my lesson and I will keep skipping the instructions. Who's got time for that sort of thing?

(My wife appreciated the Monty Python reference)

Playing this game was one of those situations where I had to question my own motivations. It is a bad game, and yet I enjoyed playing it. Does that make me a bad person? I have always talked about how I will play any RPG out there and get some enjoyment out of it. This certainly fits the bill of bottom rung RPG that should only be enjoyed by crazy people like me. At least it is colorful and funny. It doesn't go for bleak and muted like so many other games did. I will see if Nester's RPG Rule holds up if I am able to stay awake long enough while playing Eternal Eyes to actually beat it. Until then I am ranking this at the bottom of the Playstation RPG heap. Of course I still have about 60 to play through so I might change my mind. Hopefully I'm not quite as crazy as I think I am.

Atari Jaguar #2: White Men Can't Jump

(As far as I know, only this and NBA Jam TE used the multi-tap)

Because I really love you guys I played through White Men Can't Jump. This game gives off infamy like plutonium gives off radiation, and they are about equally welcome in American living rooms. This is a game that managed to take a fun activity like basketball and ruin it. Even the worst basketball game usually has the essence of fun in it. How can you ruin basketball? This is one of the many questions  that game players back in 1995 had about this oddity. They also had to ask themselves why the game had nothing to do with the movie. It has none of the characters or story other than the basic premise of street ball. Why even pay for a license if you're not going to use it? Of course it shouldn't be that surprising for Atari in 1995. By this point they had gone completely off the rails They had a handful of good games sandwiched between some of the most bizarre and ill-advised games in history. Unsurprisingly it would be their last full year making console games. So what about the game itself? 

(I will admit The Street Sharks do seem kind of cool)

 You can tell right away that it is a game made by a bunch of people who didn't quite understand how a game is supposed to work. They put very little thought into how the mechanics of basketball work or how it is supposed to translate to video game form. The game was developed by High Voltage Software who are amazingly still around today. According to Wikipedia this was their very first game, and they would actually be one of Jaguar's go-to developers in its waning days. They would end their relationship with Atari by developing Fight For Life which is an equally infamous, and actually much worse, game than WMCJ. I will write about that one if I can ever stomach playing through it. Trust me, that game is brutal. With WMCJ I get the feeling that it could've been at least a decent game if they had focused on the right parts.

(The first thing you see when the game starts)

Right away you can tell something is wrong by the way the games start. The game promises fast basketball action, but the fastest moving part is the menu screen. I found it tough to pick the team I wanted because they scrolled through too quickly. This is only the beginning of the trouble. A typical basketball game gives you a closeup with two players jumping for the ball. In this game we get a faraway view with a bunch of text on the screen obscuring your view. The game is already in progress as the camera slowly starts to scroll in. You have probably already been punched and stripped of the ball about three times before you even realize what's going on. All the zany 90s lingo appearing on the screen is what the game is most remembered for. Thankfully there is an option to turn it off, so I am not going to linger on it too much. It seems like most of the onscreen messages refer to the two computer players who are constantly punching each other while they don't have the ball. Once again it's an example of the developers focusing on the wrong thing. Shouldn't they have instead focused on making you able to see what is going on when the game begins instead of trivial messages that don't even refer to what's going on? That's what I would've done anyway.

(I would love to know more about these two. I'm assuming they worked on the game)

Because I like to spend my days off playing through twenty year old train wrecks I went through tournament mode on a snow day a while back. The way it works is that you borrow money from a couple of shifty loan sharks and save up enough to play in the championship. The loan sharks appear as a couple of real actors although it is only for two frames repeated over and over again. The voices and real people would've been impressive if this game hadn't come out around the same time Playstation did. Jaguar never could get the timing right. Anyway, you get to pick different games depending on difficulty and play until you have $5,000. When you have enough you get to play in the tournament which is actually only one game. It's kind of a letdown to only have one game in a tournament, but by this time I was ready to stop playing and was a little relieved. This doesn't usually bode well for a game review.

Probably the saddest part about this game is that once you strip away all the goofy window dressing than it's just a bland basketball game. After playing a couple of games I quit even noticing the text on the screen. The in game voices aren't much help so that aspect doesn't stick on my brain either. The teams are silly enough, but once you're playing they become just regular players albeit with different skills. I like to go with the good three point shooters personally. I think I played it for an hour or two and ended up beating it in one day. The controls are decent enough and I don't remember anything egregious about the shot detection although other reviewers say otherwise so maybe I am wrong. It just sort've becomes boring basketball after a little while. 

