New blog

 Sorry I haven’t updated this blog in several years. I started a new blog more focused on rankings and reviews and I am quite proud of it. Come check it out!

https://rankingeverygame.blogspot.com/?m=1

Sega Master System #2: Great Football (1987)

(Get used to dumb looking covers. The Master System has a million of them.)

I’ll always find it funny that Sega did a whole series of lousy sports games on the SMS and gave them the name Great. It’s almost like they knew their product was weak so they decided to just have fun with it. I guess it’s always been a warning that games with superlatives in the title are usually not very good. A good game doesn’t have to tell people it’s a good game in the title. All together there were seven Great sports games, and they are certainly not well liked by collectors. If you want the thole US set you gotta get all seven of them and you’re not going to end up playing them much. There are only 114 US games, so more than six percent of your collection will be these boring sports games. Great Football is definitely the strangest and hopefully the worst of the lot. I hope it is the worst because eventually for this blog I will have to play through all seven. Isn’t there another Alex Kidd game I could play through instead? (PS there is! I’m still gonna play these sports games though.)

(This game is about football so here is a picture of football.) 

I have never played anything quite like Great Football before. The two player game is typical mid-80s football, but the one player game is odd to say the least. It’s reminiscent of my childhood when a friend of mine only would let us play “over the plate” baseball. What that meant was that we weren’t actually allowed to pitch the baseball making it an all offensive game. In Great Football all you do is play offense. The computer never touches the ball except on a turnover, and when that happens you are just penalized and get the ball back. So how can you loose? Well game actually picks up in the fourth quarter with the player’s team behind by a certain amount of points. So it’s a football game where you only play offense, only get to play the fourth quarter, and have to overcome and imaginary deficit by a team that never even gets the football. Huh?

I was determined to beat this game on my first try because I didn’t really want to play it again. I picked the Bombers because that was my high school mascot and played against the Spartans because I live in Lansing just a couple of miles away from Michigan State University. I ended up with a twelve point deficit which didn’t sound too hard to overcome. I used the same strategy with this one that I used with 10-Yard Fight. I was determined to never pass the football. Since I never had to worry about turning it over on fourth down there wasn’t much to lose by just running it. As time went on I made things even simpler than that. I kept using the same play over and over again. It seemed to always result in either short gain or really long gain. This led to a couple of fairly long third downs which made the game almost exciting, but I didn’t have to worry about losing the football so I couldn’t get that into the action. The only time I tried to kick the football it went exactly sideways so I usually ran it in instead after a touchdown. Just to add to the weirdness the two point conversions are only worth one point. They just couldn’t get anything quite right in this one.

(Good ol' #7. Nothing beats that!) 

Home football gaming turned a corner when Tecmo Bowl came out. That’s really the first game that got American football right on consoles. Great Football fits into the group of lesser football games that came out before Tecmo Bowl. However, even among that group it stands out in a bad way. Even the original Atari version let you play defense. 10-Yard Fight was no masterpiece, but at least the computer opponent gave me a challenge and I had to switch up plays. Nobody wants to play a game that only needs one play to be won. With its odd setup I felt like I was only playing 1/8^th of a real football game, and that’s not good. Hey at least I had fun playing it with my brother back in the day.

I am happy that I finished this one because I don’t finish SMS games very often. I feel a little bad because the two games I have written about have been two of my least favorite. I may try to replay a few I actually like and write about them because I really do love the SMS. I am also going to try to keep track of my game completions on the side of the blog as an attempt to increase my output. It probably won’t work, but I like to keep trying. Of course with all the games I have already beat I could keep this blog stocked with about 400 more articles. Looks like I need to get writing!

PC #1: Ultima

A couple of things happened to me here at the tail end of 2019 which really show off what a weirdo I am. After 20 years of computing I finally got my first PC. It’s not a complete transformation for me. I just needed a cheap laptop that I could use around the kids. Of course when I unboxed my new computer my thoughts quickly turned to games. There is a whole world of PC games out there that I have never been exposed to. So what’s the first game I bought with my GOG account? The very first Ultima. Yes, the first PC game I ever bought was the first Ultima game in 2019. It looks like I have some catching up to do with my CRPGs. It’s the kind of game that pushes all the right buttons for me. I love RPGs and the early history of media. I have seen dozens of silent movies and have sampled jazz music all the way back to the 1910s. How could I not want to play one of the earliest examples of my favorite type of game? I know that Alakabeth came out even earlier, but that one might be too archaic even for me. At this time Ultima is as far back as I can go. So how was my Ultima experience?

(Note the nifty air car. The graphics look so nice because this is the updated mid 80s version) 

Honestly I couldn’t believe how much fun I had playing this ancient game. It’s primitive and quirky as all get out, but Lord British was on to something. The story is about as traditional as it gets. There’s an evil wizard out there and you have to go stop him. How are you going to do that? By going to visit kings and doing their quests. The game has a surprisingly large overworld which is separated into four continents. Not bad for one of gaming’s first overworlds. There are also dungeons scattered throughout, and this is where most of the level grinding takes place. So we have quests, money and experience, an overworld with dungeons to explore, and a few NPCs to talk to. Most of the classic RPG elements are all in place, but there are still some quirks that would quickly be abandoned in the series but nevertheless make this game one worth experiencing. 

Experience points are almost pointless. Supposedly when you gain lev

(If stats went to 9999 I would still be reading this sign)

els there will be some different monsters and shop items, but I never noticed. Experience is more like a total score than anything else. I maxed mine out at 9999 which actually does make me feel accomplished. The stats are gained in unique ways. To gain HP you either pay a king or fight in a dungeon. Every time you leave a dungeon you will get an HP bonus related to how many monsters you defeated. You don’t really have a max HP, so you can stay in the first few levels of a dungeon and go up and down until you feel like you have enough HP to take on the world. The rest of the stats are increased by completing quests and finding signposts. Anytime I got frustrated in this game I would sail between signposts and raise my stats. I found it cathartic.

Oh and did I mention that you go into space and blast alien spaceships? Because you totally go into space and blast alien spaceships. It’s a bit hard to comprehend for people who are only familiar with the later Ultima games, but the first two games are sci-fi adventures. The shuttle that you see for sale all over the place is in fact a space shuttle. You use it to fly into space and play a simplified version of Star Raiders. The princess won’t help you travel through time unless you are a space ace. That’s fair enough I suppose. It’s jarring after hours of dungeon crawling to suddenly be in space shooting down aliens, but in a weird way it works. The hardest parts are remembering to wear your vacuum suit and managing your fuel. The trick is to not chase after the ships. I tried to do that thinking they would fly away and not come back, but every screen has a set number of ships so it’s best to just wait for them to come to you and conserve your energy. It took a while, but I eventually shot the required 20 and became space ace. I never get tired of saying that.

(Sadly most NPCs have very little to say. There's not even a button for that)

I did make it to the endgame and defeat the evil wizard, but it did take a little help from the internet. Still it’s not as confusing as many 80s RPGs. I’m surprised by how efficient it was. For such a large world it was easy to navigate. The caves are random grids, but even those could be traversed without mapping. Really all the quests can be completed in any dungeon so don’t waste any graph paper on this one. I did play it with a world map on the side of the screen, but even that was probably not necessary. I’m just not that good with directions.