(I love how all you can see are the words "White Men." That's a good hint as to how bland this game really is)

It all serves as another reminder of just why the Jaguar was such a failure. Twenty years later and people are still talking about the onscreen commentary and lack of connection to the movie instead of the actual gameplay. This is because the bad parts about this game are the only memorable parts. If it just had some generic name like Jaguar Street Ball it would have just faded into the Jaguar library like any other sports game. Instead it is an in-your-face assault of mid-90s ridiculousness. The developers knew they had a boring game and decided to hide it under as much stupid as they could. That's why this game is so infamous today. It stands for a time that Atari had quit making games and starting making jokes. It's probably barely in the bottom 10 worst games for the system, but it lives on as a reminder of just how far a great company can fall before it becomes an embarrassment to an entire industry. Little did they know that after the E.T. debacle of 1983 Atari was just getting started. Nintendo had the family fun, Sega had the attitude, and Atari had the disaster.

 

Playstation #2: Mega Man X4

 

If you are reading this blog than you have probably been playing Mega Man games for most of your life. The series has been part of the fabric of gamer's childhoods since the first game debuted in 1986. I still remember seeing a picture of that lantern fish from MM2 in the old Sears Catalogue and dying to play the game. It's one of the ten games that had the most impact on me as a kid. Mega Man is still fairly popular these days, and it seems that they've always been able to keep updating it enough so that kids still connect with the character. It's one of those game series that seems proud of the fact that kids play the games as well as adults. That's why I find Mega Man X4 so interesting. This is one of the darkest platform games I have ever played, but somehow it still feels like a regular Mega Man game. They didn't go 90s extreme or give the characters gritty makeovers. Instead they found the darkness hiding just under the surface.

(How could it be so serious? It's got this goofy looking guy)

On the surface everything seems normal. It's the first X game to come out on Playstation, so of course it is better looking than the earlier games. Actually, it's one of the best looking PS1 games out there. The developers wisely stuck with the 2D perspective. so instead of a bunch of ugly polygons we get stylish anime cutscenes. They are still a pleasure to look at even after all these years. The voice acting is bad in the typical late 90s fashion. All the bad guys sound bored and tired while the good guys are way too energetic at all times. It would be a while before voice acting found its goldilocks zone.

On the surface everything seems normal. It's the first X game to come out on Playstation, so of course it is better looking than the earlier games. Actually, it's one of the best looking PS1 games out there. The developers wisely stuck with the 2D perspective. so instead of a bunch of ugly polygons we get stylish anime cutscenes. They are still a pleasure to look at even after all these years. The voice acting is bad in the typical late 90s fashion. All the bad guys sound bored and tired while the good guys are way too energetic at all times. It would be a while before voice acting found its goldilocks zone. 

(No platform game is complete without a snow level)

I also greatly enjoyed that level design in this one. I have played through the original Mega Man X and always thought that the levels were uninspired. I feel bad because everyone loves that game so much. In this game every level is something different. There is a timed evil computer level and a high-speed shooter to go along with more classic environments like jungles and snow. The set-up is normal for the series. You fight eight robot bosses, have a couple of interludes, and the move on to the endgame. It is very fun, but very typical. It could be a cozy sweater of a game if not for the dark storyline.

(I love the stairs even though it had been done before)

In this one everyone is sad and confused. Sigma, the series' main antagonist, is able to get different robot factions fighting against each other while X and Zero try their best to figure out what's going on. The conclusion is that everything is a mess and they will probably have to turn evil at some point. This time around many of the bosses are old friends of the heroes and are either misguided or believing that they are doing the right thing. This makes killing them carry more gravity than it usually does. In most of the games the robot bosses are simply evil and don't have any other motivations. This game uses the fog of war to make everyone more sympathetic. Friends will betray friends with only the big boss Sigma seeming to actually be evil. It all leads up to a couple of downer endings for X and Zero. Expect more fear and disillusionment than celebrating. It really took me by surprise.