I think I played this game for about 10 hours, and I enjoyed every one of them. It does a great job of capturing the time and place that it was created. Ultima was the beginning of more personal gaming. You can’t tell much about the creators playing an arcade game like Space Invaders. Even bigger games like Atari’s Adventure don’t paint much of a picture. However, playing Ultima really says a great deal about Richard Garriott. His interests and personality are right there in the game. At the time he probably didn’t know he’d be spending the next two decades making Ultima games, so he put as much of himself as he could into this first epic quest. Even after almost forty years it’s a journey worth taking

NES #49: The Magic of Scheherazade (1989)

I had the opposite experience with this game as I did with Gilligan’s Island. Whereas Gilligan’s Island was a bad game that I nevertheless had fun playing, The Magic of Scheherazade appears to be a good game that I didn’t enjoy playing very much. There are a few reasons for this. I mostly played it at night after the kids were asleep so I was already tired and couldn’t focus on a confusing action RPG. It’s also a game that I had attempted to beat before so this time through I was just trying hurry and get it over with. I played the bulk of it in two long sessions and probably went past the point where I was enjoying myself. I’m curious to know if this actually is a good game or if my love for RPGs runs so deep that I just assume it is good. Let’s look at the evidence.

It certainly has a good setup. It’s based on the Arabian Nights making it one of the few games of the era with a Middle Eastern theme. Its story includes amnesia, evil wizards, and time travel which of course are all the best plot points. It switches between Zelda-style action sections and turn-based RPG combat. It also has a large cast of quirky characters. Many of them are playable in the RPG section giving it a very large cast for an NES game. So far it sounds like a slam dunk, but there are parts of the game that really bring it down.

(It's gotta be good if it looks like this, right?)

The first problem is that the turn-based battles are no fun, and they always seemed to happen when I wanted them to the least. They happen unexpectedly between screens, so they always snuck up on me when I was trying to go somewhere. As the game goes on they do become easier with better party members and strong matchups, but every time I got into one of these battle I rolled my eyes. It’s basically just my party slowly attacking and then waiting for the opponents to slowly attack. It doesn’t have any of the strategy or tension of good turn-based combat. The action based combat is better, but still nothing special and too often turns into button mashing. I wish the developers would’ve picked one method of fighting and made it excellent instead of having both and making them mediocre. The game, however, does have some excellent bosses that require strategy and take up most of the screen. They are some of the biggest bosses I have seen in an NES game. So at least they got that part right.

(One of those big bosses I was talking about)

It’s also one of those games that is both too hard and too easy. Like most 8-bit RPGs it can be quite cryptic at times. Dungeons often feature mazes and hidden pitfalls. I hope you are paying attention to what all the NPCs say as well, because you will need some knowledge to solve puzzles too. Of course in an RPG wandering can be a good thing because it gives you a chance to level up without resorting to just grinding. Unfortunately there’s just not that much leveling required. Every world caps the levels gained at five which is never hard to accomplish. You get money from combat too, but items are not that expensive. Most regular monsters die in one or two hits to begin with, so the challenge level throughout is fairly low besides the bosses. So when you’re stuck in a dungeon you are mostly fighting the same monsters over and over without much sense of accomplishment. It once again shows that the developers wanted to make an RPG but didn’t really understand how they are supposed to work.

I hope I am not being too harsh on this one. It’s certainly one worth checking out if you are at all interested in 8-bit RPGs especially since it is much more affordable than many other similar NES games. It’s just not one that really elevates itself to the “lost classic” or “hidden gem” category that many modern reviewers place it in. It is a game that strives for depth in a field of simple action games. It’s also a game that misses the mark with all the RPG elements. You will not be challenged by the combat. You will not enjoy the turned-based combat very much. You will have to use the internet to get through some dungeons. At the same time, you will probably enjoy the quirky characters, intricate story, and well designed overworlds. It’s not a lost classic by any means, but it’s still a decent NES experience. I am certainly glad I played it, but I wasn’t too sad it was over either. Hey if you’re looking for definite conclusions than you are reading the wrong blog. I’m just some dude on the internet.

NES #48: The Adventures of Gilligan's Island

(No complaints about the box art. That's pretty much Gilligan's Island right there)

This is one of those “more fun to dunk on than it is to play” games that people who write about games love to make fun of. On the surface it’s not too hard to see why. By the time this game came out the series it was based on had been canceled for almost twenty years. It’s not like there’s ever been a big market for games based on sitcoms either. Is there another example of a game based on a tv show that had been off the air for decades? Even The Addams Family had a movie to promote when they got their own game. So it already has one strike against it for being based on a very silly show that had been off the air for a generation. It also came out right at the peak of the NES in 1990 when people were too busy playing Mario 3 to care much about such and odd licensed game. It would be more understandable if it came out a couple years earlier when the system was desperate for games, but instead it was destined to collect dust in a rental store beside Tom Sawyer and Wall Street Kid. So just how is this game which seems to be aimed only at uncles? Well as an uncle myself I was determined to find out.

(The 60s sexism was left intact)

I have to say, for a game that’s 95% backtracking it’s pretty good. Each level is set up like an episode of the tv show, although I have no idea if they were recycled from the show or original to the video game. The setup, for those of you who didn’t watch TBS in the early 90s, is that every episode they would think they were getting off the island, but for typically Gilligan related reasons they never did. It works just the same in the video game. The levels will start out with a plot-related discussion and then you spend the rest of the levels talking and gathering things for the other castaways. You play as the portly skipper who doesn’t really look like any other video game hero besides maybe Fred Flintstone. Gilligan follows you around to make sure that you never accomplish anything. He mostly falls in holes and supplies funny dialogue. Unfortunately he only has about three pieces of dialogue so don’t expect this game to provide that many laughs. There is some combat, including a surprisingly hard final boss, but the meat of the game is hunting down all the required items for the different castaways before time runs out. There is a map to help you find where everyone is, but sometimes they can be hard to get to. It drives me crazy that some places require you to float in the water, but the water always hurts you. There’s nothing worse than a required part of the game hurting you. When you finally reach the end of the level you get the joy of thinking you are going to get off the island only to find out that Gilligan has inadvertently thwarted you again. I suppose it is fairly unusual for an old game to be so full of downer endings. It might be disappointing for someone not familiar with the show to find out that they never get off the island, but don’t worry. They eventually make it off then go back later and watch the Harlem Globetrotters play basketball against Martin Landau’s evil robots. I only wish that plotline made it into the game.

(A common reaction when playing this game)

Honestly I had a pretty good time playing this one. I know I shouldn’t have, but I just can’t help myself. Maybe a lifetime of playing bad old games has hardened me. Maybe it’s because of the intricate levels with world maps. As you know if you’ve been reading this I love a good world map. I enjoy these old games that have baffling layouts where characters will be hanging out in dangerous caves for seemingly no reason. 1990 was probably the peak year of my Gilligan’s Island obsession, but I wouldn’t even play this game until 28 years later making my enjoyment of it even more baffling. I guess that when you spend years and years hearing snarky comments and reading bad reviews about a game you are surprised when you turn it on and it's a real game that you can actually play. There’s always something comforting about playing such a legendarily bad game and finding out that it is both playable and beatable. I took a risk and played through Gilligan’s Island without the need to be snarky or hateful, and for some reason that makes me feel like a slightly better person.

Sega Genesis #6: Valis (1991)

(Who needs body armor when you've got a cool headband?)

I think Valis may have the slowest moving text in the history of gaming. Every cutscene feels like when you accidentally push the button that makes the owl talk to you again in Ocarina of Time. Much of the dialogue is also rather pointless. I appreciate that the developers wanted to give the game personality, but I don’t need a letter-by-letter reveal that Valis does not, in fact, have an umbrella. I suppose that the slowness shouldn’t be too much of a surprise considering this game originated on the MSX computer in 1986. The MSX is most famously remembered today as being the reason Metal Gear is a stealth game. It was supposed to be a fast paced action game, but the software couldn’t handle it, so it became a stealth game instead. Valis doesn’t survive the software limitation quite as well, but it is still a reasonably enjoyable game. 