I am not overly familiar with the X series in general, but I know that this one gave me an experience that I wasn't really prepared for. It was cartoonish game safe for kids which also brought up big philosophical questions. It's an anti-war game that also features robots on motorcycles. It is a formulaic game that also poses a great amount of challenge. The levels have to be learned, and some of the bosses are brutal. X and Zero are both playable characters, and neither one of them make it very easy. I probably fought the final boss 30 or 40 times total. The victory left me feeling satisfied, but the questions posed afterword made me wonder if all this fighting meant anything. I don't often feel so confused at the end of a game, and this is why it's one of the great ones on Playstation. It's also still affordable. Some of the earlier X games go for hundreds of dollars. This one can usually be tracked down for less than 30. It is a winner no matter how you look at it.

Sega CD #2: Lunar: The Silver Star

It took me a long time to track down the original Lunar. First I had to get a Sega CD which isn't the easiest thing to do in the 21st century. Then I waited around until I found an affordable copy of it. Luckily I was able to pick one up right here in Lansing. Finally, in 2015 I was able to play a game that had intrigued me for so many years. So why do I always go the long way around when finding games? It is hard to say. I do get more pleasure out of a game if I am playing it on the original system with the original controller. It also excites me finding games like this in an actual store. I always keep my lists, usually mental ones, as I go to used game stores. Finding games like Lunar pleases me to no end. It is probably something I won't be able to do forever. There keep being new systems to replace the old ones so space is limited. How much longer are they going to keep selling Sega CD games? So I was happy to get a copy of Lunar on Sega CD although there are probably easier ways to find it. In the end though it would turn out to be a bit problematic. I will get back to that.

If you know anything about Sega CD than you probably know it has Sonic CD, a bunch of goofy FMV games starring dead people, and a few expensive high quality RPGs. Lunar is  one of the most well known of the latter category as it has been remade several times over the years. I can understand why it has such a strong legacy. It is one of the earlier RPGs that relies more on story than on gameplay. It has a cast of interesting characters who interact with each other and give the game much more definition. Also, it is very funny.

(Nash is such a cad)

The humor is what this game is most remembered for, but it still took me a little by surprise. Just about everyone has something funny to say even as the story gets more and more serious. Sometimes it made me laugh out loud. There were so many references to early 90s pop culture that it does run the risk of being dated. Was Wayne's World really that much of a cultural phenomenon? They sure reference it enough. I am assuming the funny parts came from the translators. They brag about their "improvements" in the poorly written instruction manual going so far as to show off their less romantic lyrics to the theme song. On more recent ports have they left the funny dialogue the same? Would modern gamers even get them? It's a translation that is certainly a product of its time.

(A typical battle scene. You do fight a bunch of shrubs in this game)

The gameplay has its ups and downs. The leveling is well balanced which is always a major plus. I never felt too strong nor too far away from gaining another level. It moves at a fairly quick pace for a game with so much dialogue, and the world is quite large. It can be a bit awkward at times though. The battles are a bit odd in that you can move around the battlefield, but this doesn't seem to help things very much. It's mostly going to be your strong fighters attacking and everyone else casting spells from far away until the monster gets too close. I also wish the instructions had done a better job explaining what the items do. Most of them have to be equipped to be used in battle and with such little inventory space I never knew what to do with anything. I guess I should've just used the internet, but that still feels like cheating to me even if it's just for looking up inventory items.  I do have to keep in mind that this game is from 1992 and there weren't that many well built console RPGs out there. The good far outweighs the bad in this one.

(Another timeless reference)

Because I was playing this on such old technology I almost got stuck at the end. I kept getting into the final battle only to have the game freeze on me. This is one of those games where you can save just about anywhere, so it didn't take me too long to get back to the end again, but it sure made me nervous. No matter what I did the game kept freezing. I could always tell in the middle of a battle because the sound would suddenly cut out. I was able to finish the final battle, but not see the ending. Finally I broke down and watched it on Youtube. I would say this still counts because I finished all the playable parts. Sometimes I am glad I live in the 21st Century. I was able to finish the game even though it kept freezing. I am still glad about all those hours spent on the Sega CD even with the error at the end. It's all about the experience! So that's my experience with Lunar. I am still thrilled that I finally got to play this game. It makes me a little sad though because when am I going to be able to write about Sega CD again. How hard is Ecco the Dolphin?