(Talking about naps is always a good way to start a game)

In this game Valis is on a quest to save the world by running mostly to the right and fighting bosses. She starts out as a typically dressed schoolgirl, but once she becomes a super warrior she loses most of her clothes. I guess that she becomes so powerful that her only vulnerable spots are her shoulders, breasts, and wrists. This is always the dark side of having female protagonists in games. They are often practically naked while their male counterparts wear full body armor. Hopefully I will find some less sexist female characters as I play more games. There have to be more than just Samus and Terra. 

(Right after this she goes up a snowy mountain)

For the most part the game was easy. There are unlimited continues so it becomes an endurance test. There were exactly two hard parts. One was, oddly enough, the very first boss. He has a powerful earthquake attack that is almost impossible to avoid. The first time I tried to play through this game I just figured it was impossible and decided never to play it again. Luckily I forgot my vow and gave it another try. I found a way to minimize the damage enough to get through it just barely. The other hard part is the fifth boss. After you hit her enough times she does an instant kill attack. No matter what I did I always ended up dead. I tried hitting her as many times as I could but that didn’t seem to work. I tried timing my attack to just before she struck and that didn’t work either. Finally I randomly killed her and decided not to ask any questions about it. My reward was a very long, boring cutscene. I guess if I wanted to avoid this foolishness altogether and move on with my life the game gave me plenty of chances. 

(The image of near failure)

I shouldn’t give the cutscenes too hard of a time though because overall I had a pretty good time playing this one. There is something undeniably pleasant in these old Genesis brawlers no matter if they are generic or not. It had enough magics and powerups to make me think a little, and the level designs were decent enough. I could play through 500 games like this one and not feel like my time was wasted, and looking through Genesis catalogue it appears I probably will. This game was the first of a series of four which somehow all made it to America. That’s not bad for a series that most people haven’t even heard of. The world of gaming is a bigger and more interesting place than even I realized. 

Super Nintendo #6: Out of This World (1991)

(If this is the highest rated I'd hate to see the lowest)

When I think of gaming during my childhood years I can't help but think of video game rentals. This is a mostly obsolete concept today, but I grew up during the video store's heyday. I feel like my family rented at least one game every week throughout the entire 1990s. I grew up in a town with about 10,000 people in it, but even in such a small place there were three or four very good video stores with a large selection of games. I played just about every game I could get my hands on too. There weren't too many kinds of games that I did not like. I was never a very harsh critic, so just about any game would get at least passable approval from my part. However, there was one game that I absolutely hated. It was a game that I played for about five seconds before it started to make me very angry. My dad and cousins tried to convince me that it wasn't so bad, but I didn't believe them. That game was Out of This World. Since then I have discovered that many people actually like this game. It is even thought of as a classic. I was always a little afraid to go near it though. I  think I had to wait 25 years for the trauma to wear off before I could give it a reasonable chance. Well the time has finally come and I have played through the most hated game of my youth. How do I feel now that it's finished? I'm not really sure.

(Our hero)

If you are planning in playing this game just be warned. You will die. You will be shot, poisoned, drowned, beaten to a pulp, impaled on stalagmites, ripped apart by wild animals, and go splat on the ground potentially every ten seconds or so. Anything that moves on the screen that is not your character or his one companion must be stopped before it can kill you. Every hole you find is either horrible death or your only hope of escaping. There is really only one way to find out. You do have a gun, but shooting the many guards takes very careful planning, and you have to shoot just about all of them before you can move on. There are also places where you can miss vital cryptic operations that will make the game completely unwinnable so be careful. There is really no way to tell until it is too late, so I hope you've been writing down all those passwords. Does this experience sound like a fun way to spend a Friday night to you? No wonder I hated this game so much as a kid.

The gameplay reminds me of Prince of Persia without so much jumping and Oddworld without all the problem solving. You play as a regular person who ends up in a strange and deadly world. I found this to be very strange as a child. It was very confusing seeing a game character doing real world things like drinking a can of soda. Of course if you just press start you will miss the intro movie and end up in a deep pool of water that you have to swim out of before you die. This is about as odd a way to start a game as possible. The first section of the game starts out on the surface where your foes are deadly animals. You eventually run into one of the humanoid inhabitants of this world who, surprisingly enough, shoots you. Strangely you end up in a cage instead of a coffin and with the help of your buddy in the cage are able to slowly escape while experiencing a million annoying deaths. This is one of those games where every creature kills you unless it is vital to the plot that they don't. If they wanted you dead so much than why didn't they just kill you at the beginning of the game? It would have put us all out of our misery that much faster. Even near the game's climax you are falling to your potential death when one of the aliens decides to save you just so he can beat you to death. Why didn't he just let you fall? This game piles confusion upon confusion. 

(Guards and prisoners are all identical. Why that's not confusing at all!)

I will say that this game has a very unique look for a Super Nintendo game. It has a very blocky early-90s computer look that reminds me of early concepts for virtual reality. It goes with a bright color scheme which I appreciate even though most of the game largely takes place in caverns and prisons. The only problem is that the blue and green interiors would sometimes make me think I was in a water filled room and about to drown. That's a reasonable assumption in this game. I hated the more realistic graphics as a kid, but now that's my favorite part of the whole game. Super Nintendo graphics have a timeless and unified feel to them for the most part. It doesn't matter if it's a game from 1991 or 1997. You see it and you instantly know it's SNES. Out of this World is one of the rare cases where you could see screenshots and not know what system it came from. It could just as easily be Jaguar or Sega CD. At least I should give the game a few points for that. 

(Blue on blue with blue)

My own playthrough of this game was a mixed bag of excitement and frustration. The game plays as one long level, but there are checkpoints along the way, although you don't know where they are until you die and respawn. Some of these sections would involve obtuse puzzle solving while at the same time having to fight about a dozen guards in close combat. I remember some of these sections taking me thirty minutes or more. It is hard for me to feel good about myself when I'm looking at the same three or four screens over and over again. I got tired of the shooting parts very quickly because almost all of the targets are the same guard over and over again so the strategy never really changes. You have to make a shield, blow away their shield, and then shoot them. The only difficulty comes in the speed and timing. I got annoyed when I would complete some puzzle that took fifteen minutes and then get blown away by that guard again because I was a little bit too slow. I enjoyed the non shooting puzzles much better. I liked the part where I was rolling through tunnels and the swimming sections. Yes, this game had a swimming section that I actually enjoyed. The threat of drowning makes for some tense moments that give the game a much needed change in momentum. I will say that I enjoyed when I would finally figure out what I was doing and a whole section would come together, but this feeling was somewhat ruined by the knowledge that it might still take me a dozen attempts to get through a section without getting killed. Sadly, the bad seemed to outweigh the good in this one. I really can't say I had that much fun playing it, and the brief ending just left me feeling empty inside. 

(These lasers don't kill you because of reasons)

As you can probably tell I'm not too keen on this game. I expected that due to its awkward gameplay it would have a somewhat mixed reception. However, it seems to have almost universal acclaim. It was well received when it came out, and people still have a high opinion of it now. My question is why? It seems to have every element that people don't like in other games. The gameplay is unfair and based mostly on trial and error. The controls are stiff and awkward. Why are A and X both run and shoot? Couldn't they pick one function for each button? All that does is lead to mistakenly shooting or running when you don't mean to. The graphics are nice, but they lead to more problems than anything else. I hate how sometimes gunshots are just background scenery and sometimes they are deadly. The puzzles are often headscratchers which are nearly impossible to solve without cheating. The ending is worse than an old static  "The End" screen in an NES game. Any one of these problems would cause another game to get bad reviews, yet Out of This World has all of them. Why do people love it so much? 

So if you both read my blog and enjoy this game, please let me know. What is it that makes you enjoy this one? It's a puzzle I have been trying to solve for the last 25 years. It is more difficult for me to understand than any of the puzzles in the game itself. What is it about this game that impresses people? Your insights would be appreciated, because I am totally lost. 

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.